The Ring of Death (23 page)

‘Are the phones working
now
?' he asked.

‘They most certainly are.'

‘Then I'd like to make that phone call. And after that, I'd like to get the hell out of here.'

The constable gestured to the cell door. ‘That's not locked, and you'll find a phone upstairs,' he said.

Crane quickly crossed the narrow cell, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor.

‘You should eat your sandwich before you make that call,' the constable called after him. ‘The fried egg won't taste half as good once it's gone cold.'

‘Bugger the fried egg,' Crane said, over his shoulder.

The house was in a suburb much favoured by Whitebridge's moderately prosperous middle class. It had a double frontage and wide bay windows. The front garden was neat and orderly, and the central feature of it was a gnome, patiently fishing in a small wishing well.

The gnome would have been the chief constable's wife's choice, Paniatowski thought, as she walked up the path to the front door. George Baxter himself would never have indulged in such fey frivolity.

She rang the front-door bell, and it was the chief constable himself who answered it.

‘For God's sake, Monika, what are you doing here at seven o'clock in the morning?' he asked exasperatedly. ‘Can't whatever it is that's got you worked up into a state wait until I get to the office?'

‘No,' Paniatowski told him firmly. ‘It can't wait.'

‘Who is it, George?' asked a voice from the hallway.

The woman who had spoken was about the same age she was, Paniatowski noted. She, too, was a blonde, and rather pretty – in an unassuming way.

Baxter sighed, and stepped to one side. ‘Chief Inspector Paniatowski, this is my wife Josephine,' he said. ‘Jo, this is Monika.'

The two women tentatively shook hands.

‘She knows all about me!' Paniatowski thought, studying the other woman's face.

But that was hardly surprising. George Baxter was not the sort of man to keep his past hidden from his wife. George Baxter was straightforward and honest. Or rather, she amended, she'd
thought
he was straightforward and honest until she'd got the phone call from Yorkshire.

‘Well, since you seem to feel an overwhelming urge to deal with police matters right now, I suppose you'd better come inside the house,' Baxter said to Paniatowski.

Mrs Baxter backed down the hallway, towards the kitchen, and Baxter led his chief inspector into a front room dominated by a large display cabinet full of delicate porcelain figures in pastoral poses.

‘Nymphs and shepherds,' Paniatowski thought, running her eyes briefly over the cabinet. ‘That'll be Jo's choice again.'

Once Baxter and Paniatowski had settled down on the two easy chairs of the cord three-piece suite, Jo appeared in the doorway.

‘Would you like a drink, Chief Inspect— Monika?' she asked. ‘Tea? Or would you prefer coffee?'

Paniatowski wondered how it must feel to have been courted on the rebound, and whether Jo sometimes felt that Baxter regarded her as no more than a consolation prize. She hoped – for all their sakes – that the thought had never even crossed the other woman's mind.

‘I'd like a cup of tea, please,' she said. ‘No milk, but a slice of lemon if you've got one.'

Jo didn't ask Baxter what he wanted. And why should she? She was his wife – his lifetime companion. She knew things about him that an ex-lover couldn't even begin to guess at.

Baxter waited until Jo had returned to the kitchen, then said, ‘So what's this all about, Monika?'

‘DC Crane was arrested last night,' Paniatowski told him. ‘He was kept in the cells at Skipton Police Headquarters overnight, then this morning he was released. No explanations or apologies were offered – they just said he could go.'

‘Did you really think that a green young detective constable like Crane could keep an eye on a man like Forsyth without being spotted?' Baxter asked, sounding slightly disappointed in her.

‘What I thought – or didn't think – isn't the point,' Paniatowski replied as she felt the anger, which she'd promised herself she would contain, came bubbling to the surface. ‘I want to know
why
Jack Crane was arrested.'

‘He was arrested because Forsyth
wanted
him arrested.'

‘And you went along with that quite happily, did you?'

‘No, I didn't.' Baxter looked pained. ‘And I'd have thought you'd know me well enough not to even feel the need to ask that question.'

‘Hurt your feelings, have I?' Paniatowski taunted. ‘Or is it just that I've shown you up for the man you really are?'

‘I think you should remember who you're talking to,
Chief Inspector
,' Baxter said, his own anger starting to show.

‘And I think you should stick up for the men under your command,
Chief Constable
,' Paniatowski countered.

The sound of footsteps in the hallway subdued them both, and they sat in glaring silence while Jo – pretending not to have noticed the atmosphere in the room – brought them their drinks.

Once his wife had left again, Baxter resumed, as if there had been no pause at all.

‘I
did
stick up for the men under my command,' he said. ‘Forsyth wanted to use Lancashire officers for the operation, and I refused.'

‘So you washed your hands of it? You let somebody else do the dirty work instead. Well, why not? After all, it worked for Pontius Pilate.'

‘Monika!' Baxter said warningly.

‘But you didn't entirely keep your own men out of it, did you? Because
Jack Crane
is one of your men.'

‘It was Crane I was thinking of when I asked the Yorkshire Police for their help,' Baxter said.

‘Oh, it was, was it?' Paniatowski asked, sceptically. ‘And would you mind explaining how having him banged up in Yorkshire for the night could possibly be called
thinking of him
?'

‘All right, I will,' Baxter agreed. ‘Forsyth didn't want to be followed last night, and what do you think would have happened if I'd refused to have any part in making sure he wasn't?'

‘I don't know,' Paniatowski admitted.

‘No, you don't, do you?' Baxter said, hectoring. ‘You're so fired up with your own righteous indignation that you can't be bothered to stop for a moment and do some actual
thinking
. Now, do you want to hear about how I saw the situation or don't you?'

‘I'm listening,' Paniatowski said.

‘Well, that does make a pleasant change,' Baxter told her. ‘It seemed to me that if I refused to help him, Forsyth would have brought in his own people from London to handle the job. And do you think they'd have treated Crane as gently as the Yorkshire Police did? Because I bloody don't!'

‘I'm . . . I'm sorry, sir,' Paniatowski said contritely.

‘And so you should be,' Baxter told her.

‘Do you know what Forsyth was doing out well beyond Clitheroe, last night?'

‘No, I don't. I haven't got a clue. It's no concern of mine. And it shouldn't be any concern of yours, either.'

Paniatowski felt a fresh wave of anger wash over her, but did her best to keep it damped down.

‘Forsyth is interfering in my investigation, sir,' she said levelly. ‘And I want to know
why
he's interfering.'

‘All he's asking for is to be kept appraised of developments,' Baxter said. ‘I fail to see how that could be called interfering.'

‘That's because you don't know what he's doing behind the scenes,' Paniatowski argued.

‘And do you?'

‘Well, no.'

‘Then isn't it just possible that he isn't doing anything
at all
behind the scenes?'

‘You don't understand him like I do. He doesn't ever play a simple, straightforward game. He's always operating on at least three or four different levels.'

‘Maybe he is. But how do you know that all – or
even one
– of those levels have anything to do with your case?'

‘Tell me, honestly, sir, don't you resent him being here?' Paniatowski asked, sidestepping the question.

‘Well, of course I resent him being here. But there's nothing I can do about it, so I'm just getting on with my job as best I can. And I'm ordering you – get that,
ordering you
– to do the same.'

When DS Cousins saw DS Gutterridge walking across the police canteen in his direction, he looked the other way.

But it was to no avail. Gutterridge came to a halt in front of his table, and said, ‘Mind if I join you, Paul?'

‘I do, as a matter of fact,' Cousins said, coldly. ‘I'm rather particular who I share a table with these days.'

Gutterridge sat down anyway. ‘What's happened to us, Paul?' he asked. ‘We used to be real mates.'

‘And the operative words there are
used to be
,' Cousins said.

‘I was a good friend to you when Mary was . . . was . . .'

‘When she was dying, Len,' Cousins said bluntly. ‘When she was
bloody
dying.'

‘That's right,' Gutterridge agreed awkwardly. ‘When she was dying. Don't you remember what we did back then? My missus used to stay with your Mary, and I'd take you out for a drink.'

‘And I appreciated it at the time,' Cousins said. ‘But looking back on it, I've decided you were probably doing it more for yourself than for me.'

‘More for myself? How do you mean?'

‘You wanted an excuse to go out boozing, and I was it. Your Lily would never have let you out on your own, but if you were only going out to console poor old Paul, then it was all right.'

‘You're not being fair,' Gutterridge protested weakly. ‘And there's other things I've done for you.'

‘Like what?'

‘Well, for example, when you were . . . when you were starting to get ill yourself, I agreed to look after your dog for you, didn't I? I took him into my own home, and fed him out of my own pocket.'

‘Yes, you did,' Cousins agreed. ‘And then
he
went and bloody well died, an' all.'

‘You can't blame me,' Gutterridge said. ‘It was canine distemper that did for him.'

Cousins sighed. ‘All right, let's say, purely for the sake of argument, that while my Mary was wasting away, you really did go out boozing solely for my sake,' he said. ‘And let's say, for argument's sake again, that you gave my dog the best home a mutt could ever hope for.'

‘Yes?'

‘Does that excuse – in any way, shape or form – how you've treated me since they let me out of the nut house?'

‘Ah, but you see, that was a difficult situation for me to know how to handle. I didn't want you to feel I was crowding you.'

‘So to make absolutely sure you
weren't
crowding me, you completely bloody ignored me?'

‘Like I said, it wasn't easy to know what the right thing to do was, and if I
seemed
to be ignoring you—'

‘I had two or three other mates like you,' Cousins interrupted him, ‘and it must have been difficult for them as well, because they also gave me the cold shoulder. And do you know
why
I think that was?'

‘No, I . . .'

‘I think it was because they didn't want to be seen knocking around with a nutter – because they were frightened that if they were, they'd be tarred with the same brush themselves.' Cousins paused for a second. ‘I've got a new life now. It's not exactly a happy one, but it's got its compensations. I'm working on a new team, too, and while I don't exactly know my new team mates well, I know them well
enough
to be sure they'd never treat me like you did.'

‘I've made mistakes,' Gutterridge admitted, ‘and I'm very sorry I've made them. But can't we put the past behind us now? Can't we start again, and be mates like we were before?'

‘All right, “mate”, let's have a cosy chat, just like we used to do,' Cousins agreed. ‘So what would you like to talk about?'

For a moment, Gutterridge looked like a man who had something he really needed to get off his chest, then he shrugged and said, ‘I don't know. It's a bit difficult, isn't it?'

‘Is it?' Cousins asked.

‘I suppose we could talk about what bobbies like us always talk about to each other.'

‘And what might that be?'

‘The Job, of course.'

‘Oh, I see!' Cousins said. ‘You'd like to talk about your current investigation, would you? Maybe ask me for a bit of advice?'

Gutterridge smiled weakly. ‘From what I've been hearing on the grapevine,
your
current investigation is much more interesting than mine.'

‘Maybe it is,' Cousins agreed.

There was perhaps half a minute's silence before Gutterridge said, ‘Well, come on then, Paul, dish the dirt. How close are you to solving the case?'

‘Isn't that the wrong question?' Cousins wondered.

‘Then what's the right one?'

‘If I was on the outside looking in, I think the thing I'd be most wondering about is
why
these men are being murdered,' Cousins said. ‘And if I got the chance to talk to somebody who was actually working the case, I think the first thing I'd ask him is why
he
thinks they're being murdered.'

‘Why do you think these men are being murdered?' Len Gutterridge asked dully.