Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire (16 page)

She reached for the phone and dialled the number. She could hear it ringing at the other end, but no one was picking it up. A couple of minutes passed with no reply, and she was on the point of hanging up when she heard a voice say, ‘Robert Martinez. Who's calling please?'

‘It's Monika,' she said, then added quickly, ‘I mean, DCI Paniatowski. I'm sorry if I woke you.'

‘You didn't wake me – I've only just got in,' Martinez said. And then, as if he considered further explanation necessary, he added, ‘I've been out walking. I needed to think about what happened earlier.'

We both needed to think about that
, Paniatowski told herself.

But aloud, she said, ‘I'm actually calling on official police business, Mr Martinez.'

‘Of course,' Martinez mumbled. ‘I'm sorry. What can I do for you, Chief Inspector?'

‘I'd like to talk to your father,' Paniatowski said. ‘Do you think he'll still be awake?'

‘I should think so,' Robert Martinez said. ‘I tried to get him to take some sleeping pills earlier, but he refused. I asked him if he wanted me to sit with him, and he said he didn't. He said he needed some time to meditate on his life. I left him in his bedroom – staring at the wall – and went out to do a bit of meditating of my own.'

‘Does he have a phone in his bedroom?'

‘No, he's very old-fashioned in that way. He says one phone in the house is enough.'

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke, then Paniatowski said, ‘So perhaps you could go and get him for me?'

‘What?' Robert Martinez asked, as if he had been deep in his own thoughts and had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

‘Could you go upstairs and ask your father to come to the phone, please,' Paniatowski said.

‘Yes. Of course. That was why you called, wasn't it?' Martinez said.

‘It was,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘I'll get him right away. Sorry if I sounded stupid just then – I'm a little confused.'

‘Don't worry about it,' Paniatowski said. ‘It's been a confusing evening for all of us.'

Martinez put down the telephone, and there was the sound of his footsteps as he climbed the stairs.

Why was she such an idiot? Paniatowski asked herself.

Why did she always fall for either the wrong men or – as in this case – the right man at the wrong time?

She heard footsteps again, but this time they were louder and more irregular – as if whoever was responsible for them was coming down the stairs two or three steps at a time.

Someone picked up the phone again – and whoever it was, was gasping for breath.

‘Is that you, Robert?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Yes.'

‘What's happened?'

‘It's … it's my father. He's … he's dead!'

‘Are you sure of that?'

‘Of course I'm bloody sure!' Martinez said hysterically. ‘His eyes are bulging and he isn't bloody breathing!'

‘Calm down, Robert.'

‘Calm down! Did you hear what I said? My father's been murdered!'

‘I want you to leave the house immediately, Robert,' Paniatowski said soothingly. ‘I want you to open the front door, and step out into the garden. Do you think you can do that for me?'

‘I don't know. I'm not sure.'

‘You can do it. I know you can. Go into the front garden and stay there until the police arrive. All right?'

‘All right,' Martinez agreed.

Paniatowski heard a clatter as Martinez dropped the phone, then a series of dull thuds as it swung to and fro, pendulum-like, and collided with the telephone table. And then – thank God – there was the sound of Robert Martinez's slow, heavy footsteps, as he made his way towards the front door.

She pulled her police radio from her handbag.

‘This is DCI Paniatowski,' she said, clicking it on. ‘There's been a serious incident, and I want at least two patrol cars and an ambulance sent to seven, Tufton Court immediately.'

She suddenly felt a little light-headed, and put her palm against the wall, to steady herself.

‘Jesus,' she groaned, ‘what a bloody mess!'

A
fter the giddiness came the nausea, and Paniatowski was sure that – very soon – she was going to be violently sick. She made it to the bathroom just in time, and spent the next ten minutes kneeling over the toilet, spewing up the contents of her stomach into the bowl.

It must have been something she'd eaten, she told herself, as she continued to dry heave – but she knew it wasn't that at all. Rather, it was a combination of guilt and self-disgust which had forced her into this position.

Finally, when she was sure there was nothing left inside to eject, she stood up. Her legs felt weak, and her head was pounding. Her body was screaming that it needed to go to bed, if only for a little while, but she knew that, with this second murder, rest was not an option.

She took a few cautious steps along the landing, then lit up a cigarette.

She would be all right now, she told herself – she would bloody well have to be!

By the time Paniatowski arrived at Tufton Court, there were already three patrol cars, Beresford's Cortina and an ambulance parked in front of the Martinez home – and in the houses adjacent and opposite to it, neighbours in dressing gowns stood looking on with ghoulish fascination.

‘Where's Robert Martinez?' Paniatowski asked Beresford, who was waiting for her at the front door.

‘I put him in one of the patrol cars,' Beresford said. ‘I got Jack Crane to ask a neighbour to make him a cup of tea, but I don't know if he's drunk it.'

They stepped into the hallway – the very same hallway, Paniatowski reminded herself, in which she had kissed Robert Martinez, and from which he had been talking to her only a few minutes earlier.

‘Several of the rooms – both upstairs and down – have been completely ransacked, but there are others which seem untouched,' Beresford said. ‘It's possible that whoever was responsible for it was disturbed in the act.'

‘Robert Martinez had been out for a walk, and they probably heard him returning,' Paniatowski said.

And she was thinking, Robert was very lucky to come out of it unscathed, because the murderer had already killed two people, and he'd have had no compunction about making it three.

Or perhaps it wasn't a matter of luck at all. Killing a helpless woman and an old man was comparatively easy, but taking on a big strong feller like Robert Martinez was another matter entirely. Perhaps the murderer hadn't felt up to the task – especially if he was quite elderly himself.

‘Would you like to see the body now?' Beresford suggested.

‘In a minute,' Paniatowski said. ‘First, I'd like you to tell me what you've got so far.'

‘We think he came in through the French windows which open on to the back garden, because they were wide open when we got here, and one of the panes was smashed.'

‘And how would he have reached the French windows?'

‘There are two possible ways. He could have walked along Tufton Court, and then taken the path around the side of the house. Or he could have come along the service road that runs behind the houses – which is what all the garages open on to – and climbed over the back gate.'

‘Would he have to have been particularly fit to climb over the back gate?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Not really. It's not a lot higher than the one at the front.'

‘And what about the burglar alarm? Is there one?'

‘Yes, but when I talked to the housekeeper on the phone – she doesn't live in, and goes off duty at six – she said that Javier Martinez only switched on the alarm when he went to bed.'

‘I thought that he was in his bedroom when Robert found him,' Paniatowski said.

‘Robert?' Beresford repeated quizzically.

‘That is his name, isn't it – Robert Martinez?' Paniatowski asked, while silently cursing herself.

‘Oh yes, that's his name, all right,' Beresford agreed. ‘I was just surprised to hear you using just his …' He caught the look in Paniatowski's eyes, and paused. ‘Anyway,' he continued shakily, ‘the point is that though he was in his bedroom, he wasn't actually …'

‘Shall we go and look at the body now?' Paniatowski interrupted him.

‘OK,' Beresford said.

It was a relief to both of them.

Javier Martinez's bedroom, which overlooked the street, was at the end of the corridor. As well as the bed and all the other usual bedroom furniture, it contained a big old-fashioned roll-top desk and bookcase which held a couple of dozen leather-bound ledgers. The only sign of a personal touch to the room was in the large-framed pictures on the walls of mountain ranges, castles and long, flat plains – and just looking at them evoked the spirit of Spain.

Martinez himself was sitting in an upright chair, a few feet from the bed. His hands were tied together behind the back of the chair. He was gagged, and there was a cord around his throat, cutting deeply into his flesh.

‘Look at him from behind,' Beresford said.

Paniatowski did, and saw that behind Martinez's neck, the two ends of the cord had been wrapped around a short, thick piece of wood.

‘What, in God's name, do you call this?' Paniatowski asked.

‘It's called garrotting,' replied Jack Crane, who had been babysitting the corpse until his boss arrived. ‘You keep twisting the stick, and the cord wraps around it and presses tighter and tighter on the throat. It's one of the two officially approved methods of execution in Spain. The other one is the firing squad.'

‘Let me get this clear,' Paniatowski said, horrified. ‘You're telling me that this is how the Spanish state still kills people?'

Crane nodded. ‘Two men were garrotted only last year. The garrotte they use is not quite as crude as this one, but the principle's the same.'

‘Take a look at the victim's hands, boss,' Beresford said.

Paniatowski bobbed down, so that her eyes were level with them. When hands were tied together, it was normally palm-to-palm, she thought, but in this case they were back-to-back. And the reason for that was obvious – the killer had needed the palms exposed so he could burn them with a cigarette.

‘He was probably tortured because the killer wanted information on where to find whatever it was he'd come looking for,' Beresford said. ‘But it's obvious that Martinez wouldn't talk, because if he had, there would have been no need to ransack the house.'

The gold!
Paniatowski thought. It was possible he had been looking for the gold!

And if there wasn't any gold, then there was nothing Javier Martinez could have said to end the torture – however bad it got – and death had probably come as a merciful release.

She had a scenario pretty much worked out in her mind now. The murderer had broken into the house, and surprised Javier Martinez in his bedroom. After torturing and killing Martinez, he had searched some of the upstairs rooms, and then gone downstairs. And it was while he had been searching the lounge that he heard the key turn in the front door.

By this point, he was probably panicking, because if he was an old man – and it seemed increasingly likely, given the whole nature of the case, that he was – the last thing he wanted was for big, strong Robert to discover what had happened before he had a chance to get away.

And then he'd had the most incredible stroke of luck, because – under normal circumstances – Robert would probably have gone into the lounge, or else upstairs to see how his father was getting on. But he hadn't done either of those things. Instead, he'd stopped in the hallway to answer the phone – to speak to her – and that had given the killer his opportunity to escape.

Paniatowski stood up again. ‘I want all the neighbours questioned at length,' she said. ‘I particularly want to know if they've seen anything suspicious in the last half hour or so.'

‘You think we just missed him, do you?' Beresford asked.

‘I think we just missed him,' Paniatowski confirmed. ‘I also want roadblocks set up on all roads out of town. Nobody gets through them without being thoroughly checked.'

‘That's already being done,' Beresford told her.

‘And I want the railway station and the bus station checked.'

‘That's being done too.'

‘Right,' Paniatowski said heavily, ‘then I suppose I'd better talk to Robert Martinez.'

‘Wouldn't you prefer me to do it, boss?' Beresford asked.

It was tempting, Paniatowski thought – but it was also copping out of her responsibilities.

‘You've already got enough on your hands as it is,' she said.

Robert Martinez was sitting in the back of a patrol car. He had a mug of tea clasped tightly in his hands, but he did not appear to have drunk any of it.

‘It feels very cold in here,' he said, when Paniatowski slid in beside him. ‘Or is that just me?'

‘You're in shock,' Paniatowski told him. ‘When we've finished talking, I'll get one of my lads to bring you a blanket.' She paused. ‘You are up to talking, aren't you, Robert?'

Martinez gave her a weak grin. ‘Oh, I can talk,' he said. ‘It's what I do for a living.'

‘I left you and your father at around six o'clock,' Paniatowski said. ‘What did you do after that?'

‘As I told you on the phone, I asked my father if he wanted some company, and he said he would prefer to be alone. I tried to deal with some of my constituency correspondence, but I couldn't concentrate, and after a couple of hours I just gave up.'

‘And then?'

‘And then, I went to see my father again. He was in his bedroom, sitting at his desk as if he was working, but I think he was finding it just as hard to concentrate as I was.'