Echoes of the Dead

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Well, you must admit, she did seem to have had something of an obsession for the opposite sex,’ Bannerman replied.

  For the briefest of instants, Woodend seriously contemplated showing his sergeant the error of his ways by the simple expedient of smashing his fist in Bannerman’s face and breaking his upper-middle-class nose. But the moment passed, and before he had time to substitute a verbal beating for the – much more satisfying – physical one, the back door opened, and Mrs Dawson walked into the kitchen.

  ‘I . . . err . . . I needed to get out for a bit,’ she said to Woodend.

  ‘Aye, love, my sergeant said,’ Woodend replied, as he noted that she had obviously been crying again. ‘We’ve got a few more questions,’ he continued. ‘Do you feel strong enough to answer them?’

  ‘I . . . I think so.’

  ‘Then sit yourself down, an’ it’ll be all over before you know it.’

  Mrs Dawson sat, deliberately positioning herself so that, while she could look directly at Woodend, Bannerman was just out of her line of vision.

  ‘Did anythin’ unusual happen in the week before your Lilly disappeared?’ Woodend asked softly.

  ‘Unusual?’ Mrs Dawson repeated.

  ‘Did you, for example, see any strangers hangin’ around in the street?’

  Mrs Dawson shook her head. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen round here, Chief Inspector. People would notice strangers. They’d ask them what they thought they were doin’.’

  Of course they would, Woodend agreed silently. This wasn’t a leafy southern suburb, in which every house had a substantial garden and the residents lived completely separate lives. This was the shoulder-to-shoulder terraced-housed north – where people not only knew their neighbours’ business, but thought they had a right to know it.

  ‘There was one thing,’ Mrs Dawson said tentatively.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Lilly was very late home on the Friday night before . . . before it happened. I had words with her about it.’

  ‘Why was that? Was it because she was normally a very punctual girl?’

  ‘Well, exactly. You could have set your watch by our Lilly.’

  ‘Did she give you a satisfactory explanation for her tardiness?’ Bannerman asked.

  Mrs Dawson looked completely mystified.

  ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  Bloody idiot, Woodend thought.

  ‘Did she give you any reason for why she was late?’ he asked.

  ‘Not really. She said she’d just been for a walk. But I could tell she was lyin’ – I could always tell when she was lyin’ to me! I nearly stopped her goin’ to her Saturday job on the market because of it.’ Mrs Dawson suppressed a sob. ‘I wish to God I had stopped her.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if you had,’ Bannerman told her, bluntly. ‘Once one of these animals has a girl in his sights, he’s not likely to put off by the fact that she doesn’t follow her normal routine.’

  ‘My sergeant’s got a talent for sayin’ just the right thing in just the wrong way,’ Woodend told Mrs Dawson. ‘But what he says is true, you know. None of what happened is any of your fault – an’ nothin’ you could have done would have prevented it.’

  ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector,’ Mrs Dawson said, looking Woodend straight in the eye and ignoring Bannerman’s gaze completely. ‘I really needed to hear that.’

  They were sitting in the Balmoral Bar of the Royal Victoria. The best bitter that the bar served was passable – maybe even better than passable – but the tartan wallpaper was starting to give Woodend a headache.

  ‘What line of investigation do you think we should pursue in the morning, sir?’ Sergeant Bannerman asked.

  ‘What line do you think we should follow?’ Woodend countered.

  ‘Well, there is a long list of possible suspects who should be investigated,’ Bannerman said.

  Woodend took a sip of his pint. ‘Is there? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘It’s all in the reports, sir.’

  ‘Oh, you mean the fellers that the local bobbies have already pulled in for questionin’?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘But – an’ correct me if I’m wrong, Sergeant – haven’t they already been ruled out?’

  ‘Yes, sir – but you shouldn’t forget who ruled them out.’

  ‘I’m not followin’ you,’ Woodend said.

  But he was – he was following every twist and turn of Bannerman’s blinkered thought process.

  ‘It’s the local coppers who have ruled them out, sir.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And whilst they are our colleagues – and thus entitled to our professional respect – I have to say that I don’t think they’d recognize a lead if you slapped them in the face with it.’

  Arrogant young sod, Woodend thought.

  ‘So it’s your opinion that we could do worse than re-interview all the usual suspects, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bannerman agreed.

  He hadn’t solved the Pearl Jones murder case by sitting on his arse and glaring at some poor twisted sod on the other side of the table, Woodend reminded himself – he’d done it by clogging his way around Canning Town, breathing in the air that Pearl had breathed herself, and talking to the people who Pearl had known. And that was how he intended to crack this case – by planting himself firmly in the middle of Lilly’s world.

  On the other hand, even though he was personally convinced that nothing would come from re-interviewing people whose alibis had already been checked out – and however incompetent the Whitebridge police were, they would surely have checked the alibis – Bannerman might just have presented him with the perfect way of getting his sergeant off his back.

  And the fact was, he admitted, there were a number of good reasons why he really wanted Bannerman off his back.

  The sergeant was an outsider, whose very presence would be likely to make the people in Whitebridge clam up.

  Besides, from the way he’d spoken to Elsie Dawson, it was clear that Bannerman didn’t regard sensitivity to other people’s grief as the quality that he most needed to cultivate.

  And then there was the clincher – that he neither liked Bannerman as a person nor entirely trusted him as a policeman.

  ‘But hang on, Charlie,’ cautioned a slightly uneasy voice from somewhere at the back of his head. ‘Isn’t it your job to train up your sergeant – to lead by example, and make him into a policeman just like you?’

  ‘No!’ a stronger voice – one which he clearly recognized as his own – immediately countered. ‘It’s my job to catch the animal who killed poor little Lilly Dawson – an’ catch him before he has the chance to strike again! It’s my job to help the town I grew up in to heal itself. An’ if that involves cuttin’ this bumptious little prick out of the loop, it’s a price well worth payin’.’

  ‘Sir?’ Bannerman said questioningly.

  And Woodend realized that it must be quite some time since he had last spoken.

  ‘I’ve been thinkin’ about what you said,’ he told the sergeant, ‘an’ I’ve decided you’ve probably got a point. It might well be very useful to re-interview all the possible suspects.’

  Bannerman nodded seriously. ‘If that’s your considered opinion, sir, then I’m sure that you’re right.’

  He thinks he’s manipulated me! Woodend told himself. The bugger really thinks he’s got me wrapped around his little finger!

  ‘And not only do I think it’s a good idea, but I’ve decided I’ll leave that particular job in your very capable hands,’ he said aloud.

  Bannerman beamed, as if he’d just been told he’d won first prize in a school debating competition.

  ‘Really, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Really,’ Woodend confirmed.

  He checked his watch, and was surprised to see that though it felt like it had been a very long day, it was still only a quarter to nine.

  ‘Do you fancy another pint?�
� he asked.

  Bannerman shook his head. ‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I think I’ll turn in for the night.’

  He really didn’t know the ropes, did he, Woodend thought – still didn’t appreciate one of the most important unwritten rules of being part of a team, which was that the boozing stopped when the boss decided it should stop.

  Even so, he was far from displeased by his sergeant’s ignorance – because he had had quite enough of the bloody man for one day.

  Left alone, with only the garish wallpaper for company, Woodend wondered what he should do next.

  He wasn’t ready to go to bed, but he didn’t want to remain in the Balmoral Bar, either. The obvious solution would be to pay a visit to one of the dozen or so pubs within easy reach of the hotel – pubs where he would not have to drink alone because he was almost bound to run into someone who he had known in his childhood or his youth.

  But he was starting to realize that to do that would be a mistake, because his life had moved on, and things could never again be as they once were.

  The old mates who he talked to in one of these pubs wouldn’t see him as the lad who had scored the goal which put his club at the top of the local amateur football league (and only later realized he had done it with a broken leg).

  They wouldn’t connect him with the youth who, when the lead singer of a visiting jazz band collapsed due to a surfeit of alcohol, had had the brass balls to climb on stage and take over the vocals.

  They wouldn’t even conjure up an image of him as the callow young man, in a new suit bought on the never-never, who’d been so nervous when he took Joan out on their first date that he’d spilled his pint all over her – and then torn her dress in his desperate urge to clean up the mess.

  No, they wouldn’t see any of that at all.

  What they would see would be Chief Inspector Woodend – up from London to solve a horrendous crime which had sent the town into a state of shock and baffled the finest minds in the local constabulary.

  And he didn’t want that – he really didn’t want that.

  He lit a cigarette and signalled to the waiter to bring him another pint. When it arrived, he sat looking at it without his customary enthusiasm, and then sighed softly to himself.

  That’s what it’s going to be like from now on, Charlie, he told himself, so you’d better bloody well get used to it.

  SEVEN

  There had been a market on the spot where Whitebridge now stood since early medieval times, which – as local historians were fond of pointing out – was long before there’d even been a white bridge to name the town after. Back then, the town had been no more than a hamlet – a few dozen mud-and-wattle huts, clustered together around a ford in the river – but on market day, when peddlers came to sell their wares and tinkers to carry out their trade, it had been the busiest and most exciting place in whole of central Lancashire.

  The modern market had been built towards the end of the Victorian era. It was a solidly reassuring cast-iron structure with an arched roof. And under that roof, over three hundred traders conducted their business from tubular-steel stalls which had been specifically designed for easy erection and disassembly – but had stood rooted to the same spot for as long as anyone could remember.

  When Charlie Woodend entered the covered market at half past eight that morning – a half-smoked cigarette in one hand and a half-eaten bacon sandwich in the other – he saw that although a few of the stalls were already open for business, most were still in the process of setting up shop.

  It was a grand place, he thought, as he watched the traders at work.

  If it was fruit and veg you were after, there were at least forty stalls offering everything from the mundane potato to the still-slightly-exotic banana. If you fancied a piece of fish, the stalls displayed salmon, trout and North Sea cod in abundance. There were new clothes and second-hand clothes; cotton, thread and wool; suitcases and duffel bags; screwdrivers and spanners; old radios and new ‘antiques’.

  Anything and everything was available, just for the asking, in this wonderful market.

  His gaze fell on one of the stalls which still had its green canvas cover tightly held down by cords and clearly would not be opening that day. He ambled over to it and saw that a handwritten note had been taped to the canvas.

  ‘HARDYS FISHMONGERS,’ the note read. ‘CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE DUE TO A FAMILY BEREAVEMENT.’

  The pleasant sense of nostalgia that he been experiencing since entering this time machine of a market drained away in an instant, and was replaced with an anger which had never been entirely absent since the moment his mother had shown him Lilly Dawson’s photograph in the newspaper.

  ‘Family bereavement’ was such a neutral, antiseptic term, almost as bland as ‘Closed for renovations’ or ‘Gone on holiday’. It gave no idea of the hell that Lilly’s family was going through, but he had talked to her mother – and he knew.

  The market was starting to fill up, and as Woodend scanned the newly arriving faces, he wondered what had been on the mind of Lilly’s murderer on the fateful Saturday morning.

  When the killer wakes up, he knows – from the pressure which has been building up in his brain – that he must fulfil his fantasies soon, but he has no idea it will come about on that particular day. Then, driving around on quite some other mission, he sees Lilly leave the market and the urge becomes just too strong to fight any longer.

  Possible?

  Yes!

  But it wasn’t the only possibility.

  When the killer wakes up, it feels as if his loins are on fire. He knows that if he does not get relief soon he will either throw himself under a bus or go completely insane. He sets out with the deliberate intention of finding a girl – any girl – and it is Lilly who is unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  It hadn’t happened in either of those ways, Woodend’s instinct and experience told him. In all probability, Lilly had been targeted for days – or possibly even weeks – before she was actually taken.

  And that was why it was such a bugger, in terms of the investigation, that she’d had her bloody Saturday job!

  The Saturday job complicated everything, because it vastly widened the circle of suspects. If it hadn’t been for the job, there would only have been limited opportunities for the killer to study her – on her way to and from school, or when she was out shopping with her mother, for instance. But working on the market, she would have been under the constant observation of thousands of pairs of eyes – and any one of those thousands of pairs could have belonged to her killer.

  His thoughts still on the murder, Woodend absent-mindedly slipped the remains of his sandwich into his mouth. The bacon had been deliciously crisp and warm only minutes earlier, but now it was cold and congealed, and tasted like a piece of old carpet straight out of the dog’s basket. He forced himself to swallow, then headed for the cafe stall at the edge of the market, intent on disinfecting his throat with a mug of hot, strong tea.

  There were several stallholders already standing around the cafe, and when Woodend ordered his tea, one of them slid four pennies across the counter and said, ‘Have this one on me, Charlie.’

  Woodend looked at his unexpected benefactor – a late-middle-aged man in a flat cap.

  ‘I’m sorry, but do I know you?’ he asked.

  The expression which came to the man’s face was a mixture of mild surprise and mild hurt.

  He certainly thinks that I ought to know him, the chief inspector realized.

  But then, people did think that, didn’t they? And it was understandable in a way, for while he had moved on, into a world in which he was surrounded by a sea of so many ever-changing faces that even his dustbin of a mind couldn’t store them all, this man’s world had remained as fixed and immutable as it had always been.

  ‘I’m Len Bowyer,’ the man said awkwardly, as if he still could not quite believe such an introduction was necessary.

  Woodend
grinned. ‘Of course you are,’ he said. ‘Len Bowyer of Bowyer’s Bakery – purveyor of the tastiest meat pies in Central Lancs.’

  Bowyer returned his grin. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘An’ I trust you’ll be eatin’ a few of them pies while you’re up here.’

  ‘You can put money on it – I’d be a fool to miss the opportunity,’ Woodend told him.

  The smile drained from Bowyer’s face, and he said, ‘It’s terrible what happened to that little lass, Charlie.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Did you know her?’

  ‘Well, of course I knew her. I know pretty much everybody who works on this market.’

  ‘I assume the local bobbies have already asked you if you’ve noticed anybody in particular hangin’ around her auntie’s stall recently,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Then you assume wrong,’ Bowyer replied. ‘I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of them.’

  Woodend sighed. Ever since he’d first started working at Scotland Yard, he’d heard other officers talking about the yokels who inhabited the provincial police forces, and had forced himself to bite back a scornful response. Now, out in the provinces himself – back on his old stamping ground – he was learning that all the sneers and lip-curling were not entirely without foundation.

  And it was a bitter pill to swallow.

  ‘Well, if they didn’t ask you about it, I certainly will,’ he said. ‘Did you notice anybody?’

  The expression on Bowyer’s face showed he was giving the matter serious consideration. ‘She was a pretty girl, so naturally she attracted her fair share of attention from the lads,’ he said finally. ‘You know what that’s like, don’t you?’

  Oh yes, Woodend thought, he knew all right, because, in his time, he had been one of those lads himself.

  He remembered hanging around the market on a Saturday, directing cheeky and flirtatious comments at the girls behind the stalls in an effort to make them blush. But it had all been good-natured, and though the girls pretended to be annoyed, they would probably have been disappointed if the lads had not bothered them.

  ‘How did Lilly feel about all the attention she was gettin’?’ he asked Len Bowyer.