Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire

by Sally Spencer

  ‘You should be concerned because the politicians who are consequently disgraced will want their revenge too – and they will extract it from the man who brought about their downfall. In other words, Major Trujillo, they will extract it from you!’

  ‘I am an officer in the Spanish army – foreign politicians could do nothing to me,’ Trujillo said.

  Yet his own words did not convince him, because he knew that was not the way it worked.

  The ruling classes, bound together by their mutual interest in maintaining the status quo, knew no national boundaries, he told himself, and while the British politicians themselves could not get to him, they would know men in Spain who could.

  ‘Perhaps the best solution all round might be for you to kill him,’ Cheavers suggested, out of the blue.

  ‘What!’ Trujillo exclaimed.

  ‘It would be easy for him to fall down the stairs and break his neck,’ Cheavers said. ‘Or perhaps you could hang him, and make it look like a suicide. The British government would not look into his death too closely, because, as I said, he still poses a threat to some very influential men.’

  ‘You’re … you’re giving me permission to kill him?’ Trujillo asked, astounded.

  ‘Not my permission, exactly,’ Cheavers replied, hedging. ‘I don’t think I could go quite that far. But let’s just say, shall we, that a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse?’

  ‘I need to think,’ said Trujillo, starting to sweat.

  ‘Wait a minute – while it might be a jolly good idea on paper, it would never work in practice,’ Cheavers said, disappointedly. ‘A clever man like Woodend has probably arranged that, in the event of his death, certain incriminating evidence will be released.’

  ‘So what am I to do?’ Trujillo asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cheavers confessed. ‘You can’t put him on trial, and you certainly can’t kill him, so what are you to do?’

  The two men sat there in silence for perhaps two minutes.

  Then Trujillo, with an edge of desperation in his voice, said, ‘I could always let him go.’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t work either,’ Cheavers said.

  ‘Why wouldn’t it work?’ Trujillo pleaded. ‘What’s to stop me just handing him over to you?’

  ‘The paperwork,’ Cheavers said. ‘Once the paperwork’s filled in, you’re snookered. I mean to say, how would you explain to your superiors that you’d released a man you’d only recently arrested for spying?’

  ‘But there isn’t any paperwork!’ Major Trujillo said, with a gasp of relief. ‘Woodend was only arrested late yesterday afternoon, and I have not yet had time to file a report on him.’

  Or more likely, in order to avoid your superiors getting any of the credit, you were not going to file any report until you had the whole case neatly tied up, Cheavers thought.

  ‘Well, that is good news,’ he said aloud. ‘If there’s no report, then I think your solution is probably the best one we’re likely to come up with.’ He frowned. ‘But there is still one small difficulty we will have to overcome.’

  ‘Yes?’ Trujillo said worriedly.

  ‘You may not have realized this, Major, but Paco Ruiz is Charlie Woodend’s lover.’

  ‘That’s disgusting!’ Trujillo said.

  ‘Yes, it is rather unsavoury,’ Cheavers agreed. ‘But the fact is that if you don’t release Ruiz, too, Woodend will use the evidence he has to put pressure on the politicians in London, who will put pressure on the politicians in Spain … And we all know whose head will end up on a silver platter, don’t we?’

  ‘I will release Ruiz, too,’ Trujillo said, defeated.

  ‘Yes, that would certainly resolve all the problems,’ Cheavers agreed.

  ‘How the hell did you manage that?’ Woodend asked admiringly, as the car left the army camp and sped across the flat plain.

  ‘I lied through my teeth,’ Cheavers replied. ‘I even told Trujillo that you were screwing Paco.’

  ‘But that is not true!’ Paco said.

  ‘I know,’ Cheavers said, apologetically. ‘And I also know that by even making such a suggestion, I will have offended a macho man like you – but I’m afraid that it had to be done.’

  Paco grinned. ‘I am the man in our relationship,’ he said. ‘It is me who is screwing Charlie.’

  ‘That’s quite true,’ Woodend agreed. ‘We tried it the other way, and it didn’t work.’

  Cheavers laughed, then reached into his pocket, produced an envelope, and handed it to Woodend.

  ‘What’s this?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Plane tickets,’ Cheavers said. ‘One from San Sebastian to Bordeaux, and another from Bordeaux to Manchester.’

  ‘And why are you handing them to me?’

  ‘Because I’ve not yet worked out what lies I’ll tell the Foreign Office to cover the lies I told Major Trujillo,’ Cheavers replied. ‘And while all this lying is going on, I’d much prefer it if you were out of the country.’

  The funeral mass for Javier Martinez was a large affair, and was attended by everybody who was anybody in Whitebridge’s Catholic community, but there was one person who was notably absent – his son, Robert Martinez.

  ‘There’s a rumour going round that he’s had a nervous breakdown,’ Meadows told Beresford and Crane, as they stood in the churchyard.

  ‘I can’t say I’m entirely surprised about that,’ Crane said. ‘He looked on the point of collapse yesterday.’

  ‘It’s probably because of the guilt,’ Beresford said sombrely. ‘He’ll have been telling himself that he should have done more for his father while he was still alive, and that if had done more, he could somehow have prevented the death. It’s not logical – but it’s what will be going through his mind.’

  Meadows and Crane exchanged glances. They both knew that Beresford’s mother had had Alzheimer’s disease, that he had sacrificed virtually his entire twenties to caring for her, and that though he might be talking about Robert Martinez, he was really thinking about himself.

  ‘Anyway, we’re not here to speculate on Robert Martinez’s state of mind – we’re here to see if we can catch ourselves a killer,’ Beresford continued, in a much more upbeat voice.

  And that was indeed why they were there. Killers – for any number of twisted psychological reasons – often did attend the funerals of their victims, and that had been the downfall of any number of them. But the respectful – if not exactly broken-hearted – congregation that was inside the church at that moment showed absolutely no sign of homicidal tendencies.

  The big oak doors of the church swung open, and the corpse and congregation appeared. The coffin was carried solemnly to the hearse, which was waiting outside in the street, and then a convoy of cars set off in slow procession towards the crematorium.

  ‘Are we going to the crematorium ourselves, sir?’ Crane asked.

  What would be the point of that? Beresford wondered.

  The killer wouldn’t be there to watch the coffin make its slow journey on the conveyor belt towards the fiery furnace. He was long gone – had probably already been long gone by the time the roadblocks went up on the night Javier Martinez was murdered – by now he would be sunning himself on some South American beach, and looking forward to a comfortable old age paid for by his bars of Spanish gold.

  ‘Sir?’ Crane said.

  ‘You two can put in an appearance at the crematorium,’ Beresford told him. ‘I have to get back to headquarters.’

  Though since the case seemed to have stalled, what he would actually do when he got to headquarters was something he hadn’t yet worked out.

  It had only been a short flight from San Sebastian to Bordeaux, and Woodend had barely got off one plane before he was boarding another. Now he was crossing the Bay of Biscay, and in a little more than an hour’s time, he would be landing at Manchester’s Ringway Airport.

  He would go straight to Whitebridge, he’d decided, because he needed to talk to Monika’s team as soon as
possible.

  He hoped that she wouldn’t think he was interfering by turning up – literally out of the blue – because that was not his intention at all.

  No, he would simply hand over the evidence that would close the case for them, and be on his way.

  They would probably never catch the killer, of course – but at least they would have the satisfaction of knowing who had done it.

  He took the sepia photograph that Paco had purloined out of his pocket, and studied the rank of smiling young men. They looked so innocent – almost childlike. But they had been far from that. Several – if not all – had been responsible for executions in the village of Val de Montaña. One of them – Lieutenant Suarez – had repeatedly raped Elena. And another man, who had married a woman from Calpe and settled on the coast, had killed again, very recently.

  ‘We’re on your trail, Pepe Durante,’ he said softly to himself.

  There were a number of men having a smoke on the steps of the crematorium, and one of them – who had made no effort to dress up appropriately for such a solemn occasion, and frankly seemed quite drunk – was Fred Sidebotham.

  ‘I’m surprised to see you here, given how you felt about Javier Martinez,’ Meadows said.

  Sidebotham looked at her through bleary eyes.

  ‘You’re that bobby,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Meadows agreed.

  Sidebotham blinked.

  ‘What was the question again?’ he asked.

  It had been a statement rather than a question, but there wasn’t much point in explaining that to a man in his condition.

  ‘Why did you come to the cremation?’ she asked, putting it as simply as she could.

  ‘I wanted to make quite sure the old bugger didn’t escape this time,’ Sidebotham said. He took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘My only regret is that they’re burning him up, instead of burying him.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because if they’d buried him, I could have danced on his grave.’ A puzzled expression came to Sidebotham’s face. ‘Why didn’t they bury him? Do you know the answer to that?’

  ‘As I understand it, from what his son told my boss, Javier had expressed a wish to be cremated.’

  ‘Funny, that,’ Sidebotham said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, when him and me were still mates – though, as it turned out, we never really were mates, at least as far as he was concerned – he always used to say that he hated the thought of cremation.’

  ‘He hated the thought?’

  ‘Yes, he was one of them old-fashioned Catholics, you see – the sort that believes that if God’s going to resurrect you on Judgement Day, he needs a body to work on, and that he can do bugger all with a handful of ashes. I wonder what made him change his mind.’

  ‘So do I,’ Meadows said thoughtfully.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The phone in the corridor of the Drum and Monkey was not the ideal one from which to make a sensitive and personal phone call, but Monika Paniatowski knew there was simply no way that she could wait until she was back in her office to make it.

  ‘I’ve just been told by one of my team that you didn’t attend your father’s funeral,’ she said, to the man on the other end of the line.

  ‘You’re right, I didn’t,’ Robert Martinez replied. ‘I know it was wrong of me, but …’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Robert, I don’t care about the bloody funeral,’ Paniatowski interrupted him exasperatedly. ‘It’s you that I’m worried about. How are you feeling?’

  ‘When I woke up this morning, I was shaking, and I haven’t been able to stop since,’ Martinez said.

  ‘Have you seen the doctor?’

  ‘I’ve got an appointment.’

  ‘And is your ex-girlfriend there with you?’

  ‘No, she’s in Harrogate, at a conference.’

  ‘So you’re all alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s not a good idea.’ Paniatowski hesitated before speaking again. ‘You’re not thinking of harming yourself, are you?’

  Robert Martinez laughed, but there was no trace of humour in it.

  ‘No, don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘I might wish I was dead – but I’m a Catholic, and I’m certainly not going to top myself.’

  She should go to him, she thought. He needed her. But her team needed her, too, because the investigation was going nowhere fast, and without her to lead them, there was no chance of ever catching the killer.

  ‘I’ll come round to see you as soon as I can,’ she said, ‘but it might not be until the evening.’

  ‘I understand,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

  ‘I …’ Paniatowski said, then she stopped herself.

  ‘What?’ Robert asked.

  ‘I’ll … I’ll get there as soon as I possibly can,’ Paniatowski said, and quickly hung up.

  But that hadn’t been what she’d been about to say at all.

  What she’d been about to say was, ‘I love you.’

  As she walked down the corridor, she was feeling light-headed – almost as if she were a different person – but by the time she had crossed the bar and sat down at the team’s usual table, she had got a grip on herself, and DCI Paniatowski was back in charge.

  ‘Where were we?’ she asked the team.

  ‘Before you went to make your phone call, I’d just told you that Robert Martinez wasn’t at his father’s funeral,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Right, that’s dealt with,’ Paniatowski said, over-crisply. ‘What have you got to report, Colin?’

  ‘I’ve had my lads out all morning trying to trace Elena’s movements after she left the copse – and they’ve got nowhere,’ Beresford said.

  ‘The logical place for her to have gone would have been Tufton Court,’ Crane said.

  ‘Why should she have gone there then, when she hadn’t gone before?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘She might have thought that she saw Robert Martinez walking along the road and turning into the Court.’

  ‘He was in London, working on the draft of an important bill,’ Paniatowski said, then she added, aggressively, ‘And before any of you ask, Inspector Beresford, I have checked on that.’

  ‘The inspector wasn’t going to ask, boss,’ Meadows said softly. ‘Nobody was.’

  ‘I wasn’t saying that she did see Robert Martinez,’ Crane continued, as if he hadn’t noticed the sudden tension in the atmosphere. ‘I was only suggesting that she might have thought she’d seen him. It was getting dark by then, remember, and it would have been easy for her to make a mistake – especially since she was cold and desperate to talk to Robert.’

  You shouldn’t have snapped at Colin like that, Paniatowski told herself. You might be upset about Robert, but that’s no excuse for falling to pieces – especially in front of the people who you’re supposed to be leading.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was a little abrupt with you just now, Inspector Beresford,’ she said.

  ‘That’s all right, boss,’ Beresford said generously. ‘We’re all feeling a bit under pressure.’

  ‘Too bloody right, we are,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘Let’s get back to Jack’s idea that Elena entered the Court because she thought she’d seen Robert Martinez. If she’d done that, surely one of the neighbours would have seen her.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ Beresford told her. ‘Everybody would have drawn their curtains for the night by then. And there wasn’t even much chance of anybody driving down the Court, because, as you know, all the houses have their garages at the back, next to the service road.’

  ‘So the murderer sees where Elena is going, follows her, and kills her,’ Paniatowski said. ‘He will have needed a car to take the body away. Check with the car rental firms, see if they rented a car out to someone with a Spanish driving licence on either Tuesday or Wednesday, Colin. And also check up on the cars that were stolen on those days.’

  ‘I’ve already done that, boss,�
� Beresford said.

  ‘Then do it again!’ Paniatowski told him.

  But it would do no good, she thought. Nothing they tried seemed to be doing any good.

  ‘There was one small point I was about to bring up before you made your phone call, boss,’ Meadows said.

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘I was talking to an old man called Fred Sidebotham at the crematorium. He’s known Javier Martinez for a long time, and he said that – for religious reasons – Martinez absolutely hated the idea of being cremated. Of course, he was very drunk, so he may have been talking rubbish, but I thought I should mention it.’

  ‘He was talking rubbish,’ Paniatowski said vehemently. ‘Robert Martinez would never have done anything that was against his father’s wishes.’

  If anyone had asked the young Charlie Woodend where he thought he would be living in his mid-sixties, he would have answered, without a moment’s hesitation, that it would be in Whitebridge.

  Because that was the way it had been in those days, Woodend thought. You were born in the town, and you would die in the town. It was simply one of the laws of nature.

  And yet there he was, fresh from sunny Spain, walking up the old cobbled street which led to the Drum and Monkey, and thinking how strange and alien it all seemed.

  Life rarely worked out as you thought it would, he told himself. It was sometimes better, and sometimes worse, but it was never quite what you’d imagined it would be.

  He saw the front door of the Drum and Monkey ahead of him, and felt a familiar surge of excitement.

  He opened the door, and saw Monika and Beresford sitting at their usual table, with a younger man and woman, who, from Monika’s descriptions of them, he knew had to be DS Meadows and DC Crane.

  Then they saw him, too.

  Beresford sprang to his feet and held out his hand.

  ‘Well, just look what the cat’s dragged in,’ he said. ‘It’s really good to see you, sir. Would you fancy a pint?’

  ‘Too bloody right I would,’ Woodend told him.

  Paniatowski, who was still in her seat – and seemed to have been having difficulty processing the fact that Woodend was actually there – looked up at him and said, ‘Hello, Charlie.’