The Red Herring (10 page)

‘The reporters will expect you to be in charge of the inquiry,' the Chief Superintendent said. ‘In fact, they'll scream blue murder if you're not, because, for some inexplicable reason, they seem to think the sun shines out of your arse.'

‘Are we making ourselves clear, Chief Inspector?' Ainsworth asked. ‘We want you on this case. No “buts”! No “couldn't we insteads . . .?” You're in charge, and that's a direct order.'

‘If you'd told me that as soon as I walked into the room, I could have been gettin' my team together by now,' Woodend said.

‘You mean, you've no objection?' Whittle asked amazed, then, realising they'd got what they wanted without the fight they'd anticipated, he clamped his mouth tightly shut.

‘Of course I've no bloody objection,' Woodend said. ‘Whatever we do now, Verity Beale will stay dead, but there's still a chance we can save this kiddie.'

It was only as he reached the door that he realised there was another question he should have asked. ‘Who'll be takin' over the Verity Beale investigation?' he said Ainsworth.

‘We thought of using one of our own people, but in the end we decided it might be better to call in your old firm – the Yard,' the Deputy Chief Constable replied. ‘You've no objection that you that, have you?'

‘No, I haven't,' Woodend said, surprised to hear himself agreeing with Ainsworth for once. ‘He'll need briefin', of course.'

‘Yes, he will,' the DCC agreed. ‘Would you be willing to lend him Sergeant Paniatowski?'

‘I'd rather have Monika––' Woodend began. Then he pulled himself up short. ‘Aye, I could use her myself, but she'll be of more value to him,' he continued. ‘But can I keep DI Rutter?'

‘Yes, you can keep Rutter. And you can have the pick of anybody else you think you might be able to use. If you need to poach men from some superintendent's task force, then poach them. And don't worry about the paperwork – just take the men you need and refer the commander who you'll have pissed off directly to me.'

‘Thank you, sir,' Woodend said, not only sounding humble, but actually feeling it.

‘Overtime, too,' Ainsworth said. ‘Authorise as much of it as you need to, because when we eventually do find this child's bo–– . . . when we eventually do find this
child
, I want it to be obvious to everybody – especially the press and the Police Committee – that we've done everything we could.'

It had never been going to be easy, doing what they had to do in the park, Martin Dove thought, but it wouldn't have been as bad as it turned out if Cray hadn't been such a bag of nerves. Still, at least now the first phase was over with, and he was back in his classroom, looking as innocent as only a Latin teacher in early middle age could.

His own nerves felt a little frayed, he was forced to admit, and he was glad that instead of having to face thirty rowdy second-year pupils he would be spending the next hour with a smaller group of serious-looking sixth formers.

‘Well, gentlemen, I hope that you have all done your prep and are now armed with enough quotes from Virgil to con your examiners into believing that you really understand what he was on about,' he said.

The remark was greeted with sufficient polite laughter to tell Dove that, whatever he felt inside, he at least sounded like his normal self.

‘Let's start with you, Mr Cummings,' Dove said, pointing to a youth in the front row. ‘What have you got to impress us with?'

The boy closed his eyes. ‘
Dixit et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,
' he intoned. ‘
Ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem spiravere; pedes vestis defluxit as imos, et vera incessu patuit dea.
'

The snotty little bastard would choose a quote like that, Dove thought visciously.

‘Very good, Mr Cummings,' he said. ‘Beautifully pronounced. But do you actually know what it means?'

‘She said no more and as she turned away there was a bright glimpse of the rosy glow of her neck,' Cummings translated, ‘and from her ambrosial head of hair a heavenly fragrance wafted; her dress flowed down to her feet, and in her walk it showed, she was in truth a goddess.'

He could have been talking about Verity Beale apart from that last bit, Dove thought. But Verity had been no goddess. Far from it. A goddess would not have concerned herself with the doings of mere mortals like him. A goddess would not have been in the Spinner, as Verity had been the night before.

‘Mr Parkinson, entertain us with your quotation,' Dove said.

‘
Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella, et fugit ad salices et se cupit ante videri.
'

‘Translation?'

‘Galatea throws an apple at me, cheeky girl––'

‘Cheeky girl!' Dove interrupted. ‘Look at the context, boy. Whatever she's trying to be, it's certainly not cheeky.'

‘Sexy girl?' Parkinson asked.

‘Sexy girl,' Dove agreed.

‘Galatea throws an apple at me, sexy girl, and runs away into the willows and wants to have been spotted.'

‘And there you have it, gentlemen, an adage as true today as it was when it was written two thousand years ago,' Dove said. ‘She might run away – but she always wants to be caught. I think we'll have one more. How about you, Mr Bentley?'

‘
Facilis descensus Averno: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis
,' Bentley said. ‘
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est.
'

‘Easy is the way down to the Underworld: by night and by day dark Dis's door stands open; but to withdraw one's steps and make a way out to the upper air, that's the task, that is the labour,' Dove translated rapidly in his head – and found that he had started to shake uncontrollably.

The incident room was one of the largest rooms in the entire station, but there were so many officers crammed into it that they were forced to stand shoulder to shoulder.

Woodend ran his eyes over the team. Some were from his own station. Others had been drafted in from neighbouring divisions. A few were special constables, normally only called in to help with crowd control at football matches and carnivals. There were about sixty of them altogether, he calculated.

When Ellie Taylor had disappeared, there'd only been three – himself and two constables – involved in the search.

‘And even that's probably a waste of three good men,' Chief Inspector Brookes had said at the time.

‘But she's been missin' for two hours, sir,' Woodend had protested. ‘There's still a good chance––'

‘Either she's nipped off for a spot of nookie with her boyfriend – in which case she'll turn up later with an excuse so thin you couldn't wrap fish in it,' Brookes had interrupted, ‘or she's been snatched by some nutter – in which case she'll be dead by now and there's not much more we can do till the corpse turns up.'

Woodend cleared his throat. ‘As you all know, a little lass has gone missin',' he said. ‘Now there may be a perfectly innocent explanation for it, but it's our job to assume the worst.'

Every officer in the room nodded gravely.

‘Time is our biggest enemy,' Woodend continued, ‘so I'm expectin' a big initial push from you people. I want everybody who was within half a mile of the school at the time Helen disappeared questioned. I want every man in the Whitebridge area with a history of sex offences pulled in, an' given a grillin' like he's never been given before.' He paused for a second. ‘Some of you have worked with me before, and know I'm very particular about suspects bein' treated strictly by the book. Isn't that right?'

Several of the officers mumbled that yes, that was right.

‘Well, you can forget all about the book on this case,' Woodend continued. ‘If any of the perverts you're questionin' happens to end up with a few bruises, you'll find me quite willin' to believe that they're self-inflicted wounds – an' to swear to it under oath if that's what's necessary.'

Nobody smiled, nobody who knew him saw it as typically gruff Woodend humour. They all knew that – just this once – he was being deadly serious.

‘There'll be appeals for information on the wireless, the television an' in the newspapers,' Woodend told them. ‘If this case runs to form, then we should get hundreds of calls jamming the switchboard. A lot of them will be from cranks with nothin' better to do with their time, but we'll treat each an' every one as if it was
the
one that we've been waitin' for.'

He lit a Capstan Full Strength. When he inhaled, he discovered that instead of the comforting harshness he was used to, it tasted like dried cow dung.

‘Give up any idea you might have of gettin' any sleep, or of seein' your families an' friends, until this is all over,' he said. ‘We'll be workin' round the clock. Are there any questions before Inspector Rutter hands out the assignments?'

No one said anything. What questions could there be? What – at this stage – could any of them possibly want to ask?

Woodend waited for a second, then strode rapidly to the door. He was thankful that the men's toilets were just two doors down from the incident room, because if they'd been any further he wasn't sure he'd have made it. He entered the nearest cubicle, pulled the door closed behind him, and bent over the bowl.

Gazing down into the water, he had a terrifyingly clear vision of how Ellie Taylor had looked when they pulled her out of the Thames, then his stomach exploded and the vision was broken up by a flood of vomit.

‘
D
on't take this in any way personally, ma'am,' said Major Dole, ‘but I'm just a tad surprised that your captain has assigned a case of this importance to a mere detective sergeant.'

And a
female
detective sergeant, to boot, Paniatowski thought. That's what's going through your mind, isn't it, Major Dole? A
female
detective sergeant! I can see it written in your eyes.

‘Chief Superintendent,' she said.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘We don't have captains over here in England, Major Dole. We have chief superintendents instead. And I'm not in charge of the case. I'm only doing a little of the spadework while I'm waiting for the man who's really in charge to arrive from London.'

The major nodded, as if now he was finally getting the picture. He was around thirty-five years old, Paniatowski guessed, with broad shoulders and grey eyes which, in other circumstances, she might have found rather attractive. They were sitting in his office, in the centre of the American section of the air-force base. A number of framed certificates and commendations hung on one wall, a couple of large-scale maps of different parts of Europe were pinned to another. For the second time since she'd sat down, she heard the fearsome roar of a jet plane taking off overhead.

‘So how can we help you with your “spadework”, Sergeant?' Major Dole asked.

‘One of your men was out drinking with Verity Beale shortly before she met her death and––'

The major held up his hand to silence her. ‘Hold it right there, ma'am,' he told her. ‘You can't say with any certainty that it was one of our men who was out with her, now can you?'

‘He was driving a big American car––'

‘What make?'

‘The landlord of the pub's not sure about that.'

‘Then it might not have been an
American
car at all?'

‘We don't make large cars in England, as you may have noticed. Besides, he had an American accent and––'

‘There's no such thing as an American accent, any more than there's such a thing as a British accent.'

‘I appreciate that, but––'

‘Was he from the South? The East Coast? The Midwest? California, maybe? Or does the landlord know as little about accents as he seems to know about automobiles?'

‘He couldn't pin it down that clearly, but he was absolutely sure that it was an American––'

‘The man could just have easily have been a Canadian.'

‘This is Lancashire, Major Dole,' Paniatowski said wearily. ‘We don't get a lot of foreign visitors here. Why would a Canadian come to Whitebridge?'

‘Why would anybody from
anywhere
come to Whitebridge?' Dole asked, smiling.

He wasn't making a joke, Paniatowski thought. Or if he was, it was a joke with a purpose – aimed at distracting her, either through amusement or injured local pride, from the matter in hand. Well, stuff him!

‘Miss Beale gave classes here,' she said. ‘So who is it more likely she was out with? A Canadian who'd come to Whitebridge to prospect for gold? Or an airman she met when she was giving her lessons?'

‘Let's assume that he is one of my boys,' the major said, in a careful, measured tone. ‘Where does that take us?'

‘I'd like to question him.'

The major frowned. ‘I'm not entirely certain what the legal and diplomatic position is in this particular situation,' he confessed.

‘A very serious crime's been committed and––'

‘True, it has,' Dole agreed. ‘But this base is as much American territory as downtown Omaha, and the men serving on it come under the jurisdiction of the United States military authorities, not the British civil one.'

‘You're saying that I can't question him?'

‘I'm saying that until the position's been clarified to my complete satisfaction, I'm not convinced that I have the authority to allow you to interrogate anybody on this post.'

‘That's outrageous!' Paniatowski protested.

‘Wiser heads than ours have laid down the procedures,' the major said seriously. ‘All we can do is to follow them.'