‘Is somethin’ the matter, lass?’ he asked.
‘A great deal’s the matter, Charlie,’ Maria said. ‘Can you come to the house?’
‘When? Now?’
‘No, not now. Give me half an hour or so to get things a bit straighter.’
To get yourself a bit straighter, more like, Woodend thought.
‘Is Bob with you?’ he asked.
‘No, he isn’t.’
‘Do you want me to see if I can find him?’
‘No!’ Maria said – almost screamed.
‘Is he—’
‘I’d rather you came alone, Charlie. Please!’
‘All right, if that’s what you want,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Do you still want me to leave it for half an hour?’
‘I … Yes, that would be best. Finish the pint you’re drinking now, have another one, and then come to see me.’
‘Listen, if you’d rather …’ Woodend began.
But he was only talking to the dialling tone.
Maria placed the phone back on its cradle, then made her way down the hall to the kitchen. She walked confidently because, in her own domain, everything had a place and there was no danger of any inanimate object lurking in ambush for her.
There were two radios in the kitchen, one tuned permanently to the Home Service and the other to the Third Programme. She clicked the switch on one of them, and found herself listening to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’.
Charlie would like a cup of tea when he arrived, she thought. And chocolate biscuits – he was always very partial to chocolate biscuits. She reached up to the cupboard, located the handle, and opened the door.
If anybody could tell her what to do about the mess she was in, it was Charlie Woodend, she told herself. True, he was Bob’s boss. But he was also her friend – a man she trusted, a man she respected. Yet even Charlie Woodend would be pushed to create any sort of order out of this confusion – even the great magician himself would have trouble pulling off this particular trick.
Her fingers had located the biscuits, and she carefully took them down.
The music on the radio was reaching its climax – swelling to fill the whole kitchen. It was so loud that it completely masked the sound coming from the living room – a sound which, if she had heard it, would have told her the catch on the French windows was being forced.
Woodend finished his pint, and then ordered another one, just as Maria had instructed him to. As a result, he did not leave the Drum and Monkey until twenty minutes after the phone call.
Later, he would try to tell himself that while Maria had seemed upset, there had been no real urgency in her voice. He would point out – as he defended himself in the case which he himself was also prosecuting – that Maria had specifically said he should wait half an hour. If he’d ignored her instructions and left immediately, he would argue, it would have made no difference. Because even if he’d been driving a racing car – and even if there’d been no other traffic on the road – he still wouldn’t have got there in time.
Yes, he would tell himself all this – and there were others who would argue his case even more strongly than he did himself. But it didn’t make any difference.
No bloody difference at all!
Eight
There were lights burning in most of the windows on Elm Croft, but the Rutter house was in darkness. Which told him two things, thought Charlie Woodend – the perpetual detective, the compulsive detective – as he pulled his Wolseley up at the edge of the curb. The first of those things was that Bob had not returned home yet – but from his earlier conversation with Maria, he had rather suspected that would be the case. The second thing was that the baby must be asleep.
So why should Maria waste electricity? Why turn on the lights when, however brightly the house might be illuminated, she would continue to move around in a world which was eternally dark?
Woodend switched off the engine, opened the car door, and stepped out into the chill night air. The street was deserted, but that was hardly surprising. The residents of the Crofts Estate would be safely indoors by now, their eyes glued to the flickering magic box which brought all the wonders of the world into the corner of their living rooms.
He was already on the Rutters’ path – making his way along the side of the house – when the unimaginable occurred.
The blinding flash – like a thousand suddenly flaring matches – came first. The deep angry boom and the scream of shattering glass followed almost immediately after it.
For a moment Woodend was back in war-time France: landing on that Normandy beach under heavy enemy fire; seeing his closest comrades fall all around him; hearing the angry roar of the guns; smelling the stench of blood, fear and desperation.
The past receded as quickly as it had arrived. His ears were ringing, his eyes were finding it hard to focus, but he knew where he was – and what must have happened.
He sprinted down the path to the kitchen door. The window panes had gone – he could hear the glass from them crunching under his feet – and through what was now no more than a hole in the wall, he could see that the whole of the kitchen was on fire.
He’d never get into the house that way, he told himself. If he tried, his eyeballs would fry before he’d even crossed the threshold.
He retreated back to the front of the house. He didn’t test the front door to see whether or not it was open – there was no time for such refinements – but just lashed out at the lock with his boot. The door groaned, but didn’t give. He kicked again, and this time it burst open.
A wave of hot air hit him. The hallway was thick with smoke, and beyond it he could just see the flickering flames.
How’s the fire managed to spread so fast? he wondered. How the bloody hell has it managed to get so far so quickly?
He lowered his head and plunged into the house. His eyes began to smart almost immediately, and he could feel the thick black smoke snaking its way to his lungs. As he made his way along the hallway, he forced himself to take much shallower breaths.
And all the time he was thinking, ‘If Maria was in the kitchen when the explosion happened, then she’s already dead! If the baby was with her, then she’s dead as well!’
So why was he wasting his time even heading for the kitchen? he asked himself angrily.
If Maria was still alive she’d be somewhere else in the house – probably huddling terrified in a corner, probably clutching her poor frightened little child tightly to her!
He would not have believed how hard it was to turn round – how simply rotating himself in thickening smoke could be one of the most difficult things he’d had to attempt in his entire life.
The lounge/diner was to his right, near the front entrance. He opened the door and screamed hoarsely, ‘Maria! Maria! Are you in there? For God’s sake tell me if you’re in there!’
Some light was seeping into the room from the street lamps outside, but he didn’t need that light to see – because the fire had already found its way through the serving hatch and was licking hungrily at the French window curtains and the three-piece suite.
There was no one in the room, but that didn’t mean there was no one anywhere else in the house. Woodend’s stomach churned as he realized that there was nothing for it but to go upstairs.
He flicked the switch at the top of the hallway, and through streaming eyes saw the landing light come on. The fire was already spreading up the hall – why was that happening? – and once he got upstairs there was absolutely no guarantee he’d ever be able to get down again. He stuck his head through the front doorway, sucked in a gulp of the largely unpolluted air outside, then ran up the stairs two at a time.
The master bedroom was empty. So was the spare room. The baby’s cot stood in the centre of the nursery, but there was no sign of the baby herself. When he found nothing in the bathroom either, he understood that the whole dangerous exercise had been a complete waste of time.
He heard the sound of a fire engine s
iren wailing in the distance, and thought, ‘God, they’ve been quick!’
But not quick enough. Nowhere near quick enough!
Moments before the air upstairs had seemed perfectly fresh, but now he was finding it difficult to breathe again.
‘Must be a reason for that,’ he thought hazily. ‘Has to be a reason … a very good reason.’
He staggered – why was he staggering, he wondered? – out on to the landing again, to discover that the fire had pursued him, and now the whole of the staircase was ablaze.
Shouldn’t have spread so fast, he thought for the fifth or sixth time. No reason why it should have spread so fast.
He returned to the master bedroom, and opened the window. Above his head the light fizzled, and then the room was plunged into darkness.
A crowd had gathered outside.
Bloody nosy parkers! he thought. What’s the matter with you? Nothin’ good on the telly at this time of night?
The fire engine was just pulling on to the street, its lights flashing, its siren still howling. Woodend wondered idly how long it would take the firemen to get the ladder up to him. If they were as good as they claimed to be, it shouldn’t take much time at all. On the other hand, if they weren’t that good he wouldn’t be around to take the piss out of them for it, because he’d be bloody well dead!
He hoisted himself up on to the window ledge.
‘Somebody’s up there!’ a woman’s voice screamed below. ‘He’s going to jump!’
Well, of course I’m goin’ to bloody jump! Woodend thought. What else do you expect me to do? Stay here and roast?
Rutter’s prize flower patch was just below him, he noticed. Bob always said that even if Maria couldn’t actually see the flowers, at least she could bloody well smell them.
‘Jump!’ several voices urged from below.
Bugger you, I’ll jump in my own time, Woodend thought.
‘Jump!’ the voices screamed again.
In fact, if it means destroying Bob’s prize flower bed, I might not jump at all, Woodend thought. It’s only a few weeks to Christmas. I might just stay here until Santa Claus comes to call, then I can leave on his sled.
You’ve gone loopy, Charlie Woodend, he told himself. You have to bloody jump.
In the event, it was more of a half-jump and a half-collapse-forward. Several people on the ground screamed as he fell, but by that point he had very little interest in anything save for the swirling images inside his head.
He was lying on his back, staring up at rows of white tiles.
White tiles?
Staring up at them?
How could he be staring up at them. Did that mean that he was hanging from the bloody ceiling?
He closed his eyes again, and when he opened them once more, it all started to make more sense. The tiles were on the ceiling, he was on a bed. Put the two together, and he was almost certain that meant he was in a hospital.
But why? Had all that greasy food, washed down with pints of best bitter and rounded off with a cigarette, finally brought on the heart attack that Joan had been warning him of for so long?
No, Joan was the one who’d had the heart attack – while they’d been on holiday in Spain.
So just what was going on?
He turned his head to one side, and saw the man in blue uniform who was sitting next to his bed.
‘So what’s it all about, Constable?’ he asked.
And then he remembered. The sudden explosion. The shattering glass. The flames. The smoke.
‘Maria?’ he said.
The constable coughed awkwardly. ‘One body has been recovered from the kitchen of the house, sir. It was fairly badly burned, but the general feeling is that it has to be Mrs Rutter.’
‘And the baby? What’s happened to the baby, man?’
‘Mrs Rutter’s child was not in the house at the time of the explosion, sir. She’s quite safe.’
‘And … and Bob?’
‘Are you talking about Inspector Rutter, sir?’
‘Well of course I’m talking about Inspector Rutter, you bloody fool! Who else could I be talkin’ about?’
‘Mr Rutter’s in a state of shock. I believe that he’s been quite heavily sedated.’
Woodend swung his legs over towards the edge of the bed, and was surprised to discover that he seemed to have acquired a number of fairly painful aches.
‘I’ll go an’ see Bob anyway,’ he told the constable. ‘I’ve no doubt he’ll be wantin’ to talk to me.’
The other man placed a restraining hand on his shoulder. ‘It wouldn’t do any good, sir.’
‘I’m your boss, you jumped-up little turd,’ Woodend said angrily. ‘So don’t go tryin’ to tell me what would an’ what wouldn’t do any good.’
The constable’s hand continued to press down on him. ‘Mr Rutter’s probably still unconscious, sir. And even if he isn’t, he wouldn’t even recognize you, given the state he’s in.’
‘If he doesn’t recognize me, then he doesn’t recognize me,’ Woodend said, wondering why he was finding it so difficult to shake off the constable’s hand. ‘But whether or not, I’m going to see him anyway.’
‘Oh no, you’re not,’ said a new voice from the doorway.
‘Oh no, you’re not. Oh yes, I am,’ Woodend said. ‘What is this? A rehearsal for the bloody Christmas pantomime?’
‘Quite apart from the injuries you sustained in your fall, you inhaled a lot of smoke,’ the doctor said.
‘After puffin’ on Capstan Full Strength for nearly thirty years, it was a doddle,’ Woodend countered.
But even to his own ears, his words lacked conviction.
‘You could have died,’ the doctor said.
‘But I didn’t.’
‘No, and, as it happens, apart from some heavy bruising I don’t think any serious damage has been done. But I’m still keeping you in for observation overnight.’
‘In a pig’s arse you are!’ Woodend said angrily. ‘You doctors might think you can act like God Almighty, but I’m a bobby, an’ I know the law.’
‘You should try to rest now,’ the doctor said soothingly.
‘An’ the law says you can’t keep me here against my will,’ Woodend continued. He turned his head slightly to look at the constable again, and unleashed on himself a fresh wave of pain. ‘You heard all that, did you?’ he asked.
The constable nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then fetch me my clothes, and we’ll be leavin’.’
‘But, sir—’
‘Don’t “but sir” me. Get me my bloody clothes.’
Perhaps the constable argued some more. Woodend wouldn’t have known if he had, because when he woke up again it was already morning.
Nine
It was ten o’clock by the time Woodend fully realized where he was, half past ten before he had mustered sufficient energy to demand to be released. The paperwork took another twenty minutes, and – since the formidable matron refused to give him his clothes until the process was completed – it was not until a little before eleven that he was able to leave the hospital.
The uniformed constable waiting at the door of his room had a familiar look about him.
‘Beresford, isn’t it?’ Woodend asked.
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘An’ you’re here to take me to headquarters, are you?’
‘I’m not sure, sir,’ the constable confessed. ‘I rather think the idea was to drive you home.’
‘I don’t know whose idea it was, but it’s a very bad one,’ Woodend said. ‘Headquarters in the place I need to be.’
‘The doctor said—’
‘The doctor said I’m fine,’ Woodend lied, and then winced as he felt a sudden pain shoot across his back. ‘You take me to headquarters, lad, an’ if anybody gives you any grief over it, you can say that – against all good sense – I insisted.’ The pain had moved to the base of his neck, but he could live with it. ‘But there’s one thing we have to do befor
e we leave,’ he continued, ‘an’ that’s to go an’ see how Inspector Rutter’s gettin’ on.’
Beresford’s eyes flickered for an instant. ‘Mr Rutter isn’t here any longer, sir. He left with a couple of other officers, half an hour ago.’
‘An’ I suppose they tried to take him home, as well, did they?’
The moment the words were out of his mouth, Woodend felt sick. Of course the officer hadn’t tried to take Bob home, he thought. Bob didn’t have a home any longer.
How could he ever even have said that? he asked himself. What kind of mindless, insensitive clod – what kind of gutter rat – was he?
‘You mustn’t feel guilty, sir,’ Beresford said, reading the expression on his face correctly. ‘You’ve been through a lot in the last few hours. It’s perfectly understandable you’d get a bit confused.’
‘Aye, you’re right,’ Woodend agreed, partly forgiving himself. ‘So where did they take Mr Rutter?’
‘To the station, sir.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought they have made him do the paperwork so soon after his bereavement,’ Woodend said. ‘But perhaps that’s what he wanted.’
‘Perhaps so,’ Beresford said, noncommittally.
‘Well, we’re doin’ no good standin’ around here,’ Woodend said. ‘Time we got our skates on.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Beresford said compliantly.
It was only as Beresford was driving him towards the centre of Whitebridge that the grief really hit Woodend, but when it did, it came with the force of a landslide.
Maria was dead! Beautiful, wonderful Maria was dead!
Images of the past flashed through his mind.
He remembered the first time he had met her, back in London. Bob had only recently become his sergeant then, and had been on pins about how they’d get on. But he need have had no worries, because the middle-aged English detective and the young Spanish research student had hit it off right from the start.
He recalled going to see her in hospital, just after the eye surgeon had told her she would never recover her sight, and he – who had faced death in North Africa and Normandy – had marvelled that anyone could show such courage.
Dying in the Dark Page 6
