Death Watch (28 page)

Polly Johnson shook her head. ‘I won't do it, Charlie,' she said. ‘I
can't
do it, based on what little you've told me.'

‘Once before, in the Dugdale's Farm murder, I asked you to take a chance on me,' Woodend reminded her. ‘We had even less to go on then than we have now – but we still managed to put a senior policeman, a buildin' tycoon, an' a police surgeon behind bars.'

‘Maybe we were just lucky,' Polly Johnson said.

‘An' maybe we'll be lucky this time,' Woodend countered.

‘I hate it when you put me in this position, Charlie,' Polly Johnson said. ‘I really
hate
it!'

Then she drained the rest of her whisky, and signed her name at the bottom of the warrants.

It was five minutes past four when Woodend knocked loudly on the door of the Brunton home, and had his hammering answered by a sleepy live-in maid.

‘I have a warrant here to search these premises,' he said, showing the document to her.

‘The mister and missis in bed,' the maid replied, speaking with a foreign accent thick enough to wrap butter in.

‘Then you'll just have to get them
out of bed
, won't you?' Woodend said.

But that did not prove to be necessary, because by the time he'd stepped past the maid and entered the hallway, Edgar Brunton had appeared at the head of the stairs.

‘Not again!' he groaned angrily. ‘I would have thought you'd learned your lesson last time.'

‘I shall be takin' you in for questionin', while my colleagues search the house,' Woodend told him.

‘You wouldn't dare!' said an outraged female voice, and Mrs Brunton appeared on the staircase next to her husband.

‘Let's not make this any more difficult than we have to, madam,' Woodend said evenly. ‘I've got my job to do, an' I intend to do it.'

‘Your job?' Mrs Brunton repeated scornfully. ‘You want even
have
a job by lunchtime!'

Maybe she was right, Woodend thought – but it was too late to turn back now.

I
t was at five fifteen in the morning that the two officers on motor patrol in the town centre noticed there was a man lying on the pavement outside the Crown and Anchor.

‘Dead by reason of heart attack?' PC Roger Crabtree asked his partner, PC Dave Warner.

‘More like dead by reason of drunk,' Warner replied.

‘Think we should take him in?'

‘Don't see why not. He looks very untidy, lyin' where he is, an' it'll at least show the sarge that we've been keepin' busy.'

Crabtree pulled the patrol car into the kerb, and the two officers got out. The stink of stale beer which surrounded the supine man was unmistakable, and if further proof were needed of Warner's assertion that he was drunk, there was a pile of vomit near his head which more than provided it.

Crabtree squatted down, and prodded the man. ‘Can you stand up on your own, or are we goin' to have to help you?' he asked loudly.

The drunk groaned. ‘All right where I am.'

‘I'm afraid that's not the case, sir,' Crabtree said. ‘Give it a couple more hours and people will either have to step round you or step over you, so we think it's best if we take you down to the station.'

‘Piss off!' the drunk growled.

‘I'm sorry, but that sort of attitude will get you nowhere, sir,' Crabtree said, in a mock-prim tone he'd been practising. He turned to his partner. ‘Help me get him on his feet.'

They took an arm each, and hauled the drunk up. He was a big man, but so far gone that the only sort of resistance he was capable of was inertia.

It was something of a struggle to bundle him into the patrol car, and it was not until he was lolling on the back seat that they got a proper look at his face.

‘Ugly bugger, isn't he?' Crabtree asked.

‘Certainly wouldn't win any beauty contests,' Warner agreed. He tilted his head to one side to examine the man from a different angle, then announced grandly, ‘We've made an arrest.'

‘You don't say?' Crabtree responded. ‘Is
that
why he's sittin' in the back of our car?'

‘What I mean is, we've made a
real
arrest, rather than just a drunk and disorderly,' Warner explained. ‘I recognize this feller. His name's Wally Decker, an' he's wanted for beatin' the shit out of some pervert in a pub yesterday.'

Topton was a moorland village, served by a small stone police station which also had responsibility for the countless isolated farms scattered all over the moors. Woodend had selected it because he knew that the sergeant in charge was close to retirement, regarded Whitebridge as a place which had almost no relevance to him, and didn't give a bugger what the chief constable thought or did. Besides, as small as it was, the police station still had two cells, so that it was possible to keep Brunton and his wife separated.

He arrived there, with his prisoners, at twenty past five. By half-past, he had them both booked in, and was confronting Edgar Brunton across the table in what the local sergeant chose to call the interview room, but was more often used as a kitchen.

‘I want to speak to my solicitor,' Brunton said.

‘An' you're perfectly within your rights to make that request, sir,' Woodend said. ‘Shall I ring his office now?'

‘There'll be nobody there at this time of day,' Brunton said.

‘So there won't,' Woodend agreed. ‘In that case, we'd better wait until there is, hadn't we?'

‘You could ring him at home.'

‘I don't like to disturb him, so I think we'll wait for normal business hours. An' if, in the meantime, you don't feel like talkin' without your legal representative bein' present, then you're under absolutely no obligation to do so.'

‘Thank you for explaining the law to me, Mr Woodend,' Brunton said, with a sneer.

‘My pleasure,' Woodend replied. He leaned back in his chair. ‘I used to wonder what made you hate women,' he continued, conversationally, ‘but havin' spent half an hour in a car with your missis, I don't wonder any more. What a mouth that woman's got on her.'

Brunton said nothing.

‘What's the matter?' Woodend asked. ‘Afraid to agree with me, in case I tell her all about it? Worried that if I
do
tell her, she'll tighten the purse strings an' you'll actually have to earn a proper livin', instead of just poncin' about an'
playin'
at bein' a solicitor?'

Brunton looked up at the ceiling.

‘Maybe the reason for your sudden feelings of loyalty is that you think the reason she killed Angela Jackson was to save your bacon,' Woodend suggested. ‘Well, you're right about that in a way – but
only
in a way. Her real reasons were purely selfish. If she hadn't killed Angela, you'd have gone to jail, an' she'd no longer have had any power over you. Whereas by
killin'
the girl, she's put you more in her debt than ever. If you got away with this – an' you won't – she'd make your life so miserable that the prospect of bein' banged up for thirty years would start to look very appealin'.'

Having completed his examination of the ceiling, Brunton turned his attention to the walls.

‘What I'm offerin' you, you see, is a chance of escape,' Woodend pressed on. ‘You can argue at your trial that while you admit to torturin' the girl, you never had any intention of killin' her. With a bit of luck, you shouldn't get more than ten years for that. On the other hand, your wife, who
did
kill Angela, will still be inside when she'd drawin' her old-age pension.'

‘Have you checked out my wife's alibi for the time the girl was killed?' Brunton asked. A smile came to his face. ‘No, I can see you haven't.'

‘Are you tellin' me that she's got one?' Woodend asked.

‘I don't know for sure, one way or the other. But I would be very surprised if she
hasn't
got one. She needs to have people constantly around her, you see. As far as she's concerned, if there's nobody within easy bullying distance, she doesn't really exist.'

‘So if she didn't kill the girl, who did?'

‘I wonder how long it will take Henry Marlowe to discover I'm here,' Brunton mused.

‘I wouldn't worry about that, if I was you,' Woodend advised. ‘You've got bigger concerns to deal with.'

‘And I wonder how long
after that
it will be before you find yourself clearing out your desk,' Edgar Brunton said.

Monika Paniatowski glanced up at the clock on the wall of Brunton's study.

Eight thirty-five!

What little advantage their early start had given them was rapidly slipping away, she thought. By now Whitebridge Police Headquarters would be coming to life. Within an hour, someone – perhaps Edgar Brunton's secretary – would begin to wonder what had happened to him, and would only need to ring the maid in order to be told he had been arrested by three police officers who had absolutely nothing to do with the official investigation.

This search had to come up with a lead
soon
, Paniatowski told herself.

The lease to a lock-up garage.

The deeds to a quiet cottage.

Something – anything! – that they could use one of the blank search warrants to investigate.

The phone rang, and Paniatowski picked it up.

‘Any luck at your end?' asked the voice on the other end of the line.

‘None,' Paniatowski replied. ‘How's Brunton holding up?'

‘Far too bloody well,' Woodend admitted. ‘He's as guilty as sin, but he still seems to believe he has the upper hand.'

That's because he has, Paniatowski thought. The whole investigation's unravelling before our eyes – and there's nothing we can do about it.

‘We need to find out how much time we've got left,' Woodend said, with an edge of desperation to his voice.

‘How do we do that?' Paniatowski wondered. ‘Ring Superintendent Crawley and ask him just how close he is to guessing that we've broken nearly every rule in the book?' She put her hand to her mouth, horrified at what she'd just heard herself say. ‘Sorry, sir,' she continued. ‘That was uncalled for.'

‘It's all right, Monika,' Woodend told her. ‘We're
all
a bit edgy.'

‘What would you like us to do?' Paniatowski asked contritely.

‘I think one of you should put in an appearance at headquarters. Don't speak to anyone you don't have to, but keep your ear to the ground. If it seems to you that the game's nearly up, ring me, an' I'll put more pressure on Brunton.'

‘What kind of pressure?'

‘Oh, I don't know,' Woodend said – and Paniatowski could tell from the tone of his voice that he'd forced a grin to his face. ‘Maybe I'll take a leaf out of Brunton's own book, an' resort to torture.'

‘Why not?' Paniatowski said, forcing herself to grin, too. ‘Everybody should have a hobby.' She hung up the phone.

‘Anything?' asked Rutter from the other side of the room – though there was no evidence of hope in his voice.

‘The boss wants one of us to go to headquarters and check things out, while the other carries on the search here. Do you want me to go, or will you?'

Rutter shrugged. ‘You go. Since we're all going to hang, it doesn't really matter which of us puts his head in the noose first, does it?'

T
he sun had recently risen, and was casting a warm golden light over the moors. It was going to be a beautiful day, Woodend thought, looking out of the window – at least, it was going to be a beautiful day for
some
people.

He turned around, to face the woman who was sitting at the table in the interview room/kitchen.

When they'd pulled her husband in the first time – in the autumn – Brunton had hinted that the reason she married him was to improve her position in Whitebridge society. Well, maybe there was something in that, Woodend thought, but he didn't think that was the only reason.

She'd been forced to dress hurriedly after her arrest, and looking at her now – without the benefit of her make-up and expensive coiffure – he had to admit that Monika had been spot on when she'd said that Mrs Brunton was plain. And how would such a plain woman have felt when Edgar Brunton – her impoverished but handsome Prince Charming – started paying attention to her? The most likely answer was that she'd been swept off her feet!

So maybe she really
did
love him – and all her bullying was nothing more than a pathetic effort to make sure that she did not lose him.

‘If I was in your position, I'd be seriously considerin' what was in my own best interest, Mrs Brunton,' Woodend said. ‘Because you know what's goin' to happen if you don't, don't you? Your husband's goin' to stand up in court an' say it was never his intention to kill the girl, an' that it was all your idea.'

‘You're mad,' Mrs Brunton said. ‘You're completely out of your mind.'

‘Your husband's wallet was found at the scene of the first kidnappin' an' we can produce a witness to prove that he bought the drug the girl was doped with. That alone is enough to convict him,' Woodend said wearily. ‘It's all over, so why don't you save us all a lot of effort an' just come clean?'

‘My husband had nothing to do with the kidnapping and murder of that girl – and neither did I.'

‘Why was he seein' a shrink, Mrs Brunton?' Woodend asked. ‘An' you must have
known
that he was seein' a shrink – because you're the one who was payin' all the bills.'

From the tortured expression on her face, it was all too clear that Mrs Brunton's mind was in turmoil.