Woodend made another desperate attempt to get up, and managed to raise himself on to his hands and knees this time. But he already knew that the pain would allow him to go no further – that whatever damage Coutes had done to him, it was more than a simple bruising.
Paniatowski had rolled away, so she was temporarily out of reach of Coutes. Now she was lying on her back, readying her legs – as the only weapons she had available to her – for when Coutes came at her again.
‘We’ve got the bastard, Monika!’ Woodend called out, in what he hoped sounded like the voice of a man who was only moments away from getting back to his feet.
Coutes turned to look him, and – despite the agony it cost him – Woodend forced himself into a kneeling position.
‘He’s mine, Monika!’ the Chief Inspector said, through gritted teeth. ‘You can help, if you like, but he’s mine!’
Coutes looked back at Monika Paniatowski, quickly checked on Woodend again, and then dropped the iron bar and ran back through the woods, towards the road.
A thousand hot needles were attacking Woodend’s chest, and his spine seemed ready to crack at any moment. Now that Coutes had gone, there was no point in staying in the kneeling position any more, and he lowered himself – as gently as he could – to the ground.
Paniatowski was back on her feet again, but from the curious way she was standing, it was obvious that Coutes had hurt her.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ she asked.
‘I’ll live,’ Woodend told her.
‘I’m going after Coutes,’ the sergeant said.
‘There’s no point,’ Woodend gasped. ‘We’ve … we’ve got all the evidence we need – let some other silly bugger make the arrest.’
‘I’m going after him,’ Paniatowski repeated, and before her boss could argue further, she had disappeared.
Woodend tried to get up again, even though he knew there was no chance of succeeding.
‘If anything happens to Monika,’ he told himself, as fresh waves of pain tore through his frame, ‘I’ll never forgive myself.’
If anything happens to Monika, said the goblin in his head, you’ll have three deaths on your conscience.
In the near distance, there was the noise of a powerful car engine roaring into life.
‘Let her be too late!’ Woodend prayed. ‘Let the bastard make his escape before she gets there!’
The engine revved, the car pulled away. The still night air was filled with the screech of tyres.
He’d made it, Woodend thought thankfully. He’d made it, and Monika was safe.
Unless, before he’d driven away, Coutes had paused to deal with Paniatowski. Unless, even now, her life was seeping away from her at the edge of the woods.
The sound of the crash was sudden, violent and totally unexpected. First, there was the loud thud, then there was the sound of buckling metal and shattering of glass, and finally, there was the explosion.
The conflagration which followed, lit up the woods as bright as day. Trees, until now no more than dark shapes, stood out starkly in all their leafless glory. Shadows, only brought to life by the flames, danced dementedly.
And Woodend, finally giving in to the pain, slipped into unconsciousness.
Thirty-Three
The bed was nice and firm. The pyjamas – though not his own – were comfortable enough. And the view of the hospital grounds from the window was both pleasant and restful.
So this was how the other half lived, Woodend thought – a private room, and a smiling nurse just the push of a button away. He could probably get used to it, if he really put his mind to it.
The door opened.
‘Visitor for you,’ the smiling nurse said, before stepping aside to let him see that the visitor in question was a man in an expensive herring-bone suit.
‘How are you, Mr Woodend?’ Forsyth asked.
‘I’m sick, Mr Forsyth,’ Woodend replied. ‘That’s why I’m here in this hospital.’
Forsyth laughed, as if he thought Woodend had just been incredibly witty. ‘May I come in?’ he asked.
‘Might as well,’ Woodend told him. ‘You look like a coatrack standin’ out there.’
Forsyth laughed again. He entered the room, turned the bedside chair around, and straddled it.
‘Yes, you certainly do look as though you’ve been in the wars,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Still, even though you have a couple of broken ribs, there’s no actual permanent damage.’
Ignoring the ‘no smoking’ sign, Woodend lit up a Capstan Full Strength. For a moment it was hard to decide whether the pleasure of inhaling was worth the pain that also accompanied the action – but it was an unequal battle, and his addiction won hands down.
‘Breakin’ ribs seems to have been Douglas Coutes’s speciality,’ he said. ‘But how do you know that’s all that’s wrong with me, Mr Forsyth? Hospital records are supposed to be confidential.’
‘And so they are. But nothing is secret from everyone – and I am one of those people from whom nothing is secret at all.’
‘How terribly, terribly, epigrammatic,’ Woodend said, in fair imitation of Noel Coward. ‘Listen, Mr Forsyth,’ he continued in his normal voice, ‘I know we need to polish up this double act of ours before we take it round the Northern working men’s club circuit, but I don’t feel like rehearsin’ right now. So why don’t you say what you’ve come to say – an’ then piss off.’
The man from the Ministry of Defence smiled, and this time he really did look amused.
‘Forthright and direct,’ he said. ‘That’s just what’s written in your record. Or perhaps, I should say, that’s the gist of what’s written in your record. Your Chief Constable has chosen to express himself in terms which are a little less … what shall we call them? … a little less complimentary.’
Woodend sighed, then coughed, then took another drag on his cigarette. ‘Get to the point, will you?’ he asked.
‘I’m here on a threefold mission. It’s my job to provide you with the official version of the truth, and to issue with a warning about will happen if you decide to deviate from it.’
‘I was never very good at arithmetic, but I make that twofold,’ Woodend said.
‘And thirdly, I am here to satisfy my own curiosity,’ Forsyth conceded. ‘But that comes later. The official version of events is as follows: The body discovered in the shallow grave was that of Robert Kineally, though, of course, the Senator will be given the true remains – the ones recovered from the woods – for burial. Robert was killed by a Southern racist by the name of Harold Wallace, who is now also deceased. The Right Honourable Douglas Coutes had nothing to do with any of this at all – his name did not feature even at the margins of the investigation. And lastly, it is with great regret that we announce the death of the said Douglas Coutes, which was the result of a freak driving accident – invaluable service to his country, promising career cut tragically short, etc, etc.’
‘Neat,’ Woodend said.
‘I thought so,’ Forsyth replied. ‘Do I need to make the threats now, or will you take them as read?’
‘I’ll take them as read,’ Woodend said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, justice has finally been done. But can you really seal it all up as easily as that?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Forsyth said confidently. ‘The Cousins are terribly apologetic about the whole sorry business. According to them, the operation was all the work of a tiny rogue element in the CIA.’
‘An’ was it really?’
‘Who knows? But whatever the case, a few low-level operatives in Langley will lose both their jobs and their reputations, and we’ll pretend we’ve put it all behind us.’
‘But you won’t have?’
‘Oh dear me, no. They’ve been caught with their trousers down, and everybody knows it. The American Airforce will take the bases we want them to have without complaint. And later on, some other concession will have to be made. It may not be of a strictly military nature – it could involve something
as interesting as computer technology, or something as mundane as soy bean imports – but whatever it is, it will be markedly advantageous to us. Then – and only then – will the accounts be balanced.’
‘You seem to be takin’ all this in very good part,’ Woodend said.
‘What choice do we have?’ Forsyth asked. ‘The Americans are the senior partners in our alliance, whichever way you look at it, and if they treat us as a second-rate power, that’s because we are one. But even so,’ he continued, suddenly gloomy, ‘I do sometimes wish that their intelligence services would stop trying to manipulate us as if we were some tinpot South American dictatorship.’
‘I’ll bet you do,’ Woodend said.
‘Well, that’s the official business over and done with,’ Forsyth said, perking up. ‘Now let’s get on to the part that really fascinated me. How did you know Coutes actually had killed Kineally?’
‘That’s easy,’ Woodend told him. ‘Throughout nearly all of the investigation, he was very calm – far too calm for a man with the weight of evidence stacked up against him. An’ why?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Because he’d seen through the whole charade – he knew what levers were bein’ pulled, an’ why they needed pullin’. In other words, he was well aware that he was the victim of a CIA scam, an’ so he knew that sooner or later he’d be offered a deal to get him off the hook. Now he might not have liked the situation he found himself in, but when you play dirty tricks yourself …’ Woodend paused for a moment. ‘I’m assumin’ he did play dirty tricks, didn’t he?’
Forsyth smiled. ‘As one of his loyal civil servants, I feel obliged to say that my Master was above that kind of thing.’
‘An’ if you weren’t one of his loyal civil servants?’
‘Then I’d probably say he was one of the dirtiest players it has ever been my misfortune to come across.’
‘I thought as much,’ Woodend replied. ‘Anyway, as I was sayin’, when you play dirty tricks yourself, you probably learn to roll with the punches when other people play dirty tricks back on you. So while he didn’t exactly enjoy what was goin’ on, he probably saw it as no more than a necessary inconvenience – like missin’ a turn when you land on the wrong square in a board game.’
‘Very well put,’ Forsyth said. ‘Very well put indeed.’
‘Besides, he might even have seen a way to turn it all around to his own advantage.’
‘How?’
‘He had ambitions to be Prime Minister himself, didn’t he?’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘An’ if he’d helped the CIA now, he might have had the leverage to persuade them to help him later.’
‘You think so?’
‘I do. An’ why wouldn’t they have wanted to help him? He was their kind of man – one they’d know they could do business with. He might even have been able to get them to play a few dirty tricks on his rivals for the post.’
‘Dear God, you could be right!’ Forsyth said with feeling. ‘But let me see if I’ve got what you’ve said so far absolutely straight. You’re claiming he knew it was a CIA scam?’
‘Yes.’
‘How?’
‘Because he knew it wasn’t Kineally’s body in the shallow grave. But he couldn’t admit that, could he? He couldn’t tell anybody that the reason he knew it was a fake was that he had first-hand knowledge of where the real body was actually buried.’
‘I can see all that, but it’s your own reasoning I’m finding difficult to follow.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, until you did find the real body, just a few hours ago, your theory was just that, wasn’t it – highly theoretical?’
‘Not really,’ Woodend said. ‘There were a couple of occasions when Coutes did panic, an’ they were more than enough to tip me off.’
‘Fascinating!’ Forsyth said. ‘Do tell me all about them.’
‘The first time he panicked was at the very beginnin’ of the case. In fact, it happened before my part of the investigation had even started. It was when he rang me up in Whitebridge, to tell me the body had been found. He sounded really scared. Now why was that?’
‘I couldn’t even begin to guess.’
‘All he’d been told at that point was that Robert’s body had been found. Not where it had been found, you must understand – just that it had. So he naturally assumed it had been found in the woods, because that’s where he’d buried it.’
‘But when he got more details, especially those concerning the shallow grave, he realized he had no reason at all to worry?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And when was the second time he panicked?’
‘After I’d talked to Abe Birnbaum, the night before last, I went to see Coutes in his trailer. I accused him of abandonin’ the jeep at the station, to make it look as if Robert Kineally had run away. He panicked then because he thought that if I knew about the jeep, I must also have known that previous to abandonin’ it, he’d driven to the woods, unloaded Robert’s body, and buried it. He might have confessed, then an’ there, if I’d said no more. But I did say more, an’ that spoiled it all.’
‘How?’
‘I said somethin’ which indicated that I still thought that the body taken from the shallow grave was Robert’s. That told him that I was as far away from the real truth as I’d ever been.’
‘And what a relief that must have been to him,’ Forsyth said.
‘Of course, the cause of both of Coutes’s panic attacks were a complete mystery to me at the time,’ Woodend continued. ‘That’s because I didn’t know that the body in the shallow grave was a fake. But once I did know that, I could see there was only one possible explanation for Coutes’s sporadic nervousness.’
‘He had to really have killed Kineally,’ Forsyth said.
‘He had to really have killed Kineally,’ Woodend agreed.
Forsyth stood up. ‘Thank you, Chief Inspector Woodend, that was most illuminating,’ he said. He walked over to the door, then stopped and turned around. ‘There is one more matter I’d like to discuss, before I go.’
‘An’ what might that be?’
‘I’d just like to run through the events which occurred in the last few minutes of the Minister’s life, if you don’t mind.’
‘Which events are they? The event when he offered to bribe me to forget all about it? Or the event when he tried to throttle the life out of me?’
‘The events I’m most concerned with occurred after both those unpleasant incidents.’
‘Then I’m afraid I can’t be very helpful to you. At the time, if you recall, I was on the verge of unconsciousness.’
‘Quite,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘But before you blacked out, you were able to see the struggle that went on between the Minister and your Sergeant Paniatowski, weren’t you?’
‘Part of it,’ Woodend said, suddenly cautious.
‘You see, what surprises me about that particular incident is that she allowed him to get away.’
‘She didn’t allow him to get away at all,’ Woodend said angrily. ‘While they were fightin’, she tripped an’ fell.’
‘Ah yes, but you see, that was all later,’ Forsyth said.
‘Later?’
‘After she’d pulled him off you.’
‘I don’t know quite what you’re getting’ at.’
‘Sergeant Paniatowski is an expert in some form of unarmed combat, isn’t she?’
‘Yes?’
‘So what I don’t see is why she didn’t completely immobilize Douglas Coutes while he was still trying to kill you. She surely had the necessary skills to do that, hadn’t she? And since he was concentrating all his attention on choking you, he must have been a sitting duck.’
‘It was dark,’ Woodend said.
‘True,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘But I believe there was some kind of paraffin lamp burning. If that was adequate to dig up a body by, it would certainly have provided ample illumination for any manoeuvre Sergeant Paniat
owski would be likely to contemplate.’
‘This wasn’t some competition held in the police gym. She was tryin’ to save my life.’
‘And I would have thought the best way to ensure that would have been to use her skills to maximum effect.’
‘You weren’t there,’ Woodend said, with growing unease. ‘You don’t know what it was like.’
‘And then, of course, there’s the small matter of the Minister’s car,’ Forsyth said.
‘What about it?’
‘Strange that it should crash like that, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t. Coutes was in a big hurry to get away, an’ he made a miscalculation.’
‘Perhaps he did,’ Forsyth agreed, though he sounded far from convinced. ‘Did I mention that I’ve had the boffins examine the scene of the crash. Not the local turnip tops, you understand, but the chaps who really know what they’re doing.’
‘No, you didn’t mention it. An’ who are these chaps who really know what they’re doin’? MI5?’
‘Something like that,’ Forsyth said dismissively. ‘At any rate, it looked on the face of it to be an almost impossible task I’d set them, given the vehicle had been completely incinerated. But then they had a marvellous stroke of luck. It appears that one of the back wheels was seared off at the point of impact, and managed to roll clear. And the interesting thing about that wheel was that the tyre had been slashed. Did you slash it, Chief Inspector?’
‘No.’
‘They also found a rather sharp knife – a flick-knife, I think they call it – which they believe was responsible for the damage. I wonder where that could have come from?’
From Monika’s handbag, Woodend thought. It was more than likely that it was the knife Chief Inspector Baxter had given her.
‘So this is the way I see it,’ Forsyth continued. ‘Firstly, Sergeant Paniatowski slashes the back tyre of the Minister’s car, and then she deliberately allows him to escape from the woods, knowing he’ll get into the car and drive away as quickly as he can. Now why should she have done that?’
I wish I could help you, Charlie, Monika had said in the van. I wish there was something I could do to take away a little of the pain.
A Long Time Dead Page 25
