Death of an Innocent (20 page)

‘What did you do in the war?'

‘I was in the Pay Corps – in Aldershot. Why?'

‘I was part of the D-Day Invasion of France, myself,' Woodend said. ‘The beaches we had to land on were mined an' fortified, but we didn't worry too much about that, because we were more interested in all the stuff the Germans were firin' at us from the tops of the cliffs.'

‘I'm afraid I don't quite see⎯'

‘If I came through that all right, I think I can just about manage a stroll round a buildin' site without doin' myself much harm. Don't you?'

The estate agent shrugged. ‘I suppose so. If you think a stroll will help you to make up your mind, Mr Woodend . . .'

‘I'm sure it will.'

‘. . . then I'll be in the site office when you want me.'

Woodend walked to the end of the row of mock-Georgian houses, then stopped and looked around him. Half the building site had already fallen victim to the developers' bulldozers and excavators, but the rest of it was relatively untouched and – as with the moors on the other side of the fence – patches of green grass were beginning to appear through the melting snow.

The question was not whether there had been activity on the site the previous Sunday, Woodend thought. He was sure that there had been. What mattered was
where
that activity had taken place. And
why
?

He started to cross the strip of undeveloped land that separated him from the chain-link fence. It was unlikely that Taylor and Ainsworth had used the heavy equipment to do anything to the part of the site which had
already
been dug up, he argued, yet why should they have bothered to⎯?

He came to an abrupt halt. Just ahead of him enough snow had melted to reveal a patch of bare earth about the size of a bath towel. Excavations? But why there, rather than closer to the finished buildings?

Dragging his Wellingtoned right foot along the ground, he cleared a trail through the sludge from the exposed patch of earth to the point at which the excavation finished and the grass began again. That done, he returned to his starting point, and made a fresh trail in the opposite direction. When he hit grass a second time, he stopped and examined the line in the slush.

‘Just about two yards wide,' he said to himself. ‘Now let's see how
long
it is.'

He repeated the process, working at right angles to his original line. It took him a couple of minutes to discover that the excavation had been about four yards long, and another five minutes to scrape the slush back into its original position – masking the fact that he had ever been there.

He was on the point of heading back to the site office when the sun, suddenly emerging from behind a cloud, cast its rays on a small patch of brightness in the nearby grass. Woodend moved closer and saw that the object was a fleck of yellow paint. He put his hand in his overcoat pocket, took out one of the small plastic bags he always carried with him, and dropped the fleck into it. He wasn't
certain
he knew what he'd found – but he thought he had a pretty good idea.

There was a third car parked next to the site office now – an E-type Jaguar. Its owner, a man in a yellow safety helmet and an expensive blue suit, was standing in front of the office. He was not alone. Mr Fletcher, the estate agent who would sell his houses to anyone – even a bent bobby – was with him. Fletcher was hanging his head, and Taylor was waving his hands agitatedly. It was clear to Woodend that the agent was on the receiving end of a tremendous rocket.

The two men noticed Woodend's approach simultaneously. Taylor let his hands drop to his sides, and Fletcher hastily stepped forward to speak to his prospective buyer.

‘Mr . . . Mr Taylor was just telling me that I should never have allowed you to wander around the site on your own,' the estate agent said nervously. ‘It's a question of the insurance, you see. The company would have been liable if there'd been an accident.'

‘But there wasn't, was there?' Woodend asked. ‘So you've got nothin' to worry about.'

Terry Taylor took a few steps forward, so that he was standing next to Fletcher. He smiled. His teeth were very white and regular, but even all the expensive remedial dentistry they had obviously undergone did not quite hide the evidence of earlier neglect.

‘Chief Inspector Woodend! What a pleasant surprise!' Taylor said in a voice full of flat Northern vowels, but with a hint of Southern springiness lurking just below the surface. ‘My man Fletcher, here, tells me that you're interested in buying into Moorland Village. Is that right?'

Woodend shook his head. ‘Not really. I got used to livin' in the town when I was down in London, an' I've got used to livin' in the country now I'm back in Lancashire – but this place is neither the one thing nor the other.'

‘You'd be surprised how quickly people can adapt,' Fletcher said earnestly, attempting to compensate for his earlier gaffe by clinching a sale now. ‘Why, we had this customer in one of our earlier developments who'd lived in a flat all his life, but I saw him the other week and he said that buying one of our houses was the best move he'd ever⎯'

‘Don't you have some work you should be getting on with, Fletcher?' Terry Taylor interrupted.

‘I beg your pardon, Mr Taylor?'

‘Work!' the builder repeated. ‘In the office!'

A sudden look of comprehension crossed Fletcher's face. ‘Oh . . . er . . . yes, I suppose I do,' he said weakly.

‘Then you'd better go and do it, hadn't you?'

‘Right away, Mr Taylor.'

Taylor watched Fletcher until he had disappeared through the site office door, then turned back to Woodend, and smiled again. It was a smile totally devoid of warmth, Woodend thought – almost an
inhuman
smile.

‘Imagine that fool Fletcher trying to sell you a house on this pricy estate when the government will soon be providing you with somewhere to live for absolutely nothing,' he said.

Woodend shivered – though not with the cold.

‘I have to be goin',' he told the builder.

‘But before you consider extreme outcomes like going to jail, it's always best to look around for alternative solutions,' Taylor continued, as if he hadn't spoken. The builder glanced down at his expensive wristwatch. ‘Do you happen to know a pub called the Last Chance Inn, Mr Woodend?'

‘Out on the moors? Near Hoddlesworth?'

‘That's right.'

‘I think I've been past it a few times, but I can't say I've stopped an' gone inside.'

‘It's got a little restaurant attached to it. The chef is French. He does a very decent lunch.'

‘Thanks for the tip,' Woodend said. ‘I'll remember it the next time I'm in the area.'

Taylor smiled again. ‘I mustn't be making myself clear. What I'm trying to say to you is that, as it's almost my lunchtime, I thought I'd pop over there. And if you'd care to join me . . .'

‘I wouldn't.'

‘Don't be so hasty,' Taylor urged. ‘When two people have business to discuss, it's always better to do it over lunch.'

‘But we
don't
have any business to discuss. I've told you already, I'm not interested in buyin' one of your houses.'

‘And given your current, somewhat precarious, situation, I wouldn't dream of selling you one of them, even if you
were
interested. But that's not the kind of business I'm talking about – and we both know that, don't we?'

‘Aye,' Woodend conceded. ‘I suppose we do.'

‘So will you join me?'

‘As long as we each pay for our own grub.'

‘Why don't you let me treat you?' Taylor suggested. ‘I'm a rich man. I can afford it.'

‘I've no doubt you can,' Woodend replied. ‘I'll bet you spend more on little luxuries than I earn altogether. But that's not the point, is it?'

‘Then what is the point?'

‘I wouldn't want to put myself in a position where I could be accused of bein' beholden to you.'

Taylor chuckled. ‘Given the position you're
already
in, I would think it's rather late in the day for you to be worrying about minor matters like a free meal,' he said.

T
erry Taylor was an excellent – if aggressive – driver, sitting behind the wheel of an excellent – if aggressive – car, and though some of the lanes were narrow and the slush was slippery, they were making excellent time.

They were mid-way between two remote moorland villages when Taylor turned to Woodend – the humourless smile firmly back in place again – and said, ‘Don't you think you're taking something of a chance by accepting my invitation, Mr Woodend?'

‘Why should I?'

‘Because, given that you apparently seem to think I'm some sort of law-breaker⎯'

‘“Criminal's” the word you're graspin' for, Mr Taylor,' Woodend interrupted. ‘An' I don't
think
anythin'. I
know
. You're as big a villain as I've come across in a long, long time.'

‘So, as I was saying, given your poor opinion of me, isn't it rather foolish of you to agree to come out here, to the middle of the moors – where anything could happen?'

Woodend ran his eyes slowly up and down the other man's frame.

‘You're a big feller, Mr Taylor,' he said finally. ‘An' I reckon you must have been quite a hard man in your time. But you've been livin' the good life for quite a while, an' now I could take you with one hand tied behind my back and the other one pickin' my nose.'

Taylor laughed. ‘But suppose I'd not planned to hurt you myself,' he said. ‘Suppose I'd arranged to have some of the brutes I employ on my building sites – men who'd break their own mothers' bones for a couple of pounds – waiting in ambush further up the road?'

‘Then I'd be in big trouble,' Woodend admitted. ‘But you haven't arranged that, have you?'

‘How can you be so sure?'

‘Because if you ever did decide to have the crap knocked out of me, you'd arrange for it to happen at a time when you were havin' afternoon tea with the Mayor an' all his council.'

Taylor threw back his head and laughed even louder this time. ‘I wasn't
really
threatening you, you know,' he said.

‘Yes, you were,' Woodend contradicted him. ‘I know you'd no intention of actually carryin' the threat out – for the moment, anyway – but you were interested in findin' out just how frightened you could make me if you really tried. Well, now you know, don't you?'

‘Are you really as calm as you seem?'

‘What do you think?'

‘I think you're far too intelligent not to appreciate the dire situation you're in, and that it will only take a little pressure from me to make that brave front you're putting on crumble away into a hundred tiny pieces.'

‘Maybe you're right,' Woodend said. ‘We'll soon see, won't we?'

‘Yes,' Terry Taylor agreed. ‘We'll soon see.'

The Last Chance Inn was situated in a small village at the very edge of the moor. From the outside it looked a simple, honest structure, built from huge blocks of dressed stone and topped by a heavy slate roof. The inside, by way of contrast, was all false smoothness. Fake polished beams had been put up to hide the genuine rough beams that ran across the ceiling. The flag floor had been covered with a thick swirling carpet. Horse brasses, which had once adorned working horses on show days, now decorated the lounge. The whole place was a designer's dream of what an eighteenth-century pub would have looked like – if, that was, the people living back in the eighteenth century had shared his rather effete tastes.

It was still early for lunch, so Woodend and Taylor had the restaurant to themselves. Taylor gave the menu a cursory glance, then said to the waitress, ‘I'll have the sirloin steak. I like it well done.'

Woodend took more time to study his menu. ‘Does the mixed grill include black puddin'?' he asked finally.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘Then that's what I'll have.'

Taylor waited until the waitress had retreated into the kitchen, then leaned across the table and said, ‘That was a very nice touch, Mr Woodend.'

‘What was?'

‘Oh, you know what I'm talking about. Pretending to be interested in the food. Insisting on black pudding, as if you really wanted it. When all the time, your stomach's so knotted up with fear that even the
thought
of something solid is enough to make you feel sick.'

‘I did a bit of amateur boxin' in the Army,' Woodend said. ‘My lads enjoyed seein' me fight – it was good for their morale to know that
their
sergeant could knock down pretty much anybody he came up against. But I never really cared much for it as a sport myself. It wasn't the gettin' hit that bothered me, you understand. I just got bored with all that dancin' round the ring an' tryin' to look dangerous. It seemed to me that if you were goin' to have a fight, the best thing you could do was stop poncin' about an' just get on with it.'

‘In other words, you're saying I should stop poncing around myself and get to the point.'

‘Aye, that's what I'm sayin'.'

‘All right. But before we begin in earnest, I suppose I'd better just check that I'm working from the right assumptions. I haven't got things wrong, have I? You
are
investigating me?'

‘You haven't got things wrong,' Woodend confirmed.

‘And your visit to Moorland Village this morning was part of that investigation?'

‘That's right.'

‘What, exactly, were you looking for?'

Woodend shrugged. ‘Anythin' at all that might add to the picture I've been buildin' up.'