Lambs to the Slaughter (6 page)

But Shastri had gone – at least for a while.

‘I am taking a sabbatical and returning to my native India, my dear Monika,' she had said before she left. ‘I am looking forward to it immensely, but I shall certainly miss my favourite chief inspector and her almost-daily demands that I perform the impossible.'

And I miss you, Doctor, Paniatowski thought, looking at the Jaguar XJ6 – parked between an ambulance and patrol car – which had usurped the space that rightfully belonged to Shastri's vehicle.

A uniformed constable, heavy-set and middle-aged, strode over to the MGA and said, with some gravity and self-importance, ‘You can't park here, love – and if you had any sense, you'd already have worked that out for yourself.'

‘Worked it out for myself?' Paniatowski asked innocently. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘It must be true what they say about blondes,' the constable told her. ‘Do you see that police car and that ambulance?'

‘Yes. Has somebody been taken ill?'

The constable shook his head, as if finding it hard to believe that even a dizzy blonde could be
quite
so stupid.

‘No, love,' he said indulgently. ‘Nobody's been taken ill – there's been a murder.'

‘Now that is a happy coincidence,' Paniatowski replied, pulling out her warrant card and showing it to him. ‘Because, you see, investigating murders is what I do for a living.'

The constable's mouth dropped open, then he pulled himself together and saluted.

‘Sorry, ma'am,' he said. ‘You must be DCI Pany . . . Pany . . .'

‘Paniatowski?' Monika suggested.

‘That's right,' the constable confirmed. ‘I've seen your picture in the paper dozens of times, but you look different in the flesh.'

A mistake, his expression said. A big mistake! You're only making matters worse.

‘I'm PC Mellors, ma'am, the local bobby,' he said hastily, ‘and that lad over there is PC Briggs, my trainee.'

‘I imagine that PC Mellors is teaching you quite a lot, PC Briggs,' Paniatowski said. ‘Particularly in the area of how to deal diplomatically with members of the general public.'

Briggs grinned, then wondered if that was appropriate, and instantly assumed a bland expression.

‘Yes, ma'am,' he said.

Paniatowski turned her attention back to Mellors. ‘We'd like to see the body now,' she said. ‘That is, if it's not too much trouble.'

‘No trouble at all, ma'am,' Mellors said, completely missing the irony.

He led Paniatowski and Meadows through the front parlour of the house – a room that, as in most of the terraced dwellings, was only used on special occasions – and into the only other room on the ground floor, the kitchen, which had a coal-fired range on which the cooking was done, and was where the people who lived in these houses spent most of their time.

‘Mr Hopkins is in the lavvy, at the bottom of the yard, ma'am,' Mellors said, opening the back door.

The yard was perhaps twenty feet long. It was bounded by party walls with the neighbours on each side, and a back wall which separated it from the alley. The wash house, containing a coal-fired boiler, a mangle, and the house's only tap, was close to the back door, and the toilet – as Mellors had promised – was at the far end of the yard.

The ‘outside lavvy' was a small windowless brick shed. It was around eight feet tall at the front, three feet wide and five feet deep. It had a sloping roof, and was whitewashed. The door was open, but their view of what was inside was blocked by a large grey-haired man.

The man turned.

‘Ah, the constabulary have arrived,' he said. ‘You're DCI Paniatowski, aren't you?'

‘That's right.'

‘Thought you were. I'm Taylor, Dr Shastri's temporary replacement. Taylor's the name, and cutting's the game.' He stepped to one side. ‘Behold, Chief Inspector – the stiff!'

The victim was sitting on the toilet at the back of the lavatory, his head slumped forward. His trousers and underpants had been pulled down to his knees, and the naked legs above them were pale, veined and mottled. The legs, trousers, and much of the floor, were stained with blood.

The doctor took hold of the legs, and lifted them, thus rocking the corpse backwards.

‘It's rather macabre, but I have to do it this way,' he explained. ‘Rigor's set in, you see.'

The middle of Len Hopkins' forehead had been smashed in – but
only
the middle.

‘The way I see it,' the doctor said, ‘he was sitting there, minding his own business – if you know what I mean – when the door was flung open. Now what would you do in that situation?'

‘Try to close the door again?' Paniatowski suggested.

‘And that would be easy for you to do, being a woman,' the doctor said. ‘All you'd have to do is stand up and take a couple of paces forward, but if
he'd
stood up, he'd probably have fallen over – because his trousers would have been round his ankles.'

‘Are you sure of that?'

‘Nothing's sure in this life, but most men like to get their clothes as far away from the “operations centre” as possible. We're as careless about performing our bodily functions as we are about most of the other things we do, you see, and certain stains can be very embarrassing.'

‘So what do you think he
actually
did?' Paniatowski asked.

‘My guess is that he would have lifted his backside slightly and tried to pull the trousers up again, which would have both given him more freedom of movement and done something to alleviate his embarrassment. But all the time he was doing that, he would be looking at the intruder – not that he could have seen much of the man.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘This was the only lighting,' Taylor said, pointing to a burnt-down candle on a small shelf. ‘It was bright enough for him to see by, but it wouldn't have cast any light outside the shithouse. In other words, while the candle would have allowed the killer to see him, it wouldn't work the other way.'

‘You're probably right,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Anyway, even though he couldn't
see
, he was probably still
looking
. And that was a big mistake, because it presented the murderer with a perfect target.'

The doctor lowered the legs, and the body returned to its former position.

‘How many blows were delivered?' Paniatowski asked.

‘As far as I can tell without slicing the top of his head off, there was just the one.'

‘And do you have any idea what type of instrument the murder weapon might have been?'

‘Could have been anything with a tapered end,' the doctor said. ‘But, as it happens, I know for a fact that it
wasn't
just anything.' He turned, and took a few steps towards the wash house. ‘Follow me.'

Lying against the side of the wash house, almost at the party wall, was a small pickaxe. The pointed end of it was stained with what was probably blood.

‘If that's not what he used for the dirty deed, I'll eat my own scrotum,' the doctor said.

‘Have you touched it?' Paniatowski asked.

The doctor laughed. ‘My scrotum?'

‘The pickaxe.'

‘I most certainly have not. It's lying exactly where it was when I first noticed it.'

Paniatowski studied the pickaxe again. It didn't look like any she'd seen before.

‘It's a short-handled pick, ma'am,' PC Mellors explained, seeing the puzzled look on her face. ‘Miners used to use them in seams which were too narrow to swing a normal pickaxe in.'

‘But they don't use them any more?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Not really,' Mellors said. ‘The brute force days of mining are all but over – it's nearly all done mechanically now.'

‘But the fact that it
is
a short-handled pick makes it the ideal weapon for murdering somebody in an enclosed space, you see,' Dr Taylor said.

It had once been a working tool, Paniatowski thought – from the scars on the wooden haft, there was no doubt about that. On the other hand, the haft itself had been recently polished, and the cord which was looped through the hole at the bottom of it was clean, so someone had been taking care of it since it had been retired from the mine.

She opened the wash house door, and stepped inside. Hanging on the wall were a spade, a yard brush, a hammer and a saw, and between the hammer and the saw there was a strong hook with nothing on it.

She returned to the yard.

‘Would the assailant have to have been strong to deliver the blow he did?' she asked the doctor.

‘It would certainly have been an advantage, as strength is an advantage in most situations,' Taylor said, ‘though I suspect that even a comparatively weak man could have done the damage if he'd been angry enough. But again, I won't know for sure until I've taken a closer look inside his noggin.'

Paniatowski tried to picture the scene in her mind – tried to reconstruct the event which had only been witnessed by two men, one of whom was now dead.

The killer, pickaxe in hand, flings open the toilet door, and sees an old man with his trousers round his ankles, looking up at him.

And what is the expression on the old man's face?

Is it anger?

Is it fear?

He cannot see the man in the doorway, but does he know who he is and why he is there? Does he know, in fact, why he is about to die?

And what about the killer?

What is he feeling?

He was feeling rage, Paniatowski told herself. She could sense that rage, still in the air hours after the murder. She could almost smell it.

So what happened next?

The killer swings the pickaxe, and feels it jar as it connects with the middle of the old man's skull.

The axe has done its work, it is of no further use to him, yet instead of dropping it then and there, he keeps hold of it as he turns to make his escape.

And what route does he choose for that escape? Not the alley – which would be the sensible course – but through the house!

He still has the pickaxe in his hand as he draws level with the wash house.

Has he always been intending to throw it against the wash house wall?

No! There would be no point – absolutely no advantage – in doing that.

So why is it still in his hand?

It's still in his hand because he doesn't realize it's there!

He has been grasping it tightly during his murderous attack, and he had been so caught up in his own passion that he has simply forgotten to let go.

But now, as he reaches the wash house – perhaps four or five seconds after he has taken a life – he finally becomes aware of it.

And it disgusts him. It horrifies him.

He flings it away – not caring where it lands!

He was no cold-blooded murderer, this man, Paniatowski thought. A cold-blooded murderer would not have been so disoriented by the act that he would have forgotten to let go of the murder weapon. He had killed because he felt he must – because there were forces inside him driving him to do it.

She sensed the rage again, and wondered just what Len Hopkins could have done to engender it.

I
t had been light for over an hour when Beresford and Crane passed the chipped enamel sign which said, ‘You are now entering Bellingsworth. Please drive carefully', but because of the heavy grey clouds hanging over the village, it was that dismal sort of light which made even the darkness which preceded it look good.

Beresford parked at the end of the main street, which was distinguished from all the other streets in the village only by the fact that it contained two or three buildings which were not part of a row of terraced houses.

‘You might sometimes catch yourself thinking that Whitebridge is a bit of a dump, but compared to this place, it's bloody Las Vegas,' he said sourly, as they climbed out of the car.

They had only walked a few paces when they reached the Miners' Institute. The building, like most of the miners who used it, seemed both squat and powerful. It was constructed mainly of large blocks of roughly dressed stone that must once have been pale – almost golden – but, over the years, had turned deepest industrial black. It had big double doors – which were painted emerald green, and provided the place with its only real splash of colour – and very small windows, which suggested that once they were inside the institute, the miners wanted to leave thoughts of the outside world behind them.

In front of the institute there was a large free-standing noticeboard, which informed anyone who cared to look at it that – among other things – the next darts' match was on Thursday, the racing pigeon society would be meeting the day after that in the committee room, Eddie Brown had a second-hand motorcycle (in very good condition) he was willing to sell, and the membership secretary would very much like to remind all members that their yearly subscriptions were due.

But it was the poster in the centre of the board which drew Beresford and Crane's attention.

It was crude, and obviously hastily printed, but its message was more than clear.

Why we must strike!

We are fighting for our lives and our industry.

Voting ‘yes' on the strike ballot will ensure our victory.

Come to the public meeting at the Miners' Institute on

Monday night, and make your voice heard.

The poster did not invite comments, but several had been added at the bottom of it anyway.

‘Don't vote yourself out of a job,' someone had written.

‘Smash the capitalist system,' a second writer had countered.