The Dark Lady (14 page)

Because he had suddenly lost his nerve? No, Woodend told himself, it wasn't that. His assailant had run away because the real purpose of the attack had never been to hurt – it had only been to distract. And for that night, at least, it had worked. He'd lost his appetite for exploring, and as soon as he could find his way back to the club, he'd go straight to bed.

He discovered he was limping slightly, but that would soon wear off. And it had been worth a few aches and pains to learn so much – because while he still didn't know what he was looking for, he was convinced it was out there, somewhere in the woods.

W
oodend watched the tall silver-haired man in the expensive tweed suit hover on the threshold of the Westbury Hall breakfast room as if he had still not made up his mind whether or not to enter it.

A BCI man? the chief inspector wondered, as he speared the last remaining piece of sausage and popped it into his mouth. Probably – or why else would he be there?

The man had evidently made his decision, and walked over to Woodend's table.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Chief Inspector Woodend?” he asked, in a plummy voice.

“That's me,” Woodend agreed. “An' you'd be . . .?”

“Howard Blake,” the other man replied, and when Woodend didn't respond with recognition, as he'd obviously been expected to, he added, “for my sins, I'm the chief constable.”

Bloody hell! Woodend thought. The chief constable. The feller his sarky minions called ‘Sexton' Blake. What was he doing in Westbury Park at that time of the morning?

The chief inspector put down his knife and fork, and was starting to rise to his feet when Blake gestured him with his hand to sit down again.

“Let's not stand on ceremony, Mr Woodend,” the chief constable said. “This is very much in the nature of what you might call a purely informal visit, so why don't you just get on with your breakfast while I have my say.”

Blake took the chair opposite the chief inspector's. Woodend looked out of the window. There was no police car there, just an expensive Austin Westminster. There was no sign of a police driver, either.

Woodend sliced into a rasher of bacon as if that were the only thing which concerned him, but his mind was already in overdrive. Chief constables usually steered a very wide berth of him, and he was far from happy that this one had not only come to see him – when it would have been much easier to summon him to the station – but had come alone, in his private car, when there was unlikely to be anyone else about to see him. Worse still, he'd come out of uniform.

“You seem to have been in the wars,” Blake said, looking at the bruise on Woodend's cheek.

“Aye, I walked into a door, sir,” Woodend told him. “An' the bugger of it is, I was stone-cold sober at the time.”

The chief constable's fingers played the table as if it were a piano. Drum, drum, drum. Drum, drum, drum.

He's nervous, Woodend thought. Now why the bloody hell should he be nervous?

“We . . . er . . . don't seem to have seen a great deal of you down at Maltham Central,” Blake said.

Woodend dipped the bacon into his egg yolk. The chief constable was definitely rattled, he decided.

“You haven't seen
anythin
' of me down at Maltham Central, sir,” he corrected Blake. “Hangin' around cop shops is not the way I work. Everythin' I need to solve the case is right here.”

“Yes, I . . . er . . . appreciate that your methods are both slightly unconventional and usually highly successful, Chief Inspector . . .”

“Thank you, sir.”

“. . . but I was wondering if, in this particular investigation, you might have lost your focus a little.”

Woodend sliced up his fried bread into rough squares. “How do you mean, sir?” he asked innocently.

“Well, you see, I happen to have run into Simon Hailsham yesterday evening . . .”

“Run into him, you say? Would that have been in the pub? Or was it in the Lodge?”

Blake frowned. “It was perhaps the wrong choice of words,” he admitted. “As a matter of fact, I saw him in my office.”

“So it wasn't even in the least bit what you'd describe as a casual encounter, then?”

“He was most eager to talk to me,” Blake said, ignoring Woodend's last comment. “It seems that the people at BCI are rather concerned about the leisurely pace at which you seem to be conducting your investigation. Of course, their concern is heightened by the fact that the newspapers, by tying the murder in to these ludicrous stories about this so-called Dark Lady, are generating a great deal of adverse publicity.”

So that was why Blake was so edgy, Woodend thought – because he wasn't there in his capacity as chief constable, he'd come as the messenger boy for the mighty BCI.

“So I've been conductin' my investigation at a leisurely pace, have I, sir?” he asked. “I have been here less than two days. Just how soon are you expectin' me to make an arrest?”

“I don't expect miracles,” the chief constable said defensively, “but from what I understand, there are some obvious suspects.”

Woodend sighed. “Yesterday, everybody at Maltham Central was convinced a dosser called Fred Foley had done Schultz in,” he said. “Now, suddenly, it's the Poles who did it. It seems to me that you don't really care who's charged, as long as somebody is. An' the only reason for such unseemly haste – as far as I can tell – is that BCI wants the matter over an' done with, so it can concentrate its full attention on makin' obscene profits.”

Blake reddened slightly, but kept his temper under control. “The Poles have an obvious motive,” he said. “It's well known that they hate the Germans in general, and they probably felt an extra antipathy towards Gerhard Schultz, since he was one of their bosses. In addition, they clearly had both the means and the opportunity. And if all that were not enough, there's a witness who actually placed them near the scene of the crime.”

“If the witness is tellin' the truth, then they were seen at the other side of the woods from the spot where the murder took place,” Woodend pointed out. “An' we don't know the witness is tellin' the truth – he could have said what he did just to get the bribe from BCI.”

The chief constable's flush deepened. “Bribe is rather a harsh word to use under the circumstances,” he said.

“So which word would you prefer to use,
under the circumstances
?” Woodend asked, sounding genuinely interested.

Blake stroked his chin reflectively. “Financial incentive would, I feel, more accurately reflect the true position.”

“All right, we'll call it that if it makes you feel better. But even with a witness spurred on by a ‘financial incentive', we still haven't got enough evidence to charge the Poles.”

“If that's your instinct, then I'm prepared to accept it,” Blake said. “You see, I really am trying to see things from your point of view. But surely, if we were to arrest these Poles, and question each of them separately one of them would crack in order to save his own skin.”

“Shall I tell you what I think?” Woodend asked.

“Of course.”

“I think the
Poles
were in the woods that night – just like Ted Robinson said they were – but their purpose for bein' there had nothin' to do with Gerhard Schultz's death.”

“So what were they doing?”

“I don't know – yet.”

“Then pull them all in, and we'll soon have your answer for you!” Blake said, exasperated.

Woodend shook his head. “You don't know them like I do, sir. As far as they're concerned, it's them against the world. They're a really tight little bunch, an' they'd never admit to anythin' that'd get their pals into trouble. It'll be far better to wait until we've got somethin' definite on them. But whatever that somethin' is, I can assure you that it won't be a murder charge.”

Blake had plainly reached the limits of his tolerance – or of BCI's tolerance.

“I would have expected more co-operation from Scotland Yard.”

“An' I would have expected the professional courtesy of bein' allowed to do my job without interference,
sir
,” Woodend countered.

Blake stood up so violently that he almost knocked his chair over.

“As soon as I get to the station, I shall be putting in an official complaint to your superiors about your attitude,” he said.

“That's your privilege, sir,” Woodend replied, mopping up the last of egg yolk with the last of his fried bread squares.

But he was more worried than he was letting on. There'd been a time, a few months earlier, when he had contemplated moving into administration. Then he'd realised just how important his current job was to him – how, in a way he wasn't quite sure he understood himself, it both drove and defined him. And every time he clashed with authority, he was putting that precious job at risk.

He still had some food left, but he had suddenly lost his appetite. He lit up Capstan Full Strength and watched Blake drive away. He'd made some powerful enemies this time, he told himself, and if he was to come out of the whole business unscathed, he was going to have to catch his killer soon. But he wouldn't do it their way. He bloody wouldn't.

Rutter had taken the overnight sleeper from Hereford to Southampton, and a taxi from the railway station to the police headquarters, so it was just after eight o'clock in the morning when he found himself standing at the front desk and talking to the duty sergeant.

“Mike Partridge?” mused the sergeant, who was white-haired and probably nearing retirement age. “Can't say the name rings a bell with me, but this is a big city, you know.”

“Could you get one of your lads to check through the records and see if he's ever been in trouble?”

“No problem at all,” the sergeant assured him. His eyes swept across the lobby, and settled on a slightly portly, middle-aged constable who had just come through the door. “Are you workin' on anyfink important at the moment, Horace?” he asked.

The constable shook his head. “Not really, Sarge. As a matter of fact, I was just planning to grab some breakfast,” he said, his tone indicating he hoped that might still be possible.

“This young bloke's a sergeant from the Yard,” the duty officer said, dashing the constable's optimism. “Wants to know if some geezer he's interested in has got any form down here. Take him down to the records room and show him the ropes, will you?”

“I'll be glad to,” the constable said, without much conviction. “If you'd like to follow me, sergeant.”

Rutter did just that. The two men went along a corridor and down a set of steps to the basement.

“Now, who's this villain you're interested in?” the constable asked, as he opened the door to the dusty records room.

“I don't know if he
is
a villain yet,” Rutter told him. “But his name's Mike Partridge.”

“Mike Partridge?” the constable repeated. “About my age? Red face? Moved up north after the war?”

“Yes, that sounds like our man,” Rutter agreed. “Do you know him?”

“Know him! I should say that I do. Went to school with the bloke, didn't I? And we were in the same unit in the army. I'm sure he's not got form – if he had, I'd know about it.” An idea came to his mind. “Tell you what – instead of us wastin' our time down here, why don't we go somewhere else and I'll tell you all about him.”

“Good idea,” Rutter said. “Is there an interview room somewhere we could use?”

The constable grinned. “Oh, there are interview rooms enough in this station, but I also find I do my best remembering in the canteen.”

The woman who came out of the house on Elm Road, some fifteen minutes after Chief Constable Howard Blake had left Westbury Park in a huff, had a wiry frame and was dressed in a smart, two-piece costume. She was in her late thirties, Woodend guessed, and though she must once have been a pretty woman, she now looked completely washed out. Yet the chief inspector also detected great strength in her – the same kind of strength her husband had.

“It's Mrs Müller, isn't it?” he asked as she drew level with him.

“Yes, I am Gretchen Müller.”

“An' I'm Chief Inspector . . .”

“I know who you are,” the woman interrupted. “Everyone in the park knows who you are. What do you want with me?”

“I'd like a little chat.”

The woman glanced down at her watch. “I have a bus which I must catch,” she said. “I am expected at my school in less than half an hour. I am the one who has the keys.”

“I never had any intention of holdin' you up,” Woodend assured her. “We can talk on the way to the bus stop.”

The early-morning sun was shining on them benevolently through a gap between the huts, but Woodend got the distinct impression that the woman felt cold – that, in fact, she always felt cold.

“Your husband told me that after he left the club on the night of the murder, he went straight home, where he found you listenin' to a concert on the radio,” the chief inspector said.

“That's right. It was Prokofiev's
Romeo and Juliet
.”

“He also claims he sat with you for a while, until the station closed down for the night, an' then you both went to bed. Are you what you might call a heavy sleeper, Mrs Müller?”

“No, I'm not,” the woman said. “Since the start of the war, I have hardly slept at all.”

“Long time to go without sleep,” Woodend said. “But that's neither here nor there. The question I really want to ask you is this: if your husband had got up again an' gone out, you would have known about it, wouldn't you?”

“Yes.”

“So you're sayin' that your husband never left your side from the time he got home that night until you left for work the followin' mornin'?”