The Enemy Within (17 page)

‘It's too late to win me round,' Maria said. ‘But I still want to know why you pretended you had an interview with Bob.'

‘I'm doing a background piece on your husband. “Rising star of police force.” That kind of thing. I thought it might help if I could see his home. Whatever you think of me, I can assure you that I meant no harm.'

‘I still don't believe a word you say,' Maria told her. ‘And I really would like you to leave now.'

‘Of course. I'll go at once. I'm so very sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Rutter. Truly I am.'

‘You can apologize as much as you like. I shall still tell my husband about your visit.'

‘Yes,' Elizabeth Driver said, smiling slightly to herself. ‘Yes, I'm quite sure that you will.'

One of his doctors had told him that his flashbacks, like an old photograph, would fade with time. LH had believed it – and believed in
him
– for quite a while. Not any more. The doctor had been just another in a long line of charlatans who had all peddled their false hopes and soft reassurances. The flashbacks had not faded. They were as vivid now – as heart-stoppingly real – as they had been that day he had staggered out of the jungle.

Him on one side of the clearing, Socks on the other. Two guards. The one closest to Socks is big for a Chinese, but the one LH must deal with is so slight he looks as if one of the rare jungle breezes would blow him away.

LH reaches into his sheath and pulls out his knife. A Fairbairn Sykes, specially made for killing by Wilkinson Sword. It is a terrible and terrifying instrument, with a point which could prick out the heart of a mosquito and an edge which could slice through a brick.

He is two feet from the guard now, and the guard is two seconds from death. He makes his move – left arm wrapped around the guard's chest, right hand drawing the knife across the guard's throat. The guard gurgles and twitches, and then goes limp. LH drops him and reaches for his sub-machine gun.

All hell breaks loose in the clearing as the three British soldiers spray hot metal death into the sleeping Chinese. The enemy have no chance. Some never wake. Others have only moments to realize that something is wrong before they forfeit their lives. Prone bodies are twitching, dying men are groaning all around the clearing. If all war is hell, then this is the inner circle.

‘Cease fire!' Jacko screams. ‘Cease fire, you mad bastards!'

It takes some time for the order to work its way into LH's brain, and even longer for the brain to persuade the finger to release its grip on the trigger.

The clearing itself relapses into silence, though beyond it countless jungle creatures shriek, scream or howl. LH can hear none of this. His ears are still reverberating with the sound of gunfire. But though he cannot hear, he can still smell, and he knows that the clearing stinks of cordite and blood.

Jacko is already checking through the bodies, hoping that one of the Chinese is still alive and able to walk – because if they cannot find a guide to lead them out of this green, sweating prison, then all the killing has been for nothing.

He finds what he is looking for. A boy. If he had been English, LH would have said he was seven or eight, but being Chinese he could be as much as twelve. Jacko holds on to the boy's thin arm and speaks soothingly to him in Chinese.

The boy looks around him wildly, then breaks free of Jacko's too-gentle grip. For a moment they think he is about to make a run for it, but that is not his intention. Instead, he falls on his knees before the sentry LH has killed, and starts to moan, ‘
Jia mu! Jia mu!
'

‘What's he saying?' LH asks Jacko.

Jacko looks sick. ‘He's saying “Mother, mother”,' he replies.

W
oodend could remember evenings around this table in the Drum and Monkey when heated discussions of the current case had produced enough energy to light up the whole pub.

Where was that energy now?

Paniatowski looked as if she were about to break into tears at any moment. Rutter had the appearance of a man who had just completed an assault course in full kit and carrying his platoon leader on his back. Worst of all, Woodend thought, not only did the other two seem to have no fight left in them, but they seemed, just by their presence, to be sapping his.

‘Run through Betty Stubbs' background again, will you, Monika?' he asked half-heartedly.

‘She went to one of the local elementary schools, where she wasn't much of a scholar,' Paniatowski droned. ‘She left school at fourteen, and got a job at Woolworth's. Her father kept a pretty tight rein on her socially, by all accounts, and her first real boyfriend was her husband, Ted. They were married as soon as she turned twenty-one. They lived with her parents for the first couple of years, then they bought the house in Rawalpindi Road. About ten years ago, Betty had a burst appendix and had to give up work. And that's it.'

‘There's nothin' at all in that to make her particularly attractive to our killer, is there?' Woodend asked.

‘Nothing at all.'

‘Yet we know he didn't select her at random. We know he's been planning this for quite some time.' Woodend turned to Rutter. ‘What about you, Bob? Did you get any leads on the knife?'

‘After Sergeant Atkins told me the wound looked as if it had been inflicted by a commando knife, I sent some of the lads round all the shops in the area which might have sold it – including the ones dealing in second-hand goods. The shopkeepers came up with names of three customers who'd bought sharp knives. I interviewed all three personally. They seemed non-starters, but I gave their knives to the lab for examination anyway.'

‘What about old soldiers?' Woodend asked.

‘What about them?'

The Chief Inspector sighed. ‘Old soldiers often bring souvenirs of their wars home with them. Anybody who might have been in a position to get his hands on a knife while he was in the services needs to be checked on.'

‘I hadn't thought of that,' Rutter admitted.

No, Woodend thought. But there was a time when you
would have
.

‘Mr Woodend!' the barman called.

‘Yes?'

The barman was holding up the phone. He had his hand over the speaker. ‘Phone call for you. Are you here?'

Woodend sighed again. ‘Aye, I'm here, I suppose.'

He levered himself out of his chair and walked over to the bar. The moment he had gone, Rutter said, ‘He knows.'

‘Knows what?' Paniatowski asked.

‘About us.'

‘Is there still any “us” to know about?'

‘Look, we still need to find the time to talk. I've got an idea. You leave your car here tonight, and I'll drive you home.'

‘It's only a short journey to my flat. You must think we don't have much to talk
about
.'

‘Monika . . . please . . .' Rutter said.

‘And are you really sure that once we're alone together in your car, you'll want to talk? Isn't it more probable that you'll give in to your base animal instincts, and try to screw me rigid? Or has your new-found morality left you impotent?'

‘It's not like that!' Rutter protested. ‘You know it isn't.'

‘I'm sorry to break up this meetin' of Agony Aunts Incorporated,' said a grim voice above them, ‘but if you can possibly spare the time, I'd like you to come along with me.'

Rutter and Paniatowski looked up. They had not noticed Woodend's return, but then they'd been so intent on each other that the chances were they wouldn't have noticed a herd of elephants rampaging through the pub.

‘What's happened?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Something important?'

‘That depends what you classify as important,' Woodend said tartly. ‘As important as the conversation the pair of you were just havin'? Probably not! But it could possibly prove to be of minor interest to a team of detectives who are supposed to be investigatin' a murder case. Can you guess what it might be?'

Rutter and Paniatowski exchanged glances, and both saw in the other's eyes that they were thinking the same thing – and hoping that it couldn't be true.

‘Another bonfire's been set alight, hasn't it?' Rutter said.

‘Spot on!' Woodend agreed.

Even from a distance, Woodend could see the headlights of the cars pointing towards the extinguished bonfire. This time it was a real field, rather than merely a strip of waste ground. And this time, it was located on the edge of Whitebridge rather close to the inner-city industrial centre. Other than that, the scene which was being enacted in the east meadow of Sourbrooke Farm was almost a mirror image of the one at Mad Jack's Meadow two nights previously.

Woodend parked his Wolseley next to a squad car, and saw that Rutter and Paniatowski were also pulling in close by. Perhaps he had been too rough on them back in the pub, he thought. But he liked them both, and did not want to see either of them getting hurt. And then there was Maria to consider – dear, sweet, blind Maria.

He climbed out of his car and walked towards the centre of the field. The arrival of the fire brigade had prevented the bonfire from completely burning to the ground, though the firemen had still not been able to save much of it.

But maybe there'd been no need to save it, Woodend thought hopefully. Maybe this time it really
was
nothing more than an act of vandalism carried out by one gang of small boys against another gang of small boys.

And then he saw the stretcher-bearers and, standing beside them, a woman wearing a sheepskin jacket over her bright sari.

Woodend looked down at the corpse on the stretcher. ‘If she was in the bonfire, why isn't the rest of her burnt as badly as the left arm and leg?' he asked the sergeant in charge.

‘She
wasn't
in the bonfire, sir,' the sergeant replied. ‘She was
beside
it. I assume that was where the murderer laid her out.'

‘Do you really mean “laid her out”? Or is that just a fancy way of sayin' “dumped her”?'

‘Laid her out,' the sergeant reiterated. ‘You'll see that for yourself when you examine the photographs, sir. She was a few feet from the bonfire, parallel to it, if you see what I mean. Her right arm was by her side, and her right leg was stretched out straight in front of her. But her left arm an' left leg had been moved, so they were pointing at the bonfire. It was all neat an' careful, sir. There's no chance it could have happened accidentally.'

‘So why do
you
think he did it in that way, Sergeant?'

‘Seems to me that the only possible explanation is that he wanted exactly what did happen
to
happen.'

‘In other words, he wanted part of the body burned, but not all of it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘But
why
should he have wanted that?'

‘Beats me, sir,' the sergeant admitted. ‘I'm pretty much a traffic an' petty larceny man. All this is a bit out of my league.'

‘There are times when I wish that it was out of mine,' Woodend told him.

A constable appeared with a torch in his hand. ‘Inspector Rutter thinks you'll want to see what we've found, sir.'

Woodend followed him to a spot about halfway between the bonfire and the edge of the field. Rutter and Paniatowski, both with flashlights in their hands, were bending over something on the ground. As he got closer, Woodend could see that it was a small suitcase. It was bright red, and looked newly bought.

‘I take it the suitcase belonged to our victim?' Woodend said.

‘It's more than likely,' Rutter agreed. ‘Especially since all the clothes are about the right size and the right style for a woman her age.'

Paniatowski had been carefully searching through the suitcase. Now she held up a blue booklet in her gloved hand. ‘British passport.'

‘Open it,' Woodend told her, bending down to take a closer look.

The document had recently been issued to a Lucy Tonge.

Lucy Tonge's body had been taken away for post-mortem at roughly the same time as door-to-door inquiries were establishing that Lucy lived alone and her neighbours knew little or nothing about her. A further search of the meadow had been postponed until daylight. Until the town woke up again, there was little to do but wait – and Woodend decided that he and his disjointed team might as well do the first part of their waiting back in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey.

Paniatowski and Rutter looked a little more alert and a little more motivated than they had earlier, Woodend thought – but there had to be a better way to keep his team up to speed than by relying on a fresh murder every few days.

‘I want to examine the murders from two different angles,' he announced. ‘First the similarities between them, then the differences. Do you want to run through the similarities, Monika?'

Paniatowski nodded. ‘Both women lived alone. Both had their throats cut, and both were dumped in fields with bonfires, which were then set alight. And both knew Mr X.'

‘Are you certain?' Woodend cautioned.

‘The suitcase and passport make it a more than reasonable supposition. Just as Mr X had promised to get Betty Stubbs cured, so he promised to take Lucy Tonge away from all this. It's a case of the gamekeeper fattening the partridges again.'

‘Good point,' Woodend agreed. ‘Now in what way were the cases different? Bob?'

‘We never found Betty Stubbs' handbag, which probably means the killer took it away,' Rutter said. ‘On the other hand, he left Lucy Tonge's passport where we were sure to discover it. Then there's the way he chose to position the bodies. He put Betty's in the middle of the bonfire, where – if all had gone according to plan – it would have been badly burned. But he went to great pains to see that didn't happen to Lucy's.'