The Red Herring (26 page)

He should have used a piece of her clothing instead, he told himself, because while that would have been less immediately convincing, it would also have been far less risky. But he
had
used the pencil case, and, as a result, had opened a breach through which a clever man like Woodend just might be able to glimpse the truth.

Dunn took another sip of his whisky, and, as the alcohol massaged his nerves, began to understand – perhaps for the first time in his life – why other men set so much store by drink. He wondered what Woodend was up to at that very moment – wondered how much he already knew, and how much more he could imagine.

Dunn raised his glass to his lips again, and was surprised to find that it was already empty. He never had a second drink, but perhaps that night he would break his own rule, he thought, getting to his feet and walking to the kitchen. Yes, perhaps, just this once, a second drink was a good idea.

The whisky bottle was standing by the sink. He unscrewed it and, without making any attempt to gauge the amount, half-filled the glass. It was then that he noticed that his hand had developed a slight tremble.

He had not thought about God for years – to him, the Air Vice-Marshal was far more powerful and awesome than any deity – but now he discovered himself repeating a silent prayer over and over again.

‘Please don't let Woodend find out what I've done with Helen. Please . . .
please
– don't let him find out.'

Monika Paniatowski crossed her legs with slow deliberation, and looked around the best room of the Artillery Arms. Most of the customers, standing or sitting in small groups, were men with short haircuts and a military bearing.

As she sipped at her vodka, she caught the odd snatch of conversation drifting her way from the group closest to her.

‘Won't be our kind of war at all,' said one of the men. ‘All the fighting – if that's what you want to call it – will be done by button-pushing boffins in concrete shelters.'

‘Tosh, Rodney. Absolute balderdash,' said a second. ‘Nobody's going to go nuclear over this.'

‘Oh? And what makes you say that?'

‘They won't because they
daren't
. They'll fight a limited war because that's the only way the world can survive– and that means they'll need us, just like they always do.'

‘Maybe there won't be a war at all,' suggested a third member of the party.

The other two men looked at him with something akin to pity.

‘Do you really think Khrushchev can afford to back down at this stage?' asked the one called Rodney. ‘Do you really think he's going to call his ships back? And if he doesn't, could Kennedy afford the loss of face that would go with letting those ships through the blockade?'

From their accents and general demeanour, they were obviously all officers, Paniatowski thought, whereas most of the soldiers in the public bar, where she'd had her first drink, had equally obviously been enlisted men. She smiled to herself at the thought that, though there was no sign on the door of the best room prohibiting the squaddies from mixing with their betters, there might as well have been.

‘I do like girls who have nice smiles,' said a drawling voice just above her head.

She looked up. The man standing over her was tall, blond, and – from the gleam in his eyes – obviously fancied himself as something of a lady-killer.

‘And I do like men who know how to give women compliments,' Monika told him.

The soldier beamed with pleasure. ‘Would you mind if I sat down?' he asked. ‘Or are you waiting for someone?'

‘No, I'm all alone,' Paniatowski replied.

The soldier slid quickly into the seat opposite her, and signalled to the waiter for another round of drinks. ‘Name's Sebastian,' he said.

‘Elaine,' Monika replied. ‘Do you live round here?'

‘Not exactly
live
. I'm a captain in the Royal Artillery. Our barracks are just around the corner.'

‘Oh, I see!' Monika said. ‘That would explain the name of the pub.'

Sebastian chuckled, as if she'd just said something incredibly witty. ‘I take it you
don't
live round here,' he said.

‘You're right,' Monika agreed. ‘I'm down here visiting my uncle. It's the first time I've ever been in the area.' She gave him a slightly puzzled frown. ‘It seems a very strange place to have an army barracks.'

Sebastian chuckled again. ‘
Really
don't know the area, do you?' he asked. ‘Do you mean to say you've never heard of the Woolwich Arsenal?'

‘I thought they were a football team,' Paniatowski said innocently.

‘You
are
amusing,' Sebastian told her. ‘The Arsenal's one of the places where the Ministry of Defence develops its weaponry. That's the main reason we're here.'

‘To test the weapons?'

‘Oh much, much more than that. The boffins may be able to design the things, you see – do all the clever calculations and so forth – but without experienced soldiers like me to advise them, they'd be bound to make all kinds of ghastly mistakes.'

‘So you're really quite important,' Paniatowski said.

‘Just a part of the team,' Sebastian said, self-deprecatingly. ‘So tell me, Elaine, what do you do?'

‘I'm a nurse.'

‘That must be interesting,' Sebastian said, doing his best to hide his I've-heard-what-nurses-are-like-when-they've-gota-few-drinks-inside-them expression. ‘I say, Elaine, you wouldn't like to move on to somewhere a little less crowded, would you?'

‘Well no, I wouldn't mind, but I was rather hoping to see a friend of mine,' Paniatowski said.

Sebastian's mouth drooped slightly. ‘Oh, I see,' he said, sounding disappointed.

Monika laughed. ‘A
girl
friend, silly,' she said. ‘Maybe, if she turns up, you could get one of your friends to join us and we could make a foursome.'

‘That would be jolly,' Sebastian agreed. ‘Do you think she
will
turn up?'

‘She told me this was her local, so I think it's more than likely. Perhaps you know her by sight. She's a very pretty girl with long red hair.'

Suspicion instantly flooded into Sebastian's eyes. ‘You don't mean Vanessa Barker, do you?' he asked.

Vanessa Barker? VB?

‘That's her,' Monika agreed. ‘Do you mean to say you
do
know her?'

‘Know her – and know
all about her
,' Sebastian said harshly. ‘Now if you'll excuse me, it's time I rejoined my friends.'

He stood up, and walked quickly across to join the three officers whose conversation Monika had been listening to earlier. As Sebastian spoke earnestly to them, they each gave Monika several furtive – and hostile – glances. Then the four of them split up and joined other groups. By the time five minutes had passed, all the soldiers were crammed together in a bunch near the door, and Monika, still sitting at her table, had most of the room to herself.

Interesting, she thought. What had just happened didn't answer all the questions she had in her mind – but at least it was a start.

It was time for her to leave, she decided. She made her way towards the door and the officers moved quickly to the left or to the right, creating a passageway for her like the parting of the Red Sea. As she left the room, she was conscious of a couple of dozen pairs of hostile eyes focusing on the back of her head.

The public phone was in the passage. Monika picked up the receiver, and asked to be connected to a Whitebridge number.

The phone at the other end had just started to ring when she heard a voice behind her say, ‘I suppose you think you're very clever!'

She turned, and was not surprised to find herself facing one of the officers. He was a short, darkish man, and seemed to have had rather more to drink than most of companions.

‘I said, I suppose you think you're very clever,' the man repeated.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' Paniatowski replied.

‘Coming down here to spy on us,' the man said drunkenly. ‘Well, let me tell you one thing – if you can't trust us, you can't trust anybody.'

A second officer, looking rather less the worse for wear, appeared in the doorway of the best room.

‘Leave it, Toby,' he advised.

‘I
won't
leave it,' the drunken man said. ‘It's time these people realised that we're . . . that we're . . . that we're something-or-other.'

‘Loyal,' his friend said. ‘The word you're looking for is “loyal”.' He took the drunk firmly by the arm and began to manoeuvre him back into the best room. ‘But he's got a point,' he said, as a parting shot to Paniatowski. ‘Sending people like you down here is nothing less than an insult.'

The phone had stopped ringing, and now a voice said, ‘The Drum and Monkey. Can I help you?'

‘I'd like to speak to Chief Inspector Woodend, please,' Paniatowski said. ‘He's usually at the corner table by this time of night.'

The next morning there were many people in Whitebridge who looked out of their bedroom windows on to a familiar view, but with fresh eyes. How could anything so ordinary – so commonplace – manage to seem so precious? they asked themselves. But they already knew the answer to that question. It was precious because it was still there – and when they had gone to bed the previous night they had not been sure that it would be.

The fact that the world had survived the night brought them fresh hope. Perhaps, while they had been sleeping, Khrushchev or Kennedy – or even both of them – had understood the lunacy of what was happening, and had pulled back from the brink of destruction. Perhaps, when they turned their wirelesses on, they would be told that the world had survived the crisis, and there was still a chance, after all, that they would live to see their children grow up.

It did not take long for such hopes to be shattered. The American blockade was still holding firm, the newsreader announced, and the Russian ships were showing no signs of intending to turn back.

So this was it! There would be no summer holidays in Blackpool next year. There would be no need to worry about the effect of slugs on the tomato plants, because there would be no slugs and no tomatoes. Maybe it would be the Russians who launched the first missiles, or perhaps it would be the Americans. It didn't really matter, one way or the other. Civilisation, which had taken countless generations to develop to its current level, would come to an abrupt end on an overcast day in October 1962.

They went through the motions of washing, shaving, getting dressed and giving their shoes a quick polish. They drank their first cups of tea and smoked their first cigarettes of the day. And, when the time came, they opened their front doors and set out for the bus stop.

But there didn't seem to be much point in any of it, any more.

I
t was just after nine o'clock in the morning when Woodend entered through the main door of King Edward's Grammar School. On his first visit, there had still been a little of the young Charlie Woodend about him – just a trace of the short-trousered boy who had looked up at the school with something like awe. Then, he had waited in the foyer, examining the photographs of smiling schoolboys, until he had been summoned. Now, he strode purposefully over to the office where lurked Mrs Green – the dragon-lady whose main job it was to protect the headmaster's inner sanctum from unwanted intruders. Once there he raised his arm, knocked sharply on the door, and immediately turned the handle.

Mrs Green glanced up from her desk with the look of disdain on her face which a lady's maid would have worn had she been told she must share her carriage with her under-gardener.

‘Can I help you?' she asked, most unhelpfully.

‘I doubt it very much,' Woodend replied. ‘I'm here to see your boss. Is he in?'

The secretary frowned disapprovingly. ‘As a matter of fact, he's not,' she said sternly. ‘But even if he were, you couldn't see him without having first made an appoint––'

‘So he's not here,' Woodend interrupted. ‘An' why's that, I wonder? Could it be that he's suddenly got the call to go down to the big city?'

‘I can't imagine how you would know that,' Mrs Green said, her disapproval deepening by the second, ‘but yes, the headmaster
has
been called away to London. There are some urgent family matters that he needs to attend to – not that that's any business of yours.'

Woodend shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘They never cease to amaze me, these people,' he said. ‘They're so bloody arrogant – so sure of their own position – they can't even be bothered to think up a convincin' excuse to cover their tracks.'

‘I can assure you––' Mrs Green said, disapproval rapidly sliding into outrage.

‘No, you can't,' Woodend told her. ‘You can assure me of nothin', because you haven't any more idea of what's really goin' on around here now than I had myself a couple of days ago. Well, if I can't speak to the engineer, I'll have to make do with the rubbin' rag.'

‘I do beg your pardon!'

‘If anybody wants me, I'll be with the deputy head.'

Mrs Green glanced up at the timetable on the wall. ‘But Mr Hargreaves has a class in five minutes,' she protested.

‘Aye, well he'll just have to cancel it, then, won't he?' Woodend said. ‘Have you got a telephone number you can reach the headmaster at?'

‘No, I––'

‘I didn't think you would have. They don't hand out numbers like that to mere civilians like you.'

Mrs Green was swelling with rage. ‘I have the headmaster's complete confidence,' she said. ‘I know everything––'

‘Not this time, you don't. Because this has nothin' at all to do with runnin' a school.' Woodend's expression suddenly softened. ‘Listen, Mrs Green, don't feel too bad about it, because you're not the only one who's been kept in the dark – by a long chalk. I tell you what. Why don't you draft the letter? You know that'll make you feel better.'