The Red Herring (19 page)

‘Maybe somebody's warned him about people like you,' Woodend suggested.

‘If you'd just put aside your personal dislike for me for a moment, and listen to what I have to say, you might learn something very interesting,' Elizabeth Driver told him.

‘All right,' Woodend agreed. ‘You've got two minutes.'

‘Despite the fact you've worked in Scotland Yard yourself, you don't actually know this Chief Inspector Horrocks, do you?'

‘You were supposed to be tellin' me somethin' I didn't know, not interrogatin' me.'

‘That's just what I thought,' Elizabeth Driver said, reading her own meaning into his words. ‘You've never actually heard of the man, have you? And do you know why?'

‘Because I left the Yard before he joined it?'

‘Exactly!'

‘So we don't know each other because we've never met. Now there's a scoop for your front page if I ever heard one.'

‘Why don't you ask me
when
he joined the Yard?'

Woodend sighed. ‘All right, if that will keep you happy. When did he join the Yard?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, that's another highly instructive piece of information.'

‘But I
should
know, shouldn't I? It should be a matter of public record.'

‘What exactly are you sayin' here?' Woodend asked.

‘I got one of my colleagues in London to ring the Yard and ask how long Horrocks has been working there. The man in Personnel he talked to said there was no such DCI.'

‘So whoever was answerin' the inquiry couldn't read the records properly. That's nothin' new.'

‘Half an hour later, the same man rang my colleague back. He was very apologetic. He said that, of course, there was a DCI Horrocks. He couldn't think what had ever made him say there wasn't.'

‘Well, there you are, then.'

‘So my colleague asked when Horrocks had joined the Yard, and the man suddenly went all vague again – said he'd have to check up on the exact details, and he'd get back to him on it.'

‘An' he probably will.'

‘Then,' Elizabeth Driver said, with a hint of triumph creeping into her voice, ‘my colleague asked where Horrocks had been working before he was transferred to the Yard, and the man said he believed it had been in “B” Department, which, as I'm sure you know, is the Traffic and Transport Division.'

‘Aye, by some quirk of fate I do happen to know that,' Woodend replied dryly.

‘But there's no record of any DCI called Horrocks working in “B” Department.'

‘So maybe he's been recently promoted,' Woodend suggested.

‘There's no record of a
DI
Horrocks working there, either.'

‘Then perhaps the man from Personnel was wrong about where he'd been posted last.'

‘And there's no record of a DI
or
DCI Horrocks working in “A”, “C” or “D” Department, either,' Elizabeth Driver said, as if she were playing her trump card. ‘Don't you think that's just a little strange?'

‘I think your mate in London has probably got the whole thing round his neck,' Woodend said. ‘I think that if he goes back an' checks over his facts again – carefully, this time – he'll soon find out exactly where Mr Horrocks was workin' before he moved to the Yard.'

‘You might be pushing out the official line to me, but you don't sound at all convinced yourself,' Elizabeth Driver told him.

No, I probably don't, Woodend thought. An' that just might be because I'm
not
.

Bob Rutter sat as his desk at the top of the horseshoe in the incident centre, looking through tired eyes at the rest of the team. Apart from a lull in the middle of the night, every one of them had been almost constantly on the phone since Cloggin'-it Charlie and Helen Dunn's mother had made their appeal for information the night before.

Some of the calls had come from cranks, eager to implicate their neighbours or advance some insane pet conspiracy theory. Others had come from well-meaning people who desperately wanted to help, but who, in fact, had nothing to contribute. There had even been a few calls which had sounded promising, but had led the follow-up teams to quite another young girl than the one who had gone missing.

It was possible – even probable – that this whole exercise would turn out to be a complete waste of effort, he thought. Yet every time he heard a telephone ring, Rutter experienced a tiny flicker of hope that this call might be the one which would prove to be a breakthrough.

He turned to the large stack of statements and reports which had been building up on his desk since the previous afternoon. Each of the reports had been thoroughly checked through by at least two officers, and anything which might be of even the slightest importance reported to the collator, who had logged it for future cross-reference. That should have been the end of the process. Rutter was under no obligation to go through the pile himself, yet, feeling almost as driven as his boss was, he found himself reaching towards the stack.

The first file he opened was a report on the search of the park which had been carried out the previous afternoon. There had been no rain for some time, the report pointed out, and thus, though crushed grass around the bushes opposite the school would indicate that someone had been standing there at some point in the day, there was no possibility of lifting any footprints. Nor were there any other clues, such as cigarette ends or personal objects which had been accidentally dropped.

Rutter put the file to one side and reached for the next, which listed objects recovered from other parts of the park. He ran his eyes quickly down the list. Coins amounting to a grand total of one shilling and threepence ha'penny. A penknife. A scarf. A left glove. Four contraceptive sheaths (used) and one still in its packet. A pencil case. A set of house keys. An empty whisky bottle. A pornographic magazine. A Serbo-Croat phrase book . . .

A Serbo-Croat phrase book! Who the bloody hell could have any possible use for a Serbo-Croat phrase book in Whitebridge? Rutter wondered.

He reached for a third file – this one a report of people and vehicles spotted in the vicinity at the time of the disappearance – and the name of one vehicle leapt off the page at him!

Rage was a rare experience for Rutter, but it blazed through him now.

‘Which incompetent half-wit's in charge of checking car registrations against owners?' he screamed.

His team looked up, startled.

‘That . . . that would be me, sir,' Sergeant Cowgill said.

‘And did you happen to notice that there was an Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire parked on the road at the bottom of the Corporation Park around the time Helen Dunn disappeared?' Rutter demanded.

‘Yes, sir, I did.'

‘Then why the bloody hell haven't you found out who it belongs to?'

‘I'm workin' my way down the list as fast as I can, sir,' Cowgill said defensively.

‘Working your way down the list! It should have been the first bloody vehicle you checked on. It was spotted outside the Spinner, for Christ's sake. Verity Beale's landlady saw––'

He stopped, suddenly. He and Woodend had discussed the possibility of the murder and the kidnapping being connected, but as far as all the men in this room were concerned, they were two completely separate cases.

Of course Cowgill would have attached no special significance to the Armstrong Siddeley. Knowing as little as he did about the Verity Beale case, why should he have?

Rutter took a deep breath. ‘Sorry about that outburst, Sergeant,' he said. ‘Would you do me a big favour and move the Armstrong Siddeley to the top of your list? I'd like to know who it belongs to as soon as possible.'

‘I'll get on to it right away, sir,' Cowgill promised.

If she'd been out drinking with Woodend, Monika Paniatowski would probably have ordered a vodka. But she wasn't with Woodend in this country pub a few miles outside Lancaster – she was with Detective Chief Inspector Jack Horrocks of Scotland Yard. And caution told her to stick to fruit juice.

Horrocks took a sip of the gin and tonic he'd ordered for himself, then said, ‘You've got to learn to play the game, Monika.'

‘I beg your pardon, sir?'

‘The game – you've got to learn how to play it properly, or you'll end up like your boss, Cloggin'-it Charlie.'

‘There are a lot of worse ways that I
could
end up,' Monika Paniatowski said tartly.

Horrocks shook his head. ‘No, there aren't – as you'd soon realise if you really thought about it. Charlie Woodend's got as far as he's ever going to go. He's a dinosaur. A throwback. But you, Monika – you could be the first female chief constable in the country.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘Yes, I do, but as I said, you'll have to learn how to play it skilfully – learn how to create the right impression. You think we've wasted our time this morning, now don't you?'

‘Honestly, yes,' Paniatowski replied.

‘I admire honesty in a person – as long as it's used in moderation,' Horrocks said. ‘But the fact is, we haven't been wasting time at all. We've merely been letting it
pass by
. And do you know why?'

‘No.'

‘Because if we'd solved the case immediately, our superiors would have assumed it must have been open and shut from the start. Whereas, if we wait a while, they'll draw the conclusion that it was probably quite complicated and, but for our brilliant detective work, it might have gone unsolved for ever.'

‘But by letting the trail go cold, aren't we running the risk that we
won't
get a result?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Not at all.'

‘You sound as if you know something that I don't know.'

‘I probably know a great many things you don't know.'

‘I meant about this case.'

‘Yes, I know you did,' Horrocks admitted. ‘And you're quite right, I do know things you don't.'

‘How can you, when I've been working on it for longer than you have, and you haven't seen anything that I haven't seen myself?'

Horrocks tapped the side of his nose with his index finger. ‘Ways and means, Monika,' he said. ‘Ways and means.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘And sometimes it's
better
not to understand. Let me just assure you that the case
will
be solved, and though you might not see exactly
how
it's done, I'll make sure that you get most of the credit for it.'

‘Why should you do that?'

‘Because I don't want the credit for myself – and even if I did, my superiors would not be very pleased if I accepted it.'

‘You're not making a lot of sense,' Paniatowski said.

‘I'm sure I'm not, but if you want this investigation to be a real step up for you, that's something you're just going to have to get used to. And there's one other thing I should probably make clear, while I'm about it.'

‘And that is?'

‘Once this case is over, and I'm back in London, I'll want you to continue to work for me. The work won't be acknowledged directly. Your chief constable will probably pretend he knows nothing about it – but it will
only
be a pretence, and if you carry out the tasks I set you satisfactorily, you could find yourself promoted to inspector before very much longer.'

‘I don't see why you should need me to continue to work for you once this case is over,' Paniatowski said.

‘Of course you don't,' Horrocks agreed. ‘But, in time, you will. And if you're anything like as ambitious as I think you are, you'll be very glad I picked you rather than Inspector Rutter.'

‘So you know about Mr Rutter as well as Mr Woodend, do you?' Paniatowski asked.

Horrocks smiled. ‘As I said earlier, I know about a lot of things.'

W
alter Hargreaves did not look a happy man, Woodend thought. The deputy head's hands seemed to have taken on a life of their own, and fiddled relentlessly with the paper clips on his desk. His moustache, always pencil-thin, seemed to have shrunk even further since the last time they had met. All the confidence and competence the man had exuded at their previous meeting – and which Woodend was sure had been developed through a lifetime of achievement – seemed to have evaporated. If ever a man could truly be called a shadow of his former self, then that man was Walter Hargreaves.

‘This is a very difficult time for all of us at King Edward's,' the deputy head lamented.

‘I imagine it is,' the chief inspector agreed. ‘But you'd be wrong to blame yourselves for that poor little lass's disappearance, you know. It could have happened in any school.'

‘King Edward's has always had its enemies,' Hargreaves continued, talking more to himself than to Woodend. ‘Centres of excellence will always draw the envy of those who are excluded from them. And, over the years, it has had its share of crises, too. In the late eighteenth century, things were so bad that the school shrunk in size to no more than one teacher and a single room in the back of a church. Did you know that?'

‘No, I didn't,' Woodend said.

‘Yet it survived, because, whatever else happened to it, it managed to keep its shining reputation intact. Now, in the course of a single day, we have received two blows which threaten to destroy several centuries of work by hundreds of dedicated men like myself. There are journalists at our very gate, you know.'

‘Well, one journalist, anyway,' Woodend amended.

‘Leeches – that's what they are. They sense our temporary weakness and are just waiting for their opportunity to fasten themselves on the body of the school and suck the precious life-blood out of it.' He sighed. ‘If only the board of governors, in its wisdom, had appointed one of our own to guide the progress of the school. If only they had seen that it needed someone at the helm who loved the school – and who would put its interests first.'