Lambs to the Slaughter (7 page)

And a third had scrawled, somewhat incongruously, ‘Jenny Talbot will do it with anybody.'

The two detectives carried on up the street, passing a mini-market – which had formerly been two miners' cottages, and was offering big savings on five-pound bags of potatoes and tins of pineapple chunks – a small post office, an even smaller library (which only opened on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays) and what appeared to be the village's only pub. They looked at the parish church, which was capped with an unambitious spire, at the graveyard beyond it, and at the single-storey brick-built church hall which lay beyond that.

When they reached the far end of the village, no more than five or six minutes after they had set out, Crane said, ‘They're worried.'

‘Who's worried?' Beresford asked.

‘The miners who want to have a strike. Since we saw that poster on the noticeboard outside the Miners' Institute, I've counted another fifty-six just like it.'

‘I don't see where you're going with this,' Beresford admitted.

‘In terms of spreading the news, there was no real need to put up the posters in the first place. This isn't a big city, it's a village of no more than a couple of thousand people. And I'm willing to bet that everyone in it knew about the meeting before a single poster was pasted to a single lamp post.'

‘Yes, they probably did,' Colin Beresford agreed. ‘But I'm still not entirely on your wavelength.'

‘At the start of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks did exactly the same thing,' Crane said. ‘They practically inundated St Petersburg – or Petrograd, as it was in those days – with posters.'

‘So?'

‘The point is that it was a small party which was trying to give the impression that it was a big one which was in total control of the situation.'

‘You're saying that if you really are in control of something, there's no need to make a big song and dance about it,' Beresford asked.

‘Exactly, sir.' Crane agreed.

And if you really weren't in control of things, you might resort to even
more
desperate measures, Beresford thought – like bumping off your opponents.

‘We'd better start thinking about setting up our incident centre, Jack,' he said. ‘Where – in this vast metropolis – would you choose?'

‘There's only really the Miners' Institute and the church hall,' Crane replied, ‘and since our killer may well be a miner himself, using the Institute would be a little bit like setting up camp in the middle of enemy territory.'

‘So you'd favour the church hall?'

‘Yes, but only by default.'

‘We'd better go and find the bloody vicar then, hadn't we?' Beresford said.

Chief Constable George Baxter gazed out of his office window at the sky above Whitebridge, where the weak winter sun was making a valiant – though probably doomed – effort to free itself of the clouds which had been masking it.

Baxter shifted his gaze onto the man sitting opposite him. The man's name was Forsyth – or, at least, he said that was what it was. He was probably in his late fifties or early sixties, but his skin was almost as smooth as a baby's. He was wearing an expensive suit and sporting an expensive manicure. He worked for a government department which he refused to put a name to, and though Baxter knew that Monika Paniatowski had clashed with him three times in the past, this was only the second time that the chief constable himself had had to deal with him.

‘Do you always have such dismal weather in this godforsaken part of the country?' the visitor asked.

‘Yes, we do,' Baxter said. ‘It can be a bit depressing at times, but as long as it keeps you poncey southerners out of our hair, we're more than prepared to put up with it.'

Forsyth chuckled, though there was no hint of amusement in it.

‘Ah, that wonderful dry northern humour,' he said. ‘I can't tell you how little I've missed it.'

‘So, if you don't like the weather and you don't like the humour, maybe you should just stay away,' Baxter suggested.

‘Believe me, I'd like to,' Forsyth admitted, ‘but there's a job up here which needs to be done, and I'm here to do it.'

‘And what job might that be?'

‘I'm here to compile a report on industrial relations in the north of England, with particular emphasis on the proposed miners' strike,' Forsyth said.

‘You're here to do everything you possibly can to prevent that strike from ever happening,' Baxter translated.

‘And what patriotic Englishman would not wish to see it prevented?' Forsyth asked. ‘If it does go ahead, it will do great damage to our already-struggling economy.'

Baxter glanced down at his watch. ‘Well, thank you for dropping in, Mr Forsyth, and now – if you'll excuse me – I've got work to do,' he said.

But Forsyth showed no signs of leaving.

‘It is at pits like the one in Bellingsworth that we stand the best chance of turning the tide,' he said.

‘Bellingsworth!' Baxter repeated.

‘That's right – the very place to which you have recently dispatched the admirable DCI Paniatowski and her team.'

‘Stop playing games,' Baxter growled.

‘Bellingsworth, you see, is not so strongly in the grip of the communist conspiracy as some of the other collieries,' Forsyth said. ‘There are positive forces at work there, and one of them – an old man called Len Hopkins, who was a very positive force indeed – was, much to my annoyance, murdered last night.'

‘So are you saying that he was killed because he opposed the strike?' Baxter asked.

‘You surely don't expect me to do Monika's job, as well as my own, do you, Mr Baxter?'

‘Answer the question.'

‘I don't think he was taken out by some professional assassin, working on Moscow's instructions, if that's what you're wondering. It is far more likely that he was murdered by a local hothead, inspired by the Kremlin, but acting entirely independently of it.'

‘If you're asking me to pull my people off the case, and let yours take over, then you're wasting your time,' Baxter told him.

‘I'm not asking that at all. I have every confidence that Monika will find the killer, though she may need a little help from me.'

‘If I get even a whiff of you sticking your nose into police business, I'll have you arrested,' Baxter said.

‘The point you seem to be failing to grasp is that the miners of Bellingsworth – on both sides of the divide – will reach the same conclusion about Hopkins' death as I have, and at the meeting tonight—'

‘
What
meeting tonight?'

‘What meeting!' Forsyth repeated, with just a hint of contempt in his voice. ‘You fondly imagine you have no need of my help – yet you don't even know about the meeting in the Miners' Institute to discuss the strike!'

‘I've only been on the case for a few hours,' Baxter said, suddenly feeling rather uncomfortable.

‘And I have been studying Bellingsworth
for weeks
,' Forsyth countered. ‘In the light of the murder, and based on the intelligence I have received, I expect there to be trouble at the meeting – and if it is allowed to get out of hand, it could seriously impede Monika's investigation.'

‘In what way?'

‘In all sorts of ways, not the least of which is that the miners would be less willing to talk to the police after an incident of that nature.'

He was right, Baxter thought. The bastard was spot on.

‘So you're advising me to send in reinforcements for the meeting, are you?' he asked.

Forsyth laughed. ‘Of course not. Sending in hooligans in uniform would only make matters worse. It is for that reason that I have asked the head of Scotland Yard's Special Branch – which occasionally runs little errands for us – if he would be so kind as to send a couple of his men up to Bellingsworth.'

‘So that's why you're really here, is it?' Baxter asked. ‘You want permission to send your men on to my patch.'

‘They are not
my
men, and I don't need
your
permission,' Forsyth said in a chilling voice. ‘You have no power over me, though I – if I seriously put my mind to it – could probably have you out of your job within a week.'

‘Threaten me like that again, and you'll leave my office head first,' Baxter said.

‘If you did decide to eject me in that manner, I'd have you out of your job in a
day
,' Forsyth said, unperturbed. ‘But there's no real need for antagonism on either side, Chief Constable. My only aim is to ensure that Monika comes out of this investigation covered in glory. I have a great deal of affection for her, you know, and she, for her part, is fond of me . . .'

‘She despises you,' Baxter said.

‘You're wrong about that. She is
very
fond of me – even if she doesn't quite realize it herself. We have now worked together on several investigations, and—'

‘You've never worked
together
,' Baxter interrupted him. ‘You don't
work
with anybody – all you ever do is
use
them.'

‘And doesn't it reflect well on Monika that I consider her worthy of using?' Forsyth asked.

‘When will these goons of yours from Special Branch be arriving?' Baxter asked.

‘They should be in Bellingsworth sometime this afternoon.'

Baxter smiled, as a new thought – and one which he was sure would get right under Forsyth's skin – occurred to him.

‘They should be in Bellingsworth this afternoon,' he repeated. ‘Isn't that a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted?'

‘I have no idea what you mean,' Forsyth said, though from the uncharacteristically defensive look which had come to his face, it was fairly plain that he did.

‘I mean that you're a day too late,' Baxter said, starting to enjoy himself. ‘If you'd sent them up
yesterday
, they would have been able to protect Len Hopkins, your ally in the battle against the Red Menace – then none of us would have been faced with the problems we have now.'

Anger blazed in Forsyth's eyes for a split second, and then was gone.

‘You're quite right, of course,' he agreed, as smoothly as ever. ‘Given the depth of feeling over this strike, it would have been advisable to give Mr Hopkins some protection. I made a mistake – but then we're all only human, aren't we?'

‘I am, certainly,' Baxter said. ‘But I've got serious doubts about you.'

L
en Hopkins' body, bent at the knees and still frozen in rigor, had presented a challenge to the ambulance men attempting to balance him on the stretcher, and the problem had been further compounded by the fact that the doors on his terraced cottage had not been designed with awkwardly shaped corpses in mind. Eventually, however, they managed to slot the dead man into the back of the ambulance, and drive away.

Dr Taylor stood on the pavement, watching the ambulance make its slow – almost stately – progress down the street.

‘Just you wait until they've turned the corner,' the doctor told Paniatowski and Meadows. ‘It'll be a different story. Oh yes, indeed – then you'll smell the burning rubber.'

‘I seem to be missing the point,' Paniatowski said.

‘They'll race me back to the mortuary,' Taylor explained, climbing into his car. ‘You might consider that childish – and you'd be quite right – but that's what they'll do.'

‘How do you know they'll race you?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘Because since I've caught on to their little game, I've been really hammering the Jag, but so far they've still managed to get back first,' the doctor said, firing up the engine. ‘But today – because the journey's a little longer than usual – they just might have met their match.'

‘About the post-mortem report . . .' Paniatowski began.

‘You'll have it as soon as is humanly possible,' Taylor promised, ‘and don't you worry, I'll stay within the speed limits until I leave the village, because unlike those two reprobates, I'm
responsible
.'

He closed the car door, slid the Jaguar into gear, and pulled gently away from the kerb.

‘So what do you think of the new doctor, boss?' Meadows asked.

‘I like him,' Paniatowski admitted. ‘He's no Shastri, but he has a certain style that I think I can work with.' She lit up a cigarette. ‘We need to interview the woman who found the body – Susan Danvers. Where is she?'

‘She's at home. Her doctor's with her.'

‘Go and talk to the doctor,' Paniatowski said. ‘Ask him if she's in any state to be questioned.'

‘And where will you be when I've got an answer, boss?' Meadows asked.

‘I'll be here – trying to make some sense of what happened,' Paniatowski said.

She turned around and walked back into the house – through the parlour, through the kitchen and into the yard. She looked down the yard at the lavatory in which Len Hopkins had met his end.

The back gate had blown open, and a cold wind which had been roaring down the alley had taken advantage of the fact to conquer the yard. Paniatowski shivered as she felt its icy fingers reaching for her, but even with the wind, the stink of the killer's rage still hovered in the air.

The church hall was about ten times the length of an average car garage, and roughly five times as wide, Crane estimated. There was a small stage at one end of the room, on which hung a heavy purple mock-velvet curtain, and there were a number of tables and chairs stacked up along the wall.

Two women, well past pensionable age, were mopping the floor near the stage, and a tall thin man in a clerical collar stood a little distance from them, watching them work, and occasionally popping something into his mouth from the paper bag he held in his hand.