The Enemy Within (26 page)

‘Doesn't seem to be much wrong with that,' Woodend said. ‘Sounds very sensible, as a matter of fact.'

‘That was only the beginnin',' Jamie told him. ‘The softenin' up.'

‘What does my husband do?' Mrs Bryant asked.

‘He's the Editor.'

Her laugh showed just the slightest edge of contempt. ‘I know that. What I mean is, does he do anything unusual?'

‘Like what?'

‘You shouldn't have to ask that question. You should already have an answer.'

‘I don't know what to say.'

‘Does he ever leave the office unexpectedly, after – say – he's had an unexpected phone call?'

‘I wouldn't know.'

She sighed. ‘You're hopeless. You'll never make Fleet Street at this rate.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Don't apologize to me. It's your career we're talking about. Let's try again. Is there ever any occasion on which he seems worried when, as far as you can tell, there's nothing for him to be worried
about
?'

‘You see what I'm sayin'?' Jamie Clegg asked.

‘Yes,' Woodend said.

He was beginning to see a lot of things.

‘You're not lost yet,' Mrs Bryant said brightly. ‘You can still
be trained. Shall I set you an exercise?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘For the next two weeks, I want you to watch my husband like a hawk. I want a concise report on everything he does. But here's the tricky bit – he must never suspect that you're watching him.'

‘I'm not sure I'd be happy doin' that, Mrs Bryant.'

‘Why ever not?'

‘He's my boss.'

‘As a matter of fact, he isn't. He's your Editor. I'm the one who owns the newspaper.'

‘Even so––'

‘He won't mind, I promise you.' She laughed again. ‘How could he mind, when he wouldn't even know?'

Jamie felt sweat trickling down his arms. ‘It's not right.'

Constance Bryant's face was suddenly stern – almost vengeful. ‘I'm not interested in employing reporters who won't even try to better themselves. If you can't complete even this simple task, then I think you'd better start looking for another job. And I wouldn't look in the newspaper industry, if I were you – because if you did, I'd feel obliged to inform anyone you might apply to that you're a no-hoper.'

Crude, Woodend thought. Very crude. Yet what other choice did the woman have? She was dying of cancer. She had neither the time nor the strength to develop a more subtle approach.

‘Did you agree to do what she asked?' Woodend said.

Jamie Clegg nodded. ‘Yes. I didn't see I had any option. She could have made up any number of reasons for her husband to sack me.' His youthful face turned a deep red. ‘She might even have said that I made a pass at her.'

‘How long was it before you told him all about it?'

Jamie Clegg's eyes widened with surprise. ‘How did you know . . .?'

‘A week?'

‘Ten days.'

Jamie tapped nervously on Dexter Bryant's door, and as he walked into the office, he realized that his heart was beating out a frenzied drum solo.

Bryant looked up at him and smiled. ‘Yes, Jamie.'

‘Mrs Bryant . . .'

‘What about her?'

He had meant to say it smoothly – had rehearsed it that way. Instead, it all came out in a blurt. ‘Mrs Bryant told me to watch what you do an' write a report on it.'

He didn't know quite what to expect. A verbal explosion, perhaps? Or maybe even worse? Bryant was still a powerful man. He could easily express his anger with his fists.

Instead, the Editor nodded, a little sadly. ‘I see.'

‘I didn't want to do it, sir. She made it seem like I had no choice.'

‘You did quite right to agree to do what she wanted. And you did quite right to come to me. Take a seat, Jamie.'

Hardly able to comprehend the way in which events were turning, Jamie Clegg groped his way to a chair.

‘Did you know my wife was ill?' Bryant asked softly.

‘I thought she might be a bit under the weather.'

‘I'm afraid it's much worse than that. She has cancer. She's dying.'

‘I'm s . . . sorry.'

‘So am I, Jamie, so am I. What I've just told you must never go beyond this room. Do you understand?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I've done some reading about the disease. It's such a big worry that women often develop other worries to take their minds off it. I think that's what Constance is doing. She's worried about me. And what, specifically, do you think she is worrying about, Jamie?'

Clegg could feel himself going red. ‘I . . . I don't know.
I . . . wouldn't like to say.'

‘You can say it. I won't be offended.'

‘Maybe she thinks you're seein' another woman?'

Bryant beamed with approval. ‘I knew you were a smart
boy, Jamie. You've got a great future ahead of you. Yes, that's what she thinks. That I'm having an affair. Do you think I am?'

‘I . . . I don't . . .'

‘Perhaps that was an unfair question, so let me ask you another one. If I said I wasn't having an affair, would you believe me?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Then let me assure you that I'm not. But that doesn't solve our problem, does it? As long as my wife thinks I am, she'll be unhappy. And we don't want the poor woman to be unhappy. So what can we do about it?'

‘I could do the report, just as she asked me,' Jamie Clegg suggested.

‘How would that help?'

‘If I said in the report that you were always in the office – even when you weren't – she'd see that you had no time to be messin' about with another woman.'

‘Very clever,' Bryant said, admiringly. ‘Yes, that really would do the trick. And just to make sure it works, wouldn't our best plan be to have me write it, and you make a copy of it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

Poor bloody Constance, Woodend thought. She had been attempting to shine a light on the truth, and had done no more than give her husband an opportunity to throw up a smokescreen.

'When did this conversation take place?' he asked.

‘It must have been about a month ago, now.'

Of course it was about a month. That would have given Bryant just the time he needed.

‘Thank you, Jamie,' Woodend said.

‘Is that all?'

‘Yes.'

Woodend
could
have added that if the young reporter hadn't confided in his Editor, there was a good chance that Betty Stubbs, Lucy Tonge and Constance Bryant would still be alive. But he didn't. The lad had no idea what part he'd played in the scheme, and there was no point in upsetting him by telling him now.

W
oodend checked his watch. Richard Quinn had been under arrest for something over six hours. For the first two of those hours, the doctors wouldn't have let anyone near him, but after that DCS Newton had probably been able to persuade them that the suspect was fit to be questioned. All of which meant that – given the man's precarious emotional balance and grip on reality – he'd likely have confessed to any number of crimes he hadn't committed by now.

Which was, of course, just what the man who'd fitted him up would have been hoping for.

The Chief Inspector picked up the phone and dialled the number of a large house buried somewhere deep in the Home Counties.

‘Yes?' said an unmistakable clipped military voice on the other end of the line.

‘Reduced to answerin' your own phone these days, General?' Woodend asked. ‘Talk about the decline of Old England, eh!'

‘The servants are all out getting––' the other man began. He paused. ‘Who the devil is this?'

‘It's––'

‘Don't tell me! Let me think about it.' Another pause, then the General said delightedly, ‘It's Staff Sergeant Charlie Woodend, isn't it? It has to be! No one else would have the
bloody nerve
to talk to me like that!'

Woodend smiled fondly. ‘How are you, sir?'

‘Getting older by the day, Charlie. But more importantly, how are you, you old reprobate? Haven't heard from you for years.'

‘No, sir, you haven't. We don't really move much in the same circles any more.'

General Stockton chuckled. ‘That's your fault rather than mine,' he said. ‘If you'd taken the commission when I offered it to you, you could have been a full colonel by now.'

Unlikely, Woodend thought. Highly unlikely.

He might just have made captain, he supposed, but sooner or later he would have come up against the Army's equivalent of Chief Constable Henry Marlowe – and there his progress up the ladder would have come to a grinding halt.

‘So what can I do for you, Charlie?' the general asked. ‘Got a son who wants to join the regiment? If that's what you're after, consider it as good as done.'

‘Thank you, sir, but the favour I want doin' is of a more clerical nature,' Woodend said, choosing his words carefully.

‘Clerical nature? What's it to do with?'

‘A man involved in my latest investigation. I'd like to know what's in his war record.'

‘Well, good heavens, Charlie, why are bothering
me
about that? You're the police. No one's going to obstruct you. Just put your request in through the normal channels.'

‘If I do that, I'll get
a
war record – but I'm not sure that it'll be the one I want.'

‘Whatever do you mean, old chap?'

‘I'm almost certain that if I went through the “normal channels”, I'd be told that the man I'm interested in suffers from fallen arches. An' from the way I saw him movin' in the park this afternoon, I don't believe he does.'

‘Not making a lot of sense, you know,' the general said. He fell silent for a second. ‘Unless . . .' he continued, ‘. . . unless the man you're interested in had
two
war records. Is that the track your mind's running along?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘One record to
account for
his time in the Army, the other to say what he actually
did
?'

‘Exactly, sir.'

There was a longer silence this time, then the general said, ‘You're asking a hell of a lot of me, Charlie.'

‘Yes, I am,' Woodend agreed.

‘And at what point do you intend to mention a certain sticky situation which occurred during the Ardennes Offensive of 1944?'

‘I believe that situation actually occurred in early '45,' Woodend said, ‘but in answer to your question, I'm not planning to mention it at all.'

‘Really? You're not trying to collect on an old debt, then?'

‘There is no debt. I only did for you what you would have been equally prepared to do for me if our positions had been reversed. So it doesn't even count as a
favour
.'

‘If you
had
tried to use the fact you'd saved my life to put pressure on me, I'd have hung up on you,' the general said.

‘I know,' Woodend replied.

‘So perhaps you're applying pressure by
not
applying pressure.'

‘Perhaps I am.'

The general chuckled again. ‘Nothing changes. You were
always
at least one step ahead of me.' His voice grew more serious. ‘If this file contains what you seem to think it contains, it's for your eyes only.'

‘Agreed.'

‘You can't show it to any of your subordinates. You can't use it in court.'

‘Fair enough.'

There was a third silence, then Stockton said, ‘I'm not promising anything, but I'll do what I can for you, Charlie.'

‘Much appreciated, sir,' Woodend said.

Dusk was falling as Woodend, armed with the information General Stockton had supplied, pulled his Wolseley up in front of the hotel where Elizabeth Driver was staying.

The arrest of Richard Quinn had come just in the nick of time for the children of Whitebridge, the Chief Inspector thought.

That morning they would have awoken only too aware of the dark cloud hanging over them.

They couldn't go to the bonfire they'd been looking forward to for weeks, their parents would have told them – not while there was a killer on the loose.

But the killer only attacked women, the children would have argued.

That was true
so far
, the parents would have countered, but there was no guarantee that children would be immune in the future.

The arrest had changed all that. Although the
Courier
said no more than that a man was ‘helping the police with their inquiries', they all knew that was merely code – that the murderer was safely under lock and key, and the festivities could go ahead as planned.

There had never been any
actual
threat to the children, Woodend reminded himself as he climbed out of the car. There would have been no point in the murderer killing children, because such killings did not fit into his careful scheme of things. And
careful
was the only word for it. In all his years on the Force, he had never come across a crime which had been so meticulously planned.

He entered the hotel and headed straight for the bar. Elizabeth Driver was sitting at one of the small tables, sipping at a gin and tonic. And why shouldn't she be? She had no need to go out chasing information. After her phone call to Marlowe that morning, the information would come to her.