Golden Mile to Murder (12 page)

‘Bastard!' Woodend said.

‘Yes, you don't have to be here long before you start hearing rumours about Mr Ainsworth's parentage,' Rutter agreed.

Woodend deposited his crumpled – but still burning – cigarette in the souvenir ashtray next to the phone. If he'd been in Whitebridge at that moment, he'd have marched straight into Ainsworth's office and pointed out forcibly how vital Bob Rutter had become to his work. But he wasn't in Whitebridge when the blow fell – which had probably all been part of the Detective Chief Superintendent's machiavellian calculation.

‘We'll get it clear just who you report to as soon as I've got this case wrapped up,' he promised. ‘In the meantime, stay in touch.'

‘I'll do that,' Rutter promised.

Not that it seemed likely to him that there would be much to stay in touch about.

When Monika Paniatowski arrived at the Incident Room, Sergeant Hanson and the three detective constables were already seated around the central Formica table. And they looked as if they had been there for a while – as if they had deliberately arrived early for the express purpose of having a private discussion before the outsiders from Whitebridge arrived.

The three constables merely nodded in her general direction, but Sergeant Hanson stood up and walked over to her.

‘Did you sleep well?' he asked.

Monika felt her defensive shield slide into place, as it always did when she was with male officers. He'd asked her if she'd slept well, but had he really meant, had she slept
alone
? It wouldn't be the first time a man had used that gambit on her – not by a long bloody chalk.

‘Sorry, I didn't mean to stump you with that question,' Hanson said, smiling. ‘Should I have started with something easier?'

Monika felt herself returning his smile. ‘I slept very well,' she said.

‘And now I'll bet you're just bursting to get down to work. I've taken the liberty of assigning desks already, but if you're not completely happy with the arrangement—'

‘I'm sure whatever you've decided will be fine.'

Hanson almost looked relieved. ‘In that case, that'll be your desk over there – right next to Mr Woodend's. You'll find all the usual forms and requisition orders in the drawer. If there's anything else you want, you've only to ask me for it.'

‘Thank you.'

‘Do you fancy a cup of tea before you get started?' Hanson asked.

He was being very nice, Monika thought – but male officers had been nice to her before, and there was usually a price they expected to be paid.

We've filled in all the forms for you, Monika. The least you can do is show us a bit of leg.

I'll swap shifts with you, Monika, as long as you give me a quick kiss and cuddle in return.

‘Oh dear, have I asked another difficult question?' Hanson asked, his smile back in place.

‘I'd love a cup,' Monika said, looking round for the tea urn.

‘Haven't got the catering side of things organised down here yet,' Hanson said, following her glance, ‘so I'll have to pop up to the canteen for a cup.'

‘If it's too much trouble –'

‘No trouble at all. I'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail.'

Hanson disappeared up the stairs, and Monika wondered what she should do next. She could stay standing where she was until he returned, but that would make her look like a useless pillock. She could go and sit at the table with the three men who had barely acknowledged her presence. Or she could go over to her desk. She chose the desk.

The typewriter which rested on the desk was an Underwood – old, but serviceable enough. The pencils had all been sharpened to a fine point and there was a new sheet of blotting paper. She'd had no chance to form an opinion of Hanson as a detective yet, but he certainly knew how to organise an office – and that skill was rarer than most people seemed to appreciate.

As she leant over the typewriter and experimentally tapped one of the keys, she got a sudden sensation of being watched – studied, almost – by at least one of the men sitting at the table. It was not a new experience, yet somehow this time it was different. The inspection she was undergoing was not lascivious. If anything it was almost clinical – as if she were a laboratory rat being observed as she made her way through the maze.

She brushed the feeling aside, and reached for her desk drawer, intending to find out which kinds of forms Sergeant Hanson considered necessary for officers conducting a murder inquiry. As the drawer slid open – and she saw what was inside – she had to force herself to hold back a gasp.

All the forms were there, just as Hanson had promised her they would be, but in addition, resting on top of them, there was a rubber condom – a
used
rubber condom.

Behind her, she heard a loud snigger. She turned, slowly, towards the table. All three of the detective constables had their heads bent and seemed intent on their paperwork.

Paniatowski picked up the condom carefully between her thumb and forefinger and walked over to the table. Once there, she dropped it on a spot equidistant between the DCs. It fell on the table with a dull squelch. The three men first looked up – and then down.

‘I don't know which of you has been having it off with my drawer,' Paniatowski said, ‘but whoever it is, somebody should explain to him that he's been wasting his money on condoms, because it's almost impossible for him to get a desk pregnant – especially if his tackle is so small that he can't fill a rubber johnny out better than this.'

The young Constable Eliot blushed, the ginger-haired Constable Stone giggled. Only Constable Brock, it seemed, did not find her remark either embarrassing or funny – and that told her all she wanted to know.

‘Get rid of it, Brock,' she said.

‘Me?' Brock demanded, outraged.

‘You!' Paniatowski repeated. ‘That is, unless, you'd rather it was still there when Mr Woodend arrives.'

Without waiting for a response, she turned and marched out of the room. As she mounted the stairs, she noted that her heart was galloping.

You're being stupid! she told herself. This isn't the worst thing you've ever had to put up with.

No, it wasn't. It was nothing more than the latest in a long string of indignities which had begun the moment she'd joined the Whitebridge force as a uniformed constable. But every time something like this happened, it got a little bit harder to cope with – every time, the light at the end of the tunnel seemed just that bit further away.

Rank hadn't insulated her from it – things were as bad now as when she'd been a rookie constable – and she had a nightmare vision of herself as a fifty-five-year-old Chief Superintendent, still having to put up with the crap. Of course, there was an obvious solution to the problem. She could resign from the force and take a job in something safe and mundane – like local government. But she didn't want to, dammit! She had earned her position as detective sergeant by guts and hard graft – and she was not about to relinquish it now without a fight.

By the time Monika Paniatowski had thoroughly scrubbed her hands in the ladies' toilet and returned to the Incident Room, Hanson was back with her tea, and Woodend was firmly ensconced in a chair at the head of the Formica table.

‘Let's get down to business, shall we?' the man in the hairy sports coat suggested. ‘I sent you lads out cloggin' it along the Golden Mile last night. Was it worth it?'

The three constables immediately looked to Hanson for guidance.

The sergeant gave a slight cough. ‘Yes, sir. Apparently you were right,' he admitted.

‘Oh aye? Right about what?'

‘Several of the people we talked to admitted seeing quite a lot of Inspector Davies over the last two or three weeks.'

‘An' not before?'

‘Not since he was made up to inspector, which must have been three or four years ago now.'

Which pretty much confirmed what the rock seller had told him, Woodend thought.

‘An' where did Mr Davies stop durin' these walks up the Mile?' he asked.

Hanson shrugged. ‘There you've got us, sir. We've found plenty of witnesses who saw him going past, but none who actually saw him stopping anywhere.'

‘Not even at the Gay Paree Theatre?'

‘I beg your pardon, sir?'

‘The manager of the Gay Paree – a self-important ham who goes by the name of Gutteridge – knows your Mr Davies.'

‘Are you sure of that, sir?'

‘I can't prove it, but I'm sure enough. Anyway, the interestin' question is – where did their paths first cross? It's highly unlikely they met on the golf links or at their local rotary club – I know some of these places can be quite liberal, but even they must draw the line at admittin' filth merchants. An' Mr Gutteridge doesn't strike me as the kind of feller who'd be interested in model aeroplanes, like Mr Davies was.'

‘Perhaps Punch . . . Mr Davies was a . . .' – Hanson was searching for the right word – ‘. . . a patron of the theatre, sir.'

‘If he'd been a “patron”, as you so delicately put it, he'd just have sunk into the darkness like everybody else, and Gutteridge wouldn't have known him from Adam,' Woodend said. ‘There has to be more to it than that.' He paused for a second. ‘I was readin' somewhere about a town in America called Las Vegas,' he continued. ‘Apparently it's in the arse-end of nowhere – slap-bang in the middle of the desert, to be precise.'

‘Really, sir?' Hanson asked politely, though it was obvious he had no idea where this particular line of thought was leading.

‘Aye,' Woodend said. ‘It seems that the reason it exists at all is that these gangsters in California had a lot of money they didn't know what to do with – so they decided to invest it in creatin' a town dedicated to gamblin'.'

‘You're wondering if the same thing could have happened here and there's British gangsters' money behind the Golden Mile?' Hanson asked.

‘Well, it's a thought, isn't it?'

Hanson shook his head doubtfully. ‘I'll look into it, sir, but don't expect me to come up with too much. As far as I know, there's two kinds of businesses on the Mile – the big ones, which are owned by legitimate entertainment companies like Rank and Mecca, and the small ones, which sell hot dogs, postcards and rock, and are pretty much one-man operations. I can't see scope for organised crime in either of them.'

‘I think I agree with you there,' Woodend said. ‘But the fact remains that
somethin'
was drawin' Mr Davies – who was an experienced an' dedicated police officer – to the Golden Mile – an' so far we've bugger all idea what it was.' He lit up a Capstan Full Strength and inhaled deeply. ‘Get out on the streets again, lads. An' really put your backs into the job, because by the end of the day I want to know what that mysterious
somethin'
is.'

The four local men rose to their feet. Paniatowski was about to do the same when she noticed Woodend gesturing to stay where she was.

‘So, tell me, Sergeant, what little expeditions have you got planned for today?' the chief inspector when the local men had gone.

‘I've got a meeting with the sergeant in charge of the stolen car ring inquiry in an hour, sir,' Paniatowski said. ‘And I've arranged to meet the team who were working with Mr Davies on the hit-and-run just before lunch. Once I've had a talk with both of them, I should have a clearer idea of where to go next.'

Half the sergeants he'd worked with in the past would have given a much longer outline of what they intended to do, Woodend thought – and have been watching him intently for signs of approval or disapproval as they spoke. He liked the fact that Paniatowski did not do that. On the other hand, after seeing the way she'd conned Mrs Davies the previous day, he was going to have to look out for her taking short cuts.

‘I expected to see you at breakfast, Sergeant,' he said. ‘You never turned up.'

‘I don't eat much breakfast, sir,' Paniatowski lied.

‘Maybe you don't,' Woodend replied. ‘But I like to see the people I'm workin' closely with first thing in the mornin'. So as from tomorrow, I'll want to see you – bright-eyed an' bushy-tailed – sittin' across from me at breakfast table. Understood?'

‘Understood, sir,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘I
used to get frustrated about only being a sergeant – but not any more,' George Collins said, after glancing briefly out of the café window to check that the sea was still there. ‘Now I'm quite happy to serve out my last few years with three stripes on my arm.'

‘What happened to make you change your attitude?' Monika Paniatowski asked.

‘Oh, nothing dramatic,' the white-haired sergeant answered. ‘I think I just grew out of being ambitious. I began to see that I'd get more satisfaction out of doing the job I had well than I would by constantly hankering after promotion. You'll probably get to feel that way yourself, in time.'

Like hell, I will! Monika thought. I'll never be happy as long as there's even
one
more step to climb.

‘Tell me what Mr Davies was like as a boss,' she said.

‘All in all, not bad. If you needed the overtime, he found some reason for you to stay on the job for a couple of hours more, and if you wanted to nick off early on the odd occasion, he'd generally turn a blind eye.'

He was probably very kind to stray dogs and little children, too, Paniatowski thought – but that's not really what I'm interested in.

‘How would you rate him as a detective?' she asked.

‘Pretty solid,' Collins said, after some thought. ‘Very reliable. I'm not saying there aren't smarter detectives in the Blackpool CID, but none of them have his determination. He was like a terrier – once he'd got his jaw clamped around something, he wouldn't let go.'