A Walk With the Dead (15 page)

‘You want to be careful, boss,' said a voice from the doorway. ‘If people hear you talking to yourself, they'll start thinking that you're as far round the twist as the rest of the DCIs.'

Paniatowski turned to look at Meadows, who appeared as fresh as if she'd had a good night's sleep.

‘Did you come down here
just
to take the piss, Sergeant?' she asked. ‘Or was there some other purpose to your visit?'

Meadows grinned. ‘I came to tell you the suspects have arrived, boss,' she said.

‘All five of them?'

‘Yes.'

Paniatowski looked into the mirror again, and studied her reflection's eyes. They were still red, but now that the adrenalin had started pumping through her, all signs of tiredness were gone.

‘Then let's get started,' she said.

Most of the prison officers in the canteen were sitting in groups of two or three, but there was one – a sandy-haired man in his late twenties – who was alone, and it was to his table that Baxter carried his breakfast tray.

The officer looked up, and there was a slightly worried expression on his face. ‘I wasn't on duty on any of the occasions that Jeremy Templar was attacked, so there's really nothing I can tell you,' he said.

Jeremy Templar, Baxter noted. Not just “Templar” or Prisoner Some-Number-or-Other, but
Jeremy
Templar. Now that was interesting.

‘What makes you think I've come across here to ask you questions?' he said aloud.

‘Haven't you?' the officer asked.

‘No, the only reason I'm here is to have my breakfast, and I thought I might as well share a table with a fellow “ginger”, unless, of course, my fellow “ginger” objects to that.
Do
you object?'

The officer shrugged. ‘Not really.'

It was about as warm an invitation as he was likely to get, Baxter thought, placing his tray on the table and sitting down.

‘So what's your name, son – and how long have you been in the prison service?' he asked, as he sliced off a piece of sausage and dipped it in the deep-yellow yolk of one of his fried eggs.

‘I thought you said you wouldn't be asking any questions,' the officer replied suspiciously.

‘This isn't questioning, son,' Baxter said, good-naturedly. ‘If you want to see how I
question
people, you should sit in on one of the interrogations. All I'm doing at the moment is making a little light conversation, but, of course, if you'd rather I just shut up . . .'

The officer flushed slightly.

‘I'm sorry,' he said, ‘I must have sounded rather rude.'

‘Think no more of it,' Baxter said magnanimously.

‘My name's Tim Robson, and I've been working here for about three years,' the other man told him.

‘And do you like it?' Baxter asked, cutting the corner of a piece of sliced bread.

‘I wouldn't say I exactly
like
it,' Robson answered, ‘but it's a necessary job that's not as easy as it looks, so there's a certain satisfaction to be gained from doing it well.'

‘It certainly
is
necessary,' Baxter agreed, and then, deciding to test the water, he added provocatively, ‘The longer we keep this scum off the streets, the better it is for everybody. Don't you agree?'

‘There are certainly some prisoners in here who shouldn't be released for a long, long time,' Robson said carefully.

Baxter nodded. He just about had the lad's number now, he decided. Robson was something of a vague, polite liberal. Within the prison context, he was probably slightly uncomfortable about both his liberality and his good manners, and thus would always do his best to keep out of any discussions in which his true self might be revealed. All of which meant that if he was going to say anything useful, he needed to be steered into it.

‘Most of the officers in this prison think I'm here to pin the blame for Templar's suicide on them, but that's not the case at all,' Baxter said. ‘In fact, the longer I'm here, the more convinced I am that, working under these conditions, there wasn't much at all they could do to protect him.'

‘No, I don't think there was much they could do,' Robson agreed.

‘That's not to say that I don't get the distinct feeling that any of them lost much sleep over what happened to the man,' Baxter continued. ‘I'd even go far as to guess that most of them consider that whatever punishment he took from the other inmates was well deserved.' He paused for a significant moment. ‘I expect that's how you feel yourself, isn't it?'

‘And how do
you
feel?' Robson asked, evasively.

‘As far as I'm concerned, the only punishment that any man should be subjected to is to serve out the sentence handed down to him by the judge,' Baxter replied.

Robson nodded, but said nothing.

‘Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect the ordinary, decent prisoners, who are forced to rub shoulders with the dirty pervert every day, to have the same attitude as I do,' Baxter continued.

‘But what if he wasn't a filthy pervert at all?' Robson asked.

Now he hadn't been expecting
that
, Baxter thought.

‘Are you telling me that Templar didn't do it?' he asked.

‘I can't say, with any degree of certainty, that he
was
innocent, but I believe that he was,' Robson replied.

‘You talked to him, did you?'

‘No, we're not supposed to have conversations with the prisoners about anything – and especially about the crimes they've been convicted of.'

‘So where does this belief in his innocence come from?'

Robson looked embarrassed. ‘This will sound stupid.'

‘No, it won't,' Baxter assured him.

‘It comes from having observed his wife on visiting days,' Robson said in a rush – almost as if he believed that expressing the thought quickly would somehow make it sound less idiotic.

‘Go on,' Baxter encouraged.

‘There are some women who decide not to stick by their husbands when they've been sent to prison, but they're in a small minority,' Robson said. ‘A lot of the prisoners' wives don't actually approve of what their men did to end up in jail – but they still come to see them religiously, every visiting day, and give them what comfort they can.'

‘And a great comfort it must
be
to them,' said Baxter, who still had no idea where the other man was heading.

‘The one exception to that rule is in the case of the sex offenders,' Robson told him. ‘
Their
wives are so disgusted by what they've done that they never visit. But Mrs Templar came every single visiting day. And we looked forward to it almost as much as he did, because she was a very attractive woman, and all the officers fancied her.'

Baxter sighed. The problem of talking to young men with an idealistic streak, he thought, was that they invariably got things wrong.

‘It's not as straightforward as that, son,' he said. ‘A man can have a beautiful wife and still fancy little girls – or little boys, for that matter. I've seen it happen scores of times myself.'

‘I'm not a simpleton, you know,' Robson said, and now there was a hint of real anger in his voice. ‘In fact, I'm very far from the naive fool that you seem to take me for!'

‘Sorry, lad, I never meant to suggest . . .' Baxter began.

‘It's my fault,' Robson interrupted, calming down a little. ‘I should never have talked about Mrs Templar's looks, because her looks weren't what was important about her.'

‘Then what
was
important?'

‘Her sensitivity and her intelligence were what mattered. If he'd been guilty, she'd have known – and she'd never have come to see him like she did.'

‘Maybe she'd simply forgiven him,' Baxter said, speaking tentatively, so as not to upset Robson again.

The officer shook his head firmly. ‘If she'd just forgiven him, you'd have been able to tell.'

‘You think so?'

‘I
know
so. There was pity in her eyes – yes – but it wasn't pity for a man who had fallen short of the standards she expected of him, it was pity for a man who should never have been in the awful situation he now found himself in.'

An innocent man in Templar's position would be just as likely as a guilty man to take his own life, Baxter thought. Perhaps even more likely to, because he would see no point in continuing to live in a world in which right and wrong had been turned upside down.

He reminded himself that as a special investigator, his only task was to determine whether or not Templar's death could have been prevented – and that the man's guilt or innocence was well beyond his remit. But if Templar
had
been innocent, then it seemed to Baxter more important than ever that the report he wrote reached the right conclusions.

‘Who would I go to if I wanted some fingers breaking?' he asked.

‘I beg your pardon!' Robson said, shocked. ‘
Do
you want to have someone's fingers broken?'

‘Of course not,' Baxter replied. ‘But I would like to know who's in control on the other side of the bars.'

Robson glanced guiltily around him, as if to check that none of the other officers were listening.

‘The man you're looking for is called Lennie Greene,' he said in a whisper.

According to his record sheet, Harold William Swain was fifty-four years old, and though his body looked a lot older than that, there was still a hint in his eyes of the much younger man's obsession that had driven him to lose everything he must once have valued.

Paniatowski and Beresford sat down opposite him, and Paniatowski said, ‘Sorry to have dragged you in here so early in the morning, Mr Swain.'

‘No, you're not,' Swain replied. ‘You're not sorry at all. And I didn't do it, you know.'

‘Didn't do what?' Paniatowski asked.

‘I didn't kill that young girl in the Corporation Park. I've never killed anybody.'

‘That's surely more by luck than judgement,' Paniatowski pointed out. ‘You gave the girl who you raped such a thorough and vicious beating that she certainly
could have
died.'

‘I couldn't help myself. I'm not a violent man, but I was in the grip of a force beyond my control – a force I didn't even understand back then.'

‘Do you understand that force now?'

Swain nodded. ‘Yes, I believe I do.'

‘Then why don't you explain it to me?'

‘The girl didn't make me happy,' Swain said simply.

‘And that was your reason for half killing her, was it?'

‘Yes, that was my reason. It wasn't a good reason – but it was reason enough, at the time. I felt she'd betrayed me, you see.'

‘How could she have betrayed you? You didn't even know her!'

‘It didn't matter that we were strangers to one another. She was still
supposed
to make me happy.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Nobody. It was just something I knew, deep inside me. She was supposed to quench the terrible yearning that had been burning me up. And she didn't. All she did was cry and scream. So I punished her – though I now know that the person who I really wanted to punish was myself.'

‘I'm sure it would be a great consolation to her to know that,' Paniatowski said sarcastically.

‘Don't think I haven't tried to explain it to her,' Swain said passionately. ‘When they finally let me out of prison, the very first thing I did was to find out where she lived, and beg her to forgive me. She wouldn't listen. She called the police instead, and they warned me that if I didn't want to go back to gaol, I'd better keep away from her.'

‘You can hardly blame either the girl herself, or the police, for that,' Paniatowski said.

‘No,' Swain admitted. ‘I can't.'

‘So tell me, Mr Swain, do you still feel the same urges?'

‘Yes, I do, but I'm getting treatment for them.'

‘Is it working?'

‘I think so. The urges are still there, but they're nowhere near as strong as they used to be.'

‘So on Saturday, when you were in the park . . .'

‘I was not in the park when that poor girl was killed.'

‘How do you know
when
exactly
she was killed? There was nothing about her time of death in the papers.'

‘I don't know when she died, but that doesn't matter, because I wasn't in the park at all. I was attending a weekend residential course in Preston, to help deal with my problem.'

Swain had never been her prime suspect, Paniatowski thought, but she still couldn't help the sinking feeling she had when he mentioned an alibi which she was sure would check out.

‘Why didn't you tell me you were on this residential course earlier?' she demanded.

‘My wife – my ex-wife – won't speak to me,' Swain said. ‘When we pass in the street, she looks right through me. All my old friends give me the cold shoulder. Even the landlord of the disgusting little bedsit in which I now exist can barely bring himself to collect the rent from me, because he doesn't want to touch the same envelope that I have.'

‘Get to the point,' Paniatowski snapped.

‘None of them – not my wife, not my friends, not even my landlord – want to hear me say how sorry I am for what happened,' Swain told her. ‘And if I had given you my alibi for Saturday at the start of this interview, you wouldn't have wanted to hear it either. But I didn't do that, so you had to listen – and I feel just a
little
better for having told you.'

P
aniatowski and Beresford were sitting in the police canteen, chain smoking and drinking industrial strength tea from large brown mugs.