Stone Killer (4 page)

‘I wouldn't be at all surprised if they had.'

‘And what's your reasoning behind that conclusion?'

‘The only reason I can see for them bein' so willin' to put their lives on the line for him in the bank is that he's done somethin' similar for them, sometime in the past.'

Danvers shook his head gravely. ‘In that case, I would have to say that – provided they've got adequate supplies in there – they could probably hold out for a week or more.'

‘We can't have that!' the Chief Constable said, mopping his brow with an Irish linen handkerchief. ‘We can't have that at all. The press would crucify us if we let it run on for a week. We'll have to go in.'

‘I really wouldn't advise it,' Woodend told him. ‘He says he'll blow up the hostages if we try anything, and I believe him.'

Marlowe looked around the table for support for his plan for an assault, but both Danvers and Slater-Burnes were refusing to meet his eye.

‘If that's true – if he really would blow them up – then we have no alternative but to simply tell him what he wants to hear,' the Chief Constable said.

‘Tell him what he wants to hear?' Woodend repeated.

‘That's what I said.'

‘But what did you
mean
?'

‘Do I have to spell everything out for you, Chief Inspector?' Marlowe asked irritably. ‘We'll tell him that we've released his wife, and arrested the real murderer.'

‘He's not a fool,' Woodend said. ‘He isn't goin' to swallow any old cock-an'-bull story you feed him.'

‘Then we'll just have to come up with a story that doesn't
sound
like it's cock-and-bull,' the Chief Constable said, as if doing that were the easiest thing in the world.

‘I said earlier that I'm no military man,' Woodend told him. ‘Well, I'm no actor, either. If I try lyin' to him, he'll see right through me.'

‘So we'll just have to get
someone else
to lie to him, won't we?' the Chief Constable said, exasperatedly.

‘He won't talk to anyone else,' Woodend said firmly. ‘He made that quite clear.'

‘That's probably because he thinks you're the best he can get,' Marlowe said. ‘When he realizes that a superintendent, or even a chief superintendent, is willing to speak to him—'

‘It'll make no bloody difference at all!' Woodend cut in, no longer able to hide his anger. ‘This man's a professional soldier. He's been in the Army long enough to realize that rank isn't necessarily any guide to ability.'

‘What did you just say?' the Chief Constable demanded.

‘Look, sir, he's thought all this through,' Woodend said, trying to sound more reasonable. ‘He knows
what
he wants doin' – an' he knows
who
he wants to do it. He's simply not goin' to accept any alternative.'

‘Your arrogance seems to know no bounds,' the Chief Constable said, with disgust.

‘It wasn't me who decided I should become involved,' Woodend pointed out. ‘It was Apollo. Or Major Maitland. Or whatever else you want to call him. An' he doesn't just want me to investigate the case – he wants me to report my findings to him on a regular basis.'

‘That's outrageous!' the Chief Constable exploded. ‘Who does he think he is?'

‘He thinks he's a man holdin' twenty hostages at gunpoint,' Woodend replied.

‘May I intervene here?' Slater-Burnes asked diffidently.

‘Of course,' Marlowe replied, hardly able to hide his relief.

‘There might be something to be said for listening to your chief inspector, Mr Marlowe,' the man from the Home Office advised. ‘After all, if storming the bank would result in all the hostages being killed – and Colonel Danvers seems to think that might well be the case – then it is certainly a strategy you should adopt only as a last resort. So what is your alternative? Why, to allow Mr Woodend to do what he wants to do!'

‘I never said I
wanted
to do it at all,' Woodend pointed out.

‘Then to allow Mr Woodend to do what he feels
needs
to be done,' Slater-Burnes said, shifting his ground with all the speed and elegance of a professional ballroom dancer.

‘You're saying I should allow Woodend to re-open the case?' Marlowe asked, like a drowning man grasping at a lifeline.

Slater-Burnes laughed lightly. ‘Good heavens, no, Chief Constable.'

‘No?'

‘Certainly not. You're the man on the ground – the man who is ultimately responsible. I'd be the last person on earth to try and steal any of the credit which will be rightfully due to you when this whole terrible affair is brought to a successful conclusion. All I was doing – although I readily admit I may not have made myself completely clear – is suggesting an option which is open to you.'

The Chief Constable had been dodging responsibility his whole career, and now – in what was undoubtedly the biggest challenge he would ever have to face – he could dodge it no longer. Under normal circumstances, Woodend would gladly have
paid
to see Henry Marlowe in such an uncomfortable situation. But these were
not
normal circumstances. Innocent lives were at risk, and he simply could not stand by and watch as the Chief Constable put them in further jeopardy.

‘You have no choice, sir,' he heard himself say. ‘There's only a slim chance I can prove Judith Maitland didn't do what she was sentenced for, but it's the only chance we've got.'

The lifeline had presented itself at the last possible moment. Marlowe grabbed it with both hands.

‘That's your considered opinion, is it, Chief Inspector?' he asked.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Let us be quite clear about this – you'd advise me to take no further action at the moment, other than allowing you and your team to re-investigate the Judith Maitland case?'

‘That's correct.'

Marlowe could not resist taking in a gulp of air. ‘Very well,' he said. ‘If that's your considered opinion, I'll let you play it your way. You have three days to produce some sort of result. But I warn you now, Chief Inspector, that if any of the hostages are killed in those three days, I will hold you personally responsible.'

Oh, I've no doubts about that, Woodend thought. No doubt at all, you slippery bastard!

T
he office which Woodend shared with his sergeant was thick with smoke when the Chief Inspector entered it – and it didn't take a detective to work out why. At least a dozen dead cigarettes were already crammed into Monika's small ashtray, and two more – rapidly burning themselves down – were balanced precariously on the edge of her already-burn-scarred desk.

Monika herself had the phone jammed between her chin and shoulder, and was making copious notes on the pad in front of her. When she saw Woodend, she gave him as much of a nod as was consistent with keeping the phone in place, then returned her full attention to listening and writing.

The Chief Inspector walked over to the window. Below it was the car park, and in two of the visitors' spots stood an Army jeep and Rover 2000.

The vehicles were a perfect match to their owners, he thought. Colonel Danvers' jeep declared unequivocally what he was – blunt, straightforward and perhaps a little crude. Slater-Burnes' Rover, on the other hand, was powerful without being ostentatious – the sort of vehicle which could manoeuvre around you without you even realizing it had happened.

Woodend's thoughts shifted from the unwelcome visitors' cars to his seated sergeant.

The poor lass had had a really rough time over the past couple of years, he reminded himself.

First there had been the revelations about her childhood – revelations under which a lesser woman would have sunk without trace. Then, even before she'd had time to come to terms with them – or perhaps, on reflection, it was
instead of
coming to terms with them – she'd begun her love affair with Inspector Bob Rutter, Woodend's protégé, whom he'd brought with him from his days in Scotland Yard. The Rutter–Paniatowski affair had ended disastrously, of course – as it was always bound to. And worse was to follow. With her own life still lying in pieces around her, Monika had found herself investigating the murder of Bob Rutter's blind wife, Maria – a murder which a few people, at the very least, had probably initially believed she had had a hand in. And as the final icing on the bloody cake, Rutter had suffered a – not entirely unexpected – nervous collapse, and gone away on sick leave.

Woodend turned away from the window. Monika Paniatowski had put down the phone, and was looking at him expectantly.

Aye, it had been a lot for her to handle, Woodend thought, and it was a miracle that she'd coped with it as well as she had.

‘Would you like to hear what I've got so far, sir?' the sergeant asked her boss.

‘Why not?' Woodend replied. ‘Since I'm here anyway, I suppose I might as well solve yet another mystery which has baffled the criminal experts on five continents.'

Paniatowski grinned – almost as naturally as she would have done before her downward spiral had begun.

‘Judith Maitland,' she began, reading from her notes. ‘Twenty-nine years old. Until recently, she ran a very successful catering company in partnership with a man called Stanley Keene.'

‘In
partnership
?' Woodend said quizzically.

‘It's not what you might think,' Paniatowski said. ‘There was nothing going on between them.'

‘You're sure of that, are you?'

‘Absolutely. Nobody's come flat out and said it in so many words, but everyone I've talked to has left me with the distinct impression that when Keene gets in the horizontal position, he'd much rather it was a man lying under him than a woman.'

‘You're so tactful you could almost be a chief constable,' Woodend said. ‘Tell me more.'

‘Keene was essentially the officer manager. He did the ordering, balanced the accounts, that kind of thing. Judith was what you might call the field operative. Whenever the company catered an event, she was there on the spot, supervising it. All of which meant that though the company was based in Whitebridge, she didn't actually spend much of her time here.'

‘How does her husband, the Major, fit into all this?' Woodend wondered.

‘Judith met him two years ago, at a function for the Territorial Army that she was catering in Bolton. Maitland was the guest of honour. It appears to have been something of a whirlwind romance. They were married just two months after that first meeting. They had a brief honeymoon touring in France, then he was posted overseas, and she carried on running the business.'

‘Tell me about the man she's supposed to have murdered,' Woodend said.

‘His name was Clive Burroughs,' Paniatowski said, consulting her notes again. ‘He was a couple of years older than Judith Maitland. He lived in Dunethorpe, where he ran a builders' merchant's business which he'd inherited from his father. He was killed in his own office – his head smashed in with a hammer. According to the officers who investigated the crime, Judith did it.'

‘Motive?' Woodend asked.

‘If we're to accept the word of the Dunethorpe Police, it was one of the oldest – and most boring – in the book. He was a married man with two children, and he was having an affair with Judith. They had a disagreement of some kind – the police think he'd probably told her he'd decided to end their relationship – she lost her temper, and killed him.'

‘How long had this affair been going on?'

‘Judith claims there
was
no affair—'

‘Well, she would, wouldn't she,' Woodend said dryly.

‘But the general consensus seems to be that they were seeing each other for nearly a year before Burroughs was killed.'

‘How did they first meet?'

‘In the same way she met her husband. Judith was catering a party for the Dunethorpe Chamber of Commerce. It was a family occasion. Burroughs was there – and so was his wife.'

‘She
knew
he was married, then, did she?'

‘I assume so.'

‘So he couldn't have lied to her – said that he was unattached. Which means that if she
did
have an affair with him, she must have known exactly what she was gettin' herself into, doesn't it?'

‘Ah, now I see where you're going with this!' Paniatowski said, an angry note suddenly apparent in her voice.

‘I'm sorry?' Woodend said, mystified.

‘You mean, you're wondering whether she
set out
to be a home-breaker? You're wondering if she embarked on the affair already knowing full well that someone was bound to get badly hurt? In other words, you're asking yourself if she was a heartless bitch—'

‘Monika!'

‘… like me!'

‘That's not right, and it's not
fair
, Monika!' Woodend said sternly. ‘In this job, as you well know, you have to learn to divorce your personal life from your professional life.'

‘Divorce! Now that's an interesting choice of word to use,' Monika Paniatowski said.

‘Separate it, then,' Woodend said impatiently. ‘Anyway, you see what I'm talkin' about, don't you? When we're discussin' a case, we have to be able to do it fully an' openly. I can't go pussyfootin' around the issues – wondering whether you'll think that when I talk about a suspect I'm secretly talkin' about you. We'd never get anywhere if we did that.'

‘You're right,' Monika Paniatowski said contritely.

But the problem was, he wasn't entirely sure himself that he
was
right, Woodend thought. He had always tried his best to understand human failing rather than condemn it, and he often told himself that he certainly wasn't going to condemn Monika and Bob for their affair. Yet at the same time, he was forced to admit, there was a small corner of him which
did
blame – and found it very difficult to forgive – them.