Dying Fall (26 page)

‘Emergency. Which service do you require?' said the operator in a calm, neutral voice.

‘Police!' Bazza told her. ‘An' make it quick.'

A new voice came on the line almost immediately. ‘Whitebridge police headquarters,'

‘Do you know Detective Constable Beresford?' Bazza asked.

‘Yes, but I don't see—'

‘Friend of yours, is he?'

‘This line is for emergencies only,' the bobby said. ‘If you wish to report one, then you must—'

‘If Beresford
is
a friend of yours, you'd better get down to the outdoor market as quick as you can,' Bazza interrupted. ‘Because any minute now he's goin' to be gettin' the shit kicked out of him.'

‘Now you just listen to me …' the policeman said.

But Bazza
wasn't
listening. With a grin on his face, he was already hanging up the phone.

The gang were no longer so tightly bunched around Beresford. Now, while they still had him encircled, they had spread out.

And that was a bad sign.

‘We didn't like what you did to that nice Paki lady,' Scuddie said. ‘We thought that was very bad.'

It was almost as if he was reading the words from a script, Beresford thought. And, in fact, that
was
basically what he was doing. They were all in a play that Bazza had written, and they were coming to the end of the final act.

‘What do you mean, you thought it was very bad?' he asked. ‘You all laughed like drains when I did it.'

But there was no more conviction in his words than there had been in Scuddie's.

‘We didn't laugh, did we, lads?' Scuddie asked.

And the others chimed in that no, they certainly hadn't.

‘It was so bad what you did to her that we all think you need punishin' for it,' Scuddie continued.

There was no point in pretending any more, Beresford decided.

‘It's obvious that you all know who I am,' he said.

‘Course we do. You're Col the Paki-basher.'

‘I'm Detective Constable Colin Beresford.'

‘A bobby?' Scuddie scoffed. ‘I don't believe you. If you're in the Filth, where's your warrant card?'

Beresford realized that reaching for his card was a mistake almost as soon as he'd started to do it – but by then it was already too late. The moment's distraction, as his attention shifted from Scuddie to the card, was the signal the gang had been waiting for.

A heavy boot slammed into Beresford's right knee. The agony was indescribable, and he felt his legs collapse beneath him. And then he was on the ground, instinctively wrapping his arms around his head as the boots found easier, more vulnerable targets.

He was going to die – he
knew
he was going to die – and he wondered vaguely, when the pain allowed him to, who would look after his mother when he was gone.

He was aware of a sudden screaming in the distance, but before he had time to identify it as a police siren, he lost consciousness.

W
oodend was sitting at his desk. His face was grey, and the hand which held the inevitable cigarette was shaking.

When Paniatowski entered the room, he looked up and said, ‘How's Beresford?'

‘Still in a coma,' Paniatowski told him.

‘But he's goin' to be all right, isn't he?'

For a moment Paniatowski searched around for some way of softening the blow. Then she decided that since the truth could not be hidden, he might as well be told it straight away.

‘The doctors don't know anything for certain,' she said. ‘Colin's taken a lot of punishment, and it could go either way.'

‘This is all my fault,' Woodend groaned. ‘I should never have given the lad the job in the first place.'

‘You did what you had to do,' Paniatowski told him. ‘Colin knew the risks, and he
wanted
to do it.'

‘Bollocks to that as an excuse!' Woodend said. ‘An' bollocks to my feelin' sorry for myself.' He stood up, and suddenly seemed more like himself. ‘We've a job to do, so let's get at it.'

‘A job to do?' Paniatowski repeated.

‘That's right,' Woodend agreed. ‘I can't do anythin' for Colin, but I can certainly do somethin' about the bastard who put him in hospital.'

Cloggin'-it Charlie had always seemed a big bugger, the sergeant in charge of the holding cells thought as he watched Woodend approach him, but at that moment he looked like a bloody giant.

‘Barry Thornley!' Woodend said.

‘I beg your pardon, sir.'

‘I want to talk to Barry Thornley. An' if you happen to hear any screams while I
am
talkin' to him, I'd advise you to keep well out of it.'

The sergeant consulted his list. ‘But we don't have any Barry Thornley in custody, sir.'

‘Of course you do,' Woodend said impatiently. ‘He was one of the hard mods who was pulled in earlier.'

The sergeant looked at his list again. ‘Sorry, sir, but you're wrong. We've got the names of all the lads arrested, an' none of them is Barry Thornley.'

For a second, Woodend was silent, then he raised his hand to his head and said, ‘Dear God!'

The patrols were being reinstated, but it was probably already too late, Woodend thought, as he drove his battered old Wolseley at what was almost racing-car speed towards the derelict part of town.

The police switchboard operator had confirmed that the person who made the call about Beresford had been a young working-class male, and the chances of that being anyone but Bazza were just about nil.

So kicking the shit out of Beresford had had two purposes. The first, most obvious one, was that it had been a punishment beating. But the second – and more important – was that Bazza had thought it would be a distraction.

He'd been right, of course. There wasn't a police force in the whole country that wouldn't instinctively drop everything else when one of their own was in trouble. And in Whitebridge, every officer within striking distance of the outdoor market had immediately rushed to the scene – leaving the tramps to take care of themselves.

‘I should have seen it comin',' he said, furious with himself. ‘I should have bloody seen it comin'.'

He had reached his destination, and slammed on the brakes. All around him stood dark empty buildings – sad monuments to Whitebridge's former industrial might – and the chances were that in one of those buildings he would find a tramp, burned to a crisp.

It was as he was getting out of his car that he heard the first scream, and only a few seconds later – when a man came rushing out of the black-lead factory – that he understood what the scream was all about.

The man was on fire! Flames engulfed his legs and his torso, and were licking around his head. And he was running as fast as he could – as if in that way he could escape the agony that the fire was bringing him.

Woodend stripped off his jacket, and began running towards the human torch. The man stumbled, then fell, then began rolling around on the ground. And still he would not stop screaming.

By the time Woodend had reached him, his face was starting to melt, and though he was attempting to protect it with his hands, they were on fire, too.

Woodend threw his jacket over the man's head and upper body, and pressed down hard. It was not an easy task, because the victim, not understanding that this would help, was still attempting to twist away. And even when Woodend had managed to prevent the trunk from moving, the legs, still blazing, were kicking in the air.

There were others on the scene now – two constables who, following Woodend's lead, were attempting to smother the fire around the man's stomach and legs.

And finally, it had some effect. Finally all the flames were extinguished, and the victim just lay there, groaning weakly.

Stepping away, Woodend looked down at his own hands, and noted – almost objectively – that they had been quite badly burned.

‘It'll be the shock that's makin' me take it so calmly,' he told himself.

‘Are you all right, sir?' one of the constables asked.

Woodend winced with pain. ‘No, I'm bloody not,' he said. ‘But I'll live – which is more than this poor bugger will probably manage.' He wished he had a cigarette, but knew that it would probably be too painful to hold it. ‘Let's have a look at him, shall we?'

The constable shone a torch on the dying man. The flames had burned away most of his clothes, but his boots were still largely intact, and enough of his face had escaped the fire for Woodend to see that he was a young man with a shaved head.

‘Misjudged it this time, didn't you, Bazza?' Woodend said softly. ‘
Badly
misjudged it.'

It did not take the uniformed constables long to find the second victim of the fire. He was in the black-lead factory from which Barry Thornley had run screaming, and there was no question that he was dead.

‘There's a poetic justice in what happened to that lad, isn't there, Sarge?' asked the constable who was showing Paniatowski the body. ‘Sort of like, “Them that live by the flame shall die by the flame” – an' quite bloody right, in my opinion.'

‘It's certainly hard to feel any sympathy for Barry Thornley,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘So that's it, then,' the constable said. ‘We've got our murderer, an' he's dead himself. End of story.'

If only it was that simple, Paniatowski thought. But it wasn't. The puppet might be dead, but the puppet-master was still very much alive, and Bazza's death was going to make it harder –
much
harder – to pin his crimes on him.

The smell of cooked meat had suddenly become almost unbearable, and Paniatowski realized just how close she was to throwing up.

‘Time for a breath of fresh air,' she said, almost gagging on her words.

‘Know what you mean,' the constable replied sympathetically.

Emergency floodlights had been erected outside the factory, and it was as bright as day –
brighter
than most Lancashire days. Paniatowski glanced down at the roped-off section of the road where it looked as if someone had been having a camp fire – and reminded herself that the camp fire in question had been called Barry Thornley.

She needed a cigarette, she thought, but the moment she lit the match – and smelled the burning – she started to feel sick again. She dropped the cigarette and the match on to the floor, and stamped on them. Then, because she didn't want to contaminate the crime scene, she bent down and put them in a plastic envelope, which she placed in her handbag.

It hadn't been a good day, she told herself. It hadn't been a good day at all.

Police barriers had been erected ten yards each side of the factory, and standing behind the one to the left was a tall tramp who looked as if he wished he were dead.

‘There you go, Monika,' she said softly to herself. ‘However bad you feel, there's always someone worse off than you.'

She walked towards the barrier, and the closer she got to it, the more she could see just what a terrible state Pogo was in. Both his cheeks were badly bruised, and his left eye was almost closed. His moustache was caked in dried blood, and from the way he was holding himself, it was obvious that something else – probably his ribs – hurt like the devil.

‘What happened to you?' she asked, horrified.

‘We need to talk,' Pogo said.

‘Yes, we do.'

‘But not here,' Pogo told her, glancing at the factory door, then turning quickly away again.

‘My car's around the corner,' Paniatowski said. ‘Will that do?'

Pogo merely nodded.

They were sitting side by the side in the MGA. There was a hip flask of vodka between them, and they had both already taken a swig.

‘So what
did
happen to you?' Paniatowski said.

‘We'll get to that later,' Pogo replied. ‘Before that, I'd like to tell you the story of my life, or anyway, the only part of it that matters.'

‘Why?' Paniatowski asked.

And the moment the word was out of her mouth she was cursing herself for being an insensitive bitch.

Pogo did not seem to take offence. ‘Why?' he repeated. ‘Because it's a long time since I've told it to anybody but myself.'

‘Fair enough,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘The last time I had friends was 1944,' Pogo said reflectively. ‘How long ago was that?'

‘Over twenty years,' Paniatowski told him.

‘Over twenty years,' Pogo echoed, sounding almost surprised it had been as little as that. ‘We were all part of a sabotage unit operating behind the German lines. After the officer and the sergeant were killed, I was next in line to take charge, so I did.' He smiled at Paniatowski. ‘You said right from the start that I'd been a corporal, didn't you?'

‘That's right, I did,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Anyway, what with facing death together, day in and day out, we grew to be as close to each other as any group of men could possibly be. We were closer than brothers. We were closer than a married couple. It wasn't just that we were friends and comrades – we became
a part
of each other.'

‘I can see that,' Paniatowski said.

‘At any rate, that's what I
thought
we were,' Pogo continued. ‘We were living off the land. You've no idea what it's like, Sergeant, to live off a diet that's mostly made up of raw turnip.'

Yes, I have, Paniatowski thought. When my mother and I were on the run, that's what we ate, too.

But this was Pogo's story, and so she said nothing.

‘There were
some
Germans who helped us,' Pogo continued. ‘People who were sickened by what Hitler had done to their country, and who wanted the war over as soon as possible. And we were staying in the farmhouse of some of these Germans on the particular night I'm talking about. They were an old couple who owned it – even at that stage of the war, when they were desperate enough to draft almost anyone, the man was considered too old for military service. And they had their granddaughter staying with them, a sweet little lass of fifteen.'