Death of an Innocent

by Sally Spencer

  Two young constables got out of the lead car and walked up the steps to the front door. Even sending them to do the job had been a deliberate choice, Woodend thought, a ploy designed to deny him the dignity of being dealt with by his equals. Besides, young bobbies were more impressionable than their older colleagues – if anybody could be guaranteed to spread the news of what had happened, it would be them.

  Woodend opened his front door. ‘What can I do for you, lads?’ he asked – going through the motions, playing his assigned part in the script that someone else had written.

  ‘We’ve come to take you down to the station, sir,’ said one of the constables, a kid who would have been playing conkers at the time when Woodend was counting the corpses in the death camp at Belsen.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’ the Chief Inspector asked.

  ‘No, sir. Not yet.’

  ‘So if I refuse to come . . .?’

  The constable looked down at his boots in obvious embarrassment. ‘You know the procedure better than I do, sir,’ he mumbled. ‘It’d be much easier all round if you co-operated with us.’

  Much easier, Woodend agreed. And, after all, why should he go out of his way to make things difficult for these kids who were only doing what they’d been told to do?

  ‘I’ll just get my coat,’ he said.

  The constable coughed. ‘If I was you, sir, I’d pack an overnight bag, as well,’ he advised.

  ‘I see. So things have already gone that far, have they?’

  ‘Don’t know anythin’ about that, sir. Just know that Mr Evans said it would be better if you brought a few things with you.’

  Woodend threw a change of underwear, a clean shirt, a pair of socks, his shaving stuff and a well-thumbed copy of Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood into a bag.

  ‘Do you need to cuff me?’ he asked the fresh-faced constable.

  The young man seemed to blush, even at the thought of it. ‘No, sir. We’ve been told that isn’t necessary.’

  Well, at least he’d been spared one indignity. But then that had probably been part of the plan too – a part aimed at allowing him to hold on to just a tiny flickering flame of hope, so that when that flame was finally snuffed out, he would be all the more devastated.

  So, the handcuffs might be absent now, but they would be brought out at some stage or other, he was sure of that. And even as he stood there on his own doorstep, he could almost hear the metallic click as they were clamped around his wrists.

  Woodend had spent more time in this interview room than he cared to remember. But he had never sat at this side of the table, with his eyes looking directly at the door which led to freedom – a door which, like so many other men before him, he knew he would be passing through only under police escort.

  He turned his attention to the two policemen who were sitting opposite him. It was almost comical to see the look of troubled concern on Ainsworth’s drink-mottled face, as the DCC tried – with very little success – to slip into the role of the sympathetic member of the interrogation team. The bullet-headed Chief Inspector Evans was experiencing no such difficulties in finding his role. His face was even more pinched than usual, and his eyes burned with a blood lust. If there were such a thing as reincarnation, he would almost certainly come back as a slavering Dobermann, like the four which guarded Terry Taylor’s building site.

  ‘I will ask you again, Mr Woodend, do you want to see a solicitor?’ Evans said.

  Woodend shook his head.

  ‘Would you please answer the question verbally, so it can be noted down, Chief Inspector?’

  How easy it was to forget the procedures, Woodend thought. How easy to stop thinking like the methodical bobby he had been all these years, and to slip straight into the criminal’s skin.

  ‘No, I do not wish to see a solicitor,’ he said for the benefit of the WPC who was recording the interview on her shorthand pad.

  Ainsworth sighed wearily, pretending that he was not enjoying any of this at all.

  ‘Are you going to tell us what we want to know straight away, Charlie?’ he asked. ‘Or are we going to have to drag it out of you?’

  ‘That depends,’ Woodend told him. ‘What exactly is it that you’d like to know?’

  ‘Who’s this man Tideswell?’ DCI Evans barked. ‘Is that his real name, or just an alias?’

  ‘Tideswell? I used to know a feller called Fred Tideswell when I was just a little kid,’ Woodend said reflectively. ‘He was a tackler up at the old British Empire Mill. But he was gettin’ on in years then, so he must be dead an’ buried by now. An’ as far as I can remember, he had no family to speak of.’

  ‘We’re not talking about him – and you know it! What about the other Tideswell? W. M. Tideswell?’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

  ‘Yet this same man, who you claim never to have heard of, deposited five hundred pounds in your account at the Royal Lancaster Bank on Whitebridge High Street?’

  ‘I know nothin’ about that.’

  ‘Nobody gives five hundred pounds to a complete stranger,’ Evans pointed out.

  ‘They do if they’re tryin’ to fit him up. An’ that’s what’s happenin’ here. I’m bein’ fitted up.’

  DCI Evans laughed, dryly and humourlessly. ‘How many times have you sat on this side of the table and heard some toe-rag who’s as guilty as sin make just that same claim?’

  ‘Often enough,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But that doesn’t mean that now an’ again somebody who says it might not actually be tellin’ the truth.’

  Ainsworth, still grappling with playing the part of benign uncle, shook his head regretfully.

  ‘Tell us the rest, Charlie,’ he urged. ‘Then at least we can say in mitigation that you co-operated with us.’

  Woodend picked up his packet of Capstan Full Strengths and lit one up without offering them around. ‘There is no rest to tell.’

  ‘Are you claiming this is the only bribe you’ve ever taken?’ DCI Evans demanded.

  ‘That’s a bit like the “When did you last beat your wife?” question, isn’t it? I haven’t taken any bribes at all.’

  ‘Then how did the money get there?’

  ‘The bankin’ system’s specifically designed to stop other people from takin’ money out of your account – not to prevent them puttin’ it in.’

  ‘So you still maintain that this Tideswell man was prepared to say goodbye to five hundred pounds of his money just to fit you up?’

  ‘Who said it was his own money?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘If it wasn’t his, then whose was it?’

  Taylor’s, Woodend thought. Bloody Terry Taylor’s!

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Will you please give me the details of all other bank accounts, apart from the one in the Royal Lancaster, which are held in your name?’

  ‘There are no others.’

  ‘So it would come as a complete surprise to you to learn that the Amalgamated Cotton-Industrial Bank of Skelton has just such an account on its books?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No? But you’ve just told us, on the record, that you don’t have any other accounts.’

  ‘Nor do I,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But whoever’s out to get me is doin’ a thorough job of it, so I’m not surprised a second account exists. When was it opened, by the way? Yesterday?’

  ‘According to the bank’s records, you opened that account eleven months ago.’

  Woodend took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘Eleven months, eh? Well, I’m willin’ to bet that if you look at those records closely, you’ll find the ink isn’t even dry yet.’

  ‘Tideswell has been paying five hundred pound a month into that account,’ Evans said, as if Woodend had never spoken. ‘In other words, it now contains five and a half thousand pounds. It would have taken you over four years to earn that much money legitimately. I can see how it must have been a big temptation to you.’

  ‘Do you really think any jury is goin’ to
believe that I’d be stupid enough to open bank accounts in my own name, an’ then have bribes from this Tideswell feller paid straight into them?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be the first bent bobby to act in that way,’ Evans said. He clasped his hands in front of him, as if he were a lay preacher about to deliver a sermon. ‘That’s the trouble with officers who go bad, like you have, Mr Woodend – you’re all so cocksure you’re completely fireproof that you don’t bother to take even the most elementary precautions.’

  ‘So accordin’ to you, Mr Evans, I’m not only greedy, but I’m also thick,’ Woodend said.

  ‘As I told you just a moment ago, you wouldn’t be the first to be so blatant about it – not by a long chalk.’

  ‘It’s getting rather smoky in here, don’t you think, Chief Inspector?’ Ainsworth said to Evans.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘I said, it’s getting rather smoky in this room. It must be difficult for a non-smoker like you to tolerate. Why don’t you go outside, and get a few breaths of fresh air?’

  ‘I’m all right for the moment,’ Evans said.

  ‘But you’d be even better for a short break,’ Ainsworth insisted. He turned to the WPC. ‘You can take a break, too, Constable.’

  They would have to have had the sensitivity of concrete not to take such a heavy hint. DCI Evans and the woman constable stood up and stepped out of the room.

  Ainsworth waited until the sound of their footsteps had receded down the corridor, then turned his attention back to Woodend. ‘Well, this is a real mess you’ve found yourself in, isn’t it, Charlie?’ he said.

  ‘For once, I agree with you,’ Woodend replied.

  ‘And I still want to help all I can,’ Ainsworth continued. ‘If you’ll stop screaming about being fitted up, and just take your punishment like a man, I’ll make sure the prosecution asks the judge to impose a minimum sentence.’

  ‘For a while, I thought Evans might be in on all this,’ Woodend said. ‘But he isn’t, is he?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Evans is just a dupe – but a very useful one. People may not like him very much, but they know he’s fundamentally straight an’ honest. So if he believes that I’m guilty, then I must be.’

  ‘We all believe you’re guilty, Charlie.’

  Woodend shook his head. ‘No, you don’t. For a scam like this to have a chance of workin’, it needs two things goin’ for it.’

  ‘It’s pointless to still try and pretend that⎯’

  ‘The first is a hell of a lot of money to splash around. Well, that’s really no problem for a rich feller like Terry Taylor, is it? But the second thing it needs is the co-operation of somebody inside the force – somebody quite high up.’

  ‘And that’s me?’ Ainsworth asked.

  ‘An’ that’s you,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I’ve been sittin’ here wonderin’ what’s makin’ you do it. I’ve never liked you – you were never my kind of bobby – but I’ve always thought you got more pleasure out of makin’ the people around you jump through hoops than you did from worldly goods. An’ I still think I’m right about that. So if it’s not the money you’re after, what is in it for you? Has Taylor got friends who can help you make Chief Constable? Or do you have political ambitions? Has he offered to see to it that, in the course of time, you become the Honourable Member for Whitebridge?’

  ‘You’re losing your marbles,’ Ainsworth said dismissively.

  ‘Am I?’ Woodend asked. ‘Or have I finally started to see things as they really are? You told me to take my punishment like a man. That’s funny.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Very funny, coming from a feller like you – a feller who isn’t enough of a man to stop play-actin’ even when there are only two of us here.’

  Ainsworth’s already red face flushed with anger. ‘You want me to stop play-acting?’ he hissed. ‘You want me to be straight with you? All right, I will be. There’s only one person to blame for the situation you find yourself in now – and that’s Charlie Woodend.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You! If you’d just been willing to lie low for a while, you’d have waltzed your way through the Disciplinary Board hearing and come out at the other end smelling of roses. But you couldn’t do that, could you, Charlie? You just had to keep sticking your nose into things that were none of your business.’

  ‘Murder is my business.’

  ‘And you simply can’t see beyond it, can you? You just go barging in without any thought of the consequences –without even considering the innocent lives you might be destroying in the process.’

  ‘What innocent lives?’

  ‘Battersby’s, for a start.’

  ‘He was scarcely innocent.’

  ‘Maybe not – but he didn’t deserve to die either, did he?’

  ‘No,’ Woodend admitted, feeling a fresh pang of his recurring guilt. ‘He didn’t deserve to die.’

  ‘And he’s only a marginal case, at best. You could have wrecked dozens of lives! Dozens!’

  ‘An’ what’s that supposed to mean, exactly?’

  Ainsworth, who had been riding on a crest of anger, seemed suddenly to recall where he was, and what he was saying. ‘Nothing,’ he told Woodend. ‘It means absolutely nothing.’

  The two men fell silent for perhaps half a minute, then Woodend said, ‘Shall we get the formal chargin’ over with now?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ainsworth said. ‘As soon as DCI Evans returns, we’ll get the formal charging over with.’

  ‘I’m sorry about this, sir,’ the sergeant said as he rolled the new detainee’s fingers over the inkpad.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Woodend told him.

  As had been the case with the interview room, the holding cell area took on an entirely new aspect when viewed from the other side of the fence. It had seemed so neutral and antiseptic when he’d visited it in the past. Now it felt full of menace. And the cells! He was well aware that they were perfectly adequate – not much smaller than the spare bedroom back at the cottage, as a matter of fact – yet they appeared so cramped and confined.

  ‘Photograph next, sir,’ the sergeant said, leading him through to a second small room where the camera was permanently mounted.

  ‘I’ve not had my picture taken since I was dressed up as Henry VIII at the fancy dress ball,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Just sit on the stool, sir,’ the sergeant said, his voice as bland as the expression on his face.

  Woodend sat.

  ‘Look straight at the camera, sir.’

  A flash.

  ‘Now turn your head to the side, please.’

  A second flash.

  ‘Should you wish to consult a lawyer⎯’ the sergeant began.

  ‘I know my rights,’ Woodend interrupted him.

  ‘I’m sure you do, sir,’ the sergeant said levelly, ‘but I am still obliged by police procedure to remind you of them.’

  Woodend nodded. ‘Of course you are. Sorry, Sergeant.’

  ‘Should you wish to consult a lawyer or telephone one friend or relative, then you are entitled to do so.’

  But who would he call? There was no point in worrying Joan – far better to wait until he was out on bail and could explain the situation to her face-to-face. And he couldn’t ring Monika Paniatowski, because a record of the call would be kept – and people might start asking why he’d needed to call her.

  ‘Sir?’ the sergeant said.

  ‘There’s nobody I want to speak to. We’ve completed all the paperwork, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then if you wouldn’t mind showin’ me to my cell . . .’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘I got a parkin’ ticket once,’ Woodend said, as the sergeant led him down the corridor.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir?’

  ‘I said I got a parkin’ ticket once. In Accrington, it was. Left the car too close to a zebra crossin’. An’ up until today, that’s the only
illegal thing I’ve ever been charged with.’

  ‘We all get parkin’ tickets at one time or another, sir,’ the custody sergeant replied.

  ‘But most of us don’t get charged with corruption – is that what you’re sayin’?’

  ‘No sir, I’m not. I’m just sayin’ that most of us have had parkin’ tickets at one time or another.’

  They both fell silent, and the only noise to fill the air was the sound of their feet on the tiled floor. They reached the cells and the sergeant opened one of the doors.

  ‘We don’t know each other very well, but we do know each other,’ Woodend said. ‘Do you really think I’m guilty of corruption, sergeant?’

  ‘It’s not for me to say, sir,’ the other man replied. ‘My job’s to see that you get fed properly and that your rights aren’t violated. I wouldn’t like to go much further than that.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Woodend agreed, chastened. ‘I’m sorry to have put you on the spot like that.’

  He stepped over the threshold of the cell, and heard the door click closed behind him. He looked around. A bed, a wash basin, and a toilet alcove which was not visible from the door.

  He placed his bag on the floor, and sat down on the bed. You are in deep, deep trouble, Charlie, he told himself.

  DCC Ainsworth probably wouldn’t oppose his bail in court the following morning, but even once he was out on the street again, he was not sure that he could do himself any good. He needed the police records and a dozen trained men at his disposal. As it was, he wasn’t even sure that Monika Paniatowski would dare to help him any further.

  He had to find a way to get something on Terry Taylor, he told himself. Once he’d done that, everything else would fall into place like iron filings around a magnet. But where the hell could he begin?

  He looked around at the walls and the metal door. If things went the way Ainsworth had planned they should, a prison cell would become as familiar to him as his own home. More familiar – because work so often kept him away from the cottage, but once in jail, the cell would become the centre of his world.