Final Beat of the Drum, page 19
‘If you like,’ Dawson said miserably.
‘You wanted to tell me that you can’t hold back on your investigation any longer – that you have to pull out all the stops in an effort to catch the murderer?’ Towers guessed.
‘Look at it from my perspective,’ Dawson pleaded. ‘The way I conduct this investigation from now on will be examined under a microscope, and if there’s anything I can be criticized for, I bloody well will be.’
‘Quite right,’ Towers said. ‘You have to do the best job you can.’
‘Bloody hell, you’ve changed your tune,’ Dawson said, amazed at how easy it had been.
‘Needs must, old son,’ Towers said philosophically. ‘If you go down, the chances are that you’ll try to drag me with you.’
‘I would never …’
‘Of course you would. There’s no point in pretending. I’ve never had a particularly high opinion of you, and you’re certainly not going to improve on it by lying to me.’
‘I’ve never had a particularly high opinion of you, either,’ Dawson said sullenly.
‘That comes as no surprise to me at all,’ Towers replied, ‘but there’s one huge difference between you and me. Do you know what it is?’
‘No,’ Dawson said, wishing he was dead.
‘The big difference between us is that you’re scared of me, and I’m not scared of you,’ Towers told him. He patted Dawson on the shoulder. ‘No hard feelings. You’ve done what you could, and it just wasn’t good enough, so I’ll have to find another way to nobble St Louisa.’
‘I want you to do something for me, for a change,’ Dawson said, sulkily.
‘Do you indeed?’ Towers asked. ‘And that might that be?’
‘There’s an ex-bobby called Crane hanging around on the edge of the investigation. He says he’s doing work for the university, but I don’t believe him. I want you to use your influence to get him off my back.’
Towers looked gobsmacked. ‘Crane did you say?’ he asked. ‘Jack Crane? Got a patch over one eye?’
‘Yes, that’s him.’
Towers chuckled. ‘Have I said something funny?’ Dawson demanded.
‘Jack Crane was one of Monika Paniatowski’s team back in the day – and they were all joined at the hip, which means that if he’s involved in any of this, it’s probably on Monika’s behalf.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Dawson admitted.
‘Of course you don’t. That’s because as a detective, you’d make a good hatstand. So I’ll spell it out for you – slowly. It’s beginning to look as if Paniatowski is sticking her big Polish conk into this investigation. Now it’s very unlikely that somebody as independently minded as Louisa Rutter would have asked for her mother’s help, so that means that Monika’s doing it off her own bat. She probably realizes this investigation is important for her daughter’s advancement, and she’s arrogant enough to think that she can solve a case that nobody else can.’
Towers took a card out of his pocket, wrote some names on it, and handed it to Dawson.
‘Monika Paniatowski, Kate Meadows, Colin Beresford, Jack Crane,’ Dawson read. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’
‘I want to know what they’ve been doing for the last couple of days, and I want them followed from now on,’ Towers said. ‘I’ll put my own lads on it, but I may need to use a couple of yours, as well.’
‘You … you want to build up a case against them for obstructing justice,’ Dawson gasped.
‘Exactly.’
‘You do realize it’s an offence punishable by imprisonment?’
‘Of course I realize it.’
‘So are you planning to send DCI Paniatowski to gaol?’
‘Not necessarily,’ Towers said. ‘If Louisa Rutter is prepared to take very early retirement, any evidence we’ve collected will disappear. But if she resists – well, she’ll just have to get used to only seeing her mum on visiting days.’
He had spent the previous few hours hiding in the evergreen bushes in the Corporation Park, but when he heard the town hall clock strike midnight, he broke cover.
The temperature had dropped below freezing, and he was grateful for that, because although his body was aching with the cold, the weather had at least served to keep most people off the streets.
His knee had been damaged in the fall, so he made slow progress and was forced to rest it every couple of hundred yards. He wondered if he had done himself any permanent damage, and decided he probably had.
That didn’t matter.
There was only one thing that mattered.
There was too much light from the moon for his liking, but the street lamp across from the target house was out, and that was a lucky break – the first one he’d had all day.
He positioned himself next to the lamp-post.
He was suffering from hunger pains now, and it felt as if he had a rat inside him, gnawing away at his vital organs. He could have prevented this by bringing some food with him, but that would have increased the risk element, and he had taken enough risks already.
‘You only have one chance, and this is it,’ he said softly to himself.
One chance, and even that was bound to end in failure eventually – but the longer he could put off that failure, the better.
The target house was in darkness, as were all the other houses along the street, but now he saw a tiny speck of light, bobbing about in one of the upper rooms.
A torch!
The light disappeared, and he had to wait what seemed like a lifetime before it reappeared on the ground floor.
And then it was gone from there, too.
He counted slowly to twenty, and then started to cross the road. His knee should have been better for the rest, but perhaps that rest had been too long, and now it seemed to have locked, and he dragged it behind him like the useless appendage it had become.
He opened the gate and stepped into the garden. He was glad of the moonlight now, because there were a number of large plant pots in the garden, and without it he would undoubtedly have crashed into them.
There were steps down to the basement, and he took them slowly, his good leg holding his weight while he swung the useless leg into the right position. And finally he was outside the basement, looking in.
And there was that small dot of light.
SEVENTEEN
Friday, 4 February, 2000
Arthur Sweeting’s first job, when he left school, had been as a library assistant, or, to be more accurate, as the library assistant’s assistant. He had never been overly ambitious or dynamic, but like the tortoise in the fable he had been slow and dependable, and when he retired from the library, half a century later, it had been as deputy librarian (popular fiction).
In the five years since his retirement, he had grown chrysanthemums, collected postage stamps from the Pacific Islands, and pottered about in general. His life followed a calm and unruffled path. He had never married, and had never been the kind of man to whom surprising things happened, so when he heard the hammering on his front door at five thirty in the morning, his first thought was that he was having a bad dream.
The knocking persisted.
He wondered who it could be.
It was too late for hooligans, creating a disturbance on their way home from the pub.
It was too early for the postman to be delivering a package. Besides, the postman’s knock was always somewhat restrained, and the person at the door now was giving it a real hammering.
Whoever it was, it wasn’t just disturbing him, it was also disturbing his neighbours, and since Arthur couldn’t have that, he supposed he’d better go and see what the problem was.
He rose reluctantly from his bed, found his slippers and dressing gown, and went over to the window.
He raised the sash, and looked down on to the street. He could see several men standing there. They were all wearing helmets and heavy padded jackets. They also seemed to be carrying rifles, but they couldn’t be – not in Arcadia Terrace. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, noting that there was a slight tremble in his voice.
One of the men looked up.
‘Police!’ he said. ‘Could you open your front door for us, please, Mr Sweeting.’
‘I’m not sure I …’
‘If you don’t, we’ll have to smash it in – and you wouldn’t want that, would you?’
‘No, I …’
‘Then open the door. And be quick – because time is pressing.’
Arthur Sweeting had never done anything quickly in his life, but he did his best to comply with the instruction. Once in the hallway, he opened the door, with the chain still on, and said, ‘I’d like to see some kind of identification before I let you in, if you don’t mind.’
A gloved hand held a warrant card up in front of him. The card said the man was Sergeant Albert Ingham, and that he was a member of the Central Lancs Police Armed Response Unit.
‘Will that do you?’ Ingham asked.
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Then open the bloody door.’
Sweeting slid back the chain and opened the door, and immediately the hall was filled with men.
Big men!
Men wearing body armour!
And yes, it was guns they were carrying!
‘Sign this,’ said Ingham, holding out an official looking piece of paper and a cheap pen.
‘What is it?’
‘Just bloody sign it.’
Arthur Sweeting knew his rights, and knew he shouldn’t sign anything without reading it first, but somehow his hand wasn’t listening to his brain, and almost without realizing it, he laid the paper against the wall, and signed it at the bottom.
‘You’ve just agreed to let us use your house as an access route to your back garden,’ the man explained.
‘But why should you want to go into my back garden?’ Sweeting asked. ‘There’s nothing at all that could be of any possible interest to you out there.’
‘I don’t give a toss about your garden – it’s the garden on the other side of the wall that we need to get to,’ the sergeant said.
‘But there must be some mistake,’ Sweeting protested. ‘I know the owner of that house. Her name is Monika Paniatowski. She’s a retired lady now, but she used to be a chief inspector. Her daughter is still in the police.’
‘Thank you for that information, but we already know whose house it is,’ Ingham said.
It was five thirty-three when the alarm buzzer rang in Kate Meadows’ bedroom, and when she checked the control panel, she saw that the source of the alarm was Lizzie Grimshaw’s room.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she groaned, ‘couldn’t you have waited a couple more hours, Baby Grimshaw?’
Apparently not!
Lizzie Grimshaw was waiting for her on the upstairs landing.
‘I’m not worried,’ she said, though the expression on her face told quite a different story.
‘Have your waters broken?’ Meadows asked.
Lizzie nodded. ‘Just before I pressed the buzzer.’
‘And are you having contractions?’
‘I’ve had one.’
‘I want you to time the gap between them,’ Meadows said.
‘Will that help?’ Lizzie asked.
‘It will help the midwife to estimate when the baby might arrive,’ Meadows explained.
‘The midwife,’ Lizzie repeated. She looked around her in panic. ‘Where is she? Why isn’t she here?’
‘I haven’t rung her yet,’ Meadows said softly, as she guided Lizzie back into her room, and navigated her around the wardrobe which had been nothing but a bloody nuisance from the start.
‘What if she doesn’t get here in time?’ Lizzie asked, as Meadows guided her into her armchair.
‘She will,’ Meadows promised. ‘You’ve only just started your contractions, so there’s lots of time yet.’
‘But what if she doesn’t?’ Lizzie persisted.
‘Then I’ll deliver the baby myself – I’ve done it dozens of times.’
‘Really?’
‘Really,’ Meadows assured the girl.
True, her experience was confined to foals and calves on the family estate, but there was no point in explaining that now.
‘Try to relax,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
She stepped out into the corridor, and her heart sank as she saw Harriet Hobbes standing there.
Harriet was the house worrier. She was an expert at worrying, and like an athlete who had learned how to master the techniques of both the marathon and the sprint, she was equally at home with minor short-term worries and major long-term ones. Thus, she worried about world peace and whether there was enough bread in the bin to last out until morning – and treated them both as a major cause for concern. Meadows believed that there was never any excuse for a man hitting his wife, but suspected that if she had been married to Harriet, she would have been sorely tempted.
‘Could I have a word with you?’ the bloody woman asked.
‘I’m a little busy at the moment, Harriet,’ Meadows replied.
‘It’s very important – and it won’t take long.’
Meadows sighed. ‘Go on.’
‘There’s an intruder that wanders around this house late at night,’ Harriet said, in a confidential whisper.
‘This house has the best security system available,’ Meadows said, exasperatedly. ‘Nobody could have got in without setting off all the alarms.’
‘Well, somebody did,’ Harriet said firmly. ‘Both last night and the night before.’
Ah, Meadows thought, all is explained.
‘I know what’s happened,’ she said. ‘You heard someone the night before last, and that set your imagination galloping, so you thought you heard someone last night, too.’
‘So you admit there was someone the night before last?’ Harriet said, triumphantly.
‘Yes,’ Meadows said. ‘It was me you heard – either going out or coming back.’
‘You?’ Harriet asked suspiciously. ‘Going out late at night?’
‘Yes,’ Meadows confirmed. ‘I’m a big girl now, and I can go out on my own any time I want to.’
‘But why would you want to?’
God, the woman was impossible.
‘I felt like a breath of fresh air,’ Meadows said, trying to sound her professional best, yet aware that some of her irritation was still managing to get through.
‘You want to be careful,’ said Harriet, who was always too wrapped up in her own concerns to read the signals other people were sending out. ‘It’s dangerous after dark. The night before last – the very night you were out alone – there was this man called Hadley who got himself killed in his own home.’
‘In his own home,’ Meadows repeated. ‘So what you’re saying is that being at home is risky, and leaving the house was the best thing I could have done.’
‘No … I—’ Harriet said helplessly.
‘I’d love to stay and chat for longer,’ Meadows interrupted, ‘but, you see, Lizzie is having her baby, and she’s relying on me to make the arrangements. I’d like to thank you for reporting your concerns,’ she continued, in her most official voice, ‘and rest assured that they’ve been duly noted.’
And without waiting for a reply, she headed for the stairs.
The man standing on Monika Paniatowski’s doorstep was wearing body armour and a combat helmet. Both his hands were occupied. In the left, he had a warrant card which he had raised to Paniatowski’s eye level. In the right, he was grasping a Heckler and Koch HK416 assault rifle.
‘Commander J C Moore,’ Paniatowski read from the warrant card. ‘So what can I do for you and the small army you seem to have brought with you?’
‘We’re looking for your son, Philip Paniatowski,’ Moore said, in a tough gravelly voice that Monika thought he might have been practising.
‘Then I suggest you go to the remand centre where he’s being held,’ Paniatowski told him.
‘Very funny,’ Moore said, though he didn’t sound amused. ‘He was in the remand centre until last night, then he escaped.’
Paniatowski knew she should feel disturbed at the news that a violent criminal, who deserved to be locked up, was out on the loose. Yet her first reaction wasn’t alarm at all – it was pride.
Her son had shown spirit. Her son had shown ingenuity. For the moment, at least, he had beaten the system.
The feeling did not last long, and what replaced it was a gut-churning fear, because these men who were searching for him were heavily armed and meant business, and if Philip resisted – and being Philip, he might well – they would take him down as if he were no more than a mad dog.
She became aware that someone – probably Moore – was speaking to her, but through her mental turmoil it sounded like an echo in some distant cave.
‘I asked you if you were hiding him,’ Moore said, speaking very slowly and distinctly in case she was having trouble following him, ‘and I must warn you, madam, that if that is what you are in fact doing, there will be serious consequences for you.’
She looked him the eye. She could tell he thought he was a hard man, and probably he was, but then she was a hard woman.
‘Are you threatening me, sunshine?’ she asked.
‘No, madam, I am merely making you aware of the harsh realities of life. And I don’t like being called “sunshine”.’
‘So what should I call you?’
‘I would prefer to be addressed as “commander”.’
‘I’m sure you would,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And as a retired senior police officer, calling me madam doesn’t quite cut it for me – so give me the respect I’m entitled to, and call me “ma’am”.’
‘I—’ the commander began.
‘I haven’t finished yet,’ Paniatowski snapped. ‘Thank you for making me aware of the harsh realities of life, but it really wasn’t necessary, because I was dealing with harsh realities when you were a gurgling, puking baby, lying in your cot and wondering when the great milk tit in the sky was going to pay you another visit.’
‘I’m just doing my job, ma’am,’ the commander said stiffly.
‘Then learn to do it with a bit of humanity, because that’s what makes you a good bobby, rather than just a competent one,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You’re going to search my house from top to bottom. That’s your job. But you won’t find my son, because wherever he is, he isn’t here. So there’s no need for smoke cylinders or stun grenades or whatever else you might be thinking of using. I want my house leaving as you found it. Is that clear?’
