Fatal Quest

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Then what is the answer?’

  ‘Yer might fink fings are in a hell of a mess out there now,’ Smithers said, gesturing towards the street, ‘but yer can’t even begin to imagine how bad they’d be wivout people like me around.’ He paused for a second. ‘Now don’t get me wrong,’ he continued, in an almost avuncular manner. ‘It’s not actually your fault that you can’t imagine it.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘No, it ain’t. You’re at the bottom of the ’eap, looking up. But your brass are the top of the ’eap, and they’ve got a much clearer view of the situation as it really is. So they see me as an ally – at least, they do some of the time – because they know that we’re involved in the same struggle. Because they know that if we weren’t both here – the coppers and the top businessmen – everyfink would fall apart in no time at all.’

  Ten

  DC Cotteral was slouched over his desk. He had wrapped a rubber band in an intricate weave around the outstretched fingers of his right hand, and was now slowly moving one finger at a time, in order to see what effect that would have on the overall structure.

  ‘It’s good to see you’re keepin’ busy,’ Woodend said.

  Cotteral looked up. ‘Oh, I am,’ he agreed. ‘This isn’t as easy as it looks, you know. If you don’t get the tension just right, you’ll snap the elastic and end up with a nasty case of rubber-band-lash.’

  Woodend glanced across at the Wolf’s Lair. The door was open, and there was no sign of Bentley.

  ‘Where’s the guv’nor?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Cotteral asked.

  Woodend shook his head, and Cotteral smirked.

  ‘Funny he didn’t tell you where he was going,’ the detective constable said. ‘I thought DCIs always made it their business to keep their bagmen apprised of their movements.’

  But not this particular DCI with this particular bagman, Woodend thought – and you know that as well as I do, Cotteral, you little shit.

  ‘I’m not in the mood for playin’ games,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Aren’t you, Sarge?’ Cotteral asked. ‘I am surprised, especially after what the guv’nor said this morning, just before he left for his half-day conference.’ He wiggled his fingers again, putting even more tension on the rubber bands. ‘Now what were Mr Bentley’s exact words?’ he pondered. ‘Oh yes, I’ve got it now. “I’m sick to death of that smart-arse Woodend and his bloody games.” That’s what he said. I think he’s rather annoyed with you.’

  If he’d needed any further indication that his own position on the DCI’s team was precarious, he’d got it now, Woodend thought. His star had never hung very high in Bentley’s sky, but for Cotteral to dare to put the boot in like this, it must have gone into freefall and be plunging rapidly towards the earth.

  ‘So you’re sayin’ the guv’nor’s gone to a half-day conference?’ he asked Cotteral.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I think it’s called “Modern Law Enforcement – a dynamic approach to policing London in the second half of the twentieth century”,’ Cotteral said, his smirk widening.

  ‘And he’s wastin’ a whole half-day on that crap?’

  ‘Well, you’ve got to admit, it’s better than working for a living.’

  Woodend felt an anger, which had been nestling in the pit of his stomach for two days, start to bubble up.

  ‘So who’s investigatin’ the Pearl Jones case?’ he demanded.

  ‘The guv’nor is – when he gets back.’

  ‘An’ have there been any developments in the case at all? Have they found the mother yet?’

  Cotteral had finally put too much strain on the elastic band, and now it snapped.

  ‘Ouch!’ the constable said, waving the hand in the air, to take away the slight sting.

  ‘Have they found the mother?’ Woodend repeated.

  ‘The mother? No, I don’t think they have found her.’

  ‘Then don’t you think you should get off your arse an’ start lookin’ for her yourself?’

  Cotteral gave Woodend a look which fell somewhere between extreme contempt and extreme pity.

  ‘Mr Bentley doesn’t like the men working under him using their own initiative,’ he said. ‘He sees it as challenging his authority. So if you want to get on with him, you do what he tells you to do, when he tells you to do it.’

  ‘Don’t rock the boat,’ Woodend said, echoing Greyhound Ron Smithers’s words.

  ‘Well, exactly,’ Cotteral agreed. He reached for another rubber band from the box on his desk. ‘And if Mr Bentley gives you no instructions at all, then you find a way to amuse yourself until he does.’

  ‘That isn’t how things are supposed to work in the police force,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Maybe not,’ Cotteral said. ‘But it’s how they do work. If you want to get on, you have to play the system as you find it. I’m an expert at that, and if I was a betting man, I’d put money on my making sergeant long before you make inspector.’

  One day, Woodend promised himself, I’ll have my own team. An’ when that day comes, I’ll award the Golden Boot up the Backside to any member of it who can’t come up with an idea that I haven’t spoon-fed him.

  He sat down at his desk, picked up the Wally Booth file, and ran his eyes over the list of Booth’s known associates. The last time he’d looked at the file, he’d thought that getting any of them to cooperate with the investigation would be difficult. Now, after his meeting with Smithers, he decided it was nigh on impossible. Because if Greyhound Ron didn’t want to talk himself, he certainly didn’t want any of his ‘business associates’ to talk – and unless they felt the urge to end up dead, like Booth, he wouldn’t get a peep out of them.

  So what’s the point of even pursuing the case any further? he asked himself. Especially when he had better things to do with his time.

  He stood up.

  ‘I’m goin’ out,’ he told Cotteral.

  ‘What shall I tell the guv’nor if he wants to know where you are?’ asked the detective constable, who had now devised a much more elaborate system, using two rubber bands and both his hands.

  ‘You can tell him exactly what I’ve just told you,’ Woodend said curtly. ‘That I’ve gone out.’

  Word of Victoria Jones’s flight – enforced or otherwise – seemed to have got around the neighbourhood, and the door of 36 Balaclava Street was wide open. Woodend didn’t look inside. He didn’t need to, because he knew that anything that could be nicked would already have been nicked.

  Bentley should have posted an officer to guard the place, Woodend thought, but now it was too late. Any evidence the house might have contained would have been stolen or destroyed.

  Two women, their hair in curlers, and with untipped cigarettes drooping from their lips, were standing in a doorway on the opposite side of the road. When Woodend started to cross the street, they exchanged glances, but made no effort to move.

  ‘Are you the Old Bill?’ one of them asked.

  Woodend nodded.

  ‘I said ’e was,’ the woman said to her companion.

  ‘Then why ain’t ’e wearing a suit?’ the other woman asked, as if Woodend weren’t there at all.

  It was a good question, even if it wasn’t addressed to him, Woodend thought.

  And the answer, he supposed, was that he’d never really felt comfortable in a suit, because, back where he came from, they were only ever worn at weddings and funerals. Of course, a time might come, once he’d been promoted – if he’d been promoted, he corrected himself – when he’d probably have to swap his sports jacket for a suit. But that was long in the future.

  ‘She’s got a point, though, ain’t she?’ the first woman asked Woodend. ‘Wiv the money wot you’re pulling in, I’d have fort you could afford a nice blue suit.’

  That was a bit rich, coming for a woman dressed in a pinny so stained it practically told her life history, Woodend told himse
lf.

  But all he said was, ‘I’m DS Woodend. An’ you are …?’

  ‘Mrs Wilson,’ said the first woman.

  ‘Mrs Gort,’ the second supplied.

  ‘I was wonderin’ if you two ladies saw what happened over there,’ Woodend said, pointed at Victoria Jones’s house.

  ‘’Appened over there?’ Mrs Wilson repeated, as if she had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘The burglary.’

  ‘’As she been burgled?’ Mrs Wilson said, with mock surprise. ‘Well, we didn’t see nuffink, did we, Effel?’

  ‘Not a bleeding fing,’ Mrs Gort agreed. ‘She used to ’ave some nice stuff, though, didn’t she?’

  ‘The question is, where did she get all that nice stuff from?’ Woodend said.

  ‘Beats me,’ Mrs Wilson told him. ‘As far as I could tell, she never did nuffink to earn a crust.’

  ‘Did she have visitors?’

  ‘Yer mean, was she on the game?’

  ‘I mean, did she have visitors of any kind?’

  The two women exchanged glances.

  ‘A few darkies, now and again,’ Mrs Wilson said. ‘But they wasn’t out on the razzle. They was religious darkies.’

  ‘How could you possible know that?’

  ‘Well, for a start, they only come on Sundays, and always at just about the time the churches was turning out. And yer could tell from the way they was dressed – the men in stiff collars and ties, the women in ’ats – that they’d all been out praising the Lord.’

  ‘Anyway, ’ole families of ’em come sometimes,’ Mrs Gort chimed in. ‘Piccaninnies and all. They never let them piccaninnies play out on the street, neiver – and if that’s not religious, I don’t know what is.’

  ‘What can you tell me about Mrs Jones’s daughter?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Why d’yer want to know about ’er?’ Mrs Wilson wondered.

  ‘Because she’s been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered! Get on wiv yer,’ Mrs Gort said.

  ‘It was in the paper,’ Woodend assured her. ‘Didn’t you see it?’

  ‘Don’t read no newspapers,’ Mrs Wilson said. ‘Can’t seem to find the time.’

  Can’t seem to make the effort, more like, Woodend thought.

  ‘’Ow was she killed?’ Mrs Gort asked.

  ‘Her throat was cut,’ Woodend said. ‘Now will you answer my question?’

  ‘She was a nice girl – for a darkie,’ Mrs Gort said.

  Mrs Wilson sniffed. ‘If yer ask me, she ’ad ideas well above ’er station,’ she said. ‘Parading up and down the street in that fancy school uniform of hers, like she was better than the rest of us. Still,’ she continued, shivering slightly, ‘I wouldn’t wish wot’s ’appened to her on anybody.’

  Mrs Gort had been looking up the street, and now she tugged on her friend’s sleeve and said, ‘We’d best go inside, Lil.’

  ‘Best go inside? What are yer talking about?’ Mrs Wilson asked. ‘I ain’t finished talkin’ to this copper, ’ave I?’

  ‘’E’ll ’ave enough on ’is hands, wivout us,’ Mrs Gort said, glancing nervously up the street again.

  This time, Woodend looked too, and saw what Mrs Gort had seen.

  Two big men were rapidly approaching, and though they were obviously a team, one was walking on the pavement, and the other on the road, at least four feet from his pal.

  ‘Bleeding ’ell, I see just what you mean, Effel,’ Mrs Wilson said. And then, in what probably wasn’t intended to be a parody of good manners but certainly came out as one, she continued, ‘If yer’ll excuse us, Sergeant, we ’ave urgent matters wot we need to attend to indoors.’

  The women stepped back into the house, and closed the door firmly behind them, while Woodend, for his part, turned to face the approaching men.

  Though they were not the same men he had encountered outside Greyhound Ron’s pub, they were virtually indistinguishable from them. The same bulky frames, the same sharp suits, the same arrogant swagger to their walk – and the same certainty in their hard eyes that whatever it was they wanted to do, they would meet with no resistance.

  Woodend’s mind ran back to the phone call, two nights earlier, in which the anonymous caller had threatened him with trouble if he showed too much enthusiasm in investigating Pearl Jones’s murder.

  Well, maybe this was the trouble, he told himself.

  Without even realizing he was doing it, he had adopted a fighting stance – feet wide apart, hands balled into fists. But he knew none of it would do him any good as long as the two men kept a distance between them – because while he might, conceivably, be able to drop one of them, the other would be on him before he had a chance to take evasive action.

  The men came to a halt a couple of yards short of him. The one on the left had a long jagged scar on his cheek. The one on the right had a large brown mole just above his lip. Neither of them would have won any beauty contests.

  ‘Are you Charlie Woodend?’ the one with the scar asked.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Charlie Woodend, yes.’

  The man with the scar shrugged, as if to suggest the title didn’t impress him, and that even if Woodend had announced himself as Pope Charlie III, it would have made absolutely no difference.

  ‘The boss wants to see you,’ he said.

  ‘The boss?’ Woodend repeated. ‘Ron Smithers?’

  The other man smirked, and his scar puckered. ‘Greyhound Ron ain’t what I’d call a boss,’ he said. ‘I’ve scraped better fings off the sole of my shoe than Greyhound Ron.’

  Well, if it wasn’t Ron Smithers then it had simply to be the other big wheel, Woodend thought.

  ‘We’re talkin’ about Toby Burroughs, are we?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Scarface agreed. ‘Mr Burroughs. Like I was saying, ’e wants to see yer.’

  ‘An’ what if I don’t want to see him?’

  Scarface shrugged again. ‘Then yer don’t ’ave to.’

  ‘You won’t try me make me?’

  ‘No, we ain’t ’ad no orders about making you. But if yer do decide to turn ’im down, that’s your funeral.’

  It would interesting to see how Burroughs would react if he did turn him down, Woodend thought.

  On the other hand, it might be even more interesting to hear what it was that the man wanted to say.

  ‘Where’s your car?’ he asked, making a snap decision.

  Scarface chuckled. ‘Car?’ He turned to his partner. ‘I didn’t say nuffink about us ’aving no car, did I?’

  ‘Nuffink at all,’ his partner agreed, grinning. ‘I’m sure I’d ’ave remembered if yer ’ad done.’

  Woodend gave a deep sigh. This was the second pair of heavies he’d met in the space of a few hours, and like the first, they seemed almost compelled to put on a comic double act for him.

  Where did they draw their inspiration from? The music hall? Television? American gangster films?

  The two men were still waiting for a response from him.

  Woodend sighed again. ‘All right, I’ll buy it,’ he said resignedly. ‘How will I be travellin’ to the headquarters of the feller who’s supposed to be the most feared man in the whole of London? By bus?’

  ‘No, we’ll drive yer there.’

  ‘An’ how do you propose to do that, without a car?’

  It was clearly just the moment the two men had been waiting for – the crowning moment of their routine.

  ‘We’ll take yer in our mobile business unit,’ the one with the mole over his lip said.

  Eleven

  The ‘mobile business unit’ turned out to be an aged black van. The words ACME WINDOW CLEANING SERVICE had been stencilled in white on the side, and – in case the words themselves were not enough to convince a passer-by of the verisimilitude of the whole operation – there were ladders, sponges, and several enamel buckets nestling haphazardly in the back.

  Woodend briefly examined the back of the van, then said, ‘You’re not expecti
n’ me to travel in there, with all the equipment, are you?’

  Scarface laughed. ‘Course we’re not. That’d be below the dignity of a detective sergeant – specially one wot’s as sharply dressed as wot you are.’

  The hairy sports coat was going to have to go, Woodend told himself resignedly. Sooner or later, he was simply going to have to invest in a suit.

  ‘So who will be ridin’ in the back?’ he asked.

  ‘Nobody,’ Scarface told him. ‘We’ll all ride in the front, like the good pals wot we’ve just become.’

  The man with a mole over his lip climbed into the driver’s side, and Scarface opened the passenger door.

  ‘After you,’ Woodend said.

  ‘After you,’ Scarface insisted.

  Woodend climbed in, reflecting as he did so that there were probably better places in the world to be than sandwiched between two thugs.

  ‘So you’re both window cleaners, are you?’ Woodend asked, as the van pulled away from the kerb.

  ‘That’s right,’ the driver agreed easily.

  ‘I find that surprisin’,’ Woodend admitted.

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘Because you’re not exactly dressed for the job.’

  ‘Ah well, yer see, we’re wot yer might call the new, modern, managerial-style winder cleaners,’ Scarface said.

  ‘An’ what does that boil down to in practice?’ Woodend wondered. ‘That you collect the money for the window cleanin’, but don’t actually clean any windows?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Scarface countered. ‘But it’s no big strain on the people wot pay us. Shelling out a bob a week ain’t never ’urt nobody.’

  ‘But it doesn’t get your windows cleaned, either,’ Woodend pointed out.

  ‘True enough,’ Scarface agreed. ‘But at least it makes sure that yer winders don’t get smashed.’

  As long as they were on the busy roads, full of traffic – full of potential witnesses – Woodend felt safe, even if he was crammed between two men who made their living out of breaking bones. But the situation changed when they reached Whitechapel, and the driver stuck his hand out of the window to signal that he was about to turn right into an alley.

  ‘Where are we goin’?’ Woodend asked, doing his best to hide his growing alarm.