Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire (31 page)

He had been expecting the photograph to cause something of a sensation, but nothing like the sensation it actually did cause.

Monika Paniatowski grew wide-eyed with shock and amazement, and when she handed the photograph on to the rest of the team, their reaction was equally dramatic.

‘We never knew!' Kate Meadows gasped. ‘It never even crossed our minds for a second!'

‘I want the Martinez house searched from top to bottom,' Paniatowski said to Beresford. ‘I want it torn apart if necessary.'

And the whole team stood up.

‘Am I missing something here?' Woodend asked, looking up at them.

‘There's no time to explain the whole thing now,' said Paniatowski, who was already taking her coat off the back of the chair, ‘so you'll have to settle for a quick summary.'

‘Fair enough,' Woodend agreed.

‘You were dead wrong about Pepe Durante being the killer, Charlie,' Paniatowski told him, pulling her coat on, ‘but when you told us that you'd brought us a vital piece of evidence, you were right on the money.'

The team of four officers had spent over an hour searching the lounge in the Martinez house.

They had been through all the drawers and cupboards. They had lifted the carpet, and checked that none of the floorboards was loose, or looked like it had been tampered with. They had undone the stitching on the three-piece suite, and peered inside. They had examined the pelmets over the curtains, and unscrewed all the electrical sockets to make sure that nothing was hidden behind them. And so far, neither they, nor any of the officers pulling the rest of the house apart, had come up with anything.

The problem was that the evidence they were searching for might not even be there any longer, Paniatowski thought, as she watched the officers at work. It could, instead, be lying at the bottom of the canal, or even buried out on the moors. And if that was the case, then even though she knew
who
had killed Doña Elena – and
why
he had killed her – she would never be able to prove it.

A constable appeared in the lounge doorway.

‘DI Beresford wondered if you could come down to the basement, ma'am,' he said.

‘Has he found something?' Paniatowski asked.

‘He thinks he might have done,' the constable replied.

The basement had been used as a dumping ground for objects that Robert Martinez and his father had discarded, but could not quite bring themselves to throw out. There was chipped furniture, an old bicycle, and rolled-up carpets. There were cardboard boxes which had held crockery and knick-knacks, and now had their contents spread all over the floor.

But none of these things seemed to be of any interest to Beresford. All his attention was focused on a small section of wall close to the floor.

‘Do you notice anything about this bit of brickwork, boss?' he asked Paniatowski.

Paniatowski squatted down, and shone her torch on it.

‘The mortar between the bricks is dirty,' she said, ‘much dirtier than the mortar on the rest of the wall.'

‘That's because somebody's made an attempt to disguise the fact that this mortar is new, though all he's actually succeeded in doing is drawing attention to it,' Beresford said.

‘You think there's something behind it?' Paniatowski asked.

‘I'm bloody sure there is.' Beresford tapped it with the hammer he had been holding in his hand. ‘It's hollow.'

‘Then let's take a look,' Paniatowski suggested.

They could have simply smashed the wall in, but since they were still not entirely sure what lay behind it, they decided to approach the task with caution, chipping away at the mortar until they had loosened a brick, and then pulling that brick free, and moving on to the next one.

It was five minutes before there was a hole big enough for Beresford to put his arm through and reach inside, and when he finally could, he groped around for a couple of seconds before saying, ‘There are two things in here.'

‘Then bring them out one at a time,' Paniatowski said.

The first object he removed was rectangular, and encased in oilskin. When Beresford unwrapped the covering, they found they were looking at a small bar of gold, which had the words Banco de España stamped on it.

There must have been more bars at one time – perhaps as
many as three or four – but they had been sold off, and the money they had raised had been laundered through Sunshine Holidays.

It was strange to think that only a couple of hours earlier, the whole team had believed that this gold had been the motive for two murders, Paniatowski mused.

But the murders had never been about the gold – the gold had nothing to do with it all.

‘Bring the other thing out now,' she said. ‘And let's hope it's what we think it is.'

The second object, which was also wrapped in oilskin, was a ball-peen hammer, and Paniatowski nodded her head with satisfaction.

‘What do you think the lab boys will find when they examine that?' she asked Beresford.

‘I think they'll find that it was probably the blunt instrument that was used to kill Doña Elena.'

Paniatowski nodded again. She knew now why Elena had come to England, and why she had watched this house from the copse of trees, instead of going straight to the front door and ringing the bell. She knew why the woman had had to die, and why her killer had attempted to hide her body.

There was much more she knew, too – and though she couldn't prove it, she didn't think she'd need to.

Since he had no official status on this investigation, Charlie Woodend had not come into the house, and Paniatowski found him in the garden, walking up and down to keep warm.

‘It's a bloody horrible climate you have in this country,' he said when he saw her. ‘I don't know how you stand it.'

‘You can get used to anything in time,' Paniatowski said. ‘Listen, Charlie, I have to talk to someone off the record, and I'd be grateful if you could be there with me.'

‘That someone would be Robert Martinez, would it?' Woodend asked.

‘Yes, it's Robert, and the reason I want you to be there is that …' Paniatowski began.

‘You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, lass,' Woodend interrupted her.

‘But I do want to tell you,' Paniatowski said. ‘The reason I want you to be there is that I've become rather emotionally attached to him.'

‘Aye,' Woodend said. ‘I'd rather gathered that.'

S
tanding in the doorway of his ex-girlfriend's flat, Robert Martinez looked better than he had sounded on the phone – but not much.

‘We need to talk, Robert,' Paniatowski said.

Martinez nodded. ‘I know that.'

‘This is an old friend of mine, Charlie Woodend,' Paniatowski said.

‘Chief Inspector Woodend,' Martinez said, holding out his hand.

‘Ex-Chief Inspector,' Woodend replied, shaking it.

‘I'd like Charlie to sit in on our talk, if you wouldn't mind, Robert,' Paniatowski said.

‘Would it make it easier for you?' Martinez asked.

‘Yes, I think it would.'

‘Then why would I mind? I care for you, Monika – I really do – and I hate it that you're in this situation because of me.'

‘It's not your fault,' Paniatowski said. ‘It just happened.'

Martinez nodded again, though Paniatowski was unsure whether that meant he was in agreement with her or not.

‘You'd better come in, then,' he said.

He led them into the lounge, and they all sat down.

‘Would you like to start, Charlie?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Why not?' Woodend replied. ‘The story really begins with a young Spanish Nationalist army officer called Luis Suarez. Suarez was a bit of a ladies' man, and one of the ladies he was particularly friendly with was the daughter of a Colonel Hierro. In fact, he was a bit too friendly, and she got pregnant. Now Suarez knew that when the colonel found out – and he was bound to find out, by the very nature of things, in a few months – he himself was as good as dead. So he decided to make a run for it, but before he could run, he needed to get some money – and that's when he took his unit to Val de Montaña, looking for the gold that he'd heard one of the communist militiamen had.' He paused. ‘It doesn't seem as if any of this is news to you, Mr Martinez.'

‘It isn't,' Martinez said.

‘He has the man who's supposed to have the gold – Javier Martinez – brought to the priest's house, and tells him that if he doesn't hand it over, he'll kill him and his entire family. And Martinez – who, by all accounts, was a very decent man – does give him the gold. It's probably at this point – though it may have been even earlier – that Suarez realizes that Martinez can not only provide him with the gold, but also with a new identity. And he needs a new identity, you see, because if he keeps using his real name, Hierro will find him wherever he's gone, and have him taken back to Spain. Now, what he does next shows just what a ruthless bastard he really is. He kills Martinez and two soldiers who know he's got the gold, and he sets the priest's house on fire. But he doesn't kill the baby Roberto – he takes him with him. Do you know why that was, Mr Martinez?'

‘I imagine he thought it would make it easier for him to be granted political asylum if he had a small child with him,' Robert Martinez said.

‘We seem to be thinking along the same lines,' Woodend agreed. ‘So he leaves the village with you and the gold. Everybody will think Luis Suarez has died in the fire, and he's got papers identifying him as Javier Martinez, so he's in the clear.' Woodend paused to light a cigarette. ‘I think we can forget the heroic story he fed Monika, about living off roots and berries as he made his way through Spain. My guess would be that he travelled by train, wearing his army uniform, and that it was only when he got to the Pyrenees that he ditched it.'

‘I agree,' Martinez said.

‘Once he's in France, he has to work out what to do next,' Woodend said. ‘He probably thinks about going to South America, and looking at it from the cultural and linguistic viewpoint, that would be his logical choice. But there's a lot of moving around in the Spanish-speaking world, in much the same way as there is in the English-speaking world.'

‘So there's always a chance that if he does go to South America, he'll eventually run into somebody who knew either Luis Suarez or Javier Martinez,' Paniatowski said.

‘Exactly,' Woodend agreed. ‘So what he decides to do instead is to make a complete break with the past. He comes to England – to Whitebridge – and, after a while, starts up his coach business.' He took a drag on his cigarette. ‘Monika tells me he wasn't very mechanically minded,' he said to Robert Martinez.

‘No, he wasn't,' Robert agreed. ‘In the first few years, he was entirely dependent on Fred Sidebotham to keep his buses running.'

‘Whereas the real Javier Martinez was an absolute wizard with engines,' Woodend said. ‘People used to come from miles around to have him look at their engines. But that's very much by the by. Where was I?'

‘He comes to Whitebridge,' Paniatowski prompted.

‘Oh aye, he comes to Whitebridge, and even here, he's very careful. There are not many Spaniards living in this town, but he still makes sure he keeps well clear of them.'

‘He was against me starting the Whitebridge Hispanic Circle from the start,' Robert said. ‘He tried his best to talk me out of it. But I went ahead anyway – I think it was my first real act of defiance.'

‘You told me he'd turned his back on everything Spanish,' Paniatowski said, ‘and so he had – except that his bedroom was full of pictures of Spain. That was the one place where he could really be himself.'

And even there, there'd been no pictures of the sea, she thought, because Luis Suarez had been brought up on the Castilian Plain. He probably hadn't even seen the sea until he'd joined the army in the Civil War – and it simply wasn't the real Spain to him.

‘Now we fast-forward thirty-six years, to a lunchtime paella party in Calpe,' Woodend said. ‘My god-daughter Louisa is there, and so is Martinez's wife, Elena. Louisa shows her a picture of you and your father in the
Whitebridge Evening Telegraph
. But it's not her husband she sees – it's her rapist. So she buys a plane ticket to England. Her plan – as far as we can reconstruct it – is to tell you who this man claiming to be your father actually is. But you're not in Whitebridge. You're in London. She waits for two days – watching Tufton Court from a copse of trees – for your return. And maybe she does see someone she thinks might be you turning into Tufton Court. Or maybe she's just so cold and frustrated that she decides to confront Luis Suarez on her own. And that's a fatal mistake, because he's just as ruthless a bastard as he ever was, and he kills her.'

‘I think it's time that you said something now, Robert,' Paniatowski said quietly.

Martinez nodded. ‘While my mother was in Whitebridge, she wrote me a letter, explaining everything. But she didn't send it to my home – maybe she was afraid the man I thought was my father would intercept it – she addressed it to the House of Commons, and it arrived when I wasn't there.'

‘And when that happens, the mail is couriered to Whitebridge,' Paniatowski said.

‘Yes, it is.'

Paniatowski puts her hands on Robert's shoulders to console him, and suddenly they are kissing.

This is insane, she tells herself – yet she does not want to let go.

The kiss continues, and it feels wonderful and natural – as if it has always been meant to be.

Someone outside rings the doorbell, and as the chimes reverberate down the hall, she forces herself to break away from him.