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  ‘I agree,’ Beresford said, ‘and that’s why, if I’m kicked off the investigation, you’ll have my resignation on your desk by the end of the day.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’d never consider—’

  ‘And it won’t be the only one – you’ll have DS Meadows’s and DC Crane’s resignations as well.’

  ‘Anyone else? Will the station cat be resigning?’

  ‘No, sir – just me, Meadows and Crane.’

  Pickering sighed. ‘If you’re going to threaten me, DI Beresford, you should at least make sure that your threat is credible,’ he said, with a new, harder edge to his voice.

  ‘With respect, sir, it’s not a threat, sir – it’s a statement of fact,’ Beresford said levelly.

  Pickering sighed with exasperation. ‘Look, I know you’re upset, and I’m making allowances for that, but I really can’t have you talking to me in this way. Whatever you might say now, you know, deep down inside yourself, that you’d never throw away your career like that – and if you wouldn’t, then I’m bloody certain the other two wouldn’t.’

  Beresford looked around him, and found that the woman he was looking for was stretching yellow police tape between two elm trees.

  ‘Could you come here, Sergeant Meadows?’ he called out.

  Pickering watched Meadows walk towards them. The sergeant was an enigma to him, and – he suspected – to many other men on the force. She wasn’t particularly tall, and she certainly wasn’t particularly curvaceous. Her dark hair was cut so short it lay on her head like a piece of black velvet. She rarely smiled, and – even at Christmas parties – never said anything even mildly flirtatious, and yet though he was at the top of the tree, and she was somewhere near the bottom, she sometimes scared him. But even so … even so, she featured heavily in his daytime fantasies, and even more often in the darker ones he had when he was asleep.

  Meadows came to a halt next to Beresford. ‘Is there something I can do for you, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ Beresford told her, ‘I just want to keep you up to date with the latest developments.’ He paused. ‘Mr Pickering wants us off this investigation. What do you think of that?’

  Meadows shrugged indifferently. ‘It’s not really my place to think about it at all, is it, sir?’ she asked. ‘Who is or isn’t on the case is entirely the chief constable’s decision.’

  ‘Well, at least one of you seems to be capable of looking at things sensibly,’ Pickering said, doing his best to keep a complacent smile from curling the edges of his mouth.

  ‘You wouldn’t argue, but what would you do if you were taken off the case?’ Beresford asked Meadows.

  ‘What would I do?’ Meadows asked. ‘I’d resign, so I could carry out my own investigation. I expect DC Crane would do the same.’

  ‘Clear the way,’ a voice shouted. ‘Clear the way. There’s a stretcher coming through.’

  All heads turned towards the woods, as the paramedics appeared, carrying the stretcher between them. By the side of the stretcher, holding a drip high in the air, was Dr Shastri, her usually lively face about as animated as a dried raisin.

  And lying strapped onto the stretcher – her head swathed in bandages, her skin the colour of the whitest chalk – was Monika Paniatowski.

  Oh Christ, what if she never comes out of it? Beresford thought. What if she stays like this forever?

  The paramedics slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, then one climbed inside, and the other closed the doors. The engine was already running, and the moment the driver was behind the wheel, the ambulance started to gently pull away.

  Beresford turned to the chief constable.

  ‘She’s our boss, sir,’ he said – and Pickering noticed the moisture forming in his eyes. ‘We don’t want to make things difficult for you, but we have to be part of the search for Monika’s attacker – we don’t have any choice.’

  If they all resigned, the chief constable thought, it would look as if he hadn’t been able to handle them properly – and that would be very bad indeed, especially if the press somehow managed to pick up on it.

  ‘In the light of your obvious strength of feeling, I’m prepared to bend a little more than I normally would,’ he said. ‘I’ll assign you to DCI Dixon’s team, if that’s what you want.’

  He paused, to give them time to respond.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Meadows said.

  ‘Appreciate it, sir,’ Beresford added.

  ‘But I will only do that on the understanding that you do exactly what DCI Dixon tells you he wants you to do,’ Pickering said. ‘That – and no more. Do you think you’ll be able to work within those restrictions?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Meadows agreed.

  And none of them believed a word of it.

  ‘Somebody’s got to be there at Monika’s house to deal with Louisa, when she gets back from her match in Yorkshire,’ Kate Meadows said, when the chief constable had left.

  ‘I know,’ Beresford agreed gloomily. ‘I think it had better be me, because I’ve known her since she was a baby. She calls me Uncle Colin, you know …’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard her.’

  ‘And I’m almost a member of the family.’

  ‘There’s no almost about it,’ Meadows told him, ‘but somebody also has to stay here to make sure we don’t get shafted by Rhino Dixon’s band of merry men, and since you’re the ranking officer from our side, I think it should be you – which means that I get to break Louisa’s heart.’

  Was that the real reason she thought she should go and he should stay? Beresford wondered.

  Or was it that she thought that big flat-footed Colin Beresford couldn’t possibly handle Louisa with the sensitivity the situation would require?

  And if it was the latter, should he be offended or relieved?

  It was all so confusing – but you were bound to be confused when you’d just seen your best mate being carried away on a stretcher.

  ‘Thanks, Kate,’ he said, though he almost never called her by her first name. ‘I really appreciate it.’

  Meadows shrugged. ‘You do what you have to do.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what the boss was doing in the woods this afternoon?’ he asked.

  Meadows blinked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Beresford persisted. ‘If we knew why she was here, we might have some idea why she was attacked.’

  ‘Whoever attacked her, it had nothing to do with the reason she was here,’ Meadows said.

  ‘So you do know why she was here!’

  ‘I’d better be going,’ Meadows said. ‘We don’t want Louisa to learn what’s happened to her mother from someone else, do we?’

  TWO

  A convoy of three cars, headed by a mid-range Mercedes-Benz, announced the arrival at the woodland crime scene of Detective Chief Inspector William ‘Rhino’ Dixon and his team.

  The cars came to a halt on the road – just beyond the outer limits of the police tape – and their occupants spilled out onto the tarmac.

  Even from a distance, Dixon – who stood six feet four in his stockinged feet, and was as broad as a barn – stuck out from the rest of his team.

  He was not the most attractive of men, thought Beresford, watching developments from the edge of the woods. His eyes were small, his nose huge, his thick neck was inclined to lean forward under the weight of his massive head, and his skin was an unhealthy grey. When he spoke, it was with a rasping voice which came from having been a dedicated chain smoker (whenever finances permitted) since the day he put childish things behind him and graduated from the infants’ school into the primary.

  He had a habit of jabbing whoever he was addressing with a heavily nicotine-stained forefinger, and was reputed to be a bit of a bastard to those officers working for him.

  ‘Still an’ all,’ other bobbies in the canteen would say, ‘he does get results.’

  Indeed
he did get results, Beresford thought – but they weren’t as good as Monika’s.

  Dixon’s team gathered around their boss like adoring schoolchildren around a particularly popular teacher at sports day.

  Or perhaps, Beresford thought, they were more like medieval courtiers, who were well aware that their positions in court were entirely dependent on their monarch’s approval.

  He groaned inwardly.

  Medieval courtiers?

  Had he actually used ‘medieval courtiers’ in a comparison with the Mid Lancs police?

  He was definitely going to have to give up listening to young Jack Crane so much!

  Dixon had begun to address his team. His voice, though scratchy, was quite loud, and the fact that his words were being lifted by the breeze meant that Beresford caught most of them.

  ‘Sergeant Higgins, I want a recent picture of DCI Paniatowski on the front page of every local and regional newspaper within a fifty mile radius of Whitebridge,’ Dixon said. ‘The newspapers themselves will probably have plenty of photographs of Paniatowski in their own archives – but don’t leave the choice to them, select the one you think is likely to be most effective. Got that?’

  ‘Got it, sir.’

  ‘Inspector Marsden, you’re in charge of supervising the search of the woods. And bear in mind that when I say I want it searching, I mean I want it searching – just get this clear: I want each and every bloody leaf on each and every bloody tree examined as if it – and it alone – held the vital clue to the attacker; I want every blade of grass studied as if was a precious antique. And when your lads have been over it all once, I want them to go over it again. Understood?’

  ‘Understood, sir.’

  ‘Right, then bloody well get on with it,’ Dixon said.

  As his team got to work, DCI Dixon looked around him – and seeming to see Beresford standing there for the first time, waved, as if he were on a day trip and had just spotted a mate.

  Beresford – who was convinced that Dixon had actually noticed him the moment he’d climbed out of his car – wondered if he should wave back, and decided it might be safer just to walk towards the chief inspector, especially since the chief inspector had begun to walk towards him.

  Almost as if Dixon had choreographed it – and maybe he had – they met at the yellow tape.

  ‘I can remember the days when police barriers were made out of cast iron and solid wood,’ the chief inspector said. ‘Bloody big heavy things, so it’s hardly surprising that half the fellers I trained with got hernias and left the force on invalidity pensions. Still, I suppose it was as good a way of sorting the wimps from the men as any – it was certainly a lot better than the personality tests the police trick cyclists are always on at us to take these days.’

  Beresford said nothing – as with the wave, he was not sure that a response was either required or expected.

  ‘OK, Shagger, you can relax now that the US Cavalry’s here to take over,’ Dixon said.

  Beresford blinked. He knew his nickname around police headquarters was Shagger – and as a man who had not lost his virginity until he was thirty, and had been making up for it ever since, he fairly revelled in the name – but no one had ever used it to his face before.

  ‘So how are you bearing up?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘Not too well, sir,’ the inspector admitted.

  ‘I thought you might say that,’ Dixon told him, stepping under the tape. ‘Walk with me.’

  Rhino set off, taking huge strides, around the edge of the woods. Beresford fell in beside him.

  ‘Any idea what your boss was doing in the woods on a Sunday afternoon, when any sensible person would be at home watching the box and having a good old farting session?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ Beresford replied.

  But Meadows knows, he thought – and Meadows is refusing, point-blank, to tell me.

  ‘The chief constable would like your team to be grafted onto my team,’ Dixon said. ‘In fact, it’s a little bit more than just liking it – he’s bloody insisting on it. Now, why would he want to do something which goes against both established procedure and common sense?’

  ‘Perhaps he thought about it and decided that we’d be useful to you,’ Beresford suggested.

  ‘Maybe he did, but if it was just that, he would have dropped it when I said I wasn’t interested,’ Dixon mused. ‘So it has to be more than his own puny thoughts – it has to be something you said.’ He grinned unpleasantly. ‘What did you do, Shagger – play the resignation card?’

  Beresford hesitated for a second, then realized that lying would be a pointless exercise, and nodded his head.

  ‘Silly bugger,’ Dixon said, contemptuously.

  ‘Now look, sir, you may not particularly like it, but I felt very strongly that—’ Beresford began hotly.

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ Dixon interrupted him, ‘but, you see, I haven’t finished chatting yet.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ Beresford replied contritely.

  ‘When I said “silly bugger” I wasn’t talking about you, Shagger,’ DCI Dixon continued. ‘I meant him – Chief Constable Pick-your-words-very-carefully. And the reason I called him a silly bugger is because a man in his position can’t afford to cave in to pressure from one of his underlings. If you’d made that sort of threat to me, my boot would have been so far up your arse that you’d have flown down to that unemployment office.’

  I can believe that, Beresford thought.

  ‘But what’s been done can’t be undone, so let’s examine the situation that we actually find ourselves in,’ Dixon suggested. ‘I don’t want you on my team, mainly because my lads don’t want you on my team. And the reason they don’t want you is because this is the kind of investigation in which reputations are made – and they’re terrified of outsiders stealing all the glory, especially when the outsiders in question are notorious for doing just that.’ He paused. ‘Anything you’d like to say, Shagger?’

  Plenty, Beresford thought. If we’re successful, it’s not because we’ve stolen the work done by other teams – if any of us even tried that, the boss would get rid of him in a heartbeat. No, we’re successful because we’re all bloody good and the boss is bloody marvellous.

  ‘Well, is there anything you’d like to say, Shagger?’ Dixon asked.

  ‘Not at the moment, sir.’

  ‘Then you’re smarter than most people give you credit for. Now, you do want to be on the team – fairly desperately, if I’m any judge – because you worked for Monika Paniatowski—’

  ‘I still work for her,’ Beresford interrupted.

  ‘Aye, I suppose it’s always as well to look on the bright side of things,’ Dixon said. ‘The point is, you feel entitled to be involved in the investigation, and I’m not entirely sure that you’re wrong.’

  ‘It’s not just me,’ Beresford said. ‘It’s Meadows and Crane as well. We all owe Monika a lot.’

  ‘So here’s what we’re going to do,’ Dixon continued. ‘You’ll attend all the briefings, and anything you feel you have to contribute, you will contribute. In addition, your sergeant can shadow my sergeant. But beyond that, you’ll follow your own line of investigation, quite independent of what my team is doing.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Beresford said gratefully.

  ‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Dixon cautioned him. ‘See that tree over there?’ he continued, pointing to an ancient oak.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Go and stand with your back to it, will you?’

  ‘I don’t see why I—’

  ‘I’m an old man – humour me,’ Dixon said, deceptively coaxingly.

  Beresford did as he’d been instructed.

  ‘Now spread your arms out,’ Dixon said.

  ‘I’m still not quite sure I—’

  ‘Just do it!’

  Beresford did. It was a wide trunk, so even with his arms outstretched, the backs of his hands were still in contact with the rough bark.

  ‘That’s
just perfect,’ Dixon said.

  ‘What is? The tree?’ Beresford asked, mystified.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perfect for what?’

  ‘I’ll tell you for what,’ Dixon said, standing directly in front of him, so that the inspector was forced to stay exactly where he was. ‘If your investigation impedes my investigation in any way—’ stab, stab, went the chief inspector’s nicotine-stained index finger into Beresford’s shoulder – ‘or if I find you’ve been holding back information because you want to make the collar yourself—’

  ‘That won’t happen,’ Beresford promised.

  ‘… then I’ll bloody crucify you,’ Dixon said, jabbing him once more for good measure, ‘and this is the very bloody tree I’ll crucify you against.’

  The room, it had to be said, was pleasantly furnished. The chairs were made of light wood, the coffee tables of black, smoked glass. The walls were painted in a soothing blue, and several prints – some of them pastoral scenes, others seascapes – had been mounted on them. There was a public address system – though only an expert like Meadows would have noticed it – but it had made no sound in all the time the two of them had been there, so perhaps some thoughtful person, realizing how painful it might be to those in distress, had decided to disconnect it.

  And yet, in all probability, this care and attention had little effect, because everyone and anyone who sat in this room knew – with a terrifying certainty – that beyond the door set in one of the soothingly painted walls, there were people who were dying.

  Meadows risked a glance at Louisa Paniatowski. Louisa had her birth mother’s dark Mediterranean beauty, but she also had a courage and determination she had acquired from her adoptive mother, the sergeant thought.

  The girl had not cried when she’d been told what had happened to the woman who was at the centre of her life, and she was not crying now – but the pain that was emanating from her was almost suffocating.

  What are you thinking, Louisa? Meadows wondered. What’s going through your brain? Are you imagining what’s going on beyond that door?

  But Louisa wasn’t thinking about that at all – for though her body was in the waiting room, her mind was back in the living room of the Paniatowski family home, some eight hours earlier.