The Red Herring Read online

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You noticed the two cars arrive. You noticed the way the Yank was dressed. You can remember roughly what time the man left. You’re a nosy bugger, Mr Yarwood––’

  ‘I––’

  ‘––and there’s absolutely no need to be ashamed of it, because that’s part of your job, just as it’s part of mine.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose we are both paid to be nosy.’

  ‘So how were they getting on?’

  ‘The Yank was tryin’ to act normal, but he kept lookin’ a bit like I do when I’ve forgotten my weddin’ anniversary again.’

  ‘Guilty-looking?’

  ‘Enough to leave a jury in no doubt.’

  ‘And what about the woman?’

  ‘If he looked like me, then she looked like my missus.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Hurt – an’ bloody determined that she wasn’t goin’ to be the only one to suffer.’

  ‘Did the redhead talk to anybody else?’

  ‘She did, as a matter of that.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘There were these two fellers sittin’ in the corner. One of them was wearin’ a green corduroy jacket, I remember, an’ the other had on a pair of glasses with very heavy frames. She went across an’ had a quick word with them.’

  ‘So you think she knew them?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they all looked very uncomfortable – as if they’d much rather not have run into one another.’

  ‘Is there anything else you could tell me about these two men?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘As a matter of fact, there is,’ the landlord told her. ‘I don’t know what the man in the heavy glasses was drivin’, but the one in the green corduroy jacket had an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire – an’ you don’t see many of them in Lancashire, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski said thoughtfully. ‘No, you don’t.’

  Ten

  The other kids seemed to be totally unaware that anything was wrong, Helen Dunn thought. But then, why would they be aware? They had their friends to distract them during the lunch break. So only she – the outsider, the one with so little else to occupy her mind – had noticed that the teachers were not their normal selves. That when they crossed the playground, they kept looking over their shoulders as if expecting an ambush. That when they spoke to each other, it was in the hushed whispers of conspirators. Yes, something had definitely happened – something dramatic – but she had no idea what it could be.

  She walked to the edge of the playground. The Corporation Park lay just the other side of the street, and by raising her hands to the sides of her head, she could restrict her range of vision to the nearest clump of trees and imagine that she was in the country.

  She loved the countryside, though she had had very little personal experience of it. When she’d been growing up, in a succession of camps with military – soulless – playing fields, she had devoured storybooks about children living on farms. As she’d heard the planes take off overhead, she had been listening, in her mind, to the hoot of the owls in places called Foggy Bottom and Scary Hollow. As the military bus had conveyed her to the military school, she had pretended it was a rattling old country bus, which only managed to struggle through another day because all the children were so fond of it. Now she lived near the real countryside, but she never saw it because her father was far too busy to ever give her the gift of his time.

  Though there was no wind to speak of, she saw one of the bushes on the edge of the park move, and knew that someone was watching her. She was not afraid – her father had taught her that fear, like all other forms of human weakness, was to be despised. But she was curious.

  Who was hiding? And why was he hiding – because she was sure it was a he. Was he watching her because she was Helen Dunn, the squadron leader’s daughter, or simply because she was the only girl standing at the very edge of the playground?

  She turned around to see if the teacher on yard duty was close by, but there was no sign of him. And it suddenly seemed to her as if fate was – finally! – pointing her towards an adventure. She glanced over her shoulder once more, then stepped quickly through the gate and out on to the street.

  Woodend, Rutter and Paniatowski were sitting at a corner table in the crowded lunchtime public bar of the Wheatsheaf, a pub which owed its popularity more to its proximity to the police station than it did to its thin beer and cardboard-tasting Cornish pasties.

  ‘I know it’s early days yet, but I still wish I’d already started to build up a clearer picture of the victim,’ Woodend said. ‘What was she? A saint, or a sinner? From what Bob’s said, her landlady seems to regard her as little better than a prostitute, though, to be fair, Mrs Hoddleston doesn’t sound like the most open-minded of women.’

  ‘Maybe not, but Verity Beale had had sex a couple of hours before she died,’ Bob Rutter pointed out.

  Monika Paniatowski’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘And that means she was a loose woman, does it, sir?’

  ‘No, but it doesn’t exactly qualify her for the title of Miss Purity 1962, either,’ Rutter countered, stung.

  ‘Simon Barnes sees her as a woman in search of religion – an’ as a born teacher who loved passin’ her knowledge on to other people,’ Woodend continued. ‘Then there’s the headmaster an’ his deputy. What did you make of the pair of them, Monika?’

  ‘I got the distinct impression, when we were talking to the headmaster, that there were things about Verity Beale he would much rather we didn’t find out,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘So did I,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Now why should that be?’

  ‘The headmaster’s main job is to protect the reputation of the school,’ Bob Rutter said, rather primly. ‘Grammar schools always place great store on their reputation.’

  ‘Aye, well you’d know more about that than I would,’ Woodend said. ‘But what exactly do they want to protect their precious reputation from?’ He paused to light up a Capstan Full Strength. ‘Tell me about your phone call to London again, Bob.’

  ‘The inspector I talked to seemed very willing to help us at first, then he suddenly clammed up on me.’

  ‘Do you think that’s because you somehow managed to rub him up the wrong way?’

  ‘No. Far from it. I played it perfectly – all joviality and brother-officer, making sure we were soon on first name terms. But despite that, I obviously said something which put him on his guard.’

  ‘Like mentionin’ Verity Beale?’ Woodend suggested.

  ‘Yes, I think it had to be that. Don’t you?’

  Woodend took a thoughtful sip of his pint. ‘We’re not missin’ somethin’ here, are we?’ he asked. ‘There hasn’t been some big scandal involvin’ our Miss Beale which has somehow managed to slip by us?’

  ‘None that I can think of, but I could get one of my lads to check through the back copies of the newspapers,’ Rutter said.

  ‘Aye, you do that,’ Woodend agreed. ‘An’ check on the Armstrong Siddeley, as well. The one Mrs Hoddleston saw bringin’ Miss Beale home more than once, an’ which, coincidentally, was parked on the car park of the Spinner last night.’

  ‘They could have been two completely different cars, sir,’ Bob Rutter pointed out.

  ‘They could have been,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But it’s not really very likely, is it?’

  ‘True,’ Rutter agreed. ‘So what will you be doing this afternoon, sir?’

  ‘Oh, I thought me an’ Sergeant Paniatowski might have a bash at trackin’ down this Yank Verity Beale chose to spend her last night on earth with,’ Woodend said.

  Margaret Dunn shared both her daughter’s skinniness and her slightly haunted look, the deputy head thought as he glanced at the woman who was sitting across the desk from him.

  ‘We’ve only been looking for Helen for a few minutes,’ he said reassuringly. ‘She’s bound to turn up soon.’

  ‘She’s not here,�
� Margaret Dunn said, biting her lower lip.

  She was doing her best to contain her panic, but she was still not making a very good job of it, Hargreaves thought. If they didn’t produce Helen soon, the woman would probably go into hysterics.

  ‘If she’d tried to leave the school, the teacher on yard duty would have seen her,’ he said.

  But would he really? he wondered. Most of the staff had been walking round shell-shocked ever since he’d told them that Verity Beale had been murdered, and it wouldn’t really have surprised him if half the school had nicked off without anybody noticing.

  ‘She knew she had a dental appointment booked,’ Margaret Dunn said. ‘She knew I was going to pick her up to take her there. We’ve done it before. She’s always waiting for me by the main gate.’

  ‘Children sometimes forget things like that,’ Hargreaves said.

  But from what he’d seen of Helen Dunn it didn’t seem likely, even to him, that she’d be the forgetful type. In fact, apart from that one incident in Woolworths – an incident which, at Verity Beale’s insistence, her parents still hadn’t been told about – Helen was a conscientious child, almost to the point of being a bit too much of a goody-goody.

  There was a knock on the door, and the duty teacher entered the room. Hargreaves looked up at him expectantly, but the teacher shook his head.

  ‘We checked everywhere,’ he said. ‘The playground, the classrooms, even the parts of the school which are out of bounds to the children. There’s no sign of her anywhere.’

  ‘What about the street?’ Hargreaves asked. ‘Have you thought to look there?’

  The duty teacher nodded. ‘I’ve had the prefects check the full length of Park Road. They’ve gone into the shops. Nobody’s seen a girl in a King Edward’s uniform.’

  Margaret Dunn’s sallow face turned even paler than the deputy head would ever have thought possible.

  ‘Can we get you something, Mrs Dunn?’ he asked solicitously. ‘A glass of water, perhaps?’

  But it was doubtful if Margaret Dunn had heard him. Her skinny hands were entwined and she seemed to be shrinking into herself.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she moaned. ‘Whatever will he say? Whatever will the squadron leader say?’

  Eleven

  The duty sergeant handed the message to Woodend as soon as he returned from lunch. It was short and to the point. Deputy Chief Constable Ainsworth and Detective Chief Superintendent Whittle would like to see him in Ainsworth’s office as soon as possible – if not sooner.

  As Woodend walked along the corridor he found himself wondering exactly what it was that Tweedledum and Tweedledee wanted to see him about this time. If it was a progress report they were after, then they were out of luck – because there had been no progress yet.

  He knocked and was told to enter. Both Whittle and Ainsworth were sitting behind the DCC’s desk. They looked grim. But more than that, they looked as if they thought they were about to have a fight on their hands.

  It was Ainsworth the ventriloquist – rather than Whittle his dummy – who opened the conversation.

  ‘I know you don’t like being taken off a case once you’ve got your teeth into it, Charlie,’ he said.

  ‘Bloody right I don’t,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘But there are sometimes circumstances which mean––’

  ‘What’s the problem here?’ Woodend demanded. ‘Had a call from the school, have you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, we have,’ Whittle said.

  ‘An’ I can just guess who it was from,’ Woodend said. ‘That bloody headmaster! I could see from the start that I wasn’t the kind of feller he’d want on the case. If you don’t talk like you’ve got a plum in your mouth an’ walk as if you’ve a poker stuck up your backside––’

  ‘You’re pushing it, Chief Inspector, even by your outlandish standards,’ Ainsworth said angrily.

  ‘Maybe I am, but I don’t like bein’ buggered about just because some toffee-nosed bastard––’

  ‘You’re pushing it, and if I didn’t need you so badly, I’d have you suspended immediately for insubordination.’

  The words – and their implication – hit Woodend like a bucket of icy water. Ainsworth needed him badly – but not for the murder investigation.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

  ‘It seems that one of the pupils from King Edward’s – a girl of thirteen called Helen Dunn – has gone missing,’ Ainsworth said.

  Almost without wanting to, Woodend found himself thinking of Ellie Taylor, who used to live on Lant Street in Southwark, and of her grandfather, George, who’d lost a leg fighting to maintain Queen Victoria’s Empire.

  ‘You will get Ellie back for us, won’t you, Sergeant?’ the old man had pleaded.

  ‘Did you hear what I said, Chief Inspector?’ Ainsworth asked.

  ‘Aye, I heard,’ Woodend said dully. ‘How long has this girl been missin’?’

  ‘Not much more than an hour, but her teachers are certain she’d never have gone off of her own free will.’

  ‘She should have been back over an hour ago,’ old George Taylor had said. ‘I know it doesn’t sound long, but she’s a very reliable girl, an’ if she was goin’ to be late, she’d have let us know.’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll find her,’ young Sergeant Woodend had promised.

  ‘You can imagine how the press will handle this, can’t you?’ Ainsworth said. ‘Verity Beale’s murder could have been a big story, but now it won’t rate more than a few inside columns. It’ll be Helen Dunn’s disappearance which fills the front page.’

  ‘You’re right enough about that,’ Woodend agreed.

  Ainsworth opened his mouth to speak again, but the words seemed to stick in his gullet, and he nodded to indicate to Whittle that he should say them instead.

  ‘The reporters will expect you to be in charge of the inquiry,’ the Chief Superintendent said. ‘In fact, they’ll scream blue murder if you’re not, because, for some inexplicable reason, they seem to think the sun shines out of your arse.’

  ‘Are we making ourselves clear, Chief Inspector?’ Ainsworth asked. ‘We want you on this case. No “buts”! No “couldn’t we insteads . . .?” You’re in charge, and that’s a direct order.’

  ‘If you’d told me that as soon as I walked into the room, I could have been gettin’ my team together by now,’ Woodend said.

  ‘You mean, you’ve no objection?’ Whittle asked amazed, then, realising they’d got what they wanted without the fight they’d anticipated, he clamped his mouth tightly shut.

  ‘Of course I’ve no bloody objection,’ Woodend said. ‘Whatever we do now, Verity Beale will stay dead, but there’s still a chance we can save this kiddie.’

  It was only as he reached the door that he realised there was another question he should have asked. ‘Who’ll be takin’ over the Verity Beale investigation?’ he said Ainsworth.

  ‘We thought of using one of our own people, but in the end we decided it might be better to call in your old firm – the Yard,’ the Deputy Chief Constable replied. ‘You’ve no objection that you that, have you?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ Woodend said, surprised to hear himself agreeing with Ainsworth for once. ‘He’ll need briefin’, of course.’

  ‘Yes, he will,’ the DCC agreed. ‘Would you be willing to lend him Sergeant Paniatowski?’

  ‘I’d rather have Monika––’ Woodend began. Then he pulled himself up short. ‘Aye, I could use her myself, but she’ll be of more value to him,’ he continued. ‘But can I keep DI Rutter?’

  ‘Yes, you can keep Rutter. And you can have the pick of anybody else you think you might be able to use. If you need to poach men from some superintendent’s task force, then poach them. And don’t worry about the paperwork – just take the men you need and refer the commander who you’ll have pissed off directly to me.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Woodend said, not only sounding humble, but actually feeling it.

  ‘Overtime,
too,’ Ainsworth said. ‘Authorise as much of it as you need to, because when we eventually do find this child’s bo–– . . . when we eventually do find this child, I want it to be obvious to everybody – especially the press and the Police Committee – that we’ve done everything we could.’

  It had never been going to be easy, doing what they had to do in the park, Martin Dove thought, but it wouldn’t have been as bad as it turned out if Cray hadn’t been such a bag of nerves. Still, at least now the first phase was over with, and he was back in his classroom, looking as innocent as only a Latin teacher in early middle age could.

  His own nerves felt a little frayed, he was forced to admit, and he was glad that instead of having to face thirty rowdy second-year pupils he would be spending the next hour with a smaller group of serious-looking sixth formers.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, I hope that you have all done your prep and are now armed with enough quotes from Virgil to con your examiners into believing that you really understand what he was on about,’ he said.

  The remark was greeted with sufficient polite laughter to tell Dove that, whatever he felt inside, he at least sounded like his normal self.

  ‘Let’s start with you, Mr Cummings,’ Dove said, pointing to a youth in the front row. ‘What have you got to impress us with?’

  The boy closed his eyes. ‘Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,’ he intoned. ‘Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem spiravere; pedes vestis defluxit as imos, et vera incessu patuit dea.’

  The snotty little bastard would choose a quote like that, Dove thought visciously.

  ‘Very good, Mr Cummings,’ he said. ‘Beautifully pronounced. But do you actually know what it means?’

  ‘She said no more and as she turned away there was a bright glimpse of the rosy glow of her neck,’ Cummings translated, ‘and from her ambrosial head of hair a heavenly fragrance wafted; her dress flowed down to her feet, and in her walk it showed, she was in truth a goddess.’

  He could have been talking about Verity Beale apart from that last bit, Dove thought. But Verity had been no goddess. Far from it. A goddess would not have concerned herself with the doings of mere mortals like him. A goddess would not have been in the Spinner, as Verity had been the night before.