Death of an Innocent (14 page)

Battersby made a superhuman effort, and struggled to his feet. ‘I've got to think it over,' he said. ‘I've . . . I've got to . . . to . . . go somewhere on my own . . . where I can think about it.'

He put his hand over his mouth, and rushed away. He only just made it through the door into the shopping centre before he doubled up and was violently sick.

W
ith Woodend in the passenger seat, Monika Paniatowski pulled off the main road and drove on to the Birkdale estate. There was even less traffic this time than there had been earlier. The men – and many of the women – were now all at work, and these were not the kinds of households which could afford to run second cars for non-working wives.

Their arrival had been noted, Woodend thought. Housewives vacuuming their front rooms, and mothers walking their well-wrapped-up babies, turned their heads in frank curiosity at the sight of an unfamiliar car on their familiar territory. They probably wouldn't have paid half as much attention to the borrowed Anglia he'd been using earlier. But it didn't matter a damn that they'd been spotted. The time for caution was over. There was no need to play your cards close to your chest when you had a winning hand – and a winning hand was exactly what Clive Battersby had dealt them in the Weaver's Arms.

‘This had better work, sir,' Paniatowski said, the hint of uncertainty in her voice showing that she did not quite share her boss's optimism. ‘We only get one shot at it, so it had
better
work.'

‘There's no way it can fail,' Woodend assured her.

‘Battersby's probably scared half to death and⎯'

‘Of course he is, but that can only work to our advantage. Look, he was on the verge of tellin' me everythin' I needed to know in the shoppin' precinct. Since then, he's had a couple of hours to realize he hasn't got any option but to co-operate. An' seein' the two of us standin' there on his doorstep will be the final straw. He'll give us Terry Taylor – and Terry Taylor will give us both the motive for the murders an' the name of the murderer.'

And in a few hours at the most, I'll be back in my own office, as if the nightmare I've been livin' through had never happened, he added silently.

‘What if he's so frightened that he's done a runner?' Paniatowski asked worriedly.

‘That'll delay matters – but not for long,' Woodend argued. ‘He won't get far, an' once he's taken into custody he'll probably be more willin' than ever to spill his guts. In fact, lookin' at it from that angle, it might even speed things up if he decides to cut an' run.'

But though his words sounded confident – though he told himself that he really believed them – he still breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the battered Morris Minor parked in front of Battersby's house.

Woodend and Paniatowski got out of the car and walked up the path which led to the detective constable's front door. Coming from inside the house, they could hear the sound of loud music. Woodend recognized it. ‘Winter', the last movement of Vivaldi's
Four Seasons
. He would not have thought that Battersby was a man for the classics.

The music really
was
very loud. ‘It's a wonder the neighbours don't complain about the noise,' Paniatowski said.

Woodend grinned. ‘There aren't many perks to bein' a bobby,' he said, ‘but one of the few we do get is that neighbours will always think twice before they complain about us.'

They reached the front door. Woodend raised his arm to ring the bell, only to find Paniatowski's hand restraining it.

‘Better not, sir,' the sergeant said.

‘Why?'

‘Since I'm the only one who's still got official standing, I'd like to be the one who handles things from here on. If you don't mind, that is.'

‘I don't mind,' Woodend said.

Why should he? This impotence was only temporary. In a few hours he would back firmly in the driving seat.

Paniatowski rang the bell. They waited. They should have been able to see a distorted image of Battersby entering the hallway through the frosted glass in the front door, but they didn't.

‘He probably can't hear us ringing over all that bloody noise inside,' Paniatowski said.

She pressed the bell again – and this time she kept her finger on it.

Woodend took a step to the side. The curtains in the bay window were half open, and he could see through the gap into Battersby's living room.

It was the sofa he saw first – a rather threadbare one with a floral pattern. And then he noticed the pair of legs which were sticking out from beyond it!

‘Get out of the way!' he told Paniatowski.

‘What's the matter, sir?'

‘Don't ask questions, Monika – just get out of the bloody way!'

Paniatowski moved clear of the door. Woodend braced himself, then lashed out with his right leg. His boot made contact with the lock. The door juddered, but held firm. He swung again, and this time the lock groaned and gave, and the door swung, complaining, open.

Woodend rushed into the hallway, and from there into the lounge. But he already knew that he was far too late. He had seen the legs through the window – now all that was left to do was to see the
rest
of what was left of Battersby.

The detective constable was lying on his back. He had a shoe and sock on his left foot, but his right foot was naked. The big toe of the right foot was jammed up against the trigger of a shotgun, the barrel of which was in his mouth. Much of the upper part of his head was missing. Bits of brain, and what looked like an ocean of blood, had been spattered on the wall and skirting board.

‘Oh my God!' Paniatowski said.

Then she walked quickly over to the radiogram, and pressed the eject button. The mechanical arm swung off the record, and the room was suddenly – eerily – quiet.

Woodend looked again at the bloodied pulp which had been the head of the man he'd been talking to only that morning.

‘Jesus!' he exclaimed, to no one in particular.

‘Get out of here, sir!' Paniatowski said urgently.

‘What?'

‘Get the hell out of here!'

‘But I can't just leave Battersby⎯'

‘There's nothing that you or anybody else can do for the poor bastard now, and if it comes out that you were with me when I found the body, we'll both take a fall.'

She was right, Woodend thought – there
was
nothing anybody could do for Detective Constable Clive Battersby now.

As he stepped out of the front door, he could hear that Paniatowski was already talking into her radio. He walked quickly down the path and out on to the street. The snow was falling again – quite heavily – but his mind was in such a state of turmoil that he didn't even notice it.

His chances of being quickly reinstated had died with Battersby, he told himself. And, even worse, without the information the constable could have given him, he was no nearer to finding the man who killed the poor bloody kid up at Dugdale's Farm.

He kept on walking, more out of instinct than from a desire to reach anywhere specific. He had covered perhaps half a mile when the ambulance – warning lights flashing and siren blaring – screamed past him.

W
hen night fell on most days of the year, all that could be seen through the front window of the Woodends' cottage was the black impenetrability of the moors. But there were a few winter evenings – and this was one of them – when the layer of snow which was covering the inhospitable ground sucked what little light was available into itself, and the moors shimmered with an eerie glow.

Woodend had no idea how long he had been sitting there in front of the window, a glass of malt whisky clutched in his big hand. He did not even know how many times he had got up from his chair to refill the whisky glass. Though his body had not left the cottage since it had got back from the Birkdale Estate, his mind had been ranging far and wide.

Battersby's death had not just been a defeat for him – it had also been a far-too-convenient escape for someone else. The detective constable had been the weak link near the very end of the chain. And now he was gone. Was that mere coincidence? Woodend didn't think so.

He pictured how things must have happened. Battersby would have been sitting in his kitchen – finally coming to accept that he had no choice but to turn to his old boss for help – when he heard the doorbell ring.

Had he looked through the window to see who it was? Or had he just assumed it was a neighbour come round to borrow a cup of sugar, or a door-to-door salesman trying to sell him the latest miracle cleaning fluid?

It didn't really matter
what
he'd thought, because when he had opened the door he'd found himself facing neither the neighbour with her cup, nor a salesman with a suitcase and an ingratiating smile, but some hard-lookin' fellers with grim expressions on their faces.

How many of them would there have been, Woodend wondered. Two? Three?

It would have taken at least three, he decided.

The hard-lookin' fellers would have backed him into his lounge, deaf to all his protests that their secret was safe with him. While two of them stood in the doorway, blocking any chance of escape, the third would have put the record on the record player, turning up the volume very loud to cover the sound of the explosion which was to follow.

Battersby must have worked out what was about to happen by then, and had probably begun to plead with them to let him live. But it had done him no good! Two of the men had grabbed him and held him on the floor, while the third had bent over him and forced the shotgun barrel into his mouth.

How he must have struggled, knowing that he was fighting for his very life. And how pointless he must have known that struggle would be, even from the very beginning.

The barrel would have hurt his teeth and the roof of his mouth. He would have found breathing difficult, and there was probably the taste of oil on his tongue. He would have heard the click of the trigger being pulled back, and for one brief instant have known he was as close to death as anyone ever gets. And then . . . and then, nothing.

His killers would have taken off his right shoe and sock, wiped the gun clean of their own prints, and placed it where they wanted it to be found. Then they would have left and walked calmly down the street.

Terry Taylor – or whoever it was who was behind Terry Taylor – must now be thinking he was in the clear. But he was wrong! Battersby's death may have closed the most obvious route to a solution, but over the last few hours Woodend had come to realize that it had opened several new ones.

There would be bruises from the struggle on Battersby's arms and legs. There might be scrapings of his killers' skin under his fingernails. No one – not even that bloody fool DI Harris – would be able to pretend it was anything but murder. A full-scale inquiry would have to be launched. Hundreds of people would be interviewed. Someone on the estate would be bound to have seen the killers or their vehicle, and be able to provide a description. And then it would just be a case of the police following a piece of string until they got to the end. The descriptions would lead them to the murderers, the murderers would lead them to Taylor.

The builder had made a big mistake when he'd decided that the best way to escape being implicated in the first two deaths was to sanction a third.

The telephone rang, and Woodend dashed across the living room to pick it up.

‘Monika?' he asked, almost breathlessly.

‘No, it's me, sir,' said a male voice.

Bob Rutter!

‘How are things goin' down in Hendon?' Woodend asked, injecting his voice with a lightness he did not feel. ‘I hope you're learnin' somethin' – even if it's only which bums to suck up to.'

‘I'm not calling to talk about me – I'm calling because of what's been happening to you,' Rutter said.

‘Oh! So you've heard, have you?'

‘Paniatowski rang me up.'

‘That was nice of her,' Woodend said, thinking that if Paniatowski and Rutter were speaking to each other voluntarily then he must be in an even worse mess than he'd thought he was.

‘I was wondering if there was anything that I could do to help you,' Rutter said.

‘Your best plan might be to pretend you've never heard of me,' Woodend told him, bitterly.

‘I'm not just making polite conversation, here – I mean it,' Rutter replied, his tone falling somewhere between stern and earnest.

‘I know you do,' Woodend said, chastened. ‘But even if you were up here in Whitebridge, I doubt you could do much. Stuck in London, you're about as much use as . . .'

He paused.

‘Has something occurred to you?' Rutter asked.

‘Aye, it has,' Woodend agreed. ‘You know Terry Taylor?'

‘The builder?'

‘That's the man.'

‘Is he a suspect?'

‘I think so – but I doubt DI Harris would agree with me.'

‘I'd be worried if he did. DI Harris is an idiot. But you still haven't told me how I can help.'

‘I've just remembered readin' an article about Taylor in the
Evenin' Telegraph
a few months back. It was one of them back-slappin' pieces which is more an advertisement than information. But one fact's stuck in my mind. He said that before he came to Whitebridge, he had a very modest jobbin' builder's business in Southwark, South London.'

‘And you want me to go down to Southwark and see what I can sniff out about him?'

‘If you can find the time.'

‘I'll
make
the time.'

‘You're a good lad,' Woodend said sincerely.

‘You're a good boss,' Rutter replied.

Woodend put down the phone, and walked back to the window. Suddenly, now that he'd remembered that article, it was all starting to make sense.