Death Watch

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Get on with it!’ Rutter growled.

  ‘One night, this man came up to me in a pub. He said he knew I’d been nicking stuff from the clinic, and he had half a mind to report me to the police. But then he went on to say that if I got a bottle of this halothane stuff for him, he’d give me twenty quid for my trouble, and forget all about the other thing.’

  Rutter slammed his hand down hard on the table. ‘Do I look like a complete bloody idiot?’ he demanded angrily.

  ‘No, you—’

  ‘Then don’t try to treat me as if I was one. A man comes up to you in a pub, you say. You’ve never seen him before, but he not only knows who you are, he knows you’ve been stealing drugs from the clinic. And that’s the story you want to go with, is it?’

  ‘I didn’t say I’d never seen him before,’ Willis protested.

  ‘Had you seen him?’

  ‘Yes. I hadn’t actually talked to him, but I’d seen him around – because he was an out-patient at the clinic.’

  ‘What was wrong with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. But he was seeing one of the shrinks.’

  ‘And did this man you’d seen around tell you his name?’

  ‘Course he didn’t.’

  ‘How very convenient!’

  ‘But I made it my business to find out, because you never know when a piece of information like that might come in useful.’

  ‘So what was his name?’

  Willis hesitated. ‘You’ll drop all that “accessory before the fact” stuff, will you?’

  ‘As long as I don’t uncover any new information which proves you knew exactly what was going on.’

  ‘You won’t – because I didn’t.’

  ‘Then you’re off the hook for that.’

  ‘An’ the drug-dealing charges?’

  ‘You’re off the hook for those, too. Now tell me his bloody name!’

  ‘Edgar Brunton,’ Willis said.

  It was two o’clock in the morning, and most of Whitebridge was asleep. The street lights were still on in the centre of the town, but the buildings they stood in front of were in darkness. The only real signs of life in the entire area emanated from police headquarters – an island of light around the duty sergeant’s desk in the lobby, another around the custody sergeant’s desk in the lock-up, and a third coming from an office on the administrative floor which had been assigned to DCI Woodend.

  Woodend sat at his desk, his head in his hands. Facing him were Rutter and Paniatowski. None of them had spoken for some time.

  It was Woodend who finally broke the silence.

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ he groaned. ‘This is a rapidly turnin’ into a complete bloody nightmare. Are you absolutely certain that this Norman Willis feller was telling the truth, Bob?’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Rutter confirmed.

  ‘So we had the right man fingered from the very start. I bloody knew we did! It wasn’t just the wallet – it was my gut feeling. And then we had to let him go – because the body turned up while he was still in custody.’

  ‘He’s got to have had an accomplice,’ Paniatowski said. ‘That’s the only way to explain it.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘Now we’ll have to arrest the bastard again.’

  ‘Crawley and Marlowe will never let us get away with that,’ Paniatowski cautioned. ‘The moment they learn we’ve taken him in custody, they’ll suspend all three of us, and kick him loose.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to make sure they don’t know, won’t we?’ Woodend said.

  ‘And how can we ever hope to get away with that?’

  ‘By not takin’ him to headquarters.’

  ‘Then where can we …?’

  ‘We’ll call in a few favours from the troops on the ground, an’ lock him up in one of the outlyin’ police stations which Marlowe pays so little attention to that he’ll have almost forgotten they exist.’

  ‘But the second we’ve taken him away, his wife will be on the phone to the chief constable,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Then we’ll just have to arrest her, too.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Murder!’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Somebody had to smother that poor bloody girl an’ then dump her body on that patch of waste land – an’, at the moment, my money’s firmly on Mrs Brunton.’

  ‘You do realize that if this goes wrong, we’ll all be out on our ears, don’t you, sir?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘The thought had occurred to me,’ Woodend admitted. ‘Which is why I’m givin’ both of you a chance to pull out while you still can.’

  ‘I’m in,’ Paniatowski said decisively.

  ‘What about you, Bob?’ Woodend asked.

  Rutter hesitated for a second, then he grinned.

  ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘If things do go wrong, I’m still good-looking enough to get a job as a porter at the Pendleton Clinic.’

  It was three-thirty in the morning when Councillor Polly Johnson – who was by choice a magistrate and by bad luck a widow – heard her front-door bell ringing. At first she tried to ignore it, but when the ringing persisted she forced herself out of bed, threw on a dressing gown, and went downstairs to see who’d had the temerity to disturb her slumbers.

  She looked at the big man standing in her doorway with some disdain. ‘For God’s sake, Charlie, what are you doing here at this time of night?’ she asked.

  ‘I need search warrants, Polly,’ Woodend said apologetically. ‘An’ I need them in a hurry.’

  ‘Obviously you need them in a hurry, or you’d have left it till morning,’ Councillor Johnson said tartly. ‘But let me be clear about this. You are talking about search warrants in the plural?’

  ‘I am.’

  Councillor Johnson put her hands on her hips. ‘Life’s never simple with you, is it, Charlie?’ she asked. And then, without waiting for an answer, she added, ‘I suppose you’d better come in, then.’

  She led him into her kitchen, which was dominated by a large oak table. ‘You can sit here while I go and find the warrants,’ she said. ‘If you want a beer …’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind …’

  ‘… then you’re out of luck, because there’s none in the house. If you want whisky, there’s a bottle in that cupboard over there, and you’ll find glasses next to the sink.’

  When she returned, five minutes later, Polly Johnson had a sheaf of warrants in her hand, and had clearly applied a little light make-up to her face.

  Woodend, who had already taken up her offer of a drink, said, ‘Shall I pour a whisky for you?’

  ‘Jesus, no!’ Councillor Johnson said, sitting down opposite him. ‘Not everybody has your cast-iron stomach, you know.’

  ‘When you’ve heard what I have to say, you might need it,’ Woodend advised her. Then he filled a second glass, and placed it in front of her. ‘The first warrant is for Edgar Brunton’s house,’ he continued.

  ‘Is this in reference to the Angela Jackson case?’

  ‘Yes. An’ the Mary Thomas case.’

  ‘As far as Edgar Brunton goes, you’ve already had one bite at that particular cherry,’ Councillor Johnson reminded him.

  ‘I’ve got it right this time,’ Woodend promised her.

  ‘I hope you have,’ Polly Johnson said. ‘Because if you haven’t, I’m going to find myself shunned at the few social functions I still attend.’ She took a slug of the whisky Woodend had poured her, filled in the warrant, then said, ‘What are the others for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Woodend admitted.

  ‘When will you know?’

  ‘When I’ve searched Brunton’s house.’

  ‘At which point you can come back here and I’ll fill them in for you.’

  ‘There may not be time for that,’ Woodend said. ‘We’ve no idea what state the poor kid’s already in.’

  ‘So you expect me just to give you carte blanche, do you?’ Polly Johnson asked.

  Woo
dend grinned. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘I just want you to give me warrants in which the only part that has been filled in is your signature.’

  Polly Johnson shook her head. ‘I won’t do it, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I can’t do it, based on what little you’ve told me.’

  ‘Once before, in the Dugdale’s Farm murder, I asked you to take a chance on me,’ Woodend reminded her. ‘We had even less to go on then than we have now – but we still managed to put a senior policeman, a buildin’ tycoon, an’ a police surgeon behind bars.’

  ‘Maybe we were just lucky,’ Polly Johnson said.

  ‘An’ maybe we’ll be lucky this time,’ Woodend countered.

  ‘I hate it when you put me in this position, Charlie,’ Polly Johnson said. ‘I really hate it!’

  Then she drained the rest of her whisky, and signed her name at the bottom of the warrants.

  It was five minutes past four when Woodend knocked loudly on the door of the Brunton home, and had his hammering answered by a sleepy live-in maid.

  ‘I have a warrant here to search these premises,’ he said, showing the document to her.

  ‘The mister and missis in bed,’ the maid replied, speaking with a foreign accent thick enough to wrap butter in.

  ‘Then you’ll just have to get them out of bed, won’t you?’ Woodend said.

  But that did not prove to be necessary, because by the time he’d stepped past the maid and entered the hallway, Edgar Brunton had appeared at the head of the stairs.

  ‘Not again!’ he groaned angrily. ‘I would have thought you’d learned your lesson last time.’

  ‘I shall be takin’ you in for questionin’, while my colleagues search the house,’ Woodend told him.

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ said an outraged female voice, and Mrs Brunton appeared on the staircase next to her husband.

  ‘Let’s not make this any more difficult than we have to, madam,’ Woodend said evenly. ‘I’ve got my job to do, an’ I intend to do it.’

  ‘Your job?’ Mrs Brunton repeated scornfully. ‘You want even have a job by lunchtime!’

  Maybe she was right, Woodend thought – but it was too late to turn back now.

  Twenty-Four

  It was at five fifteen in the morning that the two officers on motor patrol in the town centre noticed there was a man lying on the pavement outside the Crown and Anchor.

  ‘Dead by reason of heart attack?’ PC Roger Crabtree asked his partner, PC Dave Warner.

  ‘More like dead by reason of drunk,’ Warner replied.

  ‘Think we should take him in?’

  ‘Don’t see why not. He looks very untidy, lyin’ where he is, an’ it’ll at least show the sarge that we’ve been keepin’ busy.’

  Crabtree pulled the patrol car into the kerb, and the two officers got out. The stink of stale beer which surrounded the supine man was unmistakable, and if further proof were needed of Warner’s assertion that he was drunk, there was a pile of vomit near his head which more than provided it.

  Crabtree squatted down, and prodded the man. ‘Can you stand up on your own, or are we goin’ to have to help you?’ he asked loudly.

  The drunk groaned. ‘All right where I am.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not the case, sir,’ Crabtree said. ‘Give it a couple more hours and people will either have to step round you or step over you, so we think it’s best if we take you down to the station.’

  ‘Piss off!’ the drunk growled.

  ‘I’m sorry, but that sort of attitude will get you nowhere, sir,’ Crabtree said, in a mock-prim tone he’d been practising. He turned to his partner. ‘Help me get him on his feet.’

  They took an arm each, and hauled the drunk up. He was a big man, but so far gone that the only sort of resistance he was capable of was inertia.

  It was something of a struggle to bundle him into the patrol car, and it was not until he was lolling on the back seat that they got a proper look at his face.

  ‘Ugly bugger, isn’t he?’ Crabtree asked.

  ‘Certainly wouldn’t win any beauty contests,’ Warner agreed. He tilted his head to one side to examine the man from a different angle, then announced grandly, ‘We’ve made an arrest.’

  ‘You don’t say?’ Crabtree responded. ‘Is that why he’s sittin’ in the back of our car?’

  ‘What I mean is, we’ve made a real arrest, rather than just a drunk and disorderly,’ Warner explained. ‘I recognize this feller. His name’s Wally Decker, an’ he’s wanted for beatin’ the shit out of some pervert in a pub yesterday.’

  Topton was a moorland village, served by a small stone police station which also had responsibility for the countless isolated farms scattered all over the moors. Woodend had selected it because he knew that the sergeant in charge was close to retirement, regarded Whitebridge as a place which had almost no relevance to him, and didn’t give a bugger what the chief constable thought or did. Besides, as small as it was, the police station still had two cells, so that it was possible to keep Brunton and his wife separated.

  He arrived there, with his prisoners, at twenty past five. By half-past, he had them both booked in, and was confronting Edgar Brunton across the table in what the local sergeant chose to call the interview room, but was more often used as a kitchen.

  ‘I want to speak to my solicitor,’ Brunton said.

  ‘An’ you’re perfectly within your rights to make that request, sir,’ Woodend said. ‘Shall I ring his office now?’

  ‘There’ll be nobody there at this time of day,’ Brunton said.

  ‘So there won’t,’ Woodend agreed. ‘In that case, we’d better wait until there is, hadn’t we?’

  ‘You could ring him at home.’

  ‘I don’t like to disturb him, so I think we’ll wait for normal business hours. An’ if, in the meantime, you don’t feel like talkin’ without your legal representative bein’ present, then you’re under absolutely no obligation to do so.’

  ‘Thank you for explaining the law to me, Mr Woodend,’ Brunton said, with a sneer.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Woodend replied. He leaned back in his chair. ‘I used to wonder what made you hate women,’ he continued, conversationally, ‘but havin’ spent half an hour in a car with your missis, I don’t wonder any more. What a mouth that woman’s got on her.’

  Brunton said nothing.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Woodend asked. ‘Afraid to agree with me, in case I tell her all about it? Worried that if I do tell her, she’ll tighten the purse strings an’ you’ll actually have to earn a proper livin’, instead of just poncin’ about an’ playin’ at bein’ a solicitor?’

  Brunton looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Maybe the reason for your sudden feelings of loyalty is that you think the reason she killed Angela Jackson was to save your bacon,’ Woodend suggested. ‘Well, you’re right about that in a way – but only in a way. Her real reasons were purely selfish. If she hadn’t killed Angela, you’d have gone to jail, an’ she’d no longer have had any power over you. Whereas by killin’ the girl, she’s put you more in her debt than ever. If you got away with this – an’ you won’t – she’d make your life so miserable that the prospect of bein’ banged up for thirty years would start to look very appealin’.’

  Having completed his examination of the ceiling, Brunton turned his attention to the walls.

  ‘What I’m offerin’ you, you see, is a chance of escape,’ Woodend pressed on. ‘You can argue at your trial that while you admit to torturin’ the girl, you never had any intention of killin’ her. With a bit of luck, you shouldn’t get more than ten years for that. On the other hand, your wife, who did kill Angela, will still be inside when she’d drawin’ her old-age pension.’

  ‘Have you checked out my wife’s alibi for the time the girl was killed?’ Brunton asked. A smile came to his face. ‘No, I can see you haven’t.’

  ‘Are you tellin’ me that she’s got one?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘I don’t know for sure, on
e way or the other. But I would be very surprised if she hasn’t got one. She needs to have people constantly around her, you see. As far as she’s concerned, if there’s nobody within easy bullying distance, she doesn’t really exist.’

  ‘So if she didn’t kill the girl, who did?’

  ‘I wonder how long it will take Henry Marlowe to discover I’m here,’ Brunton mused.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, if I was you,’ Woodend advised. ‘You’ve got bigger concerns to deal with.’

  ‘And I wonder how long after that it will be before you find yourself clearing out your desk,’ Edgar Brunton said.

  Monika Paniatowski glanced up at the clock on the wall of Brunton’s study.

  Eight thirty-five!

  What little advantage their early start had given them was rapidly slipping away, she thought. By now Whitebridge Police Headquarters would be coming to life. Within an hour, someone – perhaps Edgar Brunton’s secretary – would begin to wonder what had happened to him, and would only need to ring the maid in order to be told he had been arrested by three police officers who had absolutely nothing to do with the official investigation.

  This search had to come up with a lead soon, Paniatowski told herself.

  The lease to a lock-up garage.

  The deeds to a quiet cottage.

  Something – anything! – that they could use one of the blank search warrants to investigate.

  The phone rang, and Paniatowski picked it up.

  ‘Any luck at your end?’ asked the voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘None,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘How’s Brunton holding up?’

  ‘Far too bloody well,’ Woodend admitted. ‘He’s as guilty as sin, but he still seems to believe he has the upper hand.’

  That’s because he has, Paniatowski thought. The whole investigation’s unravelling before our eyes – and there’s nothing we can do about it.

  ‘We need to find out how much time we’ve got left,’ Woodend said, with an edge of desperation to his voice.

  ‘How do we do that?’ Paniatowski wondered. ‘Ring Superintendent Crawley and ask him just how close he is to guessing that we’ve broken nearly every rule in the book?’ She put her hand to her mouth, horrified at what she’d just heard herself say. ‘Sorry, sir,’ she continued. ‘That was uncalled for.’