Murder at Swann's Lake (8 page)

“Is it . . . ? Is there . . . ?” she asked, wishing she could think clearly enough to frame her questions properly.

“It's calmed down again,” Javier said, anticipating what she'd wanted to know. “The police have let us pull back to other end of the square. Nobody's been seriously hurt unless . . . unless you—”

“I'm fine,” Maria told him. “If you could just help me get up.”

Two willing pairs of hands lifted her to her feet. It felt funny at first, almost if she were standing on top of a large rubber ball, but she soon got used to it.

“I think we should call you an ambulance,” Javier said.

“I'm all right now,” Maria insisted.

“You don't look all right.”

“It's just this headache.”

“I could ring your parents,” Javier suggested.

Maria shook her head. It hurt. “They're away,” she said. “In South America. Raising money for Spanish refugees. Just get me a taxi. I'll go straight home, have a warm bath and tomorrow it'll be like this never happened.”

“If you're sure,” Javier said, dubiously.

“I'm sure,” Maria replied

The man standing at the bar of The Green Dragon, a pub just off Lime Street, was around forty-five years old and carried a warrant card in his pocket which proved he was a detective inspector in the Liverpool police force. The man who sidled up to him and ordered a tonic water was considerably younger, and obtained his power not from any document but simply by virtue of who he worked for.

“Evenin' Mr Roberts,” said the younger man.

“Evenin' Phil,” the policeman replied. “I heard through the grapevine that you're lookin' for a favour.”

Phil smiled. “Not exactly a favour. More in the line of a bit of information.”

“Information can be expensive, too,” DI Roberts pointed out, taking a sip of whisky. “Especially given the shockin' price of good Scotch these days.”

“We'll see you all right,” Phil told him. “We always have before, haven't we?”

“True,” Roberts agreed. “So what do you need to know?”

“Tell me about Chief Inspector Woodend.”

The Inspector almost choked. “Charlie Woodend?” he gasped “‘Cloggin' it Charlie'? From the Yard?”

“That's the man,” Phil agreed.

Roberts whistled softly. “Don't mess with him.”

“You know him, do you? Done a bit of work with him?”

“Let's just say I've come into contact with him – a murder case in Grange-over-Sands a couple of years ago.”

“And . . . ?”

“He's got the dedication of a missionary, the obstinacy of a mule and the balls of a bull. He can't be bought, an' he can't be threatened. An' if he was workin' in Liverpool, I'd be a very different bobby to what I am today.”

“What do you mean by that?” Phil asked.

Roberts took another sip of his whisky. “Well, for a start, if he was here, I'd have more sense than to be seen talkin' to you right now,” he said.

“That bad?” Phil said.

“Or that good, dependin' on which side of the fence you're lookin' at it from,” Roberts said. “I know a few fellers in the force who'd love to have him cleaning up some of the messes we've got on our hands at the moment. But if you're a bobby like me, who wants to put a little bit aside for his retirement, then Chief Inspector Charlie-Bloody-Woodend is definitely bad news.”

“Suppose somebody I knew was havin' a little trouble—” Phil said.

“What's this ‘somebody' business,” Roberts interrupted. “We both known you're talkin' about Sid Dowd.”

“
Somebody
,” Phil repeated firmly. “It has to be
somebody
, because at the moment we're skatin' on very thin ice.”

“Understood,” Roberts said.

“Let's suppose this somebody was on the fringe of an investigation that this Woodend bloke was lookin' into. What would you advise him to do?”

“You can warn Sid – sorry, this ‘somebody' you're workin' for – that there are only two ways to handle Charlie Woodend,” Roberts said. “Either you tell him everythin' he wants to know, or you stand clear of him – an' I mean
well
clear.”

Phil slipped the brown envelope into Roberts' pocket so skilfully that even the Detective Inspector didn't realise it was happening. “Thanks for your time, Mr Roberts,” he said. “It's been very interestin' talkin' to you.”

Woodend had not expected to see Jenny Clough again so soon, nor had he expected the two plates of beans on toast which she laid on the desk in front of him. “This is a nice surprise,” he told her.

Jenny shrugged. “I just thought the two of you might fancy a bite to eat,” she said.

“An” you weren't wrong,” Woodend replied. “Thank you, lass.”

“If there's anythin' else you want, I'll be in the kitchen.” Jenny smoothed down her dark hair with her left hand. “I'm doin' a bit of cleanin', you see.”

Woodend gave her a friendly smile. “Yes,” he said sympathetically. “I think I do.”

“Well, I'll be off then,” Jenny said, stepping into the yard and closing the door behind her.

Woodend picked up his knife and fork and cut into the thick sliced toasted bread on which the beans tantalisingly rested. “Aren't you goin' to have yours before it goes cold, Bob?” he asked.

Rutter, who was working his way through the contents of the top drawer of Robbie Peterson's filing cabinet, shook his head. “I'd rather get this job done now I've started it,” he said.

“Please yourself. I'll see your share doesn't go to waste,” Woodend told him, then added, almost under his breath, “Keen young bugger.”

The beans were probably the same brand as he could have bought in London, yet they seemed to taste better up north. Must be something to do with the air, Woodend decided. Either that or he was prejudiced – and he knew that couldn't possibly be the case.

He turned his mind to Jenny Clough. She was a nice lass. There weren't many women who would have thought to make a snack for a man who'd as near as dammit accused her husband of killing her dad. Yes, she was a
really
nice lass. But that didn't mean he'd forgotten that she'd lied to him when she'd said she didn't know what the Clough brothers were doing outside the club the previous Friday.

“Found anythin' interestin' yet?” he asked Rutter.

“Just invoices and bills.”

Woodend pushed one plate aside and attacked the second. “Well, if you come up with anythin' unsavoury, like say, a used french letter, don't feel under any obligation to tell me about it till I've finished eatin',” he said.

Rutter grinned. “From what Doris told us, Robbie hasn't felt much of a need for one of those for quite a while.”

“Wouldn't surprise me if she'd been puttin' somethin' in his tea to cool his ardour,” Woodend opined. “Well, it would have been cheaper than takin' him to the vet's, don't you think?”

When there was no reply, he turned to look at his sergeant. Rutter was closely examining a brown paper envelope. “Have you found somethin', lad?” the Chief Inspector asked.

“I'm not sure,” Rutter said, laying it on the desk. “You take a look at it.”

Woodend shovelled the last few beans into his mouth – no point in wasting them – and picked the envelope up. He'd never seen one quite like it before. It wasn't square, but it was squarer than most office envelopes tended to be. And it was made of stronger paper, too – so strong it was almost cardboard.

“Interestin',” he said. He looked at the address. “Mr Alexander Conway, 7 Hatton Gardens, Doncaster. Who the bloody hell's Mr Alexander Conway when he's at home?”

“Look on the other side, sir,” Rutter advised him.

Woodend turned the envelope over. A crude sketch map been pencilled in on the reverse. It showed a road, marked as the A628, and a town labelled Peniston. Just before the town, an arrow was pointing to the side of the road, and below that were the words, ‘Lay-by, 3.00 a.m., Mon 26, 50,000 cartons'.

“What do you make of it?” Woodend asked his sergeant.

“Well, it's obviously a map of somewhere, sir.”

“It's a map of one of the main roads into Yorkshire, you ignorant southern bugger,” Woodend said. “What else?”

“It seems fairly obvious. Whoever sketched out the map . . .”

“Probably this Conway bloke.”

“. . . did it because he wanted to arrange a meeting with someone else—”

“Probably Robbie Peterson. Or somebody who was workin' for him.”

“Agreed. Wanted to arrange a meeting in a lay-by outside Peniston at three o'clock in the morning, on the 26
^th
of last month.”

“Or next month,” Woodend pointed out. “Or the month before. But whatever month we're talkin' about, it's a funny time to have a meetin', wouldn't you think?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Funny place, too. Hardly congenial. So why arrange it then and there?”

“Because they didn't want to be seen?” Rutter suggested.

“Go to the top of the class,” Woodend said. “What about the last two words – ‘50,000 cartons'?”

“I don't know,” Rutter confessed.

“That's because you're not thinkin', lad,” Woodend told him. “We're agreed that whatever they were shiftin' was probably illegal, aren't we?”

“Yes.”

“An' when you're dealin' in stolen goods, what are you lookin' for? Well, the first thing is as little weight per item as possible. That's why people steal televisions rather than washin' machines. An' the second thing you want is the highest possible resale value. So what would fit the bill in this case?”

“Diamonds?” Rutter suggested.

Woodend smacked his own forehead. “50,000 cartons of
diamonds
? Are there enough diamonds in the whole bloody world to fill 50,000 cartons?”

“Sorry, sir, that was stupid,” Rutter said. He thought again. “Cigarettes!” he exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Woodend agreed. “An' I'm bettin' on
cork tipped
cigarettes.”

“You've lost me,” Rutter admitted.

“Most of the fags made in this country don't have cork tips,” Woodend explained. “But because poncy buggers like you can't handle a real fag, we have to import them, thereby seriously damagin' our balance of payments account. And where do we import them from?”

“Mostly from America.”

“And how do they get here? By carrier pigeon?”

“No,” Rutter said. “I imagine most of them come by boat.”

“And a lot of the boats will dock in . . . ?”

“Liverpool!”

“Precisely, my dear Watson. Liverpool – where Robbie Peterson used to be the cock o' the walk. The way it probably works is that somewhere between the docks an' the bonded warehouse, the fags go missin'. But there's a score of other ways it could be done. They might be unloaded onto another boat in the river or even on the open sea. The details don't matter. What's important is that the next time they see the light of day, it's in Swann's Lake.”

“And from here, they're taken across to Yorkshire,” Rutter said.

“Yorkshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, probably as far as Northumberland,” Woodend speculated. “Think about it, Bob. Isn't this just the perfect place for the centre of an operation like that? For a start, there's the local police. I mean, that Inspector Chatteron might be a dab hand at movin' furniture, but when it comes to crime prevention, he couldn't catch a cold. Then there's the fact that this is a holiday resort.”

“How does that help?” Rutter wondered aloud.

“Some of the people Peterson's been dealin' with must have come here from time to time, mustn't they?”

“Probably,” Rutter conceded.

“Almost definitely,” Woodend said.

Rutter tried to hide his grin. What he was being subjected to at that moment was what he'd come to think of as Woodend's Minefield Mood. When this mood struck him the Chief Inspector would plough a straight course, ignoring all the objections and questions exploding all around him, intent only on reaching the other side. Sometimes, it would take him only half an hour sheepishly to admit he'd got it all completely wrong. But there were other times – admittedly fewer – when, despite the objections and the questions, he'd turn out to have it completely – brilliantly – right.

“OK, say they've almost definitely been here,” Rutter said. “Why is Swann's Lake better than anywhere else?”

“Oh, it's not better than
anywhere
else,” Woodend said dismissively. “Manchester would be better – except there, like I said before, you'd have a smarter police force to deal with. No, what Swann's Lake is, is better than anywhere else of
its size
. Think about it. If a couple of shady characters appear in most communities as big as Swann's Lake, they'd be noticed immediately. But here there's so many new faces comin' in an' out every day that they'd be practically invisible.”

“And you're sure Peterson was involved?”

“Certainly I am. The map wouldn't have been in his filin' cabinet otherwise. And then there's his Liverpool connections. Who would be in a better position to get the fags nicked in the first place?”

“But even if he was involved in a smuggling racket, does that get us any closer to finding out who murdered him?” Rutter asked.

“Of course it does,” Woodend said. “Look, right from the start we've thought this was a gangland killin', and now we have a suspect. Peterson and this Conway character had a sweet little Trans-Pennine number goin' for them. But then somethin' went wrong. Maybe they argued over how to split the money. Maybe Conway decided he just couldn't trust Peterson any more. Whatever the reason, Conway decided to have his partner killed.”