Death of a Cave Dweller

by Sally Spencer

  Woodend allowed a light smile to play on his lips. “Your husband must have a good four or five inches on your brother,” he said.

  Lucy Johnson smiled back. “He does,” she agreed. “But Martin’s always been a tough little sod.”

  So Rick Johnson had allowed himself to be locked up in gaol, rather than admit he’d been given a beating by someone who was smaller than he was. It was crazy, Woodend thought, but given what he’d learned about Rick Johnson’s character during the course of the investigation, he couldn’t honestly say that it surprised him.

  “Thank you for all your help, Mrs Johnson,” he said. “You can go back home now.”

  “Will you be lettin’ Rick out of jail?” the girl asked.

  “Yes,” Woodend said. “I’m sorry, but given what you’ve just told me, I’m rather afraid that we’ll have to.”

  Lucy smiled again. “There’s no need to be sorry,” she said. “Violence is one thing that Rick does understand, an’ after the pastin’ that our Martin gave him, he won’t dare lay a hand on me from now on.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  The girl’s smile acquired a sad tinge. “Oh yes, I’m sure. I know exactly what my future’s goin’ to be like. Would you like to hear about it?”

  “If you want to tell me.”

  “I’ll get pregnant again, an’ this time I know I’ll manage to keep the baby. Rick’ll work hard to put food on the table, an’ we’ll end up happy enough – in our own way.”

  But nowhere near as happy as if you’d run away with Eddie Barnes, Woodend thought, feeling another surge of the anger which he knew was so unprofessional but which he could do nothing about.

  “Good luck, Mrs Johnson,” he said, realising, as he spoke, that he had never meant anything more sincerely in his entire life.

  “Thanks,” Lucy said, “but I don’t think I’ll need it now.”

  Woodend waited until the girl had begun climbing the stairs, then turned his attention back on Mrs Pollard.

  “There was a time when I thought I understood exactly how you fitted into all this, but now I’m not so sure,” he confessed. “Would you care to enlighten me?”

  “I don’t think that I want to talk about it right now,” Alice Pollard said, looking meaningfully at Rutter.

  Woodend glanced down at his watch. “This shouldn’t take very much longer,” he said. “Do me a favour, Bob. Nip across to the Grapes an’ get a couple of pints in so that mine’ll be waitin’ for me when I get there.”

  Rutter nodded to show he understood, and followed Lucy Johnson up the stairs.

  “Rick Johnson’s not your lover, is he?” Woodend asked the club owner, as he heard the door bang shut at the top of the stairs.

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “So what the bloody hell is he?”

  “When I wasn’t much older than Lucy is now, I was already on the game,” Alice Pollard said, matter-of-factly.

  “I know,” Woodend replied.

  “Who told you?”

  “I’ve seen all the details on your sheet down at the station – or, at least, my sergeant has.”

  Alice Pollard nodded sadly. “Of course you have. You can never tear up your past, can you? However much you might try – an’ however much you want to?”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I was you,” Woodend told her. “My sergeant’s a bit on the careless side, you see, an’ we might find, when we get back to London, that he’s still got your charge sheet tucked in his pocket. Course, what with the shockin’ price of postage these days, he won’t want to send it back to Liverpool, so he’ll probably just throw it away.”

  Mrs Pollard smiled gratefully. “You’re a nice man,” she said.

  “There’s a lot of folk who’d disagree with you,” Woodend told her. “Anyroad, carry on with your story.”

  “I knew nothing about nothing in them days,” Alice Pollard said, “and I hadn’t been walking the streets for more than a few months when I found out I was goin’ to have a baby. I didn’t know where to turn. There were people who said they could get it fixed for me, but when I asked them what it involved they started talking about drinking a bottle of gin while you were sitting in a hot bath. There were even a few who said it was amazing what you could do with a knitting needle.” She shivered involuntarily. “Well, I didn’t fancy doing either of them things, so I went ahead and had the baby. But I knew I couldn’t keep him, and the minute he was born, I offered him up for adoption. Then, over twenty years later – though I can’t say in all honesty I deserved it – that kid looked me up.”

  “Rick Johnson.”

  “Yes, my tiny, helpless baby was adopted by a family called Johnson,” Alice Pollard agreed. “And he still goes to see them regularly. But as far as he’s concerned, I’m his mother. And though he’s got his faults – God knows he has – I love him with all my heart.”

  The sound of heavy footfalls came from the stairs. Mrs Pollard looked questioningly at the chief inspector.

  “Size-nine police-issue boots, at a guess,” Woodend said. “Well, whatever else the Liverpool Police might say about me – an’ I imagine they say quite a lot – they can’t complain that I’m not keepin’ them busy.”

  A uniformed constable appeared at the foot of the stairs. He strode across to the snack bar, came to a halt, and saluted.

  “Inspector Hopgood sends his compliments, sir,” he said. “The inspector thought you might like to know that about an hour ago I arrested Steven Henry Walker.”

  “On what charge?”

  The constable took out his notebook, licked the end of his finger and turned a couple of pages.

  “Walker was arrested on suspicion of burglary as he was leavin’ the home of a Mr an’ Mrs Walter Finn,” he said, as if he were in the witness stand being cross-examined by a hostile barrister.

  “Would they be Mike Finn’s parents?” Woodend asked.

  “As to that, sir, I have no details about the rest of the family, so I couldn’t possibly comment.”

  But though coincidences did happen in life, this was highly unlikely to have been one of them, Woodend thought. So what, in heaven’s name, would have motivated Steve Walker to break into Mike Finn’s home?

  And then it came to him in a sudden flash of inspiration! Walker wanted to find Eddie Barnes’s killer. Walker suspected that the killer was Mike Finn. Seeing it from that angle it was obvious what he’d been looking for!

  “Did he actually steal anythin’ from the house?” the chief inspector asked the constable.

  “Yes, sir,” the other man replied. “It wasn’t actually worth very much, but stealin’ is stealin’. What he’d taken was—”

  Woodend held up his hand to silence the constable. “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” he said. “What he had under his arm when you caught him was a stack of magazines.”

  “That’s . . . that’s right, sir,” the constable said, looking very much as he might have done if he’d been standing on a stage and a magician had pulled an egg out of his ear.

  “Do you know somethin’, Constable?” Woodend said. “There’s more than a fair chance that by this time tomorrow I’ll be on a train speedin’ back to the bosom of my family.”

  Inspector Hopgood sat behind his desk, staring at the man in the hairy sports jacket who was sitting opposite him. He did not look at all pleased to see Woodend back in the station so soon after the chief inspector’s last visit.

  “I only let you know about Steve Walker’s arrest out of professional courtesy, sir,” he said across his desk.

  Professional courtesy? Woodend thought. Professional bollocks was more like it! The bastard was just playing it very carefully and making sure that he’d covered his own back.

  “But I never for a moment imagined that you’d have any real interest in the arrest,” the inspector continued. “After all, it was just a common-or-garden burglary which can’t possibly have anything to do with your case.”

  Woodend sighed, and
wondered whether any of these provincial police forces would ever assign him a man he could work with as well as he worked with Bob Rutter.

  “What magazines did Walker steal?” he asked.

  Hopgood consulted the file which was lying on his desk.

  “Let me see now,” he said. “There was a Woman’s Weekly, a Ladies’ Home Journal, a copy of John Bull . . .”

  “It’s hardly the sort of readin’ material you’d think would interest a teenage rock’n’roll singer, is it now?” Woodend asked.

  Hopgood laughed patronisingly. “We’re assuming for the purposes of our investigation that the magazines in question were the property of Mr an’ Mrs Finn, and not of their son,” he said.

  “Yes, I should imagine the Ladies’ Home Journal would be very popular with workin’-class folk livin’ in a terraced house,” Woodend said. “Tell me, Inspector, have you asked yourself if it was just a coincidence that Steve Walker should choose to break into the house of a lad he knew well?”

  “Not really, but—”

  “An’ have you stopped for a second to wonder why he should risk goin’ to prison just to steal a few magazines?”

  “Kids today! Who knows what makes them tick?” Hopgood said, as if he’d provided a watertight and all-encompassing answer.

  “There was a stage in this investigation when I might well have agreed with you on that point,” Woodend told him. “For a couple of days, I couldn’t understand them either. But do you know what? They might dress differently, they might talk differently an’ they might have more money to spend than we did when we were young, but once you get under the surface they’re just the same as we are. Steve Walker’s taught me that.”

  “He has?” Hopgood asked, as if it were the most outrageous statement he’d ever heard.

  “Aye,” Woodend said. “An’ he did it by actin’ just like I would have done at his age.”

  “You’d have committed a criminal act! You’d have forced your way into someone else’s house!”

  “Aye, maybe I would have done – if that’s what it took,” Woodend said. “But what I really mean is that if the police didn’t seem to be gettin’ anywhere with their inquiries, I’d have gone out lookin’ for justice myself.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not following you, sir,” Hopgood confessed.

  “No, I didn’t think you would,” the chief inspector said. “Where are these magazines that Steve Walker stole?”

  “They’ve all been placed in the evidence cupboard, just like they’re supposed to be.”

  Woodend lit up a Capstan Full Strength. “Good. Well, send somebody to fetch them for me, will you?”

  The idea seemed to deeply shock Inspector Hopgood. “But they’ve already been classified and filed.”

  Woodend sighed again. “Don’t make me go above your head, lad,” he said. “That won’t make either of us look particularly good – an’ you know that as well as I do.”

  Hopgood hesitated for a second, then picked up the phone and barked an order into it. For perhaps two minutes the men sat opposite each other in uncomfortable silence, then a female clerk entered the room with the magazines in a plastic wallet.

  Woodend opened the wallet, and took the magazines out. “Be careful of the prints, sir!” Hopgood warned.

  “Bugger the prints!” Woodend told him cheerfully. “They’ll be so smudged they’ll be no good as evidence anyway.” He flipped through the copy of Woman’s Weekly. “There it is,” he cried triumphantly. “Or rather, to be more accurate, there it isn’t.”

  “I’m afraid that I don’t know what you’re talking about, sir,” Inspector Hopgood said.

  “Well, that’s nothin’ new, is it?” Woodend countered. He placed the magazine back on the desk. “I know there’s not a great deal of love lost between you an’ me, Inspector Hopgood, but in view of what he’s done to assist my inquiries, I’d consider it a personal favour if you let Steve Walker go.”

  “But he’s already been charged!”

  Woodend shrugged. “Lose the paperwork – it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened.”

  “An’ there’s the Finn family to consider. They’ll want to see the man who broke into their house brought to justice.”

  “I’ll send my sergeant to sort them out,” Woodend said. “He’s such a smooth young bugger he could talk an Eskimo into buyin’ a fridge. Besides, the Finns will have a lot more to worry about than a busted back door.”

  “You’ve lost me again,” Hopgood confessed.

  “If I was them, I’d be more concerned about the fact that my son had been arrested on suspicion of murder,” Woodend told him.

  Seventeen

  They were sitting the same cream and brown interview room in which Woodend had talked to Rick Johnson only a few hours earlier, but the whole atmosphere was very different this time. Johnson had been aggressive and defiant. Mike Finn, on the other hand, was cowed, and even from across the table it was possible to catch the stink of his fear.

  “The sooner you’ve got all the dirty water off your chest, the sooner you’re goin’ to start feelin’ better,” Woodend told Finn. “It might not seem like that from where you’re sittin’, but believe me, it’s perfectly true. I’ve seen it a hundred times. So why don’t you just come clean now, lad?”

  Finn twisted nervously in his seat. The chair creaked in protest. “Can I go to the toilet?” he asked.

  “Of course you can, lad,” Woodend said benignly. “Just as soon as we’ve got a statement from you.”

  “But I really need to go now.”

  “No, you don’t,” the chief inspector assured him. “It’s just your nerves that make you think you do. An’ like I was just tellin’, you’ll feel much better once you’ve confessed.”

  “But I’ve got nothin’ to confess to,” Mike Finn protested. “Honestly I haven’t.”

  “Do you think I’m totally thick, lad?” Woodend asked. “Do you think I’d pull you in if I couldn’t make it stick?”

  Mike Finn bowed his head. “I don’t know,” he muttered into his chest. “I don’t know anythin’ anymore.”

  “Well, let’s look at the evidence. For a start, Inspector Hopgood’s got the names of half a dozen witnesses who saw a lad with long blond hair hangin’ around near Jack Towers’ house the night somebody posted that threatenin’ letter through his box,” Woodend lied.

  “It wasn’t me.”

  “We’ll soon see about that, won’t we? There’ll be a line-up, as you must realise, an’ I don’t reckon that the witnesses will have much trouble pickin’ you out.” He paused for effect. “An’ even if they did, we don’t really need them because there’s all the forensic evidence.”

  “What forensic evidence?”

  “It’s all so scientific an’ complicated that I don’t understand half of what the boffins can do myself,” Woodend admitted. “But I do know that you can’t handle a dead rat – especially when you go to all the trouble of puttin’ a string noose around its neck – without leavin’ some traces of yourself behind. An’ then there’s your poisonous little billet doux to Jack Towers. Do you imagine, even for a second, that you can put together an anonymous letter without some of the sweat from your fingers stickin’ to it?”

  “But I was wearin’ . . .” Finn began, then dried up as he suddenly realised his blunder.

  “But you were wearin’ gloves,” Woodend supplied. “Yes, I thought that you might have been. So we won’t get any sweat samples. But who needs them, when we’ve got the magazines?”

  “You can’t use them,” Mike Finn said. “Not unless you had a search warrant to go into my house.”

  “Proper little barrack-room lawyer, aren’t you?” Woodend said unconcernedly. “An’ you’d be quite right if we had gone into your house too look for them. But we didn’t. Steve Walker removed them, we merely took them off him when he was arrested.”

  The chief inspector opened the Woman’s Weekly. “Bet you got some funny looks from your newsage
nt when you bought this lot. Or perhaps you didn’t buy them from your own newsagent. Maybe you were just smart enough to go somewhere else to buy them. Doesn’t really matter. We’ll find whichever newsagent you did use, an’ I’ve no doubt he’ll remember the transaction well enough.”

  Mike Finn licked his dry lips. “I didn’t buy no magazines,” he said, but with a total lack of conviction which showed that he’d all but given up trying to defend himself.

  Ignoring the comment completely, Woodend continued to flick through the Woman’s Weekly.

  “Here we are,” he said. “Under fashion. The headline reads, ‘ . . . season’s frocks’. Funny that, isn’t it?”

  Mike Finn said nothing.

  “Of course, what it should say is ‘Next season’s frocks’,” Woodend continued. “Only the ‘next’ has been cut out, because you needed it for the sentence, ‘Which one will die next?’ As bobbies are always supposed to say at this point: Give it up, lad. I’ve got you bang to rights.”

  “We really wanted the dinnertime spot at the Cellar Club,” Finn said. “It was our big chance to get noticed.”

  “So in order to drive the Seagulls out of Liverpool, you rang up a couple of clubs to cancel their bookin’s, you slashed the tyres on their van an’ you sent them the dead rat with a noose around its neck? Isn’t that right?”

  Mike Finn nodded his head despairingly. “I thought it would be all over when Eddie Barnes died,” he said. “An’ then the bloody Seagulls went an’ got themselves a new guitarist. He wasn’t nearly as good as Eddie, but that didn’t matter. They’d still have got their dinnertime spot at the Cellar Club back. Mrs Pollard told me as much. So I posted that letter through Jack Towers’ box in the hope they’d pack up their things an’ move to London.”

  “We’re gettin’ a bit ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?” Woodend suggested. “Let’s go back to the night Eddie died. You’d tried everythin’ you could to get rid of the Seagulls, but nothin’ had worked. You were feelin’ pretty desperate. Then there was a disturbance after the Cellar Club had closed down for the evenin’ – it was a fight, wasn’t it . . .?”