Marlowe looked up from his paperwork immediately – another first! – and said, ‘I’d like a progress report on the investigation into Bradley Pine’s murder, Chief Inspector.’
Woodend scratched his ear. ‘There hasn’t been any progress to speak of,’ he admitted. ‘The patrol cars have been alerted to look out for Pine’s vehicle, but since the body wasn’t discovered until most people were gettin’ ready for bed, there wasn’t much more we could do.’
This was the point at which the bollocking should come, Woodend thought. This was the point at which Marlowe should tell him that any halfway decent chief inspector would already have had the murderer under lock and key.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, Marlowe said, ‘Being the first senior officer at the scene of the crime does not automatically give you the right to be put in charge of the investigation, you know.’
‘I appreciate that, sir,’ Woodend replied.
‘However, after having given the matter due consideration, I have decided to assign the case to you,’ Marlowe continued, ‘though naturally, taking into account both the prominence of the victim and the particularly gruesome manner of his death, there will be some conditions attached.’
‘What sort of conditions?’ Woodend wondered.
‘I want this murder cleared up as soon as possible.’
‘Which means?’
‘Within the week.’
‘I can’t promise that,’ Woodend told the chief constable. ‘Conductin’ a murder investigation’s isn’t like runnin’ a bus company, where you know the route you goin’ to have to cover, an’ you can draw up some kind of timetable for how long it should take you.’
‘Well, of course I realize that, but—’
‘In fact, it’s much more like gardenin’.’
‘Gardening!’ Marlowe exclaimed. ‘How could it possibly be like gardening?’
‘Because you can do all kinds of things to encourage the seeds to begin sproutin’, but until they actually do, you can’t even think of beginnin’ to think of harvestin’ them.’
The chief constable shook his head – slowly, and almost despairingly. ‘There are times when you don’t sound at all like an officer working in a modern police force,’ he said.
‘There are times when I don’t feel much like one, either,’ Woodend admitted. ‘Listen, sir, you’ve often enough made it quite plain that you don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to lead an enquiry—’
‘And you’ve often enough given me ample grounds for that belief—’
‘—so why don’t you simply assign the case to somebody you do have confidence in?’
Marlowe swallowed hard.
‘It’s true that there have been times when your approach has made me seriously doubt your competence,’ he said, ‘but there have also been times – especially in dealing with crimes of a bizarre nature – when you seem to have been able to solve cases which have quite baffled most of your colleagues.’
It was not a wise move to grin at his boss’s obvious discomfort, but Woodend did it anyway.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said. ‘That means a lot to me – especially comin’ from you.’
‘I don’t know why you should have been so successful in those cases,’ Marlowe continued, hurriedly. ‘Perhaps, after all, it was no more than a matter of luck.’
‘Aye, that might explain it,’ Woodend agreed.
‘Or perhaps, when the crime is bizarre, your brain is better attuned to the insane mind behind it than those of more professional officers.’
‘So it’s a case of set a nutter to catch a nutter, is it?’ Woodend asked innocently.
‘I wouldn’t have put it quite in those terms, Chief Inspector,’ Marlowe said frostily, ‘but you will concur with me that Bradley Pine’s murderer is a dangerous lunatic, won’t you?’
‘Murderers are pretty much dangerous by definition,’ Woodend agreed, ‘an’ slittin’ open another man’s stomach is not somethin’ I’d normally associate with a well-balanced feller.’
‘Precisely!’ Marlowe said. ‘So, in this particular investigation, there’ll be no real need to delve very deeply into the victim’s background, will there?’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Woodend said, ‘I think I must have missed a step in the logic of that argument.’
Marlowe sighed. ‘Bradley Pine was killed by a madman, so it is certainly worth looking closely at any madmen who he might have had dealings with in the past,’ he explained. ‘On the other hand, it would be a complete waste of time to dwell too much on the dealings he had with people who were perfectly sane.’
‘It doesn’t work like that,’ Woodend said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There was real rage behind the attack on Bradley Pine, an’ maybe that rage had taken the killer to the point of madness. But the cause of the rage may have been perfectly understandable an’ perfectly sane.’
‘You’re splitting hairs,’ Marlowe said dismissively.
‘People sometimes kill simply because they’ve been taken beyond the point of endurance,’ Woodend argued. ‘An’ what’s got them to that stage is often somethin’ that happened a long time ago.’
‘You will not waste time and resources looking too closely into Bradley Pine’s background,’ Marlowe said firmly. ‘That is a direct order, and though I will not personally be here to see that it is enforced—’
His mouth snapped shut like a steel trap, as if he’d suddenly realized he’d said too much.
‘What was that, sir?’ Woodend asked.
‘I will not be supervising you directly in this investigation, but whoever assumes that responsibility will be working to the remit that I have given him,’ Marlowe said, attempting to blur his previous statement.
‘You’ll be replacin’ Bradley Pine as Conservative candidate, won’t you?’ Woodend asked.
‘The idea has been mooted,’ Marlowe admitted, ‘but that is really no concern of yours, Chief Inspector. Your task is to track down the brutal and insane killer who may well yet turn out to have had no connection with Bradley Pine at all, but merely selected him because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Woodend said nothing. If Marlowe was prepared to accept that particular theory as a possibility, he thought, then persuading him that the moon was made of green cheese should be a doddle.
‘And speaking of Pine’s movements, I might be able to point you in the right direction, there,’ Marlowe continued.
‘Oh aye?’
‘Indeed. I attended a meeting that Bradley addressed yesterday evening, and at the end of it he came up to me for advice.’
‘What kind of advice?’
‘Nothing that could possibly have any relevance to the case. He wanted to know how I thought his speech had gone down, and wondered if I could make any suggestions to improve his performance in the future.’ Marlowe paused. ‘I think he was beginning to realize he was completely out of his depth, you know. I think he was starting to regret accepting the nomination at all, when there was another – clearly more able – candidate available.’
‘An’ that candidate would be?’ Woodend asked.
‘That candidate would be me!’ Marlowe said, not quite sure whether or not he should take offence.
‘Of course it would, sir,’ Woodend said.
‘But that’s neither here nor there,’ Marlowe ploughed on. ‘The important point is that he happened to say to me that when he left the village hall he intended to drive straight to St Mary’s Church. Bradley was a Roman Catholic, you know, though you shouldn’t hold that against him.’
‘I won’t,’ Woodend said, wisely concealing what would have been his second broad grin of the meeting. ‘Us Buddhists tend to be very tolerant of other religions, sir.’
‘Are you a Buddhist now?’ Marlowe asked.
‘I am,’ Woodend lied.
Marlowe shook his head. ‘Extraordinary – though not really all that surprising,’ he said.
The
chief constable glanced involuntarily at the telephone, then at his watch, then at the telephone again.
He was on tenterhooks, Woodend thought. He knew he was almost certain to be contacted by the Conservative Party Selection Committee, but he wouldn’t really be at ease until the call had actually been made.
‘Can I go, sir?’ the chief inspector asked.
‘Yes, yes, by all means,’ Marlowe said impatiently, as if the murder case were now no more than an annoying distraction.
Woodend turned and walked to the door. He was already turning the handle when he heard Marlowe say, ‘You will remember what I told you, won’t you, Chief Inspector?’
‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘You are not – under any circumstances – to carry out a detailed check on Bradley Pine’s background.’
‘Oh yes, I’ll remember that,’ Woodend assured him.
‘Good, because if you don’t …’
‘You’ve no worries on that score, sir. Us Buddhists have memories like elephants. It’s part of the trainin’.’
Woodend stepped out in the reception room and closed Marlowe’s door behind him.
I’ll remember it, all right, he thought, but that’s a long way from sayin’ I’ll pay any attention to it.
Four
Whenever the chief constable was holding one of his press briefings – and how he loved to hold his press briefings – he would describe the room in which Woodend was now standing as ‘The Incident Room’. Once the briefing was in full flow – and his normally high opinion of himself was inflated even further – he would go so far as to talk about it as ‘The Nerve Centre of Our Investigation, Located in the Very Heart of Police Headquarters’.
It wasn’t a description that DCI Woodend found it easy to subscribe to. The nerve centre of any investigation that he took part in was, as far as he was concerned, in his head.
Beside, whilst he was willing to admit that he had – in common with most other Northern men from a working class background – an almost complete ignorance of the subject of human biology (that sort of thing was best left to the women, who made a sort of hobby out of it) he was pretty sure that the heart did not reside in a person’s feet, whereas the ‘Incident Room’ was quite clearly in the basement.
In fact, the Incident Room was the basement. Or rather, the basement became the Incident Room whenever a major crime had been committed, but otherwise served as a repository for junk which didn’t seem to particularly belong anywhere else.
The junk which had built up since the last major case had been cleared away overnight. Now the basement contained a dozen desks, set out in a horseshoe pattern so that the detective constables manning them could see both each other and the large blackboard which had been erected at the broad end of the horseshoe.
Woodend studied the young DCs for a moment.
Every one of them was talking energetically on the phone, and taking copious notes as he went.
Yesterday, they had all been based in small stations dotted throughout Central Lancashire, the chief inspector thought, and the caseloads they had been handling involved such crimes as burglary, car theft, wilful damage and arson. Now they had been trawled into headquarters, and suddenly found themselves in the middle of a real murder inquiry. All of which meant that they were as excited as little children who’d discovered, on Christmas morning, that Santa had brought them exactly the toys that they’d wished for.
Woodend nodded to Detective Sergeant Dix – a grey-haired veteran who was supervising the initial phases of the operation – then positioned himself by the blackboard.
He cleared his throat. ‘For the benefit of those of you who don’t already know me, I’m Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend, an’ I’ve been put in charge of this investigation,’ he said.
The detective constables looked up from their tasks with interest. They all did know him – if only by reputation.
‘Finish the calls you’re makin’, then listen up to what I’ve got to tell you,’ Woodend told them.
The detective constables galloped through their calls and replaced the receivers.
‘Let’s get one thing out of the way immediately,’ Woodend said. ‘There is absolutely nothin’ glamorous about a murder investigation. It’s hard work, an’ it’s frustratin’ work, but if we all pull together, we just might get a result.’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘At the moment, you’ve got only one task in front of you, which is to find out where Bradley Pine went last night an’ what happened to his green Cortina once he’d been killed. Is that clear so far?’
The detective constables nodded enthusiastically.
Kids! the chief inspector thought, with a mixture of concern, affection – and envy.
‘It’s not actually necessary, in operational terms, for you to be told the precise details of the murder,’ he continued. ‘Strictly speakin’, all you need to know in order to do your jobs is that, as the result of actions by a person or persons unknown, Bradley Pine is dead. But I’ve always believed that if you’re part of a team you should be kept informed – as much as is practicable – about what’s goin’ on. That’s why I’ve asked Sergeant Dix to tell you exactly what happened to Pine last night, even though that same information is still bein’ withheld from the press.’
The constables looked pleased – as well they might.
‘But before you’re briefed, let me give you one word of warnin’,’ Woodend said. ‘When you go off duty tonight, there’ll be loads of people – wives, girlfriends an’ mates – who’ll be itchin’ to be filled in on the gory details. An’ there’ll be a great temptation to tell them, because everybody likes to be the centre of attention an’ interest – everybody likes to reveal secrets. But it’s a temptation you must resist. Is that clear?’
The detective constables nodded earnestly, as if to say that of course the secret was safe with them.
‘Good!’ Woodend said. ‘Because if word does get out – an’ I find it came from any of you – I’ll get the offender’s balls between a couple of Accrington bricks an’ crush them to a pulp.’
The young constables – for whom a surging in their loins was still a recent enough experience for it not to have lost its novelty value – grimaced.
Woodend paused again to allow time for their scrotal sacs to return to their normal positions.
‘Your team leader will be Detective Inspector Rutter,’ he continued. ‘At the moment, he’s travellin’ up from London, but he managed to ring me while he was changin’ trains at Crewe, an’ I’ve filled him in on most of the details.’ He turned to the grey-haired sergeant. ‘You’ve worked with Bob Rutter before, haven’t you, Sergeant Dix?’
Dix nodded. ‘I have, sir. He’s a good man.’
‘He’s a very good man – one of the best – an’ he has my full confidence,’ Woodend said.
But was that entirely true any more, he wondered. Could Bob Rutter handle so much stress on his first day back on the job?
Well, there was only one way to find out.
‘If you study the way DI Rutter works, you should learn a lot from him,’ he continued. ‘But one more word of warnin’ – mess with him, an’ what he’ll do to you in return will make bein’ fed through a meat grinder seem like a holiday by the seaside.’
He’d done all he could to smooth Rutter’s passage back into the job, he thought.
Now it was up to Bob.
The man stepping down from the train which had just pulled in at the main platform of Whitebridge Railway Station was in his early thirties, carrying a suitcase, and dressed in a smart blue suit.
He looked – to anyone giving him a casual glance – like a successful businessman. A closer examination, however, revealed quite a different story. The lines etched into his face told a tale of worry and strain – possibly even of despair – and any observer would have been forced to conclude that if he was a businessman, he had not been so successful recently.
There were other signs that all was not well. He se
emed ill at ease, and instead of heading briskly for the exit – as any businessman with a tight schedule would – he remained on the platform, looking back longingly at the train from which he had just disembarked.
The truth was that Bob Rutter was far from sure it had been a good idea to return to Whitebridge at all – and now was fighting the very strong urge to get back on the train and let it take him where it would.
The train guard was walking along the platform, checking that all the doors had been properly closed. Satisfied that they had been, he returned to the guards’ van, blew his whistle, and climbed aboard.
Rutter watched the train pull out of the station, then picked up his suitcase and walked towards the exit.
The station occupied an elevated position above the town, and once clear of the ticket gate, a panoramic view of Whitebridge opened up before Bob Rutter.
There were the cathedral and the bus station; there the old cotton mills, many of which had now been converted into other more-or-less viable businesses; there the canal, along which large barges had once carried the spun cotton cloth to the seaport of Liverpool.
He remembered the first time he had come to Whitebridge, three years earlier. Then, he had been following in the wake of his boss, who had transferred from Scotland Yard – who had been ejected from Scotland Yard – and was about to take up a new posting in the Central Lancs CID. Then, he’d had a wife who was just learning to cope with blindness and motherhood. Then, he had yet to meet Monika Paniatowski and embark on an affair with her which he bitterly regretted – but could not quite bring himself to wish undone.
Was it only three years? Bob Rutter asked himself.
It felt like a hundred.
He felt a hundred.
He walked over to the taxi rank.
‘Where to?’ the cabbie asked.
Where to, indeed, Rutter wondered.
Sins of the Fathers Page 3
