The Enemy Within (18 page)

‘So what conclusions can we draw from that?'

‘He arranged things so it would take some time for us to identify Betty, but he either actually
wanted
us to identify Lucy Tonge immediately, or didn't
care
if we did or not.'

‘An' what was the thinkin' behind that?'

‘Caution,' Paniatowski suggested. ‘Betty was his first murder. He hadn't quite got the measure of us. Now he thinks he has, and he's confident that we won't catch him whatever he does.'

‘Does that mean that you think he's plannin' another death?' Woodend asked.

‘I don't know,' Paniatowski said. ‘What do you think, sir?'

‘I don't know either,' Woodend admitted. ‘But if he
is
goin' to kill again, he's only got tomorrow night to do it.'

While treachery rules

No wise man will say

Who'll still be alive

At the end of the day.

T
here was a thick fog that morning. It was the kind of fog which seems to take malicious pleasure in the chaos it is causing – a fog which insinuates its way into noses and throats; a fog which caresses the skin with the icy touch of death. It was such a fog as most people imagined when they thought of Jack the Ripper haunting the streets of old London. It was the last thing that Whitebridge – a town slowly being engulfed by the fear a second murder had brought to it – needed at that moment.

‘The last time we saw her was yesterday mornin',' the blonde cashier said. ‘She was already in Mario's Coffee Bar when we got there on our break.'

Bob Rutter looked around the supermarket stock room which the manager had reluctantly agreed he could use to conduct his interviews. It was a cramped airless room, a room in which it was impossible to move without squeezing between towers of cardboard boxes. He wondered what it must have been like for Lucy Tonge to spend most of her working day in this place.

‘Did you notice anything unusual about Lucy yesterday morning?' he asked.

‘She was drinkin'
tea
!' said the second cashier, who was a brunette and had her hair in a beehive. ‘Fancy drinkin' tea in a
coffee
bar! Course, she never did have any style about her, however hard she tried.'

The blonde nudged her friend in the ribs. ‘Shut up!' she said. ‘You shouldn't talk about her like that now. She's dead!'

He was not exactly dealing with rocket scientists here, Rutter decided. ‘Apart from her drinking tea in a coffee bar, was there anything else odd about her behaviour?' he asked.

‘How do you mean?' the blonde girl replied.

‘Did you
often
see Lucy in the coffee bar, for example?'

The two girls shook their heads.

‘Matter of fact, it was the first time,' the blonde said. ‘And I think the only reason she was there then was to talk to us.'

‘To swank to us, you mean!' the brunette said.

‘To swank about what?' Rutter asked.

‘Her Prince Charmin'! The man who was goin' to take her on a glamorous cruise.'

‘Had she ever mentioned him before?'

‘No. She told us he'd asked her not to talk about him, on account of him bein' married. We didn't fall for that, of course.'

‘You didn't believe he was married?'

‘We didn't believe he
existed
. She was always makin' up stories. Called herself
Mrs
Tonge, didn't she? Said she was a widow.'

‘And wasn't she?'

‘Course she wasn't! She's from Preston, like my Auntie Gladys, an' my auntie told me she'd never been married.'

‘So why do you think she pretended she had?'

‘For the same reason she invented her Prince Charmin'. To try an' convince us that she could pull men if she wanted to. We weren't fooled. A man'd have to be blind
an'
stupid to want anythin' to do with Lucy Tonge. If you ask me, whoever killed her probably mistook her for somebody else.'

Poor Lucy, Rutter thought. Poor miserable Lucy. Even in death, she was being denied her due.

The note on his desk said the Chief Constable wanted to see him as soon as he came in. Well, he should have expected that, Woodend supposed. Sharks could smell blood, vultures could smell death. And Henry Marlowe – who had the worst characteristics of both of them – could smell a threat to his career even with the wind blowing in the wrong direction.

Woodend walked along the corridor and knocked on the Chief Constable's door.

The previous chief constable had always got off his chair to greet his visitors at the door. Marlowe, believing that his desk enhanced his position, had never been tempted to indulge in such a dangerously democratic experiment, and merely called out that Woodend should enter.

The Chief Constable was not alone. Sitting next to him – on the authority side of the desk – was Detective Chief Superintendent Newton.

Newton was a comparatively new boy to the Mid Lancs Force. Woodend had not expected to like him, and the Chief Superintendent had lived up to that expectation. He reminded Woodend of some of the sergeants he had known in the Army – men who would lick their superiors' boots as long as that gave them the right to inflict the same humiliation on those below them.

The Chief Constable looked woefully at Woodend. ‘Two murders, by the same man, in only three days,' he said. ‘This is a very bad business, Charlie.'

‘I'm aware of that, sir,' Woodend replied.

‘The papers aren't at all happy about it. And who can blame them? Scotland Yard already thinks we're country bumpkins, and you're not doing anything to persuade them otherwise.'

‘Do you have any specific complaints, sir?' Woodend asked.

‘Specific complaints?' repeated Marlowe, who had an almost pathological fear of being pinned down to a definite opinion. ‘No, I have no
specific
complaints. They are, by their very nature, operational matters, and it would be quite improper of me to interfere.' He turned to Newton. ‘Isn't that right, Duncan?'

‘Quite so,' Newton replied. ‘Operational matters, by their very nature, are
my
concern.'

Two people, one voice, Woodend thought. And that voice was undoubtedly Henry Marlowe's. Woodend wondered if Newton quite appreciated how willing the ventriloquist would be to throw his dummy to the wolves, should the need arise. There was a pause, while Newton waited for Marlowe to speak again. Then, when it became plain that the ventriloquist intended the dummy to have the next line, he cleared his throat, then said, ‘Would you like to outline to us the way in which you're conducting this investigation, Chief Inspector?'

‘I'm followin' procedures, sir.'

‘And what does that mean, exactly?'

You shouldn't need to ask, Woodend thought. You should already bloody-well
know
!

‘We're tryin' to trace the movements of both victims,' he said. ‘We're lookin' for witnesses. We're investigatin' the victims' backgrounds to see if there are any common factors which link them.'

‘And it's all getting you precisely nowhere,' Marlowe said.

‘Solving a case of this nature isn't always easy, sir,' Woodend said, adding silently: If it
was
easy, you'd be doing it yourself, you bastard!

‘As you know, DCS Newton is not a man to second-guess those under his command,' Marlowe said. ‘Apart from that sort of thing being inappropriate, he's far too busy with his own responsibilities to keep looking over anybody else's shoulder. But there may come a time when, for the sake of the Force's reputation, he will feel compelled to step in and take charge himself. Isn't that right, Duncan?'

‘Yes, that's right,' Newton agreed.

‘So there you have it, Chief Inspector,' Marlowe said. ‘Get a result soon, or the case will be taken over by someone who can.'

‘I wouldn't want you to think I don't appreciate your custom, but two bodies in three days is rather too much of a good thing,' Dr Shastri said.

Paniatowski, weighed down by the case, weighed down by her
life
, nevertheless managed to force a weak grin to her face.

‘Sorry about that, Doc,' she said.

‘And where will it end?' the doctor asked. ‘I had planned to spend next July with my family in India. Will that still be possible, do you think? Or will trade be so brisk by then that you will be sending the bodies to me on a conveyor belt?'

‘This should be the last one for some time,' Paniatowski said, praying that it was.

The doctor nodded her head. ‘Good. And now, would you like to know what I and my little scalpel have discovered?'

‘If you wouldn't mind.'

‘The woman was in her mid-twenties––'

‘We know that. We've got her passport. She was twenty-six.'

Dr Shastri feigned a frown. ‘Please, no more!' she said. ‘Every job has its perquisites. In the case of a real butcher, he has the opportunity of selecting the finest cuts of meat for his own use. In the case of we medical butchers, we have the satisfaction of telling people things they do not already know, and thus demonstrating how clever we are. Do not deny me that simple pleasure.'

‘Sorry!' Paniatowski said, and this time her grin was genuine.

‘The woman was in her mid-twenties,' Dr Shastri repeated, now that the ground rules had been made clear. ‘She had had her tonsils cut and her appendix removed. Rather unusual for a non-Asian woman of her age, she was still a virgin, though she was wearing a diaphragm – so perhaps she had hopes of getting lucky. It is difficult to say with absolute accuracy, but I would guess that she had between six and nine months left.'

‘Left?' Paniatowski repeated. ‘Left to do what?'

‘To live, of course.'

‘She was
dying
?'

‘Did I not mention that before?'

‘No. Believe me, I'd have remembered if you had.'

‘Then let me tell you that this woman was suffering from the same kind of inoperable cancer as the last one you brought me.'

‘S
o now we've got our common factor,' Woodend said heavily, sliding his over-spilling ashtray from one side of his desk to the other and then back again. ‘One single point at which the life of a middle-aged prostitute an' that of a timid young shop worker intersect. Both women, in now appears, were outpatients of the Whitebridge General Cancer Wing.'

‘Which, you must admit, narrows it down
a little
,' Bob Rutter said, attempting a note of optimism.

‘Well, aren't we the Happy Little Bunny this mornin',' Woodend said sourly. ‘You're quite right, of course, Inspector. Now, instead of our murderer bein' any man in Whitebridge an' district, we've narrowed it down to the doctors, the male orderlies, the cleaners, the maintenance staff, the caterers, men who happened to be there visitin' other sick people, people with access to the hospital's medical records, and any feller who bothered to hang about outside the hospital so that he could follow Lucy and Betty an' find out where they lived. So it should be a doddle from here on in, shouldn't it?'

This wasn't the DCI Woodend she knew, Monika Paniatowski thought, shocked. It was Cloggin'-it Charlie's way to encourage his team, not to make them feel like something the cat had dragged in. And then she realized that the anger he was showing was not directed at his inspector and his sergeant at all, but at the people behind the ranks – and the way he thought they'd screwed everything up.

‘At least we've built up a clearer picture of the murderer,' she said, attempting to steer Woodend's attention back on to the investigation.

‘Have we?' Woodend asked incredulously. ‘In what way?'

‘We now know why he chose Betty and Lucy as his victims.'

‘Is that right? Well, I'm probably bein' thicker than usual, but I can't say that
I
know.'

‘He chose them because they were particularly vulnerable,' Paniatowski said. ‘Because, in addition to their other troubles, they had cancer to worry about. He selected them because he knew they were so desperate that they'd probably believe
whatever
he told them.'

‘So we know he's a meticulous planner. I'd call for a drum roll if we hadn't
already
known it.'

‘We knew, but perhaps we weren't
fully
aware of either the depth of his planning or the extent of his ruthlessness,' Paniatowski persisted.

‘Good God, if that's all we can learn from one extra death, then we really are in trouble,' Woodend said. ‘How many more women have to be killed before we get our next clue, Monika? Two? Three? An' how many murders will it take before we're finally in a position to make an arrest? A dozen? A hundred? We're lettin' down the people we're supposed to protect. An' the
reason
we're lettin' them down is that we're distracted – me included – with what's goin' on between the pair of you.'

‘With respect, sir, I think you're wrong about that,' Rutter interjected. ‘I don't claim that the relationship is making our jobs any easier, but I don't think it's clouding our judgement either. We're too professional for that.'

‘Then why aren't we gettin' anywhere with the investigation?' Woodend bellowed.

‘Because this is the cleverest killer, and the most complicated case, that we've ever had to deal with,' Rutter said.

Woodend grabbed at his ashtray, and for a moment it seemed as if he was intending to hurl it at his inspector. Then he released his grip on it, and lit up a cigarette.

‘Aye, perhaps you're right,' he said, when a few seconds had passed. ‘Perhaps we'd still have been in this hole even if you had both managed to keep your pants on.'