Supping with the Devil Read online

  ‘I won’t do it,’ Meadows says firmly. ‘I won’t put innocent girls at future risk just so a few fat cats in headquarters can add another scalp to their belts.’

  ‘I don’t think you should be so hasty, Kate,’ Addison says. ‘I really think you should give the matter your serious consideration.’

  ‘I won’t do it.’

  ‘Well, in that case,’ Addison says, ‘the sooner you’re transferred out of the West Midland police, the better.’

  The transfer comes though – with record speed – two weeks later. It is not good policing to take her off the case at that stage, but this is to do with fear and revenge, rather than policing.

  She has turned down an offer which should never have been made, and so that offer itself has had to be written out of history, just as her undercover work has now been written out of her record.

  She does not complain, because she knows it would do no good – and because she has come to cherish the police work which has finally given her life some meaning.

  ‘Sarge? Are you all right?’ said the voice.

  It seemed hollow and unreal – like words spoken into a metal bucket. But it made Meadows realize that for some time – and she had no idea how long – her mind had not been in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, but back in that sordid Birmingham motel room.

  ‘Sarge?’ Crane repeated.

  ‘I can’t tell you what I did in the West Midlands, Jack,’ she said. ‘And even if I could – and trust me on this – you really wouldn’t want to know.’

  Most nights when she got home from work, Louisa would either be waiting for her in the hallway or doing her school work in the study they shared. And however hard her day had been – and whatever tasks still lay ahead of her – Paniatowski would always find half an hour to spend with her daughter.

  Sometimes they would talk about what Louisa had done at school that day. Sometimes – increasingly, now that Louisa was older and had expressed a strong desire to join the force – they would talk in very general terms about Paniatowski’s work. And sometimes they would talk about seemingly nothing at all – and have a great time doing it!

  That night, there was no healing conversation. That night, Paniatowski was greeted by an empty house, because it was the school holidays, and Louisa was spending a couple of weeks with her great-aunt Pilar in Valencia.

  It was as Paniatowski was preparing herself a nightcap that the phone in the hallway rang.

  ‘It’s so totally 1950s to have a phone in the hallway, Mum,’ Louisa always said. ‘Why don’t we have one installed in the living room,’ and then she would invariably add cunningly, ‘and while we’re at it, we might as well put one in my bedroom as well.’

  She would have a phone put in Louisa’s bedroom, Paniatowski promised herself. She’d do it soon, as a ‘welcome back’ present. But, in the meantime, it was still in the hall, and she supposed she’d better answer it.

  ‘Hello Monika, it’s Reg Holmes here,’ said the voice at the other end of the line. ‘The reason I’m calling you is that I’ve just had a briefing session with the chief constable, and it wasn’t really very satisfactory at all.’

  ‘Why was that, sir?’

  ‘Well, he explained my own remit to me – keep an eye on the campsite but don’t make the police presence too conspicuous unless things start to go wrong, et cetera, et cetera – and then he said that you’ll be based at the Hall itself. What I missed – or rather, what Mr Baxter failed to explain – is exactly what your role will be. And when I pressed him on it, he started to get very irritated for some reason.’

  He got irritated because he’s feeling guilty, Paniatowski thought. He knows he’s doing the wrong thing, but he just can’t stop himself.

  ‘Are you still there, Monika?’ DCS Holmes asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Anyway, I’ve been trying to work out for myself exactly what your job will be, and I can’t do it for the life of me. I know you won’t be in charge of security within the grounds, because I hear they’ve employed a gang of thugs for that. That is what they’ve done, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what they’ve done.’

  ‘It seems like a bloody stupid idea to me, but it’s their stately home, so I suppose it’s their business. But all that would seem to leave you with is observer status – and that clearly can’t be the case, because you’re a high-ranking officer. So what exactly is Georgie Boy expecting you to do?’

  ‘I’m there as an adviser,’ Paniatowski said, thinking, as the words came out, how hollow they sounded.

  There was a long pause at the other end of the line – and in the silence, she could almost hear Holmes’ brain clicking as he joined up the dots and reached the inevitable conclusion.

  Finally, he said, ‘Ah, I see. An adviser. Well, thank you for explaining that to me.’

  ‘Are we still on for dinner at the Trocadero, a week on Thursday?’ Paniatowski asked – mainly to confirm her own suspicions.

  Another pause – even longer this time.

  ‘Actually, my schedule’s getting rather jammed up, so we should probably take a rain check on the meal out,’ he said finally.

  ‘How about making it the week after next, then? I could ring up and book it, if you like.’

  ‘That’s a possibly,’ Holmes said vaguely. ‘But I wouldn’t like to commit myself at the moment. Tell you what – when things become clearer, I’ll let you know. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘Good night, Monika.’

  ‘Good night, sir.’

  He couldn’t get off the phone quickly enough, Paniatowski thought, as she replaced her own phone on its cradle.

  ‘When things become clearer,’ Holmes had said.

  But what he really meant was that things were suddenly becoming very clear – and that since Paniatowski’s career seemed to be heading straight for the rocks, it was time for the wilier rats to start jumping ship.

  ‘I wish you were here, Louisa,’ she said to the empty hallway. ‘I really wish you were here.’

  FIVE

  Thursday, 5th August

  ‘Where is it you said you were going, Jeff?’ Mona Hill shouted from the balcony of the master bedroom, from where she was watching the way that the Filipino maid packed her husband’s suitcases.

  Jeff Hill, who was sitting on a sun lounger by the pool and smoking a large cigar, looked up, and called back, ‘Whitebridge.’

  And he was thinking, ‘Why must she scream like a fishwife? Does the woman have no class?’

  ‘It seems like a funny place to me to be holding a sales conference,’ Mona said.

  ‘It’s where all the cotton mills are,’ Hill told her, adding, almost under his breath, ‘you ignorant bitch!’

  ‘I though they’d all moved to India, or somewhere like that,’ Mona said suspiciously.

  ‘Most of them have moved, but not all. And people who buy the JHSG brand expect top quality – which means made in Britain.’

  Mona retreated back into the master bedroom – no doubt to criticize the way the poor bloody maid was doing her job – and Hill took another generous puff of his cigar.

  As a matter of fact, he reminded himself, most of his products were made in India – it was much cheaper to use child labour thousands of miles away than it was to use adult labour close at hand – but Mona didn’t know that, and she was too thick to find out.

  There was one school of thought in the footballing world which confidently asserted that Jeff Hill had been the best English player to emerge since the end of the War, and another – equally sure of itself – which contended that he had merely been the dirtiest.

  There was something to said on both sides – he had certainly been a hard man on the pitch, but he had also been an amazingly successful one, and the last time he had been transferred (to Honnerton United, in 1969) his new club had paid two hundred and twenty thousand pounds for him, which was a record fee at the time.


  Most people thought it was bad luck – though there were those who considered it no more than just retribution – that he should get a serious knee injury only a year into his new contract. The injury had effectively ended his football career, but as one door had slammed shut on him, another had opened, and making use of both the money he had saved and his great national fame, he had launched Jeff Hill Sporting Goods, which soon became one of the leading firms in its sector.

  Seeing his wife appear at the patio door and begin to walk towards the pool, Hill sighed and took a sip of his whisky.

  ‘You’re not seeing a woman, are you?’ Mona demanded, when she drew level with him.

  ‘A woman?’ he repeated. ‘Whatever would make you think that?’

  ‘Well, it’s not as if it hasn’t happened before, now is it?’

  Hill did his best to try and look cut to the quick.

  ‘I made one mistake – four years ago – and you won’t let me forget it, will you?’ he asked, mournfully.

  ‘If it was just one mistake,’ Mona countered. ‘If that hussy wasn’t just the last of a long line.’

  ‘I swear to you, she was the only one,’ Hill promised.

  He would dearly love to get rid of this bloody woman, he thought, but not at the cost of her taking half his assets with her.

  ‘Why don’t I come with you to Whitebridge?’ Mona suggested.

  ‘We’ve been through all this before,’ Hill said wearily. ‘The sales conference is also a trade fair – which means it’s strictly business. I’ll be involved in some tough negotiations with some very hard men, and in a situation like that, it’s the one who blinks first who loses out.’

  ‘I still don’t see …’

  ‘Nobody else who’s there will be taking their wives with them, and if I take mine, that’s as good as saying I’m henpecked. And henpecked husbands don’t get offered good terms.’

  ‘But how do I know I can trust you?’ Mona asked in that plaintive voice he hated so much.

  ‘Listen,’ Hill said, ‘if I really was playing around with another woman, don’t you think I’d take her somewhere nice – like the South of France? Can you seriously see me having an affair in a dull, grimy town like Whitebridge?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Mona admitted.

  Idiot! Hill thought.

  When Linda Davies examined her life so far – all seventeen years of it – she felt compelled to give it a mixed review. On the one hand, she had been blessed with the voice of a Southern sharecropper – a voice which was harsh and powerful, passionate and angry, yet could be so softly beautiful that it could bring grown men to tears – and all without the necessity of ever visiting the USA or picking cotton. On the other hand she had been cursed with parents who were middle class and – what was even worse – liberal.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love her parents. She really did love both of them. But through their kindness and compassion, they were making it very hard for her to grow into being a real rock star.

  Harsh, conservative parents would have been much easier to handle. She could have run away from home, and slept in doorways until she was discovered by a travelling band which was desperately in need of a singer.

  Uncaring, neglectful parents would have been better, too. She could have endured an unhappy childhood which might have left her with mental scars, but would have made her performances even more gut wrenching.

  Instead, she had Tom and Helen Davies!

  ‘We only want what’s best for you, darling,’ her mother had said, two years earlier, when she’d announced that she wanted to join the Midnight Crawlers. ‘Your happiness is really all we care about.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re going to try and stop me being a singer?’ she’d asked, half-hoping they’d finally give her something to rebel against.

  ‘Of course not, sweetheart,’ her father had said soothingly. ‘You have a wonderful voice, and while we can’t say we’re entirely happy about the songs you choose to sing—’

  ‘They are rather depressing,’ her mother had interrupted. ‘Couldn’t you find something a little more cheerful?’

  ‘A happy blues, do you mean?’ Linda had asked. ‘The “Life Is Wonderful And Everything’s Coming Up Roses” blues, for example?’

  ‘… and while we can’t say we’re entirely happy about the songs you choose to sing,’ her father ploughed on, regardless, ‘we can both see that it would be a shame not to use that voice.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ Linda had asked.

  ‘That we’re perfectly willing to allow you to play your “music” with your friends …’

  ‘They’re not my friends, for goodness sake – they’re my band.’

  ‘… with your band, then. But you’re still very young and we need to be sure you’re being looked after.’

  ‘Are you saying that every time I play a gig you’ll want to come with me?’ Linda had asked.

  ‘No, we’re not saying that at all. We’re not quite as out of touch as you seem to think, and we realize that having us tag along would prove to be something of an embarrassment for you.’

  ‘Well, thank heavens for that.’

  ‘But when you do a show which takes you away from home overnight, I’m afraid we’re going to have to insist that either Dominic or Charles goes along as a chaperone.’

  She’d agreed to pay her parents’ price, and every time the Midnight Crawlers had played a gig outside the London area, one of her two brothers had been there by her side.

  The band never said anything about it – they couldn’t afford to, because they knew that with her they were going places, and without her they were going nowhere – but she was certain that they were laughing at her behind her back.

  As the band’s fame had spread and they spent more and more time touring, it became plain that the arrangements simply couldn’t stay as they were, and the elder of her two brothers, Dominic, had become her manager.

  He was working for her!

  She was paying him!

  At least, that was how it looked on paper. But in practice, Dominic was not so much a manager who also happened to be her brother as a brother who did a little managing on the side.

  And so it was that on stage she could be a second Janis Joplin – a mesmerizing force of nature – but once she walked off stage again, she became – under Dominic’s watchful eye – Little Miss Perfect.

  But that was all about to change. The RockStately Festival was the biggest venue the Midnight Crawlers had ever played, and she knew she would be a sensation. And when she climbed down from the stage, she would still be the same person she had been while she was dominating it – and if Dominic didn’t like that, he could just go and get stuffed.

  Paniatowski looked around the small room in the west wing of Stamford Hall. The place was crammed with television monitors.

  ‘So what do you think of my electronic control centre,’ asked Edward Bell, giving the last three words a slightly mocking tone which didn’t quite hide his sense of pride.

  ‘It’s very impressive,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Who came up with the idea? Was it you? Or was it the earl?’

  ‘Neither of us, actually,’ Bell admitted. ‘The original idea came from a very bright young chap who came me to see me shortly after the first advertisements for the RockStately Festival appeared. He said he wasn’t really interested in selling the equipment – he was more what you might call a researcher – but he wondered if we’d do him a favour.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Paniatowski, who could smell a sales technique from a mile away.

  ‘Apparently, his company had been looking around for somewhere suitable to test out all the new surveillance equipment they’d developed, and they almost couldn’t believe their luck when they heard about the festival. Anyway, he asked if he could set up a couple of cameras – just to show me what they could do – and I have to say, I was most impressed.’

  Paniatowski suppressed a smile. Edward Bell might be both intelligent an
d educated, but he was scarcely sophisticated, and it was plain that he’d been as dazzled by the ‘very bright young chap’ as one of his ancestors would have been by an itinerant magician.

  ‘So what happened next?’ she asked.

  ‘I agreed to let him set up a system which covered the whole estate – a comprehensive system, he called it. Well, it seemed the least I could do, after he’d gone to so much trouble.’

  ‘And all this was free?’

  ‘Absolutely free. Of course, once the festival is over, I’ll have the opportunity of buying the equipment, but since it will be good publicity for the company to have their cameras installed in one of the finest stately homes in England, he’s promised me I can have it at a very substantial discount.’

  The bright young chap is banking on the fact that once you’ve got used to it, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘So everybody wins,’ she said aloud.

  ‘Well, exactly,’ Bell agreed. ‘Let me show you how it works.’

  He flicked a switch on the control board. One of the screens lit up to reveal a panoramic view across the grounds towards the East Gate, where the builders were putting the final touches to the stage.

  ‘And when you get bored of looking at that, you can look at this,’ Bell said, flicking a second switch.

  A second monitor covered the section of the park which led down to Backend Woods.

  ‘Where are the actual cameras?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘All over the place,’ Bell told her. ‘Most of them have been set up on things that were already there, or, to put it another way,’ he grinned, ‘they’ve been “deployed on pre-existing natural or man-made objects”.’

  ‘They would be the bright young man’s words, would they?’ Paniatowski asked, grinning back.

  ‘That’s right,’ Bell agreed. ‘There are cameras mounted on some of the follies and in the trees. They’re not exactly hidden, but if you didn’t know they were there, you probably wouldn’t notice them. That, according to our young friend again, is to make them blend in with their environment.’