The Ring of Death (24 page)

‘I've no idea,' Cousins replied. He counted out two beats, and then continued, ‘And I've no idea where you go on Thursday nights, either.'

Gutterridge jumped, as if he'd just be electrocuted.

‘Thursday nights?' he repeated.

‘One of the victims, Simon Stockwell, always went missing on Thursday nights,' Cousins explained. ‘It's more than possible that Andy Adair did, too. And when, a couple of minutes ago, you starting showing so much unnatural interest in the case, I began to wonder if
you
went missing on Thursday nights, too. Now I know you did. That's why you suddenly want to become mates again. Because
you
want to know what
I
know. Because you're in this – whatever
this
is – up to your neck. I'm right, aren't I?'

‘I . . . I . . .' Gutterridge spluttered.

‘If you tell me everything you can, I'll do my best to help you,' Cousins said. ‘I can't promise you that you won't serve any jail time, because I've no idea what it is you've done, but I can promise you that I'll be in your corner for you every step of the way.'

‘All you have to do is catch the killer,' Gutterridge said, his voice verging on the hysterical. ‘Catch him, and the problems will go away.'

‘Ah, but that's the difficulty, you see,' Cousins explained. ‘We've absolutely no idea who the killer is. He could well strike again before we catch him – and next time his victim could be you.'

Gutterridge looked as if he were about to be sick. ‘I can handle myself,' he said, unconvincingly.

‘Andy Adair was ten years younger, two inches taller and about a hundred and fifty per cent fitter than you are,' Cousins pointed out. ‘And look what happened to him.'

‘You've no mercy, have you?' Gutterridge asked bitterly. ‘No sense of compassion.'

‘I've offered to help you out if you come clean with me,' Cousins said unyieldingly. ‘That's the best I can do, and if I was in your shoes, I think I'd grab the opportunity with both hands. Besides . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘If you
don't
come clean now, I'm going to have to report this conversation to my boss.'

‘You couldn't . . . you wouldn't . . .'

‘I've no choice in the matter, Len. It's what they call
germane to the investigation
.'

‘You're a bastard!' Gutterridge said. ‘You're nothing but a bloody rotten bastard!'

‘Maybe I am,' Cousins agreed. ‘But I'm also too good a bobby to be able to pretend this conversation never happened.'

Gutterridge stood up so violently that his chair went flying away behind him, and he somehow managed to strike the underside of the table with his knee.

‘That must have hurt,' Cousins thought, as he looked down at the rocking table.

But if Gutterridge was in any pain – any
physical
pain, at least – he showed no sign of noticing it, and as he fled from the canteen, he wasn't even limping.

Well, he'd done all he could for the man, Cousins told himself, reaching for the newspaper which someone had left behind on the table next to his.

And then he saw the headline which was screaming out at him from the front page, and any thoughts of Detective Sergeant Leonard Gutterridge immediately went out of his mind.

TWENTY

T
he first thing Monika Paniatowski noticed as she drove onto the Whitebridge Police Headquarters' car park was that DS Paul Cousins was standing in front of her parking place.

He wasn't there as the bringer of glad tidings, she guessed. Glad tidings – even
great
tidings – could have waited until she reached her office. He was there because the tidings were bad, and he wanted to deliver them as soon as possible.

Then she noticed the newspaper he was holding tightly in his right hand, and guessed that the tidings would be very bad indeed.

‘It's the
Globe
, ma'am,' Cousins said, thrusting the paper at her even as she was getting out of her MGA. ‘I think you need to read it.'

The story filled the front page.

‘I'll have his balls for this,' Paniatowski said angrily. ‘Do you realize how much it could impede the investigation?'

‘I do, ma'am.'

‘And it's a complete fabrication! He can't back any of it up, because there's not an ounce of truth in it.'

‘You're right that there's not an ounce of truth in it, but you're wrong that he can't back it up,' Cousins said grimly.

‘What are you talking about?' Paniatowski demanded. ‘I've seen Stockwell's criminal record, and there's no mention of child abuse in it.'

‘There wasn't yesterday, but today there is,' Cousins said. ‘And I'd be willing to bet that there's some mention of it in Adair's army record, as well.'

‘Bloody Forsyth!' Paniatowski said.

‘Yes, ma'am, it just has to be his handiwork, doesn't it?'

‘We can easily prove the documents are complete forgeries – because however skilfully they've been done, they're simply not supported by the facts,' Paniatowski said stubbornly.

‘We
can
prove they're forgeries, but not
easily
,' Cousins told her. ‘The officers who are down in the new record as having arrested Stockwell for child abuse were Inspector Fred Meade and DS Pat Donovan. And what do you know about those two, ma'am?'

‘Meade died about three years ago,' Paniatowski said. ‘Heart attack, wasn't it?'

‘That's right, ma'am. And Donovan died in a car crash, two years ago. So they're not going to dispute the facts, are they?'

‘No, but there'll be others who can. It's not just the arresting officers who would have been involved in a case like that. There's a whole legal process to be gone through.'

‘Yes, there is,' Cousins agreed. ‘And they'll have doctored that, too. I haven't had time yet to check on who was the judge in this supposed prosecution, but when I do I'm sure I'll find that he's either dead himself or has retired and gone to live with one of his children – in somewhere like Australia.'

‘Wherever he's living, we'll send officers to interview him, and expose all this for the lie that it is,' Paniatowski said, with mounting fury.

‘With respect, ma'am, I don't think you've quite grasped the big picture yet,' Cousins said.

‘Haven't I? Then you'd better explain it to me.'

‘I've no idea what it is that Forsyth hopes to achieve by all this, but I do know that he doesn't care
what
you can prove in a month's time, because he'll be long gone by then. You see, this isn't a long-term strategy he's employing – it's just a short-term tactic.'

‘And one that's going to backfire on him straight away,' Paniatowski said, with grim satisfaction. ‘Because we don't need judges or prison officers to prove this is a tissue of lies – all we need is Mrs Stockwell. She knows Simon never went to prison for child abuse – and even if she hates him, she's not going to allow his reputation to be smeared in this particularly nasty kind of way.'

‘That occurred to me, too,' Cousins said. ‘That's why the first thing I did after I'd read the article was to drive to Mrs Stockwell's house. And do know you what I discovered when I got there? That she'd gone!'

‘Gone?'

‘The neighbours said she'd taken her kids away on a holiday.'

‘A holiday?' Paniatowski repeated. ‘She wouldn't think of going on a holiday with her husband still to be buried. Besides, she can't
afford
to go on a holiday. She's up to her neck in debt.'

‘I suspect that she
isn't
in debt any longer,' Cousins said. ‘I think you'll find that her debts have all been paid off. And she's definitely gone away – the neighbours saw her leave early this morning in a big black chauffeur-driven car.'

Paniatowski flung open the door of Forsyth's temporary office, and saw the man from London was already at his desk, and had an amused smile playing on his face.

‘I've been expecting you, Monika,' he said. ‘In fact, I'm surprised it's taken you quite so long to get here.'

‘You planted this story in the newspaper, didn't you?' Paniatowski demanded, slamming the copy of the
Daily Globe
down on the desk.

‘Yes, I did,' Forsyth confirmed. ‘But it was your fault that it
had to be
planted.'

‘How could it be my fault?'

‘You were given the opportunity, at your press conference yesterday, to deny any possible IRA involvement in the killing of Andy Adair. And you didn't take that opportunity, did you?'

‘You're right, I didn't. Because although it's a long shot that the IRA did it, I still can't rule it out entirely.'

‘Do you
really
think that if the IRA were involved, I wouldn't know about it?' Forsyth asked.

‘It's possible,' Paniatowski said. ‘You love to play up the image of the all-seeing, all-knowing super-spy. You probably even believe it yourself, by now. But has it never occurred to you that it might be no more than that – an image?'

‘I would know if they were involved,' Forsyth said firmly. ‘And if they
were
responsible for Adair's murder, do you seriously believe I would ever have allowed the case to be assigned to a country bumpkin chief inspector like yourself?'

Paniatowski felt her anger flaring up again, then realized that was just what Forsyth wanted to happen, and forced a smile to her face.

‘You really know how to hurt a girl,' she said. ‘But if you're right, and the IRA
aren't
involved in the case, what was the point of planting the false newspaper story?'

‘I did it because, for operational reasons, I don't want there to be a hint – not even the merest wisp of a suggestion – that this murder had anything to do with Andrew Adair's experiences in Ireland. And in order to ensure that
is
the case, I had to do something which would shift the focus of attention away from any such speculation.'

A new possibility – so horrific she didn't really want to contemplate it – came to Paniatowski's mind.

‘Did you have Simon Stockwell killed?' she asked.

‘Why should I have done that?'

‘Precisely because Stockwell
didn't
have an Irish connection, so there could be no suggestion
he'd
been killed by the IRA. And if
he
hadn't been killed by them, then Adair – who was murdered in exactly the same manner – couldn't have been killed by them either.'

Forsyth smiled again. ‘My congratulations,' he said. ‘You're finally starting to think like someone who could be of some use in the security services.'

‘Answer the question,' Paniatowski demanded.

‘No, I didn't have Simon Stockwell killed.'

‘But if you had, you'd have denied it just as convincingly as you're denying it now?'

‘Quite so,' Forsyth agreed. ‘By the way, I've recently received some information from Poland that might be of great interest to you, Monika.'

‘So now we're playing
Change the Subject
, are we?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Well, you should have chosen a better subject to change to, because I'm not
interested
in Poland.'

She was not lying. She had not thought seriously – or at any length – about Poland for years. And yet there was something in Forsyth's tone which suggested that this particular piece of information
would
be of interest to her, and already her stomach was starting to knot up.

‘Very well, if you don't want to talk about Poland, let's talk about something else,' Forsyth said mildly.

Damn the man, Paniatowski thought – and wished she still believed in hell, so that she could picture him being burnt in it for all eternity.

‘Monika?' Forsyth said.

‘You might as well tell me,' Paniatowski said indifferently, knowing she was fooling neither herself nor Forsyth.

‘The Polish authorities have recently been doing some excavations on the site of one of the early battles of the Second World War,' Forsyth said. ‘And one of the many things that they've uncovered is a mass grave of Polish soldiers – specifically, of Polish cavalrymen.'

Paniatowski found her mind was suddenly travelling back in time. She was no longer a woman in her late thirties – a senior detective, involved in a battle of wits with a spook from London. Instead, she was a small girl, sitting on the firm, well-muscled knee of a man dressed in an immaculate cavalry officer's uniform. She could feel his fingers running gently through her hair. She could smell his cigar and his highly polished leather boots.