Lambs to the Slaughter (29 page)

‘Because he knew that Louisa was very fond of her
Uncle
Colin, so she'd associate the name with nice people, and that would make her more vulnerable to what he suggested next?' Meadows suggested.

‘Exactly,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘We'd never have come up with that idea, but Forsyth did – because that's the way his twisted tortuous mind functions. And I should have spotted that mind at work.
Why
didn't I spot it?'

‘You were so worried about your daughter that you weren't thinking straight,' Meadows said, ‘which, of course, is probably what he was banking on.'

‘And even now that I know he did it, I've no idea
why
he did it,' Paniatowski agonized. ‘Was he punishing me? And if he was punishing me, what was he punishing me
for
?'

‘I don't know,' Meadows admitted.

‘There's something else I don't understand,' Paniatowski said. ‘When Forsyth rang Sutton, at four o'clock on Monday morning, he already knew that Len Hopkins was dead. I'm right about that, aren't I?'

‘You are.'

‘So if he knew Hopkins was dead long before anyone else knew – anybody, that is, apart from the killer – we have to assume that the murder was carried out on Forsyth's instructions, don't we?'

‘I don't see that there's any other conclusion we
could
draw,' Meadows agreed.

‘But of all the people he could have chosen to have killed, why did he select Len Hopkins? Forsyth wants to prevent the strike, and Len was one of its biggest opponents within the village. From Forsyth's perspective, the old man must have seemed like a real asset. Having Len murdered would be like shooting himself in the foot and—'

Paniatowski suddenly stopped talking, and turned pale.

‘What's the matter?' Meadows asked worriedly.

‘Knowing what we know now, who do we think killed Len Hopkins?'

‘The chances are, it was the young man who visited him, claiming to be from the DES, and . . . and . . .'

‘And that was the same young man who abducted Louisa,' Paniatowski said shakily. ‘Forsyth deliberately chose to put my daughter in a car with a murderer!'

She picked up her glass, and knocked back the rest of her vodka.

‘I'll make the bastard pay for that. I don't know how I'll do it yet – but I swear I'll make him pay.'

‘You can't, boss,' Meadows said softly.

‘Can't I? Is that what you really think?'

‘Listen, there'll be no way you can get at him legally – he'll have covered his tracks too well for that to happen.'

‘Yes, he will,' Paniatowski agreed, already starting to look defeated.

‘So what are you going to do instead?' Meadows asked. ‘Are you going to kill him?'

‘Yes – if that's the only option open to me, then that's what I'll bloody well do.'

‘No, you won't. Once you've calmed down, you'll realize that if you do kill him, you'll end up in gaol – or maybe even dead yourself.'

‘I don't care. I'll take the risk.'

‘And are you prepared to risk Louisa's future, as well?' Meadows asked.

Paniatowski sighed. ‘You know I'm not.'

‘So you're stuck, aren't you? He's got all the power of the state behind him, and you've got nothing. And however much you might hate that particular idea, you'll have to learn to accept it – because you've really got no other choice.'

‘What a bloody mess,' Paniatowski said.

‘Yes, that's what it is,' Meadows agreed. ‘A bloody mess.'

The poster which Monika Paniatowski had had printed – and which Beresford had instructed two of his detective constables to paste up all over Bellingsworth – was the size of a large envelope, which meant it was small enough to paste to lamp posts, yet too large to be easily overlooked.

Two-thirds of the poster was taken up by the sketch that the police artist had produced from the description which Louisa had given him, and the text underneath it said:

The Whitebridge Police want to question this man.

If you think you might have seen him,

please ring the number below immediately.

The poster had already been up all over Bellingsworth for several hours when Becky Sanders, stepping down from the school bus, saw an example pasted to the bus shelter.

Two other school kids – a boy and a girl – had followed her down the steps, and noticing the effect the poster seemed to be having on her, went to see what all the fuss was about.

‘It's just like one of them wanted posters you see in westerns,' said the boy with some relish. ‘Wanted – dead or alive!'

‘Do you think he was the one what did in poor old Mr Hopkins?' the girl asked.

‘Bound to be,' the boy said confidently. ‘They wouldn't have bothered putting it up if he wasn't.' He tilted his head to one side. ‘He's an ugly-looking bugger, isn't he?'

‘He most certainly is not,' the girl disagreed. ‘If you want the truth, I think he's rather cute . . .'

‘Cute!' the boy scoffed.

‘. . . and if I had the choice of waking up beside him or waking up beside you, I know which one I'd choose.'

‘If you think he's better looking than me, you must be going soft in the head,' the boy said, stung. ‘I'm so good-looking, I could be in films.'

‘Yeah – horror films!' the girl said. ‘Who do
you
think is cuter, Becky – the feller on the poster or young Frankenstein here?'

They'd been totally absorbed in their own little argument, and it was only now – when they turned their full attention on to Becky, in anticipation of her supporting one or the other of them – that they noticed she was sobbing uncontrollably.

It was said that the first forty-eight hours of any murder investigation were the most crucial ones, Colin Beresford thought, as he stood on the pavement outside the church hall and looked down the street. Well, they'd been running this investigation for more than forty-eight hours, and they were no further on now than when they'd arrived in the village on Monday morning.

‘I've made a mess of this whole case, haven't I, Jack?' he asked DC Crane, who was standing by his side.

‘No, sir,' Crane replied. ‘You've made a series of perfectly logical assumptions which, as chance would have it, happened to be wrong.' He paused for a moment. ‘But if I could just make one criticism . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘Forget it. It's not my place to say.'

‘Were you about to say that ever since I started bedding women, I've been strutting around like I was the king of the jungle?' Beresford wondered.

‘I wouldn't have put it quite like that,' Crane said cautiously.

‘Yes, you would,' Beresford told him.

‘Yes, I would,' Crane agreed.

‘And is there any cure?'

‘It'll wear off in time,' Crane promised. ‘It's a stage that all fellers have to go through.'

Beresford grinned. ‘But most of them don't have go through that stage when they're already in their thirties and a detective inspector in the Mid Lancs CID?' he suggested.

Jack Crane returned the grin. ‘Look at it this way, sir, if I'd been given the choice of being a complete arsehole for a couple of months, or a virgin for the rest of my life, I'd have plumped for being a short-term arsehole any day of the week. And besides that—'

He broke off abruptly, as he caught sight of a schoolgirl running frantically – almost dementedly – down the street towards them.

‘Isn't that Becky Sanders?' asked Beresford, who had noticed her too.

‘I think it is,' Crane said.

The girl came to a halt in front of them, and for a few seconds just stood there, gasping for breath as the tears poured down her face.

‘What's the matter, Becky?' Beresford asked.

‘Why have you put up those pictures of my boyfriend all over the village?' Becky demanded. ‘Is it because you think he killed Mr Hopkins?'

‘I think you'd better come inside, and wait while we fetch your mother,' Beresford said softly.

‘He didn't do it!' Becky screamed. ‘You have to believe that! Gary didn't do it!'

The Drum and Monkey had closed its doors to its customers more than an hour earlier, but the normal rules did not apply to what had been once been Charlie Woodend's team and was now Monika Paniatowski's, and the two women were still sitting at the table as the landlord cleared up around them.

‘Do you know where Forsyth will be right at this minute?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No,' Meadows replied. ‘Do you?'

‘Oh yes,' Paniatowski said bitterly. ‘He'll be in a suite at the Royal Victoria – waiting for me.'

‘Waiting for
you
!'

‘He likes to see me. He likes to play his little mind games with me. It's almost like sex to him. It may even be
instead of
sex.'

‘Will you go?' Meadows asked.

Paniatowski shook her head. ‘Not this time. I daren't. Despite what you said, I still don't trust myself enough to get within striking distance of him.'

The phone behind the bar rang, and the landlord picked it up.

‘It's for you, Chief Inspector,' he said.

Paniatowski walked over to the bar and took the phone from him.

‘Is that you, boss?' asked the troubled voice on the other end of the line.

‘It's me,' Paniatowski confirmed. ‘Is something wrong, Colin?'

‘I need you over here in Bellingsworth,' Beresford said. ‘I need you right now.'

T
he three of them sat at a table in the church hall, Beresford and Paniatowski on one side, a thin, sobbing Becky Sanders on the other.

‘Tell me what you told Inspector Beresford earlier, sweetheart,' Paniatowski said softly.

‘I killed him,' Becky sobbed. ‘It wasn't Gary, it was me. Gary wasn't anywhere near here when it happened.'

‘You're going to have to give us a little more detail than that,' Paniatowski said.

‘I hit him with the short-handled pickaxe, while he was sitting on the lavvy,' Becky said.

‘How did you know he'd be on the lavvy?'

‘I just
knew
.'

‘I don't think that's quite true,' Paniatowski said. ‘I think the reason you knew he'd be there was because you'd put laxative in his milk.'

‘That's right, I did. I'd forgotten that,' Becky said.

‘You must have slipped the laxative in while Mr Hopkins was in Accrington, at the brass band concert,' Paniatowski suggested.

‘Yes, that's when I did it.'

‘So how did you get into the house? Did you have a key?'

‘No, the . . . the door wasn't locked.'

‘How did you get to the toilet, later that night? Did you go through the house again?'

‘No, I was waiting in the back alley. I heard him come down the yard, and open the lavvy door, and then I counted very slowly to twenty.'

‘That sounds like something you were
told
to do,' Paniatowski said.

‘It wasn't. I just did it.'

‘What happened next?

‘I had the pickaxe in one hand, and my flashlight in the other, but once I was in the yard, I put the flashlight in my mouth, so I'd have two hands free for the pick. I opened the lavvy door, and I could see him sitting there. His eyes were very big. I think that was because I was shining the light in them.'

‘It would have been.'

‘He said, “Is that you, Susan?” I wanted to say it wasn't, but I couldn't speak because of the flashlight.' Becky paused. ‘I don't know why I wanted to say that I wasn't Susan.'

‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Did he try to pull his trousers up?' Beresford asked.

‘No, he just sat there.'

‘But his trousers were round his ankles, were they?'

Becky blushed. ‘I don't know.'

‘You don't know?'

‘I didn't want to look down, in case I accidentally saw his thingy.'

‘Carry on,' Paniatowski said.

‘I . . . I swung the pickaxe at him. When it hit him, it really shook, and my wrists tingled. That was when I dropped my flashlight. I didn't mean to, it just fell out of my mouth. And when it hit the ground, it went out.'

‘We didn't find any flashlight at the scene,' Paniatowski said.

‘No, you wouldn't have. I picked it up again. It wasn't easy in the dark, but I knew I had to find it, because I'd been told that I should make sure I didn't leave anything behind.'

‘You'd been
told
?'

‘I mean, I thought that.
I thought
I shouldn't leave anything behind.'

‘Then what did you do?'

‘I went into the back alley . . .'

‘No, you didn't,' Paniatowski said firmly. ‘If you want us to believe you, Becky – if you want to convince us it was you, and not Gary, who killed Mr Hopkins – then you can't lie to us about
anything
.'

‘I ran back towards the house,' Becky said miserably. ‘I was nearly there when I realized I still had the pickaxe in my hand.'

‘So what did you do with it?'

‘I threw it against the wash house wall.'

‘Why did you decide to leave through the house, instead of going into the alley?'

‘I don't know.'

‘And how did you manage to lock the front door behind you?'

‘I don't remember.'

Paniatowski risked a sideways glance at Beresford. It was clear from the expression on his face that he believed that Becky really had killed Len Hopkins – and so did she.

‘What I still don't understand is why you killed him, Becky,' Paniatowski said. ‘He was a nice man.'