Salton Killings (24 page)

So this was how it ended, Woodend thought sadly. The killer was not a bad man, merely one who had been caught up in a web of circumstances not of his choosing, who had wanted to make a little sense out of a life that was really nonsensical, who had tried – according to his lights – to introduce a little more fairness into the world.

McLeash and Black reached the top of the slope and stood in front of him. It was hard to tell what McLeash was thinking; he had lived a lie for so many years that even now he could bring down the mask, make his face a blank. But Woodend could read Black's earnest expression easily enough as he looked up at him and said, “I'm sorry, sir. I'm sorry it had to end like this.”

It was only hours since they had charged Mr Wilson with the murder of his daughter in this same room. Now it was the turn of the young cadet, his face pale against the green wall, but his manner calm, peaceful almost.

“How did you get Diane Thorburn to agree to meet you in the salt store?” Woodend asked.

“It was easy, sir. All the other girls had boyfriends and she wanted one too. When I started payin' attention to her, she was over the moon. But we had to keep it secret, her parents were dead strict, and besides, I'm not a Catholic. I told her the best chance we had to see each other was when she was supposed to be in school.”

“And she told Margie?”

“Not everythin', only that she had a handsome boyfriend,” Black blushed, “an' that she wanted time to be with him. We needed Margie, you see. She had to throw a fit so that Diane could slip away without anybody noticin'.”

“What about Margie?” Woodend asked. “How did you trick her into goin' into the woods?”

“That wasn't clever of me – that was nothin' more than luck,” Black told him. The cadet hesitated. “Look, sir, do you mind if I tell it in my own way, otherwise, I'm goin' to get confused.”

“Aye, go on,” Woodend said softly.

“I killed Diane on my day off, but I wore my uniform anyway – people notice you less when you're in uniform. An' then I realised I'd lost my police whistle. I tried to get it back that night when I broke into the salt store, an' then again when I was workin' with Highton and Sowerbury. When Sowie said he'd found somethin' metal, I thought that was it, but it was only the suspender clip. So I knew it was only a matter of time before you caught me. I waited across from Margie's last night, an' she did come out – only you turned her back. I was gettin' desperate when I met Pete Calloway.”

“He never arranged to meet her in the wood, did he?”

“No, sir. He was waitin' outside the church.” Black smiled a thin, pale smile. “He's still there for all I know. But I knew they usually met in the wood.”

“Katie Walmsley?”

“That wasn't planned. I was just walkin' along the canal path, tryin' to clear my head, tryin' to make some sense of things, when I saw her. An' suddenly it seemed so simple, the answer to all my problems. All I had to do was kill her.”

“Yet you put flowers by the place where you pushed her in, didn't you?”

“Yes, sir, fresh ones every week. She was a nice lass, was Katie.”

“So why did you kill her?”

Black looked at the Chief Inspector reproachfully.

“You know that, sir.”

“I do,” Woodend said, “but we need somethin' for the record.”

Black nodded, to show that he understood, then took a deep gulp of air.

“My sister died when I was a kid,” he said. “It was an accident. She couldn't swim, an' when she fell into the canal she drowned. I loved Jessie an' I missed her – but not as much as my mum and dad did. There was nothin' I could do to take her place. However well I did in school, whatever I did around the house, it was always compared with what Jessie had done. An' my dad never stopped talkin' about what she could have achieved if she'd lived, an' how unfair it was that she was dead. If I could have died myself and brought her back to life for them, I would have done it.”

“An' all the time there were other girls growin' up,” Woodend said, “girls without Jessie's talent, without her kindness.”

“Blonde girls,” Rutter added.

“It wasn't so bad if they weren't blonde,” the cadet said, “they didn't seem so much like Jessie then. But the closer the blondes got to her age, the worse it was. I realised it that day when I saw Katie on the canal path. She wasn't half the person our Jessie had been, and yet she was alive. It was like an insult to my parents an' their memories of Jessie. I couldn't do anythin' else to make their life easier to bear – so I killed for them.”

The ale was not as good as in the George, but not surprisingly the Pooles had not opened that night. Woodend looked across at Davenport, wearing a suit that had obviously been bought before his wife's cooking had expanded his girth. It occurred to him that he had never seen the constable in civvies before, and that he did not even know his first name.

Nobody looks beyond the uniform, he thought, not even other coppers.

“If we suspect policemen of anything,” he said aloud, “it's bribery an' corruption. It never enters anybody's head that a bobby could be a cat burglar or a pickpocket – let alone a killer. Remember when I asked Black where he was on the day of the murder, Davenport? I only did it to put him at his ease, there was no question of checkin' up on him.”

“But it was no wonder he looked flustered,” the constable said.

“I thought he was embarrassed at meetin' a big cheese from London,” Woodend continued, “an' knowin' Blackie he probably was. But there was more to it than that. He must have been workin' out whether or not to tell me it was his day off, an' in the end he decided to lie an' say it was Tuesday, not Monday, when he went to the Magistrates' Court.”

Woodend looked down at his pint pot. It was empty.

“I'll get another round in, sir,” Rutter said.

The Chief Inspector rose to his feet.

“No, you won't. My treat tonight.”

He moved to the bar and was served immediately; no one's conscience is so clear that he can afford to keep the Law waiting.

“So why did he admit this morning that Monday was his day in court?” Rutter said when Woodend returned.

“I'd have asked him that myself, only I don't think he'd have been able to give me an answer. It might just have been a slip. After all, he's been under a lot of pressure, he could simply have forgotten what he'd told me before.”

“Then again,” Rutter suggested, “he may have reasoned that if we didn't find the whistle, the investigation could drag on for weeks, and he would eventually be reassigned to normal duties. In which case, the sooner he covered up the discrepancy, the better.”

Woodend nodded.

“That's possible too, but I think the most likely explanation was that he knew the game was up an' he needed one last session in court – even more than he needed to strangle Margie Poole. He killed for his parents, but he went to court for the good of his own soul.”

A hawker came in, carrying a big wicker basket full of tubs of Fleetwood Bay shrimps. Davenport looked as if he was about to ask for the man's license, but checked himself as Woodend pulled out a crisp pound note and bought three tubs.

“It was a dangerous game he was playin',” the Chief Inspector said, tucking into his shrimps with gusto. “He was my expert on the village, an' he had to assess each piece of information before he fed it to me, to see whether it would point to him. Mind you, he was dead clever about it. He told us some things that would lead us off on a wild goose chase, and he kept back others that would help to clarify the situation. That's why he mentioned Mary Wilson's murder, which happened when he was a baby, but said nothin' about Katie Walmsley's death. An' all the time I was wonderin' about McLeash, Black could have answered all my questions if he'd wanted to.”

“McLeash?” Davenport asked.

“Aye – an' Liz Poole. They've been havin' it off for years, probably since McLeash first started comin' here. It's common knowledge in the village.”

Davenport looked uncomfortable. He hadn't known.

“Young Peggy Bryce nearly told us about it, didn't she, Bob?”

Rutter pondered for a moment.

“Of course,” he said. “You asked her how she knew that McLeash didn't fancy little girls and she said it was because . . .”

“. . . because he fancied big girls instead. Only at that point, she realised we
didn't
know, an' she clammed up on us.”

“Why didn't Black tell you about it, sir?” Davenport asked. “What did he get out of keepin' it quiet?”

“It helped to confuse things. I saw McLeash lookin' at the bolt on the salt store – he knew nothin' about the murder, he was just gettin' ready to meet Liz there – an' I was suspicious.”

“That would explain a lot about Poole's behaviour too,” Rutter said.

“Oh aye. Husbands are always the last to find out, but finally Harry was beginnin' to suspect the truth. That's why he faked the headaches. It kept Liz firmly behind the bar, an' it left him free to go an' see if McLeash was waitin' for her.” He finished his shrimps, screwed up the tub and threw it at the bin. It just missed. “There were a couple of other things about McLeash that puzzled me because I didn't know about the affair. I was sure he was lyin' when he said he didn't know Mary Wilson, but I didn't know why. Of course he knew her, she was Liz's best friend, but he couldn't admit it without also explainin'
how
he came to know her. Then there was the fact that he was hangin' around Salton even though there was nothin' to load.”

“He wanted to see Mrs Poole,” Rutter said.

“Yes, partly he was hopin' to get his oats – in fact when Liz didn't turn up the second night, he went back to his boat and got drunk. But he was also genuinely concerned about the secret comin' out. They'd been usin' the salt store for years – God knows what they'd left behind. An' while he's free as a bird himself, he didn't want to see Liz gettin' into trouble.”

“An' that's why he followed Margie into the wood,” Davenport said, “because she was Liz's daughter.”

“Aye . . . an' possibly his.”

“She can't be,” Rutter protested. “She looks like her father.”

“No she doesn't, she takes after her mother. The only thing she has in common with Poole is hair colouring”, and that proves nowt. I'm just a secondary modern lad, I'm ignorant on Mendelian genetics,” he grinned at Rutter's obvious perplexity, “but I do notice people an' I know that colourin' can skip a generation. In fact, it often does. I wonder what McLeash's mother's hair is like.” He drained the dregs of his beer. “But back to Black,” he said. “Apart from the matter of timin', he made a couple of other mistakes, didn't he?”

Rutter and Davenport assumed the expressions of men who have already had the answer, but who wouldn't mind someone else spelling it out for them.

Woodend's grin widened.

“I'll just get the next round in,” he said.

As he stood at the bar waiting for the pints to be pulled, he thought, with regret, of how much pleasanter it would have been to spend his last night in the George, being waited on by the delectable Liz.

Poor old Harry, he said to himself as he counted his change. He's not had a lot of luck with his choice of wives.

“There was Katie Walmsley's hair for a start,” he continued, back at the table. “Blackie said it was cut like a pixie's. What does that mean to you, Davenport?”

“Close-cropped, sir. Short. Bits curlin' round the ears.”

“But?” Woodend said, looking at Rutter.

“But her hair wasn't like that. It was long and wavy. She copied Marilyn Monroe.”

“It was long an' wavy until an hour before she died, then Peggy Bryce cut it off. Peggy lives right near the cartroad and Katie went straight home. The chances of Black seein' her in the village were minimal. He didn't. The reason he has such a vivid memory of her hair is because that's how it looked when she was drownin', when he was forcin' her head under the water.”

The lights flashed and the landlord called out, “Time, gentlemen, please,” in a loud voice.

“The other mistake he made was on the night he broke into the salt store, though I suppose that was natural enough in the heat of the moment.”

Rutter and Davenport had given up any pretence of knowing what was going on. Woodend was pleased. The old dog might not be able to learn any new tricks, but he could still perform the old ones well.

“How long was it between Black leavin' you an' comin' back with Constable Yarwood?”

“It's difficult to say, sir,” Rutter answered. “We were pretty much involved in the case. Could have been ten minutes, could have been an hour.”

“It must have been at least half an hour,” Woodend said. “Anyway, the exact timin's not important, but two other things are. One: given that Black lives on Stubbs Street, which is close to the Police House, what was he doin' at the corner of Maltham Road and Harper Street even five minutes after he left you?”

“He could just have gone for a walk,” Rutter suggested.

“Maybe. But how did he know Downes had been attacked?”

The other two men looked at him blankly.

“Even Yarwood didn't know that,” Woodend explained. “He only knew that his partner had disappeared into the salt store. Besides, you said yourself that Yarwood was half out of his mind and all he could think about was his eyes. Black didn't need the information from Yarwood, because
he
was the one who'd attacked Downes.”

Rutter handed round his packet of Tareyton and then held a match under the Chief Inspector's. Woodend inhaled deeply. They weren't so bad once you got used to them. Maybe cork-tipped would catch on after all.