Dangerous Games Read online

  That was the trouble with young people today, he thought. No bloody resilience at all. Try something once, and if it doesn’t work first time off, bloody give up.

  He had reached the edge of the building, and an open space of perhaps five yards lay between him and the crane. He swept the area with his torch – because he was damned if he’d let the swine ambush him again – but there was no sign of a waiting enemy.

  He took a few steps forward, and shone the torch into the cabin of the crane. It seemed to be empty.

  That was it, then, was it? The thief had given up his attempt to steal the heavy machine, and had made his escape.

  So, apart from the blow to his head – which had now almost completely stopped bothering him – no real damage had been done, Turner thought.

  And then he looked up at the arm of the crane, and realized he couldn’t have been wronger.

  Beresford had gone home to look after his mum, so there were only three of them at the table in the Drum and Monkey when the landlord called across the bar that there was a phone call for Woodend.

  The chief inspector climbed to his feet, and ambled over to the bar, as he had done a hundred times before.

  Paniatowski waited until he was out of earshot, then said to Rutter, ‘You want to be careful.’

  ‘Careful about what?’

  ‘Careful to show that you still have an interest in doing your job.’

  ‘I do have an interest in my job,’ Rutter said angrily. ‘I love my job. But I also love my daughter, and if it’s a question of either her or …’

  ‘It isn’t a question of either/or,’ Paniatowski interrupted him. ‘You can have both, but you’ve got to learn to balance things better.’

  ‘Now that I’ve got a nanny for Louisa …’

  ‘You talk as if that’s the answer to all your problems. But it isn’t, is it? So what if you’ve got a nanny? She can’t be there all the time. And what will you do when she isn’t?’

  ‘Then I’ll look after my daughter.’

  ‘What if we’re in the middle of an important case?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Rutter said weakly. ‘I plan to cross that bridge if, and when, I come to it.’

  ‘There’s no “if” about,’ Paniatowski said. ‘It will happen.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Listen, I’ll help out all I can. Once in a while, I’ll baby-sit for you, so that you can at least give the appearance of being a full-time officer.’

  ‘You’d do that?’ Rutter asked surprised.

  ‘I’ve just said I would, haven’t I? Anyway, is there any reason why I wouldn’t?’

  Rutter shrugged, awkwardly. ‘Well, you know …’

  ‘Because she’s Maria’s baby?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that is what I meant.’

  ‘Maria may have hated me – God knows, she had reason enough to – but I never hated her. And even if I had, what’s that got to do with Louisa? She’s just an innocent child.’

  ‘You never cease to amaze me,’ Rutter said softly. ‘You never cease to touch me.’

  ‘Yes, well, let’s not get all sentimental and gooey about it,’ Paniatowski said brusquely. ‘Especially since the boss is coming back.’

  Woodend was indeed returning to the table – and he looked grim.

  ‘Has something happened, sir?’ Rutter asked.

  The chief inspector nodded. ‘Aye, somethin’ happened,’ he said. ‘There’s been another one.’

  Temporary police spotlights had been set up on the building site, and now the whole area around the crane was drenched in a bright, harsh light.

  There were no shadows at all. Small stones, embedded in the ground – and until now practically invisible – shone like gems. The crane itself stood naked and exposed, all the dents and scratches in its bodywork, which were hardly noticeable in the daylight, on display for all to see.

  But nobody was looking at the ground, and nobody was looking at the cabin of the crane. Instead, all eyes were focused on the arm of the crane, which was thirty feet in the air.

  Woodend tore his gaze away from the hanging corpse, and looked at the uniformed inspector, who had been the first ranking officer on the scene and so had taken charge of the site.

  ‘Do you have to leave the poor bugger hangin’ there like that, Sid?’ he asked. ‘Can’t you get him down?’

  ‘Believe me, sir, I would if I could,’ the inspector replied. ‘But until the fire brigade gets here, we’re helpless.’

  ‘Am I to take it that the crane’s liftin’ mechanism’s been nobbled, then?’ Woodend said.

  ‘That’s what we think must have happened. When the night watchman, Harry Turner, first arrived, the feller on the end of the rope was still kicking. So Turner climbed up into the cabin of the crane, to see if he could work out how to lower the arm. But he couldn’t even start the engine. And neither could any of my lads, however much they tried. So my guess would be that before the killer left, he found a way to jam it.’

  There was the sound of a siren in the distance.

  ‘That’ll be the fire brigade now,’ the uniformed inspector said. ‘If you don’t want me for anything else, sir, I suppose I’d better go and explain to them what it is they have to do.’

  ‘Aye, you take yourself off,’ Woodend said.

  The inspector walked away, and Woodend turned to his team.

  ‘Comments?’ he said.

  ‘The killer’s learning from his mistakes,’ Monika Paniatowski said. ‘The way he chose to do it this time, there was absolutely no chance of him decapitating his victim.’

  ‘No chance of a quick death for the poor bugger, either,’ Rutter said grimly. ‘The victim can’t have survived for that long, but it must have been hell for him while he did.’

  ‘So was it important to the killer that he suffered?’ Woodend wondered. ‘Or was the only thing that mattered to him that his victim should hang?’

  ‘Terry Pugh was already dead when he was hanged,’ Paniatowski reminded him. ‘I’m starting to think that the killing and the hanging are two entirely separate things.’

  ‘Meanin’ that the actual killing is practical – an’ any means will do – while the hangin’ is more of a symbolic nature?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘Although, in this case, he managed to find a way to combine the two.’

  ‘What do you think, Bob?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘I think it’s important to him that other people get to see his handiwork,’ Rutter said thoughtfully. ‘And in that way, too, he’s learned from his previous mistakes. The only people who saw Terry Pugh’s body were two fishermen and half a dozen bobbies. This time, the killer’s ensured that his victim is not only seen by more policemen and an entire fire brigade crew, but by them as well.’

  The ‘them’ he was referring to was the crowd which had gradually been building up on the other side of the chain link. There were at least a hundred people there now, most of them in such a hurry to take in the spectacle that they were still in dressing gowns and carpet slippers.

  Woodend nodded in agreement. ‘To kill his victim, all he had to do was raise the crane’s arm far enough for the man’s feet to be a couple of feet off the ground,’ he said. ‘To prevent the night watchman from rescuing him, he only had to add eight or ten feet to that. But he wanted to make a real show out of it – and that’s why he raised the arm so high before he sabotaged the motor.’

  ‘What is his game?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I’m buggered if I know,’ Woodend told her. ‘But I’d like to see Mr Marlowe explain this away as a suicide tomorrow mornin’.’

  Eleven

  That two hangings were of a great deal more interest to the press than a single one was clearly demonstrated by the fact that the next morning’s press conference was so popular they could have sold tickets to it.

  ‘Just look at them!’ said the Chief Constable, looking through the glass porthole of the door leading into the room where the hacks had been assembled. �
�They’re like bloody vultures, squatting there. They can’t wait for me to trip up so they can start tearing into my flesh.’

  And whose fault was that, Woodend wondered, though he said nothing.

  ‘I blame you for this,’ the Chief Constable said, answering his chief inspector’s unspoken question. ‘And that bloody sergeant of yours, too – she must take part of the blame. I knew my predecessor was making a mistake when he promoted her.’

  ‘Monika Paniatowski’s a good bobby, sir,’ Woodend said. ‘A very good bobby.’

  There was a dangerous edge to his voice which would have made most men proceed with caution, but Marlowe seemed not to notice it.

  ‘Paniatowski’s place isn’t out in the field,’ the Chief Constable said. ‘It’s in the kitchen – waiting for her man to come home, so she can cook him whatever he tells her to.’

  ‘I think you’re overlookin’ all the excellent work she’s done, sir,’ Woodend said, and the edge to his voice was getting sharper.

  ‘And if it’s not in the kitchen, it’s in the bedroom,’ Marlowe ploughed on regardless. ‘In the bedroom, I repeat – lying flat on her back, and with her legs spread wide open. That’s where she belongs. That’s where all women belong.’

  There were a couple of ways to deal with a comment like that, Woodend thought – and one of them was a two-part solution involving his fist and the Chief Constable’s mouth.

  ‘It seems there was this sex expert, givin’ a lecture, an’ the first thing he told his audience was that there were only seventy-six positions in which to make love,’ he said, opting for the second course of action.

  ‘What in God’s name are you talking about now, Chief Inspector?’ Marlowe demanded.

  ‘Anyway, he hears a voice from the back of the hall call out, “Seventy-seven positions”!’ Woodend continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘Well, naturally, the expert’s pissed off at bein’ contradicted. “I have studied the subject for over twenty years,” he says, “an’ I can assure you there are seventy-six positions.” “Seventy-seven positions!” the feller at the back of the hall insists. The lecturer decides it might be best just to pay him no more attention. “In the first position, the woman lies on her back,” he says. “Seventy-eight!” the heckler shouts.’

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ Marlowe wondered.

  ‘No, sir. I was merely pointin’ out that there are other ways for a woman to have sex than lyin’ flat on her back with her legs spread.’

  ‘And what has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Well, if you must insist on confinin’ all women – which must include Mrs Marlowe – to either the kitchen or the bedroom, you could at least try to ensure that the time your wife spends in the bedroom is just a little bit interestin’ for her.’

  ‘I’ll break you, Woodend,’ Marlowe said, in a low hiss that would not have disgraced the mouth of a poisonous snake. ‘I swear to God that one day soon, I’ll break you!’

  The Chief Inspector smiled. ‘Maybe so, sir – but not before the press conference,’ he said.

  Marlowe and Woodend sat side by side, facing the press. Marlowe had been quite correct when he’d said that the hacks couldn’t wait to start tearing into his flesh, Woodend thought, but they seemed to him to be much more like ravening hyenas than vultures.

  ‘Rather than make a formal statement, I think I’ll simply take questions today,’ the Chief Constable said. He looked around the room. ‘Let me see, I think we’ll start with you, Miss Forbes.’

  Woodend grinned inwardly. This was not the random choice that Marlowe was trying his damnedest to make it appear. Annie Forbes was a spinsterish-looking woman, with greying hair pulled back in a tight bun. She normally wrote cosy pieces for readers much like herself, and was probably only there that day because the usual reporter couldn’t make it.

  ‘Well, Miss Forbes?’ Marlowe said.

  Annie Forbes gazed back at him over the top of her glasses, in much the same way as a wised-up school-ma’am might have looked at a particularly recalcitrant male pupil.

  ‘Will we be allowed to ask as many questions as we may wish to, Chief Constable?’ she asked.

  ‘Within reason, yes. If you have a second question, to follow on from your first, I will certainly endeavour to answer that too.’

  This response did not seem to quite satisfy Miss Forbes.

  ‘I think I may have expressed myself badly,’ she said, smiling apologetically. ‘What I really meant to ask was if every reporter in the room who wants to ask a question will be allowed to ask it.’

  Marlowe reddened slight. ‘In an ideal world, I’d certainly be willing to stay here for as long as you all wished me to,’ he said. ‘But, as I’m sure you understand, I am heavily involved in an important police investigation.’

  Annie Forbes smiled again, though this time the smile seemed more malicious than regretful. ‘So the answer to my question is, “No, they will not,” is it?’ she asked sweetly.

  ‘Yes, I’m rather afraid it is,’ Marlowe conceded.

  ‘In that case, I’d like to give the time that you’ve allotted to me to my colleague, Mr Williams.’

  Woodend almost chuckled aloud. Arthur Williams, he knew from past experience, was to polite, deferential journalism what Jack the Ripper had been to flower arranging.

  Williams stood up quickly, before Marlowe had the opportunity to come up with a reason why he shouldn’t.

  ‘You assured us yesterday that Terry Pugh’s death was a suicide, Chief Constable,’ he began. ‘Do you still stand by that?’

  Marlowe forced himself to smile benignly. ‘No, I don’t,’ he said. ‘In fact, there’s nothing to stand by. At the time I made the statement, I already knew it was not a suicide we were investigating.’

  ‘Then why did you …?’

  ‘I apologize for deceiving you, but I can assure you that I did it from the best of all possible motives. I hoped that by lulling the killer into a false sense of security, we would be able to apprehend him before he killed again. Unfortunately,’ he turned to look briefly at Woodend, ‘the officers I have working under me have not been quite as effective as I would have wished them to be.’

  ‘So the two murders are related?’ Williams asked. ‘They were both carried out by the same man?’

  ‘Yes, that is the conclusion we have reached.’ Marlowe turned to Woodend again. ‘Isn’t that true, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘They would … er … certainly appear to be connected,’ Woodend said uneasily.

  ‘So there is also a connection between the two victims, is there?’ Williams asked him.

  ‘Since we don’t yet know who the second …’ Woodend began.

  ‘We are keeping the second victim’s identity a secret for the moment,’ the Chief Constable interrupted him, ‘and though we do have a definite connection between the two deaths, I am still not at liberty, for operational reasons, to reveal exactly what it is.’

  ‘What the hell were you pullin’ in there, you bloody idiot?’ Woodend demanded, once he and Marlowe were safely away from the press, and back in the Chief Constable’s office.

  ‘Do I need to remind you who it is that you’re talking to, Chief Inspector?’ Marlowe asked angrily.

  Woodend looked down at the floor. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then please let me hear you ask your question again – and with a little more respect this time.’

  Woodend took a deep breath, and looked up. ‘What the hell were you pullin’ in there, you bloody idiot, sir?’ he said.

  Marlowe had turned as red as a beetroot.

  ‘I was doing all that was in my power to maintain the reputation and credibility of this police force!’ he bellowed. ‘I was attempting to create the impression that the force in general – and you in particular – had a firm grip on the situation.’

  ‘By tellin’ lies?’

  ‘Was I telling lies? Is that what they were? So tell me, Chief Inspector, isn’t it highly likely that the two victims were connected in
some way?’

  ‘Yes,’ Woodend admitted, grudgingly.

  By Woodend’s standards, the Chief Constable recognized, this was almost a climb-down, and it did something to restore his good humour.

  ‘There you are, then,’ he said. ‘That’s all I told the reporters.’

  ‘But there are other possibilities as well – possibilities you didn’t even bother to raise,’ Woodend pointed out.

  ‘We are not interested in any other possibilities, Chief Inspector,’ Marlowe told him firmly.

  ‘But we have to be,’ Woodend protested. ‘We can’t just …’

  Marlowe raised his hand to silence him, and this time the Chief Inspector obeyed his instruction.

  ‘Find a link between the two victims, Chief Inspector,’ Marlowe said in a voice that had sunk to a deadly whisper. ‘Find it for both our sakes, but most especially for yours – because I can’t keep on covering up your incompetence for ever, you know.’

  In Woodend’s office, the usual fug of smoke hung in the air like the poisonous cloud it actually was, but the chief inspector noticed immediately that there were only two people contributing to it.

  ‘Where’s Inspector Rutter?’ he asked.

  Paniatowski looked up. ‘He’s stepped outside for a few minutes, sir,’ she said.

  ‘A few minutes, eh? An’ do we have any idea just how long that few minutes is likely …?’

  ‘We’ve managed to identify the second victim, sir,’ Monika Paniatowski interrupted.

  ‘That was quick work,’ Woodend said approvingly. ‘Not that you’ll get much credit for it from upstairs, since Mr Marlowe’s told the press we already knew who he was.’ He straddled the chair opposite his sergeant. ‘How did you get on to him so fast? Did he have some sort of identification on him that we managed to overlook last night?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘There was no driving licence, or anything like that – but there was a pawn ticket, and I sent DC Beresford to the pawnbrokers’ as soon as it opened.’

  ‘The feller behind the counter was very co-operative,’ Beresford said. ‘He knew immediately who the ticket belonged to, because the man was a regular customer by the name of Reg Lewis.’