Echoes of the Dead

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  The man smiled. ‘Didn’t I say?’ He reached into his pocket and produced his leather-bound warrant card. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Hall. I’ve come all the way from Scotland Yard to see you.’

  ‘Scotland Yard,’ Mrs Dawson repeated. ‘I haven’t spoken to anyone from Scotland Yard since . . . since . . .’

  ‘I know – since poor little Lilly died,’ Hall said sympathetically. ‘Look, why don’t you hand me your bags while you look for your key, and then we’ll go inside, shall we?’

  Once they were both in Elsie Dawson’s kitchen, Hall insisted that the woman should sit down.

  ‘You need a bit of a rest after all your efforts,’ he said cheerily.

  ‘But the shopping needs putting away and . . .’ Mrs Dawson began.

  ‘That can wait for a few minutes,’ Hall assured her. He paused for a moment. ‘Tell me, Mrs Dawson, just how long is it since Lilly was murdered?’

  ‘Twenty-two years.’

  ‘That’s a long time ago.’

  ‘Is it?’ Mrs Dawson asked, as a tear leaked from the corner of her eye. ‘It doesn’t seem like a long time ago to me. It seems like it was just yesterday.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ Hall agreed readily. ‘In some ways, time stopped still for you when Lilly was killed, didn’t it?’

  ‘It did,’ Mrs Dawson said, suppressing a sob. ‘It really did.’

  ‘And here I am, upsetting you all over again,’ Hall said, with what sounded like genuine regret. He reached forward and laid his hand gently on the woman’s shoulder. ‘You know what you need now, Mrs Dawson? You need a nice hot cup of tea. Wouldn’t that be nice?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Elsie Dawson said weakly. ‘I’m not sure I want to . . .’

  ‘Well, I can see the kettle, and I can see the pot,’ Hall told her. ‘All I need now is the tea caddie. Where do you keep it?’

  ‘What’s this all about?’ Mrs Dawson wondered.

  ‘Is it in the cupboard over the sink?’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  Hall took the caddie out of the cupboard, opened it, scooped out three spoonfuls of tea and deposited them in the earthenware pot.

  ‘One for me, one for you and one for the pot, as my old mum used to say,’ he told the woman, as he worked. ‘You wanted to know what this was all about, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I . . .’

  ‘Well, to be honest with you, I’m here on a very painful mission.’ Hall filled the kettle and switched it on. ‘You’ll be aware, won’t you, that the man who went to prison for killing your little girl has recently died?’

  ‘Yes – and I hope he’s burning in hell for all eternity,’ Mrs Dawson said passionately.

  ‘After what he did, I’m more than certain in my own mind that he’ll be doing just that,’ Hall said. ‘But did you know there are some people around here who are starting to say he didn’t do it after all?’

  ‘How can they say that?’ Mrs Dawson gasped. ‘He confessed!’

  ‘So he did,’ Hall agreed. ‘He killed Lilly – your poor, sweet, helpless little Lilly – and he confessed to having killed her. That’s why, before these vicious rumours have time to spread any further, we want to nip them in the bud. And that – in a nutshell – is why I’m here now.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Mrs Dawson said.

  She felt hot, as if she had caught a fever. And then, suddenly, she was she was so cold that she was shivering.

  She was confused. She was upset. She was sure the policeman from London meant well, and didn’t realize how much distress he was causing her, but it was awfully hard to bear and she was not sure how much more she could take.

  Steam appeared in the spout of the kettle.

  ‘Goodness, didn’t that water boil quickly?’ Hall said. He laughed. ‘You must have better electricity up here than we have in the south.’

  He poured the boiling water on the tea leaves, replaced the lid on the pot, and sat down opposite Mrs Dawson.

  ‘We’ll just give it time to brew,’ he said. ‘What I’m doing, you see, is re-investigating the case, just to make sure the evidence is as watertight as we think it is – which, of course, we both know it will be. So would you mind if I asked you a few questions?’

  ‘It couldn’t do any harm, I suppose,’ Mrs Dawson said uncertainly. ‘What happened was that Lilly went to the market that morning . . .’

  ‘Oh, I don’t want to distress you by making you go over all that again.’ Hall stood up. ‘The tea should be just about ready by now.’ He laid out two cups, poured the tea and added milk. ‘Sugar?’ he asked.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Hall grinned. ‘Me neither. My wife says I’m fat enough as it is.’ He sat down again, and took a sip of his tea. ‘Delicious,’ he pronounced. ‘What brand is it? PG Tips?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thought so. I don’t have many talents, Mrs Dawson, but I do pride myself on being able to tell one make of tea from another.’ Hall took another sip. ‘As I said, I don’t want to drag you through all the painful details again. What I’m really interested in is the visit that the Scotland Yard men made to you back then. There were two of them, weren’t there?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Mrs Dawson agreed. ‘One was Chief Inspector Woodend. I thought he was a nice man. I used to see him around town, after he moved back here, but somehow I could never bring myself to go up and speak to him.’

  ‘Too painful for you, I expect,’ Hall suggested.

  ‘Yes, that must have been it,’ Mrs Dawson agreed. ‘The other man was Mr Woodend’s sergeant. He wasn’t so nice.’

  Hall grimaced. ‘Sergeant Bannerman. And you’re quite right, he’s not nice at all,’ he said. ‘Now, what I wanted to ask you, Mrs Dawson, is did they ask to see Lilly’s things?’

  ‘Yes, they did.’

  ‘And I’ll bet it was that nice Mr Woodend who actually went to look at Lilly’s room, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was.’

  Hall grinned. ‘Thought so. Bannerman was never much of one for the personal touch. So, tell me, Mrs Dawson, did Mr Woodend bring anything down from Lilly’s room with him?’

  ‘Yes, he brought a couple of her drawings. They always made me so sad, those drawings.’

  ‘And did he take them away with him?’

  ‘No, he apologized for bringin’ them downstairs at all – said he couldn’t think how it had happened. And then he went up to Lilly’s room and put them back where he found them.’

  ‘So he didn’t take the drawings away with him,’ Hall mused. ‘Did he take anything else?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Dawson said, uncertainly.

  ‘You don’t think so – but you’re not entirely sure, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Mrs Dawson admitted. ‘I’m not entirely sure. Is it important?’

  ‘Not really,’ Hall said. He paused again. ‘What I’d like do now, Mrs Dawson, is ask you about some of the things that you bought for Lilly.’

  What’s the etiquette for greeting a friend who also happens to be your boss? Colin Beresford wondered, as he stood in the arrivals’ lounge of Manchester’s Ringway Airport, waiting for Paniatowski to clear customs and passport control.

  Should he kiss her on the cheek? Should he kiss her on the lips? Should he offer to shake her hand? Or should he do nothing at all?

  The moment he caught sight of her walking towards him, he knew that the best course would be to do nothing at all, because – clearly – the trip to Spain had not gone well.

  ‘That’s the trouble with booking your flights at the last minute – you don’t get to choose where you sit,’ Paniatowski complained when she drew level with him. ‘I had to spend the whole of the return flight in the bloody non-smoking section.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’ Beresford suggested, sympathetically.

  ‘I’ve already told you – I was nearly three hours without a cigarette!’

  ‘I don’t mean th
at,’ Beresford said.

  ‘I know you don’t,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  By the time they reached Beresford’s car, she had outlined the whole of the conversation which had taken place on Woodend’s sunny terrace.

  ‘I was looking forward to my first visit to Spain,’ she said. ‘I was going to take Louisa with me. She really loves her Uncle Charlie and Auntie Joan.’

  ‘Yes, I know she does,’ Beresford said.

  ‘And now the whole thing’s been spoiled for me – I can never go there again without remembering this visit.’

  ‘How’s Mr Woodend taking it?’ Beresford asked, as they both climbed into the car.

  ‘He’s devastated at the thought of having sent an innocent man to jail. If it was anybody else, I’d say he’d get over it in time – but you know Charlie.’

  Beresford fired up the engine, and pulled away.

  ‘How much damage is the whole business likely to cause?’ he asked.

  ‘Scotland Yard and the Mid Lancs Constabulary will have to pay out a fairly hefty sum in compensation to Howerd’s daughter between them, so I imagine Charlie won’t be exactly popular with the top brass in either of those places,’ Paniatowski said. ‘But as far as the rest of the Force is concerned – well, mistakes are made, even by the most diligent and scrupulous of police officers, and there’s not a bobby who’s ever pounded a beat who doesn’t know that.’

  ‘None of Mr Woodend’s old colleagues will want to cast the first stone at him – if only for fear that the next one might well be aimed in their direction,’ Beresford said. ‘What about the newspapers?’

  ‘They might kick up a stink for a couple of days, but it will soon die down, and nobody who’s ever known Charlie Woodend personally will pay much attention to them, anyway.’

  They were clear of the airport now. In less than an hour, they would be back in Whitebridge, Paniatowski thought, and as soon as she got there, she would ask to see the chief constable and report to him on what she and Hall had discovered.

  And what would happen then?

  Baxter would begin the process which would probably eventually lead to Fred Howerd’s exoneration and pardon. Lilly Dawson’s murder would be filed away on the cold case shelf. DCI Hall could go back to London, and she herself could return to active duty. And Charlie Woodend could sit under a blue Mediterranean sky and work on forgiving himself.

  It was not the ideal end to an investigation, she told herself – so few things in life ever ended ideally – but, given the circumstances, it was about as good as it could be.

  She would not have taken such a philosophical view if she had known about the time bomb which, even then, was slowly ticking away back in Whitebridge. But she didn’t know about it. Nobody did – for the moment – except DCI Tom Hall.

  SEVENTEEN

  The man sitting across the chief constable’s desk from George Baxter was in his fifties, and had a naturally florid face which turned even redder when he was angry – as he was now.

  ‘Don’t you think that what happened to my poor brother was terrible?’ the man demanded.

  ‘The case is still being investigated, and I wouldn’t wish to prejudge it by making any comments at this time,’ Baxter said carefully.

  ‘For God’s sake, Fred protested his innocence – in what was almost his dying breath – to a priest,’ Robert Howerd said.

  ‘And, given those circumstances, what he said must be taken very seriously indeed,’ Baxter agreed, ‘but it’s still not evidence.’

  ‘My family has been going through hell for the past twenty-two years,’ Howerd said. ‘And it’s continuing to go through hell – in fact, it feels worse than ever – because even though you have Father O’Brien’s statement, your incompetent, corrupt police force is still dragging its heels.’

  ‘Incompetent?’ Baxter said, gripping the corner of his desk tightly. ‘Corrupt? My police force?’

  ‘That’s what I said, and I stick by it,’ Howerd told him.

  ‘Oh, do you?’ Baxter asked, as he felt an anger at least as strong as Howerd’s begin to bubble to the surface. ‘I wouldn’t go making that kind of accusation if I was you. And I certainly wouldn’t use my family’s distress as an argument for wanting to see things done.’

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘Because, as I understand it, you’d already pretty much cut Fred adrift at the time of his arrest.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ Robert Howerd protested.

  ‘Oh, come on! Have you forgotten what it was like? There was you and your father, wandering around your big impressive shop on the High Street – fingering your watch chains and looking important – and what was Fred doing? Fred was slaving away at a tatty little stall in the covered market!’

  Robert Howerd swallowed. ‘My father did that to teach him a lesson,’ he said. ‘Fred had been rather wild in his youth, and Father felt that by denying him some of the privileges which went with our position, it might lead him to see the error of his ways. But it was always his intention to welcome Fred back into the bosom of the family. He had always planned to make Fred joint managing director when he himself retired. And that’s just what would have happened, if your bungling policemen hadn’t arrested him – on practically no evidence at all.’

  ‘What a cosy family picture it is that you’re painting for me,’ Baxter said sceptically. ‘And, do you know, it might even be a convincing one – if I wasn’t aware of the complete picture, with all its blemishes.’

  ‘Blemishes?’

  ‘You didn’t make much of a song and dance about Fred being innocent when he was first arrested for the murder, did you? And why didn’t you? Because – along with the rest of Whitebridge – you firmly believed that he’d done it – that he’d raped and killed that little girl. Am I wrong?’

  ‘We . . . we made a mistake,’ Robert Howerd admitted.

  ‘And there was another way in which you and your father were like the rest of Whitebridge, too – you didn’t want to have anything at all to do with his immediate family!’

  ‘You’re quite wrong about that. We paid his wife’s and daughter’s expenses from the moment he went to prison – and we’re still paying Elizabeth’s to this day.’

  ‘That’s only money!’ Baxter said, contemptuously.

  ‘I beg your pardon!’

  ‘It’s easy to be free with your money – especially when you’ve got plenty of it. But did you make any real effort with his family? Did you show them any of the warmth or compassion they must so desperately have needed? Did you, for example, invite them round on Christmas Day?’

  ‘No, we didn’t actually . . .’

  ‘And what about the way that you treated your brother himself? Did you ever visit him while he was in prison? Did you even bother to call on him when he was dying?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Howerd admitted, awkwardly.

  ‘Because you still thought he was a murderer. But now, when it turns out there’s a chance he didn’t kill Lilly, you’re starting to feel guilty about the way you’ve behaved towards him and his family,’ Baxter pressed on. ‘And instead of taking responsibility for that guilt yourself – as a real man would, as a Christian would – you’re trying to pass it on to someone else. You want me to crucify each and every officer involved in the case – and you want me to do it even before my investigation is completed. Well, let me tell you here and now, Mr Howerd, I simply won’t do it.’

  ‘I think you’re being highly impertinent!’ Howerd blustered.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong about that, sir,’ Baxter said. ‘An ordinary constable may perhaps be impertinent, but I’m the chief constable, and I’m just being as bloody rude to you as you’ve been to me.’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ Howerd choked.

  ‘If there is a case to answer, then it will be answered,’ Baxter promised. ‘If I find that your brother is entitled to a posthumous pardon, then I will work unceasingly to see he gets one. But what I will not do is just sit here while you tell
me how to run my police force.’ Baxter looked down at his watch. ‘I think we’ve said all there is to say to each other, so I’ll wish you good day,’ he continued.

  Robert Howerd stood up, and stormed over to the door. Only when he was already in the corridor did he turn round and say, ‘Let me assure you, you’ve not heard the last of this.’

  No, he probably hadn’t, Baxter thought – because when a man wouldn’t face his own guilt, there was no telling what he might do next.

  Howerd disappeared from the doorway, and the space was immediately filled by Lucy, the chief constable’s secretary.

  ‘Now that certainly didn’t sound like one of your more successful meetings, sir,’ she said.

  ‘One of these fine days, they’ll finally give me a secretary who knows how to mind her own business,’ Baxter said. He grinned. ‘Are you just here to gloat, Lucy, or was there something you actually wanted?’

  Lucy smiled back at him. ‘I’ve got Chief Inspector Hall in my office, sir. He says he knows he hasn’t booked an appointment, but if you could just spare him a few minutes, there’s something rather urgent he needs to discuss with you.’

  ‘Is Chief Inspector Paniatowski with him?’ Baxter asked.

  ‘No, sir, she isn’t.’

  ‘Now that is strange,’ Baxter said, almost to himself. ‘They’re supposed to working together – and if it is really important, then I’m surprised Monika hasn’t come too.’

  ‘Do you want me to send him away with a flea in his ear, sir?’ Lucy asked innocently.

  Baxter sighed. ‘No, now that he’s here, I suppose I’d better see him,’ he said.

  It was not the first time that Paniatowski had had to face an angry George Baxter. During their stormy on–off relationship, he had frequently lost his temper over her unwillingness – or inability – either to commit fully or to put an end to it altogether. And since then – since she had been a DCI and he had been her boss – there had been arguments over the way she conducted her investigations. So Baxter’s anger was not new to her – but she didn’t think she had ever seen him quite so angry before.