The Ring of Death

by Sally Spencer

  Well, he’d done all he could for the man, Cousins told himself, reaching for the newspaper which someone had left behind on the table next to his.

  And then he saw the headline which was screaming out at him from the front page, and any thoughts of Detective Sergeant Leonard Gutterridge immediately went out of his mind.

  TWENTY

  The first thing Monika Paniatowski noticed as she drove onto the Whitebridge Police Headquarters’ car park was that DS Paul Cousins was standing in front of her parking place.

  He wasn’t there as the bringer of glad tidings, she guessed. Glad tidings – even great tidings – could have waited until she reached her office. He was there because the tidings were bad, and he wanted to deliver them as soon as possible.

  Then she noticed the newspaper he was holding tightly in his right hand, and guessed that the tidings would be very bad indeed.

  ‘It’s the Globe, ma’am,’ Cousins said, thrusting the paper at her even as she was getting out of her MGA. ‘I think you need to read it.’

  The story filled the front page.

  Killer with a sense of justice?

  By Mike Traynor

  The Central Lancs Police have been searching for a link between the murders of Andrew Adair, who until recently was a member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, and Simon Stockwell, who ran his own painting and decorating business. Perhaps they would have been wise to begin by examining both men’s criminal records.

  Had they done so, they would have discovered that both Adair and Stockwell have been charged, in the past, with assaults on young girls well under the age of consent, and have served terms in prison as a result.

  But if the police were in ignorance of these facts, as they seem to have been, perhaps the killer wasn’t. Perhaps that was what motivated him to carry out the killings in the first place. Perhaps that was why he stripped their bodies naked once his grisly work had been completed.

  Neither this newspaper nor this reporter would endorse what the Americans call “vigilante killings”, yet it is hard not to feel, in some small way, that these men got what they deserved.

  ‘I’ll have his balls for this,’ Paniatowski said angrily. ‘Do you realize how much it could impede the investigation?’

  ‘I do, ma’am.’

  ‘And it’s a complete fabrication! He can’t back any of it up, because there’s not an ounce of truth in it.’

  ‘You’re right that there’s not an ounce of truth in it, but you’re wrong that he can’t back it up,’ Cousins said grimly.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Paniatowski demanded. ‘I’ve seen Stockwell’s criminal record, and there’s no mention of child abuse in it.’

  ‘There wasn’t yesterday, but today there is,’ Cousins said. ‘And I’d be willing to bet that there’s some mention of it in Adair’s army record, as well.’

  ‘Bloody Forsyth!’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, it just has to be his handiwork, doesn’t it?’

  ‘We can easily prove the documents are complete forgeries – because however skilfully they’ve been done, they’re simply not supported by the facts,’ Paniatowski said stubbornly.

  ‘We can prove they’re forgeries, but not easily,’ Cousins told her. ‘The officers who are down in the new record as having arrested Stockwell for child abuse were Inspector Fred Meade and DS Pat Donovan. And what do you know about those two, ma’am?’

  ‘Meade died about three years ago,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Heart attack, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, ma’am. And Donovan died in a car crash, two years ago. So they’re not going to dispute the facts, are they?’

  ‘No, but there’ll be others who can. It’s not just the arresting officers who would have been involved in a case like that. There’s a whole legal process to be gone through.’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Cousins agreed. ‘And they’ll have doctored that, too. I haven’t had time yet to check on who was the judge in this supposed prosecution, but when I do I’m sure I’ll find that he’s either dead himself or has retired and gone to live with one of his children – in somewhere like Australia.’

  ‘Wherever he’s living, we’ll send officers to interview him, and expose all this for the lie that it is,’ Paniatowski said, with mounting fury.

  ‘With respect, ma’am, I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the big picture yet,’ Cousins said.

  ‘Haven’t I? Then you’d better explain it to me.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what it is that Forsyth hopes to achieve by all this, but I do know that he doesn’t care what you can prove in a month’s time, because he’ll be long gone by then. You see, this isn’t a long-term strategy he’s employing – it’s just a short-term tactic.’

  ‘And one that’s going to backfire on him straight away,’ Paniatowski said, with grim satisfaction. ‘Because we don’t need judges or prison officers to prove this is a tissue of lies – all we need is Mrs Stockwell. She knows Simon never went to prison for child abuse – and even if she hates him, she’s not going to allow his reputation to be smeared in this particularly nasty kind of way.’

  ‘That occurred to me, too,’ Cousins said. ‘That’s why the first thing I did after I’d read the article was to drive to Mrs Stockwell’s house. And do know you what I discovered when I got there? That she’d gone!’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘The neighbours said she’d taken her kids away on a holiday.’

  ‘A holiday?’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘She wouldn’t think of going on a holiday with her husband still to be buried. Besides, she can’t afford to go on a holiday. She’s up to her neck in debt.’

  ‘I suspect that she isn’t in debt any longer,’ Cousins said. ‘I think you’ll find that her debts have all been paid off. And she’s definitely gone away – the neighbours saw her leave early this morning in a big black chauffeur-driven car.’

  Paniatowski flung open the door of Forsyth’s temporary office, and saw the man from London was already at his desk, and had an amused smile playing on his face.

  ‘I’ve been expecting you, Monika,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m surprised it’s taken you quite so long to get here.’

  ‘You planted this story in the newspaper, didn’t you?’ Paniatowski demanded, slamming the copy of the Daily Globe down on the desk.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Forsyth confirmed. ‘But it was your fault that it had to be planted.’

  ‘How could it be my fault?’

  ‘You were given the opportunity, at your press conference yesterday, to deny any possible IRA involvement in the killing of Andy Adair. And you didn’t take that opportunity, did you?’

  ‘You’re right, I didn’t. Because although it’s a long shot that the IRA did it, I still can’t rule it out entirely.’

  ‘Do you really think that if the IRA were involved, I wouldn’t know about it?’ Forsyth asked.

  ‘It’s possible,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You love to play up the image of the all-seeing, all-knowing super-spy. You probably even believe it yourself, by now. But has it never occurred to you that it might be no more than that – an image?’

  ‘I would know if they were involved,’ Forsyth said firmly. ‘And if they were responsible for Adair’s murder, do you seriously believe I would ever have allowed the case to be assigned to a country bumpkin chief inspector like yourself?’

  Paniatowski felt her anger flaring up again, then realized that was just what Forsyth wanted to happen, and forced a smile to her face.

  ‘You really know how to hurt a girl,’ she said. ‘But if you’re right, and the IRA aren’t involved in the case, what was the point of planting the false newspaper story?’

  ‘I did it because, for operational reasons, I don’t want there to be a hint – not even the merest wisp of a suggestion – that this murder had anything to do with Andrew Adair’s experiences in Ireland. And in order to ensure that is the case, I had to do something which would shift the focus of attention away from any such speculati
on.’

  A new possibility – so horrific she didn’t really want to contemplate it – came to Paniatowski’s mind.

  ‘Did you have Simon Stockwell killed?’ she asked.

  ‘Why should I have done that?’

  ‘Precisely because Stockwell didn’t have an Irish connection, so there could be no suggestion he’d been killed by the IRA. And if he hadn’t been killed by them, then Adair – who was murdered in exactly the same manner – couldn’t have been killed by them either.’

  Forsyth smiled again. ‘My congratulations,’ he said. ‘You’re finally starting to think like someone who could be of some use in the security services.’

  ‘Answer the question,’ Paniatowski demanded.

  ‘No, I didn’t have Simon Stockwell killed.’

  ‘But if you had, you’d have denied it just as convincingly as you’re denying it now?’

  ‘Quite so,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘By the way, I’ve recently received some information from Poland that might be of great interest to you, Monika.’

  ‘So now we’re playing Change the Subject, are we?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Well, you should have chosen a better subject to change to, because I’m not interested in Poland.’

  She was not lying. She had not thought seriously – or at any length – about Poland for years. And yet there was something in Forsyth’s tone which suggested that this particular piece of information would be of interest to her, and already her stomach was starting to knot up.

  ‘Very well, if you don’t want to talk about Poland, let’s talk about something else,’ Forsyth said mildly.

  Damn the man, Paniatowski thought – and wished she still believed in hell, so that she could picture him being burnt in it for all eternity.

  ‘Monika?’ Forsyth said.

  ‘You might as well tell me,’ Paniatowski said indifferently, knowing she was fooling neither herself nor Forsyth.

  ‘The Polish authorities have recently been doing some excavations on the site of one of the early battles of the Second World War,’ Forsyth said. ‘And one of the many things that they’ve uncovered is a mass grave of Polish soldiers – specifically, of Polish cavalrymen.’

  Paniatowski found her mind was suddenly travelling back in time. She was no longer a woman in her late thirties – a senior detective, involved in a battle of wits with a spook from London. Instead, she was a small girl, sitting on the firm, well-muscled knee of a man dressed in an immaculate cavalry officer’s uniform. She could feel his fingers running gently through her hair. She could smell his cigar and his highly polished leather boots.

  ‘No, please!’ she thought. ‘It couldn’t be anything to do with him. It just couldn’t be.’

  ‘Often, in such cases, the corpses would be stripped of anything of value before they were interred, but this particular burial seems to have been a very hurried affair, which means that it is much easier to identify the bodies than it would normally be,’ Forsyth continued. ‘One of the dead has been identified as a Colonel Andrej Paniatowski. That would be your father, would it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paniatowski gasped, feeling as if she were choking.

  ‘Initially, the Polish authorities were very keen to publicize their discovery. It would make the West Germans feel guilty, you see – and they just love making the West Germans feel guilty. Their Russian masters, however, were altogether less eager, since it would probably also revive, in the public mind at least, memories of the Katyń Forest Massacre, in which they themselves murdered a goodly number of Polish officers. So, for the moment, it is as if the discovery never occurred. But it did occur.’

  ‘Why . . . why are you telling me this?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Because I thought you’d like to be able to bury your father’s body in England,’ Forsyth said.

  ‘And you’re saying that you could get it for me?’

  ‘Yes, I am. It won’t be easy – but it can be done.’

  ‘And what do you want from me in exchange?’

  ‘I want you to start behaving yourself. And I mean really behaving yourself. No more attempts to find out what I’m doing here. No more amateur spying excursions for your subordinate, Secret Agent Crane.’

  ‘If you’re offering me this, I must really have you worried,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Don’t overrate your own importance, Monika,’ Forsyth told her. ‘When a mechanism is delicately balanced as this one is . . .’

  ‘As which one is?’

  Forsyth smiled. ‘There you go again – trying to be too clever by half. It’ll be your downfall some day, Monika. It may even be your downfall soon. Now what was I saying?’

  ‘You were talking some shite about delicate mechanisms,’ Paniatowski told him.

  ‘So I was. When a mechanism is as delicately balanced as this one is, even something as insignificant as a fly can tip it over. And all I am doing here – through this offer of mine – is attempting to ensure that one of the more persistent of the flies keeps away.’

  ‘You’d really have my father’s body brought to England?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I would. And I can see, from the expression on your face, just how much that would mean to you.’

  Paniatowski stood up. ‘My father was an honourable man,’ she said. ‘He lived by his honour, and he died for his honour.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s a goal we all seek to attain.’

  ‘And if I made a deal with you, I wouldn’t be fit to be the custodian of his remains.’

  ‘So you’re turning me down?’ Forsyth asked, disappointedly.

  ‘I’m telling you that you take your offer and stick it up your tight upper-class arse,’ Paniatowski replied.

  TWENTY-ONE

  In big places, like London and Manchester, people disappeared all the time, but even in a relatively quiet backwater like Whitebridge such things were not entirely unknown.

  Some of these people – a few – would never be seen or heard of again, but in most cases the disappearance would be so temporary that it could hardly be counted as a disappearance at all.

  A husband would go out for a drink with his mates, get legless and then be either too incapable – or too frightened – to go home. So he’d crash out on one of his friend’s sofas and – when he appeared, shamefaced and overhung, at his own door sometime around noon the next day – would be amazed to discover that he’d been reported missing.

  A young girl would tell her parents that she was staying with a friend overnight, when the truth was that she was going to a disco in a nearby town. She’d miss the last bus home, and – not having the money for a taxi – would have no way of returning to Whitebridge before morning.

  An old man, going a bit soft in the head (as they said locally), would forget his own address and spend the night sleeping on one of the benches in the Corporation Park.

  All very mundane! All very domestic!

  Which explained why, once the duty sergeant at Whitebridge HQ had taken down the details of the first disappearance that day, he pushed the whole matter to the back of his mind.

  Then a second disappearance was reported . . . and a third . . . and a fourth . . . and what had started out as a gentle trickle of mild concern was, the sergeant thought colourfully, rapidly turning into a fast-flowing river of worrying shit.

  And it was at that point that he began to wonder if all these disappearances had anything to do with DCI Paniatowski’s murder investigation.

  Colin Beresford stared gloomily down at the thick pile of missing-person reports.

  Maybe, looking back at it later, it wouldn’t seem as bad as it did now, he thought.

  Maybe, seen in retrospect, it would be viewed as the moment when the team got the first big break in a case which, up until that point, hadn’t really been going anywhere.

  Maybe!

  Or maybe they’d come to acknowledge it as the point at which the investigation began its almost inevitable disintegration.

  He drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk.
He needed to talk to Monika about it – really needed to talk to her – and she was still in her meeting with Mr Forsyth.

  He heard the sound of her footsteps along the corridor – that click-click-click of her high heels – and breathed a sigh of relief.

  The boss was back. The boss would know what to do.

  The door opened, and Paniatowski walked into the office.

  ‘Things are going pear-shaped, boss,’ Beresford began. ‘Since eight o’clock this morning, we have seven reports of . . .’

  And then he stopped.

  Stopped because, even as distracted as he was, he had noticed the change in her.

  Stopped because he was shocked by it.

  It was nothing external, this change. Apart from a slightly worried, slightly abstract expression of her face, she looked much as she always did.

  But as a man who had known and worked with her for a long time – and who sometimes wondered if he might actually be in love with her – he sensed something cataclysmic had happened to her in the previous half-hour.

  Paniatowski sat down opposite him, and lit up a cigarette with trembling hands.

  ‘What the hell has that bastard Forsyth just put you through?’ Beresford asked, aware that by even asking the question he might be treading in an emotional mine field.

  Paniatowski shrugged. ‘Put me through?’ she said with a casualness which didn’t fool him for a minute. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘The meeting was very straightforward. I asked him about the story in the Globe, and he admitted he’d planted it in an attempt to scotch any speculation about an IRA link to Adair’s murder.’

  She delivered the words in a flat, unemotional – almost dead – tone of voice. And that wasn’t the Monika who Beresford knew. The Monika he knew would have been furious!

  ‘Are you sure there wasn’t anything else said?’ he risked asking.

  ‘If there’d been anything else, I’d have told you,’ Paniatowski replied, with a growing irritation in her voice which he suspected she was using to mask something else.