Death of an Innocent Read online

  Table of Contents

  By Sally Spencer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  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

  DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

  A Charlie 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 2002 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 Ltd.

  Copyright © 2002 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.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-5708-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0085-3 (ePub)

  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.

  One

  The first flakes of snow had made their appearance in the middle of the night, floating gently down to earth like mellow kamikaze pilots and melting wistfully away almost as soon as they made contact. The ones which followed were better organized, tighter packed and more determined, and by the time dawn finally broke, the moors were covered with a thick white blanket.

  It was still snowing as Detective Sergeant Monika Paniatowski coaxed her seven-year-old MGA down the rutted track which led to the hand-loom weaver’s cottage that her boss, Charlie Woodend, had bought when Scotland Yard had exiled him to the North of his youth.

  Paniatowski checked her watch. Woodend himself wouldn’t mind being disturbed at this ungodly time on a Sunday morning, she thought, but she didn’t imagine for a moment that Joan, his wife, would be best pleased.

  She eased her car round a bend in the lane and brought it to a halt in front of the stone cottage. Woodend, who must have heard the MGA’s tortuous progress – and understood immediately what it signified – was already standing by the front door, dressed in a shabby overcoat and inhaling energetically on a Capstan Full Strength cigarette.

  Paniatowski wound down her window just in time to hear his parting words to his wife.

  ‘Don’t be daft, lass. You’ll never get a taxi in this weather,’ the big man said. ‘Besides, I’m not havin’ some stranger seein’ you off. You’re my missis, an’ I’ll take you down to the station.’

  He closed the door, and walked down the steps to the car. ‘If you’re draggin’ me out on a mornin’ like this for anythin’ less than the wholesale massacre of the Whitebridge Boy Scouts, you’re in big trouble, Monika,’ he growled.

  ‘It’s not quite as spectacular as that, sir – but we have got two dead bodies on our hands. I tried to ring you about it, but all I got was the engaged signal.’

  Woodend walked round to the passenger side and opened the door. ‘Telephone line’s probably down. It happens a lot with the snow. Still, it won’t bother Joan. She’s goin’ to Altrincham.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow you, sir.’

  Woodend looked at her almost pityingly. ‘It won’t be snowin’ in Altrincham, because they’re too posh there to have the same weather as everybody else,’ he explained.

  ‘Family visit?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend agreed. ‘She’ll be stayin’ with her sister – the one who was smart enough to marry a bank manager rather than a policeman.’ He opened the passenger door, and squeezed inside. ‘I wish you’d get a bigger car, Monika.’

  ‘I wish you’d get a better road, sir,’ his sergeant told him.

  ‘So what’s it all about this time?’ Woodend asked, as Paniatowski began to execute a three-point turn on the slippery snow.

  ‘I haven’t got all the details yet,’ the sergeant said. ‘All I know is that a reporter from the BBC rang the station and said he’d found two bodies – a man and a woman – at a farmhouse out on the moors.’

  ‘Probably hypothermia,’ Woodend pronounced. ‘You get a lot of that with the cold weather. Why aren’t the uniforms handlin’ it?’

  ‘Because these two didn’t freeze to death. They were both shot – at close range. It’s all very messy, apparently. Which makes it sound like a job for us, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Woodend agreed. ‘That sounds just up our street.’

  The snowploughs would probably turn out later in the day to cut a swathe through the snow, but for the moment it was nature, not man, that was in control. These were the real moors they were crossing now – not the half-civilized moors which existed on the edge of the villages, but the brooding expanses of untamed land which had not changed for five thousand years. The few farmhouses they passed were squat, stone buildings, hunkered down against the wind and the rain, and the folk who lived behind the thick walls could go for days without seeing even their nearest neighbours. It took a special kind of person to farm out on the proper moors, Woodend thought. Special – and bloody weird!

  ‘You say it was a reporter from the BBC who phoned this case in?’ he asked, as
Paniatowski did her best to keep the MGA travelling in a straight line.

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘An’ what the bloody hell was a reporter doin’ out on the moors before the crack of dawn?’

  ‘Beats me,’ Paniatowski admitted.

  A large building site, surrounded by a chain-link fence, loomed incongruously up in front of them. Woodend looked at the huge billboard picture of neat, detached houses and read the banner which proclaimed, ‘The Moorland Village – a new concept in rural living from T. A. Taylor and Associates!’

  ‘Bollocks!’ he said.

  ‘I take it from that you’re not very keen on housing estates, sir,’ Monika Paniatowski observed.

  ‘Housin’ estates are all very well in their place – an’ their place is the towns,’ Woodend told her. ‘If you want to live in the countryside, then bloody live in it properly.’

  It was another four miles beyond the building site before Paniatowski pointed ahead and said, ‘I think that’s the place, sir.’

  The farmhouse was located about two hundred yards from the main road. It was similar to the other farms they passed on the way, except that there were at least six vehicles parked in its yard.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Woodend exploded. ‘What the bloody hell did they think they were doin’, drivin’ right up to the place like that? Which soft bugger’s in charge of the team? Mickey Mouse?’

  ‘DI Harris was on duty at the time when the call came in,’ Paniatowski said flatly.

  ‘Well, there’s no bloody wonder this has happened then, is there?’ Woodend demanded angrily. ‘Harris needs a map to find his way to his own office.’

  ‘Should we park here and walk the rest of the way?’ Monika Paniatowski suggested.

  Woodend looked again at the caravan of vehicles parked in front of the farmhouse.

  ‘That’d be like puttin’ a French letter on after you’ve had your end away,’ he growled.

  ‘Pardon, sir?’

  ‘It’s a bit too late to start takin’ precautions now, isn’t it?’

  Paniatowski turned on to the narrow lane, and dropped into a lower gear. The MGA bumped and scraped against the ruts in the track. Woodend studied the vehicles which had already arrived at the scene. There were two family saloons which he recognized as belonging to a couple of his detective constables, two patrol cars, an ambulance, the Humber Super Snipe which Dr Pierson, the police surgeon, had recently acquired, a Triumph Spitfire he didn’t recognize at all – and a big green Volvo.

  ‘Bloody hell, Dick the Prick’s here!’ Woodend exclaimed. ‘Now that’s really all I needed!’

  Paniatowski nodded sympathetically. The enmity which existed between Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend and Deputy Chief Constable Richard Ainsworth was almost legendary in the Central Lancashire Police. Ainsworth disliked many things about Woodend, including his general attitude to authority, his total lack of dress sense, and the fact that instead of staying at the command centre – as a senior office, in Ainsworth’s opinion, should – the bloody man would insist on rooting around at the scene of the crime like a truffle pig. As for Woodend’s opinion of Ainsworth, it could not properly be expressed in language he would use in front of a woman – even if that woman were his hardboiled bagman, Monika Paniatowski.

  ‘I can’t work out why Dick’s here at all,’ Woodend mused, as Paniatowski manoeuvred the MGA carefully around the side of the ambulance. ‘It’s just not like him. Durin’ normal workin’ hours it’s well known his arse is firmly glued to his seat, an’ outside workin’ hours the idle sod probably likes to pretend he’s a country gentleman rather than a bobby.’

  Paniatowski parked. Woodend heaved himself out of the cramped passenger seat, and took in the scene. The ambulance driver and his mate were sitting in the cab of their vehicle, smoking and reading the Sunday papers. In the distance, a couple of uniformed constables were inspecting one of the outbuildings. And one of Woodend’s own regular team, the burly DC Hardcastle, stood on duty by the farmhouse’s front door.

  As he reached in his overcoat pocket for his cigarettes, Woodend saw DCC Ainsworth emerge from the farmhouse. Ainsworth noticed him, too, and made a beeline for him.

  ‘It’s extremely kind of you to have finally turned up, Charlie,’ the DCC said.

  ‘I got here as soon as I could, sir, given the conditions,’ Woodend replied evenly. ‘Have you been here long yourself?’

  ‘Apart from that reporter from the BBC who discovered the bodies, I was the first one on the scene.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Woodend asked quizzically. ‘That was fortunate for us, wasn’t it?’

  ‘As it happens, it was more by luck than judgement,’ Ainsworth conceded. ‘I’ve a busy day ahead of me, so I got up especially early to take one of the dogs over to the kennels in Skelton. We breed and show beagles, you know. We’ve won prizes for it.’

  ‘No, oddly enough, I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Anyway, my errand took me along the Tops Road, and I couldn’t have been more than three or four miles from here when I heard about this incident on the police band. So I came straight over.’

  ‘An’ did you find anythin’ useful, sir?’

  ‘Nothing of note. I just established that the victims were the only people in the house, and then, since I’m not the kind of man who’s constantly looking over his subordinates’ shoulders, I decided to leave the rest up to you.’

  ‘That was very thoughtful of you, sir.’

  If Ainsworth noticed the irony, he showed no sign of it. Instead, he glanced down at his watch.

  ‘My God, how time flies,’ he said. ‘You don’t mind if I go now, do you? I’m expecting some rather important people round for luncheon in just over three hours time.’

  An’ you wouldn’t like to let a simple thing like a double murder get in the way of that, now would you? Woodend thought.

  But aloud all he said was, ‘If I should happen to need to consult you about anythin’, you wouldn’t object to me ringin’ you at home, would you, sir?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Ainsworth said, without much conviction. ‘Carry on, Chief Inspector.’

  Then he turned and walked back towards his Volvo.

  Paniatowski had been tactfully hanging back during the conversation, but now she joined Woodend.

  ‘What did the Old Man have to say for himself?’ she asked.

  ‘He said he’s got some rather important people comin’ round for “luncheon” – which, in case you don’t know, is a fancy way of sayin’ “Sunday dinner” – so he’s had to dash off. You’ve not got any very important people comin’ round for luncheon yourself, have you?’

  ‘Let me think,’ Paniatowski said. ‘No, I don’t think I have, sir.’

  ‘Well, that’s a blessin’,’ Woodend said. ‘So, since you don’t seem to have anythin’ better to do with your time at the moment, let’s you an’ me go an’ look at the scene of the crime, shall we, lass?’

  It was as they approached the farmhouse that Woodend first noticed that something was not quite right about the man standing on duty by the door. DC Hardcastle was a stolid and dependable – if uninspired – officer, as well as a pillar of the police rugby team. His face normally glowed with health and vigour, but now he seemed as pale as a ghost.

  ‘Are you all right, Hardie?’ Woodend asked solicitously.

  The detective constable nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, I have to say that you don’t look it. What’s upset you, lad?’ He pointed into the farmhouse. ‘Was it somethin’ you saw in there?’

  Hardcastle nodded again, but said nothing.

  Woodend frowned. Hardcastle, he knew from experience, was not the kind of man to go into a near faint at the sight of blood.

  ‘Is it somethin’ that I should know about before I go in there myself?’ he asked.

  DC Hardcastle’s eyes clouded over and his lips began to tremble like a landed fish’s.

  ‘It’s . . . it’s not somethin’ I can tell
you about, sir,’ he gasped. ‘You . . . you won’t know . . . you won’t understand . . . until you’ve seen it for yourself.’

  Then his broad shoulders shook, and he began to sob uncontrollably.

  Two

  There was no entrance hall to the farmhouse, and stepping through the front door Woodend found himself in the living room. It was a large, square room, of the sort in which the moorland farmers of a previous generation – and possibly a few of those still around – would cook, eat, repair their equipment, and even tend to sick animals. But it had never been intended to be turned into the slaughterhouse it had become that cold winter morning.

  The closest victim to the door – the male – was lying on his back. The front of his white shirt was shredded, revealing a chest which was pitted with scores of small wounds. The man’s face was a pulp, with bits of brain, bone and muscle forming an obscene corona around the upper part of the head. The second victim – the female – was bunched up in the far corner of the room, and for the moment was partly obscured by Dr Pierson, who was bending over her body.

  There were two other men in the room, one dusting the sideboard with powder, the other standing self-importantly next to the large stone fireplace.

  ‘Found anythin’ useful yet, Battersby?’ Woodend asked the man by the sideboard.

  Constable Clive Battersby turned round to face his boss. ‘It’s a bit early to say, sir. But there’s certainly plenty of prints.’

  Woodend nodded. Battersby didn’t impress most people at first sight, he thought – and there was good reason for it. The detective constable was rapidly running to fat, and the shiny blue suit he was wearing should have been thrown out long ago. Yet there was no doubt that he’d performed very well on the Home Office courses he’d attended, and when DCC Ainsworth had once referred to him at a press conference as ‘one of our highly trained team of site-evaluation experts’, he’d probably come closer to the truth than he usually did when he opened his mouth.

  The Chief Inspector turned his attention to the other man. Like Battersby, he was in his early thirties, but showed none of the constable’s inclination to put on weight. His body was lean, and his face bore those signs of insecurity which can sometimes manifest themselves equally as arrogance and extreme sensitivity. There were those who said that DI Harris had been promoted too soon – and those who said that he should not have been promoted at all, Woodend reminded himself. Looking at Harris now, he could not help wishing that, for a case as serious this one, he had had Bob Rutter, his old bagman, as his Number Two. But that was not to be. Rutter was down at the police college in Hendon, on a course which had been specially designed for highflying young detective inspectors like him.