A Walk With the Dead (20 page)

But the real question was – as it had been right from the start – what was he protecting them
from
? Was he attempting to prevent them from being punished for something they had had no control over? Or was he merely doing his best to mask their incompetence?

Baxter stood up, and walked over to the window. There was a three-quarters moon that night, and in the pale glow he would clearly see the high walls which ran around the prison. He could see beyond them, as well – to the road that stretched out across the dark empty moors, a thin strip of tarmac leading away from this unnatural world and back to civilization.

What motivated a man to apply for a posting in a desolate place like this, he wondered.

It was true that some of the officers had local connections – Officer Higgins, for example, could not have been born more than twenty miles from the prison, if his accent was anything to go by. But there were others – Fellows, Robson and Jefferies, to name but three – who were clearly not even native Yorkshiremen, yet had pulled up their roots and planted them afresh on this semi-barren heath.

It was a mystery, Baxter told himself – but then so much about Dunston Prison was mysterious.

Until a few hours earlier, Maggie Hudson had lived on the Pinchbeck council estate – but now, of course, she didn't live anywhere.

The estate was often referred to in town council meetings and official documents as a ‘mixed' area – and what that actually meant was that while many of the residents were honest, industrious folk – who were just about getting by in life through hard work and determination – there was a sizeable minority which was drunken, lazy, dishonest and just plain vicious.

Monika Paniatowski knew all about the estate, and as she drove towards it behind the wheel of her bright red MGA, she gave an involuntary shudder.

‘Is something wrong, boss?' asked Meadows, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

‘No,' Paniatowski said quickly.

Nothing at all was wrong – except that she had been brought up on this estate herself, under the same roof as her sexually abusive stepfather, and each street – each lamppost – held memories of a time when killing herself had started to seem like a pretty good option.

It was getting late, and as they drove down Oak Tree Avenue – a street on which there was no evidence of oak trees – there were few lights on in the downstairs windows of the houses. Number eleven Oak Tree Avenue, however, was the exception to the rule. Here, the front room was ablaze with illumination, and despite the windows being closed, the music being played inside could be heard halfway down the street.

Paniatowski pulled up next to the house, and she and Meadows got out of the car. As they walked up the path – which was so overgrown with weeds it was almost as slippery as a skating rink – an upstairs window in the next-door house slid open, and a woman bawled out, ‘Are you the bobbies?'

‘Yes, we are!' Paniatowski shouted back

‘Well, about time,' the woman screamed. ‘I'm sick to my back teeth of complaining, and nothing being done.'

Then she slammed the window closed again.

The noise of the music – Gary Glitter's ‘I'm the Leader of the Gang' – was so overpowering that Paniatowski was hammering on the door for at least a minute before anyone answered – and even then, it was only a small, dirty child, who should have been in bed hours earlier.

‘Mam wants to know what the bloody hell you want at this time of night?' the little girl said, looking up at them.

‘I'm called Monika,' Paniatowski said, bending down and looking into her eyes. ‘What's your name, sweetheart?'

‘Diane,' replied the girl, who seemed puzzled at being addressed by an adult in such a friendly manner.

‘We'd like to come in, Diane,' Paniatowski said softly. ‘Would that be all right?'

The girl shrugged. ‘Suppose so,' she said, then turned and walked back down the litter-strewn hallway.

Baxter was still at the window, thinking about his other problem – the one in Whitebridge.

He had been far from happy at the idea of Monika Paniatowski handling
one
child-murder after her recent experience, so he was even less enthusiastic about her handling
two,
and when he had heard about the second murder, his immediate instinct had been to make another visit to Lancashire, and have a second talk with his DCI. Then, having thought it through, he decided there were a number of reasons why that would be a mistake.

As if to convince himself of the rightness of his decision, he began to count the reasons off on his thick, ginger-haired fingers.

One: to do so would be a signal to Monika – and to all the other officers in Whitebridge HQ – that he did not have confidence in a detective chief inspector he had personally promoted.

Two: by undermining Monika, he would also be undermining her effectiveness, making it less likely that she would get a result.

Three: he had an important job to do in Dunston Prison, especially if, as Officer Robson seemed to think, Jeremy Templar had not been guilty of the crime for which he been imprisoned.

And four . . .

There was no four, he tried to tell himself, but self-deception had never been his forte.

And four, he thought firmly, marking it out on his index finger: he was not prepared to sneak in and out of Whitebridge like a thief in the night, so Jo would soon learn he'd made that second visit, and his wife's recriminations would start all over again.

‘You could always go and see her, too,' he said aloud.

But even if he did that, she would still be convinced that his main reason for returning to Whitebridge was to see Paniatowski. She would never be able to accept that it was
DCI Paniatowski
and not
Monika
that he had gone to talk to.

Perhaps he should have gone straight back home the moment Jo had hung up on him, he thought, but he had believed at the time – and still believed – that to have done that would only have strengthened her suspicions, because no man goes running home unless he has something to hide.

He opened the window, and breathed in the crisp, chill night air.

From somewhere in the distance, he heard a hooting sound.

An owl?

Out on the moors – where there were no barns and no trees?

Perhaps it had got lost, he thought. Or perhaps it had been caught in a particularly strong wind, and blown off course.

Both those things were entirely possible, but given that what he
didn't
know about owls was enough to fill a book, there was probably another explanation he couldn't even begin to guess at.

Whatever the case, he was certain that he and the owl shared a feeling of bewilderment at suddenly being in a totally unfamiliar environment.

‘But at least the bloody owl can see in the dark,' he muttered.

He returned to the desk, took a small sip of his whisky, and wished that life wasn't always so bloody complicated.

Meadows and Paniatowski had followed little Diane into a living room which was a social worker's vision of hell. There was more garbage on the floor here, too, (including a number of aluminium trays that had once held Chinese or Indian takeaway food), and the whole place stank of sweat and urine. Two other children, even smaller than Diane, were playing lethargically on the dirty floor, while their mother – a grossly fat woman – lounged on a battered sofa.

Meadows crossed the room, and switched off the hi-fi.

‘Here, what do you think you're doing?' demanded the woman – who looked so much like the dead girl that she could only have been her mother.

Paniatowski held out her warrant card. ‘We're from the police, Mrs Hudson,' she said.

‘I've kept telling the kids to turn the noise down, but they just won't listen to me,' Mrs Hudson said, slurring her words.

‘Do you have a daughter called Maggie?' Paniatowski asked.

‘What's she done?' the fat women demanded. ‘Just tell me, and I'll get her dad to give her a real good belting when he gets back from the pub.'

She'd be wasting her time being sensitive with this one, Paniatowski thought, reaching into her bag and producing a picture of the dead girl in the park.

‘Is this your daughter?' she asked, thrusting the photograph under Mrs Hudson's nose.

The fat woman squinted at the picture. ‘She don't look right,' she said. ‘What's wrong with her?'

‘She's dead,' Paniatowski said bluntly. ‘She was murdered, sometime this afternoon.'

‘Oh God, that's terrible,' Mrs Hudson said, screwing up her face. Then she reached down for a can of lager that was lying on the floor, and took a generous swig.

‘When did you last see her, Mrs Hudson?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Don't know,' the fat woman confessed. She turned to Diane for help. ‘Did our Maggie come home for her tea?'

‘We didn't have no tea,' the little girl reminded her. ‘No dinner, neither.'

‘Don't you be so cheeky, or you'll be feeling the back of my hand,' her mother rebuked her. ‘Was our Maggie here or not?'

‘We haven't seen her since yesterday,' Diane told Paniatowski. ‘She sometimes stays with her friends.'

And I certainly don't blame her for that, Paniatowski thought.

‘You'll have to come down to the morgue to identify the body,' she told Mrs Hudson.

‘Couldn't you wait until her dad gets back, and take him instead?' the other woman asked.

‘There'll be a patrol car round in fifteen minutes to pick you up,' Paniatowski said, in disgust. ‘Be ready for it when it arrives.'

‘Are you sure it couldn't be her dad?' the fat woman whined. ‘I've not really been very well, you see. I'm under the doctor.' Then she added, as if to clinch her case. ‘I'm on seven kinds of pills.'

‘If you're not ready when the patrol car arrives, I'll see to it personally that you spend a night in the cells,' Paniatowski promised.

‘There's no need to go cutting up nasty like that,' Mrs Hudson replied, clearly offended.

‘We'll see ourselves out,' Paniatowski said, turning towards the door.

‘Just a minute!' Mrs Hudson called after her.

Paniatowski swivelled round. ‘Yes?'

‘Will there be any compensation?'

‘I've no idea what you're talking about,' Paniatowski said coldly.

‘Well, if she is dead, like you say she is, then surely there must be compensation,' the fat woman explained.

‘And whose job do you think it is to compensate you for the loss of your daughter?' Paniatowski wondered.

The fat woman shrugged. ‘I don't know. Maybe the council should come up with the money,' she suggested. ‘And if they won't do it, then it's the government's responsibility, isn't it? I don't really care who coughs it up – as long as somebody does.'

‘No, you
don't
care, do you?' Paniatowski asked angrily. ‘As long as somebody pays out your blood money, you don't give a toss.'

‘You can't go talking to me like that,' Mrs Hudson said. ‘I've a good mind to report you.'

‘And I've a good mind to kick the shit out of you – if only to give your kids a good laugh,' Paniatowski told her. She turned towards the door again. ‘Fifteen minutes, remember,' she said over her shoulder. ‘Be ready.'

P
C Jim Clarke was young, fresh and enthusiastic, and while many of the other officers had spent their time in the locker room bitching about the fact that they'd been called in for extra duty, Clarke himself had not joined in with the moaning. The truth was that he was thrilled to be part of this early morning canvass, and the thrill only increased when he was assigned a bus stop near the park – which was no more than a quarter of a mile from where the murder had actually been committed! Thus, it was hardly surprising that as he approached the bus stop – the folder and clipboard he'd been issued with held firmly in his right hand – he should be nursing a secret hope that he would return to police headquarters with a vital piece of information that would crack the investigation wide open.

There were about a dozen people standing at the bus stop, and they were a fair cross-section of the Whitebridge bus-travelling public – men and women, boys and girls, young and old. It was a schoolboy who noticed Clarke first, and after concealing the cigarette he was smoking in the palm of his hand – because bobbies could be buggers about under-age smoking – he passed the information on to his mate. The mate told the man next to him, who informed the woman next to him, and by the time Clarke arrived at the shelter, there were twelve pairs of eyes fixed on him.

Clarke drew himself up to his full height – an impressive six feet one – and cleared his throat.

‘Could I have your attention, please,' he said. ‘My name is PC Clarke, and I'm here to ask you—'

‘Is this about the murder?' asked a cloth-capped middle-aged man, with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

‘Of course it's about the murder, Juggins,' said the woman standing next to him. ‘What else would get a bobby out of his bed at this time of day?'

Sensing he was losing control of the situation, Clarke decided to abandon the rest of his opening speech, and get to the heart of the matter.

‘I have in this folder the photograph of a girl,' he said.

One of the schoolboys nudged the other in the ribs, and both sniggered.

‘A photograph of a girl,' Clarke repeated, glaring at the boy. ‘In a moment, I'm going to give them out. I want you to look at them very carefully. If you saw her at any time yesterday, I'd like you to tell me. Then I'll take down your name and address, and one of my colleagues will visit you later today.'

‘One of your
what
?' asked the man in the cloth cap.