Dying in the Dark (16 page)

‘You're drunk, Miss Driver,' Woodend said. ‘Your best plan is to get back to your hotel an' try to sleep it off.'

‘There's a … there's a saying in my trade,' Elizabeth Driver told him. ‘“I'll kill for a story.” That's what we say. Only we're not suppos … supposed to mean it, you see. It's only fig … figurative. Nobody's … nobody's ever intended to take it literally.'

‘You're makin' no sense, you know,' Woodend said.

‘I'm a killer. Don't you understand that? I'm a bloody killer. I should be arrested.' Elizabeth Driver held her hands out in front of her. ‘Come on, Charlie, put the cuffs on me.'

Given the state she was in, and where she was sitting, she should never have tried such a complicated manoeuvre. As she thrust her hands forward, her body swayed and she lost her balance completely. If Woodend hadn't caught her, she would have fallen right to the floor.

‘Call a taxi,' Woodend told the barman.

Cradled in his arms, Elizabeth Driver moaned softly.

At first, the taxi driver was dubious about managing the drunken journalist all on his own, but when Woodend dangled the possibility of a large tip in front of him, his attitude suddenly changed and he agreed that it would no problem at all.

Woodend watched the taxi pull away, then wondered what he should do next. He could go back into the Bluebell, he supposed, but it wasn't the pub it used to be, and anyway, his encounter with Elizabeth Driver had soured the place for him.

Much better then, to try somewhere else completely. The Wheatsheaf was just up the road. He didn't use the place very often, and the chances of running into someone he didn't want to talk to were practically nil.

Yes, he decided. He'd go to the Wheatsheaf, have a couple of quiet pints on his own, and then call it a night.

His theory that there would be no one he knew in the pub was shot to pieces the moment he crossed the threshold. To get to the public bar, it was necessary to walk down the corridor, which entailed passing the best room. And sitting in the best room, he saw, were Lucy and Derek Higson.

If the couple hadn't noticed him, Woodend would probably have continued on until he reached his natural habitat. But Derek Higson
did
notice him. Worse, he looked delighted to see him.

For a second, Woodend contemplated ignoring Derek's energetic waving, then decided that would be churlish. There really was no alternative but to go and join the Higsons.

Woodend sighed heavily.

First Elizabeth Driver, and now the Higsons. It just wasn't turning out to be his night, was it?

Paniatowski and the man, who said his name was Teddy, were walking along the canal towpath. Twice Teddy had tried to grab hold of her hand, and twice Paniatowski had rejected it. Now Teddy stopped, and looked at his watch with the flame provided by his lighter.

‘It's getting late,' he said.

‘Is it?' Paniatowski asked.

‘I'll have to be going back to my hotel soon,' Teddy said. ‘I've got a busy day ahead of me tomorrow.'

‘You could head back now,' Paniatowski suggested.

‘I'm not in
that
much of a rush,' Teddy protested. ‘I was thinking. It's quite a mild night for autumn, isn't it?'

‘There's a bit of a nip in the air,' Paniatowski said.

‘We wouldn't notice that if we cuddled up together on the bank over there. We could lie on my coat.'

Paniatowski took several steps back from him. ‘No!' she said.

‘What do you mean, no?'

‘I should have thought it was plain enough.'

‘I've bought you three vodka and tonics!' Teddy said, with just a hint of outrage in his voice.

‘I never asked you to,' Paniatowski reminded him. ‘In fact, if I remember rightly, I refused all three times. But you insisted.'

‘It didn't stop you from drinking them, though.' Teddy paused for a second, as if considering what approach to try next. ‘Why did you come down here with me in the first place, if you didn't fancy a bit of how's-your-father?' he asked.

‘Do you want the truth?'

‘I most certainly do! I think I'm
entitled
to the bloody truth.'

‘You're entitled to nothing, but I'll tell you anyway,' Monika Paniatowski said. ‘We're here because I wanted to give you the opportunity to prove that – contrary to all appearances – you could behave in a decent and dignified manner if the occasion calls for it.'

‘And what's that supposed to mean.'

‘It means that when I say “no”, you accept it with good grace.'

‘Like hell I will,' Teddy said angrily. ‘Not after you've been leading me on, like you have.'

‘I haven't been leading you on,' Paniatowski said firmly. ‘I promised you nothing – and you're getting nothing.'

‘Look, I don't want to get rough with you—' Teddy began.

‘Good,' Paniatowski interrupted. ‘Because I really wouldn't advise it.'

‘… but after all the time and money I've spent on you I'm entitled to a little something. And I'm going to take it.'

‘Don't make me hurt you,' Paniatowski said.

Teddy laughed. ‘
You
hurt
me
? You must be joking. You might be quite fit for a lass, but you're no match for me.'

Two seconds later, when he was kneeling on the canal bank, holding his nose and moaning softly, he realized he might have been wrong about that.

‘I
didn't realize that you drank in pubs, just like us ordinary mortals,' Woodend said, with forced joviality, as he sat down at the Higsons' table.

‘But I
am
an ordinary mortal,' Derek Higson said.

And though he'd said the words with a mock seriousness which invited dismissal, Woodend suspected he really
did
believe them.

‘It's true I'm probably the only one from our old class who can afford to ride around in a Rolls-Royce,' Higson continued, ‘but that's only skin deep. You won't have to scratch very far below the surface before you uncover the Sudbury Street Elementary School kid with a runny nose and his socks round his ankles.'

‘You
never
had a runny nose,' Woodend said scornfully. ‘If memory serves me well, you were sent out every mornin' with a freshly ironed Irish linen hankie. An' I know for a fact that your mam stitched together the best black elastic stockin' garters in the area.'

‘Aye, she was a grand woman, was my mam,' Higson said, slipping easily back into the vernacular he had used as a child. He hesitated before he spoke again. ‘Listen, you must have thought it terrible of me not to mention what happened to your inspector's wife this morning, but I'd only just got back, and I hadn't even heard about it.'

‘Do you think the husband did it?' Lucy Higson asked.

‘It doesn't matter whether he did it or not,' Derek Higson said, in a voice which was
almost
a rebuke. ‘Guilty or innocent, Charlie will have taken it hard, because that's the way he is.'

Lucy Higson frowned. ‘I'm not sure I understand,' she confessed.

Higson laughed, taking the edge off his earlier implied criticism. ‘You wouldn't,' he said. ‘You'd have to have been at Sudbury Street Elementary, instead of at your posh prep school, to really understand. Charlie here has always had what you might call a protective instinct. He took any number of younger lads under his wing in his time. And I was one of them.'

Oh, you most certainly were, Woodend thought.

He tried to remember the name of the boy who made Derek Higson's life a misery for quite a while.

Terry Dawes!
Foxy
Dawes! That was it!

There were those who said that Dawes had earned his nickname because of his red hair, but others – who knew – said it was because he was a cunning, ruthless little bastard.

As a copper-knob, Foxy should have been the natural object of the playground bullies, but he'd avoided that fate by becoming the leader of the bullies himself.

He'd been very good at it, Woodend thought. He'd had a natural talent for picking out the best targets – for honing in on the boys it would be most satisfying to persecute. And one of his chief victims had been Derek Higson.

The thing that made Derek so vulnerable was that his family was poor, even by the standards of Sudbury Street Elementary. Derek's clothes were always beautifully clean, but he wore second-hand short trousers all the time he was at school, and his grey socks were more darning than they were socks.

Little Charlie Woodend had ignored the bullying at first, believing then – as he still did now – that if you were ever to grow to be a man, you had to learn to fight your own battles. But the incident in the lavatories had changed all that.

The boys' lavatories are at the end of the school yard. They are not a place Charlie ever goes to by choice – they are freezing in winter and stink in the summer heat – but sometimes the call of nature cannot be resisted.

On this particular day, he hears all the shouting and screaming as he is walking towards the door, but it is only when he gets inside that he realizes what is happening.

Foxy Dawes's gang is crowded around a prone figure on the floor That figure is Derek Higson. His short trousers are around his ankles, and he is crying his heart out.

‘Look at him, Charlie!' Foxy Dawes says gleefully, pointing at Derek's crotch area.

Charlie, to his own eternal shame, does look, then says, ‘I think you should leave him alone.'

‘Look at him!' Foxy chants. ‘Look at him, look at him, look at him!'

‘Let him go,' Charlie says.

Foxy should take warning from his tone, but he is having too good a time to even notice.

‘Look at him, look at him, look at him!'

Charlie lashes out with his fist. He will get six strokes of the cane for it later, but Foxy loses three teeth and his gang will never bother Derek Higson again.

‘You seem miles away,' the much older, much richer, Derek Higson said, cutting into Woodend's memories of his childhood.

‘What?' the Chief Inspector asked, startled.

‘You seemed miles away. I was just saying that you stuck up for me in the old days, and I bet you've stuck up for this Inspector Rutter of yours in just the same way.'

‘I'd rather not discuss it, if you don't mind,' Woodend said.

‘Of course you'd rather not,' Higson said, looking abashed. ‘I'm sorry that I ever brought the matter up. I get rather carried away with my own curiosity, sometimes.'

‘Sometimes? You
always
get carried away,' his wife said adoringly. ‘You have a real interest in people, Derek. That's what makes you so good at your job.' She stood up. ‘I hope you gentlemen will excuse me for a second,' she continued, before turning and heading towards the toilets.

Woodend found himself admiring her retreating rear, then instantly felt guilty about it.

‘How did we manage to get so out of touch with each other after we left school, Charlie?' Derek Higson wondered.

It happened long
before
we ever left school, Woodend thought. I think it happened that day in the lavatory, when it became plain to both of us that you needed me more than I needed you. We should have been equals, but we weren't – and neither of us was ever really comfortable with that. ‘People
do
just drift apart,' he said aloud. ‘When we left school, we set off on such different paths. Then there was the war. Then I moved down to London. It was inevitable.'

‘I suppose it was,' Higson said reflectively.

Woodend tried to remember just how much he
did
know about Higson since their school days together. It was a very incomplete picture at best. Derek entered the furniture business as an apprentice cabinetmaker, that much he was sure of. And he had married even before he came out of his time.

‘Your first wife died, didn't she?' he said, then realized with horror that he had spoken what he had meant only to be thinking.

‘Yes, she did,' Higson replied. ‘It was cancer that took my Jane. It was a tragedy. She was barely into her thirties.'

‘I'm really sorry, Derek. I never should have mentioned it,' Woodend said contritely.

‘It's all right,' Higson assured him. ‘It was a terrible cross to bear at first. I thought it would kill
me
as well. But eventually, everything settled down to a mild numbness, and memories of her only flared up to haunt me occasionally. I never thought I'd marry again. I was quite content – though that's not exactly the right word – to live on my own for the rest of my life. Then I met Lucy, and it was like being given a huge electric shock. She'll never replace Jane, of course, and it would be wrong to think she should. What I have with Lucy is different to what I had with Jane, but in a way it's just as wonderful.'

‘You're a lucky man,' Woodend said.

‘Yes,' Higson agreed seriously. ‘In so many ways, I suppose I
have
been lucky.'

‘I've been thinkin' over what you said about Pamela Rainsford's killer possibly bein' a woman,' Woodend said.

Higson looked shocked. ‘Oh God, the last thing I wanted to do was to influence you in any way,' he said. ‘What do I know about criminal investigation? I'm just a furniture salesman with a smooth line in patter. I wouldn't recognize a murderer if he hit me on the head.' He laughed, then looked ashamed of himself. ‘Sorry, that wasn't a very tasteful thing to say in view of what happened to your inspector's wife, now was it?'

‘The thing is, why shouldn't it be a woman?' Woodend persisted. ‘She'd have to be quite strong, but then a lot of women are nowadays. It was a particularly vicious attack, but if we've learned anythin' over the last few years, it's that women can be just as vicious as men. An' once we open ourselves to the possibility that a woman could have killed …'