Salton Killings (16 page)

“How are your eyes now?” Black asked quietly.

“The doctor said they'll be all right,” Yarwood said.

He seemed unaware of the fact that he had ever met Black before, and the cadet did not enlighten him.

Woodend bought Black a cup of tea in the hospital canteen. It tasted strongly of disinfectant, but at least it was hot and wet.

“So they saw nothin',” Woodend said, “but at least we've made some progress. I'm sure now that the killer left somethin' behind. Otherwise why would he have taken the risk of returnin' to the scene of the crime?” He poured more sugar into his teacup in an attempt to kill the smell of iodine. “Let's see if you'd make a good detective, Blackie. What's it likely to be?”

Black pursed his brow in concentration.

“It can't be anythin' too big, sir,” he said finally.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, for a start most people don't usually carry big things around with them, and when they do – if they've got a suitcase or somethin' – they're not likely to forget 'em. Anyway, if it was big, we'd have found it before now.”

“So it's small,” agreed Woodend, who was already three steps ahead. “Like what?”

“Somethin' personal,” Black said. “Somethin' that could be linked directly to him.”

“Go on.”

“His wallet or drivin' licence.” Black thought again. “A weddin' ring or a watch. A medal from the war or one of them St Christopher things.” He waved his hands in the air. “A pipe, a penknife – anythin' that somebody in the village could identify.”

“Yes,” Woodend said softly. “Somethin' somebody in the village could identify. An' I think it's there, lad, lyin' under all that salt, just waitin' for us to find it.”

When Woodend returned to the Police House, Rutter was waiting for him with his preliminary report. The Chief Inspector glanced through it. It was clearly laid out, the various points separated, the ones that Rutter considered important underlined. At the bottom was the heading ‘Speculations and Possible Lines of Investigation'.

He
is
a smart lad, Woodend thought, an' he'll make a good copper now he's learnin' a bit of humanity.

“Got anythin' on Ripley or McLeash yet, Bob?” he asked.

“Nothing on Ripley, sir, but a good deal on Jackie.”

He reached for his notes.

“Just give me a verbal for now,” Woodend said.

“Well, firstly, Somerset House. There were quite a number of John or Jack McLeashes born between 1915 and 1921, but the Yard's been able to trace them all.”

“Doesn't surprise me,” Woodend said.

“Secondly, the boat. Staffordshire Police have located the builder. He remembers McLeash because of the way he paid for it. No bank loans, no builder's repayment schemes – cash on the nail, five pound notes out of his pocket.”

“Lot of money for a gypsy to get his hands on at one time, isn't it?” Woodend asked.

“Yes, sir. About his visits to the village: Brierley's do keep records, but they only retain them for five years. McLeash has been a fairly regular customer, although there have been times when he hasn't appeared for months. And that complicates the other inquiry. There've been no reports of murders on or close to the Trent and Mersey Canal, but as there are periods when we don't know where McLeash was, that doesn't prove a thing. He's had a whole network to choose from. So I've asked the Yard to check on other canals, the Grand Union, the Oxford, any that connect with this one.”

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Woodend said. “I think you've just given me enough to make it worth my while payin' yon bugger another visit.” He looked at his watch. It was just after eleven. “You take Black an' go an' find Davenport. I should think he'd appreciate a bit of help on the house to house.”

McLeash looked rough. His eyes were red and he hadn't shaved. He was boiling a pot of coffee on his small spirit stove.

“Could you use a cup?” he asked. “I know I bloody could.”

Woodend sat where he had the night before. McLeash poured the liquid into two tin mugs and slid one across the table. The Chief Inspector took a sip. It was hot and strong and helped to burn away the taste of the hospital tea.

“So what can I do for ye?” McLeash asked.

Now he was sober, he had better control over his accent – but it was too late.

“Shall we drop the pretence, Mr McLeash,” Woodend suggested.

“I dinna know what you're talkin' about.”

“Ever read a Sherlock Holmes story called ‘The Man with the Twisted Lip'?” Woodend asked.

“No,” McLeash said suspiciously.

“A middle-class lady, the wife of a journalist, is walking through a not very respectable area one day when she sees her husband's face suddenly appear at the top window of a cheap boarding house. She rushes upstairs to find him gone an' a hideous beggar with a twisted lip in his place. Since the only way out of the room is through a window, below which runs the Thames, it's assumed that the beggar has killed the husband an' thrown him in the river.”

“Wha's the point?”

“I'm comin' to that. Holmes uncovers the truth. The journalist an' the beggar are the same man. He put on the disguise in the first place because he was writin' a story on beggin', then found out he could make more money doin' that than he could in his proper job. But rather than admit who he really was, he went to jail.”

“I'm still not followin' you,” McLeash said.

“I think you are. You were fitted up for that robbery in Wolverhampton, you said. The cigarettes were planted on you.”

“So they were.”

“If that's true, then it's because you're a gypsy and everybody knows gypsies steal. You fitted the part.”

“True,” McLeash agreed. “So what?”

“They'd probably have taken your word that you were innocent if you'd admitted who you really were, but you kept quiet. Ironic, isn't it? The man with the twisted lip wouldn't speak up because he was ashamed of his disguise and wanted to protect his respectable self – and you were ashamed of your respectable self and wanted to protect your disguise.”

“So who exactly am I supposed to be?” McLeash asked.

“I've no idea,” Woodend said. “But you're certainly not Jackie the Gypsy.”

“I dinna know what you're talkin' about,” McLeash said.

Woodend chuckled.

“I must have got you rattled. Your Scots is almost as bad as it was last night. But even without that slip, I'd have got on to you. For a start, you asked to see my warrant card.”

“An' why shouldn' I?”

“Because gypsies simply don't. They're used to bein' pushed around by authority, an' they've mastered the art of passive resistance. I've never met one who questioned that authority, as you did.

“An' then there was your impersonation of an army officer. What was it you said? ‘Not the sort of chap we want in the army.' Very funny – an' very accurate. But how would a gypsy know what a Home Counties officer sounded like?”

“I go to the pictures a lot,” McLeash said.

“No, you don't,” Woodend corrected him. “Readin's your vice. Did you really expect me to believe that a book seller, even a junk dealer, wouldn't recognise a first edition of
Pride and Prejudice
as valuable? An' even if he didn't, why should a gypsy be interested in buyin' it? The print's bloody awful, he'd be much more likely to go for somethin' modern.”

McLeash smiled.

“Go on,” he said.

“An' even allowin' that those two highly improbable things came to pass, do you really expect me to believe that a man in the state you were in last night could sit down and actually absorb Jane Austen – unless he knew the book backwards? Where's the rest of your library, Mr McLeash?”

McLeash pointed to the drawer underneath the bench on which Woodend was perched.

“You're sitting on it,” he said, “Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, the complete works of Shakespeare . . .”

And this time his accent was neither Scottish or northern, but solid upper-middle class.

“So, Mr McLeash, if that is your name,” Woodend said, “what's your game?”

“It is my name,” McLeash said. “A man's legal name is what he chooses to call himself. You can't tell me anything about the law, I've got a degree in it – from Oxford.”

“Oriel College?” Woodend asked.

McLeash smiled again.

“I seem to have underestimated you, Chief Inspector.”

“Don't lose any sleep over it, lad,” Woodend said, scratching his nose, “it's a common enough mistake. Now tell me about yourself.”

McLeash twisted round to the cupboard and brought out a fresh bottle of whisky.

“Hair of the dog,” he said, ruefully. “Care to join me?”

Woodend held out his mug and McLeash tipped some of the pale brown liquid into it.

“My father was a barrister,” McLeash began. “A prosecuting counsel, and I always assumed, without ever really thinking about it, that I would follow in his footsteps. And then I went up to Oxford. What an eye-opener that was. I met people who were free, really free, people who were doing what
they
wanted to do. And for the first time, it occurred to me that I had a choice too.”

“An' you chose to become a narrow boat man,” Woodend said.

McLeash shook his head.

“It wasn't as simple as that. Before I could know what I wanted, I needed to discover what I didn't want. It took me three years to come up with the answer – I didn't want debts.”

“Debts?” Woodend asked.

“Man is born free, but everywhere he is in debt.”

McLeash's eyes blazed. In many ways, Woodend thought, he's as much a fanatic as Mr Wilson.

“Have you a wife, Chief Inspector?” McLeash asked. “Children?”

“Yes,” Woodend said, beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable. “I'm married and I have one daughter.”

“Then you are in debt. If you fell in love with a stunningly beautiful woman, would you leave your wife for her? No, because you owe her loyalty for the years she has sacrificed to you, for the pain she went through in bearing your child. Could you throw up your job if it turned sour on you? No again, because you owe it to your daughter to ensure her future. And the further you progress, the more you become ensnared in a web of debts. Now you owe it to the village to catch Diane Thorburn's killer.”

“Damn it, man,” Woodend said, “all you're talkin' about is normal adult responsibilities.”

“Debts,” McLeash said firmly. “And the worst debt of all, the most crushing, soul-destroying burden we must carry through our lives is the debt we feel we owe to our parents. More misery has been caused, more harm inflicted, by that simple biological link than by anything else. If I had become a lawyer, I would have spent my life persecuting poor wretches and constantly looking over my shoulder to see if I had my father's approval. And if I had gone into some other profession I would have had to dedicate myself to proving to my father that I had made a wise choice in not pursuing the law.”

McLeash poured a fresh shot of whisky into his mug, then offered the bottle to Woodend. The Chief Inspector shook his head.

“I informed my father of my decision,” McLeash continued, “and asked for the cash to buy the boat in lieu of my inheritance. It was a very modest sum. He was angry at first, then merely bitter. I had written off my debt to him, you see, before I had even really begun to pay it. He gave me the money and told me never to darken his door again.”

“An' then you assumed the persona of Jackie the Gypsy,” Woodend said, “because an Oxford man would never have been accepted on the canal.”

But McLeash was not listening. There was a far-away look in his eyes and when he spoke again, it was to himself.

“I wasn't just cocking a snook at the old college calling my boat after it. ‘A room projecting onto the street and having a window in it.' That's what
The Oriel
is. It projects out onto the street of life, but is not part of it. From its window I can watch the world go by and yet be untouched.” He frowned. “No,” he said, “not untouched. The web of debt has many strands, and not even my boat has been able to protect me from them all.”

“Why are you still here?” Woodend asked.

The dreamy look disappeared from McLeash's eyes and they became hard, alert.

“Why shouldn't I be?”

“There's no salt to load, and there must be work further down the canal. I can see no reason for your staying.”

McLeash favoured him with a thin, superior smile.

“I see no reason to justify my movements to a policeman,” he said, “not even one who can recognise a first edition.”

“Life's a game to you,” Woodend said, suddenly angry, “but we can't all afford that luxury. Two girls have been killed in this village. You were around for the second murder, and probably the first. That's quite enough reason for me to pull you in for questionin' if I have to.”

“So it is,” McLeash said calmly, “but it wouldn't get you an answer to your question. You couldn't hold me long, and when I was released I'd come straight back here. Don't try to intimidate me with the law, Chief Inspector. I've got a degree in it. Remember?”

Highton dug in his shovel, carried the salt across to where Sowerbury was standing and dumped it into his sieve. Sowerbury shook his arms until all the salt had fallen through. The pile by his side was at waist height, proof that the two constables had been hard at it, but it was as nothing compared to the mountain still to be shifted.

“It's goin' to take a long time, sir,” Sowerbury said when he saw Woodend standing at the door.

The back of the Chief Inspector's neck tingled, as it always did in the store. There was something there, somewhere in that vast mound of glittering mineral. He knew it. He was tempted to ring up Maltham Central and commandeer two, five, ten extra men, the whole Force if necessary, just to get the answer now. But would they find it? There was the rub. Weren't they more likely to get in each other's way, re-sift piles that had already been checked, miss other mounds completely? Whatever they were looking for was small, he agreed with Black on that. He dared not take the chance that it would be overlooked.