The Woodcutter (35 page)

This was what she tried now. It didn’t take long to find it, not because it wasn’t buried deep but because she knew where to start digging. And there it was, hidden beneath all that stuff about his face-transforming smile, that dangerous charm which she had complimented herself on being so alert to.

She spoke it out loud so that there could be no fudging.

‘Deeply repressed reason for driving north to Birkstane: I am sexually attracted to Wolf Hadda.’

Now she could submit it to the test of exposure to the clear light of day.

But it wasn’t shrivelling.

Damn! But no need to panic. Such things happened. Usually the other way round, of course. And it seemed peculiarly perverse in every sense that her urges should have focused on a man who was physically scarred, psychologically damaged, and morally repugnant. But if human beings weren’t perverse, she’d be out of a job.

She would deal with it, just as Simon Homewood dealt with his feelings for her.

Her self-examination had taken care of the time nicely. She saw a sign telling her that she was now in Cumbria.

She wasn’t altogether sure what had started here all those years ago, but one way or another all journeys are circular. We never arrive anywhere that we haven’t been before.

Where was Hadda now? she asked herself.

And where did he think he was heading?

She switched on her left indicator and prepared to turn off the motorway.

5

McLucky was late.

‘Fucking trains,’ he said. ‘They couldn’t run a raffle.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Hadda. ‘I’m just here myself. My probation officer was very keen to exchange notes on how we’d enjoyed our respective Christmases.’

‘Me too,’ said McLucky, sitting down heavily.

The lounge door opened and a young, pretty waitress backed in carrying a heavily laden tray.

‘I ordered you a scotch,’ said Hadda. ‘And some smoked salmon sandwiches.’

‘And I told you before, I’m choosy who I eat with.’

‘If you don’t stop snarling, the waitress will be thinking we’re having a lovers’ tiff.’

‘Would it put her mind at rest if I gave you a thump?’

‘She looks the happy-ending type to me, so she’d probably prefer if you gave me a kiss.’

That didn’t make McLucky smile but his face relaxed a little and when the waitress reached their table and set down the plates and glasses, he picked up his glass.

‘I’m not so choosy who I drink with,’ he said. ‘Cheers. Now, answers.’

‘Yes, I’ve been to Spain,’ said Hadda. ‘Yes, I saw Medler. No, I didn’t kill him.’

McLucky said, ‘Jesus.’

‘You did ask.’

‘I didn’t actually. I was hoping you were going to turn up with your clerical friend and he was going to swear on the Bible you’d not been out of the county all Christmas. How the hell did you manage it? I thought there were travel restrictions.’

‘There are. I would have needed permission. If I’d asked.’

‘But your passport . . . you’ll be on record . . .’

‘Mr Wally Hammond, widower, of Gloucestershire, is on record as having enjoyed a festive break with sixty other geriatrics at the Hotel Flamenco. I have a friend who knows how to arrange such things. He is, as you’ll probably have gathered, a cricket fan.’

McLucky looked at him blankly, then said, ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because I think the only way to persuade you I’m telling you everything is to do just that. I went to see Medler late on Christmas Eve, having seen his wife head off to the midnight service at the English Church. We had a long conversation. I left him a sadder and I hope a wiser man about twelve thirty. He was alive and well. Except for being pretty drunk. And he must have got drunker from the sound of what happened. Happy now?’

‘Happy? You must be joking.’

‘You’ve still got doubts? I thought that tape you brought me of Estover and the Nutbrowns chatting at Poynters would have cleared your mind.’

‘It was suggestive, but a long way from conclusive,’ said McLucky. ‘Anyway, it just says something about what you maybe were. It’s what you might have become that bothers me.’

‘Fine.’ Hadda sipped his orange juice. ‘In your shoes, maybe I’d be cautious too. Why don’t you see how suggestive you find this? Me, I’ll just check that Sneck’s all right in the van. Give me a ring when you’ve had time to listen to it.’

He pushed across the table a digital recorder with an earpiece attached.

McLucky studied it suspiciously for a moment then fixed the device in his ear and pressed the start button. Hadda rose and, leaning heavily on his stick, made his way out of the lounge, smiling his gratitude at the young waitress who rushed forward to open the door for him.

In the car park he opened the Defender’s tailgate.

‘Out,’ he said to Sneck.

The dog woke up, yawned as if thinking about it, then jumped down. Hadda locked the car, walked to the edge of the car park and sat down on a low wall bordering a patch of municipal greenery. Sneck jumped over the wall, sniffed around, cocked his leg against a tired-looking tree, then returned to lie across his master’s feet and went back to sleep.

Hadda, leaning forward with both hands resting on his stick and his chin resting on his hands, closed his eyes too and let his mind go back to his encounter with Arnie Medler on Christmas Eve.

6

It had taken a minute or more for Medler to recover from his initial shock. Hadda saw no reason to make things easier. He settled in a chair opposite the man and stared at him fixedly as if able to read the confusion of emotion running across the ex-policeman’s mind. Finally he reached forward with the axe and nudged the cognac bottle towards the ex-cop.

‘You look like you need a drink,’ he said.

‘Bloody right, I do,’ croaked Medler. ‘Seeing you there waving that fucking hatchet around, wonder I didn’t have a heart attack.’

‘Can’t have that,’ said Hadda. ‘Not before we talk.’

Medler topped up his glass, emptied it, filled it again then looked at Hadda.

‘You?’

‘No thanks. I’m driving.’

The conventional response plus the drink seemed to help Medler’s recovery and his voice was stronger as he said, ‘So how’d you find me? McLucky, was it?’

‘Might have been.’

‘I knew there was something. First lesson in CID. Never trust a coincidence.’

‘So why did you go along with him?’

‘Don’t know. Could have snuck off home soon as I clocked him, pulled down the shutters. I suppose I was just glad to see a face I recognized from the old days. Any face. Someone to talk to who knew me when I was . . . someone.’

‘A good honest cop,’ said Hadda with savage irony.

‘That’s right! That’s what I was. All right, I cut a few corners, took a couple of drinks, but only to help me get where I wanted to be.’

‘You mean, like
here
?’

‘
No!
I mean get a result. Saw no harm in letting a few sprats swim loose if they helped me catch a fucking great shark. And if I picked up a few backhanders on the way, that just increased my credibility, right? Come on, Sir Wilf, you were a financial whiz. All right, you may have taken the rap for stuff you didn’t know about, but you can’t have made all the money you did without dipping your fingers in places they shouldn’t have been.’

‘You trying to say I got what I deserved?’ said Hadda incredulously.

Medler shook his head.

‘No. Of course not.’ He tried a laugh, but it didn’t come out right. Nevertheless he pressed on: ‘I’ll tell you something funny, though. In one way it
was
your own fucking fault you got what you did. Ironic that. Like in Greek tragedy. That surprises you, eh? I’m not just a dumb plod, I got O-levels.’

Hadda leaned forward and said harshly, ‘I’m not here for literary fucking criticism, Medler. Just tell me what happened. And quick. I don’t want to be still here when the lovely Tina returns from her devotions.’

‘Don’t worry, one way or another I reckon she’ll be on her knees for a couple of hours yet. But all right, here goes . . .’

He emptied his glass again. Refilled it. He was beginning to feel he had some control over the situation. Hadda didn’t mind. It was a delusion easily remedied.

‘Sure you won’t? OK. Well, it started with a tip, an anonymous email, said we might like to take a close look at Sir Wilfred Hadda, mentioned a website, InArcadia. We knew about InArcadia. Clever buggers, they were. Everything heavily encrypted, more layers to get through than you’d find on an Eskimo whore, ducking and weaving all the time so that just when you thought you’d got a handle on them, they’d be over the hills and far away. It was only a matter of time, though, and we’d just had a big breakthrough when we got this tip about you. While we hadn’t laid hands on the people running it – not surprising, they could be anywhere in the world – we’d got about twenty thousand client credit-card records.’

‘Twenty thousand!’

‘Tip of the fucking iceberg. There’s a lot of weirdoes about. Anyway, among all these credit-card records we found a couple that we traced back to your company. That with the email allegations was enough to get a warrant to take a closer look. Maximum discretion. You were an important man.’

‘Maximum discretion!’ exclaimed Hadda. ‘The media turned up mob-handed! You couldn’t resist it, could you, Medler? A big hit, you wanted all the world to see you making it, right?’

The ex-cop was shaking his head vigorously.

‘You’re wrong, Hadda. Man like you with fancy-dan lawyers, we tread careful till we’re sure. I played it by the book, need-to-know op, me the lowest rank needing to know. Nearly shit myself when I arrived and saw it was looking like a muck-rakers’ convention.’

No reason for the man to lie, thought Hadda. Meant someone else wanted the world to be in on the act from the start . . .

‘But I bet you enjoyed it, all the same.’

‘Why not? Everyone likes taking a swipe at a tall poppy. Build ’em up, knock ’em down, that’s what makes celebrity culture go round. And when I clocked that stuff on your computer, I thought, Hello! This case isn’t going to do me any harm whatsoever.’

‘Made your mind up straight away, did you?’ said Hadda. ‘Innocent till proved guilty doesn’t apply, not when you’ve got yourself a big one.’

Medler laughed again and shook his head.

‘That’s where you’re wrong again, Sir Wilf . . . sorry, Mr Hadda. That’s the irony I was telling you about. If you hadn’t reacted the way you did, punching me in the mouth, twice, and doing a runner and getting yourself hospitalized, you know what you’d probably be doing now? You’d be relaxing in your Caribbean mansion, having a drink, looking forward to eating your Christmas turkey on the beach!’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘I’m talking about me being a good cop,’ said Medler, suddenly animated. ‘I’m talking about me doing the job I was paid for. We do a real job on sifting through evidence, and not just because we know rich bastards like you will be spending more than the department’s annual budget on putting together a defence. We do it for rich and poor alike, because it’s the right fucking thing to do!’

Hadda had come prepared for many things, but not moral indignation.

He’s talking like he’s still in the job! he thought.

But even as he looked he saw the indignation fade and awareness of the truth of his situation return to Medler’s eyes.

He rubbed his hand over his face and said wearily, ‘Yeah, that’s right, Mr Hadda. If you’d just sat on your hands, protesting your innocence, and let us get on with the job of investigating the case, I reckon that a week or so later, I’d have been making a statement to the media saying Sir Wilfred’s been the victim of a scurrilous attempt to smear his good name and, as far as the Met’s concerned, he’s being released without a stain on his character.’

He filled his glass again and regarded his visitor with a malicious glint in his eyes.

‘But you couldn’t sit still, could you? Not the great Wolf Hadda, the City’s own action man. You had to hit out and make a run for it, and suddenly everything changed. You were lying on your back with lots of bits missing and enough machinery attached to you to run a small factory, and it was impossible to find a bookie who’d give odds on you lasting the week out. So, like you, the case was put on ice. We had plenty of living perverts to pursue without wasting too much time on the moribund. In fact, at the time, following up all these payment trails from InArcadia, things got really hectic.’

Wolf Hadda suddenly reached forward and seized the brandy bottle. He raised it to his lips and took a long swig. Finished, it took all his will power not to hurl the bottle against the villa wall. Instead he lowered it gently to the table and said, ‘So when did you realize I was innocent, Mr Medler?’

‘Month or so on. Most of the media boys had lost interest, they like their meat to be still on the hoof, so I was surprised when my boss asked for an update on your case. We went back a long way, him and me, so I told him I’d better things to do than investigate a living corpse, and he told me it wasn’t his idea but there was “an interest”. Now that’s code for politics or security or both. Somebody somewhere wanted to know whether you’d been sticking it to little girls or not. You got any idea who, Mr Hadda?’

He was starting to sound far too like his old cocky self. And his old cocky self would be sifting through truths, weighing alternatives, looking for opportunities.

Wolf brought the hatchet blade down on the arm of the recliner just an inch from Medler’s wrist, causing him to jerk away so violently his glass flew out of his hand and smashed on the tiled patio.

‘Jesus Christ! What you do that for? You could have had my hand off!’

‘Your hands are the least of your worries if you start jerking me around, Medler. We’re not having a conversation. Just tell me what happened!’

‘All right, all right, keep your hair on!’

He reached for the cognac and took a long pull straight from the bottle.

‘What I did then was go away and do what I’d have done if you hadn’t been such an action hero. I took a long hard look at the case notes and the evidence file. On the surface it all looked pretty sound, but once I started digging, it didn’t take long to smell a rat.’