Death of a Cave Dweller (24 page)

“That was my first thought as well,” Rutter said, “but it turns out his getting barred had nothing to do with causing trouble. The landlord just decided that the girl was too young to serve. Come to think of it, that's the one thing they all said about her – that she was very, very young.”

Woodend slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “I can be so bloody stupid sometimes,” he said.

“What do you mean, sir?”

“You said your witnesses weren't able to give you much of a description, but did any of them happen to notice the colour of this girl's hair?”

“The waitress and the landlord did.”

“An' did they describe it as dark brown – almost black?”

“Yes,” Rutter gasped. “As a matter of fact, they did. How on earth did you know that?”

“Oh, I'm a dab-hand at spottin'
the bloody obvious, if it's held right under my nose,”
Woodend said.

I
n less than two hours, the Cellar Club would be full of teenagers, gyrating to the latest records which the stewards who worked on the transatlantic liners had brought back hot from the United States, but for the moment Woodend and Mrs Pollard had the place to themselves.

Woodend, standing on one side of the bar counter, was smoking a Capstan Full Strength with all the concentration of a man who took his regular shot of nicotine very seriously indeed. The club owner was sitting on a tall stool at the other side and was apparently going through her accounts ledgers. But from the number of times she stopped to glance up at the policeman, it was clear that her mind was not really on the job in hand.

It was the woman who finally broke the silence. “I realise that bein' deliberately mysterious is part of your charm,” she said, “but I really would appreciate it if you'd tell me what all this is about.”

Woodend chuckled. “Do you know, there's a lot of people – includin' some young, green detectives – who think that solvin' a murder is like doin' a jigsaw puzzle?” he said.

“A jigsaw puzzle?”

“That's right. But it's much more complicated than that. When you're startin' out in my game, you see all the pieces of the puzzle lyin' on the table in front of you, an' you assume that all you have to do is slot them together. But you soon find out you're wrong – at least, I did – because what you learn is that although all the bits of your puzzle
are
there, there's also bits of other puzzles mixed in with them. An' sometimes, in order to make sure that all you've got is the pieces which will help you make the big picture you're interested in, it's necessary to put some of the smaller puzzles together first.”

“Well, thanks for that,” Mrs Pollard said. “Now that you've explained it to me, it's as clear as mud.”

“Exercise a bit of patience, an' it should soon be as clear as a newly polished window,” Woodend promised her.

There was a sound of two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs. One was heavy and masculine, the other had the click-click quality of a woman wearing high heels.

“Who the hell's that?” Mrs Pollard asked.

“That,” Woodend replied, “is the young lady who's goin' to help us find out which pieces belong where.”

The man and woman had reached the bottom of the stairs, and now Mrs Pollard could see that they were Bob Rutter and Lucy Johnson.

“You know all about it, don't you?” the club owner said to Woodend.

“Well, let's just say that I've got a pretty fair idea,” the chief inspector told her.

Lucy Johnson advanced across the room, stopping a few feet from them.

“Why did you tell him to bring me here?” she asked, pointing her thumb over her shoulder at Rutter. “Is this anythin' to with Rick?”

“In a way,” Woodend said. “Your husband doesn't treat you very well, does he, Mrs Johnson?”

“You've got it all wrong. He's—”

“In fact, he's a proper domestic tyrant, if the truth be told. Even knocks you about from time to time, doesn't he?”

Lucy Johnson looked down at the brick floor. “He does have a bit of a temper on him,” she admitted.

“You'd never have got married to him if you hadn't been pregnant, would you?”

Lucy Johnson looked to Alice Pollard for guidance, and when the older woman nodded her head, as if to say she should tell the truth, she said, “No, I wouldn't have. To be honest, I was just about to break it off with him when I realised I'd missed my period.”

“So when another a man – a much
gentler
man – started to pay attention to you, you were naturally flattered. Then it got to be more than that, an' you actually fell in love with him.”

“We didn't do anythin' we shouldn't have done,” Lucy Johnson said passionately. “All we used to do was go to places where nobody knew us, an' sit around an' talk.”

“Like the back seats in the cinema?” Woodend suggested. “Did you enjoy
Spartacus
, Mrs Johnson? He's a very good actor, that Kirk Douglas, isn't he? Well worth sittin' through the film twice!”

The girl's jaw dropped. “All right,” she said reluctantly. “Maybe we did go in for a bit of kissin' and cuddlin'– but it was never any more than that. Eddie was very insistent about it. He said that it wouldn't be right to go all the way – not until I'd divorced Rick an' married him.”

“So it was
almost
innocent,” Woodend said. “But your husband was furious when he found out about it, wasn't he? That's why he attacked Eddie Barnes in the pub. An' the reason Eddie didn't press charges when he had the chance was because he was feelin' guilty.”

“Yes,” the girl said.

“Which, of course, explains why Rick likes to have you by his side wherever he is – because now he's found out what was goin' on, he doesn't trust you anymore.” Woodend lit a fresh Capstan Full Strength. “Now think very carefully about these next few questions, Mrs Johnson. You an' Rick were the last two people to leave the club the night before Eddie Barnes died, weren't you?”

“Yes.”

“Did Rick go into the dressin' room at any point – even for just a few seconds?”

“No,” Lucy Johnson said firmly.

“You know what you're tellin' me by sayin' that, don't you?” Woodend asked. “You're tellin' me that your husband, Rick, couldn't possibly have murdered your boyfriend, Eddie.”

The girl looked the chief inspector straight in the eyes. “I still love Eddie even though he's dead,” she said, “an' if my husband had killed him, I'd want him to pay for it. But he didn't. Rick kept me close to him all evenin', and he never once went anywhere near that dressin' room.”

“One more question,” Woodend said. “More for curiosity than for anythin' else. It's about the feller who did such a good job of beatin' your husband up.” He closed his eyes, and pictured the man who he'd seen arguing with Rick Johnson outside the Cellar Club's entrance. “Am I right – he had brown hair, was aged around twenty-three or twenty-four an' couldn't have stood much more than five foot six in his stockinged feet?”

“Yes, you're right,” Lucy Johnson said.

“An' who might he have been?”

“Martin, my big brother,” Lucy said. “He'd warned Rick a couple of times that if he knocked me about any more, he'd give him a seein' to. An' that's exactly what he did.”

Woodend allowed a light smile to play on his lips. “Your husband must have a good four or five inches on your brother,” he said.

Lucy Johnson smiled back. “He does,” she agreed. “But Martin's always been a tough little sod.”

So Rick Johnson had allowed himself to be locked up in gaol, rather than admit he'd been given a beating by someone who was smaller than he was. It was crazy, Woodend thought, but given what he'd learned about Rick Johnson's character during the course of the investigation, he couldn't honestly say that it surprised him.

“Thank you for all your help, Mrs Johnson,” he said. “You can go back home now.”

“Will you be lettin' Rick out of jail?” the girl asked.

“Yes,” Woodend said. “I'm sorry, but given what you've just told me, I'm rather afraid that we'll have to.”

Lucy smiled again. “There's no need to be sorry,” she said. “Violence is one thing that Rick does understand, an' after the pastin' that our Martin gave him, he won't dare lay a hand on me from now on.”

“You're sure about that?”

The girl's smile acquired a sad tinge. “Oh yes, I'm sure. I know exactly what my future's goin' to be like. Would you like to hear about it?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“I'll get pregnant again, an' this time I know I'll manage to keep the baby. Rick'll work hard to put food on the table, an' we'll end up happy enough – in our own way.”

But nowhere near as happy as if you'd run away with Eddie Barnes, Woodend thought, feeling another surge of the anger which he knew was so unprofessional but which he could do nothing about.

“Good luck, Mrs Johnson,” he said, realising, as he spoke, that he had never meant anything more sincerely in his entire life.

“Thanks,” Lucy said, “but I don't think I'll need it now.”

Woodend waited until the girl had begun climbing the stairs, then turned his attention back on Mrs Pollard.

“There was a time when I thought I understood exactly how you fitted into all this, but now I'm not so sure,” he confessed. “Would you care to enlighten me?”

“I don't think that I want to talk about it right now,” Alice Pollard said, looking meaningfully at Rutter.

Woodend glanced down at his watch. “This shouldn't take very much longer,” he said. “Do me a favour, Bob. Nip across to the Grapes an' get a couple of pints in so that mine'll be waitin' for me when I get there.”

Rutter nodded to show he understood, and followed Lucy Johnson up the stairs.

“Rick Johnson's not your lover, is he?” Woodend asked the club owner, as he heard the door bang shut at the top of the stairs.

“No, he isn't.”

“So what the bloody hell is he?”

“When I wasn't much older than Lucy is now, I was already on the game,” Alice Pollard said, matter-of-factly.

“I know,” Woodend replied.

“Who told you?”

“I've seen all the details on your sheet down at the station – or, at least, my sergeant has.”

Alice Pollard nodded sadly. “Of course you have. You can never tear up your past, can you? However much you might try – an' however much you want to?”

“I wouldn't be so sure of that if I was you,” Woodend told her. “My sergeant's a bit on the careless side, you see, an' we might find, when we get back to London, that he's still got your charge sheet tucked in his pocket. Course, what with the shockin' price of postage these days, he won't want to send it back to Liverpool, so he'll probably just throw it away.”

Mrs Pollard smiled gratefully. “You're a nice man,” she said.

“There's a lot of folk who'd disagree with you,” Woodend told her. “Anyroad, carry on with your story.”

“I knew nothing about nothing in them days,” Alice Pollard said, “and I hadn't been walking the streets for more than a few months when I found out I was goin' to have a baby. I didn't know where to turn. There were people who said they could get it fixed for me, but when I asked them what it involved they started talking about drinking a bottle of gin while you were sitting in a hot bath. There were even a few who said it was amazing what you could do with a knitting needle.” She shivered involuntarily. “Well, I didn't fancy doing either of them things, so I went ahead and had the baby. But I knew I couldn't keep him, and the minute he was born, I offered him up for adoption. Then, over twenty years later – though I can't say in all honesty I deserved it – that kid looked me up.”

“Rick Johnson.”

“Yes, my tiny, helpless baby was adopted by a family called Johnson,” Alice Pollard agreed. “And he still goes to see them regularly. But as far as he's concerned,
I'm
his mother. And though he's got his faults – God knows he has – I love him with all my heart.”

The sound of heavy footfalls came from the stairs. Mrs Pollard looked questioningly at the chief inspector.

“Size-nine police-issue boots, at a guess,” Woodend said. “Well, whatever else the Liverpool Police might say about me – an' I imagine they say quite a lot – they can't complain that I'm not keepin' them busy.”

A uniformed constable appeared at the foot of the stairs. He strode across to the snack bar, came to a halt, and saluted.

“Inspector Hopgood sends his compliments, sir,” he said. “The inspector thought you might like to know that about an hour ago I arrested Steven Henry Walker.”

“On what charge?”

The constable took out his notebook, licked the end of his finger and turned a couple of pages.

“Walker was arrested on suspicion of burglary as he was leavin' the home of a Mr an' Mrs Walter Finn,” he said, as if he were in the witness stand being cross-examined by a hostile barrister.

“Would they be Mike Finn's parents?” Woodend asked.

“As to that, sir, I have no details about the rest of the family, so I couldn't possibly comment.”

But though coincidences did happen in life, this was highly unlikely to have been one of them, Woodend thought. So what, in heaven's name, would have motivated Steve Walker to break into Mike Finn's home?

And then it came to him in a sudden flash of inspiration! Walker wanted to find Eddie Barnes's killer. Walker suspected that the killer was Mike Finn. Seeing it from that angle it was obvious what he'd been looking for!