Two minutes!
One hundred and twenty seconds!
And in those two minutes, Grant had not spoken, looked directly at him, or even seemed to move a muscle.
It was like sitting opposite a cardboard cut-out, Woodend thought. But then that came as no real surprise. Special Agent Grant – earnest, enthusiastic, naïve Special Agent Grant – had always been a cardboard cut-out, a fresh-faced front used to conceal the dark machinations of the CIA officer who had assumed his persona.
Now, Grant – or whatever the bloody man’s real name was – finally seemed to be coming back to life, and the worried frown which had been frozen on to his face was slowly transforming itself into something resembling a confident grin.
‘You think you’ve found a way out, don’t you?’ Woodend asked, conversationally. ‘You think you’ve discovered a loophole that you might just be able to slip through and save your own skin?’
‘I’ve never been concerned for myself,’ Grant told him. ‘My only concern – and, I admit, it did concern me – was that this crazy theory of yours might be just credible enough for one or two of our more disreputable journalists to take an interest in it.’
‘You’re full of shit,’ Woodend said.
‘Of course, even if that had happened, it wouldn’t have taken us long to expose the story as no more than the ravings of a madman,’ Grant continued. ‘But we’d much rather not do that unless we absolutely have to – because even “crazy” mud sticks a little.’
‘An’ now you don’t think you will have to expose it?’
‘I’m sure I won’t. Because this story of yours has such a huge flaw through it that even the sleaziest of tabloids won’t touch it.’
‘An’ that flaw is …?’
‘That the cornerstone of your whole theory is that body in the shallow grave isn’t Robert Kineally’s. Take that away, and your argument collapses like a house of cards.’
‘True,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But why would I want to take it away?’
‘Because your argument’s unsustainable. And I can demonstrate that by asking you one simple question.’
‘Then, by all means, ask it.’
‘What actually happened to Kineally, if Wallace didn’t kill him back in ’forty-four? If it wasn’t his body lying in that shallow grave, then what has he been doing for the last twenty-one years?’
‘I don’t know – yet,’ Woodend admitted.
‘Of course you don’t! How could you? Let me tell you something, Chief Inspector – men like Robert Kineally don’t just disappear into thin air! He comes from a good family. An important family. I don’t know what happened to him back in 1944 – no one in my government does – but—’
Grant clamped his mouth tightly shut, as if he were still hoping against hope that there was a chance to bite back the words.
‘No one in your government knows what happened to him in 1944?’ Woodend repeated. ‘I thought you thought you did. I thought you thought you’d found his body in a shallow grave near the perimeter fence.’
‘You’re deliberately misinterpreting my words again,’ Grant said, making something of a recovery. ‘I meant we don’t know the exact details of what happened. We don’t know whether or not Huey Bascombe played a direct part in the murder, and we don’t know—’
‘Give it up, Ed,’ Woodend said. ‘The gaff’s blown. The game’s over.’
‘For God’s sake, if Kineally was still alive, don’t you think we’d have found him by now?’ Grant asked, exasperatedly.
‘I never claimed he was still alive,’ Woodend said quietly.
‘And even if you were right about the body not being his – and I’m not conceding for a second that you are – there’s absolutely no way on God’s green earth that you’ll ever be able to prove it.’
‘You might well have been right about that – if it hadn’t been for what Abe Birnbaum told me,’ Woodend countered.
‘Huh?’
‘Remember what I said earlier about betrayin’ your country rather than betray your friend? Well, that’s what Birnbaum’s done. Without even intendin’ to, he told me somethin’ that will blow this whole, sordid operation of yours wide open.’
‘What was the unpleasant word you used to me earlier?’ Grant asked. ‘Bollocks?’
‘Bollocks,’ Woodend agreed.
‘Then I have to say that you’re talking bollocks, Chuck. Birnbaum’s a mere dry-cleaner—’
‘The biggest in the tri-state area,’ Woodend interrupted.
‘Birnbaum is nothing, and Birnbaum knows nothing,’ Grant continued, ignoring him.
‘He knows about the fight Douglas Coutes and Robert Kineally had,’ Woodend pointed out.
‘Hell, everybody knows about that!’
‘But what everybody doesn’t know is that Coutes broke three of Kineally’s ribs.’
‘What?’
Woodend chuckled. ‘I thought that would take you by surprise. It’s not in the records, is it? It was never recorded because Kineally, for reasons of his own, didn’t want it recorded. Which is why you didn’t know about it. Which is also why the skeleton you used might have been perfect as far as the height an’ build goes, but is missin’ the magic ingredient – those broken ribs.’
‘I … I …’ Grant said, in a strangled voice.
‘You’re lost for words?’ Woodend suggested helpfully.
‘Birnbaum’s mistaken,’ Grant managed to gasp.
‘He isn’t, you know,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ the paramedics who treated Robert Kineally unofficially will confirm that he isn’t.’
There was a knock of the trailer door, and Monika Paniatowski appeared. ‘He’s on the move,’ she said to Woodend, with some urgency.
‘Good,’ Woodend replied. He turned to Grant. ‘You’ll have to excuse me now, “Special Agent”,’ he said, ‘because as interestin’ as our conversation is turnin’ out to be, I need to go an’ catch a real murderer.’
There was no difficulty at all in following the car down the narrow country lanes, because even when they lost sight of it – which they frequently did – they could always see its lights in the distance.
‘If we’d been in the Wolseley, he’d have known we were on to him long before now,’ Paniatowski said, changing gear to take a bend. ‘But who’d ever suspect an electric company van, out on a mission of mercy to some outlying farm which has lost its power? It was a brilliant idea of yours, sir.’
‘Aye, it wasn’t bad,’ Woodend replied, almost absently.
‘Out with it!’ Paniatowski ordered him.
‘Out with what?’
‘Whatever’s on your mind. Whatever’s dragging you down at a time when the adrenaline rush should have you climbing the walls of the van.’
‘I keep thinkin’ it’s all my fault,’ Woodend admitted.
‘You shouldn’t blame yourself.’
‘How can I not blame myself? If I’d chosen my words a bit more carefully, back in May 1944 – if I hadn’t told Mary she couldn’t keep what she’d done a secret from Robert – then two people who’ve been a long time dead might very well still be alive.’
‘You can’t possibly know that’s true,’ Paniatowski said. ‘At least,’ she amended, ‘not with any degree of certainty.’
‘Which is another way of sayin’ that I can’t possibly know it isn’t true with any degree of certainty, either,’ Woodend said miserably. ‘It only took me a few seconds to speak those words, Monika, but the weight of them will be pressin’ down on me until the day I die.’
Paniatowski took her right hand off the wheel, and placed it on Woodend’s arm. ‘I wish I could help you, Charlie,’ she said softly. ‘I wish there was something I could do to take away a little of the pain.’
‘I know you do, lass,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ I want you to know that I appreciate it.’
A small sign at the side of the lane advised them that there was a major road ahead.
‘What happens when we get to a crossroads
?’ Paniatowski asked, suddenly concerned. ‘If we turn the same way as he does, won’t he start to suspect that we’re following him?’
‘Not if we only have to do it the once,’ Woodend reassured her. ‘After all, why shouldn’t the electrician’s van be goin’ the same way as he is?’
‘And if we have to do it twice?’
‘That could be trickier,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But once we turn, we’ll be on the main road to Coxton Halt Railway Station now, so I don’t think that there will be any more turns after that.’
‘You don’t think there will be – or you hope there won’t?’ Paniatowski asked him.
‘A bit of both,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But I’m almost sure that I’m right. You see, I think this is the route that Robert Kineally’s jeep took on that night in May 1944.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the driver had two tasks he needed to complete – an’ I don’t think he’d have risked makin’ two separate trips to do them.’
‘In other words, what we’re looking for is somewhere between here and the railway station?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Exactly,’ Woodend agreed.
The car reached the crossroads, and turned towards the railway station. The van, a hundred yards or so behind it, did the same.
It was less than a mile to the point at which the road ran through the woods, and the moment the driver of the car had trees on either side of him, he indicated that he was about to pull in.
‘What do I do now?’ Paniatowski asked, whispering, even though there was no actual need to.
‘Keep drivin’,’ Woodend said, sinking lower down into his seat. ‘An’ keep your eyes firmly on the road ahead. I don’t want him thinkin’ we’ve been lookin’ at him – even for a second – or he’ll probably decide it’s safer to leave what he has to do until another night. An’ that will bugger up everythin’.’
Neither speeding up nor slowing down, Paniatowski drove past the now-parked car.
‘How much further along the road do you want me to go?’ she asked, when they were well clear of the other vehicle.
‘Just to be on the safe side, you’d better make it at least a mile,’ Woodend told her.
‘A mile!’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘That’s much too far.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Woodend assured her. ‘He’s got a lot to do in that wood, an’ even on foot, I’ll be back there well before he’s finished.’
‘You’ll be back there?’ Paniatowski repeated.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘I’m coming with you!’
‘No, you’re not, lass. This is by way of bein’ personal business. I have a very old score to settle.’
Thirty-Two
Even from some distance down the road, Woodend could hear the sound of a shovel slicing through the earth.
The Target was making no effort to be quiet, he thought. But then why should he, out here in the middle of nowhere?
He reached the parked car, and stood there for perhaps a minute, calculating exactly where the noise was coming from.
The moonlight was bright that night, and it suddenly struck Woodend that all the significant events in this case – the incident with the coloured soldiers, the fight between Coutes and Kineally, and Kineally’s murder itself – had all happened under a bright moon.
It was time to make a move. Feeling along the ground with his feet – searching for any irregularities or loose twigs – he entered the woods.
He had only gone a few steps when he saw the paraffin lamp glowing in the darkness, four or five yards ahead. A few more steps, and he could see all there was to see – the hole, the man inside it, and the blanket spread out on the ground to collect the earth.
This was a much deeper grave than the one at Haverton Camp, he thought, but then, unlike the one at the camp, this grave had never been meant to be discovered.
‘You should have dug him up years ago, when most people hardly even remembered his name,’ the Chief Inspector said.
The man in the hole froze.
‘Woodend?’ he asked.
‘Failin’ that, you should have left him where he was. I’d never have found him if you hadn’t led me to him. But I knew you couldn’t just leave him here, could you – because you’d already had one shock to your system, an’ you weren’t prepared to risk another.’
‘Listen, Sergeant—’ the man in the hole said.
‘As I seem to keep havin’ to remind you, Mr Coutes, I’m a Chief Inspector now,’ Woodend said.
‘And why stop there?’ Coutes wondered. ‘With my help, you could soon be a Superintendent. Maybe even a Chief Constable. The possibilities are endless, if you’ll just turn round and walk away now.’
‘Even if I trusted you, you couldn’t tempt me,’ Woodend said. ‘An, as it is, you’re the last person on earth I’d be likely to trust. So tell me, Mr Coutes, why did you kill Robert Kineally?’
Coutes laughed. ‘Why are you even asking that question, when you already know the answer? I killed him, as you so clearly explained to me last night, because I had to.’
‘Because you knew he wouldn’t rest until he’d done somethin’ to avenge Mary Parkinson’s death?’
‘Exactly. Very neatly put. The next time he’d come after me, he might have had a knife or a gun. And even if he’d decided not to kill me, he would certainly have tried to discredit me. So, all in all, it seemed to me that the simplest course was to eliminate him while I had the chance.’
‘While he was still weak from the beatin’ that you’d given him in the skittle alley?’
‘I’m not going to apologize for that. A good general always attacks when and where his enemy is weakest. He’d be foolish to do anything else.’ Coutes climbed out of the hole. ‘You should accept my offer to assist you in your career, you know,’ he continued, taking a step closer to Woodend. ‘If you don’t, I might just have to turn nasty.’
‘Meanin’ that you might have to do to me what you did to poor Robert Kineally?’
Coutes laughed again. ‘Of course not. Killing is the solution to his problems that a man resorts to in his youth. As he grows older, he finds other means to get his own way.’
‘Like what?’
‘I haven’t properly thought through my options yet. But I could say, for example, that it wasn’t you who discovered me digging up the body, it was me who discovered you.’
‘That wouldn’t work.’
‘Why not? You were at the camp at the same time I was, and though most people would be willing to accept a Chief Inspector’s word, they’d be even more likely to believe a Minister of the Crown.’
‘There’s two flaws in that plan,’ Woodend said. ‘The first is that I’d already left the camp when Robert Kineally disappeared.’
‘And the second?’
‘I’ve got a witness who’ll swear that I followed you here.’
‘That would be that sexy little sergeant of yours,’ Coutes said. ‘Monika, isn’t it?’
‘That would be Sergeant Paniatowski, yes,’ Woodend confirmed.
‘A good bluff,’ Coutes said. ‘But if she is a witness, as you claim, where is she?’
‘She’s around here somewhere.’
Coutes shook his head. ‘No, she isn’t, or she’d have made herself known long before now. My guess is that she’s still in the car, because you thought she’d be safer there. That’s always been a weakness of yours – wanting to protect other people.’
He took another step forward.
‘I’d like you to put that shovel down now, Mr Coutes,’ the Chief Inspector said.
‘And if I don’t?’
‘Then I’ll have to assume that you’re up to your old tricks, an’ act accordingly.’
Coutes threw the shovel to the ground with great aplomb.
‘You really are living in the past, aren’t you?’ he asked.
‘One of us is, anyway,’ Woodend replied.
‘You see,’ Coutes continued, taking one more s
tep towards him, ‘you still haven’t grasped the very simple fact that a man in my position – a Cabinet Minister – can find a hundred ways of getting out of his difficulties without resorting to violence.’
He must have had the short iron bar concealed up his jacket sleeve all along, but Woodend only became aware of it a second before it struck him forcibly in the chest.
The pain was indescribable. Woodend staggered backwards, clutching his ribs. Then he took a blow to the head, and he went down.
Coutes rolled him over, and straddled him.
Woodend felt the iron bar pressing down on his throat. He tried to raise his arms, but Coutes had them pinned down with his own knees. He tried to kick his legs, but there was no strength in them. He was starting to see black spots before his eyes, and realized that soon he would lose consciousness. And all the time the bar was pressing down, tighter and tighter.
‘You were right, I should never have dug him up,’ Coutes said in a voice that seemed to be coming from inside a tin can, somewhere far, far away. ‘I think I’m going to have to put him back in the hole, and this time, he’ll have company – you and your sexy little sergeant!’
So this was how his life would end, Woodend thought – in a small wood, next to a crime scene which was already more than twenty years old. He made one last effort to raise his arms – even though he knew that it was pointless.
He thought he heard footsteps, but knew he must be imagining them. Then he heard Coutes scream, and suddenly the bar was gone from his throat and the weight was off his chest.
He tried to climb to his feet, and only got as far as raising himself on one elbow before his body refused to move any more.
But at least he could see what was happening now – at least understand how he had come to cheat death at the last moment.
Two figures were squaring up to one another in a small clearing only a few feet away from him. The first was Douglas Coutes, the iron bar still held firmly in his hands. The second – her body set in the classic stance of a woman trained in unarmed combat – was Monika Paniatowski.
Coutes swung the bar. Paniatowski stepped back – and lost her footing. As she went down, Coutes swung at her again, and this time the bar connected with her shoulder.
A Long Time Dead Page 24
