The Red Herring

by Sally Spencer

  ‘So you saw me on the telly, did you?’ he asked. ‘What are you? A talent scout? Think you can get me a job in Hollywood, do you?’

  ‘You’re looking for the little girl.’

  ‘If you did see me on the telly, you don’t have to be a genius to have worked that out.’

  ‘I’ve got her.’

  Woodend felt the hairs on his neck prickle. The hoarse caller could be a crank, of course – they got enough of those ringing in after every major crime. But there was always the possibility that he wasn’t!

  ‘So you’ve got her, have you?’ he asked. ‘Well, why don’t you hand her back before any real harm’s done? You’re probably a bit frightened yourself, but you don’t need to be. You don’t have to run any risk in returnin’ her – just leave her somewhere she can be easily found, an’ then call me again.’

  The other man laughed. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes I would. I think it’d be the best thing all round,’ Woodend said earnestly.

  ‘I’m going to be gone for a moment, but don’t hang up because I’ve got someone I’d like you to hear.’

  There was silence for a few seconds, then Woodend heard a girl’s voice say, ‘Don’t hurt me! Please don’t hurt me!’

  ‘Who are you, luv? Tell me your name!’ Woodend said.

  ‘I’m . . . I’m Helen Dunn.’

  The line fell silent again. Woodend began counting slowly. He had reached twelve before the man with the rasping voice came back.

  ‘As you’ve just heard for yourself, she’s still alive,’ the rasper said. ‘You did hear, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I heard,’ Woodend agreed. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘I want to kill her, of course! But not yet. Killing her now wouldn’t be half as much fun as waiting a while. So there’s still a chance you could find us both, isn’t there?’

  ‘You don’t have to go through with this, you know,’ Woodend said, trying not to sound as if he were pleading.

  ‘But I want to go through with it. Why don’t you ask me when I intend to kill her?’

  ‘There’s no point in either of us talkin’ like that.’

  ‘Ask me!’ the other man insisted. ‘Ask me – or I’ll do it right now.’

  ‘When are you goin’ to kill her?’ Woodend said dully.

  The hoarse man laughed again. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It could be three days from now, or it could be tomorrow morning. You’ve no way of knowing, have you? So if you want to find her, you haven’t got a minute to waste.’

  Then the line went silent again, and this time there was mechanical hum which told Woodend the call really was over.

  ‘Whoever the caller was, he must have been in this pub fairly recently,’ Bob Rutter said, looking round him in an attempt to remember the faces of the people who had been in the now-vacant seats.

  ‘He could have been here,’ Woodend agreed. ‘On the other hand, he might know my car, an’ have seen it parked outside when he drove past. Or he could just be somebody who knows me well enough to be sure that I’d be here at this time of night. The point is, was the caller the kidnapper or just a nutter?’

  ‘You heard the girl’s voice,’ Paniatowski pointed out.

  ‘I heard a girl’s voice,’ Woodend countered. ‘In fact, I can’t even be sure of that. I heard what sounded like a girl’s voice choked with terror, but maybe it was just him impersonatin’ a girl.’ He drew heavily on his cigarette. ‘But let’s assume for the moment that the call was genuine,’ he continued. ‘Why should the kidnapper have rung me?’

  ‘Because you’re the man in charge,’ Rutter said. ‘Because he saw you on television.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ Woodend said. ‘What I want to know is, why ring anybody connected with the case?’

  ‘Maybe he just likes playing games,’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘Aye, that’s not entirely unknown,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But if that is the case, the call should have come later.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘If he is playin’ a game, there’s two parts to it. The first part is the one he plays with the girl, an’ the second is the one he plays with me.’

  ‘You’re saying he shouldn’t have rung you until there was no chance of you spoiling the first part of the game,’ Rutter said.

  ‘Or to put it another way, he shouldn’t have rung you until the girl was dead,’ Paniatowski added.

  ‘Exactly,’ Woodend said. ‘Let’s leave that question for a minute, an’ move on to somethin’ else. He could have rung me at the station. He could have rung me at the television studio, just after we’d made the broadcast. But he didn’t do either of those things. He either ran the risk of followin’ me, or took the chance that I’d be here. Why?’

  ‘He wanted to make sure you had no possibility of either tracing the call or recording it,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘That’s what I think, an’ all,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Which means that he’s not like some of these loonies who play games with the police because what they really want to do is get caught. So I come back to my original question. Why is he playin’ the game – an’ why has he started to play it now?’

  The waiter returned to the table. ‘Another call for you, Mr Woodend. I think it might be the same man who called you last time.’

  He should have rung the technical lads at the station, and had a tracer put on the pub’s phone, Woodend thought as he stood up. But even if he had done that, it would not have been in place yet – and the caller probably knew it just as well as he did.

  He reached the corridor and picked up the phone. ‘Is it you again?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me again,’ the hoarse-voiced caller said. ‘Have you been having a nice little chat with Inspector Rutter and Sergeant Paniatowski?’

  Woodend shivered. The man hadn’t just driven by and seen his car, then – he’d been inside the pub. Or, at least, watching the pub!

  ‘What makes you think Rutter and Paniatowski are here?’ he asked, just to confirm his suspicions.

  ‘Rutter’s wearing a blue suit that makes him look more like a stockbroker than a policeman,’ the caller said. ‘Paniatowski’s wearing a green dress which shows off quite a lot of her legs. Very tasty! If she was fifteen years younger, I might fancy her myself.’

  ‘Would you have fancied Verity Beale if she’d been fifteen years younger?’ Woodend asked.

  The other man chuckled. ‘So you’ve got there at last, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘Is that an admission that you killed her?’

  ‘It might be.’

  ‘Then maybe you could answer me this – why dump her body in the pigsty?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about her any more,’ the rasper said. ‘Let’s get back to your team. What were you talking about?’

  ‘What did you think? We were talkin’ about you. We were sayin’ that the smartest thing you could do – from your own point of view as well as everybody else’s – is to let Helen go.’

  ‘Liar!’ the rasper said disgustedly. ‘What you were really doing was trying to decide whether I was just a crank – or if I really did have the girl.’

  ‘There was that, as well,’ Woodend admitted.

  ‘Go out to your car,’ the rasper said.

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘Go out to your car, and see what’s hidden underneath it.’

  ‘You’ll like that, won’t you?’ Woodend demanded. ‘You’ll like to see me crawlin’ on my hands and knees, like a dog?’

  The caller laughed contemptuously. ‘Considering you’re an experienced policeman, you’re really not very good at this, are you?’

  ‘Not very good at what?’

  ‘At laying verbal traps for me to fall into.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

  ‘Yes, you do. You think that between the last call and this one, I’ve driven to the pub, and that when you go outside I’ll be somewhere in the s
hadows, watching and waiting. That’s why you asked if I’ll enjoy it – to make sure I’ll be there. But I won’t be. I have been to the pub – if you’d had the sense to post men in the car park, they’d have caught me – but I’m miles away now.’

  ‘Are you doin’ this on your own?’ Woodend asked. ‘Or have you got helpers?’

  The caller laughed again. ‘Do you really think I’d share this experience with anybody else?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Woodend said.

  And he didn’t. Experience taught him that men like the rasper often acted alone, yet he got the distinct impression that wherever the man was calling from, there was someone else there with him.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ the rasper said. ‘Perhaps there are two of us. Or even three or four. That should make things easier for you, shouldn’t it Mr Woodend? If four men are involved – or maybe it’s even five – then it’s four or five times more likely that somebody will make a mistake and drop the vital clue which will lead you to the girl.’

  ‘I don’t want to play games any more,’ Woodend said.

  ‘But I do,’ the rasper said. ‘And I’m the one who’s calling the tune that we both dance to. Go out to your car, Mr Woodend. Go now – before somebody else finds what I’ve left there for you.’

  The phone went dead. Woodend made his way quickly out to the car park. His Wolseley was standing just where he had left it.

  For a moment he paused to wonder if it had been booby-trapped, but then he quickly dismissed the idea. Whether the rasper was genuine or not, killing policemen was not how he got his kicks.

  Woodend knelt down by the Wolseley, and ran his hand slowly under the car’s chassis. Halfway between the back and front wheels, he felt his fingers brush against something. Gingerly, he explored the shape of it with the nail of his index finger. As far as he could tell, the object was a long, thin, rectangular shape.

  He should call in the lads from the lab to handle the situation from there on in, he thought. But what would be the point of that? The rasper was a clever man, who had considered all the angles. Whatever he had left under the car, he would have taken great pains to ensure that there was nothing about it to connect it with him.

  Taking hold of the rectangular box by one corner, Woodend lifted if from the ground, and out from under the car. He held his prize up towards the streetlight, so he could examine it better. The box was covered in a green tartan material, and a zip ran around most of the top.

  A pencil case!

  Woodend took the zip fastener between two fingers, carefully pulled it round, and flipped the pencil case open. Inside were all the things he expected to find – ordinary pencils and coloured pencils, a sharpener, a protractor and a set of compasses. In the lid itself, someone had written a name in a careful, childlike hand. It came as no surprise to him that that name was Helen Dunn.

  Eighteen

  ‘It is exactly eight forty-eight on the morning of Wednesday October 24th, and here are the news headlines,’ said the voice of the newsreader from the radio in Paniatowski’s MGA. ‘As the crisis over Cuba deepens, both the USSR and President Castro have called the American low-level flight over the island an unwarranted breach of Cuban air space. In further developments, the USA has announced the quarantine of Cuba will begin at ten o’clock Eastern Standard Time, though, for practical purposes, it is already in place.’

  Paniatowski switched the radio off, and reached, with her free hand, for the packet of cigarettes which was resting on the dashboard.

  ‘The situation’s not getting any better, is it?’ DCI Horrocks asked from the passenger seat.

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘How do you want to handle this session with Captain Tooley?’

  Horrocks grinned. ‘You’re a very single-minded young woman, aren’t you, Monika?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s the only way to do the job.’

  ‘Did you learn that from Cloggin’-it Charlie?’

  ‘I think I already knew it before I started working with Mr Woodend, but he’s done nothing to convince me that I was wrong.’

  ‘Do you wish you were working with him on this case, rather than with me?’ Horrocks asked.

  Alarm bells started to ring in Paniatowski’s head.

  What is this? she wondered. Some kind of test?

  ‘I don’t know enough about you yet to make that kind of judgement,’ she said cautiously.

  Horrocks chuckled. ‘Not much of a one for flattering your superiors, are you, Monika?’

  ‘Now that’s one thing that Mr Woodend did teach me,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘You never did tell me how we’re going to handle this session with Captain Wilbur Tooley.’

  ‘I don’t know yet. But you’re a bright girl. You should be able to see where I’m going and follow my lead quickly enough.’

  There were times when Horrocks sounded just like Charlie Woodend, Paniatowski thought. And there were times when it seemed as if he was from a completely different planet.

  They got on to the base with the minimum of formalities. There was no sign of Major Dole in the office block, but the military policeman on duty knew why they were there, and took them straight to the office where Captain Tooley was already waiting for them.

  Monika had never met an air-force pilot before, and – without really thinking about it – had assumed that they were all blue-eyed gods like Paul Newman. Tooley, by Newman standards, was a definite disappointment. He was tall and gangly, with floppy brown hair, earnest, bulging eyes and a highly prominent Adam’s apple which bobbed up and down every time he spoke. Sitting in the chair opposite the two British police officers, he seemed more like a boy who’d been caught abusing himself behind the woodshed than a man who anyone would be happy to entrust with the control of a lethal killing machine.

  ‘Let’s get a couple of things clear before we start talking, shall we?’ Horrocks said jovially to the young officer. ‘This is not a formal interview in any sense of the word – though that’s not to promise there won’t be a formal interview later. Understood?’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘And, that being the case, you are not actually obliged even to be here, or to answer any questions which you would prefer not to answer. Is that clear, Captain Tooley?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Tooley said, his Adam’s apple jumping like a pea which been sucked up a straw.

  Horrocks smiled. ‘Well, that’s got the very stuffy, oh so very British, bit out the way, Wilbur. Now we can relax a little.’ He glanced down at the sheet of paper which lay on the desk in front of him. ‘Your full name is Wilbur Lee Tooley. You were born in Oxford, Mississippi in 1935, which makes you twenty-seven years old now, are married with two children, and have been in the US Air Force for eight years. Have I got anything wrong so far?’

  ‘No, sir. That’s all quite correct.’

  ‘Now, as you know, we’re here to investigate the death of Verity Beale. What exactly was your relationship with her?’

  Tooley fixed his eyes on the corner of the room. ‘She . . . she was a friend,’ he said.

  ‘That’s all she was? Just a friend?’

  ‘Yes. We met through the church.’

  ‘That would be the Baptist Church in Whitebridge?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Horrocks frowned slightly. ‘What I don’t quite understand is why you went all the way to Whitebridge to worship. Wouldn’t it have been more convenient to use the church on the base?’

  ‘The Baptist Church feels more like my church back home than the base chapel does.’

  Horrocks nodded. ‘Of course. It’s quite obvious once you’ve explained it. Now, when you went to the church in Whitebridge, I expect you took your wife with you.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So she was a friend of Miss Beale’s, as well?’

  Tooley shifted his attention from the corner of the room to the surface of the desk. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘She . . . she doesn’t find it easy to make friends with t
he Brits.’

  Horrocks laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose we are a pretty odd lot when you come to think of it,’ he conceded. ‘Let’s get on to what happened the night before last, shall we? You went to the Spinner, which is a public house between Sladebury and Whitebridge?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘But though you both went there from the base, you travelled in separate vehicles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because after we’d had our drink, she was going back to Whitebridge and I planned to return to the base.’

  ‘So Miss Beale was never actually in your car that night.’

  ‘No,’ Tooley said. ‘No, she wasn’t.’

  Horrocks frowned again, more deeply this time. ‘That’s funny. I would have thought it would have been much more comfortable in your big American car than it would have been in her small British one. Still, I suppose there’s no accounting for taste, is there?’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about,’ Tooley said – but from the troubled expression on his face, it was obvious that he was at least starting to get an inkling.

  ‘You don’t understand, Captain Tooley? Then perhaps I’d better spell it out more clearly for you,’ Horrocks said, and now a hard edge had crept into his voice. ‘I would have thought it would have been much more comfortable to have sexual intercourse in your car than it would have been to have it in hers. Unless, of course, you chose to make the beast with two backs out in the open air.’ He grinned, though not pleasantly. ‘But I can’t really see you jumping on her bones al fresco, given how chilly it can be on an English autumn evening.’

  ‘I never said I had sex with her!’ Tooley protested.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ Horrocks turned to Paniatowski. ‘Then where on earth did I get the idea that Miss Beale had had sexual intercourse shortly before she died, Sergeant?’

  ‘From the police doctor, sir.’

  ‘The police doctor,’ Horrocks repeated, as if the term were unfamiliar to him. ‘That would be some ancient British druid who prescribes herbs according to the phases of the moon, would it?’