Echoes of the Dead

by Sally Spencer

  And as he walked away, Crane was almost certain he could hear the sound of Shastri gently chuckling to herself.

  The senior clerk was somewhere in her fifties – which Crane considered really old – but, even so, he simply could not stop himself from noticing that she still had rather shapely legs.

  ‘Bloody hell, if I’m not careful I’ll be fancying my own granny next,’ he thought, as he followed her down the corridor.

  The archive was a large, daunting room lined with metal filing cabinets which reached from floor to ceiling, but the clerk with the good legs – who said her name was Mrs Walton – seemed totally undaunted, and went straight over to a cabinet in the corner.

  ‘When you’ve worked here for as long as I have, there’s nothing you can’t find,’ she said, sensing his wonder.

  ‘How long would that be?’ Crane asked.

  ‘Twenty-three years,’ Mrs Walton told him, then added dryly, ‘and, do you know, it’s been such fun that it’s just seemed like one long roller-coaster ride.’

  Twenty-three years! Crane repeated silently. He’d been just a baby when she’d first started filing things away in this place.

  Mrs Walton slid the cabinet door closed, and held the file up to the light.

  ‘You’re lucky,’ she said.

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘The police surgeon at the time this autopsy was carried out was called Heap. We used to call him Shit Heap.’

  ‘Really,’ Crane said, feeling himself start to blush.

  ‘He was a pig of a man – forever looking for excuses to brush up against any woman who came close to him – and as a doctor he would have made a good hatstand,’ Mrs Walton said.

  ‘He wasn’t very good?’

  ‘He might have been good, if he’d made the effort, but he couldn’t be bothered. You’ve never seen reports as sloppy as the ones he wrote.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone in the Whitebridge police ever complain about him?’ Crane asked.

  ‘No, they were as sloppy as he was,’ Mrs Walton said. ‘Actually, that’s not quite true,’ she amended. ‘Do you know DCI Woodend?’

  ‘Not personally, no.’

  ‘He once gave Heap a right bollocking. He was working for Scotland Yard at the time, and he wasn’t at all happy about the way Heap had written up some report or other. I don’t think it was so much what he said to him as the way that he said it, but Heap crept around the place like a frightened mouse for a week after that, and I still have to laugh when I think about it.’

  ‘And I’m lucky that he was the one who wrote the report, am I?’ Crane asked, remembering why he was there.

  Mrs Walton laughed. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Quite the contrary – you’re lucky he didn’t.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘It was his assistant, Dr Wells, who sliced Mottershead up – and there was a man who did know what he was doing.’ She walked across the room, and handed the file to Crane. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then. Happy reading.’

  Bazza Mottershead had died as a result of having his throat cut – probably with a razor – but he had not given in without a struggle, as was clearly revealed in his autopsy report. The sleeves of his jacket had been slashed in several places, suggesting that what had occurred had been a fight, rather than an attack, and this was confirmed by the presence of another man’s blood at the scene of the crime.

  So what had happened had probably been unplanned, Crane thought, as he read the report. The murderer had not intended to kill Mottershead, at least not at that point in time – because if he had, he’d have chosen a method which involved him in much less personal risk. It was likely that they’d had an argument which had unexpectedly turned into the fight. Mottershead had either been the first to produce his weapon – which was probably also a razor – or had pulled it out when he saw the weapon in his killer’s hand. They’d circled each other, and though it had been the killer who had struck the lethal blow, it could have easily been the other way around.

  But the fight that had resulted in Mottershead’s death was not Crane’s main concern. He was there to search for indications of an injury which had been inflicted earlier than the fight – possibly as much as several days earlier.

  He scanned the main findings of the report, praying he’d find the evidence on which much of Paniatowski’s theory rested.

  And there it was!

  ‘The subject also had several scratch marks on his left arm, which are consistent with being inflicted by human nails,’ he read.

  ‘Nice one, boss!’ Crane exclaimed, holding up an imaginary glass in salute to Paniatowski.

  For years, Paniatowski had thought of her ex-lover as a great big ginger teddy bear, and even during their meetings in his office – as chief constable and chief inspector – it was sometimes a little difficult to banish the image. But watching him on the television screen in her own office was a different matter, she thought. On television, where there was none of their personal history to cloud her vision, she could see him for what he really was – a man whose authority and integrity were undeniable.

  ‘So you’re saying that by the end of the day, you expect charges to be brought against ex-Chief Inspector Woodend?’ one of the reporters at his press conference was asking.

  ‘Am I?’ Baxter asked, looking slightly bemused. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘But surely, you said—’

  ‘I said that by the end of the day I hope to have satisfactory answers to all the questions that you – and the general public – have been asking,’ Baxter interrupted. ‘Following on from that, it is possible that charges will be laid against certain police officers, but I am not prepared to go further at the present time.’ He stepped away from the podium. ‘That’s all, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming.’

  There was no point in watching any more. Paniatowski stood up, walked over to the television, and switched it off.

  ‘Mr Baxter carried that off very well,’ Beresford said, from behind the desk.

  ‘He carried it off brilliantly,’ Paniatowski countered. ‘And – make no mistake – we owe him for it.’

  ‘But will it do the trick?’ asked Crane, pacing back and forth in what little space the office allowed for pacing. ‘Will it actually make our feller do what we want him to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘But we’ll soon find out.’

  They lingered in the car park of the Drum and Monkey much longer than they would normally have done. They took their time over lighting their cigarettes, and then feigned an animated conversation, while all the time surreptitiously looking around them.

  ‘Can you see him?’ Beresford asked anxiously.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘But he’s not stupid, and the fact that we can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there.’

  He had to be there, she told herself. He simply had to be.

  But what if he wasn’t? What if he’d missed seeing the news conference? Or had seen it, and then decided there was simply nothing more he could do?

  If either of those things had happened, then the gamble she’d made, using Charlie Woodend’s already shaky reputation as her stake, hadn’t worked, and all she’d actually succeeded in doing was to push that reputation even closer to the brink.

  ‘If he is there, he’s already had more than enough opportunity to see us,’ Beresford said.

  ‘There’s no harm in giving it a while longer,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘There bloody is,’ Beresford countered. ‘It’s starting to look suspicious that we’ve been here even this long.’

  He was right, Paniatowski was forced to admit to herself.

  ‘Well, then, let’s get this show on the road,’ she said aloud.

  They crossed the car park and entered the pub though the door which led straight into the public bar, but while Paniatowski then headed for the usual table, Beresford and Crane kept on walking towards the other exit.

  Paniatowski sat down and
looked at her watch. How long should she give it before accepting that the plan had failed, she wondered.

  Fifteen minutes?

  Half an hour?

  She would give it a whole forty-five minutes, she decided – and if it still hadn’t worked by then, it was never going to work.

  ‘There’s another phone call for you, Chief Inspector,’ the barman shouted across the room.

  She checked her watch again. Less than three minutes had passed.

  She breathed a sigh of relief. ‘He must really be feeling desperate,’ she thought.

  ‘I saw the press conference that the chief constable gave,’ Mr X said angrily. ‘He said he was going to have Chief Inspector Woodend arrested.’

  ‘I didn’t hear him say that,’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘All right, he as good as said it,’ the anonymous caller countered.

  ‘I suppose he did,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘Can’t you stop it?’

  ‘Not with the little you’ve told me.’

  ‘Not with the little I’ve told you,’ Mr X said bitterly. ‘Do you know what anguish and soul searching it’s taken for me to tell you even as much as I have done? Can you even begin to comprehend how I’ve had to wrestle with my own conscience – how I’ve woken in the middle of the night, bathed in sweat?’

  ‘It’s not my problem,’ Paniatowski said bluntly. ‘I’m not the one who’s done wrong. I’m not the one who’s looking for some way to atone for my sins. I’m just the poor bloody chief inspector who has to try and find a way to stop what you started.’

  There were seven public phone boxes within easy walking distance of the Drum and Monkey. Crane had been assigned the four which were bunched close together, while Beresford had given himself the three outlying ones.

  It was Beresford who found Mr X. It was not difficult. He would have stood out at any time – even in a crowd – and, alone in a phone box, he was no more than a sitting duck.

  Beresford knocked on the window with his knuckles.

  The caller turned around, and mouthed the words, ‘I’m on the phone.’

  That was pretty much what you’d expect someone in a phone box to say, Beresford thought, as he took out his warrant card.

  He held up the card, and knocked again.

  The caller, his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, opened the door slightly.

  ‘This is a very important call that I’m making, officer,’ he said in a voice which had a slight lilt to it.

  ‘Would you step out of the box, please, sir,’ Beresford replied, in his best official tone.

  ‘A very important call,’ the man said urgently. ‘In fact, it’s a matter of life and death.’

  ‘A matter of death, certainly,’ Beresford agreed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you can prove to me that it’s not Chief Inspector Paniatowski that you’re talking to, I’ll apologize and be on my way,’ Beresford said. ‘But if it is the chief inspector – and we both know it is – then I’d like you to step out of the box.’

  The other man nodded his head in defeat. Then he opened his hand, and simply let the receiver fall, before finally stepping out of the box.

  The phone was swinging back and forth like a pendulum. Beresford grabbed it, raised it to his mouth, and said, ‘We’ve got him, boss.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The priest had not moved so much as an inch for some considerable time. His hands, resting uncomfortably on the interview room table, were so tightly clenched together that they had turned an almost deathly white. His mouth was determinedly closed. Even his eyes – focussed on the opposite wall, as if searching for inspiration or guidance – were still.

  ‘You do know that you’re way out of your league, don’t you, Father O’Brien?’ Paniatowski asked, conversationally.

  O’Brien said nothing.

  ‘Oh, I’ll admit that you were smart enough to work out that if you kept ringing me at police headquarters, we’d probably have put a trace on the line,’ Paniatowski continued, ‘but it really wasn’t very clever, once you’d seen me go into the Drum and Monkey, to make the calls from a phone box which was quite so close to the pub.’

  ‘I have nothing to say,’ the priest told her.

  ‘Haven’t you?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Then I’ll just talk to my inspector, won’t I?’ She turned to Beresford. ‘As I was telling the good Father on the phone, just before you collared him, he has to take direct responsibility for this whole bloody mess – because he was the one who demanded that we re-open the Lilly Dawson investigation. Well, we gave in to his demands, and we did re-open it, so he should have been feeling very pleased with himself, shouldn’t he?’

  ‘He certainly should,’ Beresford agreed. ‘I know I would be, if I’d been in his place.’

  ‘And perhaps, initially, he was. But the feeling didn’t last. And do you know why that was?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Would you like me to tell you?’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble, boss.’

  ‘No trouble at all, Colin. The reason Father O’Brien stopped patting himself on the back was that soon after the investigation was launched, some new information came his way. And in the light of this new information, he realized that, rather than assisting the cause of justice – which is what he’d thought previously – he was doing the exact opposite. Ask me how he got this new information.’

  ‘How did Father O’Brien get this new information, boss?’ Beresford asked obediently.

  ‘It was given to him in the confessional. And that was the source of his problem, you see, because he wanted to tell us what he’d learned, in order to prevent an injustice, but he couldn’t do that because of the confessional seal. So what he did do was to try and set up a situation in which we’d find out the information for ourselves. Are you following all this?’

  ‘Not really,’ Beresford lied.

  ‘Well, for example, he couldn’t say anything as specific as “Joe Bloggs killed Lilly Dawson” because that would be breaking the seal. So what he had to do instead was to say, “Find out who killed Mottershead, and that will lead you to who killed Lilly.” In that way, you see, he was using the information he’d been given in the confessional without actually having to reveal it. But even so, I’m not sure he was acting strictly within his vows.’

  ‘And neither am I,’ the priest moaned. ‘If you knew what torment I have been in . . .’

  ‘Yes, well, I might have some sympathy for you if I hadn’t already used most of what I had available on a good man called Charlie Woodend, whose whole life is likely to be destroyed by what you did,’ Paniatowski said dismissively. ‘There’s one thing I still don’t understand, though, Father – one of your fussy little, conscience-stricken hints that I still haven’t been able to completely unravel. And do you know what it is?’

  ‘No,’ the priest said, in a dull flat voice.

  ‘You said we should talk to Michael Eccles. But however hard I think about it, I still can’t see what he could possibly contribute to the investigation.’

  ‘I want to tell you why it’s important,’ O’Brien said. ‘Believe me, Chief Inspector, I desperately want to tell you. But I can’t.’

  ‘Well, that’s not much use then, is it?’ Paniatowski said, ‘especially since we’ve no idea where Michael Eccles is.’ She paused. ‘Still, that doesn’t really matter, because your main value to us, Father, is not actually what information you have – it’s that you have it at all.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ the priest said.

  ‘I told you that you were out of your depth,’ Paniatowski countered. She turned to Beresford again. ‘Explain it to him, Colin,’ she said wearily.

  ‘What really matters is where you got the information from,’ Beresford said. ‘In other words, when you learned all this in the confessional, just who was it who was confessing?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ O’Brien said.

  �
�You don’t need to,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘We already know it was Elizabeth Eccles.’

  ‘In all the time he was here – and he served most of his sentence in Preston Prison – Fred Howerd only ever had one visitor,’ the assistant governor said.

  ‘And that would be his daughter?’ Crane guessed.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘How often did she come to see him?’

  The assistant governor frowned slightly. ‘Sorry, I must not have been expressing myself very well. What I meant, when I said he only had one visitor, was that he was only visited once – and that was by his daughter, just before he was released.’

  ‘I’d like to talk to any warders who came into close contact with Mrs Eccles during the visit,’ Crane said.

  ‘None of them did,’ the assistant governor replied. ‘I handled the whole thing myself.’

  ‘Oh!’ Crane said, surprised. ‘Was that because he was something of celebrity prisoner?’

  The assistant governor laughed. ‘Is that how you think of him, back in Whitebridge? Well, I suppose he might have been a bit of a celebrity when he was first admitted, but after nearly a quarter of a century, you know, he was merely looked on as just another of the old lags.’

  ‘Fame is such a fleeting thing,’ Crane said, almost wistfully.

  The assistant governor laughed again. ‘So it is,’ he agreed. ‘In actual fact, the reason I was so closely involved with Mrs Eccles’s visit is that it was my job to arrange for Fred Howerd’s transfer from the prison to some other accommodation – either a hospital or a relative’s home.’

  ‘How much do remember about the visit?’ Crane asked.

  ‘Probably more than you’d imagine I would,’ the assistant governor said. ‘It was a rather unusual visit, you see.’

  ‘Was it? And what made it unusual?’

  ‘Mrs Eccles did.’

  In his time in the prison service, the assistant governor has observed all manner of visitors. Some have been so distraught at seeing their loved ones behind bars that they have almost had to be carried from the visiting room. Some have come wrapped in their own cloak of martyrdom, some clad in the armour of resentment. But he has never met one like Mrs Eccles before. She does not ask him how her father is, merely where he is. And right from the start, she is all business – as cold and calculating as a butcher negotiating the price of a side of beef.