‘It’s far too early in the investigation to give up on that particular line of approach,’ Paniatowski told him.
And Walker smiled, and replied, ‘If you say so, ma’am.’
‘How are things going back at headquarters, Colin?’ Paniatowski asked Beresford.
‘The team’s in place, and raring to go,’ the inspector said, ‘but until you throw it something it can really get its teeth sunk into, there’s not much for it to do.’
But I haven’t got anything to throw it yet, Paniatowski thought. I’ve not even got much to chew on myself.
‘What I don’t understand is why the killer changed his modus operandi when it came to disposing of the second hand,’ she said aloud.
‘Why decide to dump it in the centre of town, instead of leaving it in the countryside?’ Beresford asked. ‘It can’t have been that he thought that we’d have all likely sites in the countryside under observation – because even someone who knew virtually nothing about the Force would surely have realized that we don’t have that much manpower available to us.’
‘I’m not talking about where he dumped it,’ Paniatowski said. ‘What’s important is how he chose to announce the fact that he’d done it. He left the woman’s hand by the river bank, and then called up every local reporter he could think of. But when it came to the man’s hand, he sent an anonymous note to just one reporter – the revolting Traynor.’
‘He could have suddenly decided that by using the telephone he was running the risk of someone recognizing his voice,’ Walker suggested.
‘There was nothing sudden about it,’ Paniatowski told him. She took the note Traynor had given her out of her pocket, and laid it flat on the table. ‘Read that, Sergeant.’
‘I’ve already read it.’
‘Then read it again.’
‘If you want a real scoop, here’s one, Mr Traynor,’ Walker read. ‘Go and take a look at the dustbin behind your office. There’s a human hand in it.’ He nodded. ‘Nice touch, using Traynor’s name like that. Makes it sound more authentic, somehow.’
‘And makes it all the more difficult to put the note together,’ Paniatowski said. ‘That’s why I said there was nothing sudden about it. I think this note was pasted together sometime yesterday – and that’s at the latest.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, I don’t think I’m quite following you,’ Sergeant Walker admitted.
‘Searching for the right words, even for a relatively simple note, can take time,’ Paniatowski explained. ‘If, on the other hand, you decide to make life more complicated by using a word like “scoop” – and that’s just what the killer did want to do, because he knew that was just the word to get Traynor excited – you have to allow more time to find it. And if you want to use somebody’s actual name – and the killer wanted to do that, too – you have to be prepared to trawl your way through a fair number of magazines.’
‘So what you’re saying is the killer always planned to tip us off about the second hand with a note?’ Walker asked.
‘No, I’m saying he always planned to tip Traynor off,’ Paniatowski corrected him.
She was right, Walker thought. Bang on the button.
And while he told himself he could probably have worked all that out for himself – given time – the simple fact was that DCI Paniatowski had already worked it out.
‘What I still don’t know is what he wants us to do,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘But whatever it is, he’s using the press as a way of making sure that we do it.’
‘So if he’d already decided to use an anonymous note to reveal the location of the second hand, why didn’t he do the same thing for the first?’ Beresford asked. ‘What’s the point of changing horses midstream?’
Paniatowski gave him a thin smile. ‘If you remember, Colin,’ she said, ‘that’s the question I asked you.’
SEVEN
Mike Traynor read through his article in the first edition of the Evening Chronicle with no small degree of satisfaction.
Human hand discovered on river bank!
Police this morning discovered a severed hand hidden in the bushes on the river bank close to the Pinchbeck Estate. The hand was in a blue plastic freezer bag.
He was guessing about the freezer bag, but it was a pretty good guess, because the second hand had been in such a bag, and so there was no reason why the first one shouldn’t have been.
Though no general statement about the hand has been issued, a well-placed and reliable source in Whitebridge Police Headquarters has confirmed – exclusively to this reporter – that the hand is a woman’s.
And that was no lie, Traynor thought – it had been confirmed, though it was certainly true that DCI Paniatowski had never intended to give him any such confirmation.
There were further – even more bizarre – developments later in the morning, but for the moment, and at the specific request of the police authorities, I have decided not to report on them.
Well, that should definitely put the cat right among the pigeons, Traynor told himself.
Of all the reporters covering the case, only he was in a position to state that the hand was definitely a woman’s – and only he had any basis for hinting that more was to follow.
He had been tempted to tell his readers that they could find the ‘more’ that he had alluded to in the following morning’s Daily Globe. But he had quickly decided that his editor – who (totally unreasonably) cared more about the Chronicle’s success than he did about his reporters getting on in the world – would never have stood for that.
He wondered how his editor would react when he did read the Globe. Probably go ballistic, he thought. He’d probably claim that since the Chronicle was paying his salary, the Chronicle should have the first bite at any stories he’d uncovered.
Well, sod that! This story was too big for a provincial rag. This story was national.
The administrative area in Whitebridge Police Headquarters was the part of the building which was least likely to be visited by street-level bobbies. It occupied much of the second floor, and consisted of a warren of small offices, linked by a long corridor which was painted battleship grey and had a lovely view of the car park. It was here that overtime payments were calculated, maintenance work was approved and officers’ leave time was registered. But it was also here that the Criminal Records Department had its slightly fusty home, and it was that particular office that Sergeant Walker had been very eager to visit.
Standing in the corridor outside the CRD, DC Crane at first kept himself occupied by counting the cars parked below, but that task was soon completed, and he found himself at a loose end.
What was Walker doing in there, he wondered.
And wonder was all he could do – because, despite the fact that the sergeant was clearly excited, he’d shown no signs of wishing to share the source of that excitement with his partner.
The door swung open, and Walker stepped jubilantly into the corridor, clutching a piece of paper in his hand.
‘We’ve got a lead,’ he said. ‘And not just any old lead, but a bloody good one.’
‘What kind of lead, Sarge?’ Crane asked.
‘Nothing you should worry your little head about,’ Walker replied, clearly enjoying himself. ‘Only the name of the second victim!’
‘That’s great!’ Crane exclaimed. ‘We’d better find the boss right away, and tell her.’
Walker scowled. ‘Tell her?’ he said. ‘Why should we want to go and do something like that?’
‘Well, you know, she is supposed to be the one in charge of the investigation,’ Crane pointed out.
‘And so we have to go running to her with every little thing that we find, do we?’
‘No, not every little thing,’ Crane conceded. ‘But as you said yourself, Sarge, this is a major lead.’
‘And it’s also something we’re perfectly capable of handling by ourselves,’ Walker said.
He marched off down the corridor, and had covered half the distance to
the fire door when he realized Crane wasn’t with him. He stopped, spun round and saw that the detective constable was loitering uncertainly by the Criminal Records Department.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Walker demanded. ‘Got a bone in your leg or something?’
A couple of years earlier, when he was new to the area, Crane would not have known what the sergeant was talking about, but now he understood well enough.
‘Got a bone in your leg or something’ was ‘deep Lancashire’ for ‘Why the hell are you still standing there when there’s work to be done?’
Even so, the DC hesitated. This wasn’t right, he told himself. The boss should be informed immediately of any new developments, and it was up to her to decide what to do next.
‘Come on, lad, shape yourself!’ Walker called out. ‘There’s not a minute to lose.’
Still, Walker was the sergeant, while he himself was only the constable, Crane argued. So it wasn’t really up to him to judge what was appropriate and what wasn’t.
‘Coming, Sarge,’ he said, striding quickly – though still reluctantly – to where Walker was waiting for him.
There was a lift down to the car-park level, but Walker didn’t have the patience to wait for it to arrive, and so they took the stairs instead.
‘Now you’ll get to see the sharp end of policing for yourself,’ Walker promised Crane, as the two men almost raced across the car park to Walker’s Ford Escort.
‘Yes, now you’ll see how it’s done,’ Walker continued, once they were in the car and he had fired the engine.
‘Can I ask you a question, Sarge?’ Crane asked, as the sergeant set off at what was almost a racing start.
‘Ask away,’ Walker told him.
‘Just as a matter of interest, Sarge, what’s the real reason we aren’t telling the boss what we’re doing?’
Walker sighed. ‘We’re not telling her because I don’t think she’s got the stomach to do what needs to be done,’ he said. ‘We’re not telling her because I’m worried she’ll take the best lead we’re likely to get on this case, and make a complete balls-up of it. All right?’
‘All right,’ Crane said, though he didn’t sound convinced.
And despite having given the reasons himself, Walker wasn’t convinced either.
The truth – the real truth – which he was still fighting off acknowledging as best he could, was not so much that he believed Paniatowski would make a balls-up of it, as that he was frightened that she wouldn’t.
Brunskill’s Bakery claimed in its advertisements that all its products were freshly baked every day, and despite the fact that it was in the advertisements, the claim was actually true.
By three o’clock in the afternoon, the drivers had completed their scheduled deliveries and gone home. In the bakery itself, the ovens had been shut down, and the master bakers sat around – smoking and chatting – while their apprentices unenthusiastically cleared up. Even in the offices – though it was still two hours to clocking-off time – there was a feeling that the day’s work had been done.
Jenny Brunskill did not share in this general lethargy. She had still not been able to isolate the reason for the recent decline in sales, but she was determined that she would do so before she went home.
She was going over the figures yet again when Elaine Dunston appeared with the evening paper, opened in the middle.
‘Thought you’d like to see this as soon as it arrived, Miss Brunskill,’ the secretary said.
‘You’re quite right, I do,’ Jenny agreed. She scanned the two pages, as Elaine was leaving the office, then said, ‘Gosh, it looks even better than I’d thought it would.’
She looked across at Stan, as if expecting some reaction, but her brother-in-law said nothing.
‘It’s our new advertisement!’ Jenny enthused. ‘A double-page spread!’
Still, Stan was silent.
‘Of course, as you’d expect, it cost us an absolute arm and a leg,’ Jenny continued, ‘but if even only one in twenty of the readers decides to buy our pies as a result of it, it will have been well worth the outlay, don’t you think?’
‘Hmm,’ Stan said.
‘What’s the matter with you today?’ Jenny asked, slightly crossly. ‘Are you coming down with the same bug as Linda did?’
‘Life is never what you think it will be, is it?’ Stan asked mournfully. ‘It simply never turns out as you hoped.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Jenny said. ‘I’m very happy with the way my life’s turned out.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Why?’
‘I suppose my happiness is mostly due to the fact that I’m working at a job I love.’
‘A job you love?’ Stan repeated. ‘Do you really love it?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Or is it just that your father told you that you should love it?’
Jenny laughed. ‘Sometimes you do talk complete and utter nonsense, you know,’ she said.
There was a knock on the door, then the door opened just wide enough for Elaine to pop her head round it.
‘I don’t know whether or not you’d be interested, Miss Brunskill, but there’s something really quite gruesome on the front page of that newspaper,’ she said, with obvious relish.
Jenny looked at the double-page advertisement once more, her eyes ablaze with pleasure, then reluctantly folded them together so she could take a look at the ‘really quite gruesome’ thing that Elaine had spotted on the front page.
‘Oh, my God!’ she groaned, when she’d read it.
‘What’s the matter?’ Stan asked.
‘They’ve found a woman’s hand down by the river! It was in a plastic freezer bag!’
‘Do they know whose hand it is yet?’
‘Whatever makes you even ask a question like that?’ Jenny Brunskill wondered.
Stan shrugged. ‘Why wouldn’t I ask it? What other question could I have asked about a severed hand?’
Elaine Dunston burst into the room again, without even bothering to knock this time.
‘The police are here, Miss Brunskill,’ she gasped.
‘The police?’ Jenny repeated, mystified. ‘What on earth are you talking about, Elaine?’
‘There’s two of them – a detective sergeant and a detective constable. They’re in the lobby. And they say that nobody can leave the premises until everybody’s been questioned.’
‘Did they give you any idea of what it might be all about?’
‘No, they didn’t. They said they wanted to speak to you about it first, but wouldn’t it be awful if—’
‘What it’s all about, madam,’ said a heavy voice from the doorway, interrupting Elaine mid-flow, ‘is a severed hand.’
Even though it was still only a little after three o’clock in the afternoon, it already felt as if it had been a very long day indeed, Monika Paniatowski thought, as she looked down at the hand which Dr Shastri had just extracted from the refrigerated drawer.
It was, as Mike Traynor had said in the alleyway, clearly a man’s hand. The palm was large and the skin somewhat rough. The fingers were thick, and the fingernails were clipped short. There was black hair sprouting from both above and below the knuckles.
‘As you have already surmised, this – unlike the lady’s – is a working hand,’ Dr Shastri said.
‘And did the same person who cut off hers also cut off this one?’ Paniatowski asked.
Shastri laughed. ‘I am truly flattered by your unbounded confidence in me, my dear chief inspector,’ she said, ‘but you must accept that even I have some limitations.’
‘Meaning that you can’t say?’
‘Meaning that, if backed into a corner, I might be willing to commit myself to saying that a similar cleaver was used in both cases.’
‘But not necessarily the same one?’
‘No, not necessarily the same one. Meaning also that the two amputations are similar enough for me to be w
illing to accept that they could have been carried out by the same person – though it would certainly not surprise me to learn that they had been the work of two separate attackers.’
‘I see,’ Paniatowski said, disappointed.
‘However, you should not despair,’ Shastri said cheerfully. ‘After all, each cloud has its silver lining, it is always darkest before the dawn and every dog has his day.’
Paniatowski grinned. ‘What have you found out?’ she asked.
‘Not much,’ Shastri said airily. ‘In fact, the merest of trifles. But it may just help you in your inquiries.’
‘Spit it out,’ Paniatowski told her.
Dr Shastri looked hurt. ‘Now that you are the Big Chief, you are far less fun to play with,’ she said. ‘Very well, to cut a long story short, the first thing I discovered was a slight trace of ink on all the fingertips.’
‘Ink?’ Paniatowski repeated.
‘Yes. It puzzled me at the time, and, to be honest with you, it still does. But then I stopped worrying about that, and became quite excited by what I found under the fingernails.’
‘And just what did you find?’ asked Paniatowski, who had resigned herself to playing Shastri’s game.
‘I found a white powder, and when I analysed it, I discovered that it was largely made up of polysaccharides – which is starch to an ignorant person like you – and also gluten.’
‘In other words?’
‘In other words, it is common flour – which leads me to believe that the man was a baker.’
‘What it’s all about, madam, is a severed hand,’ the voice had said.
Jenny looked up. The man who’d spoken was in his late thirties. He had the square build of a rugby player, with dark, flashing, suspicious eyes, and lips which would find no difficulty in expressing contempt. He was accompanied by a slimmer, younger man with a thin, artistic face, who – had his hair been a little longer – could have been mistaken for a poet.
‘I’m DS Walker and this is DC Crane,’ the thickset man said. ‘We’d like to ask you some questions about Tom Whittington.’
‘Tom? He’s our head baker.’
‘You don’t say? Now there’s what I call a coincidence – I’m here to talk about Whittington, and you actually know him.’
The Dead Hand of History Page 7