A Walk With the Dead (14 page)

‘Are you telling me you want to a police officer when you grow up?' she asked, expecting, despite the look on the girl's face, that Louisa would laugh and say of course she didn't.

‘Yes, I do.'

‘But why?'

‘Wouldn't you like me to follow in your footsteps?'

‘Yes . . . no . . . I don't know,' Paniatowski said, confused. She took a deep breath. ‘There's nothing wrong with being a police officer . . .'

‘Of course there isn't – or you wouldn't be one.'

‘But with all the advantages you've had . . .'

‘So you're saying I should only join the force if I really can't do anything else?'

‘No, but a bright girl like you . . .'

‘Aren't
you
bright?'

‘I suppose so, but . . .'

‘Well, there you are, then.'

Paniatowski was delighted to see her daughter could stand up for herself in an argument, and rather distressed that she should have chosen this
particular
argument to demonstrate the talent. She had never given much thought to what Louisa might do when she grew up, because that time was still so far away. But it wasn't actually
that
far away, she suddenly realized. In fact, it was just around the corner.

‘I want you to do whatever will make you happiest,' she said.

‘Really?' Louisa asked sceptically.

‘Really,' Paniatowski said. ‘Of course, I'd be very proud of you if you ended up as a brain surgeon or an architect – but I'd be equally proud of you if you worked in a shop, as long as that's what you wanted.'

‘And you'd also be proud of me if I became a police officer,' Louisa said relentlessly.

‘And I'd also be proud of you if you became a police officer,' Paniatowski agreed, biting on the bullet. ‘I just don't want you joining the force because of me. You understand that, don't you?'

Louisa gave a half nod – which might have signalled understanding, or might not – then said, ‘I was right, wasn't I?'

‘Right about what?' Paniatowski asked, mystified.

‘About what I said in Jill's bedroom – that she was hiding a very important secret.'

As she was signing the adoption papers, Paniatowski had promised herself she would never lie to Louisa, and that promise held firm now. And anyway, there would have been no point in lying, because the girl would have seen right through her.

‘Yes, Jill had a secret,' she admitted.

Louisa grinned. ‘See?' she said. ‘I've already got the makings of an excellent detective.'

There were lights running along the path to the north gate of the park, but Dolly was still some distance from that path, and was picking her way through the bushes in semi-darkness.

Twice, she thought she heard a bush close to her move, as if somebody was hiding behind it.

‘It's nothing but the wind rustling through the leaves,' she told herself desperately, ignoring the fact that there
was
no wind to speak of.

She wanted to run towards the lights. But she knew that would be a mistake, because if she lost her footing, she would fall on her face, and once she was on the ground . . .

Fighting her ever-increasing fear, she forced herself to put one foot before the other and test the ground before entrusting her full weight to it.

The path was no more than a dozen yards away, she thought – she was going to be all right!

And perhaps the prospect of reaching the path was enough to encourage her to abandon her caution a little, because suddenly her left leg buckled slightly under her, and she stumbled forward.

She stumbled – but by some miracle, she didn't fall. She came to a halt, took a deep breath, and concentrated on re-establishing her equilibrium.

‘Only ten yards,' she mumbled to herself. ‘Ten yards at the most.'

And it was at that very moment that she felt the hands locking around her throat.

Her attacker was standing right behind her, his rubbery fingers pressing down hard against her soft skin.

She began to choke, and dark spots were already starting to appear before her eyes.

In a panicked attempt to break free, she twisted first to the left, and then to the right, but the attacker had his body pressed closely against hers, and breaking free was simply impossible.

She tried to scream – but she couldn't.

More through desperation than planning, she lifted her right leg and kicked backwards. She felt the heel of her shoe make contact with something hard – maybe the man's knee – and suddenly the hands had gone from her throat and she could hear the sound of a body falling to the ground.

Now she was free to scream. And scream she did. It was a harsh, rough terrified scream, which seemed to fill the whole park.

She was conscious of her attacker moving, and knew she should run away, but her legs seemed frozen to the spot.

She screamed again – even louder this time – and heard the sound of feet, crashing through the undergrowth in the distance.

‘Tony!' she sobbed. ‘Help me, Tony.'

Behind her, she heard a scurrying noise and the whoosh of branches being knocked roughly aside.

Her attacker was leaving, she thought. She was going to live!

The crashing grew louder, and suddenly Tony was by her side.

‘What the bloody hell's happened?' he demanded.

‘I was attacked,' she croaked. ‘The murderer . . .'

‘Are you sure you're not just making this up?' Tony asked suspiciously.

She could not believe he had said that.

‘The murderer,' she repeated. ‘He . . . he was here.'

‘I mean, how do I know you're not just pretending – to punish me for not escorting you out of the park?' Tony asked.

‘My throat,' she gasped. ‘Look at my throat.'

He flicked on his lighter, and held it so close to her neck that she could feel the heat.

‘Jesus!' he said, ‘you really were attacked!'

‘Yes . . . I . . .'

‘We need to think,' Tony interrupted. ‘There's a taxi rank at the end of the park. I'll give you some money, and walk most of the way to it with you. I promise I won't let you out of my sight until you're safely inside the cab. But you mustn't tell the taxi driver what happened. You mustn't tell
anybody
what happened.'

‘But we have to let the police know,' Dolly protested.

‘I don't think that's a very good idea,' Tony told her. ‘If we go to the police, they'll want to know what we were both doing in the park. And that could be rather tricky, couldn't it?'

‘Somebody tried to kill me!' Dolly moaned.

‘Yes, I know that, but they didn't succeed, so there's no real harm done,' Tony said. ‘Those bruises look nasty, but if you say you've got a sore throat and wear a scarf, they'll be gone in a day or two.'

‘Somebody tried to kill me,' Dolly repeated – because there didn't really seem to be anything else to say.

‘Look, I was keeping this a secret until the next time I saw you, but since you're so upset, I suppose I'd better tell you now,' Tony said. ‘It's your birthday next week, isn't it?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I've arranged a special treat to celebrate it – a slap-up meal in a really posh restaurant.'

She was confused. Everything was
so
confusing.

‘A really posh restaurant?' she said. ‘But you told me we couldn't even go in a
pub
together.'

‘Ah, yes, that is what I told you, and it's quite true,' Tony said awkwardly. ‘But . . .'

‘But what?'

‘But . . . err . . . I was only talking about Whitebridge when I said that. This posh restaurant's in Accrington, where nobody knows us.'

‘But wouldn't they think . . .'

‘You can pretend you're my daughter while we're in the restaurant – you wouldn't mind that, would you? – but later, when we're in the park . . .' Tony pulled himself up suddenly, as he realized what he was saying. ‘No, not in the park . . . of course not in the park . . . somewhere nice . . . maybe down by the river, maybe out on the moors.' He paused to take a breath. ‘Later, after all that pretending in the restaurant, we'll go somewhere nice, and you'll be my little sexpot, just like you always are. You'd like that, wouldn't you?'

‘Yes,' she said – because she
would
like it.

‘Only, if we go to the police, that can't happen, can it?' Tony asked. ‘There'll be no posh restaurant and no little trip out to somewhere nice – because I'll be in gaol. So I think it's best we forget the police. Don't you?'

‘I suppose so,' Dolly said dubiously.

Tony laughed. ‘You suppose so,' he repeated, as if she'd made a joke. ‘You're a funny little sexpot, aren't you?'

‘Yes,' she agreed.

‘Right then, let's find you a taxi, just like we planned,' he said.

‘All right,' she agreed.

‘There is just one more thing,' Tony told her.

‘What?'

‘I must admit that I'm a little hurt you've never thanked me for rescuing you.'

‘Thank you, Tony,' Dolly said meekly.

I
t was a few minutes before the sun was due to rise, and the uniformed sergeant was sitting in the passenger seat of one of the patrol cars.

‘The feller we're about to drop in on used to be a very important figure in this town, you know,' he told the driver.

‘Did he?' asked the other man, though he was not really interested, and was instead mentally debating the important question of whether the overtime he would be earning was worth dragging himself from his bed at this ungodly hour.

‘A very important figure,' the sergeant repeated. He glanced down the street that lay in front of them – at the decaying terraced houses and gardens filled with old prams and rotting fridges. ‘And now he's living in Balaclava Terrace. How are the mighty fallen, eh?'

‘That's right,' the driver agreed, as he calculated whether the overtime payment would be large enough to buy him the graphite fishing rod that he'd had his eye on for some time.

A bird – it might have been a sparrow – chirped on one of the roofs, and the sergeant switched on the car's interior light and checked his watch.

‘Six twenty-seven,' he announced. ‘Time to move,'

The driver turned the ignition key, flicked his back lights on and off – as a signal to the van parked behind them – and pulled away from the kerb.

‘Get your foot down, lad – we don't want to give the bugger any warning we're coming,' the sergeant said.

The driver pressed down hard on the accelerator, and the patrol car shot forward.

‘Seventy, sixty-nine, sixty-eight, sixty-seven . . .' the sergeant said, counting down the numbers of the houses they were now whizzing past. ‘Fifty-three, fifty-one, forty-nine . . . That's it. Slam the anchors on, lad.'

The driver hit the brake, and the car skidded to a halt. Behind him, the driver of the van was carrying out a similar manoeuvre.

The sergeant leapt out of the car, rushed up to the short path of number forty-five, and hammered on the door.

‘Police!' he shouted. ‘Open up! Do it now – or we'll break the bloody door down.'

The residents of Balaclava Street were not the only ones to suffer a rude awakening that early morning. Those who lived in New Bridge Street, East Street, Elm Avenue and India Mills Road were similarly awoken by a sudden banging on the door and a demand from the police that they be admitted.

The disturbance did not last for long. By six thirty-two, when the last hurriedly dressed man on DI Beresford's list was led handcuffed to the waiting patrol car, it was all over, and those who had heard the knock on the door with some trepidation – but had not subsequently been arrested themselves – could return to their beds and their uneasy sleep.

Dolly Turner lived far enough away from any of the dawn raids to have avoided being woken up by them, but she was awake anyway. Dolly had hardly slept at all the previous night, but instead had tossed and turned – and worried.

She knew that Tony was right when he'd said that if they reported what had happened to the police, he'd probably end up in serious trouble. And she was looking forward to going to a posh restaurant in Accrington, though at least part of her suspected that if she hadn't been attacked, the question of the restaurant would never have come up at all.

But . . . but . . .

But she
had
been attacked!

She could have been killed!

And surely,
whatever
Tony said, the police would have to be told, or she'd be in trouble as well!

She heard the sound of shuffling feet in the corridor outside, then a cough, then the sound of her dad urinating into the toilet bowl.

Her dad!

She hadn't even thought about him as she'd mentally struggled over what to do next. But if the police found out about Tony, her dad would find out about Tony. And if her dad found out . . .

It simply wasn't fair that you should have problems like this to deal with when you were only fourteen years old, she told herself.

It simply wasn't fair at all.

Paniatowski examined herself in the mirror over the basin in the women's toilets. Her eyes were bloodshot, but that was only to be expected after having spent half the night studying criminal records. There were lines etched into her face, too, and not all of them – she strongly suspected – were due to exhaustion.

‘Louisa was right, you're starting to show your age, Monika,' she said to the image in the mirror, and she was so tired that she could almost have sworn that image nodded back in agreement.

She turned on the tap, cupped her hands under it, and splashed some water on her face.

‘Better,' she said when she looked into the mirror again, ‘but not
that
much better.'