‘But it never occurred to you before?’
‘Well, no,’ the invoice clerk admitted. ‘Pamela wasn’t like most of the girls who work here, you see. She seemed to have her own set of rules.’
‘I think this latest boyfriend of hers was something special,’ said a brunette shorthand-typist who wore her hair in an elaborate beehive.
‘What makes you say that?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Sometimes she’d start getting very edgy when it got near to clocking-off time. You know the sort of thing. She didn’t seem to be able to concentrate properly, and couldn’t stay in any one place for more than a few seconds.’
‘And what did you think that meant?’
‘Well, that this boyfriend – whoever he was – was taking her somewhere special – somewhere expensive.’
Or somewhere exciting, Paniatowski thought – though she had no idea why that particular idea had popped into her head.
Neither Woodend nor Paniatowski thought to order lunch, but at one o’clock it duly arrived, delivered on two dull tin trays by a couple of the office juniors. Woodend, deep in thought, only started to appreciate just how good the meat and two veg was when he’d almost finished it.
The trays were taken away, and the questioning continued along much the same lines as it had before lunch.
‘I liked Pamela, but I couldn’t say I really knew her,’ confessed a wages’ clerk who – being older than most of the other women – was starting to go grey. ‘It’s Jenny Thomas you should really be talking to. She was Pamela’s best friend.’
Woodend pictured the look in Jenny Thomas’s eyes when she’d been explaining how Pamela would quickly drop her when she’d taken up with another man.
With friends like her, he thought, who needs enemies?
Six
It was half-past five when Bob Rutter, standing next to the blackboard in the ‘nerve centre’, announced to his team that while he expected them to carry on with their inquiries for at least two or three more hours, he had other matters to attend to, and was going home.
‘Going home, sir?’ repeated one of them, an eager young detective constable called Bates.
‘Yes! Have you any objection to that, Chief Superintendent Bates?’ Rutter demanded aggressively.
‘No, sir, but …’
‘But what?’
‘But nothin’, sir.’
But it’s not like you to shirk your duty, sir, Rutter supplied silently, on Bates’s behalf. It’s not like you to leave up to others work that you should be doing yourself.
True enough. It wasn’t like him. But his life was falling apart, and it was much more important to make one last effort to save it than it was to catch whoever had killed Pamela Rainsford.
It only took him ten minutes to drive from the centre of Whitebridge to the new suburb in which his family – for the moment, at least – lived. He was close to home when he saw the illuminated billboard, and though he’d been expecting it, he still frowned.
Welcome to Phase Two of the Croft Estate
Two hundred exciting new executive houses
Show-house now open
Prices reduced
‘Phase Two!’ he said disgustedly.
There had been no Phase Two – or even any talk of one – when he had bought his house in Elm Croft a couple of years earlier. One of the things which had attracted him to that particular property was that it was on the edge of the estate, with an uninterrupted view of the moors.
‘And there’s no chance there’ll be any more building in front of it, is there?’ he’d asked the estate agent, before handing over his deposit.
‘There’s always a chance,’ the agent had replied, in the exaggeratedly frank way that such agents had. ‘When you think about it, Mr Rutter, there’s always a chance you’ll be struck by a meteorite or win a couple of hundred thousand quid on the football pools. But it’s not something you can spend your life worrying about, now is it?’
‘Even so—’ Rutter had said doubtfully.
‘You soon learn never to say “never” in my line of work,’ the agent interrupted, ‘but as far as I know, all that land beyond the estate is owned by an old farmer who’d rather cut off his own leg than sell a square inch of it.’
The old farmer’s determination to hold on to his land – if such determination had ever actually existed – crumbled little more than a year after the Rutters had moved in, and the bulldozers arrived less than a week after that.
Furious, Rutter had gone to the Croft Estate office and demanded to know what they hell was going on.
The new plan, he was told, was to build three more ‘crofts’ – Birch Croft, Sycamore Croft and Ash Croft.
‘But you need have no worries about feeling hemmed in,’ Mr Sexton, the building manager, assured him. He pointed to a plan on the wall of his office. ‘The next row of houses will be facing the other way, so the bottom of your garden will be touching the bottom of the garden of the corresponding house in Birch Croft. And it’ll be a big garden, Mr Rutter.’ He laughed. ‘You’d almost need to mount an expedition to get from the Birch Croft house to yours.’
Rutter failed to see the humour. ‘When does work on Birch Croft actually start?’ he’d asked.
‘Oh, not for a while yet.’
‘But the bulldozers are already there.’
‘Ah, I see what you mean. It’s Ash Croft – what you might call the outer ring of houses – which we’ll be building first.’
‘And why might that be?’
‘Because they’ll be the easiest ones to sell. Because they’ll be the ones with the …’
He stopped suddenly, as if he’d said more than he’d intended to.
‘The ones with the uninterrupted view of the moors,’ Rutter said, finishing the sentence off for him.
‘Well, yes, that’s right,’ Sexton admitted.
‘Just like I had, when your agent sold me my house.’
Sexton shrugged. ‘What can I tell you, Mr Rutter? Times change. Things move on. It’s the way of the world.’
‘So because you want to sell the houses on Ash Croft first, I’ll be forced to live next to a building site for at least a year?’
‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ Sexton said, with the indifference of a man who held all the cards. ‘Besides, it probably won’t be anything like as noisy as you seem to think it will.’
Now, nine months later, Ash Croft was completed – though the houses had not been selling half as quickly as Mr Sexton had clearly anticipated. And soon – out of the morass the builder had created while constructing it – Birch Croft and Sycamore Croft would begin to rise.
Rutter had gradually come to terms with the situation. Sexton had been right about the fact that the large gardens would mean there was a considerable distance between the two rows of houses, he told himself. And anyway, an uninterrupted view of the moors was not something a man on a detective inspector’s salary could reasonably expect.
But now, driving home on a day in which his world seemed to be unravelling like a ball of string, he began to take a darker view again. In his mind, the Croft Estate was now symbolic of his whole approach to life – proof that when he had two courses of action open to him, he would always choose the wrong one.
Maria was on the hall phone when Rutter entered the house through the back door. Standing in the kitchen, he couldn’t distinguish the words. But he could tell that she was speaking Spanish, so it was more than likely that she was talking to one of her parents.
He opened the kitchen door and stepped into the hallway just as Maria was replacing the phone on its cradle. He coughed, as he always did, to let her know that it was him, and not some intruder.
‘What time is it?’ she asked.
‘Just after six.’
‘Then why are you home so early? I thought you had a new murder case to investigate.’
‘We do. It’s some poor bloody woman who—’
‘I am not Monika Paniatowski,’ Maria
said cuttingly. ‘I get no pleasure from hearing the grisly details of your work. My only interest is to wonder how you could bear to drag yourself away from your precious investigation.’
God, what a bloody mess he’d made of things! Rutter thought. What a bloody, bloody mess.
‘I came home early because I’d already instructed the team on exactly what to do, and—’ he began.
‘I told you, I have no interest in your work,’ Maria interrupted.
‘I know that. I was just explaining to you how I came to be free for the rest of the day.’
‘But why should you even want to be free for the rest of the day?’
‘I thought we might spend some time together. I thought we might try to talk things through.’
‘There is nothing to talk about,’ Maria said coldly. ‘Besides, how do you know I’m not busy myself?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Oh, I see how your mind works. Why should the poor blind woman have any plans of her own? Isn’t she just supposed to stay quietly at home until her lord and master deigns to return?’
‘I’ve never seen things in that way,’ Rutter protested. ‘You know I haven’t, darling.’
‘I thought I knew many things,’ Maria said, ‘but it seems that I was wrong about most of them. And as it happens, I do have plans of my own – plans which require your absence – and so I would appreciate it if you would return to your precious work.’
There might not be any right things to say in this situation, Rutter thought, but there were certainly wrong ones. And the worst thing he could possibly do, he felt instinctively, would be to ask her about her phone call.
‘What were you talking to your parents about?’ he was horrified to hear himself say.
‘What has that got to do with you?’ Maria countered.
‘They’re my in-laws.’
‘That is certainly true – for the moment at least. But that still does not give you the right to question me about my private conversations.’
‘Are you planning to go and visit them?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘For how long?’
‘That has not been decided yet.’
‘A week?’ Rutter asked frantically. ‘Two weeks?’
‘That is my business.’
‘It’s not just your business. Not if you’re planning to take my daughter with you.’
‘It’s your fault that this is happening, Bob,’ Maria said, sounding a little more like her old self again. ‘Not mine! Yours!’
‘I know,’ Rutter admitted miserably.
‘Could you do one thing for me before you go out again?’ Maria asked.
‘What?’ Rutter replied. And when she had told him, he said, ‘Why should you want me to do that?’
‘Just for once, can’t you do what I ask without asking questions?’ Maria countered.
‘You’re expecting a visitor, aren’t you?’ Rutter demanded.
‘Since I’ve already said I want you out of the house, I should have thought that was obvious.’
‘Who is it? Who’s coming round?’
‘After what you’ve done, you really have no right to ask.’
She was spot on, Rutter thought. He did have no right to ask. Absolutely no right at all!
At seven o’clock – when Woodend and Paniatowski had interviewed so many young women that they’d scarcely have noticed if they had finally reached the end of the line and started again – Lucy Higson appeared at the door.
God, but she was a striking woman, Woodend thought, and wondered how Derek Higson – a man of his own age, for God’s sake! – had managed not only to pull her but to hold on to her.
‘It’s past clocking-off time, but I’ve talked to the staff and told them they’re to stay here for as long as you want them to,’ Lucy said.
Woodend forced a weak grin. ‘I shouldn’t have imagined they would have liked that very much.’
‘They didn’t,’ Mrs Higson agreed, returning his smile. ‘At least, they didn’t like it until I informed them they could book it down as overtime. If there’s one thing that Derek and I have learned in this business, it’s that if you need to put an immediate stop to grumbling, just offer double pay.’
The woman was a real cracker, Woodend told himself – and not just in the looks department.
But though she’d gone to a lot of trouble to make it possible, even the thought of interviewing anyone else that day was enough to make his head start throbbing.
‘You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Higson, but I think you can tell your staff they can all go home now,’ he said.
‘So you’ve finished here?’
‘I wish we had,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But I’m afraid we’ll be back again first thing in the morning, to begin afresh. We haven’t even started on the shop-floor staff yet.’
‘You’re going to question all our craftsmen and apprentices, are you?’ Lucy Higson asked, sounding surprised.
‘Any reason why we shouldn’t?’
Lucy Higson shrugged. And she managed to make even that gesture seem elegant.
‘There’s no reason at all why you shouldn’t talk to them,’ she said. ‘I just think it would be a waste of time.’
‘Why’s that?’
For a moment, Lucy Higson seemed unsure of how to answer.
‘I don’t wish to appear to be speaking ill of the dead,’ she said finally, ‘but there’s a certain tendency among the girls who work in the office to think that they’re somehow better than the men with jobs on the shop floor. What they fail to realize, of course, is that it’s the craftsmen who are the real heart of the enterprise. Without them, and the superb work they do, we’d have nothing to sell. Without them, we’d all go hungry.’
‘So what you’re really sayin’ is that Pamela was a bit of a snob?’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite as strongly as that,’ Lucy Higson replied, sounding slightly uncomfortable. ‘Let’s just say that she chose to keep something of a distance between herself and those who, quite unfairly, she might have seen as mere manual labourers.’
When a girl does that, it can hurt, Woodend thought, especially when it’s a pretty girl who you’d like to impress. And sometimes, faced with rejection, admiration can turn into loathing. Sometimes it can even make normally decent-enough men feel a strong urge to punish.
Seven
It had been dark for some time when Woodend and Paniatowski finally emerged from the offices of New Horizons Enterprises, and with the darkness had come a chill which promised another cold night. It wouldn’t be long now before early-morning windscreens were covered with a thick layer of frost, and engines stuttered in response to the demands of starter motors, Woodend thought.
The two detectives climbed into Woodend’s Wolseley, both lighting up cigarettes as they did so.
‘I get heartily sick of all the people who ask how there can be a God when there’s so much sufferin’ in the world,’ Woodend said, as he pulled away. ‘Fortunately, bein’ a serious student of theology, I’ve got a rebuttal right at my fingertips. And what I say to them is this – “If there is no God, then who the bloody hell created pubs?”’
‘Sorry, sir, what was that again?’ Monika Paniatowski asked.
Woodend sighed. ‘It wasn’t that funny a line the first time round, so it certainly wouldn’t improve with repetition,’ he said.
‘What wouldn’t?’
‘I was just indicatin’ – in my own bumblin’, fumblin’ way – that at the end of a day like this, it’s a bloody good thing there’s a pint waitin’ for us.’
‘If you don’t mind, sir, I think I’d rather give the pub a miss tonight,’ Monika said.
Woodend raised a surprised right eyebrow. ‘What’s the matter? Not feelin’ well?’
‘I’m all right,’ Monika said, unconvincingly. ‘I’d just rather go home and get my head down. You don’t mind, do you?’
Of course he minded. Some of their best work had been done in the public bar o
f the Drum and Monkey. There were cases which would have gone unsolved but for the inspirations which came from lubricating their brains with ample supplies of best bitter and double vodka. Besides, business apart, he rather enjoyed having a drink with his team.
‘I don’t mind at all if you don’t come,’ he lied. ‘Where would you like me to drop you off? At the station?’
‘Yes, please,’ Monika replied.
The public bar of the Drum and Monkey was crowded, but the landlord – bless his little cotton socks – had made sure that the team’s usual table was kept free. Except that there didn’t seem to be any reason to reserve it that night, because Monika had gone home, and there was no sign of Bob Rutter.
‘DI Rutter’s not happened to have been in tonight, has he, Jack?’ Woodend asked.
‘Not that I’ve seen,’ the landlord replied. He pointed to the phone behind the bar. ‘Do you want to call the station, an’ see if he’s still there?’
‘Not at the moment,’ Woodend said, because, after all, he didn’t want the Inspector to think that he was chasing him – that he was desperate for the man’s company.
Sitting at his usual table, pint of best bitter in front of him, he waited for new ideas to start flooding into his head. But none came. He needed stimulating, he told himself. He needed the input that only Bob Rutter and Monika Paniatowski could provide.
He tried to remember what it was like working without them, and found he couldn’t. Though Bob Rutter had only been with him for six years – and Monika Paniatowski for considerably less – closing a case without their help now seemed almost inconceivable.
‘Phone call for you, Mr Woodend,’ the landlord called out across the busy room.
Woodend did his best not to look too eager as he stood up and walked over to the bar, but there was still a definite spring in his step.
‘Where are you, Bob?’ he asked into the mouthpiece.
‘It’s not Bob, Charlie,’ said a female voice with the slightest hint of a foreign accent.
‘Maria?’ Woodend asked.
‘I’m so glad I found you there, Charlie,’ Maria Rutter said.
She sounded like she’d been crying, Woodend thought.
Dying in the Dark Page 5
