Dying in the Dark (14 page)

‘Who ended it?'

‘Me.'

‘And why was that?'

Tewson should have been expecting the question, but it still seemed to floor him. ‘You know how it is,' he said.

‘No, I don't,' Paniatowski replied. ‘But I imagine I will when you've told me.'

Tewson shrugged. ‘I just got fed up with her. That's all.'

He'd built a shell of caution around himself, Paniatowski thought, and if she was going to get anywhere, she needed to break through it. She decided to go for where he was probably most vulnerable – for where most men of his age were most vulnerable – his masculine pride.

‘I expect Pamela was two-timing you, was she?' she asked.

‘No!' Tewson said, stung, just as she'd intended he would be. ‘No, I've never had a girl two-time me.'

‘Ah, I see what it must have been, then,' Paniatowski said airily. ‘There was something wrong with your sex life, was there? Whose fault was that? Couldn't you satisfy her?'

Tewson looked at her oddly. ‘Are you quite sure that you're a policewoman?' he asked.

‘You've seen my warrant card, haven't you?'

‘Yes, but …'

‘But what?'

‘These questions you're asking. They're not the sort I'd expect a policewoman to ask. They're a bit
personal
, aren't they?'

‘I'm working on behalf of the victim,' Paniatowski said. ‘She took being murdered very personally indeed.'

‘I mean, I've never been asked questions like these before.'

‘This is the 1960s, in case you haven't noticed,' Paniatowski said. ‘Not all women are quite as shy and retiring as they used to be. Of course, that may not have been your experience.'

‘What are you suggesting?'

‘It's obvious. I see it all now. Pamela
was
one of those shy and retiring girls. And the reason you chucked her is that while she had no objection to the odd bit of slap and tickle, you weren't as persuasive as some other men are at getting your girlfriend to go as far as you wanted her to.'

Tewson didn't want to laugh – not when he was talking to a policewoman, not when they were discussing another woman who had been
murdered
– but he just couldn't help himself.

‘Have I said something funny?' Paniatowski wondered.

All signs of amusement drained from Tewson's face.

‘Look, I told you I'm getting married soon, didn't I?' he said.

‘Yes?'

‘Well, my fiancée
is
a bit prim, if the truth be told. I wouldn't like her to know some of the things I got up to before I met her. And I certainly wouldn't want to be in any trouble with the police.'

‘Why should you be in any trouble with the police?'

‘Maybe you can advise me on the law,' Tewson said cautiously – feeling his way as he went. ‘Can you be charged with public indecency if there's been no actual complaint from the public?'

‘What?!' Paniatowski asked.

‘I mean, is it indecent just to
do
it, or do you have to be
seen
to do it? And even if you're
seen,
is it still indecent if the people who see it think it's just a bit of a joke?'

‘If you're a flasher, then I'd advise you to seek urgent medical help,' Paniatowski said. ‘But I'm certainly not going to arrest you for something you've done in the past.'

‘A flasher!' Tewson repeated. ‘Exposing myself in public! Is that what you think I'm talking about?'

‘Isn't it?'

‘No, it bloody well isn't!'

‘Then tell me what you
do
mean.'

The first time, Tewson explained, was when they'd been going out together for a couple of weeks. Up to that point, Pamela had allowed him to stick his tongue in her mouth and give her breasts the occasional squeeze, which he'd considered to be very satisfactory progress for a few dates.

That evening, they were out for a drive in the country, and had been going down a quiet lane when the engine of his Morris Minor had started to miss. He'd coaxed it on for another hundred yards, then it had finally died on him.

‘So what do we do know?' Pamela had asked. ‘Can you fix it?'

‘Not me,' Tewson had replied. ‘I know nothing about cars. But there's a phone box about half a mile back down the road. You wait here, and I'll go and call the AA.'

The Automobile Association had told him that it was a busy night, but they could probably get a breakdown truck to him within the hour. He walked back to the car, and gave Pamela the news.

‘The point is, she could have started right then,' Tewson explained to Paniatowski. ‘But she didn't. She waited for at least half an hour before she began making her moves.'

‘I think I'm beginning to get the picture,' Monika Paniatowski said.

‘Have you ever made love in the back of this car?' Pamela asked.

‘Made love?' Tewson repeated stupidly. ‘What do you mean?'

‘
What do you think I mean? Have you ever done
it.
Have you ever gone the whole way?
'

‘Well, no.'

‘It'll be a bit cramped back there, but that should make it all the more interesting.'

He noticed her use of tenses. ‘It'll' not ‘It'd'. ‘When?' he asked.

‘Now!'

He tried to calculate how long it was since he'd made his phone call. ‘But the breakdown van will be here soon,' he said.

‘So what? We'll see its headlights long before it arrives, and have plenty of time to adjust our clothing.'

‘But it's not only the breakdown truck that could come,' he said, panicking. ‘There might be other cars. For all I know, this lane could be on the route of a police patrol car.'

‘Don't be such a chicken. We're in the middle of the countryside,' Pamela said contemptuously.

‘Or walkers!' Tewson said. ‘If somebody was walking down this lane, we wouldn't see them until they were right on top of us.'

‘But by then you'll be right on top of
me.
Don't you think it's worth the risk?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, if you don't fancy me enough to take a little chance like that, maybe we should stop seeing each other.'

‘There'll be other opportunities,' he said.

‘No, there won't,' Pamela replied firmly. ‘It's now or never.'

He was young. His hormones were raging. It was
now.

‘Even then, she seemed to hold back,' Tewson explained to Paniatowski. ‘It wasn't … it wasn't until we saw the headlights of the AA van, that she really got going. That she really began moving her …'

‘There's no need to paint me the full picture,' Paniatowski said.

‘We tried to act normally when the mechanic arrived. But he could tell what had been going on. I could see it in his eyes.'

‘It wasn't a one-off, was it?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No,' Tewson admitted.

It was far from a one-off. A few days later Pamela wanted to do it again, this time in the car park behind the cinema, just minutes before the picture was about to end. And as time passed, her demands became increasingly dangerous. They did it in the church yard. They did it on some rough ground within spitting distance of the police station. They did it in the multi-storey car park.

It was a Bank Holiday Monday that was the final straw. They were in the woods when Pamela made the suggestion, and this time she insisted they take all their clothes off.

‘There's loads of people around,' Tewson had protested. ‘Picnickers and such like.'

‘I'm not saying we should do it on the path,' Pamela said scornfully. ‘We could go deeper into the woods.'

‘I don't fancy it.'

‘Then maybe I'd better start looking for a new boyfriend.'

They had done it, shedding all their clothes, as Pamela had wished. And this time, finally, their luck had run out. As he had approached his climax Tewson had heard the sound of whistles and catcalls behind him, and turning his head, was horrified to see that they were being observed by a group of young men holding bottles of beer in their hands.

He and Pamela had picked up their clothes and fled, to the accompaniment of more ribald comments. But even at the time, it had occurred to him that Pamela's desire to escape had not been half as strong as his was.

When they had put some distance between themselves and their watchers, they came to a halt and dressed.

‘Well, that's the last time we try that,' Tewson had said firmly, as he struggled into his trousers.

‘Why?' Pamela had asked.

‘Because we got caught,' he told her, hardly able to believe that she had even needed to ask the question.

‘So we got caught,' she said calmly. ‘It was bound to happen sooner or later.'

‘You
liked
it, didn't you?' he said accusingly
.

‘I didn't
mind
it,' Pamela replied
.

‘Well, I did,' Tewson said. ‘And we're not doing it any more.'

‘Aren't we?' Pamela asked, and he noticed a dangerous edge creeping into her voice.

‘No, we're not,' he said. ‘There's no need to. You've got a flat. We could do it there.'

‘If we can't do it where I want to, then we're not doing it at all,' Pamela said.

‘I work for the town hall,' Tewson told Paniatowski. ‘Some of the bosses there are very conservative. If word had got out about what I'd been doing, my chances of promotion would have gone right down the tubes.'

‘So you broke it off,' Paniatowski said.

With his confession over, Tewson was starting to relax, and now he even risked a grin. ‘No,
she
nearly broke it off,' he said. ‘Several times! She might have been a bit weird, but she was certainly very energetic.' A wistful look crossed his face. ‘Despite all the worry it involved, I don't think I'll ever enjoy sex quite as much again.'

‘Do you think that was why she was on the canal bank?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Was she doing more of what she'd done with you?'

‘That did occur to me,' Tewson said seriously. ‘Poor Pamela. I was shocked when I heard what had happened to her, but I can't say I was surprised, if you know what I mean.'

‘I know what you mean,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘She was like a drug addict, wanting a bigger fix all the time,' Tewson said. ‘Something was just bound to go terribly wrong eventually.'

‘W
here the hell's Cloggin'-it Charlie?' Monika Paniatowski wondered, as she sat alone at the team's usual table in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey. ‘If he's coming, he should be here by now.'

It couldn't be pressure of work that was keeping him away, she thought, because when the pressure was really on, this place was where Woodend
did
most of his work.

So it had to be
her,
didn't it?
She
had to be the reason that he hadn't turned up.

Instead of understanding why she would find it difficult to help him in his attempt to clear Bob's name, Woodend had taken it as a personal insult – and possibly as a betrayal!

Well, if that was his attitude, she told herself angrily, he could go screw himself!

But even as the thought ran through her mind, she knew she didn't mean it. Charlie Woodend was her rock – her one certainty in an uncertain world. When she was in trouble, he helped her. When she needed encouragement, he provided it. She couldn't even begin to imagine how she could manage without him.

‘It's a crying shame to see a pretty girl sitting there all alone,' said a voice somewhere above her head.

She looked up. The man was a stranger to her – which meant that he was a stranger to the public bar of the Drum and Monkey. He was around thirty, with heavily slicked-back black hair. He was wearing a check jacket – which, for all its garishness, hadn't been cheap – cavalry twill trousers and suede shoes. A sales rep of some kind, Paniatowski decided – a man whose stock in trade was that he believed he could talk anybody into anything.

‘I don't want company,' she said.

A lie! She wanted company all right – just not his.

‘What experience has taught me about pretty girls is that they don't know
what
they want until they've tried it,' the man said. ‘What are you drinking? Gin and tonic, is it?'

‘Vodka and tonic.'

‘Oh, I say! A lady with exotic tastes indeed. Please do me the honour of letting me buy you another one.'

‘I've hardly started this one.'

‘Never mind that. There's no harm in having a fresh one lined up, now is there?'

The man glanced down at his gold watch.

She could read his mind, she thought.
It's getting late
, he was telling himself,
so I'll give this bird one more try, and if I'm not getting anywhere, I'll go and see what else I can pull
.

He was everything she disliked about men, Paniatowski decided. Crude, manipulative and insincere. Selfish, insensitive and arrogant. Though Charlie Woodend and Bob Rutter were so different to each other in so many ways, they almost looked like twins when contrasted to this loathsome creature.

‘So what do you say, darling?' he asked. ‘Can I sit down, or what?'

‘It's a free country,' Paniatowski told him, ‘but I think you'd be making a mistake.'

A smile of triumph flashed across his thin lips and was gone again in little more than a second. ‘Making a mistake, am I?' he asked. ‘Well, why don't you let me be the judge of that?'