‘Yes.’
‘And only a few years out of medical school?’
‘That’s right.’
‘So I’m assuming that in order to buy the practice, you must have had rich parents behind you.’
Lucas laughed. ‘Far from it. I’m the original working-class boy made good – that is, if your definition of good is running a modest practice in a neighbourhood which is not always easy.’
‘So you borrowed the money to buy it?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘From a bank?’
‘No, not from a bank.’
There was a tap on the door, and then a stocky woman in late middle age entered the room, carrying a tray.
‘Ah, thank you, Mrs Dale – that smells delicious,’ Dr Lucas said.
The woman nodded to Paniatowski, and laid the tray on the hideous coffee table.
‘Will there be anything else, doctor?’ she asked.
‘No thank you, Mrs Dale,’ Lucas replied, and once she had left the room, he said to Paniatowski, ‘I’d be totally lost without my housekeeper. I simply wouldn’t be able to keep the whole show afloat.’
‘So you’re not married, then?’
‘I was.’
‘Divorced?’
‘That’s right.’ Dr Lucas picked up the silver-plated coffee pot and poured the dark liquid into the two cups. ‘Cream?’
‘I take it black. No sugar.’
‘So do I,’ Dr Lucas said, handing her the cup. ‘My wife was never cut out to be a doctor’s wife – or, at least, not the kind of doctor I am.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s a city girl, with a city girl’s romantic view of the countryside. When we got married, I think she saw me running a small country practice in which I was second in importance only to the squire, and the locals doffed their caps to her as the doctor’s lady. That kind of society doesn’t exist any more, of course – if it ever did – and it came as a shock to her that instead of yokels queuing up deferentially to see me, we had women in dressing gowns and curlers banging on the door at midnight, and demanding I give them tranquillisers.’
‘So what happened?’
‘My wife gave me an ultimatum,’ Lucas said, his eyes filled with sadness, his jaw wobbling slightly. ‘Either I gave up the practice, or she would leave me. I loved her – I truly did. But I suppose I loved my work more – and so we parted.’
It was all true, Paniatowski thought. He really did feel the pain. But, at the same time, he was trying to use that pain to make her like him more.
‘Did you hope that by sending the Danbury family’s medical records to Dr Shastri you’d earn a few brownie points?’ she asked.
‘No, I …’
‘Did you think you needed to earn a few brownie points?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Lucas protested.
‘Of course you do!’
‘You’re here to ask me if I knew that William sometimes hit Jane,’ Lucas said, defeatedly.
‘No, I’m here to ask you if you knew William beat Jane – often quite savagely.’
‘He didn’t mean to hit as hard as he did. He doesn’t know his own strength. He never has.’
‘She came to your surgery for treatment, did she?’
‘Yes, and sometimes I went to the house.’
‘Was that because she was too weak to come and see you?’
‘No, no, of course not,’ Lucas said hastily. ‘It was because it was easier for me to make a house call.’
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘For years.’
‘And you never thought that it might be your duty to report it to the authorities?’
‘She didn’t want me to. She begged me not to.’
Just as she had begged Shastri not to report her rape, she thought.
But that was entirely different.
Or was it?
‘You must have read about other cases like Jane Danbury’s,’ she said quickly, to avoid drowning in a sea of introspection. ‘You must know that whatever she said, she was in no position to know her own mind.’
‘And what would have happened if I had reported it?’ Lucas asked, almost whining now. ‘She would never have testified against William, because she knew that he was basically a good man and that he loved her.’
‘If we could have proved that a criminal act had been committed, we wouldn’t have needed her consent.’
‘William was a rugby player, you know – a prop forward, and rather a good one,’ Lucas said. ‘There are those who think that if he’d turned professional, he could have played for England.’
‘And why would that be of any interest to me?’ Paniatowski wondered.
‘No reason at all,’ Lucas replied, and now he was clearly fighting back, ‘but then, chief inspector, you’re not a man, are you?’
‘I’m sure you have a point to make, but if you go at this rate I’ll be drawing my old age pension by the time you finally make it,’ Paniatowski said.
‘William is handsome, a fine athlete, an excellent businessman, and exceedingly good company. Almost every man who knows him admires him, and would like to be like him.’
‘I’m still waiting for the point.’
‘These men who admire him would have done everything they could to block any prosecution mounted against William, and since some of them are police officers, and several are members of the judiciary, the prosecution would have faltered and died before it even reached the first hurdle. And that would have done no one any good, now would it?’
‘It might have done Jane Danbury some good,’ Paniatowski said. ‘It might at least have made her aware that she had options.’
‘She already knew she had options,’ Lucas argued exasperatedly. ‘She’s not like a lot of my patients – a downtrodden woman living on a council estate, dependent on her husband’s pay packet. She had both the means and opportunity to leave William, but she didn’t. Now why was that?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Because, despite it all, she loved him, and her life would have had no meaning without him. She not only loved him, you see. She – like the men I referred to earlier – admired him.’
‘She admired a domestic tyrant who beat the shit out of her?’
‘Yes, because apart from those moments of madness, he was a very good husband and he is a very good person. He’s done wonderful work in Whitebridge. I could show you a long list of the charities he supports – the Boys’ Brigade, the Outward Bound Association, the YMCA theatre group … And I could give you the names of scores of people he’s helped – not because there was anything in it for him, but because that is his nature.’
‘What hold does he have over you?’
‘He is my oldest friend.’
‘Did he lend you the money to buy this practice?’
‘No, at that point, he couldn’t have afforded to do that. But what he did do, you see, was to work tirelessly at getting other people to lend me the money. It wasn’t easy, because if the bank wouldn’t touch me, then why should they? I think what swung it was his promise that he’d be personally responsible for the debt – that if I defaulted, he’d make sure they got their money back. That’s the kind of man he is – he would give you the shirt off his back.’
‘And then go home and kick his wife.’
‘It’s been bad recently, I admit that,’ Lucas confessed. ‘I don’t know why it’s been quite so bad – perhaps he’s been having business worries – but it’s not something he’s done on a day-in, day-out basis. He hardly laid a hand on her during her pregnancies.’
‘Hardly laid a hand on her? During her pregnancies?’
‘And I believed – I really did believe – that Canada would have been a new start for them, a real chance for him to turn over a new leaf.’ He paused. ‘I know you’re starting to think that perhaps William might have killed Jane, but you’re wrong.’
‘Am I?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you be so sure? Give me a reason for your certainty.’
‘I just know he wouldn’t have done it.’
Paniatowski shook her head despairingly. ‘Dr Lucas,’ she said, ‘that really isn’t good enough.’ She stood up. ‘Thank you for your time.’
‘Are you going to report me, chief inspector?’ Lucas asked anxiously. ‘Will I be prosecuted?’
What would be the point of that? Paniatowski asked herself. Lucas was – according to Liz Flowers – a good, caring doctor, and dragging him through the courts on a negligence charge wasn’t going to undo the damage that had been done to Jane Danbury.
Still, she saw no reason to let him think he was off the hook quite yet.
‘Will I be prosecuted?’ Lucas asked, in the voice of a schoolboy who has been caught smoking behind the bike sheds.
‘I don’t know,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘I’ll have to think about it.’
The meeting was scheduled to be held in Paniatowski’s office at noon, but when Crane arrived at five minutes to twelve, Meadows was already there, setting up her equipment.
‘Why have you brought a projector with you?’ Crane asked.
‘It’s to help the boss – who’s understandably feeling very maternal at the moment – to think the unthinkable,’ Meadows said enigmatically.
‘Would you like to explain that?’ Crane said.
‘No,’ Meadows replied. ‘Not yet. Not until the time is right.’
Paniatowski and Beresford arrived, and Paniatowski briefed the team on her meetings with Shastri and Dr Lucas.
Then it was Beresford’s turn.
‘I’ve never conducted an investigation in a place like Milliners’ Row before,’ the inspector said. ‘It’s a completely different world, and the normal rules simply don’t apply. Neighbours don’t pop in and out of each other’s houses, and they don’t notice what’s going on in the street, partly because nothing is usually going on in the street, and partly because of those bloody high walls and the trees that run down the middle of the road. So while we know from the colonel’s lady that a car did stop outside the Danburys’ house shortly before Jane was killed, nobody has any idea what kind of car it was, or who was driving it.’
‘If Melanie hadn’t been abducted, I’d have put my money on William Danbury,’ Paniatowski said. ‘We know that he beat his wife regularly, and maybe, on this occasion, he just went too far. But Melanie was abducted, so there has to be a third party involved, and logic points towards it being that third party, not the husband, who killed Jane. Bearing that in mind, I’d like us to run through the pattern we should expect to find when we study a standard abduction.’ She paused to light a cigarette. ‘Would you like to kick us off on that, Kate?’
‘If you don’t mind, boss, I’d like to hear what the others have got to say first,’ Meadows replied.
What game was Meadows playing? Crane wondered.
But when he glanced across at the sergeant, her face revealed nothing.
‘All right, if Kate doesn’t want to come in at this point, perhaps you’d like to begin, Colin,’ Paniatowski said, and it was clear to Crane that she was as mystified by Meadows’ comment as he was himself.
‘The kidnapper will normally have been stalking the mother and baby for some time,’ Beresford said. ‘He will have followed them to the shops, and watched them in the playground. It will have been from observing their routine that he will have developed some kind of plan.’
‘But the stalking isn’t just to do with the planning,’ Crane said. ‘It’s an integral part of the kidnapper’s overall pleasure. He enjoys the thrill of the chase – I read somewhere that most stalkers have an almost permanent erection during this part of the process – and he can actually come to feel that he’s developing a relationship with his intended victim.’
‘But the classic pattern seems to have no relevance to this particular case,’ Beresford pointed out. ‘Jane and Melanie didn’t have the kind of routine that our man could latch onto. In fact, they rarely seem to have left the house and grounds, so most of the perverts capable of carrying out the act probably weren’t even aware of Melanie’s existence.’
‘So are you saying that what we have to look for is another pattern?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘There is no pattern, because there is no stalker,’ Meadows said, judging her moment to have arrived. ‘Danbury kills his wife in a blind rage, but once he’s calmed down, he begins to realise what a mess he’s in. He can’t take her round to Dr Lucas to be patched up this time, can he? And suspicion is bound to fall on him, because he’s a wife beater. But if his daughter went missing, he suddenly realises, that would immediately shift the focus of the investigation, and most of our resources would be devoted to searching for her. Plus, that will automatically rule William out, as far as most people are concerned – because while they’re willing to accept that a man might kill his wife in a rage, they’re very unwilling to believe that he’d kill his own child in cold blood.’
‘Are you saying that Melanie is dead?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Yes – she’s dead – and we all know she’s dead.’
But did they? Paniatowski wondered. She tried to picture picking one of the twins out of his cot, taking him into the garden and …
‘I’m not a fool,’ she said, with a hint of anger in her voice. ‘I know that parents kill their own children. But I just can’t see William Danbury …’
‘Can I show you the film that I found in William’s study, boss?’ Meadows asked.
‘Why not?’ replied Paniatowski, who, like the other members of the team, had been wondering – on and off – why the projector was there.
Meadows dropped the blinds on the windows and switched the light off. Then she flicked the switch on the projector. A humming sound filled the room, and a circle of white light appeared on the screen that Meadows had erected next to Paniatowski’s filing cabinet.
‘According to Gretchen, William Danbury bought this camera to record his sons growing up,’ Meadows said. ‘Note the wording of that – his sons, not his children.’
The film started running, and it was immediately apparent that it had been shot in the garden of the Danburys’ house.
William Danbury is playing a game of football with his two boys. The boys are screaming with excitement, and, even from a distance, it is plain to see that Danbury himself is ecstatically happy.
The camera moves round to reveal a close-up of Gretchen, sitting at a garden table. The au pair has a magazine on her lap, and flicks through the pages as if she finds the whole thing incredibly boring.
‘Who’s shooting the film?’ Beresford said.
‘Wait and see,’ Meadows told him.
The camera sweeps across the lawn, to reveal a small child in a white dress. It is obvious that Melanie Danbury has not been walking long, and that while she still finds it technically complicated, it is a joyous and liberating experience for her.
‘She’s a beautiful kid,’ said Beresford, with a catch in his throat.
Melanie totters across the lawn, and reaches the spot at which her father is standing. Though she is clearly enjoying having her independence, she is also feeling quite tired.
‘Watch what happens next,’ Meadows said.
Melanie wraps her thin arms around her father’s leg – maybe through affection, or perhaps merely for support.
Danbury makes no move to pick her up. Instead, he turns his head, and gazes frozenly into the near distance.
‘What the hell is the matter with him?’ Crane asked.
Melanie looks up and says something. The microphone is close enough to pick up the sound but not to distinguish the words.
‘She wants him to pay some attention to her,’ Beresford said, though he need not have bothered, because that was clear to everyone in the room.
Danbury continues to stare at the wall.
Through tiredness or boredom, Melanie relinquishes her grip on the leg. Without eithe
r its support or forward momentum to help her maintain her balance, she starts to sway, then falls backwards.
She is probably not hurt by the fall, but she is scared, and as she hits the ground, she starts to cry.
Danbury takes a couple of steps away from her.
‘For God’s sake, Jane, do something about the kid’s screaming!’ he says angrily.
And it is at that point that the film ends.
Crane, Beresford and Paniatowski, who had not seen the film before, sat in stunned silence once it had ended.
Meadows gave them a few seconds to think about it, then said, ‘You don’t always have to hate someone to kill them – sometimes, all you need to be is indifferent. Danbury is indifferent to Melanie. And if he convinced himself, as I’m certain he did, that it was necessary to sacrifice his daughter in order that his boys would not lose the father they so obviously needed, he could have killed her in a heartbeat.’
Paniatowski said nothing, but she didn’t need to – the horrified expression on her face said it all.
‘We know that Danbury beat his wife,’ Meadows ploughed on. ‘We know that there can’t have been a stalker, because Melanie hardly ever left the house. We know there were only three keys to the front door – and Danbury had one of them. And we know that whoever killed Jane was no stranger, because she turned her back on him. It has to be Danbury.’
‘Yes,’ Paniatowski said slowly. ‘Yes, it does.’
‘Do you want me to pick him up, boss?’ Beresford asked, with almost puppy-like eagerness.
‘No,’ Paniatowski said.
‘No?’ Beresford repeated.
‘Danbury has two things going for him. The first is that he’s supposedly the grieving father, so public opinion will be on his side. The second is that he seems to have a lot of influence with a lot of powerful people in this town. So we’d be putting our necks on the line by pulling him in – and if we couldn’t make it stick, there’d be consequences for all of us.’
She saw the look of amazement in the eyes of the other three.
‘But putting our necks on the line is what we do,’ the eyes said. ‘It’s what defines us – what makes us special. So why don’t we hang the consequences, like we always have before?’
Thicker Than Water Page 9
