He tried to work out who might pay a call on him during the course of the morning.
Not the milkman, he collected his money on Saturdays.
Not that nice social worker from the town hall – since the cutbacks, she only came once a fortnight.
There was no one – but he had to get to the police, because they seemed to know nothing.
They didn’t even know what Mary’s real name was, or they’d have used it in the article!
All his neighbours were out at work, and wouldn’t be home until evening, so he couldn’t rely on them.
He had to do this himself. He had to somehow gather the strength to walk to the phone box at the end of the street.
Because although he could not be positive, he was almost certain he knew who had killed the woman in the Royal Vic.
The man’s name was Walter Spinks, and he was resident lepidopterist at the confused complex of red brick and plate glass buildings which was known as the University of Mid Lancs.
He was a tall, thin man with very long fingers, curly brown hair and thick glasses. He wore a bow tie, and was the first man Meadows had met in a long time who – she was sure – hadn’t wondered, even for a moment, what it would be like to take her to bed.
‘The butterfly is the most fascinating and inexplicable creature,’ Spinks enthused. ‘Take the monarch as an example. The generations that stay in one place live for only three to five weeks, but the generations that migrate – and imagine anything as tiny and delicate as a butterfly migrating – live for much—’
‘That’s all very interesting, but I’m here as part of a murder investigation, Dr Spinks,’ Meadows interrupted.
‘Some of them have been recorded to have flown over 4800 miles,’ Spinks said, as if he thought that he only needed to hit the right fact to capture her whole attention.
‘I’d like you to look at this,’ Meadows said, sliding a photograph of Mary’s tattoo across the desk.
‘This isn’t a butterfly – it’s a tattoo,’ Spinks said.
‘I know,’ Meadows admitted, ‘but it’s all we have to work from at the moment, and we were hoping that it resembled a real butterfly closely enough for you to make a judgement.’
‘Actually, it’s a rather fine piece of work,’ Spinks said, examining the photograph through a magnifying glass. ‘It’s almost like a watercolour painting, don’t you think?’
‘Almost,’ Meadows agreed. ‘Can you identify it?’
‘I think so. It looks like a northern brown argus. There are sub-species of this particular butterfly spread all over the world – Scandinavia, Russia, North Korea – but I think this is the genuine article. Of course, to be really positive, I would need to see more. Some of the sub-species have white spots on the underside of the wings, for example, and—’
‘What part of America is it common in?’ Meadows asked.
‘America?’ Spinks exploded, with something akin to horror. ‘America, you say!’
‘Isn’t it …?’
‘This is a northern brown argus. We don’t share it with the Americans. We don’t even share it with the Midlands or the Home Counties. It’s ours.’
‘Ours?’
‘You find it in Lancashire and Cumbria – and you don’t find it anywhere else.’
DC Simcox was still stuck at his desk in the ballroom of the Royal Victoria, taking calls from people whose main motive in ringing up was that they just wanted someone to talk to.
It was all Shagger Beresford’s fault, he told himself. A better boss than Beresford would have instantly spotted his potential, given this tedious task to some poor drudge, and thus freed him to make a substantial – perhaps the substantial – contribution to the investigation.
The latest caller he was being forced to deal with was a woman called Janet Dobson, who said she worked as a librarian at Whitebridge Central Library. He’d been surprised when she announced her occupation, because, up to that point, he had thought from her voice that she was quite a young woman. Now, of course, he realised his mistake, and a picture formed in his mind of a thin woman with a pinched face, who had her grey hair tied in a severe bun, and wore spectacles with lenses as thick as jam jar bottoms.
‘Exactly what is the nature of your information, Miss Dobson?’ Simcox said, sticking – for the moment, anyway – to the script he had been given.
‘It said on the news that you wanted to hear from anyone who had seen the woman who was murdered,’ Miss Dobson said.
‘And do you think you’ve seen her?’ Simcox asked, softening his voice to a tone he felt was appropriate for talking to old ladies.
‘Well, of course I do,’ Miss Dobson said tartly. ‘I would never have called if I hadn’t. And, by the way, there’s no think about it.’
Vinegary old hag, Simcox thought.
‘So where do you think – I’m sorry, where do you know – you’ve seen her?’ he said aloud.
‘Where do you think I’m likely to have seen her? Do you imagine that I walked into my living room one night and there she was – sitting in my favourite armchair with her feet up, and reading the evening newspaper while she slowly supped at a gin and tonic?’
‘No, I—’
‘Or maybe I was in my bath when I noticed her crouched evilly behind the taps, like some kind of malevolent hobgoblin.’
‘I don’t know where you might have seen her, madam – that’s why I asked,’ Simcox said, in a harder, more impersonal voice which was intended to remind the dried-up old spinster that she was talking to an officer of the law, who was therefore entitled to her respect.
Miss Dobson sighed. ‘I saw her in the library.’
Bollocks! Simcox thought. Absolute cock!
There were people who went to the library, and people who simply didn’t. He himself was a member of the latter group, having never crossed the library threshold since he was forced to do so at school, and so – it was obvious to him – was the dead woman.
‘What was she doing in the library?’ he asked, starting to doodle a picture on his notepad which could well turn out to be Miss Dobson. ‘Was she borrowing a book? That’s what most people do in libraries, isn’t it.’
‘Is it?’ Miss Dobson asked. ‘I never realised that. Do you know, thanks to this wonderful knowledge that you’ve just imparted to me, I’m going to adopt a whole new approach to my work from now on.’
‘There’s no need at all for you to take that attitude, Miss Dobson,’ Simcox said stiffly.
‘And there’s no need for you to talk to me as if I were mentally deficient,’ Miss Dobson countered. ‘But in answer to your question, no, she was not borrowing a book. In fact, since she was not a rate payer, a member of a rate payer’s family or someone who paid her rates indirectly through rent to her landlord, she was not entitled to borrow books.’
She was a right stroppy old cow, this one, Simcox thought, giving her image on his notepad a pronounced squint.
‘How do you know she wasn’t a rate payer?’ he asked.
‘Firstly – because she was an American; and secondly – because she told me that she was just visiting Whitebridge.’
‘So why was she in the library?’ Simcox asked, mystified.
‘She wished to consult the archives.’
‘The what?’
‘The archives.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Simcox, who would have died rather than admit he had no idea what she was talking about.
‘She was specifically interested in the local newspapers from one year in the early 1920s – 1924, in point of fact.’
‘And you keep them in the library, do you?’ asked Simcox, half suspecting that she was taking the piss out of him.
‘Yes, we do. We have all the newspapers since 1876.’
‘They must take up a lot of space,’ Simcox said, his suspicions mounting by the second.
‘We store them on microfiche.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Simcox said. He glanced down at his script, and realised how far he had
veered away from it.
‘When did all this happen?’ he asked.
‘On Monday and Tuesday of last week.’
‘Monday and Tuesday!’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re saying that she didn’t just read the newspapers one day, but came back for second helpings?’
‘Obviously.’
To do it once seemed, to Simcox, to be crazy. To repeat the action seemed … well, he just didn’t know what it seemed.
‘Thank you for calling, Miss Dobson,’ Simcox said, returning to his script. ‘The Mid Lancs police force values any and all the help it receives from members of the general public, and—’
‘Is that it?’ the librarian asked.
DC Simcox pencilled in a bushy moustache under his librarian’s prominent nose.
‘I don’t know what else you were expecting,’ he said.
‘I was expecting you to say that someone will be coming to the library to interview me.’
‘And so they will, madam, in the fullness of time,’ Simcox said, balling up his picture and dropping it into the battleship grey regulation police waste-paper basket next to his desk.
The man had insisted on seeing Beresford personally. He was around sixty years’ old, with broad shoulders and a square head. He was wearing a heavy check jacket, cavalry twill trousers, and what were probably very comfortable – if somewhat battered – suede shoes.
He looked to Beresford like either an ex-bobby or a pub landlord, and when they had shaken hands, he said, ‘My name’s Terry Carson. I used to be on the force myself, but now I’m the manager of the Rising Sun.’ The inspector couldn’t resist giving himself a mental pat on the back.
‘So what can I do for you, Mr Carson?’ Beresford asked.
‘It’s like this,’ said Carson, sounding perhaps a little nervous and definitely very cautious. ‘I’ve been running the Sun for a couple of years now. It was a bit of a rough pub before I took it over – and that’s probably why they decided to put an ex-bobby in. Anyway, the first week I was there, this feller from the brewery paid me a call. He was one of them men with a sharp blue suit and a five quid haircut. You know the type I mean.’
‘I know the type you mean,’ Beresford agreed.
‘So this feller gives me a ledger with “Incident Book” written on the front. He said it was part of a general statistics gathering process, and every time there was a disturbance in the pub, I was to write it up.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘Did I hell as like! “General statistics gathering process”, my arse. The only statistics they’d be collecting were on me. It was like asking a condemned man if he wouldn’t mind providing his own rope – and that book is as virginal and unsullied now as it was the day he handed it over.’
‘But there have been fights in the Rising Sun in the last two years, haven’t there, Mr Carson?’
The landlord hesitated. ‘This is where it all starts feeling a bit uncomfortable for me,’ he admitted. ‘This is where I get the impression that I’m skating on very thin ice.’
‘As an active officer talking to an ex-officer, let me see if I can help you with this,’ Beresford suggested.
‘All right.’
‘The Rising Sun is a lot quieter than it used to be, but it’s still in the centre of Whitebridge, and it’s still a pub used mainly by working men, so it would be a bloody miracle if there wasn’t a fight every once in a while, especially late on Friday or Saturday nights. Now, as a private citizen, you’re only allowed to use physical force when you need to defend yourself. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘So when a fight breaks out, what you’re supposed to do is call the police. The only problem with that is that by the time we get there – even if we’re quick – the whole pub could be smashed up.’
‘That’s right,’ Carson agreed. ‘And who gets blamed for it? The poor bloody landlord – that’s who!’
‘So what you actually do is wade into the fight yourself,’ Beresford continued. ‘And before the troublemakers know what’s happening, they’re lying in the gutter outside the pub with aching jaws and black eyes, and you’re standing over them, telling them their custom is no longer welcome in the Rising Sun. Right?’
Carson frowned.
‘Maybe,’ he said reluctantly.
Beresford laughed. ‘You overlooked that sort of thing when you were on the beat, didn’t you, Mr Carson?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘And so did generations of bobbies before you – so why should you assume it’s any different now?’
‘Well, you know, times change,’ Carson said dubiously. ‘There’s a new breed of bobby around these days – the cousins of that feller from the brewery with the five quid haircut.’
‘I can assure you that I’m not one of the new breed,’ Beresford said. ‘Why don’t you just tell me what it was that you came in to tell me?’
‘It was last Thursday night,’ Carson said. ‘I noticed these two women in the snug who’d I’d never seen before.’
‘And you think one of them was Mary Edwards?’
‘I’m certain she was.’
‘Go on.’
‘They were sitting very close together, and they were giggling a lot, like mates do when they’re out on the razzle. Then suddenly the door burst open, and this big bugger came in. He saw them together, and he went crazy. He said something like, “What are you doing here, Sheila?” She said, “I’m talking to my friend.” “It’s Doris what’s your friend, not this thing,” he screamed at her. The other woman – Mary – got up. I think she wanted to reason with him.’
‘What were you doing at this point?’
‘I was just watching and waiting – because, very often, the landlord stepping into an argument only makes things worse, and what might well have died of its own accord – if he’d left it alone – rapidly turns into a punch-up. Besides, if it had been Sheila that stood up, I would have been more worried, but I never thought he’d hit a woman who wasn’t his wife.’
‘But he did hit her?’
‘He certainly did. He gave her a real back-hander across her face. That’s when I started to move – and if I’d reached him in time, I’d have made him very sorry that he ever hit a woman in my pub.’
‘What do you mean – if you’d reached him in time?’
‘Before I was even halfway there, Mary had handled it. It was very fast, so I’m not entirely sure what happened in what order, but what I think she did was first kick him in the nuts and then – when he was half doubled up – follow it through with an uppercut to his jaw. I tell you, whoever trained that woman – and there’s no doubt in my mind that she was trained – did a bloody good job.’
‘So it would seem,’ Beresford said.
‘Anyway, the feller went down like a sack of potatoes. Mary dusted off her hands – calm as you please – stepped over him, and left the pub. After a few seconds, Sheila stood up and left as well.’
‘Was she following Mary?’
‘I don’t think so. I think she just wanted to get away from the feller while he was still down.’
‘And what happened to the feller?’
‘I picked him up and eased him gently into a chair. Then I got him some ice for his balls, and brewed him a nice cup of tea with brandy in it.’
‘What happened to the feller?’ Beresford repeated.
Carson grinned. ‘I took him by the collar, and dragged him to the door. Once I had him out on the street, I may have accidentally kicked him a couple of times – because I really don’t like fellers who hit women.’ He paused. ‘I know I should have reported it, but if I had, it would have gone down in the incident book, and I didn’t want to give that smarmy bastard from head office the satisfaction. Besides, Mary might have had a bruise for a day or two, but after what she did to that feller, he won’t be able to ride his bike for a month.’
‘Could you give a description of Sheila and the man to the police artist?’ Beresford
asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Carson replied. ‘It’s what I was trained to do.’
FIVE
Tyndale & Comstock (Solicitors and Commissioners of Oaths) had occupied a house in the centre of Alexandra Row for as long as Monika Paniatowski could remember, but she had never – until that morning – had cause to pass through the dark blue front door.
Beyond the outer door was the general office/waiting room, which would have looked like every other old-fashioned solicitor’s waiting room but for the framed newspaper front pages hanging from the walls.
The grey-haired receptionist smiled at her and said, ‘It’s Chief Inspector Paniatowski, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Mr Tyndale is engaged just at the moment, but he should be free soon. Would you like to take a seat?’
The chair the receptionist had indicated was perfectly positioned to give her a clear view of most of the framed newspapers. That was no accident, Paniatowski thought, but – more than likely – Tyndale’s idea of a good joke.
All the front pages were from local papers, all had been blown up to at least three times their actual size, and all of them had a headline relating to criminal proceedings.
Local man freed! said one of the headlines.
John Hodges’ sentence overturned, screamed a second.
And in case there was any doubt why these papers were being displayed in this office, a third proclaimed: Another triumph for Tyndale.
That kind of ostentation was probably frowned on by the Law Society, but she doubted that bothered Tyndale, because he was a big boisterous character, and, like the real Lone Ranger, slightly larger than life.
The door to one of the offices opposite her opened, and a man stepped out. She could not put a name to the face, but she knew he was no stranger to the custody cells in Whitebridge police headquarters.
On the threshold, the man turned.
‘Thank you, Mr Tyndale,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘Do your best to stay out of trouble, won’t you, Harry?’ said a voice which sounded like it belonged to a very old man.
Death in Disguise Page 7
