The Dead Hand of History (11 page)

‘I
do
remember,' Paniatowski replied. ‘But thank you for reminding me of it, anyway.'

The phone rang, and Shastri picked it up.

‘Yes? Yes, she is.' She handed the phone to Paniatowski. ‘It's for you.'

‘Who is it?'

‘I did not ask and he did not say, but I suspect that it is probably one of your handsome young policemen, who, I have no doubt, looks upon you as almost as he might look upon a goddess.'

Monika took the phone from the doctor.

‘DCI Paniatowski,' she said.

‘Go to Brunskill's Bakery,' said a man's voice.

The voice didn't sound at all natural, Paniatowski decided. Either the man was talking through a handkerchief, or else he was finding some other way to distort it.

‘Who am I talking to?' she asked.

‘Go
now
!' the man said.

‘I shall need a name before I can . . .' Paniatowski said.

But the man had hung up.

There were only two of them in Jenny Brunskill's office now – Jenny herself and DS Walker.

‘This is the way we're going to play it, Miss Brunskill,' Walker was explaining. ‘I'll ask you a few questions, and you'll give me a few answers. It shouldn't take long at all. Once we've got that out of the way, I'd like you to vacate the office if you don't mind, so that I can use it to question your staff, starting, I think, with that Polack who was with you when I arrived.'

‘Are you referring, by any chance, to my brother-in-law, Stanislaw?' Jenny Brunskill asked.

‘Yes, if that's his name,' Walker agreed easily. ‘But I think I'd find it easier just to call him Stan, like you do.'

‘No doubt you would find it easier,' Jenny said icily. ‘But it would be more
appropriate
for
you
to call him
Mr Szymborska
, especially considering the fact that he is not
merely
one of my staff, as you so readily seem to assume, but is a part-owner of this business.'

‘Szym . . .' Walker said experimentally. ‘Szym . . .' He grinned. ‘No, I think I'll just stick to Stan.'

‘You said you'd use my office to question the staff
if I didn't mind
?' Jenny said.

‘Yes?'

‘Suppose I
do
mind? Suppose I don't want you questioning
my
staff in
my
office? Suppose, for that matter, that I don't want to answer any of your questions myself?'

‘You'd be well within your rights,' Walker said. ‘But you have to ask yourself one question. And it's this – if you refuse to cooperate, what conclusions am I likely to draw from that?'

‘Why should I
care
what conclusions you draw?'

‘Because I'm the police, madam,' Walker said, his voice suddenly hardening. ‘And though I can be through this place like a dose of salts if I choose to, I think you'll find that if you force me to take a roundabout route – which will include getting warrants issued – then it might take two or three days to complete the job, during which time no work will get done in the bakery at all. Besides,' he added, ‘I'd have thought you'd be willing to do anything you could to help us catch the man who cut off Tom Whittington's hand.'

‘You're right, of course,' Jenny admitted. ‘Catching this terrible man
is
what really matters. So what would you like to know?'

‘Let's start with the obvious question,' Walker suggested. ‘Have you got any
other
jailbirds working here?'

‘Tom never went to jail,' Jenny said. ‘He was given a suspended sentence and three years' probation.'

Walker sighed heavily. ‘All right, if you prefer it that way, have you any other employees with
criminal records
?'

‘Two or three.'

‘Which is it?'

‘Three.'

‘So you've actually got
four
jailbirds working for you.'

‘In this company, we pride ourselves on giving people who've made a mistake a second chance.'

‘Have any of these “second chancers” of yours ever been done for violence?' Walker asked.

‘No.'

‘Any of them who've
not
been done for violence, but who you feel could turn very nasty, given the right circumstances?'

‘Certainly not. We like to encourage a happy working atmosphere here in Brunskill's Bakery, and that kind of person – anyone prone to violence – would simply not fit in.'

Walker sighed again. ‘I have to say, you're not being very helpful, madam,' he told her.

‘So what would you like me to do in order to be
more
helpful?' Jenny wondered. ‘Tell you that Billy the cake mixer often looks at me in a funny way, as if he'd like to beat me up?'

‘Only if it's the truth, madam,' Walker said. ‘
Does
he often look at you in a funny way?'

‘No, of course he doesn't. He's a perfectly sweet boy. That's why I gave him the responsibility of looking after the bakery cat.'

‘Then why bring his name up at all?'

‘I was just trying to make the point that . . .'

‘Unless, deep down – subconsciously, shall we say? – there's something about him that
does
worry you.'

The office door swung violently open, and Walker looked up to see Paniatowski framed in the doorway.

‘I'd like a word with you outside, Sergeant!' she said.

Walker raised his eyes towards the ceiling, in a gesture of mock despair towards a vengeful god.

‘Yes, ma'am, I'm sure you would like a word with me, and I'd like one with you, so if you could just give me a few minutes to finish off this—'

‘Now!' Paniatowski said.

Walker rose heavily to his feet. ‘I'm sorry about this, Miss Brunskill,' he said. ‘I won't be long.'

‘If I was you, Sergeant, I wouldn't go putting any money on that,' Paniatowski told him.

EIGHT

‘
T
his isn't right,' Sergeant Walker complained to his new boss, as he stepped into the foyer of the administration block and closed Jenny Brunskill's office door behind him. ‘It isn't . . .'

‘I think we'd better go outside,' Paniatowski said.

‘Why?' Walker asked – furious, willing to take issue on almost anything that was said to him. Then he saw Elaine, the secretary, apparently absorbed in what she was reading at her desk, but with her ears flapping like a circus elephant's. ‘All right,' he agreed.

They walked out on to the forecourt. The staff car park was just ahead of them, and the loading bay to the left. To the right was a public telephone box, and Paniatowski found herself wondering if this was the box that the call to the mortuary had come from.

‘I really don't think you should have done that, ma'am,' Walker said morosely.

‘You don't think I should have done
what
?'

‘Spoken to me in the way you did, in front of a member of the general public. A male DCI would never have—'

Walker stopped abruptly, as if he'd suddenly decided that he was pushing things just a little
too
far.

‘Yes?' Paniatowski asked.

‘We're supposed to be working as a team,' Walker continued, in a tone which was a strange mixture of the aggrieved and the conciliatory. ‘We're supposed to put up a united front when we're dealing with civilians.'

‘Then why don't
you
start acting like you're a
member
of that team?' Paniatowski demanded angrily.

‘Sorry, ma'am?' Walker replied, as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

It had been a mistake to lose her temper, Paniatowski realized, because it was just what Walker had wanted. Now, from his viewpoint, she was being the typical hysterical woman, and that made him feel as if
he
had the upper hand.

‘What brought you to this bakery in the first place?' she asked, in a much calmer voice.

‘I came in my Ford Escort,' Walker said. He waited for Paniatowski to explode again, and when it became plain that she wasn't about to, he continued, ‘The reason I'm here is that I've identified the hand as belonging to somebody who
works
here.'

‘And why didn't you let me know that you'd developed such an important lead?'

‘Tried to, ma'am, but you weren't in your office, and nobody at the station seemed to know
where
you were.'

‘I was at the mortuary,' Paniatowski said.

‘Oh!'

‘Which, given the discovery of the second hand, shouldn't have been
too
hard for you to work out.'

‘Didn't think of that, ma'am,' Walker said.

‘Anyway, even if you couldn't find me, why didn't you call me on my radio?' Paniatowski asked.

‘I tried that as well, ma'am. I couldn't get through to you.' Walker laughed. ‘But that's hardly surprising, is it?'

‘What?'

‘Well, since you were at the mortuary, you were in a
dead
zone.'

‘I like a man with a good sense of humour,' Paniatowski said, between clenched teeth.

‘Do you, ma'am?' Walker asked.

‘Yes, I certainly do. So you will let me know if you come across any, won't you?'

He was lying about radioing her, of course, she thought. He had stumbled on a lead and rushed down to the bakery in the hope that he could solve this case on his own – thus making his new boss look a complete bloody fool.

As if the case
could
be solved that simply!

As if the killer, who had planned everything so well so far, would
allow
it to be solved so simply.

She realized there was one important question she had still not asked. ‘So what
was
the lead which led you to this bakery?'

Walker smirked complacently. ‘Fingerprints.'

‘Fingerprints?'

‘We took the man's hand and fingerprinted it, and then we matched the prints against our records, and came up with a name.'

‘You fingerprinted it
before
the medical examiner had had the opportunity to examine it?' Paniatowski asked incredulously.

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘Let me be clear on this. First you contaminated the evidence, and
then
you handed it over to the doctor?'

Walker shrugged. ‘I wouldn't say we contaminated it, exactly. When we'd finished, we wiped the ink off.'

Well, that certainly explained the ink stains that Dr Shastri had found, Paniatowski thought.

Was Walker really as stupid as he seemed? she wondered. Could
anybody
be as stupid as he seemed?

‘And once you'd matched the fingerprints, you came straight here?' she asked.

‘That's right, ma'am.' Walker paused. ‘Well, not straight here, of course. As I've already explained, the first thing I did was to spend quite a lot of time trying to contact you.'

‘What did you hope to achieve by coming here without me? Was it your plan to have the killer in handcuffs before I even knew what was going on?'

‘Yes, of course it bloody was!' the sergeant's eyes said.

‘No, ma'am, it wasn't that at all,' Walker told Paniatowski. ‘The way I saw it, I was just taking a bit of the donkey work off your shoulders and placing it on to my own.'

‘So you
didn't
expect to find the killer here?'

‘Now that's a different question entirely, if you don't mind me saying so, ma'am. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the killer
does
work here.'

And neither would I, Paniatowski thought – because most murder victims are killed by someone they see nearly every day.

‘Would it be all right if I got back to interrogating the witness now, ma'am?' Walker asked.

‘No, it wouldn't,' Paniatowski replied. ‘I'm taking over the questioning myself.'

‘That's just not bloody fair,' Walker muttered, almost under his breath.

‘What was that, Sergeant? Something about it not being fair?'

‘No, ma'am. I was just wondering, since you're taking over the lead I developed, what you wanted
me
to do.'

‘I want you to find out if the uniformed branch have uncovered anything useful from the house-to-house search yet. And I want to see you in the Drum and Monkey at seven o'clock sharp. Got that?'

Walker nodded. ‘Got it, ma'am. But did you just say
seven
o'clock in the Drum and Monkey?'

‘Yes. Why?'

‘It just seems a bit early to be thinking of rounding off the day, that's all. I believe that when Mr Woodend was in charge . . .'

‘I
know
what Mr Woodend did, because I was with him,' Paniatowski said, keeping her temper under control – but only just. ‘And perhaps, when we're further into the investigation, the meetings at the Drum will be held later. But
tonight
's meeting is at seven o'clock.'

‘You're the boss,' Walker said.

‘Yes, I am,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘There's one more thing before you go, Sergeant.'

‘Yes, ma'am? And what might that be?'

‘You've made a number of mistakes today, not the least of which are contaminating evidence and failing to keep me informed of developments in the investigation. I could issue a reprimand for both those actions – and maybe I will.'

‘That's your decision to make, ma'am,' Walker said flatly.