A Long Time Dead (32 page)

‘If we'd been in the Wolseley, he'd have known we were on to him long before now,' Paniatowski said, changing gear to take a bend. ‘But who'd ever suspect an electric company van, out on a mission of mercy to some outlying farm which has lost its power? It was a brilliant idea of yours, sir.'

‘Aye, it wasn't bad,' Woodend replied, almost absently.

‘Out with it!' Paniatowski ordered him.

‘Out with what?'

‘Whatever's on your mind. Whatever's dragging you down at a time when the adrenaline rush should have you climbing the walls of the van.'

‘I keep thinkin' it's all my fault,' Woodend admitted.

‘You shouldn't blame yourself.'

‘How can I
not
blame myself? If I'd chosen my words a bit more carefully, back in May 1944 – if I hadn't told Mary she couldn't keep what she'd done a secret from Robert – then two people who've been a long time dead might very well still be alive.'

‘You can't possibly know that's true,' Paniatowski said. ‘At least,' she amended, ‘not with any degree of certainty.'

‘Which is another way of sayin' that I can't possibly know it
isn't
true with any degree of certainty, either,' Woodend said miserably. ‘It only took me a few seconds to speak those words, Monika, but the weight of them will be pressin' down on me until the day I die.'

Paniatowski took her right hand off the wheel, and placed it on Woodend's arm. ‘I wish I could help you, Charlie,' she said softly. ‘I wish there was something I could do to take away a little of the pain.'

‘I know you do, lass,' Woodend said. ‘An' I want you to know that I appreciate it.'

A small sign at the side of the lane advised them that there was a major road ahead.

‘What happens when we get to a crossroads?' Paniatowski asked, suddenly concerned. ‘If we turn the same way as he does, won't he start to suspect that we're following him?'

‘Not if we only have to do it the once,' Woodend reassured her. ‘After all, why shouldn't the electrician's van be goin' the same way as he is?'

‘And if we have to do it
twice
?'

‘That could be trickier,' Woodend admitted. ‘But once we turn, we'll be on the main road to Coxton Halt Railway Station now, so I don't think that there
will
be any more turns after that.'

‘You don't
think
there will be – or you
hope
there won't?' Paniatowski asked him.

‘A bit of both,' Woodend admitted. ‘But I'm almost sure that I'm right. You see, I think this is the route that Robert Kineally's jeep took on that night in May 1944.'

‘Why?'

‘Because the driver had
two
tasks he needed to complete – an' I don't think he'd have risked makin' two separate trips to do them.'

‘In other words, what we're looking for is somewhere between here and the railway station?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Exactly,' Woodend agreed.

The car reached the crossroads, and turned towards the railway station. The van, a hundred yards or so behind it, did the same.

It was less than a mile to the point at which the road ran through the woods, and the moment the driver of the car had trees on either side of him, he indicated that he was about to pull in.

‘What do I do now?' Paniatowski asked, whispering, even though there was no actual need to.

‘Keep drivin',' Woodend said, sinking lower down into his seat. ‘An' keep your eyes firmly on the road ahead. I don't want him thinkin' we've been lookin' at him – even for a second – or he'll probably decide it's safer to leave what he has to do until another night. An' that will bugger up everythin'.'

Neither speeding up nor slowing down, Paniatowski drove past the now-parked car.

‘How much further along the road do you want me to go?' she asked, when they were well clear of the other vehicle.

‘Just to be on the safe side, you'd better make it at least a mile,' Woodend told her.

‘A mile!' Paniatowski repeated. ‘That's much too far.'

‘No, it isn't,' Woodend assured her. ‘He's got a lot to do in that wood, an' even on foot, I'll be back there well before he's finished.'

‘
You'll
be back there?' Paniatowski repeated.

‘That's what I said.'

‘I'm coming with you!'

‘No, you're not, lass. This is by way of bein' personal business. I have a very old score to settle.'

E
ven from some distance down the road, Woodend could hear the sound of a shovel slicing through the earth.

The Target was making no effort to be quiet, he thought. But then why should he, out here in the middle of nowhere?

He reached the parked car, and stood there for perhaps a minute, calculating exactly where the noise was coming from.

The moonlight was bright that night, and it suddenly struck Woodend that all the significant events in this case – the incident with the coloured soldiers, the fight between Coutes and Kineally, and Kineally's murder itself – had all happened under a bright moon.

It was time to make a move. Feeling along the ground with his feet – searching for any irregularities or loose twigs – he entered the woods.

He had only gone a few steps when he saw the paraffin lamp glowing in the darkness, four or five yards ahead. A few
more
steps, and he could see all there was to see – the hole, the man inside it, and the blanket spread out on the ground to collect the earth.

This was a much deeper grave than the one at Haverton Camp, he thought, but then, unlike the one at the camp, this grave had never been
meant
to be discovered.

‘You should have dug him up years ago, when most people hardly even remembered his name,' the Chief Inspector said.

The man in the hole froze.

‘Woodend?' he asked.

‘Failin' that, you should have left him where he was. I'd never have found him if you hadn't led me to him. But I knew you
couldn't
just leave him here, could you – because you'd already had one shock to your system, an' you weren't prepared to risk another.'

‘Listen, Sergeant—' the man in the hole said.

‘As I seem to keep havin' to remind you, Mr Coutes, I'm a Chief Inspector now,' Woodend said.

‘And why stop there?' Coutes wondered. ‘With my help, you could soon be a Superintendent. Maybe even a Chief Constable. The possibilities are endless, if you'll just turn round and walk away now.'

‘Even if I trusted you, you couldn't tempt me,' Woodend said. ‘An, as it is, you're the
last
person on earth I'd be likely to trust. So tell me, Mr Coutes, why
did
you kill Robert Kineally?'

Coutes laughed. ‘Why are you even asking that question, when you already know the answer? I killed him, as you so clearly explained to me last night, because I had to.'

‘Because you knew he wouldn't rest until he'd done somethin' to avenge Mary Parkinson's death?'

‘Exactly. Very neatly put. The next time he'd come after me, he might have had a knife or a gun. And even if he'd decided not to kill me, he would certainly have tried to discredit me. So, all in all, it seemed to me that the simplest course was to eliminate him while I had the chance.'

‘While he was still weak from the beatin' that you'd given him in the skittle alley?'

‘I'm not going to apologize for that. A good general always attacks when and where his enemy is weakest. He'd be foolish to do anything else.' Coutes climbed out of the hole. ‘You should accept my offer to assist you in your career, you know,' he continued, taking a step closer to Woodend. ‘If you don't, I might just have to turn nasty.'

‘Meanin' that you might have to do to me what you did to poor Robert Kineally?'

Coutes laughed again. ‘Of course not. Killing is the solution to his problems that a man resorts to in his youth. As he grows older, he finds other means to get his own way.'

‘Like what?'

‘I haven't properly thought through my options yet. But I could say, for example, that it wasn't
you
who discovered
me
digging up the body, it was
me
who discovered
you
.'

‘That wouldn't work.'

‘Why not? You were at the camp at the same time I was, and though most people would be willing to accept a Chief Inspector's word, they'd be even more likely to believe a Minister of the Crown.'

‘There's two flaws in that plan,' Woodend said. ‘The first is that I'd already left the camp when Robert Kineally disappeared.'

‘And the second?'

‘I've got a witness who'll swear that
I
followed
you
here.'

‘That would be that sexy little sergeant of yours,' Coutes said. ‘Monika, isn't it?'

‘That would be Sergeant Paniatowski, yes,' Woodend confirmed.

‘A good bluff,' Coutes said. ‘But if she
is
a witness, as you claim, where is she?'

‘She's around here somewhere.'

Coutes shook his head. ‘No, she isn't, or she'd have made herself known long before now. My guess is that she's still in the car, because you thought she'd be safer there. That's always been a weakness of yours – wanting to protect other people.'

He took another step forward.

‘I'd like you to put that shovel down now, Mr Coutes,' the Chief Inspector said.

‘And if I don't?'

‘Then I'll have to assume that you're up to your old tricks, an' act accordingly.'

Coutes threw the shovel to the ground with great aplomb.

‘You really
are
living in the past, aren't you?' he asked.

‘One of us is, anyway,' Woodend replied.

‘You see,' Coutes continued, taking one more step towards him, ‘you still haven't grasped the very simple fact that a man in my position – a Cabinet Minister – can find a hundred ways of getting out of his difficulties without resorting to violence.'

He must have had the short iron bar concealed up his jacket sleeve all along, but Woodend only became aware of it a second before it struck him forcibly in the chest.

The pain was indescribable. Woodend staggered backwards, clutching his ribs. Then he took a blow to the head, and he went down.

Coutes rolled him over, and straddled him.

Woodend felt the iron bar pressing down on his throat. He tried to raise his arms, but Coutes had them pinned down with his own knees. He tried to kick his legs, but there was no strength in them. He was starting to see black spots before his eyes, and realized that soon he would lose consciousness. And all the time the bar was pressing down, tighter and tighter.

‘You were right, I should never have dug him up,' Coutes said in a voice that seemed to be coming from inside a tin can, somewhere far, far away. ‘I think I'm going to have to put him back in the hole, and this time, he'll have company – you and your sexy little sergeant!'

So this was how his life would end, Woodend thought – in a small wood, next to a crime scene which was already more than twenty years old. He made one last effort to raise his arms – even though he knew that it was pointless.

He thought he heard footsteps, but knew he must be imagining them. Then he heard Coutes scream, and suddenly the bar was gone from his throat and the weight was off his chest.

He tried to climb to his feet, and only got as far as raising himself on one elbow before his body refused to move any more.

But at least he could see what was happening now – at least understand how he had come to cheat death at the last moment.

Two figures were squaring up to one another in a small clearing only a few feet away from him. The first was Douglas Coutes, the iron bar still held firmly in his hands. The second – her body set in the classic stance of a woman trained in unarmed combat – was Monika Paniatowski.

Coutes swung the bar. Paniatowski stepped back – and lost her footing. As she went down, Coutes swung at her again, and this time the bar connected with her shoulder.

Woodend made another desperate attempt to get up, and managed to raise himself on to his hands and knees this time. But he already knew that the pain would allow him to go no further – that whatever damage Coutes had done to him, it was more than a simple bruising.

Paniatowski had rolled away, so she was temporarily out of reach of Coutes. Now she was lying on her back, readying her legs – as the only weapons she had available to her – for when Coutes came at her again.

‘We've got the bastard, Monika!' Woodend called out, in what he hoped sounded like the voice of a man who was only moments away from getting back to his feet.

Coutes turned to look him, and – despite the agony it cost him – Woodend forced himself into a kneeling position.

‘He's mine, Monika!' the Chief Inspector said, through gritted teeth. ‘You can help, if you like, but he's mine!'

Coutes looked back at Monika Paniatowski, quickly checked on Woodend again, and then dropped the iron bar and ran back through the woods, towards the road.

A thousand hot needles were attacking Woodend's chest, and his spine seemed ready to crack at any moment. Now that Coutes had gone, there was no point in staying in the kneeling position any more, and he lowered himself – as gently as he could – to the ground.

Paniatowski was back on her feet again, but from the curious way she was standing, it was obvious that Coutes had hurt her.

‘Are you all right, sir?' she asked.

‘I'll live,' Woodend told her.

‘I'm going after Coutes,' the sergeant said.

‘There's no point,' Woodend gasped. ‘We've … we've got all the evidence we need – let some other silly bugger make the arrest.'