Backlash (13 page)

‘We don't know that any harm has come to Mrs Kershaw – but it still doesn't stop us from throwing resources that we can ill afford into searching for her.'

‘You can't compare the two,' Baxter told her.

‘
Why
can't I?' Paniatowski countered. ‘Because one's a senior policeman's wife and the other's a common whore?'

‘Essentially, yes.'

‘You disappoint me,' Paniatowski said, knowing she might be pushing things more than was wise, but – by this stage – not giving a damn. ‘They're both
people
, sir.'

‘You're right,' Baxter admitted. ‘They are.'

‘And I think the two cases may be connected.'

‘I'm listening,' Baxter said.

‘The man who slashed Denise Slater was, at least potentially, a sadist. Agreed?'

‘If she accurately reported what it was he said to her, then that does seem likely.'

‘And before he ran away, he said, “It shouldn't have been like this.” So maybe he rethought his entire game plan. Maybe he decided that since he obviously couldn't
persuade
women to go with him, he'd have to
force
them.'

‘So perhaps he did kidnap this prostitute.'

‘And perhaps he also kidnapped Mrs Kershaw.'

‘On the same night? That's stretching the bounds of credibility a little, isn't it, Monika?'

‘You've heard about the red shoe heel, haven't you?'

‘Yes, but . . .'

‘The shoes were not Mrs Kershaw's – her husband has confirmed that. So the kidnapper must have taken them with him. And despite the fact that it's difficult to dress anyone who's unconscious – which Mrs Kershaw probably was at the time – he slipped the shoes on her feet before he left the house. Doesn't that suggest that he was fulfilling some sort of fantasy?'

‘It's possible,' Baxter conceded.

‘And further support for the fantasy theory is that the two missing women are of the same physical type. You'd describe Elaine Kershaw as petite, wouldn't you?'

‘Undoubtedly.'

‘And when Marie was talking about Grace, she said, “She's so tiny”. So what stretches the bounds of credibility the furthest? Believing that one man snatched two women? Or believing that there are two perverts in Whitebridge who decided to snatch women within hours of one another?'

‘You may widen the scope of your investigation,' Baxter said reluctantly.

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘But I want you to keep clearly in mind that the main thrust of the investigation is to be aimed at returning Mrs Kershaw safely to her husband – and that if the investigation into the prostitute's disappearance looks like distracting you, in any way, from that central purpose, you will abandon it. Mrs Kershaw is – and must always be – your main consideration.'

‘Naturally,' Paniatowski agreed.

Like hell! she thought.

Elaine Kershaw was the wife of an important man, and that made her important, too. She had the whole of the Mid Lancs constabulary on her side – from the lowly officers who admired Kershaw from a distance, to the chief constable who attended the same church as her husband and went fishing with him.

And who does Grace have on her side? she asked herself. Me – and
only
me!

TEN

D
usk came early in November and, as it descended, half the life of Whitebridge shut down. The shops stayed open, but the shoppers were few. Offices continued to function, but the death of the day brought with it an accompanying demise of enthusiasm and initiative. Only in the few factories that were still left in the town did the relentless movement of the conveyor belt – which was affected by neither light nor darkness – manage to maintain a purposeful rhythm of activity.

The police force – especially those members involved in the Elaine Kershaw case – were exempt from this particular evening malaise, and long after the dark had firmly established itself, Sergeants Lee and Meadows were still ploughing their way through the files which chronicled the last five years of Chief Superintendent Kershaw's working life.

It was just after nine o'clock that Kate Meadows pushed the file she was studying aside and said, ‘I have to go out for an hour or so, Bill.'

Lee looked up. ‘Got a meeting with your boss, have you?' And without waiting for a reply, he added, ‘Well, I expect you know your way to the Drum and Monkey by now.' He chuckled. ‘Don't look so surprised, Kate. Your boss's fondness for the Drum is legendary around police headquarters.'

‘Legendary – but disapproved of?' Meadows wondered.

‘Far from it,' Lee assured her. ‘You can sometimes get a lot of work done over a few pints – I often wish Mr Kershaw would take a leaf out of DCI Paniatowski's book.'

Meadows stood up. ‘I'll get back as soon as I can.'

‘If I was you, I wouldn't bother,' Lee told her. ‘You've probably taken in as much of this stuff as you can for one day. When you've finished your meeting with DCI Paniatowski, your best plan would be to get yourself off to bed, so you can make a fresh start in the morning.'

‘And what about you?'

‘I won't be good for much more than another half-hour myself, so if you
do
come back, you'll probably find me gone.'

‘In that case, I'll see you in the morning,' Meadows said.

‘Sweet dreams – as if there was any chance of that,' Lee called after her, as she stepped out into the corridor.

‘There's not a shoe shop in the whole town which will admit to ever stocking shoes with high red heels,' Crane told the rest of the team. ‘Of course, we could try further afield – Bolton's a bit more cosmopolitan and sophisticated than Whitebridge – but I don't think we'll have any luck there, either.'

‘And why's that?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Because I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that they won't have been made by what you might call an “ordinary” shoe manufacturer,' Crane explained. ‘One of the assistants who I talked to said they were “kinky” – and the more I look at that heel, the more I'm sure she's right. I think they're the work of a specialist company which caters for customers with a particular requirement, if . . . er . . . you know what I mean.'

Paniatowski sighed. ‘Yes, Jack, I think we
all
know what you mean.'

‘So, suppose I wanted a pair of these shoes,' Beresford said. ‘Where would I buy them?'

‘There are a number of sleazy sex shops in Manchester which might possibly stock them – or so I'm told,' Crane said tentatively, ‘but even if they do, I don't think the kidnapper will have bought them there.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because there'd always be a chance that the shop owner might remember his face – and he seems to have been far too careful to take that kind of risk unless he absolutely had to.'

‘And you're saying that he
didn't
have to?'

‘That's right.'

‘So what would he have done instead?'

‘Bought one of those magazines that the sleazier newsagents keep under the counter, flicked through the adverts until he found something he liked – in this case, the red shoes – then ordered the shoes, and had them sent to a post office box. There's some risk even in that, but it's much less.'

Paniatowski nodded. ‘Good thinking, Jack. The first thing in the morning, I want you to go round all those newsagents and buy as many different magazines as you can.'

Crane grimaced. ‘Does it have to be me who does that, boss? I don't even own a dirty raincoat.'

‘I'll do it,' Kate Meadows said.

‘You've got a mountain of Chief Superintendent Kershaw's files to work your way through,' Paniatowski reminded her.

‘I'll need a break at some point in the morning,' Meadows said. ‘I'll
have to have
a break, or I'll go stale – and that's when you start overlooking vital bits of information. So I'll do it.'

‘When I pulled that face, it was only a joke, Sarge,' Crane said, sounding slightly guilty. ‘I really don't mind making the rounds of the shops myself.'

‘I'll do it,' Kate Meadows said, for a third time – and even more firmly.

‘Fair enough,' Crane accepted. Then he turned to Paniatowski. ‘That is, if it's all right with you, boss.'

‘It's all right with me,' Paniatowski agreed, though she was puzzled why Meadows should have been quite so insistent.

She took a sip of her vodka, and mentally prepared herself to deliver the bombshell.

‘The chief constable wants us to widen the investigation,' she said, as if it had all been Baxter's idea.

And then she told them all about little Grace Meade.

It took Paniatowski fifteen minutes to outline the details of Grace's disappearance, the attack on Denise Slater and her own encounter with Lucy and Marie, and when she'd finished, Beresford said, ‘But we're overstretched already, boss.'

‘Not nearly as overstretched as we'd be if Mr Kershaw's men hadn't come on board,' Paniatowski replied. ‘And I really do think that there might be a clear connection between the two cases.'

If anyone was about to take a pot shot at the theory, she expected it to be Beresford, but, in fact, it was Crane who said, ‘I'm not convinced, boss. Snatching two women on the same day would be almost impossibly complicated.'

‘It would certainly be very complicated, I'll grant you that – but not impossibly so,' Paniatowski told him.

‘Especially if there were two men involved,' Colin Beresford said, totally out of the blue.

‘
Two
men?' Paniatowski repeated.

‘One of my young DCs asked me this morning why we assumed there was only one intruder in the Kershaw house, when – for lack of any specific evidence pointing in that direction – there might just as easily have been two or even three,' Beresford explained. ‘I had to admit that he had a point.'

‘Go on,' Paniatowski said – welcoming the support but almost fearful of where Beresford might be leading them.

‘What if we turn the constable's question on its head?' Beresford continued. ‘What if, instead of asking ourselves if two men could have kidnapped Elaine Kershaw, we ask instead if it's possible that two men
were
involved, but that while one was snatching Elaine, the other – his partner – was snatching Grace Meade?'

And suddenly Paniatowski's mind was flung violently back down a long, dark, jagged, time tunnel – back to a kidnapping case which she and Charlie Woodend had investigated, where the very fact that they
hadn't
worked out earlier that more than one man was involved had almost cost the life of an innocent child.

‘Dear God!' she said aloud.

‘Are you all right, boss?' Crane asked worriedly.

‘I'm fine,' Paniatowski lied. ‘Denise Slater needs to be walked through the mug shot book, and, with any luck, she'll be able to identify her attacker,' she continued – more crisply, more in control, now. ‘If she does manage to pick out a suspect, then the next thing we need to do is to find out if he crops up in any of Mr Kershaw's investigations.' She turned to Meadows. ‘That'll be your job, Kate.'

‘Got it, boss,' Meadows agreed.

Paniatowski looked up at the clock above the bar. ‘That's probably about as far as we can get tonight,' she pronounced. ‘See you all in the morning.'

As she stood up and turned towards the door, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and looking round, she saw that the tapper was Beresford.

‘Did I miss something out?' she asked.

‘Not really,' Beresford admitted. ‘But I would like a quiet word in the car park, if that's all right with you.'

‘It's all right with me,' Paniatowski told him – though she strongly suspected that it wouldn't be.

Paniatowski and Beresford walked to the far end of the Drum and Monkey's car park in uneasy silence. Even when they reached the boundary wall, they didn't speak, but instead both looked up at the night sky.

Finally, after perhaps half a minute of star gazing, Beresford said, ‘I'm more than a bit concerned about the new direction that the investigation is suddenly taking, boss.'

Paniatowski, who had been expecting something like this, already had her answer prepared.

‘Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it you who said – not five minutes ago – that the two cases could easily be connected?' she asked.

‘Yes, I said it,' Beresford conceded.

‘Well, then?'

‘The thing is, boss, my first instinct is
always
to support you, because I've learned to trust your judgement. But on this occasion . . .'

‘On this occasion, you've decided that you
don't
trust it,' Paniatowski interrupted. ‘And why is that, Colin? Could it be because you think that I hate Mr Kershaw so much that I don't really
want
to investigate his wife's abduction—'

‘No, I—'

‘—and that I'm desperately searching for a distraction – any kind of distraction – which will give me the excuse I need to avoid having to really try to get a result?'

‘Of course not!'

‘So just what point
are
you attempting to make?'

‘I think that what's been happening has offended your sense of natural justice.'

‘Sense of natural justice?' Paniatowski scoffed. ‘That's a bit of airy-fairy, doesn't-actually-say-much, way of speaking, isn't it?'