Murder at Swann's Lake (23 page)

“You don't want to go there, luv,” he said. “That's right down by the docks, that is.”

“I know where it is,” Annabel told him.

“It's a real rough area,” the cabbie warned her.

Annabel sighed. “Look, I'm on the game, and I'm meeting my bloody pimp down there,” she said loudly. “
All right!
”

The taxi driver raised his hands. “Whatever you say, luv,” he assured her. “You're the one who's payin' the fare.”

Annabel climbed into the back of the cab. She did not glance over her shoulder, but if she had done, she would have seen Detective Sergeant Gower getting into the taxi just behind hers.

“You want me do
what
?” Gower's cabbie asked, when the Detective Sergeant gave him his instructions.

“Follow the taxi in front,” Gower replied. “But try not to let him
know
you're doin' it.”

“Are you off your chump, or what?” the cabbie asked.

“No, I'm not off my chump. I'm a copper, workin' on a case.”

“Where's your warrant card, then?”

Handed in to the Super when the bastard suspended me, Gower reminded himself. “There's no time for bleedin' warrant cards,” he growled menacingly. “But let me tell you somethin' for nothin', Sunshine. I've got friends in the Manchester police, an' if you don't get this thing into gear right now, I'll tell them to make your life a bloody misery.”

“Follow that cab!” the driver said sullenly. “As if we was in bloody America or somethin'.” But he pulled off from the kerb anyway.

This excursion to Manchester might lead to nothing, Gower thought, as he watched the taxi just ahead of them. Annabel Peterson might be doing no more than visiting an old school friend. But the feeling in his gut told him that tonight was definitely
the
night – that he'd finally get his reward for all the weeks of patiently watching the flat which Annie could not possibly afford.

The two taxis travelled through the city centre, then left the impressive civic building and big stores behind. Soon they were making their way along narrower, meaner streets, streets full of terraced houses squatting against the skyline like malignant goblins.

“Well, she certainly won't be meetin' any of her posh friends in
this
area,” Gower said happily to himself.

Annabel's taxi driver stuck out his indicator and pulled up in front of a rough-looking dockside pub called The Grapes.

“You want me to stop as well?” Gower's driver asked.

“No I don't, you bloody fool,” the Sergeant hissed. “Drive round the corner an' park.”

The cabbie did as he'd been told. Gower gave him a ten shilling note and, without waiting for his change, walked quickly back to The Grapes. There was no sign of Annabel Peterson on the street – but that was only to be expected.

The Sergeant approached the pub cautiously and had to stand on tip-toe to look over the frosted glass that ran halfway up the window. The Grapes was a scruffy, run-down place, typical of the area. The bar was crowded with dockers and merchant seamen, all dedicated to drinking down ten or twelve pints before last orders were called. He could see Annie at the bar, sitting with her back to him. Apart from two obvious prostitutes, she was the only woman in the pub.

Had she merely dressed the part, or was she really on the game? Gower wondered. But if she'd been selling her body, surely she'd have stuck to her poncy boyfriends back in Maltham, instead of coming all this way to give one of these rough fellers a cheap knee-trembler in a back alley. No, she had to be up to something else, and given where she'd come looking for it, he had a pretty good idea what that
something
was.

He didn't dare go into The Grapes – they could smell the police a mile off in that sort of place. So he would have to rely on arresting Annabel once the exchange had been made. True, this was not his manor, but he thought he could justify making the arrest himself by saying that he hadn't had time to contact the local police. Anyway, thinking through the consequences of his actions had never been his strong point. As far as he was concerned, all that would be sorted out later.

He moved away from the pub and leant against a lamp-post on the street corner. The light wasn't working – probably vandals had broken the bulb so many times that the city council had got tired of replacing it – so Gower was virtually invisible, except from close to. On the other hand, he had a clear view of the pub. Anyone entering or leaving was illuminated by its bright lights.

He saw a coloured seaman in a woollen cap walk down the street and enter The Grapes. Black bastards, they should never be allowed into the country in the first place, he told himself. And evidently the landlord shared his opinion, because the seaman was only inside for thirty seconds before he emerged again. But he didn't go away! Instead, he cut up the alley at the side of the pub.

About half a minute later, Annie Peterson came out, and also disappeared up the alley. Gower strode quickly after her, pulling his torch out of his pocket as he went. His beam caught them in the act – the black seaman taking the money off Annabel, her taking the package off him.

“Police!” Gower shouted. “Don't move!”

They both began running, and so did the Detective Sergeant. The black man streaked ahead, but Annie Peterson, hampered by her high heels and tight skirt, soon came to a resigned halt. Gower charged on anyway, ploughing into Annie and knocking her off her feet. He helped her, none too gently, into a standing position again.

“You, my princess, are bleedin' well nicked,” he said with malicious glee.

The night-time duty sergeant at the Manchester River Police headquarters, his eyes red with tiredness, looked up from his paperwork at the man in the hairy sports jacket. “Can I help you?” he asked.

Woodend produced his warrant card and held it out for the Sergeant to see. “I got a call from one of your lads. He told me you're holding a girl called Annabel Peterson,” he said.

The Sergeant nodded. “That's right, sir.” He stepped from behind his desk. “She's waitin' for you in Interview Room Three. Straight down that corridor and third door on your right.”

Woodend walked down the empty corridor, listening to the echo of his own heels. What a cock-up Annie Peterson had made of her life, he thought. What an absolute bloody mess.

He counted off the doors, reached the third one, knocked and entered. Like so many of the interview rooms he'd spent countless hours in, it was a depressing place, small and cramped, with chocolate-brown paint to waist height and institutional cream from there to the ceiling. The wooden table which took up most of the space looked incredibly rickety, and the two straight-backed chairs on each side of it had definitely seen better days.

A bovine-looking WPC, with a bored expression on her face, sat on one of the chairs, Annie Peterson on the other. Annie had a cigarette in her mouth and was using an Individual Fruit Pie aluminium plate as her ashtray. From the number of crushed cigarette ends it contained, she had obviously been chain-smoking. She was wearing one of the tartish dresses that were the uniform of her battle against the rest of the world, Woodend noted, but though her thick make-up was smudged, she had not been crying.

“Thank you, Constable,” Woodend said. “I'll take over now. Just wait outside the door.”

The WPC rose to her feet and squeezed past the Chief Inspector. When she had closed the door, Woodend eased himself into the seat opposite Annie. She looked quiet and subdued. The fire – the aggression – seemed to have left her. She gave him a friendly smile, but one tinged with sadness.

“One last pick-up,” she said. “That's what it was going to be. One last pick-up. I didn't want to do it, but they told me they needed time to recruit someone to take my place. I said that was their problem, and they said it would be a pity if such a pretty face as mine ended up covered in razor scars. They meant it.”

“I'm sure they did,” Woodend agreed. “But what I don't understand is why, in God's name, you ever allowed yourself to get involved with people like that in the first place.”

Annabel Peterson shrugged. “It gave me freedom, I suppose. I didn't have to depend on Robbie anymore; I didn't have to depend on
anyone
.”

Woodend shook his head in disbelief. “That's not it,” he said. “Or at least, not all of it. You're a bright girl, Annie. You could have made yourself independent of Robbie in hundreds of different ways. So there has to be somethin' else, doesn't there? Another reason you chose to go the way you did?”

Annabel Clough looked him straight in the eyes. “Do you really want to know? she asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I think that somewhere below that hard-bitten exterior, there's somebody I could like,” Woodend said. “All I want you to do is help me find her. Are you willin' to do that?”

Annabel nodded. “I used to think the men I went out with accepted me for myself,” she said tiredly. “I was wrong. I was out with one of them at an exclusive country club one night and I went to the toilet. When I got back to the table, my date was talking to one of his friends. They didn't see me, and I accidentally overheard what they were saying. Shall I tell you exactly what that was, Chief Inspector?”

“If you want to.”

“The friend said he'd heard I was a great girl, and the man I was with said, ‘Yes. She'll let you do anything you want to her. And the best part is, she doesn't even charge for it. Not that I'd mind paying if she asked.' Do you know how that made me feel?”

“I can imagine,” Woodend said.

Annie shook her head vehemently. “No, you can't. Nobody can, unless it's happened to them. I felt so worthless. I saw that whether I took money or not, I was still nothing more than a common prostitute to him. To all of them! I rushed back to the toilet and was sick in the basin. I don't know how long I was there, heaving my guts up, but all the time I was thinking, I want to die. I just want to die. And I swear to God that if I'd had a packet of razorblades on me, I'd have slit my wrists then and there.”

“Go on,” Woodend said sympathetically.

“But I didn't have any razorblades, and by the time I was cleaning myself up, I'd thought of something better to do than kill myself. My ‘boyfriends' had been using me, but now I was going to start using them. Instead of
me
being their plaything, I'd introduce them to a new one. I'd help them to destroy themselves, just as they'd been working so hard at destroying me.”

“But
heroin
, Annie!” Woodend exclaimed. “My God, there can't be more than a few hundred heroin users in the whole of the British Isles.”

Annie smiled with what looked like genuine amusement. “That was part of its appeal to them,” she said. “They always like to feel they belong to an elite.”

“Did you kill your father?” Woodend said.

“I've often thought about it.”

“That wasn't what I asked.”

“No,” Annie said. “I didn't kill Robbie. How could I? When all's said and done, he was my dad.”

There was the sound of a scuffle coming from the other end of the corridor, but Woodend felt no inclination to hurry towards it. Whatever was going on, it was the Manchester Police's business, not his. And then he saw what was causing the disturbance. Two uniformed constables were struggling to restrain a frenzied young man. And that young man was Michael Clough.

The sight of Woodend had an instant calming effect on Clough. He stopped trying to break free, and became, once again, the calm, detached person Woodend had come to know. “Tell them I have to see Annabel, Chief Inspector,” he said.

“I can't,” Woodend replied. “There are rules, Mr Clough. Until she's charged – and she
will
be charged, you know – the only person she can see is her solicitor. After that, she'll be allowed visitors, but only from her immediate family. Of course, it shouldn't be long before you can count yourself as one of them, should it?”

“What do you mean?” Clough asked.

“Well, you are plannin' to marry her, aren't you?”

For once, Michael Clough looked as if he'd been caught off-guard. “How . . . how did you know?” he asked.

“Jesus, lad, for anybody who's got eyes to see, it's bloody obvious,” Woodend told him.

W
oodend had not been expecting the black Rolls Royce Silver Dawn to pull up in front of The Hideaway, but neither was he particularly surprised when it did. Men like Sid Dowd didn't bother making appointments – if they wanted a meeting, even one with senior police officers, then that meeting usually happened.

The driver's door opened, and a hard-looking young man in a smart blue suit got out. His eyes quickly swept the area around the club, looking for any source of trouble. Very professional, Woodend thought. Sid Dowd was wise to employ someone like Phil to watch his back. But just how far would Phil go in the service of his boss? Would he, if Dowd asked him to, drive a nail into an enemy's skull? Yes, Woodend decided, he would. Probably without a second's thought!

Satisfied that the yard was safe, Phil opened the back door of the Rolls, and Dowd, as immaculately dressed as he'd been at the funeral, stepped out with all the grace and assurance of a visiting royal.

Woodend suppressed a yawn. His visit to Manchester the night before had meant he'd only managed to grab a few hours' sleep, and he was feeling the effect. He wasn't as young as he used to be, he told himself. It was about time he let that keen young sergeant of his do most of the running about. Except that, unless Woodend could come up with a very good argument against his resigning, Rutter wouldn't be around to do the running much longer.