Stone Killer (3 page)

‘Honestly, I really don't know,' Woodend protested. ‘I'm no expert in such matters. The only reason I'm here at all is because
you
wanted me here.' He paused for a second time. ‘Why
did
you want me here?'

‘Would you like to know what would happen if you
did
storm the place?' Apollo asked.

‘Like I said, I'd rather discuss other ways of resolvin' the situation,' Woodend told him.

‘All the hostages are wired up to explosives,' Apollo said. ‘The second I get the feeling you're even
thinking
of going on the offensive, I'll blow them all to Kingdom Come.'

‘Dear God!' Woodend breathed softly – and to himself.

Aloud, he said, ‘But if you did that, you'd go straight to Kingdom Come with them.'

‘So what?'

‘So I always thought that the main point of pullin' a bank robbery was to get away with the money, an' spend the rest of your life on some nice secluded beach surrounded by dusky maidens.'

‘That might be true if this were a real bank robbery,' Apollo told him. ‘But, you see, it isn't.'

‘Then what the bloody hell are you doin' inside a bank an' armed to the teeth?'

‘If a man chooses to make his stand, he should always select the most defensible position he can from which to make it,' Apollo said. ‘And what more defensive position could there be than a bank – especially a bank with a vault in which to hold his hostages?'

‘Just because you've given yourself a fancy bloody name doesn't mean you have to talk in riddles,' Woodend said. ‘Why don't you spell out for me exactly what it
is
you want?'

‘Very well,' Apollo agreed. ‘I want justice.'

‘Justice?'

‘I have tried to find it through the conventional means, but that has been a dismal failure, so now I have been forced to take more drastic action.'

‘You're still soundin' a bit airy-fairy to me,' Woodend said. ‘What,
exactly
, do you want?'

‘I want an innocent woman released from prison.'

Woodend shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘You're livin' in cloud cuckoo land, lad,' he said regretfully.

‘Am I?'

‘You most certainly are. The powers that be are never goin' to give in to your demands, however many hostages you're holdin' – and whatever you threaten to do to them.'

‘You misunderstand me,' Apollo said. ‘I don't
just
want her released – I want her innocence proved. And I want
you
to prove it.'

‘An' if I can't?'

Apollo glanced for a moment at the door behind him. ‘If you can't, then the blood of those people down in the vault will be as much on your hands as it is on mine,' he said.

W
hat he was having to do at that moment was nothing more than a waste of time, Woodend told himself, as he knocked on the Chief Constable's office door, less than an hour after he had left the Cotton Credit Bank.

No, it was
worse
than that, he amended, taking a last drag on his cigarette before grinding it under his heel. A waste of time merely prevented him doing something useful – whereas this meeting could do actual
harm
.

The problem, of course, was Henry Marlowe himself. In Woodend's opinion – and in the opinion of the majority of hard-working bobbies in Central Lancashire – Marlowe was the worst possible kind of chief constable. Where he should have used his intelligence, he usually relied on his cunning. Where he should have been even-handed, he was selectively vindictive. The main function of the Lancashire Constabulary, as far as Henry-Bloody-Marlowe saw it, was to maintain him in his cushy sinecure, so that rather than looking ahead – which was what the job called for – he was perpetually glancing over his shoulder, in order to be best able to guard his own back.

‘Enter,' said a deep, practised voice from inside the office.

Woodend opened the door. Marlowe had recently acquired a conference table – he must have read in some management magazine or other that it was the right thing to do – and he was sitting at it now, flanked by four other men.

Woodend already knew the two seated closest to the Chief Constable. The one on Marlowe's right was Chief Superintendent Cunningham, who was – in theory – his own immediate boss, but – in fact – served as nothing more than Henry Marlowe's mouthpiece. To Marlowe's left was Cedric Townsend, the local Member of Parliament, a man who – even for a politician – seemed to be dangerously short of scruples.

But it was the other two men in whom Woodend was more interested. One was tall and thin, and wore his tweed suit as if it were a heavily starched uniform. The other was shorter, and dressed in a pin-striped suit, the waistcoat of which was clearly straining against his rounded belly. Neither of them had the air of local men about them. Both, instead, exuded the smell of outside trouble.

‘Take a seat, Chief Inspector,' Marlowe said, somehow managing to make even this simple invitation seem both unwilling and ungracious.

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘You won't have met these gentlemen before,' Marlowe continued. ‘This –' he indicated the tall, thin man – ‘is Colonel Danvers of the Lancashire Fusiliers, and this –' pointing to the smaller, pin-striped man – ‘is Mr Slater-Burnes, from the Home Office.'

Woodend nodded to both of them, and, after a slight pause, they half-nodded back.

‘The reason I have convened this extraordinary meeting is that we are facing an extraordinary situation,' Marlowe intoned impressively. ‘Cases of hostage-taking are not at all common in Central Lancashire. Indeed, with the exception of seeing such occurrences in the American talking pictures, I personally have never come across one before.'

The same thought had occurred to Woodend earlier, and had probably crossed the minds of scores of other folk as well. But of all the people who might have shared the thought, only Henry Marlowe would ever have dreamed of referring to films as ‘talking pictures'.

It was a pure affectation, the Chief Inspector thought, aimed at reinforcing the impression of those listening to him that Marlowe was an old-fashioned bobby with old-fashioned values. But all it really showed, he decided, was that the Chief Constable stood head and shoulders above anybody else when it came to talking a load of old bollocks.

‘Perhaps we had better begin with a briefing from Mr Woodend,' the Chief Constable said. He leant back expectantly. ‘Chief Inspector?'

‘What the man in the bank seems to want me to do, is to find—' Woodend began.

‘Never mind what he
wants
!' Colonel Danvers interrupted. ‘I don't give a damn what he does – or does not – want from you. What I need – what we all need – is to be briefed on the security situation!'

‘I'm no expert on such matters,' Woodend warned.

‘Of course you're not,' Colonel Danvers said scornfully. ‘But you'll just have to do the best you can, won't you?'

‘As far as we know, there are three armed men an' around a score of hostages in the bank,' Woodend said, slowly and carefully.

‘Three of them. Well, that shouldn't present
too
much of a problem for my lads,' Danvers said.

‘The man I talked to – he called himself Apollo, by the way – was at pains to inform me that all the hostages are bein' held in the vault,' Woodend said. ‘Now I've done some checkin' on that, an' it seems that back in the old days – when local banks backed the paper money they issued with actual
gold
– the Cotton Credit was the place where most of the other banks in the area chose to keep their bullion. Which means, I would suggest, that it's a very secure vault indeed.'

‘Even so—' Danvers began.

‘In addition,' Woodend interrupted, ‘Apollo claims to have wired up all the hostages to explosives – an' I'm rather more than inclined to believe him.'

‘That's ridiculous!' Danvers said dismissively.

‘Is it?'

‘Of course it is. Handling explosives is a tricky and dangerous business. To have organized anything like that without creating an explosion, the man would have to have had military training.'

‘I believe that he has,' Woodend said. ‘In fact, I believe that I know who he is.'

‘Then why didn't you tell us right away?' Marlowe asked.

‘I was goin' to, sir – before your friend over there interrupted me,' Woodend said mildly.

Marlowe shot him a look of pure hatred, then said, ‘Tell us about it in your own way, if that's what makes you happier, Chief Inspector. And try not to keep us here all day.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Woodend said, pretending not to notice the sarcasm. ‘Apollo's main – and as far as I can see, his
only
– concern, is the current situation of a woman called Judith Maitland.'

‘Current situation?'

‘She's servin' a life sentence, with a recommended twenty-five years minimum, in Skipley Prison.'

‘For what?'

‘For murder.'

‘Should we have heard of her?' Marlowe asked.

Yes, you most certainly should have, Woodend thought. And
would
have – if you ever read anything in the newspapers besides the golfing reports.

But he contented himself with saying, ‘Possibly. Her trial made quite a stir, a few months ago.'

‘Ah yes, I think I remember it now,' Marlowe said, unconvincingly. ‘Just fill me in on the details.'

‘She's a Whitebridge woman, but since the murder she was accused of took place in Dunethorpe, we weren't directly involved in the investigation,' Woodend said. ‘Anyway, as I said, she was convicted of this murder an' sent to prison. Then, three days ago, she tried to commit suicide by slittin' open her veins. The prison authorities got to her in time, and she'll recover – but it was a damn close-run thing.'

‘I still don't see what all this has got to do with this Apollo chap?' Colonel Danvers said impatiently.

‘I was just comin' to that,' Woodend told him. ‘Apollo's not only the Roman god of light, which is what I'd always thought of him as, but he's also their god of truth. I know that for a fact, because I looked it up.'

‘I'm so pleased that you feel you have so much free time on your hands you can afford to chase up classical references,' the Chief Constable said, his sarcasm thicker than ever.

‘I think it's relevant,' Woodend said. ‘An' so will you, if you give me time to get to the end of my story.'

‘Take all the time you need, by all means,' Marlowe said.

‘Judith Maitland was a successful local caterer before her arrest,' Woodend explained. ‘She did jobs all over Lancashire. But she's also married – an' her husband is a Major Thomas Maitland.'

‘You're surely not trying to drag the Army into the middle of all this, are you?' Colonel Danvers asked, outraged.

‘No, sir, it seems to be comin' in of its own accord,' Woodend said. ‘Major Maitland went missin' two days ago.'

‘I thought you said that there were three armed men in the bank,' Danvers said.

‘An' so there are,' Woodend agreed. ‘Maitland's regiment's just returned from an overseas postin', an' a lot of the men are on leave. We're tryin' to trace them all, but I'd be willin' to bet there'll be two who we
can't
contact – because they'll be in the Cotton Credit with their boss. In other words, what we're dealin' with here are three battle-hardened soldiers.'

‘You're quite sure that Major Maitland and this man who calls himself Apollo are one and the same, are you?' Colonel Danvers asked.

‘It'd be a bit of a coincidence if they weren't, now wouldn't it, sir?' Woodend replied.

‘And what exactly does he want?' Marlowe asked. ‘Did you say it's his wife's release he's after?'

‘Yes, but it's not quite as simple as that. He also wants me to prove that she should never have been locked up in the first place.'

‘He wants
you
to prove it?' Marlowe asked sceptically.

‘Me – an' nobody else,' Woodend said. ‘He says he's been followin' my career for years. Apparently he's a big fan of mine.'

The Chief Constable winced at his subordinate's choice of words. ‘But the woman's been found guilty of the crime,' he said. ‘So she must have done it, mustn't she?'

‘Not necessarily,' Woodend disagreed.

‘Are you saying that she's innocent?'

‘I'm sayin' that there have been miscarriages of justice before, an' no doubt there will be again.'

‘And you think this Judith Maitland might be a victim of a miscarriage of justice?'

Woodend sighed. ‘I won't know till I've looked into the case, will I, sir? But her husband plainly doesn't believe she did it – an' he's the one callin' the shots right now.'

‘How long has he given you to investigate this case?' Slater-Burnes – the Home Office man – asked.

Woodend shrugged. ‘To tell you the truth, he didn't seem overly concerned about the timescale – it's the right result he's after.'

‘But doesn't he appreciate the situation he's in?' the Chief Constable demanded.

‘Oh yes,' Woodend said. ‘From what I could see, he's got a
very
clear appreciation of it.'

‘But … but … he can't possibly hope to hold out for much more than a day, can he?'

‘I don't know,' Woodend admitted. He turned to Colonel Danvers. ‘What's your opinion, sir?'

The military man thought about it for a moment. ‘Where has Major Maitland served?' he said finally.

‘In Palestine, Malaya, Aden and Cyprus.'

‘And you think the other two might have been with him on those tours of duty?'