Echoes of the Dead (22 page)

Returning
, Paniatowski thought. Not
has returned
, but
is returning
.

‘Is he taking the two o'clock express train?' she asked.

‘He didn't say, one way or the other, but that would certainly be the logical train for him to take.'

Paniatowski looked at her watch. It was twenty-five to two.

‘I have to go,' she told the chief constable.

‘This interview is not over, Chief Inspector,' Baxter said sternly. ‘It will not
be
over until I decide it is.'

‘I'm sorry, sir, but I have to go,' Paniatowski replied.

Then she turned and rushed out of the room.

EIGHTEEN

H
e was standing on the central platform, a cigarette in one hand and plastic coffee cup in the other. He did not look quite so chunky as the last time she had seen him, but that could have been accomplished – she now realized – by a simple change of posture. He had abandoned the scruffy sports jacket and flannel trousers, too, and was wearing a sharp blue suit.

He saw her approaching him, and smiled.

‘I've not exactly been
expecting
to see you here, Monika,' he said, ‘but I always knew you
would
turn up for a fond farewell if you possibly could.'

‘How could you do it?' Paniatowski demanded angrily.

‘It was easy,' Hall said complacently.

‘That's not what I mean, and you know it,' Paniatowski told him. ‘How could you treat a fellow officer like that?'

But Hall was not interested in discussing the ethics of policing, she thought, looking into his eyes. He had his script for this possible encounter well prepared, and he was determined to stick to it.

‘The trick I pulled on you wasn't a very complicated one,' Hall said. ‘All I did was talk to some old hands at the Yard who still remember Charlie Woodend – Bannerman amongst them – and then adopt a few of the characteristics of your old mentor. It was a weak disguise, at best, and I doubt it would have fooled most people. But it took you in, because you
wanted
to be taken in – because, in times of crisis, you really miss your Uncle Charlie.'

He was right on both counts, of course, Paniatowski told herself. It probably
wouldn't
have taken in most people – and she
did
miss Charlie.

‘So, when it boils down to it, you were never anything more than one of Bannerman's arse-crawling lackeys?' she said.

‘I'm nobody's lackey,' Hall replied, with a sudden edge to his voice.

He was angry that she wasn't sticking to the script that he'd envisaged, she thought – angry that, instead of basking in her grudging admiration, he was being showered with her contempt.

‘So if you're not a lackey, just what
are
you?' she asked.

‘I'm a man who played it straight for over thirty years, and never rose above the rank of chief inspector. I'm a good cop – a
very good
cop – who would like to retire soon, and would prefer to do it on a superintendent's pension.'

‘And Bannerman can make that possible?' Paniatowski said.

‘And Bannerman can make that possible,' Hall agreed.

‘So it was
always
your intention to nobble Charlie Woodend, was it?' Paniatowski said.

‘Of course it wasn't,' Hall replied, and now he was managing to sound a little hurt. ‘Give me credit for a little human decency.'

‘You'll have to earn it first,' Paniatowski told him. ‘So if the plan wasn't to nobble Charlie, what was it?'

‘The original plan was to prove Fred Howerd was guilty as charged,' Hall said. ‘That would certainly have been the best solution all round. Or, failing that, I intended to bury any evidence which pointed in the other direction. Which is why, as you'll appreciate, I was rather knocked off balance by Mrs Eccles's revelation that her father actually had an alibi.'

‘Yes, I can see that must have been something of an inconvenience for you,' Paniatowski said.

‘I badly miscalculated the way I handled Terry Clegg,' Hall admitted, ‘but, in my own defence, I have to say it would have been a tricky situation for
anybody
to handle.'

‘When did you decide to pull that stunt on the top floor of the car park?'

‘As we were leaving the market. It was obvious to me that Clegg would crack the second you started questioning him, and I couldn't have that, because I knew that once he had told you Howerd
did
have an alibi, you'd feel obliged to investigate it further.'

‘So what was the point of threatening to throw him over the edge?'

‘I didn't threaten to throw him off – not in so many words. I was very careful about that.'

Paniatowski sighed. ‘All right – what was the point of
implying
you might throw him off the edge?'

‘I thought it might scare him into demanding to see a lawyer. If he'd done that, everything would have worked out fine, because any lawyer worth his salt would have told our friend Clegg that as long as he kept his mouth shut, we wouldn't be able to touch him.'

‘Wouldn't it have been much easier simply to
suggest
the idea of a lawyer to him?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Much,' Hall replied. ‘But you'd have overheard, and wondered why I was doing it. And at that stage of the game, the last thing I needed was for you to have doubts about me.'

‘But now that doesn't matter,' Paniatowski said.

‘But now it doesn't matter,' Hall agreed. ‘Still, things did look distinctly sticky for a while, and I could see my superintendent's pension disappearing right down the plughole. The problem is, you see, that Bannerman's had something of a rocky ride recently, and he can't afford any more slip-ups.'

‘And that's why it's just not enough for him to be seen as part of an investigation which made the perfectly understandable mistake of getting the wrong man?'

‘Exactly! What
he
wants – what he
needs
– is complete exoneration from any wrongdoing.'

‘Which means there was no choice but to set up Charlie Woodend to take the fall?'

‘I knew you'd get there in the end, Monika! Well done! He needed exoneration, and I've got it for him – because the only thing he looks guilty of now is naively trusting his superior.'

‘How long have you known about the red pencil?'

‘Oh, right from the start. It was the one thing that Bannerman was really worried about.' Hall clamped his hand over his mouth, and when he removed it again, he was grinning. ‘Oh dear, I should never have said that,' he continued, in mock horror. ‘Still, this is no more than a bit of idle banter between colleagues, so what's the harm in it?'

‘Everything's a joke to you, isn't it?' Paniatowski demanded.

‘That's right,' Hall agreed. ‘And if you're intending to keep on wading through this lake of shit that we fondly call a career, you'd better start treating it as a joke, too.'

‘Tell me about what happened to the pencil,' Paniatowski said.

‘Can't do that, because I don't know myself, with any certainty,' Hall said, not even trying to sound convincing. ‘But I can
hypothesize
, if you like.'

‘Hypothesize then,' Paniatowski said, stony-faced.

‘Picture the scene, if you will. A newly appointed chief inspector and a hungry detective sergeant visit the mother of a murder victim. The chief inspector – who fancies himself as a dab hand at solving crimes by simply soaking up the atmosphere – goes up to the murder victim's room. Once he's left, the sergeant says something which upsets the mother – he has a natural talent for that kind of thing – and the woman has to go outside for a breath of fresh air. Are you still with me?'

‘I'm still with you,' Paniatowski said.

‘The chief inspector, meanwhile, is looking around the girl's room, and he sees something there that upsets him so much that he has to rush to the toilet and spew up his ring.' Hall paused. ‘Bannerman and I had a good laugh at that, back at the Yard.'

‘You would.'

‘Anyway, the sergeant, hearing the disturbance, goes upstairs to see what's happened. Then, when he realizes that what his boss is doing is throwing up, he thinks he might just have a look in the girl's bedroom himself. That's when he sees the pencils – and what particularly attracts him to them is that they have the girl's teeth marks on them. “Hello, that might come in useful,” he tells himself. He pockets the pencil, and goes back downstairs before his boss has finished his business in the lavvy. Then later, when they're in – for example, and still hypothetically speaking – a pigeon loft, he takes the opportunity to drop the pencil on the floor. Perfectly sound police work, you might say . . .'

‘I wouldn't,' Paniatowski interrupted.

‘. . . except that, years later, it turns out that he's planted it on the
wrong
man. Well, you can't expect him to take the blame for it, can you – not when his old boss has retired, and so has nothing more to lose, while he's still got a bright future ahead of him.'

‘Nothing more to lose?' Paniatowski repeated. ‘Charlie could go to jail for this!'

‘Theoretically, I suppose he could,' Hall agreed airily. ‘But it's not likely, is it? I would imagine that, even now, your chief constable is looking for ways to cover the whole thing up.'

‘You wouldn't say that if you really knew George Baxter,' Paniatowski told him.

‘Well, even if he decides to institute legal proceedings, it could take years to bring it to court, and Woodend could be dead by then,' Hall said, as if he still saw no real problem. ‘Besides, if the worst comes to the worst – and I don't for a minute think that it will – we don't have an extradition treaty with Spain, so all old Charlie has to do is sit tight.'

There had been something about the whole conversation – perhaps Hall's bravado, or perhaps his refusal to take things seriously – which had had a familiar ring about it to Paniatowski, and now she had finally managed to pin it down.

‘I know why you're doing this,' she said.

‘Doing what?' Hall asked.

Paniatowski said nothing.

For a moment, Hall just stood there, shifting his weight awkwardly from one foot to the other, then he said, ‘I'm doing it because you asked me to – and a gentleman always tries to give a lady what she wants.'

‘You're doing it because you're feeling bad – because you realize that there's no difference between you and all those scumbags you've spent your life glaring at across the interview table,' Paniatowski told him.

‘I don't know what you mean,' Hall said.

But he did!

She could
see
that he did!

‘What do you normally say to those scumbags when you're trying to get them to come clean?' she asked. ‘“Come on, lad, tell us you did it. You know you'll feel much better once you've got it off your chest.”
Is
that what you say, Tom?'

‘Maybe,' Hall admitted.

‘And they often
do
feel better, don't they? And why is that? Because you've convinced them that you'll understand! Because, though you don't actually say it, you've given them the impression that, in their place, you might have done exactly the same thing!'

‘So what?'

‘Can you picture that look of guilty relief in their eyes, as they're making that confession that you've coaxed out of them, Tom? And do you know that if I held a mirror in front of you now, you'd see that same look in your own eyes?'

In the distance, they could hear the sound of a klaxon, as the train approached the station.

‘You're talking a load of bollocks, Monika!' Hall said. ‘Complete and utter bollocks.'

But he knew that he did not sound convincing – even to himself.

‘I'm sitting across that table from you right now, Tom – listening to your confession, seeing that look in your eyes – and
I
don't understand at all,' Paniatowski continued. ‘I'd
never
have acted as you did. I wouldn't bend the rules for a
decent
bobby who'd done wrong, let alone for a piece of offal like Bannerman.'

‘You can say that now – I might have said the same thing at your age – but just you wait until you get bit older,' Hall said weakly.

‘I'll never get
that
old, Tom,' Paniatowski told him. ‘I'll never get that
rotten
.'

The train pulled into the station and juddered to a halt. Hall did not offer her his hand, because he knew she would not have taken it if he had done. Instead, he simply reached out and opened the carriage door closest to him.

He stepped on to the train, then swivelled round to see if she was still there. He seemed almost surprised that she was.

‘I really had you fooled, though, didn't I, Monika?' he asked, rallying a little. ‘I had Charlie Woodend down to a “t”. I was
so much
like him that I think you might have agreed to sleep with me – if I could have been bothered to ask.'

‘Is that the best you can do?' Paniatowski asked with a mixture of pity and contempt – both genuine – in her voice. ‘After all the time you've had to prepare your parting shot, could you
really
not come up with anything better than that?' She shook her head. ‘I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything else,' she conceded. ‘
It's
pathetic because
you're
pathetic. You've sold your soul for your pension. And not even to the Devil – who at least has some terrible dark satanic majesty about him – but to a worm of a man who's not fit to lick Charlie Woodend's boots.'