Dying Fall (31 page)

‘You couldn't do it because you'd never be able to live with yourself afterwards.'

Rutter looked out into the darkness, and though he could not see the sheer drop they were parked in front of, he knew it was there.

‘You're quite right,' he agreed. ‘I
couldn't
live with myself afterwards.'

‘W
hy don't you save us all a lot of time an' bother, an' make a statement straight away?' Woodend suggested.

Ron Scranton, at the other side of the interview-room table, shot a look of pure hatred at Paniatowski, then turned to face Woodend and said, ‘That Polak bitch nearly crippled me, and I want her prosecuted.'

‘You were tryin' to brain her with an ashtray at the time,' Woodend pointed out. ‘An' though, given the state my hands are in, it'll probably hurt me as much as it'll hurt you, I think you should know that if I hear you refer to Detective Sergeant Paniatowski in that way again, I'll have to take drastic action.'

‘What do you mean? Drastic action?'

‘I mean that I'll knock your teeth so far down your throat that you'll have to stick your fingers up your arse to bite your nails.'

‘You can't threaten me!' Scranton said.

‘Really?' Woodend replied, interestedly. ‘That's funny, because I thought I just did.'

‘Whatever I may have said to that Po— to Detective Sergeant Paniatowski, I was
tricked
into saying,' Scranton said.

‘Tricked?' Woodend repeated. ‘Ah, now I understand. When you made your confession, you didn't know she was a police officer.' He turned to Paniatowski. ‘That was a big mistake you made there, Monika. Although it's not strictly necessary, in the
legal
sense, to identify yourself when you're on an undercover operation, I think it would have been only fair to have let Mr Scranton know who you were right from the start.'

‘Does showing him my warrant card in front of witnesses count as letting him know who I was?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Yes, I think that would just about cover it,' Woodend agreed.

‘So I knew she was a policewoman,' Scranton conceded. ‘But that's not the point.'

‘Then what is?'

‘I thought she was one of us.'

‘You appear to have been wrong about that.'

‘And she offered me sex, but only if I'd tell her that I'd ordered those tramps' murders.'

‘Is that right, Monika?' Woodend asked disapprovingly.

‘He asked me if I'd sleep with him, and I said I might,' Paniatowski told him. ‘I never mentioned the murders.'

‘She's a liar!' Scranton said.

‘Is she, now?' Woodend asked mildly. ‘So she was the one who brought up the subject of the murders?'

‘That's what I've just said, isn't it?'

Woodend reached into the pocket of his jacket, produced a small black box, and placed it on the table.

‘This is the latest Japanese miniature tape recorder,' he announced. ‘Now I know that, given your political an' racial views, you might not like the Japs much, but I think they're pretty bloody clever.'

He pressed the switch.

‘
I might as well tell you, since you've already guessed
,' said a voice which was clearly Scranton's. ‘
Those two tramps who were killed …
'

‘
Yes?
'

‘
It was done on my direct orders.
'

‘Seems to me that
you
were the first one to mention the tramps,' Woodend said.

‘That's taken out of – what do you call it? – context,' Scranton blustered.

‘So you're sayin' that when we play the whole of the tape, we'll hear Sergeant Paniatowski mention the tramps first?'

‘No, but when I said that thing about killing them, it was because it was what she wanted me to say – what she was egging me on to say.'

‘Difficult to prove, that, I would have thought,' Woodend said. ‘But let's move on to motive, shall we?'

‘I have no motive, because I didn't
do
it!'

‘Of course, given that you're a right-wing nutter, you don't really need any motive at all,' Woodend said reflectively. ‘But I'm inclined to believe there was at least
some
method in your madness. You were showin' the morons who hang on your every word that you really mean business. An' then, of course, there were the council elections to consider. You must have thought that even the
rumour
that you were behind the murders would have been enough to bring out the caveman vote.'

‘This is ludicrous!' Scranton said.

‘An' that would have been especially important since you were plannin' to stand against an incumbent – an' not just any incumbent.' Woodend paused. ‘Why
did
you decide to stand against Councillor Lowry? Why, of all the wards to choose from, did you pick his?'

‘None of your business.'

‘Could there have been something personal in it? I think so. You've hated him for a long time, haven't you – ever since he beat the crap out of you in the primary-school playground?'

‘How … how do you know about that?' Scranton asked.

‘An' then fate seemed to
keep
throwin' you together, didn't it?' Woodend asked. ‘You ended up servin' at the same RAF camp, in Abingdon. That was where you started the fire in the Indian restaurant, wasn't it?'

‘They never proved that was me.'

‘No, but the RAF was convinced enough to give you a dishonourable discharge.' He turned to Paniatowski. ‘Are you startin' to see any pattern here, Monika?' he asked.

‘Indian restaurant in Abingdon burned down when our Ron was based there? Tramps set on fire in Whitebridge, which happens to be where our Ron lives now?' Paniatowski said. ‘Yes, sir, I think I
do
see a pattern.'

‘You must have hated serving on the same base as Lowry,' Woodend continued, ‘because that really showed up the difference between the two of you, didn't it? There was him, an officer an' a decorated war hero, and there was you, a mere aircraftman who, as we've just mentioned, was dishonourably discharged.'

‘At least, unlike Lowry, I was discharged for doing something I believed in,' Scranton said.

‘Lowry wasn't discharged
at all
,' Woodend pointed out.

‘No, he wasn't,' Scranton agreed. ‘But he would have been, if he hadn't resigned when he did.'

‘This is all bollocks,' Woodend said.

‘Soon after he got his medal, he started drinking heavily,' Scranton said. ‘It was no secret. Everybody in the camp knew about it. And one day, he went too far – one day he took a chopper up when he was drunk, and crashed it.'

‘I think you've got it round your neck,' Woodend said. ‘He did crash a helicopter, but that was in Malaya, as a result of comin' under enemy fire.'

‘And he crashed a second one in Abingdon,' Scranton insisted. ‘And
that
was as a result of being pissed as a rat.'

‘I don't believe you,' Woodend said.

‘Then ask yourself this,' Scranton countered. ‘Throughout all our political battles, why has Lowry never used the fact that I've got a dishonourable discharge against me?'

‘I don't know,' Woodend admitted.

‘It's because he's afraid of what I'd say in return. It's in both our interests to keep quiet about what we did in the RAF.'

It had been a mistake to talk about Lowry, Woodend decided. It had done no more than to distract them from the main point.

‘When did you first decide to use Barry Thornley to do your killings for you?' he asked.

‘I didn't.
Because I had nothing to do with the murders!
'

‘You're not denying you knew him, are you? That he was a supporter of yours?'

‘He may have attended a few of my meetings,' Scranton said vaguely.

‘An' at what point did you decide he had to die, too?' Woodend wondered.

‘At what point did I do
what
?'

‘At what point did you decide he had to die?'

‘I read in the papers that his death was an accident – that he set
himself
on fire.'

‘You shouldn't believe
everythin
' you read in the papers – especially when you already know better,' Woodend said. ‘Bazza's death was
meant
to look like an accident, but the fire didn't do quite enough damage to him to disguise the fact that just before he died, you'd hit him over the head.'

‘Somebody hit him over the head?' Scranton gasped.

‘No,
you
hit him over the head,' Woodend corrected him.

‘Last night?'

‘Yes, that's when he died.'

‘At what time?'

‘You
know
what time.'

‘What
time
?' Scranton insisted urgently.

‘It was round about nine o'clock.'

Scranton exhaled a huge sigh of relief. ‘Last night, I was addressing a meeting of the BPP in the back room of the Woodcutters' Arms in Burnley,' he said. ‘I got there at eight, and I didn't leave the place until after eleven.'

Over the phone, the barman at the Woodcutters' confirmed that Scranton had indeed been there the night before, and said he could produce at least twenty witnesses to back his claim up.

He could still be guilty, Woodend thought. Though he couldn't have killed Big Bazza himself, he could still have
ordered
it to be done. But the way he'd acted in the interview room – his amazement when he'd been told that Thornley had been murdered – argued otherwise. Scranton was either one of the world's great actors or had nothing at all to do with the killings, and the chief inspector had no doubt that it was the latter.

Now, as he and Paniatowski walked wearily back to their office, Monika turned to him and said, ‘I'm sorry, sir, this was all my fault. You kept saying we didn't know for certain that it was Scranton, and I kept insisting it was. And why? Because I let my hatred of him – and everything he stands for – blind me.'

‘I went along with you in the end,' Woodend pointed out. ‘By the time you pulled him in, I was convinced we'd got our murderer. An' I went
on
believin' that until nearly the last minute.'

But Paniatowski herself hadn't believed it. Though she'd played her assigned role in the interrogation to perfection, she had known in her gut, almost from the start, that Scranton was not their man.

It was his flat which had convinced her, she thought, analysing where the conviction had come from. She had used the state of it as an excuse for calling Scranton an insignificant little nobody, without fully realizing that she didn't need an excuse at all, because the flat was positive
proof
of her assertion.

The big boys in the BPP in London might use Scranton for their purposes, but only as a foot soldier sent out to do the tedious work for them. They had no respect for him, because they knew – as she had found out – that he was no more than weak-willed cannon fodder.

And so where were they now? she asked herself, as they reached the office door. In one hell of a mess, she thought, answering her own question.

It wasn't just that they had to start again, they would be starting with a distinct disadvantage – because by concentrating their efforts on Scranton, they'd allowed the real killer's trail to go cold.

‘I'll just get my coat, an' then we're out of here,' Woodend said dispiritedly. ‘Drum and Monkey?'

‘Might as well,' Paniatowski agreed, although she knew that, in their present state, drink wouldn't help – that it would only serve to make them even more depressed.

The moment he opened his door, Woodend noticed the buff envelope on the corner of his desk.

‘It's from Bob,' he said, recognizing the handwriting. ‘He calls it a parting gift.'

‘I wonder what it is,' Paniatowski said. ‘It's too big for a cheque, and too small for a pair of carpet slippers.'

It was not much of a joke, but given the circumstances, Woodend was grateful that she'd even
attempted
to be funny.

‘It's probably just paperwork, tyin' up a few loose ends,' he said. ‘Only Bob would ever think of callin' paperwork a “gift”.'

‘Aye, he was a bugger for his reports,' Paniatowski said, in conscious imitation of her boss.

And instantly, the atmosphere of gloom thickened.

Was
a bugger, they both thought.

Bob Rutter was gone and never coming back, and despite the difficulties, the disagreements – the outright bloody rows – they would miss him.

‘Shall I look at it now, or should I leave it until mornin'?' Woodend asked.

Paniatowski shrugged. ‘Whatever you want.'

‘I'll look at it now,' Woodend said, because he knew, just as Paniatowski did, that though they
would
eventually go to the pub, it was never going to be a good idea and the less time they spent there the better.

He sat down in his chair, and slit open the envelope. ‘There's some documents an' a letter,' he told Paniatowski. ‘If he's got anythin' nice to say about you, I'll read it out to you.'

Paniatowski grinned. ‘And if he hasn't, you'll make something up?' she suggested.

‘Well, exactly,' Woodend agreed.

Then, as he started to read the letter, the tiredness dis­appeared from his face, and was replaced by a look which combined amazement and concentration.

‘Bloody hell fire!' he exclaimed.

‘What does Bob say?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Just give me a minute,' Woodend told her. ‘I want to see if this all hangs together.'

But it was much more than a minute he needed. He took
five
minutes to read the entire package, and another three to check through it again.