A Long Time Dead (31 page)

‘You really are a remarkable case study in paranoia, Chief Inspector,' Grant said.

‘It's hard
not
to be paranoiac when everybody's out to get you,' Woodend told him, with a grin.

‘Nobody's out to get you.'

‘Aren't they? Ten minutes ago, I was your mate, Charlie. Now I'm “Chief Inspector” again. But I digress.'

‘This whole story of yours is just one
big
digression.'

‘I'm bettin' that things really started to gel when you tracked down Huey Bascombe in Fulsom Prison,' Woodend continued, ignoring the comment. ‘Because, you see, what Huey was able to tell you filled in a lot of the larger gaps in your initial plan.'

‘And what
did
Bascombe allegedly tell us?'

‘For a start, he told you that Coutes an' Kineally had a big fight, just before Kineally disappeared. So there's your motive, handed to you on a platter. Then he told you that his mate, Harry Wallace, had stolen Coutes's knife – which gave you a murder weapon.'

‘So you believe the part about Wallace taking the knife, do you?'

‘Aye, I believe it, right enough. Why wouldn't I, when it's what actually happened?'

‘And how can you be so sure that it
did
happen?'

‘We'll get to that in a minute,' Woodend promised. ‘The next step in your little scheme was to track down Harry Wallace. But either you didn't find him, or he was already dead. Whatever the case, you didn't have Coutes's knife, which was a pity. But then you decided that didn't really matter. You were already workin' on producin' a duplicate set of Kineally's dog tags, so why not make a duplicate of Coutes's knife as well?'

Grant shook his head. ‘I don't know where you get it all from,' he said. ‘I really don't.'

‘Of course, neither the knife nor the dog tags would stand up to a thorough examination in our labs at Scotland Yard, but since our labs were never goin' to get to see them – since they were supposedly goin' to be sent back to
your
labs – that didn't matter either.'

‘Are you claiming that the knife and the dog tags
didn't
go back to our labs?'

‘I don't know about that, one way or the other. But if they did, they certainly weren't tested thoroughly, because the results of the tests – includin' the one which revealed it was Coutes's bloody fingerprint on the dog tag – had been written weeks earlier, possibly even before the “evidence” itself had been manufactured.' Woodend paused. ‘But not findin' the knife did cause you
one
problem.'

‘And what problem was that?'

‘You couldn't be sure Huey Bascombe was tellin' the truth. He said Harry Wallace had stolen the knife, but what if he hadn't? What if you planted the duplicate knife, an' then Coutes could produce the genuine one? Now that would have been embarrassin', wouldn't it? So you had to make sure Coutes really
didn't
have the knife any more. That's why, despite the risks of trippin' off a very sophisticated alarm system, you broke into Coutes's flat – because you needed to take a close look at his weapon collection. And when your operatives reported back to you that what should have been one of the prize pieces in the collection wasn't there in the case, you knew that Huey Bascombe had been completely straight with you, an' you were ready to start the final stage of the operation.'

‘Which was?'

‘You conned a surveyor from New Elizabethan Properties into makin' certain that the skeleton was discovered.' Woodend paused. ‘I was wonderin' how you made it look as if the ground hadn't been disturbed for years, when, in fact, you must have been tinkerin' with it only a few days earlier.'

‘I have no idea what you're talking about,' Grant said.

‘Did you have to lay new turf when you'd finished? Or did you take the old turf up with such care that you could put it back without anybody noticin'? Were chemicals involved? I'm told you can do marvellous things with chemicals.'

‘This is beyond fantasy!'

‘So you won't tell me, eh?' Woodend asked philosophically. ‘Doesn't matter. It's only technical details – an' as you've been pointin' out all along, one thing you Yanks do have is the technology.' He lit up a cigarette, and inhaled with relish. ‘Anyway, the next thing you did was to have Coutes brought down here, an' let him sweat for a couple of days while the so-called “evidence” was buildin' up against him. An' then you made him an offer.'

‘What kind of offer?'

‘You said that if Coutes agreed to do whatever it was your government had been wantin' him to do all along, you'd get him off the hook by producin' somebody else to take the rap for killin' Kineally. An' you did. With the help of Bascombe, you produced Harry Wallace.'

‘Are you saying that Wallace
didn't
kill Kineally?' Grant asked.

‘Definitely,' Woodend told him. ‘An' not only didn't he kill Kineally, he didn't kill the man whose skeleton you dug up from the shallow grave near the perimeter fence, either.'

‘What are you talking about now?' Grant demanded.

‘I don't exactly know how you got your hands on that skeleton. It could have come from a teaching hospital. You might have filleted some dead tramp you'd picked up off the street. Knowing the lengths you seem willing to go, you might even have dug it up in a graveyard. But the source isn't important. The simple fact is, that skeleton
isn't
Robert Kineally's.'

Monika Paniatowski stood in the shadows by one of the remaining trailers. She was feeling nervous, and desperately wanted a smoke – but she was only too aware that if the flare of the match didn't give away her position, the glow from the cigarette which followed it undoubtedly would.

So far, the Target had shown absolutely no sign of wishing to go anywhere at all. So perhaps Woodend was wrong about him. Perhaps he was wrong about the whole case.

Cloggin'-it Charlie
had
been wrong before, she reminded herself.

But not often. And not as wrong as that.

Besides, the way he had explained things this time had made perfect sense. In fact, his explanation was the
only
one which made
any sense
at all.

The door of the trailer opened, and the Target stepped out. She'd been expecting him to be holding some kind of travelling bag, but he wasn't. Instead, he was carrying something long and thin, wrapped up in a blanket.

‘I'll never doubt you again, Charlie Woodend,' Paniatowski said softly to herself. ‘From now on, I'll take everything you say – however outlandish it might seem – as gospel.'

The Target got into the car parked next to his trailer, and turned the ignition key. The engine refused to fire.

He would try at least a couple more times, then wait to allow his carburettor to dry out, Paniatowski thought.

Then he'd try again, and when the engine still wouldn't start, he'd decide that his spark plugs had probably come loose. And he'd be right, because they were loose. She'd made sure of that herself.

Once the Target had discovered the problem, it would only take him two or three minutes to fix it, and he'd be ready to go.

But by then, they'd be ready too.

G
lancing down at his watch, Woodend saw that exactly two minutes had passed since he had told Grant that Harry Wallace had been responsible neither for Robert Kineally's death nor the death of the man ‘found' in the shallow grave.

Two minutes!

One hundred and twenty seconds!

And in those two minutes, Grant had not spoken, looked directly at him, or even seemed to move a muscle.

It was like sitting opposite a cardboard cut-out, Woodend thought. But then that came as no real surprise. Special Agent Grant – earnest, enthusiastic, naïve Special Agent Grant – had
always
been a cardboard cut-out, a fresh-faced front used to conceal the dark machinations of the CIA officer who had assumed his persona.

Now, Grant – or whatever the bloody man's real name was – finally seemed to be coming back to life, and the worried frown which had been frozen on to his face was slowly transforming itself into something resembling a confident grin.

‘You think you've found a way out, don't you?' Woodend asked, conversationally. ‘You think you've discovered a loophole that you might just be able to slip through and save your own skin?'

‘I've never been concerned for myself,' Grant told him. ‘My only concern – and, I admit, it
did
concern me – was that this crazy theory of yours might be just
credible enough
for one or two of our more disreputable journalists to take an interest in it.'

‘You're full of shit,' Woodend said.

‘Of course, even if that had happened, it wouldn't have taken us long to expose the story as no more than the ravings of a madman,' Grant continued. ‘But we'd much rather not do that unless we absolutely have to – because even “crazy” mud sticks a little.'

‘An' now you don't think you
will
have to expose it?'

‘I'm sure I won't. Because this story of yours has such a huge flaw through it that even the sleaziest of tabloids won't touch it.'

‘An' that flaw is …?'

‘That the cornerstone of your whole theory is that body in the shallow grave isn't Robert Kineally's. Take that away, and your argument collapses like a house of cards.'

‘True,' Woodend agreed. ‘But why would I
want
to take it away?'

‘Because your argument's unsustainable. And I can demonstrate that by asking you one simple question.'

‘Then, by all means, ask it.'

‘What actually happened to Kineally, if Wallace didn't kill him back in 'forty-four? If it wasn't his body lying in that shallow grave, then what has he been doing for the last twenty-one years?'

‘I don't know – yet,' Woodend admitted.

‘Of course you don't! How could you? Let me tell you something, Chief Inspector – men like Robert Kineally don't just disappear into thin air! He comes from a good family. An important family. I don't know what happened to him back in 1944 – no one in my government does – but—'

Grant clamped his mouth tightly shut, as if he were still hoping against hope that there was a chance to bite back the words.

‘No one in your government knows what happened to him in 1944?' Woodend repeated. ‘I thought you thought you did. I thought you thought you'd found his body in a shallow grave near the perimeter fence.'

‘You're deliberately misinterpreting my words again,' Grant said, making something of a recovery. ‘I meant we don't know the
exact
details of what happened. We don't know whether or not Huey Bascombe played a direct part in the murder, and we don't know—'

‘Give it up, Ed,' Woodend said. ‘The gaff's blown. The game's over.'

‘For God's sake, if Kineally was still alive, don't you think we'd have found him by now?' Grant asked, exasperatedly.

‘I never claimed he was still alive,' Woodend said quietly.

‘And even if you were right about the body not being his – and I'm not conceding for a second that you are – there's absolutely no way on God's green earth that you'll ever be able to prove it.'

‘You might well have been right about that – if it hadn't been for what Abe Birnbaum told me,' Woodend countered.

‘Huh?'

‘Remember what I said earlier about betrayin' your country rather than betray your friend? Well, that's what Birnbaum's done. Without even intendin' to, he told me somethin' that will blow this whole, sordid operation of yours wide open.'

‘What was the unpleasant word you used to me earlier?' Grant asked. ‘Bollocks?'

‘Bollocks,' Woodend agreed.

‘Then I have to say that you're talking bollocks,
Chuck
. Birnbaum's a mere dry-cleaner—'

‘The biggest in the tri-state area,' Woodend interrupted.

‘Birnbaum
is
nothing, and Birnbaum
knows
nothing,' Grant continued, ignoring him.

‘He knows about the fight Douglas Coutes and Robert Kineally had,' Woodend pointed out.

‘Hell,
everybody
knows about that!'

‘But what everybody
doesn't
know is that Coutes broke three of Kineally's ribs.'

‘What?'

Woodend chuckled. ‘I thought that would take you by surprise. It's not in the records, is it? It was never recorded because Kineally, for reasons of his own, didn't
want
it recorded. Which is why you didn't know about it. Which is also why the skeleton you used might have been perfect as far as the height an' build goes, but is missin' the magic ingredient – those broken ribs.'

‘I … I …' Grant said, in a strangled voice.

‘You're lost for words?' Woodend suggested helpfully.

‘Birnbaum's mistaken,' Grant managed to gasp.

‘He isn't, you know,' Woodend said. ‘An' the paramedics who treated Robert Kineally unofficially will confirm that he isn't.'

There was a knock of the trailer door, and Monika Paniatowski appeared. ‘He's on the move,' she said to Woodend, with some urgency.

‘Good,' Woodend replied. He turned to Grant. ‘You'll have to excuse me now, “Special Agent”,' he said, ‘because as interestin' as our conversation is turnin' out to be, I need to go an' catch a
real
murderer.'

There was no difficulty at all in following the car down the narrow country lanes, because even when they lost sight of it – which they frequently did – they could always see its lights in the distance.