The Enemy Within (15 page)

‘But you haven't seen her since?'

‘She . . . she may have dropped in a couple of times since the funeral.'

‘That's it? Just a couple of times?'

‘Possibly a bit more than that,' the steward admitted.

‘Meanin' what, exactly?'

‘I suppose you might have called her a regular.'

Woodend ran his hand thoughtfully along his chin. ‘Do you know, I think I might risk a pint of Baldwin's Best Horse Piss after all.'

‘We're not allowed to serve non-members.'

‘In that case, I shall be forced to arrest myself. But I can't do that before I've actually committed the crime, now can I?'

When the pint had been pulled, Woodend slid a two-shilling piece across the bar.

‘Have that on me,' the steward suggested.

‘Not a chance, lad,' Woodend replied. He took a sip of the beer. ‘God, it's even worse than I remembered. Where's it from? London?'

‘Yorkshire!' the steward said, outraged.

‘Funny, I could have sworn it had a southern taste about it,' Woodend told him. He took another swallow. ‘Still, maybe I'll get used to it.'

‘You don't mind if I go an' check on the stock, do you?' Rodney Whitbread asked hopefully.

‘That can wait for a few minutes,' Woodend replied, in a voice which was not
quite
commanding. ‘How did Betty Stubbs get by after her husband died, do you know?'

‘I expect she had a widow's pension.'

‘She did – but she had a lot of debts, as well. Or hadn't you heard about them?'

‘I may have heard somethin'.'

Woodend took another sip of his pint. ‘You see, this isn't a big city, like Manchester,' he said. ‘We're simply not geared up to runnin' vice operations in the same way that they are.'

‘I'm not followin' you.'

‘Oh, I think you are. When I learned that Betty Stubbs was on the game . . . I'm sorry, I'm gettin' ahead of myself. You did
know
she was on the game, didn't you?'

‘I . . . uh. . .'

‘Anyway, I began to wonder how she got started. Where would you go if you wanted to get your end away?'

‘I'm a married man!'

‘Then you'll have a lot in common with most of the fellers who visit prostitutes.' Woodend lit up a cigarette. ‘Anyway, I'd already come to the conclusion that she'd most likely want to start out in some surroundin's where she was known an' felt comfortable. Then my inspector came up with the interestin' fact that most of her punters met her here.'

‘I wouldn't know anything about that. I just serve the drinks.'

‘The thing is,' Woodend continued, as if the barman had never spoken, ‘she'd have needed someone to help her out – to recommend her to those fellers who were feelin' randy but didn't know where to go to get satisfaction. See what I'm sayin'?'

The bar steward looked down at the counter, and said nothing.

‘Now in a lot of trades, you can rely on word of mouth,' Woodend continued. ‘You get a good plumber – if such a thing really exists outside the realms of fiction – an' you have no hesitation about recommendin' him to your friends. But while nobody's ashamed to say they've used a plumber, there's a lot of men who'd think twice before admittin' to havin' gone to a prostitute. So what she will have needed is somebody who not only knew what she did, but had the opportunity to talk to all the customers. He'd probably be the sort of feller that customers would tell their troubles an' frustrations to anyway. A bar steward, for example.'

‘If you think that I––'

‘Oh, I do, lad,' Woodend interrupted. ‘I thought it even before I came in here. Now that I can see the look on your face, I'm sure of it.'

‘I don't want to say any more.'

‘An' I don't want Whitebridge Rovers relegated to the Second Division at the end of the season. But I've got to be realistic – and so have you.' Woodend took another drag on his Capstan. ‘Look, son, I'm investigatin' a murder here. That's all that matters to me at the moment. If you're fiddlin' the books or sellin' off some of the stock when the committee's not lookin', I don't care. An' I don't care if you were pimpin' for Betty Stubbs. But if you hold out on me, I'll have your guts for garters. So let's hear what you've got to say.'

‘I wasn't pimpin' for her,' Rodney Whitbread muttered. ‘Not exactly, anyway.'

‘So what, exactly anyway,
were
you doin' for her?'

‘Sometimes I'd point a bit of business her way.'

‘An' what was your cut of the deal? Half of what she made?'

‘It wasn't like that. She'd slip me a couple of quid now an' again, but I never asked her to. I only helped because I felt sorry for her. She needed the money, and she told me that goin' on the game was the only way she knew to get it. Am I in trouble now?'

‘Not as long as you keep tellin' me the truth,' Woodend assured him. ‘I'll need a list of her punters' names. An' you'd better not try to hold out on me, because we already know who some of them are, an' if those names don't appear on your list––'

‘I couldn't do that! You can't ask me to!'

‘It's more in the nature of tellin', rather than askin',' Woodend said. ‘But don't worry, nobody need know that they came from you. In fact, I'll go out of my way to suggest I got the list from somewhere else entirely. But I have to have it. Understand?'

‘I suppose so,' Rodney Whitbread said, defeatedly.

‘An' I'll especially need to know if she had any favourite punters.'

‘I couldn't say about that.'

‘You're feedin' me a line again,' Woodend growled.

‘No, honestly, I'm not,' Whitbread protested. ‘She saw her customers at home. I've no idea whether any of the fellers I recommended her to saw her just the once, or whether they saw her a dozen times. That's the truth. I swear it is!'

‘What about her most recent punters?' Woodend asked. ‘The newest ones? Can you tell me anythin' about them?'

‘She's . . . she's not really been on the lookout for new business recently. She hasn't been feelin' too well.'

‘But?'

‘No buts.'

Woodend sighed. ‘Do you think you're the first one who's ever found himself in this position, lad? Because if you do, you couldn't be wronger.'

‘I don't know what you're talkin' about. What position?'

‘When you heard Betty Stubbs had been murdered, your first thought was to go down to the station. Then you started worryin' about how it would make you look. An' you're still worryin' – because though you've told me some of it, you're still holdin' part of it back.'

‘She told me about this new feller she was seein',' Rodney Whitbread admitted. ‘She said he was different to the others.'

‘In what way?'

‘Even though she couldn't do . . . couldn't do what she used to do to him . . . he still wanted to see her. An' he paid her the same amount of money, even if all she could manage was to toss him off.'

‘What else did she say about him?'

‘Nothin'.'

‘Age? Description? Background? Where she met him? Where they went together? Did she go to his house or did she go to his?'

‘I swear that's all she said. That he wasn't like the others. That he promised he'd never abandon her.'

‘There must be somethin' you've forgotten – or are holdin' back!'

‘I got the impression that he was younger than she was. But that was only an impression.'

‘When was the last time you saw her?'

‘The night before last. About seven o'clock.'

‘Not long before she was killed?'

‘I suppose it must have been.'

‘Tell me about it.'

‘She dropped in shortly after we'd opened. There weren't any other customers. She didn't want a drink, or anythin'. She just wanted to talk. To tell you the truth, I don't think there were many people, apart from me, who she felt she
could
talk to.'

‘An' what did she have to say for herself.'

‘She said her friend, Mr X––'

‘Mr X?'

‘That's what she called him. It was a bit of a joke between us, like. Man of mystery an' all that.'

‘Go on.'

‘She said . . . I did tell you she hadn't been feelin' too grand recently, didn't I?'

‘Aye, you did. What was wrong with her, by the way?'

‘I don't know for sure. Maybe it was women's troubles. Somethin' to do with her plumbin'. Anyway, as I was sayin', she told me Mr X was goin' to help her with her health problems – that he knew a doctor who'd performed miracles in the past.'

He'd traded on her hope and used her vulnerability against her, Woodend thought angrily.

The bastard! The schemin', lying, cold-hearted bastard!

‘An' after she'd told you about this doctor and his miracle cure, she left, did she?' Woodend asked the bar steward.

‘Yes.'

‘To meet Mr X?'

‘I think so,' Rodney Whitbread said. Then a single tear slid down his cheek. ‘Oh God!' he moaned. ‘Why didn't I try to stop her?'

L
ucy Tonge should have reported for work at the supermarket at half-past eight, but it was nearly twelve when she waltzed through the main door wearing the skirt and jacket that she'd spent most of the morning shopping for.

She smiled at the girls on the cash registers as she walked past them. To think that she had once envied them their jobs – had once desperately wanted to be one of them.

She had almost begged Mr McCann to let her take over one of the tills.

‘Can't do it, Lucy,' he'd told her.

‘Why not?'

‘Anybody can work a cash register, but not one in a hundred girls could run the stock room like you do. You're far too valuable where you are to be moved anywhere else.'

She'd believed him. She'd even been flattered. And then she'd overheard him talking to the assistant manager later in the day.

‘Got to draw the line somewhere,' McCann had said. ‘None of the girls are what you might call beauty queens, but we certainly don't want somebody with a face that could turn milk sour sitting at the cash desk.'

How she'd wept that night – and on the nights which followed. But that didn't matter now. It hadn't been her
real
life she'd been living – only a badly lit, badly plotted rehearsal. And though she could have been bitter about finally being given a starring role so late in her career, she wasn't. To go out in a blaze of glory – that was all she asked for! And that was what her knight in shining armour was about to give her.

‘Mrs Tonge!' said a booming voice.

‘Mr McCann,' she replied, turning to the man in a khaki coat.

‘What time do you call this, Mrs Tonge?'

‘Five minutes to twelve, Mr McCann.'

‘And do you have an explanation for your extreme tardiness?'

‘I'm afraid I don't, unless it's that I just didn't feel like coming in any earlier.'

‘You're sacked,' McCann said. ‘Go to the office immediately. Ask for your cards and two weeks' pay in lieu of notice.'

She hoped he'd say that. ‘Mr McCann, you take your two weeks' pay and stick it up your ar––. . . up your bottom,' she told the manager. ‘You're not sacking me, because I quit.'

She turned and walked out of the supermarket with as much flair as she could summon up.

McCann probably thought that she would run straight home, weeping tears of regret at her rash decision. But she didn't do that at all. Instead, she walked quite calmly into Mario's Coffee Bar and ordered herself a pot of tea and a round of toast. She had planned this in advance, just as she had deliberately staged her row with McCann shortly before some of the cashiers were due to take their break.

The girls would arrive soon. Though they had never invited her to join them, the cashiers always came to Mario's, and this time she would be waiting for them. She would be perfectly civil to them. She wouldn't brag or gloat. She would simply tell them – in the most matter of fact tone – where she was going the next day. And then, though they would hate themselves for doing it, they would envy her as much as she had once envied them.

It was pure coincidence that Rutter and Paniatowski ran into each other at the main entrance to police headquarters, and yet, given his current mood, it seemed to the inspector like the hand of fate was pushing them together.

‘We need to talk, Monika,' Rutter said.

Paniatowski looked at him bemusedly, as though she knew something was going on – but hadn't yet quite figured out what it was.

‘So talk,' she suggested.

Almost as an involuntary action, Rutter glanced quickly up and down the street.

‘Not here,' he said. ‘And not now. We need to be somewhere quiet.'

‘This wouldn't be about us seeing each other, would it?'

‘I've already told you, now's not the time,' Rutter said.

‘What's the matter with you?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Since yesterday afternoon, you've been acting as if I was a complete stranger.'

Rutter knew he should shut up then and there, yet somehow he couldn't bring himself to do it. ‘It's because of talking to those men,' he blurted out.

‘What men?'

‘Betty Stubbs' punters.'

‘I still don't understand what you're saying.'

‘At first, I was disgusted at the thought of even being in the same room with them. I felt so bloody superior, you see. But then I started to question myself – to wonder if I was any better than they were.'