Dying Fall (22 page)

‘Tell me what's been happenin' with the hard mods, Colin,' Woodend said.

‘To be honest, there's not much
to
tell,' Beresford admitted. ‘I never realized how much of a leader Bazza was to them until he went away. They're quite lost without him.'

‘And Councillor Scranton?' Woodend asked Paniatowski.

‘I'm going to nail the bastard!' Monika said vehemently.

‘But you're not close yet?'

‘I'm getting there. He's so eager to find his way into my knickers that eventually he'll tell me everything I need to know.'

‘Neither of you have asked me how Inspector Rutter's gettin' on,' Woodend said.

‘We … er … thought if there was anything we needed to know, you'd tell us,' Paniatowski said awkwardly.

‘It appears that he's gone down with a bad case of the flu, so he hasn't been able to do much actual investigatin' as yet,' Woodend said.

‘Well, let's hope he's soon back on his feet,' Paniatowski replied.

From the way she'd said it, it was clear she didn't really believe that Rutter was sick at all, Woodend thought – and neither did he.

‘Bazza's the key,' he said aloud. ‘He always has been. Once we've cracked him, we've cracked the whole case. And that's mainly down to you, Colin.'

‘I can handle it,' Beresford said confidently.

‘I'm sure you can,' Woodend agreed.

And he hoped to Christ that was true – because if things went wrong, they would go
badly
wrong.

The personnel officer in RAF Abingdon had a large bushy moustache which served as a more than adequate thatch for the generous, amiable mouth which lay beneath it. But he was also graced with bureaucrat's eyes – narrow and distrustful – and looking at him across the desk, Rutter realized that getting anything out of him was going to be uphill work.

That was the problem with choosing to cut things fine, the inspector thought. You had to assume, when you made that decision, that once you finally got around to doing the job you'd been sent to do, everything would go without a hitch.

But the truth was, he had not been
consciously
cutting things fine at all. The truth was that he had been having such a good time with Elizabeth that the days had just slipped by, and it had come as a shock to him to realize there was only one left before Barry Thornley returned from Spain.

‘The problem is, I don't quite see how I can help you,' the personnel officer said.

‘I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear,' Rutter told him. ‘We're conducting a murder inquiry, and I'm doing a background check on one of our prime suspects.'

‘Yes, yes, I quite understand that,' the officer agreed. ‘But these are
military
records, you see.'

‘Which means, I'm sure, that they are both comprehensive and clear,' Rutter said ingratiatingly. ‘I'm always telling my chief inspector that we could learn a great deal from the way the military keeps its records.'

‘They're
confidential
records,' the officer said, in case Rutter had missed the point.

It was time to lay it on with a trowel, Rutter decided.

‘A man has been murdered,' he said.

‘So you've already explained.'

‘And not
just
murdered, but murdered in one of the most horrible ways imaginable. Set on fire! Can you imagine the fear he must have felt before he finally died? Can you imagine the
pain
?'

The personnel officer shuddered. ‘One of my best friends in Fighter Command crashed his kite,' he said. ‘He wasn't killed on impact, though it might have been better if he had been, because by the time they'd pulled him out of the burning cockpit …'

‘It must have been terrible,' Rutter said, sympathetically.

‘It was.'

‘Quite as terrible as it was for our murder victim. But, you see, we can't do anything for
either of them
now. What we
can
do, however, is prevent the same thing from happening to some other poor soul.'

‘If you could get a court order …' the officer said hopefully.

‘We can't,' Rutter told him. ‘We haven't got enough evidence yet. But we
know
that Scranton is our man.'

‘I'm sorry, but without a court order, there's nothing I can do,' the officer said. He paused for a second. ‘Have you had the chance to visit any of the local pubs while you've been here?'

‘No,' Rutter said, uninterestedly.

‘You should,' the officer urged. ‘Some of them are very fine indeed. I'd particularly recommend the Foresters' Arms.'

‘I don't think I'll—'

‘The landlord was one of our chaps before he retired. Name of Trubshawe. Now I think about it, he served here at the same time as your chum Scranton.'

‘I see,' Rutter said.

The personnel officer smiled. ‘I rather thought you would.'

Paniatowski was having lunch with Councillor Scranton in the Dirty Duck – and hating every minute of it.

It might have been easier to take if she hadn't read the British Patriotic Party pamphlet that he'd given her, she thought. But she
had
read it – every loathsome word of it.

Councillor Scranton and his party, it seemed, had a violent dislike of Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans, Catholics, Jews, gypsies and
tramps
. If only these undesirable elements could be purged from British society for ever, the country would again become the earthly paradise it had once been. The pamphlet did
not
make any clear concrete suggestions as to how this purging might be done, but anyone reading between the lines would have no difficulty in discerning what it
thought
would be the right approach.

‘You're very quiet, Monika,' Scranton said.

‘I was thinking,' Paniatowski replied.

‘I've been thinking, too,' Scranton told her. ‘I've been wondering how it came about that we suddenly started spending so much time together.'

Paniatowski laughed. ‘That's down to you,' she said. ‘You're the one who keeps issuing the invitations.'

‘But you're the one who keeps
accepting
them. And I find myself asking
why
you accept them.'

‘I believe in what you stand for. I think that people like you—'

‘That might explain why you would come to meetings and offer to work for the party, but it doesn't at all explain these more intimate moments we've been having.'

‘What's the matter? Do you think I'm some kind of police undercover agent?' Paniatowski asked.

Scranton shook his head. ‘No, if that had been the case, you'd never have told me you worked for the police in the first place. But looking at you across the table, I see a beautiful woman. And looking at myself in the mirror, I see a rather homely middle-aged man.
Now
do you see what I'm getting at?'

‘I think so,' Paniatowski said. ‘You're fishing for compliments.'

Scranton looked sheepish. ‘It was more a case of seeking an explanation,' he said unconvincingly.

‘Well, firstly, you may be no Hollywood star, but you're certainly not homely,' Paniatowski said. ‘And secondly, and much more importantly, I'm not too interested in purely physical appearances. What draws me to a man is a sense of his power.'

Scranton smiled – almost smirked. ‘And you think I have that sense of power, do you?'

Yes, she was supposed to say. Yes, Ron, of course you have!

Instead, she frowned and said, ‘I haven't quite made up my mind about that, yet.'

Scranton looked crushed. ‘But you know that my men call me the Leader, don't you? And that I have bodyguards,' he said.

‘Hitler's early followers called him the Leader. And he had bodyguards right from the start, even when most people thought of him as nothing but a clown,' Paniatowski said. ‘You don't demonstrate your power by what you've got – you show it through what you
do
. It was only when his SS troopers began smashing Jewish shops and beating up gypsies that people really started to take him seriously. That's when he really started to
emanate
power.'

‘Do you want
me
to start beating up gypsies?' Scranton asked lightly, trying to turn it into a joke.

‘Not necessarily,' Paniatowski said in a serious tone, ‘although it would be no bad thing if
somebody
did. But if you want me to really admire you, you'll have to show me that there is something beyond the mere words. After all, even the captain of a school debating team can make a good speech – and he has got no real power of any kind.'

‘Something beyond the mere words,' Scranton mused. ‘Something
violent
, you mean?'

‘Violence
is
power,' Paniatowski said. ‘Or if not violence itself, the ever-present threat of violence.'

‘Do you really believe that?' Scranton asked.

‘I
believe
that if Tsar Nicholas had crushed the peasants and workers as he should have done, I'd be at my country estate in Russia right now,' Paniatowski said.

‘There
is
more to me than words, you know,' Scranton told her.

‘Then I'd certainly like to hear about it.'

‘There have been certain things which have happened in Whitebridge recently which would not have happened had I not issued the order,' Scranton said.

‘Like what?'

‘Oh, I think you can guess like what.'

‘I'd still prefer to hear it from you.'

Scranton glanced around him. ‘Not in such a public place. And not today. But soon, when we have a little more privacy, I promise I'll give you all the details.'

Paniatowski forced her sexiest smile to her lips. ‘I'll look forward to it,' she said.

The Foresters' Arms was a traditional country pub. Its windows were leaded, old oak beams ran the length of the ceiling, and there were horse brasses on the walls. The landlord was standing behind the bar when Rutter entered, and immediately introduced himself as
Tubby
Trubshawe, which left the inspector wondering if Trubshawe had always been on the plump side or whether – given his second name – he had felt under some sort of obligation to develop his substantial girth.

In Rutter's experience, pub landlords fell into one of two categories, the loquacious and the morose, and as they got talking it soon became clear that Trubshawe was a master of loquacity.

‘Ron Scranton and I were both corporals,' Trubshawe said. ‘Now normally, you try to get on with men of the same rank as yourself – it's a bit of the us-against-the-world mentality, I suppose – but I couldn't get on with him.'

‘Why not?'

‘To be honest with you, he was a bit right-wing for my tastes. Don't get me wrong, I'm a staunch Conservative myself, but you have to draw the line somewhere, don't you?'

‘And where did
you
draw the line?'

‘He had this thing about racial purity. Said that Hitler might have had his faults, but that he'd had some good ideas, too. And this – mark you – was just five years after we'd fought a bloody war to defeat the swine.'

‘Must have been hard to take,' Rutter said.

‘It was,' Trubshawe agreed. ‘Didn't like gypsies, either. There was a camp quite close to the base, and he was always going on about them. Saw them as vermin. Parasites. Said we should burn them out.'

‘How did he feel about tramps?' Rutter wondered.

‘Much the same, I would imagine.'

‘He was dishonourably discharged, wasn't he?'

‘I believe he was.'

‘What was the reason for that?'

‘You can never be entirely certain why the RAF does things the way it does,' Trubshawe said. ‘The army's perfectly prepared to admit it's got some riff-raff in its ranks, but we like to think we're a cut above that, and when we wash
our
dirty linen, we make damn sure we don't do it in public.'

‘But you could probably make a good guess at why he was discharged, couldn't you?' Rutter coaxed.

‘Well, I certainly have my suspicions,' Trubshawe conceded, ‘but I'm not sure I'd like to be quoted on them.'

‘You won't be,' Rutter promised.

‘There was this Indian restaurant that opened in Abingdon. It was called the Taj Mahal, if memory serves,' Trubshawe said. ‘You see them all over the place now, but back then they were a bit of a novelty. In fact, I think the Taj was the first one in Oxfordshire. Anyway, it hadn't been open for more than a week when it was burned to the ground. As luck would have it, nobody was hurt – but they quite easily could have been.'

‘And you think it was Scranton who set the fire?' Rutter asked.

‘Wouldn't go that far, old boy,' Trubshawe replied, suddenly cagey. ‘But I will say
this
– the very next day, the powers that be whisked Scranton out of the camp as if he had the plague, and we heard no more about him until we were told he'd been given a DD. No idea what happened to him after that.'

‘He went back home to Whitebridge,' Rutter said.

‘With his tail between his legs, no doubt.'

‘Not really. He's on the town council now.'

‘Extraordinary how things turn out, isn't it?' Trubshawe said. ‘There was another chap from Whitebridge here at the same time as Scranton. Name of Lowry. If anyone was going to be a town councillor, I'd have thought it would be him.'

‘I take it that you got on better with Lowry than you did with Scranton,' Rutter said.

‘Didn't really know the man, to be honest. He was an officer, you see, so our paths very rarely crossed. The only reason I remember him at all is because of his mother.'

‘His mother?'