‘You’ve forgotten the hat,’ Inspector James said.
‘So I have,’ Hope admitted. ‘I’ll be forgetting my own head next.’ He turned to Beresford. ‘She said she wanted a hat – and that it had to be a big one.’
‘A big one?’ Beresford repeated. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that she didn’t want one that sat on the top of her head, a bit like a cherry on a cake. What she said she needed was one with a wide brim.’
‘Her disguise,’ Inspector James mouthed.
Beresford nodded.
‘Did you find her a hat?’ he asked the shopkeeper.
‘I did,’ Hope replied, ‘but hats for women aren’t really fashionable any more, and I had to rummage through the whole of the storeroom to find it. It didn’t really suit her, to be honest – she looked like a very tiny John Wayne – but she seemed more than happy with it.’
‘What happened to the clothes she was wearing when she came in?’ Beresford asked.
‘She left them here,’ Hope told him. ‘She said if I could sell them, I could keep the money.’
‘That was nice of her.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Hope agreed. ‘She was a nice woman – though to be honest, it would have been easier to sell Buckingham Palace to the Queen than it would have been to shift that stuff.’
‘So what did you do with it?’
‘Put it in the bin outside,’ Hope said, and before Beresford could ask the inevitable question, he added: ‘It was collected on Wednesday.’
It was less than eighteen hours since Javier Martinez’s body had been discovered, and the two Scenes of Crime Officers (SOCOs for short), were still hard at work in the house that Javier Martinez had shared with his son.
That the two men had surnames was beyond doubt, but almost no one on the Whitebridge police force used them. Indeed, it was doubtful if most of the officers knew what their surnames were. Instead, they were always referred to as Eddie-n-Bill – as distinct from Eddie and Bill – which reflected the fact that it was virtually impossible to think about one of them without also thinking of the other.
It was Eddie, the short, round one, who responded to the knock on the door, to find Meadows and Crane standing there.
‘Good evening, Sergeant Meadows,’ he said, the delight evident in his voice. ‘And what can we do for you on this cold, dark winter’s evening?’
And he was thinking, If I was a few years younger, quite a bit taller, a lot better looking, and about three times more sophisticated than I am now, I might just have a chance with you, darling.
‘There’s a couple of things I’d like to check on inside, if that’s all right with you,’ Meadows said.
‘Anything your little heart desires would be more than all right with me,’ Eddie said.
Bill, who was tall and thin, appeared in the doorway behind his partner.
‘Actually, that’s not strictly true, Sarge,’ he said hastily. ‘We’re not supposed to let anyone in until we’ve finished the job, and this is a big house, so we’re nowhere near done yet.’
‘Have you finished in the victim’s bedroom?’ Meadows asked.
‘Well, yes,’ Bill admitted. ‘It being the actual scene of the crime, it was the first room we examined.’
‘That’s the only room I want to look at,’ Meadows told him. ‘In fact, I don’t even want to look at the room – I just want to skim through the accountancy ledgers that Javier Martinez kept in there.’
‘There couldn’t be any harm in that, could there?’ Eddie asked his partner.
‘No, I suppose not,’ Bill agreed.
‘And if you want somebody to turn the pages over for you, Sergeant, you’ve only to ask,’ Eddie said.
Meadows grinned at him. ‘I’d love to have you turn over my pages, Eddie,’ she said, running her tongue along the edge of her lips suggestively. ‘I’d even let you carry my briefcase home for me, but if I did, my friend here,’ she pointed at Crane, ‘would start getting jealous.’
‘Fair enough,’ Eddie said philosophically.
‘Eddie fancies you, you know,’ Crane whispered to Meadows, as they walked up the stairs.
‘You don’t say,’ Meadows replied. ‘You know, Jack, with a keen eye like yours, you ought to be a detective.’
They entered the bedroom, and Meadows walked straight over to the bookcase containing the row of leather-bound ledgers.
‘What does the fact that Javier Martinez kept the ledgers here tell you about the man himself, Jack?’ Meadows asked, as she pondered on which of the ledgers to select.
‘I’m not sure,’ Crane admitted. ‘What does it tell you?’
‘It tells me that the closest thing in the world to his heart was money.’
Meadows selected the ledger that had 1957 stamped on it, and took it across to the roll-top desk.
‘I didn’t know that you’d had any formal training in accountancy, Sarge,’ Crane said.
‘I haven’t,’ Meadows replied, flipping the ledger open at random. ‘But I used to employ a whole team of accountants, and I picked up a few tricks from them.’ She paused. ‘By the way, that particular piece of information is not for general dissemination.’
‘Of course not,’ agreed Crane, who had made a sort of hobby out of attempting to piece together Kate Meadows’ past history from the occasional hints she let slip – though so far, he had to admit, it was a hobby in which he had made very little progress.
Ten minutes passed, then fifteen and Meadows was still poring over the ledger.
Crane wandered up and down the room, stopping occasionally to examine one of the framed photographs hanging on the wall. The mountains were impressive, he thought, and even the plains had a kind of bleak grandeur about them. The only thing that was missing was any pictures of the sea, and he wondered why that was.
Another fifteen minutes slipped by, and Crane was starting to get both bored and hungry.
‘There’s one thing I don’t understand, Sarge,’ he said.
‘There are many things that you don’t understand, young Jack – in fact, I could fill a book with them,’ replied Meadows, who was obviously annoyed at being disturbed. ‘What particular thing are you fretting about now?’
‘When we were driving out to the Sunshine Holidays’ depot, you said this line of investigation was a complete waste of time, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I do seem to remember saying something along those lines,’ Meadows agreed.
‘And yet here we are, long after we could – in all conscience – have called it a day, still pursuing that line.’
‘So clearly, I must have changed my mind about it being a waste of time,’ Meadows said.
‘And what’s made you do that?’
‘There’s something that’s not quite right about Sunshine Holidays,’ Meadows told him. ‘I can sense it, I can smell it – but I haven’t quite been able to put my finger on it yet.’
‘I can’t say I’ve noticed anything,’ Crane said.
‘That’s because you’re an admirably straightforward young man,’ Meadows said. ‘I, in stark contrast, am neither particularly admirable nor particularly straightforward. Now why don’t you stick your hand in your trousers and play pocket billiards with yourself, while I finish the job?’
It was another half an hour before Meadows finally closed the ledger with a frustrated slam.
‘I’m out of my depth,’ she announced. ‘I’m going to have to get some help on this job.’
‘You mean a forensic accountant?’ Crane asked.
‘No, I was thinking that I might ask a bricklayer or a national hunt jockey to give me a hand,’ Meadows said, somewhat tartly. ‘Of course I mean a forensic accountant, Jack!’
‘Well, good luck with the mountain of request forms you’ll have to fill in first,’ Crane said.
Meadows smiled. ‘You seem to be under the impression I’ll be getting my forensic accountant through the good offices of the Whitebridge police force.’
&
nbsp; ‘And won’t you?’
‘Absolutely not. I don’t want someone who’s prepared to work for the pittance that this town will pay him – I want the best.’
‘And, of course, you know exactly where to get your hands on the best, don’t you?’ Crane asked.
‘Naturally,’ Meadows agreed.
SEVENTEEN
Once they had crossed the provincial border and entered Cataluña, they turned away from the sea and headed towards the mountains. The roads soon became steep, narrow and twisty. Several times, it seemed as if the little Seat was about to give up the ghost, but then, in response to its driver’s urgings, it found the strength to make another effort.
As night was falling, they arrived at a mountain inn, which was built of huge blocks of stone and had a sharply sloping roof. Inside, the beams were exposed, and the only illumination came from the flickering oil lamps and the blazing log fire.
They were the only overnight guests, but they were not the only customers. Several shepherds – hard mountain men of an indeterminate age – stood drinking at the bar, and though they nodded to the new arrivals in an accepting manner, they made no attempt to start a conversation.
The meal the two ex-policemen were served consisted of mountain ham as a starter, followed by a thick, rich peasant stew, all of which was washed down with rough red wine.
It was as the plates were being cleared away that Paco said, ‘I have a confession to make.’
‘Go on then,’ Woodend said …
‘When I told you that this was the quickest route to Arco de Cañas, I was lying,’ Paco told him. ‘I should not have done that.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Woodend assured him.
‘It does matter,’ Paco insisted. ‘You are my friend, Charlie. I should never have lied to you, and my only excuse – which really is no excuse at all – is that I was ashamed.’
‘Ashamed of what?’
‘Ashamed that I was not quite brave enough to go back to Madrid. May I explain?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I was a country boy when I first went there – an orphan – but it is a city with a big heart, and it soon adopted me. I loved it, Charlie – I still love it. And I could not bear the thought of seeing how it has changed – how the whole place has become a monument to that fascist butcher Franco.’
‘I should have understood that right from the start,’ Woodend said sympathetically. ‘I should have appreciated how hard it would be – and if anyone should apologize, it should be me.’
‘I have added perhaps half a day to our journey,’ Paco said.
‘It’s not important,’ Woodend told him. ‘The roots of the crime we’re investigating are nearly forty years old. Getting to them a few hours later isn’t going to make much difference.’
Paco smiled – perhaps a little sadly.
‘Not important?’ he repeated. ‘It’s almost killing you that we’re taking so long to reach Arco de Cañas. Why is that, Charlie? Why does this case matter so much to you?’
‘It’s a major investigation,’ Woodend said, ‘and it seems a long time since I was involved in a major investigation.’
‘But that’s not the whole story, is it?’ Paco asked.
‘No,’ Woodend admitted, ‘it isn’t – but it’s as much as I’m prepared to say for now.’
Paco nodded. ‘We have a long drive tomorrow, and I think I will go to bed now,’ he said.
‘I’ll be up in a few minutes myself,’ Woodend said, reaching for the wine flagon.
Ben Higgins, the railway porter, was far from pleased to see Beresford standing on his front doorstep again, but then he caught the look in the policeman’s eyes and decided it probably wouldn’t be very wise to complain too much about it.
‘You told me the woman you identified arrived in Whitebridge on Wednesday,’ Beresford said, without preamble.
‘That’s right, I did,’ the porter agreed.
‘And you’re sure it was Wednesday, are you?’
‘Yes,’ Higgins said. ‘I’d stake my wife’s life on it.’
‘Well, that is strange,’ Beresford said, ‘because you see, she was spotted in Manchester, getting on the train for Whitebridge, on Tuesday afternoon, and while I know some of the services between Manchester and Whitebridge are slow, I’ve never heard of one taking twenty-four hours before!’
‘It may have been Tuesday that I saw her,’ Higgins admitted.
‘It may have been Tuesday,’ Beresford repeated in disgust. ‘And what about the bloody hat?’
‘The hat?’
‘The hat that, according to the man who sold it to her, was nearly as big as a bloody Stetson! Why didn’t you think to mention that?’
‘You asked me what she was wearing,’ the porter said, sounding as if he felt he was being unfairly persecuted.
‘Yes, I most certainly did,’ Beresford agreed.
‘Well, there you are then – she wasn’t wearing the hat, she was carrying it in her hand.’
Once Paco had gone to bed, Woodend closed his eyes, and thought about what would probably be happening at that moment back in Whitebridge.
The team would already have gathered around their usual table in the Drum and Monkey, and perhaps by now they would have finished briefing each other on what they had discovered during the day, and begun hammering out theories that fitted with the facts.
He found himself wishing he could be there in the Drum himself – just for half an hour.
Not at the corner table, of course. That table was Monika’s now. She had earned the right to preside over it.
No, he wished that he could be a fly on the wall, proudly watching his protégée at work.
Eyes open again, he looked into the warm glow of the fire and turned his mind to what might happen the next day, when they finally reached Arco de Cañas.
‘You will take care, Charlie, won’t you?’ Joan had asked, before he and Paco had left Calpe.
And he had replied, ‘Of course we’ll take care – not that there’s likely to be anything we’ll need to take care about.’
He’d meant the words when he’d said them, but now, up there in the mountains – up there in a world so different from his cosy seaside existence that he might almost be on another planet – he was not quite so confident.
The Civil War was far from dead and buried – the recent events in Whitebridge proved that – so there might well be trouble waiting for them in Arco de Cañas, and a wise man, it seemed to him, would turn back now.
‘But then you’ve never been particularly wise, have you, Charlie?’ he asked himself.
‘The most important thing we seem to have learned about Elena is that she didn’t arrive on Wednesday, as we previously thought, but on Tuesday,’ Paniatowski told the team, across the corner table in the Drum and Monkey.
‘And we know that for a fact, not just because Doña Rosa said it, but because it’s been confirmed by the Manchester police,’ Beresford added.
‘So the really interesting question is why she didn’t go straight to Martinez’s house,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘We know she hadn’t got a change of clothes with her. We know she hadn’t got any money. And we know she’d come all this way to see her husband and son. So why didn’t she go to the bloody house?’
‘Maybe she did,’ Jack Crane suggested. ‘Maybe she went to the house, but not into it.’
‘What makes you say that?’ Paniatowski wondered.
‘The hat she bought from the man in the second-hand clothing shop,’ Crane replied. ‘We all agree she wanted that as a disguise, don’t we?’
‘Yes, we do,’ Paniatowski said.
‘But the question is why she should think she’d need a disguise at all,’ Crane continued. ‘And I think the reason was that she didn’t want her husband to know she’d arrived here until the time was right.’
‘And when would the time be right?’
‘When Robert Martinez returned from London.’
‘Go on.�
��
‘Elena knew that the only reason the soldiers had been able to identify Javier as a captain in the militia was because of what she’d said to the lieutenant. She’d never meant to give her husband away – but that’s exactly what she did do.’
‘True,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Now, we know that Javier had forgiven her for it long ago. He told you himself, didn’t he, boss?’
‘He did.’
‘But Elena didn’t know that. And I think what she wanted was for their son to mediate between them. So she was watching the house on Tuesday, waiting for Robert to turn up, and when he didn’t, she went to the bench outside the bus station, which is where Doña Rosa met her and took her home.’
‘And what happens the next day?’
‘What happens the next day is a direct result of what happens that night,’ Crane said. ‘The killer has been watching her. Her disguise doesn’t fool him, because he’s followed her all the way from Spain, and he’s watched her acquire it in Hope’s Fashions. And when he sees Doña Rosa take her home, that panics him, because he’s no idea what the two women might say to one another.’
‘Elena never mentioned either her son or her husband to Doña Rosa,’ Paniatowski pointed out.
‘But the killer doesn’t know that – he can’t know that. He decides it’s just too dangerous to leave her walking around, and the next morning, he lures her somewhere quiet, and kills her.’
‘And dumps her body in the canal, because he doesn’t want Javier to know she’s been murdered?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Exactly. And it’s no surprise he chooses the canal. He’s had all night to scout around for somewhere to hide the body, and he’s decided that’s his best bet.’
‘Your theory is based on the fact that the killer is after the gold, is it?’ Beresford asked.
‘Yes,’ Crane replied.
‘So why, once he’s seen Elena go off with Doña Rosa, doesn’t he do, that night what he eventually did several nights later – which is to break into the house and torture Javier Martinez?’
Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire Page 18