A Long Time Dead (27 page)

‘Bascombe had a great deal to gain by lying,' Woodend pointed out, playing devil's advocate. ‘Less than two hours ago, he still had a couple of years of a prison sentence left to serve. Now, he's going to walk away from Haverton Camp a free man.'

‘Sure, he had a lot to gain from the situation,' Grant conceded. ‘But the only way he was ever going to gain it was by telling us the
truth
. And that's just what he did, didn't he?'

‘Maybe,' Woodend said, reluctantly.

‘Look, most people thought that Kineally had simply disappeared, but Bascombe knew that he'd been murdered. He also knew which particular knife had been used to do the killing. And to top it all, he knew exactly where Kineally's body was buried.'

‘Maybe somebody else fed him some of those details,' Woodend said, still doubtful.

‘Who?' Grant asked.

‘I don't know.'

‘When he arrived here, he was a convict with time yet to serve, so he's been housed here under what were essentially prison conditions. He's been under guard even when he took his exercise.'

‘So maybe those guards told him—'

‘There wasn't much they
could
tell him. They're not directly involved in the investigation, so they know as little about what's been going on here as the electricians or the guys who work in the commissary.'

‘Which is the same as saying that they knew nothing at all?' Woodend asked.

‘Which is the same as saying that they knew nothing at all,' Grant agreed. ‘Face the facts, Charlie. Bascombe might have made a lucky guess about one particular detail of the crime, but he couldn't possibly have guessed it all. He had to have been there. He had to have seen it all with his own eyes.'

‘That's true enough,' Woodend agreed reluctantly.

But his feeling of discontent – the irritating itch – still refused to go away.

W
oodend and Paniatowski were the first customers of the day to cross the threshold of the Dun Cow, but this would not normally have bothered the Chief Inspector. He didn't need other drinkers around him to help him to relax. It was enough for him to be inside a pub – the welcome refuge of the true-born Englishmen over the centuries, in which the very walls oozed a feeling of benign well-being. Yet that morning, the Dun Cow's public bar was failing to have its usual healing effect on him, and the pint of best bitter, within easy reach of his right hand, was refusing to work its usual magic.

Woodend gazed moodily out of the window at the wall, beyond which lay the skittle alley where Harry Wallace and Huey Bascombe had once intended to teach two black soldiers a lesson they'd never forget, and Captain Douglas Coutes had beaten the living daylights out of Captain Robert Kineally.

‘It makes perfect sense that Harry Wallace should be the killer, you know,' Monika Paniatowski said. ‘He was a racist – and a violent one, at that.'

‘Hmm,' Woodend said.

‘For a man like him, being humiliated in front of those two black men must have been like his worst nightmare come true,' Paniatowski argued. ‘Being made to
apologize
to them was a depth he'd never thought he would sink to. Is it any wonder, then, that he couldn't rest until he got his revenge?'

‘No wonder at all,' Woodend said – but with a lack of conviction in his voice which belied his actual words.

‘So, given everything I've just laid out for you – all of which you seem to agree with – just what
is
your problem, sir?' Paniatowski asked, impatiently.

‘My problem?' Woodend replied. ‘My problem is that it's all too neat an' tidy.'

‘Ed Grant used almost exactly the same words,' Paniatowski said. ‘Only he wasn't referring to the case against Wallace, he was talking about the one against Coutes.'

Woodend's eyes flickered with a sudden interest. ‘An' when did Grant say this?'

‘Last night,' Paniatowski said vaguely.

‘That doesn't sound at all like the Special Agent I know,' Woodend mused. ‘Right from the start of this investigation, he was absolutely convinced Coutes was our man. Of course, he's changed his mind about that now. He didn't have much choice in the face of the fresh evidence that's turned up, did he?'

‘No, I suppose he didn't.'

‘But until this mornin', there
was
no fresh evidence. An' yet you're tellin' he said this
last night
?'

‘That's right,' Paniatowski said, starting to wish she'd never begun this conversation. ‘Shall I order us some more drinks?'

‘We've hardly touched the ones we've got,' Woodend replied. ‘Now, what would make a man who was so sure he was right about every single aspect of the case suddenly back down like you say he did last night?'

‘Doesn't really matter, does it, sir?' Paniatowski asked. ‘The case is officially closed.'

‘Didn't he realize that, by backing down in that way, he was makin' himself look a complete bloody fool?' Woodend said, refusing to let go.

Paniatowski sighed, and gave in to the inevitable.

‘Perhaps he said it without really believing it,' she suggested. ‘Perhaps he was just teasing me.'

‘
Teasing
you?' Woodend repeated. ‘Teasing
you
?'

‘Yes.'

‘How could sayin' somethin' like that have been seen as
teasin
' you?'

There really was no way out of it, Paniatowski thought.

‘I'd told him that, as a result of our investigations, we were coming round to the view that Coutes was guilty,' she said. ‘And then Ed … then Special Agent Grant … said that because the evidence was so neat and tidy, he was starting to think that Coutes had been framed.'

‘An' that was teasin' you?' Woodend said, as if he still hadn't grasped the point.

‘He was showing off,' Paniatowski said, exasperatedly. ‘Asserting himself by taking a contrary opinion to mine. It's what a certain kind of man will do when he finds himself in a certain kind of situation.'

‘Where, exactly, did this conversation take place?' Woodend asked.

‘In bed!' Paniatowski said angrily. ‘All right? We were in bed! Do you have any objections to that?'

‘No objections at all,' Woodend told her, though he was shaking his head sadly. ‘It's none of my business what you do in your free time. But, I have to say, Monika, you really can pick 'em, can't you?'

‘Yes, I suppose I can,' Paniatowski agreed wistfully. ‘But that still doesn't mean that I appreciate you sitting in judgement on the quality of the men I choose to sleep with,' she continued, her anger returning. ‘If I make mistakes, then at least they're
my
mistakes, as an adult, I'm entitled …'

She stopped, not because she had run out of either steam or righteous indignation, but because there wasn't any point in going on when it was plain that Woodend was no longer listening to her.

‘Grant didn't look all that shocked when Huey Bascombe confessed,' Woodend muttered, almost to himself. ‘He saw his own rock-solid certainties collapse around him, and it didn't bother him at all – or at least, nowhere near as much as it should have done.'

‘I
am
still here,' Paniatowski said, annoyed. ‘And I am
still
trying to make a point.'

‘Finish up your drink, Monika,' Woodend said. ‘We need to get back to the camp.'

If Special Agent Grant had still been occupying the ‘operational command module', Woodend would have invented some pretext to take him somewhere else, and left Monika Paniatowski to do the search. But Grant wasn't there. Having packed away most of the files in their FBI transit boxes, he had probably returned to his own trailer to do something equally neat and efficient there, and the two English detectives had the place to themselves.

Woodend opened the first of the boxes with great care. ‘We don't want Grant to know we've been rooting around in here,' he explained. ‘At least, we don't want him to know quite
yet
.'

‘Would you mind telling me what you're looking for, sir?' Paniatowski asked, for the fourth or fifth time.

‘I'm lookin' for photographs!' Woodend replied. ‘Eight by ten glossy photographs! Of the corpse!'

‘Well, that is nice for you,' Paniatowski said sarcastically. ‘And is it your intention, sir, at some point in the distant future, to tell me
why
you're looking for them?'

‘If I'm right about them, that should be very obvious to you,' Woodend said, opening a third box. ‘An' if I'm wrong, then we might as well just pack our bags an' go home.'

‘Which is what I thought we were planning to do anyway,' Paniatowski commented.

Woodend opened a fourth box, looked inside, and let out a low whoop of triumph.

‘If I'd have been in Special Agent Grant's shoes – which is to say, workin' from Special Agent Grant's
brief
– I wouldn't have left these pictures around for just anybody to see them,' he said.

‘You wouldn't have?'

‘I most definitely would not.' Woodend spread out the photographs on the table top. ‘Of course, to be fair to the man, he can't really have been expected to see the need to get rid of them. An' why is that?'

Monika Paniatowski sighed. ‘I don't know, sir,' she said, resignedly. ‘Why
is
it?'

‘Because he wasn't privy to my little chat with Abe Birnbaum last night. So he doesn't know everythin' that I know. None of them do.'

‘None of
who
do?'

‘Just as I thought!' Woodend said, ignoring the question and devoting his whole attention to examining the photographs. ‘Just as I remember them!'

The excitement in his voice was so evident – and so intense – that Paniatowski began to wonder if perhaps the strain of an investigation in which he'd been so personally involved hadn't been too much for him.

‘Take a look at these four shots in particular, Monika,' Woodend urged. ‘Take a
close
look, and tell me exactly what you see.'

Paniatowski did as she'd been instructed. ‘I see the reconstructed torso,' she said.

‘Look again!'

She did. But the rib cage had not suddenly rearranged itself to give her a vital clue, and what she was looking at was still just bones.

‘I don't know what you're expecting me to say,' she confessed.

‘An' you call yourself a detective sergeant,' Woodend said, with a good-natured exasperation which had been sadly missing since the start of this case. ‘Do you notice anythin' special about this torso, Monika?'

‘No. I'm sorry, sir, but I can't say that I do.'

‘Well, exactly!' Woodend said. ‘There
is
nothin' special about it.
Now
do you see what I'm on about?'

The perplexed expression slowly left Paniatowski's face, and a look of excitement – almost equal to Woodend's own – replaced it.

‘Yes!' she said. ‘Now I
do
see!'

T
he nearest public telephone phone box to Haverton Camp was on the edge of Haverton Village, and as luck would have it, it was neither occupied nor had it been vandalized.

‘You really think that the telephone lines back at the camp might be tapped?' Paniatowski asked Woodend, as they climbed out of the Wolseley.

‘I'm almost
certain
they're bloody tapped,' Woodend told her. ‘Grant will have wanted to know the way our minds were workin' at every stage of the investigation, an' a tap on both our phones was one of the ways he could have found out.'

And another way was to come to my caravan in the middle of the night, and climb into bed with me, Paniatowski thought bitterly.

‘He won't have learned much which will have caused him serious concern,' Woodend continued. ‘He'll know Bob Rutter went to Coutes's flat, but he'll probably assume that was a waste of effort – which is what
I
thought it was, until all the other pieces of the puzzle started to fit together.'

‘The whole thing still sounds just incredible to me,' Monika Paniatowski confessed.

‘Aye, to me an' all, if I'm honest,' Woodend admitted, ‘but as Sherlock Holmes once said, when you've eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.'

He reached into the voluminous pocket of his hairy sports coat, and brought out a handful of loose coins which, if he'd been at home, Joan would long ago have removed for the sake of the coat's shape.

‘You make the first call,' he told Paniatowski. ‘An' do all you can to be persuasive.'

‘Would you like me to tell him I'm making the phone call stark naked?' Paniatowski asked tartly.

‘Aye – if it'll help,' Woodend replied. ‘In fact, if you think a bit of method actin' will make your performance any more convincin', you could strip off before you even begin to dial the number.'

Paniatowski gave him a look which would have frozen most men in their tracks, but she was not in the least surprised when Woodend didn't even seem to notice.

When he was like this, she thought – when he had the scent of the chase in his nostrils – the rest of the world did not really exist for him.

She stepped into the booth, dialled Dunethorpe CID, and asked to be connected to Detective Chief Inspector Baxter.

‘Monika!' Baxter exclaimed, when he came on to the line. ‘Where are you? I've been ringing and ringing, but nobody at your headquarters seems to know how to get in touch with you. And, apparently,
you
felt absolutely no desire at all to get in touch with
me
.'

He sounded hurt, Paniatowski thought. But how much more wounded would he have been if he'd known about what had gone on between her and Special Agent Grant?