Death Watch

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Are you all right, Sarge?’ Beresford asked cautiously.

  ‘At this moment, or in general?’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘Well, you know, in general.’

  ‘Do you want to know how I’m coping with the idea that while I’m a childless woman living alone, my ex-lover has his daughter living with him now?’

  ‘Well, no. Not exactly.’

  ‘Or are you more interested in finding out how I feel about the fact that we both suspect that same ex-lover is sleeping with a slag of a journalist called Elizabeth Driver?’

  ‘I was only making casual conversation,’ Beresford said awkwardly.

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ Paniatowski told him.

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ Beresford admitted. ‘But listen, Sarge …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I know that I’m so inexperienced that I’m still practically wet behind the ears, but—’

  ‘Inexperienced in what?’ Paniatowski interrupted. ‘In police work? Or in life?’

  ‘In both. And I know there are probably a hundred people you’d rather talk to than me …’

  ‘Get on with it,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘… but if you ever do need a shoulder to cry on, I just want you to know that mine’s always available.’

  Having said his piece, Beresford fixed his eyes firmly on the floor, looking awkward – and perhaps a little humiliated.

  Paniatowski reached across the desk and put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Thanks, Colin,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever take you up on your offer – but it’s certainly comforting to know it’s there.’

  Someone coughed – loudly and unnaturally. Both Paniatowski and Beresford looked up, saw Rutter standing in the doorway, and immediately found themselves wondering just how long he’d been there.

  There was a moment of embarrassed silence, which seemed to suggest he had been there for quite some time, then Rutter said, ‘The boss wants you back at headquarters right away, Monika.’

  ‘Is he assuming that I’ll have finished this job by now?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Because if he is, he’s way off the mark. I’ve barely made a dent in it.’

  ‘He doesn’t expect you to have finished,’ Rutter told her. ‘That’s why I’m here – to take over from you.’

  ‘Any idea why he wants me back at headquarters?’

  ‘He wants you to take over from me in the Brunton interrogation.’

  Paniatowski frowned. ‘It’s not like him to go switching jobs around at this stage of the investigation,’ she said. ‘Why’s he doing it now?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Rutter said.

  There had been times in the past when their relationship had made any conversation between the two of them sound strained, Paniatowski thought. But Rutter’s voice was not just strained now – it was evasive.

  Which meant that he had a pretty good idea of why the switch was being made, and whilst part of it might be because Rutter was better at following paper trails, that couldn’t be the whole picture. And suddenly she saw exactly what the whole picture was – in all its gory detail.

  She stubbed her cigarette, and stood up. ‘I’ll see you later, Beresford,’ she said.

  ‘See you later, Sarge,’ Beresford replied.

  Head down, she walked quickly to the door. She didn’t speak to Rutter. She didn’t even look at him. He might take it as rude, but that didn’t matter. All that concerned her at that particular moment was that he didn’t see that she was crying.

  Edgar Brunton glanced up when the door to the interview room opened, and, for the first time since he’d been taken there, looked somewhat knocked off balance.

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ he asked Woodend, across the table.

  ‘This is Sergeant Paniatowski, Mr Brunton,’ the chief inspector said mildly. ‘I’m sorry for not introducing you formally, but I was under the impression you’d already met one another.’

  ‘I know who she is,’ Brunton spat back at him. ‘I asked you what she was doing here.’

  ‘She’s replacing Inspector Rutter as the “good policeman” in this amusing cabaret we’re putting on for you.’

  ‘I don’t want her here,’ Brunton said.

  Paniatowski walked across the room and sat down next to Woodend. ‘Do I bother you, Mr Brunton?’ she asked. ‘Now I wonder why that could be?’

  Brunton folded his arms, and said, ‘No comment.’

  ‘DCI Woodend claims that the thinking behind me joining this little party is that it will free up DI Rutter to do something else,’ Paniatowski continued, conversationally. ‘But I don’t think that’s the real reason at all. In fact, I think he’s lying through his teeth.’

  ‘This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?’ Brunton asked.

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  ‘Because you’re a woman who’s got her career to think of, Sergeant – and unless you’d agreed to it between yourselves in advance, you’d never say that kind of thing about your boss while he was actually in the room.’

  ‘That’s a good point, Monika,’ Woodend agreed, playing along in the way that he hoped she was expecting him to, but really having no idea where Paniatowski was going with this approach.

  ‘The thing is, while he undoubtedly was lying, he was only doing it to be kind,’ Paniatowski said, unperturbed. ‘The reason he didn’t want me to know why I’m here is because he thought it would hurt me to know.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Brunton said.

  ‘I was sexually abused as a child,’ Paniatowski said bluntly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘And I’m guessing that Mr Woodend thinks you were, too – especially since he’s learned that you’ve been visiting a shrink. So that’s why I’m here – because he believes that since we’ve both suffered in similar ways, you’ll find it much easier to talk to me.’

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Brunton said. ‘I wasn’t abused at all. My mother loved me. She took wonderful care of me.’

  ‘Sergeant Paniatowski said you’d probably been abused, but I don’t recall her mentionin’ your mother at all,’ Woodend said.

  ‘The implication was there,’ Brunton spluttered. ‘The implication was clearly there.’

  ‘He’s got it all wrong about your mother, hasn’t he?’ Paniatowski asked Brunton, in a voice which was positively oozing understanding.

  ‘He most certainly has.’

  ‘The problem’s not with your mother at all – it’s with your wife!’

  ‘My wife! What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I’m not as clever as Inspector Rutter is at going through documents, but even someone as slow-witted as me can spot the bleeding obvious when it’s staring them in the face,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You maintain a very expensive office and live in a luxurious house, yet even the most cursory glance through your business accounts reveals that you don’t earn enough to pay for either of them. So where does the money come from?’

  ‘That’s absolutely none of your business!’ Brunton said, outraged.

  ‘Why, it comes from your wife, of course,’ Paniatowski said airily. ‘She’s a rich woman, isn’t she? And that really must be very humiliating for you, knowing that – to all intents and purposes – you’re a kept man.’

  ‘My wife’s family didn’t start out rich,’ Brunton said. ‘When she was growing up, her parents ran a tripe stall. On the market!’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘It means that she got something out of the marriage, too. She would never have scaled the heights of Whitebridge society if she hadn’t been married to me. Besides,’ Brunton added, almost as an after-thought, ‘we are very much in love, and so the question of who has how much money never really arises.’

  ‘Even the presents you give her – including the one you claim to have been intending to buy her yesterday – are financed out of her account,’ Paniatowski continued, unrelentingly. ‘It’s almost as though she was giving
the presents to herself – and you know that. There must have been times when you wanted to strangle her – only that would mean going to prison. There must have been times when you wanted to divorce her – except that would entail giving up the life of luxury you’ve grown so accustomed to. So what else could you do to make your suffering bearable? Well, I suppose you could make some other poor bloody female suffer, and half convince yourself it was your wife.’

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ Brunton said.

  ‘You are a lawyer,’ Woodend reminded him.

  ‘There is an old adage in my profession that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client,’ Brunton said, recovering a little of his poise. ‘I want to thank Sergeant Paniatowski for reminding me of it.’

  ‘You did a bloody marvellous job in there,’ Woodend said, when he and Paniatowski had stepped out into the corridor.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘But why didn’t you let me know where you were going with the interrogation in advance?’

  ‘Because that would have made you a player in the game – and I didn’t want that. I knew that if I was to make progress, it would be by going head to head with Brunton.’

  Woodend scratched his head. ‘Now where did you get the idea from?’ he wondered.

  ‘I got it from watching the way you work,’ Paniatowski told him.

  Woodend grinned self-consciously for a moment, and then quickly grew more serious. ‘That comment you made about me havin’ you in there because you’d suffered child abuse yourself …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘That was purely for Brunton’s benefit, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it was – partly,’ Paniatowski conceded.

  ‘Meanin’ that partly it wasn’t?’

  ‘You’re an instinctive bobby, sir,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m inclined that way myself.’

  ‘That’s a nice way of avoidin’ answerin’ the question,’ Woodend told her.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘But I don’t want you to avoid it. You’ve got somethin’ on your mind, so why don’t you just spit it out?’

  Paniatowski sighed heavily. ‘You may not even have realized that it was my childhood experiences that made you decide to put me in that room with Brunton,’ she said. ‘But that was almost certainly why you did it.’

  ‘An’ if you’re right, what kind of feller does that make me?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘The kind whose first reaction is to try and protect whoever he sees as most in need of that protection. In the past, that’s been me. And I still need your protection – but not as much as Angela Jackson does.’

  ‘So what am I?’ Woodend asked worriedly. ‘A saint or a sinner?’

  Paniatowski grinned, and passed her hand across her face to brush away the tears she hoped her boss hadn’t seen forming.

  ‘I suppose you’re a bit of both,’ she said. ‘We all are. But, on balance, I think you tilt slightly on the side of the angels.’

  Woodend looked embarrassed, but did his best to cover the look by glancing back at the door of the interview room.

  ‘Brunton’s asked for a lawyer, an’ so we’ll have to get him one,’ he said. ‘But if we go back in there now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he cracks before the bugger ever arrives.’

  ‘Neither would I,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  There was the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor, and they turned to see that Rutter was approaching them.

  ‘Finished goin’ through Brunton’s stuff already, Bob?’ Woodend asked. ‘That must be a record – even for you.’ Then he noticed the expression on Rutter’s face and added, ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something bad.’

  Rutter nodded gravely. ‘They’ve found a girl’s body,’ he said.

  Fourteen

  The girl’s body had been discovered on a piece of waste land in Stainsworth, which was one of Whitebridge’s more dilapidated districts, and had been scheduled for urban clearance if and when the government ever got around to making the money available. A dozen narrow terraced streets fed into the land – streets which had once been home to mill workers like Charlie Woodend’s dad, and now housed families living mainly off unemployment benefit and other handouts from the state.

  Whenever Woodend drove through the area, he looked at the crumbling buildings and almost invariably found himself harking back to a period which had been poorer and harder, yet also seemed to him to have been more honest and more decent. But no such thoughts entered his head that night.

  By the time Woodend and Rutter arrived at the scene, several official vehicles – patrol units and unmarked CID cars – were already parked on the road next to the land. There were street lights every few yards, but none of them was working, and the only illumination at the roadside came from the rotating light on the waiting ambulance, which cut an eerie and ever-shifting orange swathe through the darkness.

  Further away, in the centre of the patch of waste land, there was light – a small island of it, provided by hastily erected police emergency lighting.

  A spotlight on failure, Woodend thought miserably. On my failure!

  He stepped out of the car, and noticed immediately how cold the air had suddenly become. He turned up the collar of his jacket, then looked around him. A number of dark menacing figures with pointed heads were standing at intervals around the periphery of the land, and he walked up to the nearest of them.

  ‘Where’s the path, Constable?’ he asked.

  ‘It starts just past the next lamp post, sir,’ the constable replied.

  It wasn’t much of a path – barely a couple of feet wide – but the beam from Woodend’s torch showed that it was free of weeds, which indicated it was fairly heavily used.

  The walk from the pavement to the point at which the emergency lighting had been erected was a short one, but to Woodend’s leadened legs, it felt as if it were an epic journey.

  A sheet had been laid on the ground, in the centre of the circle of light. It had been placed there to cover the girl – perhaps to give a little of the privacy in death that she had been denied in the last moments of her life – but from the indentations on its surface, it was possible to see exactly where she lay.

  ‘She looks so tiny,’ Woodend thought bitterly.

  A number of flattened yellowish objects lay crushed into the ground around her, and it took Woodend some seconds to identify them as chips – or ‘French fries’, as the Yanks he’d known in the War had called them. He wondered what they were doing there, then wondered why he was wondering, then recognized that he was simply putting off the moment when he looked at the girl.

  But it could not be put off!

  Beresford, his face set in a grim mask, was maintaining a vigil next to the body.

  ‘The ambulance men are ready and waiting to take her away the moment you’ve seen her, sir,’ he said. ‘But if I was you, I’d leave your examination until she’s been cleaned up.’

  ‘An’ why’s that?’ Woodend demanded. ‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘But I don’t have a daughter.’

  ‘I don’t want to look at her,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But I’m in charge of this investigation, an’ I bloody have to, don’t I? So let’s get it over with.’

  Beresford bent down, and gently pulled away the sheet to reveal the girl’s head.

  Woodend let out an involuntary gasp. Though he had not admitted it, even to himself, he had been praying this would turn out to be some other girl.

  A girl he knew nothing about.

  A girl he had not tried – and failed – to save.

  But it wasn’t some other girl!

  It was unquestionably Angela’s face – the mouth contorted with the terror she had felt as she died, the eyes looking up at him with sightless rebuke.

  ‘I need to see the rest of her,’ he said.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Ber
esford asked hesitantly.

  ‘Just bloody do it!’ Woodend told him.

  Beresford stripped the rest of the sheet away, and beside him, Woodend heard Rutter moan, then say, ‘Dear God!’

  The body was naked, and caked in a mixture of blood and dirt.

  It had been slashed!

  And stabbed!

  And burnt!

  It was hard to estimate how many times the poor child had been wounded, though some unfortunate soul – probably Dr Shastri – would have to count all those wounds eventually.

  ‘Cover her up again, Colin,’ Woodend said. ‘Cover her up – an’ make it quick!’

  Beresford rapidly pulled the sheet over the girl again, but though the corpse was no longer visible to the eye, the image of it had been burned deeply into Woodend’s brain.

  ‘There was a note, sir,’ Beresford said.

  ‘A note!’

  ‘On a piece of cardboard which had been torn off a baked-beans box. It was written in block capitals, and it … it was pinned …’

  ‘Steady, lad,’ Woodend said.

  Beresford gulped in a fresh supply of chill night air.

  ‘It wasn’t pinned to anything,’ he said. ‘It was nailed to her leg. I … I … removed it, and had it sent down to the lab for analysis.’

  ‘You just did right,’ Woodend assured him. ‘Can you remember exactly what it said?’

  Beresford shuddered. ‘Oh yes, I can remember. It said, “This is a gift from the Invisible Man to all my fellow sufferers everywhere”.’

  A gift? Woodend repeated silently. This poor mutilated child was, in the eyes of the man who had tortured and then killed her, a gift!

  And what the hell did he mean by calling himself the Invisible Man?

  The bastard was even sicker than he’d thought – sicker than he could ever have imagined.

  He looked around him. At the edge of the circle of light which bathed the girl’s body stood half a dozen constables.

  ‘Who found her?’ he shouted. ‘I want to talk to whoever it was that found her.’

  ‘It was a couple of local lads, sir,’ one of the constables said. ‘I’ve put them in my car.’

  ‘Bring ’em here now,’ Woodend said. ‘No, not now! Wait until the body’s been taken away.’