The Ring of Death (19 page)

‘What exactly are you going to say at the press conference?' Beresford wondered.

‘I don't know yet – I still haven't talked it over with the chief constable. But whatever I say, it can't be anything like as vague as what I said yesterday. At the moment, I'm thinking of revealing the fact that both victims were naked, but holding back any information on the position they were found in.'

‘Even that will whip the hacks up into a real frenzy,' Beresford warned her.

‘I know it will,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘But what choice do I have, now there's been a second killing?'

‘If I was in your position, ma'am, I wouldn't hold
any
of the details back,' Cousins said.

‘Are you mad?' Beresford asked, then, realizing he'd done it again, he continued, ‘Listen, Paul, if we
do
release all the details, there'll be complete pandemonium.'

‘I know,' Cousins agreed, levelly.

‘And what, exactly, would that achieve in terms of the investigation?' Beresford asked.

‘Nothing,' Sergeant Cousins conceded. ‘In fact, it would bring all kinds of cranks crawling out of the woodwork, and make our job a lot harder.'

‘Well, then?'

‘But it would also scare the shit out of people.'

‘And that's a
good
thing, is it?'

‘I think so. Because, as well as scaring them, it would also put them on their guard. And they
need
to be put on their guard – because whatever the killer's motive, I don't think this will be his last murder. In fact, I think he's just getting started.'

Beresford had gone back to the incident room, Crane had returned to his surveillance of Mr Forsyth, and now the only two people left at the team's table were the chief inspector and her bagman

‘How did I handle that, Paul?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Handle what, ma'am?' Cousins asked innocently.

‘Handle finding out that Inspector Beresford had deliberately disobeyed my instructions.'

‘Well, you certainly made it plain you were displeased with him,' Cousins said cautiously.

‘For God's sake, I know that. What I
don't
know is if I handled it
well
!'

‘That's not for me to say,' Cousins demurred.

‘It is if I order you to say it!'

The sergeant sighed. ‘All right, ma'am. Inspector Beresford certainly deserved a bollocking for what he did, but you should have saved it for later, when me and young Crane weren't there.'

He was right, Paniatowski admitted to herself. She should have seen Beresford's behaviour as a breach of discipline committed by one of her subordinates, and dealt with it in a proper, official manner. Instead, she'd reacted emotionally, because she'd been hurt that her old friend Colin had let her down.

‘Anything else you'd like to add?' she asked Cousins.

‘Even while you're bollocking him, I think you could show a little more sympathy for his situation, ma'am.'

‘What situation?'

‘He's in mourning.'

‘For who?'

‘Not for
who
, for
what
. He's in mourning for his past – for the days when you and him were mates, and somebody else was in charge. He's suddenly realized that things have changed forever, and there's no going back.' Cousins paused for a moment. ‘I'm going to tell you something now that, with my medical history, I probably shouldn't tell anybody. All right?'

‘All right,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Sometimes, when I'm just opening my front door, I like to pretend that my wife's inside the house, waiting for me to come home. I don't really believe it, of course – not at any deep level – but I find it gives me comfort, if only for a moment. And DI Beresford was doing something like that this morning – just for a moment, he was pretending he was
DS
Beresford.'

‘Will he do it again?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘Probably,' Cousins conceded. ‘But as time goes by, he'll do it less and less. Because however hard you try to prevent it, the memories start to fade. However much you try to convince yourself the past is still real, it's somehow not quite
that
real any more.'

‘You're finding it harder to imagine your wife waiting for you, aren't you?' Paniatowski asked, softly.

A single tear rolled down Cousins' cheek. ‘I am, ma'am,' he admitted. ‘And that's my loss.'

From the moment they'd met – or, at least, from the moment they'd had their first serious talk – Paniatowski had been trying to work out who Paul Cousins reminded her of. Now, thinking about the way he'd dealt with PC Pickering earlier, the way he'd conducted himself in the meeting they'd just had, and the way he'd just been giving her advice, she thought she'd managed to pin it down.

‘In some ways, you're a bit like Charlie Woodend, aren't you, Paul?' she asked.

Cousins brushed the tear off his cheek with the back of his hand, and grinned. ‘There's some people who wouldn't take kindly to being compared to Cloggin'-it Charlie,' he said.

‘I know there are,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘But I'm not one of them,' Cousins said, as his face grew serious again. ‘I regard it as one of the greatest compliments a bobby could ever be paid. Thank you, ma'am.'

‘No,' Paniatowski said, ‘thank
you
, Paul.'

SEVENTEEN

E
dward Dunston was sitting at his desk – in an office remarkable for its absolute absence of any personal touches – and was fighting the urge to look up at the clock on the wall yet again.

Dunston was in his late forties, a tall, spare man who wore conservative suits and thin wire spectacles. His head was large and dome-shaped, and now he had lost most of the hair from his pate, a number of people had commented – usually behind his back – that he looked a little like one of the super-intelligent aliens so beloved by illustrators of science-fiction comics. He was generally regarded as being cold and humourless – qualities he himself found admirable in a chartered accountant – and his staff were well aware that while they were expected to apply themselves with extreme diligence, they should give no sign that they were actually
enjoying
their work.

Despite his best intentions, Dunston felt his head move – and his eyes fix on the clock face.

A quarter to three!

In five more minutes, the pubs would be calling last orders.

He knew that some accountants of his acquaintance kept a bottle of booze secreted in their desk drawers, but he had always looked down on the habit. As far as he was concerned, working time was working time and drinking time was drinking time – and never the twain should meet.

‘But Jesus, I could use a drink right now!' he thought.

He looked up at the clock again. Another few minutes and he would have no choice in the matter – another few minutes and it would be out of his hands.

‘You can do this,' he urged himself. ‘You can sit it out.'

But even as the thought flashed across his mind, he was already rising to his feet and beginning to make excuses for himself.

This was an emergency, he argued, as he reached for his hat. His nerves had been on a knife-edge for the last twenty-four hours, and if a whisky would help to settle them, then he was quite prepared to break his own rules for once.

He opened the door and stepped into his outer office, where his secretary was busy pretending to be so absorbed in her tasks that she hadn't even heard him.

‘I'm going out for a few minutes, Janice,' he said.

His secretary looked up.

‘Going out, Mr Dunston?' she repeated incredulously. ‘But you've got an appointment at three o'clock.'

Damn it, so he had, Dunston thought – and not just
any
old appointment, a very important one!

‘Make my apologies, will you?' he said over his shoulder, as he crossed the office. ‘Ask the client if he wouldn't mind waiting.'

‘But . . . but it's Mr Hoskins,' the secretary stuttered. ‘He's never been known to wait for . . .'

‘I shouldn't be more than half an hour,' Dunston said, opening the outer door and fleeing into the corridor.

He made it to the empty lounge bar of the Black Horse just as the barman was flashing the lights for last orders.

‘Well, this is a surprise,' the fat landlord said, jovially. ‘It's not often we see you in here at this time of day, Mr Dunston.'

‘I need a drink,' the accountant gasped.

‘Course you do,' the landlord agreed. ‘What can I get you? The usual?'

‘Yes, but make it a double,' Dunston said. ‘No, on second thoughts, make it
two
doubles.'

‘Coming up, sir,' the landlord said.

And it was not until he had turned his back on his customer that he allowed his eyebrows to arch in surprise.

Dunston sat down on one of the bar stools, and took his cigarettes out of his jacket pocket. As he struck a match, he noticed that his hands were trembling.

‘You're blowing the whole thing out of proportion,' he told himself. ‘So Andy Adair has been murdered. Well, people
do
get murdered.'

And Adair, being the rough sort of man he was, had probably been more likely to get murdered than most, his argument continued.

But his death didn't have to mean anything, in terms of the people who knew him, even if they knew him through the . . . through the . . .

‘I said your two double whiskies are on the bar, Mr Dunston,' he heard the landlord say.

‘Oh, thank you very much, Tony,' Dunston mumbled.

The landlord grinned. ‘You really are wrapped up in your own thoughts today, aren't you?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Not only didn't you notice your drink had arrived, but you never heard me ask you if you'd mind if I turned the telly on.'

‘The telly?'

‘Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski's giving a conference on the latest developments in that murder investigation, and if it wouldn't bother you, I'm quite keen to watch it.'

‘I don't mind at all,' Dunston said.

‘You're sure?'

‘I'm sure.'

But it wasn't quite as simple as that – because while, in some ways, he was
desperate
to hear what the chief inspector had to say, the thought of listening to her also filled him with dread.

If Paniatowski announced that the murderer had been arrested – and especially if that murderer turned out to be someone from Adair's army days who held a grudge against him – then the sense of relief would be wonderful. But if instead she said that the police were no further on in their investigation, then the knot in his stomach would grow even tighter than it was already.

The landlord switched on the set just as Paniatowski was mounting the podium, and as Dunston watched her turn to face the camera, he realized he was praying softly to himself.

‘
There have been further tragic developments in the investigation we are currently conducting
,' Paniatowski said gravely.

‘No!' Dunston thought, reaching for the first of his whiskies. ‘It can't have got any
worse
!'

‘
There has been a second murder, and we strongly suspect that it was carried out by the same man who killed Andrew Adair.
'

‘Let it be someone I don't know,' Dunston pleaded silently. ‘Let it be someone I've never even
heard
of.'

‘
The second victim has been named as Simon Stockwell. He was thirty-two years old, and worked as a self-employed painter and decorator.
'

‘No!' Dunston moaned.

‘Are you all right?' the landlord asked, worriedly.

‘
His body was discovered this morning at Ashton Croft, the home of Sir William Langley, a well-known and highly respected local businessman.
'

Langley!

As well!

‘Me next,' Dunston sobbed. ‘Me next. It could be
me
next.'

‘Shall I call a doctor?' the landlord asked.

Dunston shook his head, and knocked back the second double whisky in a single gulp.

It would take more than a doctor to save him now, he thought.

Sitting in a comfortable armchair in his suite at the Royal Victoria, Mr Forsyth watched Monika Paniatowski's television performance with great interest.

So far, he thought, she had been doing rather well.

She had revealed that the two victims had both been found naked – which would have brought forth no more than an indifferent shrug if the journalists had been French, but had the English hacks almost jumping from their seats in excitement – yet had held back the information that they had been posed on all fours. That was sensible. In her situation, he would probably have done the same thing.

She had managed to field all the questions she didn't want to answer in a way which suggested she wasn't fielding them at all. Again, top marks.

But she was not entirely out of danger yet, and as the end of the press conference approached, she was starting to look more relaxed – which Forsyth considered was a bad sign.

The reporter stood up. ‘Tom Jenkins,
Daily Chronicle
,' he announced. ‘It's true, isn't it, Chief Inspector, that the first victim, Andy Adair, served as a soldier in Northern Ireland?'