Dying in the Dark (7 page)

‘I've never seen things in that way,' Rutter protested. ‘You know I haven't, darling.'

‘I
thought
I knew many things,' Maria said, ‘but it seems that I was wrong about
most
of them. And as it happens, I
do
have plans of my own – plans which require your absence – and so I would appreciate it if you would return to your precious work.'

There might not be any right things to say in this situation, Rutter thought, but there were certainly wrong ones. And the
worst
thing he could possibly do, he felt instinctively, would be to ask her about her phone call.

‘What were you talking to your parents about?' he was horrified to hear himself say.

‘What has that got to do with you?' Maria countered.

‘They're my in-laws.'

‘That is certainly true – for the moment at least. But that still does not give you the right to question me about my private conversations.'

‘Are you planning to go and visit them?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘For how long?'

‘That has not been decided yet.'

‘A week?' Rutter asked frantically. ‘Two weeks?'

‘That is my business.'

‘It's not
just
your business. Not if you're planning to take my daughter with you.'

‘It's your fault that this is happening, Bob,' Maria said, sounding a little more like her old self again. ‘Not mine! Yours!'

‘I know,' Rutter admitted miserably.

‘Could you do one thing for me before you go out again?' Maria asked.

‘What?' Rutter replied. And when she had told him, he said, ‘Why should you want me to do that?'

‘Just for once, can't you do what I ask without asking questions?' Maria countered.

‘You're expecting a visitor, aren't you?' Rutter demanded.

‘Since I've already said I want you out of the house, I should have thought that was obvious.'

‘Who is it? Who's coming round?'

‘After what you've done, you really have no right to ask.'

She was spot on, Rutter thought. He
did
have no right to ask. Absolutely no right at all!

At seven o'clock – when Woodend and Paniatowski had interviewed so many young women that they'd scarcely have noticed if they had finally reached the end of the line and started again – Lucy Higson appeared at the door.

God, but she was a striking woman, Woodend thought, and wondered how Derek Higson – a man of his own age, for God's sake! – had managed not only to pull her but to hold on to her.

‘It's past clocking-off time, but I've talked to the staff and told them they're to stay here for as long as you want them to,' Lucy said.

Woodend forced a weak grin. ‘I shouldn't have imagined they would have liked that very much.'

‘They didn't,' Mrs Higson agreed, returning his smile. ‘At least, they didn't like it until I informed them they could book it down as overtime. If there's one thing that Derek and I have learned in this business, it's that if you need to put an immediate stop to grumbling, just offer double pay.'

The woman was a real cracker, Woodend told himself – and not just in the looks department.

But though she'd gone to a lot of trouble to make it possible, even the thought of interviewing anyone else that day was enough to make his head start throbbing.

‘You've been very helpful, Mrs Higson, but I think you can tell your staff they can all go home now,' he said.

‘So you've finished here?'

‘I wish we had,' Woodend admitted. ‘But I'm afraid we'll be back again first thing in the morning, to begin afresh. We haven't even started on the shop-floor staff yet.'

‘You're going to question all our craftsmen and apprentices, are you?' Lucy Higson asked, sounding surprised.

‘Any reason why we shouldn't?'

Lucy Higson shrugged. And she managed to make even
that
gesture seem elegant.

‘There's no reason at all why you shouldn't talk to them,' she said. ‘I just think it would be a waste of time.'

‘Why's that?'

For a moment, Lucy Higson seemed unsure of how to answer.

‘I don't wish to appear to be speaking ill of the dead,' she said finally, ‘but there's a certain tendency among the girls who work in the office to think that they're somehow
better
than the men with jobs on the shop floor. What they fail to realize, of course, is that it's the craftsmen who are the real heart of the enterprise. Without them, and the superb work they do, we'd have nothing to sell. Without them, we'd all go hungry.'

‘So what you're really sayin' is that Pamela was a bit of a snob?'

‘I wouldn't put it quite as strongly as that,' Lucy Higson replied, sounding slightly uncomfortable. ‘Let's just say that she chose to keep something of a distance between herself and those who, quite unfairly, she might have seen as mere
manual
labourers.'

When a girl does that, it can hurt, Woodend thought, especially when it's a
pretty
girl who you'd like to impress. And sometimes, faced with rejection, admiration can turn into loathing. Sometimes it can even make normally decent-enough men feel a strong urge to punish.

I
t had been dark for some time when Woodend and Paniatowski finally emerged from the offices of New Horizons Enterprises, and with the darkness had come a chill which promised another cold night. It wouldn't be long now before early-morning windscreens were covered with a thick layer of frost, and engines stuttered in response to the demands of starter motors, Woodend thought.

The two detectives climbed into Woodend's Wolseley, both lighting up cigarettes as they did so.

‘I get heartily sick of all the people who ask how there can be a God when there's so much sufferin' in the world,' Woodend said, as he pulled away. ‘Fortunately, bein' a serious student of theology, I've got a rebuttal right at my fingertips. And what I say to them is this – “If there is no God, then who the bloody hell created pubs?”'

‘Sorry, sir, what was that again?' Monika Paniatowski asked.

Woodend sighed. ‘It wasn't
that
funny a line the first time round, so it certainly wouldn't improve with repetition,' he said.

‘What wouldn't?'

‘I was just indicatin' – in my own bumblin', fumblin' way – that at the end of a day like this, it's a bloody good thing there's a pint waitin' for us.'

‘If you don't mind, sir, I think I'd rather give the pub a miss tonight,' Monika said.

Woodend raised a surprised right eyebrow. ‘What's the matter? Not feelin' well?'

‘I'm all right,' Monika said, unconvincingly. ‘I'd just rather go home and get my head down. You
don't
mind, do you?'

Of course he minded. Some of their best work had been done in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey. There were cases which would have gone unsolved but for the inspirations which came from lubricating their brains with ample supplies of best bitter and double vodka. Besides, business apart, he rather enjoyed having a drink with his team.

‘I don't mind at all if you don't come,' he lied. ‘Where would you like me to drop you off? At the station?'

‘Yes, please,' Monika replied.

The public bar of the Drum and Monkey was crowded, but the landlord – bless his little cotton socks – had made sure that the team's usual table was kept free. Except that there didn't seem to be any reason to reserve it that night, because Monika had gone home, and there was no sign of Bob Rutter.

‘DI Rutter's not happened to have been in tonight, has he, Jack?' Woodend asked.

‘Not that I've seen,' the landlord replied. He pointed to the phone behind the bar. ‘Do you want to call the station, an' see if he's still there?'

‘Not at the moment,' Woodend said, because, after all, he didn't want the Inspector to think that he was
chasing
him – that he was
desperate
for the man's company.

Sitting at his usual table, pint of best bitter in front of him, he waited for new ideas to start flooding into his head. But none came. He needed stimulating, he told himself. He needed the input that only Bob Rutter and Monika Paniatowski could provide.

He tried to remember what it was like working without them, and found he couldn't. Though Bob Rutter had only been with him for six years – and Monika Paniatowski for considerably less – closing a case without their help now seemed almost inconceivable.

‘Phone call for you, Mr Woodend,' the landlord called out across the busy room.

Woodend did his best not to look too eager as he stood up and walked over to the bar, but there was still a definite spring in his step.

‘Where are you, Bob?' he asked into the mouthpiece.

‘It's not Bob, Charlie,' said a female voice with the slightest hint of a foreign accent.

‘Maria?' Woodend asked.

‘I'm so glad I found you there, Charlie,' Maria Rutter said.

She sounded like she'd been crying, Woodend thought.

‘Is somethin' the matter, lass?' he asked.

‘A great deal's the matter, Charlie,' Maria said. ‘Can you come to the house?'

‘When? Now?'

‘No, not now. Give me half an hour or so to get things a bit straighter.'

To get
yourself
a bit straighter, more like, Woodend thought.

‘Is Bob with you?' he asked.

‘No, he isn't.'

‘Do you want me to see if I can find him?'

‘No!' Maria said – almost screamed.

‘Is he—'

‘I'd rather you came alone, Charlie. Please!'

‘All right, if that's what you want,' Woodend agreed. ‘Do you still want me to leave it for half an hour?'

‘I … Yes, that would be best. Finish the pint you're drinking now, have another one, and then come to see me.'

‘Listen, if you'd rather …' Woodend began.

But he was only talking to the dialling tone.

Maria placed the phone back on its cradle, then made her way down the hall to the kitchen. She walked confidently because, in her own domain, everything had a place and there was no danger of any inanimate object lurking in ambush for her.

There were two radios in the kitchen, one tuned permanently to the Home Service and the other to the Third Programme. She clicked the switch on one of them, and found herself listening to Wagner's ‘Ride of the Valkyries'.

Charlie would like a cup of tea when he arrived, she thought. And chocolate biscuits – he was always very partial to chocolate biscuits. She reached up to the cupboard, located the handle, and opened the door.

If anybody could tell her what to do about the mess she was in, it was Charlie Woodend, she told herself. True, he was Bob's boss. But he was also her friend – a man she trusted, a man she respected. Yet even Charlie Woodend would be pushed to create any sort of order out of this confusion – even the great magician himself would have trouble pulling off this particular trick.

Her fingers had located the biscuits, and she carefully took them down.

The music on the radio was reaching its climax – swelling to fill the whole kitchen. It was so loud that it completely masked the sound coming from the living room – a sound which, if she had heard it, would have told her the catch on the French windows was being forced.

Woodend finished his pint, and then ordered another one, just as Maria had instructed him to. As a result, he did not leave the Drum and Monkey until twenty minutes after the phone call.

Later, he would try to tell himself that while Maria had seemed upset, there had been no real urgency in her voice. He would point out – as he defended himself in the case which he himself was also prosecuting – that Maria had specifically said he should wait half an hour. If he'd ignored her instructions and left immediately, he would argue, it would have made no difference. Because even if he'd been driving a racing car – and even if there'd been no other traffic on the road – he
still
wouldn't have got there in time.

Yes, he would tell himself all this – and there were others who would argue his case even more strongly than he did himself. But it didn't make any difference.

No bloody difference at all!

T
here were lights burning in most of the windows on Elm Croft, but the Rutter house was in darkness. Which told him two things, thought Charlie Woodend – the perpetual detective, the
compulsive
detective – as he pulled his Wolseley up at the edge of the curb. The first of those things was that Bob had not returned home yet – but from his earlier conversation with Maria, he had rather suspected that would be the case. The second thing was that the baby must be asleep.

So why should Maria waste electricity? Why turn on the lights when, however brightly the house might be illuminated, she would continue to move around in a world which was eternally dark?

Woodend switched off the engine, opened the car door, and stepped out into the chill night air. The street was deserted, but that was hardly surprising. The residents of the Crofts Estate would be safely indoors by now, their eyes glued to the flickering magic box which brought all the wonders of the world into the corner of their living rooms.

He was already on the Rutters' path – making his way along the side of the house – when the unimaginable occurred.

The blinding flash – like a thousand suddenly flaring matches – came first. The deep angry boom and the scream of shattering glass followed almost immediately after it.

For a moment Woodend was back in war-time France: landing on that Normandy beach under heavy enemy fire; seeing his closest comrades fall all around him; hearing the angry roar of the guns; smelling the stench of blood, fear and desperation.