Dying Fall (15 page)

Neither constable said anything, though they were already beginning to fear the worst.

‘Well, you have been busy boys, haven't you?' Elizabeth Driver asked brightly.

‘Don't know what you're talking about, madam,' Crabtree said.

Driver laughed. ‘Even if you were a good liar, that particu­lar line wouldn't work. And you're
not
a good liar. In fact, you're a bloody awful one.'

‘Now look here, madam—' Crabtree started to protest.

‘I think you should know that I've been following you since you left the off-licence,' Driver interrupted.

‘Oh!' Crabtree said.

‘Oh!' Warner agreed.

‘Oh!' Elizabeth Driver confirmed. ‘You're in big trouble, boys. You know that, don't you?'

‘We were only—' Warner began.

‘Following orders?' Driver interrupted again.

‘Well, yes.'

‘That's the defence the Nazi war criminals used – and look what happened to them.' Driver tilted her head to one side and mimed being hanged, then continued, ‘Somebody's going to have to take the fall for this, and if you don't help me, it could be you. On the other hand, if you decide to cooperate …'

‘What do you want to know?' Warner asked desperately.

‘Who
issued
the orders that you were “only following”?'

‘Mr Marlow,' Crabtree said. ‘He's the—'

‘Chief constable! I know. And did Mr Marlowe give you these orders
personally
– or were they relayed through a flunky?'

‘He gave them personally,' Crabtree admitted.

‘So who paid for all the booze that I saw you buying at the off-licence?'

‘He did. He gave me a couple of pounds, and said if I needed any more, I'd only got to tell him.'

A look of perfect happiness spread across Elizabeth Driver's face. ‘Excellent!' she said.

T
he Alderman Baxter Retirement Home was housed in what had once been the Whitebridge Workhouse.

A great deal had been done to brighten up the place since those far-off days when it catered for desperate paupers with no choice but to throw themselves on the mercy of the Board of Guardians – liberal applications of pastel paint had all but obliterated the institutional chocolate-brown colour with which the walls had once been coated, gaily patterned curtains somewhat softened the stern windows – and yet, for all that, the building still had an air of Victorian pious self-righteousness and inflexibility which made Paniatowski shiver as she walked through the entrance archway.

She had not seen James Fuller, the person she was there to visit, for nearly twenty years. Back then, viewed through the eyes of childhood, he had seemed a tall, almost godlike figure, but he had probably never been as imposing as she'd believed, and now he was nothing more than a little old man.

‘I wasn't sure you'd remember me,' she told him.

‘You underrate yourself,' Fuller replied. ‘I never forget any of my star pupils.'

‘Is that what I was?' Paniatowski asked, surprised. ‘A star pupil? I don't recall doing
that
well at school.'

Fuller laughed. It was a dry, rasping laugh, which was almost a cough. ‘Oh, I don't mean you were a star pupil in the
academic
sense,' he explained. ‘You were only slightly above average when it came to your school work.'

‘Well, then?'

‘What made you stand out was that you had a spark. You had character. Look how you fought them when they tried to change your name!'

‘When
who
tried to change my name?'

‘Your mother and your stepfather. They wanted to change your surname so it was the same as theirs. But you weren't having that. You were eleven years old, living in a country you hardly knew, and with still a trace of a Polish accent, but you still stood firm. And, in the end, it was them who gave way. Do you really not remember that?'

‘No, I don't remember it at all,' Paniatowski admitted.

But then, she told herself, she had tried to forget as much as she possibly could about her abused childhood.

‘I wanted to ask you about someone else's school days,' Paniatowski said.

‘Whose?'

‘Councillor Tel Lowry's. He was at the school quite a few years before me, but …'

‘You don't need to tell
me
that.'

‘… but since he's become such an important man in the community, I expect you remember him even better than you remember me.'

‘I remember him
as well as
I remember you,' Fuller said, with just a hint of reproach in his voice. ‘But given that it's well over thirty years since he passed through my hands, why have you come to ask
me
about him?'

Because I'm desperate, Paniatowski thought. Because Charlie Woodend – for reasons of his own – wants me to find a weakness where none seems to exist.

‘We can learn a lot about people from their childhood,' she told Fuller. ‘Don't they say that the child is father to the man?'

‘They do say that,' Fuller agreed. ‘And they're not far off the mark.'

‘So what
was
he like?'

‘In a word, unhappy. Parents always have favourites among their children, you know, however much they may deny it, and it was Tel's older brother, Barclay, who was his father's favourite.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because Joseph Lowry – hard, unbending man he was – never made even the slightest attempt to disguise the fact. Barclay was the crown prince. He was destined to take over the family firm. He was sent to an expensive school, so that he'd gain a place in one of the top universities. Tel, on the other hand, had to make do with being educated locally.'

‘And the mother just accepted that?'

‘I don't think she had any choice in the matter. Joseph held the purse strings, and Joseph called the shots.'

‘It must have been terrible for Tel,' Paniatowski said with feeling.

‘It got worse,' Fuller told her. ‘Whatever Tel did – however successful he was – it was never good enough for Joseph. Tel won prizes, and Joseph never turned up to see him collect them. Tel captained the school football team, and had to play without his father there to cheer him on. But he overcame all obstacles, didn't he? Just like you did. As soon as he was old enough, he joined the RAF.'

‘And became a hero,' Paniatowski said.

‘And became a hero,' Fuller agreed. He paused, to suck a little air into his leathery old lungs. ‘I liked most of the pupils I taught, Monika, but there were only a few I actually
admired
– and you and Tel Lowry were both members of that select group.'

Paniatowski sighed. The problem about trying to dig up dirt on Tel Lowry, she decided, was that the more she got to know about the man – and the disadvantages that he, too, had suffered – the more she found herself warming to him.

‘Councillor Scranton didn't happen to pass through your hands, as well, did he?' she asked.

Fuller scowled. ‘That piece of shit!' he said.

The phrase rocked Paniatowski. She knew, objectively, the teachers must swear, just like ordinary people, but it was still a shock to hear one of them actually do it.

‘In what way was he a piece of shit?' she asked, marvelling at her own courage in repeating the words in front of her old teacher, even if he
had
used them first.

‘In what way?' Fuller said. ‘In any way you'd care to think of. He was a bully and a sneak – and possibly a thief as well. He liked to pick on the children who didn't quite fit in, and, of course, Tel Lowry was one of them. The bullying went on for quite some time, until Tel decided to square up to him in the playground one day. I was on playground duty at the time, and if I'd seen the fight, of course, I'd have been morally – and
contractually
– obliged to stop it.'

‘But you didn't see it?'

Fuller grinned. ‘No. I could see what was
about to
happen, and I found I had developed a sudden fascination for the cloakroom door. And that door didn't stop being fascinating until Scranton was on the ground, and had no intention of getting up again. When I did finally deign to notice him, I could see he was a real mess, so I told him he'd better be more careful in the future, or he'd fall over again. He got the message clearly enough.'

‘He would have done,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Funnily enough, though they obviously didn't plan it, they both ended up not only in the RAF, but posted to the same base. Abingdon, I think it was.'

Paniatowski smiled. ‘Where they buried the hatchet, and became great friends?' she suggested.

‘That sort of thing might happen in films, but I've never seen it happen in real life,' Fuller told her. ‘Besides, Tel was an officer and a hero, while Scranton was nothing more than an enlisted man. And from what I've heard, they weren't on the same base for long, anyway, because Scranton was dishonourably discharged.'

‘And now he's a town councillor,' Paniatowski said.

‘And now he's a town councillor,' Fuller agreed. ‘Makes you think, doesn't it?'

Rutter slid the photograph of Philip Turner and his wife across the desk to Woodend.

The chief inspector studied it for a moment. ‘They look as if they were very happy together,' he said. ‘An' she was killed in an accident, was she?'

‘That's right,' Rutter confirmed. ‘And according to his brother, that's when he started to go to pieces. And once he was on the slippery slope, he couldn't make himself stop, until eventually it got to the point where he couldn't do his job properly, and he was fired.'

An' there should be a warnin' in that for you, Bob, Woodend thought.

‘So you don't think there's any connection between Turner's former life in Manchester an' what happened to him in Whitebridge?' he asked.

‘None at all,' Rutter said. He reached across the desk, picked up the picture again, and slid it into his pocket. ‘Well, if that's all, I'll see about getting this picture printed up and circulated,' he continued.

‘But
is it
all?' Woodend wondered.

Rutter looked puzzled. ‘Well, yes. Unless there's something else you'd like to add.'

‘I was rather hopin' that
you'd
have something to add,' Woodend said heavily.

‘I'm afraid I'm not following you, sir.'

Woodend sighed. ‘You've been out most of the day, yet all you seem to have done is talk to Turner's brother.'

‘Not
just
talked to him,' Rutter pointed out. ‘Don't forget, I had to
find
him first.'

‘An' how difficult was that?' Woodend wondered.

‘Not
too
difficult, but even so—' Rutter began.

‘You seem to forget I've done that kind of work myself,' Woodend interrupted him. ‘An', even more significantly, I've seen the speed at which
you've
done that kind of work in the past. It shouldn't have taken you nearly all day, Bob. You should have been back here hours ago.'

‘I am a
detective inspector
!' Rutter said angrily.

‘What's your point?' Woodend wondered.

‘My point is that not only have I more than earned your respect by the work I've done for you, but I'm
entitled
to your respect by virtue of my rank – which is only one below yours. So I don't expect to be checked up on all the time, and I don't expect to have to account for every minute of my day to you.'

‘Listen, Bob …' Woodend began.

But Rutter had no intention of listening. He had already stood up and was walking towards the door.

‘There was a time when I would have taken this kind of crap from you, because I was your boy,' Rutter said as a parting shot. ‘But I've grown up, and I'm not your boy any more.'

He stepped out into the corridor, and slammed the door behind him.

Woodend, still sitting behind his desk, shook his head from side to side.

‘No,' he said softly. ‘No, you're
not
my boy any more.'

It was earlier that afternoon that the chief constable's secretary asked him if he wanted her to schedule a pressconference in time for the reporters to meet their deadlines, and Marlowe had replied that he wasn't sure whether he wanted to hold one or not.

‘Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when he said that,' she later confided to her best friend, over an early evening glass of shandy in the local pub.

‘Why's that?' the friend asked.

‘Because Mr Marlowe
loves
press conferences. They're his favourite part of police work. He thinks they make him look authoritative, and I suppose they do, in a way. Besides,' she giggled, ‘it gives him an excuse to put his best uniform on.'

‘But he did decide to hold one in the end, didn't he?' the friend asked.

‘Oh, yes. About an hour after he'd said he wasn't sure, he told me to go ahead and set it up.' The secretary glanced up at the clock on the wall. ‘In fact, it should be starting about now.'

Henry Marlowe stepped on to the podium. Given all the complications of the case – the lack of progress, Woodend's continued feud with Lowry, and the fact that his own solution to the problem had not yet had time to come to fruition – he was still not sure this press conference was a good idea, but he had decided that
not
to hold one would have invited too much unwelcome speculation.

He looked down at the faces of the gathered journalists, and began to feel more at ease. He was a past master at this kind of thing, he reassured himself, and surely a smart operator like him could find a way to grab some personal glory out of the occasion.

He devoted most of his opening remarks to the second attempted murder, the previous night, and managed – subtly, he thought – to suggest that whilst he had not actually been a party to the
physical
rescue of the tramp, the man would certainly have died but for his own behind-the-scenes work.