Echoes of the Dead (10 page)

‘Meanin' what, exactly?' Woodend wondered.

‘Meanin' that seein' as he's just wrapped up the job he was assigned, I imagine he'll have bags of time on his hands for talkin' to Scotland Yard.'

‘I take it you've caught your murderer,' Woodend said.

‘That's right, we have,' the sergeant agreed. ‘You'll find the DCI's office through them double doors an' down the end of the corridor. Is there anythin' else I can do for you, sir?'

‘Aye,' Woodend said. ‘You can stop bein' so bloody insufferable.'

The first thing Woodend saw when he pushed open the double doors and stepped into the corridor was the four men approaching him from the other end of it. Three of the men were uniformed officers, and the fourth, dressed in a shabby blue suit, was in handcuffs.

The prisoner was as big as he was, Woodend guessed – and maybe even harder. His nose had been badly broken at some point in the past, and there were numerous scars on his chin, cheeks and forehead. He didn't exactly seem enthusiastic about taking this walk along the corridor, and it was only by considerable effort on their part that the three officers were managing to make any progress at all.

Just looking at the scene made Woodend's hands start to twitch, but before he could take it any further, a warning voice in his head said, Don't get involved, Charlie. It isn't any of your business, an' they probably wouldn't thank you for stickin' your oar in.

Good advice, he told himself, stepping into an open doorway, in order to give the local bobbies more room to manoeuvre.

Mind you, he added, as he watched the officers continue to struggle against their prisoner, they do look as if they could
use
a little help.

The party had almost drawn level with him when the prisoner finally noticed him.

‘You're that bobby up here from London, aren't you?' the man demanded.

‘Come on now, Walter, don't make this any more difficult than it has to be,' urged PC Sid Smart, Woodend's old bird-nesting mate.

But Walter had come to halt, and refused to be budged.

‘Aren't you?' he insisted. ‘Aren't you that bobby from London?'

‘Yes, he is,' Sid Smart agreed wearily. ‘But he's here on another case entirely, an' the last thing he wants is to talk to you.'

‘They say I killed Bazza Mottershead,' the prisoner told Woodend. ‘But I didn't. I swear to you, I never touched him.'

‘Like I said, what you did or didn't do is nothing to do with Scotland Yard,' Sid Smart countered, giving his prisoner a shove in the right direction.

A warning that something was about to go seriously wrong flashed across Walter's eyes. Woodend saw it, but knew – even as he was registering the fact – that it was already too late to prevent it.

Walter moved with the speed of a veteran street fighter.

He raised one leg no more than eighteen inches off the ground, then brought it down again, scraping the heel of his shoe along the calf of the man on his right. The officer screamed, tried to keep his balance for no more than a split second, and then crumpled to the floor.

Walter turned quickly to his left and headbutted the man on the other side of him. A loud cracking sound – suggesting breaking bone – echoed down the corridor, and the officer joined his colleague on the ground.

The only constable left standing was Sid Smart, and he was still reaching for his truncheon when the prisoner swung his arms in a wide arc and struck him under the chin with the edge of the handcuffs.

If they'd handcuffed his wrists
behind
his back, like they did in America, that could never have happened, Woodend thought, as he tensed himself for the attack he was sure was coming.

But Walter seemed to have no interest at all in attacking him. Instead, he held his hands out in front of him in a pleading way, and said, ‘You've got to help me. I'm innocent.'

Woodend glanced quickly down at the three fallen policemen. The first one down was rubbing his leg, the second holding his nose, and the third – Sid Smart – gingerly fingering his jaw. None of them would be feeling too happy for a while, he thought, but it could have been much worse.

He switched his attention back to the man responsible for all the mayhem. ‘What you've just done isn't goin' to help your case at all, you know, Walter?' he said, matter-of-factly. ‘If I was in your shoes, I'd try to calm down an' wait until my lawyer arrived.'

The look of supplication which had filled the prisoner's face was replaced by one of blind fury.

‘You're a bloody bastard!' he screamed. ‘You're just as bad as the rest of them.'

‘Take it easy now, Walter,' Woodend said soothingly. ‘I really don't want to hit a feller in handcuffs – so please don't make me.'

But Walter was now in such a rage that it was doubtful he even heard the warning. He leapt at Woodend, then went flying backwards – almost doubled over – as his stomach came into contact with the chief inspector's fist.

The three uniformed officers were, slowly and painfully, climbing to their feet.

‘Thanks, Charlie,' Sid Smart gasped.

‘My pleasure,' Woodend told him.

The three bobbies surrounded Walter, and half-carried, half-dragged him along the corridor, while Woodend watched them and massaged the knuckles of his right hand with the fingers of his left.

‘My men could easily have handled the situation, you know,' said an angry voice behind him.

Woodend turned around, and saw the chief constable glowering at him from one of the office doorways.

‘I said, my men could have easily have handled the situation,' Eliot Sanderson repeated.

‘Aye, they seemed to be makin' a right good job of it,' Woodend replied. ‘I don't know why I even bothered to put my two penn'orth in.'

‘If you hadn't been there, they wouldn't have been distracted,' Sanderson said.

‘Yes, I knew it must be
my
fault,' Woodend agreed.

‘And at least
we've
caught
our
murderer,' Sanderson told him.

Woodend grinned. ‘Not if you listen to what Walter has to say on the subject, you haven't.'

‘It was just as I thought from the very start – a case of thieves falling out,' the chief constable said, ignoring both the comment and the grin. ‘Walter Brown is a well-known burglar, and – before their fateful disagreement – Bazza Mottershead was his fence.'

‘Well, there you are,' Woodend said easily. ‘A nice simple murder – all neatly tied up an' filed away.'

‘I'm beginning to regret the fact that I ever called in Scotland Yard,' the chief constable said.

Me an' all, Woodend thought, as another heartbreaking image of Lilly Dawson flashed across his brain.

DCI Paine had a shiny bald head, and his rounded cheeks were almost entirely occupied by a wide smirk of self-congratulation.

‘We've caught
our
murderer, you know,' he said.

‘Aye, I ran into him earlier,' Woodend said, rubbing his knuckles again.

‘We could probably have caught Lilly Dawson's killer by now, too, if the chief constable hadn't panicked and called in you so-called “experts”,' Paine continued.

‘Is that a fact?' Woodend asked. ‘So tell me, Chief Inspector, how far did you actually
get
with that investigation?'

‘It's all in my report,' Paine said.

First the police doctor and then the chief inspector – they were buggers for writin' reports, this lot, Woodend thought. It was just a pity that they all seemed to confuse neat typing with useful information.

‘Have you actually gone to the trouble of
reading
my report?' Paine asked.

‘Yes, I thought I might as well – since it was obviously goin' to be such a
quick
read,' Woodend said. ‘As far as I could see, you didn't make much use of your boffins, did you?'

‘I'm afraid I have no idea what you mean by that,' Paine said, sucking in his cheeks to show his displeasure. ‘The forensic team carried out a thorough examination of all the evidence available, and produced an excellent report.'

‘I'm sure it was – I'll bet there wasn't a single spellin' mistake in the whole document,' Woodend said softly.

‘What did you say?' Paine demanded.

‘If they did as thorough a job as that, I'm surprised they didn't find any evidence on Lilly's clothes.'

‘And I don't suppose it occurred to you, did it, that perhaps the
reason
they didn't find any evidence was because there
was
no evidence to find?'

‘No, as a matter of fact, that
hadn't
occurred to me,' Woodend said, running his thumbnail along the edge of the plastic envelope in his pocket.

DCI Paine smiled like a man who thought he had just scored a point.

‘However good they are – and, as I've just told you, they're
very
good – the lab men still can't spin gold out of sand,' he said.

‘True,' Woodend agreed. ‘Nobody would expect them to – but they didn't find anythin' in the pottin' shed where Lilly's body was discovered, either.'

‘And, again, that's because there
was
nothing to find.'

‘I think I just might go an' have a quick look at that shed myself,' Woodend mused.

‘Well, if that's what you want to do, by all means be my guest,' Paine said magnanimously. ‘But I warn you, you'll only be wasting your time.'

Woodend had no need to ask anyone for directions to the allotments where Lilly Dawson's body had been found. As a kid, he had walked past them regularly on his way to Fuller's Pond, which was generally acknowledged to be the best place in Whitebridge to catch tadpoles and sticklebacks.

In those days, he recalled, these allotments had been the last outpost of the man-made world – separated from the wild and majestic moors by no more than a country lane and a thick copse of elm trees – and the whole area around them had been a haven for all kinds of wildlife.

Rooks and pied wagtails had nested high in the trees. Hares had made their homes in the tall grass. Shrews and voles had scampered back and forth as they pursued their furry business. Hedgehogs had trotted across the open spaces, secure in the belief – proved erroneous by the gypsies, who caught them and baked them in mud – that their spiky quills made them invincible.

All that had now changed. The gentle elms had gone, and in their place were diggers which roared as they ripped up the earth, and bulldozers which rumbled ominously as they forced the helpless soil from one spot to another. There were lorries which screamed out their protests as their drivers fought a never-ending battle with the gears, and pneumatic drills which pounded relentlessly. And all the birds and beasts, tired of the disruption – and perhaps even terrified of it – had left in search of a quieter place in which to live out their simple lives.

It was like being robbed of part of your childhood, Woodend thought sadly, as he watched the heavy plant move on relentlessly.

‘But at least
you
were allowed to
finish
your childhood,' he reminded himself, ‘which is more than can be said for Lilly Dawson.'

As he approached the potting shed in which Lilly had spent the last few terrifying moments of her life, he realized that something was very wrong – from a procedural point of view – with the scene as it was laid out before him.

He had never imagined that there would be a policeman permanently on duty outside the shed – no police force had the manpower for that kind of luxury – but he
had
thought that there would at least be a strong police padlock newly fitted to the door, and official notices which warned the general public to keep away.

Instead, the shed just looked like any other shed, with no indication at all of the horror that had been committed within it.

He lifted the latch, and the door to the shed simply swung open.

If this had happened in London, he'd have had the balls of whoever was responsible, he thought.

But this wasn't London. It was Whitebridge, where the technicians had come up with nothing during their ‘thorough' examination of Lilly's clothes, and, having made what had probably been – at best – a cursory examination of the murder scene, had left it open to all kinds of contamination.

He looked around the shed. This had once been one man's little kingdom – the citadel from which he tended his own tiny garden of Eden – yet apart from a few broken plant pots in one corner, and a tattered seed catalogue in another, there was no longer any evidence of it.

But there was evidence aplenty of the tragic struggle which had occurred here less than two weeks earlier, Woodend thought, looking at the scuff marks in the packed earth floor which had been gouged out by Lilly's heels, as she battled desperately – and hopelessly – for her life.

He felt his anger rising again, and though the hardened professional he was trying to be fought against it, that anger would not go away.

He got down on his hands and knees and, slowly and methodically, began to search the ground.

It was behind one of the broken plant pots that he found the feather.

It was the second one he had discovered in less than two hours – and it had to mean something!

Most of the drinkers in the Clog and Billycock that lunchtime were either chatting to their mates or else playing darts, though there were a few who sat silent, blankly gazing into space as they grappled with the problems that life had thrown into their paths.