A Long Time Dead (3 page)

Woodend stubbed out his cigarette. ‘If you're tellin' me all this because you think I might have some influence with the people they put in charge of the case, then you're just wastin' your breath,' he said.

‘You! Have influence!' Coutes scoffed. ‘I'm the one with influence. I'm a
government minister,
in case you've forgotten.'

That's better, Woodend thought. That sounds more like the Douglas Coutes I came to know and heartily dislike – the Douglas Coutes who was arrogant to the point of megalomania.

‘So why
are
you ringin' me?' he asked.

‘Because you're a detective.'

He's flipped, Woodend told himself. The man's gone completely off his rocker.

‘You want
me
to investigate the case?' he asked.

‘Obviously!'

‘I can't.'

‘Can't?'

‘That's what I said. I don't care how much influence you've got, it won't be enough to get me assigned to the investigation. The local police would never stand for it. An' even if they were made to buckle under pressure, the press would make a field day out of it. Besides, if I'm to have any involvement at all, it will be as a witness – because I was there just before it all happened.'

‘It's because you were there – because you know what it was like – that I want you on the case,' Coutes said doggedly.

‘In what capacity?'

‘I'm not sure. I haven't really had time to work out all the details yet,' Coutes said impatiently. ‘We'll come up with something. Perhaps we'll call you a “ministerial advisor”.'

‘But what I'd really be is some kind of private eye!' Woodend said incredulously. ‘A gumshoe!'

‘It doesn't matter what your exact status is,' Coutes said. ‘All that really matters—'

‘I won't do it,' Woodend said firmly.

‘Why not?'

‘Because I don't think it
can
be done, Mr Coutes. It's amazin' that after all this time they've been able to produce evidence against you – but it'd take a real bloody miracle to uncover any more evidence that could possibly be used in your defence. Besides …'

‘Besides what?'

‘Given the fact that they've lifted your bloody fingerprint from his dog tag, I'm a long way from bein' convinced you
didn't
do it.'

‘How dare you!'

‘I'm just lookin' at the facts. You were a real nasty piece of work back then, and you an' Kineally certainly had enough reason to hate one another, didn't you, Mr Coutes?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘You surely haven't forgotten Mary Parkinson, have you?'

‘Who?'

‘Mary Parkinson. Farmer's daughter. Sweet little thing. You met her in the Dun Cow.'

‘Oh, her,' Coutes said dismissively.

‘Her,' Woodend agreed.

‘You surely don't think I'd have murdered Kineally over a piece of skirt, do you?'

No, given what little value he placed on women in general, he probably wouldn't have, Woodend thought.

‘Still, on the face of it, things are certainly lookin' bad for you, aren't they?' he asked.

‘I've already given you my word that I didn't kill him,' Coutes said, somewhat impatiently.

‘The word of an officer an' a gentleman?' Woodend asked. ‘Well, you never were much of an officer—'

‘Now just listen here—'

‘—an' you were nothin' at all of a gentleman.'

‘I may be in trouble at the moment,' Coutes said, with a new, threatening tone seeping into his voice, ‘but even weakened, I still have sufficient power to either make, or break, someone like you.'

‘Maybe you're right,' Woodend agreed. ‘Maybe you can – an' maybe you will. But whatever happens, I'll do nothin' to help you.'

‘Listen, Charlie, I seem to have got a bit carried away,' Coutes said, wheedling now. ‘If you'll just reconsider—'

‘Not a chance,' Woodend interrupted. ‘I'm goin' to hang up the phone now, Minister.'

‘You can't just—'

‘I'd wish you good luck – but we'd both know I didn't mean it.'

C
hief Constable Henry Marlowe looked up at the big man who was standing in front of his desk. He had not liked Charlie Woodend from the moment they had met, and the longer they knew each other, the deeper that dislike had grown.

Woodend, it seemed to Marlowe, paid scant regard to anything that really mattered. His lack of concern
began
with the way he dressed – hairy sports jackets instead of the smart lounge suits favoured by other senior officers – but went on to include so many other things.

When Woodend bothered to show any deference at all, it was
mock
-deference. At best!

In addition, he had a habit of ignoring standard procedures (as clearly laid down by his betters) and instead chose to blunder around any case he was assigned to like a rampant dinosaur.

But perhaps the worst thing about ‘Cloggin'-it Charlie', the Chief Constable was forced to admit, was that – despite the appalling way he carried out his duties – he usually got results. No doubt that was more due to luck than judgement – and no doubt his luck would one day run out – but until then, his very presence on the Force was a source of continual irritation to the forward-looking senior policeman who had to deal with him.

All of which helped explain why the arrival of the visitor from the capital – the man now sitting behind the desk next to the Chief Constable – had been so welcome. Because when he went away again, he wouldn't be going alone. And the thought of being without Woodend – even if it was only for a week or so – was more than enough to instantly give Marlowe a rosier view of life.

‘This is Mr Forsyth,' the Chief Constable told his Chief Inspector. ‘He's come up from London, specifically to see you.'

‘I
am
honoured,' Woodend said.

There was nothing wrong with words the Chief Inspector had used, Marlowe told himself. It was the
way
Woodend had used them. The bastard simply refused to be impressed by anything.

The Chief Constable rose to his feet. ‘Since the matter that Mr Forsyth wishes to discuss with you is outside the ambit of my operational control, I have decided to absent myself from this meeting,' he said, moving towards the door.

Forsyth waited until Marlowe had left the room and closed the door behind him, then stood up and said, ‘Well, this is all very formal, isn't it?'

‘Mr Marlowe likes formality,' Woodend said. ‘Thrives on it, as a matter of fact.'

‘Yes, that's certainly the impression I gained myself,' Forsyth said thoughtfully. ‘But without wishing to interfere with Mr Marlowe's usual arrangements and procedures in any way, I'm sure we'll both be much more comfortable sitting over there.'

He was indicating a pair of easy chairs, placed on opposite sides of a large coffee table.

This ‘relaxing area' was a relatively new feature of the Chief Constable's office, and had been added when Marlowe had read about it in one of the management magazines he so enjoyed perusing in the time he should have been devoting to police work.

Woodend lowered his heavy frame into one of the chairs, and made a rapid assessment of the other man. Forsyth was in his fifties, he guessed. He was wearing an expensive herring-bone suit, and heavy glasses which – perhaps by accident, but more likely by design – matched the cloth perfectly. His short grey hair was neatly trimmed, his hands looked as if they had been recently manicured.

A civil servant, Woodend thought.

But not one of those who helps the unemployed to fill out forms in the dole office, and then goes home and worries about his mortgage. No, this man would have a large mahogany desk somewhere in Whitehall, and, at the weekends, would escape to his country residence for a spot of hunting and fishing.

‘Do you have any idea why I'm here?' Forsyth asked, as if he were genuinely curious to hear the answer.

‘I can only imagine that it's somethin' to do with Douglas Coutes,' Woodend replied.

Forsyth laughed. ‘Right on the button,' he said. ‘Our Minister's in a bit of a bind.'

‘So I believe,' Woodend said, noncommittally.

‘A bind that you, apparently, expressed absolutely no interest in helping him to get out of.'

‘That's correct.'

‘May I ask why?'

Woodend sighed. ‘It's a long story.'

A very long story. A story that started – in a sense – before he ever even met Coutes.

Everybody, and that included the Germans on the other side of the Channel, knew the invasion of France was coming – but very few people knew exactly when or where it would actually happen. For the vast army, gathered on, or near, the south coast of England, it was therefore merely a matter of training as hard as it could and then waiting to be told on which battlefield it would quite possibly lay down its collective life.

Charlie Woodend, newly promoted to sergeant, was at home in Whitebridge when the order came through that he was to be a part of that invading army. It was the first leave he had had for four years, and though he knew his home town like the back of his hand, he still found it hard, after being in the desert for so long, to come to terms with the absence of sand.

There were other things he found difficult to accept, too.

His parents' terraced house, which had seemed huge to him as a child, now felt dwarf-sized.

The parochial feel of a place which had been weaving cotton for a hundred years – and blandly assumed it would continue to do so for another thousand.

Yet the difficulty was not with the house or the place, he recognized. They were as they had always been
. He
was the one who was no longer the same.

It had been with much trepidation that he had gone to see Joan. He'd been carrying her image around his head all the time he had been away. But what if – in the process – his mind had modified that image of her? What if – like the town – she now seemed an almost alien creature to him?

Their first meeting had done little to calm his fears. Physically, she had changed a
little
over the years, for though she was still a slim young thing, it was now possible to detect the beginnings of the thickness which would set in as she approached middle age. That didn't really bother him. But what if she had started to develop a thickness of the
soul?
Or if such a thickness had always been there, but he'd never noticed it before?

‘What would you like to do?' he asked flatly, almost as if he were talking to a virtual stranger.

‘We could go the pictures if you like,' Joan suggested. ‘They're showin'
Casablanca,
with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, an' I missed it the first time round.'

‘All right, let's do that,' he agreed lethargically.

He had expected no more from the picture than a temporary respite from his confused feelings for Joan. Yet he soon found himself captivated by the plot, and when Rick – who had constantly claimed throughout the picture that he stuck out his neck for nobody – decided to make the noble self-sacrifice, Woodendfelt an uncharacteristic tear trickling down his cheek.

‘You could have knocked me over with a feather when Rick didn't get on that plane with Ilsa,' Woodend said, as he and Joan were leaving the cinema.

‘Could I?' Joan asked.

‘Didn't it come as a surprise to you, an' all?'

‘Not really.'

‘So what was it that you saw, an' I missed?'

‘That you an' Rick are a lot alike.'

‘Come off it, lass!' Woodend said, suddenly starting to feel a little hot around the collar. ‘Rick's a Hollywood hero, an' I'm just an ordinary workin' class feller.'

‘But when push comes to shove, you'll both do what's right, however much it might cost you,' Joan said firmly.

Woodend shook his head. ‘I'm not as big a man as you're givin' me credit for,' he said.

‘Maybe you're not,' Joan agreed. ‘But you will be – given time.'

Woodend felt all his fears – all his misgivings – melt away, and before he knew quite what he was doing, he had flung his arms around Joan and was hugging her to him.

‘Steady on, Charlie Woodend! You're almost crushin' me to death,' Joan gasped.

He relaxed his grip a little. ‘If I manage to get through this war in one piece, I want to marry you,' he told her.

‘You'll get through,' she assured him, and the way she said it made him believe that he really would.

‘You haven't said if you want marry me or not,' he said, almost fearful of her response.

Joan smiled. ‘There didn't seem to be much point in statin' the obvious, Charlie.'

But what if things hadn't happened like that? Woodend asked himself, as he viewed his past from the easy chair in Marlowe's office.

What if he hadn't been granted leave, and so never had the opportunity to go back to Whitebridge?

What if he
had
gone back home, but he and Joan had decided to spend the evening in the pub, instead of the cinema?

Or they'd gone to the cinema, but watched some other film, rather than
Casablanca
?

Would he, then, have been the man he was that first time he met Mary Parkinson – or would he have been a different man, who would have reacted to her quite differently?

And if he
had
reacted differently, would Robert Kineally have spent the last twenty-one years lying undiscovered in a shallow grave?