A Long Time Dead Page 13

‘There seems to be an awful lot of guessing going on.’

  It was very difficult to be certain, with only a side-on view of the man’s face, but it seemed to Woodend that Birnbaum was deliberately twisting his features into what could only be called a look of bemused innocence.

  ‘I said, there seems to be an awful lot of guessing going on,’ the Chief Inspector repeated.

  Birnbaum turned to face him, and Woodend could see his suspicions had been correct – ‘bemused innocence’ was the look the other man had been striving for, and he’d almost got it right.

  ‘But why are you asking me all this stuff, Sarge?’ the American asked, establishing eye contact – but only briefly. ‘You were here yourself when they broke up.’

  ‘No, I wasn’t,’ Woodend corrected him.

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ Birnbaum agreed, making a very poor show of looking as if he’d only just remembered that fact. ‘You were shipped out of here shortly before then, weren’t you? Where did they send you to, Sarge? You never told us before you left.’

  ‘I couldn’t tell you. Any troop movements – even the movements of just one soldier – were top secret at the time.’

  ‘And there was me thinking you were just being unfriendly,’ Birnbaum said, with an unconvincing grin.

  ‘Bollocks!’ Woodend said. ‘You knew as well as I did that I couldn’t talk about where I was going.’

  ‘Maybe I did,’ Birnbaum agreed. ‘Maybe I’ve just forgotten that I knew. But the war’s been over for a long time, Sarge, so why not satisfy my curiosity now. Where did they send you?’

  ‘They sent me to the Isle of Wight,’ Woodend said, noting that with the change of subject Birnbaum was relaxing a little. ‘It was a grand place. A little world all of its own. You should try and visit it while you’re over here this time.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ Birnbaum said, now much more at his ease.

  ‘So tell me, Abe,’ Woodend continued, in a soft coaxing tone, ‘why did Robert Kineally and Mary Parkinson break up?’

  Birnbaum jerked violently, as if a charge of electricity had been sent through the chair on which he was sitting. ‘Who … who knows?’ he asked.

  ‘Did Mary Parkinson break up with Robert Kineally? Or did Kineally break up with her?’

  ‘Maybe it was a bit of both, Sarge,’ Abe Birnbaum suggested. ‘You know yourself what wartime romances were like – blazing passion one second, and cold blankets the next.’

  Not that wartime romance, Woodend thought. That wartime romance was very special.

  ‘You’re not under oath at the moment, Abe,’ he said, ‘but you may well be at some time in the future, so I—’

  ‘Under oath?’ Birnbaum interrupted. ‘What are you talking about? Why would I be under oath?’

  ‘—so I’m going to give you a second chance to answer my question, and this time, I want you to be completely honest with me. Do you know why Robert Kineally and Mary Parkinson broke up?’

  ‘No, I don’t know that,’ Birnbaum said, with a slightly squeaky wobble in his voice.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be his buddy,’ Special Agent Grant said suspiciously. ‘I thought he told you everything.’

  ‘Nobody tells anybody everything,’ Birnbaum replied.

  Woodend’s thoughts took him back to that damp night in May 1944 – back to that drab railway station, only a few miles from where he was sitting at that very moment.

  He had seen Mary.

  He had listened to Mary.

  And what she had told him had seared right through his heart.

  There’d been a moment, he remembered now, when he had almost decided not to get on the train at all – a moment when he had seriously considered returning to Haverton Camp and hurting someone very badly.

  But such heroics were the province of the matinee idols of the silver screen. Ordinary fellers, like Sergeant Charlie Woodend, had responsibilities which made any such dramatic gestures impossible. He had felt for Mary and Robert – felt for them deeply – but he still had his duty to perform for his country, his family and his Joan.

  He had climbed on the train, when it pulled into the station, knowing he was doing the right thing. But there was a part of him which had regretted the action – and still did.

  If Mary had told Kineally what she had told him that night, he thought – and there was no guarantee that she had – it was more than likely that Kineally had told Birnbaum.

  ‘One last question,’ he said to Birnbaum. ‘And again, I would caution you to think very carefully before you answer. Did the break-up have anything to do with Captain Coutes?’

  ‘Search me,’ Birnbaum said.

  And this time there was absolutely no question that he was lying.

  Fifteen

  The map which Monika Paniatowski held in her hands was curling at the corners, and yellowed with age. It had the words ‘TOP SECRET’ stamped in one corner of it, in bold black capital letters. And she supposed that once, back in the days when this American military camp had played a small – but significant – part in the huge gamble which was the Invasion of Normandy – ‘top secret’ must have been exactly what it was.

  She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine what it must have been like to be stationed in this place in 1944 – to be part of an army which had never once fired a shot in anger, but knew it would soon be facing up to troops who had been hardened by five years of bloody war.

  There must have been euphoria and despair, hope and fear, she thought. But it was impossible to conjure up such feelings now – when all that was left was a few decaying huts and the odd strip of crumbling concrete.

  She strode quickly over to one of the barrack blocks. This one, according to the map, was where the officers had been billeted. Logically, therefore, this must also have been the one where Robert Kineally spent his last night, before being stabbed to death by a German World War One Army knife, and then hastily buried in a shallow grave.

  She studied the map again, and gauged the distance from the hut to the site of the grave. A few hundred yards, at least. And in between the barrack block and the fence had been several other buildings, now long gone – the military stores, the cookhouse, the armoury.

  Even in the dead of night, the killer – whether he was Coutes or one of the Americans – had taken a very big chance in making that journey with the body slung over his shoulder.

  Unless, of course, Captain Robert Kineally hadn’t actually been dead at that point!

  Unless the killer had somehow persuaded his victim to accompany him to the chosen spot, and murdered him there!

  If that was what had happened, what excuse had the killer come up with to persuade Kineally to go with him? Whatever it was, Kineally would have had to have trusted the man, or he would never have agreed.

  She wondered what Woodend would make of her reasoning, when she talked to him about it later.

  And then, frowning without even realizing it, she wondered what Woodend would think if she told him what had happened between her and Grant the previous evening.

  She wouldn’t tell him, she decided.

  It was her own business who she saw in her free time – who she slept with in her free time. And though she doubted that Woodend would actually express disapproval – he probably thought it was her own business, too – she could eliminate even the possibility of unpleasantness by keeping the matter to herself.

  A couple of men had appeared by the wire, close to the site of the shallow grave. They were not soldiers, and – from their clothes – she guessed that they were not even Americans.

  So what the hell were a pair of British civilians doing wandering around close to a crime scene? Paniatowski lit up a cigarette, and began to walk quickly towards them.

  The two civilians – one skinny as a rake, the other much inclined towards plumpness – watched Paniatowski’s approach with growing appreciation.

  ‘Like it?’ the fat one asked.

  ‘Well, let me put it this way, I certainly w
ouldn’t kick it out of bed,’ the skinny one replied.

  Then they saw the document that the woman was holding in her outstretched hand.

  ‘What do you make of that?’ the thin one asked.

  ‘Looks like a warrant card to me,’ the fat one said.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ his friend agreed.

  ‘Bit of a passion killer, really.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  Paniatowski drew level with them, and came to halt. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Paniatowski,’ she announced. ‘And you are …?’

  ‘I’m Ben Tilley, and my good friend here is Lew Boardman,’ the fat man said.

  ‘And what do you think you’re doing here?’

  ‘We think we’re surveying,’ Tilley told her.

  ‘Surveying?’

  ‘It’s what we do. We’re charted surveyors, so it’s become a bit of habit, really. It’s how we put food on the table, clothe our young ones and keep a roof over our heads.’

  ‘You are aware that this is a crime scene, aren’t you?’ Paniatowski asked severely.

  ‘We should be,’ Tilley replied. ‘We’re the unfortunate devils who found the body.’

  ‘Cost us half a day’s work, that did, what with answering questions and filling in forms,’ Boardman added.

  ‘So you do know that you shouldn’t be here?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Shouldn’t be here?’ Boardman repeated. ‘But we’ve got permission. In writing!’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘That American chappie,’ Tilley said. ‘You know the one I’m talking about. He’s around your age. And he never uses a short word when he can find a long one instead.’

  ‘Grant!’ Boardman supplied.

  ‘That’s right, Grant,’ Tilley agreed. ‘He said that his team had done all the investigating it needed to—’

  ‘“Had carried out all the necessary investigatorial procedures,”’ Boardman corrected him.

  ‘—had carried out all the necessary investigatorial procedures,’ Tilley amended, ‘and there was no reason why we couldn’t get back to doing the job we’re paid for.’

  It made sense, Paniatowski thought. All the evidence had been bagged and sent back to the States, so there really was no reason to keep these men from their work any longer.

  ‘So you found the skeleton, did you?’ she asked.

  ‘She’s a clever girl to have worked that out, isn’t she?’ Boardman asked Tilley.

  ‘She didn’t need to work it out, Lew,’ Tilley replied. ‘We just told her ourselves.’

  ‘Still, it was quite clever of her to remember we’d told her, wasn’t it?’ Boardman said.

  Paniatowski sighed. ‘Were there just the two of you here at the time?’ she asked.

  ‘No, there was another chappie here as well,’ Tilley said. ‘You see, the developers—’

  ‘New Elizabethan Properties,’ Boardman chipped in.

  ‘—are based in London.’

  ‘And they decided they didn’t trust local people – people on the ground – to do a decent job.’

  ‘Why should they, when it’s well known that down here we all marry our cousins and do unspeakable things to sheep in the dead of night?’

  ‘So they sent somebody from their head office to look over both our shoulders.’

  ‘Full of himself, he was.’

  ‘I should say he was. Thought he knew it all. Thought he could teach his grandmother to suck eggs.’

  ‘He didn’t look quite so clever when we uncovered the body, though, did he?’

  ‘He certainly didn’t. He turned quite green. Or maybe it was purple.’

  ‘Looked like he was going to throw up.’

  ‘We drove him down to the railway station, didn’t we?’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘And we haven’t seen hide nor hair of him since.’

  ‘So now it seems that we can be trusted to work alone.’

  ‘Which suits us down to the ground. We don’t mind finding the odd skeleton.’

  ‘We’ve come across a lot of worse things than that in our job, we can tell you.’

  ‘Not that we would. We’d never describe any of them to a sweet innocent girl like yourself.’

  Paniatowski had abandoned her stern expression a long time ago, and now was finding it hard not to laugh. ‘Are you a natural double act?’ she asked. ‘Or have you had to work on it?’

  ‘Bit of both,’ Boardman said.

  ‘If we looked like Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, we’d probably be different,’ Tilley told her.

  ‘But since we’re more like Laurel and Hardy, we just have to play the cards we’ve been dealt,’ Boardman added.

  ‘Am I speaking to Chuck Woodend?’ asked the American voice at the other end of the transatlantic telephone line.

  What was this?

  A ghost?

  A spirit?

  A voice from the ether?

  Woodend’s mouth was suddenly as dry as a desert, and a crazed drummer began to beat out a frenetic tattoo in his head. No one had called him ‘Chuck’ since 1944, he thought, and even then, only one man had ever used the name.

  ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ the American asked.

  ‘Woodend here,’ the Chief Inspector croaked.

  ‘I’m Eugene Kineally,’ the caller announced.

  The desert receded, the drummer ceased his insane attack. No ghost – just a brother.

  ‘Good morning, Senator,’ Woodend said.

  ‘It’s the middle of the night here,’ Kineally told him, and then, as if to answer an unspoken question, he added, ‘With all that’s going on over there, I just couldn’t sleep.’

  I’ll bet you couldn’t, Woodend thought.

  ‘If this is about the inquiry into your brother’s death, then the person you should probably speak to is Special Agent Grant,’ he said aloud.

  ‘This isn’t an official call at all,’ Kineally said. ‘In the morning, I’ll be a senator again. Tonight, I’m just a brother.’

  ‘I see,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Have they told you I was the one who insisted the FBI be brought into the case?’ Kineally asked.

  ‘Yes, they have.’

  ‘And that the reason I insisted was because I didn’t trust either the military police or the British police?’

  ‘It may have been mentioned,’ Woodend said cautiously.

  ‘I’d never have made that demand if I’d known you were going to be involved with the investigation, Chuck. I want you know that I have absolute confidence in you.’

  ‘You do?’ Woodend asked, reeling from the shock. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Robert did.’

  ‘But how do you …?’

  ‘How do I know that? Because Robert wrote to me every day. Even when I was on active service in the Pacific, and he knew I wouldn’t get any mail for months – if ever – he never missed writing. I still have those letters, and sometimes, late at night, I … I read through a few of them, and it’s almost like he’s still here. He wrote about everything that happened to him – and he wrote a lot about you.’

  ‘I’m honoured,’ Woodend said humbly.

  ‘He told me that if he ever had to put all his trust in just one man, that man would unquestionably be you,’ the senator continued. ‘He had great faith in you, Chuck – and so do I.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Woodend admitted.

  ‘I want to see my brother’s death avenged. Even after all this time, I want to see justice done.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever I can to see that happens.’

  ‘That’s all that any man can promise. That’s all I wanted to hear you say.’ The senator’s voice began to crack. ‘It’s been a privilege to talk to you, Chuck. Good luck, and may God bless you!’

  The line went dead, but for at least half a minute Woodend stood as frozen as a statue.

  He had felt the heavy weight of the case pressing down on him before, but the phone call seemed to have made hi
s burden almost unbearable.

  Sixteen

  Bob Rutter had learned during his years in the Met that there were only two sorts of pubs which were regularly patronized by officers from Scotland Yard, and he had privately christened them ‘The Slimes’ and ‘The Steams’.

  ‘The Slimes’ were rough. They invariably had sawdust sprinkled on the floor – so useful for soaking up the blood that would undoubtedly be spilled by closing time! – and brass spittoons within expectorating distance of each table. They drew their clientele from the furthest, darkest fringes of society – burglars and fences, prostitutes and their pimps, bank robbers and would-be bank robbers, bookies and con men. When an officer immersed himself in one of these pubs, it was because he had to – because, if he wanted to talk to his snitches and listen to the current criminal gossip, this was the only place to be.

  ‘The Steams’ were a different matter altogether. There was no uniformity of fixtures and fittings about them. They could be smart or shabby – or on the way up or down, from one state to the other. They could be located on one of the broad city streets, or hidden away down a back alley. What gave them their special character – as with ‘The Slimes’ – was their clientele. They were policemen’s boozers – a home from home.

  In these pubs, a bobby was sure to come across someone else he knew on the Force, and be able to talk in a language the other man would understand. And if, due to pressure at work, a particular bobby became over-boisterous – or even fairly destructive – the landlord of the boozer had learned to look the other way. After all, they were only letting off steam, he would tell himself, and the police were normally good business. Besides, even if he did decided to report the infraction, who the hell was he going to report it to?

  The pub outside which Rutter was standing at that moment – The Thames Waterman – was neither a ‘Slime’ nor a ‘Steam’. Charlie Woodend would instantly have labelled it ‘poncy’ – by which he would have meant that it was the embodiment of a brewery designer’s distorted idea of what traditional pubs had once looked like. It was popular with clerks from the City’s merchant banks and brokerage houses, and both policemen and criminals steered well clear of it – which was why, of course, Rutter’s old friend, Inspector Tom Wright, had chosen it as the venue for their meeting.