The Enemy Within (25 page)

‘I wanted to get Mr Bryant's permission before I talked to you all,' he said, ‘but I haven't been able to contact him. Which I suppose is hardly surprisin' under the circumstances. Nevertheless, if I had managed to speak to him, I'm sure he'd have been more than willin' for me to go ahead with this.'

A balding, young-middle-aged man raised his hand tentatively in the air.

‘Yes?' Woodend said.

‘Jack Donovan, Deputy Editor,' the man announced. ‘I believe I speak for all of us when I say we're more than willing to do anything we can to help.'

Woodend nodded. ‘Good. Now, as you all know, Mrs Bryant wasn't a well woman an' didn't get out much. But nobody lives in a complete vacuum, an' what I'm tryin' to get a lead on is anybody who might have had more than casual contact with her. So if you know anythin', I'd be grateful if you'd speak now.'

He scanned the row of faces in front of him. Some of them looked genuinely distressed at the news of Constance Bryant's death, some merely mildly uncomfortable, and a few almost completely blank. None seemed to offer the hope of any useful leads.

‘It doesn't matter how trivial the information you have might seem to you,' he encouraged. ‘It could provide the vital link we need. Even if it's only office gossip, there still might be an important grain of truth in it.'

The paper's staff were becoming restive. Several shuffled their feet, and a couple of them coughed unnecessarily. And then – from the very edge of the semicircle – came the distinct sound of a snicker.

Woodend focused his attention on the person who had made the sound. He was a boy, scarcely out of school, with sly eyes and an unpleasant mouth. The Chief Inspector recognized the type easily enough – snide, cocky and malicious – and for a moment he almost ignored him. Then he decided that even if this
was
one of the straws Paniatowski had talked about, it was still better than nothing.

‘Have you got somethin' to say?' he asked.

The boy grinned, obviously pleased to be the centre of attention. ‘If you want to know about Mrs Bryant, why don't you ask Jamie Clegg?' he said.

‘An' why should I do that?'

‘Because he had the hots for her.'

There was a low rumble of disapproval from the rest of the staff.

‘That's not the kind of thing the Chief Inspector needed to hear, Bains,' the Deputy Editor said angrily. ‘When this is over, I'll see you in my office.'

‘Who's Jamie Clegg?' Woodend asked.

At the other end of the semicircle, Clegg raised his hand. He wasn't much older than the boy who'd just spoken, Woodend noted, and the fact that he was blushing furiously showed he had none of Bains' self-assured cockiness.

‘You're the reporter who tried to take the petrol can away from the scene of the first murder, aren't you?' Woodend asked.

Clegg's colour deepened. ‘I didn't know . . . I never meant to . . .' he mumbled.

‘None of that matters now,' Woodend told him. ‘What did your friend Mr Bains mean when he said you had the hots for Mrs Bryant?'

Jamie Clegg looked down at the floor. ‘She took me out for coffee a couple of times,' he admitted.

‘
She
took
you
? You didn't ask her to go?'

Clegg muttered that no, he hadn't, and around him several people started to giggle.

‘
Why
did she ask you out for coffee?' Woodend asked.

‘She said she could see I wanted to get on in newspapers. She said she'd been a young reporter herself once, and she'd help me in any way she could.'

That made sense, Woodend thought. Constance Bryant's maternal instincts had been rebuffed by her own son, so what could be more natural than that she should choose to lavish them on this earnest – and obviously decent – young man?

‘Did you talk about anythin' else?' he asked.

‘No.'

‘She didn't tell you about any of her friends? Didn't talk about some project she'd become involved in?'

‘She just wanted to give me tips on how to be a good journalist.'

Well, that seemed to lead nowhere. ‘Does anybody else have something they want to say?' Woodend asked.

Nobody had.

T
he map of the park classified the stretch of water as a lake, but it was really nothing more than a pond with pretensions. Still, Woodend thought, it did well enough for the ducks. They seemed perfectly happy on it, bobbing up and down on the surface with the occasional dive to the bottom to break the monotony. They didn't have to worry about seeing justice done. They didn't give a quack about whether the right man had been arrested or not. And God, how he envied them!

He had been in the park for around about half an hour, he guessed. He'd been hoping that getting away from the bustle of the centre of the town might, in some way, open his mind – suggest a new line of inquiry for him to follow. No chance! The park had failed to work its magic, and amidst all this nature there wasn't even a brick wall for him to bang his head against.

‘Hey, sweetheart, come over 'ere an' show us your tits!' called a loud rough voice behind him.

He turned. Two large – obviously drunken men – were lounging on one of the benches. A schoolgirl, who couldn't have been more than thirteen or fourteen, was rapidly walking away from them.

The Chief Inspector walked over to the bench. ‘You're causin' a disturbance,' he said.

‘An' what if we are?' one of the men asked belligerently, bunching his fists. ‘What are you goin' to do about it?'

The other man recognized Woodend, and poked his companion in the ribs.

‘Police!' he warned. ‘We're sorry, Chief Inspector,' he said to Woodend. ‘We'll keep it quiet from now on.'

‘Want to be out catchin' murderers instead of hasslin' honest blokes,' the first man mumbled.

‘What was that?' Woodend asked sharply.

‘Nothin',' the man replied.

‘I'll be back this way in ten minutes,' Woodend told him. ‘Make sure you've gone by then.'

He walked on. He'd sounded just like a beat constable, he thought – which had probably been good practice for his future career. And the obnoxious drunk had been right – he should have been out catching murderers. The problem was, he had no idea where to look.

It took him five minutes to reach the park boundary. He turned around and retraced his tracks. He'd promised the drunks he'd return, and that was one promise – at any rate – that he should be able to keep.

The two men had left the bench, and were standing by the pond. He wondered at first why they were waving their arms in such a strange manner. Then he realized that what they were actually doing was throwing stones at the ducks.

He quickened his pace, but even as he narrowed the gap between himself and the two miscreants, he saw a third character arrive on the scene.

Dexter Bryant!

The drunks had stopped throwing stones, but only in order to give the Editor their full attention. He was by no means a small man, but they still towered over him menacingly.

Bryant waved his hands in angry remonstration. The drunks' aggressive stances stiffened. Woodend was now almost running.

One of the drunks placed his hand on Bryant's shoulder. The Editor brushed it angrily away, and the second drunk, taking that as a signal for the start of the hostilities, swung his fist at Bryant's face.

The fight – if it could be called a fight at all – was over in seconds. Bryant blocked the punch with his left arm and jabbed at his attacker's throat with the extended fingers of his right hand. The man collapsed in a heap. His partner was in no position to either assist him or continue with the assault, for, simultaneously with the jab, Bryant had run the heel of his right shoe down his shin, and now the drunk was hopping around on one leg in a desperate effort to reduce the pain.

The Editor flicked an imaginary speck of dust off the sleeve of his coat, and began to walk towards the exit to the park. It was only then that he saw Woodend.

‘I can't stand cruelty to dumb animals,' he said furiously. ‘It's so completely bloody pointless.' He paused. ‘Or am I just making excuses for myself? Is the truth that I was looking for a fight as a way of alleviating a little of my misery?'

Woodend shook his head. ‘You've no need to reproach yourself. You didn't start it – they did. They only got what was comin' to them.'

‘Were you looking for me?' Bryant asked.

‘No, I was just walkin' – hopin' it might help to clear my brain.'

‘I was doing much the same thing. Or rather, I was searching.'

‘For what?'

‘For one small mitigating circumstance which might mean that I could blame myself just a little less for Constance's death.'

‘You can't hold yourself responsible,' Woodend said.

‘But I do,' Bryant replied fiercely. ‘I should have seen the truth earlier. I should have stopped making excuses for LH, and recognized him as the real menace he is.'

‘Wait a minute,' Woodend said. ‘Are you tellin' me that you now think Richard Quinn
did
kill your wife?'

‘Yes. And the other poor women, as well.' Tears began to run down Dexter Bryant's cheeks. ‘I didn't want to consider the possibility, Mr Woodend, so I shut my eyes to it. But now that it's out in the open, it's obvious to me that something like this was almost bound to happen eventually.'

Monika Paniatowski gazed down at her vodka glass and tried to remember if this was her fifth or her sixth double. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered any more, now that everything was turning to shit.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts – and her own misery – that she didn't even know Woodend had entered the bar until he sat down in the chair opposite hers.

‘What are you doin' here, Monika?' the Chief Inspector asked.

‘What does it look like?' Paniatowski replied, realizing for the first time just how drunk she was. ‘I've taken the rest of the day off, and now I'm sitting here, all by myself, having one hell of a good time.'

‘Has somethin' happened?'

‘You might say that. Did you know that Bob's going to resign?'

‘Yes, he told me.'

‘And did he tell you why?'

‘Yes.'

‘I should have left him alone,' Paniatowski said morosely. ‘There's plenty of fish in the sea. Why did he have to be the one I pulled out?'

‘It was his choice as well as yours,' Woodend told her. ‘Anyway, there's no point in dwelling on it now. What's done is done.'

‘Did you find your one big clue down at the newspaper office – the one big clue that will ena . . . enable you to crack the whole case wide open?' Paniatowski demanded. ‘No, of course you didn't.'

‘I think you should go home,' Woodend said. ‘I'll drive you.'

‘Did you know they'd got the results on the knife back from the lab?'

Bloody hell, that was quick! Woodend thought. They must really have pulled out the stops.

He imagined the look on Marlowe's face as he read the part of the report which stated that the boffins could find no connection between Quinn's knife and the one which had been used to commit the murders. Mere
evidence
probably wouldn't make the Chief Constable abandon his belief that Richard Quinn was the killer immediately, but even as inflexible a man as he would eventually be forced to see that, without a forensic link, there was no case.

‘It's ironic, isn't it?' Paniatowski slurred.

‘What's ironic?'

‘You've been right so many times in the past, but this time – when it really matters, when you've put your career on the line – you turn out to be completely bloody wrong.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘The knife! Richard Quinn's knife! He'd tried to clean off the evidence, but he didn't make a very good job of it.'

‘You're surely not trying to tell me . . .'

‘I'm not
trying
to tell you anything. I
am
telling you. Richard Quinn really did kill those three women. The forensic evidence on the knife couldn't be more conclusive.'

I
t was the mid-afternoon quiet period in the Kettledrum Cafe, and the only two customers were the big detective and the very intimidated-looking junior reporter.

‘Tell me again what you an' Mrs Bryant talked about,' Woodend said. ‘An' this time, I'd appreciate the truth.'

‘It was the truth!' Jamie Clegg protested.

‘No, it wasn't,' Woodend said emphatically.

It couldn't be.
Not after forensics had proved it was Richard Quinn's knife which had killed the three women!

‘It was partly true,' Jamie Clegg said. ‘She
did
tell me that she could see I was a lad who wanted to get on in life, and that she was prepared to give me some coaching.'

‘But that wasn't the real reason she wanted to talk you, was it?'

‘No.'

‘So tell me what was.'

They sat opposite each other in the cafe. Mrs Bryant seemed very nervous. No, Jamie thought, that wasn't the right word at all. She seemed very
driven
.

‘The trick to being a good reporter is to notice things,' she said.

‘I know that.'

‘No, you don't. You only
think
you do. Close your eyes.'

He closed his eyes.

‘Describe the people on the next table,' she said.

‘I can't.'

‘I could have done.'

‘I didn't know I was goin' to be tested.'

‘You never do, but when you're a reporter, your whole life's a test. Open your eyes again.'