Addison opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, and in the end, he made do with gesturing towards the door.
Crane nodded, and left. He didn’t say goodbye, because there didn’t seem to be much point.
TEN
Once the interview had resumed, it hadn’t taken long to work out what advice Arthur Tyndale must have given to Frankie Flynn during their private consultation.
‘No comment,’ Flynn had said to the first question – and the second, and the third.
Paniatowski and Meadows had put on their best double act in an effort to draw him out, but Flynn had stuck to his guns, while Tyndale had watched the whole proceedings with an amused smile occasionally playing on his lips.
Now, with the interviewing suspended for the moment, Paniatowski and Tyndale were sitting in the chief inspector’s office.
The solicitor looked around the office with what seemed to be genuine interest.
‘You really don’t have much of a flair for interior decoration, do you, DCI Paniatowski?’ he asked, when he’d finished his inspection.
‘What do you mean by that, Mr Tyndale?’
‘There’s nothing here in this room which casts any sort of light on your personality – nothing which proclaims the passions and feelings which fuel the engine that drives you.’
‘Do you think I should have my walls covered with newspaper articles, like you’ve covered yours?’
‘Why not? You’ve made plenty of headlines in your time – and most of them have been very complimentary,’ Tyndale said. ‘So what’s wrong with nailing your colours to the mast?’
And then he began coughing – and this coughing fit, Paniatowski thought, was harder and even bloodier than the last one she’d witnessed.
‘Why don’t you go home now, and have a good rest, Mr Tyndale?’ she suggested.
‘Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, chief inspector?’ Tyndale replied. ‘With the Lone Ranger completely out of the picture, the men in black hats can do whatever they want.’
‘Is that really how you see us – as the men in black hats?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Yes, that’s exactly how I see you.’
‘Isn’t that view of the world a little lacking in subtlety?’
Tyndale laughed. ‘The police have come a long way since I started out in this trade. The bobbies I was up against in the early days would never have used the word “subtlety”. They wouldn’t even have known what it meant.’
Paniatowski smiled. ‘Nicely sidestepped, Mr Tyndale,’ she said. ‘You won’t answer the question I’ve just asked, and you’ve instructed your client not to answer any of my questions. That’s right, isn’t it? That is what you’ve done?’
‘I have not instructed my client to do anything,’ Tyndale said. ‘What I have done is to make him aware of his options – one of which is to answer no more questions.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And what were the other options that you presented him with?’
‘Why should he answer?’ Tyndale replied, ignoring the question. ‘You can’t place him in Melissa Evans’ suite – and without that, you haven’t got a case.’
‘You know for a fact that we can’t place him in Melissa Evans’ suite, do you?’
‘No, but I really believe that if you could place him there, you’d have brought it up during the interrogation. So what have you actually got, when all’s said and done? You have a motive of sorts – but only of sorts – and an alleged sighting by one of the hotel’s employees.’
‘The doorman will be a very good witness,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘You’ll see that for yourself, when you talk to him.’
‘The doorman has been arrested twice for being drunk and disorderly,’ Tyndale countered. ‘Did you know that?’
Of course she knew. Before dealing with a slippery character like Tyndale, she’d made certain she’d found out all she could about everyone involved.
‘That was years ago,’ she said, ‘back in the days when he was a professional boxer.’
‘True,’ Tyndale agreed, ‘but if this comes to trial – and I seriously doubt that it ever will – I’ll make sure the counsel for the defence mentions that fact to the jury. We may even suggest that the doorman had been drinking on the day in question – and the chances are that the jury will believe us.’
‘I can offer you manslaughter, which is as good an offer as you’re ever going to get,’ Paniatowski said.
‘I don’t want any kind of offer,’ Tyndale countered. ‘What I want is that my client – who is innocent – be released.’
‘Don’t you have a conflict of interest here?’ Paniatowski wondered.
‘In what way?’
‘Both the victim, and the man we strongly suspect of killing her, are your clients. That seems like a conflict to me.’
Tyndale laughed. ‘Frankie Flynn has been my client ever since he was old enough to throw a punch or steal a bar of chocolate – the silly boy is always getting himself into trouble. Melissa Evans was never my client. I was retained by Mary Edwards.’
‘You’re splitting hairs,’ Paniatowski said.
‘It’s what lawyers do,’ Tyndale told her. ‘It’s what they are supposed to do. But even if I accept that there is no distinction to be made between the two, Mary Edwards/Melissa Evans is dead, and since she gave me no instructions as to what to do after her demise, there is simply no way I can represent her, which is why, the moment I have the address of her estate’s executor, I will send him the advance that she paid me.’
‘If Flynn really didn’t do it—’
‘Trust me, he didn’t.’
‘Then why won’t you advise him to give an alibi for the time Melissa Evans was killed?’
‘It is not up to him to prove his innocence – it is up to you to prove his guilt,’ Tyndale said. ‘If he says anything at all, you will immediately twist his words to make them mean what you want them to mean. If he says nothing, you will be denied such ammunition.’
‘All I want is the truth,’ Paniatowski said.
Tyndale studied her face for a moment, then said, ‘I believe you. I do truly believe that left to run the investigation your own way, you would produce an honest, decent result. But you are caught up in a system which is corrupt down to its very bowels, chief inspector – an organisation which is committed firstly to its own convenience and secondly to its own survival, which means that justice comes in a very poor third.’
‘That’s simply not true,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Why don’t you let my client go, chief inspector?’ Tyndale urged. ‘We both know you have nowhere near enough evidence to charge him with the murder of Melissa Evans.’
‘No, we don’t,’ Paniatowski agreed, ‘but we will be charging him with attacking a police officer – and we will be opposing bail.’
‘From what I’ve heard, Inspector Beresford sustained no real damage as a result of my client’s actions, and all-in-all I think it might be wiser not to charge him,’ Tyndale said.
‘And why is that?’
‘Because if you charge him with the attack on Beresford, I will demand that you investigate Sergeant Meadows’ attack on him.’
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Flynn attacked her. She was only defending herself.’
‘So you say.’
‘So say the four other officers who witnessed the incident.’
‘We both know that police officers will lie to protect their colleagues. And we’re not the only ones who know it – judges and juries know it, too. Besides, once Meadows had damaged his shin, my client was helpless. There was absolutely no justification for her attempting to break his jaw.’
Paniatowski laughed. ‘If Kate Meadows had wanted to break his jaw, she would have broken it. Flynn was out of control, and Meadows used no more than necessary force to restrain him.’
‘That is a matter of opinion.’
Paniatowski shook her head. ‘You’re clearly not going
to bend even a little, and neither am I,’ she said. ‘There isn’t really much point in prolonging this conversation, is there?’
‘No,’ Tyndale agreed, ‘I don’t suppose there is.’ He stood up with some difficulty. ‘This case is probably my swansong, chief inspector, and while I have always done my best for my clients, it is particularly important to me that I get it right this time.’
Detective First Grade Pete Franco was on the phone to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Vital Records Office.
Franco had always been highly regarded within the police department – he was generally acknowledged to be a good detective and all-round nice guy – but the simple courage and dignity he had shown when his wife died of breast cancer had raised him to almost heroic status in many people’s eyes.
No one had been the least surprised when Franco had volunteered to trace Melissa Evans’ family, because he was not a man to run away from death. On the contrary, with his own bereavement, he had developed a strong empathy for others who had suffered a loss, and now he sought out such cases with an almost priest-like dedication.
Franco had been making notes while he’d been talking on the phone, and when he hung up, he slid those notes across the desk to Detective Third Grade Ted Henning, his partner.
‘The captain’s not going to like this,’ he said.
Henning read the notes and nodded.
‘It’s not exactly going to have them dancing in the streets over in England, either,’ he replied.
Every time a new customer opened the door to the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, the howling gale – which had been banging against the windows and rattling their frames – seized the opportunity to rush in. It did not come alone, but brought with it some of the sheets of discarded newspaper, cigarette packets and plastic bags it had collected as it roared around the town. It was a foul night, and, according to the weather forecast, the next day promised to be no better.
The gloom at the corner table had little to do with the climate.
There were always frustrating days during any investigation, but this seemed to be one of the worst any of the team could remember.
Melissa Evans had almost definitely been intending to write about the Hardcastle murder, but they still had no idea what had attracted her to it. It was possible, of course, that there was a family connection, but Evans was a Welsh name, and there had been no Evanses living in Whitebridge – or Accrington or Burnley for that matter – in 1924.
Frankie Flynn, encouraged by his solicitor, was still refusing to say anything but ‘no comment’.
They had now, finally, managed to trace Melissa’s port of entry – Manchester Ringway Airport – but that got them no closer to finding the killer than if they hadn’t known at all.
So where did they go from there?
‘What we’re left with is two possible directions in which we can go,’ Paniatowski said. ‘The first is that the murder had everything to do with what Melissa Evans did in the past, and nothing at all to do with her being in Whitebridge. In other words, we accept the idea that she was killed on the instructions of someone who didn’t like what she’d written about him. In support of this theory, she employed full-time bodyguards back home, and her conversation with Arthur Tyndale suggests she was worried about someone following her from the States and getting his hands on a gun. Theory two is much simpler: Frankie Flynn did it because she’d publicly humiliated him. Which one of those are you all inclined to go for?’
‘Flynn,’ Beresford said, without hesitation. ‘If you examine his record over the years, it’s clear that he’s been growing increasingly violent, and it was only a matter of time before he killed somebody.’
‘I agree,’ said Meadows – who almost never agreed with Beresford. ‘If Flynn had an alibi – even a tenuous one – his solicitor would have advised him to present it by now.’
‘That might well be true if we were dealing with any other solicitor, but in this case it’s Arthur Tyndale, and he believes that if Flynn says anything at all, we’ll just twist his words round in order to fit him up.’
‘But that’s paranoid!’ Meadows said.
‘Yes, it is,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘But there’s always been a hint of paranoia in the way Tyndale’s acted, and the closer he gets to death, it seems to me, the more paranoid he becomes.’
‘I still think Flynn’s our man,’ Beresford said.
‘And I think we haven’t been taking the hitman theory seriously enough because, given our own experience, it seems so unlikely.’ Paniatowski countered. ‘But that’s a failing on our part. Americans don’t always think like we do. Over there, violence is often seen, by many people, as the solution to a problem. In recent years, John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X have all been assassinated. When was the last time an important political figure was assassinated in England, Jack?’
‘In 1812,’ Crane said. ‘The prime minister, Spencer Perceval, was shot in the Houses of Parliament.’
‘So what I’m saying is—’ Paniatowski began.
‘Phone call for you, chief inspector,’ the barman shouted across the bar. ‘Shall I switch it through to the other phone?’
Paniatowski nodded, and headed for the corridor.
‘Monika, that you?’ said the voice at the other end of the long-distance line.
‘It’s me,’ Paniatowski confirmed. ‘You’ll have to stop ringing me here, Fred, or people are going to start thinking I’ve got a secret lover.’
It was Mahoney’s cue to slip into their ‘were-we-lovers, weren’t-we-lovers’ routine, but all he said was: ‘Yeah.’
‘Is something wrong, Fred?’ Paniatowski said, although there was no real need to ask, because her stomach had already informed her that she was about to hear something that she really wouldn’t like.
‘We’ve finished checking out Melissa Evans,’ Mahoney said heavily. ‘We’ve looked through her social security record, her driving licence form and her passport application, and they seem to indicate that she was born in a small town in South Carolina on June 7, 1940.’
That made her thirty-eight, which was just about right, Paniatowski thought.
So what was Fred so worried about?
‘Have you talked to the family?’ she asked.
‘We can’t. Her only immediate family were her parents, and they both died in a car crash in 1942.’
‘Then who brought her up?’
Mahoney sighed regretfully.
‘Nobody brought her up, Monika, because she was in the car with her parents, and she was killed, too.’
The Fox and Hounds sounded like an old pub, but it wasn’t. Ten years earlier, there had been a row of terraced houses on the site, but when that terrace – along with all the terraces surrounding it – had been demolished in order to create an executive estate, the Fox and Hounds had risen from the ashes as a watering hole for the assistant bank managers and junior accountants who had moved into the area.
It was the kind of pub which had coloured lights around the windows even when it wasn’t Christmas. Its walls were covered with traditional hunting prints (imported from a small factory in Thailand), and its bars were made of a solid oak which somehow managed to look like a veneer.
Paniatowski hated it, but not as much as she hated the thought of what she was going to have to do once she was inside.
She found Mike Traynor at a round copper-topped table in the saloon bar. He was alone – but that was pretty much par for the course.
Traynor was watching her from the moment she entered the pub, and when it became obvious that she was heading for his table, he grinned.
‘Why if it isn’t Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski,’ he said. ‘What an unexpected pleasure. Do sit down.’
Paniatowski sat. ‘Murder isn’t funny,’ she said. ‘It’s not something you treat as a game.’
‘Do let me buy you a drink, DCI Paniatowski,’ Traynor suggested. ‘What would y
ou like?’
‘I’d like you to be honest with me,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘You were playing with words at the press conference. You said the body in the mortuary wasn’t Melissa Evans. It is – it’s just somebody else as well.’
‘You’ll get no argument from me about that,’ Traynor said.
‘Why did you do it? What was the point?’
‘Listen, chief inspector, the reason that I said what I did say at the press conference was that it serves to enhance my reputation. There’s me on the one hand – a simple journalist working with just a notepad and a telephone – and there’s you on the other – a senior police officer with a huge organisation to back you up – and it’s me who gets to the truth first. The next article I write will cost fifty quid more than the last one – and the newspaper will pay up willingly.’ He took a drag of his cigarette. ‘But it was a purely professional decision to make you look an idiot in front of the cameras – there was absolutely nothing personal in it at all.’
‘Liar!’ Paniatowski said.
Traynor grinned again.
‘Well, maybe there was just a little bit of malice in it,’ he admitted. ‘After all, you and me don’t really get on, do we?’
‘You must have a lot of faith in your source to have gone out on a limb like that,’ Paniatowski said.
‘I have tremendous faith in him. You said in the press conference that my sources have sometimes fed me a load of old cobblers, and so they have. But not this one! He’s no manky old river, washing up the odd bit of detritus at my feet. He’s a bubbling fresh mountain spring. He’s been giving me information for years, and he’s never once let me down.’
‘I need to talk to him,’ Paniatowski said.
‘You can’t.’
‘You’re refusing to give me his name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you want me to arrest you?’
‘I’d love you to arrest me – it will only add to the reputation of Fearless Mike Traynor, the crusading journalist.’
‘I wonder if you’ll still be feeling as brave when you hear the judge pass sentence on you,’ Paniatowski mused.
‘That would be even better,’ Traynor said. ‘I wouldn’t get more than six months, and I’d be out in three – and when I was released, I’d be fighting off offers for a film of my life.’
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