Because however much he despises Fred Howerd â however he might want to crush the man's skull to powder â he knows that he is a detective chief inspector, and that he has a job to do.
The two detectives enter the interview room, and sit themselves down opposite their suspect.
Fred Howerd is looking very nervous indeed â like a frightened rat trapped in a corner.
âIt's time to come clean, Fred,' Woodend says, and is pleased to note that he
almost
sounds sympathetic.
âI . . . I don't know what you're talkin' about,' Howerd replies.
There is a quiver in his voice, but that's only to be expected.
âTell us about Lilly,' Woodend suggests.
âWho?'
âCome on, lad, don't give me that. You know perfectly well that it's Lilly Dawson I'm talkin' about. Lilly Dawson! The girl whose face has never been off the front pages of the newspapers for the last week.'
âOh, her,' Howerd says weakly. âI thought you were talkin' about some girl I actually knew.'
âAre you sayin' that you
didn't
know Lilly?'
âThat's right.'
âBut you both worked on the market.'
âIt's a big place, the market.'
âSo you really
don't
know her?'
âThat's what I said.'
âYou've never even seen her?'
âNot that I can remember.'
âThen tell us about your pigeons, instead, Fred,' Woodend suggests.
âWhat about them?'
âYou spend a lot of time with them, don't you?'
âI have to. They're champion birds, you know. They need a lot of looking after.'
âDid Lilly like pigeons?'
âHow would I know? I told you, I've never even met the girl.'
âBecause, you see, she liked all kinds of dumb creatures â rabbits and hamsters, guinea pigs andâ'
âI don't see what this has to do with me.'
âI haven't finished talking yet,' Woodend says firmly.
Howerd looks down at the table. âSorry.'
âAnd hamsters and cats and dogs. She liked them, too,' Woodend continues. He pauses for a second. âSo it wouldn't be at all surprisin' if she also liked pigeons, now would it?'
âI suppose not,' Howerd admits.
âIn fact, I think she'd positively jump at the chance of seein' some pigeons close to. Don't you think I'm right?'
âMaybe.'
âWe found a pigeon feather in Lilly's clothes,' Woodend says. âAnd another one in the potting shed where we discovered her body.'
âSo what?' Fred counters. âHave you ever been down to the Boulevard? There's hundreds of the buggers there. Queen Victoria's statue is covered in pigeon shit.'
Woodend leans forward, so that his face was almost touching Fred Howerd's.
âCovered in pigeon shit?' he repeats, with a new menace in his voice. âThat's swearin', Fred. I don't like people swearin' at me â especially when they happen to be toe-rags like you.'
âSorry,' Fred Howerd mumbles.
âSorry what?' Woodend demands.
âSorry, sir,' Howerd says, looking down at the table again.
âThere's nothin' wrong with that, is there?' Woodend asked. âYes, I shifted ground occasionally, to keep him on his toes, an', yes, I slapped him down once or twice. But it was all well within the guidelines â all standard procedure.'
Paniatowski looked distinctly uncomfortable.
âAm I right about that, or not?' Woodend asked.
âYou're right,' Paniatowski admitted.
âWell, there you are then.'
âBut . . .'
âBut what?'
âI must have sat there and listened to you interviewing dozens of suspects over the yearsâ'
âScores of suspects,' Woodend interrupted.
â. . . and none of those interviews sounded even vaguely like the one you've just described.'
âWell, of course they didn't. By the time you started working with me, I'd developed my own style. But you have to remember, back then I was just startin' out, an' feelin' my way as I went.'
âI know, Charlie,' Paniatowski said. âThat's exactly the point
I
was trying to make earlier.'
âWhat do you think, Paco?' Woodend asked, appealing to his old friend.
âIf what you have given us is an accurate description of what actually occurred, Charlie . . .' Ruiz began cautiously.
âIt is accurate! It's bloody spot on!'
â. . . then I would have to say that, from what we've heard so far, I can detect nothing that would have made Howerd afraid to produce his alibi.'
Well, that wasn't exactly a
ringing
endorsement, was it, Woodend thought gloomily.
âCarry on, Charlie,' Paniatowski said.
âThe thing is, any fool can tell the difference between a common pigeon's feather and one that comes from a Sheffield tippler,' Woodend continues. âBut we can do even better than that. The boffins who work for us in the police laboratory have got this new technique called the Feather Identification Process. It can not only tell us what kind of pigeon the feather came from, it can pinpoint the exact pigeon. Did you know that?'
âI don't see what that's got to do withâ'
âDid you
know
that?'
âNo, I . . .'
Of course he doesn't know it, because no such technique exists â but Howerd doesn't know
that,
either.
âBut we don't even need to use the FIP,' Woodend says, âbecause we've got a witness.'
âA witness?' Howerd repeats.
âThat's right. A witness who says he saw you take Lilly Dawson to your pigeon loft!'
âI never . . .' Howerd protests.
He is lying. It's obvious he's lying. But Woodend is lying too, because though the witness â âTinker' Bell â is sure it was a girl that Howerd took to his loft, he cannot definitely say that it was Lilly Dawson.
âAnd to top it all â to put the icin' on the bloody cake, as it were â we've got the pencil,' Woodend says.
âWhat pencil?'
âA Lakeland coloured pencil. A red one, as a matter of fact. It has bite marks on it which we can prove came from Lilly's teeth, and we found it right there in your pigeon loft.'
âNo!' Howerd gasps.
âYes,' Woodend says firmly. âLilly liked to draw things. She must have wanted to draw your pigeons â with the red feathers â which is why she took her pencils out of her satchel andâ'
âShe never opened that satchel,' Howerd interrupts. âI'll swear she didn't.' A look of horror crosses his face. âI mean, she couldn't have opened it, because she was never there,' he adds, unconvincingly.
âSo there you have it!' Woodend said. âThe questioning had hardly begun, and Howerd had already as good as admitted that he took Lilly Dawson to his loft the night before she was abducted.'
On the face of it, he sounded confident â almost
triumphant
â Paniatowski thought.
But she'd known him a long time â had
worked
with him a long time â and she could see below the surface.
Whatever he might say, he was worrying about the alibi Terry Clegg had provided.
And he had other concerns, too. He was starting to question why â at the time â he had been so confident that Howerd was the right man.
â
I was confident because I had an airtight case
,' he would be arguing to himself.
But somewhere, at the back of his mind, there must be a nagging doubt. He had
needed
a result from that investigation, because it was his first major case and because his home town seemed to demand one. And perhaps it was that â rather than the facts â which had fuelled his conviction.
â
You
see what I'm gettin' at, don't you, Paco?' Woodend asked Ruiz, pleadingly.
âIt may have been established that Howerd did take Lilly to his pigeon loft the night before she disappeared . . .' Ruiz said sombrely.
âThat's what I'm sayin'!'
â. . . but that is still no proof that he killed her, is it?'
âThere's more,' Woodend said, with just a hint of desperation in his voice.
âThen let's hear it,' Paniatowski said.
FIFTEEN
N
ow that Howerd has all but admitted he took Lilly to the pigeon loft, he is probably expecting his interrogator to keep hammering away at that point. But Woodend doesn't do that. Instead, he moves on to the afternoon of the abduction.
âIt's a lot harder to kidnap somebody than most people think,' the chief inspector tells his suspect. âAn' it's especially difficult at busy times of day â say, for example, when the market has just closed and everybody's rushing home for their Saturday dinner.' He pauses for a moment, to give Howerd time to consider the implications of what he's just said. âSo how do you grab a kid off the street, against her will, without anybody noticing?' he continues.
Howerd says nothing.
âI asked you a question!' Woodend barks.
âI don't know,' Howerd replies, in a cracked, croaking voice.
âThe answer is â you
can't.
The kid will scream and kick and bite, because she knows you're up to no good, and the last thing she wants is to get into your car.' He pauses again. âOh, I'm sorry, you don't have a car, do you? You run a stall on the market, so you have a van. And, at this very moment, the forensics team are scrupulously examining that van for traces of Lilly Dawson.'
âThey won't find any,' Howerd says â and, for once, he sounds sure of himself.
âDidn't it bother you that Howerd seemed so confident you would find no evidence that Lilly had been in the van?' Paniatowski asked.
âNo,' Woodend said firmly.
âNot even for an instant?' Paniatowski persisted.
âI said no!' Woodend replied, with a trace of anger in his voice. âLook,' he continued, in a more reasonable tone, âwe all know that civilians have no real idea of just how good the forensic boys can be, so what I told myself at the time was that what Howerd was displayin' was not
innocence
but
arrogance
. He'd probably done a thorough job of cleanin' out the van, an' so he thought he was safe.'
âAnd how did you square that idea with the fact that he'd been sloppy about concealing the other evidence?' Paniatowski asked.
âWhat other evidence?'
âThe evidence you found in the pigeon loft â the lemonade bottle with Lilly's fingerprints on it. Why hadn't he got rid of
that
?'
âAt that point, we didn't know that Lilly's fingerprints
were
on the lemonade bottle, because the lab hadn't finished checking it.' Woodend said. âBut you're right, Monika,' he conceded, âit's certainly something I should have taken into consideration.'
â
Did
the lab find traces of Lilly's presence in the van?' Paco Ruiz asked.
âNo,' Woodend admitted, âthey didn't.'
âI see,' Paco mused.
âSo maybe Howerd was right about that, and I was wrong â maybe he
had
done a good enough job to remove all the evidence,' Woodend said heatedly. âThen again, maybe he'd used some other vehicle for the abduction.'
Or maybe it
wasn't
Fred Howerd who abducted Lilly, they all thought â though nobody actually said it.
âSo, we've established that if Lilly had put up a struggle, somebody would have noticed,' Woodend presses on, seemingly impervious to Howerd's confidence about his van. âThat means she
didn't
struggle, doesn't it? And why was that? It was because she wasn't being picked up by a complete stranger at all, but by someone who she regarded as a friend.' He counts slowly up to five.
âYou
were one of her friends, weren't you. Fred?'
Howerd licks his lips. âI wouldn't exactly say that.'
âThen what
would
you say?'
âI . . . I felt sorry for the kid.'
âOf course you did,' Woodend says, hating himself for sounding so sympathetic.
âI mean, I've got a daughter of my own,' Howerd amplifies, encouraged by this new tone.
âShe's called Elizabeth, isn't she?' Woodend asks.
âThat's right.'
âAn' she's older than Lilly.'
âNot much. A few years.'
âA few years,' Woodend repeats. âSo that would make her seventeen or eighteen.
Now
I understand!'
âUnderstand what?'
âI've got a young daughter of my own. I worship her â an' I think she worships me. When she cuts her knee, it's me she comes to for comfort. When the boys bully her at school, I'm the one who she wants to tell her everything will turn out all right in the end. And sometimes, when I think about the future â her all grown up an' independent, an' not really needin' me very more â I feel sad. An' it'll be even worse when she finally gets married â when another man becomes the centre of her life.' Another pause. âYour daughter Elizabeth got married recently, didn't she?'