The Red Herring Read online

  Suddenly they were out of the woods, and ahead of them was a high, barbed-wire fence which stretched as far as the eye could see. Paniatowski slipped her gears through a racing change just in time to slow to a gentle glide as they reached the barrier in front of the base’s main entrance.

  ‘You still think they’re just going to let us drive in, don’t you?’ she said to Horrocks.

  ‘Yes, I do. I can see no reason why they shouldn’t,’ the chief inspector replied.

  That’s because you’ve never actually met Major-bloodyminded-Dole yourself, Paniatowski thought.

  She changed down into neutral, and pressed on the brake pedal. The MGA came to a halt right beside the same unsmiling sentry who had admitted her earlier. The guard gestured commandingly to Paniatowski to wind down her window, but Horrocks signalled him to walk around to the other side of the vehicle, and – to Monika’s surprise – that was exactly what he did.

  ‘Chief Inspector Horrocks, Criminal Investigation Department,’ her passenger said. ‘I imagine you’ve already met Sergeant Paniatowski. We’d like to see your Major Dole, if that’s convenient.’

  ‘I’m gonna have to call it in before I can let you through the barrier,’ the guard said.

  ‘Of course you are,’ Horrocks agreed pleasantly. ‘I wouldn’t have expected anything else.’

  The guard walked back into his blockhouse, and picked up the wall-mounted telephone.

  ‘Do you want to take bets on whether or not Dole will be available?’ Paniatowski asked sourly.

  ‘I never bet on sure things, Monika. It would be robbing you,’ Horrocks told her confidently.

  The guard hung up the phone again, and walked back to the MGA.

  ‘All right?’ Horrocks asked.

  The guard nodded. ‘Major Dole says that you’re to go right up, sir,’ he said. He turned his attention to Paniatowski. ‘You know the way to his office, don’t you, ma’am?’

  ‘I do,’ Paniatowski replied, easing into gear again.

  She did not turn to look at Horrocks, but she was certain there would be a complacent smile on his face. She wondered how long it would take for Major Dole’s stonewalling to turn that smile into a scowl.

  Fifteen

  Margaret Dunn sat on the sofa, twisting the almost-skeletal fingers of her right hand continually around her bony left wrist.

  She was probably around the same age as her husband, Woodend thought, but even allowing for the stress she was under at that moment, it was plain that the years had not treated her anything like as kindly as they’d treated him. The woman looked a mess. Her mousy brown hair hung lifelessly over the sides of her skull, her large, frightened eyes bulged, and the skin on her right cheekbone was beginning to turn a nasty shade of purple.

  ‘Do you have any children of your own, Mr Woodend?’ the woman asked timidly.

  ‘Aye. A daughter. A bit older than your Helen.’

  ‘So you can imagine how I feel?’

  ‘All too well,’ Woodend told her. ‘You loathe an’ despise the man who’s taken your daughter.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You could watch him bein’ slowly torn apart by a pack of wild dogs, an’ not even be put off your dinner.’

  ‘You’re right. Does that make me a terrible person?’

  ‘Not at all. Like I said, I’d feel exactly the same way myself.’

  Had felt the same way himself!

  He remembered standing in the morgue at the back of the Southwark Coroners’ Court, looking down at Ellie Taylor’s frail body on the cold slab. Whatever they said about kids growin’ up quicker nowadays, she was still a child, with bosoms which were only just starting to develop and legs not much thicker than matchsticks.

  He had forced his eyes to follow the trails of caked blood which ran down her legs from both her vagina and anus. Her front teeth had been knocked out, too, for reasons which were obvious to him but which he prayed the man standing next to him would not understand.

  ‘You promised you’d get her back for us,’ old George Taylor had said bitterly.

  ‘I thought there was a good chance I could,’ Woodend had replied.

  Or rather, to be truthful, he had wanted to believe there was a good chance.

  ‘Will you at least catch the monster who did this?’ George Taylor had asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Woodend had admitted.

  But what he’d really meant was, ‘Not unless he makes a mistake the next time he does this.’

  ‘But however you feel about him, it’s important that you don’t let any of those feelin’s come through when you’re makin’ your appeal on television tonight,’ Woodend told Mrs Dunn.

  ‘Are you saying that you want us to speak to this . . . this animal . . . as if he were no more than a slightly misguided human being?’ Squadron Leader Dunn demanded.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m sayin’,’ Woodend told him. ‘An’ I’ll explain why. It’s because if he senses any animosity from you, he’ll close his mind off completely to anythin’ you have to say to him. Do you understand that?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Dunn said reluctantly.

  ‘An’ you, Mrs Dunn?’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ the woman replied, in a voice as dry and cracked as late autumn leaves.

  ‘Don’t talk about your daughter – talk about Helen,’ Woodend continued. ‘Force him to see her not just as an object he’s snatched for his own twisted reasons, but as a real person. Tell him that you’re not interested in seein’ him punished. Say all you want is to get her – to get Helen – back. If you feel the urge to cry, don’t hold in the tears.’

  ‘Won’t that make him see us as weak?’ the squadron leader asked. ‘Isn’t that just he wants?’

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight from the start,’ Woodend said, doing his best to hide his irritation. ‘He’s not interested in you at all.’

  No, the only person the kidnapper was interested in at all was young Helen. If he wanted to see anyone crawl – anyone begging him for mercy – it would be the poor bloody girl.

  ‘Is there anything else you want us to say?’ asked Margaret Dunn, showing more self-possession than Woodend would have given her credit for a few minutes earlier.

  ‘Talk to Helen directly,’ the chief inspector said. ‘Pretend she’s in the room with you. If you can keep speaking to her as a person, that might help force him to see her that way too.’

  ‘And what should I say?’

  ‘Whatever comes naturally. That you miss her. That you want her to come home as soon as she can.’

  ‘Should I say that we’ve already lost one daughter and––’

  ‘Margaret!’ the squadron leader said, his voice full of fury.

  ‘No, you shouldn’t say that,’ Woodend told her, gently. ‘Mention of anyone other than Helen would be a distraction – might even open an avenue of mental escape for him. He has to be focused on the girl he’s kidnapped – has to be made aware of the fact that she’s a human being too, with rights of her own.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes, I can see that,’ Margaret Dunn said meekly.

  ‘Well, that’s about it for now,’ Woodend said. ‘A police car will come an’ pick you up when it’s time to go to the studios in Manchester. I suggest you both get some rest before then.’

  ‘Rest!’ Dunn said, almost contemptuously. ‘I’ve got too many responsibilities to rest! Don’t you realise we could be on the verge of World War Three?’

  ‘Aye, I do,’ Woodend replied. ‘I’m just surprised that you’ve got any space left in your head to think about it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Dunn demanded. ‘A joke? Or a criticism?’

  Dunn was a cold bastard, Woodend thought, a really cold bastard! But he himself should not have allowed his personal animosity for the squadron leader get in the way of the job in hand.

  ‘If I’ve offended you, Squadron Leader, then I apologise,’ he said. ‘I know you’re under a lot of strain, an’ I should have made allowances for tha
t.’

  Dunn nodded. ‘Apology accepted.’

  ‘One more thing before I go,’ Woodend said. ‘If the reporters have got wind about what’s goin’ on by the time the car comes for you, they’ll be all over the street waitin’ for you to come out an’ talk to them. We’ll keep them behind a barrier, but they’ll still be close enough to start shoutin’ out questions the second they see you emerge.’

  ‘Vultures!’ Dunn said bitterly. ‘That’s what they are – vultures hovering over other people’s misery.’

  ‘I wouldn’t argue with that,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘So what am I to do? Am I to answer their questions? Or do I just walk over to the barrier and punch their goddam heads in?’

  ‘You’re to do neither of those things,’ Woodend told him. ‘You’ll ignore them, because if you say anythin’ at all, they’ll use it as an excuse to misquote you in their papers. An’ that’s the last thing we want. We need to reach the kidnapper through his television set, which we can control, not through the newspapers, which we can’t. Understood?’

  ‘Understood!’ Dunn snapped back, crisply.

  ‘I’ll see myself out,’ Woodend said. He walked over to the door, then suddenly swung around again. ‘By the way, Mrs Dunn, what happened to your cheek?’ he asked.

  ‘My cheek?’ the woman asked nervously.

  ‘That swellin’ you’ve got just below your eye could develop into a real beauty of a bruise.’

  ‘Yes, I . . . I know,’ Mrs Dunn stuttered.

  ‘So how did it happen?’

  ‘I . . . I walked into a door.’

  ‘Well, when you get to the studio, make sure that the make-up girls who are lookin’ after you do all they can to cover it up. If they don’t . . .’ Woodend continued, turning away from the woman and looking directly at her husband, ‘. . . if they don’t, a lot of the viewers are goin’ to start thinkin’ that somebody’s been knockin’ you about, aren’t they?’

  Major Dole greeted Paniatowski and Horrocks at the door of his office, and waved them genially to the chairs in front of his desk. Once they were sitting down, the major returned to his own side of desk, resumed his seat and leaned back in a way which Paniatowski quickly decided was deliberately contrived to show just how relaxed he felt about the meeting.

  ‘So just what can I do for you guys?’ the major asked.

  ‘Sergeant Paniatowski tells me that when she talked to you earlier, you indicated that you didn’t feel able to bring yourself to co-operate with us over this murder investigation,’ Horrocks said.

  Dole frowned. ‘Is that what she said? I don’t see how she could have ever gotten such an impression from what I told her.’

  ‘What you said was that you were far from convinced we had authority of any kind on this base,’ Paniatowski retorted angrily. ‘You further said that with the crisis over Cuba, you didn’t have time to deal with what you regarded was a purely local domestic matter.’

  Dole smiled at Horrocks. ‘That’s a complete misreading of the situation as I presented it,’ he told the man from the Yard. ‘Wasn’t it your George Bernard Shaw who said that the English and the Americans are two nations divided by a common language?’

  ‘I believe it was,’ Horrocks said, not returning the smile. ‘But though I’ve only known Sergeant Paniatowski for a short time, she doesn’t strike me as the sort of officer who completely misreads any situation.’

  ‘Then perhaps it’s all my fault,’ Dole conceded, his smile melting away as quickly as it had appeared. ‘And if that’s the case, then I apologise. I never meant to imply that we weren’t willing to help. I merely pointed out that it might take a little time.’

  ‘No, you bloody well didn’t!’ Paniatowski said, with feeling.

  ‘That will do, Sergeant,’ Horrocks said, slightly sharply. ‘Please carry on, sir.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Dole said. He turned to Paniatowski. ‘When you were here earlier, you suggested that Miss Beale was seen having a drink with an American officer in a pub called the Spinner, didn’t you?’

  ‘No!’ Paniatowski said firmly.

  ‘No?’

  ‘I said he was military, but I never suggested he was an officer. And I certainly didn’t mention the name of the pub.’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t,’ Dole agreed amiably. ‘Perhaps I got the name of the pub from the officer in question.’

  ‘So you’ve identified him, have you?’ Horrocks asked.

  ‘Sure, I have. His name is Captain Wilbur Tooley, and he is fully prepared to admit that he was in the pub with Miss Beale – though not, of course, that he had anything to do with her subsequent death.’

  ‘And we’re supposed just to take his word – and yours – for that, are we?’ Paniatowski demanded. ‘We’re expected to say that he couldn’t have done it because both he and his good friend Major Dole say he didn’t?’

  ‘He’s no particular friend of mine, and, no, I would not expect you just to take our word for it,’ Dole replied evenly.

  ‘So we can talk to him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there’s no time like the present,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Where can we find him?’

  ‘You can talk to him – but not right now.’

  ‘I told you he’d stall,’ Paniatowski said to Horrocks. ‘This is exactly the same sort of tactic he was using with me earlier. Sound reasonable – but give nothing away!’

  ‘Is that what you’re doing, Major Dole?’ Horrocks asked, as if he were only mildly interested.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Dole said. ‘At the moment, we’re facing a real crisis here. With President Kennedy and Mr Khrushchev in apparent deadlock, we can’t afford to rule out the possibility that the Reds will decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against certain strategic targets, and in order to maintain our capability to respond effectively to such an attack, it has been deemed necessary to make sure that our capability is beyond their reach.’

  ‘Or to put it in layman’s terms, you’re worried that the Russians might blow up this base before you have a chance to drop a few bombs on them?’ Horrocks asked.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And in order to make sure that doesn’t happen, you’re keeping your planes in the air for most of the time.’

  ‘You got it,’ Major Dole agreed.

  ‘And one of the men who’s keeping the planes out of the Communists’ reach is this Captain Tooley.’

  ‘Right again.’

  ‘I see,’ Horrocks said, stroking his chin with index finger. ‘So when will Captain Tooley be landing again?’

  ‘I’m not allowed to tell you that, Chief Inspector. Security reasons, you understand. But what I am prepared to tell you is that if you want to interview him tomorrow morning, either on base or the police station – whichever you prefer – then there should be no difficulty with that.’

  ‘That sounds very reasonable, doesn’t it, Sergeant?’ Horrocks asked Paniatowski.

  ‘Yes, that sounds reasonable,’ Paniatowski replied, forcing the words out through her clenched teeth.

  ‘There . . . er . . . is one other thing,’ Dole continued. ‘I’d be grateful if, until you’ve spoken to him, you didn’t drop the captain’s name in conversations with other people any more than is absolutely necessary.’

  ‘Security considerations again?’ Paniatowski asked sourly.

  ‘In a way,’ Dole said, reluctantly.

  ‘In what way?’ Paniatowski persisted.

  ‘You’re determined to have your pound of flesh, aren’t you?’ the major asked.

  ‘I think I’ve earned it,’ Paniatowski told him.

  Dole sighed. ‘Very well. Captain Tooley happens to be a married man. If you discover that he had anything to do with Miss Beale’s death, then his little assignation with her will, of course, have to be made public. But if he’s innocent – and I’m personally convinced that he is – then there really is no point in dragging his private life through the mud, is there?’

  ‘Ar
e you telling us he was having an affair with Verity Beale?’ Paniatowski demanded.

  ‘I think it would be better to let Captain Tooley speak for himself on that particular matter.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Horrocks. He stood up and held out his hand to Major Dole. ‘Thank you for your help,’ he continued. Then he looked pointedly at Monika Paniatowski.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Paniatowski said grudgingly.

  All the way back to Whitebridge, Paniatowski kept replaying both her meetings with Dole in her head.

  What had caused the change in his attitude between the first and the second encounters? What had converted him from a man apparently determined to fight her every inch of the way to one who seemed almost willing to do at least half their job for them?

  Was it because she was only a detective sergeant, while Horrocks carried the weight of being a chief inspector?

  It was a tempting theory, but if that had been case, why hadn’t he come right out and said that he wasn’t prepared to deal with someone so low down the chain of command? Why had he, instead, seemed to indicate that he wouldn’t deal with the civilian authorities under any circumstances?

  If she couldn’t work out what had changed, she should perhaps try to isolate what hadn’t, she told herself.

  She pictured his face, and quickly came to the conclusion that there had been no real change at all. Despite his smiles and his jokes, the same, basically antagonistic Major Dole had been present at both meetings. So if he’d shifted his ground, it hadn’t been because he wanted to, but because someone else – someone more important – had told him that was what he had to do.

  Sixteen

  Through the windscreen of the police car, Woodend could see the long queue of double-decker buses and taxis, vans and private cars. Occasionally one of the frustrated motorists in that queue would hoot angrily on his horn, but it was a pointless gesture, because nothing was moving. In fact, nothing had moved for a good ten minutes.

  ‘I’m sorry about this, sir,’ said his driver.

  ‘It’s not your fault, lad,’ Woodend told him. ‘The only people who can take any blame for this are God an’ the Manchester Police. Any idea what’s causin’ the hold-up?’