Golden Mile to Murder (20 page)

‘I thought you might like a bit of breakfast,' he said. ‘Tea, toast and freshly squeezed orange juice. If you fancy egg and bacon, I can do you that, too.'

Paniatowski groaned. ‘How can you be so bloody cheerful?' she demanded.

‘Why shouldn't I be? It's another beautiful day outside, and the memories of last night still haven't quite faded.' He frowned slightly. ‘You do remember last night, don't you? I'd hate it if you didn't.'

‘I remember,' Paniatowski said.

‘God, you were wonderful,' Hanson said sincerely. ‘I don't think I've ever been with a woman quite like you.'

‘And exactly how many women
have
you been with?'

‘A few. Enough to recognise someone special when I come across her.'

Paniatowski groaned again, as the steam hammer in her head shifted gear. ‘Don't you have a hangover?' she asked, inviting him to share her misery.

‘I had a bit of a headache when I woke up,' Hanson admitted. ‘But it's gone away now.'

‘God rot you!' Paniatowski said, through clenched teeth. ‘Why did you let me drink so much?'

Hanson grinned. ‘You don't seem to me to be the kind of woman who needs anyone's permission to do
anything
.'

True, Paniatowski thought. She had no one to blame but herself.

‘I should never have had that last whisky just before we went to sleep,' she said, self-pityingly. ‘I was all right without that last whisky.'

‘You'll be fine once you've got a bit of food inside you,' Hanson assured her. He laid the tray on the bedside cabinet. ‘Look, I've cut the toast into soldiers to make it easier to swallow. So why don't you eat your breakfast like a good little girl?'

Paniatowski sat bolt upright. It hurt.

‘Breakfast!' she exclaimed. ‘What time is it?'

‘About a quarter to eight. Why?'

Paniatowski sprang out of bed. She was naked, but it seemed pointless to start coming over modest after all that had happened the night before.

She began a frantic search of the floor, looking for the clothes she had so carelessly abandoned in the heat of passion.

‘What's the hurry?' Hanson asked. ‘The morning briefing isn't until nine o'clock.'

‘Yours might not be,' Paniatowski told him, picking up her stockings and bra, ‘but mine's with Cloggin'-it Charlie over breakfast, and if I'm not there on time he'll have my guts for garters.'

Woodend was just eating the last bit of his kipper when Paniatowski entered the dining-room and sat down opposite it.

‘You look like hell,' the chief inspector said.

‘Mornings aren't my best time, sir,' Paniatowski told him.

‘Bollocks!' Woodend snorted. ‘You were out on the razzle last night, weren't you?'

‘I may have had a couple of drinks,' Paniatowski admitted.

‘I don't care if you had a couple of
dozen
drinks,' Woodend told her. ‘I don't care if you were so pissed you couldn't find your bed. What you do on your own time is entirely your own business. But what I do insist on, Sergeant, is that when you're on
my
time, you're able to keep your eye on the ball. Have I made myself clear?'

‘Yes, sir,' Paniatowski said meekly.

‘Right, we'll see if we can order you up some breakfast,' Woodend said raising his arm in the air to signal the waitress. ‘Though I'm far from convinced the dragon who runs this place will be willing to serve anybody who's had the temerity to turn up late.'

‘It's all right, sir, I'm not hungry,' Paniatowski said. ‘All I want's a cup of tea.'

Woodend bad mood suddenly evaporated, and he chuckled. ‘Virtue might not always be its own reward,' he said, ‘but vice is usually its own punishment. I'd go more carefully next time, if I were you.'

‘Yes, sir,' Paniatowski said.

But she was thinking: Will there
be
a next time? Do I want to see Frank Hanson again? Can I afford to put myself in a position where I might start getting involved?

Only the skeleton of the kipper lay on Woodend's plate now. He pushed it to one side.

‘So have you got anythin' to report, Sergeant?' he asked. ‘Or were your investigations yesterday just a waste of time?'

‘Why don't I tell you what I found out, and see what you think, sir?' Paniatowski suggested.

‘Aye, go on then,' Woodend agreed.

Paniatowski merely sketched out her meeting with Sergeant Collins and what he'd told her about a possible stolen car ring, but when she came to Sergeant Howarth and the hit-and-run, she was much more thorough – though she omitted to mention her brief excursion behind the reception desk of the Palace Hotel.

Woodend listened in silence until she had finished, then nodded his head. ‘It doesn't seem quite right,' he admitted, ‘but I don't see what it's got to do with us.'

‘If a crime's been committed, sir –'

‘Then much as I deplore it – much as I hate hit-an'-run drivers – it's really none of our business.'

Paniatowski had been prepared for this, and even in her post-hangover haze she had her counter-argument prepared.

‘What if it's
not
just a local matter?' she said. ‘What if it's connected with Mr Davies' murder?'

‘Go on,' Woodend said, noncommittally.

‘We know that everyone who belongs to the Golden Mile Association is influential in the community, and so has a lot to lose if there's even a breath of scandal. But this is much more than a
breath
. One of them gets blind drunk and kills an old woman – and he knows that if he's caught he'll be exchanging his big detached house for a prison cell before he's even had time to say “involuntary manslaughter”.'

‘I'm still listenin',' Woodend told her.

‘He manages to get home without being discovered, and his first thought is that he's in the clear. After all, there are thousands of cars in Lancashire, and the driver of any one of them could have been responsible. But then the doubts start to set in. What if the police pin down the hit-and-run driver to the Golden Milers, he asks himself, and then narrow it down further to the last ones to leave? He won't be one of thousands of suspects any more – he'll be one of only a handful. Now let's just say he knows both the men leading the investigation. He doesn't see any difficulties with Sergeant Howarth – all he has to say is that he had nothing to do with the accident, and Howarth will believe him. But Inspector Davies is another matter. He has a reputation for never letting go of a case until he's solved it.'

‘At least, he had until recently,' Woodend mused.

‘The driver decides that the only way to be sure he's safe is to get rid of Mr Davies. He lures him under the pier on some pretext or other, and kills him.' Paniatowski spread out her hands like a magician who'd just completed a successful trick. ‘What do you think of that, sir?'

‘I'm not convinced a man would risk life imprisonment to avoid three or four years in jail.'

‘Life or three or four years, it makes no difference – it's all the same to him.'

‘You'd better explain that.'

‘He's at the top of the mountain, and he likes it there. If he once falls it doesn't matter whether he only rolls a few feet or ends up right at the bottom – because however small the fall, he knows he can never reach the top again.'

‘You've got a way with words, I'll give you that,' Woodend said. ‘So do you really think the hit-and-run and the murder are connected?'

‘I do,' Paniatowski said.

Well, it wasn't completely beyond the bounds of possibility that they were, she told herself.

‘If you were goin' to take this particular investigation any further, you'd need a list of the folk who actually attended this function,' Woodend said.

‘I've got one.'

‘Have you, now?' Woodend asked. ‘From Sergeant Howarth?'

‘No, sir.'

‘From the manager of the Palace Hotel?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Then from where?'

‘I'd rather not say, sir.'

Woodend rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand. ‘I'm known for cuttin' corners, Sergeant,' he said, ‘but I always make sure I stay within the bounds of the law.' Well, usually, anyway, he added as a mental qualification. ‘Have you kept within the bounds of the law in obtainin' this list, Sergeant?'

‘I believe so, sir,' Paniatowski said – or at least, if she hadn't, nobody would be able to prove it.

‘An' who's on this list of yours?'

‘As I said, it's exclusively local bigwigs. Doctors with private practices, a few successful solicitors, a builder, a couple of bank managers, three or four magistrates . . . According to Sergeant Hanson you don't get invited to join the Milers unless you're a true pillar of the community. You get the picture?'

‘Aye, I get the picture,' Woodend said. ‘So despite the fact it's called the Golden Milers Association, it's really nothin' to do with the Golden Mile. For example, there was nobody there from behind the scenes in what you might call the “entertainment industry”.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Nor any of the stars from the shows?'

‘No, sir.'

Woodend pondered for a second. ‘It's a dicey business goin' up against local power an' influence – you could be puttin' both our careers on the line – but I'm goin' to let you do it, anyway,' he said.

‘Thank you, sir,' Paniatowski said – and wondered if Woodend would have been quite so willing to back her if he'd known that as well as the solicitors, doctors and builders who had been at the function, it had also been attended by the chief superintendent in charge of the Blackpool police.

L
ife went on, Edna Davies told herself, as she reached up into the cupboard over the sink for the breakfast bowls. There were times when you thought it couldn't possibly – but it always did. Bill had died in the most horrific way. His face had been so smashed up that it had been almost impossible to recognise him. So what? Did that mean the washing-up didn't need to be done any more? Or that it was no longer necessary to get Peter ready for school?

She filled the kettle and thought about her husband. He'd been a good man, she acknowledged. A decent man. In his whole life, he had made only one real mistake – and even that had been an accident. She should have been able to forgive him. She should have been able to accept the fact that their life was tough enough without there being any bad blood between them – that they needed to be able to draw strength from each other. But she hadn't be able to do that, and though she would never have wished Bill dead, she couldn't quite suppress the feeling that he had only got what he deserved.

Edna glanced up at the kitchen clock. Twenty past eight. If Peter wasn't down soon, he would be late.

She walked to the foot of the stairs. ‘Your breakfast is on the table!' she called.

No answer.

‘Can you hear me?' she shouted.

Still, Peter did not respond. Perhaps he'd fallen asleep again. Or maybe he'd merely drifted into one his daydreams, leaving – as he always did on such occasions – the real world far behind him.

She began to climb the stairs. ‘Do you want me to lose my temper with you?' she called out.

She wondered if she'd said the right thing. The boy's father had only just died. Shouldn't she be giving him some slack? Or was that the wrong way to go about it? Now that she was both mother
and
father to Peter, should she be laying down firm ground rules even in the midst of the boy's mourning?

Bill would have known what to do, she thought. He had been a good father who had done everything he could for Peter. He'd done all he could for Susan, too – after it had been too late really to do anything at all.

Peter's bedroom was empty. Edna checked the bathroom, but he was not there either.

She opened her own bedroom door and looked across at the bed she and Bill had once shared – the bed that a much younger Peter had crawled into on the nights he'd been woken up by a bad dream. She could almost feel the three of them snuggled together, sharing their body heat and their love. But that had all been before Susan had been born.

There was no sign of Peter in his father's room – which meant there was only place where he could be. Her heart starting to beat a little faster, Edna made her way to the box room.

She knew what she would find inside – she had put it all there herself – yet still she hesitated on the threshold.

Her breathing was becoming irregular now.

I should never have done it, she thought. I should have used the room for storing bits of junk in, like everybody else does.

She grasped the knob, and opened the door. The room contained a single bed, neatly made up. Shelves ran around the walls – Bill had not wanted to put them up, but she'd insisted – and on those shelves stood the toys she'd bought over the years. The golliwog she'd given Susan for her second birthday. The doll's house she'd bought when her daughter had turned six. It was with these toys that she'd recorded the passing of the childhood Susan had never really had, and though she'd told herself that one day . . . one day . . . the girl would be able to take as much pleasure in these playthings as normal children did, she'd known, deep in her heart, that day would never come.

Peter was standing in the corner of the tiny room, a glazed look in his eyes.

‘What are you doing here?' Edna asked softly.

‘I don't know.'

‘If you don't hurry up, you'll be late for school.'

‘That doesn't matter.'

‘It does matter,' Edna said urgently. ‘If you don't get on at school, you'll never get on in life.'