Fatal Quest Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  By Sally Spencer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  10 November 1950

  6 June 1973

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  6 June 1973

  By Sally Spencer

  The Charlie Woodend Mysteries

  THE SALTON KILLINGS

  MURDER AT SWANN’S LAKE

  DEATH OF A CAVE DWELLER

  THE DARK LADY

  THE GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

  DEAD ON CUE

  THE RED HERRING

  DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

  THE ENEMY WITHIN

  A DEATH LEFT HANGING

  THE WITCH MAKER

  THE BUTCHER BEYOND

  DYING IN THE DARK

  STONE KILLER

  A LONG TIME DEAD

  SINS OF THE FATHERS

  DANGEROUS GAMES

  DEATH WATCH

  A DYING FALL

  FATAL QUEST

  The Monika Paniatowski Mysteries

  THE DEAD HAND OF HISTORY

  THE RING OF DEATH

  ECHOES OF THE DEAD

  BACKLASH

  LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER

  A WALK WITH THE DEAD

  FATAL QUEST

  Woodend’s First Case

  A Chief Inspector Woodend Mystery

  Sally Spencer

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2008 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2008 by Sally Spencer.

  The right of Sally Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Spencer, Sally

  Fatal Quest

  1. Woodend, Charlie (Fictitious character) - Fiction

  2. Police - England - Fiction 3. Detective and mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14[F]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6682-0 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-084-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-44830-121-8 (ePub)

  I am indebted to Martin Chambers for several valuable suggestions he made at the earlier stages of this book. Many thanks, Martin!

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  10 November 1950

  The girl looked around her in total panic. But she could not see far, because the smog – that swirling layer of yellow filth which sought out the weak-chested and mercilessly clamped itself around their throats – had all but isolated her from the rest of the world.

  ‘Get in the car,’ the man said, his voice harsh and commanding.

  ‘I … I don’t want …’ she protested.

  ‘Get in the car!’ the man repeated.

  And she did.

  Even though her every instinct screamed that she shouldn’t.

  Even though she already knew it was a mistake, perhaps the biggest – and last – mistake she would ever make.

  Because she was too afraid to do anything else.

  It was a dead city through which they drove. The buses had stopped running hours earlier, and now the few cars still in evidence moved at a crawl, like wounded animals desperate to return to their lairs.

  The girl grasped her right arm with her left hand, and her left arm with her right, and hugged herself tightly. She felt all alone – and so she was.

  From somewhere deep inside herself, she found the courage to speak.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  The man said nothing. She wasn’t even sure that he knew the answer himself, because most of the time he wasn’t looking at the road ahead of them at all, but at the pavement.

  The car slowed, then came to a halt.

  The man opened his door. ‘Stay there!’ he said.

  She stayed. She had no choice. Her legs felt like lead. Her head was pounding. There were so many things she needed to say, but she couldn’t find the words.

  The man walked around the front of the car and opened the passenger door.

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘I … I don’t think I can.’

  The man grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the car.

  ‘You’re hurting me!’

  He didn’t reply, and she realized that he didn’t care if he was hurting her – didn’t care about her at all.

  He dragged her round the car, across the pavement and onto a piece of waste land. The ground was rough, and several times she stumbled. But the man kept his tight grip on her, and wouldn’t let her fall.

  When they had gone perhaps a dozen yards – and looking over her shoulder, she could no longer see the pavement – they came to a stop.

  The man swung her around, so that she was facing him.

  ‘What were you doing, back there?’ he demanded.

  Back there!

  He meant the place in which she’d first caught sight of him, and then – with a look of horror quickly coming to his face – he’d first caught sight of her!

  ‘I … I …’ she began.

  ‘Tell the truth, because if you’re lying to me, I’ll know,’ he said menacingly.

  And she believed him – believed he could see right through her.

  ‘I … I was looking for you,’ she confessed.

  The man nodded sombrely. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said

  And then he put his free hand into his overcoat pocket, and when it emerged again, she saw it was holding a razor.

  ‘Please, no!’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t mean to … I only wanted to …’

  But even as she spoke, she understood that she was wasting her breath – that the emptiness and yearning which had been eating away at her for years would soon be gone.

  Because she would soon be gone.

  6 June 1973

  The barman in the buffet of Whitebridge railway station had been studying the racing form, but now he laid the paper down on the counter and turned his attention to his sole cust
omer – a big bugger in a hairy sports jacket – who seemed engrossed in a tattered paperback.

  The man had an interesting face, the barman thought. Like the rest of him, its features were writ large – long nose, wide mouth, square jaw. It was not an unattractive face, but it did somehow manage to give the impression of having been hastily carved by a sculptor using a blunt chisel.

  The barman knew who this customer was, of course. Anyone in Whitebridge who had an interest in crime – or even someone who’d simply picked up a local newspaper in the last decade or so – would have known.

  ‘Another pint, Chief Inspector?’ he called across the empty room.

  Woodend looked up from his book – which was Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. ‘What’s the latest news on the delay?’ he asked.

  ‘No news at all. But if you want my opinion, it’ll be at least another couple of hours before normal service is resumed. It always takes that long when a train comes off the track.’

  Woodend nodded. ‘In that case, another pint would be in order,’ he agreed. ‘An’ by the way, it’s not chief inspector any more. As of yesterday, I’m retired.’

  ‘Good for you!’ the barman said, trying not to sound as if he envied the other man his retirement – and almost making it.

  The door swung open, and a blonde woman walked in. She was probably in her mid to late thirties, the barman thought, assessing her with a professional eye, but she had a cracking figure which – by rights – should belong to a much younger woman.

  The blonde walked over to the table, and sat down without waiting for an invitation.

  ‘What are you doin’ here, Monika?’ Woodend asked. ‘You should be at my farewell bash.’

  ‘So should you,’ Monika Paniatowski pointed out.

  Woodend shrugged awkwardly. ‘Aye, well, I’ve never been much of a one for makin’ myself the centre of attention when I didn’t have to. An’ as long as there’s plenty of booze flowin’ – which there should be, because it’s cost me a packet – the lads won’t even notice that the guest of honour isn’t there.’

  ‘You never did quite appreciate how popular you were, did you, Charlie?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I’ve never really given a bugger about whether I was popular or not,’ Woodend said, in what was almost a growl.

  Paniatowski smiled. ‘I know you haven’t. That’s one of the reasons why people like you so much.’ She paused, to light up a cigarette. ‘Well, are you going to buy me a drink, or what?’

  Woodend grinned. ‘You want me to buy you a drink?’ he asked, feigning astonishment. ‘I’d have thought you sank enough last night in the Drum an’ Monkey to have lasted you a lifetime.’

  Paniatowski returned the grin. ‘I wasn’t alone in that,’ she said. ‘You and Beresford more than matched me.’

  ‘Aye, I will say that for Sergeant Beresford – he’s turned into no mean boozer.’

  ‘And no mean detective,’ Paniatowski said, in defence of the man who would soon be her second-in-command.

  ‘An’ no mean detective,’ Woodend agreed. He signalled to the barman. ‘A vodka for Chief Inspector Paniatowski, please. On second thoughts, make it a double.’

  ‘I’m not a chief inspector yet, Charlie,’ Paniatowski hissed, as if she was embarrassed to hear him use the title.

  ‘That’s true,’ Woodend agreed genially. ‘But you will be tomorrow.’

  ‘And where will you be tomorrow?’ Paniatowski asked, more sharply than she’d intended.

  ‘I’ll be in London, with Joan an’ our Annie,’ Woodend said.

  ‘And next week, you and Joan will be in your castle in Spain,’ Paniatowski said – and now there was a definite hint of bitterness to her tone.

  ‘Scarcely a castle,’ Woodend said. ‘But it is a pleasant little villa, with a view of the sea.’ He paused. ‘I had to go sometime, you know,’ he continued gently. ‘It’s the way of the world. I move on, an’ you move up.’

  I don’t want to move up, Paniatowski thought. Not without you there to watch me – not without you there to approve of me!

  But all she said was, ‘No regrets?’

  ‘Some – but not a lot,’ Woodend told her. ‘There are a few things I’ll miss, like best bitter an’ mushy peas. A few people, too – an’ you’re right up at the top of that particular list.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s a real turn up for the books, isn’t it, Monika?’

  ‘Isn’t what?’

  ‘My leavin’ the Force of my own free will – exitin’ with an engraved clock rather than a notice of dismissal.’

  ‘It is a bit of a miracle,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  And so it was, she thought, because in order to count the number of times that Woodend had nearly been kicked out – and her along with him – she would need the fingers of both hands.

  They fell silent, and in that silence Paniatowski found herself wishing that she could bring herself to tell her boss how much he had meant to her over the years. But from early on in their relationship, the exact nature of it had been too deep to put into words, perhaps even – on occasion – too dangerous to put into words.

  The silence continued, until Paniatowski felt it would choke her. She needed to say something, she told herself. Something superficial. Something that could pass as banter.

  ‘Of course, the real miracle isn’t that you stayed a DCI for so long – it’s that you ever got to be one in the first place,’ she said.

  ‘Now that hurts,’ said Woodend, seeming as grateful to be playing the game as she was. ‘That cuts me to the quick. You’re surely not suggestin’ – are you, Sergeant Paniatowski – that I was never chief inspector material?’

  Sergeant Paniatowski, Monika noted. As if they were back in the old days, when he was her guide and her teacher and would always be there for her.

  ‘What I’m suggesting, Charlie, is that you’re awkward and unorthodox, that you play by nobody’s rules but your own – and that if there’s any way to get right up a superior’s nose, you’ll find it in record time.’

  Woodend smiled as if she’d paid him a compliment – which, in fact, she had.

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ he agreed.

  ‘So how did you get to be a DCI, Charlie?’ Paniatowski asked, realizing to her own surprise that she really did want to know.

  Woodend gave the matter some thought. ‘I suppose the short answer is that I earned my promotion by arrangin’ to have somebody killed,’ he said finally.

  ‘Is that meant to be a joke?’ Paniatowski asked, slightly shocked.

  Woodend shook his head – seriously.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It may be an over-simplification, but it’s certainly not a joke.’

  ‘Then tell me more.’

  Woodend shook his head again. ‘I’ve already said too much. I’ve already told you somethin’ that only three men knew for sure – an’ two of them are already dead.’

  ‘You can’t leave it there,’ Paniatowski insisted. ‘You just can’t. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘Life rarely is fair,’ Woodend told her. Then his face softened and he turned to the barman and said, ‘Any news on that train yet, lad?’

  ‘Not a dickybird,’ the barman replied. ‘Like I said, you could be here for another two hours.’

  ‘Which leaves you plenty of time to tell your story,’ Paniatowski said firmly.

  ‘Which leaves me plenty of time,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Well, it happened like this …’

  One

  Sitting at his desk on the third floor of New Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Charlie Woodend watched as the smog tightened its grip on the city. Ten minutes earlier, he had been able to see the mighty River Thames – albeit hazily. Now the extent of his vision stretched no further than halfway across the Victoria Embankment, and though he had no doubt the river was still there, he had no way of proving it.

  The phone rang, and he picked it up.

  ‘DS Woodend.’

  ‘A girl’s been killed!’ a woman’s voice
shrieked at him down the line.

  But though it undoubtedly had been a shriek, it had been a shriek delivered in a whisper – as if, despite her emotional state, she still didn’t want others to hear it.

  And there were others around. Woodend could detect both a background hum of conversation and – even further away – some sort of music blasting out.

  ‘Are you still there?’ the woman demanded, as if hours, rather than seconds, had passed since he’d last spoken.

  ‘I’m still here,’ he said reassuringly, as he reached across for a pencil. ‘Keep calm, madam.’

  ‘Keep calm? How can I keep calm? The girl is dead!’

  From her accent, she sounded well educated, Woodend thought. And though, given the near hysteria in her voice, it was difficult to pin her age down, he would guess she was in her mid-thirties.

  ‘I’ll need your name,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not telling you that!’

  ‘I’m afraid you have to. It’s standard procedure.’

  ‘I don’t care. I won’t give you my name.’

  It seemed pointless to try and push her any further. ‘In that case, if you could just give me some details …’

  ‘Mitre Road! She’s on a bomb site in Mitre Road!’

  ‘And you’re sure she’s dead?’

  ‘He said she was dead. And he doesn’t lie. Not about things like that. He’s not that kind of man.’

  ‘He?’ Woodend repeated. ‘Who are we talkin’ about here, madam?’

  But by then, the woman had already hung up.

  The smog turned the short walk to Mitre Street into a journey of almost epic difficulty. Woodend got lost twice, ending up back at the river the first time, and in front of Waterloo Station the second. He met only a handful of other pedestrians, and even these few – with their heads down, moving with the heavy reluctance of men wading through water – seemed more like phantoms of the night than real people.

  Finally, nearly an hour after receiving the phone call, he arrived at his destination, the bomb site on Mitre Road. Even then, he might have walked straight past, had it not been for several thin beams of light which were dancing around erratically in the soupy air.

  He was reaching into his inside pocket for his warrant card when one of the beams moved towards him, and a uniformed constable in his mid-forties stepped out of the murk.