Lambs to the Slaughter (20 page)

‘Don't worry about that now. Just tell me what happened.'

‘I didn't like the party, and there was this boy called Colin – he seemed nice – who said he'd drive me home.'

‘Go on.'

‘He took me for a burger, and I think it was soon after that I started to feel funny.'

‘
She's been drugged
,' Dr Green, the family doctor, had said, when Paniatowski had called him the previous night.

‘
And is she . . . is she . . .?
'

‘
There's no need to panic.
It was a very mild dose – I doubt she even completely lost consciousness – and it's already starting to work its way through her system. She's over the worst of it, and by morning she should be fine
.'

‘What happened after you started feeling funny, sweetheart?' Paniatowski asked.

‘I don't know, Mum, I just don't know. The next thing I remember, I was at the front door.'

Paniatowski patted her daughter's hand. ‘When you're feeling a little bit stronger, we'll get you dressed and go and see the doctor,' she said.

‘Which doctor? The one I saw last night?'

‘No. It will be the doctor I work with.'

‘Why do I have to see a different doctor?' Louisa fretted.

Because, if it ever came to court, evidence from the police doctor would carry more weight from that of an ordinary general practitioner, Paniatowski thought.

‘I'm taking you to him because I know you'll like him,' she told her daughter. ‘He's a nice man, and he tells funny jokes.'

Louisa bit her bottom lip. ‘Why do I have to go and see him?' she asked tremulously. ‘Is it to find out if I've been interfered with?'

‘Of course not,' Paniatowski said, a little too quickly.

Louisa gave her a sad smile. ‘I'm a big girl now, Mum. I know I don't always act like it – but I am. You can tell me the truth.'

She wasn't a big girl at all, Paniatowski thought, she was still such a baby – but she wasn't a
stupid
baby.

‘All right, if you want the truth, here it is,' she said. ‘There was no evidence at all that your clothes had been disturbed, so it's almost certain that nothing happened to you.'

What she'd just said was perfectly true, she thought. The police officer in her
knew
it was true.

But the mother in her – already wracked with guilt – was preparing for the worst.

T
he vicar of Bellingsworth had not merely been snobbish when he'd described Len Hopkins as belonging to some sort of wild Methodist sect in the next valley – he'd been completely wrong. Hopkins, it turned out, had not been a Methodist at all, but an evangelical.

And this was where he worshipped, Crane thought, looking at the Brigden Evangelical Church.

The church stood on a hill overlooking the village itself, and Crane wondered whether the decision on locating it there had been made by the evangelicals (to maintain their purity), or by the parish council (on purely aesthetic grounds).

Whichever the reason, the tin-clad building was certainly ugly, and had it not been for the small spire – little more than a pimple – which was precariously balanced at one end, it could easily have been mistaken for a large shed or a middle-sized industrial chicken coop.

The pastor, who was standing in front of the church at that moment, went by the name of the Reverend Eli Mottershead, and was probably a couple of years short of his thirtieth birthday. He had a slight – almost puny – build, yet walked with the swagger of a much larger man, and Crane, who could recognize an out-and-out fanatic when he saw one, knew that he was looking at one now.

‘How long have you been working in this village?' the detective constable asked.

‘Ministering,' Mottershead said. ‘I do not
work
, I
minister
.'

So it was going to be like that, was it?

‘How long have you been
ministering
in this village?' Crane asked.

‘I was called by the Lord God to minister here only six months ago,' Mottershead replied.

Now that was a pity, Crane thought, because he'd been hoping that Len Hopkins' pastor would have known the man for much longer than that, and could tell him something interesting about Tommy Sanders.

‘Is your predecessor still in the area?' he asked hopefully.

‘No,' Mottershead said. ‘He is not.'

‘Then do you know where I can find him?'

‘We can only pray that he has ascended to Heaven, there to bask in God's infinite mercy,' Mottershead intoned.

‘In other words, he's dead?'

‘That is correct.'

‘And we can
only pray
he's ascended into Heaven?' Jack Crane repeated, slightly puzzled. ‘Why would you phrase it in quite that way? Is there any real doubt about it?'

‘My predecessor was, by all accounts, a kind and gentle man,' Mottershead said, ‘but he lacked the faith – the conviction – to go about God's work as it should be gone about, and as infinitely forgiving as the Lord is . . .'

‘He has to draw the line somewhere?' Crane suggested.

‘Indeed he does,' Mottershead said, completely missing the irony. ‘I arrived here to find not a sheep dip from which my flock could emerge purified, but a cesspit in which they were allowed to wallow in their own sin.'

He wasn't just a fanatic, Crane thought – he was a genuine, prize-winning religious nutter.

‘I expect it wasn't long before you started cleansing the cesspit,' he suggested.

‘It was not,' Mottershead agreed. ‘It has been a hard path I have chosen for myself and my flock, and some – the weaker brethren – have fallen by the wayside as we followed it, and so condemned themselves to eternal damnation. But those who have persevered – and continue to persevere – will undoubtedly find their reward in Heaven.'

‘Did Len Hopkins fall by the wayside?' Crane asked.

‘He did not,' Mottershead said. ‘He struggled constantly with his demons, and he was slowly triumphing over them.'

‘Do you have any specific demons in mind?' Crane wondered.

‘When he was a younger man, he had carnal knowledge of a woman who was not his wife,' Mottershead said, ‘and the demon which had led him to that abomination remained with him.'

A woman who was not his wife! That would be poor Susan Danvers he was talking about, Crane thought.

‘But surely, Mr Hopkins had stopped committing that particular sin a long time ago,' he said aloud.

‘And so he had.'

‘Then I don't see—'

‘He had not yet divested himself of the source of that sin.'

‘The source?'

‘There was not only his own particular demon to consider – there was also the one which dwelt in her.'

‘You told him he had to get rid of his housekeeper,' Crane gasped.

‘It was the only way.'

‘And how did he take it?'

‘There were tears, as the demon sought to hold on to his soul, but in the end, armed with the strength of the Lord, I prevailed.'

And that was why Len hadn't taken Susan to the brass band competition, Crane thought, because this so-called ‘pastor' – this vindictive scarecrow powered by bile – had told him he had to dump her.

‘I'd better have a look at this church of yours while I'm here,' Crane told the pastor.

Mottershead smiled. It was a smile of grisly, complacent triumph, the sort of smile which would have been completely at home on the face of the Spanish Inquisitor General.

‘My words have touched you,' he said.

‘You're not wrong,' Crane agreed.

‘You have begun to see your path, and now you wish to enter my church and throw yourself on God's mercy. Isn't that true?'

‘I wouldn't put it quite that way,' Crane admitted.

‘Then how
would
you put it?'

‘I wish to enter your church and see if you're complying with the fire regulations.'

The idea seemed to rock Mottershead.

‘But this is a church – a sacred place,' he protested. ‘It is above the merely temporal concerns and—'

‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's,' Crane interrupted him. ‘And Caesar, in this case, is the local borough council.'

He strode across to the church, with Mottershead, like an agitated puppy, at his heel. Once inside, he walked up and down, making loud clicking noises with his tongue.

‘This place is a death trap,' he pronounced. ‘Section 14/36/B of the Fire Code clearly states that you must have Paniatowski sliders attached to all windows, and a Meadows' rotating hinge on the door. And don't even get me started about the lack of Beresford bolts.'

‘But . . . but . . .' Mottershead whimpered.

‘Don't get your cassock in a twist,' Crane said cheerfully. ‘It's true that, as it stands, we'd have to close the place down, but I estimate that the whole lot can be put right for around six thousand pounds.'

‘Six . . . thousand . . . pounds,' Mottershead gasped.

‘Well, I suppose I'd better say seven, just to be on the safe side,' Crane told him.

‘But . . . but this is a poor church. Where could I possibly be expected to lay my hands on that kind of money?'

Crane walked over to the door, and out into the clear, crisp air.

‘Where can you lay your hands on that amount of money?' he said, over his shoulder. ‘I expect the Lord will provide it.'

As he walked down to his car, he tried to convince himself that in causing Mottershead no more than temporary discomfort – and changing nothing at all in the long term – he had been childish and petty, and had not lived up to either the standards that the police had set for him, nor the ones he had set for himself. He
tried
to convince himself, and he failed – because the simple fact was that he felt good about what he'd done.

Detective Constables Smalley and Higgs had been searching the kitchen of Len Hopkins' terraced house for over an hour, and so far they had found nothing to even mildly excite them.

‘It might help if we knew what we were looking for,' Higgs complained, as he carefully emptied the kitchen cupboard of its tins of baked beans, rice pudding and stewed fruit.

‘We're looking for clues,' said Smalley, withdrawing his head from the fireplace, after shining a torch up the chimney.

‘But what
kind
of clues?' Higgs asked.

‘We don't know, do we – that's why we're looking,' Smalley replied, running his finger across his forehead, and discovering, just as he'd suspected, that there was soot on it.

‘Still, it's the best job going at the moment,' Higgs said philosophically. ‘It's certainly better than freezing our balls off walking the streets, like most of the lads.' He paused, as a new thought came to him. ‘Why
did
we get the plum job? Does Inspector Beresford fancy you, do you think?'

‘If he did fancy one of us, it'd be more likely to be you, you pretty little thing,' Smalley countered. ‘But you've got him all wrong – there's nothing queer about old Beresford.'

‘I heard there was.'

‘There were rumours at one time, largely based on the fact that he never seemed to have a girlfriend,' Smalley admitted, ‘but according to a mate of mine who works in Whitebridge HQ, he's become a real ram in the last month or so.'

He had only just finished speaking when he became aware of the stony-faced Inspector Beresford standing in the doorway.

‘Oh, hello, sir,' Smalley said weakly. ‘We were just . . . we were just . . .'

He trailed off, painfully aware that it was perfectly obvious what they'd just been doing.

‘If you were going to poison somebody, what – from the things you've found in this kitchen – would you put the poison in?' Beresford asked.

‘A cup?' Higgs suggested.

Beresford sighed theatrically. ‘I sometimes wonder where we're getting our detective constables from these days.'

‘Oh, do you mean, what would we mix it with to disguise the taste, sir?' Smalley suggested.

‘Go to the top of the class,' Beresford said dourly.

‘Something strong,' Smalley said thoughtfully. ‘How about this, sir?' he added, holding up a tin of baked beans for Beresford's inspection.

‘Brilliant!' Beresford said. ‘And how, exactly, would you get the poison in there?'

‘I'd have to open it, I suppose,' Smalley said.

‘You'd have to open it,' Beresford repeated. ‘So you'd open the tin and put the poison in. Is that correct?'

‘Yes, sir, I suppose so.'

‘And then along comes your victim, Len Hopkins. “I don't remember opening that tin of baked beans,” he says to himself. “In fact, I'm bloody certain I didn't, so somebody else must have broken into my house and done it while I was out. Never mind, I think I'll eat them anyway.”'

‘No, that wouldn't work,' Smalley admitted.

‘So what
would
work?' Beresford demanded.

Smalley looked around, and picked up a jar of cocoa.

‘This might do the job, sir,' he suggested.

Yes, it very well might, Beresford agreed.

And now he thought about it, there was something in Monika's notes about Hopkins making himself a cup of cocoa on the night he died, and Susan Danvers washing it up before she found the body.

‘What I want you to do now, DC Smalley, is to take the cocoa tin – and anything else that poison could be mixed in with – straight to the police lab,' he said. ‘Tell them I want it all analysed as soon as possible, and that I'd like them to begin with the cocoa.'

‘What about me, sir?' Higgs asked.

‘You stay here, and keep searching for clues,' Beresford replied.