Dead on Cue (28 page)

But it was pointless to speculate on what might have been. The mill owner had chosen that spot, the boundary commissioners had drawn that line, NWTV had decided to buy the studio – and instead of the double murder being Manchester Police's headache, it was his.

And a real bugger of a headache it was – a champion among migraines. John Dinnage would have understood the complexities of the case, but Dinnage was dead, and a much lesser man had stepped into his shoes. If it would protect his own back, Henry Marlowe would be more than willing to see other men's heads roll, and there was no question about whose would be first on the block.

Not that his would be the only one, Woodend thought miserably. The stink of failure would cling to Bob Rutter and Monika Paniatowski, too, and though the axe would not fall on their necks as quickly as it fell on his own, their careers were as doomed as his.

Bob and Monika were good, loyal bobbies – and they deserved better than that. Yet though he accepted that he was the only who could save them from their fate, he did not even know how to begin. He was never going to prove that Bill Houseman had killed Valerie Farnsworth, and though he had at least three plausible suspects for the murder of Houseman himself, they had only to keep their nerve to escape scot free.

He was surprised to discover that he had reached the centre of the village, and that the post-office store was just ahead of him.

Might as well buy an evening paper while I'm here, he thought, signalling and pulling up in front of the shop.

He'd grown accustomed to receiving a cheery greeting from Ted Bryce, the postmaster, but that early evening he was out of luck. Far from being pleased to see him, Bryce looked as if he'd be much happier if the chief inspector took his custom elsewhere.

‘Somethin' the matter, Ted?' Woodend asked, concerned. ‘Not had bad news, I hope.'

Guilt replaced embarrassment on the postmaster's face. ‘No . . . er . . . nothin' like that,' he said awkwardly. ‘It's . . . it's been a long day, that's all.'

‘Most of them are,' Woodend agreed. ‘Has the evenin' paper come in yet?'

Bryce nodded. ‘It has,' he admitted reluctantly. ‘You don't want one, do you?'

‘Actually, I do,' the chief inspector replied. ‘That's why I asked if they'd come in.'

The postmaster reached for a paper from the stack, but as he handed it over his eyes were fixed on a point somewhere on the other side of the shop.

So that's why it feels like the Antarctic in here, is it? Woodend thought. Because there's somethin' about me in the paper!

He stepped out of the shop and unfolded the newspaper. He saw the headline right away – it would have been very hard to miss it!

SECOND DEATH AT NWTV

THE RESULT OF POLICE BUNGLE?

By our special correspondent Elizabeth Driver

One of the signs of a good police force is that it arrives on the scene shortly after a crime has been committed. In the case of the murders at NWTV's
Maddox Row
studios, however, the Mid-Lancs Police were
already
on the scene – investigating the death of popular actress Valerie Farnsworth – when a second murder, that of producer Bill Houseman, took place.

‘I'm completely baffled,' Chief Inspector Woodend, the officer in charge of the case, admitted to me in an exclusive interview this afternoon. ‘The killer appears to be fiendishly clever, and has left no clue behind him whatsoever.'

‘Bollocks!' Woodend swore.

There was more – several columns more – but he saw no reason why he should waste his time reading it and, aware that he was being watched from inside the shop, he stuffed the paper into the litter-bin.

Well, you had to give the lass credit for one thing, he thought – she'd promised to make him look like a buffoon, and anyone reading the article would have no doubt that he was. If DCS Ainsworth and his pal Acting Chief Constable Henry Marlowe needed any more ammunition to fire at him, Elizabeth Driver had certainly provided them with it.

As he got into his car again, he was tempted to turn around and head back to the studio. But what would have been the point of that? The show did not go out until the following evening. Aside from the NWTV security men and the few uniformed bobbies he'd left behind to keep an eye on things, there would be nobody there. And even if there had been, he was not sure that he had anything to ask them which had not already been asked.

It had been dark for some time. Woodend stood alone, on the edge of the moors of his childhood – looking up at the stars and listening to the wind moaning softly in distance. Then, almost before he realised what was happening, he found himself replaying in his head the conversation that he and Joan had had about Annie's disappearance.

Slowly and painfully, he analysed what Joan had said, then pulled apart his own comments to see if they still made sense. When the process was finally over, he was exhausted but convinced that he'd handled the situation correctly. The worst thing they could possibly do would be to drag Annie back against her will, he told himself. Doing that would lose them the part of her they still had left.

‘I made the right decision!' he shouted into the darkness.

Right decision? Right decision?

The whisper he heard was no echo – there was nothing in front of him for his voice to echo against – so he knew it must be coming from inside his head.

Would he have handled Annie's disappearance in
exactly
this way if he hadn't been up to his neck in a murder investigation which threatened to rob him of everything he had worked for all these years? he agonised.

Wasn't there something in him – just as there was something in the people most involved in
Maddox Row
– that would do its best to deceive himself and deceive others, because the truth was an inconvenience and a diversion?

And because, whatever else happened, the show must go on?

T
he rain should have been pouring down in buckets, Woodend thought as he drove along the snaking road which ran across the tops of the moors. There should have been thunder and lightning, and a wind which shrieked like a soul lost in hell. That kind of weather would have matched his mood perfectly. And what had he got instead? A sunny morning which gave the indications of turning into a perfect autumn day. It seemed as if even nature was against him!

He turned to Paniatowski, who was sitting silently in the passenger seat beside him.

‘Say somethin' to cheer me up, Monika,' he told her.

‘I wish I could, but nothing really springs to mind,' Paniatowski confessed. ‘Shall I tell you what's in the papers?'

‘Oh aye, you do that,' Woodend said sourly. ‘Readin' about what a bungler I'm supposed to be would really perk me up.'

‘There's other things in the news,' Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Shall I go to the sports page and see how the Rovers are doing?'

‘Don't bother with that, either,' Woodend said dismissively. ‘If it weren't for the fact that even at the best of times you have to be half-pissed to sit through one of their matches, the way they've been playin' this season would turn any man to drink.'

Paniatowski rifled through the paper. ‘Here's something interesting,' she said. ‘Preston Vance is dead.'

‘Oh aye? Shot straight through the heart with a Comanche warrior's arrow, was he?'

Paniatowski chuckled. ‘No, it was a car accident, apparently. Do you want me to read it out to you?'

‘Aye, you might as well.'

‘Hollywood film star Preston Vance died on Wednesday at the age of forty-eight, Orange County officials confirmed last night,' Paniatowski read. ‘Mr Vance died as a result of a road accident in which his was the only car involved. Preliminary findings suggest that he had been drinking, and had possibly taken illegal drugs.'

‘He should have stuck to ridin' horses,' Woodend commented. ‘What else does it say?'

‘Vance made his name in the 1940s and the early 1950s as the strong, silent hero in numerous western films including
Ambush at Dry Gulch
.'

‘Aye, it was a cracker, that one,' Woodend said. ‘I especially liked the bit where he knocks the crap out of six fellers in a saloon brawl an' hardly even ruffles the partin' in his hair.'

‘His career had taken something of a dive in recent years,' Paniatowski continued, ‘and he was forced to accept roles in low-budget B films such as
Gunfight at Cross Creek.
Recently, however, he had being hoping to make a comeback as a television star. Plans have been under way for some time for him to appear in a series of dramas in which he would play a gentleman amateur detective, and friends feel that it was the television network's decision not to go ahead with the series which caused him to begin drinking heavily and, ultimately, led to his death. The series, which was to have been called
Arbuthnot and I
—'

Woodend slammed on the brakes so violently that the sergeant was jerked forward in her seat. The Humber skidded slightly, then came to a halt at the side of the road.

‘What's wrong, sir?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Arbuthnot!' Woodend said. ‘Arbuthnot! That's not a Yank name, is it, Monika?'

‘No, I think it's Scottish originally,' Paniatowski said. She scanned the remainder of the article. ‘That's right, it is. The “I” in the title of the series was going to be Preston Vance himself, and Arbuthnot was going to be the name of his Scottish—'

‘Of his Scottish butler,' Woodend interrupted.

‘How did you know that?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Have you read some other article about it?'

‘No. It's as much news to me as it is to you.'

‘Then I don't see how you could have even guessed that—'

But Woodend was no longer listening to her. He had covered his face with his big hands and was thinking so hard that she could almost hear the wheels turning round in his head.

For a full five minutes neither of them said anything, then Woodend lowered his hands again and looked into his sergeant's eyes.

‘I've had it all wrong,' he told Paniatowski. ‘I've had it all wrong right from the start.'

W
oodend and Paniatowski had already been sitting in the small conference room for fifteen minutes when a uniformed constable led Diana Houseman in. The producer's widow was wearing a slinky black dress which revealed a considerable amount of cleavage, and would not have looked at all out of place at a cocktail party.

Paniatowski supposed that the dress was her idea of being in mourning. Woodend, his mind racing at top speed, did not even notice it.

‘I strongly object to being dragged from my home in this totally unreasonable manner,' Diana Houseman said, sitting down.

‘I don't really give a bugger
what
you object to,' Woodend told her.

‘I beg your pardon!' Diana Houseman said, outraged.

‘Have you lost your hearin' – as well as your morals?' Woodend demanded.

Diana Houseman stood up. ‘I have no intention of staying here to listen to your insults,' she gasped.

‘Sit down again, or I'll have you locked up,' Woodend said. ‘An' that's not a threat – it's a promise.'

Diana Houseman hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly sank back into her seat. ‘What's this all about?' she asked.

‘It's about you bein' indirectly responsible for two murders,' Woodend replied.

‘But that's absurd. I would never—'

‘I didn't say you planned them. I know you didn't. But you
did
start the ball rollin'. An' now you're goin' to help us clear the whole bloody matter up, whether you want to or not.'

For once, Diana Houseman looked cowed. ‘I'm more than willing to do anything I can to—' she began.

‘Here's the new rules,' Woodend interrupted her. ‘I ask you a straight question, an' you give me a straight answer. If you don't do that, I'll find a way to make sure you serve time behind bars, even if it's only a couple of years. Have I made myself clear?'

‘Yes,' Diana Houseman said quietly. ‘You've made yourself perfectly clear.'

‘Right, now we've established that, we can get down to business,' Woodend said. ‘Yesterday you told me an' my sergeant here that you'd taken precautions to ensure that your husband didn't find out about you an' Paddy Colligan. Is that correct?'

‘Yes.'

‘But you weren't prepared to tell us what those precautions were.'

‘Why should I? It's really none of your business.'

Woodend shook his head. ‘You still don't get it, do you?' he asked. ‘You still can't see how one thing led to another?'

‘I'm not a detective,' Diana Houseman said sullenly.

‘No, you're not,' Woodend agreed. ‘There's other words I could think of to describe you, but I won't use them now, because they'd make even my hard-bitten sergeant blush. So instead I'll just tell you what these so-called precautions of yours were, and you can tell me whether I'm right or wrong. Let's go back to the beginnin', which is weeks or maybe even months before Valerie Farnsworth was killed. You'd already started seein' Paddy Colligan, an' you knew your husband would suspect you of havin' an affair sooner or later. But that really didn't matter, because you also knew you could sweet-talk him into forgivin' you. What
did
matter was that he shouldn't find out your lover was Paddy. Correct?'

‘More or less.'

‘But you also knew you'd have to give your husband a name – because if he was goin' to forgive
you
, he had to have
somebody else
to blame.' Woodend paused to light up a Capstan Full Strength. ‘Now this is the bit that really turns my stomach,' he continued. ‘You couldn't just pick a name at random, because when your husband challenged your supposed lover, he'd obviously deny it – an' there was always a chance that Bill would believe him. So what did you do?'