The Red Herring (3 page)

‘I don't know.'

‘Well, I do. This is something we've wanted passionately – both of us. And if we don't see it through now, we'll both regret it to our dying day.'

But Roger Cray was no longer listening. Instead, he was gazing in horror at the pub door.

‘What's the matter?' Martin Dove.

‘Have you seen who's just come in?'

Dove turned towards the door and saw the woman with the long red hair standing there. ‘Oh my God!' he groaned.

Verity Beale was as horrified to see the two men as they were to see her. Who would have thought that they'd choose this pub – in the middle of nowhere – to meet?

She glanced nervously over her shoulder. Her date would arrive in a couple of minutes, and it was as important that he didn't see these men as it was that
they
didn't see him.

She took a deep breath, and wandered over to the men's table. ‘Martin! Roger!' she said, feigning pleasure. ‘I never expected to see you two here. I didn't even know you were friends.'

‘Didn't you?' Martin Dove asked, making it sound almost like an accusation.

‘We . . . we don't know each other that well,' Roger Cray mumbled. ‘We're just casual acquaintances. Ran into each other completely by chance. And we . . .' he glanced down at his almost untouched drink, ‘. . . we have to be going now, don't we, Mr Dove?'

‘I . . . er . . . yes, I suppose we do,' Martin Dove agreed unconvincingly.

The two men rose awkwardly to their feet, gave Verity Beale a farewell nod, and headed to the door.

Verity watched them leave. She had had her suspicions about both of them individually, but never of them together. It was certainly a development she would have to investigate more thoroughly in the morning. But right now, she had another task on her hands. For the moment she could only hope that they had left the car park by the time the big American car arrived.

Once in the car park, Roger Cray gave full vent to the panic he had been trying to control whilst he was inside the Spinner.

‘That's it!' he said, in a voice which was almost a scream. ‘The whole thing's off.'

‘Because we saw Verity?'

‘Of course it's because we saw Verity!'

‘There's no reason she should connect us with what's going to happen,' Martin Dove said soothingly.

‘The second she hears about it she'll connect it with us!' Cray babbled. ‘You could tell by the way she looked at us that she knew we were planning
something
.'

‘I'll deal with her,' Dove said firmly.

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Don't worry about the details. I've promised I'll deal with her, and I will. I'll do whatever's necessary.'

The evening rolled on. At ten to eleven, the landlord of the Spinner rang last orders. By a quarter past eleven, when most of the customers had left, he slid the bolt across the door to seal in the last few, illegal drinkers.

It was at around twenty-five to twelve that Verity Beale, who seemed to have been deep in thought – not to say, troubled – downed the last dregs of her drink and announced it was time to leave. The landlord followed her to the door, and opened it for her.

‘Your feller didn't stay long,' he said.

‘No, he had to get back home,' Verity replied.

‘Married, is he?' the landlord asked.

‘Not that it's any of your business, but yes, he is.'

The landlord shook his head. ‘You're wastin' your time knockin' about with married men. You're a good-lookin' lass – why don't you get yourself one that's unattached?'

‘And why don't you stick to pulling pints?' Verity asked.

‘Fair point,' the landlord agreed.

Verity Beale stepped out on to the forecourt, and heard the door shut behind her. It was as she was walking to her Mini that she noticed someone standing in the shadows. She didn't know who it was at first, but as she drew closer, the shape took a more distinct form and she felt her heart sink.

‘Have you been out here waiting for me?' she demanded.

‘Yes.'

‘Why?'

‘Because we need to talk.'

‘There's nothing to talk about.'

‘Don't you realise what risk you're putting yourself at?' the man asked.

Verity fumbled in her handbag for her cigarettes. ‘Maybe I am,' she agreed, ‘but, as I've just told the landlord back there, what I do is my business and nobody else's.'

The man stepped forward. ‘You're wrong,' he said. ‘You're so very, very, wrong.'

T
here was nothing unusual about the way in which Jed Buckley started the next day. He was up before dawn, as he always was in October, and by the time the farming report was due to come on the wireless he was, right on schedule, sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of ham and eggs and a cup of tea in front of him. It was then that things started to go
abnormally
, because instead of the expected farming report he found himself listening to a BBC announcer talking, in a flat, unemotional voice, about the Cuban missile crisis.

Buckley, like most of the other farmers he knew, had never thought much about politics. When the government had told him it was necessary to go and fight the Germans, he had gone – with little enthusiasm, but without complaint. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer periodically raised the duty on agricultural fuel, he merely shrugged and told himself that the folk in London would never really understand the hardships of farming. But this, he recognised, was different. This was just about as serious as things ever got.

He no longer had any appetite for his food, and took the remains of it to the barn, where he tipped it into one of the buckets of pig swill he had mixed up the night before. That done, he picked up the buckets and made his way across the farmyard towards the sty.

It was when he was halfway across the yard that he realised something was wrong, though it took him a few more steps to work out exactly what that something was. Though there was a clamour from the sty, as there always was this close to feeding time, the clamour on that particular morning was not directed towards him – the bringer of food – but seemed to be focused on the
inside
of the sty, instead.

Buckley wondered what could have brought about this change in their behaviour. Perhaps the pigs, some of the more sensitive of the farmyard animals, had picked up on the general tension in the air, he thought. Perhaps, though they could never be expected to understand the concept of a nuclear holocaust, they had still managed to grasp the concept that existence was teetering on the edge of oblivion.

He passed the cowshed, and heard his Herefords lowing. Somewhere to his left, his prize bantam cock was crowing loudly, to proclaim his power over his feathered concubines. One of the dogs barked. One of the cats slunk stealthily behind the tractor in search of unsuspecting prey. But there was no sign of the pigs' pink snouts poking out over the top of the fence as they stood on their hind legs and urged him on.

He reached the sty, and looked over into the pen. The pigs were not jostling around their trough, but instead stood in a tight bunch in the centre of the pen. Buckley puzzled over what was making them act so strangely. Then one of the sows shifted position – and he saw what was, undoubtedly, a human leg.

The pails clattered to the ground, spilling the swill everywhere. The farmer pulled back the bolt on the gate and rushed into the pen, waving his arms and shouting almost hysterically.

The pigs squealed, but were reluctant to give ground. Buckley, screaming at the top of his voice now, lashed out with his foot. The fat porkers grunted in protest, but finally retreated to the edges of the pen.

The farmer looked down in horror. There was a woman in the frozen mud – a woman with long red hair. A piece of cord was wrapped tightly around her neck, and she was unquestionably dead. He didn't think he knew her, but it was impossible to say for sure, because the pigs had been working on her for some time – and now all that was left of her face was bits of bone and gristle.

DCI Woodend watched the covered stretcher being manoeuvred into the back of the ambulance, then lit up what
should
have been his second or third Capstan Full Strength of the morning, but was probably closer to his tenth.

‘I don't like this, Monika,' he said.

‘It's not the kind of thing I enjoy seeing just after breakfast, either,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘That's not what I mean,' Woodend said. ‘You know how I work. I like to know where the victim was killed. I need to root around the scene of the crime, a bit like the pigs. In this case, I've no idea where the crime took place – an' what's even more troublin' is that I don't know why she was brought here.'

Monika Paniatowski looked beyond the pigsty to the sloping field which led down to the road. Half a dozen uniformed constables were criss-crossing it, their eyes fixed firmly on the ground. Standing at the edge of the field, watching them intently as they searched, was DI Bob Rutter. Apart from the police, there was nobody around – which was hardly surprising since the nearest village was a couple of miles away, and the nearest town of any size at least four or five.

‘You see what I'm gettin' at?' Woodend asked.

‘Perhaps the killer murdered her near to his home – or even
in
it – and thought that if the body was discovered there, it would be likely to draw attention to him,' Paniatowski suggested.

‘Yes, it wouldn't be the first time the body's been moved for that reason,' Woodend agreed. ‘But I think you're missin' the point, Monika.'

‘Am I, sir? So what
is
the point?'

‘He doesn't want her found near his home – fair enough – so he drives her out into the countryside. But why not just leave her on the side of the road? Or else drive her to somewhere much more secluded? Why run the risk of carryin' the body across a field to dump it in the pigsty?'

‘Maybe he thought the pigs would destroy the evidence.'

‘Well, they've certainly tried their best to do that. But he can't really have expected them to swallow her without trace. Which brings me back to my original point. Dumpin' her somewhere she wouldn't be found in a hurry makes sense. So does gettin' rid of her body as quick as possible. But what he did achieved neither of those aims.'

One of the constables bent down to pick something up, then made his way over to where DI Rutter was standing.

It's a handbag, Paniatowski thought excitedly. They'd found the victim's handbag!

Rutter took the bag off the constable, and carefully opened it up. He put his hand inside, and pulled out what looked like a small red booklet.

‘Seems as if we'll be able to put a name to the victim before long,' Paniatowski said.

Woodend nodded. The killer must have known the handbag would be found, he thought, which meant that he didn't care that the victim would soon be identified. So again, why run the
bloody
risk of carrying her all the way to the pigsty?

Rutter, the red booklet still in his hand, made his way over to where his boss and the detective sergeant were standing.

‘According to her driving licence, her name was Verity Beale, and she was twenty-six years old,' he said.

‘If that
is
her driving licence,' Paniatowski said.

Rutter shot the sergeant a look of pure dislike. ‘What chance do you think there is that anybody else would drop their handbag in the middle of nowhere?' he asked.

‘Stranger things have been known to happen,' Paniatowski countered.

‘But they don't happen very often,' Rutter said cuttingly. ‘That's precisely what makes them strange.'

Woodend looked from the inspector to the sergeant. The first impression anyone got of Rutter was of smartness. Smart haircut, smart suit, smart shoes and smart eyes. A young man who was going places. With Paniatowski, what you noticed was the fact that her nose was a little too big and her mouth a little wide – which was a long way from saying that she could walk across a room without the gaze of every man there following her. And like Rutter,
she
had smart eyes, too.

‘What's the address on the drivin' licence?' the chief inspector asked.

‘Ruskin Road, Woolwich,' Rutter answered.

‘But she's not lived there for a while,' Paniatowski said.

Rutter glared at her. ‘How do you be so cocksure sure about that, Sergeant?'

‘That skirt she's wearing was in Fred Ball's summer sale at the end of August. I nearly bought it myself.'

‘And you're saying that Fred Ball's was the only place in the whole country she could have bought it?' Rutter asked sceptically.

‘The blouse and jacket were on sale as part of the same ensemble,' Paniatowski told him matter-of-factly. ‘I didn't think they quite went together – that's why I didn't buy them in the end. The chances of any other retailer offering exactly the same combination must be about a million to one. If you don't believe me, why don't you ask your wi––'

She stopped suddenly, as if she would willingly have bitten off her own tongue. People forgot that Maria Rutter wasn't like most women, Woodend thought – forgot that though she had a baby now, and was coping exceptionally well with all the difficulties that had brought her, she'd still been totally blind for over two years.

‘I'm . . . I'm sorry, Inspector,' Paniatowski mumbled.

‘Forget it,' Rutter said brusquely. ‘Maria doesn't want your pity.' Then
he
began to look a little ashamed, too. ‘It's an easy mistake to make,' he admitted. ‘I've been guilty of it myself a few times.'

‘So we think the victim was livin' locally, do we?' Woodend asked, turning the conversation back on to the investigation.