Echoes of the Dead (3 page)

‘You're . . . you're talking about Charlie Woodend,' she gasped.

‘Yes,' the priest agreed. ‘That is the man's name.'

From time to time – and this was one of those times – DI Colin Beresford caught himself wondering if he was in love with DCI Monika Paniatowski. It was not a comfortable thought to have bouncing around in his head, because not only was Monika his boss, she was also several years older than him, and – if
that
was not enough – she was still in love with a dead man. And, besides, he usually concluded angrily at end of this train of thought, what did he – a thirty-two year old virgin – actually
know
about love anyway?

‘Are you still with me, Colin?' he heard Paniatowski's voice say to him across the table in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey.

‘Yes, boss. Sorry, boss,' Beresford replied.

But he was thinking that the problem was that when Monika looked as vulnerable as she did at that moment, it was hard
not
to love her.

‘The whole idea that Charlie Woodend would ever even think of fitting anybody up is insane, isn't it?' Paniatowski asked passionately.

‘It doesn't seem likely,' Beresford said.

Paniatowski gave him a hard stare. ‘Well, that's scarcely what I'd call a ringing endorsement,' she said. ‘For God's sake, Colin, you
worked
with the man. You knew him as well as anybody.'

‘The Charlie Woodend I knew was a giant,' Beresford admitted. ‘A legend! He was the kind of detective I aspired to be – even though I always accepted that I'd never quite make it.'

‘Well, there you are, then!' Paniatowski said.

‘But that wasn't the same Charlie Woodend who arrested Fred Howerd in 1951,' Beresford cautioned.

‘I don't know what you're talking about,' Paniatowski told him.

‘
That
Charlie Woodend had only just been made up to chief inspector.
That
Charlie Woodend still had to prove himself.'

‘Are you saying that he
could have
doctored the evidence?' Paniatowski demanded angrily.

‘Not deliberately, no,' Beresford replied. ‘But in his eagerness to get a result, he might have unconsciously decided to overlook any evidence which didn't help his case.'

‘He'd
never
have done that,' Paniatowski said stubbornly. ‘And the investigation will
prove
that he didn't.'

‘The investigation?' Beresford repeated, alarmed. ‘You never said anything about an investigation.'

‘George Baxter says there has to be one,' Paniatowski stated flatly. ‘He thinks that if we don't have an investigation, Father O'Brien will take his story to the newspapers – and they'll have a field day with it.'

‘Criminal Complaints will never agree to reopen the case,' Beresford said. ‘There's simply not enough evidence to justify a fresh inquiry.'

‘You're right,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘There's not enough evidence for an official inquiry – that's why it will have to be an
unofficial
one.'

‘And who'll be leading it?'

‘Who do you think?'

‘You?' Beresford exploded. ‘He wants
you
to lead it?'

‘As our dear chief constable was at pains to point out, I've got a lot of leave due to me, and it's about time I took some of it.'

‘Is he
ordering
you to lead it?'

‘No, he's merely offered it to me if I want it.'

‘Turn it down, Monika,' Beresford pleaded.

‘Now why should I do that?' Paniatowski asked, with deceptive mildness.

‘Because you're too close to it – too close to Charlie Woodend.'

‘It's because I'm close to Charlie that George Baxter wants me involved,' Paniatowski explained. ‘He says I know how Charlie would have thought and how he would have acted.'

‘And what happens if you uncover evidence that shows Woodend in a bad light?' Beresford asked. ‘What will you do then?'

‘I won't find any – because there'll be none to find.'

‘But suppose you do?' Beresford persisted. ‘How do you handle it? Do you put it in your report, and bring down the man who's been a guiding light to you? Or do you go against everything you've ever believed in and bury it?'

‘There's one very compelling reason I have to be involved,' said Paniatowski, sidestepping the question, ‘and that's that it won't be a purely local inquiry.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Scotland Yard will be sending its own man – a DCI – to be in joint command.'

‘Then that's your let-out, isn't it?' said Beresford, sounding relieved. ‘You can step aside and let him do all the dirty work.'

‘It's dirty work that I'm worried about,' Paniatowski told him.

‘What do you mean?'

‘The officer who worked with Charlie on the case – Sergeant Bannerman – is now
Assistant Commissioner
Bannerman.'

‘So what?'

‘So that means he's got the power and the influence to see to it that if this inquiry drags
anybody
down, it won't be him.'

‘If that
is
Bannerman's aim, and you get in the way of it, he'll crush you,' Beresford said worriedly.

‘That's a possibility,' Paniatowski admitted.

‘So you'll be ruined and you still won't save Charlie Woodend,' Beresford said hotly. ‘Bloody hell, Monika, that's no more than pointless heroics!'

‘My father was in the Polish Cavalry at the start of World War Two,' Paniatowski said.

‘I know that, but . . .'

‘His regiment charged German tanks –
on horseback.
It must have known it would be cut to pieces.'

‘Doesn't that prove my point?'

‘My father knew he was going to die, but he went through with it anyway – because he wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he hadn't.'

‘That was war,' Beresford said.

‘And so is this,' Paniatowski countered. ‘If I'm right, then the whole of Scotland Yard is behind Bannerman. And who's behind Charlie? Me! I can't let him down, Colin.'

Beresford sighed. ‘No,' he admitted, ‘I don't suppose you can.'

TWO

W
hitebridge Central railway station – like the rest of the town – had seen better days, and the mirror in the ladies' lavatory was a perfect reflection of this fact. Much of the silvering at its centre had been worn away with time, leaving dull brown patches in its place, and any traveller who wished to examine her whole face could only do so by first looking at one half and then moving sideways so that other half became visible.

Monika Paniatowski, standing in front of the mirror, performed the crablike manoeuvre necessary to reveal the left side of her features.

Her hair was as blond as it had always been, she decided. Her Polish nose – unfashionably large for some Lancastrians' tastes, but appealing enough to others for her not to worry about it – had lost none of its firmness over the years. There were perhaps more lines around her blue eyes than there had been a few years earlier, but that only served to give her more character.

‘You're not here to admire yourself, Monika,' she reminded herself angrily.

What she
was
there for was to prepare the face that would greet DCI Hall, the hotshot from London, who would be arriving on the next train – and as far as
that
face went, it was more important to look competent than pretty.

She had to set the right tone from the start, she thought – had to establish that though he came from almighty Scotland Yard, this was
her
patch, and they would work according to
her
rules. Because if she didn't establish that, she suspected, Charlie Woodend's precious reputation – and perhaps his pension – would be doomed.

She was starting at a disadvantage, she accepted, because, unlike Hall, she had yet to see the Scotland Yard file on the case. But she had done all that she could locally, and – by trawling through the newspapers and talking to colleagues who had been around at the time – she now had a pretty fair idea of how the investigation into Lilly Dawson's murder had gone.

Gertie chuckles. ‘None that
you
know about, any road,' she replies, ‘but it wouldn't surprise me if she was steppin' out with some lad on the sly.'

‘She's
thirteen
!' Elsie protests.

‘Aye, she is,' Gertie agrees. ‘An' do you remember when you were thirteen, lass?' She takes off the flat cap she is wearing and scratches her head for comical effect. ‘Now what was the name of the lad that
you
were knockin' about with?'

By six o'clock, Elsie Dawson has grown frantic, because even if Lilly has been out with a lad – and Elsie still doesn't
believe
she has – she would have been home by now.

They begin with the old abandoned mills – and even though Whitebridge's industrial decline is still a whisper of what it will become, there are
enough
of them. Next, they criss-cross the wild, savage moors – redolent with early spring flowers – which surround the town. And, when neither of these searches produces any results, they finally admit things might have turned
really
nasty, and begin dragging the canal.

We'd never treat it so casually nowadays, Monika Paniatowski had thought, as she'd read the old newspaper reports and remembered a similar case which she'd had to deal with when she was only a sergeant. We'd have given the matter top priority, right from the start.