Dead End Page 9

  He wanted to protect her, bless his little cotton socks – and she couldn’t have that.

  ‘When I give an order, Butler, I don’t expect it to be questioned by a lad who still thinks his pubic hair is a bit of a novelty,’ she growled. ‘Do you think your tiny brain can grasp that fact?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Butler mumbled.

  ‘Then I’ll get out of the car first, and you stick close behind me.’

  Paniatowski got out of the Vauxhall, and quickly took up a position in front of the bonnet. She did not need to check whether Butler and Roberts were with her – she could hear their short, excited breaths.

  The man was still advancing on them, keeping to a regular pace, looking neither left nor right,

  ‘That’s far enough,’ Paniatowski said.

  The man came to an immediate halt. Paniatowski studied his face, looking for guidance as to what he might do next, but his neutral expression gave absolutely nothing away.

  ‘We’re going to arrest you now,’ she said. ‘It would be pointless to resist, and pointless to attempt to escape. Either of those things would only make things worse for you in the long run.’

  The man smiled, slowly turned around then clasped his hands together in the small of his back.

  You’re an idiot, Monika, Paniatowski told herself.

  And what makes you an idiot?

  The fact that it’s taken you so long to work out that this feller is an American.

  EIGHT

  By the time Paniatowski got back to the dead man’s house, a whole caravanserai of official vehicles was parked outside. She checked them off in her mind: Meadows’, Crane’s, and Beresford’s cars; the Scene of Crime Officers’ van; and four patrol cars, parked across Blackthorn Way at an angle to serve as ad hoc roadblocks.

  The only two vehicles needed to complete the scene were Dr Shastri’s Land Rover, and an ambulance.

  The constables who had arrived in the patrol cars were now out on the pavements, dealing with the neighbours.

  ‘Move along please.’

  ‘We will be taking all your statements later, I promise you.’

  ‘There’s really nothing to see.’

  It was true – there was nothing to see but the same brick walls they must have seen day after day.

  Ah, but it was different now. There had been a sudden dramatic death in the house, and now the very brickwork had a fascinating evil about it.

  Paniatowski wondered if she should consult Dr Shastri about the blow she had received to the head, but apart from a continuous dull ache and the occasional shooting pain, it was causing her no problems at all, so taking care of it could be postponed until later.

  Once she was inside the garage, the first thing Paniatowski’s eyes were drawn to – inevitably – was the body, but then she scanned the rest of the place, and saw a number of randomly scattered cardboard boxes, which looked as if they might once have been part of an orderly pillar.

  And that was exactly what they had been – a pillar of boxes behind which the American was hiding until he burst out and struck her on the head, probably with the spanner which was lying in the floor.

  Beresford looked at the body and then at Paniatowski. ‘I realize that the feller you arrested was probably committing some kind of crime by even being here,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t have thought it was a serious enough crime to interest us.’

  ‘What about him?’ Paniatowski asked, jerking her thumb in the hanging man’s direction.

  ‘It’s a suicide, isn’t it?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Is it?’ Paniatowski wondered. ‘Then where’s the note?’

  Beresford looked around him. ‘We haven’t found one,’ he admitted.

  ‘Suicides almost invariably leave the note close by,’ Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Some of them even pin the notes to themselves.’

  ‘True,’ Beresford agreed, ‘but there’s always the exception that proves the rule, isn’t there? The note might somewhere else in the house. Or he may have written it as a letter, and posted it to somebody. He might even not have left one at all. Some people don’t.’

  ‘It was brass monkey weather up here on the moors last night, yet according to Inspector Cole from across the road, our Arthur here was out in the garden, smoking a cigarette, because his wife doesn’t like him smoking inside. That’s the action of a man who plans a long-term future.’

  ‘Or it could be the action of a man who’s simply a slave to habit,’ Beresford countered. ‘He’s always smoked in the garden, so he did it without thinking about it.’ He paused. ‘I’m not saying you’re wrong about suicide, boss – but somebody has to put up the alternative argument.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Then answer me this – if you’d decided to top yourself and it was your last night on earth, what would you have to eat?’

  Beresford made a face. ‘I’m not sure that I’d be able to fancy anything,’ he said.

  ‘I would,’ Crane said. ‘I’d have a dozen fresh oysters from Normandy, a few Coquilles Saint-Jacques, and a goose pâté from the Dordogne, with fresh French bread to accompany it.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Beresford said, in disgust. ‘Even if you were planning to kill yourself, there’s still no excuse for pushing stuff like that down your throat.’ He shook his head in wonder. ‘There are times when I think you’re from a different planet from the rest of us, Jack.’

  ‘You’re missing the point, Colin,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes, I rather think you are. One of you would be too nervous to eat anything, one of you would want go on the binge of a lifetime. What neither of you would do is treat it like a normal day – what neither of you would do was leave one plate and one knife and one fork in the sink.’

  ‘You may be right,’ Beresford said, though still sounding dubious.

  ‘And we can see he wet himself, but there’s not even the hint of a puddle on the floor,’ Paniatowski said.

  She noticed a coil of rope wrapped around a wall bracket which was identical to that wrapped around Arthur Wheatstone’s neck – and that gave her an idea.

  ‘How tall are you, Colin?’ she asked.

  ‘Five feet eleven,’ Beresford said, puzzled.

  ‘And what about the dead man?’

  ‘It’s hard to be exact, but I’d guess he’s about three inches shorter than me.’

  ‘Take the step ladder he was standing on, and stand on it yourself,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘But that will contaminate the evidence,’ Beresford protested.

  Paniatowski laughed. ‘There’ll be nothing at all to contaminate,’ she told him. ‘Whoever strung Arthur up will have been sure to wipe it clean.’

  ‘Let’s just hope you’re right about that,’ Beresford grumbled, ‘because the last thing I need is to be given a rocket, and then sent on a course to improve my evidence collecting skills.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ Paniatowski promised him.

  Beresford picked up the stepladder, moved it some way from the corpse, and stood on the top of its three steps.

  Paniatowski handed him the coil of rope. ‘There’s a small gap between the beam and the ceiling,’ she said, ‘Can you thread the end of this rope through it?’

  ‘I should think so,’ Beresford said.

  And then he discovered that even on tiptoe, he couldn’t reach the top of the beam.

  ‘Maybe I can thread it through even if I can’t reach the spot myself,’ he suggested.

  And perhaps he could have done, if he had been dealing with something stiffer and more inflexible – like wire – but the rope was floppy, and without the help of a fakir (sitting cross-legged on the floor, and charming it with his flute) there wasn’t any way it could be fitted through the narrow gap without a hand to guide it.

  ‘He must have used another – longer – ladder to stand on while he threaded the rope through,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Then where is it?’ Paniatowski asked.

  They a
ll looked around the garage. There was no sign of any ladder.

  ‘My good friend DI Cole, whose word I am coming to rely on more and more, says that Wheatstone had two visitors last night, and one of them was at least six feet four,’ Paniatowski said. ‘So we are faced with two possibilities. One; Arthur Wheatstone decides to commit suicide, but he doesn’t leave a note, or smoke in the house (which he knows will annoy his wife). He has a simple meal – nothing at all special – then gets a ladder, takes it to the garage, threads the rope through and takes the ladder away again. Possibility two; he’s murdered by someone tall enough to thread the rope through.’

  ‘It’s possibility two,’ Crane said.

  ‘It has to be,’ Beresford agreed.

  The corpse was lying on a wheeled stretcher, and Dr Shastri had just spent five minutes examining it.

  Now she turned to Paniatowski, and said, ‘You would no doubt like me to tell you when this poor unfortunate soul died, wouldn’t you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘Oh, it is no trouble at all,’ Shastri told her. ‘As a humble and unworthy Indian doctor, I regard it as both my duty and my privilege to dedicate my simple talents to your service.’

  Paniatowski grinned. ‘Have you thought any more about taking up that job you were headhunted for by Stanford?’ she asked.

  ‘Alas, my mind would agree to be transported in an instant to that great temple of learning, but my body refuses to consider the move,’ Shastri said. ‘It has got used to the cold and damp of Lancashire, and would suffer withdrawal symptoms were I to take it to a more civilized climate.’

  ‘So when did he die?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Taking into account his temperature and the extent of his rigour (plus several other factors I would not even dream of boring you with), I would say that he died between seven o’clock and eleven o’clock last night,’ Shastri said.

  DI Cole had seen his visitors arrive at eight, but their car had been gone by ten. That would fit in neatly with what Shastri had just told her, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘But did he die by hanging?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah, there you have me,’ Shastri replied. ‘He certainly shows several signs of having died in that manner, but until I open him up with my little scalpel, I will not be able to say with any degree of certainty.’

  ‘I’d like a report as soon as possible,’ Paniatowski told her. ‘Shall we say this afternoon?’

  ‘You may say what you like, but it will be ready when it is ready,’ Shastri said sweetly. She smiled at Beresford. ‘Your boss is a tyrant,’ she told him. ‘But then her boss, Charlie Woodend, was a tyrant, too. And no doubt when Monika has been safely dispatched to the Home for Retired Gentlewomen, you will be just as monstrous to me.’

  ‘No doubt,’ Beresford agreed.

  ‘So,’ Shastri said, turning to the two waiting ambulance men. ‘Would you two gentlemen be so kind as to convey my new friend to the mortuary?’

  A small crowd had gathered out in the street, and its persistence was rewarded by the sight of the stretcher being loaded into the ambulance.

  ‘I want this village squeezing like a lemon,’ Paniatowski said, running her eyes over the spectators. ‘I want to know if any unfamiliar faces have suddenly started appearing in Barrow. I’m most interested in the big man who DI Cole saw last night, but I also want to know about the man who was with him – and, of course, the American in the Jaguar XJ. Is that clear, Colin?’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Beresford said. ‘I’ve already commandeered the village hall, and as soon as I get reinforcements from Whitebridge, I’m on it.’ He paused. ‘Can I ask a question?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You seem to be assuming that the big man is the murderer.’

  ‘I am. He’s the only one who was tall enough to have threaded the rope between the beam and the ceiling.’

  ‘Yes, but maybe the killer had a ladder, in which case he wouldn’t need to be tall at all.’

  ‘There was no ladder. We looked.’

  ‘And doesn’t that strike you as strange? Can you think of any other garage you’ve been in where there wasn’t a ladder?’

  Actually, she couldn’t, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘But I still don’t see what you’ve got against our tall man being the killer,’ she said.

  ‘The fact that he is tall,’ Beresford countered. ‘Listen, what a killer wants most of all is to slip away unnoticed, but that’s hard to do when you’re exceptionally tall, which is why I’m willing to bet you that most known contract killers are under six feet tall.’

  ‘You’ve got a good point,’ Paniatowski conceded, ‘but within hours of him arriving at the house, Arthur Wheatstone was dead.’

  ‘Yes, and even before he’d gone through the door, he’d been spotted,’ Beresford said. ‘If he really was a killer, wouldn’t he have been more careful?’

  ‘Maybe he underestimated just how nosy a small village can be,’ Paniatowski said, though it seemed a weak argument even as she was propounding it. ‘I also want all the information you can obtain on Arthur Wheatstone and his wife, as well. Were the Wheatstones happy? Did Arthur have any particular friends they knew of – or enemies? Was he involved in any disputes with neighbours with adjoining properties? Did he have a gambling habit? Was he a peeping tom?’

  It was all pretty standard stuff, and Beresford nodded.

  ‘What about the Yank who you surprised in the garage?’ he asked. ‘How does he fit into all of this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘The only really clear impression I’ve got is that he didn’t try too hard to get away.’

  ‘What do you mean – didn’t try too hard to get away? First he hits you on the back of the head, then he’s driving away like he’s in an action movie.’

  ‘Yes, but I think that was his first panicked reaction. By the time we hit the roadworks, he’d calmed down, and he surrendered.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s so much a case of him calming down as him not having much choice.’

  ‘But he did have a choice. He could have driven off into the moors.’

  ‘Isn’t the road raised at that point?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a flood protection measure.’

  ‘So he’d have had to drive down a pretty sharp embankment. I can’t think of many people who would have tried it.’

  ‘I would have, in his position,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Yes, boss, but with the greatest respect, you can be a bit of a raving madwoman sometimes,’ Beresford said.

  ‘True,’ Paniatowski admitted, trying not to look too pleased. ‘But there’s more to it than that. When he surrendered to me, it was like it was a bit of a joke,’ she persisted. ‘He wasn’t worried at all, and everybody who gets arrested is worried to some extent – even if they’re innocent.’

  NINE

  Paniatowski knew Chief Superintendent Snodgrass to nod to, and they had undoubtedly had a few meaningless conversations at the social events they had both been expected to attend, but that was about the limit of their contact.

  Snodgrass had been brought in from outside a couple of years earlier, to tighten up rural policing. He was ex-army, and station rumour had it that he had been in the commandos, and had killed men with his bare hands. Paniatowski paid it no mind. She had all-but-stopped listening to rumour since a single dinner with a middle-aged priest from Ghana sparked the story that she was having an affair with the Nigerian vice consul.

  Since Snodgrass’s remit was the highways and byways of rural Lancashire, Butler and Roberts – her gung-ho companions of earlier that day – were his men, so when she saw him striding across the car park at police headquarters, her first thought was to put in a good word for his lads.

  Her second thought was to leave it for another day, because Snodgrass was not just striding – he was striding furiously. And there were other signs she was picking up on – his bulky frame seemed swollen
well beyond its normal size, and his face (framed by his square head) was the colour of bubbling lava.

  Yes, he was mad all right, Paniatowski thought, and pitied whoever would be on the receiving end of his rage.

  That was when she realized he was heading straight for her.

  Snodgrass came to a halt directly in her path, so that short of stepping around him – which would have been very undignified – she had no choice but to come to a halt too.

  ‘Can I ask you a question, DCI Paniatowski?’ Snodgrass bellowed. Then, without waiting for a reply, he continued, ‘What the bloody hell gives you the right to go sticking your big bloody nose into my patch?’

  This simply couldn’t be happening, Paniatowski thought.

  Senior officers might occasionally shout at junior officers. They shouldn’t, but they did. But never – never – did one senior officer bawl out another, as Snodgrass was doing now – and the fact that he was doing it in a public area only made things worse.

  ‘For God’s sake, sir, get a grip!’ she said. ‘Remember who you are – and where you are.’

  ‘Barrow Village is my patch, and I don’t expect to find CID on it without a very good reason,’ Snodgrass continued, but maybe something of what she’d said had got through to him, because now he had lowered his voice a little. ‘Did you have a very good reason for being on my patch, Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I heard on the police radio that there’d been a forced entry into a house in Barrow Village …’

  ‘And you’re investigating burglaries now, are you? I thought you fancy twats at CID didn’t get off your arses unless there was at least a double murder to investigate.’

  ‘I happened to be driving past the village—’

  ‘And you thought you’d go and find a simple suicide, and turn it into a murder.’

  ‘With respect, sir, what makes you think Arthur Wheatstone’s death was a suicide?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘It’s my men out there, doing the donkey work for your Inspector Beresford, you know,’ Snodgrass said. ‘And do you think that my men wouldn’t let me know what’s happening on my patch?’