Death of an Innocent (10 page)

‘You remember I told you that we'd found lots of sets of fingerprints in the farm?'

‘Yes.'

‘From what we now know, it would have been surprising if we
hadn't
found them.'

‘An' why's that?'

‘The neighbours say that he had a great many visitors – especially late at night.'

‘The nearest neighbours must be a mile away from Dugdale's Farm,' Woodend said. ‘How could they possibly know how many . . .?' He paused again. ‘They'd have noticed the headlights, wouldn't they?'

‘That's right,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘On the moors you can see a set of headlights for miles.'

‘Speakin' of the fingerprints, what's been happenin' with them?'

‘Scotland Yard has done us really proud. The technical lads down there must have spent all night checking the prints out, because they phoned through the results just before I set out to meet you.'

‘Go on.'

‘And if you're hoping for a break from that direction, you're in for a disappointment. The Yard came up with the same results as our fingerprint people did. None of Dugdale's visitors appears to have had a criminal record.'

‘I don't like that,' Woodend said thoughtfully.

‘I don't like it either,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘It would have been much easier for us if the Yard had come up with positive identification. But it didn't, and that's the end of it.'

‘You're missin' the point.'

‘And what point would that be?'

‘If you collected twenty sets of prints in a real villains' pub like the Burnin' Bush in Whitebridge town centre, you'd expect to find a match for a fair number of them in our records, wouldn't you?'

‘Naturally.'

‘Now say you took the same number of prints in somewhere highly respectable – like, for example, the Women's Institute. You'd be very surprised if you found even one set that matched any we'd got on file. Agreed?'

‘Agreed. But what's all this⎯?'

‘Those are the two extreme cases. But what would happen if we took a random sample from people in the shoppin' precinct an' didn't get a single match there? Wouldn't you find it strange that not one of the people printed had committed even a minor crime like drunk drivin' or petty theft?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘Twenty sets of prints from Dugdale's Farm an' no match. Statistically, that's very unlikely.'

‘Very unlikely, but not completely impossible – as the results from the Yard clearly show,' Paniatowski countered. ‘Anyway, I think you already explained the lack of matches away.'

‘Did I?'

‘Of course you did.' Paniatowski grinned, just as she might have done in what she was now coming to think of as ‘the old days'. ‘Wilfred Dugdale's guests
were
, in fact, all members of the Women's Institute – possibly the Witches Coven Section.'

Woodend returned her grin. ‘Now there's a thought. After all, we did find a dead virgin (human sacrifice for use of said coven) up at the farmhouse.'

The moment the words were out of his mouth, he felt terribly ashamed of himself.

What was happening to him? he wondered. How could he make jokes about the poor bloody girl who had lost her life in Dugdale's Farm? Could it be that the longer he was kept away from the investigation, the less he saw the victim through the eyes of a caring bobby – and the more he saw her through the eyes of a salacious reader of the sensational press?

‘We've got to find this murderer,' he said passionately.

‘We're doing all we can,' Paniatowski replied.

And it was clear to him that once again they were talking about entirely different sets of ‘we's'.

‘I want to be useful,' he said – and although he was not a man to plead for anything, it sounded to him very much as if he were pleading now.

‘You
are
useful, sir,' Paniatowski said awkwardly. ‘We're bouncing ideas off each other just like we always did.'

‘I want to do more.'

‘Like what?'

Woodend gestured helplessly with his big hands. ‘I don't know. Anythin' at all. Give me somethin' to look into that you haven't got the time, or the inclination, to look into yourself.'

Paniatowski shook her head regretfully. ‘I have detective constables to do that for me, sir. Besides – for the moment at least – you don't have any official standing.'

For the moment at least!

‘You're right,' Woodend agreed. ‘I don't have any official standin'. But you'll still keep me in touch with developments, won't you?'

‘I'll . . . I'll do my best,' Paniatowski promised. She glanced down at her watch, though Woodend was sure she knew exactly what time it was. ‘I have to be getting back.'

‘Of course you do, lass.'

Paniatowski stood up, folded her newspaper, and dropped it into the bin. Woodend watched her as she walked up the slippery path towards the park gates. There was only so far he could push her, he thought. She was already running a big enough risk just by meeting him and keeping him abreast of the investigation – to ask for more could make her shut down on him entirely. She owed him – and they both knew it – but she would not sacrifice her own career in a desperate attempt to save his. And who could blame her?

He lit up and watched as the smoke from his cigarette drifted through the chill air. He was waiting – like a starving dog – for Monika to throw him a few scraps from the investigation to chew on. And she might just do that, whatever she had said about him having no official status. But he was not certain that he could stand the wait – was half-convinced that before he got the scraps, the hunger which was gnawing away inside him would drive him mad.

So what was he to do? As far as he could see, he had only one option. If he could not investigate the murder as the police officer in charge of the case, then he would just have to investigate it as a private citizen.

T
urner's was the fourth moorland farm Woodend had visited that afternoon. It was closer to the main road than the one which belonged to the missing man, but other than that, with its thick stone walls and heavy slate roof, it was almost the twin of Wilfred Dugdale's property.

Woodend parked in front of the main building, and climbed out of his car. The chill wind which was blowing, unhindered, off the moor, enveloped him immediately in its icy fingers. He stuck his hands firmly in his overcoat pockets, and shivered.

The oak door of the farmhouse swung open, and a man stepped out into the yard. He was short and broad. His face was as wrinkled and weather-beaten as a gnarled oak tree, which probably meant he was the same age as Wilfred Dugdale, if not a little older. He was in his shirtsleeves, and if the cold scything in from the moors was bothering him, he certainly didn't show it.

‘Mr Turner?' Woodend asked.

‘That's me. How can I help yer?'

‘I'm a reporter,' Woodend lied. ‘I'm writing a story on the murders up at Dugdale's Farm.'

The old man's eyes narrowed. ‘Work for the
Whitebridge Evenin' Telegraph,
do you?' he demanded.

Woodend forced a laugh. ‘Nothin' as grand as that, Mr Turner. I'm what they call a freelance.'

‘A free-what?'

‘I write the story first, then I try to sell it to whichever paper shows an interest.'

‘A man your age should have a proper job,' the old farmer told him disdainfully. ‘A job where you can make good use of them strong arms an' broad shoulders of yours.'

‘Blame it on me old dad,' Woodend told him. ‘It was always his ambition to see me end up wearin' a collar an' tie to work.'

The old farmer nodded sagely. ‘Well, maybe your dad was right, at that,' he conceded. ‘There's so much of the work done by machines these days that there's little room left for a bit of honest hard labour.' He paused for a second. ‘So you're writin' a story, you say?'

‘That's right.'

‘Well, I don't see what use we can be to you. We're too far away from Dugdale's to have heard anythin' here.'

‘I appreciate that you can't tell me anythin' about the murders, but I was wonderin' if you could give me any background information on Mr Dugdale himself,' Woodend said.

The old farmer's eyes hardened. ‘I haven't spoken to Wilf Dugdale for over forty years,' he said.

‘I see.'

‘An' if we both live for
another
forty years I won't be speakin' to him in that time either. So if you're lookin' for background information, as you call it, then you'd better take yourself off somewhere else.'

A white-haired woman appeared in the porch behind Turner. ‘We weren't expectin' company,' she said.

‘He's not company,' her husband told her. ‘He's one of them reporters, writing a story on Wilf Dugdale. I told him we didn't know nowt.'

The old woman ran her eyes quickly up and down Woodend. ‘So you're a reporter, are you?' she asked.

‘That's right,' Woodend agreed.

The old woman nodded, though it was plain to him that she didn't believe a word of it. ‘You'd better come inside then, hadn't you?' she said.

‘We can't help him, so what's the point of that?' her husband asked. ‘He'd just be wastin' his time as well as ours.'

‘You're probably right,' Mrs Turner agreed. ‘But while he's wastin' it, he can get a good, strong, hot cup of tea down him – an' by the look of him I'd say he could use one.'

The old man shrugged. ‘I hadn't thought of that,' he admitted.

‘That's the trouble with you, Jed Turner,' his wife said good-naturedly. ‘You never
do
think of things like that.' She turned back to Woodend. ‘Come inside, lad, an' get some of that chill thawed out of you.'

She went back into the house, and the two men followed her. The living room lay immediately beyond the porch. It had a flag floor, broken up occasionally by pieces of carpet which looked as if they were nothing more than mill off-cuts. There was a battered oak table under the window, and a number of mismatched armchairs arranged around a blazing log fire. The air near the doorway was almost as cold as it was on the outside, but nearer the easy chairs the fire threw out a semicircle of heat which was far more welcoming than anything a central heating system could have possibly produced.

This was how Dugdale's Farm should have looked, Woodend thought. This was
exactly
how it should have looked.

‘Sit yourself down, then,' Mrs Turner said.

Woodend lowered himself into a creaking leather armchair with bits of horsehair sticking out of the arms. Mr Turner simply stood where he was – his backside to the fire – as if he were uncertain what to do next.

‘You might as well take the weight of your feet, an' all, Jed,' Mrs Turner said. She smiled at Woodend. ‘I won't be a minute makin' the tea. The kettle's always kept just off the boil in this house.'

Jed Turner, after some hesitation, sat down on a chair at the extreme edge of the semicircle. He did not offer to resume the conversation they had begun outside, and since Woodend did not wish to push him for any more information until his wife returned, they sat together in an awkward silence for the two or three minutes it took the old woman to make the tea.

Mrs Turner re-entered the room with three steaming mugs of tea on a battered tin tray. Woodend took a sip of his. It tasted heavily of tannin, and was strong enough to make bricks out of – which was just the way he liked it.

‘You said you hadn't spoken to Mr Dugdale for over forty years, Mr Turner,' he said, when he'd taken a couple more sips of tea. ‘Is there any particular reason for that?'

‘Aye, there's plenty of reasons for it,' the old farmer replied. ‘But none that I want to go readin' about in a newspaper.'

‘He was away from Whitebridge for a good few years, wasn't he?' Woodend said, trying another tack. ‘Do you have any idea where he went?'

‘None at all – an' I don't care, neither. He should have stayed away for ever, if you want my opinion.'

Woodend turned his attention to Mrs Turner. ‘Do you have any idea⎯' he began.

‘No, she does not,' Jed Turner interrupted him – but not before Woodend had had time to read the flicker in the old woman's eyes.

‘So there's really not much you can tell me about him, is there?' Woodend asked.

‘I can tell you that he's a real bad bugger – allus was – an' that if it turns out he was responsible for them killin's up at that so-called farm of his, I wouldn't be the least surprised.'

‘A real bad bugger?' Woodend repeated. ‘What exactly do you mean when you⎯?'

‘I've said all I'm
goin'
to say on that particular matter,' Turner snapped. He stood up, and placed his half-finished mug of tea on the stone mantelpiece with an air of finality. ‘So now, if you wouldn't mind . . .' he continued, gesturing towards the door.

‘Let the lad finish his drink before you turn him out into the cold again,' Mrs Turner said. ‘An' while he's doin' that, you could make yourself useful an' go an' fetch some more logs for the fire.'

Turner glanced down at the pile which already stood by the fireplace. ‘We've plenty of⎯'

‘I know you of old, Jed Turner,' his wife said with mock severity. ‘There might be plenty of wood for now, but later on – when we're runnin' low – you'll be moanin' that it's too dark an' miserable to go an' fetch some more. So you're better doin' it now.'

Turner gave Woodend an uncharacteristically friendly look – a look which said that even if Woodend didn't have a real job, they were both still men and so both understood that when you were dealing with women it was easier just to do what they wanted, however unreasonable that might seem. Then he rose to his feet and headed for the door.