Death Watch

by Sally Spencer

  The sergeant glanced over her shoulder. This clearing was almost completely hidden from the rest of the park, she noted, which was why – of course – it had been chosen.

  ‘What’s that?’ Beresford asked, pointing to something lying at the base of one of the rhododendrons.

  ‘A handkerchief?’ Paniatowski guessed.

  But when she bent down to pick it up, she discovered that it was much thicker than a hankie – that it was, in fact, a pad of surgical gauze.

  She lifted it to her nose, and sniffed at it gingerly. It reminded her of her rare and reluctant visits to hospital – and dealt the final death blow to the possibility that the mystery of Angela Jackson’s disappearance would have a happy ending.

  ‘Look what else I’ve found,’ said Beresford, who had been searching under a second bush.

  And when Paniatowski turned towards him, she saw that what he was holding in his hand was a fluffy toy which vaguely resembled a real cat.

  ‘Do you think this has anything to do with the abduction – or is it just something a kid dropped here?’ the detective constable asked.

  ‘It could be either,’ Paniatowski said.

  But the odds were heavily in favour of it being what the kidnapper had used to distract the girl, just before he drugged her.

  ‘Hang on,’ Beresford said. ‘I think there’s something else down there, as well.’

  He bent down again, and what he retrieved this time was a lady’s wristwatch.

  It was a fairly expensive timepiece, Paniatowski decided, which argued for it belonging to an adult rather than a child. On the other hand, it had a rather modern look about it, and it was hard to imagine it on the wrist of a matronly woman.

  She took a closer look. The leather strap, from which Beresford was suspending it, was broken, and the glass which covered the face had been smashed. The hands of the watch showed it had stopped at two minutes past three.

  ‘Do you think it’s the girl’s?’ Beresford wondered.

  ‘It has to be,’ Paniatowski replied.

  She stepped through the gap between the two rhododendrons – brushing away the overhanging branches with her hands – and found herself standing at the edge of the car park.

  The kidnapper had planned it well, she thought. Once he had lured the girl into the bushes, it would have been simplicity itself to dope her and then carry her to a waiting vehicle.

  She was still standing there when the old Wolseley arrived on the car park. The driver – a big man wearing a hairy sports coat – had his foot pressed down hard on the accelerator, and for a moment it looked as if he was intent on smashing his vehicle into the line of parked cars. Then he slammed on the brakes, the engine screamed in protest, and the Wolseley came to a shuddering halt.

  ‘The boss is here,’ Paniatowski called back through the bushes to Colin Beresford.

  There was no physical reason for Angela not to have opened her eyes, yet she still had not chosen to do so.

  There was something rather comforting about the darkness, she told herself.

  Or rather, if she was being honest, there was something frightening about what might lie beyond it.

  And so, instead of taking the big step of finding out where she was, she began with smaller ones – first moving her fingers and then twitching her toes. But even before she had started to make these simple movements, her body had already started telling her things.

  It had informed her, for example, that she was lying down.

  But not on a bed.

  On something very hard and very cold.

  She became more experimental, stretching her legs and feeling the surface below her with the tips of her fingers. There was nothing to stop her doing this – no restraints, no obstacles. Perhaps, she decided, now was the time to start looking around.

  The first thing she saw when she allowed her eyes to open was the light. It was a long neon tube, fixed to the ceiling, and it crackled occasionally. For a while, it mesmerized her, but then she grew bored with it, and decided to expand her vision of the world.

  She raised herself up on one elbow, and looked around her. She was in a room with no windows – a room in which the floor and walls were made up of dusty grey concrete. There was a metal door in the far wall, and the second she noticed it, her heart leapt and she was on her feet and rushing towards it.

  The surge of hope did not last long. There was no handle on the door, only a keyhole.

  And she did not have the key!

  She made her hands into fists and banged on the door. Then, when that seemed to have no effect, she kicked and kicked until her toes were bruised and aching. And all the time she was screaming at the top of her voice.

  ‘Let me out of here. Please let me out of here. I want to go home.’

  But nobody answered.

  Two

  The cafe in the corporation park had been designed to cater for thirty customers, with space for another sixty on the outside terrace, but the season when it would be comfortable to sit on the terrace had long since passed, and all the potential witnesses to the Angela Jackson abduction had therefore been asked to go inside.

  No one was happy with this arrangement. There were not enough chairs for all the adults to sit down on, and no room at all for the children to play. The kids were growing increasingly bored and restless, the grown-ups puzzled, concerned, and frustrated – and as the windows began to steam up, tempers were becoming frayed.

  The arrival of the big man in the hairy sports coat did not seem to offer an immediate solution to the problem, but at least it promised the possibility of a little variety, and when Woodend finally spoke, he had everyone’s full attention.

  ‘I must apologize for keepin’ you here for so long, an’ I can assure you that as soon as you’ve made your statements to the officers, you can leave,’ the chief inspector said.

  ‘What’s this all about?’ demanded a young woman whose headscarf did not quite conceal the row of plastic curlers around which her mousy brown hair had been wrapped.

  ‘There’s been an “incident”,’ Woodend said heavily.

  ‘Meaning what?’

  ‘Meanin’ just what I’ve said.’

  The woman put her hands aggressively on her hips, which was no mean feat, given the limited amount of space available to her in the crowded cafe.

  ‘My husband will be home in half an hour, and he’ll be expecting his tea on the table when he walks through the door,’ she said.

  ‘Then you’d better get yourself off now, then, hadn’t you?’ Woodend countered.

  The response had clearly not been what the woman had expected, and it knocked her a little off balance. ‘Can I go?’ she asked, somewhat subdued. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Of course,’ Woodend replied. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, I thought …’

  ‘Let me tell you somethin’, love,’ Woodend said in a voice which anyone who knew him would have read as a danger signal. ‘There’s a family in this town right now that’s experiencin’ a heartache that I hope an’ pray you never have to go through yourself.’

  ‘You never said anythin’ about—’ the woman began.

  ‘In fact, their whole world’s collapsin’ around them,’ Woodend interrupted her. He paused for a second. ‘But whatever else is happenin’ – however much anybody else is sufferin’ – you’ll have to make sure your husband gets his tea on time, won’t you?’

  Woodend was angry, Paniatowski thought, observing the exchange from the cafe doorway. And that was not like him at all.

  True, there were a number of detective chief inspectors in Central Lancs who used anger as a tool – a way of keeping both their subordinates and the general public permanently on their toes – but Charlie Woodend wasn’t one of them. He didn’t lose his temper often, and when he did it was usually because he considered that the object of his wrath had been stupid, inefficient, or insensitive.

  What she was seeing now was something quite different. This was a displa
y of rage she’d only observed once before – during the Helen Dunn kidnapping.

  The curlered woman who’d complained was looking distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t do my Harry any harm to wait for his tea just this once,’ she said grudgingly. ‘As long as it’s important.’

  ‘It’s important,’ Woodend confirmed. ‘That’s why I’d like to thank you in advance for your cooperation, madam.’

  There might possibly have been more questions put to him, but he did not wait to hear them. Instead, he turned, brushed past his sergeant, and walked out onto the terrace. Once there, he stopped, lit up a cigarette, and waited for Paniatowski to join him.

  ‘A few years ago, it could have been my Annie that had gone missin’,’ the chief inspector said.

  Paniatowski nodded. Annie Woodend, she remembered, was just completing a course in Manchester, and would soon be a fully qualified nurse.

  Woodend took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘I want everybody in that cafe questioned, but I want special attention paid to the men,’ he said.

  ‘You think the kidnapper may have returned to the scene of the crime?’ Paniatowski wondered aloud.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Woodend admitted, with a disturbed edge creeping into his voice. ‘An’ that’s the whole problem, Monika.’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘I simply can’t get into the heads of bastards who do things like this, so I just don’t bloody know.’ Woodend looked around him, as if half hoping that a sudden and obvious clue would present itself. ‘I want every inch of this park goin’ over with a fine-toothed comb,’ he continued.

  ‘Naturally,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘Inspector Rutter had better supervise that,’ Woodend said. ‘I wouldn’t trust anybody but Bob to be in charge of the job.’

  There was an awkward pause from Paniatowski, then she said, ‘But Bob’s not here, sir.’

  ‘Not here?’ Woodend repeated, as if he couldn’t quite comprehend what she was telling him.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then where the bloody hell is he?’

  ‘He’s gone down to London.’

  ‘London!’

  ‘To pick up his daughter. He did tell you about it.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Woodend exploded. ‘Is he a bobby, or isn’t he? Because if he is, he should be here when I need him.’

  He was being unfair, Paniatowski thought, but that was only because he was so distressed.

  ‘They’re arriving back sometime this afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘Then the moment he is back, I want him right here, leadin’ this investigation. Is that clear?’

  Paniatowski nodded. ‘Perfectly,’ she said.

  The lecture slot immediately after lunch was not popular with most of the teachers at the University of Central Lancashire. They complained – with some justification – that at that time of day many of their students were far more interested in going to the bar than in pursuing their studies, and so those lecturers with some influence in campus and departmental politics did their damnedest to ensure that they weren’t the ones addressing half-empty halls.

  Dr Martin Stevenson was not one of these academic rats who sought to flee a barely floating ship. Experience had shown him that his lectures were well attended at whatever time of day he was scheduled to give them, and the one he had delivered that afternoon had been particularly successful. The subject had been the psychology of Gilles de Rais, a fifteenth-century French nobleman who had abducted, raped, and killed at least a hundred young boys who he had taken into his castle as pageboys, and when the bell had rung to indicate the end of a session, there were quite a number of students who had remained firmly in their seats.

  Seeing them still sitting there, Stevenson sighed inwardly. On the one hand, he told himself, there was a research paper back in his office that he was under some pressure to finish, and had been hoping to work on for the rest of the afternoon. On the other, he supposed he should be grateful that he could arouse such interest from his students, and it seemed almost a crime to nip their enthusiasm in the bud, especially since he knew for a fact that the seminar room next door was free for most of the afternoon.

  He would give them fifteen more minutes, he decided in the spirit of compromise. Fifteen minutes would surely be more than enough. But the discussion was still going on an hour and a half later, when his secretary – who had finally managed to track him down – informed him that his wife had rung and said she needed to speak to him.

  ‘Ring her back, and say I’ll call her as soon as I can,’ said Stevenson, who was rather enjoying the heated debate with his students.

  The secretary gave him one of those disapproving looks of hers, which always managed to somewhat disconcert him.

  ‘I can’t ring her back, because she’s still on the line,’ the woman said. ‘And she did tell me it was urgent.’

  Stevenson shrugged apologetically. ‘The joys of married life,’ he said to the students, who giggled.

  When he reached his office, two minutes later, he was half expecting that his wife would have grown bored with waiting and hung up. But she hadn’t.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Rosemary Stevenson demanded.

  ‘Working,’ her husband told her. ‘And aren’t you supposed to be on duty yourself, darling?’

  ‘I am on duty,’ Rosemary told him. ‘That’s why I’m angry it’s taken you so long to answer the phone.’

  ‘If I’d known you were going to ring—’

  ‘Listen,’ his wife interrupted, ‘a girl’s gone missing from Whitebridge corporation park – and there’s a tremendous flap on down here.’

  ‘Oh dear. How awful,’ Stevenson said with feeling. ‘I suppose we must all hope that she turns up again soon.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ his wife demanded.

  ‘I don’t think there’s much more I can say, except I’m surprised that, given the circumstances, you’ve found the time to ring me at all.’

  ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ his wife asked, with just a hint of hardness to her voice.

  ‘Don’t get what, Rosemary?’

  ‘The girl’s thirteen. Chances are, she’s been abducted by some kind of pervert.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that necessarily follows,’ Stevenson said. ‘There are lots of other reasons she could have gone missing. She might be the subject of a parental custody battle and—’

  ‘She isn’t.’

  ‘Or perhaps her mother and father don’t approve of her boyfriend, and she’s run off with him. But if that is the case, they won’t get far before they start to see how unrealistic they’re being.’

  ‘Everybody down at the station thinks this is a sex crime,’ Rosemary interrupted him impatiently.

  ‘Unless they have considerably more data than you’ve provided me with, I think they must be on very shaky ground to make such a broad assumption,’ Stevenson countered.

  ‘This is your big chance,’ his wife told him.

  ‘My big chance?’ Stevenson repeated.

  ‘DCI Charlie Woodend’s in charge of the case,’ Rosemary said. ‘Cloggin’-it Charlie, they call him.’

  ‘Interesting. Why do they …?’

  ‘Because instead of keeping his fat arse parked on a seat behind his desk, like most of the other buggers in his position do, he likes to clog it around the scene of the crime.’

  Stevenson grimaced, and wished his wife would not resort to such crude language quite so often.

  ‘Well, from what you’ve told me, Mr Woodend seems to be the right man for the job,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Rosemary said firmly. ‘You’re the right man for the job.’

  ‘I’m a theoretician – an academic!’ Stevenson protested.

  ‘So you don’t have any patients, or conduct any interviews?’ his wife asked sarcastically.

  ‘Well, of course I do. You know I do.’

  ‘Then you’re basically involved in the same kind of work as Cloggin’-it
Charlie – except that you’ve got brains, and he hasn’t.’

  ‘Really, darling …’

  ‘It’s time you started making a name for yourself.’

  ‘I’m already doing that. In case you’ve forgotten, the paper I presented at the symposium in Toronto was very well received.’

  ‘Are you deliberately being thick?’ his wife demanded.

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ Stevenson replied – and he was only half lying.

  ‘It’s time you started to make a name for yourself with the public at large.’

  Stevenson glanced out of his office window at the shiny glass and concrete structures which made up the UCL campus. It was an ultra-modern university and made no pretence at being anything else, he thought. And yet, in many ways, it was just as peaceful and contemplative as any of the colleges in Oxford and Cambridge – just as much a place to think and dream.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ his wife asked. ‘It’s time that you started to make a name for yourself with the public at large.’

  ‘Do you know, I’m not sure I really want to do that,’ Stevenson told her.

  ‘Then what about me?’ Rosemary replied. ‘Don’t I count? Don’t you see how it might help to advance my career?’

  Stevenson laughed lightly. ‘I’m sure that a woman of your obvious ability doesn’t need any help from me,’ he said.

  ‘Then what about your sense of duty?’ his wife persisted. ‘If there’s a nutter running amok and you can help to catch him, don’t you think you’re pretty much obliged to?’

  Stevenson sighed. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he agreed.

  ‘So you’ll do it?’

  ‘So I’ll think about it.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t be where you are today,’ Rosemary said.

  ‘I quite agree with you there,’ Stevenson agreed. ‘You’ve been a wonderful guide.’

  ‘So why won’t you let me guide you now? Why won’t you see that what I’m suggesting would be good for both of us?’