Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire (23 page)

‘I don't sell second-hand underwear,' Hope said. ‘I tried it once, but people just wouldn't go for it. I even had this sign up, “All our underwear has been double-bleached,” but you could see the customers thinking about where it might have been before it was double bleached, and …'

‘Do you happen to know where she did buy her underwear from?' Beresford interrupted.

‘I sent her to my cousin Hymie's shop, which is just down the road. I told her to show him my card, so he'd give her a discount.'

‘So you sold her what, exactly?'

Hope gave a perfect description of the clothes Elena had been wearing when she'd been fished out of the canal.

‘Did she have a suitcase with her?' Beresford asked.

Hope closed his eyes, as if he thought that would help him remember.

‘No,' he said, ‘she had a small carrying bag – no more than a big handbag, really, and certainly not large enough to hold a change of clothes.'

‘So what happened next?'

‘What do you think happened? We made a deal – she didn't even bother to haggle – she handed over the money, and then she asked me where the changing rooms were.'

‘Is there a changing room?' Beresford asked.

‘Well, no, as you can see for yourself, this isn't the type of business that has one, but she looked so dropped on when I told her that, so I said she could go into the back room, which is where I make my brew. And that's just what she did. She looked quite a different woman when she came out again. I mean, she still wouldn't have had builders wolf-whistling after her as she walked down the street, but she at least looked as if she belonged in the twentieth century.'

‘You've forgotten the hat,' Inspector James said.

‘So I have,' Hope admitted. ‘I'll be forgetting my own head next.' He turned to Beresford. ‘She said she wanted a hat – and that it had to be a big one.'

‘A big one?' Beresford repeated. ‘What do you mean by that?'

‘I mean that she didn't want one that sat on the top of her head, a bit like a cherry on a cake. What she said she needed was one with a wide brim.'

‘Her disguise,' Inspector James mouthed.

Beresford nodded.

‘Did you find her a hat?' he asked the shopkeeper.

‘I did,' Hope replied, ‘but hats for women aren't really fashionable any more, and I had to rummage through the whole of the storeroom to find it. It didn't really suit her, to be honest – she looked like a very tiny John Wayne – but she seemed more than happy with it.'

‘What happened to the clothes she was wearing when she came in?' Beresford asked.

‘She left them here,' Hope told him. ‘She said if I could sell them, I could keep the money.'

‘That was nice of her.'

‘Yes, it was,' Hope agreed. ‘She was a nice woman – though to be honest, it would have been easier to sell Buckingham Palace to the Queen than it would have been to shift that stuff.'

‘So what did you do with it?'

‘Put it in the bin outside,' Hope said, and before Beresford could ask the inevitable question, he added: ‘It was collected on Wednesday.'

It was less than eighteen hours since Javier Martinez's body had been discovered, and the two Scenes of Crime Officers (SOCOs for short), were still hard at work in the house that Javier Martinez had shared with his son.

That the two men had surnames was beyond doubt, but almost no one on the Whitebridge police force used them. Indeed, it was doubtful if most of the officers knew what their surnames were. Instead, they were always referred to as Eddie-n-Bill – as distinct from Eddie and Bill – which reflected the fact that it was virtually impossible to think about one of them without also thinking of the other.

It was Eddie, the short, round one, who responded to the knock on the door, to find Meadows and Crane standing there.

‘Good evening, Sergeant Meadows,' he said, the delight evident in his voice. ‘And what can we do for you on this cold, dark winter's evening?'

And he was thinking,
If I was a few years younger, quite a bit taller, a lot better looking, and about three times more sophisticated than I am now, I might just have a chance with you, darling.

‘There's a couple of things I'd like to check on inside, if that's all right with you,' Meadows said.

‘Anything your little heart desires would be more than all right with me,' Eddie said.

Bill, who was tall and thin, appeared in the doorway behind his partner.

‘Actually, that's not strictly true, Sarge,' he said hastily. ‘We're not supposed to let anyone in until we've finished the job, and this is a big house, so we're nowhere near done yet.'

‘Have you finished in the victim's bedroom?' Meadows asked.

‘Well, yes,' Bill admitted. ‘It being the actual scene of the crime, it was the first room we examined.'

‘That's the only room I want to look at,' Meadows told him. ‘In fact, I don't even want to look at the room – I just want to skim through the accountancy ledgers that Javier Martinez kept in there.'

‘There couldn't be any harm in that, could there?' Eddie asked his partner.

‘No, I suppose not,' Bill agreed.

‘And if you want somebody to turn the pages over for you, Sergeant, you've only to ask,' Eddie said.

Meadows grinned at him. ‘I'd love to have you turn over my pages, Eddie,' she said, running her tongue along the edge of her lips suggestively. ‘I'd even let you carry my briefcase home for me, but if I did, my friend here,' she pointed at Crane, ‘would start getting jealous.'

‘Fair enough,' Eddie said philosophically.

‘Eddie fancies you, you know,' Crane whispered to Meadows, as they walked up the stairs.

‘You don't say,' Meadows replied. ‘You know, Jack, with a keen eye like yours, you ought to be a detective.'

They entered the bedroom, and Meadows walked straight over to the bookcase containing the row of leather-bound ledgers.

‘What does the fact that Javier Martinez kept the ledgers here tell you about the man himself, Jack?' Meadows asked, as she pondered on which of the ledgers to select.

‘I'm not sure,' Crane admitted. ‘What does it tell you?'

‘It tells me that the closest thing in the world to his heart was money.'

Meadows selected the ledger that had 1957 stamped on it, and took it across to the roll-top desk.

‘I didn't know that you'd had any formal training in accountancy, Sarge,' Crane said.

‘I haven't,' Meadows replied, flipping the ledger open at random. ‘But I used to employ a whole team of accountants, and I picked up a few tricks from them.' She paused. ‘By the way, that particular piece of information is not for general dissemination.'

‘Of course not,' agreed Crane, who had made a sort of hobby out of attempting to piece together Kate Meadows' past history from the occasional hints she let slip – though so far, he had to admit, it was a hobby in which he had made very little progress.

Ten minutes passed, then fifteen and Meadows was still poring over the ledger.

Crane wandered up and down the room, stopping occasionally to examine one of the framed photographs hanging on the wall. The mountains were impressive, he thought, and even the plains had a kind of bleak grandeur about them. The only thing that was missing was any pictures of the sea, and he wondered why that was.

Another fifteen minutes slipped by, and Crane was starting to get both bored and hungry.

‘There's one thing I don't understand, Sarge,' he said.

‘There are many things that you don't understand, young Jack – in fact, I could fill a book with them,' replied Meadows, who was obviously annoyed at being disturbed. ‘What particular thing are you fretting about now?'

‘When we were driving out to the Sunshine Holidays' depot, you said this line of investigation was a complete waste of time, didn't you?'

‘Yes, I do seem to remember saying something along those lines,' Meadows agreed.

‘And yet here we are, long after we could – in all conscience – have called it a day, still pursuing that line.'

‘So clearly, I must have changed my mind about it being a waste of time,' Meadows said.

‘And what's made you do that?'

‘There's something that's not quite right about Sunshine Holidays,' Meadows told him. ‘I can sense it, I can smell it – but I haven't quite been able to put my finger on it yet.'

‘I can't say I've noticed anything,' Crane said.

‘That's because you're an admirably straightforward young man,' Meadows said. ‘I, in stark contrast, am neither particularly admirable nor particularly straightforward. Now why don't you stick your hand in your trousers and play pocket billiards with yourself, while I finish the job?'

It was another half an hour before Meadows finally closed the ledger with a frustrated slam.

‘I'm out of my depth,' she announced. ‘I'm going to have to get some help on this job.'

‘You mean a forensic accountant?' Crane asked.

‘No, I was thinking that I might ask a bricklayer or a national hunt jockey to give me a hand,' Meadows said, somewhat tartly. ‘Of course I mean a forensic accountant, Jack!'

‘Well, good luck with the mountain of request forms you'll have to fill in first,' Crane said.

Meadows smiled. ‘You seem to be under the impression I'll be getting my forensic accountant through the good offices of the Whitebridge police force.'

‘And won't you?'

‘Absolutely not. I don't want someone who's prepared to work for the pittance that this town will pay him – I want the best.'

‘And, of course, you know exactly where to get your hands on the best, don't you?' Crane asked.

‘Naturally,' Meadows agreed.

O
nce they had crossed the provincial border and entered Cataluña, they turned away from the sea and headed towards the mountains. The roads soon became steep, narrow and twisty. Several times, it seemed as if the little Seat was about to give up the ghost, but then, in response to its driver's urgings, it found the strength to make another effort.

As night was falling, they arrived at a mountain inn, which was built of huge blocks of stone and had a sharply sloping roof. Inside, the beams were exposed, and the only illumination came from the flickering oil lamps and the blazing log fire.

They were the only overnight guests, but they were not the only customers. Several shepherds – hard mountain men of an indeterminate age – stood drinking at the bar, and though they nodded to the new arrivals in an accepting manner, they made no attempt to start a conversation.

The meal the two ex-policemen were served consisted of mountain ham as a starter, followed by a thick, rich peasant stew, all of which was washed down with rough red wine.

It was as the plates were being cleared away that Paco said, ‘I have a confession to make.'

‘Go on then,' Woodend said …

‘When I told you that this was the quickest route to Arco de Cañas, I was lying,' Paco told him. ‘I should not have done that.'

‘It doesn't matter,' Woodend assured him.

‘It does matter,' Paco insisted. ‘You are my friend, Charlie. I should never have lied to you, and my only excuse – which really is no excuse at all – is that I was ashamed.'

‘Ashamed of what?'

‘Ashamed that I was not quite brave enough to go back to Madrid. May I explain?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘I was a country boy when I first went there – an orphan – but it is a city with a big heart, and it soon adopted me. I loved it, Charlie – I still love it. And I could not bear the thought of seeing how it has changed – how the whole place has become a monument to that fascist butcher Franco.'

‘I should have understood that right from the start,' Woodend said sympathetically. ‘I should have appreciated how hard it would be – and if anyone should apologize, it should be me.'

‘I have added perhaps half a day to our journey,' Paco said.

‘It's not important,' Woodend told him. ‘The roots of the crime we're investigating are nearly forty years old. Getting to them a few hours later isn't going to make much difference.'

Paco smiled – perhaps a little sadly.

‘Not important?' he repeated. ‘It's almost killing you that we're taking so long to reach Arco de Cañas. Why is that, Charlie? Why does this case matter so much to you?'

‘It's a major investigation,' Woodend said, ‘and it seems a long time since I was involved in a major investigation.'

‘But that's not the whole story, is it?' Paco asked.

‘No,' Woodend admitted, ‘it isn't – but it's as much as I'm prepared to say for now.'

Paco nodded. ‘We have a long drive tomorrow, and I think I will go to bed now,' he said.

‘I'll be up in a few minutes myself,' Woodend said, reaching for the wine flagon.

Ben Higgins, the railway porter, was far from pleased to see Beresford standing on his front doorstep again, but then he caught the look in the policeman's eyes and decided it probably wouldn't be very wise to complain too much about it.

‘You told me the woman you identified arrived in Whitebridge on Wednesday,' Beresford said, without preamble.

‘That's right, I did,' the porter agreed.

‘And you're sure it was Wednesday, are you?'

‘Yes,' Higgins said. ‘I'd stake my wife's life on it.'

‘Well, that is strange,' Beresford said, ‘because you see, she was spotted in Manchester, getting on the train for Whitebridge, on Tuesday afternoon, and while I know some of the services between Manchester and Whitebridge are slow, I've never heard of one taking twenty-four hours before!'