Dangerous Games Read online

  He knew who had put him in the van now.

  And he knew why they had done it.

  And now he understood what was in store for him, he felt his bowels open and he soiled himself.

  Woodend drummed his fingers impatiently on the surface of the corner table in the Drum and Monkey, then checked his watch again.

  Bob Rutter was already three-quarters of an hour late, he noted. That was not at all like the conscientious inspector who had been with him since his days at the Yard – and it was certainly not a good sign.

  Possibly the reason that Rutter was so late was because interviewing the potential nannies for Louisa had taken him longer than he had anticipated, Woodend told himself.

  But that wasn’t an excuse. In a murder investigation, there were no excuses. You worked all the hours that God sent, and if your private life happened to fall to pieces in the middle of it, then that was just tough.

  What the bloody hell was the matter with him, he suddenly found himself wondering. The thoughts which had just passed through his head didn’t belong there – didn’t belong to him – at all.

  Some chief inspectors he knew did regard their teams as little more than robots programmed to do their will – but he certainly wasn’t one of them. He valued the members of his team, despite their weaknesses. In fact, those weaknesses were often more of an advantage than a hindrance. Because if they didn’t have any of their own, how would they ever understand the human weakness they came across in the course of the investigation? And if they didn’t understand that weakness, how would they ever solve the case?

  He’d swung from one extreme to the other in a matter of seconds, he told himself, and now it was time to try and strike a balance.

  He took a deep breath. Certainly, allowances had to be made, he argued – but it was also necessary to draw the line somewhere. And it was very worrying indeed that even though baby Louisa was still in London, she had already begun to distract Rutter from the job.

  ‘We might as well make a start, I suppose,’ he said aloud.

  ‘What about Bob?’ Monika Paniatowski asked.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He’s not here yet.’

  ‘I can see that for myself, but we can’t wait for him forever. If he wants to keep up to speed, he’ll just have to read our reports.’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ Monika said firmly.

  ‘I know it isn’t,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But what can we do?’

  ‘We could give him a bit longer to get here.’

  ‘Monika …’

  ‘You know as well as I do that Bob’s mind works in a different way to yours and mine, and that he often picks up on points that would have slipped by the rest of us completely. So if he’s not here when we go through our findings, there’s a bloody good chance we’ll overlook what could turn out to be a vital lead in this investigation.’

  It was tragic to see how much she still loved Bob Rutter, Woodend thought. She might snipe at him when he was there …

  Might? a voice said in his head. There was no might about it. She bloody did!

  … but when he wasn’t there, she seemed to feel under an obligation to defend him to her dying breath.

  ‘We really do have to crack on, Monika,’ he said heavily, and without giving her time to respond, he turned to DC Beresford. ‘So, what little pearls of wisdom have you managed to glean from your visit to the ball bearing factory, young Colin?’ he asked.

  Beresford outlined what he had heard in the works canteen, and Woodend told him what progress he and Paniatowski had made.

  ‘So let’s review what we know so far,’ Woodend said. ‘Terry Pugh, from what Monika and I have learned of him, was a quiet sort of feller who did his work conscientiously, an’ generally kept his head down.’

  He saw that Monika Paniatowski was smiling – and thank God she still could – at his unfortunate choice of words.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, grinning despite himself. ‘What I meant was that Pugh seems to have pretty much kept himself out of trouble.’

  ‘Although one of his work-mates did say that he was rather wild when he was in his late teens,’ Beresford reminded him.

  ‘Which of us wasn’t?’ Woodend asked.

  And then he thought: You weren’t, Colin. Given your mother’s condition, you haven’t been allowed that luxury.

  ‘On the other hand, we know that, one bright spring mornin’, Pugh received a typewritten letter which really disturbed him,’ he continued, ‘a letter which not only made him puke up the first time he read it, but which he kept re-readin’ – as if he couldn’t help himself – even when he was at work. Now, what could have been in that letter?’

  ‘I think his sister-in-law could be right about the gambling debts,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘So what are you suggestin’? That the bookies have decided that breakin’ legs isn’t a sufficient incentive to make their clients pay up any more, an’ have moved their persuasion techniques up a notch?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Paniatowski said. ‘But it can’t do any harm to have the bookies checked out, can it?’

  Woodend nodded. ‘No, it can’t do any harm at all,’ he agreed. ‘When it comes to secret vices, it’s often the quiet ones you have to watch, because they’re always the best at keeping it to themselves.’

  ‘So we’ll have the bookies checked out?’

  ‘Why not? What have we got to lose? And while they’re bein’ questioned about Pugh’s possible gamblin’ habits, they can also have a look at the sketch of the Unknown Greek.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is why Terry Pugh left the pub with this Greek feller in the first place,’ Beresford said, sounding troubled.

  ‘Go on,’ Woodend said encouragingly – because a troubled thought could often turn out to be a fruitful one.

  ‘The meeting he’d arranged to have with Mr Hough was important to him, wasn’t it?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Very important. Hough was about to offer him a much better job than the one he had at the time – an’ he could have used the extra money, what with the baby bein’ on the way.’

  ‘And from what you’ve said about him expanding his factory, Mr Hough must be a very busy man.’

  ‘I imagine he is.’

  ‘So, since his time is valuable, he won’t have taken kindly to being stood up, will he? He might even have withdrawn the job offer, for all Pugh knew. Yet despite that, he decides to leave the pub with the Unknown Greek – a stranger, who he’s only been talking to for a couple of minutes.’

  ‘You’re right, that doesn’t make sense,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘The Greek can’t have been a stranger to him at all.’

  ‘On the other hand, they’re unlikely to have met in Whitebridge, because we’ve already established that if the Greek had been here for any length of time, one of our lads would have been bound to notice him,’ Woodend said thoughtfully. He nodded at Beresford. ‘Well done, lad. You’ve not only raised some interestin’ questions, but you’ve landed yourself a job for the mornin’.’

  ‘What job’s that, sir?’

  ‘I want you to find out if Terry Pugh’s done much travellin’, and especially if he’s ever been to Greece.’

  ‘Or Turkey. Or Yugoslavia. Or Romania,’ Paniatowski said.

  And then she grinned, just in case Woodend had missed the point that what she was doing was mocking him for his earlier pessimism.

  ‘Aye, or any of them other strange weird an’ wonderful foreign places as well,’ Woodend agreed, grinning back at her.

  He suddenly realized he was feeling much better than he had earlier. The black mood that this investigation had induced in him – and which had coloured his view of life in general, and Bob Rutter’s absence in particular – had been somewhat lifted by talking through the case with Paniatowski and Beresford.

  Of course, he understood that they still had a long way to go before they were in a position to make an arrest. And, of course, it didn’t help that the Chief Cons
table was still insisting that they pretend Terry Pugh’s murder was a suicide. But these were no more than occupational hazards.

  He took another sip of his pint, and decided that letting the beer settle for a while had improved the flavour no end.

  What he didn’t realize – but very soon would – was that in so many ways, he was like a prisoner already kneeling before the execution block, yet still convinced that a last-minute reprieve would come through. And when the axe fell – as it was about to – it would come as a complete surprise.

  Ten

  The building site was on the corner where the road into town and the road to Preston intersected. It had been a large, old-fashioned cinema, which in its heyday had shown the biggest and best of the Hollywood epics, but in its later years had survived mainly by screening ‘naturist’ films for the delectation of sniggering schoolboys and dirty old men. And when even this had failed – when, some evenings, the staff outnumbered the customers – the owners had finally decided that they could no longer compete with that evil little monster, the television set, and had sold up.

  The space had been bought – much to the consternation of several local small businesses – by a large retail chain. Soon, in place of the old decrepit cinema, there would be a brand spanking new supermarket, offering cut prices, trading stamps and free gifts. For the moment, however, there was little more than a steel skeleton, surrounded by a chain-link fence and guarded, at night, by Harry ‘Bone Crusher’ Turner, who had once been the most formidable prop forward ever to have played for Whitebridge Rugby Football Club.

  If Harry – who time had turned into a somewhat cantankerous old-age pensioner – had had a dog with him as he went on his rounds, that particular site would probably never have been chosen for the events of the evening.

  But he hadn’t – and it was.

  Turner had, in fact, asked for a dog on his first day on the job, and had gone into a second-childhood sulk when his request had been immediately – and somewhat ungraciously – turned down.

  ‘But I need a dog, if I’m to do the job properly,’ he’d protested to the young site manager, who went by the name of Wickshaw.

  ‘It’s not the crown jewels you’re guarding here, you know, Harry,’ the site manager had replied. ‘There’s no gang of international building material thieves planning to swoop down on the site in the dead of night, and make off with a couple of thousand Accrington bricks.’

  ‘I know that, but …’

  ‘The Secret Cement Cartel isn’t just waiting for our guard to be down before they have it away with a dozen bags of Portland Finest.’

  The site manager was too much of a smart-alec for his own good, the night-watchman thought. He was little more than a lad, still wet behind the ears – but because he had his City and Guilds Certificate, he thought he knew everything there was to know.

  ‘What about the machinery?’ Turner had grumbled. ‘It’s very valuable, is that machinery, Mr Wickshaw.’

  ‘So it is,’ the site manager had agreed. ‘But it’s also virtually impossible to nick.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that.’

  ‘You’re not? So tell me, how’s anybody going to steal a crane or a digger? Drive it away?’

  ‘They could.’

  ‘Talk sense, Harry! Heavy plant’s not exactly built with a speedy getaway in mind, you know. A bobby on a push-bike could catch up with it, if he pedalled hard enough.’

  ‘So if there’s no risk of anythin’ valuable bein’ stolen, what am I goin’ to be doin’ here, night after night?’ the watchman had wondered.

  ‘I’ll tell what you’re doing here, Harry,’ the site manager had said, his patience almost at an end. ‘You’re here so that some chap living just down the road – who happens to be in need of a couple of concrete flag-stones – won’t be tempted to just walk in and help himself.’

  ‘But suppose he does give way to the temptation,’ the watchman argued. ‘I could be in danger.’

  ‘If we thought there was any danger, we wouldn’t entrust the security of the place to an old feller like you,’ the site manager had said, exasperatedly.

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ Turner said.

  And he was thinking: I may be old, but I reckon I could still drop you if I had to, you thin streak of piss an’ wind.

  ‘You’re still looking worried,’ the site manager had said, mistaking anger for fear. ‘For God’s sake, Harry, nobody’s going to put you in hospital for a couple of pipes or a few yards of copper wiring, now are they?’

  And so it was that Turner was dog-less and alone when he discovered the breech in the chain-link fence that surrounded the site.

  It was perfectly obvious what had happened, Harry Turner thought, as he examined the breech in the light of his torch. Some bastard had taken a pair of wire cutters, sliced his way through the chain link, and then peeled back a flap so he could get access. And now he was somewhere on the site, in any one of the dozen or so places he could have chosen to hide.

  There should be searchlights I could switch on, Harry Turner thought.

  But there were no lights, just as there was no dog.

  He was not afraid, he told himself, but it would probably wise to be a little cautious.

  He turned away from the fence, to face the site.

  ‘The police have been called!’ he bawled out in that same loud voice that had sung a thousand dirty rugby songs. ‘There’s no gettin’ away, an’ if you give yourself up now, they’ll probably go easy on you.’

  He heard a single foot-fall from somewhere to his left, and was just about to turn again when his head suddenly seemed to explode. And then everything went black.

  Rutter had finally arrived at the Drum and Monkey. He was looking somewhat flustered, but also a little triumphant.

  ‘One of the nannies who I was supposed to be interviewing couldn’t make it this afternoon,’ he explained.

  ‘Well, that is a promisin’ start,’ Woodend said dourly.

  ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ Rutter said, completely missing the warning signal. ‘Apparently, there was some kind of domestic crisis in the place where she’s currently employed. And since – on paper at least – she looked the best of the bunch, I thought I’d better allow a little leeway.’

  ‘Very good of you, I’m sure,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ since we seem to be discussin’ leeway, is there any reason you couldn’t have phoned to tell us you were goin’ to be late?’

  ‘I did make a call to the station, but you’d already left, sir,’ Rutter said defensively.

  ‘This pub has a phone,’ Woodend pointed out. ‘We’ve all used it, often enough.’

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you here, especially since I knew that within half an hour or so …’ Rutter trailed off. ‘You’re quite right, sir,’ he continued. ‘I could have phoned, and I’m sorry I didn’t.’

  His problem was that Bob was feeling very guilty about the way he’d behaved towards his daughter, Woodend thought. For quite a while after Maria’s death, he’d not believed he was able to take care of Louisa at all, and the grandparents had been forced to bear the burden. And now he finally felt he could handle it, he was trying to compensate for that earlier neglect by giving her his total commitment.

  ‘Did you hire a nanny in the end?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Yes, I did,’ Rutter told her. ‘I actually hired the one who I interviewed last – the one who made me late. I think she’s going to be really excellent.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right then,’ Woodend said – though his tone made it clear that was far from the case.

  Later, when he was talking it through with the police, Harry Turner would calculate that he could not have been unconscious for more than five minutes. But at the time, as he was slowly coming round, his thoughts were not about that at all, but instead were focused on the loud noise coming from beyond the shell of the supermarket, at the other end of the site.

  ‘The crane!’ he gasped. ‘He�
��s stealin’ the bloody crane!’

  That should certainly teach the smart-arsed site manager a lesson in humility, he thought.

  But his feeling of smugness didn’t last for long, because he had been brought up in an age when you were taught to take your responsibilities very seriously, and it was his responsibility to protect the site.

  Using the chain-link fence for support, he pulled himself to his feet. His head hurt – and when he gently probed the back of his skull with his index finger, he felt something sticky, which he assumed was drying blood.

  But all-in-all, he told himself, he was not in bad shape. Certainly he was steady enough on his feet, and his vision did not seem to be in the least bit blurred. In the old days, on the rugby pitch, he’d have shrugged off an injury like this one, and there was no reason he shouldn’t do the same now.

  The crane engine continued to roar at the other end of the site, but so far the thief had made no attempt to slam it into gear and drive away.

  Harry shone his torch along the ground, searching for something he could use as a weapon. Its beam fell on a short iron bar, which should have been returned to the tool shed, but clearly had not.

  He bent down and picked it up.

  It would serve nicely, he decided – not too heavy, but capable of doing a good deal of damage if wielded properly. It would be a more-than-adequate tool to teach the bastard who had hit him that there was a great deal of difference between ‘old age pensioner’ and ‘old and helpless’.

  He walked around the edge of the construction shell, picking out his steps carefully, because there could be nothing more undignified than tripping over and twisting his ankle.

  When he was no more than half way to the crane, he heard the engine judder for a few seconds, and then die away completely.

  ‘Idiot!’ he said softly to himself. ‘Bloody incompetent idiot. What’s the point in stealin’ a crane if you don’t even know how to operate it?’

  He was expecting the thief to make another attempt to start the crane, but as he got closer, and it still remained silent, it became clear that he was going to do no such thing.