The Ring of Death

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Do it!’ she told him.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Flush his bones down the sewer. Go even further than that, if it’ll make you happy. Feed his bones to the dogs. Pay some poor sod to spend the next twenty years daubing them with shit every day. I don’t care!’

  ‘You do care, Monika,’ Forsyth contradicted her.

  ‘You’re right, I do care,’ Paniatowski admitted, fighting back the tears. ‘It’s important to me. But I’m not prepared to sell my soul for it.’

  Forsyth sighed again. ‘I just knew, when that Irish thug told me they’d captured you, that you were going to be difficult,’ he said. ‘And now, you see, by turning down my offer, you’re forcing me to say something I’d hoped to avoid having to say at all.’

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ Paniatowski challenged.

  ‘If you sign the Official Secrets Act, I will instruct one of the Volunteers to go and collect your car from wherever it is you’ve hidden it. And once he has done that, we will drive back to Whitebridge together.’

  ‘And if I don’t sign?’

  ‘Then I’ll drive back to Whitebridge alone.’

  ‘And what will happen to us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘But you can guess.’

  ‘As can you.’

  ‘In other words,’ Paniatowski said, ‘if we don’t sign the act, you’ll have us killed?’

  ‘No,’ Forsyth replied emphatically. ‘If you don’t sign, I’ll do nothing to prevent you from being killed. The ultimate responsibility for your men rests with you and the decisions you chose to take, Monika. So ask yourself – do you really want to go to your own death knowing that you’ve caused their deaths, too?’

  ‘You win,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Forsyth agreed.

  He reached into his briefcase again, and produced a thick folder. For several seconds he held it his hands, as if weighing not just the folder itself but also his own options.

  ‘I had almost decided not to give you this, Monika,’ he said finally, ‘but it is sometimes necessary to allow even the vanquished to walk away with some small sense of victory, and this can be yours.’

  ‘What is it?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘The information you asked me to collect on Sir William Langley,’ Forsyth told her. ‘I think you might find it very interesting reading.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Whitebridge Rovers FC had languished in the Football League’s Third Division for over thirty years. Sometimes, when the season came to an end, they would be clinging to the middle of the division, like a thwarted mountaineer. Sometimes, they could be found hovering shakily just above the relegation zone at the bottom of the table. But never, in the memory of their younger fans, had they breathed the heady air at the top.

  Last season had been different. Last season, the team had played like men inspired, become division champions, and gained automatic promotion to the Second Division.

  The promotion would bring with it big changes. When the new season opened, the Rovers could look forward to higher attendance rates, and more appearances on television.

  ‘In other words,’ said Thad Rogers, the chairman, who was a prosperous local businessman and had been running the club as a loss-making hobby for over a decade, ‘we’ll finally see some money start to come in.’

  But before the money could be earned, money needed to be spent, especially on the pitch. For though visiting Third Division teams had complained about it, they were well aware of their own place in the scheme of things, and had not – in all honesty – expected much better. The promotion had changed all that. Now the club had moved up the ladder – now they finally had their chance to play with the big boys – and it was clear to everyone that before Second Division players deigned to put their studded boots on it, the pitch would have to be radically improved.

  It was in order to work towards this aim that Brian Dewhurst, the Rovers’ head groundsman, arrived at the stadium at eight o’clock that Friday morning. He did not go straight onto the pitch, as he’d originally planned, because it occurred to him that since he’d recently been entrusted with the key to the directors’ box, he might as well take advantage of the fact, and start his day with a small shot of the chairman’s vintage brandy.

  The small shot – as it happened – turned out to be not quite so small after all, because when you were drinking out of one of those big balloon glasses, Dewhurst explained to himself, you had to pour a fair bit into it before you could even see the brandy.

  And since a drink like that couldn’t be rushed – it would have been almost criminal to gulp it down – it was not until twenty-five past eight that Dewhurst forced himself to rise from the chairman’s sofa and walk over to the picture window which looked out onto the pitch.

  And that was when he saw it!

  From their position halfway up the stand, Paniatowski and Beresford looked down at the two naked men – both on their hands and knees, and both undoubtedly dead – who were facing each other in the centre of the pitch.

  ‘Did you know DS Gutterridge, boss?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Only by sight,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘Who did you say the other one was?’

  ‘Edward Dunston. He was an accountant.’

  ‘And was he one of the men whose whereabouts were unaccounted for on Thursday nights?’

  ‘He was.’

  Paniatowski lit up a cigarette. ‘What does it all mean?’ she asked, exasperatedly. ‘What message is he trying to send us?’

  ‘Is he trying to send us a message at all?’ Beresford replied. ‘Or is it aimed at any members of the Thursday-night brigade who still haven’t left town?’

  ‘Last night was Thursday night,’ Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Do you think that means anything?’

  ‘Might do,’ Beresford said.

  ‘And then again, it might not.’ Paniatowski sighed. ‘Not that that’s the only question we need an answer to. I can think of another three just off the top of my head. Why are there two of them this time? Why did he choose to position them like that? And why did he leave them here, rather than anywhere else?’

  ‘I think there are two of them because it’s his swansong,’ Colin Beresford said.

  ‘Go on,’ Paniatowski encouraged.

  ‘He’s been lucky so far. He could have been spotted when he kidnapped one of his victims. He could have been seen when he was dumping them. He might even have been caught driving around in one of the vans that he stole. But his luck can’t last forever – and he knows that as well as we do. So I think this is his grand finale – the firework display at the end of the show.’

  ‘Are you saying he won’t kill again?’

  ‘No, I’m not. If the opportunity presents itself, he’ll take it. But I don’t think he thinks he’ll get the opportunity. I think he can feel the net closing in on him.’

  ‘If only it was,’ Paniatowski thought. ‘But we’re no closer to catching him than we were three days ago.’

  ‘I also think he wants to be caught,’ Beresford added. ‘I think he’s had enough.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘Nothing tangible,’ Beresford admitted. ‘It’s just a gut feeling. I’m allowed to have one of my own, you know, now that I’m an inspector.’

  He was grinning as he said the words, Paniatowski thought. But behind the grin, was he still angry with her for going out onto the moors the night before?

  ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘Last night was a waste of time.’

  ‘So nothing happened, and nobody turned up?’

  It should have been easy to nod, but Colin Beresford was more than just her inspector, he was her friend.

  ‘I didn’t say nothing happened,’ she told him.

  ‘Well, then . . .?’

  ‘But I can’t talk about it. I can’t even tell you why I can’t talk about it, so don’t bother to ask. And don’t ask DC Crane or DS Cousins, because the
y can’t talk about it, either.’

  ‘So much for team spirit,’ Beresford said, sourly.

  ‘Nothing that happened had anything to do with the case, you have to trust me on that, Colin,’ Paniatowski said. And then she realized she was not being entirely truthful. ‘There was one thing I learned,’ she amended. ‘When Andy Adair was serving in Northern Ireland, he did a number of things that could have earned him a fairly lengthy prison sentence if he’d been found out.’

  ‘Who told you that? Forsyth?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So he was there.’

  ‘As I said earlier, I’m wondering why the killer positioned his victims facing each other,’ Paniatowski said, changing the subject. ‘It’s almost as if they were squaring up to have a fight, isn’t it? And is there any significance to leaving them in the Rovers’ ground?’

  ‘There must be,’ Beresford said, understanding what was going on and deciding not to fight it. ‘There are a hundred places he could have dumped them that would have been easier to get into than this stadium.’

  ‘We think he left his last victim in Ashton Court because he wanted Sir William Langley himself to find him, don’t we? So who did he want to find this pair? Thad Rogers?’

  ‘The chairman? I wouldn’t expect him to be here at this hour of the morning, and I don’t think the killer would, either.’

  ‘Then there’s only one other possible explanation, isn’t there?’ Paniatowski said. ‘He must have left them for the groundsman to find.’

  Brian Dewhurst was in his late fifties, Paniatowski guessed. He had large, work-hardened hands, and there was the smell of alcohol on his breath.

  ‘It were the shock of my life, seeing them two dead men,’ he told the chief inspector. ‘I thought it were a joke at first, but the more I looked at them, the more I knew it wasn’t.’

  ‘Did you know either of the victims?’

  ‘I can’t say for sure. To be honest with you, I didn’t look at them any closer than I had to.’

  ‘Then let me ask you this – do the names Edward Dunston and Len Gutterridge mean anything to you?’

  Dewhurst scratched his head. ‘I used to know a Sid Gutterridge,’ he said.

  ‘But not Len?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He was either a bloody fine actor or he was telling the truth, Paniatowski decided.

  ‘Can I ask you where you were last night, Mr Dewhurst?’ she said.

  ‘Last night?’ Dewhurst asked, showing some signs of alarm. ‘Here, you’re surely not suggesting I had anything to do with them two dead fellers, are you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘No, I’m simply asking you where you were last night.’

  ‘I was in the public bar of the Dog and Partridge,’ Dewhurst said, with the reluctance of a man who believed you should never give the authorities more information than you absolutely had to.

  ‘And can anyone confirm that’s where you were?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Dewhurst replied, and now there was an edge of aggression creeping into his voice. ‘My whole bloody darts team can confirm it. An’ the visiting team, which came from the Tinker’s Bucket, an’ all.’

  ‘And is that what you usually do on Thursdays?’

  ‘It’s what I always do on a Thursday. I’ve not missed a single match all season.’

  ‘And once the match had finished? What did you do then?’

  ‘I was home by a quarter to twelve, and in bed by a quarter past. And if you want confirmation of that, you’ve only to ask my missus. She’ll remember, all right.’ Dewhurst’s mood changed again, and he chuckled. ‘To tell the truth, last night I was bit like one of them sexual athletes you read about – I usually am when we win the match, especially if I finish my own game with a double top.’

  So whatever the killer’s reason for leaving the bodies in the stadium, it had nothing to do with Brian Dewhurst, Paniatowski decided.

  But what other reason could there he have been? What point was he trying to make?

  ‘The panic’s spreading,’ Beresford told Crane, as they sipped from their mugs of industrial-strength tea in the police canteen. ‘Since yesterday afternoon, four more men have gone missing. And when the news is released that another two bodies have been discovered at the Rovers’ ground, I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t a positive bloody exodus.’

  ‘Are all the newly missing men linked by Thursday-evening absences, sir?’ Crane asked.

  ‘Are all the newly missing men linked by Thursday-evening absences,’ Beresford repeated to himself.

  There were times, he thought, when Jack Crane didn’t sound like an ordinary bobby at all.

  ‘Three of them regularly went off on their own Thursday nights, and the fourth one did occasionally,’ he said aloud.

  ‘I wonder where they went,’ Crane mused. ‘When men slope off together in a group, it’s usually a good guess that they’re off to a strip club. But people don’t get killed for going to a strip club.’

  ‘Maybe you should ask your mate Mr Forsyth if he’s got any ideas,’ Beresford suggested.

  ‘I . . . er . . . don’t think Mr Forsyth is very interested in who the killer is, sir,’ Crane said awkwardly.

  ‘Then what is he interested in?’

  ‘Other things,’ Crane said, gazing into his mug.

  ‘Well done, Colin,’ Beresford thought to himself. ‘You’ve actually sunk to the level of trying to wheedle information out of a junior officer – a lad who’s only been on the job for five minutes. Call yourself an inspector? A leader of men? Because I bloody don’t!’

  Yet what else was he supposed to do? He had worked with Monika for nearly a decade. He had relied on her, and she had replied on him. Now she’d cut him out of the loop – and he felt like an orphan.

  Crane was looking at him nervously – as if he was expecting the interrogation to continue.

  ‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Beresford suggested. ‘And, just for a change, let’s make it something totally unconnected with work.’

  The obvious relief on Crane’s face could have been spotted from the other end of the canteen.

  ‘All right,’ he agreed.

  But talk about what, Beresford wondered. How easy would it be to think of another topic of conversation, when all he was really interested in was what had happened on the moors the previous night.

  Crane was still waiting for him – the inspector – to take the lead.

  ‘So what do you do with your free time?’ Beresford asked finally.

  ‘I do a lot of reading,’ Crane said.

  ‘Oh, you’re a big fan of the football magazines, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Crane thought. ‘I’m a big fan of the metaphysical poets and Marcel Proust.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘But I also like to go out dancing,’ he added quickly, on the off-chance that Beresford would decide to pursue the idea of football magazines further, and thus expose his total ignorance on the subject.

  ‘Who do you go dancing with? Do you have a regular partner? A steady girlfriend, perhaps?’

  Crane grinned. ‘I don’t take girls to dances, sir. I go to dances to pick up girls.’

  ‘And then you probably take them back your flat, and give them a bloody good rogering,’ Beresford the still-virgin thought enviously.

  This was not turning out to be a good day, he decided – it wasn’t turning out to be a good day at all!

  When Beresford returned to the office, he found Paniatowski absorbed in a bulky folder that he didn’t recall ever having seen before.

  The chief inspector looked up. ‘Anything I need to know?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve had the Rovers’ ground sealed, and there’s a forensic team combing through it right now,’ Beresford said. ‘I’ve got lads out on the street looking for witnesses, but I’m not holding out much hope of them finding any. There’s no sign of a break-in, so another team is out checking on the Rovers’ key-holders. There’s no repo
rt from Dr Shastri yet, either, but even when we get it, I’d be surprised if it contains anything new, because our killer’s too careful to go leaving any clues.’ He paused for a second. ‘What’s in the folder, boss – or is that something else I’m not supposed to know about?’

  Paniatowski sighed. ‘It’s all about Sir William Langley,’ she said.

  ‘Is it, now,’ Beresford said, noncommittally.

  ‘What it’s mostly concerned with is his financial dealings,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘Langley might come over as a bit thick when you talk to him, but he’s certainly not stupid when it comes to handling his money. He’s not exactly what you might call straight as a die, either. He’s set up dozens of dummy companies, all over the world. Most of them show a large loss on their annual balance sheets, and so they don’t pay any tax at all. But the reason they show a loss is that Langley’s already siphoned the money off.’

  She was expecting him to ask her where she got this information from, Beresford thought. But why the hell should he?

  ‘If Langley’s as bad as that, I’m surprised the Inland Revenue hasn’t caught up with him years ago,’ he said, almost disinterestedly.

  ‘I’m not surprised at all,’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘Aren’t you? The Revenue’s been given powers that bobbies like us can only dream of having. It doesn’t have to go sweet-talking a magistrate every time it wants to enter private property. If it feels like it, it can seize your account books or shut down your business while it audits you – and all without having to produce a single shred of evidence as justification.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘But even though it does have all those powers, it still has to work within the law. And that’s not a restraint that Forsyth’s mates seem to think applies to them.’

  Beresford sniffed. ‘I might have guessed the information came from Forsyth,’ he said.

  It was no good, Paniatowski decided, she couldn’t keep it a secret any longer– not from Colin.

  ‘Forsyth’s training Protestant paramilitaries on the moors,’ she said in a rush, before she had time to change her mind again. ‘That’s what we found out last night – and I don’t think it has anything at all to do with the murders.’