Golden Mile to Murder Page 4

  ‘On the other hand, I’ve got my sights set on being an assistant chief constable before I retire,’ Turner admitted. ‘And you don’t achieve that ambition by crossing a man who’s two steps further up the ladder than you are.’

  ‘So would you care to spell it out for me?’

  ‘I’m prepared to give you more rope than Mr Ainsworth would probably be happy with,’ Turner said. ‘On the other hand, I’m not willing to put my own neck in the noose just to spare yours.’

  ‘Thanks for bein’ so honest with me,’ Woodend said. ‘Well, that about covers everythin’, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Turner agreed, standing up. ‘So if you’d like me to introduce you to your team –’

  ‘That can wait for later,’ Woodend told him.

  ‘Later?’

  ‘Aye. Before you introduce me to these four poor buggers who’ve been foisted on me, I think I’d like to wear out a bit of shoe-leather cloggin’ it up an’ down the Golden Mile.’

  The woman making her way along the promenade was wearing a flowing black skirt and a garishly embroidered jacket. On her head was a red kerchief, and hanging from her ears were a pair of heavy gold earrings. There was other evidence of gold about her person, too – bracelets, rings and chains. It was not that she particularly liked gold jewellery – as a matter of fact she considered it rather vulgar – but it was what the punters expected her to wear, and she supposed it was as good an investment as putting the money in the bank.

  She had reached her kiosk – her place of business. It stood on a corner, next to a newly opened bingo hall. She stopped for a moment and listened to the caller shouting out the numbers.

  ‘Eighty-eight – two fat ladies. Twenty-two, two little ducks, quack, quack. Twenty-one, key to the door.’

  Now that really was mumbo-jumbo, she thought.

  Her booth was painted with the same traditional swirling pattern as had appeared on so many horse-drawn caravans in the past, and the sign over the door read, ‘Gypsy Elizabeth Rose. The only genuine Romany on the Golden Mile.’ More than a dozen photographs hung from the wall – each one featuring Elizabeth Rose standing next to a celebrity who was doing a summer season in Blackpool. The punters liked that.

  Elizabeth Rose unlocked the door, stepped into the booth, and slid behind her consulting table. It would probably be a few minutes before the first customer turned up, so there was time for her to smoke a cigarette if she wished. And she did wish – but she didn’t dare take the risk of being spotted with a Players’ Navy Cut between her lips. Gypsies were not supposed to smoke. Gypsies were not supposed to do anything that normal people did. Ah, but if only those ‘normal’ people could see her when the season was over – holidaying on the Isle of Capri. No red kerchief then. No bangles. She dressed as smartly as a countess and spoke an elegant English unhedged with ominous warnings and dark predictions.

  Neither of her lives could be called a fake, she thought as she reached for the gin bottle which rested against the leg of the table. She really was that sophisticated woman in Capri. And she really was an authentic gypsy who could sometimes see into the future when she was in Blackpool. She hadn’t foreseen the death of Detective Inspector Punch Davies, though. And perhaps she should have, because it hadn’t needed psychic powers to divine that the course he was heading on was almost bound to lead to tragedy.

  As she lifted the gin bottle to her mouth, she noted that her hands were trembling. And why shouldn’t they be? Hadn’t she got a right to be afraid when she was almost certain she knew who had murdered the policeman? Wasn’t she entitled to shake when she examined her own predicament and saw that Davies’ death had set off a trap which now gripped her in its iron jaws?

  Six

  The area under the Central Pier where DI Davies had been found was roped off and guarded by three young constables, but on either side of the ropes – and for as far as the eye could see – the beach was filled with canvas deckchairs. Woodend let his gaze rove over the thousands of people who had chosen to spend their time on the beach. It was a hot day, and some of the men had taken off their jackets and even loosened their ties, but few had gone so far as to remove their sleeveless pullovers. Further away, down at the edge of the sea, a group of young women had tucked the hems of their dresses into the bottom of their knickers, and were tentatively paddling in the water. It could have been a scene from his own childhood, the chief inspector thought.

  ‘That’s where the body was found,’ DCI Turner said, pointing to a strip of sand between two of the pier’s cast-iron supports.

  ‘But was that where he was killed?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘It seems likely.’

  ‘You can’t be sure?’

  ‘The tide was just going out. If there’d been any signs of a struggle the sea would have washed them away. But if Punch was killed somewhere else, how did the murderer get his body under the pier? He couldn’t very well drag it along the prom, now could he? There’d have been too many people about.’

  ‘Perhaps he brought it along the sands,’ Monika Paniatowski suggested.

  Turner shook his head. ‘He’d have been spotted by someone on the promenade, Monika, and whoever saw him would have been bound to report it. No one has.’

  ‘He could have been brought by boat,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘What would have been the point of that?’ Woodend asked. ‘If the killer had gone so far as to load the body into a boat, why not simply dump it in the sea?’

  ‘Perhaps because he wanted it to be found.’

  It was possible, Woodend thought, but not likely. The most obvious explanation was probably the accurate one: that Davies had been killed where he’d been found. Woodend closed his eyes – a trick he’d learned helped him to concentrate his mind. There were two explanations for Davies being under the pier, he reasoned. The first was that he’d been following someone, the second that he’d gone there for a meeting.

  ‘What sort of case was Inspector Davies workin’ on the day he died?’ he asked Turner.

  ‘As far as I remember, he was running three investigations.’

  ‘An’ they were –?’

  ‘A suspected car-theft ring, a series of cat burglaries in Poulton-le-Fylde, and a hit-and-run case in Fleetwood.’

  None of which seemed to have any connection with the Golden Mile, Woodend thought – not that he could rule out that possibility altogether. He noticed a stall selling seafood further down the sands, and reached into his pocket for some change.

  ‘Just nip down there an’ get us a ration of Morecambe Bay prawns, will you, lass?’ he asked Paniatowski, holding out the money to her.

  Paniatowski gazed down at the hand as if the sight of it offended her, then, slowly and reluctantly, took the coins and headed off towards the stall.

  Woodend waited until she was out of earshot, then turned to Turner and said, ‘I’m tryin’ to give that lass plenty of slack, Ron, but I’m findin’ it bloody hard work. She’s as brittle as treacle toffee, you know – an’ not half as sweet.’

  ‘She’s not had it easy,’ Turner said.

  ‘I can see it might be hard work bein’ a woman in a man’s world,’ Woodend conceded, ‘but she’s goin’ to have to come to terms with that if she wants to be successful. An’ she’s goin’ to have to learn to recognise it when people are on her side.’

  ‘When I say she hasn’t had it easy, I’m not talking about the ragging she’s had since she’s joined the police,’ Turner told him. ‘I’m talking about before.’

  ‘Go on,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Before I was transferred here, I’d spent my entire working life in Whitebridge. I knew her family at the time Monika was growing up.’

  ‘And –?’

  ‘Her stepfather was a Whitebridge lad called Arthur Jones. He met Monika’s mum in Berlin in 1945. She and Monika were refugees running away from the Russians, and Jones was part of the Allied army of occupation. In a way, it’s a good thing Jones married Blanca Pania
towski, because if he hadn’t, she and Monika would have been shipped back to Poland with the hundreds of thousands of other refugees.’

  ‘In what way wasn’t it a good thing?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘I’m coming to that. Jones had what you might call “expectations” when he brought his new family back to Whitebridge. You see, though he’d started out as a private in ’39, by the time the war ended, he’d risen through the ranks to captain. Well, that’s a common enough story. It wasn’t too difficult to get a field promotion if you were halfway competent and managed to dodge the German bullets.’

  Woodend – who had both dodged more bullets than he cared to remember and turned down a commission twice – grinned. ‘So what happened to Captain Jones when he returned home?’ he asked.

  ‘Like I said, he had expectations. He’d developed tastes above his station in the army, and he thought he could continue to live the same privileged life in Lancashire. It didn’t take long for reality to sink in. There weren’t enough fancy jobs to go round in Whitebridge, and from having a personal valet and an officers’ mess where he could drink with gentlemen, he found himself back in the mill, just as if the war had never happened.’

  ‘It turned him bitter?’ Woodend suggested.

  ‘It turned him to pints of bitter,’ Turner said. ‘Eight or nine a night – with whisky chasers to follow. Now there’s some men who can take their drink without getting nasty, but Arthur Jones wasn’t one of them. If he was in a bad mood, he took it out on his wife and stepdaughter.’

  ‘Knocked them about, did he?’

  ‘We could never prove it,’ Turner said. ‘The mother always came up with a reasonable explanation for the bruises, and however much pressure we put on her, she refused to press charges.’

  No wonder Monika had tensed up when they were discussing wife beating earlier, Woodend thought. It would have been odd if she hadn’t.

  ‘I expect Blanca thought that however bad life was with Jones, she’d be even worse off without him,’ Turner continued. He clenched his fists into tight, angry balls. ‘Oh, I’d really have liked to nail the bastard.’

  ‘There’s somethin’ else – beside the beatin’s – isn’t there?’ Woodend guessed.

  Turner nodded gravely. ‘I’m sure the mother never believed this, or she couldn’t have stayed with Jones however bad the alternative was –’ he lowered his voice even though there was no one close enough to hear – ‘but it’s my belief that her stepfather didn’t just hurt Monika – I think he interfered with her. You know . . . sexually.’

  Woodend found himself thinking of his own daughter, Annie, as he always did when he was working on cases which involved kids. If anyone ever dared so much as touch her . . .

  ‘So you see the point about Monika?’ Turner asked. ‘She’s had a lot to put up with.’

  ‘Aye, well, maybe I’ll have to give her even more rope than I have already,’ Woodend said. ‘But unless she learns to keep her anger under control – or at least channel it – she’s never goin’ to get anywhere in the force.’

  ‘She’s made sergeant already,’ Turner pointed out.

  ‘An’ how much of that did she owe to you – the bobby who felt sorry for her when she was a helpless kid?’ Woodend wondered.

  Turner almost blushed. ‘She’s a good officer,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have helped her otherwise.’

  Paniatowski had returned from the seafood stall carrying a cardboard tray in her hand. ‘Here’s your prawns, sir,’ she said, her voice expressionless as she held them out to Woodend.

  ‘They’re not for me,’ Woodend told her. ‘They’re for all of us. Take a couple, Sergeant.’

  ‘No, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Bring you out in a rash, do they?’

  ‘No, but –’

  ‘Then take a couple. You’ll soon learn that when you’re working with me, you grab a snack whenever you get the chance.’

  With another show of reluctance, the sergeant picked out a prawn and, conscious that Woodend’s eyes were still on her, popped it into her mouth.

  ‘That’s the advantage of bein’ the underling,’ Woodend told her. ‘You might have to do the fetchin’ and carryin’, but if there’s a price to pay, it’s not usually you that pays it.’

  He wasn’t just talking about the prawns, Monika sensed – he was laying out what he saw as a working relationship.

  Woodend offered the prawns to Turner. The local man took a couple of them, then said, ‘Now that you’ve seen where the body was found, shall I take you to your digs?’

  ‘Not too far from the scene of the crime, are they?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘No, as a matter of fact, you can see them from here,’ Turner replied. He pointed across the sands, over the sea wall and along the promenade. ‘That’s it – The Sea View.’

  Woodend’s gaze followed the direction of the pointing finger. The hotel was one of a block of dressed-stone four-storied hotels, all of which had bay windows jutting out slightly over their small front yards.

  ‘Sea View,’ he said reflectively. ‘That’s an original name.’

  ‘If you’d prefer somewhere else –’ Turner began.

  ‘Nay,’ Woodend interrupted. ‘You’ve worked with me before, Ron. You should know that all I want from my digs is a bed I can lay my head on for five or six hours a day – if I’m lucky. The Sea View will do me an’ Sergeant Paniatowski here just fine.’

  ‘Well, would you like to go across there now and settle in?’ Turner suggested.

  ‘No. Why waste the best part of the day?’ Woodend replied. ‘Have our luggage sent up there, an’ tell the landlady not to expect us for tea. Or supper, either – if there’s one provided.’

  Turner nodded. ‘All right. I’ll arrange that. And what would you like us to do next?’

  ‘I wouldn’t expect you to do anythin’,’ Woodend told him. ‘You’ve got quite enough on your hands without shepherdin’ us around.’

  ‘So what will you and Monika be doing next?’

  ‘If the car’s still available, I thought me an’ Sergeant Paniatowski might just go an’ see the grievin’ widow.’

  Seven

  The Ford Zephyr crossed the promenade and headed into the centre of Blackpool. For the first quarter of a mile it passed virtually nothing but boarding houses, bingo halls and souvenir shops, but beyond that it began to penetrate the solid, respectable suburbs where the all-year-round residents of Blackpool lived.

  Sitting in the back of the car, Woodend turned carefully towards his new assistant, well aware that the Zephyr was less spacious than a Humber and that, however much he tried, it was almost impossible to avoid his leg touching hers.

  ‘You could be very useful at this interview, Sergeant,’ he said.

  ‘Any reason in particular you should say that, sir?’ asked Paniatowski, the reluctant errand-girl, still not willing to give an inch.

  ‘In case you haven’t noticed, you’re a woman,’ Woodend replied. ‘An’ it’s highly likely that Punch Davies’ widow is a woman, too. So there’s a good chance you’ll notice somethin’ I’ll miss.’

  The remark seemed to antagonise Paniatowski further. ‘It’s not important that I’m a woman,’ she said.

  ‘Then what is important?’

  ‘That I’m a trained police officer, sir, just like you are.’

  ‘Is that what you really think?’ Woodend asked. ‘That it’s the trainin’ which makes a good bobby?’

  ‘Essentially. Yes.’

  If he’d been dealing with a man, Woodend thought, he’d probably have tapped the lad’s knee as he made his next point. But he couldn’t do that with Paniatowski.

  ‘It’s not like that, lass,’ he told her. ‘I wouldn’t say that what you’ve been taught counts for nothin’ in an investigation, but you can’t build a proper house if there aren’t any decent foundations to start with.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean, sir.’

  Woodend sighed and wondered how his li
terary hero, Charles Dickens, would have explained it.

  ‘Good police officers – really good police officers – are born with certain qualities,’ he said, ‘an’ all the trainin’ does is to refine those qualities into somethin’ better.’

  ‘Are you telling me that all policemen should be like you?’ Paniatowski asked aggressively.

  ‘No,’ Woodend replied, forcing his voice to stay level and reasonable. ‘An’ if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, Sergeant, you’re completely missin’ the point. There’s plenty of room for differences. In fact, they’re essential. If two bobbies see somethin’ – anythin’ at all – in exactly the same way, then it’s a waste of time them workin’ together. It’s the differences which make a team good or bad – an’ I want us to be a good team.’

  The driver pulled up at the curb before Paniatowski had time to reply. ‘This is the place, sir,’ he said.

  Woodend looked out of the window. They had stopped in front of a row of largish terraced houses.

  ‘Is she expectin’ us?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. We rang her from the station.’

  The chief inspector extracted his bulk from the car, taking pains as he did so not to brush against his sergeant. Once on the pavement, he stopped to take a look around. The row of houses was in good condition. They all had neat lace curtains, recently painted doors and an uninterrupted view of Stanley Park, with its cricket ground, putting green and rose gardens. Nice, very nice. But not anything like too nice – not the sort of area Woodend would have been surprised to find a detective inspector living in.

  ‘What are we looking for, sir?’ asked Paniatowski, joining him on the pavement.

  That was better, Woodend thought. Much better. She was finally starting to chuck her prejudices out of the window and use her brain.

  ‘A murder turns a family inside out,’ he said. ‘You have to expect that. But what we’re lookin’ for is somethin’ that wasn’t quite right even before the victim met his end.’

  ‘Won’t that be hard to isolate?’ Paniatowski asked.