Lambs to the Slaughter (18 page)

Heads were nodding, and Thomas waited until they'd stopped before he carried on.

‘The capitalists – and their lackeys who work in Northern Television – are claiming that Len was killed because he opposed the strike. They don't have any proof to back that up – none at all – but they're still using it as an opportunity to paint us miners as black-hearted villains.'

‘Bastards!' someone called out from the right side of the room.

‘Typical bosses' tricks,' shouted a voice from the left.

‘But what if, for once, they've got it right?' Thomas asked. ‘What if Len Hopkins
was
killed because he opposed the strike?'

‘Nobody in this village would have killed Len Hopkins,' said a voice from the left.

‘All right,' Thomas agreed. ‘You know the place better than I do, so I'll take your word for that. But what if he was killed by some other miner, from Yorkshire say – or even from Kent?'

An uneasy quiet had settled over the room.

‘I say this,' Thomas continued. ‘If he was killed by a miner,
then good for that miner
– because he wasn't just killing for himself, he was killing for all of you.'

Several miners – from both the left and the right sides of the room – had risen to their feet and were shouting at Thomas to shut up. Some were even waving their fists.

‘Oh, you don't like to hear the truth, do you?' Thomas taunted, all signs of camaraderie now quite absent from his voice. ‘You don't mind taking the benefits, but you don't want to dirty your own hands in winning them.'

At least half the miners were on their feet now, and some looked ready to silence Thomas by any means necessary.

The four constables moved rapidly to the table, and formed a protective phalanx round the man from Kent.

‘Len Hopkins lived as a traitor and he died as a traitor,' Thomas bawled, to make himself heard above the noise. ‘And if another traitor has to die – if another
hundred
traitors have to die – we should give our support to the men who killed them, because this is a war, and they are our front-line troops.'

The two men from Special Branch suddenly appeared next to Thomas, forced his hands behind his back, cuffed him, and frogmarched him towards the exit. The speed of the whole operation took all the miners by surprise, and they were still wondering quite what had happened when the officers and their prisoner reached the door and disappeared.

Beresford rushed after them, but even so, by the time he was outside the club the two officers were already bundling Thomas into the back of their car.

The hatchet-faced man heard his approach, and turned to face him.

‘Keep back, sir,' he said. ‘This man is being arrested for a breach of the peace, and it has nothing to do with you.'

‘Police!' Beresford said, reaching into his pocket and producing his warrant card. ‘We met earlier.'

‘Oh, that's right, we did,' Hatchet-face agreed. ‘You were with that cute little blonde – who you're probably slipping a length to on the quiet – but it's
still
nothing to do with you.'

‘I'm investigating a murder, and this man may be germane to my enquiries,' Beresford insisted.

‘Ed had nothing to do with your murder, son,' Hatchet-face said. ‘He's been stirring up trouble in the Kent coalfield for years, which means we've been keeping an eye on him for years – and we know exactly where he was at the time Len Hopkins was killed.'

‘And where exactly was he?'

Hatchet-face smiled. It wasn't pleasant.

‘I'm not allowed to tell you that – but he was at least a hundred and fifty miles away from this shithole,' he said.

Beresford looked down at the prisoner, who was still handcuffed, and was now sitting in the back of the car.

Thomas didn't look particularly shaken by what he had just gone through, but then, Beresford supposed, an agitator like him must regard being arrested as no more than an occupational hazard.

‘Why don't you get back to your nice little murder, and leave the important work – protecting this country – to us?' Hatchet-face suggested.

And then he climbed into the car, and his partner, who was already behind the wheel, pulled away.

‘When I went back into the concert room, it was like attending a completely different meeting,' Beresford told the rest of the team, at their ‘specially reserved' table in the Green Dragon. ‘You could have bottled the hostility in the air – and it wasn't just hostility towards Ed Thomas, it was hostility towards
each other
.'

‘Are you saying that he managed to convince some of the miners that Len Hopkins
was
killed because he was against the strike?' Paniatowski asked.

Beresford shook his head. ‘It was more subtle than that. It was as if . . . I don't know quite how to describe it.' He took a sip of his pint. ‘It was as if they were already thinking, deep down, that he'd been killed because of the strike, but they were trying to keep the thought buried. Then Thomas made that speech of his, and it all came to the surface.' He had another slug of beer. ‘Anyway, nobody seemed to want to say much after that – or maybe they
did
want to say something, but thought they shouldn't – and the meeting more or less broke up.'

‘So, in your opinion, Colin, there are now quite a number of men in this village who are willing to accept that Len Hopkins was killed by a pro-strike miner?' Paniatowski said.

‘That's right,' Beresford agreed. ‘And it's also my opinion that a lot of them might be starting to think not just that it was any pro-strike miner, but that that miner is Tommy Sanders.'

Paniatowski nodded. ‘And they may well be right,' she said.

Beresford almost choked on his beer. ‘So you've come round to my way of thinking, have you?'

‘I have,' Paniatowski admitted. ‘I can't think of any reason why Tommy Sanders would have put his own granddaughter through what he has put her through if he wasn't the murderer.'

Beresford seemed to swell in size.

‘So Tommy Sanders is our prime suspect – like I always said that he should be?' he asked.

‘So Tommy Sanders is our prime suspect,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Right,' Beresford said firmly, ‘then the first thing we need to do is break his alibi.'

An image of Becky Sanders – all thin arms and big frightened eyes – came into Paniatowski's mind.

‘If that's absolutely necessary, then that's what we'll do,' she said. ‘But I'd rather get at him some other way, if that's at all possible.'

‘Oh, come on, boss, be sensible!' Beresford protested. ‘Breaking the alibi is the obvious way to—'

Paniatowski raised a hand to silence him. ‘It's not up for negotiation,' she said, and there was a firmness in her voice which even Colin Beresford – in his moment of triumph – could not ignore. ‘Anyway, breaking the alibi will only prove that Becky's lying – and that's not enough to arrest Tommy on.'

‘It would prove that Sanders was lying, as well,' said Beresford, who had not yet
quite
given up.

‘We'll go about it another way,' Paniatowski said briskly. ‘I want Len Hopkins' house thoroughly examined again, in case we've missed anything the first time that might suggest Sanders was there last night. And I want another door-to-door, looking for possible witnesses, and this time I want special attention paid to people whose bedrooms overlook the back alley which could have been the route from Tommy's house to Len's.'

‘Got it,' Beresford said, with as much good grace as he could muster.

‘Everything else I've already laid out will go ahead as planned, but with a slightly different focus,' Paniatowski continued. ‘I still want you, Jack, to talk to Len's minister, but now I'd be particularly interested to learn if Len had told him anything about Tommy Sanders.'

‘Are you saying you think there might be a personal motive behind the murder,
as well as
a political one?' Beresford asked, as if he suspected Paniatowski of trying to steal his thunder.

‘I'm saying that if you've convinced yourself you have to kill somebody for the good of the mining community as a whole, it certainly wouldn't be a drawback if you already hated his guts,' Paniatowski replied.

‘Good thinking, boss,' Crane said, and tried to ignore the black look that Beresford shot at him.

The phone rang behind the bar. The landlord answered it, then called out, ‘Phone call for
Detective Chief Inspector
Paniatowski!' in a voice loud enough for all the customers to hear.

‘Must be something wrong with my beeper,' Paniatowski said.

Crane grinned. ‘Maybe the landlord's found some way to sabotage it. You're a real feather in his cap, you know.'

‘You're not wrong,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘If I had a heart attack and died while I was in this pub, I swear he'd want me stuffed and mounted.'

She stood up, and walked across to the bar.

‘You should take what you've just witnessed as an object lesson, young Jack,' Beresford said.

‘How do you mean, sir?'

‘When you're investigating a murder, you shouldn't overlook the obvious suspect just because he
is
obvious – nine times out of ten, he'll be the man you're looking for.'

I used to like you, Colin, Crane thought. I
really
used to like you. But I don't think I like you much any more.

‘If you're right about that, sir – and I'm sure you are, given that you seem to be right about most things – then we're a bit of an irrelevance, aren't we?' he said aloud.

‘What do you mean by that?' Beresford asked.

‘Well, if solving murders is as simple as you seem to think it is, we might as well leave it in the hands of country constables like PC Mellors.'

‘Are you trying to be funny?' Beresford demanded

‘No, sir, he's not trying to be funny – he's trying to make a point,' Meadows said.

‘And what point might that be?'

‘That you've suddenly become a complete bloody prick.'

Beresford reddened. ‘I think you've forgotten who you're talking to, Detective Sergeant Meadows,' he said.

‘And when you're talking to the boss,
you
seem to have forgotten who
you're
talking to, Detective Inspector Beresford,' Meadows countered.

‘I don't have to tolerate this insolence from you,' Beresford said angrily.

‘Oh, I see, you can dish it out, but you can't take it,' Meadows taunted. ‘Well, if you don't like it, why don't you file a complaint?'

‘Shut up, the pair of you,' Crane hissed. ‘The boss is coming back, and she looks a bit upset.'

Paniatowski looked more than a
bit
upset. Her face was as pale as death, and her whole body was shaking.

‘What's happened, Monika?' Beresford asked, turning pale himself.

‘That . . . that was Lily Perkins on the phone,' Paniatowski said. ‘Something's . . . something's happened to Louisa, and I have to go home straight away. But I . . . but I don't know what I've done with my car keys.'

Beresford sprang to his feet and hugged her to him. ‘Don't worry about it,' he said softly. ‘I'll find your car keys for you. But you can't drive yourself home in this state.'

‘But I have to . . . I have to . . .'

‘I'll leave my car here, and drive you home in yours,' Beresford said. ‘Now that would be better, wouldn't it?'

‘Yes,' Paniatowski replied, in a tiny, tiny voice.

T
here had been no snow, despite the threatening grey clouds the day before, but a heavy frost had formed during the night, and the hills which surrounded Bellingsworth glimmered and twinkled in the weak early sunlight.

In the village itself, the air was clear and sharp that Tuesday morning, and as DC Jack Crane stood on the steps of the church hall, watching the patrol car driven by Inspector Beresford pull up opposite, he clutched his cup of steaming coffee tightly in an effort to keep his hands warm.

Beresford climbed out of the car, walked across to his own vehicle, which had been parked in the village overnight, and ran a finger through the thick frost on the bonnet.

‘If I can get this started again without help, it'll be a bloody miracle,' he said grumpily.

‘How's Louisa?' Crane asked.

‘I don't know any more than I did when I rang you at home last night,' Beresford told him.

‘So you haven't called the boss this morning?' Crane asked, surprised.

‘No,' Beresford replied. ‘And before you accuse me of being completely insensitive to anyone's problems but my own, I should perhaps inform you that I went one better than just calling her on the phone, I drove round to the house!'

‘But you didn't talk to the boss?'

‘No, I didn't. It was Lily Perkins who answered the door, and she was in such a state herself that she hardly made any sense at all. The one thing I did manage to gather from her was that Monika was upstairs with Louisa, and didn't want to be disturbed.'

‘So I take it the boss won't be coming to the village today,' Crane said.

‘The boss won't be coming to the village
at all
,' Beresford replied. ‘She's asked the chief constable to grant her some compassionate leave.'

‘Then who'll be taking over from her?' Crane asked, running through his mind the list of available DCIs, and quickly deciding that none of them was immediately appealing.

‘
I'll
be taking over from her,' Beresford said.

‘You!' Crane exclaimed, before he could stop himself.

‘Me,' Beresford replied. ‘The chief constable seemed to think I was perfectly capable of leading the investigation, but, of course, if
you
have any doubts about me, Detective Constable Crane, I'm sure he'll be more than willing to reconsider his decision.'