Echoes of the Dead (5 page)

But even taking the change in circumstances into account, you could still push things
too
far.

‘It's good to see you, an' all, Sid,' he said, patting the other man on the shoulder. He grinned. ‘So, is this a chance meetin' – or are you here to make us feel like VIPs?'

‘I'm here to take you to police headquarters, sir,' PC Sid Smart said, looking, as he spoke, at Bannerman, to see if he'd got the tone right. ‘Mr Sanderson said he wanted to see you the moment you arrived.'

Aye, Woodend thought, he probably had.

‘They tell me you're a local chap, Mr Woodend,' the chief constable said, gesturing to the two men from London to take a seat in front of his desk. ‘If that's the case, it's surprising we've never run into each other before.'

No, it isn't – not really, Woodend thought. Not when you remember that my dad
worked
in a mill, and your dad was the
part-owner
of one.

‘Yes, that is strange,' he said aloud.

‘You, on the other hand, definitely remind me of someone, Sergeant Bannerman,' the chief constable continued. ‘You're not related to Samuel Bannerman, the polo player, by any chance?'

‘Yes, sir, he's my father,' Bannerman said.

‘Is he, by God! He has a damn fine seat, your father. We played against his team at Hurlingham once, and they gave us a real thrashing.'

Bannerman smiled. ‘My father
does
like to win,' he admitted.

‘Indeed he does,' Sanderson agreed. ‘And I should imagine that you take after him.'

The whole conversation was getting far too cosy – far too tea-and-cucumber-sandwiches – for Woodend's liking.

‘Do you think we could talk about the Lilly Dawson murder now, sir?' he suggested.

‘Yes, I suppose it
is
time we got down to discussing the more unsavoury aspects of life,' the chief constable conceded – though he did still manage to look slightly offended at being pushed into it quite so quickly. ‘Let me start by laying down what I consider to be the ground rules.'

‘All right,' Woodend agreed cautiously.

‘While I'm more than willing to assist with your investigation in any way I can, I hope you'll be able to appreciate that, with a second major murder case on my hands, my resources are somewhat stretched,' Sanderson said.

He sounded as if he was addressing a press conference, rather than talking to colleagues, Woodend thought.

And Bannerman obviously felt that too, because he leant forward, rested his hands on the chief constable's desk, and – with a cold edge to his voice that Woodend had never heard before – said, ‘With respect, sir, we're not here by our own choice – we came because you requested us to,'

‘I . . . err . . . beg your pardon, Sergeant?' the chief constable said, clearly taken aback.

‘We're here to do the job
you
asked us to do, and in return
we
have every right to expect you to provide us with everything we need to see that job through to the end,' Bannerman amplified.

The lad certainly wasn't lacking in confidence, Woodend thought, and – in a way – it was a pleasure to watch him cutting this stuffed-shirt down to size. But however ineffective it might turn out to be, they did still
need
the chief constable's cooperation.

‘I don't expect we'll require a great deal of help from your officers, sir,' he interjected quickly, before the chief constable had time to express the outrage which was probably building up inside him. ‘Havin' said that, of course, I am assumin' that they'll already have done the basic spadework for us.'

The chief constable nodded, and switched back into press conference mode. ‘They have indeed done the basic spadework – if not a great deal more than that,' he said. ‘In fact, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that, under my guidance, they've done everything that can be expected from a modern police force.'

He should have let his pit bull of a sergeant rag at the chief constable's pomposity a little longer, Woodend decided.

‘Yes, I'm sure you
have
done everything that can be expected from a modern police force,' he said, then paused for a second, before continuing, ‘except, of course, make an arrest.'

‘Yes, apart from that,' the chief constable admitted.

‘What can you tell us about the progress of your investigation so far?' Woodend asked.

The chief constable laughed, awkwardly. ‘I naturally don't have all the details at my fingertips.'

Well, he bloody well should have, Woodend thought.

‘A broad outline will do,' he said, aloud.

‘As I understand it, Lilly Dawson left the market at the usual time, and never arrived home,' the chief constable told him.

‘When was she last sighted?'

The chief constable waved his hands in the air. ‘I couldn't say, offhand, but I expect it will be in the reports.'

He expected it would be in the reports! If the rest of the Mid Lancs Constabulary was as useless as the man who was supposed to be running the whole show, then they were in deep shit, Woodend thought.

He stood up, and held out his hand. ‘Thank you for sparing us so much of your valuable time, sir. You've been a great help,' he said, hoping that he'd managed to squeeze at least a semblance of sincerity into the words.

FOUR

I
f there'd been just his mam and dad at home, when Woodend snatched half an hour to go pay a visit, the three of them would have sat around the kitchen table and drunk tea out of thick blue-and-white striped mugs. But, as chance would have it, his parents already had visitors – in the shape of an ageing couple who clearly still expected him to address them as ‘Auntie' May and ‘Uncle' George, even though they were not relations – and so the whole event had to be transferred to the front parlour, which was normally only used for christenings, weddings, funerals and birthday parties.

It soon became obvious to Woodend that it wasn't chance
at all
that these non-relatives were there, but rather as a result of their hearing, through the grapevine, that Mr and Mrs Woodend's only child was back in town, and in charge of the most sensational murder case to hit Whitebridge in living memory. ‘Auntie' May, especially, was eager to hear all the gory details, and seemed most put out when Woodend explained that, at the moment, he knew little more than they would have read in the papers.

Mam let the pretend aunt and uncle continue their fruitless interrogation for the best part of fifteen minutes, then stood up and said, ‘Well, we mustn't detain you any longer, May an' George. I expect there's lots of things you'll need to have got done before the day's over.'

‘Well . . .' ‘Auntie' May began to protest disappointedly.

‘I'll show you to the door,' Mam said firmly. ‘Drop around any time. You're always welcome.'

As Woodend watched his mother relentlessly shepherding her visitors to the front door, he found it hard to restrain a chuckle. This was vintage Mam, he thought – as polite as could be, but as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar.

While Mam shooed the visitors out into the street, Woodend took the opportunity to glance around the parlour.

Had it always seemed so pokey? he wondered.

Had there always been this danger that, even by making the slightest move, you ran the risk of knocking over one of the occasional tables on which Mam displayed her precious knick-knacks?

Mam closed the front door firmly behind the visitors.

‘That May!' she said, in a voice which was half-disapproval and half-amusement. ‘She's got a bigger appetite for tragedy than I have for pickled gherkins. Still,' she continued, ‘I don't suppose I can blame her – especially when she used to hold the man in charge of the case on her lap.' She smiled. ‘Imagine it, Charlie, you a
chief inspector.'

‘Aye, just imagine it,' Woodend agreed, balancing the delicate china tea cup – which he knew had been brought out of the display cabinet especially for the occasion – on one of his sturdy knees.

‘Where's this sergeant of yours?' his father asked.

‘He's settlin' into the hotel at the moment,' Woodend said, more gruffly than he'd intended.

‘An' what hotel might that be?' his mother wondered.

‘The Royal Victoria.'

‘The Royal Victoria! Will you be stayin' there, an' all?'

Well, of course he would be! What did they think? That his sergeant would have a room in the best hotel in town, while he made do with a modest bed and breakfast?

Yes, that probably was what they
would
think, he decided, because while they accepted the fact that he
was
a chief inspector, they still hadn't quite got used to the idea.

And, to tell the truth, neither had he.

‘We're so glad you're here, Charlie,' his mother said.

‘I'm pleased to see you, an' all,' Woodend replied.

‘That's not what I meant,' his mother told him.

And suddenly the rosy glow of approval in which he'd been basking – albeit uncomfortably – was gone, and in its place was the practical level-headedness of a mam who, despite the trauma of her hysterectomy, had held the family together through the lean times in the thirties.

‘So what
did
you mean?' he asked.

‘In some ways, this is a big town, Charlie,' his mother said. ‘There's a dozen cinemas and three dance halls now, you know.'

‘No, I didn't know that,' Woodend admitted, realizing just how
little
he actually knew of Whitebridge any more.

‘But in other ways, it's little more than a village,' his mother continued.

He nodded, well aware that what she was saying was true.

‘Lilly Dawson's death is tearin' the place apart,' his mother continued. ‘It's not just that she died so young – though that's bad enough – it's
how
she died.'

‘I know, Mam,' Woodend said.

‘An' she looked such a sweet little thing, didn't she? So completely trustin' and innocent?'

‘I don't think that I've actually seen any pictures of her yet,' Woodend confessed.

His mother looked shocked. ‘Not seen any pictures of her? But you're the one who's in charge of the case.'

Woodend sighed. He wanted to explain to his mother that however sweet Lilly had been, it had nothing to do with the case – that his task was simply to track down her murderer. He wanted to make her see that it was a job like any other job, and that becoming personally involved with the victim – as he
had
become in the Pearl Jones case – was a mistake, and one he was unwilling to repeat. But he knew he would be wasting his time, because he would never be able to make her understand.

‘I thought she was just bein' naive, you see,' he would explain to Monika Paniatowski, many years later, ‘but what she was actually doin' was pointin' me in the direction I've been travellin' in ever since.'

Mam disappeared into the kitchen for a second, and returned with a copy of the
Whitebridge Evening Telegraph
in her hand.

‘Here's a picture of the little lass,' she said, holding out the paper in front of her son. ‘Look at it!'

The tone in her voice made him grin. It was almost, he thought, as if he were five years old again – back in a time when Mam's words carried as much force as those of any benevolent dictator who had ever lived.

The grin disappeared from his face the moment he looked at the picture. Mam was right – as she invariably was. Lilly Dawson
had
looked like a ‘sweet little thing'. There
was
a trust and innocence in her eyes. But there was something else about the picture – something which made Woodend's stomach lurch.

‘I saw it, too,' his mother said sombrely.

‘Saw what?' Woodend asked.

But he knew. He already
knew
.

‘She looks just like our Annie might look, in a few years' time,' his mother said.

Annie! His golden girl! His only child! And there would be no more – the doctors had been quite clear about that.

‘I don't see it,' he said, his eyes still on the photograph.

But what he really meant was that he
didn't want
to see it!

‘The man who killed her has to be caught, Charlie – an' caught
quickly
,' Mam said. ‘Not just to bring a little peace an' consolation to Lilly's mother – although, God knows, the poor woman must be sorely in need of it – but for the good of the whole town.'

‘I'll do everything I can,' Woodend said – aware of just how inadequate the response seemed, even to him.

‘You should go down to the market, like I have, Charlie,' the mother continued. ‘There's so much fear an' suspicion in the air that you could cut through it with a bread knife. Everybody's wonderin' if it was one of their neighbours who did them terrible things to Lilly. An' everybody's wonderin' if he'll do it
again
. So when I said earlier that I was glad you were here,
that's
what I meant.'

‘Of course, we're also pleased to see you here for yourself,' his father added, hastily.

But his mother was not to be deflected from her point.

‘You understand Whitebridge in a way an outsider never ever could, Charlie,' she said. ‘Besides, you're my lad, an' I know you like only a mother can. Once you've set your mind to somethin', you won't rest until you've seen it through to the end. That's the way you've always been – and the way you always will be.'