A Walk With the Dead (10 page)

Crane waved his hands helplessly. ‘Liz is . . . well, I suppose she's just what you might call the final catalyst.'

‘In what?'

‘That's what I'd rather not say at the moment.'

‘Will this thing that you're holding back on – whatever it is – have any impact on the investigation?'

‘No, boss, I swear it won't.'

‘I don't like mysteries,' Paniatowski said.

‘Then you shouldn't be a detective, boss,' Crane said, sensing her wavering and risking a joke.

A smile flickered across Paniatowski's face. ‘I
will
wait – but you'd better be right about it not affecting the case.'

‘Cross my heart and hope to die,' Crane said.

‘Well, if you're wrong, you'll certainly
wish
you were dead,' Paniatowski said dryly.

George Baxter looked down at his notes he'd taken during the four interviews he'd conducted that morning, and decided that while he had made
some
progress, he hadn't made nearly enough.

He'd certainly established a pattern of sorts. The second, third and fourth pair of officers had all claimed – just as Fellows and Higgins had done before them – that when Templar had been attacked, they'd been dealing with a disturbance elsewhere.

So
had
the prisoners who wanted to hurt Templar orchestrated the whole thing?

Or had the officers invented the disturbances – or had them invented
for them
by Chief Officer Jeffries – to cover their own inefficiency?

He needed a break from work, he told himself, and since there was a news bulletin on the radio, he might as well find out what was happening beyond the walls of this closed, claustrophobic prison.

He switched his transistor radio on.

‘Sport,' said the announcer. ‘Despite the best efforts of its manager, Tommy Docherty, Manchester United looks increasingly likely to be relegated to the second division at the end of the season. A spokesman for the club . . .'

Baxter sighed. After years of hearing United fans mock Whitebridge Rovers' efforts to climb out of the second division, he should be taking pleasure from the fact that they would now be getting a taste of the unpleasant medicine themselves, he thought, but he doubted he could take pleasure in anything at that moment. He was less than forty-eight hours into his inquiry, and he was already heartily sick of it.

‘The closing headlines,' the news reader said. ‘Police in Lancashire are investigating the death of a girl found strangled in Whitebridge Corporation Park. The girl has been identified as Jill Harris, and she was thirteen years old. The officer in charge of the investigation, DCI Monika Paniatowski, has urged all members of the public who feel they may have some information to come forward, and . . .'

‘Thirteen years old! Monika Paniatowski!' Baxter exclaimed.

He reached for the phone and quickly dialled a Whitebridge number.

‘Jesus, who've I got working for me?' he asked himself. ‘Imbeciles?'

Mrs Pierce, who was head of pastoral care at Fairfield High School, was dressed like a frump, but had the keen eyes of a brain surgeon.

‘If you asked me about Jill only a couple of months ago, I'd have had very little to tell you,' she admitted to Meadows. ‘What I suppose I would have said is that she was quiet, industrious and a little boring – and I'd probably have put that down to that mother of hers.' She paused. ‘Have you met Mrs Harris?'

‘No,' Meadows said, ‘I haven't.'

‘Count yourself lucky,' Mrs Pierce said. ‘The woman's a monster. Not an evil monster, you understand – not even a malicious monster – but a true monster, nevertheless.'

‘Tell me about her,' Meadows suggested.

‘Mrs Harris' one aim in life is to fit in,' Mrs Pierce said. ‘She'd do anything to conform. She's a bit of a prude, but if you told her that everyone who was anybody was planning to strip off naked, cover themselves in paint, and run around the Boulevard, she'd be off to the ironmongers to buy a tin of Emerald Green before you could turn around.'

Meadows laughed. ‘You said that everything changed, as far as Jill was concerned, a couple of months ago,' she reminded Mrs Pierce.

‘Yes, it did. Jill was suddenly in trouble. Not in the classroom – she was still as good as gold there – but in the playground.'

‘What kind of trouble?'

‘Girls of her age can be so vicious that they'd make Adolf Hitler seem like Tiddles the Cat, but most of their viciousness is purely verbal. Having said that, of course, you should realize that verbal violence can often be more wounding than the physical kind.'

‘But you're saying that Jill went beyond the purely verbal stage?'

‘Indeed she did. She had not one, but several fights – and with several other girls.'

‘And what were the fights about?'

‘That's the
really
interesting thing.
If
girls have fights – and as I've said, that's very rare – they're always very keen to shift the blame on to the person they've had the fight with. They'll say the other girl said nasty things about their parents, or stole from them, or copied their homework.'

‘But in the case of Jill . . .?'

‘In the case of Jill's fights, neither of the participants was prepared to say a damn thing. They'd just sit there in absolute silence. To be honest with you, I found that an unnerving experience, because normally I can get girls to open up to me – whether they want to or not.'

‘I'm sure you can,' Meadows said. ‘What's your theory on why the fights started?'

‘How do you know I even have a theory?' Mrs Pierce asked.

Meadows grinned. ‘I think you're the kind of woman who'll
always
have a theory.'

Mrs Pierce smiled. ‘Yes, I suppose that is an occupational hazard,' she agreed. ‘I did have a theory at first, but, as events turned out, it didn't quite stand up to investigation.'

‘I'd still like to hear it.'

‘We had a new girl join us at the start of the spring term – a quiet, pretty, very timid little thing called Tilly Roberts. She and Jill became firm friends almost at once, and the fights started soon afterwards.'

‘So your theory is that the new girl was being bullied, and that Jill was defending her,' Meadows guessed.

‘Exactly,' Mrs Pierce agreed. ‘But then the friendship broke up – that happens with girls, they're joined at the hip one day, and scarcely noticing each other's existence the next. The friendship broke up – but the fights continued.'

‘So perhaps Jill had just acquired a taste for fighting,' Meadows suggested.

‘I'd be open to that idea if Jill had been a boy,' Mrs Pierce said, ‘but girls are not like that. Perhaps that comes from giving dolls to little girls, and guns to little boys.'

‘I'd like to talk to the girls who Jill got into fights with, and also to this Tilly Roberts,' Meadows said. ‘Do you want me to ring around the parents and get their permission, or will you do it?'

‘I'll do it,' Mrs Pierce said. ‘The parents have confidence in me.' She paused for a moment. ‘And even after talking to you for only a few minutes, I have confidence in you, Sergeant Meadows.'

‘Thank you,' Meadows said.

‘How are things going in Yorkshire, sir?' Fred Comminger, the assistant chief constable, asked the man on the other end of the line.

‘You assigned the murder of that young girl to DCI Paniatowski,' Baxter said angrily. ‘What the hell were you thinking of?'

‘It seemed a perfectly sensible decision to take,' Comminger replied. ‘DCI Paniatowski isn't involved in any other major investigation at the moment, and she'd expressed an interest in the case even before the body was discovered.'

‘You are aware that her own daughter was kidnapped not two months ago, aren't you?' Baxter asked.

‘Well, yes, but as I understand it, she was only missing for a couple of hours, and no real harm was done.'

‘There speaks a man who hasn't got any kids of his own,' Baxter said witheringly.

‘And neither have you, sir,' his deputy countered, rankled.

No, he hadn't, Baxter agreed silently, but he knew Monika well – which was more than Comminger seemed to.

‘I'm not at all sure DCI Paniatowski is up to handling this particular case at this particular moment,' he said aloud.

‘So you're telling me to take her off the investigation, are you?' Comminger asked.

‘No!' Baxter said, and was surprised at the note of what could almost have been panic in his own voice.

She couldn't be taken off the case like that – not so brutally! If that happened, she would never forgive him.

‘I'll come back to Whitebridge and talk to her. Then I'll make my own assessment of the situation,' he heard himself say.

‘You'll come all the way back to Whitebridge?' Comminger asked, with evident surprise.

‘I'm not on the other side of the world, you know. The drive won't take me much more than two hours.'

‘And it'll be another two hours back to Dunston.'

‘I'm more than willing to sacrifice four hours of my own time for the good of the force,' Baxter said. ‘And that's what this is all about you know – the good of the force.'

‘I'm sure it is, sir,' Comminger said, unconvincingly.

‘I want each case investigated by the officer who is most suited to investigate it,' Baxter continued, ‘and I'm not sure that DCI Paniatowski – because of her recent experience – is the best person in this instance.'

‘I know what you mean, sir,' Comminger said. ‘It's certainly a challenging case in which emotions will be running high, and if DCI Paniatowski fails to get a result, it certainly wouldn't do much for her reputation.'

He knows what Monika and I used to be to each other – or, at least, what she was to me – Baxter thought, and whatever I say, he thinks that's what's driving me.

‘I'm more concerned about putting a dangerous man behind bars than I am about protecting DCI Paniatowski's reputation,' he said.

‘Of course you are, sir,' Comminger agreed.

‘And since I won't decide whether or not she should stay on the case until after I've talked to her, I'd be grateful if you didn't even hint, before I get there, that there's a possibility she might be replaced,' Baxter said.

‘Whatever you say, sir – you're the boss,' Comminger replied.

And there was something in his tone that implied that his respect for the chief constable had gone into a nosedive over the previous few minutes.

‘W
here's young Jack?' asked Beresford, glancing across the pub table at the seat that should have been occupied by DC Crane.

‘He asked me if he could have half an hour off,' Paniatowski replied. ‘He said he had some personal business to attend to.'

‘Personal business,' Beresford repeated, with mild disgust. ‘Doesn't he realize we're in the middle of a murder inquiry?'

Paniatowski grinned. ‘You've gone from being the playboy of Whitebridge to a grumpy old man in less than a month, Colin,' she said. ‘Surely that has to be some kind of record?'

‘I just think he should be here,' Beresford said.

‘And he will be,' Paniatowski promised. ‘What have your lads out on the street come up with?'

‘There were several sightings of Jill Harris between the Royal Vic and her home – which is about half a mile away from the hotel – but that's hardly surprising, because the dress she was wearing would have made her rather conspicuous, wouldn't it?' Beresford said.

‘It would have made her stand out like a sore thumb,' Paniatowski agreed, remembering the flounced pink horror.

‘A couple of the neighbours remember seeing her leave her house again, about half an hour after she got home, and their description of what she was wearing matches the clothes she was found in,' Beresford continued. ‘However, from the point at which she passed the end of her street, we lose the trail.'

‘Maybe we'll get more witnesses as a result of the television appeal,' Paniatowski said hopefully. ‘How did that go, by the way?'

‘I believe that, on the whole, it went rather well,' Beresford replied. ‘I think I made all my points clearly, and that anyone who saw the broadcast will know what sort of information we need.'

‘Not that that will stop the odd nutter ringing up to claim he saw Jill being abducted by a space ship,' Meadows said.

‘No, there are always a few nutters,' Beresford agreed.

‘The problem is that anyone who saw her is likely to have seen her
before
she entered the park,' Paniatowski said. ‘What we really need is witnesses who were
in
the park – and the chances are, they don't even exist.'

‘Maybe we'll get lucky,' Beresford said, encouragingly.

Maybe they would, Paniatowski agreed silently – but somehow this didn't feel like a lucky case.

It was as Dr Liz Duffy was crossing the morgue car park that she noticed the handsome young man standing next to her vehicle.

‘Why, it's Detective Constable John Crane, isn't it?' she asked.

Crane grinned. ‘Sorry to have put you in such a difficult position earlier,' he said.

‘That's all right,' Liz told him, ‘once I got used to it, it was rather fun. But I must admit that I am interested in finding out
why
it was necessary to drop me into the middle of a pantomime without even a script to work from.'

‘You were about to say that we'd been up at Oxford together.'

‘Well, we were, weren't we?' Liz Duffy smiled. ‘Or have I simply imagined it all?'

‘No, you didn't imagine it,' Crane said, ‘but nobody I work with knows I went to university.'