Stone Killer (7 page)

‘I liked Judith Maitland,' he said. ‘I really did. I think you would have done, too, in my place.'

‘Go on,' Woodend said.

‘And I'd done some checking on Clive Burroughs. It wasn't a very edifying task, because Judith Maitland wasn't the first of his little flings – not by a very long chalk.'

‘That may be so, but I still don't see where you're goin' with this,' Woodend admitted.

‘I felt sorry for the woman,' Baxter admitted. ‘I know I shouldn't have, but I did. So I asked the prosecutor if we could present the case as a crime of passion, and he agreed.'

‘I understand that, but—'

‘In court, the prosecutor argued that Clive Burroughs and Judith Maitland had a blazing row, and that in the midst of it she picked up a hammer and caved in his skull.'

‘Yes?'

‘But I don't think it happened quite like that. I'm sure the row did actually occur, but I don't believe she was wearing the overall at the time.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because no woman ever goes to meet her lover wearing her working clothes.'

‘So what you're sayin' is that she decides to kill him, then goes out to her van, puts on her overall, and returns to Burroughs' office?'

‘Essentially.'

‘An' once she's done the deed – once he's lying there dead – she strips off the overall an' disposes of it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then I still don't see what made you exclude the overall from the evidence you presented.'

‘It's difficult to explain to someone who wasn't there,' Baxter said awkwardly. ‘I interrogated Judith for several hours, and at the end of that process I emerged with the view that what had happened had
undoubtedly
been a crime of passion.'

‘But …?'

‘But I could well imagine the court's reaction to hearing about the overall. They would have decided, then and there, that what they were dealing with was a stone killer.'

‘A what?' Woodend asked.

‘A stone killer,' Baxter repeated. ‘I was in America a couple of years ago, working with the FBI. It's a term they use a lot over there.'

‘An' what does it mean,
exactly
?'

Baxter frowned. ‘It's hard to find an exact English equivalent,' he admitted, struggling to find the right words. ‘A “total” killer, I suppose. Someone who almost seems
born
to kill. Someone who'd think no more about killing than you or I would about ordering a pint of bitter just before closing time.'

‘In other words, a
cold-blooded
killer?' Woodend suggested.

‘More or less,' Baxter agreed, gratefully.

‘But what's all this got to do with the way you put together your case?' Woodend wondered. ‘Your job is just to find out who committed the murder. It's the judge and jury who decide what
kind
of killin' it was. That's what they're there for.'

‘But they didn't
know
her. They hadn't
talked
to her, as I had.' Baxter paused, as if garnering his strength for what he knew he had to say next. ‘So I used my discretion,' he continued. ‘With the agreement of the prosecution, I excluded evidence which I felt might lead the court to reach the wrong conclusion. Judith had to pay for her crime – there was no doubt in my mind about that – but I didn't want her to serve any more time than she had to.'

‘She still got life, with a recommendation that she serves a minimum of twenty-five years,' Woodend pointed out.

‘Yes, she did,' Baxter agreed, sadly. ‘She was unlucky enough to come up against a judge with pure ice in his veins and, despite my best efforts, he imposed a heavy sentence anyway. But I still think I did the right thing.'

‘So, cuttin' through all the niceties an' the clever talk, what you're actually sayin' is that you deliberately doctored the evidence?' Woodend asked.

Baxter smiled. ‘I'd prefer to stick to the niceties and say that I merely
re-aligned
it,' he told Woodend. ‘And just between you, me and the bedpost, Chief Inspector, haven't you done something similar yourself, once or twice?'

Woodend returned his smile. ‘I'd never have been able to hold my head up again if I hadn't,' he confessed.

‘V
ery nice,' Woodend said. ‘Very nice indeed, if you can afford it – which, bein' a humble bobby, I couldn't.'

The object of his admiration was a large detached house with a double frontage and an integrated double garage. It was located in one of the best areas of Dunethorpe, and it had once been the home of a murder victim called Clive Burroughs.

Woodend took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one up. ‘Well, now we're here, I suppose we might as well go an' have a word with the grievin' widow,' he said.

‘You sound as if you think it'll just be a waste of time,' Monika Paniatowski commented.

‘An' it probably
will
be,' Woodend told her. ‘Wives are always the last to know what their husbands are gettin' up to.'

Images of Maria Rutter flashed across both their minds, and as Monika Paniatowski quickly lit up a cigarette of her own, she noticed that her hand was shaking. She wondered if she'd ever be able to put the past behind her, and immediately decided that she probably wouldn't.

The two officers walked up the path, which was flanked on either side by an almost obsessively geometric front garden. When Woodend rang the bell, they both heard a woman's voice say, ‘For God's sake, be quiet for once, Timothy. Can't you hear there's somebody at the door?'

There was a sound of footsteps in the hallway, then the front door opened. The woman who appeared in the doorway was probably in her early thirties, Paniatowski guessed. She had undoubtedly been pretty a few years earlier, but now she looked completely washed-out and very, very tired.

‘Yes?' she said.

‘We're police officers from Whitebridge,' Woodend explained, showing her his warrant card. ‘We're sorry to trouble you, Mrs Burroughs, but, if we may, we'd like to ask you a few questions about your husband's murder.'

‘Ask me a few questions?' the woman repeated. ‘I thought that was all over and done with.'

‘There are still a few loose ends to tie up,' Woodend told her. ‘I know it can't be easy for you, but—'

‘Easy!' the woman echoed, as if she'd caught him using an obscenity. ‘Easy? Of course it won't be easy!'

‘I appreciate that, but—'

‘It wasn't
easy
living with Clive while he was alive, and it's not
easy
living without him now that he's dead.' Mrs Burroughs raised her right hand, made a fist with it, and pressed that fist against her forehead. ‘If you want to know the truth, it's bloody hard. Everything's … so … bloody … hard.'

Paniatowski tapped Woodend's arm lightly. ‘I don't think we'll be needing you, sir,' she said softly.

‘Pardon?'

‘I said, I don't think we'll be needing you here. You've a lot of interviews to get through today, so why don't you go off and see someone else on your list, while I talk to Mrs Burroughs. I think that would be simpler all round.'

‘Oh, right,' said Woodend, who had no such list. ‘We'll … er … meet up again in the pub next to the police station, shall we?'

‘Yes, sir, we'll meet up again in the pub,' Paniatowski agreed.

She waited until Woodend had almost reached his car, then turned to Mrs Burroughs and said, ‘Well, at least now we can have a chat without me constantly wondering where his hands are going to wander next.'

‘Oh, he's like that, is he?' Mrs Burroughs asked.

‘He's so well known for it back in Whitebridge that all the women officers call him the Octopus-Man,' Paniatowski lied. ‘Men can be such right proper bastards, can't they?'

‘You're telling me,' Mrs Burroughs agreed, with a kind of bitter enthusiasm. ‘Would you like to come inside?'

‘I'd love to,' Paniatowski replied.

There were two children in the living room. The elder, a boy, was sitting at the table, working on a jigsaw puzzle. The younger, a girl, was sitting on the hearthrug and attacking her colouring book with a dogged determination.

‘Why don't you two kids go upstairs for a few minutes?' the mother suggested.

‘Don't want to,' the boy said, not even bothering to look up from his self-imposed struggle.

‘Maybe you don't. But then we can't always have what we want in this life, can we?' Mrs Burroughs asked.

‘Why can't we?' the boy wondered aloud.

Mrs Burroughs sighed. ‘
If
you go upstairs like I've asked you to, and
if
you can keep your sister quiet for half an hour or so, there'll be a nice surprise waiting for you down here when this lady's gone,' she said coaxingly.

‘What kind of surprise?' the boy asked.

‘Well, if you don't do as I say, you'll never find out, will you?' the mother replied.

The boy thought about it for a moment, then slid off the chair and said, ‘Come on, Emma!'

The girl climbed to her feet without any hesitation, and obediently followed her brother out of the room.

‘He's always been a bit of a handful, but he's got even worse since his father was killed,' Mrs Burroughs said, half-apologetically. ‘Still, I don't suppose I can blame him.'

‘Does he know what happened to your husband?'

‘No. I've told him his dad's just gone away for a while. But he's a bright boy and I think he may have started to suspect that whatever I might say, Clive's never coming back.' Mrs Burroughs paused for a moment. ‘Do you have children yourself?' she asked.

‘Two,' Paniatowski lied.

‘What are they?'

‘A boy and a girl, like yours.'

‘And who looks after them while you're out on police business? Your husband?'

‘Not him!' Paniatowski said contemptuously. ‘
He
ran off with his bitch of a secretary, and left me to look after them myself. The swine!'

‘So who …?'

‘My mother! I have to rely on my mother. She doesn't take a penny off me, but she certainly finds other ways to make me pay for it! She never misses an opportunity to remind me of just how much I'm in her debt!'

‘At least I'm spared that,' Mrs Burroughs said, sympathetically. ‘Clive was a proper bastard, but he left me well provided for.' She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘I don't suppose you're allowed to have a drink while you're on duty, are you, Sergeant Paniatowski?'

Paniatowski laughed. ‘Not allowed to drink on duty, Helen? It is Helen, isn't it?'

‘Yes, it is,' Mrs Burroughs agreed.

‘And you must call me Monika. You're half-right in what you've just said. The uniformed branch
aren't
allowed to drink while they're on duty. In the CID, on the other hand, it's virtually compulsory that we indulge in the odd tipple.'

Mrs Burroughs looked almost relieved. ‘In that case, would you like to share the bottle of wine I've got cooling in the fridge, Monika?'

‘I'd be delighted, Helen,' Paniatowski replied.

Mrs Burroughs produced the wine, and by the time Monika had taken a sip of hers, the widow had already knocked back a full glass herself. And it wasn't, Paniatowski suspected, her first drink of the day.

‘Did it ever occur to you that your husband was playing around with other women?' Mrs Burroughs asked.

‘No,' Paniatowski said. ‘I thought we had a very happy marriage. It came as a complete shock when he announced that he was abandoning me and the kids. How about you?'

‘That Maitland woman wasn't the first – not by any stretch of the imagination,' Mrs Burroughs said bitterly. ‘There was a string of other women before her. In the end – and this was about two years ago now – I told him I'd had enough of it, and that I was divorcing him. And do you know what he did?'

‘No. Tell me.'

‘He begged me not to start proceedings. He actually went down on his knees and
begged
me. He said that he knew he'd done wrong, but that was all over, and he'd be a new man from then on.'

‘And you believed him?'

‘Yes, fool that I was, I did.' Mrs Burroughs drained her second glass of wine, and filled up the glass again. ‘He really
did
seem to have changed after that, you know. He was much more attentive to me. It felt like it used to when we were first married. But he hadn't changed at all. He'd just got sneakier!'

‘Sneakier?' Paniatowski repeated. ‘How?'

‘You won't believe this – I can hardly believe it myself – but he used Timothy,
his own son
, as a cover.'

‘I'm not sure I understand what you mean,' Paniatowski confessed.

‘The way I always caught him out the other times was that he couldn't account for the time he spent with his women. Well, he learned by his mistakes, didn't he? He suddenly started taking Timothy out for treats – a trip to the zoo, a picnic in the country. I was pleased. More than pleased – I was
delighted
. But, you see, he only took Timothy to fool me – to hide from me the fact that he was seeing the Maitland woman.'

‘Good God!' Paniatowski said.

‘I told you you'd find it hard to believe,' Mrs Burroughs said, with grim satisfaction.

Worse than hard, Paniatowski thought. Almost impossible.

She tried to imagine her and Bob making love with his child present. They just couldn't have done it. And Bob's child had only been a baby!

If that
was
what had actually happened – if Burroughs and Judith really had used Timothy as a cover – how the hell had they managed it? Had they drugged the child – or merely left him to play with an expensive new toy while they disappeared into some quiet corner and slaked their lust?