Sins of the Fathers (10 page)

‘So how
did
Bradley Pine become a partner?'

‘Bought his way in, with the money he'd made from that invention of his, didn't he? He always was a clever chap.'

‘Yes, I know that,' Beresford said. ‘What I don't understand is why Alec Hawtrey would
want
to sell part of his family business.'

‘He didn't want to. He needed the money.'

‘Why was that?'

‘Ah, thereby hangs a tale,' Harry Ramsbotham. ‘An' not just a tale – but a lesson to us all.'

‘Go on,' Beresford said, encouragingly.

‘You'd have thought Mr Alec had the perfect life. He was happily married – at least, as far as anybody knew – an' he had two lovely children, one son an' one daughter. Then one of the lasses in the typin' pool caught his eye, an' he lost all reason.'

‘That can happen,' Beresford said sagely.

Harry Ramsbotham laughed. ‘How would you know?' he asked. ‘You're nowt but a lad.'

Beresford blushed. ‘I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—'

‘No, I'm sorry,' the old man said kindly. ‘You can't help bein' young, an' I shouldn't take the mickey out of you for it. Now where was I?'

‘He lost all reason.'

‘He did. He was a man in his thirties, an' she was a slip of a girl who hadn't even reached her majority, but it made no difference to him. He started knockin' around openly with her, as if he didn't care who saw them. Well, it was only a matter of time before his wife found out, an' once she did, she started divorce proceedin's on the ground of adultery. An' this was fifteen or sixteen years ago, mind, when it was a much more serious matter than it is now.'

‘Was it really
so
different then?' Beresford asked.

‘Bloody right it was different. There wasn't all that much of this here promiscuity around in them days – which is not to say that everybody back then behaved like little angels.'

‘No?'

‘Definitely not! A lot of fellers
did
have their bit of fluff on side, an' most of the people who knew about it chose to look the other way. But if you got caught out, that was another matter entirely. If you got caught out, you were in deep trouble an' nobody decent wanted anythin' to do with you.'

‘So Alec Hawtrey's sin was letting himself get caught.'

‘Exactly. Couldn't have put it better myself. An' when the divorce case got to court, the judge told Mr Alec that as a leadin' light in the community, he should have been settin' a much better example for the rest of us to follow. So it didn't really come as a surprise to anybody when, in announcin' the settlement, he gave Mrs Hawtrey half the factory. It was his way of punishin' Mr Alec for behavin' so disgracefully, you see.'

‘So am I to assume that Mrs Hawtrey still owns half the factory?'

‘You can assume what you like, lad, but you'd be wrong on both counts.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘First of all, she wasn't Mrs Hawtrey any more. She'd got divorced an' gone back to her maiden name.'

‘Yes, but—'

‘An' secondly, she didn't want anythin' more to do with the factory – or even with the town. She accepted on a big wodge of cash in return for her shares, an' she moved. But in order to raise that big wodge of cash, Mr Alec had had to saddle himself with a huge debt, you see.'

‘Yes, he must have done.'

‘Well, despite that, the company did manage to struggle on a few more years, but in the end the debt got so cripplin' that he had no choice but to take on a partner who could put some more money into the business. An' the partner he chose was Bradley Pine.'

‘What happened to the young girl from the typing pool, the one who Mr Hawtrey had been having an affair with?' Beresford asked.

The old man grinned. ‘What are you expectin' me to say, lad?' he asked. ‘That she couldn't live with the shame of bein' a home-wrecker, so she drowned herself in the river?'

‘Well, no,' replied Beresford.

And it was quite true that he hadn't been expecting it. In fact, he couldn't really conceive of a time in which women
would
have acted like that.

‘She didn't drown herself,' the old man said. ‘She married him. She became the second Mrs Hawtrey. And now she's his widow.'

There was another roar from the cinder pitch as the young apprentice scored again.

‘He could have a great future, that lad,' Harry Ramsbotham told Beresford. ‘But then you could say that of most of us – until we put a foot wrong.'

Elizabeth Driver strode into the most expensive hairdresser's salon Whitebridge could offer with the air of someone who knows quite well that she's slumming it, but really has no choice in the matter.

‘I want you to dye my hair,' she told the young assistant, who was already unnerved by her imperious manner. ‘I want it blonde.'

‘Any particular shade?'

‘Well, of course I want a particular shade!' Elizabeth Driver snapped. ‘Get me the colour card, and I'll show you.'

The assistant presented her with the card, and Driver immediately pointed to a colour. ‘That's the one.'

‘But that seems to be your natural colour anyway,' the assistant said, parting her hair and examining her roots.

‘Oh really? And I never even realized it,' Elizabeth Driver said with heavy sarcasm.

‘The thing is, Madam, if you let the dye grow out, you'll get your own colour back naturally,' the assistant explained.

‘That's something else I hadn't realized,' Driver said. ‘Do you want my business or not?'

‘Yes, but—'

‘But what?'

‘Before I can dye your hair, I'll have to bleach it.'

‘Naturally.'

‘And that could damage your hair.'

‘I'll risk it,' Driver said.

‘But if you'll just let nature take its course—'

‘That would be fine if I'd got the time – but I haven't!' Elizabeth Driver snapped.

‘Could I … could I ask what all the hurry is, Madam?' the assistant asked bravely.

Elizabeth Driver sighed. ‘I'm doing it for the same reason that any woman changes her appearance in a hurry,' she said. ‘And even a dim mind like yours should be able to guess what that is.'

‘You want to impress a man,' the assistant said.

‘That's right,' Elizabeth Driver agreed. ‘I'm doing it because I want to impress a man.'

W
oodend and Paniatowski arrived at the door of the Drum and Monkey at exactly the same time. They hadn't arranged for that to happen, but neither was it a surprise to either of them that it had.

This was how they meshed when they were working on a murder case together. Each of them anticipated the other's actions. Each had at least a glimmering of what the other was thinking. It was as if they developed some special kind of telepathy which would continue to transmit for the whole course of the investigation, and whilst they were not quite sure how it worked – or even
why
it worked – they were always extremely grateful when it did.

‘The whole problem with this case, as far as I can see, is that I've not been able to get a proper handle on it yet,' the chief inspector told his sergeant as they sat down at their table. ‘An' to be fair to myself, I don't think that's entirely my fault.'

‘Then whose fault is it?'

‘Bradley Pine has to take some of the blame. He seems to have been a bit of a secretive bugger even
before
he turned politician.'

‘In what way?'

‘In all sorts of ways. For example, the secretary of the golf club, who's a sharp feller called Carey, is convinced that Pine's been carryin' on an affair for years, an' yet nobody can put a name to the woman he's involved with. An' as you know yourself, it's almost impossible to …'

He stopped speaking, horrified that he'd allowed himself to wander blindly into this particular emotional mine field.

‘As I know myself, it's almost impossible to keep an affair hidden, however hard you try?' Paniatowski supplied.

‘Yes,' Woodend agreed. ‘Sorry.'

‘There's no need to apologize,' Paniatowski told him. ‘We can't keep on pretending that the past never happened, especially now Bob's back at work as a walking, talking reminder that it did.'

Woodend nodded. ‘Shall we get back on to the subject of Bradley Pine?'

‘I think it would be a good idea if we did.'

‘It's the very fact that he was so secretive himself that's makin' his murderer into such a shadowy figure. We know so little about Pine as a person that we can't even begin to guess who could have hated him enough to not only kill him, but also to mutilate him.'

‘Or why the killer, once he'd done the deed, would have wanted to move his body,' Paniatowski said.

‘Well, exactly!' Woodend agreed. ‘He was runnin' a terrific risk takin' the corpse to the lay-by – but why take him to a lay-by
at all
? Why
do
killers move the bodies of their victims?'

‘Sometimes they do it to hide them.'

‘But in this case, the killer did just the opposite. He dumped the corpse in a spot where it was bound to be discovered – an' sooner rather than later.'

‘Sometimes killers leave their victims in a specific place as a way of sending a message – a warning – to other people.'

‘Like leavin' thieves hangin' on the gibbet for days on end? Or killin' a member of a rival gang, an' then dumpin' his body in front of that gang's headquarters?'

‘Yes, that kind of thing.'

‘But if the killer was sendin' a message here, who the bloody hell was he sendin' it to? Lorry drivers? Speedin' motorists? There has to be another reason why that lay-by has a special significance. But what sort of special significance could a bloody lay-by
possibly
have?'

The bar door opened, and Bob Rutter walked in. Though they were expecting him, it still somehow took them by surprise that he had actually arrived, and for a moment both Woodend and Paniatowski froze.

Then Woodend pulled himself together, stood up, and held out his hand to Rutter.

‘It's good to have you back with us, Bob,' he said.

‘It's good to
be
back, sir,' Bob Rutter told him, taking the proffered hand and shaking it.

Oh my God, he looks so thin
, Monika Paniatowski thought.
He looks so
haunted.

But what had she been expecting, she asked herself. Had she thought he would waltz in as if he hadn't got a care in the world – as if all the terrible things which had happened to him were now no more than a distant memory?

She noticed that Rutter was looking down at her. ‘I'm glad you're back, too, Bob,' she said.

But was she?

Was she
really
?

Wouldn't Bob's return do no more than open old wounds? Might she not find – despite knowing how pointless it was – that she was still very much in love with him?

Rutter sat down, and the landlord brought an unordered – but much appreciated – pint across to the table.

With one hand Rutter grasped the drink as if it were a lifebelt, while with the other he searched in his jacket pocket for change.

The landlord shook his head. ‘I won't take your money, Mr Rutter,' he said. ‘This one's on the house.'

‘So how did your first mornin' back go, Bob?' Woodend asked, when the landlord had returned to the bar. ‘Do you think you're gettin' anywhere?'

He had been aiming to sound as normal as possible – without any evidence of the awkwardness and lack of ease he was actually feeling – and listening to his own voice he decided he'd
almost
achieved that.

Rutter shrugged. ‘It's been pretty much like the start of most of our investigations, sir,' he said. ‘We haven't got anything like enough information yet to know where to find the leads we need, so we just have to look everywhere we can possibly think of.'

‘Is Pine's car likely to tell us anything?' Woodend wondered, noting that his voice was still sounding somewhat strained.

‘I doubt it,' Rutter replied. ‘The thugs who stripped it down in the alley are likely to have destroyed any forensic evidence there might have been.'

The phone at the bar rang, and the three people at the table jumped as if they'd heard a shot.

The landlord picked up the phone and listened for a second, then called out, ‘It's for you, Sergeant Paniatowski.'

‘Who is it?'

‘She wants to know who's calling,' the landlord said into the telephone receiver.

Rutter picked up his pint and drained half of it in a single gulp.

None
of them were finding this easy, Woodend thought.

‘The feller on the phone says he's a colleague of yours, Sergeant,' the landlord shouted, across the bar. ‘He says it's been quite a while since you've spoken to one another.'

Monika Paniatowski rose to her feet slowly, as if her legs had suddenly turned to lead.

‘Could you transfer the call through to the phone in the corridor for me?' she asked.

‘I suppose so,' the landlord replied. ‘But wouldn't you be much more comfortable taking it in here?'

‘The corridor!' Paniatowski said firmly.

The landlord shrugged. ‘If that's what you want, Sergeant, it's no problem at all.'

Jesus, what was going on now, Woodend wondered, as he watched his sergeant walk heavily over to the door, like a condemned woman on the way to her execution.

He became aware that Rutter had been talking to him, but had no idea what he'd been saying.

‘I'm sorry, lad, but could you just run that by me again?' he asked the inspector.