Wings over the Watcher

by Priscilla Masters

  “Get to know the family a bit better, will you? I wonder – are we missing something right underneath our noses?”

  “Did you have anything special in mind?”

  “Not really. Just get in there, Bridget. Speak to them.”

  Korpanski shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He hated these vague directives, these ill-defined pointers. His style was to bash a couple of doors down, dawn raids, stakeouts. But she knew this softly softly approach was the best chance they had. So far nothing of any real value had turned up but they would inch closer.

  It was all there. It must be. Like tea leaves at the bottom of the cup the case was simply waiting to be read.

  “And as for you…” Hesketh-Brown’s head jerked up. It didn’t seem more than a couple of months ago that Hesketh-Brown had been an idealistic young rookie from the Potteries. Always wide-eyed, sitting in the front row, scribbling something in his pad right through the briefing. Now he was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Ah. She remembered now. His wife had recently had a baby.

  Disturbed nights.

  “Forensics. Get every single result on every single piece of forensic evidence gathered at the place where the body was dumped. Thread it all together. Work on it, Heskey. Comb it through very precisely. Use your instinct. And try not to fall asleep,” she tagged on kindly.

  Hesketh-Brown gave a sheepish smile and nodded.

  “And I think we’ll take a closer look at Pennington’s car, Ruthin. Get that sorted out, will you? I don’t suppose we’ve anything back on the bike?”

  The rim of faces looked suitably vague.

  “Oh well. Another area then.”

  She dismissed the officers and they filed out leaving her alone with Mike. “And we, Korpanski, are going to sit on Arthur Pennington’s tail until he squeaks and we’re also going to harass those two old school friends and lover boy, Guy. It might also be an idea to make the acquaintance of Mr Pirtek – if there is such a person. Come on, Mike.”

  He caught up as the doors swung behind her.

  Chapter Twelve

  Pennington worked in a small accountant’s office situated above a furniture shop in a small shopping mall. The Smithfield Centre sounds as though it would be an attractive part in the centre of this largely picturesque town. But nothing could be further from the truth. It is a Sixties concrete slab with about eight featureless shops and wouldn’t be out of place in the gulags of Moscow.

  Pennington’s office was as bland a premises as you would expect, reached through a frosted glass door at the top of a steep wooden staircase lit by one pink, flickering fluorescent tube. His name was written in modest black lettering beneath that of the senior partner, Robert Astley. In spite of the Sixties exterior something about the grained oak reminded Joanna more of the Victorian age and Scrooge’s junior clerk. She knocked and they walked straight in. A secretary glanced up and immediately straight down again as she checked her computer screen, presumably for appointments.

  “How can I help?” The offer was made with scant interest.

  Joanna flashed her ID card in front of her stuck-up little nose. “I’d like to ask you a few questions before I speak with Mr Pennington. If that’s all right,” she added sarcastically.

  The girl’s eyes flickered from one to the other. Inspecting them before she responded.

  “I expect. I mean… You don’t have an appointment.”

  “It’ll be OK, love,” Mike butted in.

  The girl obviously warmed to the tall detective. She positively simpered back at him.

  As Korpanski was already doing so well Joanna let him lead the questioning, leaning across the desk, his face a foot away from the girl.

  “Last Wednesday, love, what time did Mr Pennington turn in to work?”

  “He always comes at…”

  “I didn’t ask what time he always comes in. I asked what time he came in last Wednesday.”

  “Do you keep a diary?” Joanna interrupted.

  The girl’s eyes flickered back to Mike. “It’s all on the computer.”

  “Then flash it up.”

  The girl fiddled proficiently with a couple of the computer keys, pressed return with a bad-tempered bang and announced, “He was in for nine,” she said sulkily.

  “Thank you,” Joanna said sweetly.

  Without warning Pennington’s door burst open, taking Joanna and Mike by surprise. It was hard to say who was the most shocked – Pennington, Joanna or Korpanski. All three simply stared at one another while the girl at the desk regarded them all with poorly disguised prurient curiosity, her face flushing slightly pink. It was Joanna who recovered her equilibrium first. “Good morning, Mr Pennington. We just needed to check up on a few facts. I hope you don’t mind. We realise we don’t have an appointment but we were passing anyway.”

  But Arthur Pennington wasn’t taking a lot of notice. He merely looked confused. “They’ve taken my car,” he said. “I’ve just had a phone call from one of your colleagues. They’re taking both our cars.”

  “We’ll provide you with a replacement,” Joanna said smoothly.

  “But why?”

  His high forehead was wrinkled with puzzlement. “Why? What on earth have our cars got to do with my wife’s murder? How is depriving me of my car going to help you find Beattie’s killer?”

  The girl behind him was having a struggle pretending she wasn’t listening. She was staring fiercely into the computer screen, faking absorption. But her fingers were still, hovering over the keys as though suspended on air jets. On her face was a fixed, wooden smile.

  “Mr Pennington,” Joanna said patiently. “You know as well as I do that in a case like this we often follow leads which appear quite unrelated to the case.”

  “Leads?” His head tilted to one side and he was frowning. “What leads? I don’t understand. Why follow them if they have nothing to do with it?”

  To her shame Joanna ducked behind the police’s classic statement. “We’re just following lines of enquiry.”

  But instead of this allaying Pennington’s fears he looked even more worried. “I don’t know if I can allow…”

  Joanna looked steadily back at him, resisting the temptation to gloat and thought, You don’t have the right to refuse.

  “As soon as we’ve finished looking at them we’ll let you have them both back.”

  “Looking at them? Looking? What for?”

  “Anything which might help to find out what happened to your wife.”

  “Oh well,” he said with resignation.

  And then he lifted his hooded eyes, read her mind and stared straight back at her. “I don’t suppose I’ve the right to refuse, have I, Inspector?”

  She shook her head. “Not really.” Again she felt that unexpected wave of sympathy for the man. His wife had, after all, just been murdered.

  “Can we have a more private word with you, Mr Pennington?”

  He nodded, gave an anxious glance in the direction of the door marked Astley and led the way into his office, Joanna and Mike threading between the desks, following the bowed shoulders. The girl behind them all but left her chair as she craned her neck to watch them through. She would be popular at lunchtime today, full of the story of the morning before it reached next week’s headlines.

  Man helps police with wife’s murder enquiry.

  Joanna waited until the door was firmly shut behind them and drew out her notepad. “I just wanted to go over the morning your wife disappeared.”

  “But I’ve already told you. I left her at the breakfast table,” Pennington said in his flat, nasal voice, “eating her muesli.”

  “Just remind me of the time.” Joanna was still being patient. “So I can be absolutely sure.”

  She knew what she was doing, setting a trap, criss-crossing branches over a deep pit lined with sharp spikes on which to impale him.

  Fall in, Arthur.

  “It was at about half-past eight,” he said firmly.

  “And
then?”

  “I came straight to work.”

  Joanna stopped writing to look around. It was exactly the sort of office she would have expected Pennington to work in. Small, square, bland, a desk facing the door, computer on it. One tiny window and a fire escape. Piles of files, all of the same, uniform grey lined the shelves. He didn’t even have a picture of his wife to look at.

  “How did your wife seem that morning?”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What do you mean, how did she seem? Same as always.”

  Joanna had a vision of Beatrice, sitting at the table, stolidly chewing her way through her dish of health-giving cereal.

  “She didn’t seem excited or apprehensive?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Was she dressed?”

  The question startled him. “She always gets dressed before she eats.”

  “So was she already dressed that morning when you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “What in?”

  Pennington was visibly intimidated by Korpanski’s manner. Quite apart from the detective’s physical presence his tone had been cultivated to sound truculent and threatening. It was one of the reasons why Piercy and Korpanski worked so well together. Mr Hard and Miss Soft. Sergeant Cruel and Inspector Kind. Except sometimes Joanna wasn’t quite so kind. She too could show her claws. And use them.

  “What was your wife wearing?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  But the frock, with its splashes of colour on a white background, was memorable.

  “Think, Mr Pennington,” Joanna said kindly. “When she was found she was wearing a dress.” She described it. Pennington blinked rapidly. “I have the feeling,” he said slowly, “that she was wearing something a bit more ordinary.” A brief pause. “I think I would have remembered had she been wearing something so –”

  They all waited for the word.

  “Flash.”

  Joanna nodded and heard Mike’s irritated intake of breath.

  She knew what he was thinking, that this was leading them nowhere.

  “But you can’t be sure.”

  “No,” he said slowly.

  “Had you noticed a change in your wife’s mental state?”

  Again he looked startled by the question. “What do you mean?”

  “Friends have said your wife seemed a bit down before Christmas.”

  “It’s the time of year,” he said comfortably. “She always gets herself in a state round that time, frets whether Fiona and Graham will make it home – and all that,” he finished lamely.

  “And did they?”

  “No.” He must have felt an explanation was necessary. “Graham had to work and Fiona had a lot on – parties and all that. We were on our own for the festive season this time around.”

  Joanna could guess it was typical of all their Christmases in the last few years.

  Arthur Pennington gave a ghost of a smile. “You do ask some funny questions, Inspector,” he said.

  The worst was Joanna knew he was right. They were fishing around in muddy water, searching blindly for something that would lead them towards the truth.

  It encouraged Joanna to take a jump into the unknown and ask something that was relevant. “Who do you think killed your wife?”

  Pennington sniffed in a long, sighing breath. “I think. I believe,” he started, finally settling on, “it would seem likely that my wife had someone else. A lover.” The words cost him. His face looked crumpled and upset and he was deathly pale.

  Again Joanna had this odd instinct to console him. “I’m so sorry,” she said kindly.

  Pennington drooped in his chair. “Have you any idea who he might be?”

  There was no animosity in his voice. Not hatred for this unknown man who had cost him so much. Not only his wife’s fidelity but also her life. “No,” she said. “But we will, Mr Pennington. I promise you. We will find him.”

  Korpanski waited until they were outside before he exploded. “Offer him your condolences, why don’t you,” he mocked. “Poor bereaved Arthur. You’re taken in by him, Jo.”

  She squared up to him. “I’ve told you before, Korpanski. He is a bereaved husband until proved otherwise which warrants our sympathy as well as our respect. Understand?”

  There was something approaching disdain on his face. “It’s the way you get so completely hoodwinked, Jo. It’s pathetic.”

  She knew she didn’t deserve this. “Not pathetic, Mike. Professional. I’m not hoodwinked by him. I’m simply giving him the benefit of the doubt.”

  Mercurial as ever Korpanski’s face creased into a grin. “I still bet you he did it.”

  Mike’s moods were as changeable as the weather.

  But for once she pulled rank, “I think it would be better, Mike,” she said acidly, “if we concentrated on finding our mystery lover rather than taking bets on whether Arthur Pennington is innocent or guilty. Understand?”

  It was the sort of priggish statement which should have earned her a mocking “Whe-eh.” But in this suddenly-found good humour Korpanski was not to be suppressed. He merely grinned at her, showing a wide expanse of white teeth.

  They faced each other for a moment on the busy street before he shifted his feet. “So what next, Ma’am?”

  She ignored the jibe of formality. He knew she hated being addressed as Ma’am. It simply wasn’t her style. “I don’t know. Maybe we should trot up Derby Street and speak to Beattie’s two cronies again.” She hadn’t stilled her curiosity about Jewel Pirtek, Marilyn and Guy. Something here didn’t feel quite right. She couldn’t see how Beatrice Pennington had fitted into the friendship. They were different types. What had been her role? Maybe their lives and relationships would not lead her straight to Beatrice’s killer but they knew more than they were telling. And this “more” would prove helpful to the case.

  “Maybe we should get a couple of officers to tackle the loving children again too. Surely kids know more about their parents than this?”

  Korpanski made a face. “They were a fat lot of good before.”

  “I know. That’s what makes them so interesting.”

  He grinned again. Another wide, warm gesture. “I despair, Jo, of the things that you find interesting.”

  She laughed too. Together they rounded the corner towards Derby Street while she reflected.

  What intrigued her about Fiona and Graham Pennington was the sheer detachment they had achieved from their parents. This cold moving on as though their childhood was of no consequence. Was it possible that they really didn’t care what had happened to their mother? Was there no instinct to come and comfort their father? At what point do parents stop being solicitous towards their children? At what point – if ever – do the children take up the reins and become solicitous towards their parents? Is this what is meant by the term growing up? A detachment to the point of cruelty? At the same time she frankly acknowledged that behind the idle questioning was relevance to her own recent circumstances. Had her own child lived for twenty years instead of dying seven months before it was due to be born would it have learned to cut her out of its life?

  Korpanski, ever-sensitive to her own deep moods, stood by silently and helplessly, waiting for her to move on.

  “And we can’t ignore the people from the Readers’ Group either. We should keep the investigation wide until we’re more sure.”

  But Mike wasn’t quite so ready to leave Pennington himself behind. He jerked his thumb behind him. “We’re leaving the best one behind there.”

  She turned to face him. “Then how did he do it? He left his wife at home and came to work. She was seen cycling through the town at nine thirty, more than half an hour after he’d left. We’ve got scores of witnesses now who saw her riding her bike, locking it to the railings.” They continued walking until Joanna stopped and frowned. “What do you make of the fact that Pennington didn’t remember what his wife was wearing on that last morning?”

  Korpa
nski shrugged. “Not a lot,” he said. “I couldn’t tell you what Fran’s got on in the morning.”

  “You would if she was wearing a flashy frock.”

  “Maybe,” he said, non-committal to the last.

  They walked steadily along Derby Street, passing Strawberry Fields and the hardware shop which sold everything from spanners to doormats, when on impulse Joanna turned right into Market Street. Korpanski winced. This was the scene of his wife’s embarrassing affair with the car.

  Joanna only realised it when they reached the dry cleaners. “Is this where…?”

  From the puce colour Korpanski’s face turned it was obvious she was right. He tugged at his short collar as though to loosen a stranglehold.

  “Is it all settled now?” she asked kindly.

  “Getting there,” he muttered. “I’ve just paid up the excess. Fran’s stumped up half. We’ll survive.”

  Woman-like she couldn’t resist it. “And the handbrake?”

  “Fixed,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She resisted her next impulse to quote. For want of a nail.

  Sneaking a look at his face her colleague wouldn’t thank her for that particular philosophy.

  “Good.” She stopped. In front of them was the doctors’ surgery. Name plate clearly displayed. It was as though her feet had led her there, directed by her subconscious mind.

  They stood in front of the black-painted door for a moment. She could feel Mike’s scepticism seeping towards her but it did nothing to suppress the tingling feeling that iced her spine. From her neck right downwards. A feeling she knew Mike wouldn’t either share or sympathise with. And she was right. “We’re not going to get anything from there, Jo.”

  “No?”

  She pushed open the door.

  The receptionist looked tired and fed up. She was a honey-blonde with a centimetre of dark and greying roots. She was wearing very black mascara which had run slightly into the crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes. Her mouth, bright with nicely applied pink lipstick was pursed up with tension.