The Witch Maker

by Sally Spencer

  And somebody had! Stan!

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Pat did what he did because he was trying to protect my daughter – the girl he loves.’

  ‘But what has she—?’ And suddenly Paniatowski understood. ‘The man who raped you also made you pregnant!’ she said.

  Zelda nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you never told your daughter about it?’

  ‘I’ve never told her who her father was, but I’ve always let her think that I was in love with him. I was terrified that you and your boss were going to accidentally uncover the truth, and then Hettie would find out. I didn’t want her to know she had the blood of a brutal rapist running through her veins. And neither did Pat. He thought ... he thought you’d think it was somebody from the village who’d damaged your car, and that would mean you’d stop looking so closely at us and start looking more closely at them. It seems like a mad idea now, but it made sense to me when he explained it to me back then.’

  ‘Why those words?’ Paniatowski said, knowing she was asking more for her own sake than for the sake of the investigation. ‘Why “slut”? Why “harlot”?’

  Zelda looked at her strangely – questioningly.

  As if I’ve suddenly shown her my secret self, Paniatowski thought. And perhaps I have!

  ‘There was nothing personal in it,’ Zelda said.

  Paniatowski knew she should leave it there – but couldn’t. ‘It felt personal,’ she said.

  ‘What did you want him to write?’ Zelda asked. ‘“Bent”? Anyone can see you’re not, so that would have had no effect on you. “Ruthless”? You’d have taken it as a compliment. He knew he had to knock you off balance, so he used words that would have worked in his village back in Ireland. But he was wrong. You should never call a woman that – just as you should never treat a woman like that. So can you forgive him? Can you let him go?’

  ‘It’s not up to me,’ Paniatowski told her. ‘I really think we have to go and talk to my boss.’

  Thirty-Six

  Two hours in the police house storeroom had eroded some of Pat Calhoun’s jaunty self-confidence, and he looked distinctly unsettled by the fact that Woodend had not returned alone but had brought his sergeant with him.

  ‘Do I need to introduce her?’ Woodend asked. ‘Or have you already met the Harlot?’

  Calhoun reddened. ‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like writin’ what I wrote, honest I didn’t, but it seemed the best way to—’

  ‘Not so much an apology, more a self-justification,’ Woodend said dryly. ‘Still, we’ve other fish to fry at the moment.’

  ‘Are you really goin’ to have me locked up in Lancaster Gaol?’ Calhoun asked.

  ‘Oh yes, the car’s on the way to pick you up even as we speak. The only thing that’s changed is what we’re goin’ to charge you with.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the Irishman said.

  ‘Could you hold out your hands, please, Mr Calhoun? I need to handcuff you.’

  ‘Handcuff me!’ Calhoun repeated incredulously. ‘What for? All I did was vandalize a car!’

  ‘That’s where we disagree, you see,’ Woodend told him. ‘Hold out your hands, Mr Calhoun. It’ll be a lot easier than puttin’ up a struggle – an’ findin’ yourself on the sharp end of the Harlot’s nasty temper.’

  Calhoun sighed, and held out his hands. Woodend clicked a set of cuffs on to his wrists.

  ‘That should be enough restraint for the present,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘But if you start makin’ things difficult for us, we’ll have to cuff your hands behind your back. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ Calhoun said defeatedly.

  ‘Right then, now we’re all sittin’ comfortably, we can begin. When exactly did Zelda Todd tell you the name of the man who had raped her?’

  ‘She never told me.’

  Woodend turned to Paniatowski. ‘Now why don’t I believe him, Monika?’ he asked.

  ‘Possibly because he’s lying through his teeth?’ Monika Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘Possibly because he’s lying through his teeth,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Shall I tell you why we both think that, Mr Calhoun?’

  ‘I don’t care whether you do or not,’ the Irishman replied, with a casualness which was clearly forced.

  ‘All right, you don’t care, so I’ll do it purely for my own amusement,’ Woodend said. ‘Will you at least agree that you’re aware of the fact that twenty years ago Zelda Todd was raped?’

  ‘Why should I agree?’

  ‘Because it would be pointless not to. Because you’ve already blown your chance of pleadin’ ignorance.’

  ‘Have I indeed?’

  ‘Yes, you have. If you were goin’ to deny knowledge of it, you should have done so when I asked you if you knew the rapist’s name. “Raped!” you should have said. “Was she raped? How shockin’!” But it wasn’t a shock, was it?’

  Pat Calhoun smiled sadly. ‘We’re never quite as smart as we think we are, are we?’

  ‘What did you hope to achieve by vandalizin’ my sergeant’s car – by writin’ “harlot” on it?’

  ‘Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘Maybe. But us bobbies still like to have things spelled out for us.’

  ‘I hoped it would divert your attention from the fairground an’ towards the village. I didn’t want you to find out that Zelda had been raped, because then there was a danger that Hettie would find out, too.’

  ‘Was that your only motive?’

  ‘What other could there have been?’

  ‘Let’s go back a few days, shall we?’ Woodend suggested. ‘Zelda’s a worried woman when the fair arrives in Hallerton. An’ what’s she worried about? She’s worried that her rapist will come to the fair – probably drunk – and say somethin’ so indiscreet in Hettie’s hearin’ that the girl might put two an’ two together, an’ work out that he’s her father.’ He shook his head. ‘Imagine that. Suddenly learnin’ that you weren’t born out of an act of love, but out of an act of violence. It would have been devastatin’ for the poor girl.’

  ‘It would,’ Calhoun agreed.

  ‘So how is Zelda to prevent it happenin’? By goin’ to her mate, Pat Calhoun, an’ tellin’ him all about it, of course. By askin’ him to make sure that the rapist never gets anywhere near the fairground. But how could her mate Pat have done that if he didn’t even know the rapist’s name?’

  A small smile came to the Irishman’s lips. ‘It seems I’m not the only one who’s not as smart as he thinks he is.’

  ‘Would you like to explain that?’

  ‘Zelda wasn’t worried about the man comin’ to the fairground at all,’ Calhoun said. ‘She knew he’d be far too busy with the—’

  Only now did he see the trap he had been walking into. A look of horror came to his face, and he closed his mouth.

  ‘He’d be far too busy with what?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Nothin’.’

  ‘With the Witch Burnin’?’

  ‘I’ve said all I’m goin’ to say.’

  Woodend turned his attention to Paniatowski. ‘Mr Calhoun was tellin’ the truth when he told us he vandalized your lovely red car to distract our attention away from the fairground,’ he said.

  ‘But he was lying when he said he didn’t know the rapist’s name, wasn’t he?’ the sergeant responded.

  ‘Of course he was,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Zelda told him. Zelda would have to have told him in order for him to be able to do what he did the other night. As I see it, Harry Dimdyke wasn’t killed to protect Hettie from finding out about her father at all. He was killed to avenge Zelda for the rape.’

  ‘You ... you can’t think ...?’ Pat Calhoun gasped.

  ‘Oh, but I can,’ Woodend assured him. He cleared his throat. ‘Patrick Michael Calhoun, I am chargin’ you with the murder of Harold Dimdyke. You do not have to say anythin’, but anythin’ you do say may be taken down an’ used in evidence agains
t you.’

  Thirty-Seven

  It was nine o’clock in the evening, just thirteen hours before the first Witch Burning in twenty years. Woodend and Paniatowski sat opposite each other in the public bar in the Wheatsheaf in Throckston, he drinking pints of bitter, she sipping at neat vodka. It was almost the end of a case and it should have been a celebration – but neither of them felt as if they had much to celebrate.

  ‘You’re not going to charge Zelda Todd for any part in the murder, are you?’ Paniatowski asked.

  Woodend shook his head. ‘Maybe she intended Calhoun to kill Dimdyke, or maybe she just intended him to beat him up. Either way, we don’t have enough evidence to arrest her.’

  ‘We haven’t even got enough evidence to convict Calhoun yet,’ Paniatowski pointed out.

  Woodend nodded sombrely. ‘I know we haven’t,’ he agreed, ‘but he did it, an’ we will have enough evidence by the time he comes to trial. Every killer makes mistakes, an’ the chances are that Calhoun made more than his share. Now they know what they’re lookin’ for, the boffins from the lab will probably be able to find some forensic evidence to link him with the barn.’

  ‘And if they can’t?’

  ‘If they can’t, somethin’ else will turn up. One of the villagers will have got up in the middle of the night, for example, looked out the window, an’ noticed a red-headed man crossin’ the Green. All we have to do is persuade that person to come forward. Anyway, after a night in Lancaster Gaol, Calhoun will probably save us the trouble an’ confess.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he? He knows he’s goin’ to prison, but he won’t serve a long sentence, because even the hardest-hearted judge is bound to see that Harry Dimdyke needed killin’.’ Woodend paused. ‘I shouldn’t have said that, you know,’ he continued. ‘No policeman should ever say anythin’ like that. But it doesn’t make it any less true.’

  Paniatowski nodded. ‘He thought he was God Almighty. And he almost was – as far as the village was concerned. Most rapists travel miles before they stalk their victims. Most rapists wear a mask, or put a stocking over their heads. But not Harry Dimdyke. He was so sure of himself – so sure he could get away with anything – that he never thought twice about raping a woman not more than a couple of hundred yards from his own home.’

  ‘It’s a pity Stan Dawkins didn’t catch up with him the night it happened,’ Woodend said. ‘A pity Dawkins wasn’t the one to finish him off – before he could do any more harm.’

  ‘What harm are you talking about, exactly?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I’ve got a theory that ...’ Woodend paused. ‘No, now’s not the time to talk about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s no more than a seed at the moment. It needs time to grow. If I expose it to the light now, it might just shrivel up an’ die.’

  ‘But it’s about something you think Harry Dimdyke did?’

  ‘Ask me somethin’ else,’ Woodend said impatiently. ‘Ask me who killed Stan Dawkins.’

  ‘All right,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘Who did kill Stan Dawkins?’

  ‘Tom Dimdyke, without a doubt. He had to – to protect his bastard of a brother.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to have been him,’ Paniatowski argued. ‘The retiring Witch Maker could have been the one who decided Stan had to die. Or maybe it was one of the other villagers who took the matter into his own hands. God knows, they all care enough about the Witch Burning to have killed to protect the man who makes it all happen.’

  ‘It was Tom,’ Woodend said firmly.

  ‘That’s your gut feeling, is it?’

  ‘Yes, but there’s more to it than that. If the position of Witch Maker had been an elected one Tom would have romped home well ahead of his nearest rival. He’s a natural leader, an’ – more to the point – he’ll always have been one. So when there was trouble it would have been him that people turned to – him that sorted it out. Maybe he struck the blows that killed Stan Dawkins himself, or maybe he told somebody else from the village to, but whichever it was, it happened because he willed it to happen. Not that we’ll ever be able to prove it after all this time.’

  They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence in which Paniatowski found herself thinking about three hundred and fifty years of village history, about Meg Ramsden – and about herself.

  She hated Hallerton more than she had ever hated any place she’d ever been to.

  More than the shells of towns and villages she and her mother had wandered through in war-torn Europe.

  More than her stepfather’s house – which should have been the great escape, but wasn’t.

  Yet she dreaded the thought of leaving the village and going back to Whitebridge – returning to the problems she had left behind her and which she knew would only have festered further in her absence.

  ‘Why did he kill him at the Witchin’ Post?’ Woodend asked suddenly, in a troubled voice.

  ‘What was that, sir?’

  ‘Why did Pat Calhoun take Harry Dimdyke to the Witchin’ Post before he killed him?’ Woodend lit up a cigarette, despite the fact that there was already one burning in the ashtray. ‘Look, there’s two possible ways the thing could have happened. The first is that Calhoun intended to kill Dimdyke all along, an’ went to the barn with that purpose in mind. The second is that he didn’t intend to kill him, but lost his temper once he was in the barn. In either case, we come back to the same question. Why not kill him then an’ there? There were enough tools in the barn to serve as a murder weapon, an’ since they all belonged to Harry, there was no way they could be traced back to Pat. So why not just pick up a hammer and turn his head into pulp? Why, instead, did he run the lunatic risk of transportin’ Dimdyke across the village?’

  ‘Because the Witching Post is symbolic?’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘You’re right,’ Woodend agreed. ‘It is symbolic. Ask anybody in the village, an’ they’ll confirm that. But what possible significance could that symbol have for Pat Calhoun? He was brought up in an entirely different culture. Bloody hell, Monika, he was brought up in an entirely different country! An’ until a few days ago, he’d probably never even heard of Hallerton. So I ask you again, why did he do it in the way that he did?’

  Thirty-Eight

  The roads leading towards Hallerton were jammed with traffic from just after dawn, and even the large number of extra police drafted in from Lancaster were finding it difficult to cope with the situation.

  He supposed he should have expected it, the inspector from the traffic division thought grumpily, as he surveyed the growing chaos. Rarity always made the Witch Burning a big event, and that year there was the added spice that one of the folk most intimately involved in the whole process – the Witch Maker himself – had been brutally murdered only a few days earlier.

  The inspector had positioned himself at what he considered the nerve centre of his whole operation – the boundary to the village itself. No cars were to be allowed beyond that point, he had decided. Anyone wishing to enter the village would have to park in one of the fields which had been specially opened up for the occasion and complete their journey on foot.

  There were complaints, of course, but the inspector had anticipated that. In his opinion, the general public had gone soft since the end of the war, and a lot of folk seemed to find it too much of an effort to wipe their own backsides, never mind walk the few hundred yards into the village.

  But whatever the idle sods said – however much they protested and cajoled and wheedled – his lads stood firm. No one was to drive into the village, and that was that.

  This was good policing, the inspector thought, watching his officers at work – the kind of policing that being in the Force was really all about. Oh yes, catching murderers was all very well in its place, he supposed. But homicides were few and far between in Lancashire – whereas traffic jams were a daily reality. The two flash, headline-grabbin’ buggers who were in the village at the m
oment might do well to bear that in mind.

  The ‘two flash, headline-grabbin’ buggers in the village’ stood side by side outside the Black Bull and watched the unfolding events with a depression that neither of them seemed able to shake off.

  The Green had been divided, for the purposes of the festival, into four distinct, roped-off areas. The one which dominated it – and would dominate the attention of everyone who had come to see the Burning – was the space around the stone Witching Post. The second, a narrow strip, ran from the centre of the Green to the edge, and was obviously intended to serve as a passageway for the actors in the drama.

  The other two sections were for the spectators. The larger of them stood directly behind the smaller. It had been filling up for nearly an hour, and now it had almost reached bursting point. The smaller enclosure was closer to the Witching Post – so close, in fact, that anyone standing against the ropes could almost have reached across and touched the Post itself. This one was still completely empty, but was watched over by two stern-faced village stewards, whose job it was to keep the general public out of it.

  ‘Suppose we’d better get a bit nearer to the scene of the ancient crime, Monika,’ Woodend said, without much enthusiasm. He looked down at his sergeant’s hand, and saw she was holding a cigarette in it. ‘Better stub out your fag before we go. We don’t want you startin’ a fire, now do we?’

  As jokes went, it really wasn’t much of one, but Paniatowski still managed to respond to it with a weak grin as she ground the half-smoked cigarette under the toe of her shoe.

  ‘Now where should we stand?’ Woodend pondered. ‘Just inside the Witchin’ Post enclosure might be nice.’

  They walked towards the roped-off corridor, and immediately found their way blocked by a second pair of stewards who looked as if they meant business.

  ‘You can’t go down there,’ one of them said aggressively.

  ‘Course I can, lad,’ Woodend said easily. ‘I’m the Filth. I can go anywhere I want to.’

  The man tensed. ‘This is a private affair.’