Death of an Innocent

by Sally Spencer

  But Paniatowski did not look at him. Instead, her uncertain, questioning eyes were gazing at Woodend.

  ‘Do it, Monika,’ Woodend’s eyes said in return. ‘It’s the only chance we’ve got left. Grab it while you can.’

  Paniatowski squared her shoulders, and turned back to Ainsworth. ‘With all due respect, sir, I’m not sure that you still have the necessary authority to suspend me,’ she said.

  ‘What the devil are you talking about?’

  Paniatowski gulped, as if she knew exactly what she wanted to say, but just couldn’t seem to get the words out.

  ‘Do it!’ Woodend urged her silently. ‘Do it now!’

  The sergeant took a deep breath. ‘Richard James Ainsworth, I am arresting you on the charge of conspiracy, after the fact, in the murders of Harold Judd and Enid Judd,’ she said in a rush. ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.’

  ‘This is insane,’ Ainsworth protested.

  Paniatowski held out a shaky hand. ‘If you’d just like to give me the keys to your car, sir.’

  ‘I’ll do no such thing.’

  ‘Please don’t make me use force, sir,’ Paniatowski said, dredging up courage from the very bottom of her reserves. ‘That would really be terribly undignified.’

  Ainsworth patted his pockets perfunctorily. ‘Don’t seem to have the keys on me,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not true! You must have them. You couldn’t have driven here without them.’

  ‘Oh, I had them then, but I don’t seem to have them now.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Ainsworth asked. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  ‘I . . .’ Paniatowski began.

  ‘A body search?’ Ainsworth suggested. ‘You can’t do it yourself, you know – because you’re a woman. So you’ll have to order either Hardcastle or Duxbury to do it, won’t you? And do you really believe either of them will obey you? Do you really believe – even for a second – that a mere detective constable would have the nerve to search a Deputy Chief Constable?’

  He probably knew the words were a mistake the moment they were out of his mouth, Woodend thought. And if he didn’t then, the look on the face of DC Duxbury – who should have been Sergeant Duxbury by now – would have been enough make it clear.

  Duxbury took two steps forward. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll search him if you tell me to, Sergeant.’

  ‘An’ I’ll help him – if he needs any help,’ Hardcastle added, moving forward to join his partner.

  It was then that Philip Swales decided the moment had come to move. He had been leaning against his Mercedes, a mere spectator to the drama unfolding before him, but now he made a break for it, suddenly beginning to sprint towards the chain-link fence like a fox which has got his first sniff of the hounds.

  He did not get far. Hardcastle’s time on the rugby pitch had taught him to mark his man, and he brought the pimp down with an impressive flying tackle.

  Paniatowski looked on as Hardcastle and Duxbury pulled Swales to his feet and handcuffed him, then turned her attention back to Ainsworth.

  ‘If a hard case like Philip Swales knows when the game’s up, don’t you think it’s about time you admitted it yourself, sir?’ she asked, with a new confidence in her voice. ‘Why don’t you give me the keys?’

  Ainsworth sighed, then put his hand in one of the pockets he had patted down earlier and pulled his keys out. Paniatowski nodded to Woodend, and the two of them walked over to the Volvo.

  ‘I hope you’ve got it right this time, sir,’ Paniatowski whispered, as she inserted the key in the boot lock.

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ Woodend agreed.

  The key clicked in the lock. ‘Here goes nothing,’ Paniatowski said, opening the boot.

  The smell of disinfectant was overpowering. Now Woodend understood why it had been used so liberally in the boot of the A40. It hadn’t been the car itself they’d wanted to disinfect – it was the package they intended to transfer from there to the Volvo.

  It was a long, sausage-shaped package, wrapped up in an old blanket. Woodend took hold of the corner of the blanket and peeled it back to find himself looking at the head of a white-haired man in his middle sixties. The disinfectant had not quite succeeded in masking the smell of rotting flesh, and even without the maggots crawling on his skin, the man would still have looked very dead indeed.

  Woodend stepped back, looked across at Ainsworth, and pointed to the boot. ‘I think you might have just a little difficulty explainin’ this away, sir,’ he said. ‘It is Farmer Dugdale, I presume.’

  Ainsworth nodded. ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘That’s Wilfred Dugdale.’

  Thirty

  As Woodend walked down the corridor, he was aware that the eyes of other officers were following him. And why wouldn’t they? He was Lazarus returned from the dead, Napoleon landing in France after his escape from Elbe, the man who had fought against the odds and – this time, at least – had beaten the system. He was also, he admitted to himself, what he had always been before any of this had happened – a maverick. Perhaps even, in some people’s eyes, a bit of a freak.

  He came to a halt in front of Interview Room Number Two – the room in which he himself had been grilled by the humourless DCI Evans and malicious DCC Ainsworth. He wondered whether he should go inside – wondered whether he even wanted to.

  As if I really have any choice! he thought, turning the handle and pushing the door open. As if young Enid Judd – although dead – wasn’t still compelling him to be there.

  There were three people already in the room – DI Harris and DS Paniatowski sitting at one end of the table, DCC Ainsworth at the other.

  Woodend only gave the Deputy Chief Constable a brief glance, but it was enough to see that the man seemed to have aged twenty years in the previous hour or so.

  Ainsworth glared at him. ‘Why are you here, Chief Inspector? Have you come to gloat?’

  Woodend shook his head. ‘You should know me better than that. This is what I do – not what I enjoy.’

  ‘Will you be taking over the questioning now, sir?’ DI Harris asked, with a trace of relief in his voice.

  ‘No,’ Woodend told him. ‘Officially, I’m still under suspension. But the Chief Constable has asked me if I wouldn’t mind monitorin’ the progress of the investigation.’

  ‘So even he’s abandoned me, has he?’ Ainsworth asked.

  ‘Did you expect anythin’ else?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Nor should he have. Ainsworth might have been high on the Chief Constable’s crony list for a long time, but unlike Monika Paniatowski, Henry Marlowe was one rat who did know when it was time to desert a sinking ship.

  ‘I’m sorry about what Ainsworth’s put you through, Charlie,’ the Chief Constable had said to Woodend, not half an hour earlier. ‘He seems to have duped us both, doesn’t he?’

  And come the next morning, the story would have drifted even further from the truth. By then, Marlowe would be letting it be known that he had suspected Dick Ainsworth all along, and had only cut Woodend loose to enable him to conduct the kind of investigation that could not go through the official channels.

  The Chief Inspector picked up a spare chair, took it over to the corner of the room, and straddled it. ‘Carry on as if I’m not here.’

  Harris nodded a reluctant acknowledgement. ‘You were telling us that you were only peripheral to this case, Mr Ainsworth,’ he said.

  ‘The whole thing was Taylor and Swales’ idea from the start,’ the DCC said, in a dull, flat voice.

  ‘What whole thing?’

  ‘The Pleasure Palace.’

  ‘That’s what they called Dugdale’s Farm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And why did they call it that?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘Tell us anyway. We need it on the recor
d,’ Paniatowski said, taking over the questioning.

  Ainsworth sighed. ‘The Pleasure Palace was where middle-aged men went to meet young women.’

  ‘In other words, it was a brothel?’

  ‘If you must put such a crude, unimaginative label on it – if your self-righteousness really feels the need – then, yes, I suppose that you could call it a brothel.’

  There was not just one Ainsworth in the room, Woodend told himself. There were a number of different Ainsworths, who were constantly coming and going. And the changes – this slipping out of one character and into another – were reflected in the man’s face. His eyes were filled with defiance one moment, and a dull acceptance of his fate the next. His mouth continually altered its shape, as if he were unable to decide whether he was playing a part in a tragedy – or only in a black comedy. His whole demeanour shifted between the extremes of a child begging for acceptance, and a superior being who did no more than tolerate these lesser mortals as they went about their pathetic business.

  It was nothing Woodend hadn’t seen before. Rich man or poor man, genius or idiot, they all came to resemble each other once they were sitting in that particular chair, he thought.

  ‘Did this brothel operate every night?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘No,’ Ainsworth replied. ‘It was mainly a weekend thing – though it always did good business on bank holidays as well.’

  ‘And why did Taylor and Swales choose to locate this brothel of theirs in a moorland farmhouse?’

  ‘Isn’t that obvious?’

  ‘Tell me anyway.’

  ‘Because there was no danger of prying eyes in a place that’s so isolated. And because Dugdale had done time in Strangeways with Swales, so Swales and Taylor knew they could trust him.’

  ‘What went on at this Pleasure Palace?’

  ‘You want me to spell it out for you?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Everything went on, Sergeant. Whatever your taste, Swales would find a way to cater for it.’

  ‘And did they charge for this service?’

  ‘Oh yes. We’d all have been suspicious about the place if they hadn’t. But the charges were more than reasonable – because it wasn’t really money they were interested in.’

  ‘So what were they after?’

  ‘Influence, of course. But they played it cleverly. And they were very patient. None of us guessed what was really going on for the first couple of years the Pleasure Palace was running, but once they’d got enough important people snared up in their web, they . . . they . . .’

  ‘They started to blackmail their customers?’

  ‘It was rarely as crude as that.’

  ‘Rarely?’

  ‘It happened – but not often. It wasn’t necessary. Say, for example, that you were a member of the council planning committee, and you were considering Terry Taylor’s tender for a contract – you’d have been a fool not to give him your support, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘And if he wanted information about the other bids before he put his own in?’

  ‘Someone would give it to him.’

  ‘What about your own role in all this?’

  ‘Until the day of the murders, all I ever did was turn a blind eye.’

  ‘And make certain that the rest of the Central Lancs force was turning a blind eye, as well?’

  ‘Yes, that too,’ Ainsworth agreed. ‘If I didn’t protect them, why should they bother to protect me?’ He experienced another shift of mood, and looked Monika Paniatowski pleadingly in the eyes. ‘You have to understand that I’m as much a victim as anyone else.’

  ‘Did DC Battersby go to the Pleasure Palace?’ the sergeant asked, completely unmoved.

  Ainsworth snorted. ‘Of course not! Battersby was a mere police constable – far too insignificant socially ever to have been invited. Terry Taylor had another hold over him – his gambling debts.’

  ‘And Dr Pierson?’

  ‘Yes, he was a member of what we liked to think of as the club.’

  ‘What was his weakness?’

  ‘Does it really matter?’

  ‘Just for the record.’

  ‘He likes boys. Very young boys.’

  ‘So when Taylor asked him to falsify his post-mortem findings – to say that Enid Judd was a virgin, which she clearly wasn’t – he agreed to do it.’

  ‘What choice did he have?’ Ainsworth asked. ‘You have to understand that the killings were a complete accident. Nobody wanted them to happen. Not even Phil Swales.’

  ‘Let’s move on to the events leading up to the morning of the murders, shall we?’ Paniatowski suggested. ‘Was there a big party the night before?’

  ‘No. Sometimes Swales would bring up half a dozen girls, but that night there was only Lola.’

  ‘Lola?’

  ‘That’s what the girl – Enid – called herself.’

  ‘So who else was there – apart from Dugdale, Swales and the girl?’

  ‘A few of Whitebridge’s more prominent citizens.’

  ‘What were the names?’

  Ainsworth shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you everything else you want to know, but I won’t tell you that.’

  ‘But since you obviously do know who they were, presumably you were there yourself?’

  ‘Yes, I . . . I was there.’

  ‘What time did the party break up?’

  ‘It was around midnight when most of the guests left.’

  ‘But Swales and the girl stayed on?’

  Ainsworth nodded. ‘He had some business to do with Taylor the following morning. Teddy had said he’d pick Swales up from the farm, because the Merc was in dock until Monday. Swales could have had someone else drive out and pick up the girl, but I suppose he wanted her to share his bed.’

  ‘Did you sleep with Enid?’ Woodend asked – knowing that as a monitor he should say nothing, yet being unable to restrain himself.

  ‘Yes,’ Ainsworth admitted.

  ‘She was only fifteen, for God’s sake!’

  ‘You have to try and understand what the Pleasure Palace was like,’ Ainsworth told him. ‘It . . . it was a different world, where the normal rules just didn’t apply. When we were there, it felt as if we could do anything we wanted to, and nobody would really get hurt.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘And though we all knew that every time we went there we were putting ourselves more and more in Taylor’s power, we still couldn’t stop going. I think we must have been addicted to the place.’

  ‘You make me puke!’ Woodend said angrily.

  Paniatowski shot him a warning look. ‘What happened on Sunday morning?’ she asked Ainsworth.

  ‘I wasn’t there at the beginning, so I can only tell you what they told me later.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘They heard the car drive up, and then they saw Judd through the living-room window. His turning up like that came as a complete surprise to Swales – he thought the man was still in jail.’

  ‘And he panicked?’

  Ainsworth shook his head again. ‘Swales is not the kind of man to panic. At first he thought that Judd could be bought off with a few pounds – and when it became obvious that that wasn’t going to work, he thought he could be frightened off.’

  ‘What made him change his mind?’

  ‘Judd did. He was screaming at the top of his voice about how much he loved his daughter, and how he was going to expose the whole operation. He said there was a reporter on his way to the farm at that very moment.’

  ‘And that’s when Swales decided to kill him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And his daughter, too?’

  ‘She’d just seen him murder her father. He couldn’t very well let her live after that, could he?’

  ‘He shot them in the face to disguise their identity?’

  ‘Yes. He thought he’d have a much better chance of covering his tracks that way.’

  ‘And then he rang you?’

  ‘No. He rang
Taylor.’

  ‘And Taylor rang you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Which is how you came to be the first policeman to arrive at the scene of the crime?’

  ‘Correct. I knew I ran the risk of drawing attention to myself, but I wanted to make sure they hadn’t left any obvious evidence around.’

  ‘Like tyre tracks?’

  ‘Exactly. DCI Woodend was right about – there were tracks in the snow that the A40 had left. I drove over them.’

  ‘Swales and Dugdale had gone by the time you arrived?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what happened next?’

  ‘This is hearsay again.’

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘The A40 wasn’t in very good condition, and it broke down about a mile from Moorland Village. While he was trying to get it started again, Swales turned on the car radio. He thought it might help to distract Dugdale. That’s when they heard the BBC already broadcasting details of the murders.’

  ‘And that made them panic?’

  ‘It certainly made Dugdale panic. The report didn’t actually say that he was the main suspect, but it certainly suggested it. He told Swales that he wanted to turn back and give himself up. He said he didn’t see why he should take the blame for the murders, when it was Swales who’d actually committed them.’

  ‘So Swales killed him, too?’

  ‘That’s right. He broke his neck.’

  ‘Let’s get back to your part in all this,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Did you go straight from Dugdale’s Farm to Moorland Village?’

  ‘Yes. Taylor and Swales were already there by then, of course.’

  ‘And Dugdale?’

  ‘And Dugdale’s body . . . yes. Swales had already put it in the boot of the Austin. He was going to drive off and dump it somewhere.’

  ‘So why didn’t he?’

  ‘I advised against it. I knew that by then DCI Woodend would be setting up roadblocks. Even if the Austin wasn’t actually searched, there was still the danger that some bright young bobby might take note of its number, and since the car belonged to Judd, it would have pointed the investigation in his direction.’

  ‘Which was the last thing you wanted?’

  Ainsworth nodded, and turned towards Woodend.

  ‘I don’t like you, Charlie,’ he said. ‘I never have. But you’re a bloody good bobby. I knew if you made the connection with Judd, you’d piece the rest of it together. I wanted to do all I could to stop that happening – and, just to make double sure, I jumped on the first opportunity I had to throw you off the case.’