‘Of course. You should have seen enough of Perry Mason on the telly to know that’s what always happens.’
Paniatowski laughed. ‘But on the off-chance that it doesn’t, maybe I should try a slightly different approach,’ she suggested.
‘Perhaps that would be wise,’ Woodend concurred. ‘You might be best to build on the pally relationship you already seem to have established with her. You could try givin’ her the impression that you think the whole investigation’s a waste of time, for example. That should relax her, an’ with her guard down, she just might say somethin’ very interestin’.’
‘It’s a thought,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘Well, if there’s nothing more, sir, I think I’ll—’
‘Hang on just a minute,’ Woodend said.
‘Yes?’
‘Was there any particular reason why you didn’t check in with me before you left for Dunethorpe this mornin’?’
There was a significant pause on the other end of the line, then Paniatowski said, ‘As a matter of fact, sir, the reason I didn’t come to see you was because I wasn’t actually in Whitebridge at all this morning.’
‘No?’
‘No. I spent the night here in Dunethorpe.’
She was suddenly sounding unnaturally casual, Woodend thought – and wondered why that should be.
‘Booked yourself into a hotel, did you?’ he asked. ‘Well, given the way the minds of our bean-counters work, I hope you settled for a modest bed-and-breakfast, rather than drownin’ yourself in three-star luxury.’
The pause was even longer this time.
‘I didn’t actually check into a hotel at all,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘DCI Baxter gave me a mountain of material to look at, and I spent the night at the station, working my way through it.’
Now that just didn’t ring true, Woodend told himself.
‘So you had no sleep at all?’ he asked.
‘I … er … managed to grab a couple of hours at my desk.’
‘Well, don’t overdo it, Monika,’ Woodend advised. ‘I need my bagman to keep her mind razor-sharp. You’re no bloody good to me when you’re completely knackered.’
‘I won’t work straight through the night again,’ Paniatowski promised. ‘In fact, I was planning to come back to Whitebridge early enough to make sure I get a good night’s sleep in my own bed.’
‘Very wise.’
‘So shall I see you in the Drum and Monkey, as usual? Say at about nine o’clock?’
‘Grand,’ Woodend said. ‘It’ll give you a chance to meet the new member of the team.’
‘New member of the team? What new member of the team?’ Paniatowski asked sharply.
Oh dear, oh dear, Woodend thought, the children can get jealous of one another, can’t they?
‘He’s only with us temporarily,’ he said aloud.
‘Who is?’
‘Constable Colin Beresford. You probably remember him from the Pamela Rainsford case, don’t you?’
‘I thought he was Uniformed Branch,’ Paniatowski replied, saying the words not as if they were a description of his position in the police hierarchy but more as a slur on Beresford’s general character.
‘Aye, he is normally one of the pointed helmet brigade,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But dress him up in a decent suit, an’ you could almost pass him off as a normal person.’
‘I see,’ Paniatowski said, sounding far from convinced.
‘You were new to the CID yourself once,’ Woodend reminded her. ‘I hope you remember that, an’ try not to give the lad too much of a hard time.’
‘I’ll be like a mother to him,’ Paniatowski promised.
‘I don’t want you goin’ that far,’ Woodend cautioned.
‘And as long as he can just avoid stepping on my feet with his big thick boots, he probably won’t be too much of a liability to the investigation,’ Paniatowski concluded.
‘Very gracious of you to look at it that way,’ Woodend said dryly. ‘Nine o’clock tonight, then?’
‘Nine o’clock,’ Paniatowski agreed.
Twenty-Two
Constable Colin Beresford, dressed in the suit his mum had helped him to choose, was already relishing his first interview for the CID.
True, the person he was questioning didn’t exactly look like a master criminal. Nor was there much of a chance she actually was one, since only very rarely were master criminals middle-aged women with frizzy orange perms and a slight weight problem.
The setting, too, lacked something of the seedy glamour of a police interview room. The bright lighting which surrounded him came not from an interrogator’s lamp, but from the neon strip lighting mounted over the kitchen range in the Dirty Duck restaurant.
Still, he told himself, everybody had to start somewhere, and he was starting here.
‘Am I right in thinking that of all the staff who were working at the Dirty Duck when Judith Maitland was here, you’re the only one remaining, Mrs Newton?’ the constable asked.
‘Yes,’ the woman agreed. ‘But you mustn’t refer to this place as the Dirty Duck when Mr Thompson’s around,’ she cautioned.
‘Why?’
‘He hits the roof. And that’s not a pretty sight, I can assure you, because he’s got a terrible temper when he’s roused. So, all in all, it’d be safer to make sure you call it the White Swan.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Beresford said. ‘So, what can you tell me about Judith?’
Mrs Newton shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to say, really. She was a nice enough girl.’
‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ asked Beresford, searching for nuances he could get his teeth into, as any good interrogator should.
‘Well, I suppose I mean that she was a good worker, who never tried to get out of doing her fair share. An’ that she was always very pleasant to everybody in the kitchen.’
‘I see,’ Beresford said.
‘She didn’t seem as if she had a mean bone in her body,’ Mrs Newton ploughed on, in an attempt to find something useful to say. ‘Which is why you could have literally knocked me over with a feather when I heard she’d been arrested for murder.’
‘Interesting,’ Beresford said seriously.
But it wasn’t, really, he was forced to admit to himself.
Cases weren’t solved by the officers who were conducting them learning that someone was ‘a nice girl’ or ‘always pleasant to everybody’. There was plainly more to this CID work than first met the eye. He wondered how Inspector Rutter or Sergeant Paniatowski would have handled this particular interrogation.
‘Did you know the man who Judith was going out with while she was working here?’ he pressed on. ‘The one who jilted her?’
‘I saw him a few times, when he came to pick her up. I can’t say I ever really took to him.’
This wasn’t going at all well, Beresford thought. ‘Did he seem to have a violent nature?’ he asked.
‘Violent nature. Well, he didn’t smash up the kitchen while he was here, if that’s what you mean.’
‘No, I—’
‘An’ Judith never came into work battered and bruised, as a couple of the girls who’ve worked here have. So I suppose I’d have to say no, he really didn’t strike me as violent.’
Hopeless, Beresford told himself. Absolutely hopeless.
‘Mind you, there are other ways you can hurt a girl than knockin’ her about,’ Mrs Newton said. ‘She was in a terrible state after he left her.’
‘Was she?’
‘I should say so. Cryin’! Pullin’ her hair! The whole thing was makin’ her quite ill. She even threw up a couple of times. An’ you can’t have that kind of thing goin’ on in a kitchen, now can you? Health inspectors tend to take a very dim view of vomit in a food-preparation area.’
‘I suppose they must,’ Beresford agreed. ‘Judith went away from Whitebridge for a while, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you know why that was?’
Though there was no
body else in the kitchen, Mrs Newton still checked over her shoulder to make sure they were not being overheard, and only when satisfied they were truly alone did she mouth the words, ‘Nervous breakdown!’
‘But she got over it, didn’t she? She was completely cured when she came back?’
Mrs Newton shrugged again. ‘Couldn’t really say. It’d take a doctor to know for sure.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I suppose she must have been cured,’ she conceded, ‘or they would never have let her out of the loony bin at all, now would they?’
‘I wasn’t asking you for a medical opinion,’ Beresford said. ‘What I meant was, looking at her as just one person seeing another, you must have noticed some differences in her. Am I right?’
‘Not really.’
‘She can’t have been exactly the same when she came back as she was when she went away,’ Beresford said, almost desperately.
‘Probably not, but I can’t say that I picked up on it myself. I didn’t see much of her, to tell you the truth.’
‘But surely, once you started working together again—’
‘Are you sure you’re a detective?’ Mrs Newton interrupted.
‘Well, yes,’ Beresford said, wishing he really did sound like one.
‘Then let me give you a tip. You should get your facts right before you start asking other people questions.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Judith didn’t come back to work at the Dirty Du— … at the White Swan … at all.’
‘No?’
‘No! She just popped in a couple of times to have a talk with Mr Thompson. And you know what they were talking about, don’t you?’
‘Well, yes,’ Beresford lied.
‘So you don’t need me to—’
‘But I’d much rather you told me all about it in your own words.’
Mrs Newton glanced round the kitchen again, just as she had done before she’d told Beresford about Judith Maitland’s nervous breakdown.
‘She was starting up her own business, an’ she needed money for that,’ the woman said, in a hushed, conspiratorial voice. ‘They do say – an’ I don’t know whether or not there’s any truth in it – they do say that Mr Thompson gave her five thousand pounds out of his own pocket.’
Constable Beresford whistled, softly. ‘That’s a lot of money for anybody to part with.’
‘It would be for the likes of you or me, but not for Mr Thompson,’ Mrs Newton said. ‘This place is a real gold mine, you know.’
‘Well, it certainly always looks busy enough when I walk past it,’ Beresford admitted.
‘Busy? I’ll say it’s busy. We can do sixty or seventy covers – easy – on a good night.’
‘Is that a lot?’
‘It certainly is. Most restaurants would be over the moon if they had that kind of business. And then there’s the market days. You can’t move in this restaurant on market days for all the people who want feedin’. Besides,’ Mrs Newton continued, dropping her voice even lower, ‘there’s other considerations to be taken into account, aren’t there?’
‘Are there?’
‘There are indeed. Considerations which go well beyond bits of paper with the Queen’s face on them.’
‘What … er … kind of considerations?’ Beresford wondered.
‘Mr Thompson – an’ this I do know for a fact, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes – Mr Thompson has been in love with Judith from the first day she started workin’ here.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘I do say. An’ when the heart’s already surrendered, the head has no say in what happens to the brass, does it?’
Twenty-Three
‘You’re back again, are you?’ Mrs Burroughs asked, in a pleasant but slightly puzzled way, when she opened her front door to find Monika Paniatowski standing on her doorstep.
‘Yes,’ Paniatowski replied, with an air of mock-resignation. ‘I am indeed back again.’
‘Well, all I can say is that, however much you might criticize her, your mum must be a saint,’ Mrs Burroughs told her.
‘Sorry?’ Paniatowski said.
‘To spend so much of her free time babysitting your kids,’ Mrs Burroughs explained.
‘Oh that!’ Paniatowski said, making a mental note that the next time she told Mrs Burroughs a lie, she’d remember which lie she’d told. ‘Yes, she really is very good about looking after them.’
Mrs Burroughs glanced up and down the street, as Paniatowski had noticed people often do when they’re unsure about what to say next.
‘So what can I do for you this time, Sergeant Paniatowski?’ the widow asked, after a few seconds had passed.
‘It’s Monika,’ Paniatowski reminded her. ‘And if you don’t mind, Helen, I’d like to ask you a few more questions. Just to finally wrap things up.’
‘I think I do mind,’ Mrs Burroughs replied. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t really see the need of it.’
‘And to be honest, neither do I,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘But the boss wants it done, and whatever I think about him personally, he is still the boss. Besides, I could use the overtime. So would you mind if I came in?’
Mrs Burroughs looked dubious. ‘Well …’ she began.
‘Forget it,’ Paniatowski said. She glanced at her watch. ‘The pubs are open, aren’t they? Well, then, I’ll just go and sit in the nearest boozer for an hour or so, then tell Octopus-Man that I’ve spent the time talking to you. He’ll never know the difference.’
‘There’s no point in drinking alone, when you can do it in company,’ Mrs Burroughs said, softening. ‘Come in. I’ve got—’
‘A bottle of white wine nicely chilling in the refrigerator?’ Paniatowski guessed.
And both women laughed.
The little girl, Emma, was not in evidence in the living room.
‘She’s upstairs, taking her nap,’ Mrs Burroughs explained. ‘Thank God kids seem to need so much sleep.’
Emma’s older brother, Timothy, was playing with his train set in the corner of the room, and refused to leave even when his mother offered him the customary bribe.
‘You’ll have to be very quiet, then,’ Helen Burroughs said, giving in. ‘As quiet as a mouse.’
‘Mouses aren’t quiet,’ Timothy countered. ‘They squeak. And you can hear them running behind the wall.’
His mother sighed. ‘Quieter than a mouse then. Otherwise, you go upstairs whether you want to or not.’
‘I’ll be quiet,’ Timothy promised. ‘I don’t want to listen, anyway. Grown-ups’ talk is boring.’
His mother raised an exasperated eyebrow, and Paniatowski – as was obviously expected of her – nodded sympathetically.
Mrs Burroughs filled two wine glasses right up to the brim. ‘Cheers!’ she said.
‘Cheers!’ Paniatowski echoed. ‘What made you decide to keep on the business after your husband’s …’ She glanced at Timothy, still sitting in the corner, ‘… after your husband went away for a while?’
Mrs Burroughs shrugged. ‘My father always used to tell me that having money’s no use unless that money is working for you. And he was spot on about that. The builders’ merchant’s is a good business as long as it’s in the right hands – and Al Sanders’ hands are right.’
‘Al Sanders?’ Paniatowski repeated, conjuring up a mental picture of the creepy Sanders easily enough, but managing to sound as if she’d never heard the name before.
‘He’s the manager of the firm now. Very competent. And not a bad-looking chap, either.’
Paniatowski giggled girlishly. ‘To hear you talk, you’d think there was something going on between the two of you,’ she said. ‘Is there?’
Mrs Burroughs giggled, too. ‘You mind your own business,’ she said, wagging her finger at Paniatowski.
‘Have you never thought of moving away from this area, Helen?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Why should I have?’
‘Well, to get right away from all the bad memories you must associat
e with the place.’
‘I suppose I could do that,’ Mrs Burroughs admitted. ‘But I still like Dunethorpe, and, on the whole, I’d rather stay and block out all those bad old memories with good new ones.’
‘Good new ones like Al Sanders?’ Paniatowski asked.
Helen Burroughs giggled again. ‘That’d be telling!’
The phone in the hallway rang.
‘Damn!’ Mrs Burroughs said.
She swayed slightly as she stood up. She was not yet drunk, strictly speaking, but she was certainly working her way steadily towards it.
Mrs Burroughs had left the door open, and Paniatowski had no difficulty at all in hearing her side of the telephone conversation.
‘They’ve done what?’ Mrs Burroughs demanded. ‘But that’s ridiculous. Can’t they …? No, I bet they bloody won’t.’
She slammed the phone down and stamped furiously back into the living room.
‘Is something the matter?’ Paniatowski asked, solicitously.
‘You could say that. One of the bloody suppliers has just turned up at the yard with a lorry load of bathroom suites.’
‘And is there something wrong with them?’
‘Nothing at all. Al thinks they’re just what we wanted. The problem is that some of the paperwork’s not gone through yet, and the driver says I’ll have to sign for them personally. He also says he’s in a big hurry. Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it! He’ll just have to wait – because I can’t get there in less than an hour, what with having to get the kids ready and everything.’
‘How long would it take you without the children?’ Paniatowski asked casually.
‘Not long at all. Ten minutes to get there, five minutes to sign the papers and another ten minutes to get back. But that’s still nearly half an hour I’d be out of the house, and I can’t possibly leave the kids on their own for all that time.’
‘Don’t do it, Monika!’ a voice in Paniatowski’s skull urged her. ‘Don’t even think of doing it!’
‘I could easily look after them for half an hour, if you’d like,’ she heard herself say.
‘You’re sure?’ Mrs Burroughs asked.
‘No trouble at all. I’ll check on Emma every five minutes or so, and if Timothy gets bored, I’ll play a game with him.’
Stone Killer Page 16
