Final Beat of the Drum, page 13
‘What can I get you, Father Tom?’ she asked.
‘Just a cup of tea for me, thanks, Sylvia,’ Thomas said. ‘What about you, Mum?’
There was a sharp intake of breath as the waitress realized that Father Tom had a mother, just like any ordinary mortal.
‘I’ll have tea as well,’ Paniatowski said.
Once the waitress had retreated into the darker recesses of the café, Thomas said, ‘So what was it you wanted to talk about, Mum?’
Paniatowski had been intending to talk about Kate and Louisa, and the whole mess, but now she found she simply couldn’t.
‘I can’t tell you what’s on my mind,’ she said.
He looked hurt. ‘Is that because you don’t trust me – or because you still can’t accept that I’m actually a priest?’
‘It’s neither of those things,’ Paniatowski said, reaching across the table and grasping his hand. ‘Of course I trust you, and of course I accept that you’re a priest.’
‘But …?’ Thomas asked.
‘But you’re too close personally to the people I wanted to talk about.’
‘I see,’ Thomas said. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and added, ‘Well, if I want you to respect my choices, I suppose I have to respect yours.’
Sylvia returned with the pot of tea. ‘Would you like a selection of cakes?’ she asked. ‘I’ve got a lovely Jamaican ginger.’
Thomas looked questioningly at his mother, but even the thought of anything spicy made Paniatowski’s stomach churn, so she shook her head.
‘We’ll skip the cakes, thanks,’ Thomas said.
‘Well, I certainly won’t get rich off you, will I?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Your kindness is earning you riches in heaven,’ Thomas said.
Sylvia laughed. ‘Well, that is a comfort, Father,’ she said. ‘I must tell that to the landlord, next time he comes round for his rent.’
Once she’d gone, Thomas reached into his pocket and produced a tin of tobacco and a packet of cigarette papers.
‘Have one of these,’ Paniatowski suggested, offering him her packet of Silk Cut. ‘It’ll save all that messing about.’
Thomas shook his head. ‘I find the act of rolling cigarettes very relaxing,’ he said, though his hands were telling quite a different story as they struggled to make the roll-up look anything like cylindrical. ‘Besides, I don’t want to get used to shop-bought cigarettes, because I couldn’t afford them.’
‘There’s really no need for you to go short of your little luxuries,’ Paniatowski admonished her son. ‘A senior police officer’s pension is surprisingly generous, and these days I’ve no one to spend it on but myself.’
Another shake of the head. ‘I’d feel obliged to put any money you gave me straight into the poor box,’ he said. ‘And do you know what I’d feel as I was slipping the notes through the slot?’
‘No, what?’
‘I’d feel mild annoyance at you for putting temptation in my way, and real anger at myself for somehow finding the strength to deny myself some proper ciggies.’
Paniatowski examined her son’s face for some sign that he was making a joke, but he appeared to be very serious. It was so difficult to know when she was connecting with him, because they seemed to exist on two different planes.
‘You’re a complicated person, Thomas,’ she told him, taking a deep drag from her Silk Cut, and thinking that his attempt at making a cigarette looked like a deflated zeppelin.
‘Yes, I am complicated,’ her son agreed. ‘So are you. So is everyone, which is hardly surprising, since God made us in His own image, and He’s very complicated indeed. Anyway, what are you doing still smoking?’ he asked. ‘After your last health scare the doctor told you to stop smoking, and you swore to me that you would.’
‘It’s true, I did say I’d give it up,’ she admitted. ‘But what I never realized was that having nothing to do can be almost as stressful as having too much. I smoke because I’m bored, Thomas, and since none of my children has chosen to fill up my life with their grubby little offspring …’ She clapped her hand to her mouth, but it was already too late. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, only making matters worse. ‘I didn’t mean you. Of course I didn’t. I respect the path you’ve chosen.’
‘It’s all right,’ Thomas said soothingly. ‘And you can’t have meant Philip, either, because you haven’t so much as spoken to him for years.’
‘Don’t blame me for that!’ Paniatowski protested. ‘He refuses to see me.’
‘That’s because he’s ashamed,’ Thomas said softly. ‘But that is very convenient for you, isn’t it? Because the simple truth is, you don’t want to see him.’
‘I love him, but I also despise him, and I can’t look him in the face after all he’s done,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Have you ever thought about forgiving him?’ Thomas asked.
‘I’ve forgiven him again and again,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘It made no difference. And this last time – well that was impossible to forgive.’
‘Forgiving is never impossible,’ Thomas said.
‘Do you know what he did?’ Paniatowski demanded angrily.
‘Yes, I know what he did.’
‘Well, maybe you need reminding of the details. He attacked a man in a pub. A man he didn’t know. A man he hadn’t even had an argument with. He knocked him to the ground, and while he was lying there defenceless, he deliberately broke both his legs. That was pure viciousness – pure evil. How can you even begin to defend him for that?’
‘Let me tell you a story about this café, Mum,’ Thomas said. ‘Did you happen to notice as we came in that it was called the Sand Witch?’
‘Yes, I did, as a matter of fact,’ Paniatowski replied.
‘Didn’t it strike you as an odd name?’
‘It did, a little,’ Paniatowski admitted.
‘I’ll tell you how it came about,’ Thomas said. ‘Sylvia wanted to give her café a distinctive name, so she hired the art teacher from a local school to paint her a sign to hang over the front door – just like the signs that pubs have. The one he painted had a woman with a black pointed hat and a big nose in the foreground, and some palm trees in the background. In her hands, the woman was holding an old-fashioned broom. Do you get it?’
‘She’s a witch, standing on the sand, so that makes her a sand witch,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Spot on. Anyway, it had only been hanging there for a couple of days when someone stole it. Sylvia said it must have been an art lover, and most of her customers agreed with her – but not the reasons she might imagine.’
‘They thought it was stolen by someone who loved art so much he couldn’t bear to see it hanging there,’ Paniatowski guessed.
Thomas grinned. ‘It was pretty horrible. It looked as if the witch was more likely to sweep the beach with her broomstick than fly away on it. So Sylvia asked the artist to paint another one. His second attempt was a little better, but this time somebody thought it would be hilarious to spray paint a prick and balls on the witch. And that was the point at which Sylvia gave up.’
‘You told me that story for a purpose, didn’t you?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Yes,’ Thomas agreed.
‘And may I enquire what that purpose was?’
‘The sign was removed, but the name stayed over the door, so now, when people see the name Sand Witch, they simply assume that Sylvia doesn’t know how to spell “sandwich”. The point is that people often draw the wrong conclusions when they don’t know the full story, and that’s why it’s sometimes best not to draw any conclusions at all.’
‘We’re back to talking about Philip, aren’t we?’
‘We never stopped talking about Philip.’
‘I said something about him viciously beating up someone for no reason, and you launched into your sandwich story.’
‘That’s right.’
‘So you’re saying there are important details of the case that I’m missing.’
‘I hope I’m not saying that,’ Thomas responded. ‘I certainly never meant to.’
‘Ah!’ Paniatowski said, suddenly getting it. ‘Philip told you something in confession, and you’re being very careful not to reveal even a hint of what that something might be.’
‘He wants to see you,’ Thomas said. ‘Go and see him in the remand centre. You really need to talk to him – you both need to talk to each other.’
Paniatowski sighed. ‘It’s complicated being a priest, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Thomas agreed. He smiled again. ‘Everybody joins the priesthood for the hair shirts and the fasting, but you soon learn that it can’t be fun all the time.’
Just a glimpse of the Lofthouse’s kitchen would have been enough to drive his wife into a fit of envy and rage, Paul Mason thought. The envy part was obvious – she would have sold her soul to have a kitchen like this one. The rage would stem from the fact that the people who were lucky enough to call it their own had done so little in there that most of the expensive equipment looked as if it had never been used.
And the chances were, it actually had never been used, if the number of fingerprints Mason was able to lift were anything to go by. Maybe things had been different when Mrs Lofthouse lived there, but Lofthouse himself seemed to regard the fridge as little more than a chilled cupboard in which to stow his booze.
It was not until he had been working in the kitchen for around half an hour that it occurred to him that he had no idea where his partner was, and he was just about to call O’Casey on his mobile phone when the man himself walked in, carrying a stepladder.
‘Did you get that from the garage?’ Mason asked.
O’Casey clicked his tongue disapprovingly. ‘No, not from the garage. We haven’t checked the garage out yet. I borrowed it from a neighbour.’
‘That was very obliging of him,’ Mason said.
‘Not really,’ O’Casey said. ‘I gave him something in return.’
‘And what might that “something” have been?’
‘I gave him the gory details of what had gone on in here.’
‘Christ, you didn’t tell him about the decapitation, did you?’ Mason asked. ‘Sergeant Boyd will have your balls if you did.’
‘Of course I didn’t tell him that,’ O’Casey said. ‘My gory details came from Taste the Blood of Dracula, as anyone who’s seen that fine film will quickly realize.’
‘One of these days, you’ll get us both in trouble,’ Mason warned him.
‘Well, that’s something to look forward to,’ O’Casey said.
‘What’s the ladder for, anyway?’ Mason asked.
‘I’ve been thinking about that hook in the bedroom you spotted …’ O’Casey began.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, there’s enough for us to do without worrying about the bloody hook,’ Mason said.
‘This is an orderly house,’ O’Casey said. ‘All the fitments are there for a purpose. So what’s the purpose of the hook?’
‘I don’t know, and I don’t care,’ Mason said.
‘And that’s where we differ, because I do,’ O’Casey responded.
O’Casey placed the ladder slightly to the side of the chandelier.
‘I’m going up, Captain, wish me luck,’ he said.
‘Make us all proud of you, you young whippersnapper,’ Mason said – but his heart was not really in it.
O’Casey began to climb, and soon the upper half of his body had been engulfed by the hanging crystal.
‘This is weird,’ he said.
‘That’s one word for it,’ Mason replied. ‘Me, I’m going outside for a quiet smoke.’
He opened the French windows and stepped onto the balcony. From where he was standing, he could see all the way to the moors. This view was another thing his wife would sell her soul for, he thought, or rather, since she’d already have given away her own soul for the kitchen, she’d barter his.
He finished his cigarette, extinguished the last of the burning embers with his thumb nail, and put the stub in an envelope he had taken out of his pocket. When he re-entered the bedroom, he saw that the ladder had been moved slightly away from the chandelier, and that O’Casey, still standing at the top of it, was looking very pleased with himself.
Mason sighed, knowing that for a few minutes at least, O’Casey was going to be completely insufferable.
‘All right,’ he said, having decided to get it over with as soon as possible, ‘tell me what you’ve found.’
‘There’s a trackway here,’ O’Casey replied, running his finger along the ceiling. ‘It’s very skilfully disguised, so you have to be on a ladder to see it, but it’s here right enough.’
‘And what’s it for?’ Mason asked. ‘So you can run your model train upside down across the ceiling?’
‘No,’ O’Casey said, ‘it’s for this.’
His hand disappeared under the inverted pyramid of shimmering glass, and when it emerged again, it was pulling the hook. O’Casey guided it until it was two feet clear of the chandelier.
‘That’s as far as the track goes,’ he said. ‘But that’s not the end of the ingenuity of this little device.’
‘Why, what else does it do?’ Mason asked. ‘Play highlights from Les Misérables? Offer advice to the lovelorn?’
But O’Casey was not about to let sarcasm sour his moment of triumph, and so he chose to simply ignore the comment.
‘There’s a switch in the base of the hook, and when you click it, the hook is locked in place,’ he said.
To demonstrate, he threw the switch, and then pulled on the hook. It stayed where it was.
‘All right, so it’s ingenious,’ Mason conceded. ‘But what’s it for?’
‘There’s something I can see on the hook itself that might provide the answer to that,’ O’Casey said.
And suddenly, the light playful tone was gone from his voice, and his whole stance became more serious.
He reached across to the hook, and appeared to be delicately picking something off it. Satisfied he’d got all he could, he carefully descended the ladder, holding his spoils at some distance from it in the palm of his gloved hand.
When he reached the foot of the ladder, he held out his hand to Mason the opportunity to examine his treasure.
‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.
‘Looks like bits of a few strands of rope to me,’ Mason said.
‘But it’s probably not just any old rope, is it?’ O’Casey asked.
Mason thought about it, then a sudden realization hit him with all the force of a bucket of icy water.
‘The lab will have to do some tests before we can be sure,’ he said cautiously, ‘but it looks to me to be the same kind of rope as the one that was used to hang Andrew Lofthouse from the gallery.’
‘Yes,’ O’Casey agreed. ‘It does, doesn’t it?’
THIRTEEN
In the five hours since darkness had fallen, the temperature had dropped several degrees, and most of the people out on the street were swathed in overcoats and scarves. Not so the bouncer at the Hellfire Club. He stood in the anonymous entrance to the club with only an open leather waistcoat between his chest and the elements. If he was dressed like that just to make him look hard, it was a waste of effort, Colin Beresford thought. The man did look hard in a leather waistcoat, but then again, he would have looked hard in a pink tutu.
Beresford studied him in the dim light cast by the lamp over the door. There was something familiar about him, yet he was having difficulty putting a name to the face.
You’re getting old, he told himself. The drawers in your mental filing cabinet are starting to stick.
Bollocks, I’m a just little bit out of practice, said the part of his brain which specialized in living with denial.
‘Oy, you, granddad, no hanging about,’ the bouncer called to him.
Granddad!
Beresford took a step closer to him.
‘I want to ask you some questions,’ he said.
‘Well, you’ll just have to wait,’ the bouncer told him. ‘I’ve already done Mastermind and University Challenge this week, and I’m knackered. Look,’ he said, softening his tone, ‘I don’t want to get violent with you, but I can’t have you loitering here, because you’ll put the punters off.’
The bastard was patronizing him, Beresford thought, and he really hated that. What he hated even more was the idea of having to appeal to the brute’s better nature. But he recognized that he had no choice, because time was short, and if the official police investigation wasn’t already hot on his heels, it soon would be.
Just how big a lead could he have? he wondered.
Twenty-four hours, he decided – twenty-four hours at best.
He took a deep breath. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s really important to me – and quite a lot of other people – that you spare me five minutes of your time.’
‘You’re going to make me hurt you, aren’t you?’ the bouncer asked, with what could have been genuine regret. ‘I don’t want to do it, but you’re really leaving me …’ He stopped, mid-sentence. ‘Hang about! Aren’t you Police Constable Beresford?’
Police Constable Beresford!
That wasn’t so much a blast from the past as a blast from another lifetime.
‘Yes, I’m Colin Beresford,’ he admitted.
‘I heard you were dead,’ the bouncer said.
‘Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,’ Beresford replied.
And he thought, Jesus Christ, I’m starting to sound just like young Jack Crane.
Except that Jack wasn’t so young any more, either.
‘You remember me, don’t you, Constable Beresford?’ the bouncer asked, and when it became plain that Beresford didn’t, he added, with just a hint of hurt in his voice, ‘I’m Freddie Bairstow. I used to live in Inkerman Street.’
Freddie Bairstow! Little Freddie Bairstow – with his runny nose and fourth-hand shoes with no laces!
‘I do remember now you remind me,’ Beresford said. ‘Looking back, it feels as if I spent half my shift at your house. It was all because of your father, wasn’t it?’
