There was another roar from the cinder pitch as the young apprentice scored again.
‘He could have a great future, that lad,’ Harry Ramsbotham told Beresford. ‘But then you could say that of most of us – until we put a foot wrong.’
Elizabeth Driver strode into the most expensive hairdresser’s salon Whitebridge could offer with the air of someone who knows quite well that she’s slumming it, but really has no choice in the matter.
‘I want you to dye my hair,’ she told the young assistant, who was already unnerved by her imperious manner. ‘I want it blonde.’
‘Any particular shade?’
‘Well, of course I want a particular shade!’ Elizabeth Driver snapped. ‘Get me the colour card, and I’ll show you.’
The assistant presented her with the card, and Driver immediately pointed to a colour. ‘That’s the one.’
‘But that seems to be your natural colour anyway,’ the assistant said, parting her hair and examining her roots.
‘Oh really? And I never even realized it,’ Elizabeth Driver said with heavy sarcasm.
‘The thing is, Madam, if you let the dye grow out, you’ll get your own colour back naturally,’ the assistant explained.
‘That’s something else I hadn’t realized,’ Driver said. ‘Do you want my business or not?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But what?’
‘Before I can dye your hair, I’ll have to bleach it.’
‘Naturally.’
‘And that could damage your hair.’
‘I’ll risk it,’ Driver said.
‘But if you’ll just let nature take its course—’
‘That would be fine if I’d got the time – but I haven’t!’ Elizabeth Driver snapped.
‘Could I … could I ask what all the hurry is, Madam?’ the assistant asked bravely.
Elizabeth Driver sighed. ‘I’m doing it for the same reason that any woman changes her appearance in a hurry,’ she said. ‘And even a dim mind like yours should be able to guess what that is.’
‘You want to impress a man,’ the assistant said.
‘That’s right,’ Elizabeth Driver agreed. ‘I’m doing it because I want to impress a man.’
Eleven
Woodend and Paniatowski arrived at the door of the Drum and Monkey at exactly the same time. They hadn’t arranged for that to happen, but neither was it a surprise to either of them that it had.
This was how they meshed when they were working on a murder case together. Each of them anticipated the other’s actions. Each had at least a glimmering of what the other was thinking. It was as if they developed some special kind of telepathy which would continue to transmit for the whole course of the investigation, and whilst they were not quite sure how it worked – or even why it worked – they were always extremely grateful when it did.
‘The whole problem with this case, as far as I can see, is that I’ve not been able to get a proper handle on it yet,’ the chief inspector told his sergeant as they sat down at their table. ‘An’ to be fair to myself, I don’t think that’s entirely my fault.’
‘Then whose fault is it?’
‘Bradley Pine has to take some of the blame. He seems to have been a bit of a secretive bugger even before he turned politician.’
‘In what way?’
‘In all sorts of ways. For example, the secretary of the golf club, who’s a sharp feller called Carey, is convinced that Pine’s been carryin’ on an affair for years, an’ yet nobody can put a name to the woman he’s involved with. An’ as you know yourself, it’s almost impossible to …’
He stopped speaking, horrified that he’d allowed himself to wander blindly into this particular emotional mine field.
‘As I know myself, it’s almost impossible to keep an affair hidden, however hard you try?’ Paniatowski supplied.
‘Yes,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Sorry.’
‘There’s no need to apologize,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘We can’t keep on pretending that the past never happened, especially now Bob’s back at work as a walking, talking reminder that it did.’
Woodend nodded. ‘Shall we get back on to the subject of Bradley Pine?’
‘I think it would be a good idea if we did.’
‘It’s the very fact that he was so secretive himself that’s makin’ his murderer into such a shadowy figure. We know so little about Pine as a person that we can’t even begin to guess who could have hated him enough to not only kill him, but also to mutilate him.’
‘Or why the killer, once he’d done the deed, would have wanted to move his body,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Well, exactly!’ Woodend agreed. ‘He was runnin’ a terrific risk takin’ the corpse to the lay-by – but why take him to a lay-by at all? Why do killers move the bodies of their victims?’
‘Sometimes they do it to hide them.’
‘But in this case, the killer did just the opposite. He dumped the corpse in a spot where it was bound to be discovered – an’ sooner rather than later.’
‘Sometimes killers leave their victims in a specific place as a way of sending a message – a warning – to other people.’
‘Like leavin’ thieves hangin’ on the gibbet for days on end? Or killin’ a member of a rival gang, an’ then dumpin’ his body in front of that gang’s headquarters?’
‘Yes, that kind of thing.’
‘But if the killer was sendin’ a message here, who the bloody hell was he sendin’ it to? Lorry drivers? Speedin’ motorists? There has to be another reason why that lay-by has a special significance. But what sort of special significance could a bloody lay-by possibly have?’
The bar door opened, and Bob Rutter walked in. Though they were expecting him, it still somehow took them by surprise that he had actually arrived, and for a moment both Woodend and Paniatowski froze.
Then Woodend pulled himself together, stood up, and held out his hand to Rutter.
‘It’s good to have you back with us, Bob,’ he said.
‘It’s good to be back, sir,’ Bob Rutter told him, taking the proffered hand and shaking it.
Oh my God, he looks so thin, Monika Paniatowski thought. He looks so haunted.
But what had she been expecting, she asked herself. Had she thought he would waltz in as if he hadn’t got a care in the world – as if all the terrible things which had happened to him were now no more than a distant memory?
She noticed that Rutter was looking down at her. ‘I’m glad you’re back, too, Bob,’ she said.
But was she?
Was she really?
Wouldn’t Bob’s return do no more than open old wounds? Might she not find – despite knowing how pointless it was – that she was still very much in love with him?
Rutter sat down, and the landlord brought an unordered – but much appreciated – pint across to the table.
With one hand Rutter grasped the drink as if it were a lifebelt, while with the other he searched in his jacket pocket for change.
The landlord shook his head. ‘I won’t take your money, Mr Rutter,’ he said. ‘This one’s on the house.’
‘So how did your first mornin’ back go, Bob?’ Woodend asked, when the landlord had returned to the bar. ‘Do you think you’re gettin’ anywhere?’
He had been aiming to sound as normal as possible – without any evidence of the awkwardness and lack of ease he was actually feeling – and listening to his own voice he decided he’d almost achieved that.
Rutter shrugged. ‘It’s been pretty much like the start of most of our investigations, sir,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got anything like enough information yet to know where to find the leads we need, so we just have to look everywhere we can possibly think of.’
‘Is Pine’s car likely to tell us anything?’ Woodend wondered, noting that his voice was still sounding somewhat strained.
‘I doubt it,’ Rutter replied. ‘The thugs who stripped it down in the alley are likely to have destroyed any forensic ev
idence there might have been.’
The phone at the bar rang, and the three people at the table jumped as if they’d heard a shot.
The landlord picked up the phone and listened for a second, then called out, ‘It’s for you, Sergeant Paniatowski.’
‘Who is it?’
‘She wants to know who’s calling,’ the landlord said into the telephone receiver.
Rutter picked up his pint and drained half of it in a single gulp.
None of them were finding this easy, Woodend thought.
‘The feller on the phone says he’s a colleague of yours, Sergeant,’ the landlord shouted, across the bar. ‘He says it’s been quite a while since you’ve spoken to one another.’
Monika Paniatowski rose to her feet slowly, as if her legs had suddenly turned to lead.
‘Could you transfer the call through to the phone in the corridor for me?’ she asked.
‘I suppose so,’ the landlord replied. ‘But wouldn’t you be much more comfortable taking it in here?’
‘The corridor!’ Paniatowski said firmly.
The landlord shrugged. ‘If that’s what you want, Sergeant, it’s no problem at all.’
Jesus, what was going on now, Woodend wondered, as he watched his sergeant walk heavily over to the door, like a condemned woman on the way to her execution.
He became aware that Rutter had been talking to him, but had no idea what he’d been saying.
‘I’m sorry, lad, but could you just run that by me again?’ he asked the inspector.
‘As I said, I don’t think the car itself will turn out to be of much use to the investigation,’ Rutter told him, ‘but I think that, in leaving it where he did, the killer may have given more away than he ever intended to.’
‘Go on,’ Woodend said, doing his best to take his mind off Paniatowski and re-focus it on the investigation.
‘He abandoned the Cortina there because Greenfields was close to home – not too close, but close enough.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘It was close enough for him to make the journey home on foot without running too much of a risk of being spotted by anyone else. But it was not so close to his base that if we carry out blanket interviewing in the area around Greenfields, we’ll be bound to end up talking to him.’
Woodend scratched his head, then took a sip of his pint. ‘You just might be on to something there,’ he admitted.
The phone call – coming in those awkward moments after Bob Rutter’s arrival – should have felt like a godsend, Paniatowski thought, as she closed the corridor door firmly behind her. It should have seemed like the emotional equivalent of being untied from the railway tracks just before the express train arrived.
But it hadn’t.
Instead, it had filled her with dread.
And though she didn’t quite know why a call from Chief Inspector Baxter – for who else could it be? – should have done that, she was convinced that she would soon find out.
She lifted the phone off its cradle, and heard a click as the landlord hung up the one in the bar.
‘Monika Paniatowski,’ she said.
‘It’s me,’ Baxter replied.
‘I wasn’t expecting you to call,’ Paniatowski told him, thinking – even as she spoke the words – that it seemed an inadequate response to a man who was, after all, her lover.
‘Can we meet?’ Baxter asked.
‘When?’
‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather like it to be some time within the next day or so.’
She needed time to get over seeing Bob Rutter again, Paniatowski thought – and a couple of days just wasn’t enough.
‘Actually I do mind,’ she said. ‘As things are here at the moment, it might be rather difficult to arrange.’
‘Oh?’
‘You see, we’re in the first twenty-four hours of a new murder inquiry – and you know from your own experience what that’s like.’
‘So are you saying that you can’t spare me even half an hour of your valuable time?’
Damn him! Why was he being so persistent?
‘Half an hour?’ Monika asked, stalling. ‘Yes, I suppose I could spare that. But it wouldn’t be half an hour, would it?’
‘Wouldn’t it?’
‘Of course it wouldn’t. You’re not living just around the corner from me, you know. It’s a couple of hours drive up to Dunethorpe – and a couple of hours drive back.’
‘If that’s the only problem you can see, I could come across to Whitebridge,’ Baxter suggested.
Paniatowski glanced into the mirror over the phone. The last time she’d looked at herself – which couldn’t have been more than an hour earlier – she’d thought she was presentable enough, but now she was a complete wreck.
‘You know what I’m like when I’m all wrapped in a case,’ she said. ‘I’m just not fit to know. So I really would rather leave meeting you until we’ve got a result on this one.’
‘Maybe you would,’ Baxter agreed. ‘But I wouldn’t.’
‘Well, we can’t always have what we want in this life,’ Paniatowski said, trying her best to sound light-hearted.
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ Baxter agreed grimly. ‘We can’t always have it, although sometimes – for a little while at least – we can talk ourselves into believing that we’ve got it.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ Paniatowski admitted.
‘I never had you. That was the whole problem,’ Baxter countered. ‘Listen, Monika, I didn’t want to do this over the phone, but—’
‘Do what over the phone?’
‘I’ve met a woman.’
‘Really? I’ve met dozens of women since the last time we spoke. Dozens of men, too.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Yes,’ Monika admitted. ‘I rather think I do. I expect she’s very pretty, is she?’
‘She’s pleasant enough, but she’s nothing compared to you in the looks department. Hasn’t got any of your brains, either. But at least I know where I am with her.’
‘I see,’ Paniatowski said flatly.
‘You’ve no reason to sound like you think you’ve been badly done by,’ Baxter said, with just a hint of aggression starting to appear in his voice. ‘You’re the one who’s always insisted that there should be no firm commitment given – from either of us.’
‘That’s true,’ Paniatowski admitted. She paused for a second. ‘So is this goodbye then?’
‘I wouldn’t put it in quite those terms,’ Baxter said. ‘We still like each other, don’t we?’
‘Yes, I suppose we do.’
‘So there’s no reason why we still can’t meet up now and again for a drink, is there?’
‘No reason at all,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘But we won’t, will we?’
For several seconds, Baxter was silent, then he said, ‘No, I don’t really think we will.’
‘So we might as well just say our goodbyes to each other now, and have done with it.’
‘Goodbye, Monika,’ Baxter said – and she thought she could hear a slight catch in his throat.
‘Goodbye,’ Monika replied. ‘And thanks for trying so hard.’
‘To do what?’
‘To make things between us work.’
She was crying as she hung up the phone, but she was not entirely sure why. She had never loved Baxter, and though she had enjoyed the sex life they had shared, she’d known the earth to move much more with other men.
So why the tears, she wondered.
She supposed it could be for no other reason than that she was suddenly feeling very, very alone.
‘So you think the killer is almost certainly a Whitebridge man?’ Woodend asked Rutter.
‘Yes. Or if he’s not, he’s at least living in Whitebridge at the moment.’
Woodend took a drag on his cigarette, and then nodded.
‘I think I’d agree with you on that,’ he said. ‘If I wanted to kill somebody who lived in another town, I certai
nly wouldn’t wait till there was a thick fog before I drove over there to do it.’
‘The question is, how far would he be prepared to walk before he reached his safe haven,’ Rutter said. ‘Half a mile? A mile? I suppose it would depend on how strong his nerve was and what calculations he’d made about the risks … about the risks …’
Rutter stopped speaking, and gazed with horror in the direction of the corridor.
Woodend turned his own head, and immediately understood his inspector’s reaction.
Monika Paniatowski was standing framed in the doorway between the bar and the corridor. It was obvious from the expression she’d forced on to her face that she was trying to appear to be her normal self – but she looked totally destroyed.
Twelve
The three men leaning against the factory wall had all been enthusiastic players in the cinder pitch football match earlier in the lunch break, but now they seemed content to merely look on while others grabbed the glory.
Well, that wasn’t really very surprising, was it, Beresford asked himself. When you were getting on in years – and these men, he guessed, must be somewhere in their late thirties – you simply didn’t have the stamina any more.
One of the men had a shock of red curly hair. The second was completely bald, and his pink head gleamed in the early afternoon sun. The third had a duck-tail quiff which was held in place by an impressive amount of grease, and made him look a little like Elvis Presley might have done if Elvis had been wearing a boiler suit, smoking a Woodbine, and working in a mattress factory.
Separately, the trio would probably have passed largely unnoticed and unremarked, but standing together as they were, they looked like some kind of a comedy act – the Three Stooges of Whitebridge, or Hawtrey-Pine Holdings’s answer to the Marx Brothers.
Beresford ambled over to them in the casual way he thought a detective, totally at ease with the situation, probably would.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he asked.
‘Why, are we comin’ apart?’ said the ginger-haired man, then laughed loudly, as if he’d cracked the most original joke in the world.
Charlie Woodend would have come back with a clever line instantly, Beresford told himself, but all he could think to say was, ‘No, I just thought you might be willing to answer a few questions for me.’
Sins of the Fathers Page 8
