But what was really tearing into her guts was the thought that she might lose this murder case.
‘Are you there, Monika?’ Janet Goodman asked.
‘Yes, I …’
‘His Honour is not pleased with you,’ Janet said severely. ‘He has instructed me to inform you that the only way you can compensate for your disgraceful conduct is to sleep with him.’
‘What!’ Paniatowski exploded.
Janet Goodman chuckled. ‘Had you there, didn’t I? You’ve nothing to worry about. One of the witnesses recanted overnight, so the prosecution’s case has collapsed.’
‘You evil witch!’ said Paniatowski, through a smile that was half grin, half relief.
‘No need to thank me – it’s been my pleasure,’ Janet said. ‘I’ll see you in court.’
At a quarter to one, as Paniatowski entered the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, she was thinking that it already felt as if it had been a long day.
Beresford and Meadows were sitting at the team’s table. Judging by how much best bitter Beresford still had in his pint glass, they had been there for around ten minutes and had still not attempted to kill one another – which was good.
Actually, relations between the two had never reached the extreme of making homicide seem a distinct possibility – but they had been bad enough. And even now, animosity could still flare up between them occasionally, because though they did genuinely like each other, Beresford thought that Meadows did not have enough respect for rank, and Meadows was bloody certain that Beresford didn’t have enough respect for liberated women (with the exception, of course, of his boss, but since she was – in his eyes – almost a goddess, that didn’t really count).
Paniatowski bought herself a tonic water (Louisa was making her cut down on alcohol) and walked over to the table.
‘So what have you got?’ she asked.
‘Arthur Wheatstone worked for British Aircraft Industries,’ Colin Beresford said.
‘It was really thoughtful of you to sugar the pill,’ Meadows said, as Paniatowski’s stomach did a series of somersaults that would have scored a perfect ten at the Olympics.
‘It doesn’t necessarily have to have anything to do with spying,’ Beresford replied. ‘Take the Verity Beale case as an example.’
Ah yes, the Verity Beale case, Paniatowski thought.
That murder had occurred back in Charlie Woodend’s day, when she’d been his sergeant. Verity had had links to both BAI and the nearby American air force base and, as the investigation proceeded, Woodend’s team had come close to suspecting that virtually everything that happened – from a cuckoo being heard in the woods to a minor car crash on the High Street – was part of some huge CIA-MI5 conspiracy to muddy the trail.
And in the end, much to their chagrin, it had had nothing to do with spooks at all.
In the end, it had just been a simple case of jealousy.
Yes, but there had been no Robert Proudfoot número tres – with his early-morning visiting habits and American embassy connections – involved in that case.
‘What else?’ Paniatowski asked Beresford.
‘Mrs Wheatstone is away in Cumbria, visiting her sister. The Cumbrian police have contacted her, and they’ll bring her back to Whitebridge sometime this afternoon. I’ll stick around till she gets here, and conduct the interview myself.’
He could do it, Paniatowski thought. He could do it very competently and thoroughly. But the poor woman had just lost her husband, and might appreciate the gentleness of Jack the Poet, rather than the blunt directness of Shagger Beresford.
‘You’ll be more useful back in Barrow Village,’ she said. ‘Jack Crane can handle the Wheatstone interview.’ She turned to Meadows. ‘Has Arthur Wheatstone’s name been released by the media yet?’
‘No,’ the sergeant replied. ‘I thought you’d want it kept quiet till you’d done a bit of spade work, so I asked the local radio and television people if they’d hold off until the evening newspapers come out.’
‘Did they agree to?’
‘Yes.’
By doing so, the radio stations would be giving up their one advantage over the newspapers.
‘Do you think they’ll keep their promise?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ Meadows said. ‘I went out of my way to ask them very nicely.’
And it would be a brave man or woman who turned down a request that Meadows had made ‘very nicely’, Paniatowski thought.
‘Have you given the media a picture?’ she asked.
‘Yes, this one,’ Meadows replied, taking a photograph out of her pocket and sliding it across the table. ‘I found it in the house, and the neighbours say it’s a good likeness.’
The man in the photograph looked somewhat different to the way he had when suspended from the beam in the garage or laid out on a stretcher – and it wasn’t just because his eyes weren’t popping or his tongue hanging out.
Inspector Cole had described Wheatstone as a bit of a weed, but that, it turned out, had been no more than a big man’s disdain for someone who did not conform to his idea of manliness. It was true that Wheatstone was neither tall nor broad, but he had the sort of figure that some people would still describe as dapper. And he was good-looking too – not that spectacular jump-off-a-cliff-just-to-get-his-attention good-looking, but certainly the sort of good-looking which most women would probably give at least a second glance.
Paniatowski took a sip of her tonic water.
Did people really drink this for pleasure? she wondered.
‘What will you be doing this afternoon, boss?’ Beresford asked.
‘What I thought I’d be doing was talking to Doc Shastri, but she rang me to say her report won’t be ready till later – or maybe even tomorrow.’
‘That’s a bit of a nuisance,’ Beresford said. ‘Couldn’t you chivvy her along a bit?’
‘Could you?’ Paniatowski asked.
Beresford grinned. ‘Fair point.’
‘So what I’m going to do instead is to visit the British Aircraft Industry’s plant, accompanied by my beautiful assistant, and see if we can ascertain why anyone should wish to bring a sudden and dramatic ending to the temporal existence of Arthur Wheatstone.’
‘I love it when you talk dirty,’ Beresford said.
Mrs Wheatstone sat across the table from Crane in the less austere and disapproving of the station’s two interview rooms. She was dressed, in his opinion, how any woman of taste in her mid-thirties should be dressed. Her tailored jacket was a deep cornfield gold, and blended perfectly with her cream blouse and her rich brown skirt. She had a colourful silk scarf around her neck, and was wearing tan shoes which he suspected were hand-stitched.
Simple, elegant, perfect.
The person inside the clothes, however, did not stand up anything like so well to inspection.
There were huge bags under her eyes, and a positive roadmap of broken veins in her cheeks. Her skin had left the soft-as-velvet period far behind, and was rapidly heading towards its industrial sandpaper stage. Her nails were bitten down to the quick, and her fingers were stained with nicotine. She was a mess, and not a recent mess – not a mess created by the announcement of the recent tragedy.
‘Firstly, may I say how much I admire your bravery in the face of this terrible news,’ Crane said.
‘Thank you,’ Mrs Wheatstone replied, looking down at the table as if too modest to accept a compliment.
‘What have you been told about your husband’s death, Mrs Wheatstone?’ Crane asked.
‘Only that he’s dead,’ the widow said. ‘But since I’m here in a police station, I assume it wasn’t natural causes.’
‘Nothing is officially established until after the inquest,’ Crane said, ‘but no, I think we can say it wasn’t natural causes.’
‘And, by the same logic, it won’t have been an accident, either – not unless it was the kind of accident that someone can be held criminally responsible for.’
�
��No, not that either,’ Crane agreed.
A sudden look of horror appeared on Mrs Wheatstone’s face.
‘Oh, my God, it wasn’t suicide, was it?’ she gasped. ‘Please tell me it wasn’t suicide.’
Neither the boss nor Colin Beresford considered it could be suicide, but until Dr Shastri had put her official stamp of approval on the murder theory …
Crane reached across the table, and took Mrs Wheatstone’s hands in his.
‘If it does turn out to be suicide, you must not blame yourself,’ he said. ‘And you mustn’t blame your husband either. It is easy to condemn someone who’s taken their own life as selfish and cowardly, but until we’ve walked a mile in their shoes, we have no idea what pressure they were under.’
Mrs Wheatstone pulled her hands away.
‘Where did that crap come from?’ she asked. ‘Did you read it in a book, or do they actually waste tax payers’ money teaching it to you?’
‘I … err … I was just trying to be helpful, and the words, which I thought would help, were my own.’
‘I hope that when you’re chatting up women you’ve got a better line of patter than that – because if you haven’t, you might as well reconcile yourself to a life of celibacy.’
‘I thought …’ Crane said.
‘You thought that I would be devastated if Arthur had topped himself. And so I would be. But it’s not about lost love, not about my own sweet darling being taken from me by his own hand, how will I ever go on without him by my side … blah, blah, blah.’
‘Then what is it about?’ Crane asked.
‘It’s about the life insurance, moron! If that arsehole has gone and killed himself, then I get nothing.’
‘Except for a big house and – no doubt – some stocks and shares,’ Crane said, realising he was losing his objectivity, and not giving a toss.
‘Yes, there are stocks and shares, and it is a big house,’ Mrs Wheatstone agreed. ‘But it’s not enough. He could leave me the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and it still wouldn’t be enough.’
‘You really hate him, don’t you?’ Crane said.
‘A brilliant deduction, young sir! You ought to be a detective.’
‘But you didn’t kill him? Or have him killed?’
‘Ah, so it is murder! That’s a relief!’
‘Yes, murder is the most likely cause of death.’
‘How was it done?’
Crane hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘It’s most likely that he was hanged.’
‘Where?’
‘In the garage.’
‘Then it’s got to be murder, hasn’t it? Because my short-arsed husband could never have reached the beam without a ladder!’
‘And there weren’t any in the house, were there?’ Crane asked.
‘No, there were not.’
‘Why?’ Crane asked.
‘Why what?’
‘Why weren’t there any ladders? Every home has a couple of ladders lying about.’
‘You were asking me whether or not I’d killed my husband, and the answer is “not”,’ Mrs Whitestone said. ‘I should have, but somehow I just didn’t have the get-up-and-go. People who marry for money always have a good reason for bumping off their partners, I suppose. But I was a fool, you see – I didn’t marry him for money, I married him for love.’
‘You’re avoiding my question about the ladders, aren’t you?’ Crane said.
‘Yes, I am,’ Mrs Whitestone agreed.
‘Then answer this question – who can you think of who might want your husband dead?’
Mrs Whitestone smiled. It was a sad, poignant smile.
‘I could tell you,’ she said, ‘but why should I humiliate myself when there are so many other people willing to do it for me?’
ELEVEN
The British Aircraft Industry’s main site had started life in the early years of the century as a small airfield in the countryside, where rudimentary aircraft could take off and land, and rudimentary repairs could be carried out by mechanics who were developing their skills largely through trial and error. It had been developed by Sutton Aircraft, a company which could almost guarantee that its planes would not come apart in mid-air. Sutton was swallowed by Whalley Air, Whalley Air fell victim to a hostile takeover by Northern Aeronautics, Northern Aeronautics amalgamated with Plaintree Weapons Systems … and onwards and upwards, with new stationery and new logos every time.
As the business expanded, so did the company’s need for more land. The farmers who owned it protested that their families had worked it for generations, and to part with it would be like cutting out their own hearts. Then the money on the table reached dizzying amounts, and the farmers began to wonder who actually needed a heart, anyway.
‘There’s a lot to dislike about the Russkies, but they’re not all bad,’ one chairman of BAI was recorded saying in an unguarded moment. ‘After all, if they weren’t so set on world domination, there’d be fewer ex-farmers with money to burn, and we certainly wouldn’t be trading at anything like £27.30 a share.’
The site was located 10 miles due west of Whitebridge and 21 miles south-east of Blackpool. It was said that if you stood on top of one of the company’s huge hangar workshops, you could not only see Blackpool’s famous tower, but also the big wheel on the South Shore Pleasure Beach.
It was also said that a young apprentice had once done exactly that, and after a secret trial had been sentenced to twenty years in a maximum-security prison for damaging property deemed essential to the defence of the realm. It was a good story, but like all good stories, the spinner of the tale would invariably back its authenticity by claiming that though he hadn’t known the apprentice himself, he had known someone who had known someone who had.
What was indisputably true was that BAI was absolutely vital to the economy of the North-West. It employed eleven thousand workers on its site, as well as indirectly providing work for another sixty thousand who worked for companies servicing its needs. It had excellent industrial relations, and as long there were nations which wished to protect themselves from harm whilst also threatening harm to others, its future seemed rosy.
Paniatowski had not rung for an appointment – people who were usually available suddenly became unavailable at the prospect of being visited by the police – but had simply turned up and announced to the receptionist in the administration building that she would like to speak to the head of personnel on a matter of some urgency.
‘I’m sorry,’ the receptionist said, with a look of deep regret she could only have learned to conjure up on some kind of training course, ‘but Mr Steel is in France at the moment. Would you like to see Mr Jackson, his deputy, instead?’
‘Is he a man with a sharp, incisive mind?’ Meadows asked.
‘No,’ the receptionist said. She looked confused. ‘What I mean is, he’s Mr Steel’s deputy.’
‘Yes, we’ll see him instead,’ Paniatowski said.
Mr Jackson was waiting for Paniatowski and Meadows as they stepped out of the lift. He was around forty years old, slightly plump and balding. He was the owner of a very unsuccessful moustache.
‘Welcome, ladies,’ he said. ‘I am blessed indeed to be visited by two such charming creatures.’
Kate’s really going to love this feller, Paniatowski thought, and the cat-like growl at the back of Meadow’s throat confirmed her suspicion.
Jackson led them into his office. It had a window which looked out over the car park, and furniture which was high-quality veneered. Paniatowski guessed that his boss – Mr Steel – would have hardwood furniture and a view over the countryside, and that there were days when Jackson could almost convince himself that life hadn’t short-changed him.
A pretty blonde with her hair in ringlets stuck her head in through the open doorway.
‘The bubbly is cold enough now, Geor … Mr Jackson,’ she said. ‘Would you like me to bring it to you, or would you prefer to wait until …?’
‘Would y
ou two ladies like to join us in a glass of champagne?’ Jackson asked.
‘Is it a celebration?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact, it is.’
‘Then we’d be delighted.’
‘You’d better add two more glasses to the tray then, Valerie,’ Jackson said.
He still hasn’t asked us why we’re here, which is the first thing he should have done, Paniatowski thought – and the fact that he hasn’t is why he’s the man with the veneer furniture.
‘There is one little favour I must ask you,’ Jackson said.
‘Yes?’
‘You mustn’t tell anyone about this little celebration until five o’clock, when the official announcement will be made.’
‘No one will get a peep out of us,’ Paniatowski promised.
And she was thinking that whatever the good news was, the simultaneous announcement of the death of Dr Arthur Wheatstone might possibly take the edge off it.
Valerie reappeared with the champagne. Jackson made a great show of opening the bottle with his thumbs, and his secretary gave a cute little squeak of fear when the cork flew out.
‘You can pour, Valerie,’ Jackson said, with an oily flirtatiousness. ‘You’re so good at pouring.’
And he gave her bottom a friendly pat.
Was he showing off, or was it simply that he’d drowned any inhibitions he might have had in a pre-celebration celebration?
Whichever it was, he wasn’t exactly endearing himself to Kate Meadows.
The secretary poured four glasses and handed them out.
‘I’d like to propose a toast,’ Jackson said, ‘To the good ship BAI, may she stay afloat forever.’
The secretary repeated the toast with enthusiasm, and Paniatowski repeated it with mild embarrassment. Meadows took a sip from her glass, decided it was the sort of champagne that people who knew nothing about champagne thought was rather good, and spat it back into the glass. She walked over to the window, and disposed of the contents of her glass in a convenient rubber plant. She was glad she’d given up alcohol.
‘Good heavens, you’ve drunk all yours already,’ Jackson said to her. ‘Can Valerie pour you another glass?’
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