Golden Mile to Murder (21 page)

‘Who cares?'

The slap was so sudden and so violent that it surprised even Edna herself. One second her arm was resting by her side, the next her hand made contact with her son's right cheek, causing a resounding crack which echoed around the narrow room.

At first the boy was too shocked to cry, then the first tears appeared and soon he was sobbing uncontrollably, his thin body shaking as if he had just been pulled out of icy water.

Edna knelt down beside him, and hugged him tightly to her. ‘I'm so sorry,' she said, starting to cry herself. ‘I don't know why I did it. I don't know what came over me.'

But she did. Peter – her son – had opportunities in front of him that his sister would never know – and he was treating them as if they were nothing.

Oh God, please grant me this one wish, she prayed as she clasped her son ever tighter to her. Please, please, let at least one of my children lead a normal, happy life.

Woodend looked down the table at his team – his blonde-haired bagwoman, the solid Sergeant Hanson, the fresh-faced Constable Eliot, the brooding Constable Brock and the ginger-haired – almost feline – Constable Eric Stone.

‘Listen, I'm not sayin' you're not workin' hard,' he told them, ‘but I
am
sayin' that you're not gettin' the results. The Golden Mile's not that big a place when all's said an' done, an' we know Mr Davies was spendin' a lot of his free time there. Why did he do it? Because he needed to meet somebody connected with one of the businesses on the Mile! Probably more than one person, in fact. So you should be able to come up with witnesses who either talked to him themselves or saw somebody else talkin' to him. An' with the notable exception of Gypsy Rose Elizabeth, you've drawn a complete blank.'

‘Has the gypsy been able to contribute anything to the investigation, sir?' Hanson asked hopefully.

‘Not as yet,' Woodend replied, a vague feeling discomfort sweeping over him as he remembered what Rose Elizabeth had had to say about his own problems. ‘But even if she does prove to be of some use later, we can't go buildin' the whole case around the word of one Romany.' He paused, and let his eyes sweep the table. ‘You,' he continued, addressing DC Eliot, ‘what have you come up with, lad?'

A blush broke out on Eliot's face, and he immediately turned towards Sergeant Hanson for guidance.

‘Look at me, lad, not him!' Woodend ordered. ‘Who've you talked to?'

‘The . . . the sarge asked me to concentrate my efforts on the bingo callers, sir.'

Woodend nodded. ‘Not a bad avenue of inquiry, that,' he told Hanson approvingly. ‘Bingo callers are always on the look-out for extra customers, so they're not likely to miss much of what's goin' on around them.' He turned his attention back to Eliot. ‘An' what have these bingo callers been able to tell you?'

‘Not a lot,' the detective constable admitted. ‘Some of them knew him, and some of those who didn't recognised him from his photograph. But the only thing any of them could tell me was that they'd seen him walking past their places of business on a fairly regular basis.'

‘The Golden Mile's a village,' Woodend told his team. ‘You understand what I mean when I say that, don't you?'

But from the blank expressions which greeted this remark, it was plain that they didn't. Even Monika Paniatowski, whose abilities he was coming to appreciate more all the time, looked at him as if he were talking gibberish. If Bob Rutter had been there, he would have understood, the chief inspector thought regretfully. Bob wouldn't have needed it spelling out for him.

‘A village is anythin' which is tied together by a common interest or culture,' Woodend continued. ‘In what most people think of as a village – a collection of houses, a church and maybe a pub – what ties the people together is that they need each other. If one of them takes sick or there's a fire, there's no point in waitin' for help to come from the nearest town, because that'd take too long. So they have to rely on each other. Now the Golden Mile's a village, too, but for a very different reason. The people who work there are tied together by a
shared experience
. They share the experience of workin' while everybody around them is havin' fun. They share the experience of havin' to put up with drunks while keepin' a smile on their faces. They all know what it's like to be looked down on by people who probably don't make half the money they do. Do you see where I'm goin' with this?'

His team all nodded, though he was not sure whether he was really getting through to them or not.

‘They're like bobbies in some ways. There's only two groups of people as far as they're concerned – themselves and the civilians. An' like any bunch of villagers, they know a hell of a lot about each other.' Woodend laid his hands flat on the table. ‘There are people out there who have all the answers we need. All you have to do is find them.'

There was a pause, which perhaps indicated that the team were digesting what he'd said – or might merely have meant they were hiding their incomprehension behind a wall of silence.

Then Hanson said, ‘We'll do our best, sir. We want Mr Davies' killer caught as much as you do.'

But did they? Woodend wondered. Did they
really
? He had an uneasy feeling about this case. He felt, for much of the time, as if he were stumbling around in a thick fog, while the rest of them stood on the edges of it – making sure that he didn't find his way out.

‘If anythin' comes up that I should deal with durin' the next few hours, I can be contacted at Whitebridge headquarters,' he said, and, noticing a couple of raised eyebrows, he added, ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Ainsworth wants me to bring him up to speed on what progress we're makin' with this investigation – an' in order to avoid him havin' a heart attack, I'm goin' to have to lie through my teeth.'

He stood up, and walked to the door. Sergeant Hanson waited until the chief inspector's footsteps had receded up the stairs before addressing the rest of the team.

‘Right, you heard Mr Woodend,' he said. ‘Get out there and bring back some results.' He turned to Paniatowski. ‘If you could spare me a few minutes, Sergeant, I'd like a quick word.'

‘Of course,' Monika agreed.

The three detective constables trooped out of the room. Hanson got up from his chair, and took the one directly opposite Paniatowski's.

‘I meant what I said just before you dashed off this morning,' he said. ‘Last night was wonderful.'

Yes, it was pretty spectacular, Paniatowski thought. But aloud, she said, ‘I usually try not to get my social life and my professional life mixed up even
after
working hours, Frank. I'm certainly not going to do it
during
them.'

Hanson looked a little chastened. ‘Fair point,' he said.

‘So if there's nothing else –' Paniatowski said, starting to get up from her chair.

‘There is. I've been in touch with one of the waiters who works at the Palace Hotel. He didn't want to talk about the night of the Golden Milers' do – like everybody else, he'd rather not get on the wrong side of the people who matter – but he owes me a couple of favours, and when I reminded him of that he agreed to co-operate as long as I'd promise that what he told me couldn't be traced back to him.'

‘What
did
he tell you?' Paniatowski asked, doing her best to hold back her excitement.

‘According to him, the show finished at around eleven, and the entertainers buggered off soon after that.'

‘What kind of show was it?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Do you know, I didn't think to ask,' Hanson admitted. ‘It was probably a band or something.'

Unlikely, Paniatowski thought. Bands were for dancing, and the Golden Milers' function had been an all-male affair. But now was the time to listen, not to raise questions.

‘Go on,' she said encouragingly.

‘The Milers started to drift off at around a quarter past eleven, but there was a hard-core who stayed on after that. It wasn't a free bar, and the hotel hadn't got an extension on its licence, so there should have been no more drinks served, but – though nobody's ever going to admit it – it wouldn't surprise me if a few glasses of the hard stuff still managed to find their way under the towels.'

‘It wouldn't surprise me, either.'

‘Now we come to the bit where you get lucky,' Hanson continued. ‘As near as we can establish, the old lady was knocked down sometime between ten past and a quarter past twelve – and at midnight, when the manager of the Palace appeared and said he really was going to have to close, there were only five Milers left in the bar!'

And the last of them to leave – or at least the last to have driven down Blakiston Street – must have been the one who hit the old woman, Paniatowski thought. Unless . . .

Unless it had been one the
first
, and the others, arriving on the scene
after
the accident, were covering up for their highly influential mate! Now
there
was a convincing scenario!

‘Do you have the names of these people?' she asked.

‘Yes I do. But before I give them to you, I want you promise me you'll tread carefully. We don't want you charging round like a bull in a china shop, looking for conspiracies everywhere, now do we?'

‘Of course not,' Monika agreed.

D
etective Constable Eliot was walking along the promenade, eating chips from a newspaper, and wishing – not for the first time – that people wouldn't always get a false impression of him. The problem was, he told himself, that when they saw his baby-faced features and noticed how often he blushed, they immediately classified him as someone who would never amount to much.

Well, they were wrong! If only they'd give him the chance, he'd prove that he could be as tough as any of the hardboiled cops he'd seen in the American detective films. Maybe even tougher! And as for ambition – he'd had plenty of that. In his mind's eye he could clearly see himself as Lancashire's youngest-ever chief constable. Then he would show them! Under his leadership, the crime rate in the county would plummet, and villains from Warrington to Preston would shake at the mere mention of his name. All he needed was one lucky break to help him on to the first rung of the ladder.

He stopped to deposit his chip-paper in a waste bin, and noticed that he was standing next to Gypsy Elizabeth Rose's fortune-telling booth. The door of the booth was closed and securely padlocked – which was surprising. If he'd been a fortune-teller, he thought, he would have opened up hours ago in order to entice inside all the holidaymakers who were walking round with their money burning holes in their pockets. But maybe gypsies weren't like policemen – maybe they only worked when they felt inspired.

He paused for a moment to look at the pictures of the celebrities, frozen forever behind a sheet of plate glass on the side of the booth. There were comedians and singers, acrobats and magicians, all of them – apparently – great friends of Elizabeth Rose's. One day he himself would be important enough to merit a place next to them, Eliot thought – though perhaps not until the Queen had conferred his knighthood on him.

‘Want to buy a toy that'll keep your kids amused for hours?' asked a voice to his left.

Flattered that someone considered he looked old enough to have children of his own, Eliot turned and saw a tiny brown-skinned man holding a bunch of toy monkeys on sticks in his right hand.

‘Marvellous things, these monkeys,' the street vendor continued. ‘First they climb up the sticks, an' then they climb down again. Don't ask me how they do it – it's one of the miracles of modern science.'

‘Have you got a licence to sell those things?' Eliot asked.

‘What's that got to do with you?' the man countered.

‘A lot,' Eliot told him. ‘I happen to be a detective.'

‘A detective?' the tiny man repeated incredulously. ‘You mean you're like Bailey an' Spencer on
Seventy-Seven Sunset Strip
?'

‘No, I'm not a private eye,' Eliot said, with just a hint of regret in his voice. ‘I'm a bobby.'

‘Get away!' the vendor said, his disbelief still evident.

‘I am,' Eliot insisted. ‘I've got a warrant card in my pocket. You can see it, if you want.'

The vendor scoffed. ‘You can buy a genuine-looking warrant card down at the House of Jokes for one an' a kick,' he said. ‘Tell you what – if you're really a detective, why don't you show me a bit of detectin'?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘Have a look at them pictures on Elizabeth Rose's booth, an' tell me what's odd about them?'

Eliot did as he'd been told. ‘I can't see anything wrong with them,' he confessed, after he'd studied them for perhaps a minute.

‘You mean to tell me, Mr Detective, that you can't spot a fake when you see one?'

‘A fake?'

‘Take another look at the photo of Elizabeth Rose with Lonnie Donegan,' the vendor suggested.

Perhaps the vendor was suggesting the man wasn't really Lonnie Donegan at all, Eliot thought, but he certainly
looked
like the King of Skiffle. The constable cocked his head sideways to see if that would help. It didn't.

‘I still don't get it,' he said.

‘You notice that Lonnie's standin' close to Elizabeth Rose, but not actually touchin' her?'

‘Yes.'

‘An' can you see that while most of him is in sharp focus, the side of his body next to Elizabeth Rose is a bit blurred?'

‘I suppose it is, now that you mention it.'

‘That's because it's two different photos that have been fitted together.'