Dying Fall

by Sally Spencer

  Demand what you like, Woodend thought. It won’t influence the way I investigate the case one way or the other.

  But aloud, all he said was, ‘I’ll do what I can, sir.’

  He was almost at the door when Marlowe said harshly, ‘One day, you will dig yourself so deeply into a hole that you’ll not be able to get out again, you know. And when that happens, I’ll be right at the side of that hole, filling it in.’

  Woodend turned and smiled at him. ‘We all have our little hopes an’ dreams, sir,’ he said. ‘It’s what keeps us goin’.’

  Two

  Pogo, sitting in the bedroom of the decayed terraced house where he usually stayed when he was passing through Whitebridge, had been watching the woman ever since she had parked her car – a flashy red MGA – at the corner of the street.

  He was intrigued by the fact that she hadn’t locked her vehicle, which argued either confidence or stupidity, and for the moment he had not decided which of the two it was.

  The woman had headed straight for the house closest to her car. The place was empty and boarded up, but then all the houses in this street, being ex-mill-workers’ cottages, were empty and boarded up. She had first tried the front door, then, when it wouldn’t open, had walked over to the window and tested the boarding to see if it was really as fixed as it appeared to be. Satisfied it was, she had moved along to the next house, and repeated the procedure. Within a few minutes, she had checked half the other side of the street, in the same slow, methodical way.

  Pogo didn’t ask himself why she was doing it. He had long ago stopped asking himself why people in the ‘normal’ world did things. They had their rules, and he had his, and the two rarely crossed.

  But though he did not wonder about her motives, he did find himself wondering about her.

  She was somewhere around twenty-nine or thirty, he guessed. She was wearing a red sweater which hugged her rounded breasts and a black-and-white check skirt which was short enough to reveal a pair of very good legs. Her nose was a little larger than those normally issued locally, but it was still an attractive one, and it reminded him of a Ukrainian girl he had known in Berlin, shortly after the War. The woman’s hair was blonde and wavy, and looked like it might feel silky to the touch. Pogo did not ‘fancy’ her – it was years since he had felt emotional desire for a woman, and doubted that, even if he ever did again, his equipment would be up to the job – but looking at her still left him with a slight tinge of regret that he had fallen through a crack in society’s floor and now floated in the sewer of its – and his own – disgust.

  As the woman moved further up the street, she went out of his range of vision, and with nothing left to watch, he decided he might as well close his eyes for a moment.

  He was awoken from his unintended sleep by a crashing sound. He was not instantly alert, as he would have been in the old days, but within a few seconds he was ready for whatever piece of shit fate had decided to throw at him now, and as he rose – a little creakily – to his feet, he was already reaching into his pocket for his knife.

  There was the sound of footsteps downstairs – the clicking of a woman’s high heels – and then the sound got closer and he realized that she was climbing the stairs. He slipped the knife back in his pocket – even in the state he was in, he didn’t need a weapon to handle a woman! – and patiently awaited her inevitable arrival.

  He did not have to wait long. Just a few seconds passed before she pushed open the door and saw him. He was expecting her to be scared – the sight that he caught of himself, on the rare occasions he glanced at his reflection in a shop window, was enough to scare any woman – but if she felt any fear, she didn’t show it. Instead, she reached into her pocket, produced a small leather-bound document, and held it out for him to see.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Monika Paniatowski,’ she announced.

  At the sound of a rank, Pogo found himself stiffening. ‘What can I do for you, Sergeant?’ he asked.

  ‘If you don’t mind, sir, we’d like you to come down to police headquarters for a while,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘What is it I’m supposed to have done?’ Pogo demanded.

  ‘Nothing at all, sir. We’d just like you to help us with our inquiries.’

  ‘And what could I possibly know that might be of any use to you?’

  ‘You may not have heard about it yet, but a tramp was murdered last night,’ Paniatowski explained.

  ‘Didn’t know the man,’ Pogo shot back at her.

  ‘How can you be so sure of that, before I’ve given you any of the details?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘Don’t know any tramps,’ Pogo told her. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘Well, because you’re a …’ Paniatowski began.

  ‘I’m a what? A tramp myself?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘I’ll have you know, madam, that I am in fact a highly respected City stockbroker, midway through what is turning out to be a very unconventional adventure holiday,’ Pogo said sternly.

  Paniatowski grinned. ‘You’re pulling my chain,’ she said.

  ‘Well, obviously,’ Pogo agreed, grinning back.

  ‘We really would like you to come down to the station,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘It’s a very serious case we have on our hands.’

  ‘The murder of a tramp!’ Pogo said dismissively.

  ‘A tramp who was drenched in petrol and then set on fire,’ Paniatowski told him.

  Pogo rocked on his heels and said, ‘Jesus!’

  ‘So you’ll come voluntarily?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Meaning if I won’t, I’ll be coming involuntarily?’ Pogo asked.

  ‘It should be easy enough to find an excuse to pull you,’ Paniatowski said, matter-of-factly. Then she grinned again, and added, ‘After all, you know what bastards the police are.’

  Pogo nodded. ‘I’ll have to collect my stuff together first.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  His ‘stuff’ consisted of a sleeping bag, a small knapsack, a tin plate, a mug, a knife, fork and spoon, a Primus stove and small metal pan and a cigarette-rolling machine.

  Most tramps probably had some, or all, of those things, Paniatowski thought. But she doubted that most tramps would have arranged them in the way that this one had. The art­icles were laid out in two straight lines, the first line being roughly a foot from the second.

  Or was there anything roughly about it? Paniatowski found herself wondering, and decided that if she’d had to make a bet on the distance between the lines, she’d have to put her money on them being exactly twelve inches apart.

  The tramp collected up his possessions methodically and fitted them into the knapsack. When he’d done that, he rolled up the sleeping bag with practised ease, wrapped it in a piece of cord, and tied the cord with an elaborate knot.

  Only when he’d finished his work did he look at Paniatowski and say, ‘The threat of being arrested isn’t enough.’

  ‘Enough for what?’

  ‘Enough to make me cooperate with you. If you want me to come to the cop shop voluntarily, you’ll have to persuade me that there’s something in it for me.’

  ‘How about the promise of unlimited cups of tea?’ Paniatowski suggested.

  Pogo nodded. ‘That’ll do it,’ he agreed.

  The basement of police headquarters had been converted into what the chief constable liked to call ‘the nerve centre of a major investigation’, but as yet there were none of the customary trappings – desks set in a horseshoe configur­ation, blackboard at the front, dozens of phone lines being installed – because this time most of the area was needed as a holding pen for all the tramps who had been picked up in the police swoop.

  There were around two dozen of them, Woodend noted, surveying the scene. They were all kitted out in a similar fashion – wearing clothing long discarded by others and now encased in grime – but otherwise they were a fairly disparate crew, because while it was true that the majority were between forty and sixty,
there were also both older and younger men – and three women.

  Thirty years earlier, it would have been surprising to find even two or three tramps sleeping rough in the centre of town, the chief inspector thought. Back then, the tramp was a country-dweller. He would sleep in barns, and sometimes lend a hand on one of the thousands of small farms which were still in existence. And even if he didn’t work for his keep, the tenant farmers would give him something, because they would have regarded him as much a part of the natural life of the countryside as the rabbits and birds. Now the traditional farms had mostly gone, swallowed up by much larger ones where all the heavy work was done by machinery, and there was little room for casual labour – or even casual acquaintanceship.

  Woodend turned to Detective Constable Colin Beresford, who – it was widely believed around police headquarters – had much greater access to his boss’s ear than his lowly rank would indicate.

  ‘Did you have any difficulty rounding them up?’ he asked.

  ‘A few of them were a bit awkward, mainly the ones who were so out of their heads that they had no idea what was actually going on,’ Beresford said. ‘But on the whole, they were no trouble. After all, they’ve taken the line of least resistance for most of their lives, so why should they change now?’

  ‘Until you’ve had a little more experience of life yourself, don’t be so sweepin’ in your generalizations, lad,’ Woodend said, with an unaccustomed harshness in his voice.

  The tone flustered Beresford. ‘Sorry, sir, I never meant to suggest …’

  ‘Forget it, lad,’ Woodend said. ‘But,’ he cautioned, ‘don’t let me catch you jumpin’ to conclusions again.’

  The chief inspector turned to face the tramps. ‘I’m very grateful to you for agreein’ to cooperate with this investigation,’ he said in a loud voice which caught all their attentions, ‘an’ I’d like to make one thing clear from the start, which is that none of you are a suspect in this murder, in any way, shape or form.’

  Some of the tramps looked relieved, some showed no emotion at all, and some – and Beresford had probably been right about this – were so out of their heads that they had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘The reason you’re all here is because you’re potential witnesses,’ Woodend continued. ‘Now you may think you have nothin’ of value to contribute to the investigation – an’ maybe you’re right – but it’s also possible that you might just have noticed somethin’ in the past few days which won’t mean anythin’ to you, but could tell us a lot. That’s why you’ll each individually be taken to another room, an’ asked a few questions by one of my men. Once that’s happened, you’ll be given a packet of cigarettes an’ will be allowed to leave. Thank you for listenin’.’

  He turned away, and saw Monika Paniatowski looking at him with a troubled expression on her face.

  ‘You’re letting them go?’ she asked, disbelievingly.

  ‘That’s right,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘Even though this could well be nothing more than the first in a series of killings?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Even if it is,’ Woodend confirmed.

  ‘So it’s your intention to put them back out on the street. to be used as live bait?’

  Woodend shook his head. ‘Nay, lass. I’m puttin’ them back out on the street because we don’t have the facilities to hold them, an’ even if we had, there’s no legal justification for doin’ it. In other words, I’m puttin’ them back out on the street because I have no bloody choice in the matter.’

  The more gruesome the murder, the more it appealed to Elizabeth Driver’s readership, and hence to Driver herself. Which was why, even as Woodend was addressing the tramps in police headquarters, she was behind the wheel of her Jaguar, and heading towards Whitebridge at speed.

  As she drove, she was thinking not only about the case of the dead tramp – ‘Horror of Grilled Vagrant’ suggested itself as a headline – but also about her own relationship with Woodend’s team in general, and with Detective Inspector Bob Rutter in particular.

  The core of that relationship was the book she had decided to write – was contracted to write – about the Whitebridge Police. It was going to be a sensational exposé, and the fact that there might be nothing sensational to expose about the Force had not bothered her for a second, since she considered truth to be a commodity to be used sparingly.

  In order to write that book, she’d needed an insider in the Force, and she’d seen Bob Rutter – weakened first by the break-up of his adulterous affair with Monika Paniatowski, and then by the murder of his blind wife, Maria – as the ideal candidate. When she’d approached him initially, she’d offered the bait of writing an inspirational book about his dead wife, and – wracked with guilt as he was – he’d fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

  For the first few months of their relationship, she’d deliberately avoided any physical contact, since she’d felt it would have been unwelcome to a man grappling with his own conscience. But once she’d sensed that the time was right, she’d gone ahead and seduced him.

  And it had been so easy!

  So very easy!

  Other steps in her plan had not run quite so smoothly. Rutter had his daughter living with him now, and the little brat – for reasons of her own – had shown as much disdain for Driver as she’d shown affection for Monika Paniatowski.

  And then there had been the career of Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend, who was to be the cornerstone of her book. That had taken a dip which had almost resulted in a fall, and – as much as she hated to do anything to help her old enemy – she’d been forced to write an editorial praising him. Still, she consoled herself, that wouldn’t last for long, and when his merely postponed fall did inevitably come, it would be all the greater.

  She’d made one change to her plans which had quite surprised her. Initially, she’d intended to bring Rutter down with the rest of Woodend’s team, but now she found that she didn’t actually want to. Affection was another of those qualities she didn’t have much use for, yet she’d grown fond of Rutter, and liked the idea of keeping him around on a perman­ent basis.

  She wouldn’t be faithful to him, of course – the very idea was ludicrous – but it would be nice to have him there when she wanted him, like a particularly comfortable pair of shoes. He might baulk at the idea at first, especially after she had just destroyed the careers of his boss and his ex-lover, but she was confident enough in her own abilities to believe that she could twist things round in such a way as to make it look like it wasn’t her fault at all.

  And if that failed, there was always the bedroom in which to win him over – because, when all was said and done, he was still only a man.

  The road sign ahead said that Whitebridge was now only twenty miles away. Elizabeth Driver turned her thoughts back to the story that lay ahead of her, and then to THE BOOK, now almost finished, which was nestling comfortably in the boot of her car, next to her portable typewriter.

  Three

  The man sitting opposite DC Colin Beresford could have been anywhere between forty and sixty years old. He was wearing a tattered overcoat which was far too long for him and dragged along the ground when he walked. The coat had once been brown, but was now so streaked with dirt that the overall effect was grey. Under it was evidence of several other layers of clothing, which looked equally disgusting. The tramp had lost most of the hair on his head, but had grown a long, straggly grey beard to compensate for it. He was blind in one eye, and there were only a few rotting teeth left in his mouth.

  And he stank!

  ‘Could you tell me your name?’ Beresford asked gently.

  ‘Tommy,’ the tramp said.

  ‘And your second name?’

  The tramp looked at him strangely, as if he had no idea why the policeman should even want to ask such a question, then said, ‘Moores. Tommy Moores.’

  ‘And are you a Whitebridge man, Mr Moores?’ Beresford inquired.

  ‘Where’s Whiteb
ridge?’ Moores asked.

  ‘Here,’ Beresford explained. ‘You’re in Whitebridge now.’

  The information seemed to be of no interest to the tramp.

  And why should it be? Beresford asked himself. To Tommy Moores, the name of the place he was in was un­important. When he thought about the town at all, he would think of it in terms that would mean little to people who lived in the mainstream – a restaurant where the bins were particularly worth scavenging, church steps on which he would be likely to find a good number of discarded cigar­ettes, the cheapest place to buy meths …

  ‘So you’re not from here?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Then where are you from?’

  ‘Somewhere else.’

  Beresford suppressed a sigh. ‘But you live here now?’

  ‘Don’t live anywhere,’ the tramp replied. ‘Travel.’

  ‘All right,’ Beresford said patiently. ‘How long have you been in Whitebridge this time?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ the other man said.

  And he probably didn’t, Beresford thought. He was probably nothing more than an unthinking force of nature, staying somewhere for a while and then moving on for no other reason than because that was what he did.

  ‘Where do you sleep when you’re in Whitebridge?’ he asked.

  ‘Here and there,’ Moores said vaguely.

  ‘Do you ever sleep in the old Empire Cotton Mill?’ Beresford wondered.

  The tramp thought about it for a second. ‘Big brick building?’ he asked. ‘Close to the canal?’

  ‘That sounds like the place,’ Beresford agreed.

  ‘I’ve slept there,’ the tramp admitted.

  ‘But did you sleep there last night?’

  ‘Might have done. Don’t know.’

  ‘And other tramps slept there as well, didn’t they?’

  ‘A few.’

  ‘So what can you tell me about them?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But you must have talked to them, mustn’t you?’