The Enemy Within (28 page)

A slight flicker of the Editor's eyes revealed that he had decided what to say next.

‘You don't know anything about my war record. You're only
guessing
that I've seen active service.'

‘Am I? I know that you speak both Russian and French . . .'

‘It's true that I did study those languages during my time at Oxford, but so what?'

‘You learned a lot more, but we'll come back to that later,' Woodend said. ‘The people who were training you probably intended to drop you behind enemy lines in France – now that is a guess – but when Hitler invaded the USSR in 1941, the Russian front became much more important.'

‘This is beyond speculation,' Bryant said. ‘It's pure fantasy. Who's writing your script for you, Chief Inspector? Walt Disney?'

‘It'd save time if you'd just admit it, but I can give you dates an' places if that's what you want,' Woodend said.

‘Anyone can name a few dates and places. That really doesn't prove a thing.'

Woodend sighed. ‘In February 1942 you were flown to Egypt. From there you journeyed overland, through Turkey to Persia. You headed north, to the Caspian Sea, and crossed the Russian border at––'

‘All right, so it wasn't speculation, and it wasn't bluff!' Bryant said, frowning. He examined Woodend closely, as if seeing him for the first time. ‘You don't seem like the kind of man who'd have influence in intelligence circles.'

‘You're right,' Woodend agreed. ‘But I know a man who does.'

Bryant's frown turned to a smile. ‘Let me guess. The man you're talking about – the man who does – is the captain you served under in the war.'

‘He was a major, as a matter of fact.'

‘And you – oh, this really is too clichéd for words – you saved his life, so that now he's willing to tell you anything you want to know.'

‘It wasn't quite as easy as that,' Woodend said. ‘I did save his life, but it still took a fair amount of arm-twistin' this afternoon to get him to look up your records.'

‘But he
did
look them up in the end. So now you can prove that I was a hero after all. Do you want to arrest me for that?'

‘No, not for that. But I do want to
arrest
you.'

‘Do you think I had something to do with the Bonfire Murders?'

‘Of course I do! An' you've
known
I do since the moment you saw me standin' on your doorstep.'

‘Naturally, I deny it.'

‘I'd have expected no less from you. But it won't do you any good. All the odd bits an' pieces of the puzzle have fallen right into place. I've got the whole picture now.'

‘How interesting,' Bryant said. ‘But nowhere near as interesting as the fact that instead of bursting in here with ten burly bobbies, the only person you chose to bring with you was Sergeant Paniatowski.'

‘Don't be fooled by that,' Woodend said. ‘Monika may not be built like a Russian weightlifter, but size isn't the only thing that matters – as you proved in the park this afternoon. You'd never have been able to deal with those two drunks in the way you did if you hadn't been
trained
to do it.'

‘Yes, training is important,' Bryant agreed. ‘And I'm sure the sergeant can handle herself if the need arises. But that's not the point, is it? You're not expecting to have to use force. You're here to offer me a deal.'

‘Maybe.'

‘And perhaps I might be interested in one. But before we deal, I need to know what it is you're selling. In other words, I'd like to be sure that when you say you have the whole picture, you're not just bluffing.'

‘I'm not bluffin'.'

‘Prove it.'

‘Did you know when you married her that your wife was a spy?' Woodend asked.

‘That isn't how this particular negotiation works,' Bryant said, shaking his finger at the Chief Inspector.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I want to know what
you
know, not what you think you can
find out
from me. So you don't ask me questions – you tell me things.'

‘All right,' Woodend agreed. ‘Yes, you did know that she was a spy. The people who run you had told you. That's the reason you married her.'

‘Wrong!' Bryant said. ‘Totally wrong! I loved her.'

‘But there were things you loved more.'

‘But there were things I loved more,' the Editor conceded.

‘When did the KGB recruit you? Burgess, MacLean an' Philby all signed up while they were at Cambridge. Were the Russians runnin' a similar operation in Oxford?'

‘When I was up at Oxford, it wasn't called the KGB. And I did no more than flirt with Communism while I was an undergraduate. If I had signed on – and I'm not saying that I did – it would have been later.'

‘In Russia?'

Bryant smiled. ‘You're really rather good at interrogation, aren't you? I tell you at the outset that I'm not answering any questions, and before I know what's happening I'm responding to half a dozen.'

‘After the war, most of the covert communists joined the Foreign Office,' Woodend said. ‘But not you. You went to work on Fleet Street.'

‘You'd be surprised how many secrets are passed across the desks of national newspapers. We knew about the Profumo Scandal long before the government did. The problem was, we weren't allowed to run a lot of our best stories on security grounds. It seemed such a pity to waste them.'

‘So you passed them on to the Russians?'

‘If that's what you choose to believe, then by all means be my guest. I'm admitting nothing.'

‘You married your wife partly through love, an' partly through loyalty to the Party. She didn't know that
you
knew she worked for British intelligence. It was a good arrangement. If her controller ever wondered about you, then all he wondered was if you had suspicions about
her
. It must never have occurred to him that you were workin' for the other side. She gave you the best cover you could ever hope for, plus the possibility to pick up snippets of intelligence from her when she let her guard down. Then Constance got sick an' wanted to move to Lancashire.'

‘Isn't that where your argument breaks down?' Bryant asked. ‘Surely, if I really were a spy as you claim, I would have resisted the move to Whitebridge. You don't get state secrets passed across the desk of the Mid Lancs
Courier
. To all intents and purposes, such a move would have meant the end of my useful life as an agent.'

‘No, it wouldn't,' Woodend contradicted him. ‘Half the British military aerospace industry is located in this county. Havin' spies around is no novelty to us, is it, Monika?'

‘No novelty at all,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘You can hardly open your front door without tripping over half a dozen of them.'

‘In fact, I think it's more than likely that your controller was delighted that you'd got an excuse to relocate here,' Woodend said.

‘So you're saying that this mythical controller, having supervised me while I ran one spy ring in London, now asked me to take charge of another one in Lancashire?'

‘More or less.'

Bryant smiled. ‘You really do have a knack for making wild speculation sound almost like deductive logic,' he said.

‘If you hadn't been involved in espionage since you came to Whitebridge, your wife would never have started havin' her doubts about you,' Woodend told him.

‘She had her doubts, did she?'

‘You know she did. That's why she all-but blackmailed Jamie Clegg into watchin' you.'

‘This is all news to me.'

‘No, it isn't. Jamie had what you might call a crisis of conscience, an' told you all about it. Once you knew what Constance was doin', you also knew that she had to die. An' in a hurry! Because the longer she lived, the more chance she had of exposin' you an' your network. But how to kill her – that was the question. My guess is that your first thought was poison, but then you decided that would be too risky.'

‘Risky?' Bryant repeated, with mock incredulity. ‘I'm not a criminologist myself, but I've talked to a fair number of them in my time. And the general consensus is that poisoning is the safest of all methods. Think about it, Chief Inspector. In many cases, the authorities don't even realize there's
been
a murder. And even if they do, the murderer doesn't need an alibi, because no one can say exactly when the poison was administered. You can rest assured that if I
had
been thinking of killing my wife, poison would certainly have been my weapon of choice.'

‘No, it wouldn't,' Woodend contradicted him. ‘Constance's minders in London were still keepin' an eye on her. They knew roughly how long she had to live, an' if she'd had died any sooner – even of apparently natural causes – they'd have suspected foul play.'

‘Whereas, the idea of foul play would never have occurred to them at all if she had her throat slit and was dumped under a bonfire? Come on, Chief Inspector, that makes no sense at all!'

‘If you don't treat me like an idiot, I'll promise not to treat you like one,' Woodend said. ‘If she'd been the only woman to be murdered, her ex-bosses
would
have been suspicious. But if she was just
one
of the victims – an' all the victims seemed to have somethin' in common – then London might reasonably suppose that her death had nothin' to do with her former life. An' the plan worked out beautifully. That's exactly what the bowler-hatted brigade from London
did
think. I know – because I talked to them.' He paused for a second. ‘Didn't you feel any guilt about what you did?'

‘Whoever the killer was, he gave Betty and Lucy a little happiness in the last few weeks of their miserable lives,' Bryant said. ‘As for their deaths, they were quick, and far more merciful than allowing the cancers to run their course.'

‘Why did you fit your stepson up for the murders?'

‘If I had have been the killer, then I would probably have considered framing Richard to be a calculated gamble. I'd have told myself that he'd be no worse off in an asylum for the criminally insane than he was before, and that once the police had arrested him, they'd stop looking for anybody else.'

‘So you tipped off some reporter in London about Richard's background, an' he, in turn, tipped off Elizabeth Driver?'

‘The thing about nasty pieces of work like Miss Driver is that it's usually quite easy to guess what they'll do in any given situation. It should have come as no surprise to anybody when – purely for her own ends – she made immediate contact with the police.'

‘It was a mistake to use Richard's knife for the killin's, you know,' Woodend said.

‘Was it?'

‘A
big
mistake. Though I'd never have believed that he was capable of carryin' out three such well-planned murders, I might well have assumed – without the knife – that he'd been fitted up for the crimes by someone else on the outside. The forensic report made that an impossibility. The only people who had access to the knife were you an' him – an' if he wasn't the killer, then it had to be you. See what I mean about bein'
too
clever?'

‘I'm beginning to,' Bryant admitted.

M
ost of the children under parental supervision had now gone home, and the bonfires had become largely the domain of the bigger kids. For some of them, slipping penny bangers into other kids' pockets had still not lost its novelty. For others, the collapsed bonfires presented the ideal opportunity to show off their bravery and athleticism, and after taking a long run up, they would leap over the still-glowing wood. Bottles of beer and cider – bought under false pretences from the off-licence – were being opened now that the adults had cleared off, and several couples had moved away from the bonfire for a spot of slap and tickle. It was all a sight that the pious, fanatical Guy Fawkes would neither have understood nor approved of.

Woodend did not dare to look at his watch for fear of spooking Bryant too much, but he calculated that at least thirty minutes must have passed since he entered the living room.

‘Why did you put your victims in the bonfires?' he asked.

‘Ah, a trick question – but not a very subtle one!' Bryant said. ‘If I were to tell you about the disposal of the bodies, I'd be as good as admitting that I was the killer. Since I'm not, I'll have to say that I have no idea where the idea of using the bonfires come into it.'

‘Then let me tell you what I think,' Woodend suggested. ‘You wanted everybody to believe that there was a reason for the murders, but not a
rational
one. That was one of the attractions of choosin' cancer sufferers. From then on, any little refinement you could add which suggested that a lunatic was behind the killings could only be to your advantage. I suppose you could have decapitated your victims, or covered them in yellow paint, but the bonfires were an even better idea. There's somethin' so fundamental an' primeval about fire, isn't there?'

‘That's rather fancy thinking for a PC Plod, isn't it?' Bryant asked.

‘You can tell you're gettin' close to the truth when the man who doesn't want to hear it starts to insult you,' Woodend said mildly. ‘The other advantage of usin' bonfires, of course, was that you could blame the whole thing on Richard, if you felt the need to. The idea that he might have been committin' involuntary suttee had my boss jumpin' through hoops with delight.'

‘But not you?'

‘No. Again, it seemed just a little
too
clever. Like somethin' a crime novelist – or a crime
reporter
– might have come up with.' Woodend lit a cigarette. ‘Well, I've said my piece, an' I rather think the next move's up to you.'