Fatal Quest (7 page)

‘I did not say that at all,' Dr Jenkins replied, though the expression on her face clearly revealed that she now realized she'd
implied
it.

‘So she got her scholarship to this school from some other source,' Woodend mused. ‘Was it from some kind of charitable foundation, perhaps?'

‘I am not all happy with the direction in which this conversation is now moving,' Dr Jenkins said sternly.

‘Now that is strange,' Woodend said. ‘Why is it such a secret? I would have thought that philanthropists would like it to be generally known that they're bein' philanthropic. I would have thought anybody who'd given money to a coloured girl from Cannin' Town would have been shoutin' it from the rooftops.'

There was no answer to that, and Dr Jenkins seemed to know it.

She reached out her hand, and stabbed at a large black button at the edge of her desk. Woodend heard a buzzer ring, somewhere beyond the office, and the headmistress's secretary appeared almost immediately.

‘Please show this gentleman to the door, Miss Stapleton,' Dr Jenkins said coldly.

Well, at least she's callin' me a gentleman, even if her tone suggests I'm anythin' but, Woodend thought.

He rose to his feet and stretched out his hand. ‘Thank you for your time, Dr Jenkins,' he said.

But the headmistress, who was making a great show of reading a document which lay on her desk in front of her, acknowledged neither the hand nor the words.

‘If you'd like to follow me,' the secretary said.

‘Of course,' Woodend agreed.

As he was leaving the room, the digger started up again. He knew it
shouldn't
have pleased him that the sound would distress the headmistress – but it did.

D
C Ted Cotteral was sitting at his desk, his fingers periodically striking one of the keys of his battered typewriter. Woodend had decided long ago that Cotteral wasn't much of a detective, but now, watching him from the doorway as he slowly and agonizingly tip-tapped out his report, it was becoming apparent that he wasn't much of a typist, either.

There were no other detective constables in the outer office, and looking across the room, through the open door of the Wolf's Lair, Woodend noted that DCI Bentley was absent, too.

Well, there nothing surprising in that, he told himself. Bentley was famous for sloping off home early, so the fact that the fat idle bastard was not there now shouldn't bother him at all.

But it
did
bother him. Or rather it bothered his gut, which suddenly seemed to be encircled by a tight iron band.

He turned to face Cotteral.

‘Any idea where the guv'nor is, Ted?' he asked.

‘Shit!' the constable said, looking first at where his index finger had landed on the keyboard, and then at the key that it had impelled to strike the page. ‘You've just made me mistype, Sarge.'

‘I asked you if you had any idea where the guv'nor is?' Woodend repeated.

Cotteral reached for his eraser, and began to rub gingerly at the surface of his report.

‘He's in one of the interview rooms, Sarge,' he said, almost absently.

When he'd been a sergeant in the army, Woodend thought, he'd never have tolerated this casual attitude from the other ranks. But then, the army had been different. The officers he'd served under had had confidence in him, and would have backed to the hilt whatever action he'd decided to take, whereas Bentley …

‘What's the guv'nor
doin
' in the interview room, DC Cotteral?' he asked. ‘Talkin' to a suspect?'

‘Not a suspect
as such
,' Cotteral replied. ‘He's having a bit of a chat with a coloured woman.'

The iron band tightened another notch. In later years, when he had learned to respect his gut more, Woodend would take it as a certain sign that something had gone seriously wrong. But for the moment – even though what he'd just heard was disturbing – he wasn't entirely convinced it was any more than just acid indigestion.

‘A coloured woman?' he repeated. ‘Do you happen to know her name?'

‘As a matter of fact, I do.' Cotteral consulted his report. ‘She's called Victoria Jones, and she lives at 36 Balaclava Road, Canning Town.'

‘Since you're the one writin' the report, I'm assumin' you're the one who brought her in.'

‘That's right. I was.'

‘Are you bein' deliberately bloody minded, DC Cotteral?' Woodend demanded.

‘No, Sarge,' Cotteral said, looking innocent.

‘Then tell me who
told you
to bring her in. Did you do it on the guv'nor's specific instructions?'

Cotteral chuckled. ‘Oh, they were certainly his instructions – and they were definitely
specific
enough.'

Woodend sighed heavily. ‘Life is full of choices, Cotteral, an' I'm about to offer you one,' he said. ‘You can either give me a complete run down on exactly what happened …'

‘I'm not sure the guv'nor would be happy about me doing that, Sarge.'

‘… or you can run the risk of breakin' your bloody neck when I haul you out of the chair an' throw you across the room.'

Cotteral blanched. ‘Fair enough, Sarge,' he said, after a few seconds had passed. ‘At around half past two, the guv'nor got a phone call in his office – and that's when things started happening.'

‘Who was this phone call from?'

‘I don't know,' Cotteral said. Then, as Woodend started to move towards him, he shrank back into his chair and continued, ‘I swear to you, I don't know. But whoever it was, it had an effect on him, because five seconds after he'd rung off he came tearing out of the Lair like he'd got a red-hot poker up his arse, and said he wanted the woman picking up.'

‘Did he tell you
why
he wanted her pickin' up?'

‘No, he didn't.'

‘But he must have told you what to say to her if she asked why she was bein' brought in.'

‘He didn't do that, either,' Cotteral said evasively.

‘The choice is still yours,' Woodend growled. ‘Tell me what I want to know or find out what it feels like to fly through the air. It's really up to you.'

‘He wrote her a note, put it in an envelope, and told me to give it to her,' Cotteral replied sulkily. ‘He said once she'd read it, she'd come quietly.'

‘What was in the note?'

‘I don't know! Bentley had
sealed
the envelope before he gave it to me, and I wasn't going to open it, was I?'

‘So what happened once you got to Mrs Jones's house?'

‘She didn't want to come with me at first. In fact, she started screaming at me to go away and leave her alone. Then I gave her the guv'nor's note, and it worked just like he'd said it would. She was as meek as a lamb after that.'

‘She was as meek as a lamb,' Woodend repeated silently.

Remembering the way she had thrown him out of her house just a few hours earlier, it was hard to imagine her acting
meekly
.

So what had Bentley's note said?

And just
what
game was the chief inspector playing?

Did he think he could solve the murder himself – without even leaving the Yard?

That didn't seem likely – but if it did turn out to be the case that he could, it would certainly be a personal humiliation for his sergeant, who had spent the whole day pounding the streets, and still come up with practically nothing.

Bentley returned an hour later.

‘My office,' he barked at Woodend, as he headed for the Wolf's Lair himself.

The sergeant followed him in. Bentley sank back gratefully into his comfortable chair, but did not invite Woodend to take a seat.

‘I've just spent the last two hours talking to a darkie woman by the name of Victoria Jones,' he said.

‘Is that right, sir?'

‘Yes, it is. And do you know what the first thing she told me was?'

‘No, sir.'

‘She told me that you'd
already
talked to her.'

‘May I ask you where you got her name and address from, sir?' Woodend said. ‘Did she phone you herself?'

‘Let me ask
you
a question, first,' Bentley countered. ‘All right?'

‘All right,' Woodend agreed.

‘Who's in charge here?'

‘You are, sir.'

‘So who gets to do the talking, and who gets to do the listening?'

‘You get to talk, and I get to listen.'

‘And if there are any questions to be asked, who asks them?'

‘You do, sir.'

But how
had
Bentley got her address? Woodend wondered.

And what had been in the chief inspector's note which made Victoria Jones agree to come
meekly
to the Yard?

‘Are you still with me, Sergeant?' Bentley asked.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Good, well, since we seem to have got the question of who's in charge out of the way, let's get back to the matter in hand, shall we? Now, where was I? Oh, yes. You went to see this darkie woman, and blandly informed her that her daughter was dead. And even though she told you,
several times
, that the girl in the picture which you showed her
wasn't
her daughter, you kept insisting that she was. Why was that?'

‘Because Mrs Jones wasn't tellin' the truth.'

‘And you know that for a fact, do you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘Mrs Jones had several photographs of her daughter on the sideboard, and I could see it was the same girl.'

‘Oh, for God's sake, is that all you've got to say in your defence?' Bentley exploded.

‘Isn't it enough?'

‘No, it bloody isn't enough. The girl in the photographs may well have
looked
like the girl in the morgue, but then all darkies look alike
anyway
, don't they?'

‘No, sir. Not to me.'

‘Of course! I should have known that, shouldn't I?' Bentley said. ‘After all, you're so much more sensitive – so much more
intelligent
– than the rest of us. And how would you feel, Sergeant Genius, if I told you that ten minutes after you'd accused Victoria Jones of lying, her daughter rang up to say she was all right.'

‘I'd be surprised, sir,' Woodend said.

‘Why? Because you think you're so bloody clever that you can never be wrong?'

‘Because Mrs Jones doesn't have a phone in her house. Nobody on Balaclava Street does. That was one of the first things I noticed when I was down there.'

There was short pause – perhaps no more than two or three beats – before Bentley said, ‘Did I actually tell you that the daughter rang Victoria Jones
at home
?'

‘Not in so many words, but—'

‘Good. Because, as a matter of fact, that
isn't
where she rang her.'

‘No?'

‘No. Victoria Jones has a weakness for the drink, you see, Sergeant, and her daughter knows that better than most. So she
also
knows that if she needs to contact her mother during opening hours, all she has to do is ring the local boozer.'

The chief inspector was good, Woodend conceded. Very good!

Most other men would have been quite lost after having being caught out in the first lie, but it had taken only moments for Bentley had come back at him with a story which explained the inconsistency away. But as skilful as the manoeuvre had been, it still didn't make him any
less
of a liar.

‘What I've really been doing for the last two hours, Sergeant, is saving your bacon,' Bentley said.

‘Savin' my bacon, sir?'

‘That's what I said. The woman wanted to lodge a complaint against you. Either that, or take her story to the newspapers. A few years ago, I'd have told her that if she didn't like the way the police treated her in this country, she could piss off back to the jungle, where she bloody belongs. But we can't do that kind of thing these days, because the old order's gone, and our new masters are all bleeding-heart liberals. So what did I have to do instead? I had to demean myself by sitting there and listening to her darkie whining. And when she'd finished, I had to cajole her into not taking the matter any further. It stuck in my craw, I can tell you. But I did it. And not because I like you personally – make no mistake about it, I don't! – but because, as a point of principle, I stick by my men, right or wrong.'

Having made his little speech, Bentley sat back in his chair, no doubt waiting for the effusive thanks that his sergeant was about to shower on him.

‘She'd never have taken it to the police complaints authority or the newspapers,' Woodend said. ‘She couldn't – because she doesn't have a leg to stand on. Whatever she says, sir, the girl is
dead
.'

Bentley sighed, almost despairingly. ‘I shouldn't expect gratitude, should I? Not from a cocky bastard like you. But listen very carefully to what I have to say next, Sergeant. I don't care whether or not you still think the girl is dead – you are not to approach Victoria Jones again
under any circumstances
.'

‘But I don't see how I can continue my investigation if I'm not allowed to—'

‘It isn't
your
investigation any more, Sergeant. I'm reassigning you – as of right now – to the Waterman's Arms murder.'

‘The Waterman's Arms murder?' Woodend repeated, mystified.

‘Yes, it's a pub – in case you haven't managed to work that out for yourself,' Bentley said, with heavy sarcasm.

‘I know it's a pub,' Woodend replied. ‘It's just off Tooley Street.'

And a very rough pub it was, he thought.

‘What I
don't
know,' he continued, ‘is anythin' about a murder.'