Death of an Innocent

by Sally Spencer

  Ainsworth drew level with them and, looking straight through Woodend, turned his anger on Paniatowski.

  ‘What the bloody hell’s going on, Sergeant?’ the DCC demanded.

  ‘I’ve got a search warrant here, sir,’ Paniatowski replied, offering him the precious piece of paper.

  Ainsworth brushed the warrant angrily aside without even taking a proper look at it. ‘Who authorized this warrant?’ he asked.

  ‘Mrs Johnson, sir.’

  ‘I’m not talking about which of Whitebridge’s magistrates actually put their name to it. What I want to know is which of your superiors swore it out. Was it DI Harris?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then who?’

  ‘I did it on my own initiative.’

  ‘On his initiative, you mean!’ Ainsworth said, glaring briefly at Woodend. ‘You had no right to request a warrant without getting it cleared through me, or someone else in authority, first.’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘but that still doesn’t invalidate it as a legal document.’

  Ainsworth shook his head dolefully. ‘I always thought you were a smart bobby, Sergeant Paniatowski. But it seems as if I was wrong, doesn’t it? You haven’t even got the brains of a rat on a sinking ship – because Charlie Woodend’s already well below the waterline and you’re still clinging on to him. Well, let me tell you, this misjudged loyalty’s going to cost you dear, Sergeant. You may not have fully realized it yet, but unless you start playing this by the rules – by my rules – you’re finished in the force.’

  The short speech had had its intended effect, and Paniatowski shifted her weight uncertainly from her left foot to her right, and then back again.

  ‘Would you like to explain what you’re doin’ out here at this time of the mornin’, sir?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘And in case you’re wondering why I’m here, Sergeant,’ Ainsworth said, ignoring the Chief Inspector completely, ‘I’m here because, shortly after I spoke to you about the Austin A40 you were so eager to find, I got an anonymous telephone call telling me where I could find it.’

  ‘What about the others?’ Paniatowski asked, trying her hardest to keep her voice steady. ‘Why are they here?’

  ‘Mr Taylor is here because this is his site, and because he knows how to operate the heavy equipment we needed to use to dig the car out,’ Ainsworth said. ‘And as for Mr Swales,’ he indicated the thin-faced man who had not moved an inch during the whole discussion, ‘he is one of Mr Taylor’s associates, and we brought him along to act as a witness to whatever we found.’

  ‘Why did you bring along a man I’d already told you was a suspect in my investigation?’ Paniatowski asked shakily.

  ‘Your investigation?’ Ainsworth asked. ‘I wasn’t aware that you had an investigation of your own. And as to bringing a murder suspect along with me, I really have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I told you when I called that I thought Philip Swales was the man we were looking for. You said you’d never heard of him.’

  ‘I did no such thing, Sergeant. I’ve met Mr Swales socially on several occasions and⎯’

  ‘Did you know he’s got a record? That he’s a violent criminal?’

  ‘⎯and if you had mentioned his name to me – which you certainly did not – then I would have told you that although he’s had certain problems in the past, he is now a thoroughly respectable businessman.’

  This wasn’t how things should be going, Woodend thought. It didn’t even come close.

  Ainsworth had been caught red-handed, trying to remove the evidence of a serious crime. By now he should have been so panicked that he would be doing all he could to shift most of the blame on to Swales and Taylor. Instead, he had not only kept his nerve, but seemed to be getting more confident by the minute.

  And he was not alone in that. Philip Swales, standing a few feet away from him, was watching the whole confrontation with little more than the interest of a mildly curious passer-by. And even Terry Taylor, who had climbed down from the crane and was now walking towards them, showed none of the concern he should have been displaying.

  There was nothing incriminating in the A40! Woodend thought, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Or if there was something, the conspirators had all realized that it was not enough – nothing like enough – to tie them in with the double murder at Dugdale’s Farm!

  Terry Taylor had reached the edge of the circle, and came to a stop. Woodend looked on, powerless to do anything, as the builder searched Ainsworth’s face for some hint as to how he was expected to react to the situation.

  ‘I was just explaining to my rather over-enthusiastic sergeant here that I rang you the moment I got the anonymous call about the Austin being buried here on your site, Terry,’ Ainsworth said, giving him all the lead he needed. ‘About what time would you say you received that call?’

  ‘I suppose it must have been around twenty to eight – or perhaps five minutes later than that,’ Taylor said, falling in easily with Ainsworth’s line. ‘As you can imagine, it came as something of a shock to me.’

  ‘Let’s stop playin’ games, shall we, Mr Taylor?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Games?’ Taylor repeated.

  ‘You weren’t shocked at all. An’ you didn’t need any call from anybody to learn where the Austin was. You’ve known all along. You had to know, because only you – or one of the two security men you employ – could have buried it in the first place.’

  Ainsworth shot Taylor a glance that warned him not to say any more, but the builder now appeared to be so sure of himself that he allowed a bemused smile to appear on his face.

  ‘I had to know the car was buried here, because there were only three of us who could have buried it?’ he said. ‘Now that is a very interesting theory, Chief Inspector. Can I ask what you base it on?’

  ‘On the four bloody big Dobermanns you’ve got chained up at the entrance to the site.’

  Taylor laughed. ‘Ah, you’ve been questioning them, have you? I’m surprised you could understand them. I thought the only language they spoke was some kind of doggie German.’

  ‘You’re a funny man, an’ I’m sure you’ll be a real hit at the prison concert parties. Because you are goin’ to prison, you know,’ Woodend said, with more conviction than he felt.

  ‘On the evidence of four foreign canines?’

  ‘Aye, if you like. When the site’s got people workin’ on it, the dogs are kept chained up. But when it’s closed, they’re let loose to roam as they please. I’ve seen them myself.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The dogs won’t allow just anybody to come in an’ chain them up again. It has to be somebody they’ve been trained to obey. And that’s what happened on Sunday, when the car was buried – somebody they’d been trained to obey came on to the site an’ chained them up. So who was it, Mr Taylor? You? Or one of the dog handlers whose wages you pay?’

  Taylor should have crumbled – but he didn’t. ‘Perhaps it was someone whose wages I used to pay,’ he suggested.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘During the time I’ve owned the dogs, I’ve employed five different handlers. Two of them still work for me, but the rest have moved on. It could quite easily have been one of those other three who came to the site on Sunday.’

  It was plausible, Woodend thought – it was all too bloody plausible.

  ‘What if it turns out that the three men who used to work for you all have alibis for Sunday mornin’?’ he asked.

  Taylor shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘I’m a builder. I have no knowledge of how police investigations work. If they do turn out to have alibis, perhaps you’ll want to question me again – but I have an alibi, too.’

  I bet you bloody do, Woodend thought. An’ I bet the two handlers you still employ have alibis, an’ all. God knows, you’ve had long enough to set somethin’ up for them.

  ‘Where will I find these three ex-dog h
andlers of yours, Mr Taylor?’ he asked.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ the builder told him. ‘They worked for me – and now they don’t. They could be in Australia, or even Timbuktu, for all I know. I really have no interest in them any more.’

  Woodend glanced quickly over his shoulder at Hardcastle and Duxbury. The two detective constables were standing by their car listening to the whole exchange – and registering the defeat they were already beginning to feel on their faces.

  And they were right to feel defeated, the Chief Inspector told himself. He had completely lost control of the situation – and everybody there knew it!

  He looked up at the yellow A40 on the back of the lorry and saw, not a car, but his last chance to make anything stick.

  ‘Search the Austin, Monika,’ he said.

  ‘I forbid you to take orders from a man who has been suspended from duty and is currently under investigation for his criminal activities,’ Ainsworth snapped at Paniatowski.

  ‘I’m not taking orders from Mr Woodend,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘But since I’ve gone to all the trouble of getting the warrant sworn out, I might as well search the car now that I’m here. If that’s all right with you, sir.’

  ‘And what if it’s not all right with me?’ Ainsworth countered.

  Paniatowski hesitated for a second, as if she were considering her options. And perhaps she really was, Woodend thought.

  ‘I think I’m still going to have to search it,’ the sergeant said finally.

  The DCC shrugged. ‘Go ahead, if that’s what you want. After all, it’s your career that is on the line.’

  He shouldn’t have given in anything like so easily, Woodend thought miserably. Given the position he was in, the DCC should have fought against the idea of a search every inch of the way. And the fact that he hadn’t bothered – didn’t even seem to really care – could only mean one thing. He was willing to let them go through the ritual of a search because he knew that they would find nothing.

  Twenty-Nine

  Paniatowski walked over to the open lorry, placed her right foot on the top of one of the rear tyres, and pulled herself up on to the tailboard.

  She’s not goin’ to find anythin’, Woodend told himself. She’s not goin’ to find a bloody thing!

  The sergeant dusted off her hands, opened the driver’s door of the A40, and peered inside.

  ‘The front’s empty, but there’s a lot of stuff on the back seat,’ she said, over her shoulder.

  ‘Stuff? What kind of stuff?’

  Paniatowski pulled the driver’s seat forward, and leant further into the car. For perhaps thirty seconds, she rummaged through the contents of the back seat. As she emerged from the A40, she took a deep breath, sucking the air in greedily.

  ‘There’s a couple of whips, some leather corsets, and a stack of dirty magazines,’ she said. ‘And two stained bed sheets,’ she added, looking down at her hands in disgust.

  It was as bad as Woodend had ever imagined it could be. Some of the material was probably illegal, but that, in itself, was not enough to tie it to the murders. Christ, it wasn’t even enough to tie it in with Dugdale’s Farm!

  What a fool he’d been, Woodend thought bitterly. He’d managed to convince himself that by taking sudden, dramatic action, he’d rush Taylor and Ainsworth into making a mistake. Now he saw the situation as it really was. It had been desperation rather than his usual judgement that had guided him, and the only person who’d been rushed into a wrong move had been him. He’d taken his gamble at entirely the wrong moment. He should have waited. He should have bloody waited!

  Paniatowski was still standing on the back of the lorry, uncertain of what more he expected of her.

  ‘Check the boot, Monika,’ he said.

  ‘Think carefully about what your next move should be, Sergeant!’ Ainsworth warned.

  ‘I have, sir,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘Since I’m here, I think I might as well check the boot.’

  Paniatowski stepped carefully round the side of the car, clicked the boot open, and immediately pulled a face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘It stinks.’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Strong disinfectant, I think. It smells as if someone’s poured a gallon of the stuff in here.’

  But excessive use of disinfectant was no crime, was it?

  ‘Is there anything else in the boot?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘More filth – a few more magazines, couple of leather masks – but nowhere near as much stuff as there is on the back seat.’

  Why had they stored nearly all the pornographic material on the back seat? Woodend wondered. Wouldn’t most people have automatically put it in the boot?

  But it was pointless asking such questions now. He might have a car with Taylor’s and Ainsworth’s prints on it, but they could easily explain that away.

  ‘Of course it’s got my prints on it,’ he could almost hear Ainsworth saying. ‘I helped disinter it.’

  ‘We have reason to believe some of the prints were made when you were burying the car,’ his interrogator would reply weakly.

  ‘That’s impossible, since I had nothing to do with burying it,’ Ainsworth would reply.

  And there would be no way of proving that he was lying.

  Possibly they would find Dugdale’s prints on the car, too – but Dugdale had disappeared, so that would get them precisely nowhere.

  He may as well face the truth, Woodend thought. The game had been played through to its end – and he had lost.

  He became aware that Ainsworth had been studying him closely – no doubt charting his thought processes and observing the changes on his face as the case he thought he’d built up disintegrated into nothingness. Now, satisfied that total collapse was on hand, the Deputy Chief Constable turned his attention back to Paniatowski.

  ‘Consider yourself suspended, Sergeant Paniatowski,’ he said harshly. ‘And as for you two,’ he continued, turning towards Hardcastle and Dugdale, ‘don’t think you’re getting away from this scot-free. I’ll see the pair of you – and anybody else I find out was involved – up before a disciplinary board.’

  ‘They were just obeying my orders,’ Paniatowski protested.

  ‘Then they should have known better. Now get the hell out of here – the whole pack of you! Oh, and Duxbury,’ he added maliciously, ‘be sure to give my best wishes to your son – the school Sportsman of the Year.’

  ‘What about the A40, sir?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Mr Taylor and I will take it down to police headquarters for forensic examination – just as we always intended to.’

  Just as they’d always intended to!

  Bullshit! Woodend thought. Their plan had been to either bury the car somewhere else, or destroy it completely. Now they would have to take it down to headquarters, but before they did that, they’d go over it with a fine-toothed comb, to make completely sure that there was not even a shred of evidence to connect it with the murders.

  But then, if they’d been going to destroy it, why swill all that disinfectant around in the boot, he wondered? That just didn’t make sense at all.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ Ainsworth asked. ‘Don’t you recognize an order when you hear one?’

  Hardcastle and Duxbury looked first at each other, and then, expectantly, at Woodend. When he nodded his head to indicate that they should obey – what else was there left for them to do? – they turned and began to move lethargically back towards their car.

  I’ve let them down, the Chief Inspector thought. I’ve let them down – and they’ll be paying for it for the rest of their careers.

  Monika Paniatowski would be out of a job, and he himself would go to prison for a long, long time. The only thing he could find behind the dark cloud that had loomed on his horizon all morning was an even darker one.

  It was as Hardcastle was reaching for the car door handle that a small miracle occurred. It manifested itself in the form of
a sudden smile on DDC Ainsworth’s face, and though there was perhaps nothing truly miraculous about it all, it seemed to Woodend to be heaven-sent. Because it was not the smile of triumph that the Chief Inspector would have expected to appear! It was a smile of relief – a smile that said Ainsworth thought he had got away with it, but only just. A smile that told Woodend that there was still evidence lying around, if only he had the wit to work out what it was!

  ‘Wait a minute, lads,’ the Chief Inspector called out to Hardcastle and Duxbury. ‘Sergeant Paniatowski hasn’t finished her search yet.’

  Paniatowski, having climbed down off the lorry and now back on the ground, looked at him with amazement.

  And who could blame her?

  ‘What do you mean, she’s not finished the search?’ Ainsworth asked, now – finally – speaking to him directly. ‘She’s already examined the interior of the Austin thoroughly. Do you want her to take the engine to pieces next?’

  ‘The warrant covers everything on the site,’ Woodend said.

  ‘So what else would you like her to examine? The site office? The concrete mixers?’

  ‘No. There wouldn’t really be much point in that, sir. But she would like to search your Volvo – as well as the vehicles which belong to Mr Taylor and Mr Swales.’

  A look of fear and uncertainty flickered briefly across Ainsworth’s face – then it was gone, to be replaced by the arrogant expression of a man who acknowledged that he might have had a few set-backs, but knew that he still held most of the winning cards.

  ‘Sergeant Paniatowski will search nothing further,’ Ainsworth said, speaking to Hardcastle and Duxbury, as well as to Woodend. ‘In case you didn’t hear me before, Sergeant Paniatowski has been suspended.’

  There was a still a way out, Woodend thought, but it was a way which was open solely to Monika – if only she had the bottle to carry it through.

  ‘Look at me, Sergeant Paniatowski,’ Ainsworth said. ‘Look at me, and listen very carefully to what I have to say. Things are already bad enough for you – don’t make them any worse.’