Fatal Quest (8 page)

‘Then let me enlighten you,' Bentley said. ‘This afternoon, just before closing time, a man was murdered in the Waterman's Arms. That makes it a case for the police, don't you think?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And since
you
claim to be a policeman, I thought you might be willing – if it's not
too
much trouble – to look into it yourself. DC Cotteral already has all the details, and if you ask him nicely, I'm sure he'll show them to you.'

‘But if I'm involved in this new case, who's going to be investigatin' the Pearl Jones's murder?'

‘Not that that's really any of your business, but I'll tell you anyway,' Bentley said. ‘I'll be taking personal charge of the Pearl Jo— of the dead black girl's murder, myself.'

‘Then perhaps I should brief you on what I've—' Woodend began.

‘In my experience, when you're taking over a case that some other bugger has already made a serious hash of, the best thing you can do is start again from scratch,' Bentley interrupted him.

‘I just think—'

‘I know you bloody do! You think
far too much
for my liking. And now, DS Woodend, you can get out – because I'm sick of the sight of you.'

Woodend sat at his desk, studying the newly opened file on the murder in the Waterman's Arms. It was a typical docklands killing, and it made depressing – if all too familiar – reading.

Twice, in the previous few minutes, he had contemplated handing in his resignation. The second time, he'd even taken a sheet of notepaper from his drawer on which to draft it.

‘But I can't just resign,' he argued silently. ‘I have responsibilities. I have a wife and child to support.'

Yet even as he was making the argument, there was a part of his brain which acknowledged that he wasn't being honest with himself.

Yes, he did have responsibilities, but he was well regarded back in Whitebridge, and it would not be long before he landed some kind of job there.

And true, he would probably not be earning as much back home as he did in London, but then it didn't cost nearly as much to live in the North. Even on a much lower wage, he'd be able to provide better accommodation for his family in Whitebridge than he could ever hope to provide in London.

And to top it all, he genuinely did
miss
the North, and was itching to get back there.

So what was really stopping him from writing that letter of resignation, he admitted, was Pearl Jones.

As a coloured girl attending a posh, all-white school, Pearl must have had things tough. Woodend didn't know how the other girls at the school had treated her – though he did know she'd had one good friend, at least, the blonde girl in the photograph – but if the headmistress had resented her getting on, the chances were that other people had followed her lead, and resented it too.

Yet Pearl had persevered. More than
persevered
– she had
triumphed
.

In another year or so, she could well have found herself studying at Oxford or Cambridge. And who was to say what she might have achieved after that? She could have become a famous writer or a brilliant scientist. She might have found a cure for a deadly disease, or spent her life fighting for the rights of the other coloured people she had left behind her.

And because of all the effort she had made – the struggles she had endured and the courage with which she'd faced them – she deserved better treatment than she'd been getting, even in death.

If
he
didn't try to get justice for Pearl, then who would, he asked himself.

And what chance did he have of getting that justice for her if he handed in his warrant card now?

T
he man who sat facing Woodend across the interview-room table went by the name of Jed Horrocks. He was forty-five years old, and had a square, muscular build. His nose had been broken at some time in the past, and there was a long, vivid scar over his right eye, which was probably the result of a knife or bottle fight. He was clearly a hard man, which, Woodend thought, was a very necessary job qualification for anyone wishing to run a pub like the Waterman's Arms.

For perhaps a minute after he'd entered the room, Horrocks simply glared at the newly arrived sergeant, then he said, ‘You ain't got no right to keep me here.'

‘As a matter of fact, we have,' Woodend told him, sitting down. ‘You're what we call a “material witness”.' He turned to the uniformed constable who was standing by the door. ‘Isn't that right, Constable?'

‘Definitely, Sarge,' the constable agreed.

‘'Ow can I be
any
kind o' witness when I don't know nuffink at all?' Horrocks grumbled.

‘You'll excuse me if I say that I think you're talkin' complete bollocks, won't you?' Woodend asked.

‘Fink wot yer want.'

‘Let's just consider what happened this afternoon,' Woodend suggested. ‘There was in a fight in your pub. Correct?'

‘I suppose there must 'ave been.'

‘You
suppose
there must have been? Are you sayin' that you somehow managed to avoid seein' it?'

‘Yeah, that's right. When whatever 'appened, 'appened, I was in the cellar, bringing up a crate of bottles.'

‘So, in this fight which you
didn't
see, a man called Wally Booth was punched in the face, an' knocked to the ground. Now the beatin' he'd received wouldn't normally have killed him. But when he fell, he banged his head on the brass foot-rail running along the front of the bar – and that did for him. Correct?'

‘Can't say, 'cos I wasn't there and I ain't no doctor. All I
do
know is that when I come up from the cellar, he was lying on the floor.'

‘And apart from the dead man, the bar was empty?'

‘Yeah.'

‘So you called the police?'

Horrocks smirked. ‘Of course I did. It was my duty as a law-abiding citizen.'

‘And when the local Old Bill arrived, you were unable to give them the names of any of the customers who'd been drinkin' in the bar just prior to Wally Booth's death?'

‘That's right. They were all complete strangers to me. I didn't know any of 'em from Adam.'

‘In fact, not only didn't you know them, but you couldn't even
describe
a single one of them to the officers?'

Horrocks shrugged – though scarcely apologetically. ‘I've never been very good wiv faces.'

Woodend slammed his fist down – hard – on the table. The action would have made most men jump, but Horrocks didn't even blink.

‘You're pissin' me about!' Woodend said. ‘If there's one thing that every pub landlord has to have, it's a good memory for faces. It's part of the job, for God's sake.'

Horrocks grinned. ‘Maybe they do, and maybe it is,' he said. ‘All I can tell yer is that I'm the exception wot proves the rule.'

‘An' anyway, the place can't have been filled with strangers,' Woodend continued. ‘Pubs like yours don't depend on passin' trade for their business – what they rely on is a hard core of regular boozers. Which is why I'm willin' to bet that you knew every single feller who was in your place this afternoon.'

‘You're wrong,' Horrocks said flatly.

‘I could charge you with bein' an accessory after the fact, you know, Horrocks,' Woodend threatened.

‘Then charge me, if that's what yer want to do,' the landlord said indifferently. ‘But yer'll never make it stick.'

Woodend sighed. ‘Do you think a few more hours in the cells might serve to jog Jed's memory?' he asked the constable stationed at the door.

‘Could do, Sarge,' the constable said.

‘Then you'd better take him back there, hadn't you?'

Horrocks stood up. ‘Once my brief gets on the case, he'll have me out of here in no time at all,' he said confidently.

And he was probably dead right about that, Woodend thought, as he watched the constable escort Horrocks out into the corridor – because while it was as clear as daylight that he was lying, it would be almost
impossible
to prove it.

So how should he go about conducting this investigation, the sergeant asked himself, as he lit up a Capstan Full Strength.

Questioning the landlord again would be a complete waste of time. Horrocks would never crack, and though he'd just gone through the motions of interrogating the bloody man, he'd realized that the moment he'd seen him across the interview room.

So what
would
it take to get a result?

One thing, and one thing only! It would take one of the customers who had been there at the time of Booth's death to come forward and start naming names – and that was simply never going to happen!

But then, Woodend suspected, this sudden reassignment of his didn't actually have much to do with the Waterman's Arms murder anyway. Instead, it had been a convenient way of removing from the Pearl Jones case the one man who seemed interested in finding her killer!

The Crown and Anchor pub was on the corner, at the southern end of Balaclava Street. From the outside it reeked of neglect, and Woodend guessed that the brewery was only holding on to it until the government was once again rich enough – whenever
that
might be! – to buy it with a compulsory purchase order, and pull it down.

The inside of the pub matched its exterior perfectly. The paint was cracked, the wallpaper was peeling, and the ceiling was browned with generations of nicotine stains. There was a battered piano up against one of the walls, but no one was playing it, and Woodend doubted if it was even still playable.

Yet despite all this, the landlord was a cheery, amenable soul – the sort of landlord who prevented fights not by being a hard man himself, but by somehow managing to remind those customers intent on violence of their favourite uncle, who would be disappointed in them if they behaved badly.

Woodend ordered a pint of best bitter, then showed the landlord his warrant card, and said, ‘I'd like to ask you a few questions about one of your regular customers.'

‘Oh yes? And which particular customer might that be?'

‘Mrs Victoria Jones.'

The landlord smiled ruefully. ‘She's no customer of mine.'

‘Really? I was told she was.'

‘Victoria Jones is a strict Methodist,' the landlord said. ‘As far as she's concerned, what I sell is the devil's potion.'

‘So she's never been in here?'

‘She wouldn't even
think
of setting foot in the temple of the arch-fiend.'

Woodend grinned. ‘Is that what this place is? The temple of the arch-fiend? I didn't know that.'

‘Neither did I – till I read it in one of the pamphlets she's forever sliding under my front door.'

‘
Victoria Jones has a weakness for the drink, you see
,' DCI Bentley had said.

Bloody liar!

‘So if I want to learn more about Mrs Jones, I'm talkin' to the wrong person, am I?' Woodend asked the landlord.

‘Couldn't be talking to a much wronger one,' the other man agreed. ‘But if you want to talk to the
right
person, she's over there.'

He was pointing at a woman sitting in the corner of the bar. She was old, and so small she could have been mistaken for a child, but for her heavily wrinkled face. She was wearing a purple beret and was wrapped up in a heavy, old-fashioned coat which could just as easily have been a carpet as an article of clothing. There was a glass of milk stout in front of her, and occasionally she would lift it to her mouth and take a bird-like sip.

‘I have to tell you, she doesn't
look
like she'd be much help to me,' Woodend said doubtfully.

‘Don't be fooled by appearances,' the landlord told him. ‘Round here, everybody calls her Lene.'

‘Lene?'

‘After Windowlene – you know, the stuff that you use to make your panes of glass sparkle.'

‘So she spends a lot of time sittin' at her front window, does she?' Woodend asked, getting the point.

‘When she's not in this pub, she's at that window of hers. She don't miss much that's going on. And, you may be interested to learn, she just happens to live directly opposite Victoria Jones's house.'

‘I'm
very
interested to learn that,' Woodend agreed.

With a pint of bitter in one hand, and a glass of milk stout in the other, Woodend made his way across to the old woman's table.

‘Do you mind if I asked you a few questions?' he said, placing the milk stout in front of her.

‘Wot about?' the old woman replied.

‘About Victoria Jones,' Woodend said.

‘She's a darkie,' Lene told him, in a tone which suggested there was nothing more to be said on the subject.

‘An' you don't like darkies?'

‘Nuffink against them – as long as they stay in their own country.' Lene took a sip of her drink. ‘I will say this, though – that girl of hers is all right. Always willing to lend me a 'elping hand when I need it.'

‘Do you see much of what goes on with the family?' Woodend wondered.

‘Are you accusing me of being a nosey parker?' Lene demanded.

‘No, of course I'm not,' Woodend said hastily. ‘It's just that, living opposite them as you do, there'll have been times when you'll have been bound to see things, whether you intended to or not.'

‘What kind of fings?'

What kind, indeed? Woodend wondered.

‘Anythin' unusual,' he said.

Lene thought about it for some time. ‘Well, o' course, there is the motor car,' she said finally.

‘What about it?'

‘Big black shiny thing, it is. Don't belong to nobody wot lives round here. Much too expensive.'