A Death Left Hanging (30 page)

‘All right,' Jane says.

She knows what she really wants to say – that her mother will be out, as she always is on a Thursday, which means that she will be left alone with
him
. But she doesn't know how to express it in a way which Aunt Jane will approve of – a way in which it won't all seem like
her
fault!

It is less than a mile from this house to the one on Hebden Brow, and Aunt Helen decides they will walk it.

‘It'll do you good,' she says. ‘Tire you out so you'll have no trouble sleeping.'

Jane doesn't normally hold other people's hands now she's a big girl, but this time she does, gripping Helen's hand so tightly that the aunt has to tell her to relax a little.

Jane keeps hoping that something will happen to prevent them reaching home – an earthquake, an elephant stampede
– but the streets are almost deserted at this hour of the evening. She thinks about falling over and grazing her knee, but she knows that Aunt Helen will merely dust her down and tell her to be more careful in future.

Aunt Helen really wants to go to this dinner-dance. She will be annoyed if Jane tries to stop her. And Jane doesn't want to annoy her. Jane doesn't want to annoy
anybody
.

They reach the front door, and Aunt Jane knocks.

Oh, let him be out! Jane prays silently. Please let him be out.

But she knows that Aunt Helen would not have come to the house on spec – that before they ever set out she will have rung to make sure that Fred Dodds is in.

Dodds opens the front door. He is excited – Jane can see it in his eyes – but he is doing his best to give Aunt Helen the impression he is slightly cross that the peaceful evening he had planned to spend alone has been disrupted by the arrival of this child.

‘Make sure she's in bed by nine,' Aunt Helen says.

‘Don't worry,' Fred Dodds assures her. ‘Nobody knows better than me how to look after Jane.'

He rolls the words around his mouth in anticipation. Why doesn't Aunt Helen see what she can see and hear what she can hear? Jane wonders. Why can't Aunt Helen seem to understand what will happen once Jane is on the other side of that door?

It is just after half past seven when Fred Dodds closes the door and imprisons her in his torture chamber. But he doesn't assault her immediately. Oh no! He takes her into the living room, lifts her on to the sofa, and switches on the television.

‘I'll be back in a few minutes,' he says, going into the hall.

But it will be nearly an hour before he returns.

Why does he wait so long? Because he wishes to mentally savour the pleasure to come? Because he knows that the longer she is kept waiting, the more nervous – and perhaps the more appealing – she will become. She doesn't know. She will never know.

Perhaps he doesn't even know himself.

She looks around the room. At the pictures on the wall. At the coffee table, on which lie his cigarettes and her mother's knitting.

Her mother is knitting her a blue cardigan. She doesn't need to do it – now that she is married to Fred Dodds she can afford to buy all Jane's clothes in a shop – but it gives her pleasure. She
always
enjoys doing things for her daughter, however big or small each of those things might be. She loves Jane. She would give her life for her.

The hands on the wall clock say it is nearly half past eight. The phone rings, but Jane daren't answer it, and her stepfather chooses not to.

Another minute or two tick away. Jane can hear the sound of a car at the far end of the street. And she can hear her stepfather's heavy footfalls as he comes down the stairs. She bites her bottom lip as hard as she can. It hurts, but she wants it to hurt. She needs to punish herself for what has happened before and is about to happen again. She didn't think it was possible to despise anyone as much as she now despises herself.

He opens the door and enters the lounge. His whole face is filled with a wide, obscene leer.

‘Did you find it hard, having to wait so long?' he asks. ‘I bet you did. I'll bet you were so impatient that you wet your little knickers. I certainly
hope
that's what happened.'

He kneels down in front of the coffee table, so that his head is on the same level as hers. The car which she has heard earlier is getting closer.

‘Now how shall we begin?' he asks. ‘Where would you like us to start?'

‘I . . . I don't want . . .' she stutters.

‘Of course you want! All this is your idea. I'd never have done it if you hadn't encouraged me.'

‘I . . . I didn't . . .'

‘Oh, you may not have put it into words, exactly, but the message was clear enough.'

His hands start to reach for her. She doesn't want it to happen! Whatever
he
says, she knows
she
doesn't want it. She picks up one of the knitting needles that are lying on the table.

Her only wish is to stop him going any further. She's not aiming the needle at anywhere in particular. It is just chance that the needle goes up his left nostril.

His eyes bulge and he slumps over to the side. In the road, the car comes to a stop.

‘She battered his head into a bloody pulp not because that was the way in which his father had died, and not because she hoped to dangle the possibility of another killer before the police and the jury,' Paniatowski said. ‘She did it in order obliterate any evidence of the real cause of death.'

Jane Hartley, tears streaming down her face, nodded.

‘Why did she do it?' she sobbed. ‘Why didn't she just tell the police the truth? What I did was in self-defence. No court in the land would ever have punished me for it.'

‘She probably guessed that herself,' Paniatowski said. ‘But she didn't have your legal training and experience, so she couldn't know for sure. And even if there was only a very slight chance you'd be locked up, that wasn't a chance she was prepared to take.'

Jane Hartley dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. ‘So what happens now?' she asked, a little more in control of herself.

‘Nothing happens now,' Paniatowski replied.

‘But there'll have to be a trial. Or if not a trial, then at least some kind of hearing.'

‘My boss doesn't think that will be necessary.'

‘If there isn't a hearing, how will my mother's name ever be cleared?'

‘Your mother took the blame for killing Fred Dodds because she didn't want you to take it,' Paniatowski said. ‘But I think there was another reason she kept quiet. She didn't want what had gone on between you and your stepfather to become common knowledge. She didn't want you to go through life with everybody pointing you out as some kind of freak.'

‘But . . .'

‘She died in order to keep what had happened to you a secret,' Paniatowski told Jane Hartley, ‘and the best way you can honour her memory is to keep it secret yourself.'

T
hey sat at their usual table in the Drum and Monkey, drinking their usual drinks. It would been stretching things to call this end-of-case booze-up a celebration, but at least they could all agree it was a relief.

‘How do you think Jane Hartley will be feelin' right now, Monika?' Woodend asked.

‘I couldn't say for certain,' Paniatowski replied. ‘But if she's anything like I was when I learned the truth, she's probably wishing she could have stayed screwed up and ignorant.'

‘I can't understand that,' Rutter said. ‘Surely, it's always better to know
why
you're acting like you are, isn't it?'

Paniatowski shook her head. ‘If you don't mind me saying so, that's a typical outsider's view. When you're on the inside, things look very different. How can I explain it to you?' She frowned as she turned the problem over in her head. ‘You don't mind if I get a bit fanciful, do you?' she said finally.

‘Not if it'll help you to say what you want to say,' Woodend told her.

‘Say you have a gammy leg,' Paniatowski began. ‘You'd know it's dragging you down and stopping you from achieving your full potential, but you think there's nothing you can do about that. Then, one day, a doctor tells you that gangrene's set in, and the leg has to come off. Once it's been amputated you discover that, for the first time in your life, you have a real choice to make. If you want to, you can spend the rest of your days in a wheelchair, wishing that the leg had never gone bad in the first place. Alternatively, you can take the artificial limb the doctor's offering you, and learn to walk again – perhaps even better than you ever have before. That's the situation Jane Hartley's in right now – she can sit there wishing she'd never been assaulted, or she can learn to walk. The second option's the one she should take. But it's not an easy choice to make.'

‘You managed it,' Rutter said, with an unexpected hint of admiration in his voice.

‘I kept away from men for a long time,' Paniatowski said. ‘Even when I did start going out with them, I kept feeling this urge to hurt or humiliate them. It was years before I could finally convince myself that they weren't all just Arthur Jones in disguise.'

The door swung open. The Chief Constable's secretary entered the bar, and made a beeline for Woodend.

‘Sorry to disturb you like this, Chief Inspector,' he said, ‘but Mr Marlowe wanted me to remind you that you have a six o'clock meeting with him.'

Paniatowski and Rutter looked at each other, their eyes filled with a sudden panic. Was that
still
on? the eyes asked. Wasn't the Inquisition Circus supposed to have left town by now?

‘This meetin'?' Woodend said to the secretary. ‘Who'll be there? Just him an' me? Or is he plannin' a big party?'

‘Mr Marlowe has been in consultation with some of his senior staff,' the secretary said, ‘but I think they've all gone off duty now.'

Woodend smiled. ‘That's all right then,' he said. He turned to Paniatowski and Rutter. ‘Are you two comin' back to headquarters with me?'

‘Yes, we'll––' Rutter began.

‘We won't be long, but there's no point in rushing down our drinks, is there?' Paniatowski interrupted.

‘None at all,' Woodend agreed, looking down at his sergeant's empty vodka glass.

Though Marlowe never appeared best pleased to see Woodend, it seemed to be causing him particular pain that late afternoon.

‘Surprised to find me alone, Charlie?' the Chief Constable asked.

‘Not really, sir,' Woodend admitted.

‘Not really,' Marlowe repeated, rolling the words around in his mouth as if he were sucking on a sour plum. ‘How do you do it, Charlie?'

‘How do I do what, sir?'

‘How do you always manage to wriggle your way out of almost impossible situations?' Marlowe said.

‘I'm afraid I'm not quite followin' you, sir.'

Marlowe sighed heavily. ‘On that
Maddox Row
case, it seemed as if whoever was in charge of the investigation wouldn't be able to do right for doing wrong, yet you managed to emerge as some kind of hero. You investigate the death of a school teacher, and end up making some of Scotland Yard's finest officers look about as competent as a drunken tinker. You actually get suspended
and
investigated for corruption while investigating that shooting on the moors – but it's other people who end up going to prison. What's your secret?'

‘Clean livin' an' a clear conscience?' Woodend suggested.

‘And then there's this latest case of yours. Lord Sharpe and Jane Hartley wanted two completely different results. You couldn't possibly satisfy them both. Yet Hartley has written me a note to say she doesn't want us to pursue the matter of her mother's execution any further, and Sharpe has rung me up to say –' he reached for the pad on his desk – ‘and I bloody-well quote, “It would be a great pity if the Mid Lancs Police were to continue using an officer with the experience and talent of DCI Woodend on purely administrative matters.” What do you make of that, Charlie?'

‘I must say, I'm surprised, sir.'

‘You can't even be bothered to lie properly, can you?' Marlowe growled. ‘But just remember this – the papers might say you have the devil's own luck, but that luck can't last forever. You'll put a foot wrong eventually, and when you do I'll be waiting to fall on you like a ton of bricks.'

‘I've absolutely no doubt about that, sir,' Woodend said. ‘Will there be anything else?'

‘No, nothing else,' Marlowe made a sudden furious sweeping gesture with his hand. ‘Get out, Charlie. Leave me in peace.'

‘Certainly, sir,' Woodend agreed.

‘What's this all about?' Rutter asked, as Paniatowski signalled the waiter for another round of drinks.

‘What's
what
all about?' Paniatowski countered.

‘The only time we're normally alone together is when the job demands it. But the job's over. So why are we still sitting here?''

‘We're still here because, before you go, there's something I wanted to talk to you about. Do you remember what I said earlier? About how I used to feel the urge to hurt and humiliate men?'

‘Yes?'

‘I think meeting Jane Hartley for the first time brought it all back to me. I think I started seeing men as the enemy again. All men – but you especially. And I'm so sorry.'

‘Forget it,' Rutter said. ‘We've all got our blind spots. Look at me. As soon as I learned that Margaret Dodds had had an affair, I refused to see
any
good at all in the woman.'