‘What kind of questions?’ the ginger man asked. ‘What’s the capital of Russia? I can tell you that. It’s Moscow! What’s the longest river in the world? Easy! It’s the Nile. Who really runs Hawtrey-Pine Holdings? Another absolute doddle! The Vatican!’
‘The Vatican?’ Beresford repeated.
‘Ignore him,’ the bald man said wearily. ‘That’s the only thing to do when he starts ridin’ that particular hobby horse.’
‘Hobby horse, is it?’ the ginger man asked, aggrieved. ‘Well, just look at the facts, will you? Mr Hawtrey was a Roman Catholic, Mr Pine was a Roman Catholic. Mr Tully was a Roman Catholic.’
‘Leave off,’ the bald man said. ‘This is supposed to be our break. We’re supposed to be havin’ a good time.’
‘An’ I’m just supposed to stand here an’ listen to you hintin’ that I’m some kind of nutter, am I?’ the ginger man asked. ‘Well, you don’t need to take my word for anythin’, because the facts speak for themselves. You can go right through the payroll an’ find the same thing – anybody with a cushy job belongs to the Church of Rome. It’s a wonder to me that the Pope’s not got a job here.’
‘Maybe he has,’ said the Elvis impersonator, in what was probably an attempt to defuse the situation by making a joke of it. ‘Perhaps the only reason we don’t see him ourselves is because he works the night shift.’
‘Was Mr Pine a good boss?’ Beresford asked, doing his best to steer the conversation towards something more fruitful.
‘He was all right – as bosses go,’ the Elvis impersonator said.
‘An’ as bosses go, he went,’ the ginger man said, chuckling.
The bald man shook his head, rebukingly. ‘Let’s have a little decorum, shall we?’ he suggested. ‘The poor bugger’s not even cold yet.’
‘Which is more than you can say for the state Mr Hawtrey was in, when they took him off that mountainside,’ the ginger man said, still laughing.
‘Now that’s not right,’ the bald man said sternly. ‘Mr Hawtrey was a bloody good bloke, an’ even if you’ve no respect for Mr Pine, you could at least show a little towards him.’
‘Don’t get all high an’ mighty with me,’ the ginger man said. ‘It wasn’t me what killed Hawtrey – it was Pine.’
‘Pine killed Hawtrey?’ Beresford asked, shocked.
‘You’ll be givin’ the lad the wrong impression if you’re not careful,’ the bald man said hastily.
‘That I won’t,’ the ginger man countered, totally unrepentant. ‘Pine didn’t stick a knife in him, or blow his head off with a shotgun – or do anythin’ at all like that – but he still killed him, right enough.’
‘What he means to say, is that he thinks Mr Pine should never have persuaded Mr Hawtrey to go on that mountain climb with him an’ Mr Tully,’ the bald man explained to Beresford. He glared at the ginger man. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘More or less,’ the ginger man agreed, reluctantly. ‘Pine an’ Tully were in their thirties – fit young men who could handle it when things went wrong. But Mr Hawtrey was the wrong side of fifty – an’ he couldn’t.’
‘You can’t go puttin’ all the blame on Mr Pine’s shoulders,’ the Elvis impersonator said. ‘From what I heard, there was originally supposed to be just the two of them on the climb – Pine an’ Tully – an’ the only reason that Mr Hawtrey ended up accompanying them was because he invited himself along.’
‘Why would he have done that?’ the ginger man demanded.
‘You know why he did it. It was because he wanted to impress his wife!’
‘So now you’re sayin’ Thelma wanted him to climb that mountain?’
‘Course I’m not. Why should she want him to? It’s not a woman’s thing, is it? But he thought that by goin’ on the climb with them, he could prove to her that he could keep up with men who were much closer to her age than he was himself.’
‘I still think it was all Pine’s fault,’ the ginger man said.
‘You would,’ the Elvis impersonator responded. ‘But sooner or later you’ll have to face the fact that the way Mr Pine tried to keep Mr Hawtrey alive on the mountain makes him nothing less than a bloody hero.’
‘If he did try to keep him alive,’ the ginger man said. ‘We’ve only Pine’s own word for it.’
‘As a matter of fact, you couldn’t be wronger about that,’ the Elvis impersonator said. ‘Mr Pine said very little about what went on up that mountain. Nearly everythin’ we do know about it came from Mr Tully.’
‘Well, he would stick up for Pine, wouldn’t he? He’s another bloody Catholic.’
‘An’ I suppose the committee of inquiry – which decided that Pine did more than could have been expected of any man – was made up of Catholics as well, was it?’ the mock Elvis asked.
‘Wouldn’t surprise me at all,’ the ginger man said. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in anythin’ Tully said, if I was you. He was a bloody wreck when they brought him down.’
‘So would you have been, if you’d damn near died of exposure,’ the bald man said. ‘But you are right about one thing – he was never the same man again.’
‘Didn’t even seem to know where he was, half the time,’ the Elvis impersonator agreed. ‘Makin’ a clean break was the best thing he could have done, if you want my opinion.’
‘Making a clean break?’ Beresford repeated.
‘A few months after it all happened, he resigned from the company,’ the bald man explained. ‘He said he wanted to leave the past behind him and make a new start.’
‘So he left Whitebridge, did he?’
‘Left Whitebridge?’ the ginger man repeated. ‘He did a bit more than that. He left the country! In fact, he left the bloody continent! He’s livin’ somewhere in Australia now.’
A large-scale map of Whitebridge had been pinned to the frame of the blackboard in the basement, and Rutter studied it for a moment before turning to address his team of fresh-faced detective constables.
‘Some of you – especially the ones who’ve never been involved in a murder inquiry before – may be starting to think that we’re getting nowhere,’ he said. ‘But if that is what you’re thinking, you’re wrong. Police work is largely a matter of elimination. The more places we can rule out, the fewer there are left where the murder could have taken place.’
He paused, to let his words sink in.
What the hell was the matter with Monika, he found himself wondering in the space the silence had granted him.
She hadn’t looked exactly great when he arrived at the Drum and Monkey – and given what they’d been through together, he hadn’t expected her to – but after that phone call, she looked like death.
A constable at the far end of the horseshoe coughed, and Rutter remembered where he was, and what he was supposed to be doing.
‘I’ve marked three spots on the map,’ he said, tracing them out with his finger. ‘Here in the middle of town is Point A, St Mary’s Church. A bit further out is Point B, Greenfield. And right up there, at the edge of the map, is Point C, the lay-by. But we still have to find Point D – the place where Pine was killed. What I want to know from you is where you think we should be looking for that point – and where you think we shouldn’t.’
‘It’s unlikely he was killed anywhere outside the city boundaries,’ one of DCs suggested.
‘Is it? Why?’
‘He left the church at around nine o’clock, and his body was discovered a little after ten. He wouldn’t have time to drive far, especially in a thick fog like there was last night.’
‘Good point,’ Rutter agreed. ‘Where else?’
‘He couldn’t have been attacked anywhere very public,’ another DC chipped in.
‘Why not?’
‘If he had have been, somebody would have come across the bloodstains by now.’
Rutter nodded. ‘Sound thinking. So what have we just ruled out?’
‘The streets. The bus station. The railway station. Pub car par
ks. Anywhere a lot of people go.’
‘So what does that leave us with?’ Rutter said.
‘The murderer could have killed him somewhere indoors,’ a third detective constable speculated. ‘Maybe he got Pine to visit his house on some pretext or other, and did it there.’
‘We’ll ignore that possibility for the moment,’ Rutter said.
‘But, sir—’ the DC protested.
‘And the reason we’ll ignore it is not because it’s a bad idea. It isn’t. But if that is what actually happened, then the only way we’re going to find the place is if somebody rings us up and tells us where to look. So what we have to do is concentrate on other places where it might have happened. That means gardens, public parks, abandoned buildings and pieces of waste ground, all within the city boundaries. Agreed?’
The DCs nodded.
‘When you joined the CID you probably thought your days of pounding the pavements were over,’ Rutter said. He smiled. ‘Well, lads, I hate to break this to you, but you couldn’t have been more wrong. By the time this investigation’s over, your feet will have swelled to twice their normal size, and you’ll think back to your days on the beat as a kind of golden age.’ He paused for a moment. ‘But when we catch our killer – and we will catch him – the buzz you’ll get out of it will be like nothing you’ve ever known before.’
Beresford found Woodend sitting at the team’s table in the Drum and Monkey. The chief inspector still had a half-full beer glass in front of him, but seemed to have no interest in draining it.
‘Where are the others, sir?’ Beresford asked.
‘The others?’ Woodend repeated, as if his mind had been somewhere else entirely. ‘What others?’
‘Inspector Rutter and Sergeant Paniatowski, sir.’
‘The Inspector’s gone back to work with the team “at the heart of the investigation”.’
‘Sorry?’
‘He’s in the HQ basement.’
‘And the sergeant?’
‘I … er … sent Monika home. She was lookin’ tired, so I told her to go an’ grab a couple of hours kip.’
Tired? Beresford thought.
The dynamic Sergeant Paniatowski? Tired?
At this early stage of the inquiry?
‘So did you spend a profitable mornin’ at Hawtrey and Pine’s?’ Woodend asked.
‘I’m not sure I’d exactly say that it was profitable, sir,’ Beresford admitted. ‘But I did everything that you told me to do.’
‘Includin’ gettin’ Bradley Pine’s office sealed up until I have the time to take a look at it?’
‘Yes. And I also went to listen to what the men working at Hawtrey-Pine Holdings had to say.’
‘An’ what did the men have to say?’
Beresford outlined what Harry Ramsbotham had told him about the break-up of Hawtrey’s marriage, and Pine’s injection of cash into the company. Then he recounted his conversation with the Three Stooges.
‘So at least one of those fellers blames Bradley Pine for Alec Hawtrey’s death, does he?’ Woodend asked, when the constable had finished.
‘Yes, sir, but I wouldn’t pay too much attention to his views, because he’s also halfway to thinking that there’s a Roman Catholic conspiracy to take over the world,’ Beresford pointed out.
‘Still, if he thinks that what happened on the mountainside was Pine’s fault, there’s others who might think it as well,’ Woodend mused.
‘Others?’
‘We know that whoever killed Pine had a burnin’ hatred for him.’
‘Yes?’
‘An’ if I was a widow who blamed him for my husband’s death, I think that’s just the kind of hatred that I might have.’
‘You think that Mrs Thelma Hawtrey might have killed him?’ Beresford asked.
‘I think anybody an’ everybody could have killed him,’ Woodend replied. ‘An’ it would certainly be jumpin’ the gun to assume that Mrs Hawtrey was our prime suspect. On the other hand, it’s only human nature to blame other people for your own deep loss – an’ who would Mrs Hawtrey be more likely to blame than Bradley Pine?’
‘But when you think about the way that Pine was killed—’ Beresford protested.
‘It was a powerful blow that did for him, but the Doc said a woman could have found the strength to inflict it, if she’d been angry enough.’
‘But the mutilation! Surely a woman wouldn’t have had the stomach to do that?’
‘Ever heard the sayin’ “The female of the species is more deadly than the male”?’ Woodend asked. ‘Anyway, she didn’t have to do it herself, did she? Maybe she’s got a brother who did it for her. Or a cousin. Maybe she even hired an outside “hit-man”. Though I must admit that if I’ve no idea about how to find a contract killer in Central Lancashire, I don’t imagine that she does, either.’
‘Are we going to question her, sir?’ Beresford asked.
Woodend laughed. ‘Now who’s the one who’s eager to pin it on the poor woman?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t mean … I never intended to suggest …’ Beresford mumbled.
‘We’ll get round to talkin’ to Mrs Hawtrey eventually,’ Woodend said. ‘But first we’ll go an’ look at where our Mr Pine worked an’ played.’
Thirteen
Henry Marlowe stood at the top of the steps outside the main entrance to Police Headquarters. He was wearing his full dress uniform, which, it always seemed to him, succeeded in making him seem both noble and grave.
He looked down at the pack of journalists who had gathered at the foot of the steps. There were around a dozen of them with notebooks in their hands, and though a couple of these worked for local papers, most were from the nationals.
Which was excellent!
And what was even more gratifying was that there were a couple of camera crews in evidence.
Marlowe recollected how furious he’d been with Bradley Pine when Pine had snatched the nomination from right under his nose – and had to force himself not to smile at the memory.
Rather than the defeat he’d taken it to be then, it had all been for the best, he told himself. He could quite see that now.
Because he’d never have got press coverage like this if he’d won the nomination the first time around, whereas Bradley Pine’s murder had focussed press attention on the campaign – and given it just about as good a launch pad as any prospective MP could ever hope for.
Marlowe held up his hands – palms outwards – to call for silence from the hacks.
‘I find myself in a very difficult position,’ he said. ‘Whilst, on the one hand, I am both delighted and honoured to announce that I am standing as candidate for this constituency, I am, on the other, mortified that such an announcement should ever have been made necessary. The tragic and brutal murder of Bradley Pine has robbed this community of a talented, caring man who would have striven ceaselessly to improve the conditions of those who had voted for him, and the least I can do is to promise that I, too—’
‘Have you resigned from your post?’ asked a female voice from the middle of the press pack.
‘—if elected, will put the needs of my constituents above all other considerations.’
‘Have you resigned?’ the woman repeated.
And now several of the other journalists were starting to ask the same question.
‘Not, I have not resigned,’ Marlowe said, giving into the inevitable. ‘I have taken leave of absence, though, if I am elected to parliament, I will, of course, immediately—’
‘Should you be wearing that uniform if you’re on leave of absence?’ the woman interrupted.
‘Strictly speaking, I should perhaps have taken it off before I addressed you,’ Marlowe conceded, ‘but it seemed to me that you would wish to be briefed as soon as possible, and—’
‘Given the seriousness of the crime, wouldn’t you have served the community better by staying on in your post and leading the investigation yourself?’ the woman asked.
The came
ras, which had been directed at Marlowe up until this point, had now swung round and were pointed at the reporter.
Who was the bloody woman? Marlowe wondered.
She looked like one he’d had some dealings with before, a real chancer called Elizabeth Driver – but Driver had jet black hair, and this woman was a dazzling blonde.
‘The senior officer I have left in charge of the case is perfectly capable of conducting an investigation without any guidance from me,’ Marlowe said – though even as he was speaking the words he realized they didn’t quite seem to be conveying the message he’d intended them to.
‘So are you saying a chief constable isn’t really necessary at all?’ the woman asked, with a kind of naïve innocence.
It was Elizabeth Driver, Marlowe realized. Dark or blonde, the poisonous little bitch was back!
‘I’m not sure I understand the question, Miss Driver,’ he said, stalling for time.
The cameras swung back to Elizabeth Driver, as if they had decided to turn what should have been a coronation into nothing more than a vulgar tennis match.
‘If a very important investigation like this one doesn’t need a chief constable to guide it, then surely that’s even truer of the less significant ones?’ Elizabeth Driver amplified. ‘In other words, Mr Marlowe, what’s the point of having a chief constable at all?’
The cameras swung back to a visibly sweating Marlowe.
‘My officers can conduct the investigation without my assistance because they are effective,’ he said. ‘And the reason they’re effective is because that’s what I trained them to be.’
‘So if they don’t catch the murderer in this case, it will actually be your fault?’
There was more to this politics business than at first met the eye, Marlowe thought. When you were a chief constable, everybody listened to what you had to say in respectful silence. When you became a politician, it seemed you were fair game for anyone who fancied taking a shot at you.
‘This is a pointless discussion, Miss Driver, since the murderer will be caught,’ he said.
Sins of the Fathers Page 9
