Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire (6 page)

‘Can you go down again and see if you can find a coat or a handbag, lads?' Beresford asked.

The divers nodded, and disappeared beneath the surface again.

‘There is nothing in her pockets,' said Shastri.

So whoever she was, her killer didn't want her identified in a hurry, Paniatowski thought.

‘Could you spend some time with the police artist, and see if you can produce a sketch of what the victim probably looked like before she went into the water, Doc?' she asked Shastri.

‘Of course,' the doctor agreed. ‘Such an exercise would fill my morning beautifully. And if I happen to have a little time free when I have finished with the artist, I could always do a post-mortem.'

Paniatowski grinned. ‘It's really good to have you back with us, Doc,' she said.

‘It's really good to be back,' Shastri told her.

Charlie Woodend had once told Paniatowski that when you'd got a good team together – by which he meant a team that was loyal, could use its own initiative, and didn't always agree with you – then you had a pearl beyond price.

Paniatowski believed him. She cherished her team, and when they met in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey that lunchtime – as was their habit at the start of a new investigation – she reminded herself how lucky she was to have them working for her.

Aside from herself and Beresford, there were two other members of the permanent team.

One of them, Sergeant Kate Meadows – her bagman – could, if she'd chosen, have been a fashion model, and had probably (given her general approach to life) already been many other things in pre-police life that Paniatowski thought it wisest not to find out about.

The other member – DC Jack Crane – was a handsome young university graduate who was heading for great things, but for the moment was prepared to learn from Monika as she had learned from Charlie Woodend.

‘So where are we?' Paniatowski asked, when the waiter had delivered the drinks and gone away again.

‘At the moment, we're nowhere at all,' Beresford admitted. ‘We haven't got Dr Shastri's estimate of the time of death yet, but we know that the victim must have been killed at least three days ago.'

‘Because of the ice?' Paniatowski asked.

‘That's right,' Beresford agreed. ‘She was under the ice, which means she must have been dumped in the canal before it froze over – and that means a minimum of three days. Yet despite that, nobody's reported her missing.'

‘That would suggest she doesn't have a job,' Meadows said.

‘She certainly looks old enough to be retired,' Beresford replied. ‘And if she's divorced or widowed, it's perfectly possible that nobody's noticed that she's not around.'

Yes, it was, Paniatowski thought. But friendless widows and divorcees weren't found at the bottoms of canals with bricks tied to them. Their bodies were discovered in their own homes, after they'd been robbed or raped by complete strangers.

The very fact that someone had gone to so much trouble with this woman suggested that the murderer had both known her and wanted her death kept quiet for as long as possible. And the latter was a smart move on his part, because it was an article of faith in most police forces that the most crucial time in any investigation was the first forty-eight hours after the murder – and this woman had been dead for at least seventy-two.

‘The victim's picture will be on the lunchtime news and in the evening papers, but in addition to that, I want a door-to-door canvas of the areas she was likely to have lived in,' Paniatowski said to Beresford.

The inspector nodded. ‘I've already put a team of eager young DCs and fresh-faced PCs together,' he said. ‘Based on what she was wearing, I assume you want me to canvass areas that are neither too posh nor too poor.'

‘Exactly,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Even by limiting it to them, that's a lot of doors to have to knock on,' Beresford pointed out.

‘Do the best with the manpower you have available,' Paniatowski told him. ‘I also want you to interview anybody who regularly visits the area around that section of the canal.'

‘That'll be a handful of people, at best,' Beresford said. ‘Most of the factories and mills have been derelict for years, and since the boot factory closed down, hardly anybody has any reason to be in that vicinity.'

Which was probably exactly why the killer chose it as a place to dump his victim, Paniatowski thought.

And that argued at least some local knowledge.

‘It's unlikely there'll be many possible witnesses, but there might be a few,' she said. ‘I've seen men fishing in that canal – though what they expect to catch is anybody's guess. Then there are people who use the canal towpath as a short cut. If you can find out who they are, we might be getting somewhere. And I want the motorists who drive across the canal bridge on a regular basis stopped and questioned as well.'

‘I'll get right on to it,' Beresford said.

‘As for you two,' Paniatowski continued, turning towards Crane and Meadows, ‘there's bugger all for you to do at the moment.'

‘I could always help out with the door-to-door inquiries, boss,' Jack Crane suggested.

‘Yes, you could,' Paniatowski agreed, ‘but when this investigation really starts moving, I want your mind fresh and your feet clear of blisters – because if we're not all completely on the ball, we'll lose this one. And we don't want that, do we? Not with the chief constable breathing down our necks.'

The rest of the team nodded, because the chief constable
was
breathing down their necks – or, more specifically, down DCI Paniatowski's neck – and they all knew exactly why that was.

Dr Shastri had been a stunningly beautiful woman when she was younger, Paniatowski reminded herself – and the passing of the years had done little to rob the doctor of her looks. In fact, she seemed hardly to have aged at all – which didn't seem quite fair when everyone around her was acquiring wrinkles and putting on the pounds.

‘You are wondering about the secret of my youth, aren't you?' Shastri asked, with a smile.

‘No – I don't need to wonder, because I've seen the picture in your attic,' Paniatowski replied.

Shastri laughed, and it was like the tinkle of delicate temple bells.

‘I am no Dorian Grey,' she said, ‘and my secret is really very simple – I eat sensibly, drink in extreme moderation, and I do not smoke at all. Would that you yourself, and the rest of your team – or Monika's Marauders, as I like to call them – followed the same regime.'

‘Can we talk about the body now?' Paniatowski asked, starting to feel slightly uncomfortable.

‘Certainly,' Shastri agreed. ‘Your victim – Madame X – appears to have followed the same philosophy as I have.'

‘She wasn't young and beautiful,' Paniatowski said.

‘No, she wasn't – on the outside,' Shastri agreed, ‘but her organs are in excellent condition for a woman of her age. I doubt she ever ate a bag of chips or a steak and kidney pie in her entire life – and which of the Marauders can say that? I suspect – though I cannot be sure – that she ate a lot of fish, and cooked with oil, rather than lard. It is what is becoming known as the Mediterranean diet.'

‘Are you saying that she originally came from one of the countries on the Mediterranean?'

‘It is more than possible. Certainly, her skin seems to have had more exposure to the sun than you would expect from a native of Whitebridge.'

‘What else can you tell me about her?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Always so demanding,' Shastri said. ‘You are quite as bad – in your own way – as Chief Inspector Woodend used to be.' She paused. ‘How is Mr Woodend, by the way?'

‘He's fine – as happy as a pig in shit,' Paniatowski said.

But she had to admit that in the week or so that she and Louisa had stayed with him and Joan, there had been moments when he seemed to be fretting for something – and she had a good idea what that something was.

‘To return to the question of your cadaver,' Shastri said. ‘She was in her mid-sixties, I would estimate. From the condition of her hands, I would say that she had been used to manual labour of some kind. She had no distinguishing marks, nor had she undergone any major operations. Her teeth were in good condition for a woman of her age, but I would say it is a long time since she visited a dentist.'

‘How did she die?' Paniatowski asked.

‘She was killed by a single – very violent – blow to the back of the head. The murder weapon was very likely a ball-peen hammer or something similar. Death would have been almost instantaneous, and there is no evidence of any other damage of either a physical or a sexual nature.'

‘And how long has she been dead?'

‘Given that the cold water prevented some of the natural processes of decomposition from taking place, it is difficult to pinpoint it exactly,' Shastri admitted, ‘but I would say that death occurred approximately three days ago.'

‘In other words, she probably went into the water on Wednesday night or Thursday morning.'

‘Yes,' Shastri agreed, ‘and given that most people don't like disposing of bodies in broad daylight, I would suggest that Wednesday night was more likely.'

‘What can you tell me about her clothes?'

‘The skirt, blouse and cardigan are all mid-market brands which could have been bought from any of a dozen shops in Whitebridge and from thousands of shops elsewhere. None of them are new. In fact, I would guess they are all at least two years old. The underwear, on the other hand, is brand-new, and I'd say it has never been washed.'

‘Is there anything unusual about the underwear?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Nothing at all,' Shastri replied. ‘It is just as sensible as the rest of her clothes, and quite appropriate to a woman of her age.'

So did it mean anything that the underwear was new, while the rest of her clothes weren't? Paniatowski wondered.

Probably not, she decided.

‘Is there anything else you'd like to know?' Shastri asked.

‘Her address would be nice,' Paniatowski said, ‘but I don't suppose even a miracle worker like you can provide me with that.'

‘Alas, no,' Shastri agreed. ‘But I am sure the estimable Inspector Beresford will soon provide you with that information.'

Yes, she could only pray that he would, Paniatowski thought – because the clock was ticking.

T
here was a brilliantly blue sky that Sunday morning, and the winter sun – while not exactly aggressively hot – did at least give the impression that it was prepared to make some effort to warm the town up.

And slowly but surely, Whitebridge did begin to feel a little less chill. Icicles, hanging from roof guttering, dripped, quivered and then fell; pavements and roads became a little less lethal; and at the scene of the crime – if the crime had, actually, been committed there – a channel of greenish water ran through what had been the middle of Tommy Maddox's defective skating rink.

Tommy Maddox had inadvertently handed them a break, Paniatowski thought, as she sat at her desk, smoking her sixth cigarette of the day. If the boy hadn't been foolhardy enough to try and skate across the frozen canal, the body could have lain there until the ropes finally rotted away, and the lump of decayed meat – hardly recognizable as a human being at all by that time – had been allowed to rise to the surface.

Yes, that had certainly been a lucky break, but they didn't seem to have had much luck since. The door-to-door inquiries had turned up nothing positive, and though there'd been a fair number of responses to the newspaper and television reports, these had all proved, on further investigation, to have been filed by the lonely, the loony and the merely confused.

She was dreading her next meeting with the chief constable. In the old days, those meetings had, on the whole, been very productive, for though they had once been lovers, they had mostly managed to put that fact to one side, and behave like professionals.

But everything had changed since his wife's suicide.

His wife's accident, Paniatowski corrected herself – the coroner had ruled it an accident.

George Baxter blamed himself for his wife's death, but he also blamed his ex-lover – even though their affair had been long over before he had ever met Jo.

It wasn't logical of him, of course, but you couldn't really blame a man consumed by grief and guilt for not being logical, Paniatowski told herself.

But whether she understood his situation or not – and she did understand it – it didn't make those meetings any easier.

Beresford appeared in the doorway, but it was clear from the expression on his face that he had nothing positive to tell her.

‘I've managed to scrounge up a few more officers from the other divisions,' he said. ‘Do you want me to use them to widen the scope of the door-to-door inquiries?'

‘Do you really need to ask?' Paniatowski replied.

It was impossible for anyone to be invisible in a close-knit and downright nosy town like Whitebridge, she thought, so there would be people who knew the dead woman.

But maybe some of those people didn't read the newspapers, watch television, or live in an area that had already been canvassed. Maybe some of them were away on business, or visiting family in another town.

The victim would be identified eventually, Paniatowski was sure of that. But the problem was, the longer it took, the colder the trail grew.

At lunchtime the team all came together at their usual table in the Drum and Monkey.

‘I'd like to start by hearing your theories on why it's proving so difficult to identify our victim,' Paniatowski said.

‘Maybe she's agoraphobic,' Beresford suggested. ‘She never left the house, so nobody recognizes her.'