Death of an Innocent (12 page)

He should have known, Woodend thought. He should have recognized from the start that if there were a world championship for Jobsworth of the Year, Mickey Lee would win it hands down.

‘I'd have done it for you, you know,' he said, making one last effort.

‘
You'd
have done for it for somebody you hardly even knew,' Lee replied, a little sadly. ‘But, you see, you're not me.'

‘No, I'm not,' Woodend agreed. ‘You'd best get on with whatever you were doin' when I turned up like a bad penny. I'll see myself out.'

‘One thing before you go,' Mickey Lee said.

‘An' what might that be?'

‘If you tell anybody you've been here, I'll deny I even let you through the door.'

‘You amaze me,' Woodend told him.

N
ot too many cars went down the dirt track which ran alongside the Woodends' cottage, but there were enough of them during the week for Charlie Woodend not to find himself wondering who it was every time he heard a vehicle carefully negotiating its way down the rutted road. So he did no more than register the rumble of a car as he was preparing his bedtime cocoa at the end of the long day which included his visit to Rochdale. And even when he heard the car's engine die, the driver's door slam, and the sound of footsteps coming towards his front door, he was no more than mildly curious.

He glanced up at the grandfather clock. It was well after midnight. Chances were his visitor was some poor, hapless motorist who had taken a wrong turning and found himself wandering the labyrinth of country lanes with no idea of which turn to take next.

It came as something of a surprise, when he answered the urgent knocking at the door, to find Monika Paniatowski standing there. And it was even more surprising – possibly even shocking – to see the state the sergeant was in.

Paniatowski's eyes were red. The silky blonde hair drooped in rat's tails over her shoulders. And the shoulders themselves had developed an uncharacteristic droop since the last time he'd seen her.

‘I promised myself an early night for once,' Paniatowski said tiredly. ‘I thought I'd fall asleep the minute my head hit the pillow. But I didn't. I couldn't go to sleep however hard I tried.'

‘I know
that
feelin' well enough myself,' Woodend said sympathetically.

‘So in the end, I gave up. I got dressed again, and for the last couple of hours, I've just been driving around. I didn't mean to come here – at least, I don't think that I did. It wasn't until I realized what that bloody lane of yours was doing to my suspension that it even registered that I was anywhere near your house. Then I saw your downstairs light was still on, and it seemed like a good idea to stop. Would you mind if I came in for a few minutes?'

‘Of course not, lass,' Woodend said. ‘Step inside an' make yourself comfortable.'

Paniatowski flopped down heavily on the sofa. ‘God, life's an awful bloody thing, isn't it?' she said. ‘You don't happen to have any vodka in the house, do you, sir?'

‘You emptied the bottle the last time you were here. But there's some twelve-year-old single-malt whisky sittin' in the cupboard, if you'd like to try that instead.'

‘That'll do,' Paniatowski said dismissively, as if he had offered her methylated spirits.

Woodend poured his sergeant a large shot, then watched her as she knocked it back with scant regard to its delicate flavour.

‘What's on your mind, lass?' he asked gently.

Paniatowski gave a half-hearted shrug. ‘You? The investigation at Dugdale's farm? The clutch on the MGA? I don't know any more. My judgement's so shot that I can't work out what's important and what isn't.'

‘Do you want to talk about the case?'

‘If you like – not that that'll take us long. We're getting nowhere fast. DI Harris is happy enough, because he's having so much fun playing Big Chief that he hasn't even noticed how low the team's morale is. And as for Mr Ainsworth – well, Dick the Prick seems much more interested in nailing you to the wall than he is in finding out who blew that poor bloody girl's face away.'

Should he tell her about Dugdale? Woodend asked himself. Should he give away the one card he still had in his hand?

‘I've found somethin' out that might help the investigation, an' since it doesn't look like it's goin' to be much use to me any more, you might as well take the credit for it yourself,' he said.

Paniatowski's tired eyes were suddenly alive and intelligent again. ‘What is it?' she asked.

‘It's about Dugdale. For at least some of his missin' years, he was livin' in Rochdale. I don't really know if that bit of information will lead you anywhere positive – but it's all I've got to give you.'

‘It might help,' Paniatowski said. ‘But if there's any credit to be extracted from it, I'll make damn sure it goes to you.'

Woodend shook his head. ‘That'd be a waste of time, lass,' he said regretfully. ‘From what you've told me about what's been happenin' in the last couple of days, my stock's so low that if I turned up at the station tomorrow with the murderer in tow, an' his confession in my hand, Ainsworth would still probably arrest me as an accomplice.'

The phone rang shrilly, making Paniatowski jump. ‘Are you expecting a call?' she asked, sounding panicked.

‘At this time of night? No, I'm not.'

The same thought was running through both their minds, Woodend realized – that the caller was DCC Ainsworth, demanding to know what Paniatowski was doing at the cottage of a man currently under investigation.

It was a ludicrous idea, of course. It would never have crossed Ainsworth's mind that one officer would go out on a limb for another officer. And even if it had done, Paniatowski – despite her present state – could not have failed to notice if she'd been followed down the country lane.

So it was insane to think – even for a moment – that it was Ainsworth on the other end of the line. But the fact they
had
both thought it showed just how screwed up their minds were.

Woodend picked up the receiver. ‘Yes?'

‘Is that DCI Charlie Woodend?' asked a familiar voice.

‘Mickey? Mickey Lee?'

‘No names,' the caller said hastily. ‘No names, an' no follow-ups. This is a once-only call. Understood?'

‘Understood.'

‘An' after it, our account's squared?'

‘Absolutely.'

There was a pause as if, even at this stage, Lee was contemplating hanging up, then he said accusingly, ‘You never mentioned the fact that Wilfred Dugdale's got a criminal record!'

‘I didn't know he had.'

‘Are you playin' straight with me?'

‘Yes,' Woodend said.

‘You're sure?'

‘I swear I am.'

‘You always did play straight,' Mickey Lee said grudgingly. ‘All right, here's what I've got for you. Dugdale
did
live in Rochdale for a fair number of years before the war. He worked as a builder's labourer, on an' off, but most of the time he was drawin' the dole. In other words, he was a typical scrounger, livin' off the fat of the land while me an' my missus have to work our balls off to meet the mortgage payments every month.'

But Dugdale hadn't shown any signs of being a scrounger since he'd got back to Whitebridge, Woodend thought. Far from it – he was fully entitled to an old age pension, but he'd never bothered to register for it.

‘Go on,' he said encouragingly.

‘Dugdale was suspected of any number of minor crimes durin' his time in Rochdale.'

‘What kind of minor crimes?'

‘Breakin' an' enterin'. Fencin' stolen goods. That kind of toe-rag stuff. He was pulled in for questionin' a couple of dozen times, but the bobbies in charge of the cases could never make anythin' stick.'

‘If they couldn't make anythin' stick, why does Dugdale have a criminal record?'

‘I'm comin' to that. One night back in 1938 he got into a fight in a pub called the Dun Horse.'

‘A serious fight?'

‘Serious enough. He went for the other feller with a broken bottle an' cut him up pretty badly, too, by all accounts. Anyway, to make a long story short, he was charged with GBH, an' drew an eight stretch.'

Woodend felt his pulse start to race. He was on to something, he thought – at last, he was on to something.

‘You're absolutely sure of all this, are you?' he asked.

‘Certain. If you want more details, I can give them to you.'

‘All right.'

‘He served his time in Strangeways, an' his cellmate for most of his sentence was a nasty young tearaway who went by the name of Philip Swales. Both Dugdale an' Swales were released at the same time – June 1946.'

Right around the time Clem Dugdale, Wilfred's father, had finally popped his clogs. And Wilfred, finally free to go wherever he wanted to after eight long years in prison, had heard about his old man's death and come back to Whitebridge to claim his inheritance.

‘Did he⎯?' Woodend began.

‘That's it,' said the voice on the other end of the line. ‘That's all I've got – and that's all you're gettin'.
Ever
.'

The line went dead. Woodend replaced the receiver on its cradle, and turned back to Paniatowski.

‘Accordin' to the man I've just spoken to, Dugdale did time in Strangeways for GBH,' he said, with the new hope he felt evident in his voice. ‘He attacked another feller in a pub in Rochdale. An' it must have been a pretty nasty attack, because he served eight years.'

Paniatowski frowned worriedly. ‘Don't go getting carried away, sir,' she cautioned him.

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Just what I say: however desperate we are, there's no point in trying to twist the facts so that they'll fit into a convenient theory.'

‘Is that what I was doin'?'

Paniatowski nodded. ‘I'm afraid I think that it was. So Dugdale's got a record for violence. What does that really prove? Getting into a heated pub brawl – even a particularly nasty one – is an entirely different matter to shooting two people, one of them a girl, in cold blood.'

‘You think I'm tryin' to pin the murders on Dugdale?'

‘Aren't you?'

‘No, I'm not. This isn't about Dugdale at all.'

‘Then what is it about?'

‘The Central Lancs police force.'

Paniatowski's frown deepened. ‘You've lost me.'

‘Think about it,' Woodend urged.

Paniatowski did. ‘If Dugdale has a criminal record, then his fingerprints should be on file,' she said finally.

‘Go on.'

‘And it's almost inconceivable that none of the prints that Battersby lifted from the farmhouse belonged to the owner of the place.'

‘Agreed. So we should have got a match – and we didn't. Now why do you think that is?'

‘There are two possible explanations,' Paniatowski said, speaking slowly and carefully. ‘The first one is that DC Battersby made a lousy job of doing the comparisons.'

‘It wouldn't be the only time there's been a slip-up of that nature,' Woodend said, playing Devil's Advocate.

‘But Battersby didn't just do the comparisons only once – he did them a second time.'

‘That's right, he did.'

‘And after that, they were sent down to Scotland Yard. So if a mistake was made, it had to be made
three
times, by
two
different sets of people. And I simply can't see that happening.'

‘Which leaves us with the other possibility, doesn't it?' Woodend said. ‘An' that is . . .?'

‘That the reason there was no match was because Dugdale's prints were never submitted for examination.'

‘Or, at least, they were never submitted to
Scotland Yard
.'

‘Or at least they were never submitted to Scotland Yard,' Paniatowski echoed.

‘That information I gave you on Dugdale earlier . . . about where he was durin' the missin' years . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Forget what I said about sharin' it with the rest of your team. I think you should keep it to yourself for a while longer.'

‘Do you really?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Do you think I'm wrong about that?'

‘In a way. But it's more a question of degree than anything else.' Paniatowski gave him a tired – perhaps even vaguely optimistic – smile. ‘You don't
think
we should share the information about Dugdale with the rest of the team yet – whereas I'm bloody
sure
that we shouldn't.'

T
he pale blue Ford Anglia, which Woodend had borrowed from one of his neighbours, blended in well with the other cars parked on the early-morning streets of Birkdale, a housing estate located on the south side of Whitebridge.

The estate was a fairly new development. It was considered by many people in Whitebridge to be a highly desirable place in which to live, and its residents – drawn from the ranks of primary school teachers, clerks, driving instructors and factory foremen – were quietly complacent about having had the foresight to move into it. Yet despite their complacency, even they would be prepared to admit that Birkdale could not compare with the Castlewood Estate, a recent project of T. A. Taylor and Associates, on the north side of town. All the houses in Castlewood were detached, and were occupied by solicitors, factory managers and doctors. Such places were well beyond the reach of people like them – and of low-ranking police officers like DC Clive Battersby.

Woodend glanced through the windscreen of the Anglia at Battersby's house and those on either side of it. The one to the left had an elaborate nameplate on the front wall, announcing that it was called ‘Camelot'. The one to the right had a brass carriage lamp over its door. Battersby's house had neither a nameplate nor a carriage lamp. Even from a distance, the Chief Inspector could see that the front windows could have done with a good cleaning and that the paint on the front door was starting to flake.