Death of an Innocent

by Sally Spencer

  But though his words sounded confident – though he told himself that he really believed them – he still breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the battered Morris Minor parked in front of Battersby’s house.

  Woodend and Paniatowski got out of the car and walked up the path which led to the detective constable’s front door. Coming from inside the house, they could hear the sound of loud music. Woodend recognized it. ‘Winter’, the last movement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. He would not have thought that Battersby was a man for the classics.

  The music really was very loud. ‘It’s a wonder the neighbours don’t complain about the noise,’ Paniatowski said.

  Woodend grinned. ‘There aren’t many perks to bein’ a bobby,’ he said, ‘but one of the few we do get is that neighbours will always think twice before they complain about us.’

  They reached the front door. Woodend raised his arm to ring the bell, only to find Paniatowski’s hand restraining it.

  ‘Better not, sir,’ the sergeant said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Since I’m the only one who’s still got official standing, I’d like to be the one who handles things from here on. If you don’t mind, that is.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Woodend said.

  Why should he? This impotence was only temporary. In a few hours he would back firmly in the driving seat.

  Paniatowski rang the bell. They waited. They should have been able to see a distorted image of Battersby entering the hallway through the frosted glass in the front door, but they didn’t.

  ‘He probably can’t hear us ringing over all that bloody noise inside,’ Paniatowski said.

  She pressed the bell again – and this time she kept her finger on it.

  Woodend took a step to the side. The curtains in the bay window were half open, and he could see through the gap into Battersby’s living room.

  It was the sofa he saw first – a rather threadbare one with a floral pattern. And then he noticed the pair of legs which were sticking out from beyond it!

  ‘Get out of the way!’ he told Paniatowski.

  ‘What’s the matter, sir?’

  ‘Don’t ask questions, Monika – just get out of the bloody way!’

  Paniatowski moved clear of the door. Woodend braced himself, then lashed out with his right leg. His boot made contact with the lock. The door juddered, but held firm. He swung again, and this time the lock groaned and gave, and the door swung, complaining, open.

  Woodend rushed into the hallway, and from there into the lounge. But he already knew that he was far too late. He had seen the legs through the window – now all that was left to do was to see the rest of what was left of Battersby.

  The detective constable was lying on his back. He had a shoe and sock on his left foot, but his right foot was naked. The big toe of the right foot was jammed up against the trigger of a shotgun, the barrel of which was in his mouth. Much of the upper part of his head was missing. Bits of brain, and what looked like an ocean of blood, had been spattered on the wall and skirting board.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Paniatowski said.

  Then she walked quickly over to the radiogram, and pressed the eject button. The mechanical arm swung off the record, and the room was suddenly – eerily – quiet.

  Woodend looked again at the bloodied pulp which had been the head of the man he’d been talking to only that morning.

  ‘Jesus!’ he exclaimed, to no one in particular.

  ‘Get out of here, sir!’ Paniatowski said urgently.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get the hell out of here!’

  ‘But I can’t just leave Battersby⎯’

  ‘There’s nothing that you or anybody else can do for the poor bastard now, and if it comes out that you were with me when I found the body, we’ll both take a fall.’

  She was right, Woodend thought – there was nothing anybody could do for Detective Constable Clive Battersby now.

  As he stepped out of the front door, he could hear that Paniatowski was already talking into her radio. He walked quickly down the path and out on to the street. The snow was falling again – quite heavily – but his mind was in such a state of turmoil that he didn’t even notice it.

  His chances of being quickly reinstated had died with Battersby, he told himself. And, even worse, without the information the constable could have given him, he was no nearer to finding the man who killed the poor bloody kid up at Dugdale’s Farm.

  He kept on walking, more out of instinct than from a desire to reach anywhere specific. He had covered perhaps half a mile when the ambulance – warning lights flashing and siren blaring – screamed past him.

  Fifteen

  When night fell on most days of the year, all that could be seen through the front window of the Woodends’ cottage was the black impenetrability of the moors. But there were a few winter evenings – and this was one of them – when the layer of snow which was covering the inhospitable ground sucked what little light was available into itself, and the moors shimmered with an eerie glow.

  Woodend had no idea how long he had been sitting there in front of the window, a glass of malt whisky clutched in his big hand. He did not even know how many times he had got up from his chair to refill the whisky glass. Though his body had not left the cottage since it had got back from the Birkdale Estate, his mind had been ranging far and wide.

  Battersby’s death had not just been a defeat for him – it had also been a far-too-convenient escape for someone else. The detective constable had been the weak link near the very end of the chain. And now he was gone. Was that mere coincidence? Woodend didn’t think so.

  He pictured how things must have happened. Battersby would have been sitting in his kitchen – finally coming to accept that he had no choice but to turn to his old boss for help – when he heard the doorbell ring.

  Had he looked through the window to see who it was? Or had he just assumed it was a neighbour come round to borrow a cup of sugar, or a door-to-door salesman trying to sell him the latest miracle cleaning fluid?

  It didn’t really matter what he’d thought, because when he had opened the door he’d found himself facing neither the neighbour with her cup, nor a salesman with a suitcase and an ingratiating smile, but some hard-lookin’ fellers with grim expressions on their faces.

  How many of them would there have been, Woodend wondered. Two? Three?

  It would have taken at least three, he decided.

  The hard-lookin’ fellers would have backed him into his lounge, deaf to all his protests that their secret was safe with him. While two of them stood in the doorway, blocking any chance of escape, the third would have put the record on the record player, turning up the volume very loud to cover the sound of the explosion which was to follow.

  Battersby must have worked out what was about to happen by then, and had probably begun to plead with them to let him live. But it had done him no good! Two of the men had grabbed him and held him on the floor, while the third had bent over him and forced the shotgun barrel into his mouth.

  How he must have struggled, knowing that he was fighting for his very life. And how pointless he must have known that struggle would be, even from the very beginning.

  The barrel would have hurt his teeth and the roof of his mouth. He would have found breathing difficult, and there was probably the taste of oil on his tongue. He would have heard the click of the trigger being pulled back, and for one brief instant have known he was as close to death as anyone ever gets. And then . . . and then, nothing.

  His killers would have taken off his right shoe and sock, wiped the gun clean of their own prints, and placed it where they wanted it to be found. Then they would have left and walked calmly down the street.

  Terry Taylor – or whoever it was who was behind Terry Taylor – must now be thinking he was in the clear. But he was wrong! Battersby’s death may have closed the most obvious route to a solution, but over the last few hours Woodend had come to realize that it had opened several
new ones.

  There would be bruises from the struggle on Battersby’s arms and legs. There might be scrapings of his killers’ skin under his fingernails. No one – not even that bloody fool DI Harris – would be able to pretend it was anything but murder. A full-scale inquiry would have to be launched. Hundreds of people would be interviewed. Someone on the estate would be bound to have seen the killers or their vehicle, and be able to provide a description. And then it would just be a case of the police following a piece of string until they got to the end. The descriptions would lead them to the murderers, the murderers would lead them to Taylor.

  The builder had made a big mistake when he’d decided that the best way to escape being implicated in the first two deaths was to sanction a third.

  The telephone rang, and Woodend dashed across the living room to pick it up.

  ‘Monika?’ he asked, almost breathlessly.

  ‘No, it’s me, sir,’ said a male voice.

  Bob Rutter!

  ‘How are things goin’ down in Hendon?’ Woodend asked, injecting his voice with a lightness he did not feel. ‘I hope you’re learnin’ somethin’ – even if it’s only which bums to suck up to.’

  ‘I’m not calling to talk about me – I’m calling because of what’s been happening to you,’ Rutter said.

  ‘Oh! So you’ve heard, have you?’

  ‘Paniatowski rang me up.’

  ‘That was nice of her,’ Woodend said, thinking that if Paniatowski and Rutter were speaking to each other voluntarily then he must be in an even worse mess than he’d thought he was.

  ‘I was wondering if there was anything that I could do to help you,’ Rutter said.

  ‘Your best plan might be to pretend you’ve never heard of me,’ Woodend told him, bitterly.

  ‘I’m not just making polite conversation, here – I mean it,’ Rutter replied, his tone falling somewhere between stern and earnest.

  ‘I know you do,’ Woodend said, chastened. ‘But even if you were up here in Whitebridge, I doubt you could do much. Stuck in London, you’re about as much use as . . .’

  He paused.

  ‘Has something occurred to you?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘Aye, it has,’ Woodend agreed. ‘You know Terry Taylor?’

  ‘The builder?’

  ‘That’s the man.’

  ‘Is he a suspect?’

  ‘I think so – but I doubt DI Harris would agree with me.’

  ‘I’d be worried if he did. DI Harris is an idiot. But you still haven’t told me how I can help.’

  ‘I’ve just remembered readin’ an article about Taylor in the Evenin’ Telegraph a few months back. It was one of them back-slappin’ pieces which is more an advertisement than information. But one fact’s stuck in my mind. He said that before he came to Whitebridge, he had a very modest jobbin’ builder’s business in Southwark, South London.’

  ‘And you want me to go down to Southwark and see what I can sniff out about him?’

  ‘If you can find the time.’

  ‘I’ll make the time.’

  ‘You’re a good lad,’ Woodend said sincerely.

  ‘You’re a good boss,’ Rutter replied.

  Woodend put down the phone, and walked back to the window. Suddenly, now that he’d remembered that article, it was all starting to make sense.

  He’d been wondering where Taylor had managed to find men who would commit murder for him – men willing to hold a struggling police constable down while a shotgun was forced into his mouth – and now he thought he knew. They’d be old pals of Taylor’s, men he’d drunk with when he’d been a jobbing builder in London’s gangland.

  If only Bob could make that connection – if only he could prove that a bunch of criminals with a reputation for violence had travelled from London to Whitebridge shortly before Battersby met his death . . .

  The phone rang again. It had to be Paniatowski this time, he thought – and it was.

  ‘Have you got the preliminary results of the autopsy yet?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ Paniatowski replied, in a flat – almost dead – voice.

  ‘Well, come on, lass! What does it say?’

  ‘That the injuries sustained were entirely consistent with a successful suicide attempt,’ Paniatowski said, as if she were quoting.

  ‘That can’t be right!’ Woodend protested. ‘There must have been bruisin’ which couldn’t have been self-inflicted. Get Doc Pierson to check the ankles an’ upper arms again.’

  ‘It wouldn’t do any good.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I was there for the entire autopsy. If there’d been any bruising, I’d have seen it myself. Besides, there’s other evidence which points to suicide.’

  ‘What other evidence?’

  ‘It was Battersby’s own gun, for a start.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘I’ve seen the licence.’

  ‘Whoever’s behind all this has got enough influence to be able to tamper with the fingerprint evidence. Compared to that, slippin’ a false firearm licence into the files would have been a doddle.’

  ‘It was Battersby’s own gun,’ Paniatowski repeated firmly. ‘Hardcastle and Duxbury have been out shooting with him on the moors a few times. They’ve positively identified it.’

  It couldn’t be suicide, Woodend told himself. It just couldn’t be.

  Because if it was, they had lost their best lead without gaining anything to replace it.

  Because if it was, he knew he’d soon be asking himself exactly what it was that had caused the constable to take his own life.

  ‘So it was Battersby’s gun,’ he conceded. ‘That doesn’t have to mean that Battersby was the one who pulled the trigger, does it?’

  ‘And then there’s the note he left,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Are you sure it’s genuine?’

  ‘The experts have been over it. There’s no doubt that Battersby wrote it himself.’

  ‘An’ what did he have to say in this note of his?’

  ‘The usual stuff that suicides always write,’ Paniatowski replied – just a little too quickly.

  ‘Be more specific, Sergeant.’

  ‘Oh, you know the sort of thing,’ Paniatowski continued uneasily. ‘That he’d made a real mess of his life. That he was sorry for all the trouble he’d caused. Like I said, the usual stuff.’

  If that was all it was, why did she seem so unhappy?

  ‘There’s still more, isn’t there?’ Woodend demanded.

  Paniatowski said nothing.

  ‘I said there’s more, isn’t there?’

  Another pause.

  ‘Yes, there’s more,’ Paniatowski finally admitted.

  ‘So tell me what else he said.’

  ‘He said he hoped that you’d forgive him.’

  ‘Me? He hoped I’d forgive him?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘Oh, Sweet Jesus!’ Woodend groaned.

  ‘Don’t take it personally.’

  ‘How else can I take it? If I hadn’t backed him into a corner in the Weaver’s Arms an’ put the pressure on him to come clean, he’d still be alive.’

  ‘He didn’t kill himself because of what you said to him. He killed himself because he’d done wrong and couldn’t face the consequences. You were the one who found out about it, but it could have been me or anyone else on the team who came up with the goods.’

  But it wasn’t you or anyone else on the team, Woodend thought. It was me. I didn’t pull the trigger – but I might as well have done.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Woodend lied. ‘Listen, I need time to do some thinkin’ about where we go from here, so I’m goin’ to hang up now.’

  ‘You wouldn’t like me to come round, would you?’

  ‘I didn’t realize you were unconscious in the first place,’ Woodend said, making an attempt at humour.

  ‘You know what I
mean,’ Paniatowski persisted. ‘Don’t you want some company?’

  ‘You get your beauty sleep, lass,’ Woodend said. ‘Ring me first thing in the mornin’, an’ I’ll tell you the brilliant new idea which I’m bound to have come up with by then.’

  He replaced the receiver on its cradle and took another sip of his malt whisky. Walking back to the window, he looked out at the moors and felt as if his energy – his will to go on fighting against the odds – was being sucked from him as surely and steadily as the snow was sucking in the light.

  He needed to find a new direction for his investigation to take. He needed to come up with some blinding insight which would act as the opener for a can of worms he had yet to locate.

  He was not sure that he was up to the task, because he knew that at the same time as one part of his mind was working on the intricacies of the case, there would be another part of it – perhaps a larger part – which was wrestling with his feelings of guilt over Battersby’s death.

  It was going to be a long, long, night which was stretching ahead of him – and probably a fruitless one.

  Sixteen

  They came for him just before dawn broke.

  Woodend had been expecting them for several minutes, ever since he’d first heard the sirens screaming and – looking out of an upstairs window of the cottage – had seen the lights on their roofs flashing dementedly as they made their way down the country lanes.

  There had been no need to send three cars to bring him in. One would have served the purpose perfectly well. There’d been no need for the flashing lights and sirens, either – unless, of course, they’d hoped to spook him into making a break for it. But they knew him better than that – knew he’d never run. No, the lights and sirens had been used only to create a spectacle, as part of the stage craft in the play which he was already coming to think of as The Lamentable Fall of Charlie Woodend.

  Even the arrival of the convoy had been carefully timed – so that his neighbours would be woken from their beds and forced to watch the spectacle through sleep-filled eyes.

  Standing in his living room, still dressed in last night’s clothes, Woodend watched the cars pull up outside his cottage, and understood it all. DCC Ainsworth was not out merely to harm him, he wanted to destroy him completely – and so far, he was forced to admit, the bastard hadn’t missed a trick.