The Dead Hand of History (5 page)

‘Yes, there is – when you think about it,' Beresford replied firmly. ‘As you just pointed out yourself, we've joined the grown-ups' world now.'

Paniatowski was on the verge of saying that didn't matter – that they were still Colin and Monika in the privacy of the office – when she realized that Beresford was right, and it actually
did
matter.

‘We need to run a complete check on any person – on any
woman
– who's gone missing in the last few days within a thirty-mile radius of Whitebridge,' she said crisply.

‘It's already under way, boss,' Beresford assured her.

‘And it'd probably be a smart idea for me to set up a meeting with the chief constable.'

‘Agreed.'

‘What about a press conference, Colin? How soon do you think I need to hold one?'

‘It seems to me that the sooner you do it the better. The pack have already smelled blood and they're not going to be easy to handle even if you
do
throw them a few bones – but they'll be a bloody sight worse if you
don't
.'

‘All right, set it up for me,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘But
before
I address them as a group, I think I need to have a few quiet words with just one of them.'

‘Which one?'

‘I've been wondering about that myself. What I'm looking for is a reporter who'd cheerfully cut his own granny's throat if he thought it would get him a good story.'

‘Then pick one at random,' Beresford suggested.

‘But, at the same time, I'm also looking for one who isn't quite the fearless news hound that he fondly imagines himself to be. Which of them would you recommend?'

‘I'd go for Mike Traynor of the
Evening Chronicle
,' Beresford said, without much hesitation.

Paniatowski nodded. ‘He's the one I would probably have picked out myself,' she said. ‘Ask Mr Traynor to come up and see me – but don't let any of the others
see you
asking.'

‘Now that sounds a bit of a challenge, boss. How am I supposed to manage it?'

Paniatowski grinned. ‘You're a bright lad – you'll think of something,' she said.

‘Yes,' Beresford agreed, with a slight sigh. ‘Because I'm a bright lad, I probably will.'

The scratching outside the door continued.

‘And on your way down, do you think you could find out what's causing that bloody irritating noise?' Paniatowski asked exasperatedly.

‘
Another
challenge!' Beresford said. ‘You really do work me, Chief Inspector, don't you?'

But what he was really saying, Paniatowski thought, was, ‘It's all right, Monika, we may just have had a few bumpy minutes, but I want you to know that I'm still on your side.'

‘Of course I work you,' she said. ‘In this life, you're either use or ornament – and you'd make a bloody awful ornament.'

But that wasn't true, either, she thought – Beresford was a good-looking lad, and still almost as fresh-faced as when he'd first joined the team as a detective constable.

As Beresford headed for the door, Paniatowski walked over to the window, and saw, with dismay, that the reporters in the car park had now been joined by a camera crew.

‘That's one problem solved, anyway,' she heard Beresford say from the doorway.

She turned, and saw that the inspector was holding a long plastic strip in his hands.

‘This was what was causing the trouble,' Beresford said. ‘It's been stuck on the door so bloody long that the maintenance department had a devil of a job getting it off.'

Paniatowski didn't bother to read what was written on it. She didn't need to, because she'd seen it almost every day for over a decade.

This had been Charlie Woodend's office, and the name on the strip was his. She wondered whether her own name on the door would ever look quite so convincing.

FOUR

‘
I
'm pleased to see you're starting out on the right foot, Chief Inspector,' Mike Traynor said.

It was his smile that Paniatowski found the most annoying, though there was certainly much else in the man to be annoyed with. She didn't, for instance, like his air of superiority, especially since he seemed to have so little to feel superior about. Nor did she like the fact that – though far too old to be a callow youth, and far too young to be a dirty old man – he seemed unable to resist the temptation of continually glancing at her cleavage.

And his dandruff didn't exactly impress her, either.

‘Starting out on the right foot?' she repeated. ‘What exactly does that mean, Mr Traynor?'

‘Well, for openers, I couldn't help noticing as I walked in that you've already had the name on the door changed – which announces to the world that you've well and truly arrived.'

‘That had nothing to do with me,' Paniatowski said. ‘If anyone was announcing I'd arrived, it was the maintenance department.'

‘Of course it was,' Traynor agreed, favouring her with a heavy wink. ‘But more important than getting your name on the door, there's the fact that you decided to see me.'

‘That's important, is it?'

‘More like
significant
, if you know what I mean.'

Paniatowski frowned. ‘No, I don't think I do know what you mean,' she said.

‘The very fact that I'm here shows that you know which way the wind's blowing.'

‘Really?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Really,' Traynor confirmed. ‘You see, Chief Inspector, a lesser woman than you might well have decided to give her first interview to local radio, but you realize that's all that it is –
local
.'

‘And isn't your newspaper
local
, too?'

‘You're quite right – that's exactly what it is. But you're forgetting that I also work for the
Daily Globe
.'

‘But only as a stringer, surely?'

‘Stringer?' Traynor repeated, as if he'd never heard the word before. ‘What's a stringer?'

‘He's a reporter who doesn't actually work for a newspaper in any formal sense of the word, but has been given the right to submit any stories that he thinks might be of interest to it,' Paniatowski said. ‘I would have thought that, being in the trade, you'd have known that yourself.'

And of course he had known – he just hadn't known that
she
knew!

‘In that sense, I suppose you could call me a stringer,' Traynor told her, looking hurt. ‘But in this life, it doesn't matter what title you're given,' he continued, rallying. ‘What's important is whether or not you have influence. And I do, because I have the
Daily Globe
editor's ear.'

‘Is that right? And do you carry it around in your pocket, or do you leave it on the mantelpiece at home?' Paniatowski asked, thinking, even as she spoke, that that sounded like a very Woodendesque remark.

‘Pardon?' Traynor said.

‘You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that this is an interview,' Paniatowski said.

‘And isn't it?'

‘No. I'm not talking to you as a reporter – I'm talking to you as someone who's become a material witness in my investigation.'

‘Material witness? Me?'

‘How did you know about the hand?' Paniatowski demanded, with a sudden hard edge to her voice.

‘I'm a reporter,' Traynor countered.

‘And what is that meant to imply, exactly?'

‘It's meant to imply that I have my ways and means.'

‘Ways and means,' Paniatowski repeated, rolling the words around in her mouth thoughtfully. ‘In other words, what you're saying is that you got a phone call. Was it anonymous?'

Traynor lifted his arm and rubbed the back of his head. A waterfall of dandruff cascaded down on to his collar.

‘At this juncture I am simply not prepared to reveal my confidential sources,' he said.

‘Confidential sources?' Paniatowski repeated. ‘How many reporters were in the car park when I arrived, do you think?'

‘Dunno. Seven or eight?'

‘It's good to see that you have all the facts at your fingertips. There were
nine
! And why were they all there? Was it because you, yourself, had
told
them to be there?'

‘Of course not. Do I look like a complete fool?'

Not like a
complete
one, no, Paniatowski thought.

‘So when you talk about your
confidential
source,' she said aloud, ‘what you really mean is that whoever decided to ring
them
up, also decided to give
you
a buzz as well.'

‘I suppose so,' Traynor said sulkily.

‘Well, that
is
a valuable source, and well worth guarding,' Paniatowski said. ‘I can quite understand why you're not prepared to talk about it to me.'

‘I never said I wouldn't talk about it,' Traynor protested.

‘“At this juncture I am simply not prepared to reveal my confidential sources”,' Paniatowski quoted back him.

‘Well, maybe I said it,' Traynor admitted. ‘But I didn't
mean
it. It was what I call a negotiating tactic.'

‘Along the lines of “You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours”?' Paniatowski suggested.

‘Well, exactly.'

‘But I don't
need
to scratch your back, Mr Traynor. If you don't want to help me – and you're perfectly entitled to refuse – then I'm sure Lydia Jenkins will be more than willing to . . .'

‘It was a man who called me,' Traynor admitted, in a rush.

‘Does he have a name?'

‘
Everybody
has a name.'

‘Well, then?'

‘I just don't know what his is.'

‘Which means you didn't recognize the voice?'

‘Correct.'

‘But the accent was local?'

‘Yes,' Traynor said, uncertainly.

‘Why the hesitation?'

‘Well, the accent
was
local, but it wasn't perfect. It was if the feller had come from somewhere else and sort of picked it up.'

‘How old was he?'

Traynor made a great show of giving the matter his deepest concentration. ‘Hard to know for sure. The voice was a bit muffled, like he was talking through a handkerchief.'

‘What did he say?'

‘He said that if I went down to the river bank, I'd find a severed hand in a plastic freezer bag, hidden in the bushes.'

‘
When
did he call you?'

‘Half-past seven.'

‘You're sure about that?'

‘Positive. I was listening to a news programme on the wireless, and they'd just given a time check.'

Paniatowski glanced down at her notes. The call from the dog-walker had been logged at seven thirty-six, so the one to Traynor had been made
before
the police had been notified – which, in turn, meant that whoever had tipped off the media, it hadn't been someone on the Force.

So who
had
tipped them off?

There were only two possibilities.

The first was that the dog-walker had done it.

The second was that the caller had known where the hand was because he'd put it there himself!

‘What did you do when he'd rung off?' she asked.

‘I finished my breakfast,' Traynor said, as if the answer was obvious.

‘That must have taken real self-discipline.'

‘You what?'

‘I'm just putting myself in your shoes, Mr Traynor. You're given a red-hot tip, but instead of chasing it up immediately, you force yourself to finish your breakfast. As I said, that shows tremendous self-restraint.'

‘Well, you see, Chief Inspector, I wasn't sure whether or not to take it seriously,' Traynor said.

‘And you thought that finishing mopping up your egg yolk might help you decide?'

‘I
thought
it was probably a crank call, if I'm being entirely honest with you, Chief Inspector. After all, this is
Whitebridge
, isn't it? That kind of thing simply doesn't happen here.'

Except that it apparently does – and on my first day on the job, Paniatowski thought.

‘So if you considered it unlikely there was a story in it, what were you doing in the car park?' she asked.

‘Ah, that was because of the second call,' Traynor explained.

‘The second call?'

‘About twenty minutes later, the feller rang me again. And this time he said that since I hadn't gone down to the river bank already, there was no point in going now – because the bobbies had arrived, and they'd never let me through. Then he went on to say that probably the best place to get a lead on the story would be police headquarters.'

‘How did he know you hadn't
already
gone down to the river?' Paniatowski wondered.

Traynor smirked. ‘I should have thought that was obvious. If I'd gone down to the river, I couldn't have answered the phone the second time he called.'

Paniatowski sighed. ‘All right,' she said. ‘What made him
suspect
that you hadn't gone, as he probably imagined any reporter who was worth his salt would have done?'

‘The bastard was watching my house!' Traynor said angrily. ‘He was watching my
bloody
house!'

I take back what I said about you not being a complete fool, Paniatowski thought.