Murder at Swann's Lake (4 page)

The phone rang in the hallway. “Can you get that, Charlie?” his wife called from the kitchen. “It's probably our Annie, callin' from camp.”

She was wrong about that, Woodend thought, as he padded across the fitted carpet. It wouldn't be their daughter, wanting to tell them how she was getting on with the other girl guides. This would be the call he'd been expecting ever since he glanced at the newspaper headlines that morning.

He lifted the receiver. “Kilburn 2492,” he said.

“Is that you, Charlie?”

“It's me, sir.”

“There's been a murder in Cheshire and it seems to me it's right up your street.”

Aye, an' it'll get me out of your hair for a while, thought Woodend, who appreciated just as keenly as Bob Rutter did that the Brass were not always comfortable in his presence. In a way, he supposed, that was not surprising. He was, as had often been pointed out, not like other men – or at least not like other
policemen
of his rank. Other chief inspectors, with one eye on the commissioner's job, usually wore smart lounge suits. Woodend favoured baggy sports coats from the pockets of which he would sometimes produce a volume of Dickens, sometimes a corned-beef sandwich, with the bread cut in thick, door-step slices, just as he liked it.

He knew he would never rise above the rank of chief inspector and he accepted the fact philosophically, because although a salary well in excess of a thousand pounds a year sometimes seemed appealing, he already earned enough to meet his simple needs and didn't like the thought of giving up the kind of work his present job brought him.

“Are you still there, Charlie?” asked the voice on the other end of the line.

“Yes, sir.”

“I'd like you up there as soon as possible. Take a sleeper, if there's one available.”

“An' can I take my lad, Rutter, with me?”

“Rutter?” the Chief Superintendent repeated. “You've still got him with you? You haven't you worn him out yet – like you seem to have worn out every other sergeant you've been assigned?”

“No, sir.”

“Then he must be a remarkable young man.”

“He's a good lad,” Woodend agreed.

He said his goodbyes and put the phone down. Bob Rutter
was
a good lad, he thought as he walked back into the living room. And that girlfriend of his, young Maria, was a crackin' little lass who it was always the greatest pleasure to have round for tea. Joan thought the world of her too, and despite the difference in their ages, they seemed to have struck up a real friendship.

He ambled over to the kitchen door. Joan was still at the sink, cleaning out a large saucepan. “That was the Super,” he announced. “A new case has come up, an' he wants me to handle it. I'll probably be leavin' tonight.”

Joan dried her hands on the tea towel. “Well, your bag's packed an' ready like it always is,” she said. “Would you like me to make some butties to take with you?”

“Champion,” Woodend replied. “But don't make enough of them to fill a suitcase like you did the last time. This murder's not in Essex. It's up North – an' you can still get decent grub there.”

I
nspector Chatterton of the Mid-Cheshire Police stood on the platform at Crewe railway station and watched the London train pull in. When the carriage doors opened, a number of passengers got off, but only one was wearing a hairy sports jacket and carrying the sort of bag in which a plumber might keep his tools. Chatterton, well briefed as to what to expect by colleagues who'd worked with the Chief Inspector before, stepped forward and introduced himself.

Woodend shook the Inspector's hand. “Nice of you to meet us, Mr Chatterton,” he said. “Last time we were up here, they sent a DI to keep his beady eye on us.” He turned to the man next to him, who was carrying a smart tartan suitcase. ‘What was his name, Sergeant?”

“DI Holland, sir,” Rutter supplied.

“That's right,” Woodend agreed. “Why isn't it him this time? Won't his constitution stand the excitement of another encounter with us?”

“Mr Holland's been promoted and transferred back to Manchester, sir,” Chatterton explained.

“I'm not surprised,” Woodend said. “I always thought he was a bit of a pillock myself, but that doesn't seem much of an obstacle to gettin' on in the modern police force, does it, Inspector?”

Chatterton glanced at Rutter for guidance, and finding no more than an amused expression on the Sergeant's face, decided that his wisest course might be to change the subject. “The car's just across the road, sir,” he said.

“Oh aye?” Woodend replied, sounding genuinely interested. “An' what make would it be?”

“It's er . . . a Wolsey.”

Woodend turned to Rutter again. “A Wolsey? Isn't that what the powers that be gave us the last time we were here?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Chief Inspector shook his head as if were a truly disappointed man. “After the way we pulled them out of the shit in Salton, you'd have thought they'd have made an effort an' stretched to a Rolls this time,” he said.

“I'm afraid the Cheshire Constabulary doesn't have any Rolls Royces,” Chatterton said apologetically.

Woodend rolled his eyes. Just what he needed, he thought – a liaison officer with no sense of humour. “Lead on, Inspector,” he said. “Lead on.”

The route from Crewe to Swann's Lake took the Wolsey along country roads wide enough to allow two lorries to pass each other – but only just. Woodend looked out of the window, enjoying the sight of the lush green fields and the contented, grazing cows. It wouldn't be like that on the new-fangled motorway they were about to open between Luton and Dunchurch, he thought sourly. With three lanes in either direction, cars would be able to go so fast that the countryside would just whizz by. And it wouldn't stop with the M1 – they'd never have called it that if they didn't intend to build any more. The whole of England would soon be criss-crossed with the bloody things. Huge scars cut onto the countryside, just so people could get to where they were going a little quicker.

He turned to Inspector Chatterton who was sitting next to him. “Tell me about Swann's Lake,” he said.

“What exactly would you like to know, sir?”

“Well, we could start with who Swann was,” Woodend suggested.

“As I understand it, he owned most of the land around the lake about two hundred years ago,” Chatterton said. “But no one called Swann has lived in the area for a long, long time.”

Woodend nodded. “It's a sort of holiday spot, isn't it?”

“That's right, sir. There are several caravan sites and a fair number of wooden bungalows which are rented out during the summer season.”

“So what's the attraction of the place?”

“Well, there's the lake itself – people like to go boating – then there's the funfair and, of course, five or six social clubs like The Hideaway.”

“And where do the visitors come from?”

“All over. Liverpool, Manchester – even as far north as Bolton.”

“For your information, that's nearly thirty miles,” Woodend said to Rutter. He turned his attention back to Chatterton. “My sergeant's knowledge of geography doesn't stretch any further north than Watford,” he explained. “So tell me, Inspector, what sort of people are these visitors? Lawyers? Architects? Chief Inspectors from Scotland Yard?”

“No, nothing like that. They're mainly ordinary working people – taxi drivers, bricklayers and pipe fitters. Not that they seem too badly off, by any means. Most of them manage to run a little motor car, and you can't say
that
about everybody.”

“They come from all over the place,” Woodend repeated thoughtful. “In other words, you're tellin' me that in addition to the locals, there could be several thousand outsiders in the village at any one time.”

“I suppose so,” Chatterton admitted.

“Grand,” Woodend said. “That makes my job
a lot
easier.”

Woodend stood in the cinder yard, looking first at The Hideaway, then across at the outhouse/office where Robbie Peterson had been murdered. “How much time passed between this Peterson feller last bein' seen, an' his body bein' found?” he asked Inspector Chatterton.

“Roughly half an hour, sir.”

“Roughly?” Woodend repeated,

Chatterton nodded. “We know what time Detective Sergeant Gower found him – the man's a trained bobby, and the first thing he did was check his watch. What we're not exactly sure about is when Robbie Peterson left the club and went to his office. We can pin it down to somewhere around a quarter to ten, but no one we've talked to is prepared to be more specific than that.”

Woodend nodded understandingly. Folk out for a good time didn't keep looking at their watches – at least, not until it was getting close to calling for ‘last orders'.

“An' how many people would have gone in and out of the club durin' that time?” the Chief Inspector asked.

“There were around a couple of hundred people in the club on Friday night,” Chatterton said, “and about fifty of them have volunteered the information that during that crucial half-hour they either went home or paid a visit to the toilet block, which is located on the far side of the garage.”

“An' did any of them notice anythin' unusual?” Woodend asked.

The Inspector shook his head. “There were a few who couldn't say for sure whether or not there was a light in the office, but most of them are definite that it was in darkness.”

“Tell me what you've been able to find out about the murdered man.”

“He came here about five years ago,” Chatterton said. “Bought the club outright, as well as the caravan site, a few fairground attractions like the ghost train, and several holiday bungalows.”

Woodend whistled softly. “Must have had plenty of money behind him, then. And what exactly did our Robbie do
before
he moved to Swann's Lake?”

“You'll already have read most of what we know in the papers,” Chatterton said.

“No, I won't,” Woodend said. He turned to Rutter. “And you can stop grinnin', Sergeant.”

Rutter looked down at the ground. “Sorry, sir.”

“What's amusin' my sergeant,” Woodend said to Chatterton, “is that he knows I don't go much by reports, whether they're in the papers or on official police stationery. So while I might have read the headlines on this case, I've not gone much beyond that. All of which means that if I'm ever to find out what's goin' on, someone will have to tell me.”

“I see, sir,” Chatterton said – though it was clear that he didn't. “Well, it seems that Robbie Peterson comes originally from Liverpool, and from what the Merseyside force have been able to tell us, he was involved in all kinds of nasty work.”

“An' what exactly does that mean?”

“Robbery, fencing, protection. He worked for a feller called Sid Dowd, who seems to run most of the underworld activity there. And he worked
with
a lad called Terry Clough, who eventually became his son-in-law, and moved here at the same time as he did.”

“But Peterson's been straight ever since he left Liverpool?”

“Not according to one of the sergeants down at the station – Gower, his name is. He's convinced Robbie was still as bent as a nine-bob note.”

“I see,” Woodend said thoughtfully. “What do you make of it, Bob?”

“Make of what, sir?”

“The method chosen to dispatch our Mr Peterson to his final restin' place.”

“Unusual,” Rutter said.

“In what way?”

“It's rather gruesome. It's almost as if there was something ritualistic about it.”

Woodend beamed with pleasure at his star pupil, then turned to Inspector Chatterton. “Hear that, Inspector? Ritualistic! My sergeant's a grammar-school boy. You want to go any further with that, Bob?”

“It's as if it was a murder to set an example,” Rutter said.

“You mean like hanging, drawing and quartering?”

Rutter smiled. “I was thinking more of knee-capping.”

“So was I,” Woodend told him. “And that would suggest—”

“That the murder was carried out by someone in the criminal fraternity.”

“Aye, it would,” the Chief Inspector agreed.

And that's not going to make things any easier, he thought, because the person who'd wanted Robbie Peterson dead was probably not the one who carried out the act. Worse than that, whoever the man was, he probably had a watertight alibi for the time Peterson died.

“What do you want to do now, sir?” Chatterton asked.

“We may as well go and look at the scene of the crime,” Woodend said.

The three policemen stood in the doorway of Robbie Peterson's office. Woodend's quick eyes ran over the desk, the three-piece suite and the heavy coffee table which had caused Detective Sergeant Gower to go arse over tip.

“Impressions, Sergeant?” he said to Rutter.

“Some money's been spent on this place,” the Sergeant replied.

“But?”

“But the effect isn't quite right. It's not enough to buy expensive things. You have to buy expensive things which harmonise.”

“I'd never have noticed that myself,” Woodend admitted. “There's no wonder Joan won't let me go shoppin' for furniture with her.” He walked across the office to the workbench and looked down at the box of six-inch nails. “It's one of these that was used, is it, Inspector?”

“That's right, sir.”

“An' what about the hammer which drove it in?”

Chatterton pointed to the tool rack hanging on the wall. There was one gap in it. “The hammer which hung in that slot was lying on the desk,” he said. “It's a fair assumption it was used to drive the nail in, but we can't say for certain. The lab's checked it over. It's been wiped clean of prints.”