‘I’ll just slip outside, sir, where there’s probably better reception,’ the sergeant said.
‘Good idea,’ Woodend agreed.
Left alone, he looked around the thoroughly depressing room again. He supposed he’d better continue the search, he told himself, though it was almost certain to lead nowhere.
He opened the drawer next to the sink. It contained several mis-matched knives and forks, which had clearly not been used for some considerable time, and a bottle opener which undoubtedly had. But then he saw what was at the back of the drawer, and felt his pulse start to quicken.
Paniatowski re-entered the room.
‘Message from the station, sir,’ she said. ‘Mark Hough called. He said he’d heard the name of the second victim on the local radio news …’
‘Bloody Marlowe!’ Woodend said in disgust. ‘I asked him to keep quiet, but he just couldn’t wait to get his name back in the papers, could he?’ He paused. ‘Sorry, what was that you were sayin’, Monika?’
‘Mr Hough said that the second he’d heard Reg Lewis’ name, he realized he had something very important to tell you. He also said that he’s willing to come down to headquarters to talk to you at any time it’s convenient for you.’
‘When you’ve got a killer on the loose an’ somebody thinks they have important information that might help catch him, you don’t make appointments at “convenient times”,’ Woodend said. ‘That’s altogether far too cosy.’
‘Meaning that we’ll go and see him – and we’ll do it right away?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Exactly,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Mind you,’ he cautioned, ‘I wouldn’t go gettin’ yourself too het up thinkin’ about what it might be he wants to tell us, because I’ve got a sneakin’ suspicion that I already know.’
‘Since when?’ Paniatowski asked sceptically.
‘Since I found this,’ Woodend told her, holding out a Royal Lancashire Fusiliers cap badge for her inspection.
Tom Bygraves had not chosen to take the dual carriageway to Accrington because he wished to go in that particular direction – he had simply selected it as the quickest way to leave Whitebridge behind him. But now, once the dual carriageway had come to an end, and he was back in the much slower two-way traffic, he was starting to realize that he couldn’t continue running blind forever, and that what he needed to come up with was a plan.
But what kind of plan could a man like him possibly produce, he found himself asking.
Apart from the time he was away in the army, he had lived in Whitebridge and district for his whole life, which meant, in effect, that the area beyond the Mid Lancs cotton towns was almost like a foreign country to him.
He had no friends outside Lancashire who could offer him the refuge that he needed, so if he wanted to have a roof over his head, he would have to pay for it. But he had no money, either, apart from the normal walking-around money which he always kept in his wallet.
He’d read in American true crime magazines about men who’d lived as fugitives for years, but he hadn’t a clue how to go about becoming one of them himself. He was an assistant manager in the soft furnishings department of a furniture store, a man who knew how to obey instructions from his superiors and do his job reasonably well. But that was about it. That was about all it had ever been, even when he was in the army. And the simple truth was that he had neither the courage nor the wit for a life constantly on the run.
He was already approaching Clitheroe, and soon he would see a sign which would tell him that he was entering Yorkshire.
But he didn’t want to go to Yorkshire!
He wanted to go home!
But if he did go home, what then?
He could carry on with his normal routine of work and leisure, as if nothing had happened. But something had happened, and how was it possible to act normally when you knew that sooner or later you would end up swinging from the end of a rope?
He could do as the letter had suggested – had ordered – and go to the police, but then the life that he had known would be just as much over as if he were already dead.
He saw a roadside pub looming up ahead. He knew – with absolute conviction – that it would be a big mistake to stop there, but with equal conviction he knew that that was exactly what he was going to do. He signalled, checked his rear-view mirror, then pulled onto the pub car park.
He did not open his wallet until he was walking across the tarmac to the pub’s main entrance, but when he did, he saw that all it contained was two pound notes and a ten shilling note.
Two pounds ten! He wouldn’t get far on that! A few pints with whisky chasers and almost half of it would be gone.
His brain told him to conserve what few resources he had, but his legs were already taking him into the pub.
He did not look back, but if he had, he would have seen the black van pulling into the parking space next to his car.
Thirteen
Hough Engineering, like all the other old mills which surrounded it, had a grim, forbidding red-brick exterior, and, but for the fact that thick black smoke no longer belched out of its tall chimney, it would have been possible to believe – from a distance – that there had been no change in its raison d’être since it had first opened its doors over a century earlier.
Closer to, there was clear evidence that it had, in fact, moved with the times. The main entrance had a frontage which was both modern and aggressive, and seemed to exemplify an embracing of ‘the white heat of technology’, which the Prime Minister was currently setting so much store by.
Once through the doors, Woodend and Paniatowski found themselves in a high-ceilinged foyer which seemed to be constructed entirely out of smoked glass and chrome – and made the chief inspector grimace.
There was a reception desk at the end of the foyer, but before they could reach it, their path was blocked by a young woman with honey-blonde hair, deep blue eyes and white regular teeth.
She was not beautiful in any classic sense of the word, Woodend thought, but she was rather pretty. He put her age at around twenty-four, and guessed that she was unmarried.
The young woman smiled and said, ‘Are you the detectives? Because, if you are, I’m Priscilla Charlton, Mr Hough’s secretary.’
Woodend smiled back. ‘An’ if we’re not the detectives, who are you then?’ he asked.
Good God, he was almost flirting, he told himself – and with a woman not much older than his own daughter.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said, before Priscilla Charlton had had time to answer. ‘Yes, we’re the detectives – DCI Woodend and Sergeant Paniatowski.’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Priscilla Charlton said, offering them both her hand. And as she led them across to the lift, she added, ‘Mr Hough’s cancelled all his other appointments. He’s just bursting to see you.’
‘Is he now?’ Woodend asked. ‘Bursting, you say?’
‘Bursting,’ Priscilla Charlton repeated. ‘He’d never admit it – even to me – but I think he’s really rather intrigued by the idea of helping the police in a murder inquiry.’
They took the lift up to the first floor. When the doors slid open, they found they were looking at a small outer office, at the end of which there was an imposing teak door.
‘The inner sanctum,’ Priscilla Charlton said, and giggled.
She knocked on the teak door, but did not wait for her boss to say anything before opening it, stepping inside, and gesturing to Woodend and Paniatowski that they should follow her.
Woodend took a quick but all-encompassing look around him. The office was furnished in minimalist good taste, the only furniture being a large mahogany desk in the centre of the room, and the two chairs in front of it.
The walls were painted in a soft pastel shade. A number of framed posters hung from them, all of which advertised exhibitions and cultural events, and were linked by the fact that the words ‘Sponsored by Hough Engineering’ appeared on all of them. The chief inspector noted that one of the even
ts Hough had sponsored was the Dunethorpe Festival, and hoped that Monika hadn’t noticed it too – because Dunethorpe would remind her of her post-Rutter affair with Chief Inspector Baxter of Dunethorpe CID, and though he himself didn’t know what had gone wrong between the two of them, he suspected it had been painful.
At the far end of the room, close to the window, were two thin metal pillars, about four and half feet high, which had been fixed to the floor. They were roughly three feet apart, and were joined by a steel rod. Woodend wasn’t quite sure what they for – but thought he could make a pretty good guess.
Hough himself was sitting in his wheelchair behind the desk. He seemed genuinely pleased to see the new arrivals.
‘Take a seat,’ he said expansively, then turned to his secretary and said, ‘Thank you, Miss Charlton, that will be all.’
Priscilla Charlton did not move. ‘Don’t forget that you have your water therapy session booked for three o’clock, Mr Hough,’ she said.
Hough looked bemused. ‘Water therapy? I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
Priscilla Charlton shook her head in a gesture of disbelief. ‘Of course you have.’
‘Ah, you mean I’m planning to have a swim at around that time,’ Hough said, as if enlightenment had finally dawned.
‘You can call it what you like, but I make out the cheques, and I know that what you’re paying for is water therapy,’ the girl said. ‘And you’ve missed the last two sessions, because – you say – you have too much work on. Well, I’m not going to allow you to get away with it today.’
Hough grinned. ‘You’re a hard task master,’ he said.
‘And you are a fool to yourself,’ Priscilla Carlton said severely. Then she smiled, to take the edge off her words, and continued, ‘Will there be anything else you’ll require, sir?’
‘A cup of coffee might be nice,’ Hough said, almost diffidently. ‘Or perhaps our guests would prefer tea?’
‘Coffee’s fine,’ Woodend told the girl.
‘For me, too,’ Paniatowski added.
Hough watched his secretary intently, until she had finally left the room, then turned to Woodend and said, ‘I think I may have found something to connect your two dead men for you.’
‘The Royal Lancashire Fusiliers?’ Woodend asked.
Hough looked slightly disappointed. ‘How long have you known?’
‘About half an hour.’
‘The three of us – Terry Pugh, Reg Lewis and I – were all called up at the same time, and we served in the same unit,’ Hough said. ‘We were in Aldershot at first, for our basic training. Then, when the powers-that-be had decided they’d probably turned us into real enough soldiers to face enemy bullets, they shipped us off to Cyprus.’
‘Cyprus!’ Woodend exclaimed.
And he was thinking: Maybe the feller who Terry Pugh left the pub with wasn’t a Turk or a Yugoslav after all. Maybe he was a Cypriot.
‘It’s a funny thing, you know,’ Hough continued, ‘I hadn’t thought about Reg Lewis for years, yet the moment I heard his name on the radio, I was transported back to that little island in the Mediterranean, where people always seemed to be trying to kill us.’
‘It was rough, was it?’ Woodend asked.
‘Oh, nothing like the show I imagine you were in,’ Hough said dismissively, ‘but I suppose it was rough enough. The Greek Cypriots wanted their independence from Britain, our government didn’t want to give it to them, and us fellers in the poor bloody infantry were caught right in the middle.’
‘Like fellers in the poor bloody infantry always are everywhere,’ Woodend said with feeling.
‘We never knew, when we got up in the morning, if we’d still be alive to see the sunset,’ Hough mused. ‘Of course, that’s true of everyone, isn’t it? But in addition to the hazards that normal people have to face, we had to deal with snipers who could be hiding virtually anywhere, and roadside bombs which could reduce our Land Rovers to no more than scrap metal in an instant.’
‘Is that how you lost the use of your legs?’ Woodend asked.
Hough laughed. ‘As the result of a roadside bomb?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, it wasn’t! I wish it had been, because at least then I’d have been crippled doing what I’d been trained to do, and might possibly have got a medal out of it. But they don’t hand out medals to men who get blind drunk and fall into the path of a military lorry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Woodend said. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ Hough assured him. ‘We all have to live with our mistakes, and however much we wish we could turn the clock back and do things differently, we eventually have to accept that we can’t. And it could have been worse, you know. A few more inches, and the lorry would have run straight over my bloody head!’
The door opened, and Priscilla Charlton entered, carrying a tray with three coffee cups.
‘I hope this is all right for you,’ she said, as she handed Woodend and Paniatowski their cups. ‘I have to make it rather strong, because that’s the way that Mr Hough likes it.’
‘We like it strong, too,’ Paniatowski assured her.
‘She makes the best coffee in Whitebridge,’ Hough said proudly. ‘Don’t you, Cilla?’
‘Priscilla!’ the girl said. ‘It’s Priscilla – and if I’ve told you that once, I must have told you a hundred times.’
Hough put his hand to his mouth in mock horror. ‘I keep forgetting,’ he said. ‘Please forgive me.’
The secretary seemed to be considering the request. ‘All right,’ she said finally. ‘But make sure it’s the last time.’
She flounced out of the room, and when she’d gone, Hough said, ‘I know I really shouldn’t tease her, but it’s such fun to see her pretending to be annoyed with me.’
Woodend felt slightly uncomfortable. He knew that Hough had asked to see him, rather than the other way round – and that the factory owner himself had felt no embarrassment himself over the exchange he’d just had with his secretary being witnessed by others – but even so, the chief inspector still could not help feeling as if he had barged in uninvited on an intimate moment.
He cleared his throat and said, ‘How well did you know Reg Lewis, Mr Hough?’
‘Much better than I’d have wished to,’ Hough replied frankly. ‘I never liked the man personally, but in Cyprus I learned to depend on him. We all learned to depend on each other, when we were out there. We had to. You must know how that happens yourself.’
‘Aye, I do,’ Woodend agreed. ‘There were fellers in my war who I entrusted my life to on a daily basis, though I doubt I’d have wanted anythin’ to do with them if I’d met them before the war, back in Civvy Street.’ He paused to light up a cigarette. ‘How did Pugh an’ Lewis get on?’
‘Terry had much the same relationship with Lewis as I had – and for much the same reasons.’
‘How many other lads were there from Whitebridge who served in Cyprus with you?’
‘I couldn’t say, exactly. If I had to make a guess, I’d say that it was round about a couple of dozen, though sitting here, I can only actually put a name to eleven of them.’
‘If you could give us those names …’
‘I’ve done better than that. I’ve given them to Priscilla. She’ll hand you the list on your way out.’
There was one question that Woodend had really wanted to ask since the moment he’d walked into the room. He was tempted to ask it now, but since Hough’s answer could well turn out to be of significance to the development of the case, he decided to postpone it until the very end of the interview, when the other man’s guard would be down.
So, instead of asking that question, he reached into his pocket, pull out the police artist’s sketch, and laid it on the desk.
‘Do you know this feller?’ he asked.
Hough studied the sketch carefully, for perhaps a minute.
‘Is he a Cyp?’
‘You tell me.’
>
‘He reminds me a little bit of a lot of men I knew in Cyprus,’ Hough said finally, ‘but,’ he added with regret, ‘there’s not a close enough resemblance to any one of them for me to be able to say, for example, “That’s Costas, who ran the little bar down by the harbour”.’
‘To go back to a couple of the points you raised earlier,’ Woodend said casually. ‘You say that there were around two dozen Whitebridge lads serving on Cyprus?’
‘More or less.’
‘And that Lewis and Pugh weren’t particular pals?’
‘No, they weren’t.’
‘So what I don’t see is why it should be them.’
‘Why what should be them?’
‘If the killings are connected to Cyprus, I don’t see why the killer should have chosen those particular two men – out of the twenty-four he had available – for execution.’
‘Maybe he didn’t,’ Hough said, with a laugh that could have been no more than bravado. ‘Maybe he intends to kill us all.’
Woodend shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. He’d have to be a very stupid man indeed to believe he could get away with that.’
‘Why?’
‘Because only a very stupid man would fail to understand that at some point we’d detect a pattern – and that once we’d detected it, we’d be bound to catch him in the act eventually.’
‘Perhaps he is stupid,’ Hough suggested.
‘Not goin’ by his form so far.’
‘His form?’
‘There were any number of bridges he could have hung Terry Pugh from, but he chose the one where he was least likely to be interrupted. An’ when it came to selectin’ a buildin’ site on which to execute Reg Lewis, he picked one that was guarded by one old man who didn’t even have a dog with him. So you see, he’s far from stupid. In fact, he’s bloody clever.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Hough agreed reluctantly. ‘In which case, I don’t envy you your task in tracking him down at all.’
‘So what we always come back to is this: that a careful, logical killer like this one must have seen some connection between his victims. An’ what is the connection?’
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