The Red Herring (31 page)

‘She was right, of course,' Simon Barnes said sadly. ‘I had been a fool to even dream I could ever have a woman like her. But did she really need to
say
it? Did she really need to tell me that she'd only been using me? That I was – and these were her very words – “nothing more than a station she'd had to pass through to get to where she was really going”?'

‘An' that's when you hit her?'

‘The flower border was made of bricks. I'd noticed that earlier. You notice all kinds of things when you're standing, waiting. She turned her back on me – contemptuously, oh, so contemptuously! – and bent over to open her car door. I picked up a brick and smote her. I hadn't planned it, but that's what I did. I was surprised when she collapsed. I stood looking down at her, wondering what would happen when she came round again. Even if she didn't report me to the police, she'd be bound to tell other people about it, wouldn't she? And not just what I'd done – but why I'd done it. They would have felt the same contempt for me that she so obviously felt. I'd have been Simon Barnes the coward – the man who struck a woman from behind. Simon Barnes the poor lovesick fool – who couldn't even get from her what she seemed to be giving everybody else so freely. I think it was at that point that I decided I'd have to kill her.'

‘An' when was it you decided where to leave the body?'

‘Later. When I'd bundled her body into my car. At first I thought of just leaving her by the roadside, a few miles from the pub. But that would have been too good for her, wouldn't it?'

‘Would it?' Woodend asked.

‘Of course it would. Whoever found her would have seen her as nothing more than a poor, innocent victim of a murderous attack. I didn't want that. I wanted them to see her as she
truly
was – as a Jezebel. Do you know what happened to the Biblical Jezebel?'

‘She was thrown to the dogs of the field, so they could lick her blood an' eat her flesh,' Woodend said.

‘But there are no dogs of the fields in Lancashire. So I did the next best thing. I left her among the unclean swine – where she belonged!'

D
CC Ainsworth sat behind his desk, his face cloaked in an expression which it would have been totally inadequate to describe as rage.

‘You just can't keep your bloody big nose out of anything, can you, Chief Inspector?' he demanded.

Woodend, who had not been invited to sit down, and hence was standing, gave a shrug.

‘I found the missin' girl, just like I was instructed to, didn't I, sir?' he asked.

‘But you weren't supposed to
find
her – you were only supposed to
look
for her.'

‘I'm not a mind-reader, sir,' Woodend said, in his own defence.

‘Yes, you are – but only when it bloody well suits you to be!'

Woodend sighed. ‘If Special Branch had decided to trust us – instead of just trustin'
you
– we'd never have had to go through this kidnappin' pantomime in the first place, an' we'd probably have arrested Simon Barnes a lot earlier.'

If there was one thing worse than bloody Cloggin'-it Charlie thinking he was right when everybody else thought he was wrong, it was him thinking he was right when everybody else was forced by circumstances to agree with him, Ainsworth decided.

‘Inspector Rowe has filed an official complaint against you,' he said, attempting to snatch some small personal victory from the jaws of defeat.

‘An' who's Inspector Rowe, when he's at home?' Woodend asked.

‘He's the member of DCI Horrocks' team you assaulted.'

‘Oh, the Mexican bandit!' Woodend said. ‘“Assaulted” isn't the term I would have used for what I did.'

‘So what would you have called it?'

‘I flattened him,' Woodend said. ‘I well-an'-truly
flattened
the bugger. My knuckles are still a bit sore from it.'

‘I'm amazed you can take it so lightly,' Ainsworth told him. ‘Aren't you worried about the consequences at all?'

‘Not really, sir,' Woodend admitted. ‘Why should I be, when I've got somebody like you in my corner? You'll handle it so there are no come-backs, won't you?'

‘You're being very presumptuous, Chief Inspector,' Ainsworth told him.

‘Am I? Sorry again, sir. It's just that I've always thought of you as the kind of boss who stood behind his men.'

‘Like hell you have!'

‘Besides, as things stand, we can probably come up with some story to explain away what happened to Helen Dunn. Of course, the officers actually involved in the operation will know it's all cock-and-bull, but they're good lads, an' they'll keep quiet if I ask them to. On the other hand, if I was brought up on a charge, I'd have to tell the truth, wouldn't I? I'd be forced to explain how all other police work in Lancashire virtually ground to a halt while we investigated a crime that you already knew
wasn't
a crime at all. I shouldn't think it'd do your standin' much good with the men you command. An' once the press got hold of the story, well . . .'

‘That's sounds suspiciously like blackmail,' Ainsworth said.

‘Does it? Sorry, sir, it wasn't meant to.'

Ainsworth slammed his hand violently down on the desk. ‘I'll want a full report on this whole bloody mess by tomorrow morning at the latest,' he said.

‘I'll get started on it the moment I come back from the railway station,' Woodend promised.

‘And why, pray, do you feel the sudden need to go the railway station?' Ainsworth asked.

‘I'm goin' to say goodbye to somebody,' Woodend told him.

The porters on Whitebridge Station waited until all the passengers had climbed on board the train before they wheeled the coffin out of the luggage office and loaded it into the goods' van.

‘Where are they sending her?' asked Rutter, who was standing with his boss near the ticket barrier.

‘They'll be sendin' her home – wherever that is.'

‘Does she have a family, do you think?'

‘Verity Beale doesn't, because Verity Beale never existed. But I expect there's some family with a surname beginnin' with B who've been spun a story about their daughter's tragic accident, an' are waitin' for their Vera, or their Valerie, to come home in a box.'

The coffin had been loaded, and the doors of the guard's van securely closed. The guard on the platform waved his flag, and the train began to chug out of the station.

‘I don't think that I've ever learned so little about the victim in one of my cases as I've learned about the victim in this one,' Woodend said reflectively. ‘We know some of things that Verity Beale
did
, but we've no idea what she was
like
. Did it not bother her at all to order Helen Dunn to spy on her own father? Was she really as hard and heartless as she seemed, when she told Simon Barnes that she'd just been usin' him to get what she wanted? Or was that nothin' more than her trainin' an' experience comin' into play? Is it possible that beneath that tough shell there lurked a woman who was vulnerable, frightened an' as unsure as the rest of us are?'

‘I suppose we'll never know,' Rutter said.

‘No, we won't,' Woodend agreed, with a regretful sigh. ‘I wish I could believe that her death hadn't been totally pointless – that through it, a few people in her business might begin to see that it's no good sayin' the end always justifies the means, because that can often do as much damage as whatever those means are tryin' to prevent.'

‘Like people who threaten to blow up the world in order to save the world?' Rutter said.

‘Exactly,' Woodend agreed. ‘Khrushchev will feel more secure if he gets his missiles on to Cuba, and Kennedy will feel more secure if he doesn't. I'm not sayin' they both don't have a point, an' I'm not sayin' they're wrong to care about the people they're supposed to be protectin'. But neither of the buggers is goin' to feel secure if, between them, they turn everythin' into no more than a smoulderin' pile of ashes, now is he?'

‘We're both getting a bit philosophical for this time of day, aren't we?' Rutter suggested.

‘Aye, you're right,' Woodend agreed. He glanced down at his watch. ‘Still, I suppose there's nothin' wrong with the quest for moral certainty an' universal truth – especially when you know exactly where to find it.'

‘And where might that be?' Rutter asked, smiling.

‘In the public bar of the Drum an' Monkey, of course,' Woodend said. ‘It's remarkable how much better the world starts to look after a couple of pints of Thwaite's Best Bitter.'

T
he normally staid newsreader on the wireless had barely been able to keep the note of jubilation out of his voice as he had announced that the Russian ships, instead of trying to breach the blockade, had turned back.

So there was to be no war, Squadron Leader Dunn told himself as he stood on the table, looking around the kitchen. No opportunity now for a man like him to demonstrate his courage and his patriotism.

And no opportunity in the future, either – not after the phone call he had just received from his superior.

‘What the bloody hell did you think you were playing at, going along with this kidnapping caper?'
the group captain had demanded.

‘I was asked to help out, sir, and I did. Given the people involved, I didn't think it would be necessary to clear it with you.'

‘It's precisely the people involved who are the whole problem. We're warriors, not grubby little Whitehall spies. Can you even begin to imagine what this will do to our image if it ever leaks out? The Army and Navy will be laughing their socks off at us. Christ, Reginald, you'd have done us less damage if you'd decided to drop a bomb on Birmingham.'

So that was clear enough. The promotion he had been expecting would not come through now – would never come through. His career was in ruins, because even if he managed to live down this error of judgement, the fact that his wife had left him, taking their daughter with her, would count against him forever more.

He'd been born at the wrong time, he told himself. He shouldn't have been flying jets – he was made to pilot Spitfires. Now
that
was a plane – not much more than cardboard and string, but the man who could fly it was a real man by anybody's standards.

He saw himself sitting in the cockpit, watching the propeller whirling as the plane built up enough power for the take-off. There was none of the sophisticated gadgetry about the Spitfires that you found in modern aircraft. Once the engine was turning, the only thing that stopped the plane from wandering all over the field was the wooden wedges – the chocks – which the ground staff had inserted under the wheels.

He could picture it all – feel it as if he were really there at that moment, instead of where he actually was, on top of the kitchen table.

The pilot knowing from the sound of the engine that it was time to take off.

His signal to the men below him – men who could never even aspire to be fliers like him – that they should take away the chocks.

The Spitfire rising into the air like a small, but glorious, bird of prey.

Golden days. Glory days. Days that would never come again.

He looked up, not at the open sky, but at the ceiling and the rope which was hanging from it. He reached out and slipped the noose at the end of the rope over his head. It fitted perfectly, just as he'd intended it to, and once it was around his neck, he pulled on the knot to tighten it.

He looked around the kitchen one last time, though he could not have explained why.

‘Chocks away, chaps!' he said in a deep, commanding voice, as he stepped off the edge of the table.