The Ring of Death

by Sally Spencer

  ‘So why wouldn’t you tell me that earlier, when we were at the football ground?’ Beresford asked, unyielding.

  What did he want from her, Paniatowski thought angrily. What did he bloody want?

  ‘I didn’t tell you earlier because Forsyth made me sign the Official Secrets Act, and if he found out I’d told you, I could go to jail.’

  ‘How could he have found out?’ Beresford asked, reddening. ‘Do you think I would have told him? Or that I’d have told anybody else, for that matter? Do you think I would ever have done anything that I knew would land you in trouble?’

  Paniatowski felt her anger draining away. ‘You’re right,’ she admitted guiltily. ‘Charlie Woodend would have told me about it straight away, and I should have done the same with you. If we don’t trust each other completely, then the team means nothing.’

  She paused, to give Beresford the chance to say something conciliatory, but he kept determinedly silent.

  ‘Give me a break, Colin,’ she pleaded. ‘I’m new to the job. I’m still feeling my way.’

  The inspector’s stony expression melted away, and a smile came to his face ‘Of course you are, boss,’ he said. ‘We’re all just feeling our way.’

  It was going to be all right between them again, Paniatowski thought with relief. It would take some working on, but it was going to be fine.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, doing her best to cover her emotions with an official crispness, ‘I asked Forsyth to compile this dossier on Langley, and last night, on the moors, he gave it to me.’

  ‘Why?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Why did I ask him to compile the dossier?’

  ‘Why did he give it to you last night?’

  Paniatowski shrugged. ‘He said it was a sort of consolation prize for having made me jump through the hoops, but with a man like him, you can never be sure. He’s probably got five or six other devious reasons for giving it to me – reasons that I couldn’t even begin to guess at.’

  ‘Do you think he’d have given it to you even if you hadn’t caught him red-handed with the paramilitaries?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘No, probably not,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Then your instincts were right after all, weren’t they?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘If you hadn’t gone out onto the moors, you’d never have got your hands on what could turn out to be a valuable lead.’

  It was magnanimous of him to see it like that, Paniatowski thought – more than magnanimous.

  The problem was, she was far from certain that the dossier would turn out to be any kind of lead at all.

  ‘I’m not sure how much it helps us to know that he’s a crook,’ she said, because it had to be admitted sooner or later. ‘It’s true he might have some contact with all the dead men, because he’s got his finger in all kinds of pies . . .’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Plumbing supplies, furniture shops, funeral parlours . . .’ Paniatowski glanced through the list, ‘and, apparently, agriculture.’

  ‘Agriculture? That doesn’t seem likely.’

  ‘It says here that one of his dummy companies owns Moors’ Edge Farm, which is somewhere out on Haslingden Moor.’

  ‘Moors’ Edge Farm,’ Beresford repeated. ‘I think I know where that is.’ He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. ‘Yes, I do know. I’ve walked past it on one of my moorland hikes.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a hiker, Colin.’

  ‘I wasn’t – not when I had to look after my mother. But now she’s in the residential home, I’m finding I’ve got a lot of time to fill.’

  ‘So you joined a rambling group?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Beresford said. ‘I go on my own.’

  ‘Poor Colin,’ Paniatowski thought.

  ‘It’s sometimes good to get away on your own,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Anyway,’ Beresford continued briskly, as if realizing he’d revealed a part of his private life he’d rather have kept hidden, ‘it’s not actually a working farm any more. I wonder what possessed Langley to buy it. I suppose he picked it up for a song, years ago, and planned to turn it into his country estate. Then he got richer, and decided to buy Ashley Court instead.’

  ‘And so, instead of rising to great heights, as it might once have hoped, it’s still just a shell – like any number of other abandoned cottages you find on the moors,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Actually, it’s not a shell at all,’ Beresford said thoughtfully. ‘The roof is still in good condition, and you virtually never see that with abandoned cottages. There are heavy shutters up at the windows, too.’ He frowned. ‘In fact, thinking back on it, the place seemed pretty secure for what it was.’

  Paniatowski looked down at the folder Forsyth had given her. ‘What was it you said?’ she asked. ‘He probably picked it up for a song, years ago, when he was planning to turn it into his home?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Well, you’re half-right and half-wrong. He did pick it up for a song, but he’s only owned it for eighteen months. So I don’t really see why he bought it. What possible interest could he have in an old farm in the middle of . . .’ Paniatowski’s face froze, but only for a second. Then her lips began to form themselves into a triumphant smile. ‘I think we’ve just found the venue of the Thursday Night Club,’ she said.

  ‘I think we have,’ Beresford agreed.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Paniatowski fought back the urge to jam her foot down hard on the MGA’s accelerator, and instead navigated the rutted track which led to Moors’ Edge Farm at a sensible speed.

  From the moorland road which looped around it, the farm had looked as tiny and insubstantial as a doll’s house, but the closer the car got to the actual building, the more she could appreciate just how solid and immovable it was.

  ‘It’s the ideal meeting place for people who don’t want anybody else to even know they’re having a meeting,’ Beresford said from the passenger seat.

  Yes, it was, Paniatowski agreed silently. The nearest village was at least six miles away, and since they had left the main road, they had not encountered even one other vehicle.

  She parked the car, and got out, to take a closer look at the farm.

  It was oblong, with a double frontage – which meant that it was slightly longer than it was wide – and, like most moorland properties, it had been built of local materials. Flat dressed stone had been used to tile the roof, larger, rougher blocks in the construction of the walls (which were probably at least two feet thick). The front door and window shutters were made of heavy planks, from an oak tree which must already have been more than a stripling when Francis Drake led his attack on the Spanish Armada. The farm had been built to withstand the harsh and unyielding moorland weather, and the fact that it was still there after more than two hundred years was ample proof that the anonymous, long-dead builders had known exactly what they were doing.

  ‘See what I mean about it being in good condition?’ Beresford asked.

  She did. It was old, but it was cared for. There was not a roof tile out of place, and the mortar between the great stone blocks was so recent that it had hardly had time to discolour.

  A blue van pulled up next to the MGA, and a man climbed out of it. He was in his mid-forties, and had the sort of pinched features and shifty eyes which would have most bobbies on the beat instinctively reaching for either their notebooks or their handcuffs.

  He grinned at Paniatowski and said, ‘Well, well, another day, another forced entry, hey, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘You’re probably right, Roy,’ Paniatowski agreed, ‘but I’d better just check whether it’s necessary first.’

  She walked up to the front door, lifted the iron knocker, and brought it down against the metal plate which had been screwed into one of the oak planks. She counted to ten, then repeated the process. No one answered her knock, but she’d have been surprised if they had – because after the events of the previous fe
w days, Moors’ Edge Farm was the last place on earth that any member of the Thursday Night Club would want to be.

  The police locksmith, observing her lack of success, reached into his overall pocket and produced a set of skeleton keys.

  ‘My turn?’ he asked.

  ‘Your turn,’ Paniatowski confirmed. ‘How long do you think it should take you, Roy?’

  The locksmith bent forward and examined the lock. ‘Very modern, very expensive and very secure,’ he pronounced.

  ‘Does that mean you can’t open it?’

  Roy grinned again. ‘There may be locks I can’t open, but I haven’t come across one yet. Can you give me five minutes?’

  ‘Sure,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  She walked around the side of the house, where the rutted track which led from the road came to an end. The ground there was flatter and more regular than the rest of the land around the property, and looked as if it had only recently been excavated.

  ‘This is where they parked the cars on Thursday nights,’ said Colin Beresford, who had arrived at the spot before her.

  And from the number of tyre tracks which Paniatowski could see gouged into the clayey earth, it was clear that he was right.

  ‘How many vehicles do you reckon were parked here at any one time?’ she asked.

  Beresford shrugged. ‘There’s space for at least twenty cars, and I’ve spotted at least five distinct treads.’

  No doubt the police technicians would be able to uncover considerably more, Paniatowski thought. But even if there were only five, that was a lot of traffic for an abandoned farm house in the middle of the moors.

  The air was suddenly filled with a loud mechanical screech, which seemed to be coming from the front of the house.

  ‘Looks as if Roy’s having more difficulty than he thought he would,’ Paniatowski said.

  He was. The locksmith had abandoned his delicate picks and was now attacking the lock with a heavy industrial drill.

  ‘How thick would you say this door is, ma’am?’ he asked, when he saw that Paniatowski had returned.

  The chief inspector examined the solid oak boards – blackened by age and as hard as iron – which made up the door.

  ‘About two inches?’ she guessed.

  ‘That’s what I’d have estimated, too,’ Roy agreed. ‘But the lock itself is at least four inches long.’

  ‘How’s that possible?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘The oak, as thick as it is, is no more than a veneer,’ Roy explained. ‘There’s something bolted to the other side, and my guess would be that’s a solid-steel plate. And as for the lock itself . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen locks on bank vaults which were less sophisticated.’

  ‘Wouldn’t be easier to go in through one of the windows?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘You’d think that, wouldn’t you?’ the locksmith replied. ‘But, you see, the wooden shutters are just like the door – no more than a veneer. And behind that veneer is a steel shutter which slides down into the stonework – and can only be opened from the inside.’

  And this was supposed to be a moorland farm, Paniatowski reminded herself – a simple moorland farm.

  ‘Will you be able to get the door open?’ she asked. ‘Or should we start thinking about going in through the roof?’

  ‘Oh, I can get it open, ma’am,’ Roy said cheerfully. ‘I can open anything. It’ll just take a bit longer than anticipated, that’s all.’

  Paniatowski turned away from him, and looked out at the bleak moors which surrounded the farm house, and at the distant road which had once connected the struggling moorland communities – and now merely connected their ghosts.

  ‘What do you think we’ll find once we’re inside?’ she heard Beresford say, from somewhere to her left.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.

  And she didn’t.

  She really had no idea at all.

  But whatever it was, it would be significant. You didn’t make a fortress out of an old stone cottage unless you had something to hide. And she would have known even without the evidence of the steel shutters – known because, of the men who had visited the place regularly on Thursday nights, four were dead and perhaps as many as a dozen had gone into hiding.

  She lit up a cigarette, and found her thoughts drifting back – as they had the night before – to Bob Rutter, her long-dead lover.

  If she’d never met him, what kind of life would she be having now, she wondered.

  Would she be happily married to someone else?

  She couldn’t picture that, however hard she tried – couldn’t throw off the feeling that the part of her life she’d shared with Bob had always been meant to be. And she knew that if she were whisked back in time, and given the opportunity to bypass the affair – with all its pain and all its guilt – she would turn that chance down without a second’s hesitation.

  ‘Cracked it, ma’am,’ the locksmith called to her.

  But when she returned to the front door, she found that it was still firmly closed.

  ‘Thought you’d like to be the one to give the last push, ma’am,’ Roy explained. ‘You know, a bit like royalty cutting a ribbon to declare a place well and truly open.’

  ‘How do I do it?’

  ‘Just put your finger in the hole, and give it a good hard pull.’

  Paniatowski did as instructed, opened the door, stepped inside the cottage – and gasped.

  She had expected to find herself in a flagstoned corridor which ran right to the back of the house, where the kitchen – with its old copper boiler – would be located. She had expected there to be several doors leading off that corridor – doors which gave access to parlours and bedrooms and storage areas.

  But it wasn’t like that at all!

  The retaining walls – which had originally both held the house together and supported the heavy roof – had all been removed, and steel joists put in their place, so what she had actually entered was not a cottage at all, but one very large room.

  And a room designed with one specific purpose in mind!

  There was seating around three of the walls, arranged in tiers. And in the centre was a pit enclosed by a two-foot high concrete wall.

  Paniatowski shuddered.

  She thought she knew why the killer had stripped his victims naked, ripped out their throats and posed them on their hands and knees.

  She thought she knew why he had put his last two victims on display in Whitebridge Rovers’ stadium, and had had them facing each other.

  ‘Is this really what it looks like, boss?’ Colin Beresford asked, in a choked voice.

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ Paniatowski replied, still horrified – still not quite able to grasp the enormity of it all. ‘I don’t see what else it could be.’

  The inspector from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said his name was Bailey. He was probably only in his early forties, but his hair was greying and the frown lines on his forehead were showing signs of becoming a permanent feature. In many ways, he looked the epitome of the over-worked, undersatisfied official who could be found in every organization.

  And then you looked at his eyes, Paniatowski thought.

  The eyes were pale and washed-out, yet it was still possible to read in them the horrors he had seen, and despair it had brought him.

  ‘Well, one thing I can say for certain is that they weren’t trained here,’ he told Paniatowski, after he’d glanced briefly around the room.

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’

  ‘If they’d been trained here, we’d have found the equipment. And we haven’t.’

  ‘Equipment?’ Paniatowski repeated.

  ‘They train the dogs almost like sports promoters train their boxers – except that it’s a much more vicious process. Part of the training is to hang heavy weights around their necks, in order to strengthen the neck muscles. And they also have them running on treadmills.’


  ‘Running on treadmills! How the hell do they make dogs do that?’

  Bailey laughed hollowly. ‘They give them an incentive, don’t they?’

  ‘What kind of incentive?’

  ‘They have what they call the “bait” tied down at the end of the treadmill. It can sometimes be a wild animal, like a rabbit, but it’s usually easier to use a domestic pet – a kitten or a small dog.’

  ‘Where do they get them from?’

  ‘Sometimes they’ll snatch a pet off the street. Sometimes they’ll answer newspaper adverts which offer an animal to anybody who can give it a good home. Anyway, the dog on the treadmill can see the bait, and he wants to tear it apart, as he’s been trained to do, but the treadmill’s moving so fast that he can’t reach it however hard he runs. Later on, of course, when the training’s over, the dog will often be given the bait as a reward.’ Bailey grinned grimly. ‘That enough detail for you?’

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski said firmly. ‘I’m going to pay a visit to the bastard who’s responsible for all this, and before I do, I want to know exactly what he’s been up to.’ She looked across at the pit. ‘So there was no training in here. But there was fighting, wasn’t there?’

  ‘Undoubtedly. You can see the bloodstains in the concrete. Besides, if there hadn’t been fighting, there’d have been no need for the tubs.’

  ‘What tubs?’

  ‘Those in the corner,’ Bailey said, pointing.

  ‘They look like baby baths.’

  ‘And that’s exactly what they are. Before the fight begins, each owner gives the other owner’s dog a thorough washing down.’

  ‘Each owner washes the other owner’s dog?’ Paniatowski repeated, to make sure she’d heard Bailey correctly.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To make sure the owner hasn’t put poison on his dog’s fur.’

  ‘But surely that would poison his own dog as well,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Yes, it would. But it takes longer to absorb through the skin than it does through the mouth, and by the time the owner’s own dog started to feel the effects, the fight would be over.’

  ‘That’s vile!’ Paniatowski said.