The Dead Hand of History (6 page)

‘And was he watching the houses of all the other reporters as well?' she asked.

‘How do you mean?'

‘
None
of the hacks went down to the river. All of them came
here
, just like you did.'

‘He wasn't watching my house at all – he was watching the river bank!' Traynor said, finally catching on.

‘He was watching the river bank,' Paniatowski agreed.

And it took some nerve to do that, she thought – not just dump the hand, but stay around to see what happened next.

But
why
had he stayed around? Come to that, why had he left the hand there in the first place, and why had he phoned the reporters?

Was it simply that he got a kick out of moving people around, like pieces on a chessboard?

Or was it that he wanted to make sure the discovery of the hand made as big a splash as possible?

Traynor was looking as if he was about to be sick.

‘Is something the matter?' Paniatowski asked.

‘If . . . if I'd gone there when he told me to, I might have seen him,' the reporter said.

‘You might well,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘Still, look on the bright side.'

‘What bright side?'

‘At least you had a good breakfast.'

The street that ran along the eastern end of the Pinchbeck Estate was called River View Road, which proved that while the planners who'd named it might have lacked originality, they had at least prided themselves on their accuracy.

Positioning herself next to the red telephone box, halfway along the street, Paniatowski looked down at the river. While she could see the far bank clearly enough, her view of the near one was marred by the sharp slope – so that when the uniformed constables who were engaged in searching the bank bent down, they became completely invisible to her, and even when they were standing, she could only see them from the waist up.

So it wasn't a perfect view, by any means, she thought, but – as far as the killer was concerned – it had certainly been good enough for his purposes.

She realized that it was the first time she had consciously used the word ‘killer' to describe the man she was looking for.

But why
wouldn't
she think of him as a killer? Because what were the chances that the man who had cut the woman's hand off would let her live to tell the tale?

‘Are there any other phone boxes in the immediate vicinity?' she asked DS Walker, who she'd already briefed on her conversation with the obnoxious Mike Traynor.

Walker thought about it. ‘None that you'd call really close, ma'am,' he said finally. ‘The nearest is outside a pub four or five streets further into the estate. It's called the . . . the . . .'

‘The Black Bull,' Paniatowski supplied.

‘Oh, so you know the place yourself, do you, ma'am?' Walker asked slyly.

‘Yes, I know it,' Paniatowski replied.

Know it
all too well
, she thought.

It was in the Black Bull that her stepfather had regularly got drunk, before coming home and doing those unspeakable things to her which still gave her nightmares.

‘Do you think this is the phone box the killer made his calls from?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Undoubtedly, ma'am,' Walker said, without hesitation.

‘He couldn't have just dumped the hand and gone somewhere else to place the calls?'

‘No, ma'am.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘Because there were
two
rounds of calls.'

‘Go on,' Paniatowski encouraged.

‘If there'd only been one round of calls to the press, he could have made them from anywhere. But it's the second round – the ones he made twenty minutes later, just after our lads arrived – which give him away. Because if he'd been making the calls from somewhere else, he wouldn't have
known
the police had arrived, would he?' Walker paused, and smiled. ‘You'd already worked all that out yourself, hadn't you, ma'am?'

‘Yes, I had,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘So why ask me?'

‘I wanted to see if our minds ran along the same lines – and it seems as if they do.'

‘So he leaves the hand in the bushes, phones the press and then just waits,' Walker said. ‘That takes a lot of balls, don't you think?' He paused, as if he'd suddenly realized that he'd said the wrong thing. ‘Sorry, ma'am, didn't mean to use bad language.'

‘I'm a working bobby,' Paniatowski told him. ‘I'm
used to
bad language. And you're right – it
did
take a lot of balls.'

‘And even when the police arrive – which he can't have been expecting – he doesn't panic,' Walker continued. ‘Instead, he uses the same phone box he's used previously, to call the press again. And it
must
have been the same box, because he simply wouldn't have had time to reach another one.'

‘It must also have been the box that Mr Harper used to make
his
call, once his dog had discovered the hand,' Paniatowski mused. ‘Did Harper report seeing anyone else hanging around?'

‘Sorry, ma'am, I didn't ask him about that,' Walker said. ‘Well,' he added apologetically, ‘it never actually occurred to me the killer
would
hang around once he'd got rid of the hand.'

‘No, in all fairness, I don't suppose it would have occurred to me, either,' Paniatowski conceded. ‘But I still want him questioned again – more thoroughly, this time.'

‘I'll get right on to it,' Walker told her. He paused again, as if weighing his words very carefully. ‘I think that we're looking for a man with military training, ma'am.'

‘And just what's made you reach that conclusion, Sergeant?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘It's hard to pin it down exactly,' Walker admitted. ‘But there's something about the precision behind the planning – and the fact he knew how to improvise when that plan of his unexpectedly went wrong – which definitely suggests a military man to me.'

‘I'm not convinced,' Paniatowski said.

‘With the greatest respect, ma'am, that's because you're a woman,' Walker countered.

Of course it was, Paniatowski thought. What did women know about anything? What right had they to even be in the man's world that was the Police Force? And worst of all, how dare they presume to lead a serious investigation?

‘How would my being a man make me any more convinced?' she asked, keeping her temper reined in – but only just.

‘If you'd been a man, you'd have done national service,' Walker explained. ‘And if you'd done your national service when
I
did, the chances are you'd have been sent to Korea, to deal with the commies.'

‘Oh,
you're
the one who was sent off to fight the Red menace, were you?' Paniatowski asked. ‘I always wondered who it was.'

‘Sorry if I gave the wrong impression, ma'am,' Walker said. ‘I was only an acting corporal – a minor cog in the wheel.'

Well done, Monika, Paniatowski told herself.
Really
well done! You've only been in the job for a couple of hours, and you're already bullying and belittling your subordinates.

‘I'm sorry, too,' she said. ‘Go on with your theory.'

‘We were given basic training under combat conditions before we ever went out there, so we thought we knew what to expect,' Walker said. ‘But we were dead wrong, because there's a big difference between having blanks shot over your head and being exposed to real bullets. The first time we came under fire, I panicked, and if it hadn't been for my sergeant, who'd experienced it all before, and kept me in line, I swear I'd have done a runner. The second time was easier, and by the third I'd learned how to handle the situation.'

‘So you're saying it's not just that the killer
kept
his nerve, but that, in your opinion, he'd been
trained
to keep his nerve?'

‘Something like that, ma'am,' Walker agreed. ‘Of course, he doesn't have to have been battle-hardened by being in the services, it could simply be that this isn't his first murder. But if he had done this kind of thing before, we'd have heard about it, don't you think?'

‘Yes, we'd certainly have heard,' Paniatowski agreed.

FIVE

B
ack in the old days, the basement of Whitebridge police headquarters had been a repository for all kinds of junk that no one knew what else to do with, and only when there was a major crime was the junk cleared out and the space used as an incident room. All that had changed towards the end of the sixties. Police headquarters was to be extensively remodelled, the town council had proclaimed loudly. It would be turned into a thoroughly modern building which would meet the needs of a thoroughly modern Police Force.

An incident room – a
dedicated
incident room – had been central to the planning. And if that meant there was less space for other activities – if the canteen was a little smaller, and the office space more cramped – the council was sure the officers wouldn't mind, since they would understand that the changes would lead to more effective policing.

The incident room had been opened with a great fanfare – ‘A show put on by
paid
officials who know nothin' about policin', for the benefit of
elected
officials, who know even less,' Charlie Woodend had said sourly at the time – and the ceremony had received extensive coverage in the local press.

And then the officials and the press all went away, and the incident room was used for major incidents when there were any – and as a repository for junk that no one knew what else to do with when there weren't.

The appearance of the plastic-bagged hand on the river bank had ensured that, that morning, the incident room was fulfilling the function the councillors fondly imagined it
always
fulfilled. Telephones had been reconnected, desks had been set up in a horseshoe pattern and the junk had been scattered – temporarily – throughout other parts of the building.

Colin Beresford was standing in the doorway, preparing himself to address the young detective constables gathered there, many of whom would probably be bubbling over with excitement at the very thought of being allowed to work on their first major case.

So this was it, he told himself. This was the moment at which he would cease to be a merely theoretical detective inspector – one who so far only existed in official records. A minute or two from now, he would be briefing his men – a minute or two from now he would become a
real
inspector.

He was just about to step inside the room and take command when WPC Brenda Clegg appeared.

‘There's a phone call for you, Inspector,' she said.

‘Whoever it is, tell them that I'll ring them back when I can,' Beresford replied, irritated.

‘All right, if that's what you want,' Clegg agreed, hesitantly. ‘But she did say that it was important.'

‘
Who
said it was important?'

‘The woman from the Greenside Residential Home.'

‘Oh, my God!' Beresford groaned.

‘Is something wrong?' Clegg asked, concerned. ‘You've suddenly gone quite pale.'

As well I might, Beresford thought.

‘Mr Beresford?' the receptionist at the Greenside Residential Home asked down the phone.

‘
Inspector
Beresford,' he corrected her.

‘That's right,' the woman agreed. ‘Would you mind holding the line for a moment, Mr Beresford? The warden would like to talk to you.'

Beresford said nothing. There would have been no point, since what had been phrased as a request was clearly an order – and anyway, the receptionist had already put down the phone.

‘How could I have forgotten?' he asked himself. ‘How could I have bloody well forgotten? Jesus Christ, I'm getting to be as bad as my mother.'

And then – almost immediately – he started to feel guilty.

His widowed mother had shown the first signs of Alzheimer's disease just after her sixty-first birthday.

‘And it can only get worse,' the doctor had cautioned him. ‘I'm afraid you must prepare yourself for that, Colin.'

‘Only get worse?' Beresford had repeated. ‘How is that possible?'

It had certainly seemed terrible
enough
at the time –
she
had seemed terrible enough – but looking back on it, he understood exactly what the doctor had meant, because now those early stages of the disease seemed like almost a golden age.

At least, back then, he could occasionally have what might pass as an intelligent conversation with her.

At least, back then, she sometimes appeared to be aware of who he was, and how they were related.

Now, all that had gone. She lived in a fuzzy world which was ordered by a fuzzy logic, and though she might sometimes fervently believe herself to be the girl she'd once been, she was no longer capable of thinking of herself as the woman she had become.

He had tried (God, how he had tried!) to hold it all together – to balance his position in the Police Force with his role as a dutiful son.

When he wasn't at work, he was with his mother, but as the job had become ever more demanding, he'd been forced to rely more and more on the efforts of kindly neighbours.

Then, when even those neighbours' kindliness had been stretched beyond endurance, he had had to supplement their efforts by resorting to paid help – so that now his savings were gone and he lived from hand to mouth.