Echoes of the Dead (13 page)

‘Howerd didn't buy the lemonade for himself – he bought it for a visitor!' Bannerman said, finally getting the picture.

‘That's right – an' it was a visitor who he knew, in advance, wouldn't want to drink beer.'

‘Lilly Dawson!'

‘It's more than likely. An' since Howerd couldn't be bothered to remove the bottles once Lilly had left, it's also more than likely he couldn't be bothered to wipe the fingerprints off them, either.'

‘We've got him!' Bannerman said.

‘Not yet, we haven't,' Woodend cautioned him. ‘Not by a very long chalk.'

‘What's that on the floor, sir?' Bannerman asked suddenly.

‘Where?'

‘There. By your feet.'

Woodend looked down, and saw the coloured pencil. He bent over, picked it up, and took the pencil over to the window, where the light was stronger.

It was a
red
pencil – a
Lakeland
red pencil – and there were bite marks around the top of it.

‘
Now
we've got him,' Woodend said, with a sigh of relief.

It was almost closing time at the Whitebridge covered market. Only a few customers still lingered, and many of the stallholders had already started the process of closing up their stalls for the day.

Woodend and Bannerman stood next to Hardy's Fishmongers' – which still had the sign announcing it was closed for a family bereavement taped to its canvas cover – and watched the man three stalls up from them, packing his electrical goods away.

What kind of man was it who could rape and murder a girl, and then go about his normal business so close to the place where she had worked that he could almost touch it? Woodend asked himself.

But the answer was simple – a man like Fred Howerd!

Howerd had a thin, sharp-featured face – the sort of face, Woodend thought, which clearly announces to the world that it has treated him unfairly, and then offers that as an excuse for granting himself the right to snatch back, from that same unfair world, anything he has a fancy for.

The chief inspector wondered if Howerd knew that he was being watched – and, more to the point, if he
did
know, whether he had been expecting it.

Probably not! As Howerd's police record clearly showed, he was an impulsive criminal, rather than a reflective one. He did things – got blind drunk or stole a car – because he wanted to at that particular moment, and he worried about the consequences (if he did, actually, worry about them that all) once he had slaked his yearning.

‘Do you want us to make the arrest now, sir?' Bannerman asked, with an edge of impatience to his voice.

‘No, I don't,' Woodend replied. ‘In fact, I don't think I want
us
to make it at all. Let's just leave it to the local lads, shall we?'

‘Are you
sure
you want them to do it?' Bannerman asked, disappointedly.

‘Yes, I'm sure,' Woodend replied.

He understood his sergeant's disappointment – and even sympathized with it. This was their chance to be like the men in the white hats, who they had watched admiringly on the cinema screens of their childhoods. This should be the moment when – in one dramatic swoop – they restored order and brought the guilty to justice.

Yet he wanted no part of it, because he couldn't trust himself – because he couldn't be certain that, instead of cautioning Fred Howerd, he wouldn't simply put his big hands around the evil bastard's throat, and break his neck.

‘You're absolutely certain that you want to do it that way, sir?' Bannerman persisted.

‘For Christ's sake, yes!' Woodend snapped angrily.

Bannerman made a discreet signalling gesture with his hand, and two uniformed constables approached the suspect, one from his left side and the other from his right.

The constable on the right started to speak, and though Woodend was too far away to hear the words, he knew exactly what the officer would be saying.

‘
Frederick Anthony Howerd, I am arresting you for the murder of Lilly Dawson. You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you
.'

Fred Howerd tensed, and then began to wave his hands frantically about in the air.

He was probably saying that this whole thing was a stupid mistake, and it would be much better if the policemen just left him alone, Woodend thought.

Because men like him – however careless they'd been while committing their crimes – often simply refused to believe it when they were finally tracked down.

The constable shook his head, and said something else, probably to the effect that it would be better for Howerd if he agreed to come quietly.

And the message seemed to have finally got through, because now Howerd held his wrists out, and allowed the constable to slip the handcuffs on them.

A small crowd of stallholders, noticing that something unusual was happening, had started to gather, but they kept their distance from Howerd's stall, and watched in complete silence as the whole drama was played.

Were
they
surprised about the turn of events? Woodend asked himself.

Or had they perhaps
always
thought there was something a little
strange
about Fred Howerd?

The two policemen each put one of his hands firmly on Howerd's shoulders, and led him away. Without any bidding from the officers, the small crowd parted to let them pass.

He had solved his first major crime as a chief inspector in less than
two days
, Woodend reminded himself. He would return to Scotland Yard – where there were many who still had their doubts about him – as a conquering hero.

He should, by rights, have been elated.

But he wasn't!

Because there was a large part of him which wished that this triumph of his had never been possible.

That he had
won
no victory because there had been no victory to win.

That instead of being raped and murdered in a derelict potting shed, Lilly Dawson had been allowed to go home, with the prospect of a full and happy life ahead of her.

This feeling – this near-despair that life could be so brutish – was one that would revisit him many times over the years, but this
particular
experience of it, he knew even then, would never leave him – because it had been branded onto his soul.

Solving this case was bit like desperately looking forward to losing your virginity – and then realizing, once it was over, that it wasn't at all it was cracked up to be, he thought.

He turned to Bannerman and said, ‘Well, I suppose we'd better go back to the station and tie up all the loose ends.'

‘And then we can crack open the champagne,' replied the sergeant, sounding as though
he
, at least, felt as if he was riding the crest of a wave.

PART THREE

Whitebridge–Costa Blanca,

October 1973

ELEVEN

T
he London train was right on time, and Paniatowski – who was not usually superstitious – caught herself wondering whether that was a good sign or a bad one.

She had thought of waiting on the platform to greet DCI Hall, but instead had decided to stand just beyond the ticket barrier.

‘That way,' she told herself, ‘I'll have a chance to study him before he even knows I'm here.'

It wasn't much of an advantage, she realized, but at that moment she was prepared to grab any advantage – however small – that was going.

The train doors opened, and as the passengers began to spill out on to the platform, she ran her gaze quickly from one end of it to the other.

She had a very clear idea of what she should be on the lookout for. The man from the Yard would be young, and he would be tall – high-fliers were always both. He would be the kind of police officer who can find always time to play a punishing game of squash, even in the middle of the most demanding investigation, and his slim, athletic body would reflect that. He would be smartly, though not flashily, dressed. He'd have the sharp features of the typical hatchet man, and the cunning eyes of a consummate politician.

Yes, that was how he'd look – and she was sure she'd dislike him from the second she set eyes on him.

Most of the people who'd got off the train were already rushing towards the barrier, but the last man to disembark was still standing there, as if he was quite content to wait until the rush was over.

He was of no more than average height, Paniatowski noted. He was chunky, rather than athletic, and was wearing a sports jacket which had seen better days and a pair of grey flannel trousers.

‘That can't be him,' she said to herself. ‘That simply
can't
be him.'

Yet all the other passengers continued to sweep past her, and when the man in the jacket and grey trousers finally reached the barrier, he looked her and said, ‘DCI Paniatowski?'

Paniatowski nodded.

The man smiled. ‘And I'm Tom Hall,' he said. ‘I must admit, you're not at all what I expected.'

He was a few years older than she was – which probably made him no more than a couple of years younger than Assistant Commissioner Bannerman. He had a face which – though even the kindest of observers would have been pushed to call it attractive – was pleasant enough. And while his eyes were as intelligent as she'd pictured them, they seemed to be quite lacking in guile.

‘You're not what I expected, either,' she admitted.

‘No, I shouldn't think I am,' Hall said, ‘but the difference between us is that people are usually disappointed when they see how
I
look.' The smile, which had never quite left his face, now turned into a grin. ‘You're not one of those coppers who insist on driving their visitors straight to their hotel and ignore all the pubs on the way, are you?'

‘No,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘I'm not.'

‘Excellent!' Hall said.

The hill on which Charlie and Joan Woodend's villa stood had once been shared – in almost equal parts – by a few herds of scavenging goats and a handful of determined peasants who had cultivated their almonds on its steep terraces. Now the goats had gone, and most of the almond groves were in terminal decline. Building work had begun almost a decade earlier, but it was a slow, leisurely process, and though Woodend knew several people who lived close enough to him to be called neighbours, most of the building plots still stood empty.

It would all change, he accepted, with just a touch of regret. More and more houses would spring up, and the hillside would eventually become a full-blown village. But it hadn't happened yet, and – in the meantime – he still had his virtually uninterrupted view.

And what a bloody marvellous view it was, he told himself, as he stood on his sunny terrace that afternoon, a glass of Mahou beer in one hand and a Ducados cigarette in the other.

Straight ahead of him lay the Mediterranean Sea, a carpet of deep, rippling blue which stretched from the shoreline to the far horizon. To his right, the Peñon Ifach – a vast, breathtaking, outcrop of rock which the ancient Phoenicians had regarded as the younger sister of the Rock of Gibraltar – reared out of the water like a fierce primeval monster. And to his left – less dramatic, but equally enchanting – there was the sleepy fishing village of Moraira, dancing lazily in the heat haze.

‘Looking back on it, are you happy with the way your life has gone, Charlie?' asked a voice from somewhere to his left.

Woodend turned to face the man who had posed the question – a wiry, seventy-three-year-old Spaniard whose full name was Francisco Ibañez Ruiz, but who was better known simply as Paco.

‘That's a strange question to ask on a warm afternoon, after half a dozen bottles of beer, Inspector Ruiz,' he said.

‘It is the
perfect
question to ask on a warm afternoon, after half a dozen bottles of beer,' Paco replied, with a smile.

Yes, Woodend agreed, it probably was.

Though he liked
most
people, there were few he actually
admired
, and Paco was one of that select band. He was in awe of the way that Ruiz had put the horrors he had seen during the Civil War behind him, and grateful for the fact that, since they had solved a murder together, several years earlier, they had become firm friends.

‘Am I happy about the way my life has gone?' he said. ‘Yes, I think so. I've had a very good marriage an' I've got a wonderful daughter. An' as far as my work went—'

‘You were an honourable policeman,' Paco interrupted.

Woodend grinned. ‘Honourable!' he repeated. ‘You're very fond of that word in Spain, aren't you?'

‘It's at the root of our being,' Paco told him. ‘If you cannot understand what honour means to a Spaniard, then you will never understand Spain.'

‘It's probably not that different in Lancashire,' Woodend admitted. ‘But we'd never call it “honour” – that's far too poncey a word for a mill town like Whitebridge.'

‘So what
would
you call it?' Paco asked.

‘Decency, I suppose,' Woodend said. ‘I was a very
decent
policeman. In all the time I was on the Force, I never once did anything that I was ashamed of.'

‘I wonder how many men could honestly say that?' Paco mused.

‘I wouldn't know,' Woodend replied. ‘But it's important to me that
I
can – because everything I am now is based on everything I was then.'

DCI Hall looked around the public bar of the Drum and Monkey and said, ‘Now this is what I
call
a pub. Where shall we sit?'