Echoes of the Dead (28 page)

‘Aye, I do,' Woodend admitted. ‘But don't get me wrong,' he added hastily, ‘the kind of love that I have for Monika has nothin' at all to do with her bein' a
woman
.'

Paco snorted sceptically. ‘Are you saying that you're not in the least attracted to her?' he asked.

‘Well, of course I'm attracted to her,' Woodend replied. ‘A man would have to be blind
not
to be attracted to her. But I've never let that get in the way of our relationship.'

‘Never?' Paco asked – and the scepticism was still there.

Woodend sighed. ‘All right, there was one time when I suppose it
might
have happened.'

The other man said nothing.

‘Do you want to hear about it or not?' Woodend demanded.

Paco smiled. ‘Go on,' he said.

‘We were involved in a particularly unpleasant case. A young girl had been found dead in a moorland farmhouse, an' – for reasons I won't go into now – there were some powerful people in Whitebridge who didn't want the murder lookin' into too closely. So what they did to bring the investigation to a grindin' halt was to try an' fit me up on corruption charges. An', I have to say, they made a pretty good attempt at it. There was a real possibility that I'd go to jail.'

Paco nodded. ‘I get the picture.'

‘An' it was then, when things were at their nastiest, that we almost fell into bed together,' Woodend said.

‘I see,' Paco said.

‘It would have been an act born out of desperation – and nothin' more,' Woodend said firmly. ‘It would have been Monika offerin' me the only comfort she still had left to offer me, an' me takin' it, because I was more frightened of goin' to prison than I'd ever been under enemy fire. But, by God, lookin' back, I'm glad we
didn't
do it – because it would have ruined everythin' that we'd worked so hard to build up between us.'

‘I can see that,' Paco said – and now the scepticism was gone, and he was being deathly serious.

Woodend lit up a fresh Ducados. ‘I want to tell you somethin' now that I've never told anybody before – an' the
reason
I want to tell you is so that you'll really understand Monika, an' how I feel about her,' he said.

‘I'm listening,' Paco told him.

‘Monika was abused as a child,' Woodend said heavily. ‘Her bastard of a stepfather first started climbing into her bed when she was ten or eleven – she's not sure which – an' it went on for years. That experience would have destroyed most girls, but somehow Monika managed to summon up the spirit to overcome it. She had the balls to stick with her job in the Force, too, at a time when most bobbies thought that all female officers were good for was makin' the tea, filin' the reports an' talkin' to grievin' relatives. An' now she's a chief inspector.'

‘Yes, she is,' Paco said.

‘She's come so far,' Woodend said. ‘That's why I can't let her down. That's why I've got to stick at this thing until I come up with an answer.' He gazed at the sheet of paper again – at the list of names he had written and then rejected. ‘The anonymous caller – Mr X – told her he
couldn't
give her the killer's name,' he said for the fiftieth time. ‘What was stoppin' him? What would stop
you
?'

‘I suppose I might have made a promise to someone not to say anything,' Paco suggested.

‘An' would you have felt bound by that, even if you knew it meant shelterin' a murderer?'

‘Probably not. But I might have felt that way if the promise I'd made wasn't just an ordinary promise – if, say, it was an oath.'

‘You're thinkin' of the Freemasons, aren't you?' Woodend asked.

‘Yes.'

Woodend shook his head. ‘Unlike a lot of bobbies, I've not got a lot of time for the funny handshake and bare bollock brigade, but I've still got enough respect for them to know they'd never try to hide somethin' like this. What else can you suggest?'

‘I might have felt constrained if I thought it was for the general good.'

‘An' what do you mean by that, exactly?'

‘I'm not sure, Charlie,' Paco admitted. ‘I'm still playing around with the idea.' He strode to the end of the terrace, then turned around and continued, ‘Let us say, for example, that I was a member of the security service, and, as a result of that, I knew that the killer's continued liberty was essential for the good of my country. Under those circumstances, I think I might choose to sacrifice the one for the many, and hold my silence.'

‘An' do you think Mr X is likely to be a spy?'

‘No, I don't. In fact, the more I think about it, the less probable it seems.' Paco paced the terrace again. ‘Could it be that Mr X is being limited by a professional code of conduct?'

‘You mean like a lawyer or psychiatrist?'

‘Exactly.'

‘That's the best suggestion you've come up with yet, my old mate,' Woodend said. ‘But it's still not very likely, because, under English law, both lawyers and psychiatrists are obliged to reveal any knowledge they have of a crime, and if they
don't
reveal it, they could go to prison themselves.'

‘Then, if none of those ideas are of any use to you, I am at a complete loss,' Paco admitted.

‘Aye, an' I'm at a complete bloody loss myself,' Woodend said despondently. He turned his attention back to the large sheet of paper. ‘The anonymous caller said he couldn't tell Monika what she wanted to know,' he mumbled. ‘Not that he
wouldn't
tell her, but that he
couldn't
.'

It was getting dark, and some of the vehicles speeding past Mike Eccles had already switched on their headlights. He had no real idea of how long he'd been standing on the spot where the lorry driver had abandoned him – he had pawned his last wristwatch, for drinking money, years earlier – but he thought it must be several hours at least.

‘Why won't you stop an' give me a lift, you bloody swine?' he shouted after a motorist who had actually speeded up when he'd seen a vomit-stained man standing there with his thumb out.

None of them would give him a lift, he thought miserably – and it just wasn't fair.

It was just under twenty miles to Whitebridge, he calculated. If he started walking now, he could easily be there by morning.

But he didn't
want
to walk.

He didn't see why he should
have to
walk.

‘Bloody bastards!' he said, to the world in general.

He needed to come up with some other plan of action, he told himself – one that didn't require quite so much effort on his part.

He put his hand into the pocket of his threadbare jacket, and felt his fingers brush against the half-bottle of cheap whisky that he had been hoarding for emergencies.

‘I'll only have one little slug,' he promised himself. ‘I'll drink just enough to help me come up with a plan.'

He glugged back most of what was left in the bottle, and immediately started to feel dizzy.

He didn't actually
need
to come up with a plan right away, he decided hazily. It was quite a warm night, and he still had a little booze left. What was wrong with bedding down by the side of the road until morning, when everything was bound to be clearer?

Yes, he would think the whole thing through in the morning, he told himself as he lay down on the verge and squiggled in search of a comfortable position.

And soon, when he'd got his hands on all that money which Elizabeth would be
forced
to give him, he wouldn't need to
think
at all.

Paniatowski had rung the team to call off the evening meeting at the Drum and Monkey.

‘There haven't been any new leads since the last time we talked,' she'd told Crane and Beresford, ‘so we might as well grab the opportunity to have an early night for once.'

What she'd said had been accurate – as far as it went.

The other police forces in the region had all been more than willing to cooperate in her search for Mike Eccles, but willingness was all they'd been able to offer so far, because none of them had the faintest idea where he might actually
be
.

She hadn't got the list of Mottershead's associates from Walter Brown yet, either. When she'd called at his bookshop, towards the end of the afternoon, she discovered that he'd closed much earlier than the sign in the window promised he would, and when she'd rung his home phone number, no one had answered.

But there was another reason for her reluctance to go to the Drum that night, and that reason – which she could barely bring herself to admit, even
to
herself – was Beresford.

She couldn't stand the thought that he might question her whole approach to the investigation again – might hold up all her arguments under the harsh light of logic, and expose them for the tattered, flawed remnants that they actually were.

And it would have been even worse if he
hadn't
done that – if, instead, he'd sat there like the loyal member of her team he was and pretended to be going along fully with everything she said.

And so, instead of spending the evening with her lads, she had spent it with her daughter – trying to show interest in Louisa's daily adventures and pushing to the back of her mind the thought that if she failed this time, then everything Charlie Woodend had worked for – everything Charlie Woodend
was
– would be destroyed.

She had just tucked her daughter in bed – and given her the goodnight kiss which she sometimes suspected Louisa secretly considered herself too old for – when the phone rang.

The caller was Dr Shastri, the police surgeon.

‘And how are you, tonight, my dear Chief Inspector?' Shastri asked, in her usual chirpy manner.

Paniatowski pictured the good doctor, a beautiful coffee-coloured woman, swathed in a multicoloured sari and a wicked sense of humour.

‘I'm fine,' she lied. ‘I've never been better. Is there something that I can do for you, Doc?'

‘Perhaps,' Shastri replied. ‘My confidential sources tell me that you are re-investigating the Lilly Dawson case.'

Despite herself, Paniatowski could not resist a smile. ‘Your confidential sources, in this case, being the local television news?' she guessed.

Shastri laughed. ‘Just so,' she readily agreed. ‘And having received that information, it occurred to me that you might possibly, in the course of your investigations, have talked to Mrs Elizabeth Eccles, the daughter of the man who was falsely convicted of killing Lilly.'

‘Yes, I talked to her,' Paniatowski said, as an image of the sour-faced Elizabeth floated across her mind.

‘And was it a long discussion you had with her, or no more than a few words?' Shastri asked.

‘It was quite a long discussion.'

‘In that case, my dear Monika, I wonder if you could find the time to visit the morgue some time tomorrow,' Shastri said.

‘What's it all about?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘It is a little difficult for a simple Indian doctor like myself to explain over the phone,' Shastri told her. ‘It would be much better for us to talk face to face, if you can possibly spare the time.'

With the clock relentlessly ticking off the hours until she had to submit her report – and the chief constable breathing down her neck while it did so – time
should have been
the last thing she had to spare, Paniatowski thought.

Yet she could not honestly say – without any new leads – that this was the case at all.

Besides, even if she'd been busy, she would still have had to
make
time to see Shastri, because the doctor had been a good friend and a good colleague over the years, and had rarely asked for any favours in return.

‘Monika?' Shastri said questioningly

‘I'll be there,' Paniatowski promised. ‘I can't say exactly when it will be, but I'll be there.'

‘What a sweet little thing you really are,' Shastri said. ‘I shall look forward to seeing you, then. And will you do one more thing for me?'

‘Of course.

‘Please give my love to Louisa, and say I look forward to seeing her, too, though in slightly cheerier surroundings than the police morgue.'

‘I'll do that,' Paniatowski told her.

‘Then there is no more to be said, except to wish you goodnight and sweet dreams.'

‘Sweet dreams!' Paniatowski repeated to herself as she hung up the phone.

Dark nightmares would be closer to the mark, she suspected

TWENTY-THREE

C
harlie Woodend awoke to the sound of seagulls engaging in a heated discussion on the roof of his villa.

There was something to be said for being a seagull – or any other wild creature for that matter – he thought. It wasn't an ideal existence, obviously – the diet was incredibly monotonous, it was almost impossible to get health insurance, and you were in constant danger of vicious little kids with airguns taking potshots at you as you flew over them – but at least, by being a seagull, you never ran the risk of having your reputation destroyed or of seeing your life's work turned to ashes before your eyes.

‘It's nice that you can still be whimsical, Charlie,' he told himself, as he climbed out of bed. ‘Well done, lad.'

But the whimsy, edged as it already was with a sense of grim reality, did not last him even as far as the kitchen.

‘Think, Charlie, think!' he urged himself as he filled the kettle. ‘Who
couldn't
tell you something, even if he wanted to?'