Yes, well, it was easy for them to have that attitude, Paniatowski reflected. They only had themselves to think about if things turned sour, but she had responsibilities – she had kids.
‘All I’m saying is that when we’ve got some rock-solid evidence on William Danbury …’ she continued.
‘We already have rock-solid evidence on him,’ Beresford interrupted her. ‘You admitted as much yourself, not two minutes ago.’
‘No, I didn’t,’ Paniatowski countered. ‘What we’ve got is a rock-solid personal conviction that he did it. If we’re ever going to get real evidence – evidence that will stand up in court – we’re going to have to be very careful about the way we collect it, because if the press or Danbury’s friends get a whiff of what we’re doing, they’ll crucify us.’
The other three nodded. She was right. They could see that that was the only way to play it.
‘Sergeant Meadows, I want you to go up to Newcastle upon Tyne and find out if Danbury’s alibi holds water. I want you, Inspector Beresford, to come up with as much on Danbury’s background as you can, and you, DC Crane, to do a similar check on Jane Danbury. And I need all that information by nine o’clock tonight, at the latest. Is that clear?’
More nods.
‘What will you be doing, boss?’ Meadows asked.
‘What I’ll be doing is trying to cover your tracks, so that no else realises what you’ll be doing,’ Paniatowski said.
Generations of Whitebridgians had, like Pavlov’s dogs, been conditioned by whistles and bells. Thus, when the klaxon in the mill had been sounded at midday, they had been ready for their dinners, and when the klaxon sounded again at five, their stomachs had told them that it was time for tea. And though it had been quite a while since most people in the town had actually been mill workers, the conditioning had become part of their genes, so that even without an external stimulus, they still knew when it was the right time – the proper time – to eat.
The ladies of the Whitebridge Women’s Royal Voluntary Service were as aware of this fact as everyone else, and had been working hard all morning to ensure that sustenance reached the men in the search parties at the appropriate hour. So it was that Alfie Clayton and Tony Hayes found themselves sitting on a grassy embankment, eating corned beef sandwiches and sipping warm sweet tea, at just after a quarter past twelve.
‘It was a stupid argument,’ Tony said, between bites.
‘Yes, it was,’ Alfie agreed, feeling no need to ask Tony what argument he was referring to.
‘We used to be such good mates,’ Tony said.
In Alfie’s mind, an ancient projector clicked into gear and played a flickering newsreel of the time they had spent together on the back of his skull.
Their first day at school – short trousers and grazed knees … fishing for sticklebacks, falling in the pond, and trying to light a fire to dry their clothes, in the vain hope that their mams wouldn’t notice and give them hell … desperately sucking on cheap cigarettes, in order to look old enough to be admitted to X films … going out on their first dates together … each acting as best man at the other’s wedding …
And suddenly Alfie felt a great loss for the ten years when they hadn’t done things together – became aware of a vast, empty hole which could have been filled with memories.
‘We must never let it happen again,’ he said, with more passion than he’d intended.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We’re best mates, and nothing is more important than that – not a pigeon, not money, not … anything.’
They would never have hugged each other – it was not the sort of thing that Northern men did – but each put a hand on the other’s shoulder, and it felt right.
While she’d been talking to Gretchen Müller earlier in the day, Meadows had experienced something which had, hitherto, been almost entirely alien to her nature – a stab of envy.
It wasn’t that she envied the au pair her youth.
It wasn’t even the au pair’s looks – Meadows had a good ten years on the girl, but was confident that in any competition to pull men, she would easily come out on top.
It was Gretchen’s spontaneity which irked. On her day off, the girl had simply jumped on her bike and driven almost all the way to Dundee.
But so what? Meadows argued with herself. Her own night-time persona – Zelda – got up to some things that would have made even free-spirited Gretchen’s hair stand on end.
Yes, but the daytime part of her – Detective Sergeant Katherine Meadows – was becoming staid and predictable, almost without her realising it. Well, she would soon put a stop to that. She had been intending to go by car to Newcastle upon Tyne, but instead she would take her bike out of mothballs, and see just how little time it would take her to burn up the odd couple of hundred miles.
Paniatowski sat at her desk, staring at the wall.
How was it possible that a man could be so calculating as to murder his own child in cold blood? she asked herself.
Just what kind of man did he have to be?
As a human being – as a woman – she found it shocking that such men could exist. But what was even worse was that as a mother, it scared the hell out of her.
She needed to go home for a while, she realised. There was simply no choice in the matter, because she had to see her boys.
Paniatowski was halfway across the car park when she heard a woman’s voice calling after her.
‘DCI Paniatowski! DCI Paniatowski!’
She turned, and saw Inspector Flowers striding towards her.
My boys, she thought, I really need to see my boys.
‘Whatever it is you want to see me about, could it possibly wait for half an hour?’ she asked Flowers.
‘You told me to question my team about what happened last night, ma’am,’ Flowers said in a steely voice. ‘You wanted an answer as soon as possible. Well, I’ve got your answer now.’
Flowers was angry, Paniatowski thought. No, it was much stronger than that. She was enraged – in much the same way as a lioness would be enraged if her cubs were being threatened.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘I can’t give you the name you asked me for this morning, because there is no name to give you,’ Flowers said. ‘And the reason there is no name to give you is because none of my team did what you’ve accused them of doing.’
Of course they hadn’t, Paniatowski thought.
She saw that now.
But just to be certain – just to be sure, in her own mind, that Flowers wouldn’t be torn apart on the witness stand when the case came to trial – it would be wise to go on with the ritual.
‘Tell me how you can be so positive that none of your team told Councillor Danbury something they shouldn’t have told him,’ she said, almost wearily.
Any call reporting a murder is always taken seriously, however likely the possibility that it is a hoax, and DI Flowers, who is cruising in North Whitebridge when the alert comes over the police radio, takes the call from the German au pair girl very seriously indeed.
She and her driver arrive in Milliners’ Row at almost exactly the same time as the patrol car which contains a constable and a WPC, and which has been dispatched by Whitebridge Central.
As they pull up, Flowers sees the blonde girl clutching the gatepost for support. She tells the WPC to take the girl to her car, and then she and the other constables walk quickly up the driveway and enter the house through the open front door.
They find the body almost immediately.
The blood around it is already dry.
Flowers puts the back of her hand against the dead woman’s cheek, and then against her own. It seems to her that Jane Danbury is much colder than she is.
Neither the dried blood nor the victim’s temperature prove anything conclusively, but Flowers’ gut tells her that the other woman has been dead for at least an hour.
The chances that the murderer is still on the premises are slim, but there is jus
t a possibility that he might be, and Flowers decides that she will not search the house until she has some back-up.
She radios through to headquarters that she will need at least ten additional officers to secure the scene, and asks for whatever details can be quickly dug up on the residents of this house.
Five more patrol cars arrive. Flowers tells two of the male officers to wait for her in the hallway, and tells the WPC from the original patrol car to do the same. She has eight men left to deploy. She dispatches four of them to search the grounds, and the remaining four to block off the street and keep an eye on the au pair, who is still in the patrol car.
Back in the house, she instructs the four male officers to search every room thoroughly.
By now, she has learned from headquarters that there should be three children in the house, and she tells the WPC to check on them.
‘But try not to disturb them unless you absolutely have to,’ she says.
‘That was how I deployed my team, ma’am – and it was how they were still deployed when both you and Councillor Danbury arrived. Now, Danbury claims that one of the officers outside told him what had happened to his wife, doesn’t he? Well, I’ve been going through it over and over again since we last talked, and I’m sure that all I told the officers outside was that there was a body in the house, and that foul play was suspected.’
‘You didn’t tell them that it was a woman?’
‘No.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can never be totally certain, you know. You had a lot on your plate at that moment. And if you had let it slip, then one of your team might have let it slip, too. He didn’t necessarily even have to have told Danbury that it was his wife – he only needed to say it was a woman, and the husband could have worked it out, since Gretchen is more a girl than a woman, that it had to be Jane.’
‘I didn’t tell them that it was a woman,’ Flowers said stubbornly.
‘Well, if you didn’t tell them that, you certainly didn’t tell them how she died.’
‘Of course not. One of the first things you’re taught in scene-of-crime leadership training is that you never pronounce on the cause of death, even when it looks completely bloody obvious. I think the exact quote is, “Until the medical examiner has looked at the body, death is officially from causes unknown”,’ Flowers said. ‘I didn’t say a word to any of the officers outside the house.’
She hadn’t told them, so they hadn’t – couldn’t have – told William Danbury.
Yet Danbury had known.
‘If someone tells you a loved one has died, the first thing you want to know is how they died. But you never asked,’ she’d said to Danbury that morning.
‘Why should I have asked?’ he’d replied. ‘I knew she’d been murdered. I knew her skull had been smashed in. What else did I need to know?’
‘I’m sorry I doubted you, Inspector Flowers,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And please apologise to the other officers, on my behalf.’
‘I will do, ma’am,’ Flowers said, with all the magnanimity that relief can bring.
Paniatowski turned and walked to her car.
Danbury had done it, she told herself. There could be no doubt about that now. He had murdered his wife and kidnapped (and almost certainly killed) his own daughter.
Her cheeks felt damp, and she realised she was crying. She didn’t want to even start analysing why that might be.
FIVE
The constable’s name was Percy Moore. He was thirty-six years old, and had been married for more than ten years. He had two young daughters, he owned a caravan which he kept permanently at a Lake District caravan park, and, when Beresford tracked him down to the police canteen, he was at the tail end of demolishing a meal consisting of fried eggs, sausage, baked beans, fried bread and chips.
Beresford waited until Moore had pushed his plate aside, then slid into the seat opposite him.
‘You can’t beat a well-balanced meal, can you?’ the inspector said. ‘And to round it off, what could be better than a smoke?’
‘Nothing could be better,’ Moore said, taking a cigarette from the packet that Beresford was holding in front of him.
‘You went to St Cuthbert’s Primary School, didn’t you, Percy?’ Beresford asked.
‘That’s right, sir, I did,’ Moore agreed, lighting first Beresford’s cigarette and then his own.
‘You must have been there at the same time as William Danbury,’ Beresford said.
‘I was,’ agreed Moore, though perhaps a little cautiously, since the Danbury case had been front page news that morning.
‘Was he a mate of yours?’
‘Well, you know how it is – we were in the same class, and we played together sometimes,’ Moore said.
‘And have you seen much of him since you left St Cuthbert’s?’
‘Not really. He went to the grammar school and I went to the sec. mod., and that was sort of the parting of the ways. We might have run into each other in the pub once or twice and said hello, but that’s about the extent of it.’
Beresford had not been expecting much from this conversation – after all, Danbury and Moore now moved in two different worlds – but he could not help but feel a little disappointed.
‘What’s your impression of him?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Haven’t really got one,’ Moore said. ‘As I told you, we’ve hardly seen each other since primary school.’
‘All right, what was your impression of him when you were at school?’
Moore thought about it. ‘Absolutely totally bloody fearless, and absolutely totally bloody determined,’ he said finally.
Beresford whistled softly. ‘Strong words,’ he said.
‘But right on the button,’ Moore told him. He paused to take a drag of his cigarette. ‘Shall I tell you a story of our schooldays?’
‘If you like,’ Beresford agreed.
‘There’s always one kid in every playground that gets picked on,’ Moore said. ‘Sometimes, it’s because he’s small. Sometimes, it’s because he’s got some kind of an impediment, like a stammer. But sometimes, there’s no obvious reason at all – he just seems to carry around an invisible sign which says “Kick me!” You know what I mean?’
Beresford nodded. He knew what he meant.
‘Well, the kid in our year at St Cuthbert’s was called Roger Lucas,’ Moore continued. ‘Most of us ignored him most of the time, but, for some reason, William Danbury decided he was going to be his friend.’
‘He still is,’ Beresford said.
‘Well, there you go,’ Moore said philosophically. ‘Anyway, when this particular incident I’m going to tell you about happened, we were in Miss Madderly’s class …’
‘Which would have made you how old?’
‘Eight.’
‘Go on.’
‘There was this lad in the Gaffer’s class – that was the top class, the ones that would be leaving at the end of the year – who took a particular dislike to Lucas. Phil Briggs, his name was. At first, he’d just give him the occasional poke or push him over, but things gradually escalated until William Danbury decided to step in.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He squared up to Phil Briggs in the playground one dinnertime, and said that if Briggs didn’t leave Lucas alone, he’d answer to him.’ Moore took another drag of his cigarette. ‘I say “squared up”, but it wasn’t really squaring up at all. William was big for his age, but Briggs was two years older, and you know what a big difference in height and weight two years means when you’re only in primary school.’
‘Indeed,’ Beresford agreed.
‘So a fight started. It didn’t last long. Briggs got in a couple of good punches, and Danbury was on the ground, rolling around in agony. But he didn’t cry – he didn’t shed so much as a single tear. As soon as he was able to, he got up and hobbled away, but at dinnertime the next day, he was back, telling Briggs he’d better leave Luca
s alone if he knew what was good for him.’
‘And did it end in the same way it had the day before?’
‘Yes, but this time, Danbury didn’t seem quite so easy to knock down, and when he did go down, he didn’t look quite as much in pain as he did the time before. This was a Friday. On Monday it happened again, only this time, it was different. Maybe Danbury had learned a few new tricks over the weekend, or maybe Briggs had just got overconfident. It may even have been that Briggs just didn’t have the heart to keep knocking him down. Anyway, it was Briggs that went down this time.’ Moore paused again. ‘You know what kids’ fights are like – once one of them is on the ground, the other towers over him and says, “Have you had enough”?’
Beresford grinned. ‘Oh, I remember that,’ he said. ‘I remember both having it said to me, and being the one saying it.’
‘It wasn’t like that with this fight,’ Moore said. ‘Once Briggs was down on the ground, Danbury kept kicking him, and while he was kicking him, he was chanting the same thing over and over – “If you touch my friend again, I’ll kill you … if you touch my friend again, I’ll kill you …” Of course, that’s the kind of thing kids do say, but he really did seem to mean it, and just thinking about it now sends a shiver down my spine.’
‘What happened next?’
‘You know what it’s like when something really shocks you? You just stand there gaping at it – hardly able to believe what you’re seeing. I think we all expected it to stop at some point, but when it finally became clear that it wasn’t going to – that William would have kicked Briggs to death if he could have – a couple of the lads pulled Danbury away.’
‘Did Briggs get his revenge?’
Moore shook his head. ‘No, we all expected him to, but he never did. What actually happened was quite the reverse – every time he saw Danbury after that, he made himself scarce. I used to see him round town until a couple of years ago, always drunk and usually disorderly. He was regularly getting banged up in the nick. In fact, I was the arresting officer on one occasion.’
‘You say you used to see him. Has he moved to somewhere else? Or has he changed his ways?’
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