Dying Fall (19 page)

‘But I thought you told me you were planning to stay until this case was over,' Rutter said, disappointedly.

‘That
was
my plan, and my editor agreed to go along with it. But then he changed his mind.'

‘Why?'

‘Because he wants to punish me,' Driver said, speaking in a light, off-hand way, as if to demonstrate that whatever adversity she was faced with, she would handle it bravely and cheerfully.

‘Punish you?' Rutter repeated.

‘He's furious with me for not keeping the Henry Marlowe story to myself.
That's
why he's making me go.'

‘Why
didn't
you keep the story to yourself?'

‘I seriously thought about doing just that. It would have been a wonderful feather in my cap if I had done. But, you see, if the story had only run in one newspaper, there was a chance that Marlowe would have somehow weathered the storm. And I knew how it important it was – both to you and Cloggin'-it Charlie – to get rid of the bloody man.'

Rutter smiled. ‘You're far too good to be true, you know,' he said.

But he didn't mean it. There was no hint of suspicion in the statement, and if she
was
too good to be true, then all he could be was eternally grateful for it.

‘I'm a better person for knowing you,' Driver said. ‘In fact, I think I'm getting better every day, if that doesn't sound too arrogant.'

‘It doesn't,' Rutter said. ‘So where is this bastard of an editor sending you to?'

‘Oxfordshire,' Driver told him. ‘There's been a double murder down there. I have to admit that it does seem quite juicy, but … you know …' she shrugged helplessly, ‘… I'd rather stay with you.'

‘I
do
know that,' Rutter replied.

Wearing his hard-mod gear again, Beresford had returned to the road on which Big Bazza lived. It was a depressing street, he thought, but it was not the actual buildings themselves which made it so.

In fact, there was nothing at all wrong with terraced houses like the ones he was walking past, as long as they were properly cared for. But these weren't. The paint on the doors and window frames was worn and faded. Where windows had been cracked, the panes had been repaired with sticky tape, rather than replaced. And it wasn't lack of money that led to this dilapidation, he knew from his own experience as a beat bobby – it was lack of care.

The people who lived in these houses had
given up
caring. As long as they had the cash for a drink in their pockets, nothing else bothered them. And aside for the fact that they had roofs over their heads and that some of them occasionally had jobs, there was very little difference between them and the tramps.

He had reached the right door, and knocked. The woman who answered the knock was overweight, with pendulous breasts and scraggy hair. She was wearing a loose smock which looked far from clean, and had an untipped cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth.

‘Yes?' she said, in an ungracious rasp.

‘I'm callin' for Bazza,' Beresford said. ‘Are you his mum?'

‘Yes I am, an' he isn't here,' the woman replied.

‘Do you know where he is?'

‘He said he had some holiday time due, so he's gone away. I don't know where, exactly – I didn't ask, an' he didn't tell me – but it can't have been far, 'cos I keep most of his wages to pay for his food an' board.'

‘Thanks, you've been very—' Beresford began, but he was only talking to the door, because the woman had gone back inside.

Big Bazza wasn't like his mother, or most of the other residents of this street, Beresford thought, as he turned and walked away. His appearance might frighten little children and old ladies, but at least he took some pride in it. And it was possible that if he had been born into some other family, on some other street, he might have made something of himself, instead of growing into a man who measured his own worth by the number of people he hated.

It was really no surprise that Bazza hadn't told his mother where he was going, Beresford thought. But it was surprising that he had chosen to go there at all.

What
had
put the idea of Spain into his head?

And how the hell had he managed to
pay
for it?

W
oodend had not been expecting to see Bob Rutter at the Drum and Monkey, but not only did Rutter turn up, he was actually on time for once. So maybe the heated exchange between them earlier had served a purpose, Woodend thought hopefully, as he sat down at the usual table – maybe fences could still be mended, and Bob could regain his rightful place on the team.

After he had taken a sip of his pint, he told the rest of the team about his meeting with Councillor Lowry.

‘I think we can work with him,' he concluded, after he'd spelled out all the detail. ‘I really do.'

‘Talk about going into reverse gear!' Paniatowski said, almost under her breath.

‘What was that, Monika?' Woodend asked.

‘I was just saying that your attitude to Lowry seems to have changed,' Paniatowski replied. ‘And I mean changed
more than somewhat
.'

‘Why shouldn't it have changed?' Woodend wondered. ‘He's not given me everything I want – no chairman of the Police Authority would ever have done that – but at least he's made an effort to meet me halfway.'

‘So yesterday he was the devil incarnate, and now he's a knight in shining armour?'

Woodend shook his head. ‘You should know me better than to imagine I'd ever think like that. Tel Lowry's a politician down to his boot straps, and that little trick that Marlowe pulled has damaged his own standing more badly than he's willing to admit.'

‘I still don't see …'

‘An' if he's ever to regain the ground he's lost as a result of it, he has to be seen to be distancin' himself from our beloved ex-chief constable – an' that means him gettin' closer to me. So no, Sergeant Paniatowski, I don't see him as a knight in shinin' armour, but for the moment, at least, it's in his interest to ally himself to us – an' we need all the allies we can get.'

‘So all the work that I did on his background has been wasted?' Paniatowski said.

‘You never
wanted
to do that background check in the first place,' Woodend pointed out.

That was true enough, Paniatowski thought, and after the session she'd had with the formidable Mrs Lowry, it was perverse of her to be annoyed. But the simple fact was that she
was
annoyed. Bloody annoyed!

‘Right,' Woodend said, ‘if Sergeant Paniatowski's willin' to concede that we've spent enough time on Councillor Lowry, we can move on to Barry Thornley? Up until this mornin', Bazza was no more than a
possible
suspect, because he's not the only lad in Whitebridge who wears big boots an' hates Pakistanis an' tramps. But as a result of his takin' this trip, he's become our
prime
suspect, hasn't he? An' why is that, Colin?'

‘Because he'd never have raised the money himself, and even if he had, it would probably never have occurred to him to spend it on a holiday in Spain,' Beresford replied.

‘Exactly,' Woodend agreed. ‘It was somebody else's money, an' somebody else's idea. An' it wasn't
family
money or
family
ideas, because you've already checked out that possibility, haven't you, Colin?'

Beresford nodded. ‘His mother could never have raised the cash – even if she'd wanted to – and she has no idea where he's gone.'

‘So the way I see it, the holiday was both a reward for what he'd already done, an' a way of gettin' him out of Whitebridge until the heat died down a bit.'

‘Why do you keep talking about
somebody
, when we all know you mean Councillor Scranton?' asked Paniatowski.

‘Because
I
don't know it
is
Councillor Scranton,' Woodend countered. ‘He's certainly a possibility, but there are more right-wing middle-class nutters in Whitebridge than you could shake a stick at.'

‘Scranton was dishonourably discharged from the RAF,' Paniatowski said. ‘He was stationed in Abingdon at the same time as Lowry. You might ask your new pal, Tel, about that.'

She was still feeling as if her feathers had been ruffled, Woodend thought, and as illogical as that feeling might be, he could understand it.

‘Look, I'm not rulin' Scranton out of the picture, by any means,' he told his sergeant, in a placatory tone. ‘I'd even go so far as to say that if it's
not
him who's financin' Barry Thornton, it's likely to be one of his friends or associates – or at least somebody he knows well.'

Paniatowski shot him a look which suggested she thought he was doing no more than humour her.

‘If you really believe that, it follows that it's as important for us to get as close to Scranton as it was for Colin to get close to the hard mods,' Paniatowski said challengingly.

‘Yes, it is,' Woodend agreed, rising to the challenge. ‘An' I was thinkin' of usin' young Beresford for that job, too, since the hard mods seem to be some of Scranton's closest supporters.'

‘Colin would have to get to him through Bazza, and Bazza isn't here,' Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Besides, the hard mods are no more than Scranton's foot soldiers. He's never going to take any of them into his confidence.'

‘Then who do
you
suggest we use?' Woodend asked.

‘Me,' Paniatowski said.

‘An' how do you propose to get close to him?'

‘I don't,' Paniatowski said. ‘I'm going to make him want to get close to me.'

‘An' how do you propose to do that?' Woodend wondered.

‘How do you
think
I propose to do that?' Paniatowski countered.

‘If he's going to be a primary target, we need to do a very deep background check on him,' Rutter said, out of the blue.

Woodend was surprised, not so much by the suggestion itself as by the fact that it had been made by a man who, for the previous half an hour, had been sitting at the edge of the table like a ghost at a banquet – a man who, despite his earlier hopes, seemed scarcely a part of the team any more.

‘Go on,' he said encouragingly.

‘The key to a man's present often lies in his past – especially in some big event in his past,' Rutter continued. ‘That was one of the first lessons you drummed into us.'

‘Aye,' Woodend agreed cautiously. ‘It was.'

‘A big event in Ron Scranton's past, as we've just learned from Monika, is his dishonourable discharge from the RAF. That needs to be looked into in much more detail.'

‘You're right,' Woodend agreed. ‘I'll give the Abingdon police a call, an' see what they can turn up.'

‘No disrespect intended to the Abingdon bobbies, but I think you need to do more than that,' Rutter said.

‘What have you got in mind?'

‘Send one of
us
down there. We know how to ask the right kinds of questions. We know about the need to clog it around and get a feel for the place – because that's
another
thing you've drummed into us.'

‘You've got a point,' Woodend agreed. ‘But since Beresford's tied up with hard mods, an' Monika will be workin' on getting' close to Councillor Scranton, the only person available is you.'

Bob Rutter smiled. ‘I'd already managed to work that out for myself, sir,' he said.

Woodend chewed the idea over in his mind.

It was a long shot that Bob would turn up anything useful in Abingdon, he argued – but then long shots had been known to work before. Besides, since the two strongest leads in the case were already being handled by Beresford and Paniatowski, there was little to keep Rutter busy in Whitebridge – for the moment, at least.

He pulled himself up short, recognizing the arguments he was making were just window-dressing, and that the
real
reason the idea was so appealing was that the inspector seemed so enthusiastic about it himself – and letting him follow it through might just be a way of pulling him back from the brink.

‘All right, Bob, you go down to Abingdon,' he said, and was gratified to note that Rutter seemed delighted at the prospect.

‘Where exactly
is
Abingdon?' Beresford asked.

‘Somewhere down south,' Rutter said vaguely, giving him, Woodend noted, an unexpectedly hostile look.

‘I think it's in Oxfordshire,' Paniatowski said. ‘About twenty miles from Oxford itself.'

Barry Thornley had never really believed in heaven – at least, not a heaven for the likes of him – but now he realized he'd been wrong about that all along. There
was
a heaven – and he'd landed in it an hour and a half earlier.

Standing on the promenade, watching the palm trees sway in the breeze, he was still not sure it was anything but a dream. Except he had never –
could never
have dreamed anything like this.

The sea was so blue, and so was the cloudless sky. The people on the promenade were dressed in bright, casual clothes – shorts or white trousers, sandals and brilliantly coloured shirts – and for the first time in his life, he felt out of place in his drab industrial clothing.

Not that there was any real
need
to feel out of place, he realized. These holiday-makers, if they noticed him at all, neither pointed him out for ridicule nor tried to shy away from him in fear. They didn't
care
what he looked like. They were there to enjoy themselves – dipping in the sea, sitting on the pavement in front of the small cheery bars which made the pubs and off-licences of Whitebridge seem so incredibly dingy – and that was all they were interested in.