Death of an Innocent (15 page)

He'd been wondering where Taylor had managed to find men who would commit murder for him – men willing to hold a struggling police constable down while a shotgun was forced into his mouth – and now he thought he knew. They'd be old pals of Taylor's, men he'd drunk with when he'd been a jobbing builder in London's gangland.

If only Bob could make that connection – if only he could prove that a bunch of criminals with a reputation for violence had travelled from London to Whitebridge shortly before Battersby met his death . . .

The phone rang again. It
had
to be Paniatowski this time, he thought – and it was.

‘Have you got the preliminary results of the autopsy yet?' Woodend asked.

‘Yes, I have,' Paniatowski replied, in a flat – almost dead – voice.

‘Well, come on, lass! What does it say?'

‘That the injuries sustained were entirely consistent with a successful suicide attempt,' Paniatowski said, as if she were quoting.

‘That can't be right!' Woodend protested. ‘There must have been bruisin' which couldn't have been self-inflicted. Get Doc Pierson to check the ankles an' upper arms again.'

‘It wouldn't do any good.'

‘How do you know?'

‘Because I was there for the entire autopsy. If there'd been any bruising, I'd have seen it myself. Besides, there's other evidence which points to suicide.'

‘What other evidence?'

‘It was Battersby's own gun, for a start.'

‘I don't believe that.'

‘I've seen the licence.'

‘Whoever's behind all this has got enough influence to be able to tamper with the fingerprint evidence. Compared to that, slippin' a false firearm licence into the files would have been a doddle.'

‘It was Battersby's own gun,' Paniatowski repeated firmly. ‘Hardcastle and Duxbury have been out shooting with him on the moors a few times. They've positively identified it.'

It couldn't be suicide, Woodend told himself. It just couldn't be.

Because if it was, they had lost their best lead without gaining anything to replace it.

Because if it was, he knew he'd soon be asking himself exactly what it was that had caused the constable to take his own life.

‘So it was Battersby's gun,' he conceded. ‘That doesn't have to mean that Battersby was the one who pulled the trigger, does it?'

‘And then there's the note he left,' Paniatowski said.

‘Are you sure it's genuine?'

‘The experts have been over it. There's no doubt that Battersby wrote it himself.'

‘An' what did he have to say in this note of his?'

‘The usual stuff that suicides always write,' Paniatowski replied – just a little too quickly.

‘Be more specific, Sergeant.'

‘Oh, you know the sort of thing,' Paniatowski continued uneasily. ‘That he'd made a real mess of his life. That he was sorry for all the trouble he'd caused. Like I said, the usual stuff.'

If that was all it was, why did she seem so unhappy?

‘There's still more, isn't there?' Woodend demanded.

Paniatowski said nothing.

‘I said there's more, isn't there?'

Another pause.

‘Yes, there's more,' Paniatowski finally admitted.

‘So tell me what else he said.'

‘He said he hoped that you'd forgive him.'

‘Me? He hoped
I'd
forgive him?'

‘That's right, sir.'

‘Oh, Sweet Jesus!' Woodend groaned.

‘Don't take it personally.'

‘How else can I take it? If I hadn't backed him into a corner in the Weaver's Arms an' put the pressure on him to come clean, he'd still be alive.'

‘He didn't kill himself because of what you said to him. He killed himself because he'd done wrong and couldn't face the consequences. You were the one who found out about it, but it could have been me or anyone else on the team who came up with the goods.'

But it wasn't you or anyone else on the team, Woodend thought. It was
me
. I didn't pull the trigger – but I might as well have done.

‘Are you all right, sir?' Paniatowski asked.

‘I'm fine,' Woodend lied. ‘Listen, I need time to do some thinkin' about where we go from here, so I'm goin' to hang up now.'

‘You wouldn't like me to come round, would you?'

‘I didn't realize you were unconscious in the first place,' Woodend said, making an attempt at humour.

‘You know what I mean,' Paniatowski persisted. ‘Don't you want some company?'

‘You get your beauty sleep, lass,' Woodend said. ‘Ring me first thing in the mornin', an' I'll tell you the brilliant new idea which I'm bound to have come up with by then.'

He replaced the receiver on its cradle and took another sip of his malt whisky. Walking back to the window, he looked out at the moors and felt as if his energy – his will to go on fighting against the odds – was being sucked from him as surely and steadily as the snow was sucking in the light.

He needed to find a new direction for his investigation to take. He needed to come up with some blinding insight which would act as the opener for a can of worms he had yet to locate.

He was not sure that he was up to the task, because he knew that at the same time as one part of his mind was working on the intricacies of the case, there would be another part of it – perhaps a larger part – which was wrestling with his feelings of guilt over Battersby's death.

It was going to be a long, long, night which was stretching ahead of him – and probably a fruitless one.

T
hey came for him just before dawn broke.

Woodend had been expecting them for several minutes, ever since he'd first heard the sirens screaming and – looking out of an upstairs window of the cottage – had seen the lights on their roofs flashing dementedly as they made their way down the country lanes.

There had been no need to send three cars to bring him in. One would have served the purpose perfectly well. There'd been no need for the flashing lights and sirens, either – unless, of course, they'd hoped to spook him into making a break for it. But they knew him better than that – knew he'd never run. No, the lights and sirens had been used only to create a spectacle, as part of the stage craft in the play which he was already coming to think of as
The Lamentable Fall of Charlie Woodend.

Even the arrival of the convoy had been carefully timed – so that his neighbours would be woken from their beds and forced to watch the spectacle through sleep-filled eyes.

Standing in his living room, still dressed in last night's clothes, Woodend watched the cars pull up outside his cottage, and understood it all. DCC Ainsworth was not out merely to harm him, he wanted to destroy him completely – and so far, he was forced to admit, the bastard hadn't missed a trick.

Two young constables got out of the lead car and walked up the steps to the front door. Even sending them to do the job had been a deliberate choice, Woodend thought, a ploy designed to deny him the dignity of being dealt with by his equals. Besides, young bobbies were more impressionable than their older colleagues – if anybody could be guaranteed to spread the news of what had happened, it would be them.

Woodend opened his front door. ‘What can I do for you, lads?' he asked – going through the motions, playing his assigned part in the script that someone else had written.

‘We've come to take you down to the station, sir,' said one of the constables, a kid who would have been playing conkers at the time when Woodend was counting the corpses in the death camp at Belsen.

‘Am I under arrest?' the Chief Inspector asked.

‘No, sir. Not yet.'

‘So if I refuse to come . . .?'

The constable looked down at his boots in obvious embarrassment. ‘You know the procedure better than I do, sir,' he mumbled. ‘It'd be much easier all round if you co-operated with us.'

Much easier, Woodend agreed. And, after all, why should he go out of his way to make things difficult for these kids who were only doing what they'd been told to do?

‘I'll just get my coat,' he said.

The constable coughed. ‘If I was you, sir, I'd pack an overnight bag, as well,' he advised.

‘I see. So things have already gone
that
far, have they?'

‘Don't know anythin' about that, sir. Just know that Mr Evans said it would be better if you brought a few things with you.'

Woodend threw a change of underwear, a clean shirt, a pair of socks, his shaving stuff and a well-thumbed copy of Dickens's
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
into a bag.

‘Do you need to cuff me?' he asked the fresh-faced constable.

The young man seemed to blush, even at the thought of it. ‘No, sir. We've been told that isn't necessary.'

Well, at least he'd been spared one indignity. But then that had probably been part of the plan too – a part aimed at allowing him to hold on to just a tiny flickering flame of hope, so that when that flame was finally snuffed out, he would be all the more devastated.

So, the handcuffs might be absent now, but they would be brought out at some stage or other, he was sure of that. And even as he stood there on his own doorstep, he could almost hear the metallic click as they were clamped around his wrists.

Woodend had spent more time in this interview room than he cared to remember. But he had never sat at this side of the table, with his eyes looking directly at the door which led to freedom – a door which, like so many other men before him, he knew he would be passing through only under police escort.

He turned his attention to the two policemen who were sitting opposite him. It was almost comical to see the look of troubled concern on Ainsworth's drink-mottled face, as the DCC tried – with very little success – to slip into the role of the sympathetic member of the interrogation team. The bullet-headed Chief Inspector Evans was experiencing no such difficulties in finding his role. His face was even more pinched than usual, and his eyes burned with a blood lust. If there were such a thing as reincarnation, he would almost certainly come back as a slavering Dobermann, like the four which guarded Terry Taylor's building site.

‘I will ask you again, Mr Woodend, do you want to see a solicitor?' Evans said.

Woodend shook his head.

‘Would you please answer the question verbally, so it can be noted down, Chief Inspector?'

How easy it was to forget the procedures, Woodend thought. How easy to stop thinking like the methodical bobby he had been all these years, and to slip straight into the criminal's skin.

‘No, I do not wish to see a solicitor,' he said for the benefit of the WPC who was recording the interview on her shorthand pad.

Ainsworth sighed wearily, pretending that he was not enjoying any of this at all.

‘Are you going to tell us what we want to know straight away, Charlie?' he asked. ‘Or are we going to have to drag it out of you?'

‘That depends,' Woodend told him. ‘What exactly
is
it that you'd like to know?'

‘Who's this man Tideswell?' DCI Evans barked. ‘Is that his real name, or just an alias?'

‘Tideswell? I used to know a feller called
Fred
Tideswell when I was just a little kid,' Woodend said reflectively. ‘He was a tackler up at the old British Empire Mill. But he was gettin' on in years then, so he must be dead an' buried by now. An' as far as I can remember, he had no family to speak of.'

‘We're not talking about him – and you know it! What about the
other
Tideswell? W. M. Tideswell?'

‘I've never heard of him.'

‘Yet this same man, who you claim never to have heard of, deposited five hundred pounds in your account at the Royal Lancaster Bank on Whitebridge High Street?'

‘I know nothin' about that.'

‘Nobody gives five hundred pounds to a complete stranger,' Evans pointed out.

‘They do if they're tryin' to fit him up. An' that's what's happenin' here. I'm bein' fitted up.'

DCI Evans laughed, dryly and humourlessly. ‘How many times have you sat on this side of the table and heard some toe-rag who's as guilty as sin make just that same claim?'

‘Often enough,' Woodend admitted. ‘But that doesn't mean that now an' again somebody who says it might not actually be tellin' the truth.'

Ainsworth, still grappling with playing the part of benign uncle, shook his head regretfully.

‘Tell us the rest, Charlie,' he urged. ‘Then at least we can say in mitigation that you co-operated with us.'

Woodend picked up his packet of Capstan Full Strengths and lit one up without offering them around. ‘There is no
rest
to tell.'

‘Are you claiming this is the only bribe you've ever taken?' DCI Evans demanded.

‘That's a bit like the “When did you last beat your wife?” question, isn't it? I haven't taken any bribes at all.'

‘Then how did the money get there?'

‘The bankin' system's specifically designed to stop other people from takin' money out of your account – not to prevent them puttin' it in.'

‘So you still maintain that this Tideswell man was prepared to say goodbye to five hundred pounds of his money just to fit you up?'

‘Who said it was his own money?' Woodend asked.

‘If it wasn't his, then whose was it?'

Taylor's, Woodend thought. Bloody Terry Taylor's!

‘I don't know,' he said aloud.

‘Will you please give me the details of all other bank accounts, apart from the one in the Royal Lancaster, which are held in your name?'

‘There are no others.'

‘So it would come as a complete surprise to you to learn that the Amalgamated Cotton-Industrial Bank of Skelton has just such an account on its books?'