The Enemy Within (2 page)

Nothing! Had it not been for the distant hum of traffic, and sound of the London express clanking into Whitebridge railway station, they could almost have convinced themselves they were all alone in the world.

‘I told you they wouldn't be here,' the older boy said, his tone suggesting just a little contempt for his companion's earlier fear.

The younger boy stood up. ‘So what do we do now?' he asked.

‘We do what we come here to do in the first place,' his leader said impatiently.

Crouched low, they quickly made their way towards their target. They were almost there when the younger boy stumbled forward, lost his grip on his petrol can, and landed heavily on the ground.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you're doin'?' the older one demanded.

His friend groaned. ‘I think I've broken me leg,' he sobbed. ‘I can feel the bone pokin' through.'

The older boy knelt down and ran his hand up and down the leg.

‘You big cry-baby,' he said when he had finished his tactile inspection. ‘Get up! There's nothin' wrong with you.'

‘I've broken me leg!'

‘Do you want me to go back an' tell the rest of the gang you're a sissy?'

‘No, but––'

‘Then get up.'

The younger boy climbed slowly to his feet. The pain, he discovered, was not as bad as he'd first thought, but even so, he was buggered if he was going to admit that now.

‘What made you fall over, anyway?' the older boy asked.

The younger boy bent down and picked up something from the ground. ‘A shoe!' he said. ‘A lady's shoe. It looks nearly new.'

‘Throw it away.'

‘But it might be worth somethin'.'

‘Only if you happen to know some one-legged woman who you could sell it to.'

The younger boy flipped the shoe over his shoulder and retrieved his petrol can.

Now that they were no longer pretending to be commandos, it took them only seconds to reach their target. The older boy uncapped his jerrycan, and began to slurp petrol over the side of the bonfire. The younger boy did not follow his example. He had other ideas. Anybody who knew anything about bonfire building was well aware that however big the particular bonfire grew, there was always a hollow section at its core – a hollow section packed with the stuff which would actually start the fire. And what
kind
of stuff was it, usually? Old clothes, cardboard boxes, newspaper – and comics!

And comics!

It was more than possible, he reasoned, that there were already comics in there. Comics he'd never read. It would be a shame to burn them with the rest of the bonfire.

He reached into his pocket, and pulled out the flashlight his granddad had given him for his birthday.

‘What the bloody hell are you doin' now?' the older boy demanded.

‘Nothin'.'

‘Pour your bloody petrol over the bonfire, like you're supposed to!'

Ignoring his friend, the younger boy squatted down and shone the flashlight into the hollow. ‘I've found the other shoe,' he said.

‘You what?'

‘Remember that lady's shoe I fell over? Well, I've found the other one. An' . . . an' . . . I think I'm goin' to be sick.'

‘What's the matter?'

‘The . . . the shoe . . .' the younger boy gasped. ‘It's still got the lady's foot inside it!'

A
virgin copy of the Shostokovich Jazz Suites lay submissively on the record player turntable, ready for its first encounter with the gramophone needle. A box of expensive Belgian chocolates sat on the coffee table in expectation of a frenzied attack. In the fridge, a bottle of Polish vodka was chilling nicely. And judging by the sound coming from the bathroom, the tub was already half full of steaming water. It was the perfect recipe for the quiet night at home which Monika Paniatowski had been promising herself for some time.

And then the phone rang.

Paniatowski made a grab for the receiver, and listened intently while the duty sergeant on the other end of the line fed her the details of the report which had just come in.

‘So the body was found under the bonfire on Mad Jack's Field,' she said, when the sergeant had finished. ‘Is foul play suspected?'

‘It's a pretty odd place to die of
natural
causes,' the sergeant pointed out.

Indeed it was, Paniatowski agreed silently. ‘You've dispatched all available patrol units to the scene, have you?' she asked.

‘First thing I did. There should be quite a crowd already there by the time you arrive.'

‘And Mr Woodend?'

‘He's been contacted. But since he lives in the back of beyond, there's no tellin' when he might get there.'

Paniatowski tried to summon up the healthy outrage which the disruption of her plans seemed to call for.

It wouldn't come.

And why should it have, she asked herself?

After all, who in their right mind would savour a night of solitary self-indulgence, when the alternative was to drive out into the dark night and share what would probably turn out to be a particularly grisly murder?

Paniatowski remembered Mad Jack's Field from her childhood. Back then it had been surrounded by houses on all four sides. Now, though there were still houses on three sides, a new industrial estate had grown up on the fourth, and it was along the feeder road built for the estate that she made her approach to the scene of the crime.

Strictly speaking, Mad Jack's was not really a field at all, she thought as she pulled her six-year-old MGA round one of the new road islands. True, in defence of its status, it could be pointed out that there was indeed grass growing on Mad Jack's Field – but given the amount of rain with which God punished Lancashire, grass would grow on anything which was not actually continually on the move. Besides, as well as its grass and nettles it also boasted an abundant crop of half-buried house bricks, glass bottles and discarded cobblestones. So it was not so much in a state of
being
anything, but should rather be regarded as once having
been
(the site of an old brewery) and as eventually to
become
(an extension of the new industrial estate).

‘Did I really just think that?' she wondered aloud, as she used her free hand to pull a cigarette from the packet on her dashboard. ‘Did I actually let that thought pass through my mind?'

Being, been – and eventually to become!

Christ, she was sounding just like Charlie Woodend in one of his more philosophical moments. In fact, now she considered it, the longer she worked with Cloggin'-it Charlie, the more she was starting to sound like him in all sorts of ways. Which was not necessarily a bad thing, she supposed – as long you were also willing to accept that promotion wasn't important to you, and that pissing off superiors was a natural function of any decent working bobby.

She reached a second roundabout on the new road, and saw Mad Jack's Field up ahead of her. A number of official vehicles had already arrived on the scene, and instead of parking parallel to the pavement – as they would normally have done – were positioned at ninety degrees to it, so that their backsides stuck out into the road almost as far as the white centre line.

Paniatowski nodded her approval at this clumsy arrangement. Mobile floodlights would have been better, of course, but since such modern equipment was considered a frivolity by the quill-pushers who controlled expenditure in the Mid Lancs Constabulary, car headlights shining on to the field would serve almost as well – until, of course, their batteries went flat.

Paniatowski parked in a free slot. For a moment her hand hesitated over the dashboard, then she switched off both the engine and the lights. Enough car batteries were already being sacrificed in the interests of justice, she decided. The MGA, on this occasion, could be spared the humiliation.

A young constable, standing on guard duty, watched Paniatowski climb out of the car.

Nice legs on the sergeant, he thought. Very nice legs. Nice face too. Her blonde hair was lovely, and so were her green eyes. Her Slavic nose was perhaps a little too large for Lancashire tastes, but he'd have tolerated it – if he'd ever been given the chance.

‘Evening, Clive,' Paniatowski said. ‘Mr Woodend here?'

The eyes were blue, not green, the constable corrected himself. Piercing blue. Somehow, they managed to both allure him and to scare him off.

‘I asked you if Mr Woodend was here,' Paniatowski repeated.

The constable coughed awkwardly. ‘Sorry. I was miles away for a minute. No, he's not turned up yet, Sarge.'

Paniatowski stepped off the pavement and started to cross the field. The constable continued to follow her with his eyes. Nice narrow waist, he thought. Breasts which, without being over-large, would give you something to hang on to. True, she was much older than he was – possibly even pushing thirty – but that was no reason why she shouldn't feature in his guilty fantasies the next time he locked the bathroom door securely behind him.

Two more uniformed constables were standing on guard in front of the bonfire, one of them two feet to the left of the central hollow, the other two feet to the right. Sticking out of the hollow itself was a rounded female bottom wrapped in a brightly coloured sari.

‘Who the hell's that?' Paniatowski demanded.

‘Dr Shastri, Sarge,' one of the constables replied.

‘Dr Shastri? The new police surgeon? Are you sure?'

‘That's what her credentials say.'

Now there was a real turn up for the books! Paniatowski thought. It had seemed incredible enough when the brass had appointed an Asian to the post. That the Asian in question was also a woman was little short of a miracle.

The doctor seemed absorbed in her work. Paniatowski lit up a cigarette, then turned her attention back to the constable.

‘Who found the body, Walter?' she asked.

The constable pointed. A little way away from the bonfire was a small group made up of a fourth constable, a man and a woman, and two boys of ten or eleven. The couple had chosen to position themselves some distance from the boys. They held their bodies as stiff as statues, but their eyes were taking in the scene with all the interest of keen television viewers who had unexpectedly found themselves dropped into the middle of an episode of
Z Cars
. The boys, in contrast, looked more worried than intrigued. They were finding it hard to stay on one spot, and but for the presence of so many uniformed policemen they would undoubtedly have legged it long ago.

Paniatowski drew on her cigarette, and walked over to the group.

The man was wearing a thick duffel coat with the hood up, and had a prominent Adam's apple. The eyes behind his thick glasses glared at Paniatowski, as if he resented the fact that she had freedom of movement while he was confined to one spot.

‘What happened?' Paniatowski asked.

‘If you don't mind, I'd prefer to keep that to myself until a detective finally deigns to turn up,' the man said.

Paniatowski produced her warrant card again. ‘I am a detective.'

‘Are you sure?' the man asked.

‘Can you read?' Paniatowski countered.

The man examined the warrant card in exaggerated detail. He was probably some kind of clerk, Paniatowski decided – the kind who wore a blue blazer with the top pocket stuffed with ballpoint pens.

‘Well, I never,' the man said, having completed his examination.

Paniatowski sighed audibly. ‘You were going to tell me what happened,' she reminded the man in the duffel coat.

‘Oh aye. So I was. Well, we were takin' a short cut across the field, the missus an' me. Weren't we, love?'

The woman, her hair in curlers under her headscarf, nodded.

‘Anyway, we come across these two nippers,' the man continued. ‘Screamin' their heads off, they were. Well, we calmed them down a bit, and then they told us about the body. Once we were sure they weren't just taking the mickey, I told my missus to go and ring the police. I thought I'd better stay here myself – sort of on guard, like.'

‘You seem to have behaved quite properly and responsibly, sir,' Paniatowski said, not at all surprised when a beam of complacent pride came to the man's face. ‘Have you already given your name and address to this officer?'

‘Yes, I have.'

‘Then you might as well go home.'

‘Just like that?' the man asked.

What was he expecting? Paniatowski wondered.

A medal?

Or did he perhaps think that his initial involvement entitled him to a grandstand view of the rest of the case?

‘We really don't need you any more, sir,' she said.

‘Humph, it's a wonder anybody bothers to do their duty,' the man said. ‘Come on, Mabel, let's be gettin' home.'

Paniatowski waited until the couple had gone – the man storming off, the woman following meekly in his wake – then she knelt down so that her eyes were at the same level as those of the two boys.

Two frightened, blackened faces stared back at her. She ran her index finger down the larger boy's cheek, and some of the blacking came off on it.

‘I didn't know we had any commandos in Whitebridge,' she said, looking at the tip of her finger. ‘Would you like to tell me what you were doing here? On some kind of mission, were you?'

‘We . . . we was just cuttin' across the field, like that man was,' the older boy said.

‘No, you weren't,' Paniatowski contradicted him. ‘If you were just taking a shortcut, you wouldn't have gone right up to the bonfire and found the body. Is the bonfire yours?'

‘No.'

‘Then whose is it?'

‘The Stott Street Gang's.'

‘It stinks of petrol,' Paniatowski said. ‘Did you notice that?'

‘No,' both boys said quickly.