Golden Mile to Murder (7 page)

‘Bloody hell, lass, you can't go lookin' around people's houses without the proper search warrant!' Woodend exploded.

‘She invited us into the house, and invited me upstairs. I might have looked around, but I didn't touch anything. I don't think I've broken any laws, have I, sir?'

‘No,' Woodend conceded reluctantly. ‘Probably not. So what did you discover on your little only-slightly-illegal search?'

‘Like I said, I went into the main bedroom first, on the pretext of examining the curtains. It's a very feminine room – all soft furnishings and bright colours. The next door up the hallway is obviously the boy's room, with model aeroplanes hanging from the ceiling and pictures of footballers stuck up on the walls. You know the sort of thing I mean?'

‘Yes,' Woodend agreed. ‘I know the sort of thing you mean.'

‘The third bedroom's the girl's. But it's the fourth that's the interesting one. That's where I would have expected to find Mrs Davies' sewing machine if I hadn't already known better. Instead I found a single bed – made up – and a battered wardrobe. When I opened the wardrobe—'

‘I thought you said you hadn't touched anythin'.'

‘Hardly anything. When I opened the wardrobe, I discovered it contained jackets and suits. You know what this means, don't you, sir?'

‘It means that the Davieses no longer shared a bed,' Woodend said.

‘Exactly. And wasn't that worth finding out?'

‘Maybe,' Woodend admitted. His eyes narrowed. ‘Tell me, Sergeant, when you threw your arms around Mrs Davies like that, was it already in your mind to try and talk your way upstairs?'

‘No. But when I thought about it – when I saw how you'd deliberately created the opportunity for me – it seemed too good a chance to miss.'

Did she really believe he'd done it deliberately, Woodend wondered – or was she just putting the onus of the search on him? If it were the former, she was more naïve than her record would indicate. If it were the latter, she was playing just the sort of game of running rings around her boss as he remembered playing when he was an ambitious DS himself. Whichever the case, this young woman would need watching.

S
ergeant Frank Hanson sat facing the three detective constables who formed the rest of the team, and puffed listlessly on a Woodbine.

The room in which they were meeting – the basement of Blackpool Central Police Station – had for years been nothing more than a dumping ground for things it was easier to store than to sort through. Since the murder, however, the old bicycles, damaged traffic signs and cardboard boxes full of mouldy reports had all been cleared out, to be replaced by a long table, a blackboard and several gun-metal desks.

Out of chaos had been created the nerve centre of a major criminal investigation, Hanson thought cynically. It was a pity then, that the new nerve centre still smelled like a junk room.

‘Where the bloody hell did you say Mr Woodend had gone, Sarge?' asked one of the detective constables, DC Brock, a thickset young man with a bullet-shaped head.

‘To see “Judy” Davies, Badger,' Hanson replied.

‘An' while he's pissin' about doin' that, we're left sittin' here on our arses instead of bein' on the streets lookin' for the killer.'

‘It's apparently the way Mr Woodend usually works,' Hanson said mildly. ‘First he gets a feeling for the scene of the crime, and
then
he decides what direction the investigation's going to take.'

He was trying to sound reassuring – it was a necessary prerequisite for a murder team that they had confidence in the man who would be leading them – but he did not feel very reassured himself. Chief Inspector Turner had told him that he should keep a tight rein on Woodend, and already, after only an hour or so in the town, the ex-Scotland Yard man had gone off on his own bat. Of course, it was highly unlikely he'd learn anything damaging from ‘Judy' Davies. Living out by Stanley Park – a couple of miles away – she would never have heard any of the ugly rumours which had been buzzing around the cop shop. But still . . .

‘We don't need anybody from headquarters stickin' their oar in,' said another of the constables – a slightly overweight ginger-haired officer who went by the name of Eric Stone.

‘You don't think so?' Hanson asked.

‘No, I don't. We're the ones with the local knowledge, aren't we? We could handle this on our own.'

‘So who did it?' Hanson asked, as if he really was expecting an answer.

‘Who did what?'

‘Who killed “Punch” Davies?'

‘I don't know,' the ginger-haired constable admitted.

‘But you know how to find out, do you? You have a plan for conducting the investigation?'

Stone shrugged. ‘I'm only a DC, Sarge. I haven't got the experience yet. But there's men here who have – men like DCI Turner.'

Hanson stubbed out his Woodbine in a battered tin ashtray.

‘DCI Turner is a good boss to work for,' he said, ‘and though he's only been here a couple of years, he already knows Blackpool like the back of his hand. But if you want to talk about experience, how much experience do you think Mr Turner has had in leading murder inquiries?'

‘I don't know, Sarge.'

‘Well,' Hanson said patiently, ‘he won't have led one
before
he got promoted, will he? And as soon as his promotion came through, he was transferred here, so he'll only have dealt with domestics. Mr Woodend, on the other hand, must have handled a couple of dozen serious cases while he was at the Yard. Bearing all that in mind, don't you think he might be just a little bit useful?'

‘What about
her
?' the bullet-headed DC Brock asked.

There was no need to enquire who the ‘her' in question was. ‘
What
about her?' Hanson countered.

‘Why's
she
on the case? She doesn't have either the experience or the local knowledge.'

Hanson reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. ‘Have you got something against women officers, Badger?' he asked.

Brock shrugged. ‘They're all right for lookin' after missin' children and brewin' up, but they've no place in a murder investigation.'

‘She's Mr Woodend's bagman. Nothing more and nothing less,' Hanson reminded him. ‘You should know by now what a bagman's job is. She'll be running his errands while we do the real detective work around here. And I'm sure even you, Badger, can have no objection to a woman running errands.'

The other two constables chuckled, and even Brock allowed a smile to come to his lips.

‘No. I've no objection to that,' he agreed. The smile twisted, and acquired a lascivious edge. ‘I might even be able to think of a few little jobs that she can do for me.'

Someone – a woman – coughed, and the four detectives turned to see Sergeant Paniatowski standing in the doorway.

‘How long have you been there?' Hanson asked.

‘I've just arrived,' Paniatowski told him – though none of the men were sure whether she was telling the truth or not.

‘And where's Mr Woodend?' Hanson asked. ‘He'll be along in a minute, will he?'

Paniatowski shook her head. ‘He's walking back.'

‘All the way from Stanley Park?'

‘No, he came most of the way by car. It's only the last bit he's doing on foot.'

Hanson remembered his conversation with DCI Turner earlier in the day, and felt his stomach churn over. ‘Where did you drop him off?' he asked.

‘Just near the Tower.'

At the northern end of the Golden Mile, Hanson thought – right in the middle of the area on which the rumours about Punch Davies had been centred. Bloody hell fire!

It had been towards the end of the nineteenth century that Blackpool Borough Council had passed legislation to ban most traders from the beach, thus leaving more room for holidaymakers. But the traders had not wanted to lose their lucrative businesses, and the holidaymakers – while appreciating the extra lounging space – still wanted the services the traders offered. The solution had been simple. The traders had hauled their barrows and stalls off the sands, crossed the promenade, and set up shop again in the front gardens of sea-front hotels. The traders were happy their businesses continued, the buyers were happy to still be able to buy, the hotel owners were happy with the unexpected extra source of revenue – and the Golden Mile was born.

The Mile ran from the Tower to the Central Pier and was rightly considered by just about everyone to be the heart of the town. There were garishly painted amusement arcades here, full of one-armed bandits which greedily gobbled up the pennies and occasionally condescended to spit out a shilling's worth of change in return. There were bright-red ‘What the Butler Saw' machines, over which pimpled youths bent, licking their lips as they cranked the handles and their eyes devoured flickering black-and-white pictures of half-naked women. A dozen or more small shops offered cartoon postcards of huge women in bathing costumes with crabs firmly affixed to the rears, and blondes with improbable bosoms and silk-stocking legs. Photographs could be developed here, and all the equipment necessary for making sandcastles purchased. Anyone with a shilling in his pocket could go and see ‘The Sensational Severed Living Hands of Patma' or ‘Tanya, the Tattooed Girl'. Anyone with an urge to gamble could sit in for a game of bingo.

Grand, Woodend thought, as he weaved his way through the crowd, sniffing the fried onion at hamburger stalls and the tart smell of vinegar which drifted over from the whelks. Absolutely grand! Yet something was missing – something which would have enhanced his pleasure was simply not there. And then he realised what that something was. He felt incomplete working on a case without Bob Rutter by his side.

He imagined the conversation they would have had:

‘Now this is what you call a holiday resort, Bob,' he could hear himself saying. ‘Take Brighton, which all you southerners seem to think is so bloody marvellous. It's only got one buggerin' little pier, hasn't it – whereas Blackpool now, Blackpool's got
three
.'

And no doubt Rutter would have smiled in his slightly superior grammar-school-boy way and replied, ‘But it hasn't quite got the
style
of somewhere like Brighton, has it, sir?'

No, it bloody hadn't! But it had got a style all of its own, and he would have made quite sure Rutter understood that.

He couldn't imagine ever talking to Monika Paniatowski in the same light-hearted way. Perhaps that was his failure – or perhaps it was hers – but whatever the reason, he felt he had lost something valuable when he had lost Bob Rutter as his bagman.

Woodend came to a halt in front of a small, open-fronted shop which was sandwiched between two gaudy amusement arcades and had a sign over it announcing that it sold ‘The World Famous Blackpool Rock'.

The chief inspector ran his eyes over shelf upon shelf of lurid pink tubes wrapped in cellophane, and felt the sticky-sweet taste of childhood gently oozing into his mouth.

‘Take some sticks home for the kids?' suggested the shopkeeper, a middle-aged man with a slight cast in his left eye.

In point of fact, I was almost on the point of buyin' one or two sticks for myself, Woodend thought.

But aloud, he said, ‘A couple of years ago I might have, but I'm sure my daughter thinks she's far too grown-up for that kind of thing now.'

The man with the squint shrugged his shoulders fatalistically. ‘You're not very brown,' he commented. ‘Just startin' your holiday, are you?'

He'd never have been asked the question if it had been the promenade at Brighton he'd been wandering along, Woodend thought. That was the difference between the North and the South – southerners minded their own business, but in the North they regarded
everybody's
business as their own.

‘I'm not on holiday at all, as it happens,' he said. ‘I'm workin'.'

A southerner, even if it he
had
raised the first question, would have let the matter rest there, but the rock seller said, ‘Oh aye, an' what kind of business are you in?'

‘I'm a bobby,' Woodend told him. ‘From Whitebridge.'

‘The big city, hey? Well, there can only be one reason you're down here, can't there?'

‘Can there? An' what might that be?'

‘You're here to find out who killed poor Mr Davies, aren't you?'

Poor
Mr Davies, Woodend repeated to himself. ‘Did you know Inspector Davies at all?' he asked.

‘Not what you might call well – but well enough. I had a break-in a couple of years back – I'd been stupid enough to leave some cash in the shop overnight – an' it was Inspector Davies, Sergeant Davies as he was then, who investigated it.'

‘What was your impression of him?'

‘Very favourable. He was my kind of bobby.'

‘An' what kind of bobby is that?'

‘He seemed serious about his job. Like he really cared about catchin' the feller who'd robbed me. Like he wouldn't sleep at night if he didn't get a result. You don't mind payin' your taxes when you know the money's goin' to make up the wages of people like Mr Davies.'

‘An' did he actually catch the robber?'

‘He did. Got him for a string of other burglaries along the front as well. Of course, the bugger denied it – well, they always do, don't they? – but Mr Davies assured me he was the man, right enough.' He sighed. ‘It's a pity they have to promote men like him, isn't it?'

‘Why do you say that?' Woodend wondered.

‘Well, they lose touch with the ordinary people, don't they? After the robbery, Sergeant Davies often used to drop round to check that everythin' was all right, an' have a bit of a chat. But that stopped once he got made up. I don't want to suggest he got snobbish or anythin',' the shopkeeper added hastily, ‘I just think he was so busy with his new responsibilities that he didn't have the time to stop an' talk any more.'