Fatal Quest (14 page)

‘Not likely at all,' Paniatowski admitted. ‘So what
was
the real reason for the meeting?'

‘Pardon?' Woodend said, as if he hadn't heard.

‘You did eventually find out why he wanted to see you, didn't you?'

‘Oh yes, it was obvious, once all the other bits of the jigsaw had slotted into place.'

Paniatowski sighed. ‘So tell me?'

Woodend chuckled. ‘Not yet. A good tale's a bit like a good meal – if you serve bits of it out of order, you spoil the taste of the whole thing.'

‘There are times when I could kill you, Charlie,' Paniatowski said.

‘Aye, I can be annoyin' on occasion,' Woodend agreed. ‘Anyway, while I was sittin' there, tryin' to make sense of it all, the phone rang. An' who do you think it was?'

Paniatowski sighed again – even more heavily this time. ‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Who was it?'

‘It was a voice from the past,' Woodend told her.

‘Charlie?' said the vaguely familiar voice at the other end of the line.

‘Yes?'

‘Arthur Cathcart here.'

‘Oh, hello, sir.'

Woodend had caught sight of Major Cathcart – now
Commander
Cathcart – from time to time, and they'd even exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries when they'd happened to meet accidentally – but it must have been at least two years, he thought, since they'd had anything that could have passed as a conversation.

‘I think we need to have a talk,' Cathcart said.

‘All right,' Woodend agreed, mystified.

‘But not over the phone. It should be done face-to-face.'

‘Would you like me to come up to your office, sir?'

‘No!' Cathcart said emphatically. ‘No,' he repeated, more softly this time. ‘I think it would probably be better, given the
nature
of what needs to be said, if we met somewhere not
too
closely connected to the Job.'

‘A pub?' Woodend suggested.

‘That would certainly be more suitable,' Cathcart agreed. ‘Or better yet, why not come to my place for Sunday lunch?'

‘Sorry, sir,' Woodend said, not certain he had heard the commander correctly.

‘We throw a buffet-lunch party most Sundays,' Cathcart said. ‘It's very informal, and it's really quite a jolly crowd.'

‘Whenever I have the opportunity, I like to spend my Sundays with my wife,' Woodend said.

‘It's perfectly understandable that you would,' Cathcart agreed. ‘And, naturally, when I invited you, I was also inviting her.'

‘I'm not sure …' Woodend began.

‘We're old comrades-in-arms, Charlie,' Cathcart reminded him. ‘And really, I'm quite ashamed of the way I've been neglecting you since we were demobbed.'

‘I never expected you to …'

‘I mean to say, I've never even
met
your wife. Joan, isn't it?'

‘That's right.'

‘And you've never met mine.'

‘Even so …'

‘What's the matter? Do you think it will make you feel uncomfortable to be rubbing shoulders with the brass?'

‘The thought had occurred to me,' Woodend admitted.

Cathcart laughed. ‘Well, you needn't worry on that score, Charlie. Sundays are part of my
other
life – the part that doesn't involve police work. In fact, you'll be the first copper I've ever invited.'

‘It's very kind of you, sir …'

‘Is that a yes?'

‘I'll have to ask Joan.'

‘And if she's happy with the idea, can I take it as a yes then?'

‘I suppose you can,' Woodend said cautiously.

‘Jolly good! So I'll look forward to seeing you both on Sunday,' Cathcart said.

And then he hung up.

I
t was a quarter to four when DCI Bentley finally returned to the office. Once inside, he walked straight over to Woodend's desk with the careful steps of a man who was sober enough to know that he'd had too much to drink, but drunk enough to believe he could successfully conceal the fact from other people.

‘How's your murder investigation going, Charlie?' he asked with unaccustomed bonhomie.

How's
yours
going, you fat idle bastard? Woodend thought.

‘I'm makin' some progress, sir,' he lied.

Bentley nodded his head sagely, as if to acknowledge having just heard some profound statement from his sergeant.

‘Good, good,' he said. ‘Excellent, in fact. You know, Charlie, you and me, we may have had our differences in the past, but I still think that you've got the makings of a bloody good copper in you.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Woodend said.

Though he was only too well aware that, as the effects of the drink began to wear off, Bentley's newly discovered golden opinion of him would start to fade away, too.

‘There's just … just one thing,' Charlie,' Bentley continued, opening and closing his eyes in an effort to make them focus properly.

‘What's that, sir?'

‘What's what?' Bentley asked, puzzled.

‘The “just one thing”, sir.'

‘Oh, yes. That. Over lunch, I had time for a few quick words with one of the directors of the brewery.'

‘Which brewery?'

‘You know! It's the … the …' Bentley said, as he tried to recall the name, and failed. ‘The one that owns that pub, the … whatever the devil it's called.'

‘The Waterman's Arms?' Woodend suggested.

‘That's right, I knew it was
something
like that. The Waterman's Arms.' Bentley paused to draw a few shallow breaths, then continued. ‘Apparently, according to this chap, the place is still closed down.'

‘Well, it is the scene of a crime, sir,' Woodend pointed out.

‘It … it may, as you say, be the scene of crime, but keeping it closed is costing the brewery a lot of
money
. They don't like that. And … and there's no reason why they should.' Bentley paused again, this time to collect his thoughts. ‘Is there any reason why the Waterman's Arms
shouldn't
re-open?' he asked.

‘Not really,' Woodend said.

Nor was there, he thought. The forensics team had arrived at the pub long after the scene had been hopelessly contaminated by fleeing potential witnesses, and if they couldn't find anything then, it was highly unlikely they'd be able to find anything new now.

‘Maybe you'd better check it over again yourself, personally, before we finally give them permission to open up,' Bentley suggested.

‘Oh, I don't think that will be necessary, sir.'

The chief inspector blinked, and Woodend realized he was going through one of those sudden mood swings that drunks are always prone to.

‘So you think that won't be necessary, do you?' Bentley asked, with a new, harsh edge to his voice.

‘That's right, sir, but if you feel it would be—'

‘Let me tell you something, Sergeant. What
you
think doesn't matter a tuppenny damn. Round here, it's what
I
think that matters.'

‘Yes, sir, I quite accept—'

‘So instead of lecturing me on what is and isn't necessary, you'd do well to get yourself off to the pub and see if it
can
be opened again. Got that?'

‘Got it, sir,' Woodend said.

The Waterman's Arms was entered from a narrow alleyway which ran from the road to a series of steps (which, themselves, led to a small jetty on the river), and just taking a walk down the alley made Woodend feel as if he were stepping back in time.

He knew all about the watermen, after whom the pub was named. They had made their money by ferrying people across the Thames, back in the days when there had been far too few bridges spanning the river to meet the needs of an expanding city. They'd been a tough breed, and – having to row for twelve hours a day, in all weathers, and often against the tide – they'd needed to be. In the middle of the previous century they'd been able to supplement their incomes by claiming finder's fees for fishing dead bodies out the river, but that practice had been stopped when the authorities had noticed that the number of corpses had increased dramatically, and assumed – quite rightly – that the watermen had given up waiting for victims of drowning, and had begun to create a few of their own.

All of which made it more than likely that Wally Booth hadn't been the first man to die in the Waterman's Arms by a long chalk, Woodend thought, as he drew level with the pub.

The official notice, pinned to the door of the Waterman's Arms, stated that the establishment was closed until further notice, on the orders of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Not that such a notice was really necessary, Woodend thought, because the regular customers would not only
know
it was closed, they would know whose angered fist had been
responsible
for closing it.

He took the pub's front-door key out of his pocket, and inserted it in the lock. Then, as he felt the mechanism begin to click into place, he began to wonder whether it was worth the effort of actually going inside.

The only reason he was there at all, he reminded himself, was because a drunken chief inspector had irrationally told him
he
should
be there.

And since he had no expectations of finding anything interesting inside, what was the point of wasting any more of his time?

‘Hang about, Charlie,' said the voice in his head which was comparatively new to him then, but over the coming years would grow to be a more or less constant companion. ‘You don't actually know for certain that you
won't
find somethin' in there, now do you?'

‘Don't I?' Woodend wondered aloud.

‘Of course you don't. It's not beyond the bounds of possibility, is it, that a man like you – a fresh an' brilliant young detective – will come across a vital clue that the jaded forensic team have overlooked?'

Woodend grinned. ‘I've got two points to make,' he told the voice. ‘The first is that I'd better learn to stop talkin' to myself before somebody sends the men in white coats to take me away.'

‘An' what's the second?' the voice asked.

‘I've got to give up these delusions of grandeur concernin' my detectin' skills, because if I don't, my head will swell up so much it won't fit through this door or any other.'

‘So you're
not
goin' in?' the voice asked, disappointedly.

Woodend sighed. ‘I'll go in,' he conceded. ‘I suppose I might as well, since I'm here already.'

Then he pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

The pub was pretty much as he'd expected it to be. There was sawdust on the floor, and several spittoons placed strategically around the room, in order that customers would not have to walk far to expectorate. There was a counter which ran the whole length of the far wall, with a painted mirror behind it and the brass foot-rail – which had robbed Wally Booth of his life – at its base. There were tin adverts, mounted on the walls, for products that had long ceased to exist, and heavy wooden tables which bore the scars of generations of cigarette burns.

This boozer would hardly have changed at all since the time the great Charles Dickens might have visited it, Woodend thought. And closing his eyes, he could picture the weather-beaten watermen, knocking back pints of bitter, paid for in aching muscles, before going home to the hovels where their families eked out their miserable existence.

It had been a good idea to come inside, he thought, if only to immerse himself, for a moment, in the world that Dickens himself had once inhabited. But opening his eyes again, he saw none of the clues that the persuasive voice in his head had suggested he might find there.

He turned around, and walked back towards the door.

And it was then that he heard the noise!

It was a deadened, heavy noise. Not the scampering of a frightened rat, but rather a slight movement made by something considerably heavier. And it was coming from behind the bar.

He turned again.

‘Police!' he said. ‘You'd better come out.'

It was perhaps five or six seconds before the man who'd been crouching behind the counter reluctantly stood up.

He was, Woodend estimated, roughly five feet eight or five nine inches tall, and was around forty years old. He was wearing the same kind of suit as the ones worn by Greyhound Ron Smithers's bouncers and Toby Burroughs's collectors, but it had been less expensive when new, and now was showing distinct signs of wear.

‘Who are you?' Woodend demanded.

‘Smiff,' the man said. ‘John Smiff.'

‘Well, that's certainly original,' Woodend told him. ‘An' what are you doin' here, Mr
Smith
?'

The other man shrugged. ‘I was walking past when I saw the door was wide open, so I just come in.'

‘The door wasn't wide open – it was
locked
,' Woodend corrected him. ‘But then that doesn't really present much of a problem to a man with a set of skeleton keys in his pocket, now does it?'

‘I swear to you, I wasn't doing nuffink,' ‘Smith' whined.

‘Tell that to your brief,' Woodend advised him. ‘Maybe he'll be able to convince the court it's the truth – but I very much doubt it.'

‘Yer
arresting
me?' ‘Smith' asked, as though it was the most outrageous thing he'd ever heard.

‘I don't see why I shouldn't,' Woodend replied. ‘Given the circumstances, it seems like the right thing to do.' He took his handcuffs out of his pocket and held them in the air for ‘Smith' to see. ‘Would you come round from behind the bar now, please?'