Death in Disguise

by Sally Spencer

  ‘That depends,’ Meadows said. ‘What was it that you wanted to talk to the boss about?’

  ‘I wanted to discuss a man called Frankie Flynn. He’s been detained and, as I understand it, he’s being questioned this morning.’

  ‘He certainly is,’ Meadows agreed, ‘and I’ll be the one wielding the rubber hose.’

  ‘I beg your pardon!’

  Meadows smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Robinson, I’m only speaking metaphorically.’

  Robinson returned her smile. ‘Well, that is a relief,’ he said.

  ‘I much prefer to use a piece of lead pipe, for the simple reason that it’s very hard to jab someone in the kidneys with a rubber hose,’ Meadows told him.

  There were probably any number of smart and witty answers he could make to that, Robinson thought, but since he couldn’t come up with a single one at that moment, he settled for saying, ‘Do you think we could possibly get back to the reason I’m here?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Meadows agreed, with the apparent enthusiasm of a small puppy.

  ‘Up until now, Frankie Flynn has been represented by Arthur Tyndale, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes – the Lone Ranger rides again.’

  ‘But he’s not been well for some time, and it seems that early this morning, poor old Arthur collapsed and had to be rushed to hospital. He’s in a pretty bad way, by all accounts, and apparently, they’re not expecting him to last the day.’

  ‘Which leaves our poor little Frankie without anyone to wipe his bottom for him,’ Meadows said.

  ‘I … err … wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ Robinson said.

  ‘I know you wouldn’t – you’d have said it leaves him without anyone to wipe his arse for him,’ Meadows replied, ‘but, you see, I’m a lady.’

  ‘No, that’s not it at all,’ Robinson began, before deciding to give up on this particular strand of the conversation and move on. ‘The point is that the chief constable – who, for wholly understandable reasons, wants this matter over and done with as soon as possible – has asked me to come here and proffer myself as an alternative.’

  ‘Yes, you could certainly do that – and you could take over Tyndale’s job, as well.’

  Robinson smiled again, because – really – there was no choice in the matter.

  ‘Do you always take the mickey out of … out of …?’ he asked, before finding himself lost for the right words.

  ‘Out of people like your good self?’ Meadows supplied.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Only when the opportunity presents itself.’

  Had he been flirting? Robinson asked himself.

  No that was impossible, because he was an upstanding pillar of the community and upstanding pillars of the community simply didn’t flirt.

  ‘What do you think the chances are that Flynn will agree to me representing him?’ he asked, in a deliberately dry, solicitor-like voice.

  ‘He’s a bit of a conservative – I find that most mindless thugs are,’ Meadows said, ‘and he won’t like changing horses mid-stream at all, but if I explain to him that the one he was riding has gone under, I’m sure he’ll come round to the idea.’

  ‘And you’re willing to do that, are you?’

  ‘I’d do anything for a friend of the chief constable’s,’ Meadows said, in mock sex-siren voice, which somehow managed to override the parody and still be quite sexy anyway. ‘By the way, which are you – golf or Masons?’

  ‘I’m not quite sure what you mean?’

  ‘If the chief con thinks he can get away with ringing you at this time of the morning, you’ve either got to be a golfing buddy or a fellow Mason. I was just wondering which it was.’

  ‘It’s both,’ Robinson said.

  Paul Robinson had only spent a little over twenty minutes talking to Frankie Flynn, but when he returned to the visitors’ reception area, the look on his face said it had been the longest twenty minutes of his life.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Have you got a cigarette?’ Robinson asked.

  ‘I don’t smoke.’

  ‘I didn’t think that I did any more, but I could really use one now,’ Robinson said.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Meadows said.

  She disappeared into the bowels of the station, and re-emerged a minute later with a packet of Embassy Filter and a box of matches.

  Robinson took the cigarettes gratefully and reached into his inside jacket pocket for his wallet.

  ‘They’re on the house,’ Meadows said. ‘What seems to be the problem? Doesn’t Frankie want you to represent him? He seemed perfectly happy with the idea when I suggested it to him.’

  Robinson lit a cigarette, sucked on it greedily, and then began to pace the room.

  ‘Flynn seemed perfectly happy about it then, and he’s perfectly happy about it now,’ he said. ‘I think he’s quite relieved, in a way, because he could see with his own eyes that Arthur wasn’t at all a well man.’

  ‘So if Frankie’s agreed to the change of solicitor, then there’s no problem, is there?’

  ‘Not from his side, no.’

  ‘But from yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me why you think there’s a problem?’

  ‘I’m not sure I can,’ said Robinson, still pacing.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because of who I am, and because of the standards laid down by the society to which I belong.’

  ‘Well, that’s as clear as mud,’ Meadows said.

  Robinson lit a second cigarette from the glowing butt of his first, then stubbed the butt out in the ashtray.

  ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘if I withdraw, I’ll just be shunting the dilemma I find myself facing over to one of my colleagues – the thought of which is already making me feel extremely uncomfortable.’

  ‘Or to put it another way,’ Meadows said, ‘you’re playing pass the parcel, and you hear the parcel ticking and realise it’s a bomb. You don’t want to be blown up yourself, but you don’t want any of your mates blown up either, so you start to think about ways you can defuse it.’

  ‘Eloquently put,’ Robinson said. He stopped pacing and locked eyes with Meadows. ‘Could I give you a hypothetical example of the sort of problem I might possibly be facing?’

  ‘If it helps to do it that way, I don’t see why not,’ Meadows agreed.

  ‘Hypothetically, I might be called in, at the last minute, to take over a case from another solicitor, and I might discover that that solicitor had served his client very badly indeed. Note my wording carefully, Sergeant Meadows – I did not say he had served him incompetently – which is regrettable, but not morally reprehensible – the words I actually chose were that he had served him badly.’

  ‘So noted,’ Meadows agreed.

  ‘But the simple truth is that by the rules and standards that bind me as a solicitor, I am not entitled to make any such judgement, unilaterally, on one of my peers.’

  ‘In other words, you’re not allowed to say he’s a useless dickhead – even if he is?’

  ‘Exactly. Were such a hypothetical situation to arise, I would have to report the facts to the Law Society, which would then conduct an investigation, and that investigation would, in turn, decide whether or not any action needed to be taken against that solicitor. The result of the investigation would be honest and fair, but it would also take some time. “The wheels of justice grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine” as the old quotation has it.’

  ‘I don’t see—’ Meadows began.

  ‘I haven’t finished, Sergeant Meadows,’ Robinson said. ‘Let us say, in this hypothetic example of ours, that the police were investigating a murder, but had arrested the wrong man. Are you still with me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There’d be a danger, don’t you think, that while they were so distracted with this false trail, the murderer might get away?’

  ‘That certainly is a possibility,’ M
eadows agreed.

  Robinson hesitated before speaking again.

  ‘If I were to do something which was right, but not necessarily legal, could I trust you not to reveal it to any third party?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve stopped speaking hypothetically, haven’t we?’

  ‘Yes, we have.’

  ‘It would depend,’ Meadows said.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On whether I thought it was right, too.’

  ‘You would. I’m sure you would.’

  ‘Then you can trust me.’

  Robinson reached into his pocket, pulled out a slip of paper, and handed it to Meadows.

  ‘Now that I’ve explained to my client his situation as it truly is, you will probably find him much more amenable than he has been previously,’ Robinson said, ‘and if you were to ask these questions during the interview, I think you might well be surprised by some of the answers you get in return.’

  ‘It’s a nasty virus Philip and Thomas have had, so you were quite right to call me,’ the doctor said, when he finally came downstairs, ‘but fortunately it’s a virus which doesn’t linger long once it’s begun its retreat.’

  ‘So … so are they going to be all right, Dr McCloud?’ Paniatowski asked, tremulously.

  ‘They’re going to be fine.’ The doctor walked over to the front door. ‘They’re big strapping lads, and they’re over the worst of it now. They’ll probably sleep for most of the day, and then they’ll be almost back to normal.’

  Paniatowski rushed up the stairs, but forced herself to slow down once she reached the landing, and entered the sick room on tiptoes.

  The twins were sound asleep, and their breathing was almost back to normal. She wanted to pick them up and hug them to her, but she knew it was rest – not desperate, gushing love – that they needed.

  ‘I will watch them now,’ said a voice from the doorway.

  ‘No, it’s all right, I want to do it,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘You are a – how do you say it? – a nervy wreck,’ Elena told her. ‘It is not good for you – and it is not good for the babies – for you to stay. Go and get a little rest, Mrs Monika.’

  ‘All right,’ Paniatowski agreed, meekly.

  She had rushed up the stairs, but now her body felt very heavy, and she descended them like an old woman.

  Once she was back in the lounge, she sank gratefully into her armchair, and closed her eyes.

  ‘I’ll have a sleep,’ she said softly. ‘Just a short one.’

  But suddenly she was wide awake – suddenly she was thinking about how things could have gone.

  She pictured herself, dressed from head to foot in black on a frozen March morning, walking between two rows of yew trees in the wake of two tiny coffins. She could hear the priest, standing by the open grave and promising everlasting life for her babies, and though she believed in that herself, it gave her no comfort.

  Paniatowski jumped up, and paced the room. This was no good. She had to find something to absorb her.

  But she didn’t want to go back to work.

  Not yet.

  Not until she was feeling a little stronger.

  ‘It’s about time that I gave Charlie a ring,’ she told herself.

  She’d started these once-weekly phone calls when Woodend had announced that he had cancer, and the habit had continued even after the doctors had given him the definitive all-clear.

  It was no chore to ring Charlie, she thought, as she dialled the number, because she was really very fond of him.

  No – it was more than fond. They had been through so much together during the years he had been her boss that they had developed a bond which was intangible as a summer breeze, but as strong as steel.

  She was glad he had eventually retired, since it had allowed her to take on the job he had trained her for, and yet there were moments when she wished he was still the DCI and she his sergeant.

  The phone stopped ringing and she heard the voice she knew so well say, ‘Woodend.’

  ‘How are you, Charlie?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m getting stronger every day, lass,’ Woodend said. ‘I managed to walk nearly all the way to the beach yesterday.’

  ‘That’s brilliant!’

  ‘Me hair’s started growing back, too, which is a bit of a nuisance, really, because I don’t know what I’ve done with me comb.’

  Paniatowski giggled. God, it felt so good to be talking to Charlie.

  ‘You could always buy another comb,’ she suggested.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ Woodend said dubiously. ‘It’s a big investment, is a new comb.’

  ‘What’s the weather like there, Charlie?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, it’s not like what it is back in Lancashire, and that’s for damn sure,’ he said. ‘I’m sitting on me terrace at the moment – and I’m wearing me shorts.’

  She pictured him sitting there, – a big man who had worn a hairy sports coat and cavalry twill trousers for most of his adult life – gazing out to sea and living the Mediterranean dream.

  They chatted about Louisa and the twins, about Joan, Charlie’s wife, and Annie, his daughter, who was a nurse in London.

  Then Paniatowski said, ‘I didn’t know that you were a mate of Arthur Tyndale’s.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that me and the Lone Ranger were exactly mates,’ Woodend replied, ‘but I enjoyed talking about Dickens to someone who knew almost as much on the subject as I did. Mind you, having said that, he was dead wrong on the subject of Martin Chuzzlewit!’

  ‘He says that you’re the one who’s got it wrong.’

  ‘Aye, well he would, wouldn’t he? So how did you happen to be talking to him, anyway?’

  ‘He’s involved in my latest investigation. Before she was killed, he was representing the victim, but when we made an arrest, it turned out he was also the prime suspect’s solicitor. He says his duty is to serve the client he had first, which is the prime suspect.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Woodend replied. ‘Well, watch him, because, as you’ve just demonstrated with that particular bit of sophistry, he can be a very tricky bugger when he wants to be.’

  ‘I’ll watch him,’ Paniatowski promised.

  ‘Having said that, I’m not sure he ever really earned that reputation of his – at least, not properly,’ Woodend said reflectively. ‘I mean, he had a few spectacular successes – I’ll give him that – but were they ever more than a flash in the pan? And there are bobbies in Whitebridge who’ve had much more to do with him than we ever did – like Bill Stokes, who used to head up the Serious Crime Squad – and they certainly don’t call him the Lone Ranger. In fact, what Bill used to call him was the Jinx.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, because things often seemed to go wrong for his clients. Just when Bill was considering releasing one of Tyndale’s clients because of lack of evidence, the very evidence he needed would miraculously appear. DCI Stokes told me that on a few occasions, he even got an idea about how to refocus the investigation from something he read in the newspapers.’

  ‘That can happen to all of us,’ Paniatowski said. ‘At least, it’s certainly happened to me. You just never know what’s going to give you a new perspective on a case.’

  ‘You’re missing the point entirely, lass,’ Woodend said. ‘Yes, it does happen with everybody – but it happened much more often with Tyndale’s clients than with any other solicitor’s – that’s why Bill Stokes called Tyndale the Jinx.’

  ‘Still, you’ve got to give him credit for self-promotion,’ Paniatowski said, thinking of the newspaper articles hanging on his office wall.

  ‘Aye, bullshit overshadows logic every time,’ Woodend said. ‘So tell me about this latest case of yours.’

  It always came back to the cases, Paniatowski thought, with a rueful smile. They could talk about anything and everything else under the sun, and have a really enjoyable time doing it, but ultimately – inexorably – they’d somehow find their way back
to crime.

  ‘The victim is an American woman,’ Paniatowski said. ‘She was murdered in the Royal Vic.’

  Woodend chuckled. ‘Bloody hell, a murder on sacred ground – that’ll have set the cat among the pigeons,’ he said. ‘Still, I bet you’ve had no difficulty getting authorisation for overtime.’

  ‘None at all,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘So have you got any leads?’

  ‘Several. She might have been killed by someone who took offence at what she wrote about him.’

  ‘Was she a reporter?’

  ‘No, she was a biographer – and not a very academic one.’

  ‘Eee, you shouldn’t go using big words like “academic” with a simple Lancashire lad like me,’ Woodend said.

  Paniatowski grinned again.

  ‘Not to mention “biographer”,’ she said.

  ‘Aye, that’s another big word we’re best steering clear of,’ Charlie Woodend agreed.

  ‘Another possibility is that she might have been killed by a man who she kicked in the balls in the Rising Sun.’

  Woodend chuckled again. ‘That should stop his sun rising for a while,’ he said. ‘Was he trying to pick her up?’

  ‘No, she was trying to pick his wife up.’

  ‘That’s two motives for you, then – damage to his pride, and damage to his goolies.’

  ‘And then there’s the line that Crane’s following. You remember Crane, don’t you? You met him once in the Drum.’

  ‘Aye, I think so. Is he the lad who looks like a poet?’

  ‘He is a poet.’

  ‘Is he, by God! Well, it takes all sorts to make a world, I suppose, and he seemed a bright lad, so he’ll probably go far.’

  ‘Anyway, just before she died, our victim was doing research on a murder that happened in Whitebridge in 1924.’

  Woodend sighed. ‘When I were but a nipper,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, when you were but a nipper – with your bare arse hanging out of your short pants, and a slice of bread and dripping held firmly in your tiny right hand,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Aye, it were just like that,’ Woodend said nostalgically.

  ‘Now where was I?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘You were saying that your victim was researching this murder that happened in 1924.’