Thicker Than Water

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I think it’s more than likely.’

  ‘That leaves me with the third option,’ Briscoe said.

  He paused. It might be a good idea, before embarking on the third option, to get the chief constable to agree – preferably in writing – that it was the right course of action to take, he thought, but Pickering was in an important meeting, and had left strict instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed.

  Of course, given the seriousness of the situation, he could always insist on being put through, but he was not sure he actually wanted the chief constable’s guidance, because Pickering was one step removed from the sharp end of policing now, and rapidly becoming what all chief constables became eventually – a bureaucrat rather than a bobby, whose decision would be coloured more by public relations considerations than the requirements of good practice.

  ‘That leaves me with the third option,’ he repeated, ‘which, as you will already have worked out, is that you should talk to her.’

  ‘Shall I ring her now?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘I’d like nothing better than for you to ring her now,’ Briscoe replied, ‘but unfortunately, she’s ripped the phone out of the wall, so any talking you do will have to be face-to-face.’

  Well, shit! Beresford thought.

  ‘Listen, Colin …’ Briscoe said. He paused. ‘I am right? It is Colin, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it is.’

  ‘I’m not going to order you to go in there, Colin. In fact, I’d put it in even stronger terms than that – no one involved in this entire operation will blame you if you don’t go in there.’

  ‘I want to go,’ Beresford said.

  And he did, not because his words may have led to Archie Danbury’s death – if any man ever deserved to be killed, it was Archie – but because those same words might have determined Ethel’s future.

  ‘Well, if that’s your decision – made independently, without any outside pressure – I’ll get Sergeant Cox to issue you with a bullet-proof vest,’ Chief Superintendent Briscoe said.

  ‘I don’t want a bullet-proof vest,’ Beresford told him. ‘If I go in wearing that, Ethel will see me as the enemy – and that’s the last thing I need.’

  ‘That may be a good point, but I can’t allow you in there without one,’ Briscoe replied, ‘especially given that we’ve no idea what sort of mental state the woman is in. She might see you as a friend one minute, and an enemy the next. And she’s armed with a double-barrelled shotgun, remember, so if she starts to see you as an enemy, then God help you.’

  ‘She won’t see me as an enemy,’ Beresford said firmly.

  ‘You can’t know that for sure. By your own admission, you only met the woman yesterday.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ Beresford said.

  Briscoe sighed. ‘Have you ever had to face someone wielding a gun?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘The first time, you’re so scared that you’re absolutely convinced you’re going to crap yourself. And it doesn’t get any better – you think the same thing the twentieth time it happens. Believe me, I know.’

  ‘I’m not saying I won’t be scared …’ Beresford began.

  ‘Take the vest, son – because I’m not letting you go in there without one,’ Briscoe said firmly.

  ‘All right,’ Beresford agreed, with more irritation in his voice than was prudent when addressing a chief superintendent. ‘I’ll wear the bloody thing.’

  The bullet-proof vest was deep constabulary blue and had ‘Mid Lancs Police’ written across it in bright white capitals.

  It slipped over the head, and was then tightened up by Velcro strips on each side.

  ‘They call it a bullet-proof vest, but it isn’t really bullet-proof at all,’ Sergeant Cox said, as he checked the fasteners. ‘I much prefer the other name for it, which is bullet-resistant.’

  ‘Well, you are a proper little ray of sunshine, aren’t you?’ Beresford said drily.

  Cox chuckled. ‘I sometimes get carried away with the technical side of things,’ he said, ‘but don’t worry, it stops bullets, all right. It’s got a special layered synthetic fibre inside, which is five times as strong as steel. But if you do get hit, you’ll still feel the impact all right, and for days after you’ll have bruises the size and colour of syphilitic testicles.’

  Briscoe and Cox watched as Beresford left the protective safety of the parked police cars and walked across the road to the Danburys’ front door.

  ‘He’s got a key, has he?’ the chief superintendent asked.

  ‘Yes, sir, it’s the spare one that Mrs Danbury left with one of the neighbours.’

  Beresford came to a halt at the front door, but made no move to open it. Instead, he started fiddling with his bullet-proof vest, as if to assure himself it was still there.

  ‘Do you think he’s decided to bottle out?’ CS Briscoe asked.

  ‘Possibly,’ the sergeant replied. ‘I gave him a bit of a pep talk while I was helping him on with the vest, and he seemed all right then, but maybe now he’s on his own, he’s starting to have second thoughts.’

  ‘We’ll give him another half minute to make up his mind, then we’ll pull him back,’ Briscoe said.

  Beresford suddenly took hold of the vest at the shoulders, and lifted it over his head.

  ‘What the bloody hell is he doing?’ Briscoe exploded. He clicked his radio over broadcast. ‘Team B, get in there. Stop that maniac now!’

  But it was too late to do anything about Beresford now, because even before the jacket hit the ground, he was opening the door.

  Once he had closed the door behind him, Beresford had, in effect, locked one world out and imprisoned himself in other.

  Outside, there was a variety of sounds – the whispered conversations, the intermittent crackle of police radios, the heavy footfalls as officers ran – almost bent double – from one protected position to another.

  There was a variety of smells out there, too – car exhaust fumes, cigarettes, sweat, and, when the breeze suddenly changed direction, the fresh tang of roasted hops from the brewery.

  Inside, the only sound came from the free-standing hall clock, as its pendulum made the journey from left to right, and then back again from right to left – tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock …

  Inside, the air was dominated by the stink of cordite.

  Beresford could see the open door to the lounge, but from where he was standing, he could not look far into the lounge itself.

  ‘It’s me, Mrs Danbury!’ he called out, taking a step forward. ‘Colin Beresford! There’s nobody else with me. I’ve come alone.’

  There was no answer from the lounge.

  ‘I’m coming down the hallway,’ he said, taking a second step. ‘Is that all right?’

  Still no sound, other than the ticking of the clock.

  Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock …

  He stayed where he was.

  ‘Before I come any further, I really need you to tell me it’s all right, Mrs Danbury.’

  Nothing!

  Why wasn’t she saying anything? he wondered.

  Surely, she’d asked for him because she thought he was on her side – because she wanted to talk to him, and him alone.

  And that meant that she was on his side, too, didn’t it?

  But what if he’d misread the situation?

  What if she now regretted killing her husband, and blamed him for putting the idea into her head in the first place?

  He hadn’t put the idea into her head at all, of course, but if she was now feeling guilty, and looking for a scapegoat …

  He was sweating, he realised. Though it was not particularly warm in the hall, the sweat was pouring from him, clogging up his armpits and streaming in rivulets down his face.

  He could turn around now, quietly retrace his steps, and be at the front door before she knew what was happening.

  And if, once she did realise, she followed him out onto the street, intent on doing to
him what she had already done to her husband, the snipers would soon take care of her.

  He had his whole life ahead of him, he thought, whereas Mrs Danbury’s life was ruined, whatever the outcome of the morning’s events.

  So why take the risk?

  ‘It can’t go on like this, Ethel,’ he said loudly. ‘One of us has got to do something.’

  And then he took another decisive step towards the lounge.

  NINE

  The three wise men from the police authority were still droning on endlessly, like wasps around a picnic table.

  ‘… when you consider William’s very valuable contribution to the community … it isn’t doing his two little boys any good to be separated from their father, you know … perhaps, if you were to lay down some strict conditions, say, for example, that Danbury was required to report at the police station twice a day …’

  Blah, blah, blah.

  Their problem was that they just couldn’t bring themselves to see Danbury as a serious suspect, Paniatowski thought.

  It simply wasn’t possible that good old Bill Danbury – who played golf with them and told some very amusing dirty jokes in the clubhouse, who had raised thousands and thousands of pounds for charity, who was a stalwart supporter of Whitebridge RFC and had been a brilliant prop forward in his day, who you could always rely on to help you out when you needed access to a line of credit or a domestic alibi – had actually murdered his wife and kidnapped his own child.

  But it had gone beyond concern for William Danbury’s comfort. Now, it was as much about them as it was about him.

  They saw themselves as men of influence in the community – men whose opinions were deferred to. Yet here was this woman – a mere chief inspector, who, not so long ago, had been no more than Charlie Woodend’s bag carrier – refusing to be swayed by the sensible advice they were offering.

  So far, the chief constable had remained silent – had been, to all intents and purposes, no more than a spectator – but unless the meeting was to grumble on until the end of time, he was going to have to come down on one side or the other.

  It was time to gamble on him coming down on the right side, Paniatowski decided.

  ‘Do I have your permission to give these gentlemen some of the operational details of this case, sir?’ she asked Pickering.

  From the look in the chief constable’s eyes, it was clear that he recognised the question for what it actually was – a request for permission to go on the attack.

  He blinked twice, then said, ‘I don’t see why not. They are all members of the police authority, and I’m sure we can rely on them not to reveal to anyone else anything they are told in this room.’

  He was still playing it cagily, she thought – speaking in a tone of voice which suggested he had taken the request at face value, so that later, if needs be, he could claim that what was about to follow had come as much a surprise to him as it had to them.

  ‘Then let’s start with the victim,’ Paniatowski suggested. ‘How often did any of you see Jane Danbury?’

  Immediately, the wise men began to look uncomfortable.

  ‘Not very often, as a matter of fact,’ Alderman Cudlip admitted. ‘William usually comes to functions and social gatherings alone. He says that his wife prefers to be at home with the children.’

  ‘Jane Danbury virtually never left the house,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Sometimes that was because she was physically unable to – but we’ll come back to that point later. She had no friends to speak of, and – even more crucially – no opportunities to make enemies.’

  Cudlip laughed awkwardly. ‘You seem to have read us all wrong, chief inspector,’ he said. ‘We never thought for a moment that she’d been killed by an enemy. What we assumed was that the murderer was a stranger who had broken in, with the intention of robbing the Danburys, and …’

  ‘And was caught in the act by Mrs Danbury?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And having disturbed him, you’d expect her to run as far away from him as she possibly could, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But she doesn’t do that at all. She stays right there in the living room. And to make it easier for the burglar – a man she’s never seen before – to attack her, she turns her back on him.’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t know he was there.’

  ‘As for the burglar himself, he doesn’t just knock her unconscious – he keeps hitting her until her head is nothing but pulp.’

  ‘He may have panicked.’

  ‘Panicked, you say. A man in a panic would get out of the house as soon as possible. But he doesn’t do that. He doesn’t even take any of the valuables, which, according to your theory, is why he’s there in the first place. What he does do is to abduct the baby.’

  Alderman Cudlip looked at the other two wise men, as if he were expecting them to come to his rescue, but it was clear he had drawn a blank.

  ‘Perhaps the baby was what he wanted all along,’ Cudlip suggested. ‘There are, after all, such things as baby traffickers. I was reading about one in the papers, just the other day.’ He took a slow puff of his pipe, and was immediately surrounded by a cloud of blue smoke. ‘I will admit that the case I read about happened down south,’ he continued, ‘but anything bad that starts down south does eventually find its way up north.’

  ‘Have you ever examined baby trafficking from a business perspective?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Certainly not! That’s a horrible – grotesque – suggestion.’

  ‘But that’s the way the traffickers look at it. They work in the shadows, preying on the poor and helpless. The last thing that they want is the blaze of publicity that a murder would bring them.’ Paniatowski paused. ‘Now let’s consider William Danbury himself. He is a man who is entirely dependent on his wife. Without her, he would have no job.’

  ‘That surely can’t be right,’ Cudlip protested. ‘William is a highly respected businessman …’

  ‘A highly respected businessman who earns only what his wife chooses to pay him, and has no shares in the company he works for. His wife must have walked all over him, mustn’t she?’

  The three wise men looked neither at her nor at each other.

  And that’s because they know, she thought – that’s because they bloody well know!

  ‘Were you aware that William Danbury regularly beat up his wife, Jane – sometimes quite badly?’ Paniatowski demanded.

  ‘Did he, by God?’ Alderman Cudlip said.

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Then no, we were not aware of it.’

  ‘Really?’ Paniatowski asked sceptically. ‘Are you certain of that?’

  ‘Sometimes, when we were out for the night, William might express the view that a woman needs a good slapping now and again,’ Cudlip said, ‘but we all say silly things when we’ve had a few brandies, and no one took it seriously.’

  He was lying, Paniatowski thought. Maybe they didn’t know the full extent of what was going on, but they knew, all right. They knew, and they had accepted it because they liked Danbury’s company and they enjoyed his influence, and if his wife did get beaten up now and again, well, they hardly knew her.

  ‘He had a mistress, too – the family au pair,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘She was in love with him and expected him to marry her – and that could have ruined everything, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Then surely, if he was going to kill anyone, it would have been more sensible to kill the au pair,’ Cudlip said – and the moment the words were out of his mouth, it was obvious that he regretted ever uttering them.

  ‘So you’re admitting that he is capable of killing, are you?’ Paniatowski challenged.

  ‘No, of course not. I was speaking theoretically.’

  ‘The house’s security system is top of the range, and hadn’t been tampered with,’ Paniatowski said, hammering home her points. ‘Only three people had keys – Jane, William and the au pair. We know that Jane knew her murderer, and we
know that if she had found out about her husband’s affair – which she was almost bound to – she would very likely have cut him off without a penny. Can you seriously doubt that it was William Danbury – and not some nameless intruder – who killed Jane Danbury?’

  She waited for one of the three wise men to say something, but even Alderman Cudlip seemed unwilling to speak.

  ‘And do you know what the worst thing about this tragedy is?’ Paniatowski continued. ‘The worst thing is that it could so easily have been prevented – because if one of Danbury’s close friends had forced him to get help for his problem, the murder might never have occurred.’

  ‘I’m not sure I approve of it, but I have to admire the way you twisted things around to make them feel guilty about what happened,’ Pickering said to Paniatowski, when the three wise men had left.

  ‘I didn’t twist things around.’ Paniatowski said. ‘I didn’t need to. They feel guilty because they are guilty. Anyone who tolerates violence to others must bear part of the guilt for the violence.’

  ‘You’re sure William Danbury did it, are you?’ Pickering asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, I hope to God that you’re right, because you’ve just made yourself three real enemies there …’

  ‘My aim was never to make friends and influence people – it was to ensure that William Danbury stayed safely behind bars.’

  ‘… and if Danbury does turn out to be innocent after all, they’ll want your head on a platter.’

  ‘He did it,’ Paniatowski said firmly. ‘I know he did it.’

  The phone rang, and the chief constable reached across his desk for it.

  ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘He’s done what?… But why wasn’t I told?… I know I said I wasn’t to be disturbed, but this is … Yes, all right.’

  When he put down the phone again, there was a grave – almost funereal – expression on his face.

  ‘There’s been a serious incident,’ he told Paniatowski, ‘and one of your people is involved.’

  Ethel Danbury was sitting on an upright chair at the far end of the living room, with the shotgun cradled on her lap.