Fatal Quest (2 page)

I don't
want
to move up, Paniatowski thought. Not without you there to watch me – not without you there to
approve
of me!

But all she said was, ‘No regrets?'

‘Some – but not a lot,' Woodend told her. ‘There are a few things I'll miss, like best bitter an' mushy peas. A few people, too – an' you're right up at the top of that particular list.' He chuckled. ‘It's a real turn up for the books, isn't it, Monika?'

‘Isn't what?'

‘My leavin' the Force of my own free will – exitin' with an engraved clock rather than a notice of dismissal.'

‘It
is
a bit of a miracle,' Paniatowski agreed.

And so it was, she thought, because in order to count the number of times that Woodend had nearly been kicked out – and her along with him – she would need the fingers of both hands.

They fell silent, and in that silence Paniatowski found herself wishing that she could bring herself to tell her boss how much he had meant to her over the years. But from early on in their relationship, the exact nature of it had been too deep to put into words, perhaps even – on occasion – too
dangerous
to put into words.

The silence continued, until Paniatowski felt it would choke her. She needed to say something, she told herself. Something superficial. Something that could pass as banter.

‘Of course, the real miracle isn't that you stayed a DCI for so long – it's that you ever got to be one in the first place,' she said.

‘Now that hurts,' said Woodend, seeming as grateful to be playing the game as she was. ‘That cuts me to the quick. You're surely not suggestin' – are you, Sergeant Paniatowski – that I was never chief inspector material?'

Sergeant
Paniatowski, Monika noted. As if they were back in the old days, when he was her guide and her teacher and would
always
be there for her.

‘What I'm suggesting, Charlie, is that you're awkward and unorthodox, that you play by nobody's rules but your own – and that if there's any way to get right up a superior's nose, you'll find it in record time.'

Woodend smiled as if she'd paid him a compliment – which, in fact, she had.

‘You're right, of course,' he agreed.

‘So how did you get to be a DCI, Charlie?' Paniatowski asked, realizing to her own surprise that she really
did
want to know.

Woodend gave the matter some thought. ‘I suppose the short answer is that I earned my promotion by arrangin' to have somebody killed,' he said finally.

‘Is that meant to be a joke?' Paniatowski asked, slightly shocked.

Woodend shook his head – seriously.

‘No,' he said. ‘It may be an over-simplification, but it's certainly not a joke.'

‘Then tell me more.'

Woodend shook his head again. ‘I've already said too much. I've already told you somethin' that only three men knew for sure – an' two of them are already dead.'

‘You can't leave it there,' Paniatowski insisted. ‘You just can't. It wouldn't be
fair
.'

‘Life rarely
is
fair,' Woodend told her. Then his face softened and he turned to the barman and said, ‘Any news on that train yet, lad?'

‘Not a dickybird,' the barman replied. ‘Like I said, you could be here for another two hours.'

‘Which leaves you plenty of time to tell your story,' Paniatowski said firmly.

‘Which leaves me plenty of time,' Woodend agreed. ‘Well, it happened like this …'

S
itting at his desk on the third floor of New Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Charlie Woodend watched as the smog tightened its grip on the city. Ten minutes earlier, he had been able to see the mighty River Thames – albeit hazily. Now the extent of his vision stretched no further than halfway across the Victoria Embankment, and though he had no doubt the river was still there, he had no way of proving it.

The phone rang, and he picked it up.

‘DS Woodend.'

‘A girl's been killed!' a woman's voice shrieked at him down the line.

But though it undoubtedly
had
been a shriek, it had been a shriek delivered in a
whisper
– as if, despite her emotional state, she still didn't want others to hear it.

And there
were
others around. Woodend could detect both a background hum of conversation and – even further away – some sort of music blasting out.

‘Are you still there?' the woman demanded, as if hours, rather than seconds, had passed since he'd last spoken.

‘I'm still here,' he said reassuringly, as he reached across for a pencil. ‘Keep calm, madam.'

‘Keep calm? How
can
I keep calm? The girl is dead!'

From her accent, she sounded well educated, Woodend thought. And though, given the near hysteria in her voice, it was difficult to pin her age down, he would guess she was in her mid-thirties.

‘I'll need your name,' he said.

‘I'm not telling you that!'

‘I'm afraid you have to. It's standard procedure.'

‘I don't care. I
won't
give you my name.'

It seemed pointless to try and push her any further. ‘In that case, if you could just give me some details …'

‘Mitre Road! She's on a bomb site in Mitre Road!'

‘And you're sure she's dead?'

‘He
said
she was dead. And he doesn't lie. Not about things like that. He's not that kind of man.'

‘He?' Woodend repeated. ‘Who are we talkin' about here, madam?'

But by then, the woman had already hung up.

The smog turned the short walk to Mitre Street into a journey of almost epic difficulty. Woodend got lost twice, ending up back at the river the first time, and in front of Waterloo Station the second. He met only a handful of other pedestrians, and even these few – with their heads down, moving with the heavy reluctance of men wading through water – seemed more like phantoms of the night than real people.

Finally, nearly an hour after receiving the phone call, he arrived at his destination, the bomb site on Mitre Road. Even then, he might have walked straight past, had it not been for several thin beams of light which were dancing around erratically in the soupy air.

He was reaching into his inside pocket for his warrant card when one of the beams moved towards him, and a uniformed constable in his mid-forties stepped out of the murk.

‘Just keep on walkin', son,' the constable said gruffly. ‘No point in trying to rubber-neck, 'cos there's nuffink for yer to see 'ere.'

‘I'm from the Yard,' Woodend told him, holding up the warrant card. ‘It was me who called you out.'

The constable ignored the card, and instead shone his torch up and down Woodend's body.

‘Yer don't
look
much like a detective,' he sniffed, noting that instead of the expected suit, Woodend was wearing a hairy sports jacket and cavalry-twill trousers. ‘Don't sound much like one, eiver.'

Meaning I don't sound like I was born within the sound of Bow Bells, Woodend translated mentally.

Meaning, in addition, that since I don't have a Southern lilt to my voice, I must be some kind of yokel.

‘From the Norf, are yer?' the constable asked.

‘From the North, are you,
Sergeant
!' Woodend snapped back, in much the same tone as he would have used when he'd been another kind of sergeant – one who wore battledress.

‘No need to take the hump,' the constable said. Then, after a while, he came to something like attention, and added a reluctant, ‘Sorry, Sarge.'

‘Where's the body?' Woodend asked.

‘This way. Mind 'ow yer step.'

Woodend followed the constable over the heaps of rubble which must once – before a Luftwaffe bomb paid it an unwelcome visit – have been part of a substantial building.

There were thousands of sites like this all around London, because even though the War had been over for five years – and even though there was a desperate housing shortage – the capital city (like Britain as a whole) was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and simply could not
afford
to rebuild.

Four men were gathered around the corpse on the ground – three uniformed officers and a civilian whose stethoscope and black bag conveniently identified him as the police doctor. Despite the gagging smog, they were all smoking cigarettes, and Woodend felt his own hand reach automatically in his jacket pocket for his packet of Capstan Full Strength.

‘DS Woodend,' he told the doctor, as he lit up. ‘What's the story?'

‘She's a girl, and she's dead,' the doctor replied curtly.

‘And?'

‘I'll save the details till your guv'nor gets here, because there's no point in me saying everything twice, now is there?'

‘My guv'nor won't be comin',' Woodend told him.

‘A bit too damp for him, is it?' the doctor asked.

‘Somethin' like that,' Woodend agreed.

Although what DCI Bentley had actually
said
, when Woodend had phoned him at home, was, ‘I've spent years arsing round this city, cleaning up other people's shit, Sergeant – and now it's your turn.'

‘I'll have a look at the body now, if you don't mind,' Woodend said.

‘Be my guest,' the doctor replied indifferently.

Woodend knelt down and shone his torch on the girl's face.

‘Bloody hell!' he said.

‘Didn't I mention the fact that she was a nigger?' asked the doctor innocently, though his tone suggested that Woodend's obvious surprise was a source of some amusement.

‘No, you didn't,' the sergeant replied coldly.

He objected to the use of the word ‘nigger' on principle and, in fact, though she had black curly hair and a broad nose, this girl was not particularly dark at all.

‘I don't expect you've got many niggers up Norf, Sarge,' one of the constables said.

‘I'd like you to refer to her as “coloured”, if you don't mind,' Woodend told him.

‘Oh, come on, Sarge, what's the harm?' the constable asked. ‘It's not as if she can hear me, is it?'

‘An', in case I didn't make myself clear, I'd like you to refer to her as “coloured” even if you
do
mind,' Woodend said, with an edge to his voice.

‘Fair enough,' the constable replied sulkily.

He'd been right about one thing, though, Woodend thought – there
were
no coloured people in Lancashire, and the first time he'd ever seen a black face, it was in London.

‘Cause of death is a slit throat,' the doctor said.

‘I'm no medical man, but I think I might have been able to work that out for myself, even if you hadn't been here,' Woodend replied, shining his torch on the violent gash beneath the girl's delicate chin.

‘Do you think she was on the game?' the doctor wondered.

‘It's possible,' Woodend said cautiously.

‘Wouldn't be the first time a prostitute's met a sticky end in London, would it, though?' the doctor asked jovially. ‘Shades of Jack the Ripper, eh?'

‘Not you as well!' Woodend growled.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Can't you show a little respect for the dead, for Christ's sake!'

The doctor shrugged. ‘You see a lot of death in my business, and I suppose you just get used to it,' he said, in what might – or might not – have been a vague apology.

I've seen a lot of death myself, too, Woodend thought.
I've
seen mountains of bodies piled up inside a German concentration camp. But that doesn't make this particular death any less tragic.

‘When was she killed?' he asked.

‘Three hours ago at the earliest, two at the latest.'

From the near distance came the sound of a bell chiming midnight.

‘Big Ben,' said one of the constables, as if he thought that the yokel sergeant with the Northern accent would need the information.

Woodend stood up and looked back towards the pavement. There was no way the woman who'd called him could have seen the girl's body from the road, he thought.

But then she'd never
claimed
to have seen the body, had she?

What had her actual words been?

‘
He said she was dead. And he doesn't lie. Not about things like that. He's not that kind of man.
'

She not only knew there'd been a murder, but she knew the murderer's name. So why wouldn't she tell him that name? Why wouldn't she even give him her
own
name?

Both those questions would be answered if he could find her – but how the hell was he supposed to do
that
?

I
t was a long walk through the smog from the scene of the crime to the dingy one-and-a-half-bedroom flat which Woodend was still reluctant to call ‘home', and it was a quarter past two in the morning before he finally opened the front door and saw that his wife, Joan, was sitting in the living room, half asleep.

‘I wish you wouldn't do that, lass,' he said.

‘Do what?' Joan asked innocently.

‘Wait up for me.'

Joan yawned. ‘Who
says
I was waitin' up?'

He grinned. ‘I'm a detective, love. It's printed on my warrant card. An' usin' my detectin' skills, I've deduced that you were waitin' up because you're still here.'

‘The reason I'm still here is because I wasn't
tired
enough to go to bed,' Joan lied. ‘Anyway, you'll be wantin' somethin' to eat.'

‘I don't want to put you to any trouble,' Woodend told her.

‘An' I've got just the thing,' Joan continued, with the showmanship of a magician who was just about to pull a rabbit out of his top hat. ‘What would you say to some nice lamb chops?'