Death in Disguise

by Sally Spencer

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Sally Spencer From Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Journal

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Journal

  Chapter Six

  Journal

  Chapter Seven

  Journal

  Chapter Eight

  Journal

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Journal

  Epilogue

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Sally Spencer from Severn House

  The Monika Paniatowski Mysteries

  ECHOES OF THE DEAD

  BACKLASH

  LAMS TO THE SLAUGHTER

  A WALK WITH THE DEAD

  DEATH’S DARK SHADOW

  SUPPING WITH THE DEVIL

  BEST SERVED COLD

  THICKER THAN WATER

  DEATH IN DISGUISE

  The Inspector Woodend Mysteries

  DANGEROUS GAMES

  DEATH WATCH

  A DYING FALL

  FATAL QUEST

  The Inspector Sam Blackstone Series

  BLACKSTONE AND THE NEW WORLD

  BLACKSTONE AND THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

  BLACKSTONE AND THE GREAT WAR

  BLACKSTONE AND THE ENDGAME

  DEATH IN DISGUISE

  A Monika Paniatowski Mystery

  Sally Spencer

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2016

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published 2016 in Great

  Britain and the USA by SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2016 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2016 by Lanna Rustage.

  The right of Lanna Rustage to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8620-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-721-0 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-782-0 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

  are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described

  for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are

  fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ONE

  March 13th, 1978

  The Royal Victoria Hotel, Whitebridge, was widely considered to be a superior hotel for superior people, and most of the guests who stayed there would have thought it very bad manners to allow themselves to be murdered within its confines.

  The American woman in the Prince Alfred suite had no such qualms, as was witnessed by the fact that she was sprawled in one of the armchairs with an open wound on her forehead, and was undoubtedly dead.

  The body was discovered by the chambermaid, a girl of southern European peasant stock, who was thus well-used to both hard work and people dying before their time. She did not panic, but went straight to the floor supervisor. He, in turn, informed the general manager that a situation had arisen, and the manager immediately rang the police. The whole incident should have been a secret between the three of them, but, as if by osmosis, disquiet soon began to spread through the entire hotel, and long before the first policemen arrived, there was a generalised feeling that something had gone seriously wrong.

  When Acting Chief Constable Keith Pickering received news of the murder, he felt much as a real-life mayor of New York City would have felt on being informed that a giant ape was perched on top of the Empire State Building – it wasn’t his fault at all, but if he didn’t manage the situation extremely carefully, it might as well have been.

  The problem was that the Royal Victoria was not just any hotel. Successful local businessmen wined and dined their clients in its restaurant, and the town’s solicitors, surveyors, accountants and councillors regularly met in the Prince Albert bar to perform the ancient rite of exchanging scandal. No father of the bride with any social pretensions would ever dream of holding his daughter’s wedding reception anywhere else, and it had become de rigueur for the Masons to throw their Ladies’ Nights in the Royal’s ballroom.

  Worse yet, it was the favourite haunt of the police authority, a body which (if George Baxter ever recovered enough of his mind to realise he could no longer do the job of chief constable properly) would either confirm Pickering in the post or bring someone in from outside.

  He hit the intercom button on his desk.

  ‘Which of the DCIs is available to take on a major case?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think DCI Hawthorn has got much on at the moment, sir,’ the secretary replied.

  Ollie Hawthorn was solid, reliable, and totally lacking in the imagination that it takes to be a great detective, Pickering thought.

  ‘What’s DCI Paniatowski doing at the moment?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s on a few days’ leave,’ the secretary said.

  ‘Not any more, she isn’t,’ Pickering told her.

  There had been a thin layer of ice on the pond in Corporation Park earlier in the day, but the combined efforts of several council workmen and a weak winter sun had been enough to ensure that the swans were not too inconvenienced.

  Standing at the edge of the pond, Monika Paniatowski tipped the double trolley slightly, so that the twins – well wrapped up, with only their eyes and the bridges of their noses visible – could get a better view of the majestic birds.

  ‘Our teachers used to tell us that a swan’s wing could break a man’s arm,’ she told the boys. ‘I wonder if that’s true.’

  She grinned. She really wasn’t very good at talking to babies, she thought.

  She tried again. ‘Wook at the woverly wittle birdies,’ she said.

  Was that any better?

  Probably not!

  She was just going to have to rely on the twins sensing the love that emanated from her every time she was near them.

  ‘We’ve got a woverly wittle murder on our hands, boss,’ said a voice to her left, and when she looked, she saw DS Kate Meadows standing there.

  ‘I’m on leave,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘And the murder victim was a guest at the Royal Vic,’ Meadows said, ‘so all leave is cancelled.’

  Joe Green liked to think of himself as an intelligent man who took an interest in what was go
ing on around him, though many of the people who knew him preferred to call him a nosey parker, and there were even those who – uncharitably but not entirely without foundation – considered him to be one very short step away from becoming a peeping Tom.

  Thus, it was not surprising that when he heard a car pull up on the opposite side of the street, he hauled himself out of his armchair and walked over to the window.

  He was pleased to see that it was his neighbour, Monika Paniatowski, and as she transferred her two children from the back of her car to their trolley, he took the opportunity to carry out one of his periodic inspections of her.

  She was, he guessed, edging ever closer to forty, but she still went in and out at the right places, and even if she was a few pounds overweight after giving birth to the twins, she carried it well. Her hair was a glorious blonde, and she had a central European nose which was rather large by Lancashire standards, but certainly did not preclude her from playing a regular part in Joe’s fantasies.

  A second car pulled up – a green Mini Cooper – and another woman got out. She was in her early thirties. She had a slim – practically boyish – figure, and wore her dark hair so short that it almost looked like a piece of rich smooth velvet just resting on the top of her head.

  ‘Who’s she?’ asked a voice by his side, which was so unexpected that it made him jump.

  He turned to face his wife.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Probably just another bobby.’

  Paniatowski wheeled the trolley up to the front door, where Elena Ortega, her Spanish nanny, was waiting to take charge of the children.

  ‘How would you describe her?’ Angela Green asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The woman with Monika.’

  ‘I haven’t really thought about it.’

  ‘I’d say she was elfin or pixyish. No, that’s not quite right. She’s more like a delicate china doll, don’t you think?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Do you fancy her?’ Angela asked, and now there was a sharp edge to her tone.

  ‘Me?’ Joe asked. ‘No, not really.’

  But he did! By God, he did!

  Once the children were safely inside, the two women walked to Meadows’ Mini Cooper, and climbed inside.

  As they drove off, Joe Green was back in the world of his fantasy, but this time Monika had brought a friend.

  The quickest way to get from Paniatowski’s house to the Royal Victoria was to take the Whitebridge bypass, and that was what they had done.

  For the first half of the journey, the bypass was a dual carriageway, but they had now reached the point at which – the money for construction work having almost run out – it shrank into a three-lane highway, the middle lane to be used strictly for overtaking. Most drivers treated this middle lane with caution, because the last thing they needed when they’d pulled out was to meet a car coming at them from the other direction. Meadows had no such qualms – her philosophy being that there was no potential collision that couldn’t be avoided with a little extra acceleration.

  ‘So why me?’ Paniatowski asked, after Meadows had successfully – but only just successfully – completed an almost heart-stopping overtake.

  ‘Why you what, boss?’ Meadows replied, scanning the on-coming traffic for someone else to play chicken with.

  ‘Why does the chief constable consider it necessary to haul me in off leave, when there are at least three other DCIs who he could have assigned to the case?’

  ‘You want me to say it’s because you’re the best, don’t you?’ Meadows asked, grinning.

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski replied, feeling slightly uncomfortable because she suspected that there was at least a small part of her that had wanted Meadows to say that. ‘I was just wondering …’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I think that is the reason,’ Meadows said. ‘A murder in the Royal Vic is a big event – especially when the victim was occupying one of the two suites on the top floor.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Prince Alfred suite.’

  ‘Not such an important person, then – the real VIPs are given the Princess Beatrice suite.’

  ‘Maybe the Princess Beatrice was already occupied.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Paniatowski agreed, and then, noticing the look of terror on the face of an oncoming driver, she added, ‘Why are you driving so fast, Kate?’

  ‘There’s been a murder, boss,’ Meadows replied. ‘We need to get there as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Then why don’t you put your siren on, to at least warn other drivers that there’s a maniac approaching?’

  ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Put the siren on!’ Paniatowski said firmly.

  ‘If you’re not careful, boss, you’ll be slipping into grumpy middle age,’ Meadows told her – but she switched the siren on, anyway.

  A uniformed constable, posted just outside the hotel, was stopping anyone from entering the building, and standing next to him was a man wearing a smart business suit and a very worried expression.

  ‘That’s Mansfield, the general manager,’ Meadows said, as she pulled into the curb. ‘I think he’s a pain in the arse.’

  ‘From what I remember from the last time we had dealings with him, I’d say that’s a pretty good assessment of the man,’ Paniatowski replied.

  The manager saw them climbing out of the Mini, and immediately rushed over to them.

  ‘Thank God you’re here, Chief Inspector Paniatowski,’ he said. ‘Of all the unfortunate things that I could have imagined going wrong, this has to be easily the worst.’

  ‘Especially if you happen to be the victim,’ Paniatowski said dryly.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Mansfield agreed, although he was still scoring minus one on the empathy scale. ‘Shall we go inside?’

  Paniatowski shrugged. ‘Might as well, now we’re here.’

  The people who were cordoned off in the lobby offered no surprises. There were businessmen who had gone for a quick lunch, and then readily given way to temptation and made it into a long one. There were families, there to take advantage of the ‘early bird’ rates on the Royal Vic’s cream tea. And there were hotel staff who had worked the first half of their split shift, and wanted to get home for a few hours’ rest before they started the second half.

  Paniatowski did a quick head count, and estimated there were around thirty of them. She guessed – based on previous experience – that until a minute or two earlier, they had been behaving like most of their fellow countrymen would have done in a similar position, which was to say that they would have been grumbling softly to themselves or exchanging grievances with their immediate neighbours, while all the time stoically accepting this was the way of the world, and they had no choice but to put up with it.

  Now that situation had changed, and passivity had turned into active interest, as they watched a large, florid-faced man arguing with one of the constables by the door.

  That had to be quickly nipped in the bud, before the others decided to join in, Paniatowski decided.

  She walked over to the man and interposed herself between him and the constable.

  ‘Is there a problem here, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘Who the devil are you?’ the man demanded.

  ‘I’m DCI Paniatowski, and I’m in charge here.’

  ‘You can’t be,’ the man said, disbelievingly.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Not just a woman, but a foreigner to boot,’ the man said with disgust – and in a loud voice which was playing to his audience, he added, ‘I really don’t know what this country’s coming to.’

  ‘I asked you if you had a problem, sir,’ Paniatowski reminded him, keeping her tone level and her voice low.

  The man did not follow her example.

  ‘Yes, I have a problem,’ he said. ‘I have an important meeting to attend right at the other end of Whitebridge, so will you please tell this idiot here –’ flicking a fat thumb
in the general direction of the uniformed constable – ‘that I have to leave right now.’

  Paniatowski regretfully shook her head, but only slightly regretfully.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir. And I would very much appreciate it if you could refrain from being abusive about my officers. In fact, I think I’m going to have to insist on it.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who I am?’ the man boomed.

  ‘Yes, you’re a potential witness in what may turn out to be a very serious crime.’

  ‘I, Chief Inspector Whatever-your-name-is, am Sir Edgar Stott.’

  ‘I’m duly impressed,’ Paniatowski said, ‘but it doesn’t make you any less of a potential witness.’

  ‘I’m going to leave right now,’ Stott said, ‘and I advise you not to try and stop me.’

  ‘If you attempt to leave, I’ll have you arrested.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Stott said.

  ‘Have you ever been handcuffed?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘It’s really not a very pleasant experience. But, I must admit, it might be useful to me in terms of crowd control, because once I’ve slapped the cuffs on you, I’m not going to get any trouble from anyone else in this lobby.’

  ‘I’m a personal friend of Keith Pickering, your chief constable,’ Stott blustered.

  ‘Good for you,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Have you ever seen that trick he does with a cigarette packet?’

  ‘What!’

  ‘He takes an empty cigarette packet, makes a few tears in it, twists it round a bit and – hey presto! – you’ve got a model of a nun.’

  ‘I don’t see what that—’

  ‘Or it may be a penguin. I don’t think he’s too sure himself which it is. Anyway, next time you see him, ask him to show you how it’s done.’

  ‘This is outrageous,’ Stott said.

  ‘Will you attempt to leave without my express permission?’ Paniatowski asked.