Murder at Swann's Lake (22 page)

“Are you sure of that?”

“Of course I am. He showed it to me. He was so excited about it. He saw it as the final proof that the dream we'd been planning for so long was actually going to come about. And, of course, it was the all more exciting for him because he's never been abroad before.”

“Not even during the War?”

Miss Noonan shook her head. “He didn't serve in the armed forces. He volunteered, of course – Alex would never try to shirk his duty – but he was turned down. He had flat feet, you see. Maybe that's why he wears—” She stopped, as if she had suddenly realised she'd said too much.

“Wears what?” Woodend asked.

“I . . . I don't know what I'm saying. You've got me confused.”

“You were goin' to tell me about his shoes, weren't you?”

Miss Noonan looked him straight in the eye. “I would like you to give me your word, Chief Inspector, that you do not suspect Alex of having done anything criminal.”

“You know I can't do that,” Woodend said.

The librarian stood up. “In that case, I don't think we have anything else to say to each other.”

She wanted to stop talking before she inadvertently gave anything else away, Woodend thought. And for the moment, what she wanted was all that mattered – because he hadn't even the smallest shred of evidence to use as an excuse for pulling her in for questioning. Miss Noonan already had the door open and was gesturing that he should leave. There seemed no alternative but to do just that.

Woodend rose to his feet. “If you change your mind and decide you have anythin' more to tell me . . .”

“I won't,” Miss Noonan said. Her lower lip quivered. “But if you do find Alex,” she implored, “you will let me know, won't you? Please!”

The pub was called The King's Arms, which was rather a fancy name for a place with long cracks in the leather settle and patches of mildew on the wall. But as Woodend had pointed out when he and Rutter entered the snug bar, it didn't really matter what the place looked like, as long as the ale was good.

“The most significant thing I learned from Miss Noonan is that Conway was plannin' to go away for his holidays on Saturday,” Woodend said.

“Because that means he wasn't planning to kill Robbie Peterson?” Rutter asked.

“Exactly. Either it was like I said earlier – he found Robbie asleep an' it was too good a chance to miss – or he didn't kill Peterson at all, but knew who did, an' realised he was next in line.”

“So if he's not in hiding because he's a murderer, he's there because he's frightened of
being
murdered?”

“Spot on,” Woodend agreed. “An' whichever it is, it's in our interest to find him as soon as possible.”

“The only problem is, we've no idea where he is,” Rutter pointed out.

“You're right,” Woodend agreed. “But we've got a couple of real beltin' leads.”

“And what are they?”

“The passport and the shoes! The passport office must have the application form Conway sent in, and that will give us more details about him. And then, of course, there'll be a photograph. He was too wily to let Miss Noonan have one, but he'll have had no choice if he wanted a passport. So we'll soon know exactly what he looks like.”

“What about the shoes?” Rutter asked.

“That's a bit more of a long shot,” Woodend admitted. “But the way I've got it figured out, if he wears the same pair most of the time he's in Doncaster, they must need solin' and heelin' fairly often. So maybe they're sittin' in some cobbler's shop right now – just waitin' to be picked up. All we have to do is find out which shop, an' then ask the Doncaster police to keep an eye on it.”

“I'll get Sergeant Dash on the job right away,” Rutter said.

“I don't think we'll use the local bobbies on this job,” Woodend told him. “Can't trust them not to make a cock-up of it.”

“You said yourself that Dash had the look of a bloody good bobby,” Rutter said.

“For a
Yorkshireman
,” Woodend countered. “No, that's not fair. He is a good bobby within his limitations. But I'd still rather keep this lead to ourselves.”

“So the two us are going to check every single cobbler's in the Doncaster area?” Rutter asked incredulously.

“Not us, lad. You.”

“But it could take days!” Rutter protested.

“Not if you put your back into it,” Woodend said cheerfully.

“This isn't just a way of keeping me busy, is it? You've not given me this job so I'll have no time to worry about Maria?”

“Of course I haven't, lad,” Woodend lied.

E
ven as a kid, Woodend had been able to smell impending trouble, and now, as the police Wolsey made its way along the lakeside road, it filled his nostrils like the smell of burning paper.

“Stick your clog down, lad,” he said to his driver. “There's somethin' I don't want to miss.”

As the driver accelerated, Woodend scratched his head and wondered why, when the solution to this case probably lay in Doncaster or Liverpool, he should be getting such an uneasy feeling so close to The Hideaway.

The answer was clear the moment the Wolsey pulled into the yard. Jenny Clough, a pinny over her skirt and cardigan, was standing in front of the club talking to her sister, who was wearing another of her revealing dresses. But they were not
just
talking. Their bodies were stiff and their necks were arched forward. They looked, the Chief Inspector thought, exactly like two unfriendly cats who were sizing each other up.

What the bloody hell could have brought this confrontation on? he asked himself. True, there was often ill feeling in families after funerals, but money was usually at the bottom of that, and he was pretty sure that Doris would have seen to it that everything went to her. Besides, Jenny Clough didn't strike him as the kind of woman who would be much concerned about material things.

The driver parked the car by the garage and Woodend got out. Whatever the two women had been talking about, Annie had obviously had enough, because she'd turned her back on Jenny and started walking away. But
Jenny
hadn't finished with
Annie
yet. Showing a passion Woodend wouldn't have thought her capable of, she flung herself onto the back of her retreating sister, and dragged her down to the ground.

The fight was so fast and so vicious that it was almost a blur. The two women rolled over and over, with first one on top and then the other. Jenny clawed at Annabel's face as if she wanted to gouge out her eyes. Annabel bit deep into Jenny's shoulder. It only took Woodend a few seconds to cover the distance between the car and the fight, but by the time he got there, both women were already bleeding and gasping for breath.

Annie was on top. Woodend grabbed her under the armpits and hauled her away from her sister. Jenny scrambled quickly to her feet and would have launched a fresh attack had not Terry Clough appeared on the scene and got a hold on his wife. For a few moments, both women continued to struggle, and then, seeing it was pointless, they relaxed.

“If we let you go, you're not going to start fightin' again, are you?” Woodend asked, using his best constable-dealing-with-a-domestic-disturbance voice.

“I won't,” Annie said sulkily. “I didn't start it in the first place.”

“What about you, Jenny?”

Jenny shook her head. “That bitch isn't worth it.”

Woodend released his grip, and, after a second's hesitation, Clough did the same.

“Now what was that all about?” Terry asked his wife, his voice more puzzled than angry.

Jenny looked him straight in the face, then swung round and pointed angrily at Annie. “Ask her!” she screamed. “Ask that connivin' cow!”

“Well?” Terry said.

Annie looked as if she were going to give him the answer he was searching for, then changed her mind. “If she won't tell you, I don't see why I should,” she said. “But I shouldn't have to, anyway. If you weren't such an incredibly thick bastard, Terry, you'd be able to work it out for yourself.”

And suddenly, it seemed as if Terry Clough had. A smile of the purest happiness came to his face – a smile which quickly changed to a look of concern when he heard the muted sob which escaped from Jenny's throat.

“It's all right, Jenny,” he said softly. “From now on,
everythin's
goin' to be all right.”

He put his arm around his wife's shoulder and led her back towards the house. She made no protest – all the resistance seemed to have been knocked out of her. Annie Peterson, biting her bottom lip, watched them until they reached the door. Then she turned and hurried away from the club.

Woodend looked down at the scratches on his hand – inflicted by either Jenny or Annabel, he wasn't sure which. The scratches would sting like buggery when he put antiseptic on them, he thought – but that had been a small price to pay for witnessing something which had cleared up at least two mysteries.

Bob Rutter looked out of the Doncaster boarding-house window, down onto the street below. He had already been through the telephone directory to establish just how many shoe-repair shops there were in the Doncaster area, and he would have a busy morning ahead of him. But what was he to do until then? How was he to fill in the long hours in which there was nothing to do but worry about Maria?

He studied his room. Bed. Wardrobe. Small table and chair. The basics. He closed his eyes, so that he could see as little as Maria had that fateful morning, then made his way slowly across the room to the bed. He thought he had calculated it perfectly, yet it still came as a surprise when his shin barked against the edge of the frame. God, it was horrible, he thought. It was frightening. Without sight, you were helpless as a baby. It was enough to make a person go mad.

He forced himself to repeat the operation, walking to the door this time. The experience did not get any better with practice. He opened his eyes again. What he really needed, he decided, was a drink. More than one drink.

Annie Peterson sat bathing her wounds with Dettol in front of her dressing-table mirror. She looked a real mess, she told herself. She was sorry about the fight with Jenny, but not about its cause. Her needs were as great as Jenny's. Greater! Jenny hadn't endured the humiliation of a posh boarding school. Jenny wasn't trapped between two worlds, belonging to neither.

“I've got the right to reach out and grab happiness with both hands,” she told her scratched reflection in the mirror.

But even as she said it, she knew she was not convincing herself. Hadn't her sister the same right to happiness as she had – and who was to judge which of them had suffered more from being Robbie Peterson's daughter?

She forced the issue to the back of her mind, and thought instead about her plans for the evening. She had to go out again. She and Michael had agreed on that. She didn't want to go – aching after her fight with Jenny, she longed for nothing more than a hot bath – but there really was no choice. She had an appointment she didn't dare not keep. But then that was it! Just this one last meeting, then she would put it all behind her. For ever.

She walked over to her wardrobe and took out a short red dress with a plunging neckline which she had nicknamed ‘Slag 3' to distinguish it from all the other ‘slag' dresses she owned. Yes, that would do nicely. The perfect dress for this final encounter. And when it was over, she would burn the bloody dress – along with all the others.

Going to the pub had not been a good idea, Rutter decided. Men like Cloggin'-it Charlie Woodend could knock back pint after pint of the old neck oil without it having any visible effect apart from giving them a rosy glow, yet for him the more he drank the more he seemed to see the gloomy side of life.

He thought about his career, which had once looked so promising. He was the youngest detective sergeant in the Yard. Why shouldn't he also eventually be the youngest ever Commissioner in the Met? Now it would never happen – not because he'd been rude to a superintendent, Charlie Woodend would handle that – but because he simply didn't want to be a policeman any more.

He remembered what the doctor had said about Maria – about how many young men found that faced with the prospect of a lifetime of living with a blind person, love was simply not enough. Well, it would be for him. It
had
to be for him – or he was not the man he'd always taken himself to be.

He seemed to have lost control of his elbow and it slid along the bar, colliding with a pint glass and spilling its contents all over the bar.

“Hey you, that was my drink!” an angry voice said.

Rutter turned to face the man who made the complaint. He was big and had the look of a natural street fighter about him. “Your drink, wash it?” he asked, realising he was slurring his words. “Well, show bloody what?”

“You can buy me another one,” the big man said threateningly. “An' a whisky to go with it.”

“And you,” Rutter said, doing his best to focus on the other man, “can go and get stuffed.”

The big man leant forward. “We don't want any trouble in here,” he said, almost in a whisper, “but if you'd like to step outside, we'll soon find out whether you're goin' to buy me another drink or not.”

Even at his best he would have no chance in a fight with this bloke, Rutter thought. And after the amount of whisky he had drunk, he was feeling far from at his best. “Yesh,” he heard himself say. “Let's go outside and sort it out there.”

The big man headed towards the door and Rutter followed him. He was going to get the beating of his life, the Sergeant thought – and wondered why that should make him feel better.

Annabel Peterson got off the train at Manchester Central Station, walked straight to the taxi rank, and gave the driver in the front cab an address.