Death's Dark Shadow--A novel of murder in 1970's Yorkshire (28 page)

The big Englishman in the hairy jacket turned to his companion. ‘Which of us is which?' he asked.

‘I think you are Woodend, and I am Ruiz,' the other man replied.

‘Well, that's all right then,' Woodend said.

‘You were arrested in the town of Arco de Cañas, for asking questions about army officers,' Trujillo said.

‘Dead army officers,' Woodend pointed out.

‘It is irrelevant whether they are dead or alive,' Trujillo told him. ‘Its honour is very important to the army – it is the foundation stone on which we stand – and if you insult any officer who has ever served, you are insulting us all.'

‘And we wouldn't want to do that,' Woodend said.

‘No,' Trujillo agreed, ‘you would not.' He turned to Paco. ‘You, Ruiz, claimed to be a devoted admirer of the Generalissimo when you were in the Bar del Pueblo, although we know from your record that you are a communist and fought on the side of the rebels.'

‘I was never a communist, and since you were against the elected government, you were the rebels,' Ruiz replied.

Many interrogators in his position would have slapped the old man across the face for making a remark like that, Trujillo thought, but then they did not have his subtlety.

‘You also talked to an old stone carver, and asked him why he had removed a certain Lieutenant Suarez's name from the war memorial,' the major continued. ‘And what did the stone carver tell you?'

‘You know what he told us,' Paco said.

Trujillo sighed theatrically. ‘This is how an interrogation works,' he said. ‘I ask the questions, and you answer them. What did he tell you?'

‘He told us that Colonel Hierro ordered Lieutenant Suarez's name to be removed,' Paco said.

‘That's probably because Suarez was Colonel Hierro's daughter's boyfriend,' Woodend said.

‘That is not true!' Trujillo said vehemently. ‘You can get into trouble for telling lies like that.'

‘I thought we were in trouble anyway,' Woodend said. ‘What was the problem with Lieutenant Suarez anyway? Was he too low-class for her? Or did he get her pregnant?'

‘Shut your foul mouth!' Trujillo bellowed.

‘Pregnant,' Woodend said to Ruiz.

‘Pregnant,' Paco agreed.

This was not going as well as it was supposed to have done, Trujillo thought. Maybe it had been a mistake to interrogate them both together after all.

‘You will be taken back to the cells – and this time you will be in separate cells – and I will talk to you again tomorrow,' he said.

‘I'd like to make a phone call to my consul,' Woodend said.

‘That will not be possible,' replied Trujillo, who had been anticipating just such a request.

He had been expecting one of two responses to his refusal. The first was that Woodend would plead with him – which would be very gratifying indeed. The second was that the man would lose his temper – and it was always a good thing when a suspect lost control.

He got neither of those responses.

Instead, Woodend turned to Ruiz, and smiled.

‘I told you that you were backing the wrong horse, Paco,' he said. ‘Well, we all have to pay for our mistakes, and that's five cigarettes you owe me.'

‘I never imagined that a Spanish army officer – a major – would display so little courage,' Paco replied.

‘Courage?' Trujillo repeated. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘You're too scared to meet my consul, aren't you?' Woodend said cheerfully. ‘Oh, you're happy enough interrogating two old men – though even there, I have to say, you're not doing a particularly good job of it – but just the thought of being face-to-face with a British diplomat is enough to make you shit your pants.'

‘I am ashamed of my countrymen sometimes,' Paco said. ‘Spain produced El Cid and Hernán Cortés. Even Franco, I am told, was a brave man when he was fighting the Moors in North Africa. But our golden days are gone, and all we have now is men like Major Trujillo.'

‘I choose not to let you speak to your consul,' Trujillo said hotly.

‘Of course you do, lad,' Woodend said sympathetically. ‘You keep on saying that often enough, and you might just about be able to look at yourself in your shaving mirror tomorrow morning.'

‘I will offer you a deal,' Trujillo said, looking for a way to save face. ‘I will allow you to speak to your consul, and the next time we talk, you will tell me everything you know.'

‘Of course,' Woodend said.

‘We have nothing to hide,' Paco Ruiz added.

Crane, Beresford and Paniatowski were already at their table in the Drum and Monkey when Meadows entered.

‘You seem a little stiff, Kate,' Paniatowski said, as she walked across the room.

‘I think I've overdone it on the exercise front, boss,' Meadows said, lowering herself gently into her chair.

‘I'm surprised you found the time to exercise,' Paniatowski said. ‘How was your meeting with the forensic accountant? Did he manage to come up with anything useful?'

Meadows nodded, and outlined what she had learned from Sowerby about the creative bookkeeping.

‘The gold has to be real,' she said, as she drew to a conclusion, ‘because a huge amount of money has been going into that firm, and there's no other way that Javier Martinez could possibly have got his hands on it. And it's not so much a case of him using the gold to build up the business, as it is of using the
business
to launder the
money
.'

‘Whatever happened to his ideals?' Crane wondered. ‘Whatever changed him from an idealistic communist into a crook who was willing to trample on anyone who got in his way?'

‘That'd be the gold, again,' Meadows said. ‘He wouldn't be the first person who's been turned by thoughts of wealth. Bob Dylan said, “When you've got nothin', you've got nothin' to lose,” but when you've got something, you suddenly start to want much more. And I should know.'

‘What does that mean?' Beresford asked.

‘Nothing,' Meadows said, flushing slightly. ‘It's just the kind of stupid thing you say at the end of a long and tiring day.'

It wasn't the sort of thing he'd say at the end of a long, tiring day, Beresford thought, but from the look on Meadows' face it was obvious she wanted him to let the matter drop, and – with uncharacteristic diplomacy – he did.

‘But he had the gold when he returned to his village after the war,' Crane said, unconvinced. ‘If he was so rich, why did he even bother to go back?'

‘Because he was still hoping to return to his old life,' Meadows said. ‘And it was only after he realized that could never happen – after he had killed the three soldiers – that the gold started to be important.'

Life was full of ironies, Paniatowski thought. It would have been much easier for Javier Martinez to have escaped from Val de Montaña on his own, but he had chosen instead to increase his own personal risk immeasurably, by taking his young son with him.

What an act of love that had been.

And yet once they were in England, he had seemed totally incapable of expressing that love.

Poor Robert.

But perhaps, as loath as she was to think it, poor Javier, too.

‘Now that you're convinced the gold exists, are you happy if we drop the theory that Javier was killed by someone local, who had a grievance against him, Sergeant Meadows?' Beresford asked.

‘Yes,' Meadows said. ‘That would be just too much of a coincidence. From the very start, this whole thing has been about the gold.'

‘Does everybody accept that?' Paniatowski asked, and when Crane and Beresford nodded, she continued, ‘So we're back to one killer and one motive,' and there were more nods.

‘There's still one thing that's puzzling me,' Crane said.

‘And what's that?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Elena had been watching the house on Tufton Court for nearly a day and a half …'

‘A day and a half, did you say?' Meadows interrupted. ‘I don't know anything about this.'

‘One of my bright young lads has uncovered the fact that Elena was standing in a copse of trees on Ashton Avenue, watching the entrance to Tufton Court on Tuesday afternoon – which is when she got off the train – and all day Wednesday, which as far as we know, is the day she died,' Beresford said.

‘DC Crane's still not explained what was puzzling him,' Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Go ahead, Jack.'

‘The killer has been following her all the way, so he'll certainly have followed her to the copse of trees,' Crane said. ‘Right?'

‘Right,' the others agreed.

‘Now according to our theory, the point at which he really decided he had to kill her was when he saw her go home with Rosa. Is that right, too?'

‘Yes, it is.'

‘So we get to Wednesday morning. Elena is back in the copse. She's being watched from across the road by Mrs Potts, but she probably doesn't know that, and neither does the killer. And the other thing the killer doesn't know is whether or not Elena will get tired of standing there, and set off for Martinez's house – which, from his point of view, would be a disaster.'

‘We're with you so far,' Paniatowski said.

‘Now, it would be easy enough for him to kill her in the copse,' Jack Crane continued, ‘but once she steps out on to the road, where there are people walking about, and cars constantly driving past, he'd be bound to be spotted. So here's what's bothering me – why did he wait until Wednesday night – after she'd left the copse – to kill her? Why didn't he do it on Wednesday morning?'

And from the blank faces around the table, it was clear that no one knew the answer to that.

It was eight in the evening – the hour at which the consul habitually took cocktails with the latest deputy that London had foisted on him – when the phone rang in Martin Cheavers' office.

‘I'd better take this,' said Cheavers, who had started his own personal cocktail hour some considerable time earlier.

The phone call took a little over three minutes, during which time, his deputy counted, he used the word ‘Charlie' seven times.

‘That was Charlie Woodend,' Cheavers said, when he put down the phone. ‘It seems that he and Paco Ruiz have got themselves into a bit of trouble in Burgos Province. Apparently, they've both been accused of spying, and got banged up at some army base.'

‘And will you be making representations to the government about it?' Harrington Benson asked.

‘No, I'll be flying up to the arsehole of nowhere first thing in the morning, and demanding that the soldiers stop playing silly buggers and release our chap immediately,' Cheavers said.

Harrington Benson smiled uncertainly. ‘You're joking, aren't you, sir?' he asked.

‘I most certainly am not,' Cheavers said emphatically.

His assistant's tentative smile turned to a worried frown.

‘London won't like that,' he said. ‘We've been instructed that, in this current climate of uncertainty, we should keep our profiles very low – and that certainly doesn't include taking on the army.'

‘I don't recall seeing any cable to that effect,' Cheavers said.

Harrington Benson looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Er … no,' he agreed. ‘It will be arriving tomorrow.'

The little shit probably had an uncle in the FO, Cheavers thought. That explained a lot.

‘No doubt we will be getting such a cable, but that doesn't matter one way or the other,' he said. ‘We owe a debt to Charlie and Paco, and I intend to see that debt discharged.'

‘How are we in debt to them?' Harrington Benson wondered.

Cheavers hesitated for a second, before deciding that if his assistant did have a direct line to the Foreign Office, then using him as a conduit would be much pleasanter than talking to the stuffed shirts in Whitehall himself.

‘A few months ago, we had a visit from a member of a European royal family,' he said.

‘It was Prince Juan Carlos,' Harrington Benson said. ‘Now that is something I've read in the files.'

It was typical of the snobbish young turd to know that, but not to have taken the trouble to find out about Charlie Woodend, Cheavers thought.

‘It could have been Prince Juan Carlos – or King Juan Carlos as he is now – but it could just as easily have been some other royal, from some other country, who asked me not to keep a record of his visit,' Cheavers said, knowing he didn't really sound convincing – and not giving a damn. ‘At any rate, this visiting royal struck up a brief friendship with one of the more attractive girls in our typing pool.'

‘A brief friendship? You mean …'

‘I mean what I say – a brief friendship. I'm sure it was all perfectly innocent. However, some unscrupulous photographer with a criminal bent managed to take some pictures of them together.'

‘They weren't actually …?' Harrington Benson began.

‘No, they weren't, though it has to be admitted that the pictures were open to misinterpretation. At any rate, had those photographs been published, they could have caused considerable embarrassment, both for us and for the Span … for the government of the country from which the young prince hailed. The blackmailers knew that, and the price they put on the photographs was so substantial that even though it was imperative we got our hands on them as soon as possible, the Foreign Office went into a dither about where the money was to come from. And it was while they were dithering – and thus giving the photographer time to explore other markets – that I hired Charlie and Paco.'

‘And what happened?'

‘Charlie Woodend brought me the photographs – and the negatives – two days later.'

‘Had they paid any ransom?'

‘They said not. The only thing they asked for was their fee – which was a very modest one.'