Lambs to the Slaughter Read online

  Table of Contents

  Recent Titles by Sally Spencer from Severn House

  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

  Author’s Note

  Recent Titles by Sally Spencer from Severn House

  THE BUTCHER BEYOND

  DANGEROUS GAMES

  THE DARK LADY

  DEAD ON CUE

  DEATH OF A CAVE DWELLER

  DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

  A DEATH LEFT HANGING

  DEATH WATCH

  DYING IN THE DARK

  A DYING FALL

  THE ENEMY WITHIN

  FATAL QUEST

  GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

  A LONG TIME DEAD

  MURDER AT SWANN’S LAKE

  THE PARADISE JOB

  THE RED HERRING

  THE SALTON KILLINGS

  SINS OF THE FATHERS

  STONE KILLER

  THE WITCH MAKER

  The Monika Paniatowski Mysteries

  THE DEAD HAND OF HISTORY

  THE RING OF DEATH

  ECHOES OF THE DEAD

  BACKLASH

  LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER

  LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER

  A DCI Monika Paniatowski 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 world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

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

  Copyright © 2012 by Alan Rustage.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Spencer, Sally.

  Lambs to the slaughter.

  1. Paniatowski, Monika (Fictitious character) – Fiction. 2. Police – England – Fiction. 3. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-300-6 (epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8192-2 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-442-4 (trade paper)

  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 woman was in her middle-to-late twenties. She was wearing a bushy black wig, which was both beautifully constructed and very expensive, and she thought it was most unlikely that there was a single person in Bellingsworth Miners’ Institute that night who would even question whether or not it was her real hair. She was heavily made-up, almost theatrically so, but the make-up had been applied with a great deal of skill, so that instead of looking like a slapper – as she so easily could have done – she appeared merely temptingly exotic. She had a slim figure – she had once heard someone call it ‘pixieish’, and rather liked that – and carried herself like a model. She had never been to a miners’ institute before, and as she glanced around it with undisguised curiosity, she decided that she very much liked what she saw.

  It was its simplicity and lack of pretension that she appreciated most – its stark, stripped-down functionality. It was a place to drink and to play dominoes or snooker, and if you wanted anything else from your evening out, you’d be well advised to look elsewhere.

  Actually, she had been wanting something else from her evening – and was still hoping to get it later – but Harry Price, the young miner sitting next to her, had been most insistent that before they got down to the only thing which would ever have drawn them together, they would at least have to show their faces at the Institute.

  ‘We won the cup today, you see,’ he had explained to her.

  ‘The cup?’ she’d repeated.

  Price had looked at her as if she was from another planet, and – in so many ways – that was exactly what she was.

  ‘The Brough Cup!’ the miner had explained.

  ‘I still don’t . . .’

  ‘We always knew we had the best brass band in the north-west, and now we’ve got the cup, it’s official.’

  ‘Ah, that Brough Cup!’ she’d exclaimed. ‘We’d better go celebrate the famous victory, then, hadn’t we?’

  And so they had.

  They’d arrived at around half past seven, and it was a little after eight when the main door opened, an old miner walked in, and Harry Price said, ‘Oh, I don’t like that at all.’

  ‘Don’t like what?’ she asked.

  ‘The feller who’s just come in is called Len Hopkins, and there’s nobody in the village who’s more against calling a strike than he is.’ Price paused. ‘You know there’s going to be a strike ballot, don’t you . . . err . . . err . . .?’

  As he turned red, the woman smiled.

  ‘You’ve forgotten my name, haven’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, well, I mean, it’s not really a very common one, and . . .’

  ‘It’s Zelda.’

  ‘But that’s not your real name, is it?’

  ‘It’s real enough,’ the woman said, enigmatically. ‘When we’re doing what I came here to do, I will be Zelda – although tomorrow morning, of course, I might be someone else entirely.’

  Harry Price still seemed uncomfortable.

  ‘Look, even if it isn’t your real name, that’s still no excuse for me forgetting . . .’

  She raised her index finger to his lips, to silence him. The fingernail was long, artificial and the colour of congealed blood.

  ‘Let’s not pretend this is a new experience for either of us, Harry,’ she said softly. ‘I was with someone else last week, and I’ll be with a different someone else next week, so it’s not exactly going to break my heart if you forget my name, now is it?’

  ‘You . . . you have a different partner every single week?’ Harry asked, amazed.

  ‘Well, not every single week,’ the woman admitted. ‘Occasionally, when things get a bit too rough, I need a little healing time between dates, but let’s just say it’s most weeks.’ She smiled again. ‘Now what was it you were saying before you got all confused over forgetting who I was?’

  ‘I was asking you if you’d heard about the strike ballot,’ Harry said, glad to be back on more conventional ground. ‘Have you
?’

  Oh yes, she’d heard about it, she thought. Everybody in her line of work had heard about it – and a not insignificant number of them were shitting themselves at even the idea of it.

  ‘I think somebody may have mentioned something about a strike to me in passing,’ she said aloud.

  ‘You don’t pay much attention to current affairs, do you, Zelda?’ Price asked, using the name with both emphasis and confidence this time. ‘I bet you know as little about the strike as you do about brass band music.’ Then he grinned and added, with a roughish tone to his voice, ‘Still, as long as we share one interest, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’

  He really was rather cute, she thought, and hoped that he wouldn’t turn out to be too cute – that the hard muscle she’d noted when they first met, an hour earlier, would come into its own later.

  ‘When Hopkins walked in, you said you didn’t like it,’ she reminded Price. ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Do you see that other old man, standing at the bar?’ Price asked, by way of an answer.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, that’s Tommy Sanders, and he’s as much for the strike as Len is against it.’

  Len Hopkins wasn’t looking for trouble, and when he saw Tommy Sanders leaning against the bar, he almost turned around and walked out again. Then he told himself that this was his institute as much as it was Tommy’s, and that he had as much right to celebrate the victory of the Bellingsworth brass band as the other man did. Besides, as long as they kept out of each other’s way, there was no real reason for unpleasantness, and Tommy, he was sure, was as eager not to do anything to spoil the night as he was himself.

  He walked up to the long oak bar, carefully selecting a place at it two men down from where Sanders was standing. Then, once he had got his elbows firmly ensconced, he signalled to Ted, the bar steward, that he wanted a drink.

  ‘Your usual?’ Ted asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Len agreed.

  His ‘usual’ was lemonade, because although record numbers of pints of bitter were being consumed all around him that night, the particular Christian God he subscribed to was known to be dead set against alcohol.

  And wasn’t it more than a little ironic, he thought whimsically, that of all the men in the bar that night, the two furthest apart in their views should be the only ones who were stone-cold sober – though in Tommy’s case, it was doctor’s orders, rather than a firmly held belief, which prevented him from getting hammered.

  Behind him, he heard a voice call out, ‘Phil, Walter, you’re on.’

  The two men he had chosen as his shield between himself and Tommy turned around, and ambled over to the snooker table. Now, there was only a stretch of empty counter dividing him from Tommy Sanders, but that was more than enough, as long as they behaved themselves.

  As it happened, it was Len’s hand which misbehaved, knocking over the glass which the steward had placed on the bar. A stream of bubbly liquid cascaded through the air, and then descended again – with enviable accuracy – on to the left sleeve of Tommy Sanders’ best sports jacket.

  Tommy looked down at the stain, and then across at Len.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing, you clumsy old bugger,’ he said, though using the kind of light-hearted tone he would have employed if they were still the friends they had once been.

  ‘I’m sorry, lad,’ Len replied. ‘Can I buy you another drink?’

  ‘It wasn’t my drink you spilled,’ Tommy pointed out.

  ‘Well, then, let me pay for that nice jacket of yours to be dry-cleaned,’ Len suggested.

  ‘It’s only lemonade – it won’t stain,’ Tommy said.

  He should have left it at that – a slight accident and an amiable resolution. But those who knew Tommy well – and most of the people in the Institute did – were not in the least surprised that he didn’t.

  ‘I’ll let you buy me a drink – in fact, I’ll buy you one – but only if you’re willing to start being more sensible about this strike ballot,’ he continued, in a much louder voice.

  ‘Do you think you can buy my soul for the price of a glass of lemonade?’ Len asked, and though there was an edge of anger to his tone, it wasn’t yet an anger which could not be reined in should he choose to.

  Around them, all talking had ceased, and the attention of everyone in the room was focussed on the two old men.

  Tommy sighed, in an exaggerated manner, as if he could not believe that Len Hopkins was being so stupid.

  ‘Of course I don’t think I can buy your soul for a glass of lemonade,’ he said. ‘I know that you’re a man of principle – as I am myself – but you can’t blame me for hoping that, for just once in your life, you’ll see reason, now can you?’

  ‘I can see reason well enough,’ Len said. ‘And my reason tells me that a strike would ruin this industry.’

  ‘It’ll be ruined if we don’t strike,’ Tommy countered. ‘Don’t you realize how many pits have closed down since the war?’

  ‘And don’t you realize that this Tory government wants to close down even more – and that a second strike in two years will give it just the excuse it’s looking for?’ Len asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing . . .’ Tommy began.

  But then, instead of telling him anything, he began coughing violently.

  ‘Is that real?’ the woman asked Harry Price, as she watched the scene at the bar being played out.

  ‘Is what real?’ Price asked.

  ‘The coughing fit. Or is he just stalling, while he comes up with a new argument?’

  ‘Oh, it’s real enough,’ Harry said. ‘He’s got what the experts call pneumoconiosis, though to us miners it’s just “black lung”. It comes from breathing in all that coal dust and silica down the pit.’

  ‘And is it serious?’

  ‘In some cases – like Tommy’s – it’s very serious. Most people round here don’t think he’ll live to see next Christmas.’

  Tommy was continuing to cough, and Len Hopkins took a couple of steps sideways and laid his hand gently on the other man’s heaving shoulder.

  ‘Take it easy, lad,’ he advised.

  Slowly, the coughing subsided, and Tommy reached out for his glass of lime cordial and took a small sip.

  ‘Better now?’ Len asked sympathetically.

  ‘I’ll better be when you start thinking straight,’ Tommy said. He looked Len straight in the eyes. ‘Listen, lad, this strike won’t be just about wages – we want compensation for all the miners who’ve had their health destroyed by working down the pit. That’s only right and proper, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Len agreed sombrely. ‘It’s only right and proper.’

  ‘And the thing is,’ Tommy pressed on, sensing he’d gained the advantage, ‘your support could be vital in getting us that.’

  ‘I’m only one man,’ Len said. ‘I can’t alter anything.’

  ‘Now you know that’s not true,’ Tommy said. ‘There are certain miners whose word carries more weight than others – and you’re one of them. With you backing us . . .’

  ‘That isn’t going to happen.’

  ‘. . . we could win the ballot. But without you . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry, Tommy, I really am,’ Len said – and he sounded it. ‘Now, given your condition, I understand how you feel, and if I was in your shoes, I’d probably feel the same.’

  ‘That was a bit below the belt, wasn’t it?’ Zelda asked Harry Price.

  ‘It was, the way it came out,’ Harry agreed, taking a thoughtful, but generous, slug from his pint of bitter. ‘But I don’t think it was intended that way. Len’s just trying to be honest – like he always is.’

  Tommy Sanders swayed a little, then steadied himself.

  ‘And if I was in your shoes,’ he said, his voice thick with malice, ‘if I had no family to follow in my footsteps – then I might feel the same as you do. But I very much doubt it.’

  ‘Now that really was below the belt,’ Harry whispered. />
  ‘What makes you say that?’ Zelda wondered.

  ‘Len had two sons – great lads by all accounts – but they were killed, along with Len’s wife, in a car crash, twenty years ago now.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Zelda said.

  Things were turning nasty at the bar.

  ‘You’re a bastard, Tommy Sanders!’ Len Hopkins hissed.

  ‘You’re the bastard,’ Tommy shot back at him. ‘You’re a mean, bitter bastard who wants to stop everybody else having what he can’t have himself.’

  Later, when the Mid Lancs police had become involved, there were people who would claim that it was Len who launched the attack, though there were others – equal in number – who were prepared to swear that Tommy had started it. But whatever the truth, blows were exchanged before anybody watching really had time to grasp what was happening, Tommy punching Len on the jaw, and Len hitting Tommy hard on the nose.

  Several of the miners – Harry Price among them – jumped to their feet and rushed over to the bar, grabbing the two combatants and pulling them apart.

  ‘Now, fellers, we don’t want any trouble,’ said the bar steward – approximately thirty seconds too late. ‘In a minute, I’m going to ask these lads to let go of you, and when they do, I want you to shake hands.’

  ‘I’d rather shake hands with the devil,’ Tommy snarled, between gasps for breath.

  ‘And I’ll not shake hands with him,’ Len said. ‘But I didn’t come here looking for a fight, and if you let me go, I’ll leave quietly.’

  The bar steward nodded, and the miners released their grip on Len.

  Len walked towards the door, stopping only to exchange a few words with some miners, sitting at a table near the door, who supported his anti-strike stance.

  Tommy turned to face the bar steward. ‘I’ll have a whisky,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure you should, what with your condition and everything?’ the barman asked dubiously,

  ‘I’m sure,’ Tommy said, ‘and while you’re at it, make it a double.’

  Harry Price smoothed down his jacket and looked across the room to the seat where Zelda, the woman with whom he’d been looking forward to spending an erotic evening, should have been sitting – only to find that her place was empty.