Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Once the cat was safely inside, he went straight back to bed.’

  ‘Which is a pity,’ Paniatowski mused, ‘because if he’d stayed up a few minutes more, he might have seen another man leaving the house and heading up Tufton Court.’

  ‘I think it’s unlikely he did leave that way,’ Beresford said. ‘Why run the risk of exposing yourself on the Court, when you could slip quietly away down the service road?’

  ‘That’s true,’ Paniatowski agreed. She forced herself to smile. ‘That’s the trouble with murderers, isn’t it? They go out of their way to make things difficult for us.’

  ‘You’d almost think they didn’t want us to catch them,’ Meadows said – and her smile was forced, too.

  ‘Did we learn anything interesting from the roadblocks?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Yes, we learned that there are still some people around who think they can drive a car when they’re too pissed to walk,’ Beresford said. ‘But nobody who was stopped and questioned came even close to fitting the profile of a possible killer. So we’re left with only two possibilities – either the murderer had already managed to leave the area, or that he’s still in Whitebridge.’

  ‘At least we know now what his motive was,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Do we?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I think so. If it had only been revenge he wanted, he’d never have ransacked the house, and the same is true of a political assassination. So he has to have been after the gold.’

  ‘If it was political, he might have been searching for papers connected with the Civil War,’ said Crane, who was reluctant to abandon his own theory.

  ‘What sort of papers?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ Crane admitted.

  ‘You’re forgetting Javier Martinez’s background,’ Meadows said. ‘He wasn’t an educated man – he was a practical one. He lived in a small village, and if it hadn’t been for the Civil War, he’d probably never have left it. He certainly wasn’t the kind to go in for “secret” papers. And even if he had had some, he wouldn’t have been carrying them on his person when he was taken from the barn to the priest’s house.’

  ‘Good point,’ Crane said.

  ‘So for your theory to work, we’d have to accept the idea that a man who had just killed three enemy soldiers – and was desperate to escape with his son – would risk going back to his own home to pick up documents,’ Meadows concluded.

  ‘You’re right, Sergeant,’ Crane admitted, ‘my entire theory’s a non-starter.’

  ‘There might have been papers in his home in Whitebridge if he’d been in contact with anti-government forces in Spain since he came to England,’ Paniatowski said. ‘But we don’t know whether he had or not. In fact, what’s becoming glaringly obvious is that we know very little about him.’

  It was true, the rest of the team realized. Thanks to the work Woodend and Ruiz had done in Spain, they knew quite a lot about the first victim, but the second victim was virtually a blank page.

  ‘Let’s establish, here and now, what we do actually know about him,’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘We know he was a political refugee, and that he’s been living in Whitebridge since around 1937,’ Beresford said. ‘We know that over the last thirty years he’s built up Sunshine Travel into the biggest coach tour operator in Lancashire. We know that he has a son, and that son is our member of parliament.’

  ‘Is there anything that anyone else would care to add to that?’ Paniatowski asked, and when nobody had, she added, ‘That’s not a great deal, is it?’

  ‘I don’t see we need to know a lot more about his time in Lancashire,’ Beresford said. ‘After all, the roots of both his murder and his wife’s were planted in Spain, thirty-six years ago.’

  ‘But were they?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I’m sorry, boss?’ Beresford said.

  ‘Last night, when I arrived at the Martinez house, I automatically assumed that both Javier and Elena had been killed by the same man,’ Paniatowski said, ‘but the more I turn it over in my mind, the less it seems to me that had to be the only possibility.’

  It was something that Robert Martinez said which had set her off on this new line of thinking, she recognized.

  He’d never have tortured his own father, he’d told her, as they sat uncomfortably close together in the back of the patrol car – but he could think of a few people in Whitebridge who might have done.

  ‘Let’s consider the way the two victims were murdered,’ she suggested to the team. ‘Elena was killed with a hammer or some other blunt instrument. Was that a weapon of opportunity, or a weapon of choice?’

  ‘Could have been either,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Paniatowski agreed, ‘So we don’t know if Elena’s murder was a well-planned, cold-blooded one, or if it was carried out in the heat of the moment. But whichever it was, she wasn’t tortured, and her body was dumped where, if things had gone according to plan, it wouldn’t have been found for a long time. Javier, on the other hand, was tortured, his murder definitely was cold-blooded, and his body was left where his son was bound to find it.’

  ‘That’s all easily explained away, without even making a dent in our working theory,’ Meadows said. ‘Elena’s body had to be hidden, otherwise Javier would have been tipped off that the killer was in the area – but there was no need to hide Javier’s body, so the killer didn’t.’

  ‘And doesn’t the fact that Javier was garrotted prove the murderer was a Spaniard?’ Crane asked.

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski said. ‘It proves no more than that he knew what a garrotte was.’

  She lit up a cigarette. She’d allowed the team to become too fixated on one theory – a big mistake – and now it was going to be difficult to shift them from that even a little, she thought.

  ‘How about this as an alternative theory?’ she continued. ‘There’s someone here in Whitebridge who wants Javier Martinez dead. He has, in fact, been meaning to kill him for some time, but when he learns that Javier’s wife, Elena, has been killed, and is in the mortuary …’

  ‘How does he find out about that?’ Meadows asked.

  Paniatowski shrugged. ‘Any number of ways – somebody who works in the mortuary tells him, or tells someone else who tells him; either Javier or Robert rings up a friend, and the news spreads like wildfire through their circle; or perhaps he only heard that Javier had been taken to the mortuary in a police car, and put two and two together.’

  The other three merely nodded. They knew from their own experience how quickly news got round Whitebridge.

  ‘So he finds out about Elena, and decides he’ll never have an opportunity like this one again. He has the chance, you see, not only to kill his enemy, but to muddy the waters. He knows that in the light of Elena’s murder, and his use of the garrotte, we’re bound to see a Spanish connection, and if we pursue that, our investigation is never likely to get anywhere near him.’

  ‘So are you saying that the two deaths are probably unconnected?’ Beresford asked, clearly unconvinced.

  ‘No, I’m not saying that at all,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘What I am saying is that, with the chief constable breathing down my neck and just waiting for me to make a mistake, we can’t afford to overlook even the slightest possibility that they’re unconnected.’

  ‘What does that mean in practical terms?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘It means we’re going to have to split the team into two. Colin, I want you and your lads to find out everything they can about Elena’s time in England – how she got here, whether anybody noticed her once she’d arrived. I also want to know if anyone’s seen any strangers – particularly foreign-looking strangers – acting in a suspicious manner.’

  ‘That’s a bit like looking for a very small needle in a very large haystack, isn’t it?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘We’ve come up against longer odds in the past,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘What about me and young Jack, boss?’ Meado
ws asked.

  ‘I want you to look into Javier Martinez’s background,’ Paniatowski told her. ‘Start from the moment he arrived in Whitebridge. He’s made enemies in the last thirty-six years, and I want to hear about them.’

  ‘So we’ll be looking for business associates who feel they’ve been cheated, and husbands who think Javier has been having it off with their wives on the quiet?’ Meadows asked.

  ‘Essentially,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  None of them liked the alternative theory, Paniatowski thought – and they were probably right. But she was right in her own way, too, because George Baxter was breathing down her neck, and they couldn’t afford to exclude any possibility.

  ‘Will you be asking Mr Woodend to continue his investigation in Spain?’ Crane asked.

  Now that was an interesting question, Paniatowski thought.

  On the one hand, she was still worried that Charlie might run foul of the authorities, but on the other, he was clearly the only channel she had for getting any information out of Spain.

  ‘Give me the chance to have a stab at one last big investigation, lass,’ said a deep voice in her head. ‘You know I’m bursting to do it.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be ringing him,’ she said. She looked at her watch. ‘Right, that’s it, let’s get moving.’

  Meadows and Crane stood up immediately, but Beresford remained firmly in his seat.

  ‘Is there something wrong, Colin?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I’d like a word, if you don’t mind, boss,’ Beresford said.

  ‘All right,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  Beresford waited until Meadows and Crane had reached the door, then he said, ‘We’ve been here for over half an hour, and you’ve never once raised the possibility that Robert Martinez might have murdered his father – and that’s despite the fact that most murders are domestic, and he has no real alibi.’

  ‘Nobody else raised the possibility, either,’ Paniatowski pointed out.

  ‘Nobody else is leading the team,’ Beresford countered.

  ‘So do you think he might have done it?’

  ‘God, no! He’s got absolutely no motive – and anyway, I’m still convinced we’re looking for just one murderer.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’

  ‘You should still have raised the possibility. Even if we’d dismissed it immediately, it should have been put on the table.’

  ‘Now tell me what your real point is.’

  ‘I just want you to be careful, Monika.’

  ‘What’s that – some kind of code?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘The way you acted last night – and the way you reacted just now – makes me think you’re getting far too close to Robert Martinez,’ Beresford said. ‘And that happened on a case once before, if you remember.’

  Oh yes, she remembered well enough.

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ she said.

  But Beresford looked far from convinced.

  ‘You build up a wall between yourself and all the men who are interested in you,’ he said. ‘Now I don’t blame you for that …’

  ‘That’s more than generous of you,’ Paniatowski said, sarcastically.

  ‘… because any woman who’d been through what you went through as a kid would probably do the same,’ Beresford said, ignoring the comment.

  Paniatowski shuddered, and for one brief moment she was back in the shabby council house of her childhood, with Arthur Jones, her stepfather, forcing his attentions on her.

  ‘You see the world as divided into two kinds of men,’ Beresford continued, ‘the ones that are as vile as Arthur Jones, and the ones who have qualities that remind you of your father.’

  ‘And which kind are you?’ Paniatowski asked aggressively.

  ‘Please, Monika, don’t!’ Beresford begged. ‘I’m only saying all this because I care about you.’

  She felt both touched and ashamed.

  ‘I know you do,’ she said.

  ‘And the problem is that when you come across a man who isn’t Arthur Jones, the wall comes tumbling down, and you’re completely defenceless,’ Beresford told her. ‘And that’s what I think is happening with Robert Martinez – I think he’s breaching the walls.’

  ‘I’ve said I’ll be careful – and I will,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You’ll have to trust me on that.’

  But she was not entirely sure that she could trust herself.

  By eleven o’clock that morning, Robert Martinez had already been to the homes of half a dozen expatriate Spaniards living in Whitebridge. Each visit had been much longer than he had initially hoped it would be, but he had begun to accept that as inevitable, because most of the people he’d visited were at least in late middle age – and therefore very traditional – and that meant there were always certain protocols which had to be observed.

  The seventh person on his list was an old woman called Rosa Bautista, who lived in one of the old weavers’ cottages.

  He knew all about Rosa’s history – including the part she had played in the Civil War – from previous chats they’d had.

  Rosa had been a nurse in the early stages of the war, working on the front line under heavy enemy bombardment. Then, as the death toll had risen, she had taken up a rifle, and had found herself in the unusual position of both taking lives and saving lives in the same day. She had become – in her own small way – a symbol of the struggle, and when Valencia was about to fall, her comrades had insisted that she should be on the last boat out.

  Looking at her now – a small, frail, wizened woman – it would have been hard to believe she had once been so heroic, had it not been for the aura of simple dignity that surrounded her.

  It was clear from the pained expression on Doña Rosa’s face that she had heard the news.

  ‘Come inside, Don Roberto,’ she said. ‘You must have a cup of good Spanish coffee.’

  ‘That would be much appreciated,’ Martinez replied, though that would make it his seventh cup of the morning, and he was dreading the thought of even more caffeine entering his bloodstream.

  She led him into her kitchen – which, with its herbs and spices, smelled of a Spain he had never known himself – and sat him down at the table.

  ‘It will not take a minute to prepare,’ she said, filling the coffee machine with water.

  ‘My father was the second Spanish person to be murdered in this town in only a few days,’ Martinez said. ‘The first one was a woman – a stranger.’

  Had he seen her stiffen slightly when he’d said that?

  Yes, he thought he had.

  ‘I had heard about this woman – it was in the newspapers – but I did not know she was Spanish,’ Doña Rosa said.

  But she did know – he was sure she did!.

  ‘And since she was Spanish, I feel a responsibility to do all I can to see that her murderer is brought to justice,’ Martinez continued, following a script he had been gradually refining during the course of the morning.

  Doña Rosa turned slowly to face him, but she would not look him directly in the eye.

  ‘Have you not perhaps got enough on your hands with the death of your father?’ she wondered.

  ‘And this morning, I found myself wondering if she might have made contact with any member of the Spanish community,’ Martinez ploughed on.

  ‘How would she have done that?’

  ‘It could have been a chance meeting. Such things happen.’

  ‘But they are rare,’ said Doña Rosa, with a distinct quiver in her cracked old voice.

  ‘And then I began to wonder if this person, who the dead woman might have met, would have told the police about it – and I decided that she probably wouldn’t have.’

  ‘The coffee is almost ready,’ Doña Rosa said.

  ‘Because, you see, I know that Spaniards of a certain age – and I hope you are not insulted that I call you that, Doña Rosa, because you are a marvel – Spaniards of a certain age, with memories of the old country, do not trust the police. In fact,
they do not trust any officials.’

  ‘That’s true,’ the old woman agreed.

  ‘I imagine that when you came here as a political refugee, there were any number of government officials who tried to make your life difficult for you,’ Martinez said.

  ‘They wanted to send me back,’ the old woman said, with a sudden anger in her voice. ‘I told them I would face the firing squad in Spain, but they didn’t believe me. They laughed, and said that that could never happen. The fools! What they meant was, it could never happen in England. They had no idea what things were like in Spain.’

  ‘But you must eventually have found some official who was prepared to believe you.’

  ‘I did – or I would not be here now.’

  ‘So there are good officials?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘And there are good police officers, too. I have met one. Her name is Chief Inspector Paniatowski.’

  ‘No doubt she is nice to you – you are an important man,’ Doña Rosa countered.

  ‘I truly believe she is nice to everyone – and that if you had something to say, she would be most interested in hearing it.’

  ‘But I do not have anything to say.’

  ‘There’s something I haven’t told you about the woman who was killed,’ Martinez said. ‘She was my mother.’

  ‘Oh, you poor boy,’ the old woman gasped.

  ‘We are talking about the honour of my family,’ Martinez said. ‘I must do what I can to avenge her.’

  ‘Of course you must,’ Doña Rosa said.

  ‘And that is why, if you know something, I am asking you – I am begging you – to inform the police.’

  ‘There was a time when I feared nothing,’ Doña Rose said wistfully, ‘a time when I would have laughed in the face of death. But as you grow older, Don Roberto, it is not just your body that shrinks, it is your courage, too. I worry when my cat is away for more than an hour. I worry when I feel a draught under the door. Small matters – truly petty matters – grow to become of huge importance. It is a curse, but we must learn to live with it.’

  ‘Do you know something, Doña Rosa?’ Martinez asked gently.

  The old woman nodded. ‘Yes, Don Roberto, I do.’