‘Do you know how hard it’s been for me, working my way up through the ranks in a Force where most of the men believe that a woman’s place is in the home?’ Paniatowski demanded angrily.
‘Yes, I do,’ Baxter said.
‘And when I finally make it, what happens? I’m accused of not doing my job properly, not because I’m a woman – though you could tell that half of those reporters were thinking that as well – but because I’m a Pole.’
‘Nobody imagines it’s been easy for you, but even so, you still should have handled it better,’ Baxter said firmly. ‘Charlie Woodend would have, you know. Charlie would have soon found a way to make Traynor feel like the slug he is, while at the same time reducing the rest of the hacks to fits of laughter.’
‘I’m not Charlie,’ Paniatowski said.
‘No, you’re not,’ Baxter agreed.
‘But that doesn’t mean I can’t do the job, does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t, necessarily. But you’re still going to have to do something pretty decisive to put yourself back on the right track – pretty decisive and pretty damn quick.’
‘Like what?’
‘That’s up to you.’
‘But what do you think I should do?’
Baxter hesitated for a second, then said, ‘You might consider arresting Stan Szymborska.’
Paniatowski shook her head.
‘I’m not going to be led by the nose by snivelling loathsome hacks like Mike Traynor,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to arrest Stan Szymborska when there simply isn’t enough evidence to make that arrest stick.’
‘Are you sure that the amount of evidence you have is your only consideration?’ Baxter asked.
‘What other consideration could there be?’
‘Have you stopped to ask yourself if you might not be blinkered by the fact that Szymborska – like your father – is a war hero?’
‘That’s not fair,’ Paniatowski said bitterly. ‘The only reason you know about my father is because I told you about him myself. In bed! You can’t use that information against me now.’
‘I can use any information I choose to use, if I consider it is relevant to something which is undermining the performance of one of my officers,’ Baxter said. Then he smiled. ‘There! Now do you see what you’ve done? You’ve got me talking like a stuffed shirt.’
‘You can’t keep switching around like that,’ Paniatowski said, refusing to return the smile. ‘Who are you at the moment? George Baxter, my ex-lover? Or my boss, George Baxter the chief constable?’
‘I’m both. We’re all several different sides of ourselves at the same time. And the only way we can handle that, with any chance of success, is by doing our best to ensure that the side of us which is most appropriate to our current situation is in control. That’s why I think you should ignore your war-hero father – who you can hardly remember, anyway – and arrest Szymborska. If it turns out to be the wrong move, then I’ll be willing to take my fair share of the flak – to take more than my fair share, in fact.’
‘You make it sound like you’re trying to protect me,’ Paniatowski said.
‘That’s exactly what I’m doing,’ Baxter agreed.
‘But who are you trying to protect? Monika? Or DCI Paniatowski?’
‘Both of you, as you should have realized by now. Given our history, that’s the way it has to work – that’s the only way it can work.’
Paniatowski was silent for quite a while, then she said, ‘Are you ordering me to arrest Stan?’
‘Of course not. This is your case, and – as long as it remains your case – you must run with it as you see fit.’
‘Well, I’m certainly pleased we’ve got all that cleared up, sir,’ Paniatowski said.
‘So will you be arresting him?’ Baxter asked.
‘No, sir, I won’t,’ Paniatowski said firmly.
She was pacing her office again, but this time she was so distracted that she didn’t always remember to avoid the furniture. It didn’t matter. Though she had already barked her shins twice, she hardly even noticed the pain.
Was Traynor right when he’d said that the only reason she hadn’t already arrested Stan was because he was a fellow Pole?
Was Baxter right when he’d told her that the real problem was that she was confusing the suspect with her father, who, if he’d lived, would only have been a few years older than Stan?
But more importantly – and much worse – had she allowed Szymborska to play her?
The simple dignity with which he’d talked about his time in the box and his courtship of Linda had almost brought her to tears.
Yet was any of it real? Or were the box and the love story no more than parts of the highly elaborate game which had started with the appearance of the two severed hands?
The simple truth was that she had lost confidence in her own judgement, she told herself.
And how was she to get that confidence back?
By talking to Colin Beresford?
No, that wouldn’t be fair. She was the leader of the team. He should draw his confidence from her, rather than it being the other way round.
Almost without seeming to will it, she came to a sudden halt next to her telephone.
For a moment, she had no idea why – and then she understood.
She flipped open her address book, and dialled a number she’d thought she’d never need to call.
She heard the phone ringing at the other end of the line.
‘Pick it up,’ her mind screamed. ‘For God’s sake, pick it up!’
And then someone did.
‘I’m afraid Annie’s not here at the moment,’ said a voice she knew so very well it almost brought tears to her eyes, ‘but if you’d like to leave a message, I’ll see she gets it.’
She could see him quite clearly, almost as if he were standing in the room with her.
The big head, with the features which looked as if they’d been carved by a sculptor who’d got bored halfway through, and simply given up.
The square hard body, clad in the inevitable hairy sports coat.
The smell of him – meat pies and best bitter and cigarette ash.
The expressions which filled those half-finished features of his – amusement, puzzlement, anger and joy.
They’d been through so much together, the two of them. He’d helped her through so much.
‘Help me now, Charlie!’ she pleaded silently. ‘Tell me what to do!’
‘Is anybody there?’ Woodend asked.
Paniatowski opened her mouth and closed it again, opened a second time and was on the point of speaking when something from within her forced her jaw to clamp closed.
‘Hello?’ Charlie Woodend said. ‘Hello?’
It was now or never, Paniatowski thought. And quickly – before she had time to change her mind – she put the phone back on its cradle.
TWENTY-ONE
Sylvia Hope-Gore showed Beresford into her conservatory. It was a pleasant room. One end of it was clearly the social side, with a series of cane chairs and tables. The other end – the horticultural side – was given over almost exclusively to the cultivation of a number of green plants with slightly spiky leaves, which the inspector did not recognize.
‘You sit yourself down, and I’ll go and make us a nice cup of tea,’ Hope-Gore said. ‘You’ve no objection to herbal, have you?’
‘None at all. I rather like it,’ replied Beresford, who didn’t think he’d ever drunk herbal tea in his entire life.
‘Good,’ Hope-Gore said. ‘I stopped drinking what you might call “normal” tea ages ago – and so would you, if you knew as much about the conditions on the tea plantations as I do.’
Beresford was not at all surprised by the comment. He had done his research on Sylvia Hope-Gore, and was well aware that while most of the people in Whitebridge who knew about her would have been happy enough to describe her as a local celebrity, there was a substantial minority who would only have used the term if they
could have added the word ‘notorious’ to it.
Miss Hope-Gore – she’d never married – had been born into minor landed aristocracy, but had rejected both her family and her class in the 1920s, when she’d become a communist. Since then, she’d attempted – with greater or lesser success – to be a constant thorn in the side of the local establishment. She’d been active in industrial strikes during the Depression, had organized rent boycotts after the war and had been a staunch champion of the rights of hippies to get (as she’d once put it), ‘as much free love as they can afford’.
The old woman returned carrying a tray on which there was a teapot, two cups and saucers and a plate of biscuits.
‘I’ll help you with that,’ Beresford offered.
‘You most certainly will not help me,’ Sylvia Hope-Gore replied fiercely. ‘Doddering I may well be, but I’m not yet quite so doddering that I can’t handle a tea tray.’
‘No, of course not,’ Beresford agreed, as he watched the old woman’s progress across the room with some anxiety.
Sylvia Hope-Gore carefully laid the tray down on the cane coffee table, which lay between two cane chairs.
‘For goodness’ sake, sit down,’ she said. ‘You’re making the place look untidy, standing there like that.’
Beresford sat. ‘I was noticing your plants,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like them before. What are they called?’
‘Oh, I don’t know the scientific name for them,’ Sylvia Hope-Gore said airily. ‘I just call them ganja. Does that name mean anything to you?’
‘No, I don’t think it does,’ Beresford admitted.
Sylvia Hope-Gore nodded. ‘I suppose that’s just as well,’ she said. She indicated the tray. ‘There’s Rich Tea or Garibaldi biscuits. The choice is yours. Or if you’d prefer it, I’ve just baked some hash . . .’ She stopped herself just in time. ‘No, that probably wouldn’t be a good idea,’ she admitted.
She poured the tea and passed Beresford a cup. He took a sip, and tried not to grimace.
‘Very nice,’ he said.
‘It’s an acquired taste,’ Miss Hope-Gore told him. She gave Beresford a hard stare. ‘When you said earlier that you liked herbal tea, you were just humouring an old woman, weren’t you?’
‘No . . . I . . .’
‘Weren’t you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Beresford said abjectly.
‘There’s no need to apologize,’ Miss Hope-Gore said. ‘It was rather sweet of you to pretend.’ She sipped at her own tea with obvious relish. ‘I used to be something of a radical, you know.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘Of course, I’ve slowed down a bit since my heyday, but when the need arises, I can still man the barricades with the best of them.’
‘I believe you,’ Beresford said.
And so he did.
‘But we all change, whether we want to or not,’ Miss Hope-Gore continued, a little wistfully. ‘There was a time – and not so long ago – when I’d rather have pulled off my own arm than talk to the police.’
‘But not any more?’
‘No, not any more,’ Miss Hope-Gore said wistfully. ‘I don’t get many visitors these days – it must be a week since I’ve talked to anyone but the milkman – so even a representative of the forces of fascist repression is welcome.’ She smiled, almost coquettishly. ‘Besides, you are a very good-looking boy.’
Beresford returned it with a smile of his own, which he hoped acknowledged the compliment without also issuing an invitation to pursue this line of conversation any further.
‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions about Stanislaw Szymborska,’ he said.
Miss Hope-Gore smiled fondly.
‘Stan,’ she said softly. ‘I haven’t seen him for years. But why would you be interested in him?’
‘Haven’t you read the papers?’ Beresford asked.
Miss Hope-Gore shook her head. ‘Not since the Labour Party sold us all down the river in ’64. Is Stan in trouble?’
‘That will depend on whether or not he’s done anything wrong,’ Beresford said cunningly. ‘When did you first meet him?’
‘It must have been just after the war. I was trying to get Polish refugees re-housed at the time – it was just awful the way the council treated them – and Stan was involved in it, too. As a war hero, of course, he could have been said to have already done his bit and simply rested on his laurels. But that wasn’t his way. He was never the sort of man to just sit back and take whatever fate threw at him – he made things happen.’
But had he made things happen two nights earlier, when he may just possibly have learned of his wife’s affair? Beresford wondered.
‘How well did you know him?’ he asked.
‘It depends what you mean by well. Are you asking me, in your sweet boyish way, if we were lovers?’
‘No, I . . .’
‘Because if you are, then the answer is most definitely yes.’ Miss Hope-Gore took another genteel sip of her tea. ‘Have I shocked you?’
‘No, of course not,’ Beresford said.
He was lying. He already knew that Miss Hope-Gore was rumoured to have had affairs – her more salacious critics often claimed she’d had more pricks in her than a second-hand dartboard – but she must have been at least twenty years older than Szymborska.
‘A man reaches his sexual prime when he’s eighteen, but a woman has to wait until her forties,’ Miss Hope-Gore said, reading his mind. ‘And I wasn’t always the wrinkled old hag you see before you now – you should have seen me before my tits dropped.’
‘How long were you . . . were you together?’ Beresford asked, wondering why the conservatory had suddenly become so hot.
‘You mean, how long were we rutting like goats in heat?’ Miss Hope-Gore asked, obviously enjoying his discomfort. ‘How long were we making the beast with two backs? About three years, on and off. It was the most amazing sex I’ve ever known, and when we did split up, it certainly wasn’t because we’d stopped enjoying each other in bed.’
‘Then why?’
‘It was purely for political reasons.’
‘Political reasons?’ Beresford asked, grasping at the words – so wonderfully free of sexual connotations – as a drowning man might grasp at a straw.
‘Stan said that what the Russians were doing in Poland was wrong, while I, of course, claimed quite the opposite was true, because it was all being done in Comrade Stalin’s name and Comrade Stalin simply could never be wrong. We were never going to agree on the subject, and so we went our separate ways. It was a very amicable parting, but then, you see, apart from the fury of the bedroom, our relationship had always been very amicable.’
‘Fury of the bedroom,’ Beresford repeated, accepting that, as much as he’d rather avoid the topic of their sex life, he wasn’t going to be able to. ‘Was he violent in bed?’
An amused smile played on Miss Hope-Gore’s cracked old lips. ‘Why do you ask?’ she said. ‘Hoping to pick up a few tips?’
‘No, I . . .’
‘Stan was energetic, rather than violent. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw him really lose total control of himself, even in the height of passion. Of course, that hadn’t always been the case. There’d been a time when violence played a central part of his life.’
‘You mean while he was serving as a fighter pilot in the Polish Air Force?’ Beresford asked.
‘Well, yes, I suppose I do mean that as well,’ Miss Hope-Gore said.
‘As well?’
‘But I was actually thinking more of the time when he was in the prisoner-of-war camp. He had some terrible experiences then – so terrible that I don’t think he’s ever talked about them to another living soul.’
‘Except to you,’ Beresford said, wondering if she was just spinning him a line to make herself seem more important.
‘No, he didn’t talk about them even to me,’ Miss Hope-Gore said.
‘Then how do y
ou know about them?’
‘I don’t really. Not in any detail. But I got a flavour of them, shall we say, from hearing what he said during his nightmares.’
‘So he had nightmares, did he?’
‘Haven’t I just said that he did?’
‘How often?’
‘Fairly regularly. Not every night, by any means, but certainly at least once a week.’
‘And these nightmares of his were always about his time as a prisoner of war?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you be sure of that?’
Miss Hope-Gore smiled again. ‘I think it was probably the fact that he kept repeating the words “German guards” and “camp commandant” that really gave it away,’ she said.
‘And he said that in English, did he?’
‘He’d have to have done, or I’d never have had a bloody clue what he was going on about, would I?’ Miss Hope-Gore asked, the smile still in place. ‘He once told me that since he’d decided his future was to be in England, he always made an effort to try and think in English – and he seems to have succeeded to the extent that he dreamed in it, too.’
‘So he got very agitated when he was dreaming about these prison-camp guards, did he?’ Beresford asked.
‘No, not at all. While he was mumbling on about them, he was quite calm. It was only when he got on to the subject of the hand that he started to become really distressed.’
‘The hand?’
‘That’s right. He cut it off. Or he helped someone else to cut it off. I was never quite clear which.’
‘Can you remember exactly what it was that he said about it?’ Beresford asked.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Miss Hope-Gore said cheerfully. ‘At best, he was hardly coherent at the time, and that time was nearly twenty-five years ago.’
‘Could you try?’ Beresford pleaded.
‘All right,’ Miss Hope-Gore agreed. She closed her eyes. ‘I got the impression he was arguing with someone called Stefan. Stefan wanted to cut the hand off, and Stan didn’t. But in the end, Stefan talked him round, because Stan said, “It is the right thing to do. It is just.” That sounds a bit melodramatic when I say it, doesn’t it? But hearing it the way Stan said it – and picturing the circumstances in which he must have originally said it – I can assure you it didn’t sound melodramatic at all.’
The Dead Hand of History Page 18