Echoes of the Dead (4 page)

But even as he speaks, he thinks the prospect unlikely, because there has been little sign of
any
wildlife since the road builders embarked on their act of desecration.

‘What he's really
burstin'
to do,' the veteran bobbies inform each other, in whispered conversations in the corridors of their headquarters and over steaming mugs of tea in the police canteen, ‘is to call in Scotland Yard – as he should have done in the first place. But he
can't
do that straight away, not after all the braggin' he's done about how good he is. So what he's waitin' for
now
is some kind of excuse which will allow him to call the Yard in without losin' face.'

‘He wasted six days,' Paniatowski muttered, as she finished inspecting herself in the mottled loo mirror. ‘The first forty-eight hours of any investigation are the crucial ones – everybody knows that – and he wasted
six whole days
.'

She walked out on to the platform to await the arrival of the train from London. It would be an electric train – they were all electric on this line now – and she smiled as she remembered Charlie Woodend's comments on the demise of the old steam engines.

‘Electric trains are all right for kids to play with,' Woodend had said, ‘but they'll never be suitable for transportin' grown men around.'

Well, suitable or not, they're what we're stuck with, Charlie, she thought.

She closed her eyes, and could almost see him – a big man with a face that looked only half-finished, clad in a hairy sports jacket which was quite unsuitable for an officer of his rank.

She wondered how he'd looked that morning, twenty-two years earlier, when he climbed down from the steam train – suitable transportation! – on to this very platform.

And, more importantly, she thought, she wondered how he'd
felt
as he embarked on his first major case as a chief inspector.

PART TWO

Whitebridge, April 1951

THREE

C
harlie Woodend had never travelled First Class before, and though he'd long ago accepted – on an intellectual level – that such luxury was one of the perks of his new rank, he was finding the practice rather more uncomfortable than the theory had been. It bothered him, for example, that just by paying more for the ticket, he had acquired the services of attendants who were more . . . well, attentive. And while it was grand to have so much space to yourself, it didn't seem quite right when, further down the train, women with small babies on their knees sat sandwiched between building workers puffing on their hand-rolled cigarettes and commercial travellers clutching their sample cases.

‘You'll probably get used to it, Charlie,' he told himself.

But he was not entirely sure that he
wanted
to get used to it. In fact, he found the idea that there might come a time when he
didn't
notice the women with their babies really quite worrying.

The railway track was following a gentle curve. Looking through the carriage window, Woodend saw the Black Moss railway viaduct ahead. The journey was almost over, and – for the first time in over a year – he would soon be in the town which he had once called home.

His gaze shifted from the window to the man sitting opposite him. Sergeant Bannerman had had his head buried in a copy of
The Times
since they left London, and even if he was an inordinately slow reader – and his academic record said otherwise – he must have virtually memorized every article in it by now.

So perhaps he just doesn't want to talk to me, Woodend thought. Perhaps he simply doesn't know what to say.

‘See that viaduct, Sergeant?' he asked.

Bannerman lowered his newspaper and glanced briefly out of the window.

‘Yes, sir, I see it,' he said, in a bored, uninterested way.

‘There's folk round here who will tell you – straight-faced – that it was built by the Romans,' Woodend chuckled, ‘and when you say that you didn't know the Romans
had
trains, they look at you as if you're a
nutter
.'

‘Indeed?' Sergeant Bannerman replied.

Woodend felt a sudden – unexpected – wave of shame wash over him.

Now why was that, he wondered.

It could have been the other man's tone which brought it on, he thought – or it could have been the fact that he himself had chuckled while telling his story.

He had been trying to make the people of Whitebridge seem quaint and funny, he realized.

And perhaps they were. Perhaps their narrow view of the world – their firm belief that Whitebridge, for all its industrial ugliness, was the centre of the universe –
was
humorous. But it was a belief that he had largely shared before he had gone away to fight in the war. And even if the people of Whitebridge
were
slightly ridiculous, they were still
his
people – and he had no right to make fun of them for the amusement of an outsider.

Not that, despite his efforts, Bannerman
had
appeared amused, he admitted. Instead, the detective sergeant had seemed rather superior – as if he found Woodend's attempt to convey quaintness to be quaint
in and of itself
!

Perhaps takin' that promotion was a mistake, he thought, as he felt the rat of doubt gnawing away at his self-confidence. Perhaps I should have waited for a couple of years.

He hadn't felt like that when the Assistant Commissioner – who hated his guts – had offered him a double promotion because that was quickest way of getting him out of London and
keeping
him out of London. No, back then, he'd been delighted. But now he was beginning to see the advantages of spending some time as a detective inspector – of growing slowly towards the role of DCI, rather than of suddenly being dropped into it from a great height.

But even if he
had
served his time as a DI, working with Bannerman would still have been a problem, he thought, though – in all fairness – that was due less to Bannerman himself than it was to the fact that they were a classic mismatch.

A classic mismatch, he repeated silently, rolling the words around in his brain. Yes, that was exactly the way to phrase it.

He found himself imagining sitting in the opposite corner from Bannerman in a boxing ring, and the master of ceremonies – always an impartial outsider – introducing them to their eager, bloodthirsty audience.

‘My lords, ladies and gentlemen,' said the imaginary MC, ‘may I present to you, in the red corner, Slugger Charlie Woodend – an elementary-school-educated ex-mill worker from Whitebridge; a private soldier in North Africa who managed to claw his way to the rank of sergeant by the time of the D-Day Landings in France; a “big bugger” as they say in Lancashire; a man you might mistake for a bricklayer's labourer or a digger of ditches, but who is, in fact, no less than a chief inspector from Scotland Yard.'

And what would he say about the man in the blue corner? Woodend asked himself.

‘And in the blue corner, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, Ralph St John Bannerman, educated at one of England's finest and most ancient schools; a man who missed the war only by virtue of his youth, but nevertheless served with distinction as a second lieutenant in the peace which followed it; a gentleman, in every sense of the word, who carries his slim yet muscular frame with an elegance quite beyond the ability of the bruiser opposite him; a man who could have become a diplomat or a merchant banker, but instead chose to become a humble policeman.'

‘Have you ever done any boxin', lad?' asked Woodend, carried along by the whimsy.

Bannerman crinkled his nose in disdain.

‘No, sir, can't say that I have,' he answered in a lazy drawl which was already starting to drive Woodend crazy. ‘Rugger's more my sport.'

‘Rugger', Woodend noted.

Not
rugby
, which was what they called the game in down-to-earth Whitebridge, but
rugger
, as played by the gentlemen of England.

As the train began to slow, Woodend looked out of the window again, and saw the whole of the town spread out before him.

Every town or city had something distinctive about it – something which set the tone of the place – he thought.

Paris had its Eiffel Tower, a symbol of both its past glory and its hopes for the future. New York had the Empire State Building, a colossus which proclaimed the city's energy and confidence.

And Whitebridge?

Whitebridge had its forest of factory chimneys – built from finest Accrington Iron Brick – which were still belching out poisonous black fumes, twenty-four hours a day, just as they had always done.

The uniformed constable, who was waiting for them on the platform, saluted smartly, then said, ‘Hello, Charlie, it's right good to see you!'

A look of haughty irritation crossed Bannerman's face. ‘What you mean, constable, is, “Hello,
Chief Inspector Woodend
, it's right good to see you,
sir
”,' he growled.

Prick! Woodend thought.

Although he supposed that, in a way, his new sergeant was right. He was no longer the
old
Charlie Woodend – the lad in short trousers who'd gone bird nesting with this constable in Sparrows' Copse, long ago. Now he was the
new
Woodend – a Scotland Yard man who was only in Whitebridge to solve a crime that the locals seemed unable to solve themselves.