Dead End Page 7

  Diana considered her options. If she turned him down, that might suggest to her nurses that she was very much in control. On the other hand, it might just suggest that she was the kind of woman who found it easy to bully an old age pensioner like this man, but immediately caved in the face of police intimidation.

  If she let him in, however, she would be signalling that she had changed her mind on the visiting rules for humanitarian reasons – and that it had nothing to do with the fact that she had been scared of Kate Meadows.

  She chose the latter course, though with the proviso that she wouldn’t make it look too easy.

  ‘Strictly speaking I shouldn’t let you in, but if you can produce some proof of identification, I will allow it,’ she said grandly.

  ‘Some proof of identification, some proof of identification,’ Forsyth muttered. ‘Ah, yes, I have my driving licence.’

  ‘That would be fine,’ Diana Sowerbury said.

  Forsyth reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and took out an expensive wallet. He flicked it open and took out a driving licence, which he offered to the ward sister. Then, at the very last moment, he pulled back.

  ‘Wait a minute, that’s no good,’ he said.

  ‘I can assure you that if it really is your driving licence …’

  ‘Oh, it’s my driving licence all right. It says Charles Masterton, and I’m Charles Masterton, so it must be mine.’

  ‘Then that’s all that’s required.’

  ‘But it doesn’t say I know Minnie Mouse, you see,’ Forsyth said, clapping his hands. ‘I could just as easily be one of those sick individuals who like to look at people in comas – and if I was, you’d never know, would you?’

  ‘I’m sure you’re not that sort of person,’ Diana Sowerbury said.

  And she was thinking, what’s happening here? He’s supposed to be the one who’s trying to persuade me to let him see the patient, but instead I’m the one who’s trying to persuade him.

  ‘I tell you what might do it,’ Forsyth said, opening another section of the wallet and pulling out a photograph. ‘Take a look at this.’ He handed Diana the photograph. ‘It was taken in my garden, just after Minnie joined the police.’

  The ward sister looked at the picture, and Downes glanced at it over her shoulder.

  The garden in which the photograph had been taken had an immaculate lawn which was bordered by flower beds. In the middle of the lawn, a fountain bubbled. There was nothing in the photograph which said that this was just a very small slice of a much larger garden, but you knew from the composition that that was the case.

  In the foreground were three people smiling with quiet contentment and with their arms draped over each other. Forsyth (or Masterton, as he apparently was for the moment) was at the left-hand side, and a middle-aged woman was standing to the right. In the middle was a much younger Monika Paniatowski.

  The picture was faked – Downes was sure of that – but it had been so skilfully done that it would be almost impossible to prove it was a fake.

  It hadn’t been necessary to produce it, because the ward sister had been quite prepared to let him through on just his driving licence.

  But then, this whole pantomime had little to do with the ward sister – it had been put on for the benefit of E Downes, bag carrier and shit eater.

  Look at me, Forsyth had been saying – when I want to be a little old man, I can convince even a trained medical professional that that is exactly what I am.

  Look at this photograph. It was complicated and expensive to produce, and there was only a very small chance I’d ever really need to use it – but I had it made anyway, because I can.

  ‘She was a lovely young girl, don’t you think?’ said doting, doddering Uncle Goofy.

  ‘Very nice,’ Ward Sister Sowerbury said, without a great deal of warmth or enthusiasm. She looked around. ‘Nurse Coombes!’

  ‘Yes, sister?’

  ‘Take this gentleman and his friend to see DCI Paniatowski.’

  SIX

  Once the nurse had left the room, Forsyth walked over to the bed and, using his little finger, delicately lifted Paniatowski’s right eyelid.

  ‘Is there anybody in there?’ he asked, in the mock-fearful voice of a cartoon character trapped in the cellar of a haunted house.

  He stepped away from the bed.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if anyone is home, but appearances can be deceptive,’ he said. ‘Monika has only said one word since she was admitted here, but that single utterance was enough to point the dogged Inspector Colin Beresford in the direction of her attacker – I’m sorry, what I meant to say was that single word was enough to point the dogged Acting Chief Inspector Colin Beresford in the direction of her attacker. Can you even begin to work out what that tells us about her mental state, Downes?’

  Do you know what, Downes said to himself, I’ve just about had enough of this cat and mouse game. Sod my prospects, and sod my pension, I’m not going to take this anymore.

  ‘Since you seem to have cornered the market in infallibility, why don’t you tell me what it means?’ he asked.

  Forsyth chuckled. ‘So you’re finally fighting back,’ he said. ‘I wondered how long it would take you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Downs asked.

  ‘You surely don’t think I was baiting you without purpose, do you?’ Forsyth asked. ‘I never do anything without purpose.’ He paused. ‘Oh, I admit there’s some pleasure to be gained from squeezing something until it squeaks, but my main aim here is to ensure you don’t squeak.’

  ‘I don’t know—’ Downes began.

  ‘I’m toughening you up,’ Forsyth explained. ‘I don’t want you dragging me down, and so I’m helping you to prepare for dealing with the people you’ll have to deal with if – as may very well happen in this particular disaster of a project – the excrement hits the rotating cooling units.’

  ‘What’s wrong with simple English?’ Downes asked. ‘Why don’t you just say when the shit hits the fan?’

  ‘Then again,’ Forsyth said, clearly ignoring the comment, ‘everything I’ve just told you could be piffle, and I might simply be playing another – entirely different level – of mind games with you.’ He strolled over to the window. ‘But to get back to the matter in hand – what Monika proved when she all-but named her attacker was not only that her mind was still working, but that she was still conscious of the world around her.’ He swung round and returned to the bedside. ‘The question is, has her mind deteriorated since then, or is she still as sharp as she ever was – because if she is, then we both have cause to fear.’

  ‘I think you may be over-estimating her,’ said Downes, feeling newly emboldened – or perhaps feeling that he’d been given permission to act as if he felt that way.

  ‘Oh, that’s what you think, is it?’ Forsyth asked.

  ‘Yes. All right, she knew the name of her attacker – but that was because she’d seen him. Finding a connection between the body at the allotments and something that happened in the past is quite a different – and much more complex – matter. That would challenge someone at the top of their game. And just look at her – at the top of her game, she is not.’

  ‘An interesting viewpoint,’ Forsyth mused. ‘Over the years, I have come into conflict with Monika three times, and, as was almost inevitable, I have come out on top.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ Downes said, making only half an attempt to hide his sneer.

  ‘The reason it was almost inevitable was because I had the full power and authority of the state behind me, which is something which – I need not remind you – we do not have at this time and for this project. But even though Monika’s David did not even come close to bringing down my Goliath, she came closer than anyone else has, and even scored a few minor victories along the way. She has a remarkable brain, you see, full of sharp corners and jagged edges.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Most brains don’t really know how to deal with in
formation – they can store it, they can modify it, and they can pass it on, but they can never really use it. It’s a bit like a conduit system, if you’d care to think of it that way – you feed excrement in at one end, and it flows smoothly through the system before emerging, only slightly watered down, at the other end. But a brain like Monika’s – or like mine, for that matter – isn’t content with that. The sharp corners stop the flow, the jagged edges hook the detritus and hold it up for examination. “What exactly is this fragment of information?” the brain asks. “How does it differ from this other fragment? And do the two of them considered together tell us something important?” Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘Yes,’ Downes said.

  Forsyth knelt down beside the bed, almost as if he were in prayer.

  ‘What is that brain of yours doing now, Monika?’ he said, in a voice which was suddenly soft and almost kindly. ‘Is it at rest? Is there nothing in there but the electrical hum of a tired old refrigerator on the lowest possible setting – or, after what Kate Meadows has told you, are you already asking yourself if the body in the allotment can be fitted into a larger scheme of things?’ He raised his hand and gently stroked her cheek. ‘Is it possible that one day in the near future, when all your team are gathered around you, you will open your mouth and say “Arthur Wheatstone”?’ He looked up at Downes. ‘I fear Monika’s brain,’ he said, ‘and if you have any sense, then so will you.’

  ‘If you’re so worried about her, why not just kill her?’ Downes asked sarcastically.

  ‘Do you really think I haven’t considered that as a solution?’ Forsyth asked mildly. ‘But my masters won’t hear of it for the moment.’

  Forsyth was playing his games again, Downes thought. Well, he was getting the hang of that himself.

  ‘Why won’t your masters approve?’ he asked. ‘Is it because she’s a fairly high-ranking police officer?’

  ‘Well, her rank certainly comes into it,’ Forsyth replied, ‘but I wouldn’t say that is the main consideration. My masters like all the tidying up to appear to be either an accident or from natural causes, you see. Out on the street, it would be simplicity itself to have her knocked down by a runaway lorry, but it would be hard to explain the presence of a juggernaut on the third floor of a large hospital. And as for natural causes – well, she’s being closely monitored by a team of expert doctors. Any of the methods we’ve used to fake a natural death in the past would be very quickly uncovered.’

  ‘So as long as she stays in here, she’s safe?’ Downes asked.

  ‘As long she either keeps her mouth shut or doesn’t start saying the wrong words, she’s safe. But if she does start saying the wrong words – or if there’s even a possibility she could say the wrong words – it may be necessary to take her out first, and worry about the consequences later.’

  Jesus God, this was real! Downes thought.

  In a way, he was surprised that he was surprised. After all, he already knew about Arthur Wheatstone and the man in the trench, so he was aware that people got killed as a result of deliberate decisions taken by other people. But he’d been on the periphery of that, and it had all seemed so distant – a tale told around the campfire as the whisky bottle was passed from man to man.

  This, on the other hand, was painfully close! This was a woman lying on a bed a few feet from him, a woman who he might be told to …

  But no, Forsyth would never ask him to do that!

  ‘You killed somebody once, didn’t you, Monika?’ Forsyth asked, scouring her face for a reaction as he spoke. ‘Did you know that, Downes?’

  ‘It’s not in the file,’ Downes replied, almost world-wearily.

  ‘No, it isn’t in the file,’ Forsyth agreed. ‘But it happened, all right. She did it to protect her old boss, Charlie Woodend, although it has to be said that when she did it, he was not in any immediate danger.’

  ‘Then why isn’t it—?’ Downes began.

  ‘Horse trading,’ Forsyth interrupted. ‘I wanted something from Charlie Woodend, and he wanted something from me.’ He moved, so he was examining Paniatowski from a slightly different angle. ‘Yes, you killed to protect good old Charlie, so you can’t really complain if Downes here kills you to protect me, now can you, Monika?’

  Her face remained as still and lifeless as it had been before he began speaking – but that proved nothing.

  ‘We’ll laugh about all this one day, Monika,’ Forsyth said. ‘Or, at least, I will.’

  When she first regained consciousness – no, not consciousness, because you had to have at least a few more parts of you working before you could call it consciousness …

  What should she call it then?

  The first time she had regained awareness – yes, that was about right – the first time she had regained awareness, she had thought she was dead.

  And why wouldn’t she have thought that? She couldn’t move, couldn’t see, couldn’t speak, and maybe that was what death was – a brain floating on an airbed in a perfectly calm sea for all eternity.

  But then a nurse had entered the room – or maybe not, maybe her brain had invented the nurse to keep from absolute despair.

  It had only been when Louisa had spent some time with her that she’d finally accepted unconditionally that she was alive – if that was what you wanted to call it.

  She had tried to keep track of how much time had passed by registering any conversations she heard:

  ‘My French neighbours were making a hell of a lot of noise last Thursday.’

  ‘Well, what do you expect? It was their independence day, after all.’

  So the previous Thursday had been the 14th of July.

  And how many days had passed since then?

  Three – which made it the 17th.

  Or was it four?

  In the end, she had given up on the present, and sought some kind of escape in the past.

  She remembered what she had been told of her father’s last heroic and pointless cavalry charge – Polish horses against German tanks.

  She relived the life she and her mother had led after the invasion – wandering all over Europe, hiding first from the Nazis and then from the Red Army, begging food where they could, stealing it where they couldn’t, but always hungry … always so very, very hungry.

  She recalled her mother’s second marriage and her stepfather’s unwanted attentions, forced on her in the middle of the night.

  She experienced anew the black despair she had felt when she was told Bob was dead, and the sheer joy that adopting Louisa had brought her.

  Yet though she had lived a life crowded with events, memories of it were not enough – even when viewed from a startling new angle – to banish the ennui which had become a constant companion.

  She had come to realize that she was not afraid of death, for though she had battled against her childhood religion for most of her adult life, she had finally – with the miracle of her pregnancy – begun to embrace Mother Church once more. Now she believed in a merciful God (albeit one with a particularly black sense of humour) and was confident that beyond the grave, she could look forward to a life of everlasting things-could-be-worse.

  So the growing fear which had been eating away at her insides was not about dying, it was about not dying – about lying there helpless for another thirty or forty years, until Death finally came to harvest her.

  And now, a minion of the forces of darkness (let’s call him Satan’s little helper, she thought – and was both surprised and pleased that she could still make a joke of it) had been to visit her and hinted that he was looking for a way to terminate her.

  She was not sure how she felt about that.

  On the one hand, he could bring her the death she had been praying for.

  On the other, she was suddenly more optimistic about her chances of recovery.

  The two might have evenly balanced out but for a third element, which she suspected was petty and childish, but nonetheless seemed to be flashing li
ke a gaudy neon sign in the very forefront of her mind.

  She didn’t want Forsyth to win!

  It was a ludicrous thing for a woman in a coma to be thinking, and yet she could feel herself drawing strength from it.

  He had exposed a weakness, and if she were ever to be in a position to take advantage of it, she needed to prepare now.

  ‘Is it possible that one day in the near future, when all your team are gathered around you, you will open your mouth and say “Arthur Wheatstone”?’

  Arthur Wheatstone!

  Of course!

  Forsyth had been very much in evidence when the paramilitaries had been secretly training on the moors, and he had been constantly popping up (like an evil jack-in-the-box) during the coal strike, yet there had been no sign at all of him during the Arthur Wheatstone investigation.

  Yet she should have known – she should have bloody known – even though she hadn’t seen him. She should have been able to sense his presence – should have been able to pick up a hint of the scent of evil which trailed behind him – because that case had his fingerprints all over it.

  Arthur Wheatstone.

  She had never even heard of him until that morning in April – four years earlier – when she had arrived at his house.

  PART TWO

  The Hanging

  April 1974

  SEVEN

  Monika Paniatowski hated being called as a witness. It wasn’t so much that she resented some oily barrister suggesting that she was either a liar or a fool – and, as a bonus, that she was possibly bent. It wasn’t even that some of the older judges expressed surprise that a little lady like her could actually be a chief inspector, and sometimes interrupted the proceedings to make sure they’d actually got that right.

  No, what really got her goat was the time it took! Very often, she would not be called on the first day of the trial she’d been summoned to attend, either because the questioning of another witness had taken longer than expected, or because the judge adjourned early (perhaps, she would speculate maliciously, because he had an urgent appointment with a high-priced prostitute who would shout gross obscenities at him while he ate food out of a dog bowl on the floor!).