Golden Mile to Murder (13 page)

‘Tell me about this stolen car ring.'

‘We used to get one or two vehicles a week reported stolen, and at least half of them would be found abandoned within a few days. Now we have four or five a week going missing, and if even a couple of them turn up again, we count ourselves lucky.'

‘Is there any pattern to the thefts?'

‘None. They disappear at all times of day, and from no particular area of town. I've tried planting a few decoy cars, and that's led to the arrest of a couple of local tearaways – but I'm sure they're not responsible for the majority of the thefts.'

‘Any common thread running through the types of cars which were stolen?' Paniatowski asked.

Collins reached into his pocket and produced a piece of paper. ‘I've brought you a list,' he said.

Paniatowski smoothed the paper out on the table, and ran her eyes quickly down the columns. It was all pretty much what she would have expected – Ford Anglias and Morris Minors at the bottom end of the scale, Austin Princesses and Vauxhall Victors at the top end. But there, right in the middle of the list, was a car which didn't belong at all.

‘A Rolls Royce Silver Cloud!' she exclaimed. ‘Who, in Blackpool, drives a
Rolls Royce Silver Cloud
?'

Collins grinned. ‘Don't be taken in by appearances, lass,' he said. ‘Blackpool may not look much when compared to London, but there's some real money in this town. Take Sam the Donkeyman, for example.'

‘Who?'

‘Scruffy little feller who's got a few donkeys down by the South Pier. See him on the street, and you think he hadn't got two ha'pennies to rub together. But as soon as the season's over, he's off to his luxury villa in Spain.'

‘Is that who the Rolls belongs to?' Paniatowski asked. ‘A donkey man?'

‘No. He's got one of them big American cars. The Rolls belongs to Tommy Bolton.'

‘Who?'

Collins looked incredulous. ‘Tommy Bolton,' he repeated. ‘The comedian!' He adopted the puzzled comical face which had become Bolton's trademark. ‘“Now where was I?”' he asked, in a fair imitation of Bolton's bemused tone.

‘I think I've seen him on the telly,' Paniatowski said.

‘Bound to have done,' Collins agreed. ‘He's never off it. Anyway, first he bought himself a bungalow out in Lytham St Anne's – frightfully posh – and then splashed out on a brand new Roller. Didn't have it long, though. There can't have been more than a couple of hundred miles on the clock when it was nicked.'

‘Where was it stolen from? The promenade?'

Collins chuckled. ‘If you had a Rolls, would you leave it on the prom for all the riff-raff to mess with?'

‘No, I suppose not.'

‘And neither did Tommy Bolton. Somebody broke into his garage and took it.'

‘And neither he nor his neighbours noticed anything?'

‘The theft happened in the middle of the afternoon. Tommy was doing a matinee on the Central Pier, and most of his posh neighbours were out playing golf.'

Paniatowski frowned. She'd intended this interview to be nothing more than a smokescreen behind which she could hide from Woodend the fact that what she was really interested in was the Fleetwood hit-and-run. But now, much to her surprise, she found herself becoming intrigued by the case of the stolen Rolls Royce.

‘Doesn't it bother you that this particular vehicle was so much more valuable than all the other cars on your list?' she asked.

‘Not really.'

‘Why not?'

‘The way I look at it is like this. The gang mostly steals popular models because it knows they'll be easy to shift. But it knew it could get rid of the Rolls easily, too.'

‘I don't see that,' Paniatowski confessed. ‘If you were looking for one particular stolen Anglia, then you'd have quite a task on your hands because there are thousands about. But there aren't many Rollses.'

‘That's the point,' Collins told her. ‘Rollses are in short supply, and even if you have the money you can't just go out and buy one. Last time I checked there was a two-year waiting list – and people who are rich aren't used to waiting for anything.'

‘So you're saying –?'

‘In my opinion, Tommy's car isn't in this country any more. Even as we speak, it's probably being driven around the desert by some rich Arab with a tea towel on his head.' Collins paused to light up a Park Drive. ‘I have to say that in this case I think it's partly Tommy Bolton's own fault.'

‘Why?'

‘Driving around in a flash car like that, he was asking for it to be nicked.'

Yes, Paniatowski thought – just like, by walking around in a reasonably attractive female body, I've been asking for all the stuff I have to put up with.

‘Anyway, I'm sorry I've not been of much use, but that's really as far I've got,' Collins continued.

Something had been bothering Monika Paniatowski all through the interview, and now she had finally managed to put her finger on it.

‘One more question,' she said. ‘You keep saying, “I did this,” and, “I did that.” What's the reason?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘In my experience, sergeants normally use “we” – meaning themselves and their bosses. I was wondering why you hadn't.'

Collins looked embarrassed. ‘Just a slip of the tongue?' he suggested hopefully.

‘Or was it that you didn't use “we” because there wasn't any “we” on this case – because it was just
you
? You said earlier that Mr Davies was dogged and determined. Were you just feeding me – a fellow sergeant – the kind of flannel you'd feed to the brass?'

‘No, he was usually dogged and determined.'

‘But not on this particular case?'

‘On this case, no,' Collins admitted. ‘I'd brief him and then ask him what to do next, and it was plain from his answer that he hadn't been listening to me at all.'

‘Why do you think he was so distracted? Something to do with his home life?'

‘It's possible,' Collins conceded, ‘but I don't really think so. I think there was something about the job that was getting to him.'

‘Like what?'

‘I've no idea. But it was there all right – deep inside – eating at him like a worm.'

A wise chief inspector would be sitting in the Incident Room pretending to co-ordinate the reports which were coming in from the men on the street, Woodend thought as he ambled along the prom. A wise chief inspector would be available to answer the phone should Detective Superintendent Ainsworth deign to ring him. Aye, well, he had never claimed to be a wise chief inspector – and it was far too nice a day to be stuck in a stuffy basement.

He looked down on to the beach – at the row upon row of occupied deckchairs; at the small children scraping out moats around their castles for the incoming tide to run through; at the donkeys cantering along the sand – and at the screaming kids on their backs, holding on tight and only occasionally daring to free one hand to wave to their parents.

A tall, thin tent made of striped red and white material had been erected just near the steps leading up to the prom, and a crowd of youngsters was sitting in front of it, gazing up in fascination.

The Punch and Judy Show! The late Inspector William Davies' nickname had been Punch, Woodend reminded himself, as he walked down the steps to get a better view of the spectacle.

The performance was already well under way and there were two glove puppets on the parapet, behind which the puppeteer crouched hidden. One of the puppets wore a floppy cap and had a grotesque hooked nose. Mr Punch himself. The other puppet was his wife, Judy – which was what half the Blackpool police seemed to call Edna Davies.

‘Give-us-a-kiss, Judy,' Mr Punch said in a wheedling, squeaky voice.

‘Yes, I'll give you a kiss,' Judy replied.

The puppeteer bent his hand, and Judy disappeared below the parapet. When she emerged again, she was carrying a stick.

‘Here's a nice kiss,' she screamed, beating Punch. ‘And another . . . and another.' She chased her husband around the stage, raining blow after blow on him. ‘I hope you like my kisses, Mr Punch.'

Punch stopped trying to escape, and instead wrested the stick from his wife. ‘Thank you, Judy, for your kisses,' he shrieked. He hit her. ‘Thank, you, thank you, thank you.'

Judy cowered under the blows. ‘Enough, Mr Punch,' she pleaded. ‘No more kisses.'

‘Just one more,' Punch told her, hitting her so hard this time that she fell motionless.

Punch poked her experimentally with his stick, then, when she showed no sign of movement, he rolled her to one edge of the stage.

‘That's the way to do it,' he told the children. ‘What-a-pity, what-a-pity.'

Punch was like so many of the killers he had encountered over the years, Woodend thought – full of bravado when first admitting the crime, then slowly becoming anguished as the full horror of what they'd done started to hit home.

The chief inspector turned to face the sea. Punch Davies hadn't beaten his wife, by all accounts, but there were other ways to make a woman suffer besides inflicting physical pain. And was Judy's violent response to Punch's request for kisses so different from Mrs Davies' action in exiling her husband to the spare bedroom?

Woodend swung round to face the tent again.

A policeman had come to arrest Mr Punch for Judy's murder, and the two were engaged in a ferocious struggle, cudgelling each other with all their might. The kids, sitting on the sand, were watching the scene wide-eyed.

Punch caught the other puppet a heavy blow, and the policeman fell down dead.

It was a strange form of entertainment, Woodend thought. Mr Punch killed without compunction, and yet somehow managed to remain the hero, and later – when he cheated the hangman by tricking him into putting his own head in the noose – the audience would cheer him just as much as it had done at the beginning, when he had appeared before it without a stain on his character.

Perhaps there was something primeval about it, the chief inspector thought. Maybe by confronting evil and laughing at it, that evil somehow became less frightening.

He shook his head in self-mockery. He was a simple bobby, and abstract thoughts like that were far too deep for him. Perhaps Bob Rutter – with a grammar school education – could explain it all simply, but he was buggered if he could.

The bright green crocodile – another stock character in the Punch story – had appeared on stage – and grabbed Punch's large nose in his jaws. But there were no crocodiles in Blackpool, and however Punch Davies had earned his nickname, it certainly hadn't been by coming to grips with a slimy reptile.

Woodend decided that he had seen enough, and – reaching in his pocket for his Capstan Full Strength – he headed back to the promenade.

B
ob Rutter drove along the ring road which skirted Whitebridge, trying to convince himself – unsuccessfully – that he liked what he was seeing. So, according to Charlie Woodend, God had created Lancashire first and then worked his way out, had he? Well, He might be omnipotent, but He didn't seem to have been any more immune to the Monday morning blues than anybody else starting their week's work.

The town Rutter was observing had been founded at the bottom of a valley, then slowly spread up the hills which surrounded it like a creeping plant. It had been, for a time, one of the main centres of the British textile industry, churning out woven cotton to meet the needs of a hungry Empire. But those days were long since past. Though some of the mills were still working, many had closed down as the manufacturers had shifted production to India, where labour was cheaper and more compliant. Now the abandoned factories stood starkly against the skyline – skeletal evidence of the place's dead glory.

It was the Lancashire climate which had brought the town and the cotton industry together, Rutter had been told. In order to prevent the cotton thread from snapping, it needed to be woven in a moist atmosphere – and Whitebridge had moisture enough and to spare. There were even local jokes about the weather!

‘See that tower up on top of the hill?' one of the inspectors had said earlier. ‘It was erected to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, but
we
use it as a weather vane.'

‘Is that right?' Rutter had asked.

‘Aye. If you can see the tower, it's about to rain. An' if you can't, then it already
is
rainin'!'

The new boy had laughed politely – as had been expected of him – but he couldn't help thinking that after a while the joke would start to wear a bit thin.

Rutter checked the street map which was resting on his knee. Another quarter of a mile, he calculated, and he should be looking out for a turning to the left. He wondered how Maria, his blind Spanish wife, who was already fairly heavy with their first child, would take to Whitebridge – and whether he should ever have put her in a position where there was little choice.

‘Well, there's no point in worrying about that now,' he said to the road ahead of him.

Nor was there. For better or worse, he was stuck in his posting in Whitebridge for at least three years – and he would just have to come to terms with living in a foreign land.

He reached the junction he'd been looking for, and signalled to the left. The road he turned on to was wide, but desolate. On one side lay the rubble of what must once have been countless rows of terraced houses. On the other stood the towering – long since deserted – Calcutta Mill.

Rutter ran his eyes quickly over the building. It had high windows, designed to admit the maximum light possible into the weaving sheds. Its tall chimneys were sturdily constructed in Accrington Iron Brick. The mill must once have belched out enough smoke to cover the whole valley in a sooty pall – but it was years now since the chimneys had been fired.