The Red Herring Read online

  As the Chevrolet drew level with him, he came to attention and snapped off a tight military salute. The driver returned the salute. The Mini had already reached the woods, turned a bend in the road, and disappeared from sight. The Invicta followed it and a few seconds later, the car which had driven off the road earlier reappeared and set off in the same direction. It seemed as if everybody was getting their rations that night – except for the poor sap who’d been ordered to man the main gate.

  The sentry gazed into the darkness for a moment, then wondered if he dared risk lighting a Camel.

  ‘You lucky bastards,’ he said softly to the three now-departed vehicles. ‘You lucky, lucky bastards.’

  Most of the other kids in her class would be watching television by now, Helen Dunn thought. But then most of the kids didn’t have a father like hers. There was no point in telling Squadron Leader Reginald Dunn that she had finished her homework, even if she had, because he had got it fixed in his mind that his daughter needed to study for two and a half hours every night – including the weekends. And even though Miss Beale had told him she looked tired in class and probably needed to get to bed earlier, he had remained inflexible in his belief.

  ‘You get nowhere in this life without discipline and determination,’ he had told her often enough.

  He had a way of making her feel a failure even when she did manage to do well.

  ‘There are no prizes for coming second in anything,’ he’d say. ‘And no excuses, either. If you push yourself harder than anybody else, you’ll do better than anyone else.’

  ‘But what if I don’t care about doing better than everyone else?’ she’d once dared to ask him.

  And he had glared at her hard enough to melt her slim body down, and said, ‘After all the sacrifices your mother and I have made for you, you owe it to us to be the best. But more importantly, you owe it to yourself.’

  He had said the same to her sister, Janice. But he couldn’t say it any more, could he? Not now Janice was dead.

  Helen grieved for her sister a great deal, but there were times when she thought that of the two of them, Janice was the luckier. Through death, Janice had found a way to escape from their father’s incessant demands. Through her death, she had achieved some kind of victory.

  Keeping one ear open for the sound of her father’s footsteps on the stairs, Helen made her way stealthily over to her chest of drawers. The squadron leader inspected her room regularly – almost every nook and cranny of it – yet she had still managed to achieve two small victories of her own in spite of that. The first victory had been constructing a hiding place at all. The second had been what she kept hidden in it.

  She opened the top drawer as quietly as she could, and slid the neatly folded underwear to the front of it. Then, with infinite care, she removed the false back to the drawer and took out her prizes – a costume-jewellery bracelet, a Collins pocket English-Spanish dictionary and a cigarette lighter. None of them were of any use to her: she would never wear anything so obviously trashy as the bracelet (even if she dared), she did not speak Spanish and she felt no desire to smoke.

  That didn’t matter. What did matter was how she’d acquired them. She had stolen them all from shops in Whitebridge. She, the younger (and only surviving) daughter of Squadron Leader Dunn, was a thief. And though she knew now that she would never be brave enough to tell him – though she was aware that her other thefts, the ones which had been discovered, had put her in another’s power – she could not bring herself to regret it.

  Her revolt over, Helen sighed, returned the treasures to their hiding place, and looked down at her history book again. Miss Beale was giving them a test the following morning, and she knew it was not enough to get the top mark – she would have to score a mark which was easily the top.

  The Spinner Inn stood on the edge of a small village several miles from Whitebridge. In the past, it had served as a post house for mail coaches and as a watering hole for drovers and shepherds on their way to the big markets in Manchester. But those days were long gone, and now it relied for its trade on after-hours drinkers and couples who would prefer to have their rendezvous far away from the prying eyes of their friends, neighbours and – most especially – their husbands or wives.

  It was the pub’s isolation which had recommended it to the two men sitting at the furthest table from the bar. But even so, it did not seem to be quite isolated enough for the one in the green corduroy jacket, and as his companion – a man with thinning brown hair and heavy schoolteacher glasses – outlined the final arrangements, he let his eyes dart nervously round the room.

  The other man broke off his exposition, and sighed. ‘For God’s sake, Roger, pull yourself together!’ he said.

  ‘It’s easy for you to say that,’ Roger Cray replied. ‘You don’t have anything like as much to lose as I do. You’re not a married man. You don’t have any of my responsibilities.’

  ‘And it’s precisely because I’m not married that I’ll be running the bigger risk,’ Martin Dove argued.

  ‘How do you work that out?’

  ‘Because after it’s happened, suspicion will be bound to fall on people like me first. Whereas nobody will ever suspect that you––’

  ‘I don’t want to do it,’ Roger Cray said, trying to sound firm and failing miserably.

  ‘You’re lying,’ Dove told him. ‘You want to do it just as much as I do. You’re burning to do it. Do you realise how long we’ve been planning this – how long we’ve been relishing the thought of it?’

  ‘I––’

  ‘Months, Roger! Bloody months! And now, just as we’re on the point of achieving everything we wanted, you’re starting to get cold feet.’

  ‘Can you blame me?’

  Martin Dove frowned. The man was coming to pieces, he thought. He needed to say something quickly to distract him – something to temporarily turn his mind to pleasanter, safer subjects.

  ‘How’s the car?’ he asked. ‘Still having that trouble with your cylinders?’

  The change in Cray was almost immediate. The tension drained from his face, and a blissful smile replaced it. ‘I had two valves replaced, and now she’s running like a bird,’ he said. ‘I told you she was one of the first few ever produced, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  There was very little that Cray hadn’t told him about his 1953 Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, Dove thought sourly. Ever since he’d inherited it from his uncle, it had been one his main subjects of conversation.

  ‘Like a bird,’ Cray repeated. ‘You know what they say – “It’s the car that’s built to standards of a plane”.’ He laughed. ‘If only some planes were built to the standards of that car.’

  He had mellowed enough to be brought back to the main purpose of the meeting, Dove decided. ‘So we’re all right for tomorrow, are we?’ he asked.

  Cray looked worried again. ‘It’s a big risk,’ he said.

  ‘Of course it’s a big risk,’ Dove replied. ‘But think of the rewards. Think of the satisfaction.’

  ‘Think of the fact that we could spend the rest of our lives in prison,’ Cray said heavily.

  ‘And wouldn’t it be worth it, if we did?’ Martin Dove countered.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I do. This is something we’ve wanted passionately – both of us. And if we don’t see it through now, we’ll both regret it to our dying day.’

  But Roger Cray was no longer listening. Instead, he was gazing in horror at the pub door.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Martin Dove.

  ‘Have you seen who’s just come in?’

  Dove turned towards the door and saw the woman with the long red hair standing there. ‘Oh my God!’ he groaned.

  Verity Beale was as horrified to see the two men as they were to see her. Who would have thought that they’d choose this pub – in the middle of nowhere – to meet?

  She glanced nervously over her shoulder. Her date would arrive in a co
uple of minutes, and it was as important that he didn’t see these men as it was that they didn’t see him.

  She took a deep breath, and wandered over to the men’s table. ‘Martin! Roger!’ she said, feigning pleasure. ‘I never expected to see you two here. I didn’t even know you were friends.’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ Martin Dove asked, making it sound almost like an accusation.

  ‘We . . . we don’t know each other that well,’ Roger Cray mumbled. ‘We’re just casual acquaintances. Ran into each other completely by chance. And we . . .’ he glanced down at his almost untouched drink, ‘. . . we have to be going now, don’t we, Mr Dove?’

  ‘I . . . er . . . yes, I suppose we do,’ Martin Dove agreed unconvincingly.

  The two men rose awkwardly to their feet, gave Verity Beale a farewell nod, and headed to the door.

  Verity watched them leave. She had had her suspicions about both of them individually, but never of them together. It was certainly a development she would have to investigate more thoroughly in the morning. But right now, she had another task on her hands. For the moment she could only hope that they had left the car park by the time the big American car arrived.

  Once in the car park, Roger Cray gave full vent to the panic he had been trying to control whilst he was inside the Spinner.

  ‘That’s it!’ he said, in a voice which was almost a scream. ‘The whole thing’s off.’

  ‘Because we saw Verity?’

  ‘Of course it’s because we saw Verity!’

  ‘There’s no reason she should connect us with what’s going to happen,’ Martin Dove said soothingly.

  ‘The second she hears about it she’ll connect it with us!’ Cray babbled. ‘You could tell by the way she looked at us that she knew we were planning something.’

  ‘I’ll deal with her,’ Dove said firmly.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Don’t worry about the details. I’ve promised I’ll deal with her, and I will. I’ll do whatever’s necessary.’

  The evening rolled on. At ten to eleven, the landlord of the Spinner rang last orders. By a quarter past eleven, when most of the customers had left, he slid the bolt across the door to seal in the last few, illegal drinkers.

  It was at around twenty-five to twelve that Verity Beale, who seemed to have been deep in thought – not to say, troubled – downed the last dregs of her drink and announced it was time to leave. The landlord followed her to the door, and opened it for her.

  ‘Your feller didn’t stay long,’ he said.

  ‘No, he had to get back home,’ Verity replied.

  ‘Married, is he?’ the landlord asked.

  ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, he is.’

  The landlord shook his head. ‘You’re wastin’ your time knockin’ about with married men. You’re a good-lookin’ lass – why don’t you get yourself one that’s unattached?’

  ‘And why don’t you stick to pulling pints?’ Verity asked.

  ‘Fair point,’ the landlord agreed.

  Verity Beale stepped out on to the forecourt, and heard the door shut behind her. It was as she was walking to her Mini that she noticed someone standing in the shadows. She didn’t know who it was at first, but as she drew closer, the shape took a more distinct form and she felt her heart sink.

  ‘Have you been out here waiting for me?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we need to talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about.’

  ‘Don’t you realise what risk you’re putting yourself at?’ the man asked.

  Verity fumbled in her handbag for her cigarettes. ‘Maybe I am,’ she agreed, ‘but, as I’ve just told the landlord back there, what I do is my business and nobody else’s.’

  The man stepped forward. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘You’re so very, very, wrong.’

  Three

  There was nothing unusual about the way in which Jed Buckley started the next day. He was up before dawn, as he always was in October, and by the time the farming report was due to come on the wireless he was, right on schedule, sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of ham and eggs and a cup of tea in front of him. It was then that things started to go abnormally, because instead of the expected farming report he found himself listening to a BBC announcer talking, in a flat, unemotional voice, about the Cuban missile crisis.

  Buckley, like most of the other farmers he knew, had never thought much about politics. When the government had told him it was necessary to go and fight the Germans, he had gone – with little enthusiasm, but without complaint. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer periodically raised the duty on agricultural fuel, he merely shrugged and told himself that the folk in London would never really understand the hardships of farming. But this, he recognised, was different. This was just about as serious as things ever got.

  He no longer had any appetite for his food, and took the remains of it to the barn, where he tipped it into one of the buckets of pig swill he had mixed up the night before. That done, he picked up the buckets and made his way across the farmyard towards the sty.

  It was when he was halfway across the yard that he realised something was wrong, though it took him a few more steps to work out exactly what that something was. Though there was a clamour from the sty, as there always was this close to feeding time, the clamour on that particular morning was not directed towards him – the bringer of food – but seemed to be focused on the inside of the sty, instead.

  Buckley wondered what could have brought about this change in their behaviour. Perhaps the pigs, some of the more sensitive of the farmyard animals, had picked up on the general tension in the air, he thought. Perhaps, though they could never be expected to understand the concept of a nuclear holocaust, they had still managed to grasp the concept that existence was teetering on the edge of oblivion.

  He passed the cowshed, and heard his Herefords lowing. Somewhere to his left, his prize bantam cock was crowing loudly, to proclaim his power over his feathered concubines. One of the dogs barked. One of the cats slunk stealthily behind the tractor in search of unsuspecting prey. But there was no sign of the pigs’ pink snouts poking out over the top of the fence as they stood on their hind legs and urged him on.

  He reached the sty, and looked over into the pen. The pigs were not jostling around their trough, but instead stood in a tight bunch in the centre of the pen. Buckley puzzled over what was making them act so strangely. Then one of the sows shifted position – and he saw what was, undoubtedly, a human leg.

  The pails clattered to the ground, spilling the swill everywhere. The farmer pulled back the bolt on the gate and rushed into the pen, waving his arms and shouting almost hysterically.

  The pigs squealed, but were reluctant to give ground. Buckley, screaming at the top of his voice now, lashed out with his foot. The fat porkers grunted in protest, but finally retreated to the edges of the pen.

  The farmer looked down in horror. There was a woman in the frozen mud – a woman with long red hair. A piece of cord was wrapped tightly around her neck, and she was unquestionably dead. He didn’t think he knew her, but it was impossible to say for sure, because the pigs had been working on her for some time – and now all that was left of her face was bits of bone and gristle.

  DCI Woodend watched the covered stretcher being manoeuvred into the back of the ambulance, then lit up what should have been his second or third Capstan Full Strength of the morning, but was probably closer to his tenth.

  ‘I don’t like this, Monika,’ he said.

  ‘It’s not the kind of thing I enjoy seeing just after breakfast, either,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘That’s not what I mean,’ Woodend said. ‘You know how I work. I like to know where the victim was killed. I need to root around the scene of the crime, a bit like the pigs. In this case, I’ve no idea where the crime took place – an’ what’s even more troublin’ is that I don’t know why she
was brought here.’

  Monika Paniatowski looked beyond the pigsty to the sloping field which led down to the road. Half a dozen uniformed constables were criss-crossing it, their eyes fixed firmly on the ground. Standing at the edge of the field, watching them intently as they searched, was DI Bob Rutter. Apart from the police, there was nobody around – which was hardly surprising since the nearest village was a couple of miles away, and the nearest town of any size at least four or five.

  ‘You see what I’m gettin’ at?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Perhaps the killer murdered her near to his home – or even in it – and thought that if the body was discovered there, it would be likely to draw attention to him,’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘Yes, it wouldn’t be the first time the body’s been moved for that reason,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But I think you’re missin’ the point, Monika.’

  ‘Am I, sir? So what is the point?’

  ‘He doesn’t want her found near his home – fair enough – so he drives her out into the countryside. But why not just leave her on the side of the road? Or else drive her to somewhere much more secluded? Why run the risk of carryin’ the body across a field to dump it in the pigsty?’

  ‘Maybe he thought the pigs would destroy the evidence.’

  ‘Well, they’ve certainly tried their best to do that. But he can’t really have expected them to swallow her without trace. Which brings me back to my original point. Dumpin’ her somewhere she wouldn’t be found in a hurry makes sense. So does gettin’ rid of her body as quick as possible. But what he did achieved neither of those aims.’

  One of the constables bent down to pick something up, then made his way over to where DI Rutter was standing.

  It’s a handbag, Paniatowski thought excitedly. They’d found the victim’s handbag!

  Rutter took the bag off the constable, and carefully opened it up. He put his hand inside, and pulled out what looked like a small red booklet.

  ‘Seems as if we’ll be able to put a name to the victim before long,’ Paniatowski said.