Golden Mile to Murder (11 page)

With a smile playing on her lips, she ran her eyes appraisingly up and down Woodend's body. ‘Well, fancy running into you again so soon, Handsome,' she said.

Before there was a chance for the policeman to respond to her, Gutteridge emerged from the office and quickly inserted himself into the space between them.

‘Where are my manners, allowing you to leave unescorted?' the theatre manager said. ‘Let me show you the exit,
Chief Inspector
.'

Woodend allowed himself to be led away, but not before he had noted the look of shock which had appeared on the girl's face.

Gutteridge steered Woodend to the door. ‘Come again, Mr Woodend,' he said. ‘And next time do not feel obliged to part with any of your coins of the realm. For we humble players, the honour of your presence is payment enough.'

‘That sounds a bit like bribery and corruption to me,' Woodend said.

The manager laughed – rather too loudly, the chief inspector thought.

‘What a wit you are,' he said. ‘What a loss to the stage was your decision to follow the path of law enforcement.' But even as he spoke, his hand – resting in the small of Woodend's back – was easing the chief inspector through the exit.

Woodend stepped out into the side street and saw that directly opposite was not only a row of boarding houses as he had expected, but also a brightly lit fish and chip shop.

‘Now if that's not fate pointin' my way, what is?' he asked himself.

He crossed the road and entered the chip shop. There were no other customers at that moment, and the cook, a jolly-looking fat man, was standing behind the counter reading the evening paper. When he heard the bell over the door ring, he laid the paper on the counter and smiled at his new customer.

‘What can I do for you, mate?' he asked.

‘A fried cod an' a double ration of chips,' Woodend told him.

‘Good choice. The cod's so fresh it hasn't stopped swimmin' yet.'

Woodend watched the fryer scoop the chips out of the bubbling fat in the range and place them, with the fish, into a neat newspaper parcel.

‘Does the name Inspector Davies mean anythin' to you?' the chief inspector asked, as he handed over the money.

‘I should say it does. He got himself topped last night – under yon Central Pier.'

‘Did you know him personally?'

‘Can't say that I did.'

‘But you had no difficulty in recognising the name?'

‘Well, of course not. We don't get many murders in Blackpool, an' as far as I can remember, we've
never
had a bobby killed before. So when one does get done in, it's bound to stick in your mind, isn't it?'

Exactly, Woodend thought as he picked up his parcel of fish and chips.
It's bound to stick in your mind.
But it hadn't stuck in Gutteridge's mind. When the name of the dead policeman had first come up, he hadn't recognised it at all. Or perhaps he'd only
pretended
not to recognise it.

The last end-of-the-pier show of the day was long over, the amusements had been closed for the night, and the Central Pier was in darkness. But it was not quite deserted. The glowing red end of a cigarette, moving through the night like a demented firefly, would have told any observer that at least one person had stayed behind.

Tommy ‘Now Where Was I?' Bolton tramped relentlessly from one end of the pier to other, his mind wrestling with his problems.

Should he go to the police and tell them all he knew?

Could he dare to hope that because he would be helping them with a murder inquiry, they might, in turn, overlook what he would be forced to reveal about himself?

He shook his head angrily, cursing his own stupidity. How could they ignore what he'd done? It wasn't like a parking ticket or a littering offence. It was altogether more . . . more . . . significant.

So what was he to do? What choice did he have? None at all! He would have to keep quiet, and hope that the whole dreadful situation resolved itself of its own accord.

He had reached the very end of the pier, and slowly descended the steps to the fishermen's jetty. The waves below him – whooshing back and forth – could be so soothing on occasions. But they were not soothing now. Instead, they seemed to be roaring angry, urgent orders:
Jump in! Jump in!

He was tempted to obey. One small step was all it would take – and his troubles would be over. But though his legs were shaking, they were unwilling to move an inch further forward. Acknowledging his failure to find the courage even to take the coward's way out, he turned and climbed the steps again.

He came to a stop near the entrance to the pier, and gazed loathingly across the promenade at the dim shape which he knew to be Gypsy Rose Elizabeth's fortune-telling booth. In the past he had often held strong grudges, and had been delighted to see those he resented eventually forced to face a painful humiliation. Sometimes, indeed, he had even engineered those humiliations himself. But he had never really
hated
before – never felt the vehemence he did towards the gypsy, a vehemence which was poisoning his whole life.

She did not deserve to live! The world would be better off without her. And in killing her, he would not just be settling his own scores – he was sure of that. He would be acting for others – dozens of people whose names he would never even know. And looked at that way, the murder would be almost an act of altruism.

But how to go about it – that was the question he must ask himself. How to eliminate this vile piece of human trash and not get caught.

It took an intelligent man to play the buffoon well, and he was a
very
good buffoon – as his income clearly demonstrated. Surely if he put his mind to it, he could come up with a plan which would not only guarantee her death but also ensure that he got away scot-free.

T
he first thing Monika Paniatowski noticed when the shrill alarm clock forced her into consciousness was the vodka bottle sitting on her bedside table. The clear liquid had almost reached the screw cap when she'd bought the bottle the night before, but now the level had dropped to well below the top of the label – and she was fairly sure that was not due to evaporation!

She swung her legs out of bed, and inspected her room. It was a little cramped for her usual exercise programme, but she'd manage, she supposed. She began with a series of warming-up exercises, then got down on the floor between the bed and the wardrobe, and started doing her press-ups.

One . . . two . . . three . . .

She was drinking too much, she told herself. Worse, she was drinking
alone
. But what was the alternative? To go out on the piss with the lads? To have to endure their sexual innuendoes, which would only get more and more explicit as the evening wore on? To listen to their taunts that she was a bad sport when she repulsed their drunken embraces at the end of the session? To hear then sniggering together in the morning – because even if she didn't give them what they wanted, there would always be one or two of them who would claim that she had.

Four . . . five . . . six . . .

She must reduce her alcoholic intake. But it wouldn't be easy, because booze made the night easier to get through. She half-wished that her body would come to the assistance of her will power – that she could wake up in the mornings with a dreadful hangover. But she never did.

Seven . . . eight . . . nine . . .

The instructor had told her during her training that women could never match men press-up for press-up. And maybe he was right – maybe most of them couldn't. But she was determined to try – determined to show all those complacent bastards back at headquarters that having male genitalia didn't automatically grant them the keys to the universe.

By the time her nose had brushed against the floor thirty times, she'd had enough, but still pushed herself on to complete another ten. She'd be up to fifty press-ups soon, she promised herself, and once that barrier was broken, it shouldn't be impossible to reach a hundred.

She had washed, dressed and smoked her first two cigarettes of the day by the time she heard the gong in the hallway imperiously summoning her down to breakfast. As she walked down the stairs, she could smell the odours of a fry-up drifting from the kitchen, and remembered the times when her mother had carefully measured out what little food they'd managed to scrounge and advised her to eat it slowly. Well, those days were gone forever, thank God.

Her stomach was rumbling by the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, but then, through the open dining-room door, she caught sight of Woodend – already sitting at what would probably be
their
table for the whole of the investigation – and felt her appetite vanish.

The chief inspector's attention was focussed on the bowl of cornflakes in front of him, but once he had finished scooping the milk and cereal on to his spoon, he would undoubtedly look up and see her. Before he had the chance to do that, Monika strode quickly past the open door and on to the street.

Once outside, she took a deep breath of the salty sea air, and wondered why her instincts had ordered her to flee. Was it that she couldn't bear the thought of Woodend making a pass at her over the breakfast table? It didn't seem likely that he would. Experience had taught her that men trying to get into her knickers didn't make the offer and then give her all day to think about it. When they struck they were like snakes – one second pretending to be as harmless as dead wood and the next sticking their fangs into her.

So just what
was
it that made her so uneasy about being in the presence of her new boss? Could it be that she was worried that when he spoke of being a team and sharing the credit, he was actually being
sincere
– which made her own plans to always squeeze out of any situation only what was best for Monika Paniatowski seem almost treacherous? No! Woodend was as full of shit as the rest of them. He just had to be!

The bacon was crisp, the egg thick yolked, and the fried bread steeped enticingly in lard. As Woodend polished off the last few morsels of his fry-up, he told himself that whatever other headaches he would have to endure at the hands of Chief Superintendent Ainsworth, it was worth being back up North just for the food.

He was just finished his last piece of buttered toast when Mrs Bowyer strode meaningfully over to his table.

‘There's a phone call for you,' she said accusingly.

‘Who is it?'

‘Didn't say. Just asked to speak to you.' The landlady gave a martyred sigh. ‘This is most irregular, you know. The phone in the hallway is supposed to be for outgoing calls only – and then only in a real emergency.'

She was a real dragon, Woodend thought admiringly. If Saint George had had to face a creature like Mrs Bowyer in his quest to free the maiden, he would have abandoned the girl to her fate and gone off in search of the nearest pub.

He bit back an incipient grin and tried to look duly rebuked. ‘It'll be somebody from Blackpool Central,' he explained. ‘I'll tell them not use the phone in future. If they want to contact me, they can always send a constable round.'

‘They can do no such thing!' the landlady said. ‘This is a respectable house. No uniformed policeman has ever crossed my threshold on official business, and I'm not about to have them starting now.'

Woodend could constrain the grin no longer, and in order to save the landlady the need to become righteously indignant, he climbed to his feet and turned slightly away from her.

‘Better go an' answer the phone, then,' he said, half over his shoulder. ‘You know how bad-tempered bobbies can be when they're kept waitin'.'

He walked into the hall and picked up the receiver. ‘Woodend.'

‘It's me, sir,' said a familiar voice.

So it wasn't someone from the local station at all! Instead, it was his faithful assistant – the Tonto to his Lone Ranger – Bob Rutter.

‘Where are you, Bob?' Woodend asked, delighted.

‘I'm in Whitebridge. I arrived yesterday – just after you'd left, as a matter of fact.'

‘An' what do you think of it so far?'

‘Seems a reasonable sort of place,' Rutter said cautiously.

‘A reasonable sort of place!' Woodend repeated incredulously. ‘You probably don't know this, lad, but when God created the earth, he started with Lancashire an' worked his way out.' He lit up a cigarette. ‘Anyway, enough of the idle chatter. How soon can you get down here?'

There was an embarrassed pause on the other end of the line. ‘I'm not sure I can get down there
at all
,' Rutter said finally.

‘What are you talkin' about?'

‘I had an interview with Chief Superintendent Ainsworth as soon as I reported for duty this morning. He's assigned me to another case.'

‘
Another
case? What
kind
of case?'

‘Car theft. There's apparently been a lot of it going on in the first place God created.'

Woodend felt his fingers crushing the cigarette he held between them. ‘But that's outrageous!' he protested. ‘Car theft's a job for the local flatfeet!'

‘We
are
the local flatfeet now,' Rutter reminded him.

So they were, Woodend supposed. But that didn't alter the fact that he needed his right-hand man working with him on this case.

‘You did point out to Mr Ainsworth that I'm investigatin' the murder of a policeman here, didn't you?' he asked.

‘Not quite as subtly as you might have done, sir,' Rutter replied – and Woodend could picture the grin on his face. ‘But I did remind him that I'm one of your team.'

One
of his team? Bob Rutter
was
the team. ‘An' what did he say to that?' Woodend asked.

‘He told me that you already had a team in place. Then he went on to add that if I want to have any future in the Lancashire Constabulary, I'd do well to remember where my loyalties are supposed to lie.'