Fatal Quest (22 page)

‘Three days. Three
whole
bloody days!'

It was possible that Victoria Jones had died sometime
in those three days, though
if
she had, he still had no idea why she should have done.

‘
Are you sayin' that if she
has
been killed, it's for an entirely different reason to the one that led to your death?
' he'd asked the dead Pearl, in his delirium.

And the dead Pearl had not, of course, provided any answer.

Three days!

Whatever clues there were to Pearl's murder – if there were any
at all
– would have grown stale in three days. Or worse, might have disappeared completely.

It wasn't fair to either the dead girl or her mother that he should have been struck down by the flu bug – but then, when had life ever been fair?

Two
days had been plenty of time to make a full recovery, he told himself, as he climbed the stairs to his office – after two days he should have ignored the doctor's advice and got back into harness.

But by the time he reached the landing his lungs were on fire, and there was at least a part of him which acknowledged that if he had got up the day before, he'd have been back in his sick bed by now.

The office was empty, save for DC Cotteral, who had abandoned his interest in paper-clip sculpture, and now he was conducting an experiment in abstract art which involved releasing drops of ink from his fountain pen at various heights, and then studying the pattern they made on his blotting paper.

‘Good to see you back on your feet again, Sarge,' he said cheerily. Then, with a broad wink, he added, ‘Course, we don't really know
why
you were off
your feet in the first place, now do we?'

‘I had the flu,' Woodend said.

‘So you say. But it wouldn't surprise me if, instead of having the
flu
, you'd been hammering the bedsprings with some
floo
zy for the last three days.'

How long had Cotteral been working on that particular line, Woodend wondered. Ever since Joan had phoned in to say that he was sick?

‘Get it, Sarge?' Cotteral asked. ‘
Flu
and
floozy
?'

‘I get it,' Woodend said.

He should have expected no better, he told himself. Cotteral had to fill his time with something, and since catching murderers was
unthinkable
, why not fill it by thinking up weak jokes?

‘Where's the guv'nor?' he asked.

‘Now there you've got me,' Cotteral admitted. ‘I don't actually know where he is at the moment. But I
do
know that he said he'd be in later in the morning.'

‘An' how's the case goin'?'

‘The case?' Cotteral repeated, as if he had no idea what the sergeant was talking about. ‘Oh, you mean the little darkie's murder?' he asked, as enlightenment dawned.

Woodend wondered what kind of disciplinary sanction would be imposed on him if he spattered DC Cotteral's idiot face all over the wall. By rights, he thought, he should be given a medal for it.

‘Yes, I mean the little darkie's murder,' he said.

‘There's been no progress at all, really,' Cotteral said lazily. ‘We're still waiting for the big break.'

‘How about the mother? Victoria Jones? Have you got any leads on where she might be?'

‘Well, yes, we have, as a matter of fact,' Cotteral said, with a sudden seriousness. ‘We think that she's hiding in a coal cellar somewhere, especially after dark.'

‘Why would you think that?'

A grin started to form at the corners of Cotteral's mouth. ‘Because we can't find her, Sarge.'

‘You're not makin' any sense,' Woodend told him.

‘Don't you know the old joke?'

‘What old joke?

‘Question: what's the hardest thing in the world to find?'

‘I've no idea.'

Cotteral laughed. ‘Answer: a nigger, in a coal cellar, at midnight.'

‘You make me puke,' Woodend said.

‘Don't you think it's funny, Sarge?' Cotteral asked, half-surprised, half-offended.

‘No, I bloody don't!'

‘But I thought you were one of us now.'

It was the phone, ringing on his desk, which prevented Woodend telling Cotteral that since he'd never had any particular ambition to become an idle, bigoted toe-rag, the chances that he would
ever
become one of them were very slim.

He picked up the phone. ‘DS Woodend.'

‘You knew what was going to happen, didn't you, you bastard?' demanded the man at the other end of the line. ‘You
knew
you were making me walk across an unmarked minefield – and you didn't bloody care!'

The voice sounded so cracked – so utterly pathetic – that it took Woodend several seconds to identify it. And even when he did come up with a name, it was such an improbable one that he almost sure he'd made a mistake.

‘Tom?' he asked tentatively. ‘Tom Townshend? Is that you?'

‘Why do you even need to
ask
who it is? Or have you sent
so many
poor sods out on suicide missions that you've begun to lose count of them?'

‘I really have no idea what you're on about, Tom,' Woodend protested. ‘Can we meet up somewhere an' talk about it?'

‘If it was left up to me, the next time we met would be at your funeral,' Townshend said bitterly. ‘And the only reason I'd put in an appearance there would be so I could dance on your grave.'

‘Listen, Tom—' Woodend began.

‘But it
hasn't
been left up to me, has it?' Townshend interrupted. ‘I've been told we've
got
to have a meeting. This morning!'

‘Told?
Who
told you?'

‘I'll see you at the northern end of the Broad Walk in Green Park, in an hour from now.'

‘I'm not sure I can just drop everything here and—'

‘Be there!'

‘I have to know what's happened, Tom,' Woodend said worriedly. ‘You need to explain …'

But he was talking to a dead line.

The plane tree stood directly behind the park bench. Its solid trunk seemed impervious to the cold, but its smaller branches suddenly began to shiver, as if, so it seemed to Woodend, they had only recently discovered their own winter nakedness.

‘Own winter nakedness!' he repeated, this time aloud – and with mild self-disgust. ‘Leave poetry to them what's got the trainin' an' aptitude for it, Charlie. You just concentrate on catchin' villains.'

But the fact that the stark image
had
come to him, unsought, merely showed that the feeling of bleakness – which had enveloped him while talking to Tom Townshend on the phone – was still with him.

The sight of Townshend himself – even from a distance – did nothing to help dispel the mood. He was sitting on the bench with the collar of his overcoat turned up around his ears, and his hat pulled down so tightly that it almost covered his eyes. He seemed to be a much smaller man than the one who Woodend had talked to so recently in the Conway Club.

While Woodend was standing there, watching and worrying, the cigarette in his right hand burned so far down he could feel the heat of it on his fingers. He performed the impressive trick of taking a fresh Capstan from its packet one-handed, then lit the new cigarette from the old one, threw the stub away, and began to walk towards the bench.

On the phone Townshend had seemed desperate to have a meeting, but now, when he heard Woodend's approaching footsteps, he did not look up – and even when the sergeant stopped directly in front of him, he kept his eyes fixed firmly to the ground.

‘Whatever's happened to you, I never meant it to,' Woodend said. ‘I had no idea at all that you'd be runnin' any risk. I give you my word on that, as an old comrade.'

Townshend did finally raise his head – just enough for Woodend to see some of the bruising on his face.

‘Why is it, Charlie, that when you're a young man, with so much to live for – so much to look forward to – you throw yourself into the heat of battle without even a second's hesitation?' he asked.

He didn't sound angry, as he had done earlier – and as Woodend had expected him to now. Instead, his voice was filled with deep sadness, almost as if he were in mourning.

‘And why is it that later in life,' Townshend continued, ‘when so many of the good times are already far behind you – when you know it's all downhill from now on – that the fear finally comes?'

‘I don't know,' Woodend admitted. ‘Maybe it's because the less you have left, the more you learn to cherish it.' He took a deep drag of his cigarette, then said, ‘Tell me what happened, Tom.'

‘I can't help you any more,' Townshend said. ‘From now on, Charlie, you'll have to fight the battle on your own.'

‘If that's all you needed to say to me, you could have done it over the phone,' Woodend pointed out.

‘I know.'

‘So what was the point of draggin' us both all the way out to the park, on a shitty day like this?'

‘It was just the way it had to be.'

Woodend quickly scanned the area around the bench. A woman, warmly wrapped up, was pushing her brand-new baby in a brand-new pram. A tramp, swathed in even more layers of clothing than the woman, was picking up the cigarette end that the sergeant had recently discarded. And standing in a clump of trees, a hundred yards away, was a man in a green duffel coat holding his hands up to his eyes.

No! Woodend thought.
Not
holding his hands up to his eyes – holding something
in
his hands up to his eyes.

Binoculars!

‘We're bein' watched by the feller who's standin' in that clump of trees,' he told Tom Townshend.

‘Yes, we are,' Townshend agreed.

‘How long has he been there?'

‘I don't know.'

‘All right, then, let me put it another way – how long is it since you first
noticed
him there?'

‘I didn't notice him at all. I had no idea where he'd be – but I knew he'd have to be
somewhere
.'

‘
Why
is he here?'

‘Can't you work that out for yourself?'

Yes, Woodend thought, he probably could.

‘He's here because somebody decided that it wasn't enough for you to just
tell
me you weren't goin' to help me any more – you had to be
seen
to be tellin' me?' he guessed.

‘Yes, that's exactly why he's here,' Townshend agreed.

‘Well, since he
is
watchin' us, we might as well give him somethin'
interestin
' to watch,' Woodend said.

He threw his cigarette on the ground, grabbed Townshend by the lapels of his overcoat, and jerked the journalist roughly to his feet.

‘For God's sake, what are you doing, Charlie?' Townshend gasped. ‘Are you trying to scare me? Because if you are, you're wasting your time. I couldn't be more terrified than I am already.'

‘I can see that for myself,' Woodend said softly. ‘An' believe me, that's not my intention, Tom. All I'm tryin' to do is put on a good show for your mate over there.'

‘I don't understand,' Townshend said.

‘If I just walk away, he'll never know what you've actually said to me. But if I rough you up a bit – an' then storm off in a temper – it'll be obvious that you've delivered just the message you were
supposed to
deliver.'

He released his grip on the other man's lapels, and pushed Townshend roughly back onto the bench.

‘Jesus Christ, that hurt,' the journalist groaned.

‘It was
meant
to hurt,' Woodend told him. ‘We're bein' observed by a professional, an' if I'd tried to fake it, he'd have
known
it was faked.' He lit up another cigarette. ‘Who did this to you, Tom?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Are you sayin' you didn't recognize them?' Woodend asked, waving his hands angrily in the air for the benefit of the man with the binoculars.

‘That's right, I didn't recognize them,' Townshend agreed.

‘You're lyin',' Woodend told him. ‘You know the face of every major villain in London. That's your job.'

‘The … the reason I didn't recognize them was because they were wearing masks,' Townshend stuttered.

Woodend shook his head. ‘No, they weren't.'

‘I swear to you …'

‘An' the
reason
they weren't wearin' masks was because they wanted you to know who they were – an', more importantly, they wanted you to know who it was that had sent them.'

‘You're right, of course,' Townshend agreed weakly. ‘I
do
know who sent them. But I daren't tell you.'

‘Then what
can
you tell me?'

‘Nothing! I can't tell you a bloody thing!'

‘What did they
say
to you?' Woodend persisted.

‘They told me it was about time I started minding my own business.'

‘An' what did they mean by that?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You're lyin' again.'

‘They … they told me to stop trying to find out who was behind the Meadows Educational Trust.'

‘Have you found any more about the trust than you knew the last time we talked?'

‘No. And that's the truth, Charlie! But even if I
had
found out more, I wouldn't tell you now.'

‘Under the circumstances, I can't say I blame you,' Woodend said. ‘Is the watcher still there?'

‘He's still there,' Townshend confirmed.

‘I'll leave in a minute,' Woodend told him. ‘But before I do, I'm goin' to have to hurt you again, so you'd better brace yourself.'