Fatal Quest

by Sally Spencer

  The three detective constables who’d already reported for duty jumped to their feet.

  ‘Sit down, men,’ the chief superintendent said. ‘Which one of you is DS Woodend?’ And then, observing that none of them was wearing the hairy sports jacket he been told about, he added, ‘He’s not here yet, is he?’

  ‘No, sir, punctuality isn’t one of the sarge’s virtues,’ Cotteral said.

  The chief superintendent nodded, as if he’d been expecting to hear something like that, then said, ‘Which of these desks is his?’

  ‘That one,’ Cotteral said, pointing helpfully.

  The chief superintendent sat down on Woodend’s chair and produced a bunch of keys from his pocket. The first one he tried on Woodend’s desk drawer didn’t work, but the second did, and the drawer slid open.

  The chief superintendent shook his head disgustedly at the chaos which confronted him, then heaped the contents of the drawer onto the desk and began the process of putting them into some sort of order.

  By eight twenty-five Woodend was in the corridor, surveying the scene – the chief superintendent still sorting through his notes, the constables bent earnestly over their desks as if engaged in work of national importance.

  It couldn’t have been easy for the constables to ignore the fact that one of the big guns was sitting within touching distance of them, he thought, but they were putting on a creditable performance of doing just that. It was a bit like Death calling, he supposed – once you’d established that he hadn’t come for you, you pretended that he wasn’t there at all.

  He entered the office and walked over to his desk.

  ‘Have you found what you were looking for, sir?’ he asked, with mild curiosity.

  The superintendent glared up at him. ‘You, I take it, are DS Woodend,’ he said coldly.

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘And I’m Chief Superintendent Markham,’ the other man said. ‘Your desk is in a disgraceful state, Sergeant.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Woodend replied. ‘If I’d known that you’d be riflin’ through it, I’d have tidied it up before I went home on Friday.’

  Markham stood up. ‘You are required to come with me,’ he said.

  Required to come with me, Woodend repeated silently.

  Well, that certainly set the tone of what was to follow clearly enough, didn’t it? Whatever it was, it certainly wouldn’t involve a cosy little chat, with tea and biscuits provided.

  Markham stepped around Woodend and out into the corridor. Once there, he performed a smart right turn, and marched quickly off towards the stairwell. As Woodend fell into step behind him, he couldn’t help hearing a sharp release of breath from the rest of DCI Bentley’s team back in the office.

  You could pretty much gauge the importance of your enemies by the men they sent to run their errands for them, Woodend told himself. And since the errand boy in this case was a chief superintendent, it was a fair bet that the office they were heading towards belonged to Deputy Commissioner Naylor – the man who was the assistant to God’s deputy on earth.

  He wasn’t surprised to find himself in this situation, he thought. In fact, he’d been expecting it – and if anything was surprising, it was that Naylor hadn’t hauled him in immediately after the police had been called to the Royal Albert, but instead had waited until Monday morning.

  They reached the stairwell, but rather than starting the climb to the celestial heights inhabited by Naylor and his kind, Chief Superintendent Markham chose instead to begin descending.

  ‘Aren’t we goin’ in the wrong direction, sir?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Down, you mean?’ Markham asked, over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Markham laughed. It was a dry throaty sound, completely devoid of any real humour.

  ‘Down is where you’ve been heading for quite some time, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you realize that?’

  Yes, Woodend agreed silently. I suppose I did.

  And by now he had worked out exactly where they were going. It was not to any kind of office at all, but to the interview rooms on the floor below, which were the only part of the Yard that the criminal classes ever saw.

  Deputy Commissioner Naylor was already in the interview room when Markham ushered Woodend in.

  He greeted the sergeant with a look of intense dislike. ‘You’re not here under caution, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘At least, you’re not under caution yet.’

  ‘That’s good to know, sir,’ Woodend replied. ‘Why aren’t we doin’ this in your office? Is it bein’ decorated or somethin’?’

  ‘Your flippancy does not impress me,’ Naylor said, glancing, as he spoke, at the interview room’s other door. ‘But since you ask, the reason we are here is because I felt that, given the nature of this meeting, it would be the most appropriate setting.’

  No, that wasn’t it at all, Woodend decided. They were there because this room – unlike Naylor’s office – had that second door. And behind that door was someone else, waiting to hear what was about to be said.

  ‘Ronald Edward Smithers, otherwise known as Greyhound Ron, was murdered yesterday,’ Naylor said bleakly. ‘His throat was cut.’

  ‘You told Burroughs!’ Paniatowski said, astounded. ‘You actually gave him Smithers’s name!’

  ‘I don’t see why you should sound so surprised,’ Woodend replied airily. ‘I did warn you, at the very start of this tale, didn’t I, that I’d arranged to have somebody killed?’

  ‘What were you thinking of, Charlie? If it had ever got out, you’d have been finished on the Force. They might even have decided to charge you as an accessory to the murder.’

  ‘Oh, there was very little danger of that,’ Woodend said, with uncharacteristic flippancy. ‘Toby Burroughs was an honourable man, by his own lights, an’ even if he’d been caught, it was unlikely he’d ever have given me up.’

  ‘It was still a risk,’ Paniatowski persisted.

  ‘But a risk worth takin’. I thought that Burroughs had the right to know who’d murdered his daughter. An’ I thought that Pearl had the right to justice.’

  The lightness had completely disappeared from his voice, and been replaced by a weightier – altogether more frightening – tone.

  His earlier casual approach had been no more than camouflage, Paniatowski thought. He was still angry about Pearl Jones’s death, even after twenty-three years.

  ‘Would you do the same thing again, Charlie?’ she asked.

  ‘Today, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. Times have changed, an’ we don’t have capital punishment any more.’

  ‘And that makes a difference, does it?’

  ‘To me it does, yes. If Smithers had been convicted of the murder back then, he’d have hanged, just as he should have. I didn’t see a lot of difference between the hangman’s rope an’ Toby Burroughs’s razor. But there was one thing I made Burroughs promise before I gave him the name.’

  ‘And what was that.’

  ‘That if his daughter’s killer was to die, it had to be by his hand alone. Man to man. Face to face. With no outside help.’

  ‘Why did you insist on that?’

  Woodend shrugged. ‘To this day, I’m not sure I really know the answer,’ he admitted. ‘Maybe I was feelin’ just a little bit guilty about what I’d done, an’ wanted to at least give Smithers a fightin’ chance. Or maybe I thought that there was no real virtue in St George killin’ the dragon if he used a guided missile to do it. Whatever the reason, it just felt right.’

  ‘And Toby Burroughs had no objections to doing it that way?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. To tell you the truth, I think Toby would have gone after Smithers on his own whatever I’d said. He may have had his faults, but he at least knew there was more to bein’ a man than just wearing trousers.’

  ‘Did you hear me, Sergeant?’ Naylor demanded. ‘Ron Smithers has been murdered.’

  ‘
Has he really, sir?’ Woodend asked. ‘Well, at least you’ll have no trouble catchin’ the killer, will you?’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

  ‘I should have thought it was obvious, sir. Since the Flyin’ Squad were keepin’ a round-the-clock surveillance on him, they’ll know exactly who was with him at the time of his death, won’t they?’

  ‘Are you trying to be funny?’ Naylor demanded.

  ‘No, sir. I’m just goin’ by what you told me.’

  ‘Smithers was murdered with a cut-throat razor,’ Naylor said. ‘What does that suggest to you?’

  ‘What should it suggest to me?’ Woodend countered.

  ‘A cut-throat razor is a very personal weapon, and that suggests that there was a very personal motive behind the murder.’

  ‘Possibly you’re right about that, sir. I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘But it’s also a weapon which has largely gone out of fashion, and is now only used by a very few of the old-style gangsters.’

  ‘Old-style gangsters like Ron Smithers, who used his to cut Pearl Jones’s throat,’ Woodend said.

  ‘I was thinking more of Toby Burroughs,’ Naylor said. ‘In fact, this particular killing has Burroughs’s stamp all over it.’

  ‘Does it?’ Woodend said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Are you asking me to believe that it’s a pure coincidence that a few days after I refused your request to have Smithers arrested for murder, someone killed him?’ Naylor asked.

  ‘With respect, sir, I’m not, in point of fact, askin’ you to believe anythin’,’ Woodend told him.

  ‘So here’s what I think happened. I think that you went to see Toby Burroughs, and gave him a personal reason to want to kill Smithers.’

  ‘Now that is a bit far-fetched, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, sir,’ Woodend said. ‘Can you yourself think of a single thing that I could have said which might have driven Burroughs into a homicidal rage?’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Naylor admitted. ‘But that still doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen that way.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean that it did happen that way, either,’ Woodend pointed out.

  ‘I don’t think you yet fully comprehend the amount of damage you’ve done,’ Naylor said. ‘I don’t think you can even begin to imagine how much more difficult Smithers’s death is going to make my job.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I’d still like to try,’ Woodend said. ‘Let me see,’ he mused. ‘A violent criminal – a man who’s made thousands of people’s lives a misery, an’ is probably responsible for scores of deaths – is now no longer a problem by virtue of the fact that he’s dead himself.’ He shook his head. ‘You were quite right, sir – I can’t really see how that could possibly make your job more difficult.’

  ‘Then you’re even stupider than I thought you were,’ Naylor told him. ‘Smithers kept the people he had working for him under some sort of control, which was one of the reasons it was possible to police the area in which he had an influence. Now he’s dead, it’s anarchy out there on the streets.’

  ‘So it’s a case of it bein’ better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t, is it?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Essentially, yes,’ Naylor agreed. ‘But I didn’t call you here today to discuss Smithers’s death.’

  ‘Didn’t you, sir?’

  ‘No. What I want you to do now is to give me your full report on another death – that of Pearl Jones.’

  No, you don’t, Woodend thought. What you want is to find out if I know what I’m not supposed to know.

  ‘That night, in the Charleston Club, Pearl Jones took a picture of Ron Smithers,’ he said aloud. ‘But she did it sneakily, so that he wouldn’t know he was bein’ photographed.’

  ‘Why did she do it “sneakily”?’

  Because she suspected that he might be her father, but she didn’t want him to be aware of that until she’d had a chance to talk it over with her best friend, Rachael, Woodend thought.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said.

  ‘Then all this is pure speculation,’ Naylor said.

  ‘You’re quite right, sir,’ Woodend agreed. ‘An’ since you don’t want to waste your time listenin’ to speculation, may I go now?’

  ‘No, you may not go,’ Naylor told him. ‘I still wish to hear the rest of your report.’

  ‘All right,’ Woodend agreed amiably. ‘Unfortunately for Pearl, Smithers did realize he’d been photographed, an’, as a result, he panicked. You see, the reason he’d chosen that particular nightclub, which was a bit of a dive, to be honest, was because he was sure there’d be nobody there who’d recognize him. Or at least, nobody who mattered. But here was this young coloured kid, takin’ his picture. An’ what conclusion was he to draw from that?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘That one of his enemies did suspect he might be there, an’ had sent Pearl to get the proof. Now your average, run-of-the-mill criminal might just have taken the camera off her, but our Ron was a bit of a nutter, an’ he decided the only safe thing was to kill Pearl.’

  ‘What I still don’t see is why it should have bothered him in the slightest that anyone knew he was there,’ Naylor said.

  Bloody liar! Woodend thought. You do know the reason for it. But you want to find out if I know it, too.

  ‘What bothered him was that certain people might find out who his companion was,’ he said.

  ‘His … er … companion?’

  ‘That’s right. He didn’t want people to know that he was there with Peggy Cathcart. You see, it would appear that Peggy likes a bit of rough, an’ Smithers just fitted the bill nicely. He even carried a razor – which he wouldn’t normally have done – because he knew that would impress her. But he knew he was takin’ a big chance by goin’ out with Peggy, and he was afraid that if the affair came to light – if Commander Cathcart was publicly humiliated – the Met would feel compelled to take some kind of action against him. In other words, he was worried the top brass would decide that while they’d be reluctant to get rid of him – because it is always better to deal with the devil you know – he’d simply have to go.’

  The second door – the object of Naylor’s involuntary glance earlier – opened, and Peggy Cathcart stepped into the room. She was dressed demurely, and had the expression of a true penitent on her face.

  ‘Hello, Charlie,’ she said, with a choke in her voice.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Cathcart,’ Woodend replied stonily.

  ‘You’re quite correct in stating that she was there that night,’ Naylor admitted. ‘And you’re also right that she was having an affair with Smithers.’ He turned to the woman. ‘Isn’t that true, Peggy?’

  ‘It’s true,’ Peggy Cathcart agreed, looking down at the floor. ‘I was very foolish, and what I did was very wrong. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.’

  ‘But she didn’t know what Smithers was going to do, which, I think you’ll agree, makes her basically an innocent party,’ Naylor said.

  ‘An innocent party!’ Woodend repeated. ‘That’s the biggest load of old bollocks I’ve heard in a long time.’

  ‘Please don’t be so hard on me, Charlie,’ Peggy Cathcart begged. ‘I did try to do the right thing, you know. As soon as Ron … as Smithers … told me what he’d done to that poor girl, I rang Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Aye, you did,’ Woodend agreed. ‘An’ I must admit, you sounded very upset over the phone.’

  ‘I was upset, Charlie! I was totally devastated. I just didn’t know what to do with myself.’

  ‘But it didn’t take you long before you were able to pull yourself together again, did it?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The invitation you gave us to Sunday lunch wasn’t your husband’s idea at all, was it? It was yours.’

  ‘No, I promise you it was all Arthur’s idea. As you know, he’s always had a high opinion of you, and …’

  ‘An’ the reason that you invited u
s was so that you’d have the opportunity to con my Joan into invitin’ you back to our flat.’

  ‘I assure you, Charlie …’

  ‘Because that would give you the chance to question me on what progress I was makin’ in the investigation.’

  ‘Even if that were true, you could hardly blame Peggy for acting as she did on that occasion,’ Naylor said. ‘She was, quite simply, doing no more than fighting for her own survival.’

  ‘Oh, is that what she was doin’?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Of course. Having been caught up in a nightmare which was not at all of her own doing, she was simply making every effort she could to stop it from dragging her down.’

  ‘More bollocks!’ Woodend said. ‘The truth is that, once she got over the initial shock of the murder, she rather enjoyed playin’ the dangerous game that followed. After all, it’s not as if anybody important was killed. The kid was only a darkie, wasn’t she?’

  Peggy Cathcart suppressed a sob. ‘You’re not being at all fair to me, Charlie,’ she said.

  ‘We all know what she should have done,’ Woodend said, unmoved. ‘It wasn’t nearly enough for her just to report the murder – she should also have given us the name of the murderer.’

  ‘Yes, yes, we do all know what Peggy should have done,’ Naylor said impatiently. ‘But if you put yourself in her shoes for just one moment, I think you’ll understand why she didn’t.’

  ‘Will I?’ Woodend asked. ‘Well, let me give it a try.’ He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them again, he said, ‘Was it maybe because she was too frightened?’

  ‘Of course it was,’ Naylor replied.

  ‘I tried to be brave, Charlie,’ Peggy Cathcart said tearfully. ‘Believe me, I really tried.’

  ‘So when did you finally manage to get over this fear of yours?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘I haven’t got over it. Don’t you understand that? I don’t think I ever will get over it.’

  ‘Well, I am surprised to hear that,’ Woodend admitted. ‘Because you certainly didn’t look very frightened last Friday night, when I saw you out on the town with Smithers again.’