Death Watch

by Sally Spencer

‘The investigation?’ Stevenson repeated. ‘What investigation? They say the first twenty-four hours are crucial, don’t they? They say that if you don’t get anywhere in the first twenty-four hours, you’ll never get anywhere ever.’

  ‘That’s not a hard and fast rule, you know,’ Paniatowski cautioned. ‘Every investigation is different, and it’s always possible to pull back from a slow start if you really …’

  ‘See, if Rodney … if DCI Mortlake … wanted to catch mice, he’d just put the traps in the middle of the floor, then expect the mice to set them themselves,’ Stevenson interrupted. She giggled. ‘No, it’s even worse than that. He’d … he’d expect them to bring their own cheese.’

  ‘So you’ve got no leads, then?’ Paniatowski asked – and her sympathy was only half feigned.

  ‘An’ that’s how he is with this case, you see,’ said Stevenson, who had probably never even heard the question. ‘It’s almost as if he just expects the kidnapper to walk in and give himself up.’ She paused. The aggressive phase of her drunkenness was well passed, and she was now entering the wallowing in self-pity phase. ‘Isn’t life a load of shit, Monika?’ she asked. ‘You always think it’s going to be better this time – but it never is.’

  ‘There’s a coffee bar round the corner that I think will still be open,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Why don’t we go there now? Once you’ve got a few black coffees down you, the world will start to seem like a much better place.’

  ‘They always let you down in the end, don’t they?’ Rosemary Stevenson wailed.

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘Men! They promise you the world – they promise to protect you from every little thing that might go wrong – but they never do.’

  ‘Nobody can protect you from everything,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And if you thought about it, you’d come to accept that you wouldn’t want them to.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’ Stevenson asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think you would. Because if you don’t have to live with your own choices, where’s your self-respect going to come from?’

  ‘Don’t know what you mean,’ Rosemary Stevenson said, and Paniatowski realized that she’d lost her. ‘Not making any sense at all.’

  ‘Let’s go and get that coffee now,’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘First it was my father, then it was Martin, and now it’s Rodney!’ Rosemary Stevenson wailed. ‘I’ve let them have me, but they’ve never given me what I want – what I really need.’

  Her father, her husband, and Mortlake!

  ‘Have you been sleeping with DCI Mortlake?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘What if I have?’ Stevenson asked, and the aggression was suddenly back in force.

  ‘It’s a very bad idea to sleep with your boss,’ Paniatowski told her. ‘A very bad idea indeed.’

  ‘He wasn’t my boss when I started sleeping with him.’

  Oh God, it was getting worse and worse, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘How many people have you told about the affair?’ she asked.

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters, because if it becomes common knowledge, people will start to think that was why you got your promotion.’

  ‘Well, how else would I have got it?’ Rosemary Stevenson moaned. ‘He promised to look after me, but now he can’t catch the murderer, and everybody will think it’s my fault.’

  ‘I think we should go back to my flat,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You can stay there overnight, and maybe tomorrow you’ll see things differently.’

  ‘Go back to your flat?’ Rosemary Stevenson repeated. ‘Are you a lesbian or something?’

  ‘No, I …’

  ‘Because it’s all right with me if you are. I’ll give you what you want – as long as you’ll protect me.’

  ‘I’m not a lesbian,’ Paniatowski said. ‘But I will be your friend – if you’ll only give me half a chance.’

  ‘Lady Muck,’ Rosemary Stevenson said, afflicted by another mood swing. ‘Lady Muck being condescending to poor pissed little Rosemary! Well, it won’t work, because I’m better than you any day of the week.’

  ‘Rosemary, please try and get a grip on yourself,’ Paniatowski pleaded.

  ‘Bugger off!’ Stevenson said. ‘Bugger off before I rip my blouse and start screaming that you’ve assaulted me, you dirty lesbian, you.’

  In her present mood, she’d do it, Paniatowski thought. Even if it ruined both their careers. Even if ruined both their lives.

  ‘If you want my help, you know where to find me,’ she said.

  And then, before Stevenson had time to reply, she turned and walked quickly out of the toilet.

  It was the pain that Peter Mainwearing became aware of initially – a dull throbbing ache in his jaw, a series of short stabbing attacks to his ribs.

  Then he heard the voices.

  ‘He’s coming round,’ said the first, a woman’s.

  ‘Yes, I believe he is,’ replied the second, a man’s.

  Mainwearing opened his eyes, and discovered that he was staring up at the owners of the voices.

  ‘Where am I?’ he groaned.

  ‘In hospital,’ the man said. ‘Well, you’ve certainly been in the wars, haven’t you, old chap? Though I can assure you that your injuries are not half as bad as they’re probably feeling at the moment.’

  It was all coming back to him now. Mainwearing told himself – the pub, the big man with the scarred cheek who had lashed out at him …

  ‘Had bad is it?’ he asked.

  ‘You have a couple of broken ribs, and several others are quite badly bruised. You also have contusions to the jaw and stomach. You’re rather black and blue all over, as a matter of fact, but as I said, it feels worse than it actually is.’

  ‘And will I … do I need …?’

  ‘You’ll certainly have to take things very easy for quite a while, but there’s no reason why, after a good night’s rest, we shouldn’t be able to let you go home in the morning.’

  ‘The garage!’ Mainwearing gasped. ‘I have to get back to the garage right away.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean, old chap?’ the man asked.

  ‘He’s a mechanic, doctor,’ the woman – his nurse – explained. ‘He’s got a small garage about half a mile from Stainsworth. My neighbour says that he does a good job.’

  The doctor chuckled. ‘So you’re a grease-monkey, are you, old man? Well, there’s absolutely no point in going to your garage now. As I think I hinted earlier, it’ll be quite a while before you’re changing tyres, tuning engines, and … er … whatever else it is that you chaps do.’

  ‘Have to go there now,’ Mainwearing said.

  ‘I’ve told you that’s quite impossible,’ the doctor said sternly. ‘There’s simply no way I’m going to allow you to be discharged before the morning.’

  ‘Then get me a phone,’ Mainwearing said. ‘I need a phone.’

  ‘If there’s anyone you need to call urgently, just give us their name and we’ll call them for you,’ the doctor said. ‘But what you require now – above all else – is a good night’s rest.’

  ‘A phone!’ Mainwearing said. ‘Get me a phone!’

  And in the end, because he was growing increasingly agitated, that was what they did.

  Woodend’s feet and back ached from all the walking he’d done, and for a while he’d seriously considered going home and soaking his body in a hot bath. Then he’d decided that an internal soaking would probably do him more good, and he was already on his third pint of medicine when Monika Paniatowski walked into the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, and joined him at their table.

  ‘Did you manage to have a word with DS Stevenson?’ Woodend asked his sergeant.

  Paniatowski nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘An’ did she happen to tell you anythin’ useful?’

  ‘No, but that’s because there was nothing useful to tell. The way DCI Mortlake is running his investigation makes a headless chic
ken look like a potential Nobel Prize winner.’

  ‘You’re sure that’s true?’ Woodend asked suspiciously. ‘You’re convinced she wasn’t just feeding you a line?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Paniatowski confirmed. ‘She wasn’t in any state to be playing mind games with anyone.’

  ‘Are you saying she was drunk?’

  ‘Pissed as a rat. Pissed enough to tell me that she’s been having an affair with DCI Mortlake – an affair which began even before she was promoted to his team.’

  ‘Good God!’ Woodend said. ‘That could ruin them both.’

  As it almost once ruined you and Bob, he added silently.

  ‘Anyhow, the point is that they’re making no headway at all in their investigation,’ Paniatowski said.

  Woodend sighed. ‘There are some bobbies I’ve known in my time who’ve taken great delight in watchin’ other bobbies fail – but I’ve never been one of that breed, Monika,’ he said.

  ‘I know you haven’t, sir.’

  ‘I really want Mortlake to get a result on this one. I don’t even care if he gets promoted over my head because of it, as long as he finds the girl. But he’s not goin’ to find her, is he?’

  ‘Certainly doesn’t look that way,’ Paniatowski agreed glumly.

  ‘So it’s up to us – an’ we don’t have any more of an idea of how to go about it than he does.’ He paused. ‘Unless, of course, you’ve managed to—’

  ‘I haven’t,’ Paniatowski interrupted, dousing any flicker of hope her boss might have had. ‘For one brief moment, this afternoon, I thought I might have found a lead – but it came to nothing.’

  ‘Tell me about it, anyway,’ Woodend suggested.

  ‘There was this single-storeyed building, just on the edge of the area that you’d asked me to search. What got me excited about it was that though there had been windows in that back wall, they’d all been bricked in – and, from the state of the brickwork, it was obvious the job had been done quite recently. Anyway, I went round to the front of the place, which was on Gladstone Street …’

  ‘An’ that was when you saw that it was Mainwearin’’s garage,’ Woodend supplied.

  ‘Exactly. Mainwearing’s bloody garage. And not only does Mainwearing have a solid alibi for the time when Angela Jackson was snatched, but – from what I’ve heard in the canteen – he also appears to have one for when Mary Thomas went missing.’

  ‘It’s a right proper bugger, isn’t it?’ Woodend said.

  ‘A right proper bugger,’ Paniatowski echoed.

  They heard the sound of the street door open, and then a familiar – and surprisingly optimistic – voice call out, ‘Send us another round of drinks, will you, Jack?’

  The explanation for Rutter’s high spirits was not long in coming. ‘I’m almost certain I know who sold the drug to the killer,’ he told Woodend and Paniatowski, the moment he’d reached the table. ‘His name’s Norman Willis, and he used to work at the Pendleton Clinic.’

  ‘Do we know where can find him?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘He lives in a flat on Crimea Road, but he’s not there.’

  ‘Then do we have any idea …’

  ‘Every night, he makes a tour of half the pubs in town – and tonight was no exception. I know that because, in a couple of the boozers I visited, I only missed him by a few minutes. The problem is, I don’t know what order he makes his calls in.’

  ‘Tours half the pubs in town,’ Woodend mused. ‘He’s a heavy drinker, is he?’

  ‘No! Far from it, in fact. He usually sticks to lemonade.’

  ‘So what’s his game?’

  ‘What I suspect has happened is that since he’s lost his job at the Pendleton Clinic, drug-pushing has ceased to be a nice little earner on the side, and is now his full-time occupation.’

  ‘That sounds more than likely,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘Anyway, the fact that I haven’t found him yet doesn’t really matter,’ Rutter continued. ‘He’ll have to go home sometime, and when he does, he’ll find Detective Constable Beresford waiting for him.’

  ‘An’ you think he’ll be willing to tell us the name of the man he sold the drug to?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Yes, after I’ve told him what that man used the drug for,’ Rutter said. ‘And if he doesn’t want to tell me, I’ll arrange for him to fall down the stairs a few times, to see if that makes him more cooperative.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like you at all,’ Woodend said.

  ‘It doesn’t sound like any of us,’ Rutter replied. ‘But I’ve seen what the killer did to Angela Jackson, and I’m willing to use any means if it will prevent the same thing happening to Mary Thomas.’

  Woodend nodded. ‘That goes for me too, an’ all,’ he said.

  ‘And me,’ Paniatowski told him.

  Woodend looked at the big clock on the bar wall. It was ticking away the minutes to the closing bell – proving, with every jerk of its big hand, that time was not infinite.

  Bob Rutter had said he would do anything to prevent Mary from suffering the same fate as Angela, but though none of them would admit it openly, they all knew, deep inside themselves, that whatever Dr Stevenson had theorized, it might already be too late.

  Twenty-Three

  Norman Willis arrived back at his flat at just after midnight, but before he’d even had time to open the main door to the block, a dark figure – in the form of DC Colin Beresford – had stepped out of the shadows and informed him that he was being arrested on suspicion of drug-dealing.

  Willis had first protested his innocence, then tried to bribe Beresford from the thick roll of cash in his pocket. Finally – when else had failed – he had resorted to taking a swing at the detective constable.

  It was at that point he’d learned what a number of other men who’d resorted to violence had found out before him – which was that while Beresford might have a boyish appearance, there was nothing juvenile about the feel of his fist.

  Willis had gone down, and – still dazed – had been vaguely aware of Beresford slipping the handcuffs on him.

  Now, half an hour later, he was sitting in an interview room in police headquarters, waiting for his interrogation to begin.

  He would not have to wait long.

  Rutter looked down at the man sitting at the table. Norman Willis, he decided, had just the kind of attractive features which were necessary to get a job at the Pendleton Clinic, but since he’d left the place under a cloud, he seemed to have let himself go a bit. And the black eye certainly didn’t help improve his appearance.

  ‘Police brutality,’ Willis said, noticing that the inspector was examining his eye.

  ‘Or to put it another way, Constable Beresford beat you to the punch,’ Rutter said. ‘But let’s not waste our time buggering about with small talk – we both know we’ve got you cold for drug-dealing.’

  ‘Come off it, Inspector,’ Willis said. ‘I hadn’t got a single amphetamine on me when your lad launched his unprovoked attack.’

  ‘But you did have thirty-three pounds in used notes on your person,’ Rutter pointed out. ‘Anyway, who mentioned anything about amphetamines? Maybe I was talking about marijuana.’

  ‘Maybe you were,’ Willis agreed.

  ‘But pot isn’t really your thing, is it? Everyone should have a speciality – and you’ve chosen to specialize in prescription drugs.’

  ‘Like I said, you didn’t find any on me,’ Willis said defiantly.

  Rutter laughed. ‘The boys in our lab can do marvels with the new techniques they’ve developed recently. They can examine a hundred flies and tell you precisely which one of them it was that shat on your sandwich. So, knowing that, do you really believe that they won’t find traces of the drugs you were carrying when they give your clothes the once-over?’

  ‘They were inside plas—’ Willis began, then realized he’d been about to say too much, and clamped his mouth firmly shut.

  ‘Plastic envelopes?’ Rutter supplied. ‘Well, maybe you�
��re right. Maybe we won’t find any traces of drugs – unless we decide to plant them ourselves.’

  ‘You can’t …’

  ‘According to you, we’re already guilty of police brutality, so why wouldn’t we go the whole hog – and fit you up for drug-pushing? But to tell you the truth, Norman …’ Rutter paused. ‘I can call you Norman, can’t I?

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘To tell you the truth, Norman, I’m not really interested in charging you with drug-dealing.’

  ‘No?’ Willis asked, suspiciously.

  ‘No,’ Rutter assured him. ‘It’s not worth my time and effort. Besides, what would be the point of pressing such a pissy little charge as that, when you’re already going down for something much bigger?’

  ‘Something much bigger?’ Willis asked, with a tremble in his voice.

  ‘Oh, didn’t I mention that?’ Rutter asked. ‘We’ll be charging you as an accessory before the fact in the kidnapping and murder of Angela Jackson.’

  ‘Me?’ Willis gasped.

  ‘You,’ Rutter confirmed.

  ‘But I didn’t … I swear I never …’ Willis said hoarsely. ‘I promise … I’ve … I’ve never even met the girl.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Rutter told him. ‘But you did provide the drug – halothane – that was used to dope her.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was going to be used for that,’ Willis protested.

  ‘Then what did you think it was going to be used for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t think at all, did you? As long as you were paid, you didn’t care what it was used for? And that’s negligence! That’s why you’ll end up behind bars until you’re a very old man.’

  ‘There was nothing at all in the newspapers about halothane being used,’ Willis said.

  ‘Quite right,’ Rutter agreed. ‘That’s one of the details we decided to hold back. But it is what he used – and you were the one who made it possible. So why don’t you tell me how it happened?’

  ‘I … I was still working at the clinic at the time.’

  ‘I assumed you were.’

  ‘And … and I was borrowing a few amphetamines from the dispensary, now and again. It was only for my personal use – you have to understand that – and I’d never have taken them at all if I hadn’t been under a lot of pressure …’