Death Watch

by Sally Spencer

  What she was holding, she discovered, was a man’s leather wallet. It looked expensive, and from the condition it was in, it was clear that it had not been lying under the bush for long.

  The corporation bus depot was a three-minute drive from the Boulevard, the Boulevard itself being the point at which most of the service buses started and ended their routes. The depot consisted of a large hanger-like building, in which most of the buses were parked after they’d finished their service for the day, and a patch of concrete on which vehicles were parked between rush hours. One end of the hanger contained the cleaning tunnel, and at the other end was the garage.

  Beresford found the whole complex slightly scruffy – and not a little depressing. But at least he was unlikely to meet anyone there who’d accuse him of having venereal disease, he consoled himself.

  There were three mechanics on duty. They were all small dark men with bald spots, and Beresford found himself wondering if being tall and blonde was a disqualification for crawling under a bus.

  ‘So you want to know about Peter Mainwearing, do you?’ one of the mechanics said in answer to Beresford’s question.

  He was speaking loudly – almost shouting. He had to, in order to be heard over the noise of the radio, which was playing at full blast and echoing all around the whole garage.

  ‘Yes, Peter Mainwearing,’ Beresford agreed, shouting himself. ‘Could you turn the noise down a bit?’

  ‘Why?’ the mechanic screamed back. ‘Is it bothering you?’

  ‘No, not really, but I think it’s about to burst my eardrums,’ Beresford told him.

  The mechanic shrugged, walked over to the radio, and switched it off. For a moment or two, Beresford’s ears compensated for the sudden loss of sound by hissing loudly. Then they settled down.

  ‘Yes, Peter was here yesterday,’ the mechanic said, when he returned to the spot where Beresford was standing. ‘We had this problem with one of our buses, you see. The bugger just wouldn’t start, and we had no idea why. Peter sorted it out. What that man can do with an engine has to be seen to be believed.’

  ‘And he was here all afternoon?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Not all afternoon, no,’ the mechanic said.

  Beresford felt a sudden tingle of excitement. If he could break Mainwearing’s alibi, he told himself, it would more than make up for the humiliation he had felt in the VD clinic.

  ‘How long was he here?’ the detective constable asked.

  The mechanic thought about it. ‘He arrived at around eleven o’clock,’ he said finally.

  ‘Around eleven o’clock?’ Beresford repeated. ‘Can’t you be more precise than that?’

  The mechanic shrugged. ‘Afraid not. But it can’t have been more than ten or fifteen minutes before or after.’

  ‘And what time did he leave?’ Beresford asked, almost holding his breath in anticipation.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ the mechanic said.

  ‘Give or take ten or fifteen minutes one way or the other?’ Beresford suggested.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ the mechanic repeated firmly. ‘On the dot.’

  ‘You seem very vague about the time he arrived,’ Beresford said. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Simple,’ the mechanic replied. ‘Since we had no idea of how to go about the job before he turned up, we thought we might as well sit back and have a game of cards. Then, when he did get here, we packed away the cards and set to work.’

  ‘And you didn’t check your watch to see what time it was?’

  ‘Wear a watch on this job, and you’ll ruin it. Mine goes into my locker the minute I get to work.’

  ‘And yet, despite the fact that your watch was still in your locker, you’re certain that he left at exactly three o’clock. How is that possible?’

  ‘Simple again. The afternoon play was just coming on the wireless. It’s my favourite programme, and I remember saying to Peter that I was glad we’d got the job finished, because that meant I could listen to it in peace.’ The mechanic paused. ‘Here, I haven’t got Peter in trouble, have I?’

  ‘No,’ Beresford promised, ‘you haven’t got him in trouble.’

  He was telling the truth. The girl’s watch had been smashed at two minutes past three, and even if it had been wrong by a few minutes, that still put Peter Mainwearing in the clear – because there was no way he could have reached the corporation park before twenty past three at the earliest.

  ‘There’s times when I’ve thought about being a bobby myself,’ the mechanic said.

  You’d have to grow at least another three inches first, Beresford thought, but all he said aloud was, ‘Oh yes?’

  ‘I mean, from what I’ve heard, it’s an easy life.’

  ‘Easy?’ Beresford repeated.

  ‘Well, for a start, the pay’s not bad, is it? And you don’t have to get your hands dirty, do you?’

  Why did other people always seem to think that bobbies had such a cushy time of it, Beresford wondered.

  ‘You’re right that most of the time we don’t have to get our hands dirty,’ he agreed. ‘Of course, there are always the occasions when you have to pull what’s left of a body out of a car wreck. That can be messy. Then again, we sometimes get into fights and have blood spattered all over us – usually our own.’

  But the mechanic was not about to allow his illusions to be shattered by cold hard reality.

  ‘Still, every job’s got its drawbacks, and there are big compensations in yours, aren’t there?’ he asked, winking broadly at him.

  ‘I don’t know you mean,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Course you do. You get called out to visit a house that’s been burgled. Right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘The lady of the house is still very upset about what’s happened, you comfort her as best you can, and before you know it, you’re in bed together. You won’t deny that kind of thing goes on, will you?’

  The mechanic wouldn’t believe him if he did, Beresford thought. So why even try to disillusion him?

  ‘Yes, it’s happened,’ he said, feeling, for once in his life, like a real man of the world.

  The mechanic licked his lips. ‘How many times?’ he asked.

  In for a penny, in for a pound, Beresford told himself. ‘Lots of times,’ he said. ‘So many that, if I’m honest, I’ve almost lost count.’

  He was seeing more of that part of his wife’s world outside the home in a single day than he had seen in the rest of their married life put together, Martin Stevenson thought as he approached the Crown and Anchor, a pub very close to Whitebridge Police Headquarters.

  He stepped through the door into the saloon bar, and knew immediately that he would not like the Crown. It was too barnlike, too gaudy, too noisy – and though it would have been inaccurate to describe it as actually dirty, its standards of cleanliness fell below those of the establishments he would normally choose to patronize.

  Rosemary was sitting at a table in the centre of the room. She was wearing her uniform, and had her arm deliberately stretched out so that her sergeant’s stripes were clearly visible to anyone who looked. She had a cigarette balanced in the corner of her mouth, and a pint of bitter in her hand.

  ‘Did you see him?’ she asked, the second that her husband had sat down opposite her.

  ‘This is a strange place to meet,’ Stevenson said, looking around him as if to confirm his initial impressions of the bar.

  ‘Strange? What do you mean by that? There’s nothing strange about it. It’s perfectly normal.’

  ‘Then perhaps what I really meant to say was that it’s an “inappropriate” place,’ Stevenson told her.

  ‘Inappropriate?’ his wife echoed. ‘How?’

  ‘Well, we so rarely have the chance to get together in the daytime that I’d have thought you’d have chosen somewhere nicer.’

  ‘This is where we drink,’ Rosemary said, as if it required no more explanation than that.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and my lads.�
�

  ‘And how long have you been smoking?’

  ‘I only do it at work.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because everybody else does.’

  ‘I don’t see what that has to do with—’

  Rosemary interrupted him with a heavy sigh. ‘Listen, Martin,’ she said, ‘the way to get on in the Force is to blend in – to be just like everybody else. If I didn’t chain-smoke and knock back ale like there was no tomorrow, my lads would think I was being stuck-up and stand-offish.’

  ‘Does this Sergeant Paniatowski, who you always seem to be going on about, do the same?’

  ‘She smokes.’

  ‘But she doesn’t drink pints?’

  ‘I sometimes think you listen far too carefully to what I say, Martin,’ Rosemary said.

  ‘Most women would be more than happy that their husbands listened to them.’

  ‘And I often get the impression that you start analysing my words the moment they’re out of my mouth.’

  ‘That’s not true. I—’

  ‘Martin!’

  ‘Perhaps I do analyse them – sometimes,’ Stevenson admitted. ‘It’s an occupational hazard, and I’m very sorry about it.’

  From the expression on Rosemary’s face, it was clear that the apology had not pleased her.

  ‘Why are you always so bloody wet, Martin?’ she asked exasperatedly. ‘Why must you always lie down and take whatever I decide to throw at you? Why don’t you ever fight back?’

  Stevenson smiled soothingly. ‘In many ways, my work is concerned with producing harmony out of conflict. I help people to see life how it is, and teach them how to learn to be happy with it. So I’m not so much “lying down and taking it” as following my own advice.’

  Rosemary looked at him strangely. ‘I sometimes wonder why I married you,’ she said.

  ‘We married each other for the same reason that most other couples marry,’ Stevenson said. ‘We had an emptiness inside ourselves, and we both hoped the other would be able to fill it.’

  ‘And do I fill your emptiness?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  Rosemary softened a little, and even smiled as much as the cigarette in the corner of her mouth would allow her to. ‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ she said. ‘Did you see Cloggin’-it Charlie?’

  ‘I saw him.’

  ‘And did he know that you were there because of me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s good. Were you able to help him?’

  ‘Not a great deal …’

  ‘No?’

  ‘… but as much as I could have reasonably expected at this stage of the investigation. As things develop, I think I’ll be of much more use to him.’

  ‘It might even be because of you that he catches the kidnapper?’

  ‘That’s certainly possible.’

  ‘It would mean a lot to me if you could really help him, you know.’

  ‘Of course I know. That’s why I’m here.’

  Rosemary took the cigarette out of her mouth, and the smile which followed benefited from the greater flexibility it gave her.

  ‘Unless there’s a sudden development in the case, I come off duty in four hours,’ she said.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I thought we might take the opportunity to go out for a meal. Somewhere really nice. Just the two of us.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘And then, when we get home, we might decide to go to bed a little earlier than we usually do?’

  ‘I’d really like that,’ Martin Stevenson said.

  Dr Shastri, the police surgeon, greeted Woodend at the door of her laboratory with a broad smile, as she invariably did. ‘And how is my favourite policeman today?’ she asked.

  Woodend, as always, felt an almost juvenile glow at being addressed in such a warm way. Well, who wouldn’t? he asked himself silently.

  Given that Shastri was undoubtedly a beautiful woman, a man would have to be made of stone not to be gratified at being offered even a few crumbs from the table of her favour.

  ‘Your favourite policeman is hopin’ that you’ll have identified the drug that was used to dope Angela Jackson,’ he said, a little gruffly.

  ‘Then he will not be disappointed,’ Dr Shastri told him.

  ‘What was it? Chloroform?’

  Dr Shastri laughed, and it was like the tinkling of dozens of tiny delicate bells. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Chief Inspector,’ she said.

  ‘Should I? Why?’

  ‘Because you have allowed yourself to be just as duped by American detective films as any member of the general public would be – and I would have expected better from you.’

  ‘Would you mind explainin’ that?’ Woodend asked, trying not to feel too hurt.

  ‘Gladly. In the films, the abductor sprinkles a few drops of chloroform on a piece of cotton and holds it over his victim’s mouth for a second or two, until the victim goes quite limp. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘In the real world, those few drops would have very little effect at all. And should the kidnapper choose to administer a much larger dose, he would run quite a large risk of actually killing his victim.’

  ‘So what was used in this case?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘A drug called halothane. It was first synthesized about fifteen years ago, and has been used as a clinical anaesthetic for the last ten. It is not recommended for older patients because it can cause cardiac depression – but it is ideal for younger patients, because it does not irritate the airways.’

  ‘And are these properties of the drug common knowledge?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘They are not treated as a closely guarded secret by the medical profession, if that is what you are asking. But I would be surprised if the average layman had ever even heard of halothane.’

  ‘Well, then …’

  ‘Still, that is no real obstacle to a determined man. After half an hour in the reference section of the library, he would have learned all he needed to know.’

  Woodend nodded gravely. Dr Stevenson had told him that the kidnapper would be both intelligent and careful, and it appeared that was exactly what he was turning out to be.

  ‘How easy would it be to get hold of the stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘Not easy at all,’ Dr Shastri replied.

  ‘Then why would he …?’

  ‘But neither would it be easy for him to lay his hands on any of the other drugs he might have used as a substitute.’

  ‘But he clearly did get his hands on it, didn’t he?’ Woodend asked. ‘How would he have gone about it?’

  Dr Shastri smiled. ‘I like to think I do not have a naturally criminal mind, which makes that rather a difficult question for me to answer, Chief Inspector. But let me consider the problem.’ She frowned with concentration. ‘I suppose one way might be to steal it from a hospital – or perhaps bribe someone working in the pharmacology department to give you some. Another way might be to fool a drug company into thinking you represented a hospital, and get them to send it to you. I suppose, if you were a chemist, you could even attempt to manufacture it yourself.’

  I could check up on all those things, Woodend thought – and I will.

  But the problem was that it would take time – and time was the one thing he didn’t have much of.

  ‘Thank you, Doc, you’ve been very helpful,’ he said.

  He had almost reached the door when Dr Shastri said, ‘Charlie?’

  The single word stopped him in his tracks. She had never used his first name before. He was surprised that she even knew it.

  He turned round. ‘Yes?’

  The customary glow had quite deserted Dr Shastri’s face, and in its place was a look which could almost have been anguished.

  ‘Find this evil man, Charlie,’ the doctor said. ‘Find him before it’s too late.’

  ‘I’m doin’ my best,’ Woodend told her.

  But then, all those years ago in
London, he had said exactly the same thing to old George Taylor, too, hadn’t he?

  Nine

  The row of three-storeyed terraced houses on Kings Street had been built for professional men and their families in the Edwardian era, but since the Second World War it had been a street on which professional men worked, rather than lived. Doctors had their offices there now, as did chartered surveyors, accountants, and stockbrokers. And so it was that Kings Street became the place that the people of Whitebridge went to when they were sick, had fallen foul of the Inland Revenue, needed a mortgage, or wanted to draw up their wills.

  The firm of Brunton, Wallace, and Gough (Solicitors) was located roughly in the middle of Kings Street, and when Monika Paniatowski walked in through the main entrance she found herself in a reception area which was guarded by a severe middle-aged woman who looked the kind of person who got her fun by drilling holes in lifeboats.

  ‘I’d like to see Mr Brunton,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Is he in?’

  ‘Do you have an appointment, madam?’ the receptionist asked, barely looking up at her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought not. I’m afraid you simply cannot be seen without an appointment, and even with an appointment, you would not be dealt with by Mr Brunton, but by one of the junior partners.’

  Paniatowski held out her warrant card. ‘I’d like to see Mr Brunton,’ she repeated. ‘Is he in?’

  The receptionist opened her mouth as if ready to deliver a stinging reply, then thought better of it. Instead, she pressed a button on the intercom in front of her, and said, ‘I’m awfully sorry to disturb you, Mr Brunton, but there’s a police woman here, and she says she’d like to see you.’

  ‘What’s it about?’ asked a metallic voice through the speaker.

  ‘It’s about your wallet,’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘His wallet?’ said the secretary, who was clearly furious that Paniatowski had chosen to speak to Brunton directly, instead of going through her.

  ‘Send her in,’ the metallic voice said.

  The Invisible Man took a handkerchief out of his pocket, and carefully dusted the chair next to his spyhole. He smiled as he laboured, recognizing the fact that though cleanliness was very important to him, his main reason for wiping down the chair was that it allowed him to postpone the moment when he would open the spyhole and peer through it into the other room.