Dead End

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Now, now, let’s not let our prejudices paint a false picture of the world,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Oh, get stuffed,’ Meadows replied, though without rancour.

  It was nice to hear the children playing together quite happily again, Paniatowski thought. But the news bulletin had disturbed her, and the fact that the contract had been signed the same day the body was discovered was disturbing, because she didn’t like coincidences.

  But was it a coincidence, after all? Was it right to try and link a purely local murder with a deal spread over two continents and worth millions – perhaps billions – of dollars?

  Let’s not see it as any more than it is, she told herself. Let’s not get dragged into conspiracy theories, like we did last time.

  On the screen, the anchorwoman was talking rather pleasantly to a man who had walked all the way from New York to Los Angeles.

  It was four o’clock in the morning when the van pulled up at the gates of the Old Mill Road allotments, and two men – both dressed in black jumpers and black trousers, and wearing black rubber gloves – got out. As the van was pulling away, one of the men was already inserting his allotment holder’s key in the lock.

  Even at that time of day, it was risky entering by the gate, which was why the shorter of the pair had suggested that they cut the wire round the back, instead.

  The taller man had looked at him as if he were mad.

  ‘We are aiming for a light touch,’ he said. ‘We aim to be in and out, and no one the wiser. If we cut a hole in the fence, we might as well leave a big sign next to it saying, “We were here”.’

  ‘People might think it was just kids.’

  ‘And they might not. We can’t take the chance, so we’ll use the gate.’

  Once they were inside, they picked their way carefully between the plots until they reached the potting shed which was not really a potting shed at all.

  The door was padlocked, and the padlock would have to be cut through, but they had been aware of that beforehand, and had brought a replacement lock of exactly the same kind with them.

  The shorter man sheered through the padlock with bolt cutters, and dropped it into the bag his partner was holding open.

  Once inside the shed – with the shutters down and the door closed – they could afford the luxury of switching on their torches.

  ‘Well bugger me sideways!’ exclaimed the smaller man, who had not been there before.

  His partner, who had been anticipating just such a reaction, chuckled. ‘Yes, it’s quite a set-up, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did he use it much?’

  ‘It depended on the circumstances, but there’ve been times when he’s used it six or seven times a week.’

  ‘And was it always the same …?’

  ‘No, not always.’

  ‘You’ve got to take your hat off to him, haven’t you?’

  ‘Is that the kind of thing that you admire a man for?’

  ‘Well, you know …’

  ‘Look around you,’ the taller man said. ‘How tidy would you say it was?’

  ‘Neither that tidy nor that untidy,’ the shorter man decided.

  ‘Then that’s how we’ll leave it when we’ve finished – neither that tidy nor that untidy.’

  ‘Surely, nobody will notice a bit more mess here and there, will they?’ the shorter man asked. ‘I mean, the first thing they’ll see is what I saw, and after that their minds will be so blown that they won’t want to bother with the details.’

  ‘Most people won’t notice,’ the taller man agreed. ‘Maybe there’s only one man in a hundred who can see things as they really are – but he’s the only one who actually matters to us.’

  ‘OK,’ the smaller man said, sounding unconvinced.

  ‘Do you see that cupboard?’ the taller man said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Turn it round carefully. Pinned to the back of it, there’s an envelope marked Top Secret. I want it.’

  The other man did as he’d been instructed. ‘Yeah, you’re right!’ he said. ‘There is a brown envelope. How did you know it would be there?’

  ‘I knew it was there because I put it there.’

  ‘You broke in and put it there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you’re breaking in and taking it away again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because things didn’t quite turn out in Barrow Village as they’d been intended to. Could I have the envelope, please?’

  The shorter man handed him the envelope, then said, ‘What’s that in the corner?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you investigate?’

  The smaller man crouched down and poked the thing with his finger. ‘Ugh,’ he said, rapidly rising again and looking at one finger of his gloved fingers in disgust. ‘It’s a French letter. A used one.’

  ‘Excellent,’ the other man said. ‘We’ll leave it where it is for our little Catholic copper to find.’

  THIRTEEN

  She sensed the tension in the air the moment she walked through the side door of police headquarters next morning.

  It was a special sort of tension, of real significance only within the world of local policing – the police bubble. It had been there – this tension – when Chief Constable Marlowe had resigned in disgrace, when the whole shift had been informed that Bob Rutter was dead, and when Charlie Woodend (who everyone assumed they’d need wild horses to drag out of the place) had quietly announced that he was jacking it all in and going to grow geraniums on the Costa Blanca.

  As she walked briskly up the stairs (Louisa discouraged her from taking the lift) she wondered what the source of the tension was this time.

  She did not have long to wait for an answer. In fact, she’d only just entered the CID suite when one of the clerical officers – a bright girl called Linda – said, ‘Have you heard about Chief Superintendent Snodgrass, ma’am?’

  An image of Snodgrass from their encounter the day before immediately flashed across her brain

  A big man, using his size – as all bullies do – to intimidate.

  ‘Can I ask you a question, DCI Paniatowski? What the bloody hell gives you the right to go sticking your big bloody nose into my patch?’

  ‘What about him?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s left.’

  ‘Left?’

  ‘To join another force.’

  ‘I thought you fancy twats at CID didn’t get off your arses unless there was at least a double murder to investigate.’

  He wouldn’t be missed, at least by her, she thought. But before they could finally be rid of him, there’d be the receptions and parties, and she’d almost wear out her smiling hypocrite mask.

  ‘Who’s collecting for the gift in this department, and how much is everyone chipping in?’ she asked, bowing to the inevitable.

  ‘There isn’t going to be a gift, ma’am.’

  ‘But when there’s a party …’

  ‘There won’t be a party, either.’

  ‘But when someone goes …’

  ‘Chief Superintendent Snodgrass isn’t going, ma’am – he’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘As in “left” ma’am – hit the trail, taken the bus to Bradford, sailed off into the sunset—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’ Paniatowski interrupted, thus stemming Linda’s seemingly endless flow of images of departure.

  Senior officers didn’t just leave at the drop of a hat, she told herself. Before they could even think of relinquishing their posts, they had to untangle all the strands of activity which had inevitably been drawn into their web. In some cases, it was so complex that they had to stay on for a few months, to help their successors to navigate the labyrinth.

  The only reason a senior officer ever left in a hurry was that he had been dismissed and would, in all likelihood, soon be standing in the criminal dock, but Linda had already made it clear that wasn’t the case with Snodgrass.

 
; So what the hell was happening to Snodgrass?

  ‘If you want to give him a personal present – just from yourself, like – you could always send it to his new posting,’ Linda suggested.

  ‘And do you know where that might be?’

  ‘Should I know?’ Linda asked cautiously.

  ‘Probably not,’ Paniatowski said. ‘So where is it?’

  ‘It’s the same job as he had here, but in Hertfordshire.’

  Not a demotion, then, but not really a promotion, either.

  ‘I’m telling you that you’ve made an enemy of me, and I’m not the only one, because nobody likes an officer who can’t be a team player,’ Snodgrass had told her.

  Well, it would seem from the way things had turned out that someone wasn’t entirely chuffed with him, either.

  All jobs probably had some unpleasant aspects attached to them, Dick Judd thought, as he unenthusiastically turned over the soil on his allotment. Yes, but the difference between his job and other jobs was that while lorry drivers could admit they hated loading and unloading, and teachers were allowed to complain about all the out-of-school marking, he had to pretend he actually enjoyed working on his allotment in the same way as the three scientists from BAI (Horrocks, Jennings and Wheatstone) so obviously did.

  Two scientists, he corrected himself.

  Not three – two.

  Because while the late Arthur Wheatstone had revelled in dirt and clearly loved planting his seed, that had nothing to do with the allotments.

  There was no sign of Horrocks or Jennings that Saturday morning, although they always came on a Saturday – a bit of weeding and a bit of watering, then off to the Bird in the Hand, for a couple of pints with the rest of the weekend gardeners. Perhaps they’d stayed away as a mark of respect, Judd thought, or maybe they were genuinely upset at their colleague’s death.

  But that was no good to him, was it? He wasn’t supposed to know any of them that well. And he was supposed to love his gardening time, so it would have looked bloody odd to all the other gardening nutcases if good old Dick hadn’t turned up today.

  He just wished the scientists had taken up some other hobby – model making, for example. He was sure he could have produced a cracking Spanish galleon made entirely out of toothpicks, if he’d been given the opportunity.

  But they hadn’t done that. They were at the top of the evolutionary tree, involved in work that ninety-nine point nine percent of the population couldn’t even begin to understand, yet they chose to spend their free time involved in the same manual drudgery as their ancestors had been involved in thousands of years ago.

  Morons!

  Tired of his allotment – bloody tired, so tired that if he never saw an allotment again, it would be too soon – he looked around for some distraction which he could still legitimately classify as work, and his eye fell on Archie Eccleston, two allotments away, who was sitting on a stool outside his potting shed and smoking a roll-up.

  Judd ambled over to Eccleston’s allotment, remembering to examine the allotment before he even spoke to the other man.

  (That was how these people were. They’d notice that you’d planted radishes first, then – maybe – that you’d accidentally chopped your own foot off and were bleeding to death).

  The left-hand side of the allotment, he noted, was a virtual metropolis of plants, with carrots waving their tails defiantly in the air and lettuces which were smugly green.

  The other side of the allotment, however, Judd thought, was a desert.

  No, not a desert, he corrected himself.

  How could it be a desert with such fertile soil?

  He didn’t know what to call it, and the truth was, he didn’t give a monkey’s toss anyway!

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ he said, in his best hearty, fellow-allotment-holder voice.

  Eccleston picked up a mug with THE BEST DAD IN THE WORLD written on it. He raised the mug carefully to his mouth, and took a sip.

  ‘I always give it a thorough going over before I plant anything new,’ he said. ‘There’s them as think they can get away with less, but I’ve never believed that myself.’

  ‘And you’re quite right, too,’ Judd agreed. ‘That’s the trouble with people today, they haven’t got the self-discipline or the moral fibre that they used to have before …’

  He pulled himself up as he realized that Dick Judd, allotment holder, was on the point of merging with Richard Judd, right-wing agitator.

  He didn’t like Richard Judd very much, he thought – but at least Richard didn’t have to dig gardens.

  The poetry reading the night before had started out a great success, because the audience, though few in number, had been fans of the art (as they needed to be if they were to spend the entire evening in a draughty hall). They’d asked some intelligent questions and made some perceptive comments. There was a general feeling that culture was being experienced, and though it would have been wrong to call them ‘snobby’ and ‘smug’ it might not have been too far off the mark to describe them as ‘self-approving.’

  And then some idiot at the back had asked the wrong question.

  ‘Didn’t I see you on the telly the other day?’

  ‘Poets rarely get on the television,’ Crane had said evasively.

  ‘No, I’m sure it was you,’ the man persisted. ‘You were with that woman detective. Now what’s her name? It’s foreign sounding.’

  ‘Paniatowski?’ a woman a couple of rows in front of him suggested.

  ‘That’s right – Pontovski. You were with Inspector Pontovski.’

  The evening had gone downhill from that point, for though he was interesting to them as a poet, he was fascinating as a man who had rubbed shoulders with murderers.

  Well, that was all behind him now. It was a new morning, he was in Barrow Village close to the scene of the crime, and he was out to prove that whatever his failings as a poet, he could be shit-hot at his day job.

  He knocked on the door of number 45, and his knock was answered by a small, round woman with mischievous eyes and a nice smile.

  ‘You’re too late, love,’ she said, when Crane showed her his warrant card. ‘Your mates have already done me.’

  And then she laughed, and her breasts, denied movement either to the left or right by an ironclad bra, wobbled dangerously up and down.

  ‘You’re Mrs Moore, are you?’ Crane asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And also living in this house are Mr Fred Moore …’

  ‘My husband – the Lancashire tripe magnate! He’s had more cows’ stomachs across his market stalls than I’ve had … well, never mind that. He was interviewed when he got back from the market, last night.’

  ‘Philip Moore and Mary Moore …’

  ‘The seed of his loins, and the fruit of my womb. They’re away in boarding school – Fred wants to turn them into a lady and gentleman. I think Philip’s the one he’s hoping will turn out to be the gentleman.’

  ‘And a Walter Wicks.’

  ‘My dad.’

  ‘It appears that he wasn’t interviewed.’

  ‘He was having his sleep when your lads came round, so I asked them if they could come back later. Well, I seem to have traded them in for you, and I’m more than pleased with the bargain.’ Her face grew a little more serious. ‘Listen, it’s not that I want to get rid of you – you grace my home with your golden presence – but you’ll be wasting your time talking to my dad. I love him to pieces, but even I have to admit that he’s doolally.’

  ‘I’m a bit doolally myself,’ Crane said. ‘Maybe we’ll have a meeting of minds.’

  On the whole, Whitebridge disapproved of tall buildings (as it tended to disapprove of anything it didn’t have much of), but people were generally positive about the Red Rose Tower, if only because it served to remind any passing Yorkshireman that the final result of the Wars of the Roses had been Lancashire 1 Yorkshire 0.

  The tower was located in the upper part of Whitebridge, s
o the views – especially from the flats on the higher floors – were impressive. They didn’t come cheap, these flats, but then the building had a full concierge service, an indoor pool and a gymnasium.

  Given that it was on the right side of town for the BAI plant, it was not really surprising that two of the company’s unmarried male scientific staff should call it home, but Meadows certainly raised an eyebrow when she realized that two of the men working on the American project – John Horrocks and Philip Jennings – were not only living on the same floor, but had adjacent apartments.

  Choosing at random, she pressed Jennings’ bell, but after the third ring she heard the door open behind her and a voice say, ‘If you’re looking for Philip, he’s just taking a coffee break with me.’

  Meadows turned. The man who addressed her was in his late thirties. He had wispy fair hair and a slightly piggy nose (it could so easily have been an unattractive face, yet for some reason it wasn’t) and he was wearing a cravat.

  A cravat!

  No one in Whitebridge wore a cravat, especially at that time on a Saturday morning!

  ‘So who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m Kate Meadows and I’m a—’

  ‘A model!’ John Horrocks interrupted her. ‘You just have to be. Well, we are honoured. This might well be the most bijou residence in Whitebridge, but we still don’t get many …’

  ‘I’m a detective sergeant.’

  The look of pleasure immediately drained from Horrocks’ face, and was instantly replaced by a wariness.

  ‘This is about Arthur’s death, isn’t it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Meadows admitted.

  ‘We knew we were expecting someone – but certainly not you,’ Horrocks said, almost petulantly. Then he shrugged and replaced his defensiveness with a smile. ‘Well, now you’re here, you’d better come inside and have a cup of coffee,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Meadows agreed, ‘I suppose I’d better.’

  Mr Wicks had wild white hair and eyes that still retained much of their childhood innocence.

  ‘Did our June tell you I was a loony?’ he asked, when Mrs Moore had seated them in the lounge, put a plate of biscuits between them, and taken her leave.

  ‘No, she most certainly did not,’ Crane said.