The Red Herring Page 18

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘What’s your next question?’ Ainsworth asked.

  ‘You do know they threatened to beat the shit out of me if I got in their way, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m sure that was just a joke in poor taste.’

  ‘They weren’t jokin’,’ Woodend said firmly.

  ‘Then I’ll put in a complaint about their behaviour through the proper channels.’

  ‘An’ which channels might they be?’

  ‘Next question,’ Ainsworth said.

  ‘When can I see Cray and Dove?’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I can’t? But they’re vital to my investigation.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that.’

  ‘Cray’s car – which is an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, an’ so is practically bloody unmistakeable – was seen parked outside the Spinner the night Verity Beale was murdered. It was spotted again on the edge of the park, just before Helen Dunn disappeared. This mornin’ I’ve learned that Dove was also observed goin’ into the park just before Helen was kidnapped. Is all that coincidence? I don’t think so for a minute – an’ I’d be willin’ to bet you that if I showed Martin Dove’s photograph to the landlord of the Spinner, he’d recognise him as Cray’s drinkin’ companion.’

  ‘You’d win your bet,’ Ainsworth said. ‘Dove was with Cray in the Spinner the night before last. And the two were meeting in the park at the time Helen Dunn disappeared. But what they were up to has nothing whatsoever to do with either the kidnapping or the murder. I can assure you of that.’

  You lyin’ toe-rag! Woodend thought. But aloud, all he said was, ‘An’ what if your assurance just isn’t good enough?’

  ‘It’ll have to be.’

  ‘You’re askin’ me to investigate this kidnappin’ not only with my hands tied behind my back, but blindfolded as well,’ Woodend protested.

  ‘And I’m very sorry to have to do so, as I’ve already been at pains to point out. But that’s the way it has to be.’ Ainsworth took a sip of his Scotch. ‘If I were in your shoes, Charlie, I’d forget Dove and Cray altogether. Why not concentrate on your other leads instead?’

  ‘Because we don’t have any other leads,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Then find some,’ the DCC told him.

  The moment Woodend had left his office, Ainsworth picked up the telephone and asked to be connected to a number which he had already called several times previously that day.

  ‘Yes?’ said the cool voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re playing at there?’ Ainsworth demanded.

  ‘I take it that you’ve just had a visit from Cloggin’-it Charlie?’ the other man said.

  ‘Too right I’ve just had a visit from Woodend. He ran into your men at the school. They threatened him with violence.’

  ‘And what else did you expect them to do?’

  ‘I would have expected them to use a little tact, for God’s sake!’ Ainsworth said, exasperatedly.

  ‘You may not realise it, but we’re fighting a war here,’ the other man said. ‘It might not involve soldiers in uniform or pitched battles, but it’s still a war for all that. We don’t have time to go pussyfooting around, so even though we never set out to hurt Chief Inspector Woodend’s delicate feelings, you can’t expect me to shed any tears over the fact that we have.’

  ‘Woodend’s only one part of the picture,’ Ainsworth said. ‘I’m doing my very best to keep a lid on a bubbling pot here, and what you’re doing isn’t helping me at all.’

  ‘You won’t have to hold that lid down for much longer,’ the other man promised him. ‘By tomorrow morning it should be all over.’

  Then, without waiting for Ainsworth to reply, he hung up.

  Roger Cray looked around the room into which the bald policeman and his partner had thrust him. There was not much to see. It was a small room, and from the teddy bear pattern on the tattering and peeling wallpaper, he guessed that it had once been a child’s bedroom. And it was somewhere in Whitebridge – he was sure of that – because though he had been blindfolded for most of his time in the car, the journey had not long been long enough for them to have gone far beyond the city centre.

  He wished he could look out of the window, but the place it had once occupied had been so efficiently bricked-up that not a single ray of light from the outside penetrated it.

  For a moment, he contemplated escape, then quickly dismissed the idea. He had no tools to smash his way through the brickwork – the room was bare except for a single rickety chair, and that would soon splinter if he tried to use it as an implement. Nor could he see a way of getting through the door, because though the rest of the room was in a state of dilapidation, the door was new, and seemed to be made of solid steel. Besides, he admitted to himself, even if he had had a hammer and chisel, he would not have dared to use them, because the two men who brought him there might hear him – and he was more frightened of those two men than he had ever been of anything or anyone before.

  He heard footsteps in the corridor outside, then the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door creaked open, and he found himself praying that he could at least keep control of his bladder.

  The man who entered the room was tall, with film-star good looks, and was a complete stranger to Cray. He smiled, and said, ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting for so long.’

  ‘I . . . I want you to let me go,’ Cray stuttered.

  ‘I’m afraid that isn’t going to happen,’ the smiling man told him. ‘At least, not until you’ve given us what we want.’

  ‘And what do you want?’ Cray asked, tremulously.

  ‘Tell me about Verity Beale.’

  ‘Idon’tknow . . . I’m not sure how to . . .’

  ‘Start at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop. When and where did you meet her?’

  ‘I . . . I met her at the plant where I work about six weeks ago.’

  ‘And what was she doing in an aircraft factory?’

  ‘She . . . she said she wanted to organise an educational trip to it for some of her pupils. We got talking and . . .’

  ‘And you arranged to see each other socially?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’d really be very interested to know why she picked you to start socialising with.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The other man’s expression hardened. ‘Don’t lie to me, Mr Cray,’ he warned. ‘You’ll never get out of here if you lie to me.’

  Never!

  Never?

  The word bounced around Cray’s brain like an exploding bomb. ‘I . . . I thought at first she was attracted to me,’ he admitted.

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  ‘No, but she let me . . . she let me . . .’

  ‘Feel her up?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘You said you thought at first that she was attracted to you. What were your second thoughts on the matter.’

  ‘That she was more interested in me because of the friends I had.’

  ‘Specifically, she was interested in your friend Martin Dove.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But he’s not really your friend at all, is he?’ the other man asked. ‘He’s really no more than someone you share an interest with.’

  ‘You could put it like that.’

  ‘I do put it like that. You’re two pieces of shit who naturally found yourselves sticking together. But I digress. What made you start to suspect that Verity Beale was more interested in your associates than she was in you?’

  ‘The questions she asked. She tried to make them sound casual, but I could tell there was something more behind them.’

  ‘So it must have come as quite a shock to you when you saw her enter the Spinner the night before last?’

  ‘Yes . . . I . . . yes.’

  ‘It threw a real spanner into the works, didn’t it? You saw weeks of careful planning going down the drain.’

  ‘Ma
rtin said it didn’t really matter. He said we could still go ahead as planned.’

  ‘But you weren’t convinced, were you? So you came up with another plan, and Dove reluctantly accepted it. The two of you pretended that you were leaving the pub. But you didn’t go far. You waited on the edge of the car park. You saw the American, who Verity Beale had been drinking with, leave on his own. That was a lucky break for you, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No . . . I . . .’

  ‘Then, when she came out herself – alone and helpless – about half an hour after closing time, you grabbed her.’

  ‘I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . !’ Cray gasped.

  ‘Perhaps you knocked her unconscious right at the start, or perhaps that came later. The details don’t really matter. You bundled her into your car, and drove out towards Preston. Then one of you strangled her. Which one of you was it, Mr Cray? You? Or Dove?’

  ‘Neither of us! We didn’t . . . we never even thought of––’

  ‘There’s really no point in you taking the blame for something Martin Dove did. Maybe you didn’t even know he was going to do it. Perhaps he told you to take a walk, and when you came back she was already dead.’

  ‘This is crazy!’ Cray protested. ‘We’re not killers. All we were trying to do was––’

  ‘You could hang, you know,’ the other man interrupted.

  ‘But we didn’t kill her!’

  ‘Not for that. For the other thing. You’ll find when you go on trial – if we ever allow you to get that far – that the judge and jury will have absolutely no pity for you.’

  ‘If you ever allow us to get that far!’ Cray almost screamed.

  ‘But it doesn’t have to happen that way,’ the other man said, his voice suddenly soothing and reassuring. ‘If you co-operate with us, I’ll make sure that you get an easier time of it than Martin Dove does.’

  ‘We didn’t mean any harm,’ Cray sobbed. ‘We knew what we were doing was wrong in the eyes of most people, but we still felt driven to it.’

  The other man looked at his watch. ‘I have to be going, but I’ll be back,’ he said. ‘Use the time between now and my next visit to really think about what you can do to get out of this mess you’ve landed yourself in.’

  He turned and walked to the door.

  ‘Who are you?’ Cray asked anguishedly. ‘Who are you working for?’

  The other man smiled. ‘I’m working for justice, decency and the British way of life,’ he said. ‘And if you feel the need to put a name to me, then I suppose you could call me Horrocks.’

  Twenty-Seven

  Woodend paced Rutter’s office with all the anger of a caged and taunted lion.

  ‘How could I ever have brought myself to apologise to that lyin’ bastard Ainsworth?’ he demanded for the fifth or sixth time. ‘How could I have allowed rank to stand in the way of me tellin’ him what a loathsome shit he is? An’ even more to the point, how I could I have let myself leave his office without first beatin’ the truth out of him?’

  ‘It wouldn’t have helped the investigation to have you locked up, sir,’ Rutter pointed out.

  ‘But then what will help the investigation?’ Woodend asked. ‘Find some new leads, Ainsworth said. But we don’t need any new leads, because Dove and Cray are our men! They have to be! An’ we don’t even know where they’re bein’ held.’

  ‘Perhaps if we went over Ainsworth’s head . . .’ Rutter suggested.

  ‘To who? Chief Constable Henry-bloody-Marlowe? He’s a bigger twat than Ainsworth. I’m almost tempted to go the papers with this – let Elizabeth Driver loose on it.’

  ‘That’d ruin you,’ Rutter said.

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But it might just save Helen Dunn’s life!’

  There was a knock on the door, and a uniformed sergeant holding an evidence envelope in his hand entered the room.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ he said to Rutter, ‘but one of my lads found somethin’ rather puzzlin’ under a bush in the park.’

  ‘What is it?’ Rutter asked.

  ‘This, sir.’

  The sergeant placed the envelope on the desk, and Rutter carefully extracted the contents. It was a child’s pencil case – a long, oval one, with a red plastic cover in a tartan design.

  ‘Open it up, Bob,’ Woodend said.

  Rutter pulled on the zip, and flipped the case open. Inside the top, written in ball pen in a handwriting which looked remarkably like her sister’s, was the name ‘Janice Dunn’.

  ‘Oh Sweet Jesus,’ Woodend said, striking his forehead with the palm of his hand. ‘So Ainsworth was tellin’ the truth after all – at least about the kidnappin’.’

  ‘I don’t quite see . . .’ Rutter said.

  ‘It never crossed my mind,’ Woodend moaned. ‘I never suspected, even for a minute, that . . . that . . .’

  ‘That what, sir?’

  ‘Don’t you know?’ Woodend asked exasperatedly. ‘Isn’t it bloody obvious, lad?’

  One of the bastards he had in detention would crack soon, the man who sometimes called himself Jack Horrocks thought as he walked through the main door of Whitebridge Police Headquarters. Oh yes, either Cray or Dove – or possibly both of them – would cave in and give him all the grisly details he needed. And why? How could be so sure? Because he saw them for what they were – nothing but a pair of amateurs!

  How he despised them for that – for being dilettantes, for having the temerity to ever believe that they could play in the Big Boys’ league.

  Yet at the same time, he acknowledged the fact that for a man like himself – a man in a hurry, a man who wished to rise to the top of his particular ladder with the greatest possible speed – pathetic wretches like Cray and Dove were just the kind of fodder he needed to feed off.

  Horrocks came to a smart, almost military halt in front of the duty sergeant’s desk. ‘Where can I find DS Paniatowski?’ he asked.

  The sergeant looked up from his ledger. ‘Are you Mr Horrocks, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Sergeant Paniatowski called in a couple of hours ago. Said she was at the library.’

  ‘Which is just where she was supposed to be.’

  ‘Said she’d had a sudden attack of gastro-enteritis. Well, to be honest, what she actually said was that she was shittin’ and pukin’ all over the place. Said I should apologise to you for her, but that she was goin’ to have to go home. Hopes she’ll be fit enough to be back at work in the mornin’.’

  ‘Could you call her for me?’ Horrocks asked.

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  But all the sergeant got for his trouble was the engaged tone.

  ‘Probably taken the phone off the hook so she can get a decent sleep,’ he said, replacing the receiver on its cradle.

  ‘Yes, that’s probably exactly what she’s done,’ Horrocks agreed.

  Actually, he was not at all displeased about Paniatowski’s sudden illness, he told himself. He had needed her at the start of this investigation, because she was the one who knew about the initial spadework. And very valuable that knowledge had been, too. She had mentioned the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire to him, and that had set him off on Cray’s trail. But he’d got Cray now, and so Paniatowski had really become superfluous to requirements.

  Besides, he was starting to have serious doubts about her as a possible recruit for his network. True, she was both intelligent and ambitious, but she seemed to lack the degree of compliance he demanded from an agent. So perhaps it was best all round that she had suddenly become indisposed. Her attack of gastro-enteritis should keep her out of the way for at least twenty-four hours, and by the time she was up on her feet again he could be well away from this provincial backwater and back in London, where really important things were happening.

  Woodend had been prepared to deal with Squadron Leader Dunn if that was what was necessary, but it certainly smoothed his path for him that it was Mrs Dunn who answered the front door instead.
/>   ‘Have you found her?’ the woman gasped.

  ‘Not yet,’ Woodend replied, allowing his voice to express more optimism than he was actually feeling.

  Margaret Dunn nodded fatalistically, as if she expected no other answer – as if, in her mind, she had already selected the clothes which she would wear for her daughter’s funeral.

  ‘If you want to speak to my husband, I’m afraid he’s out,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to go, of course – he’d much rather had stayed here with me, waiting for news – but there’s a big flap on at the base.’

  A big flap, Woodend repeated silently.

  The words did not come naturally from Margaret Dunn’s mouth. They were certainly her husband’s words – and possibly also her father’s – but they were not hers. She should never have married someone in the services.

  ‘I’m sure you can help me just as much as he could,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Me?’ Margaret Dunn asked, as if she were surprised that anyone could consider her to be of any use for anything.

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I wanted to ask you about Helen’s pencil case – or rather, Helen’s pencil cases. She does have two, doesn’t she, although one of them didn’t originally belong to her?’

  ‘I bought a green one for Helen, and a red one for Janice,’ Mrs Dunn said. ‘After . . . after Janice’s accident, Helen asked if she could have her sister’s pencil case. I think she wanted it because it would remind her of Janice.’

  ‘An’ which one does Helen actually use?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Both of them.’

  ‘Not at the same time?’

  ‘No, of course not. I think that she uses her own mostly, but when she’s . . . when she’s feeling particularly lonely, she uses Janice’s.’

  ‘An’ which one was she usin’ yesterday?’

  ‘I didn’t see it, because it was in her briefcase. Is it important? I can go upstairs and check which one is there now, if you want me to.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t really matter,’ Woodend lied. ‘An’ I wouldn’t go mentionin’ any of this to your husband, if I was you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. What with havin’ to deal with both the distress he must be feelin’ over your daughter’s disappearance an’ the flap at the base, he’s got enough on his plate at the moment.’