Lambs to the Slaughter

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I left the Institute soon after Len, and came straight back here,’ Tommy said. ‘Me and Susan spent some time together . . .’

  ‘Spent some time together? What you really mean is that you had sex,’ Beresford said, before he could stop himself.

  ‘Sex!’ Tommy repeated in disgust. ‘That’s all that you young fellers these days call what goes on between a man and a woman, isn’t it? There’s no tenderness any more. No compassion. You just “ram it home”, don’t you?’ Tommy paused for a moment to cough into the enamel bowl. ‘So tell me, Inspector Beresford, how many women have you had sex with in the last month or so?’

  Too many, said the voice in Beresford’s head.

  He was shocked to hear his own mind betray him like that.

  Too many!

  How could it be too many?

  But it was, he thought. It was too many because it was turning him into a person he didn’t like very much – a person who was constantly challenging Monika, who took offence far too easily, who just had to be right.

  ‘Well?’ Tommy asked.

  Beresford took a deep breath. ‘We’re not here to talk about me,’ he said. ‘I asked you a question you’ve still not answered, so I’ll ask it again. Did you have sex with Susan Danvers?’

  ‘We didn’t go upstairs, get stark bollock naked, and jump all over each other, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘We did what a dying man and a broken-hearted woman could do to give each other a little comfort,’ Tommy said. ‘It wasn’t very satisfactory – neither of us ever thought it would be – but at least we did it for the right reasons.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘And then we talked – until about half past four in the morning. I wanted her to stay for the rest of the night, but she said she had to get home.’

  Half past four is too late! Beresford’s voice said. Len was already dead by then!

  ‘I told her it was pointless leaving at that time, but she said she needed to get a couple of hours’ sleep before she made Len’s breakfast for him,’ Tommy said. ‘I asked why she wanted to go making his breakfast, when he’d already sacked her, and she told me she’d been paid her wages till the end of the week, and she intended to work out her notice.’

  That’s what she told me, too, Beresford thought.

  ‘That was just an excuse, of course,’ Tommy said. ‘It was nothing to do with her wages at all. I think she was still hoping to get back with him. And I think that the real reason she went home was because she was already regretting what we’d done, and had convinced herself that if she woke up in her own bed that morning, it’d be like it had never happened.’

  He was lying about the whole thing, Beresford thought. He just had to be lying.

  ‘Why did you use your granddaughter as your alibi for Sunday night?’ he asked.

  ‘I agreed to use her because that was what she wanted. My little Becky was terrified that I might end up going to prison, you see.’ Tommy chuckled, though it was a sad, wounded chuckle, and it started him coughing again. ‘I think . . . I think that maybe there was a part of her that thought I had killed Len. Anyway, she asked, and I couldn’t turn her down.’

  ‘But if you already had an alibi – as you claim – you wouldn’t have needed one from her.’

  Tommy shook his head, almost despairingly. ‘You just don’t see it, do you, Inspector Beresford? I would never have used Susan as an alibi, not even if I’d been arrested – not even if I’d been tried and found guilty.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Why not? Because they’re nice people in this village – as nice as you’ll find anywhere – but even nice people can be cruel sometimes.’

  ‘I’m not following you,’ Beresford admitted.

  ‘I know you’re not,’ Tommy Sanders agreed. ‘If I’d used Susan as my alibi, it would have made her an even bigger laughing stock than she already was. Poor Susan Danvers, folk would say. She was so desperate for a man – any man – that when the feller she’d faithfully looked after for twenty years jilted her, she fell right into the arms of some poor old bugger with only half a lung. I couldn’t have done that to her, and the only reason I’m telling you now is because, like me, she’d rather go to gaol than admit where she was – and I can’t let that happen.’

  It could all still be a lie, Beresford told himself – but he knew, deep down, that it wasn’t.

  ‘I want to ask you a favour, Mr Beresford,’ Tommy said. ‘It wasn’t part of our deal, but I want to ask it anyway.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Beresford said.

  ‘I want you to try and stop what I’ve just told you from becoming public knowledge around the village. I’m not asking that for myself, you understand – I’m too close to death to give a bugger what people think about me – I’m asking it for poor Susan.’

  ‘If what you’ve told me is true, then I will try,’ Beresford promised. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Aye,’ Tommy Sanders agreed. ‘It is.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Monika Paniatowski sat with Kate Meadows at their usual table in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, her whole body trembling with rage at her enemies – and anger at herself.

  ‘I should have worked it out much sooner,’ she told Meadows. ‘I knew that Forsyth was in Whitebridge. I should have seen that when something as senseless – as absolutely bloody pointless – as Louisa’s abduction happened, he just had to be behind it.’

  ‘You’re being too hard on yourself, boss,’ Meadows said.

  ‘And if that wasn’t enough, there was the fact that the bastard who kidnapped Louisa told her his name was Colin. Why would he have done that?’

  ‘Because he knew that Louisa was very fond of her Uncle Colin, so she’d associate the name with nice people, and that would make her more vulnerable to what he suggested next?’ Meadows suggested.

  ‘Exactly,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘We’d never have come up with that idea, but Forsyth did – because that’s the way his twisted tortuous mind functions. And I should have spotted that mind at work. Why didn’t I spot it?’

  ‘You were so worried about your daughter that you weren’t thinking straight,’ Meadows said, ‘which, of course, is probably what he was banking on.’

  ‘And even now that I know he did it, I’ve no idea why he did it,’ Paniatowski agonized. ‘Was he punishing me? And if he was punishing me, what was he punishing me for?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meadows admitted.

  ‘There’s something else I don’t understand,’ Paniatowski said. ‘When Forsyth rang Sutton, at four o’clock on Monday morning, he already knew that Len Hopkins was dead. I’m right about that, aren’t I?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘So if he knew Hopkins was dead long before anyone else knew – anybody, that is, apart from the killer – we have to assume that the murder was carried out on Forsyth’s instructions, don’t we?’

  ‘I don’t see that there’s any other conclusion we could draw,’ Meadows agreed.

  ‘But of all the people he could have chosen to have killed, why did he select Len Hopkins? Forsyth wants to prevent the strike, and Len was one of its biggest opponents within the village. From Forsyth’s perspective, the old man must have seemed like a real asset. Having Len murdered would be like shooting himself in the foot and—’

  Paniatowski suddenly stopped talking, and turned pale.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Meadows asked worriedly.

  ‘Knowing what we know now, who do we think killed Len Hopkins?’

  ‘The chances are, it was the young man who visited him, claiming to be from the DES, and . . . and . . .’

  ‘And that was the same young man who abducted Louisa,’ Paniatowski said shakily. ‘Forsyth deliberately chose to put my daughter in a car with a murderer!’

  She picked up her glass, and knocked back the rest of her vodka.

  ‘I’ll make the bastard pay for that. I don’
t know how I’ll do it yet – but I swear I’ll make him pay.’

  ‘You can’t, boss,’ Meadows said softly.

  ‘Can’t I? Is that what you really think?’

  ‘Listen, there’ll be no way you can get at him legally – he’ll have covered his tracks too well for that to happen.’

  ‘Yes, he will,’ Paniatowski agreed, already starting to look defeated.

  ‘So what are you going to do instead?’ Meadows asked. ‘Are you going to kill him?’

  ‘Yes – if that’s the only option open to me, then that’s what I’ll bloody well do.’

  ‘No, you won’t. Once you’ve calmed down, you’ll realize that if you do kill him, you’ll end up in gaol – or maybe even dead yourself.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’ll take the risk.’

  ‘And are you prepared to risk Louisa’s future, as well?’ Meadows asked.

  Paniatowski sighed. ‘You know I’m not.’

  ‘So you’re stuck, aren’t you? He’s got all the power of the state behind him, and you’ve got nothing. And however much you might hate that particular idea, you’ll have to learn to accept it – because you’ve really got no other choice.’

  ‘What a bloody mess,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Yes, that’s what it is,’ Meadows agreed. ‘A bloody mess.’

  The poster which Monika Paniatowski had had printed – and which Beresford had instructed two of his detective constables to paste up all over Bellingsworth – was the size of a large envelope, which meant it was small enough to paste to lamp posts, yet too large to be easily overlooked.

  Two-thirds of the poster was taken up by the sketch that the police artist had produced from the description which Louisa had given him, and the text underneath it said:

  The Whitebridge Police want to question this man.

  If you think you might have seen him,

  please ring the number below immediately.

  The poster had already been up all over Bellingsworth for several hours when Becky Sanders, stepping down from the school bus, saw an example pasted to the bus shelter.

  Two other school kids – a boy and a girl – had followed her down the steps, and noticing the effect the poster seemed to be having on her, went to see what all the fuss was about.

  ‘It’s just like one of them wanted posters you see in westerns,’ said the boy with some relish. ‘Wanted – dead or alive!’

  ‘Do you think he was the one what did in poor old Mr Hopkins?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Bound to be,’ the boy said confidently. ‘They wouldn’t have bothered putting it up if he wasn’t.’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘He’s an ugly-looking bugger, isn’t he?’

  ‘He most certainly is not,’ the girl disagreed. ‘If you want the truth, I think he’s rather cute . . .’

  ‘Cute!’ the boy scoffed.

  ‘. . . and if I had the choice of waking up beside him or waking up beside you, I know which one I’d choose.’

  ‘If you think he’s better looking than me, you must be going soft in the head,’ the boy said, stung. ‘I’m so good-looking, I could be in films.’

  ‘Yeah – horror films!’ the girl said. ‘Who do you think is cuter, Becky – the feller on the poster or young Frankenstein here?’

  They’d been totally absorbed in their own little argument, and it was only now – when they turned their full attention on to Becky, in anticipation of her supporting one or the other of them – that they noticed she was sobbing uncontrollably.

  It was said that the first forty-eight hours of any murder investigation were the most crucial ones, Colin Beresford thought, as he stood on the pavement outside the church hall and looked down the street. Well, they’d been running this investigation for more than forty-eight hours, and they were no further on now than when they’d arrived in the village on Monday morning.

  ‘I’ve made a mess of this whole case, haven’t I, Jack?’ he asked DC Crane, who was standing by his side.

  ‘No, sir,’ Crane replied. ‘You’ve made a series of perfectly logical assumptions which, as chance would have it, happened to be wrong.’ He paused for a moment. ‘But if I could just make one criticism . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Forget it. It’s not my place to say.’

  ‘Were you about to say that ever since I started bedding women, I’ve been strutting around like I was the king of the jungle?’ Beresford wondered.

  ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ Crane said cautiously.

  ‘Yes, you would,’ Beresford told him.

  ‘Yes, I would,’ Crane agreed.

  ‘And is there any cure?’

  ‘It’ll wear off in time,’ Crane promised. ‘It’s a stage that all fellers have to go through.’

  Beresford grinned. ‘But most of them don’t have go through that stage when they’re already in their thirties and a detective inspector in the Mid Lancs CID?’ he suggested.

  Jack Crane returned the grin. ‘Look at it this way, sir, if I’d been given the choice of being a complete arsehole for a couple of months, or a virgin for the rest of my life, I’d have plumped for being a short-term arsehole any day of the week. And besides that—’

  He broke off abruptly, as he caught sight of a schoolgirl running frantically – almost dementedly – down the street towards them.

  ‘Isn’t that Becky Sanders?’ asked Beresford, who had noticed her too.

  ‘I think it is,’ Crane said.

  The girl came to a halt in front of them, and for a few seconds just stood there, gasping for breath as the tears poured down her face.

  ‘What’s the matter, Becky?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Why have you put up those pictures of my boyfriend all over the village?’ Becky demanded. ‘Is it because you think he killed Mr Hopkins?’

  ‘I think you’d better come inside, and wait while we fetch your mother,’ Beresford said softly.

  ‘He didn’t do it!’ Becky screamed. ‘You have to believe that! Gary didn’t do it!’

  The Drum and Monkey had closed its doors to its customers more than an hour earlier, but the normal rules did not apply to what had been once been Charlie Woodend’s team and was now Monika Paniatowski’s, and the two women were still sitting at the table as the landlord cleared up around them.

  ‘Do you know where Forsyth will be right at this minute?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘No,’ Meadows replied. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Paniatowski said bitterly. ‘He’ll be in a suite at the Royal Victoria – waiting for me.’

  ‘Waiting for you!’

  ‘He likes to see me. He likes to play his little mind games with me. It’s almost like sex to him. It may even be instead of sex.’

  ‘Will you go?’ Meadows asked.

  Paniatowski shook her head. ‘Not this time. I daren’t. Despite what you said, I still don’t trust myself enough to get within striking distance of him.’

  The phone behind the bar rang, and the landlord picked it up.

  ‘It’s for you, Chief Inspector,’ he said.

  Paniatowski walked over to the bar and took the phone from him.

  ‘Is that you, boss?’ asked the troubled voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘It’s me,’ Paniatowski confirmed. ‘Is something wrong, Colin?’

  ‘I need you over here in Bellingsworth,’ Beresford said. ‘I need you right now.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  The three of them sat at a table in the church hall, Beresford and Paniatowski on one side, a thin, sobbing Becky Sanders on the other.

  ‘Tell me what you told Inspector Beresford earlier, sweetheart,’ Paniatowski said softly.

  ‘I killed him,’ Becky sobbed. ‘It wasn’t Gary, it was me. Gary wasn’t anywhere near here when it happened.’

  ‘You’re going to have to give us a little more detail than that,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I hit him with the short-handled pickaxe, while he was sitting on the lavvy,’ Becky said
.

  ‘How did you know he’d be on the lavvy?’

  ‘I just knew.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite true,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I think the reason you knew he’d be there was because you’d put laxative in his milk.’

  ‘That’s right, I did. I’d forgotten that,’ Becky said.

  ‘You must have slipped the laxative in while Mr Hopkins was in Accrington, at the brass band concert,’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘Yes, that’s when I did it.’

  ‘So how did you get into the house? Did you have a key?’

  ‘No, the . . . the door wasn’t locked.’

  ‘How did you get to the toilet, later that night? Did you go through the house again?’

  ‘No, I was waiting in the back alley. I heard him come down the yard, and open the lavvy door, and then I counted very slowly to twenty.’

  ‘That sounds like something you were told to do,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘It wasn’t. I just did it.’

  ‘What happened next?

  ‘I had the pickaxe in one hand, and my flashlight in the other, but once I was in the yard, I put the flashlight in my mouth, so I’d have two hands free for the pick. I opened the lavvy door, and I could see him sitting there. His eyes were very big. I think that was because I was shining the light in them.’

  ‘It would have been.’

  ‘He said, “Is that you, Susan?” I wanted to say it wasn’t, but I couldn’t speak because of the flashlight.’ Becky paused. ‘I don’t know why I wanted to say that I wasn’t Susan.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Did he try to pull his trousers up?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘No, he just sat there.’

  ‘But his trousers were round his ankles, were they?’

  Becky blushed. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I didn’t want to look down, in case I accidentally saw his thingy.’

  ‘Carry on,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I . . . I swung the pickaxe at him. When it hit him, it really shook, and my wrists tingled. That was when I dropped my flashlight. I didn’t mean to, it just fell out of my mouth. And when it hit the ground, it went out.’