Salton Killings (25 page)

“So why, havin' made his escape, did Black take the risk an' go back?” Woodend asked.

“Black never wanted to hurt the constables,” Rutter said. “He only did it because he couldn't let himself get caught – not before he'd killed Margie. But he couldn't leave them either, knowing they'd been injured, so he went back.”

Woodend nodded.

“Black never
wanted
to hurt them,” he agreed. “Young Phil never
wanted
to hurt anybody.”

The landlord was moving around the bar, whispering discreetly to the customers. Woodend read the words on his lips.

“The bobbies are in tonight – so for Christ's sake sup up on time!”

The Chief Inspector beckoned him over.

“I'm not here to cause any trouble, lad,” he said. “So if you want to serve a few drinks under the towels, I won't notice. Provided, of course, three of them end up on this table.”

Woodend walked slowly up Maltham Road. Apart from two groups of children playing hopscotch – children who would never again have their game interrupted by Mr Wilson – the street was deserted. The Chief Inspector glanced down Stubbs Street, and could just see the ornamental windmill outside the Blacks' house, its sails hanging listlessly. Now that Phil had gone, the windmill would decay and the neat flower beds would be overrun with weeds, until the dahlias and chrysanthemums, lupins and sweet peas, had all been strangled. There would be no flowers in jam jars on the towpath, either.

Ahead of him was Brierley's, its chimney puffing out clouds of thick smoke. On the right was the salt store, its doors open, the sun glittering on the white crystals that no longer held any secrets.

He paused opposite the George and watched Liz Poole scrubbing the front step, her firm behind rotating with each movement of the brush. He crossed the road – never taking his eyes off her. She sensed that he was there and turned round to greet him. He looked anxiously at her face, worried lest the events of the previous day had wreaked permanent damage. But she was as lovely as ever, and the smile she favoured him with was warm and promising.

“Hello, Charlie,” she said. “Off today, are you?”

“Aye,” Woodend said. “How's Margie?”

Liz stood up and wiped her hands on a cloth.

“She's shaken up a bit, and the doctor says she should stay off school for a few days. But I'm not really worried, they soon get over things at that age. Harry's moanin' he's still got a headache, but then,” she shrugged, “he's always moanin' about somethin'.”

Woodend put his hand into the pocket of his sports jacket and extracted the evidence envelope containing the suspender clip.

“This is for you,” he said, handing it over. “Be more careful where you leave them in future.”

She took it without expression.

“You should get yourself sorted out, lass,” he said.

Liz smiled fatalistically.

“What can I do, Charlie?” she asked. “The man I have, I don't want, an' the man I do want doesn't want me – at least, not full-time. There's only one feller could make me give up Jackie.” She put her hands on her hips and looked him squarely in the eyes. “So how about it, Charlie? Are you goin' to take me back to London with you?”

Woodend remembered his dream – Liz in stockings and a garter belt, her jet-black hair cascading over her full breasts, beckoning to him. He would never tire of her. Even when her looks had begun to fade, she would still be exciting, because she breathed sex through every pore. He thought about his comfortable home, and his comfortable wife, and his daughter.

“Sorry, lass,” he said

Liz laughed.

“That's what I thought.”

She glanced quickly up and down the street, then kissed him full on the lips. He felt her quick tongue darting around his mouth, giving him one taste of ecstasies that were never to be his. When she broke away, he looked into her eyes and saw that they were deep and sorrowful.

“Bugger off now,” she said.

And he did.

By nightfall, Black would be in Manchester's Strangeways Prison, but for the moment he was in a holding cell at Maltham Central. Woodend waited in Interview Room B for the cadet to be brought to him. He knew the meeting would be painful, just as it had hurt him to see Liz for the last time, but he had forced himself to come.

The door opened and Black appeared, flanked by two large coppers.

“You can go,” Woodend said to the escort.

“There's regulations in cases like this, sir.”

“Bugger the regulations,” Woodend said fiercely.

The constables exchanged worried glances, then backed out of the room, closing the door behind them. Black was left standing awkwardly in front of him, looking no less like an earnest police cadet than he had done the day before. Woodend tried to hate him and found that he couldn't.

“Oh, for God's sake, sit down, Phil,” he said.

As the young man slid into the seat opposite him, Woodend took out his packet of Capstan Full Strength. Black hesitated and then spoke.

“Could I . . . do you mind if . . . would you please give me a cigarette, sir?”

“I thought you weren't goin' to start,” Woodend said, but he offered the packet anyway.

Black lit his cigarette, inhaled inexpertly and coughed.

“It's a bad habit, sir, but not a serious one, not like killin' people. An' it doesn't matter anyway, now that they're goin' to top me.”

“You'll not hang,” Woodend said angrily. “You're not evil – just sick.”

Black took another puff of his cigarette and this time he had more control.

“I'm glad I was caught, sir,” he said, “an' I'm glad you're the one that did it. You're the kind of policeman I'd have liked to become.”

“You could have been a good bobby,” Woodend said sincerely.

They sat in silence for a while, smoking their cigarettes, the ash falling onto the scarred table, then Black said, “Funny thing – life – isn't it, sir?”

“Oh aye,” Woodend replied. “It's bloody hilarious.”

It seemed to Woodend that a little more red enamel had been chipped off the Maltham sign by bored passengers waiting for their trains to arrive, but apart from that the station had not changed since he first set foot on it a week earlier. Even the same people were present.

“Part of your job to see us off?” he asked Davenport.

“Well, no, sir,” the constable said, looking down at his boots, “not exactly. I just thought that somebody should.”

And there
was
no one else, not the Chief Constable, not the Superintendent, not even Inspector Holland. Woodend had had a brief meeting with the town's senior policeman and it had been made clear that though he was very grateful to them, he wanted the Scotland Yard men out of the place as soon as possible.

Nobody feels comfortable around the people who've cleaned up their shit for 'em, Woodend thought.

The train pulled into the station, a great iron beast, its chimney belching smoke, sparks flying from its wheels. Woodend opened the closest carriage door, signalled Rutter to get inside, then followed him.

“You did well, Davenport,” he said, as the constable handed him his luggage. “Might earn you your sergeant's stripes, this case.”

Davenport looked far from delighted.

“When you write your report, sir,” he said, “I'd rather you didn't make too much of my part in the case.”

“A sudden attack of modesty?”

“I'm a good village bobby,” the constable said uncomfortably. “Well, not bad anyway. I don't think I'd like workin' in Maltham an' ordering people about, sir.”

Maybe he's right, Woodend thought. Maybe we'd
all
be happier as village bobbies.

He became aware of Rutter picking up the cases and heaving them onto the luggage rack.

No, he corrected himself, not that one. He's goin' places, is our young sergeant.

The whistle blew, Woodend closed the door, and the train began to move out of the station.

“Goodbye, Davenport,” he said through the open window.

“Goodbye, sir,” the constable called back. “It's been a pleasure – and an education.”

The train picked up speed, leaving the town behind it and ploughing through open countryside. Rutter settled back in his seat. His eyes looked as alert as ever, but it was not the villages and fields that flashed through his consciousness, it was the people he had encountered in the last week: Mrs Walmsley, so alive even after the death of her beloved daughter – and the Blacks, whose lives had ended with an accidental plunge into the canal; Mr Wilson and the Reverend Ripley, both seeking, through their religion, to fill the gap that Mary had left; Fred Foley, a burnt-out shell mourning for his runaway wife; Jackie McLeash, who had erected a barrier between himself and the possibility of such hurt; Liz Poole, who had made her bed but preferred to lie on others.

Names, he thought, that's all they'll be to the Commander, just names in a file.

The idea depressed him.

“Apart from forgettin' to remind me to buy some corned-beef butties at the station buffet, you're not a bad sergeant,” Woodend said, cutting through his musings. “I'll be asking for you again.”

Rutter grinned.

“Aye,” he said, in plain imitation of his chief. “Aye, I'd like that.”

Woodend grinned back.

“If you weren't such a serious young sergeant so hell-bent on gettin' on that you'd never dream of bein' rude to a senior officer,” he said, “I just might suspect you of takin' the piss.”

Thirty years is a long time. Woodend was retired and devoted most of his energy to reading Dickens and watching the cacti grow in the garden of his modest Spanish villa.

Harry Poole was dead and his widow ran the pub alone, taking occasional comfort from an ageing itinerant Oxford graduate who had once saved her daughter's life. The Blacks were dead too: he had gone first, full of regret that he had never valued his son's love, his son's achievements, until it was too late.

“So now I am an orphan,” thought Phil Black, middle aged and balding, as they stood on Manchester's Piccadilly station, wearing a tight suit over a quarter of a century out of date. “I have no obligations any more, nothing to live up to, nobody to please but myself.”

He had been sick, very sick, but now they said he was cured and had let him out into the world with forty pounds in his pocket and the address of the Salvation Army Hostel.

There had been so many wasted years, but it was still not too late to do useful work. He remembered back to his days in the Maltham Magistrates' Court – the poor wretches clinging helplessly to the heavy oak dock, people for whom the world was too large and menacing a place. Their eyes had begged for forgiveness and understanding, and instead they had received cold, impartial justice. There would be more like that at the hostel, and he would help them make their lives a fraction more bearable.

He walked across to the buffet and ordered a sandwich and a cup of tea. The woman who handed them over the counter hardly looked at him. Yes, he decided, Manchester was a very good place to be, not like the village at all, but big and anonymous.

He munched at his food and watched an express pull in at the platform. Everything had changed. When they locked him away in the Institution, there had been only steam engines and a journey to London had seemed like a major expedition. Now, with the electric trains, you could go anywhere in the country in just a few hours. Once he had settled in, he might take a few excursions himself.

He sipped his tea. It was hot and sweet, the way Jessie used to make it.

He had been very foolish in the past, he had been bound to get caught in the end. But the past no longer mattered – they had taught him that at the Institution. They had taught him something else too – during the electrotherapy sessions and later, when he was getting better, in long discussions with the psychiatrist – you didn't have to do something you didn't want to do, just because it made other people feel better. What was important, the doctor had said again and again, was to do what
you
wanted, because how could you have any respect for yourself as a person – as a personality – if you were just somebody else's tool?

Well, he knew now what he wanted to do, to help those less able to take care of themselves – the down and outs, the winos. And he wanted to take excursions on those new trains. There were thousands of young blondes in the cities, and millions of men to suspect – they wouldn't catch him this time.