Mainwearing smirked. ‘Yes, I could see that I had you completely fooled,’ he said.
‘But now you’ve given up playin’ games with me, have you?’
‘What would be the point in continuing them? You have enough evidence to convict me a dozen times over, so why pretend any longer? Now, finally, I am free to act like the man I really am – the man I am proud to be!’
‘The man who tortures little girls?’
‘The man who knows what he wants out of life, and – unlike most of the miserable creatures who attempt to pass themselves off as men – has the courage to take it!’
‘Well, you certainly did have me fooled,’ Woodend admitted. ‘Your partner, on the other hand, put up a very poor showin’. I knew he was guilty right from the offset.’
‘Don’t call Brunton my partner!’ Mainwearing snarled.
‘Then what should I call him? Your assistant?’
‘My disciple would be more accurate,’ Mainwearing said. ‘My slave would be even closer. He would have been nothing without me. He would never have achieved anything at all on his own.’
‘You almost sound as if you despise him,’ Woodend said.
‘I do despise him.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that can be quite true,’ Woodend said airily. ‘After all, you sacrificed a great deal of the pleasure you’d been anticipating by killin’ Angela Jackson earlier than you’d intended to. Because it’s not the same, inflictin’ the wounds after she’s dead, now is it?’
‘Not the same at all,’ Mainwearing agreed.
‘An’ why would you have made the sacrifice, if it wasn’t to save a dear friend?’
‘You really are a fool,’ Mainwearing said. ‘I didn’t do it to protect Edgar Brunton.’
‘No?’
‘No! I did it to protect myself. If he’d been in police custody for much longer, I simply couldn’t have trusted him not to betray me.’
‘You mustn’t have thought he was much of a disciple, then, must you?’ Woodend asked. He frowned. ‘Are you sure you were the one in charge? The only reason I ask is that he seems to have made most of the runnin’.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, you did the first kidnapping together – or, at least, you each played a part in it. Brunton snatched the girl in the park, put her in the boot of your car and drove to a point close to the bus station, which is where you took over. You did it that way so you’d both have partial alibis, didn’t you?’
‘Of course!’
‘But Brunton snatched Mary Thomas all by himself. Now why was that? Because you’d bungled your part of the first kidnappin’ – an’ he wasn’t goin’ to trust you again?’
‘I ordered Brunton to grab Mary Thomas,’ Mainwearing said angrily. ‘I decided he should do it because I thought that, as a result of the way you bungled the first kidnapping investigation, you had placed him above any suspicion of taking part in the second.’
And you were right about that, Woodend thought. Nobody even considered asking Brunton for an alibi covering the time when Mary Thomas was snatched.
‘Did you also order him to get the drug that was used to dope Angela Jackson?’ he asked Mainwearing.
‘Of course.’
‘An’ did you tell him where to get it from?’
‘Yes.’
‘Specifically?’
‘Yes, specifically. I told him to get it from the Pendleton Clinic.’
‘Where he was a patient, and you weren’t.’
‘So what?’
‘So why did you choose the Pendleton Clinic? Why not Whitebridge General, instead?’
‘I had my reasons.’
‘An’ what were they?’
‘I forget.’
‘There’s another thing that’s been puzzlin’ me,’ Woodend said. ‘How did the two of you ever happen to link up in the first place?’
Mainwearing looked at him blankly. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘I should have thought it was a simple enough question,’ Woodend said. ‘Did you meet at school?’
‘No.’
‘In the army?’
‘No.’
‘Through some interest that you shared? I mean another interest. One that didn’t involve torturin’ little girls.’
‘No.’
‘So it must have been through a classified advert in the Perverts’ Weekly.’
‘There’s no such magazine – and I’d never have risked using it if there had been.’
Woodend shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then I give up,’ he said. ‘How did you first get together?’
Mainwearing was beginning to look distinctly uncomfortable – perhaps even frightened. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ he said.
‘Let’s move onto somethin’ else, then,’ Woodend suggested. ‘I assume that since you were the master, and Brunton was the slave, it was your idea to put in the spyhole.’
‘What spyhole?’ Mainwearing asked.
‘The one set into the wall, between your garage an’ the derelict buildin’ next door.’
‘There is no such spyhole.’
‘I can assure you there is,’ Woodend told him. ‘It’s quite cleverly hidden, but even so, it didn’t take our technical boys more than a few minutes to find.’
‘You’re making this up!’ Mainwearing said, getting angry again. ‘I don’t know why you’re doing it, but you have to be making it up.’
‘That’s certainly one possibility,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But there’s another one, isn’t there? Maybe it was Edgar Brunton who installed the spyhole. Maybe he wasn’t quite as submissive to your wishes as you like to believe. Maybe instead of you playin’ him, he was really playin’ you.’
‘Impossible!’ Mainwearing said. ‘He wouldn’t have dared do something like that without my permission. And anyway, why should he want to?’
The door opened, and Superintendent Crawley walked into the room. He looked first at Woodend, then at Mainwearing, then back at Woodend again, and said, ‘Thank you, Mr Woodend, you may leave now.’
‘What!’ Woodend exploded.
‘You’re dismissed,’ Crawley said. ‘I’ll take over from here.’
‘But it’s my collar,’ Woodend growled.
‘How could it possibly be your collar, when you weren’t even assigned to the case?’
‘It’s my collar because I’m the one who arrested the bugger.’
‘And if a uniformed constable, pulled off the street, had made the arrest, would that have made it his collar?’
‘You’d never have caught this swine if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘I think you overestimate both your own importance and your contribution to the investigation, Chief Inspector,’ the superintendent said coldly. ‘We were closing in on Mainwearing and Brunton. We’d have had them in custody by lunchtime, even without your help.’
‘That’s bullshit, an’ you know it,’ Woodend said.
‘You have two choices, Chief Inspector,’ Crawley told him. ‘You can leave without another word, and I will include some mention of your contribution to the case in my report. Or you can continue to defy me, and I will bring you up on charges of insubordination. Which is it to be?’
What was the point in arguing, Woodend thought. He’d always told Rutter and Paniatowski that his main interest in the case was not self-advancement, but to save the girl. Well, the girl had been saved, hadn’t she? So why not live up to his word? Why not go quietly?
‘I asked you which it is to be?’ Crawley repeated.
‘I’ll leave now,’ Woodend said.
The superintendent nodded gravely. ‘A very wise decision, and one I’m sure you’ll not regret.’
Woodend walked over to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the corridor. Then he froze for a second, as if some nagging doubt at the back of his mind had suddenly been resolved. And when he moved again, it was not to go down the corridor, but to step back into the interview room.
‘There was a note pinned to Angela Jackson’s body,’ he told Mainwearing. ‘It said somethin’ like, “This is a gift from the Invisible Man to all my fellow sufferers everywhere.” Did you write that? Or was it yet again a case of Brunton – your supposed underling – takin’ the initiative?’
‘I wrote it.’
‘On what?’
‘On a piece of cardboard I’d torn off a baked-beans box.’
‘Chief Inspector …’ Crawley said.
‘So you’re the Invisible Man, are you, Mr Mainwearing?’ Woodend asked, totally ignoring the superintendent.
‘Of course I am,’ Mainwearing replied. ‘You didn’t think it was that pathetic wretch Edgar Brunton, did you?’
‘I did for a while, but now I see I was quite wrong.’
‘Mr Woodend, I really must insist that you leave now,’ Crawley said forcefully.
Woodend turned towards him. ‘I’ve got one more question for Mr Mainwearin’, an’ then I’ll go,’ he promised.
Crawley strode angrily across the room, and pushed Woodend into the doorway.
‘You’ll leave now!’ he shouted.
The expression on Woodend’s face was probably enough to tell Crawley that he’d just made a big mistake, but if it wasn’t, then Woodend’s grabbing him by the lapels, swinging him round, and slamming him against the wall certainly succeeded in getting the message across.
‘How dare you?’ Crawley gasped.
‘Listen to me, you stupid bastard!’ Woodend said, with considerable menace. ‘I’m goin’ to ask Mainwearin’ one more question, an’ if you interrupt, I’ll drop you where you stand. Understood?’
‘This is … this is totally outrageous,’ Crawley spluttered.
‘Understood?’ Woodend repeated.
‘Since I have no intention of indulging in further fisticuffs with a man from a lower rank, I have no choice but to agree. But I warn you—’
‘Good,’ Woodend interrupted. ‘Now here’s the question, Mr Mainwearin’ – why do you call yourself the Invisible Man?’
Mainwearing gave him another totally blank look. ‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ he said.
Twenty-Seven
It was early afternoon, and the two men were walking along that section of the canal bank which ran close by the University of Central Lancashire. They were dressed similarly – Woodend in his customary hairy sports jacket, Martin Stevenson in the same tweed jacket and brown trousers he had been wearing when the chief inspector had first met him. They were moving at a leisurely pace, which suggested that even if they had a particular destination in mind, they were in no hurry to get there – and that what really mattered was the conversation they were having en route.
‘I have to confess to you, Chief Inspector, that I’m feeling rather guilty,’ Stevenson said.
Woodend chuckled. ‘I thought you trick cyclists always preached that guilt was nothin’ but a weight around your neck, an’ that it should be thrown off at the earliest opportunity,’ he said.
‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ Stevenson replied seriously. ‘What I actually tell my patients is that if the guilt is there – and if it has good reason to be there – they must find a way to assuage it.’
‘So what are you feelin’ guilty about?’
‘That I never raised the possibility that there might be two men involved in the kidnapping and murder, rather than just one. But, you see, it was really a very remote possibility. The only recent case I can think of is that of the Moors Murders, and the two people involved in that – Myra Hindley and Ian Brady – were very much disorganized killers, who murdered largely on impulse. And that sets them a world apart from people like Mainwearing and Brunton.’
‘Is your guilt assuaged now you’ve explained to me why you couldn’t really have known?’ Woodend asked.
Stevenson smiled wanly. ‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘Because there’s a part of me which will keep insisting that I should have seen the possibility.’
‘Perhaps it might make you feel a little better if you could help sort a couple of other things that are still puzzlin’ me,’ Woodend suggested.
‘Perhaps it might,’ Stevenson agreed.
‘I’ve interrogated any number of murderers in my time,’ Woodend said, ‘an’ one thing they’ve all had in common, once they’ve admitted to the crime, is a willingness to fill me in on all the details. They seem to want me on their side, you see – as if that’s goin’ to make any difference to the eventual outcome – an’ they see cooperatin’ fully as being a part of that. Now, it wasn’t like that with Brunton an’ Mainwearin’. They were very open about some things, but very cagey about others. An’ I was wonderin’ why that should be.’
‘Would you care to give me a specific example?’ Stevenson asked.
‘Certainly. They both denied any knowledge of the spyhole.’
‘The spyhole? What spyhole?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t explain that, did I?’ Woodend said. ‘There was a spyhole in the wall between the house next door an’ the room where the girl was bein’ held. Now what kind of man is it who’ll confess to torturin’ a girl, but refuse to admit he’s been watchin’ her through the wall?’
‘A very strange kind of man,’ Stevenson said pensively. ‘And certainly not a kind that I’ve ever come across myself. I suppose there’s no chance that this spyhole was there previously – that it had nothing to do with Brunton and Mainwearing’s activities?’
‘You’re suggestin’ that a previous tenant of the house next door might have installed it to spy on a previous tenant of the garage?’
‘Yes, essentially.’
‘It’s a temptin’ theory. But, you see, Mainwearin’ had that room completely rebuilt by a jobbin’ builder called Decker, an’ during that rebuild, the spyhole was bound to have been discovered.’
‘Then I can’t explain it,’ Stevenson said.
‘No matter, let’s move on to somethin’ else,’ Woodend said easily. ‘There are other questions I put to Mainwearin’ that he seemed unable to answer.’
‘You mean wouldn’t answer?’
‘No, I meant exactly what I said. He should have known the answers – but he plainly didn’t.’
‘For instance?’
‘He signed himself the ‘Invisible Man’. I think I must have told you that before …’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘… and there’s no doubt that he was the one who left the note which was nailed to Angela Jackson, because he described the piece of cardboard on which it was written perfectly. But, you see, he can’t tell me why he chose that name for himself. So I’m thinkin’ that maybe it’s buried deep in his subconscious …’
‘That’s a possibility.’
‘… an’ that we just might be able to unlock that subconscious mind by the use of hypnotism.’ Woodend paused. ‘Do you use hypnotism yourself, Doc?’
‘I have done,’ Stevenson said. ‘On occasion.’
‘An’ does it work?’
‘It depends on exactly how you define the term “work”. In helping a patient to remember his childhood, for example, it can be a useful tool. But that’s all it is – a tool – and one of many available. It’s certainly not the miracle cure that some people believe it is.’
‘So you couldn’t, for example, change somebody’s personality with it?’
‘Most definitely not. All you can use it for is to build on what’s already there. You’re not going to change an introvert into an extrovert by a couple of sessions of hypnosis. You have to turn him around by other means – or rather, he has to turn himself around by other means – and, once that process is under way, you can then use hypnosis as a re-enforcement.’
‘Fascinatin’,’ Woodend said. ‘But to get back to the point. Do you think there’s a chance I can use hypnosis to make Mainwearin’ tell me why he calls himself the Invisible Man?’
‘As I’ve said, it’s a possibility. But why should you even want to? You know he�
��s guilty. Isn’t that enough? Do you really need to probe every little corner of his psyche?’
‘Not really,’ Woodend admitted. ‘It’s just that I like to know these things. I suppose it’s because when I was a kid—’
Stevenson laughed. ‘If you want to tell me about your childhood memories, you need to be lying on a couch first,’ he said. ‘And you’re going to have to pay me for the privilege.’
‘On my salary?’ Woodend asked wryly. He stopped walking for a moment, to light up a cigarette. ‘The drug Mainwearin’ used to dope the girls isn’t well known to your average layman – an’ that bothered me at first,’ he continued. ‘Then Dr Shastri explained to me that anybody with a reasonable head on their shoulders could find out all there is to know about it by spendin’ half an hour in the library.’
‘I expect they could.’
‘But what’s still got me confused is why Brunton decided that the best place to get it was the Pendleton Clinic.’
‘Is that where he got it from?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I suppose it was because he was a patient there. In fact, he was my patient there.’
‘True enough,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But he’d only be at the clinic for … what? An hour a week?’
‘Two hours a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays.’
‘An’ I wouldn’t have said that was long enough for him to have learned how the hospital ticked. Certainly not long enough for him to have found out that one of the fellers workin’ in the dispensary was bent.’
‘Perhaps someone else told him about the pharmacist.’
‘A doctor, you mean?’
‘I consider that particular possibility highly unlikely,’ Stevenson said severely. ‘We do have certain standards in the profession, you know, and I can’t see any doctor risking his reputation in that way. It’s much more likely that Brunton got the information from one of the ancillary staff, who would probably be only too glad to earn some extra money by providing it.’
Death Watch Page 23