Dying in the Dark (18 page)

‘That's right. Or at least, that's what she
said
her name was.'

‘This woman, Monika, came right up to you in the pub and introduced herself?'

‘No, it wasn't quite like that.'

‘Then how was it?'

‘I introduced myself to her, as a matter of fact. She looked lonely. I thought a little chat might cheer her up.'

‘Very considerate of you,' Woodend said. ‘And later you thought you might go for a little walk together, down to the canal?'

‘That's right.'

‘And what happened next?'

‘The bitch hit me.'

‘What caused her to attack you?'

‘I've absolutely no bloody idea.'

‘You didn't do anything to provoke the attack?'

‘Not a thing.'

‘It can't have been a robbery,' Woodend said pensively, ‘or she'd have taken your wallet and made a run for it. And she plainly
didn't
do that, or we wouldn't have her in custody now.' He paused, as if a new thought had suddenly struck him. ‘How is it that we
do
have her in custody?'

‘Don't you know?' Allcard asked, his outrage growing again. ‘Hasn't anybody told you?'

‘As I think I've already explained, I've only just got here,' Woodend said smoothly. ‘And since you, as the victim, were my prime concern, you're the first person I've talked to. No doubt there is a report on the woman's – this Monika's – arrest, but it would save time if you could give me the details now.'

Allcard sighed theatrically. ‘After she attacked me, she offered to drive me to the hospital. But I was having none of that. I told her to take me to the nearest police station, which is what she did.'

‘So she drove you here, knowing she was bound to be arrested,' Woodend mused. ‘That was thoughtful of her.'

‘Thoughtful!' Allcard said angrily. ‘Is that what you call it? She broke my bloody nose.'

‘Of course she did,' Woodend agreed. ‘And she'll be punished very severely for it. We like to think of Whitebridge as a law-abidin' town. We certainly can't tolerate prostitutes attacking respectable businessmen in this way.'

‘She's a
prostitute
!' Allcard exclaimed.

‘So I've been led to believe. The Duty Sergeant apparently knows her quite well. He's even on first-name terms with her.'

‘A prostitute,' Allcard repeated thoughtfully. ‘But if she's a prostitute, why did she argue with me? Why didn't she just ask me for some mon—?'

‘What was that?' Woodend asked, pouncing.

‘Nothing,' Allcard said quickly.

‘You told me earlier she hit you for no reason. This is the first I've heard anythin' about an argument.'

‘There wasn't one.'

Woodend nodded. ‘Good, because if there had been, God alone knows what her defence brief might have made out of it when he had you up there on the witness stand.'

‘What?!'

‘I must say, I admire your public spirit,' Woodend said. ‘Most men would think twice before filin' charges against a prostitute. They'd be too worried about what their friends and family might think, especially if they're married. Are you married, Mr Allcard?'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘Anyway, as I was sayin', they might worry their wives would think they'd actually been
consorting
with the woman. But not you! You know your duty! You won't be deterred by all the finger-pointin' and the sniggers. You'll stand up in open court and say exactly what happened.'

‘I … er … I'm no longer sure I want to go ahead with this,' Allcard said uneasily.

‘But you must,' Woodend said sternly. ‘A crime has been committed, a prosecution must follow. Otherwise this has all been a waste of police time, which is a very serious matter indeed.'

‘I … er … think that I might possibly have got a bit confused when I fell over.'

‘Fell over?' Woodend repeated, mystified. ‘I thought you said this prostitute
hit
you.'

‘No … er … that's where the confusion comes in, you see. I
thought
she hit me, but now I see that I only fell over.'

‘So it was an accident after all? And this whole thing has been nothing but a misunderstanding?'

‘That's right.'

‘And I can let the young lady go, can I, confident that I'll hear no more about it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then perhaps you'd like to come with me to the cells.'

‘What for?'

‘To
apologize
to the young lady for all the inconvenience your confusion had caused her.'

‘Do I have to?' Allcard whined.

‘Strictly speaking, there's no obligation to,' Woodend admitted. ‘An' thinkin' about it, I suppose you might be better off goin' straight back to your hotel and getting' a good night's sleep. After all, you've had a very difficult evening.'

‘Yes, I have,' Allcard moaned. ‘A
very
difficult evening.'

W
oodend was in no mood to be messed about, and, if Jack the landlord had taken too long answering his knock on the side door of the Drum and Monkey, it was more than likely he'd have kicked the door in first and worried about the consequences later. Fortunately, no such drastic action proved necessary. Jack must have been listening for their arrival, and as soon as Woodend knocked there was the sound of the bolts being drawn back.

Woodend and Paniatowski stepped through the door, and the landlord quickly closed it behind them.

‘By Christ, but you look like you really
could
use a drink, Mr Woodend,' Jack said. He turned his attention to Monika. ‘An' you an' all, Sergeant Paniatowski – if you don't mind me sayin' so.'

‘You can say what you like, as long as there really
is
a drink at the end of it,' Monika told him.

Jack led his two late-night visitors into the public bar. ‘What'll it be? The usual? Or is it a whisky night, Mr Woodend?'

‘I'll have a pint, but I'll pull it myself,' Woodend said. ‘You get off upstairs to your missus, Jack. When we've finished here, we'll leave our money on the till an' let
ourselves
out.'

‘You're sure that'll be all right?' the landlord asked.

‘I'm sure,' Woodend replied.

Jack nodded and left. Woodend slipped behind the bar, pulled himself a pint and – while it was settling – drew a triple vodka from the optic.

Though the bar was empty, and Paniatowski could have sat wherever she wanted to, her legs took her automatically to their usual table in the corner.

‘What happens now?' she asked, when Woodend had finished preparing the drinks and joined her.

‘About the assault charges?'

‘Yes, about the assault charges!' Paniatowski snapped. ‘After all that's happened tonight, I'm not likely to be talking about the bloody
weather,
am I?' She took a deep slug of her vodka. ‘I'm sorry, sir. I should never have said that,' she continued, contritely.

‘After we discussed the matter at some length, Mr Allcard decided he didn't really want to press charges after all,' Woodend said. ‘An' I've taken the extra precaution of ensurin' that there's no record of you an' him ever havin' been at the station.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Paniatowski said sincerely.

‘There's nothin' to thank me
for
. It's what you always do for one of your own,' Woodend said. ‘But I would like to know
why
I had to do it.'

‘Are you asking me why I hit him?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Well, I'm certainly not talkin' about the bloody
weather
,' Woodend replied, giving her a taste of her own medicine.

‘I hit him because he attacked me. I warned him not to do it, but when he refused to take that warning, I was forced to defend myself.'

‘Well, that's an answer of sorts,' Woodend admitted, ‘but it's certainly not the answer to the question I asked – an' you bloody know it isn't.'

Paniatowski nodded. ‘You're right,' she admitted. ‘I went down to the canal with him because I
hoped
he'd attack me – because I wanted to strike out at something, and he was a convenient target.'

‘So why take him back to the station? Wouldn't it have been more sensible to drive him to the hospital?'

‘It was the station he wanted to go to.'

‘You could have insisted on the hospital. I imagine he'd have been too weak to argue. You could have dropped him off outside the casualty department, an' then just driven off into the night.'

Paniatowski sighed. ‘What would have been the point of that? I'd have been caught eventually, whatever I did. The creep knew where he'd picked me up, and that's a strong enough trail for even our beloved Chief Constable to follow. Besides, I did it, and I wasn't about to pretend that I hadn't.'

She opened her handbag and took out her cigarettes. As she lit one, Woodend saw that her hands were trembling.

‘Do you know what I think?' Woodend said.

‘I don't really
care
what you think, sir!' Paniatowski said, with a sudden burst of anger. ‘I thought we were here to discuss the case. Do you want to do that? Or should we just call it a night?'

‘Which case do you mean?' Woodend asked.

‘There
is
only one case that concerns us,' Paniatowski told him. ‘The bloody Pamela Rainsford case!'

‘All right, let's talk about that for the moment,' Woodend conceded. ‘I'm findin' it difficult to form any clear impression of her. The way her boss talks about her, you'd think she'd never so much as say boo to a goose. Then there's her so-called best friend, who's so caught up between need an' jealousy that she doesn't know what she thinks. An' finally there's the feller I talked to earlier tonight. Mr Bascombe, his name is. Admittedly, I wouldn't automatically classify him as one of the world's most reliable witnesses, but he certainly seems to think that Pamela was little less than a nymphomaniac.'

‘Bascombe's probably not too far from the truth,' Paniatowski said, and told Woodend about the discussion she'd had with Peter Tewson, the dead woman's ex-boyfriend from the town hall.

‘What do you think to the idea that the killer in this case could have been a woman?' Woodend asked tentatively.

Paniatowski considered it for a second. ‘It's possible,' she said. ‘An ex-lover, driven mad by jealously, would certainly be capable of doing the kinds of things which were done to Pamela.'

Woodend almost choked on his beer. ‘You think Pamela Rainsford was a
lesbian
?' he asked.

‘I don't know, but it's certainly not something we should rule out,' Paniatowski replied. ‘We already know that she was experimental in her sex life. Maybe her experimentation led her to trying women as well as men.'

‘There are times when I think I'm getting' far too old for this job,' Woodend said.

‘Why?'

‘Because I'd never have come up with the idea that you just have. Because I was brought up in a world that was a lot less complicated than the one we're livin' in now. Take Bob an' Maria as an example.'

‘I don't want to talk about Bob!' Paniatowski said fiercely.

‘All right, let's talk about couples in general terms then,' Woodend said soothingly. ‘It used to be the case that if a woman found out her husband was havin' an affair, she'd give him absolute hell for it. But she wouldn't think of leavin' him, because you just didn't do that kind of thing. You stayed together for the sake of the kids, an' because
economically
, you didn't have any other choice. But it's not like that now.'

‘Where are you going with this?' Paniatowski asked suspiciously.

‘I'm just tryin' to illustrate a point,' Woodend said. ‘Take another example. I'm sure there were as many homosexuals an' lesbians around when I was growin' up as there are now, but we never heard about them. An' that's not just because they were cleverer at hidin' what they were doin', it was because most of them didn't
do
anythin'. You suppressed your urges, because society didn't approve – an' because you didn't really approve yourself, either. I'm not sayin' it was a better world we lived in back then – but, by God, it was certainly a
different
one.'

‘I'm sure that's all very interesting – in its way – sir,' Paniatowski said. ‘But your home-spun philosophy's not going to help us find out who killed Pamela Rainsford, now is it?'

‘Christ, but you're ready to lash out at just about anybody who's standin' in your path, aren't you?' Woodend said, starting to feel an anger of his own coming to the boil.

The intensity of his tone pulled Paniatowski up short. ‘No, I just—' she began.

‘Shall I tell you why
I
think you took Allcard back to the station?' Woodend asked. ‘You did it because you wanted to land yourself in the shit!'

‘That's ridiculous. I—'

‘You had no idea that good old Charlie Woodend would come ridin' in like a knight in shinin' armour to rescue you. You didn't
expect
to be rescued. You didn't
want
to be rescued. What you
did
want was to be suspended. Because if you were under suspension you'd be able to tell yourself that it wasn't that you
wouldn't
help Bob, it was that you
couldn't
.'

‘Are you saying that I deliberately planned—?'

‘Of course I'm not! I'm sure that on the conscious level you had no idea what you were doin'. But that
is
why you did it.'

‘Not true!' Paniatowski said stubbornly.