Death of an Innocent (17 page)

Two of the magistrates were men already well into middle age – local head teachers who, from the vantage point of the bench, could follow the progress of the more recalcitrant pupils who had passed through their hands. They had fixed, neutral expressions on their faces as they looked at him, but their eyes were full of the censure they reserved especially for those who had held positions of responsibility and had let the side down.

The third magistrate was younger – and a woman. Polly Johnson was a rising star of the town's social services department. The last time Woodend had seen her had been a garden party she'd thrown as a wake for the half of that garden she was about to lose under a compulsory purchase order.

‘I love those trees,' she told Woodend, when she'd had perhaps a little too much to drink. ‘I've looked after them as well as if they were my children. Now they're going to be cut down. And why? Because I don't have the
right kind
of influence. If I'd been a Mason, this would
never
have happened.'

Now, as she looked down at Woodend in the dock, there was none of the condemnation in her eyes he had found in the eyes of her fellow magistrates. Rather, there was open puzzlement – as if she couldn't quite understand what he was doing there at all.

Not that it made much difference one way or the other what any of the magistrates thought of him, Woodend realized. This was a purely formal hearing in which the charges were read out, he pleaded not guilty, and the bench ruled that the case would be tried, at an appropriate time, by a higher court.

Bail was not opposed by the police – why should it have been, when he didn't have a card left in his hand which was worth playing? – and less than two minutes after entering the dock, Woodend found himself standing outside in the lobby again.

‘You can leave through the back door if you like, sir,' said one of his uniformed escorts.

‘An' why would I want to do that?'

‘Most people in your situation usually prefer to avoid the press if they possibly can.'

‘So the press is here, is it?' Woodend said – thinking, even as he spoke: Of course it's here! What else did I expect? Bent bobby brought up before the beaks! I'm a big juicy story.

‘Thing is, it's not just the local boys,' the constable said. ‘There's a television crew from BBC Manchester as well.'

It was tempting to just slip quietly out of the back door, Woodend thought. It would certainly save Joan, still at her sister's house, from the humiliation of seeing him on the evening news. But it would also look suspiciously like he was running away – that he had something to hide.

‘I think I'll go out through the front,' he said.

‘Please yourself,' the constable replied indifferently.

Woodend opened the main door and stepped out. Yes, the press was there all right – notebooks and cameras at the ready. He recognized many of the faces, but there was one he had expected to see, and didn't – Elizabeth Driver, the crime reporter from the
Daily Globe
, the woman who had made it her personal mission to blacken his name ever since the Westbury Hall case. It was not like Liz Driver to miss an opportunity like this, and Woodend wondered what could possibly have happened to her.

The air was chilly, and he could see patches of ice on the steps which led down to the street. If he went arse over tip now, it would seem almost symbolic of his fall from grace, he thought.

He grasped the rail for support, and the moment his hand wrapped around it, he realized he had made a mistake – understood that he must look like a man so shaken by his experience in the courtroom that he was forced to clutch the rail for support. But there was no help for it now – to release his grip would merely be another confession of uncertainty.

He made his way carefully down the steps, while the reporters moved in like a pack of ravening wolves who have sensed their prey's weakness.

It was the BBC man – the true aristocrat among the waiting hacks – who stepped the furthest forward, thrusting his microphone aggressively right into Woodend's face.

‘Were you surprised to be released on bail, Chief Inspector Woodend?' he demanded.

‘Of course I wasn't surprised,' Woodend replied. ‘There can't be a single person in this whole town who doubts for a second that I'll turn up for my day in court.'

‘You sound as if you're actually looking forward to it.'

‘I am. I want this travesty ended as quickly as possible.'

‘So you're saying the charges which have been laid against you are completely unfounded?'

‘I pleaded not guilty, didn't I?'

The reporter smirked. ‘That's what they tell me,' he said. ‘But come on, Chief Inspector, the police must have been very sure of their ground before they moved against one of their own.'

‘What do you intend to do now, Mr Woodend?' one of the other reporters – a mere print journalist – called out.

‘I have no further comment to make.'

‘Don't you have any plans to try and clear your name?' the reporter persisted.

But his tone suggested that whatever Woodend might try to do, it would be a wasted effort – because black was black, and it wouldn't change colour just because some bent bobby wanted it to.

A breathless-looking young woman with black hair suddenly appeared from around the side of the courthouse. So that was where Elizabeth Driver had been – waiting in ambush for him at the back door.

Had that been her own idea? Woodend wondered. Or had she been put up to it? Was this just one more example of Ainsworth directing the drama which, as far as the DCC was concerned, could only be allowed to have one ending?

Woodend glanced up the street; at the cars covered with a thin layer of freshly fallen snow; at the early-afternoon shoppers who had stopped their shopping to watch the spectacle being played out in front of the courthouse; at the two uniformed policemen who knew him well, but now were pretending not to notice him at all.

And suddenly, it all felt just too much. Felt as if the street was beginning to close in on him – and would continue to close in until it fitted him like a straitjacket, denying him the possibility of even the slightest movement.

‘I said, do you have any plans to try and clear your name?' the reporter asked for a second time.

‘Didn't you hear what I said, you stupid bastard?' Woodend demanded angrily. ‘I told you I had no further comment to make – an' I bloody meant it.'

‘I'
m sorry I wasn't there for you in court,' Monika Paniatowski said.

‘I know you are, lass,' Woodend replied.

But as he looked at her standing there on the doorstep of his cottage, dressed in a sheepskin jacket which seemed almost to engulf her, he was thinking: She looks so small and vulnerable. Why have I never noticed that before?

‘I wanted to be there – but I just wasn't brave enough,' Paniatowski mumbled.

‘There's a big difference between bein' brave an' bein' foolhardy,' Woodend told her. ‘An' if you'd turned up, foolhardy is what it would have been. It wouldn't have done me an ounce of good – an' it would have been professional suicide for you.'

Paniatowski nodded gratefully. ‘Can I come in?'

‘Are you sure you want to?'

‘Yes.'

‘Even if I told you that DCC Ainsworth's behind this attempt to fit me up? That he'll do whatever he has to – an' I mean
whatever
– to see me behind bars? An' if that includes crushin' a detective sergeant along the way, he won't hesitate for a second?'

‘You're not telling me anything I didn't know already. Ainsworth has to be behind it – because the thing wouldn't work without him. And I'd
still
like to come inside.'

‘You're a good lass,' Woodend said.

Paniatowski smiled. ‘Good? I'm one of the best.'

‘Aye, you certainly are that,' Woodend agreed. ‘Let's get out of the cold, shall we?'

Paniatowski followed Woodend into the living room. A fire was blazing away in the grate, and the sergeant warmed her hands before shucking off her sheepskin jacket.

‘Any progress?' Woodend asked, without much evidence of hope in his voice.

‘Not so as you'd notice. We still haven't found Wilfred Dugdale, and we've no more idea now who the victims are than we had when we found the bodies on Sunday.'

‘Nobody's phoned in to report a friend or a member of the family has gone missin'?'

‘
Lots
of people have phoned up. They always do on cases like this one. Even once we'd eliminated the nutters, we were still left with a fair number of callers who did seem genuinely concerned. But it didn't get us anywhere. All the girls who the genuine callers were worried about were either too old or too young, too tall or too short – or simply turned up at home again.'

‘An' the man?'

‘We've had less calls about him – as you'd expect – and they all led to dead ends, too.' Paniatowski lit up a cigarette. ‘How bad was it in court?'

‘It was bloody awful,' Woodend admitted. ‘Even worse than I'd expected it to be. But frettin' over that won't get us anywhere. Let's stick to the case. You really haven't got any leads at all?'

‘I didn't say that.'

‘Didn't you?'

‘No. I said the investigation led by
DI Harris
hasn't got any leads. But then he's not looking at it from the same angle as you and I are, is he?'

‘The angle bein' Terry Taylor?'

‘That's right.'

‘An' you think you might be on to somethin'?'

‘I think that in investigating Taylor, we might be wading into deep water –
very
deep water which is not only mined, but is probably full of sharks as well,' Paniatowski said ominously.

‘You want to be a bit more specific?'

‘For the last couple of days I've been spending as much time as I could get away with looking into the history of Terry Taylor's business dealings. And I've discovered that the bigger his company has grown, the more local authority contracts he's won.'

‘I'm all for diggin' up dirt on the bastard, but I don't see where you're goin' with this,' Woodend said. ‘The larger a company is, the more contracts it's
bound
to win.'

‘True,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘But he's not the only big builder in the Whitebridge area, is he?'

‘No. There must be three or four more, at least.'

‘Yet last year, T. A. Taylor and Associates managed to secure over fifty per cent of the available council contracts.'

Woodend whistled softly. ‘That does seem high,' he admitted.

‘There's more. In the cases where sealed bids had to be submitted, Taylor's were always the lowest. Not usually! Always! And he didn't significantly undercut the next lowest bidder – he carefully calculated it so that it was
just
low enough to win the contract.'

‘You're sayin' that he knew what the other bids were goin' to be in advance?'

‘Either that, or he's had the devil's own luck. Then there's the case of Moorland Village.'

‘What about it?'

‘Over the last few years, several other developers have come up with similar schemes, but they've all been turned down on the grounds that they'd be spoiling an area of great natural beauty. So why did Taylor's request get such an easy passage through the planning committee?'

‘You think he's got the council in his pocket?'

‘He doesn't need to have them all,' Paniatowski said cautiously. ‘It doesn't have to be even the majority. But he
has
to have enough of the councillors on his side to give him the edge when it comes to a vote.'

‘You think he's spreadin' his money around?'

‘It certainly looks that way.'

‘But even if that's the case, what the bloody hell has it got to do with the murders up at Dugdale's Farm?' Woodend asked. ‘An' what has it got to do with
me
? He's spent a small fortune to make sure I'm in the position I'm in now, an' I still don't know why. I can see him tryin' to nobble me if I was investigatin' municipal corruption, but I'm not.'

‘I know,' Paniatowski said heavily. ‘It just doesn't make sense, does it?'

‘It's time for the local news,' Woodend said, walking over to the television and switching the set on.

‘You're sure you
want
to watch it?'

Woodend nodded. ‘Best to see just what I'm up against.'

The set warmed up, and the local newscaster appeared, sitting authoritatively behind his desk.

‘
. . . weathermen confidently predict that a thaw will begin in thenextdayor so . . .
' he was saying.

‘Maybe then, we'll find Wilfred Dugdale,' Paniatowski said.

‘If he's out there to find.'

‘If he's not, then where the hell is he?'

‘I don't know,' Woodend admitted. ‘I've just got the feelin' that the moors is not the right place to be lookin' for him.'

‘
And now to return to our main story of the day
,' the newscaster said. ‘
The Central Lancashire police continue to come under heavy fire from all sides. Not only are there apparently no new leads in the double murder at Dugdale's Farm, but today one of Whitebridge's senior policemen, Detective Chief Inspector Woodend, appeared in the magistrates' court charged with corruption. Here's Tom Eccles report on the case
.'

Eccles appeared, standing in front of the magistrate's court. There was no sign of the smirk which had been on his face when he'd questioned Woodend earlier. Instead, the expression he displayed for the camera was one of earnest concern, as befits a dedicated reporter whose only interest is in uncovering the truth.