Salton Killings (11 page)

“If he's still alive,” Woodend said. “A lot of American airmen bought it in the war.”

“If he
is
still alive,” Rutter continued, “we could ask the American police to question him. Maybe they can come up with something that will eliminate him from our inquiry.”

“It's possible,” Woodend agreed. “And then what do we do?”

Rutter looked down at the table, an abashed expression on his face. If it had been Black sitting there, Woodend would have sworn he was blushing.

“If it's not him,” the sergeant said, “the answer lies in the village and the more we get to know the place – and the people – the more chance we have of coming up with it.”

“What a very Dickensian view of police work,” Woodend said, beaming.

“Yes, isn't it?” Rutter responded, smiling back.

The George was full of salt workers who'd scrubbed off the day's grime and put on their second-best caps. There was a lively domino school in progress and the sound of a noisy crowd round the dartboard in the back room. Then someone noticed Woodend, whispered messages shot across the room, and there was a wall of silence as thirty pairs of eyes focused on him.

The reaction was not a new one to the Chief Inspector. Over the years he had got used to being the outsider, the policeman whose help was welcomed but whose presence was shunned. They regarded him, he thought, as a sort of knight errant with leprosy.

“Evenin',” he said, easily.

One or two isolated voices responded, and then there was a whole chorus of greetings. The men returned to talking to each other, louder this time, as if to compensate for their earlier rudeness. But as he made his way to the bar, he was aware that he was still being watched, and he heard the name “Mary Wilson” being uttered from at least one table. It hadn't taken long for word to get around: he had never imagined that it would.

Woodend was surprised to see Liz Poole still behind the counter.

“I thought your husband would be runnin' the shop by now,” he said.

“Oh, that one!” She narrowed her lips into a wingeing expression. “He's got a headache – had to go and lie down.” Her mouth broadened into a good-natured smile. “What will it be, Charlie?”

He had only come up for cigarettes, but he'd been expecting to be served by the dour Harry.

“A pint of bitter, please,” he said.

Once under the humpbacked bridge, McLeash cut the engines and let
The Oriel
glide into the side. The moment it bumped against the bank, he jumped onto the towpath, mooring rope in hand. The salt store stood before him, hiding the moon, casting its oppressive black shadow over the lapping water. The lack of visibility didn't bother him; this was familiar territory and McLeash could have done the job blindfold.

With strong, expert hands, he formed the knots, pulling tightly to make sure they were secure. The engine was still not running right, and he was even later than he had anticipated, but still he went back onto the boat and lit the oil lamps fore and aft.

He was almost on the point of stepping ashore again, when he changed his mind. He opened the cabin door, lowered his head, and walked down the narrow steps. It was pitch black in there. McLeash struck a match and let it burn just long enough for him to locate the whisky bottle. In the darkness, he unscrewed the cap and took a generous pull.

It had been Woodend's intention when he left the pub to go straight back to the police house, but he felt the salt store drawing him like a magnet. Caught in the pale moonlight, it seemed to stir, a sleeping giant wracked by its own dreams.

Woodend saw the figure walking along the side of the store, and stepped back into the shadows. The man was no stranger to this route, he veered to the left and the right, avoiding obstacles in the scrub that were invisible to the Chief Inspector. Woodend felt the familiar tingle at the back of his neck. The man's movements were not just careful, they were – Woodend's instincts told him – furtive as well.

The man reached the front of the store and went directly to the small inset door. He moved his hand up to the bolt as if to draw it back, and encountered the padlock. He rattled it and the sound carried through the clear night air back to the watching detective.

Woodend stepped out of his hiding place and walked towards the store. His feet crunched on the gravel but the man, absorbed with the lock, was deaf to his approach. He stopped five feet from the door.

“Good evenin', sir,” he said. “Chief Inspector Woodend. Could I ask you what you think you're doing?”

The man jumped, then swung round to face him. He was tall and broad. His dark curly hair hung unfashionably over the edge of his collar. He wore no tie, but had a knotted kerchief round his neck.

“Name's McLeash,” he said.

Was he nervous, or merely temporarily knocked off balance? Woodend said nothing.

“I'm a narra-boat man,” McLeash continued. “Ma boat's moored just under the bridge. I was just on ma way for a pint. Noticed the lock on the door. There's never been one before.”

Could he really have noticed it as he was passing? Woodend moved to where, as nearly as he could judge, McLeash had been standing when he turned. Both bolt and lock merged into the blackness of the creosoted boards and were invisible.

“Perhaps you wanted to have a look at the scene of the crime,” Woodend suggested, offering him a way out.

“Crime?”

“The murder. Diane Thorburn.”

“I didna know nothin' aboot that,” McLeash said.

He sounded genuinely surprised, perhaps even shocked, but the voice is always the easiest thing to disguise. Woodend wished it was light enough to look into the man's eyes.

“Are you trying to tell me you didn't read about it in the newspapers?” he asked.

“I've no time for newspapers,” McLeash said. “By the way,” he added, as if the thought had just entered his head, “ha ye got a warrant card or summat?”

Woodend pulled out his card and McLeash examined it in the light of a match. He grunted, apparently satisfied.

“I'd like to talk to you in the mornin', sir,” Woodend said.

McLeash shrugged.

“I'll be aroond, loadin' the boat.”

“I'm afraid you won't. No more salt will be moved until I give the word.”

“You canna . . .”

“And if you want a pint, you'd better be quick,” Woodend interrupted. “They close in ten minutes an' they'll be very strict about it tonight – there's a lot of bobbies around.”

McLeash grunted again and set off towards the pub.

Woodend watched his progress with interest. In his dress, his general attitude, even his walk, he was typical of every other gypsy the Chief Inspector had had dealings with, but in one significant way he was very unusual indeed.

The prickle at the back of his neck had not gone away, even though McLeash had. There was something he had missed. Woodend concentrated. Someone else was watching him, had been watching him all the way through his exchange with the gypsy. He turned, slowly, and located the man, halfway down the side of the salt store.

The watcher's instincts were as sensitive as Woodend's. He wheeled round and began to run back towards the canal. Woodend followed, jumping over clumps of grass, swerving round brambles dimly outlined by the light of the moon. His lungs burned with the effort, but he was gaining on his prey. He would have the bastard.

The ground gave way beneath him and, while the rest of his body moved on, his right foot remained stuck in the rabbit hole. He felt his ankle twist and then his body was lurching forward and downward. He hit the ground with a sickening thud and felt the breath being forced out of him. As he painfully pulled himself up again, he saw the man turn right and disappear under the bridge.

“Shit!” he said.

Pressure on the ankle sent hundreds of red-hot needles shooting up his leg.

“I'm too bloody old for this sort of game,” he thought. “This is what we have sergeants for.”

He cursed the rabbit whose hole had brought him down. The man he had been following had something to hide – or why would he run? And now he had lost him. Or had he?

He put himself in the other man's place. He wouldn't risk coming back the same way, so he had two choices. He could follow the canal to Claxon, or he could wait a while and then return up the steep dog-legged path around the other side of the salt store. Woodend, hobbling slightly, walked up the bridge and stationed himself outside the door of Number One Pan.

It was fifteen minutes before he heard the cautious footsteps at the bottom of the path, and another twenty seconds before a head emerged, looking quickly to the left and right. The man saw him and bobbed down again.

What the bloody hell was
he
doing out at this time of night?

“Good evenin', Mr Poole,” Woodend said loudly.

The head appeared again and Poole climbed the last few feet of the path with the air of a man who had been taking a purely innocent stroll. Woodend walked across the road to him.

“It's a lovely night,” Poole said, and for once his dourness was replaced by an effort to be pleasant.

“I'm surprised to see you here,” Woodend said. “Your wife told me you'd got a headache and were lyin' down.”

“I was but . . . er . . . I thought some fresh air might do me good, so I took a walk along the canal.” He seemed to feel the need to say more, and added, “I often do.”

“Didn't see anybody else while you were down there, did you?” Woodend asked.

“No. Should I have done?”

“No,” Woodend said. “No, I don't think you should.”

Woodend watched Poole until he entered the George, then made his own way down the hill. He stopped once more in front of the salt store. It seemed to gaze down, Sphinx-like, on the life of the village below it – solid, immovable, enigmatic.

“So,” he said, addressing the empty building, “we've got the riddle, now what's the bloody answer?”

As if in mourning for Diane Thorburn, whose funeral was that day, the weather had suddenly changed. The sky was grey and a cold, unseasonable wind blew down Maltham Road, carrying with it the smell of salt and smoke. As Woodend leant over the car, issuing instructions to Davenport, he felt the drizzle trickling down his collar.

They had passed Black on the way into the village, standing self-consciously at the bus stop, dressed in his best suit so as not to intimidate the school kids.

Not that there's much chance of that, Woodend thought. Give him an eye patch and razor scars, and he'd still look like a Sunday School prize winner.

Davenport executed a neat three-point turn and headed off back to Maltham. With any luck, he would discover the whereabouts of Lieutenant Ripley who might, or might not, have strangled his girlfriend sixteen years earlier.

“We'll split up,” Woodend said. “I'll take the narrow boat people and you go an' see our resident child molester, Fred Foley. Want any guidance?”

“I don't think so, sir,” Rutter replied confidently.

“Right,” Woodend said. “Well just think on. I know you can't wait to get back down south – back to civilisation – an' Foley is a very convenient suspect. But don't go arrestin' him, lad. Not unless there's at least a 50 per cent chance you can make it stick.”

Two days earlier, Rutter would not have known how to take the remark. Now he grinned and said innocently, “I don't see how the murderer could be
anybody
in the village, sir. I mean – they are all northerners.”

“Cheeky young bugger,” Woodend said, without heat, as he turned and walked up Maltham Road.

Cadet Black had had it all planned out. He would get to the bus stop before anyone else, and talk to individual kids as they arrived. During the journey, he'd move discreetly up and down the bus, interviewing the latecomers.

It did not work out like that. For a start, the kids were reluctant to move away once they had been questioned, preferring instead to stand in a tight circle around him. Once on the red North Western bus, it was even worse; those in front of him turned round, those behind looked over his shoulder, and most of the rest crowded in the aisle. And instead of him asking them questions,
they
were asking
him
.

“Have you caught him yet, Phil?”

“Have you got any clues?”

“Did they let you see the body?”

“Was it horrible?”

Black told them several times to sit down, but they ignored him – especially the older girls.

In the end, the conductor, a small, thin, middle-aged man with National Health specs, intervened.

“I've told you before about misbehavin',” he shouted. “Now get back to yer seats.”

They obeyed almost instantly. The conductor sat down next to Black.

“If I was you, son,” he said kindly, “I'd leave my questionin' until I got off the bus.”

Black nodded, and felt about ten years old.

They were a bloody nuisance, this lot, the conductor thought. All except for that pretty little girl from the pub. She hadn't bothered the young feller. She'd sunk right down in her seat, almost as if she was tryin' to be invisible.

Foley's front garden was a wilderness, the paint on the door was cracked and peeling, two broken windows had been boarded up with pieces of roughly torn cardboard. The house stood out like a sore on the neat face of Harper Street.

Rutter swung open the rickety gate and knocked on the front door. From within, a dog barked, then a harsh voice said, “Take that, you bugger!” and the animal yelped. Still no one came to the door. Rutter knocked again.

“I'll pay you next week,” the voice called out. “I'm a bit short at the moment.”

Rutter hammered a third time.

“Police! Open up!”

The door, like the gate, creaked and juddered on its hinges. If anything, the man who opened it was in an even worse state. His eyes were red, his nose encrusted with blackheads. Thick black stubble clung untidily to his chin. He was dressed in a soiled collarless shirt and a pair of ragged grey trousers. A greasy cap rested on top of his straggly hair. Rutter knew that he was only in his early forties, but had it not been for his body, which was still lean and hard, he could have been taken for sixty.