A Death Left Hanging (25 page)

‘All right,' Harold Jones had agreed, defeated.

‘He never hit me anything like as hard as he used to hit you, but you did know that he
was
hitting me, didn't you, Mum?' Monika Paniatowski asked, looking down at the grave.

Of course her mother had known. She had seen the bruises for herself. But she had said nothing about them. She had not wanted to admit the problem existed, because however badly Arthur Jones treated them both, he had at least given them some kind of security. And after all those years as refugees in war-torn Europe, security was not a prize to be lightly cast aside.

But what if she had known about the rest? Monika wondered.

What if she'd known about what went on those nights when she was out of the house? What if she'd found out that her husband stalked her terrified daughter? That he took her into the bedroom he shared with his wife, and locked the door? That he touched Monika where he should not have, and then made
her
touch
him
?

What would Blanca Paniatowski have done about
that
?

She would have killed him
, Monika thought.

And suddenly she understood why it was that she felt she had so much in common with Jane Hartley.

F
rom Woodend's office the sound seemed, at first, to be no more imposing than the tapping of a death-watch beetle. Then, as the woman drew closer – as her high heels pounded the floor with even greater urgency – the clicking assumed the deadly earnestness of lethal machine-gun fire.

‘Monika!' Woodend said.

Rutter nodded. Of course it was her. It
could
only be Paniatowski.

The clicking stopped, the office door was flung unceremoniously open – and Paniatowski was standing there. She was gasping for breath. Her blonde hair was dishevelled, her cheeks flushed and there was a puffiness around her eyes that showed that she'd been crying. But she still looked more like the bagman Woodend had come to trust – more like that Monika he'd grown so fond of – than she'd been at any point since the bloody Margaret Dodds case had started.

‘You know, don't you?' the Chief Inspector said to his sergeant. ‘You've worked it out.'

Paniatowski was astounded. ‘You too?' she asked, looking first at Woodend and then at Rutter for confirmation. ‘But how
could
you?'

‘We got a couple of lucky breaks,' Woodend said, almost apologetically.

‘I . . . I need to sit down,' Paniatowski told him.

‘Aye, I'll bet you do, lass,' Woodend agreed. He turned to Rutter. ‘An' I think that you, Inspector, need to leave.'

‘Of course,' Rutter agreed, beginning to rise to his feet.

‘The inspector should stay,' Paniatowski said firmly.

The comment troubled Woodend.

‘It's a bit difficult, is this,' he said. ‘You see, Monika, in order to get a clearer picture of what's been goin' on in this case, I'm goin' to need to ask you some questions about your own life, an'––'

‘You know about what happened to me in my childhood?' Paniatowski demanded.

‘Not the details, no.'

‘But how could you know anything at all? How did I give myself away? Was it something I said? Something I did?'

‘It's my belief her stepfather didn't just hurt Monika – I think he interfered with her!' DCI Turner had counselled Woodend, that day in Blackpool.

‘How
could
you know?' Monika demanded with urgency.

‘Your old boss told me,' Woodend said. ‘When you an' me were workin' on our first case together. He didn't mean any harm. He really did think it was for the best.'

‘So you've known about what happened right from the start?'

‘More or less,' Woodend agreed.

‘Yet you never said anything! You never let it show that you knew!'

Woodend shrugged to hide his discomfort. ‘Why should I have? There's a lot about my past that you don't know either. It's got nothin' to do with the way we work together or the way we treat each other as people.'

‘Thank you!' Paniatowski said. ‘Thanks for being so different to almost any other boss I
could
have worked for.'

Woodend coughed – though, strictly speaking, he felt no need to. ‘Let's get back to the Fred Dodds' case, shall we?' he suggested.

‘Yes,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘Let's do that.'

‘Would you like to think about whether Inspector Rutter stays or goes?'

‘He's no fool,' Paniatowski said. ‘Even if he goes, he'll probably have a pretty good idea of what we're talking about.'

‘True,' Woodend conceded, ‘but there's no need for him to hear all the details. It's your choice, lass. Nobody'll think the worse of you if you say he should go.'

Paniatowski hesitated, but only for a second.

‘The inspector's a part of the team investigating this case,' she said. ‘It's only right that he stays.'

‘You're sure?'

‘I'm sure.'

‘All right,' Woodend said. ‘Now all we have to decide is what order we deal with things in. Anybody have any objection if I kick off – with my phone call to Canada?'

Rutter and Paniatowski shook their heads.

‘When Cuthburtson an' Dodds were partners, Fred was still a single man, and Cuthburtson treated him like one of the family,' Woodend continued. ‘That was a big mistake from Cuthburtson's side, because his daughter, Louise, eventually reached the age at which Fred started to find her irresistible. An' that's when the sexual abuse began.'

‘What I don't see is why the family ran away to Canada, instead of simply informing the police,' Rutter said. ‘Unless, of course, Cuthburtson was worried by the fact that Fred had made Louise's brother, Ernest, his accomplice in his dirty little game. Do you think that could have been the reason?'

Woodend was almost on the point of answering himself. Then he changed his mind and turned to Paniatowski. ‘What do you think, Monika?'

‘Despite Ernest being a minor, Cuthburtson may still have been worried that his son would get into trouble for taking part in the abuse,' Paniatowski said. ‘But even if the boy hadn't been involved, my guess is that the father probably wouldn't have reported it.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because of what other people would say.'

‘Do you want to expand on that?'

‘When a criminal breaks into your house and steals something, it's no reflection on the family. Even if he kills somebody during the course of the robbery, nobody blames the victim. But if that same criminal rapes the woman of the house, or sexually assaults one of the children, then that's a different matter entirely. Some of the shame attached to the act sticks to the family. There are even people who'll say that they must have been asking for it – that it would never happen in a
really
decent family.'

‘That's surely an exaggeration,' Rutter said.

‘No, it isn't,' Paniatowski contradicted him. ‘And it's not just outsiders who can make that assumption, either. Arthur Jones' family at least partly-blamed
me
for what he did to me. And worse than that, I blamed myself. Because if it wasn't my fault, why didn't it happen to other girls?'

‘It
did
happen to other girls,' Woodend said.

‘I know that now, but it didn't know it then. And most people
still
don't know it. Do you think that all cases of child molestation are reported? Of course not! And one of the main reasons is that people are
ashamed
to report them. That's why Cuthburtson never said anything. That's why he took his family to Canada. So they could put it all behind them. But you can
never, ever
put it all behind you.'

‘We know now why Dodds made friends with Sidney Hill – and why Hill eventually killed himself,' Rutter said.

‘Yes,' Woodend agreed. ‘Ernest Cuthburtson's mental health was wrecked by what he and Dodds did to Louise, but Sidney Hill took what they'd done to his sister, Dorothy, even worse. That's why he killed himself – because he couldn't bear to live with the memory of it.'

Paniatowski saw Dorothy Hill's aged face in her mind's eye – and shuddered. ‘Marcus Dodds?' she said, to change the subject. ‘What do we know about him?'

‘That Fred killed him,' Rutter said.

‘But why?'

‘It was probably done in the heat of the moment,' Woodend said. ‘They'd been arguing the night before. Possibly they were continuing that argument at the moment Fred picked up the coal hammer and hit his father with it. Marcus was worried that the police would find out what Fred had been doing, you see. And the
reason
he was worried was because he thought that once Fred was in police custody, he might talk about what his own father had done to him! And he was right about that – after a fashion. Because when he was arrested for killing Marcus, Fred
did
tell Sergeant Parker that his father had been abusing him – and that's what made Parker decide to look the other way.'

‘That's the part I just can't understand,' Rutter admitted. ‘Fred knew from first-hand experience how terrible it was to be abused. How could he then inflict the same suffering on others?'

‘There are alcoholics' sons who despise their fathers, yet can't stay off the drink themselves,' Woodend said. ‘There are compulsive gamblers' kids who've seen what it can do to a family, but still can't resist placing a bet. Children don't necessarily
have to
follow in their parents' footsteps – but we shouldn't be surprised when they do.'

‘What about Jane Hartley?' Rutter asked.

‘What about her, Monika?' Woodend said. ‘Why didn't she tell us that Fred Dodds had abused her?'

‘Because she may not even know about it.'

‘How's that possible?'

‘She could simply have blanked it out of her mind. A lot of us do suppress the memory.'

‘Are you sure that's true?
You
didn't suppress the memory, did you?'

Monika smiled awkwardly. ‘What makes you think that?'

‘Because you
do
know about it.'

‘But I didn't always. When Arthur Jones suddenly left home, I'd no idea it was because he was afraid he'd be in trouble for what he'd done to me. Because some part of my brain – perhaps the part that cares about survival – had already locked all my memories of those terrible evenings safely away. It was years before an upheaval in my personal life brought them back to the surface again.'

‘Is that what it takes?' Woodend asked. ‘Some kind of upheaval in your personal life?'

‘Not always. But from the women I've spoken to, that's usually the cause of it.'

‘Jane Hartley's life hasn't exactly been without its ups and downs, now has it?' Woodend asked. ‘So why hasn't she got her memories back, Monika?'

Paniatowski shrugged. ‘You're asking me something that I'm not sure I'm qualified to answer,' she said. ‘I'm a detective sergeant, not a psychiatrist.'

‘That's as maybe,' Woodend agreed. ‘But modesty aside, you do
think
you know, don't you?'

‘Perhaps.'

‘Then for heaven's sake tell us, lass!'

‘Most women only have one trauma to lock away in their subconscious,' Paniatowski said. ‘Jane Hartley had two – the things that Fred Dodds did to her, and the knowledge that her mother had been hanged for his murder. And she was never forced to confront the first one, because she'd always got the second to fall back on. If she drank more than she knew was good for her, it was because her mother was hanged. If she had trouble in her relationships with men, that was because her mother was hanged, too. If she was unhappy with her life in general – well, she knew the reason for that. And if she could just prove that her mother was innocent, then all her problems would melt away. Now we're going to have to tell her that her mother wasn't innocent after all – that though she might have had good reasons for killing Fred Dodds, she was still the one who kept swinging the hammer until his skull was little more than dust.'

‘I'm sorry to have to contradict you, Monika,' Rutter said – and he sounded as if he genuinely was, ‘but we still don't know that Margaret
did
kill Fred.'

‘Don't we?' Paniatowski asked.

‘No, we don't. We have a different motive now – but motive's never been the problem. Whether we assume that she killed him to protect her daughter or that she did it to get her hands on his money, we're still left with the one important question that has been bugging us this whole investigation.'

‘An' what's that?' Woodend asked.

‘Why should she have killed her husband in a way which was bound to draw suspicion to her? She was an intelligent woman. Surely she could have come up with a better plan than that.'

‘So you're sayin' that we're no further on than we were before?' Woodend said. ‘That it's still a distinct possibility that Fred Dodds was killed by person or persons unknown?'

‘That's exactly what I'm saying.'

‘If she'd found out what Dodds was doing to her daughter, she'd have wanted to kill him!' Monika Paniatowski protested, with a hint of her previous loss of control creeping back into her voice. ‘Any mother would!'

Yet even as she spoke, she was considering the possibility that her own mother
had
known – that Blanca Jones had decided that letting the assaults continue was the lesser of two evils.

No, that wasn't true!

It
couldn't
be true, because, if it was, then everything she believed about her mother and their life together was nothing but a lie!