Dying in the Dark (15 page)

Ash Croft – the latest phase in the Crofts Estate development – was in a state of transition, Woodend thought, as he coaxed his car over the bumps and potholes of the as-yet-unmetalled road. The first houses he passed were little more than shells, while those in the next section lacked doors and window frames. Only the last few houses, at the end of the row, had been fully completed – and even of these, only two or three actually looked as if they were being lived in.

He pulled up in front of one of the houses which
was
inhabited. There was no garden to speak of yet, but that had not deterred its owner from installing at least half a dozen leering garden gnomes.

Woodend walked up to the door and rang the bell. The man who opened the door had a pinched face and a thinning thatch of mousy brown hair.

‘You're that detective,' he said, making it sound like an accusation. ‘I've seen you at the factory.'

‘That's right,' Woodend agreed. He looked around him. ‘You don't seem to have many neighbours as yet, Mr Bascombe.'

The other man scowled. ‘There are those who can afford to keep two establishments running, but I'm not one of them,' he said. ‘The wife didn't like it, but as soon as the house was ready, we moved in.'

‘I don't blame you,' Woodend told him. ‘I'd have done the same, in your position. Any sensible man would.'

‘There's too much money around these days,' Bascombe complained.

‘And the problem is, most of it's in the wrong hands,' Woodend chimed in obediently.

‘You're right about that,' Bascombe agreed. ‘So … er … what can I do for you?'

‘If you don't mind, I'd like a bit of a chat,' Woodend said.

‘What? Now?'

No, not now, Woodend thought. I've driven all the way out here just to tell you I'd like a chat
tomorrow
.

‘Now would be best, if that's convenient for you,' he said aloud.

‘Well, I suppose—' Bascombe began.

‘Excellent,' Woodend said, taking a step forward, and thus obliging the other man to take a step back, so that before Bascombe knew what was happening, they were both inside the house.

Bascombe reluctantly led him into the living room. It was neat and tidy, and totally antiseptic – the sort of room which people who don't know any better think will impress their visitors.

‘I suppose you'd better take a seat,' Bascombe said ungraciously.

Woodend sat down on the mock-velvet sofa; Bascombe lowered himself into the armchair on the opposite side of the coffee table.

‘This really is very good of you,' Woodend said ingratiatingly.

‘What I don't see is why, if you wanted to talk to me about Miss Rainsford's murder, you couldn't have done it at New Horizons, like you did with all the others,' Bascombe complained.

Because
the others
don't live on the same estate as Bob Rutter, Woodend thought. Because
the others
don't have houses which are only separated from Bob's by a strip of empty land.

‘There simply isn't time to talk to everyone during the course of the working day, Mr Bascombe,' he said. ‘So what we have to do in that situation is make choices.'

‘Choices?'

He was a vain, self-important little man, Woodend decided, the kind of man who always thinks that only
he
could do
his
job, whereas everything that goes on around him could easily be accomplished by a team of trained monkeys.

‘In police work, we generally find that we have to deal with two kinds of people,' he said gravely. ‘There are those who we can see right away will have little of use to tell us, and we rush through them while we're on the site.' He paused. ‘On the other hand, those people we think might be able to make a significant contribution to our investigation we leave till later, so we can talk to them at leisure.'

‘You think
I
could make a significant contribution to your investigation?' Bascombe asked, half-alarmed, half-flattered.

‘Indeed I do,' Woodend said.

‘I can't think why.'

Woodend laughed. ‘You would if you thought about it,' he promised. ‘Look at it this way, Mr Bascombe. Most of the women I talked to are little more than teenagers, with their minds too fixed on their love lives to notice much of anything else.'

Bascombe chuckled. ‘You're right about that.'

‘As for the men, well, I don't mean to be rude, but …'

‘Go on,' Bascombe said eagerly.

‘… but experience has taught me that men who work with their hands are far less observant than those who work with their brains.' Woodend paused again, even more weightily this time. ‘What did you say was your position again, Mr Bascombe?'

‘Assistant dispatch manager,' the other man said, with some pride.

‘Exactly. A man who works with his
brain.
That's why it's worth my while to make a special effort to see you. Do you understand what I'm sayin'?'

Bascombe puffed out his chest a little. ‘Well, when you put it like that, I suppose I do,' he said.

‘I want to find out what Pamela Rainsford was like as a person,' Woodend continued. ‘What her interests were, for example. Who she was friendly with. I've talked to Mr Higson, but I have to admit I didn't find what he had to tell me very helpful. I'm not saying it wasn't accurate, you understand, just that it didn't give me any leads.'

Bascombe's chest puffed out a little further. ‘Well, of course, he's not in the factory all that often. Travels around a lot. So I think you're right. I think that those of us who spend more time at New Horizons –
and
use our brains – will probably be in a better position to help you.'

‘Mr Higson seems to think that Pamela was a rather quiet girl,' Woodend said.

Bascombe chuckled again. ‘Mr Higson would think that,' he said. ‘Pamela was quiet enough when she was with him, but when he wasn't there she was a completely different person.'

‘Completely different? In what way?'

‘Very sure of herself. Cocky, even. And though I have no wish to speak ill of the dead, I have to say that I found her attitude to some of my colleagues a little too free-and-easy.'

‘Are you sayin' that she flirted with them?'

‘Well, yes, I suppose I am.'

‘But it was just a
harmless
flirtation, wasn't it?'

‘I wouldn't know about that,' Bascombe said darkly.

‘She never tried it on with you, did she?'

Bascombe folded his arms. ‘She did
not.
She wouldn't have dared.'

‘So she was always respectful to you?'

‘Not as respectful as I would have liked, but at least she didn't throw herself at me.'

‘Maybe the reason she was so quiet with Mr Higson was because she was afraid of him, too,' Woodend suggested.

‘Afraid of
him
!' Bascombe said, mildly contemptuous. ‘If you think that, you can't know Mr Higson very well.'

‘I don't,' Woodend agreed. ‘That's why I'm asking
your
opinion.'

‘Mr Higson doesn't want people to be afraid of him. He likes to be
liked
. And I suppose,' Bascombe added grudgingly, ‘he generally is.'

‘So if she wasn't afraid of him, why didn't she flirt with Mr Higson?'

‘Because a woman like she was couldn't take rejection,' Bascombe said, speaking solemnly as if he were revealing a great truth which lesser men might well have missed. ‘She wanted all the men around her to be enchanted with her. And she knew Mr Higson never would be.'

‘Because of his wife?'

‘Of course it was because of his wife. Mr Higson likes the best. He drives a Rolls-Royce, and he's got a Rolls-Royce of a wife.' Bascombe smirked. ‘So why should he go chasing after a cheap, flashy model that so many other men have already had a ride in?'

The mention of cars was too good an opening to miss, and Woodend seized his chance with both hands. ‘Did you happen to notice any strange vehicles parked on this street last night?' he asked.

‘There was a
fire engine
parked on the road over there,' Bascombe said, pointing through the picture window into the darkness. ‘But I've no doubt you'll have heard all about that.'

‘I have,' Woodend said patiently. ‘But I was asking about cars parked on
this
road, especially ones which left shortly before the fire engine arrived.'

‘What's this got to do with Miss Rainsford's murder?' Bascombe asked suspiciously.

‘Nothing at all,' Woodend admitted. ‘But it might have a great deal to do with Maria Rutter's murder.'

‘I thought some other policemen were investigating that,' Bascombe said. ‘The ones who came round to talk to my wife while I was out at work.'

‘You haven't talked to them yourself, have you?' Woodend asked.

‘No. Like I said, I wasn't here.'

If they'd missed him earlier, they should have paid a second visit by now, Woodend thought. But Evans's team probably hadn't considered that necessary – because they were convinced they had their man, and there was no point in busting a gut collecting any more evidence.

It was sloppy police work, Woodend thought. He hated that at any time, but he hated it even more when the fate of Bob Rutter depended on the investigation being conducted properly.

‘The reason I brought the matter up is because I'm doing a favour for the lads who were round earlier,' Woodend lied. ‘If you tell me what you know, they won't have to come back, will they? So
did
you see any strange cars?'

‘As a matter of fact, there was one of those new Ford Cortina GTs parked just down the road, about half an hour before the fire engine arrived,' Bascombe said.

‘You're sure that's what it was?'

‘Positive. I went to have a good look at it, because I'm thinking of buying one myself. It's different to last year's GT, you see, because the grille's wider and there's a new panel for the auxiliary instruments in the middle of the—'

‘This car couldn't have belonged to one of your neighbours, could it?' Woodend interrupted

Bascombe shook his head. ‘No, they'd soon have let me know about it if
they'd
bought one. Besides, it wasn't parked in front of any of the houses that people are actually living in. It was next to one of the shells down the road.'

‘What colour was it?' Woodend asked.

‘It was green,' Bascombe said. ‘But then most of them are.'

W
oodend was driving towards the Drum and Monkey almost on automatic pilot when it suddenly struck him that it was the last place on earth he wanted to be.

The reasons for this change of heart were obvious enough, he thought.

The first was Bob Rutter wouldn't be there, and his very absence would serve as a silent rebuke to the man who should have been able to get him out of gaol – and was far from certain that he could.

The second was that while there would be no Bob, there probably
would
be Monika, and he just couldn't face the thought of being with her on that particular evening.

So where should he do his drinking? he wondered.

There was a pub called the Bluebell straight ahead of him. That seemed as good a place as any.

The last time Woodend had been in the Bluebell, it had been a traditional pub like the Drum and Monkey, with a number of smallish rooms, each catering to a different mood and clientele. It wasn't like that now. Some smart alec at the brewery – a man who obviously thought he knew more about pubs than the people who actually used them – had set his evil plans in motion, and modernized the place.

Woodend gazed around the vast cavern of a room which had been created, and almost walked out. Then, remembering the Bluebell served one of the best pints of bitter in the whole of Central Lancashire, he walked across to the bar and ordered himself a drink.

‘Well, if it isn't Charlie Woodend,' said a woman's voice immediately to his left. ‘How you doin', Charlie?'

Woodend turned. Perched precariously on a very high bar stool was the obviously drunk Elizabeth Driver.

‘I'm not givin' any interviews to the press at the moment, Miss Driver,' he said. ‘An' even if I was, I wouldn't be givin' one to you.'

‘Don't want an interview,' Elizabeth Driver slurred. ‘Want … want to talk to my old pal Charlie.'

The barman placed his pint on the counter.

‘Lemme … lemme pay for that,' Elizabeth Driver said.

‘I'll buy my own,' Woodend told her, sliding some coins across the bar.

He was about to take his drink over to a table when Elizabeth Driver reached across and grabbed his arm. ‘Please!' she said. ‘Please! I need to talk.'

As much as he disliked and mistrusted her, there was something in her voice that prevented him from brushing her hand aside immediately.

‘If you want to talk, make it quick,' he said gruffly.

‘Do you … do you believe in hell?' Elizabeth Driver said.

‘I believe there are people who can make
life
hell for other folk,' Woodend replied.

‘And I'm one of them?' Elizabeth Driver asked.

‘An' you're one of them,' Woodend confirmed.

Elizabeth Driver shook her head, though not in denial. ‘I've done some terrible, terrible things to get a good story,' she said.

‘You don't need to tell me that.'

‘I've broken up marriages. I've made people lose their jobs. But this is the worst I've ever done, and I'll burn in hell for it.'

‘What have you done?' Woodend asked.

‘Don't you know?' Elizabeth Driver asked, with some of her hectoring old self back in her voice. ‘Can't you work it out?'