Death Watch (3 page)

Woodend was angry, Paniatowski thought, observing the exchange from the cafe doorway. And that was not like him at all.

True, there were a number of detective chief inspectors in Central Lancs who used anger as a tool – a way of keeping both their subordinates and the general public permanently on their toes – but Charlie Woodend wasn't one of them. He didn't lose his temper often, and when he did it was usually because he considered that the object of his wrath had been stupid, inefficient, or insensitive.

What she was seeing now was something quite different. This was a display of rage she'd only observed once before – during the Helen Dunn kidnapping.

The curlered woman who'd complained was looking distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Well, I suppose it wouldn't do my Harry any harm to wait for his tea just this once,' she said grudgingly. ‘As long as it's important.'

‘It's important,' Woodend confirmed. ‘That's why I'd like to thank you in advance for your cooperation, madam.'

There might possibly have been more questions put to him, but he did not wait to hear them. Instead, he turned, brushed past his sergeant, and walked out onto the terrace. Once there, he stopped, lit up a cigarette, and waited for Paniatowski to join him.

‘A few years ago, it could have been my Annie that had gone missin',' the chief inspector said.

Paniatowski nodded. Annie Woodend, she remembered, was just completing a course in Manchester, and would soon be a fully qualified nurse.

Woodend took a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘I want everybody in that cafe questioned, but I want special attention paid to the men,' he said.

‘You think the kidnapper may have returned to the scene of the crime?' Paniatowski wondered aloud.

‘I don't know,' Woodend admitted, with a disturbed edge creeping into his voice. ‘An' that's the whole problem, Monika.'

‘Sorry, sir?'

‘I simply can't get into the heads of bastards who do things like this, so I just don't bloody
know
.' Woodend looked around him, as if half hoping that a sudden and obvious clue would present itself. ‘I want every inch of this park goin' over with a fine-toothed comb,' he continued.

‘Naturally,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Inspector Rutter had better supervise that,' Woodend said. ‘I wouldn't trust anybody but Bob to be in charge of the job.'

There was an awkward pause from Paniatowski, then she said, ‘But Bob's not here, sir.'

‘Not here?' Woodend repeated, as if he couldn't quite comprehend what she was telling him.

‘No.'

‘Then where the bloody hell
is
he?'

‘He's gone down to London.'

‘London!'

‘To pick up his daughter. He
did
tell you about it.'

‘Jesus Christ!' Woodend exploded. ‘Is he a bobby, or isn't he? Because if he
is
, he should be here when I need him.'

He was being unfair, Paniatowski thought, but that was only because he was so distressed.

‘They're arriving back sometime this afternoon,' she said.

‘Then the moment he
is
back, I want him right here, leadin' this investigation. Is that clear?'

Paniatowski nodded. ‘Perfectly,' she said.

The lecture slot immediately after lunch was not popular with most of the teachers at the University of Central Lancashire. They complained – with some justification – that at that time of day many of their students were far more interested in going to the bar than in pursuing their studies, and so those lecturers with some influence in campus and departmental politics did their damnedest to ensure that
they
weren't the ones addressing half-empty halls.

Dr Martin Stevenson was not one of these academic rats who sought to flee a barely floating ship. Experience had shown him that his lectures were well attended at whatever time of day he was scheduled to give them, and the one he had delivered that afternoon had been particularly successful. The subject had been the psychology of Gilles de Rais, a fifteenth-century French nobleman who had abducted, raped, and killed at least a hundred young boys who he had taken into his castle as pageboys, and when the bell had rung to indicate the end of a session, there were quite a number of students who had remained firmly in their seats.

Seeing them still sitting there, Stevenson sighed inwardly. On the one hand, he told himself, there was a research paper back in his office that he was under some pressure to finish, and had been hoping to work on for the rest of the afternoon. On the other, he supposed he should be grateful that he could arouse such interest from his students, and it seemed almost a crime to nip their enthusiasm in the bud, especially since he knew for a fact that the seminar room next door was free for most of the afternoon.

He would give them fifteen more minutes, he decided in the spirit of compromise. Fifteen minutes would surely be more than enough. But the discussion was still going on an hour and a half later, when his secretary – who had finally managed to track him down – informed him that his wife had rung and said she needed to speak to him.

‘Ring her back, and say I'll call her as soon as I can,' said Stevenson, who was rather enjoying the heated debate with his students.

The secretary gave him one of those disapproving looks of hers, which always managed to somewhat disconcert him.

‘I can't ring her
back
, because she's still on the line,' the woman said. ‘And she did tell me it was
urgent
.'

Stevenson shrugged apologetically. ‘The joys of married life,' he said to the students, who giggled.

When he reached his office, two minutes later, he was half expecting that his wife would have grown bored with waiting and hung up. But she hadn't.

‘Where've you been?' Rosemary Stevenson demanded.

‘Working,' her husband told her. ‘And aren't you supposed to be on duty yourself, darling?'

‘I
am
on duty,' Rosemary told him. ‘That's why I'm angry it's taken you so long to answer the phone.'

‘If I'd known you were going to ring—'

‘Listen,' his wife interrupted, ‘a girl's gone missing from Whitebridge corporation park – and there's a tremendous flap on down here.'

‘Oh dear. How awful,' Stevenson said with feeling. ‘I suppose we must all hope that she turns up again soon.'

‘Is that all you've got to say?' his wife demanded.

‘I don't think there's much more I
can
say, except I'm surprised that, given the circumstances, you've found the time to ring me at all.'

‘You don't get it, do you?' his wife asked, with just a hint of hardness to her voice.

‘Don't get what, Rosemary?'

‘The girl's
thirteen
. Chances are, she's been abducted by some kind of pervert.'

‘Oh, I don't think that necessarily follows,' Stevenson said. ‘There are lots of other reasons she could have gone missing. She might be the subject of a parental custody battle and—'

‘She isn't.'

‘Or perhaps her mother and father don't approve of her boyfriend, and she's run off with him. But if that is the case, they won't get far before they start to see how unrealistic they're being.'

‘Everybody down at the station thinks this is a sex crime,' Rosemary interrupted him impatiently.

‘Unless they have considerably more data than you've provided me with, I think they must be on very shaky ground to make such a broad assumption,' Stevenson countered.

‘This is your big chance,' his wife told him.

‘My big chance?' Stevenson repeated.

‘DCI Charlie Woodend's in charge of the case,' Rosemary said. ‘Cloggin'-it Charlie, they call him.'

‘Interesting. Why do they …?'

‘Because instead of keeping his fat arse parked on a seat behind his desk, like most of the other buggers in his position do, he likes to clog it around the scene of the crime.'

Stevenson grimaced, and wished his wife would not resort to such crude language quite so often.

‘Well, from what you've told me, Mr Woodend seems to be the right man for the job,' he said.

‘No,' Rosemary said firmly. ‘You're the
right
man for the job.'

‘I'm a theoretician – an academic!' Stevenson protested.

‘So you don't have any patients, or conduct any interviews?' his wife asked sarcastically.

‘Well, of course I do. You
know
I do.'

‘Then you're basically involved in the same kind of work as Cloggin'-it Charlie – except that you've got brains, and he hasn't.'

‘Really, darling …'

‘It's time you started making a name for yourself.'

‘I'm already doing that. In case you've forgotten, the paper I presented at the symposium in Toronto was
very
well received.'

‘Are you deliberately being thick?' his wife demanded.

‘No, I don't think so,' Stevenson replied – and he was only
half
lying.

‘It's time you started to make a name for yourself
with the public at large
.'

Stevenson glanced out of his office window at the shiny glass and concrete structures which made up the UCL campus. It was an ultra-modern university and made no pretence at being anything else, he thought. And yet, in many ways, it was just as peaceful and contemplative as any of the colleges in Oxford and Cambridge – just as much a place to think and dream.

‘Did you hear what I said?' his wife asked. ‘It's time that you started to make a name for yourself with the public at large.'

‘Do you know, I'm not sure I really want to do that,' Stevenson told her.

‘Then what about me?' Rosemary replied. ‘Don't I count? Don't you see how it might help to advance my career?'

Stevenson laughed lightly. ‘I'm sure that a woman of your obvious ability doesn't need any help from me,' he said.

‘Then what about your sense of duty?' his wife persisted. ‘If there's a nutter running amok and you can help to catch him, don't you think you're pretty much obliged to?'

Stevenson sighed. ‘Perhaps you're right,' he agreed.

‘So you'll do it?'

‘So I'll
think
about it.'

‘If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be where you are today,' Rosemary said.

‘I quite agree with you there,' Stevenson agreed. ‘You've been a wonderful guide.'

‘So why won't you let me guide you now? Why won't you see that what I'm suggesting would be good for both of us?'

‘I really
will
think about it,' Stevenson promised. He paused for a second. ‘Shouldn't you be getting back to the investigation, darling?'

‘Damn right,' his wife agreed. ‘If I'm not careful, that bitch Monika Paniatowski will go ahead and grab all the glory, because not only has she got a protector in Cloggin'-it Charlie, but she's free to sleep with anyone she wants to – which is well known to be a good way to get on.'

‘I'm sure your own virtue will be rewarded in good time, darling,' Stevenson said.

‘I don't want to wait for “good time”, Martin,' his wife said. ‘I want my reward
now
.'

‘I'll talk to you later,' Stevenson said, replacing the phone on the hook, and renewing his contemplation of the university campus.

T
he man alighting from the train which had just pulled into Whitebridge's late-Victorian railway station was in his early thirties. He had alert brown eyes and a determined jaw. His dark hair was neat without being austere, and he was wearing a smart blue suit. An uninformed observer might well have taken him for a tough London business executive on a whistle-stop inspection tour which was intended to put the fear of God into the quaintly provincial managers of his company's old-fashioned northern branches. Closer examination, however, would have revealed an air of uncertainty about him which would not sit well on the shoulders of a company hatchet man. And a moment later, when he reached up into the carriage and gently lifted down a small child, the initial impression would not have had a leg left to stand on.

‘Well, here we are. We're finally home, darling,' Bob Rutter said to his daughter.

Louisa, who was not quite four, looked up at him questioningly. ‘Home?' she repeated.

‘You remember, don't you?' Rutter asked, with some concern. ‘This is where we used to live before you went to stay with the
abuelos
.'

The
abuelos
. Louisa's Spanish grandparents, who had taken her in when Maria, Rutter's wife, had been murdered, and Rutter had found himself incapable not only of fulfilling his duties as a detective inspector but even of taking care of his own daughter.

But that was all in the past. He was back on Charlie Woodend's team, pulling his full weight again, and now he was ready to take responsibility for his little daughter, too.

‘You
do
remember, don't you?' he asked, almost pleadingly.

The little girl looked at him with a serious expression in her eyes. ‘Yes, Daddy,' she said.

She was lying, he thought. She'd only agreed with him because she could tell that he was worried about her answer, and wanted to please him.

But at least she
did
still want to please him – which, after he had abandoned her for so long, was more than he had any right to expect.

‘I told you about Janet, didn't I?' Rutter asked.

‘Janet?'

‘The lady I've asked to look after you when I'm not there. I'm sure you're going to like her.'

‘Why can't
abuelita
look after me?' Louisa wondered.

‘Because she's in London, and we're here,' Rutter explained patiently. ‘Besides,
abuela
's quite old now, and she finds looking after an energetic little girl like you more than she can handle.'