Death Watch (12 page)

‘Paniatowski.'

‘… Sergeant Paniatowski, it was stolen somewhere around a quarter to three.'

Paniatowski looked around the office. There were three filing cabinets in one corner, and two tables on which piles of cardboard folders were stacked.

‘You seem to be a busy man, on the face of things,' she said.

‘Oh, I am,' Brunton agreed. ‘Very busy indeed.' He glanced down at his watch. ‘In fact, I'm so busy that, if you wouldn't mind—'

‘So what were you doing in the Daresbury Arcade at that time of day?' Paniatowski interrupted.

For a moment, it looked as if Brunton had decided to be annoyed, then he smiled again and said, ‘As you probably know yourself, the arcade houses a number of small shops.'

‘Small
expensive
shops,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘Shops selling antiques, jewellery, and bits of pricey bric-a-brac that people don't even know they need until they actually see them.'

‘Quite so,' Brunton agreed dryly. ‘That's
just
what they deal in. And I've rather come to rely on that arcade when I need to buy presents.'

‘And you needed to buy a present yesterday? What kind of present? Was it someone's birthday?'

‘Close, but no cigar,' Brunton said. There was a silver-framed picture on his desk, and he turned it around so that Paniatowski could see it. In the photograph were two small boys and a rather plain woman. All of them were smiling. ‘It's my fifteenth wedding anniversary the day after tomorrow,' he continued. ‘Last year, I forgot about it completely, and my wife – understandably – played merry hell with me. I wasn't going to be caught out like that again.'

‘So what did you buy her?'

‘Nothing! Because somewhere between Waterman's the Jewellers and the Venetian Glass shop, I had my wallet lifted.'

‘Did you feel it being taken?'

‘Not at all. It was only when I decided to buy something from the glass shop that I even realized it had gone.'

‘Did you inform the police?'

‘I didn't go down to the station, if that's what you mean.'

‘Why not?'

‘But I did ring Superintendent Crawley, who's a friend of mine, to tell him that it had gone missing, and he, for his part, assured me he'd see to it that the proper report was filed.'

‘Did you make this phone call right away?'

‘As a matter of fact, I didn't.'

‘Why not?'

‘When I returned to the office, I was told that there was a client waiting to see me. He had some business which needed attending to immediately, so I didn't get around to phoning Stan Crawley until around six o'clock.'

‘By which time, your wallet had been missing for close to four hours,' Paniatowski pointed out, ‘and your chances of getting it back were considerably reduced.'

An amused grin played on Brunton's lips. ‘Come on, Sergeant Paniatowski, don't try feeding me that line, as if I were a mere member of the general public.'

‘Aren't you a member of the general public?' Paniatowski wondered. ‘And what line are you talking about?'

‘The line that there was ever much hope of getting the wallet back. I deal with criminals and policemen all the time, don't forget. I know that while you have a forty per cent chance of catching the thief, there's very little hope of recovering the property he stole. I pretty much wrote the wallet off the second I noticed it was missing, and the only reason I rang Stan at all was because it was the proper thing to do.'

Paniatowski stood up. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Brunton,' she said. Then she added, almost as an afterthought, ‘You won't mind if I ask your office staff a few questions on my way out, will you?'

Brunton gave her yet another smile, which might have been forced – but just as easily might not have been – and said, ‘Of course I don't. Why would I?'

‘And I might also need to talk to the client you saw yesterday afternoon,' Paniatowski added.

Brunton frowned. ‘I'm not sure that's strictly necessary,' he said.

‘With the greatest respect, sir, I think I should be the judge of that,' Paniatowski countered.

‘Now look here—' Brunton began.

‘If you don't want to tell me, I can always ask your secretary,' Paniatowski interrupted.

Brunton's frown had turned into a scowl. ‘His name is Jeremy Smythe,' he said.

‘And where might I contact this Mr Smythe?'

‘I'm not his keeper, so I couldn't say for sure,' Brunton told her, with bad grace, ‘but as good a starting point as any might be the offices of JH Smythe Engineering.'

There was no sign outside the golf club declaring that this was an establishment which only admitted the town's elite – but there might as well have been. It was, for many of Whitebridge's aspiring businessmen and politicians, the golden temple on the hill – the place where, when they walked through the door as members for the first time, they understood that they had truly arrived.

At the very centre of this sought-after earthly paradise was the members' dining room, which was not so much a place to eat in as a place to be seen to be eating in, and it was to this inner sanctum that Paniatowski was led by one of the more lowly club stewards.

‘That's him, sitting there by himself at the corner table,' the steward said.

The man he'd pointed to was in his early fifties, and though his expensive suit was cunningly tailored, it did not quite disguise his growing corpulence. His hair was just starting to turn grey, but his bushy moustache, leading the dash out of middle age, was already quite white. He was holding a brandy glass in one slightly podgy hand, and a thick cigar in the other.

‘Has he been dining alone?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No,' the steward replied. ‘Until a few minutes ago, there were a couple of young ladies with him.' The steward's nose wrinkled with disgust. ‘He
said
they were his nieces.'

‘Thanks for the warning,' Paniatowski said.

‘Warning? What warning?' the steward asked innocently.

Paniatowski crossed the room and came to a halt at the corner table. ‘Mr Smythe?' she asked.

Smythe looked up at her. ‘That's me,' he agreed. ‘Jerry Smythe – engineering genius, raconteur, and world-famous sexual stallion.'

He had probably had more to drink with his lunch than had been strictly advisable, Paniatowski thought – but that might actually make her job easier.

‘I'm DS Monika Paniatowski,' she said. ‘I was wondering if you could spare me a minute or two to answer a few questions.'

‘Be glad to,' Smythe replied, waving the hand holding his fat cigar expansively through the air and leaving a thin cloud of grey smoke in its wake. ‘Always willing to assist the constabulary, especially when it comes in the form of a lovely package like yourself.'

‘That's very kind of you,' Paniatowski said, through gritted teeth.

‘I'm one of nature's gentlemen,' Smythe told her, without any hint of irony in his voice that she could detect. ‘Take a seat, Monika, and ask me anything you want to.'

Paniatowski sat. ‘Could I ask you to account for your movements yesterday afternoon, sir?' she asked.

Smythe pulled a comical face. ‘Don't tell me I'm in trouble, Monika,' he said. ‘Not that I'd mind being arrested – as long as it was by you.'

‘You're not in any trouble,' Paniatowski promised.

‘Then let me see,' Smythe mused. ‘I had lunch at the Dirty Duck, and then I went to see Eddie Brunton. He's a solicitor. Has an office on Kings Street.'

‘And what time did your meeting take place?'

‘It was supposed to start at a quarter past three, but Eddie didn't arrive back at his office until twenty past.'

What exactly was it that Brunton had told her? Paniatowski wondered.

When I returned to the office, I was told that there was a client waiting to see me. He had some business which needed attending to immediately, so I didn't get around to phoning Stan Crawley until around six o'clock.

‘So it was a prearranged meeting, was it?' she asked Smythe. ‘You didn't just drop in unexpectedly because you had some urgent business that needed dealing with?'

‘No, not at all,' Smythe said. ‘It was Eddie who wanted the meeting, and who was most insistent that it should be at exactly that time. In fact, he got rather irritated when I said it would be more convenient for me if we held it later.'

‘Did he, indeed?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Too right, he did. I'd half a mind to damn his impertinence, and say that since
I
was doing
him
the favour, we'd have the meeting when it suited me.'

‘So why didn't you?'

Smythe grinned sheepishly. ‘There's a good chance I'll be made Grand Master of the Lodge next year, provided I don't antagonize too many of my fellow Masons in the meantime,' he said in a much lower voice than he'd be using previously. His hand crept across the table and rested lightly on top of hers. ‘And if that does happen, Monika, I want you to know that there'll be a special place for you at Ladies' Night.'

‘So what was this favour you were doing for him?' Paniatowski wondered, pulling her hand slowly but firmly away.

Smythe looked disappointed. ‘No need to act like a frightened doe,' he said. ‘I was only being avuncular.'

‘What was this favour you were doing for Mr Brunton?' Paniatowski persisted.

‘Oh, that!' Smythe said airily. ‘He wanted me to put my name forward for the committee of some fund-raising charity he's thinking of starting. Clothe the Naked, or Feed the Hungry, I think. Something of that nature, anyway. What I still don't understand is why he needed to talk about it face to face. We could just as easily have settled matters over the phone.'

‘So that was
all
that this meeting of yours was about, was it?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Yes.'

‘You're certain about that? You didn't touch on any of your own business matters?'

‘Touch on my own business matters? Why would we have done that?' asked Smythe, looking puzzled.

‘Well, after all, he
is
your solicitor.'

‘Who told you that?'

Edgar Brunton had told her, Paniatowski thought. He was quite explicit about it.

‘I just assumed that was the case,' she said aloud.

Jeremy Smythe chuckled. ‘Eddie's a good man to go out on the town with – and some of the things we've got up to together I wouldn't even
whisper
into a delicate ear like yours. But my solicitor? No chance! Given the kind of business I'm in, I need the best legal brain that money can buy – and that certainly isn't Eddie's.'

F
or the previous fifteen minutes, the whole team had been hunkered down around the table in Woodend's smoke-filled office. Monika Paniatowski had been the centre of attention, as she'd sketched out her conversations with Edgar Brunton, Brunton's secretary, and Jeremy Smythe. Now, as she reached the end of her tale, the three men stopped looking at her – and began looking questioningly at each other.

It was Bob Rutter who broke the short silence that followed Paniatowski's final words. ‘Brunton's our man,' he said in a tone which suggested he would tolerate no contradiction.

‘Is he, indeed?' asked Woodend, surprised to hear his normally cautious inspector being so forthright. ‘An' what brings you to that conclusion?'

‘I would have thought it was obvious,' Rutter replied, taking a surreptitious glance at his wristwatch. ‘This meeting that he deliberately set up with Jeremy Smythe could have had no other purpose than to give him a partial, almost-plausible alibi.'

‘You can't just look at
one
aspect of the timing,' Monika Paniatowski pointed out. ‘You also have to consider—'

‘The man left his wallet at the scene of the crime, for God's sake!' Rutter interrupted her.

‘
Somebody
left Brunton's wallet at the scene of the crime, sir – but it doesn't have to be Brunton himself,' Beresford said, speaking tentatively, as if, as the youngest and least experienced member of the team, he did not wish to appear to be directly going against one of his bosses.

‘Bit of a coincidence if it
wasn't
him who dropped it, don't you think?' Rutter countered, and there was a hint of aggression in his tone which made everyone else in the room feel slightly uncomfortable.

Beresford shrugged awkwardly. ‘Coincidences have been known to happen, haven't they?' he asked.

Rutter turned away from him, in what could almost have been regarded as a deliberate snub. ‘Remind us again what was actually in that wallet, Monika,' he said to Paniatowski.

The sergeant glanced down at her notebook. ‘Photographs of his wife and his two children,' she read. ‘Several business cards, some of them his own, some of them other people's. A bank cheque-guarantee card. And thirty-five pounds in five-pound notes.'

‘That's a lot of money to be carryin' around,' Woodend said.

‘Brunton claims he was planning to buy a present for his wife,' Paniatowski pointed out. ‘And if he
had
actually bought one, he wouldn't have come away with much change from thirty-five quid, given the prices that they charge in Daresbury Arcade.'

Rutter took another glance at his watch, then swung around to face Beresford again.

‘Let's follow your line of argument to its logical conclusion, shall we, Detective Constable Beresford?' he suggested. ‘According to you, the wallet was dropped by the kidnapper. Right?'

‘I didn't exactly say that it had to actually be the kidnapper who—' Beresford began.

‘So if Brunton isn't the kidnapper, we need another name for the wallet-dropper,' Rutter cut in. ‘Does anybody here have an objection if I refer to him as Mr X?'