A Walk With the Dead (31 page)

That was when he saw the woman in the driver's seat, though he could not tell – at that point – whether she was alive or dead.

Paniatowski drove through the centre of Whitebridge at speed, her siren blaring, and it was only as she was approaching the road on which the garden flat was located that she started to slow down.

A man was standing on the pavement outside the flat. He was holding a blood-stained handkerchief to his cheek, and looking far from happy.

‘Jesus, it's Jack!' Meadows said.

Paniatowski slammed on the brakes, and the two women got out of the car. Crane followed their progress with his eyes, but did not move.

‘Where's Liz Duffy?' Paniatowski asked him. ‘Has she gone?'

‘No, she's not gone,' Crane replied. ‘She's inside – handcuffed to the radiator.'

‘Have you cautioned her?'

‘Yes – but I'm not sure she was listening.'

Paniatowski turned to Meadows.

‘Go and caution her again, Kate,' she said.

‘I'm on it, boss.'

As Meadows disappeared inside the flat, Crane said apologetically, ‘I should have rung you before coming here, boss, but there just wasn't time. If I'd left it any longer, she'd have been gone.'

Paniatowski nodded. ‘You just did right, Jack.'

‘I'm not sure I was actually intending to arrest her,' Crane continued. ‘I still couldn't quite believe she'd done it, you see, even though all the evidence was pointing that way. I . . . I think I just wanted her to explain – to come up with some reasonable story that would make everything all right again.'

‘Easy, Jack,' Paniatowski said soothingly. ‘Just take it easy.'

‘She threw herself at me the moment I walked through the door. If I didn't know better, I'd say she'd been tipped off.'

‘She
had
been tipped off – inadvertently – by me,' Paniatowski said, thinking back to the conversation she'd had with Duffy in the morgue. ‘Let me see your cheek, Jack.'

Crane took away the handkerchief. Four long scratches had been viciously gouged into his skin.

‘Whatever were you thinking of – giving her the chance to do that?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘I treated her too gently,' Crane admitted. ‘I was in no doubt that she'd done it by that point – she was screaming at me that she had, and she wasn't ashamed of it – but even then, I still didn't want to use reasonable force.'

Events had been so fast that Paniatowski had not even stopped to ask herself how Crane had got there before them, but she did now.

‘How long have you been here, Jack?' she asked.

‘About twenty minutes.'

‘That long!'

‘More or less.'

Twenty minutes earlier, she hadn't even seen the woman in the film glaring down at Maggie with such obvious hatred, Paniatowski thought.

‘At the time you got here,
I
didn't even know we'd be making an arrest,' she said. ‘So how did
you
know?'

‘Ah, well, you see, I had the advantage over you, because I was a friend of hers in the old days,' Crane said sadly. ‘I knew her boyfriend, too, but I didn't know she'd eventually married him, because she never told me that. She just said he'd left her, which – in a way – I suppose he had.'

‘Go on,' Paniatowski said.

‘He was a handsome feller,' Crane mused. ‘As a matter of fact, he looked a lot like Roger Moore did, when he was playing Simon Templar – the Saint – on television. And by one of those little quirks of fate, his name was Templar, too, so even though he'd been christened Jeremy, almost everybody called him Simon.'

W
hen Paniatowski and Meadows entered Interview Room B, Liz Duffy looked up at them and smiled.

‘What a pleasant surprise, ladies,' she said. ‘Do take a seat.'

There was no longer any sign of the rage that Duffy had shown earlier. Now she was sitting quite calmly, with her hands clasped loosely in front of her, and but for one broken fingernail, it would have been almost impossible to believe that this woman had done so much damage to Jack Crane's cheek.

‘What do we call you?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Elizabeth Duffy or Elizabeth Templar?'

‘Legally, I suppose, I'm Liz Templar, but professionally, I continued working under the name of Dr Duffy after I got married, so it's whichever the two of you feel more comfortable with,' Liz said accommodatingly.

‘Interview with Elizabeth Templar, née Duffy begins at twelve oh seven,' Paniatowski said, switching on the recorder. ‘Present in the room are DCI Monika Paniatowski and DS Katherine Meadows.'

‘
Weird
DS Katherine Meadows,' Liz Duffy said. ‘At least, that's what Jack Crane calls you.'

This wasn't going to be easy, Paniatowski thought – in fact, if they didn't handle it
just
right, it could end in complete disaster.

‘Don't you find it ironic that geography can play such a role in the tide of human affairs?' Duffy asked taking the lead – showing, in case they had not already worked it out for themselves, that she knew she had a strong hand to play.

‘I'm not sure I know what you mean by that,' Paniatowski.

‘You're not sure you know what I mean? Then you really are a rather dense little chief inspector, aren't you?'

‘So why don't you enlighten me?'

Liz Duffy sighed. ‘Oh, all right then. I suppose it's as a good a way to pass the time as any. Are you listening carefully, so I don't have to repeat myself?'

‘Yes.'

‘The role of geography in human affairs,' Liz Duffy said, as if she were giving a lecture. ‘The only reason I ever came to this God-forsaken industrial wasteland was because it meant I'd be physically closer to my dear husband than I'd been in Birmingham. And probably the only reason why your bumpkin of a chief constable was appointed to investigate Simon's death was that he was already conveniently just across the county border from Dunston Prison.'

That – combined with the fact that Baxter knew Yorkshire well – probably
was
why he'd been appointed, Paniatowski conceded.

‘The Home Office informed me that there would be an inquiry into Simon's suicide, but, of course, they didn't bother to mention that it would be your chief constable who would be conducting it,' Liz Duffy said. ‘I got that particular piece of information from you, Monika.'

Yes, she had, Paniatowski thought.

‘The fact is that I'm so desperate over this case that I was hoping for a miracle – and miracles simply don't happen every day.
' Paniatowski had said to Duffy in the morgue, the day before.

‘
Is it really as bad as that
?' Duffy had asked. ‘
Is your boss giving you a hard time?
'

‘
Not at the moment. He's in Yorkshire, investigating a prison suicide. But when he gets back, the fat will really be in the fire.
'

‘Oh God!'
Duffy had said.

And what Paniatowski thought she meant by that was,
Oh God, I'm so sorry for you, Monika
!

But that hadn't been it at all.

It had had nothing to with Paniatowski.

What Liz Duffy had really meant was,
Oh God, if it's the chief constable of Mid Lancs who's conducting the inquiry, then it's only a matter of time before Jack Crane hears Simon's name and puts two and two together!

And then she had panicked. She had packed her bags, and when Jack Crane had visited her the previous evening, her first thought had probably been that he'd gone there to arrest her. Now, she'd calmed down. She knew the police knew
what
she'd done and
why
she'd done it, but she also knew that the case against her was based on a little circumstantial evidence and a lot of imaginative leaps – and that it would never stand up in court.

So all she had to do was sit quietly, and she would be in the clear.

‘I'd like to go over your confession, if you don't mind,' Paniatowski said.

‘What confession?' Liz Duffy countered.

‘The one you made to DC Crane.'

‘Is that what he told you – that I'd confessed?'

‘Yes, and I believe him.'

‘He's such a dear boy, Jack, but he's always had far too vivid an imagination.'

‘So you deny it?'

‘Of course I do.'

Above their heads there was a gentle pitter-pattering sound, and looking up, Paniatowski saw that rain had begun to fall on the skylight.

She needed to break Liz Duffy, she told herself, and she was not sure – even with the ammunition that Jack Crane had provided – that she could.

‘Since you're not interested in confessing, I'd like to talk a little about your background,' she said. ‘Do you have any objection to that?'

‘You'd like me to say I
do
object, wouldn't you?' Duffy asked.

‘Would I?'

‘Of course, because my refusal would indicate that you'd hit a weak spot in my psyche, which you could then use to your advantage. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have no objection at all to discussing my background, so feel free to ask whatever you want to.'

She was using her arrogance as a shield, Paniatowski thought, but then she had no choice in the matter, because if she ever lowered that shield – if she ever abandoned her belief that she was totally right and everyone else was totally wrong – she would have to face the horror of what she'd done.

‘Jack Crane says that when you were at Oxford University together, he doesn't remember you once mentioning your parents,' Paniatowski said. ‘Now why was that?'

Liz Duffy blinked, but said nothing.

‘I never thought it would be
that
easy to find the weak spot,' Paniatowski said. ‘To tell the truth, I'm a little disappointed in you.'

‘I don't know whether I mentioned my father or not, but if I didn't, it was probably because he died when I was nine,' Duffy said.

‘I imagine that must have been a terrible blow to you. Am I right?'

‘That's really none of your business.'

‘But your mother was still alive when you were studying at Oxford, wasn't she?'

‘Yes.'

‘So why didn't you talk about her?'

‘You never went to university yourself, did you, Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski?'

‘No, I didn't.'

‘Of course you didn't. Well, if you had, you know that it was considered rather “uncool” to talk about your mother,' Liz Duffy said. ‘Besides,' she added, almost as an afterthought, ‘there wasn't much to say.'

‘So of the two, it was plainly your father who you loved the most?' Paniatowski suggested.

‘I didn't say that.'

The rain was getting angrier, and pounding down on the skylight as if it thought that, with a little more effort, it could shatter the skylight and bombard those below with a lethal shower of glass.

‘It would only be natural if you did love your father more than your mother,' Paniatowski said. ‘When I was a little girl, I used to think of my own father as almost godlike. In my eyes, he could do no wrong.'

‘Did you have to go on a course to learn how to conduct interrogations?' Liz Duffy sneered. ‘If you did – and if this what they taught you – then you've got good grounds for asking for your money back.'

‘He probably wouldn't have
remained
godlike to me,' Paniatowski said, ignoring the interruption. ‘As I grew up, and left my innocence behind, I'd probably have started seeing all kinds of flaws in him. But that never happened, because, like you, I lost him when I was a child.'

Liz Duffy laughed. ‘You have such a crude approach,' she said. ‘You're doing your best to make me empathize with you, and it's simply not working. I very much doubt that your father
did
die when you were a little girl. For all I know, he's still alive.'

‘My father was an officer in the Polish Cavalry,' Paniatowski said, with a sudden ferocity. ‘He was a hero who died fighting the Nazis, and I had his bones buried in Whitebridge so I could be close to them!'

The outburst had had an effect on Liz Duffy, and she looked almost ashamed of herself.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, ‘I never meant to . . .'

Nice one, boss, Meadows thought. Very sneaky!

But Paniatowski did not follow through on the opportunity she had created. Instead, she seemed as stricken as Duffy was.

Jesus, all that was genuine, Meadows told herself.

‘Then again, perhaps you didn't love your father at all,' the sergeant said, stepping in to fill the breach. ‘Perhaps the reason you didn't talk about your mother at university was that you hated her for not protecting you from him.'

‘What do you mean by that?' Duffy asked, reddening.

There was a loud crash of thunder overhead, and, for a moment, the lights flickered.

‘What did I mean?' Meadows asked. ‘I suppose I meant that you were probably
in need of
protection. Was your father physically abusive to you? Did he visit you in your bed at night?'

‘My father would never have hurt me – in any way,' Liz Duffy screamed. ‘He adored me.'

‘And
you
worshipped
him
,' said Paniatowski, taking control again. ‘He left a gap in your life that you've been trying to fill ever since.'

Duffy unclenched her hands, crossed her arms, and clutched her shoulder-blades.

‘I don't want to talk about that any more,' she said, in a much lower voice that could almost have been a whimper.

‘Then what else
can
we talk about?' Paniatowski wondered. ‘I suppose you could tell me about what you did to those girls – but no, that would never work, because you're far too ashamed to say anything about that.'