Golden Mile to Murder

by Sally Spencer

  Paniatowski sighed. It would all have been so much simpler if Granger could have narrowed it down to one or two suspects, she thought.

  ‘Let me ask you something else,’ she said. ‘Lumsden claimed that the entertainers left straight after the show. Was that true?’

  Granger’s eyes widened. ‘Mr Lumsden told you about the entertainers?’ he gasped.

  Paniatowski nodded. ‘But why don’t you tell me about them, too?’

  ‘It was a very tame show, really,’ Granger said. ‘I mean, you’d never have got away with puttin’ on anythin’ like it on the Golden Mile, but this was a private function.’

  It was all starting the make sense. The men out alone for the night. Lumsden reaching for his handkerchief when she’d asked him exactly what kind of entertainment it was.

  ‘How many girls were involved?’ Monika asked.

  ‘There were three of them,’ Granger said. ‘An’ the feller. They put on a bit of an exhibition, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘And when the “exhibition” was over, did any of the guests take one of the girls for a tour of the hotel – a tour including the bedrooms upstairs?’ Paniatowski asked speculatively.

  Granger looked shocked. ‘No!’ he said. ‘The management would never have allowed things to go that far.’

  So that was what Lumsden had got into such a sweat about, Paniatowski thought – something which, when all was said and done, amounted to nothing more than a giggling schoolboys’ outing.

  ‘He left at the same time as the girls,’ Granger volunteered.

  ‘Who did? The man who’d been doing mucky things on stage with them?’

  ‘No!’ Granger said dismissively. ‘The comedian.’

  ‘What comedian?’

  ‘The one who told jokes between the acts.’ A look of realisation suddenly came to Granger’s face. ‘You didn’t know about him, did you?’

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘But now that I do, you’d better give me all the details.’

  Granger was looking more and more worried. ‘Listen, if it got out he was appearin’ on the same stage as strippers, he wouldn’t be very pleased. Wouldn’t do his reputation any good, you see. I mean, he wasn’t here for the money. He told me that himself.’

  ‘So why was he here?’

  ‘More as a favour than anything else. See, now that he’s bought himself a bungalow in Lytham, he wants to start hobnobbin’ with the people round here who matter, an’ I expect he thought that puttin’ on a show for the Golden Milers was a way of gettin’ his foot in the door.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me who you’re talking about,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘I’m not in a guessing business. Why don’t you just tell me who he is?’

  ‘He’s Tommy “Now Where Was I?” Bolton,’ the waiter said.

  Barton Lane was located right in the centre of the oldest part of Whitebridge, and had been in existence long before the first mill had appeared to scar the landscape. It was the kind of lane which twists and turns when you least expect it to. The kind of lane in which the pedestrian was always coming across strange and exotic businesses which appeared to have no place in the modern world of Whitebridge – taxidermists and chandlers, specialist tea vendors and old-fashioned bespoke tailors who filled their windows with pin-striped material which seemed to do little else but gather dust.

  Lorries could not navigate their way up Barton Lane, and even the brewer’s dray which delivered the barrels of beer – and was pulled by two magnificent shire horses – sometimes ran into difficulties. But however difficult it was, the dray’s journey still had to be made, because halfway up the lane stood a pub which was officially known as the White Swan, but which all the locals called the Dirty Duck.

  Woodend was at one of the tables in the upstairs bar, the remains of a steak and kidney pie in front of him. The man who had been until recently his trusted right hand – and was showing considerably less enthusiasm for Northern cuisine than his old boss – sat opposite him.

  ‘How are things progressing in Blackpool, sir?’ Bob Rutter asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ Woodend admitted. ‘I haven’t really got a handle on this case, yet.’

  ‘And your new sergeant?’ Rutter asked – just a little too casually.

  ‘She’s got a lot of confidence,’ Woodend replied. ‘More than you had when you started workin’ with me.’

  The remark had not been intended to sting – but it did. ‘I had plenty of confidence!’ Rutter protested.

  ‘You had confidence that you could handle any job I gave you,’ Woodend told him. ‘Paniatowski’s confidence is of a different kind entirely. She’s out to make a name for herself – an’ not by bein’ part of my success, but through what she does on her own.’

  ‘Detection’s a matter of team work,’ Rutter said.

  ‘Aye, it is,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But it’s also a bit like football, in a way. If the team doesn’t work together, they’re lost. But there always comes a moment durin’ the game when the individual player has to decide to take control of the ball an’ run with it on his own. That’s what you call star quality.’

  ‘You sound as if you approve of her,’ Rutter said.

  An’ you sound as if you don’t, Woodend thought.

  ‘She’ll have to learn to bend a little to the way I work,’ the chief inspector said, ‘but I’m willin’ to bend a little in her direction, as well. Call it a bit of a crusade, if you want to – I’d like to see more women doin’ well in the police force. An’ after all, she’s reached the rank of detective sergeant, so she must have somethin’ about her.’

  ‘And I think I know what it is,’ Rutter said, still sounding slightly aggrieved. ‘At least, as far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘Do you now? An’ what might that be?’

  ‘She reminds you of yourself when you were a young bobby.’

  ‘Do you know, you might be right,’ Woodend said. ‘I’d never thought of it quite like that.’

  ‘The difference is that you were a young bobby in the forties, not the sixties,’ Rutter pointed out. ‘Policing’s moved on a long way in the last twenty years, and Sergeant Paniatowski should realise that.’

  What had caused this sudden outburst? Woodend wondered. Jealousy? Insecurity? In a way, he supposed both those things were understandable. Bob was like a young bird who had been kicked out of the nest before he was quite sure he could fly under his own power. Maybe later it would be necessary to chirp a few words of encouragement, but given Rutter’s present mood the best course of action was probably to change the subject.

  ‘Why don’t you ask me what Detective Superintendent Ainsworth had to say for himself this mornin’?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘What did Chief Superintendent Ainsworth have to say for himself this morning?’ Rutter repeated dutifully.

  ‘That he’d expected a result by now.’

  ‘But you’ve been on the case for less than two days,’ Rutter protested, falling back naturally into the familiar role of confidant and soother.

  ‘True,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But accordin’ to Mr Ainsworth, two days should have been plenty of time. He doesn’t have any of the details of the murder, mind – not a blind one – but he’s got enough experience to know that even a rookie detective constable could have got to the bottom of it all by now.’ He took a swig of his pint. ‘What about you, lad? How are you gettin’ on?’

  ‘I’ve been handed an investigation that’s already in its sixth week,’ Rutter said. ‘All the ground has already been covered several times, and the officers who’ve been working the case have come up with Sweet Fanny Adams. But that’s not really their problem any more, is it? I’m in charge now, and if anybody has to bear the stigma of failure, it’s going to be me.’

  Woodend nodded gravely. ‘They’ve got it in for both of us, haven’t they?’ he said.

  ‘Ainsworth certainly does, for one,’ Rutter admitted. ‘So wh
at can we do about it? It’s not going to be easy for Maria to pull her roots and move to Lancashire, you know. It’s hard enough for a person who can see, but when you’re blind . . . when you depend on knowing where things are, because you can’t actually see them . . .’

  And she wouldn’t have had to go through any of that if it hadn’t been for me, Woodend thought guiltily – because I’m the one who got Bob the promotion and the transfer.

  ‘Then there’s the fact that the baby’s on the way,’ Rutter continued. ‘She’ll have to learn to deal with that, too. And she’s more than willing to do it. But I don’t want to have to tell her she’ll have to go through all the trauma of moving again in another six months.’

  An’ I don’t want to have to tell Annie that I’ve made her leave all her friends behind for a new life that simply isn’t goin’ to happen, Woodend told himself.

  ‘As I see it, we’ve got two choices,’ he said. ‘The first is that we can throw in the towel – like you’ve just hinted. If that’s the course we take, then we either leave the force, or try to get another transfer to somewhere else. I don’t fancy workin’ for a private security firm, an’ even a feller like me – a feller who’s sabotaged his own career more times than he cares to remember – can see that it wouldn’t be a good plan, prospect-wise, to move forces again so soon.’

  ‘So what’s the second choice?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘There’ve been several occasions in the past when I’ve asked you to do somethin’ for me as part of an investigation, an’ – because you’re an idle young bugger by nature – you’ve suggested I give the job to the local police,’ Woodend said. ‘Do you remember any of those cases?’

  Rutter grinned. Did he remember? Of course he did! He recalled tramping the street of Leeds in search of a bootmaker who might give them the vital clue which would help them crack the Swann’s Lake case; visiting half the coffee bars of Liverpool – and drinking so much cappuccino in the process that he thought it would come out of his ears – in the hope that he’d find a lead on who killed young Eddie Barnes. Yes, he remembered – and so did his feet!

  ‘The reason I mentioned it now – apart from bein’ unable to resist a dig at you whenever the opportunity arises – is that every time you tried to skive off a job, I told you to stick with it because I didn’t trust the local flatfeet to do it properly,’ Woodend continued. ‘I’ve been sayin’ for years that one Scotland Yard man is worth five or six bumpkins from out in the sticks. Well, if we’re goin’ to survive in Whitebridge, we’re goin’ to have to prove that boast’s true. So there’s our second choice, lad. We’ll do our job so well that we’ll make ourselves bloody indispensable.’

  A waiter appeared at the end of the table. ‘Chief Inspector Woodend?’ he asked.

  ‘Aye, that’s me.’

  ‘There’s a telephone call for you, sir.’

  Woodend rose from his seat. ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  Left alone, Rutter picked up his fork and listlessly moved the remains of his pie around his dish. He’d been delighted when he’d got his promotion, but now he wasn’t sure it was such a good thing. They had to prove they were indispensable, Woodend had said. But were they? Or – more specifically – was he? Had he learned enough approaches and intuitive leaps from the master of bluff to make it on his own – or could he have benefited from a couple more years working as Woodend’s bagman?

  When the chief inspector returned to the table, he was looking as grim as Rutter had ever seen him.

  ‘Has something happened, sir?’ the newly promoted inspector asked.

  ‘Aye, you might say that,’ Woodend replied. ‘Another body’s turned up in Blackpool.’

  ‘Does it have anything to do with your case?’

  ‘It’d be a bloody miracle if didn’t. The body in question belongs to a fortune-teller who worked on the Golden Mile. I was questionin’ her about the murder only yesterday.’

  Twenty-Five

  The first dead body little Charlie Woodend had ever seen had been his grandmother’s. He’d been eight at the time, and his parents – having decided that he was old enough to look death squarely in the face – had ushered him into the cold front parlour where her coffin lay. The old lady had looked so peaceful that he’d found it hard to believe that she wasn’t just sleeping. Then his mother had told him he could touch his granny if he wanted to, and as his fingertips brushed softly against her cold, dry skin, he had accepted that she was lost to him for ever.

  The body which lay before him in the Blackpool morgue had none of his grandmother’s tranquillity. Gypsy Elizabeth Rose’s mouth was wide open, and her eyes bulged so much that they looked as if they were about to burst.

  Here was a woman who had known she was on the point of death, Woodend thought – and he wondered whether her killer had taken any pleasure from having so much power over another human being.

  ‘Fill me in on all the details you’ve got so far,’ he said to Chief Inspector Turner.

  ‘The body was discovered just before noon, on the sands close to the South Pier. It had been buried in a shallow grave, no deeper than two and a half feet at any point. The kids who found her uncovered her left hand first. Initially they thought it was one of those you can buy at joke shops, but then they dug further, discovered there was an arm attached to it, and realised how serious the whole situation really was.’

  ‘Why a shallow grave?’ Woodend murmured, almost to himself.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘If he was goin’ to bury her, why not make a proper job of it? Why not take her out into the woods somewhere, an’ put her under six feet of earth?’

  ‘Beats me,’ Turner said.

  ‘He must have known that leavin’ her there, she’d either be found by some kids – as she was – or uncovered by the tide. So we have to assume that he wanted her to be found.’

  ‘A fair point,’ Turner agreed.

  ‘But if he wanted her to be found, why go to the trouble of buryin’ her at all? Why not simply dump her in a quiet back street?’

  ‘He might have been worried he’d be seen doing that.’

  ‘Whereas he wasn’t at all worried that somebody might see him diggin’ a big hole in the sand, an’ then carryin’ a body to it?’ Woodend asked. ‘Buryin’ her must have taken at least half an hour. Throwin’ her from his car would have taken seconds. So I say again, why go to the trouble of buryin’ her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Turner said.

  And he didn’t seem very interested in finding out, either! Woodend thought. Turner was going through the motions as if he were one serious police officer presenting the facts of a murder case to another serious police officer, yet he somehow managed to give the impression that he was merely acting – that beneath his grave exterior there lurked a strong emotion he was doing his best to restrain.

  ‘You’ve established that the cause of death was definitely strangulation, have you?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Oh yes. And the pathologist thinks that whoever killed her must have been quite strong – which would seem to rule out a woman as the perpetrator.’

  Woodend lit a Capstan Full Strength in the vain hope that it might deaden the smell of formaldehyde which permeated the whole building.

  ‘I remember this woman who lived on our street when I was kid,’ he said. ‘Tiny little thing, she was – looked as if the slightest puff of wind would blow her away. But every Friday night, she’d be down at the pub door at eleven o’clock sharp, and when her sixteen-stone husband staggered out, she’d half-carry the drunken bugger home.’

  ‘Meaning some women are stronger than they look?’ Turner asked.

  ‘Meanin’ just that.’

  ‘You’re probably right.’

  Woodend studied Turner again. The local bobby seemed quite open to accepting the idea that the killer might be a woman. In fact he seemed open to accepting any idea that his colleague from headquarters might care put forward about Gypsy Elizabeth Rose’s murder.<
br />
  ‘How about suicide?’ Woodend suggested. ‘Do you think there’s any chance she killed herself?’

  For a second, Turner was uncertain how to react, then he forced a reluctant grin to his face. ‘You’re making a joke, aren’t you?’

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I’m makin’ a joke.’

  But he was almost sure that if he’d put forward a theory that was even slightly less ludicrous, Turner would have gone along with it.

  ‘Does the quack have any idea about the time of death?’ he asked.

  ‘Dr Philips is a little cagey about being too definite. If the body been left out on the beach, he could have made the standard calculation based on the drop in her body temperature, but the fact that she was buried under warm sand means the rate of cooling would have been slower. The only problem is, nobody’s sure yet how much slower.’

  ‘Well, that might answer one of my earlier questions,’ Woodend said thoughtfully.

  ‘What question would that be?’

  ‘The one about why she was—’

  Woodend bit back the rest of the comment, because he was not certain that he entirely trusted Chief Inspector Turner. Come to that, he was not certain he trusted anybody in the Blackpool police.

  ‘What were you about to say?’ Turner asked.

  ‘Doesn’t matter for the moment,’ Woodend told him. ‘Let’s get back to the matter in hand. Is the good doctor prepared to give any estimate at all as to the time of death?’

  ‘He’s willing to say it probably didn’t occur earlier than ten o’clock last night or later than seven o’clock this morning.’

  ‘That’s somethin’, anyway,’ Woodend said. ‘Now I suppose the next question is: “Does this murder belong to me, or is it bein’ given to somebody else?”’

  ‘Our chief super spoke to DCS Ainsworth about half an hour ago,’ Turner said. ‘They both think it’s unlikely that two killings – so close together in both time and geography – could be unconnected. There was some talk of putting a second DCI on the Elizabeth Rose case, but in the end Mr Ainsworth decided that – for the time being at least – the two crimes should be treated as parts of one investigation.’