Backlash (26 page)

Taylor Brown looked uncomfortable, too, but he did not complain about the heat, as he had about the cold.

Maybe he thought he needed to get used to it, since he was probably expecting to spend an eternity in Hell, Paniatowski thought.

You're so tired that you're getting whimsical! she told herself angrily. And you can't afford that.

She looked up at the clock.

Twenty minutes to ten!

They had been sitting in this room facing each other – she and Taylor Brown – for well over six hours.

She'd have to take a break from it soon.

She
needed
to take a break soon.

Besides, she'd arranged to meet the team at half past ten.

She'd make one last attempt to crack the suspect, and then someone else would just have to take over for a while, she thought.

She reached into her handbag, and took out a small package.

‘What's that?' Taylor Brown asked.

‘Now isn't that interesting?' Paniatowski mused.

‘Isn't what interesting?'

‘You want to know what I've taken out of my handbag, yet you've shown no curiosity at all about the envelope that's lying on the table.'

Nor had he. She had placed the envelope midway between them at the start of this last leg of the interrogation, and he had not so much as glanced at it.

But then, why should he be curious, when he'd probably already guessed what it contained?

She opened the packet and took out a pair of sterilized gloves.

Her hands were so sticky with sweat that slipping the gloves on wasn't an easy task at all, but – given the fascinated horror with which Taylor Brown was watching the whole process – that could only work to her advantage.

‘You're . . . you're not going to touch me, are you?' the suspect asked worriedly. ‘I don't like being touched by women.'

‘Trust me, Reg, I wouldn't touch you if my life depended on it,' Paniatowski said, opening the envelope. ‘But what I am going to do is show you some of the evidence against you.' She pulled out the glossy magazine. ‘This is called
The Joy of Pain
, Reg. We found it in your house.'

‘It's not mine,' Taylor Brown mumbled.

‘Of course it's yours,' Paniatowski said dismissively. ‘It's got your fingerprints all over it. We're going to look at it together, Reg. What particular page would you like me to turn to?'

‘Doesn't matter. Don't care.'

‘Then let's start in the middle,' Paniatowski suggested. She opened the magazine. ‘Oh look, Reg, it's a double-page advert for the Ajax Novelty Company. Have you seen that advertisement before, Reg?'

‘I don't know,' Taylor Brown said.

‘Of course you know,' Paniatowski said, her voice hardening. ‘Have you seen it or not?'

‘I've seen it.'

‘So you'll have noticed the snazzy red shoes, won't you? Take another look at them.'

‘Don't want to.'

‘Do it – or maybe I will decide to touch you, after all!'

Slowly and reluctantly, Taylor Brown lowered his eyes so that they were focussed on the advertisement.

‘I can tell what's going through your mind, Reg,' Paniatowski said. ‘You're imagining what it would feel like to slip one of those shoes on to the foot of a small, delicate woman, aren't you?'

‘You know I am,' Taylor Brown gasped.

And no doubt it was giving him a huge erection, Paniatowski thought in disgust – though thankfully that was hidden by the table.

‘But I've never done more than imagine it,' Taylor Brown said. ‘I didn't buy the shoes and I didn't put them on any woman's foot. I haven't been near a woman since I came out of prison.'

‘Except for Denise Slater,' Paniatowski said.

‘And I even made a mess of that, didn't I?' Taylor Brown countered, and began crying again.

Paniatowski turned to the uniformed constable who was standing silently and patiently by the door.

‘Could you go and find Sergeant Lee?' she said. ‘I'd like him to take over from me for a while.'

‘That would mean leaving you alone with the suspect, ma'am,' the constable pointed out.

‘That's no problem,' Paniatowski assured him. ‘Reg here only attacks
helpless
women. Isn't that right, Reg?'

Taylor Brown, who – even through the tears – was still fixated on the magazine, said nothing.

The constable opened the door, and stepped out into the corridor.

I've failed again, Paniatowski thought miserably.

The three of them – Beresford, Meadows and Crane – had been sitting in silence at the usual table in the Drum and Monkey for quite a while.

And it wasn't a
companionable
silence, Crane thought – the sort of silence there sometimes was within a group of people who knew each other so well that there was no real need to talk. No, it was an
uncomfortable
silence, made worse by the fact that DS Meadows and DI Beresford seemed barely willing to make eye contact with each other.

What was going on between them would have to be sorted out, he told himself – if not for their own good, then for the good of the team.

But
who
would sort it out? That was the question!

He wasn't about to alert the boss to their difficulties, and he doubted that either of them would, either.

And
he
couldn't sort it out, because the problem with taking on the role of kindly Uncle Jack was that they were both older than him, and both outranked him.

At twenty-five to eleven, Paniatowski arrived.

‘Let's hear it, then,' she said, the moment that she'd sat down.

‘Taylor Brown seems to have been a particularly nasty piece of work even when he was at school,' Beresford said. ‘He had his own little gang, which picked on the weaker kids.'

‘And has he stayed in touch with any of them?'

‘We don't believe so. We spoke to one of his old mates, and he said – and I quote exactly – “The problem with Reginald is that, while the rest of us put aside childish things eventually, he never quite seemed able to. And it reached the point, to be perfectly honest, where I was embarrassed to even be seen talking to him.”'

‘What about the friends he made at work?'

‘He's never held down a job for more than a few weeks. He doesn't really need to, because he's got a trust fund from his grandfather. He doesn't seem to have developed any close friends since he left school, either. Before he went to prison, he got some kind of companionship from his family, who at least tolerated him, but now he's lost that as well.'

‘How about close associates in prison?'

‘They despised him as much he despised them – maybe even more so. As far as they were concerned, a day on which they didn't torture Taylor Brown was a day wasted.'

‘He must have found his partner from
somewhere
,' Paniatowski said.

‘Perhaps he used the contact advertisements in one of those dirty magazines we found in his house,' Beresford said. ‘And if he did do that, it'll be virtually untraceable.'

‘So, to sum up, we've no idea who his partner is, where Grace was killed, or where Elaine is now,' Paniatowski said. ‘We're doing a bloody marvellous job of investigating this case, aren't we?'

‘We're doing the best we can, boss – which is probably considerably better than most of the teams who might have been assigned to the case could have done,' Beresford said.

‘So what you're telling me is that though we've got
nothing
, it's a
better
nothing than any other team could have come up with?' Paniatowski demanded. Then her expression softened a little. ‘I'm sorry, Colin. You say we're doing our best, and I know we are – but our best just doesn't seem to be good enough.'

It was at seven minutes past eleven that the drunk staggered up to the bar and said, ‘Give me another double whisky, can you?'

‘I'm sorry, sir, but you're too late,' the landlord said firmly. He pointed to the clock on the wall. ‘It's well past closing time.'

‘Nobody would notice,' the drunk persisted.

‘That's where you're wrong,' the landlord said. ‘There's four bobbies sitting there behind you, and they'd notice.'

‘If you . . . if you just slipped it to me . . .' the drunk suggested.

It had been a long day, and the landlord's patience was wearing thin.

‘You're too late!' he said, raising his voice, in the hope that if he really shouted, the information might finally penetrate the drunk's whisky sodden brain. ‘You're too bloody late!'

‘
You're too late. You're too bloody late
,' the four bobbies at the table heard the landlord roar.

It seemed like a message aimed at them, and though none of them actually nodded their heads in agreement, it was only by an effort of will.

NINETEEN

By a quarter past three in the morning, Paniatowski's eyes had stopped focussing properly, and she was forced to accept that even if Taylor Brown did suddenly decide to tell her everything she wanted to know – and more – it would probably just slip by her unnoticed.

She turned to the uniformed constable standing by the door – the third officer to occupy the post since this marathon began – and said, ‘That's it. Take him down to the cells.'

She sat, watching through bleary eyes, as the constable escorted the suspect from the room – Taylor Brown offered no resistance – and when she stood up she found that her legs had turned to water.

Climbing the stairs from the interview room to her office was an epic journey, and when she had finally completed it, she sank down on to her couch with a gasp of relief.

But though her mind was at least as exhausted as her body, it would not be still.

Could Tom Kershaw have made a better job of running this investigation than she had? she asked herself.

It would have been totally
inappropriate
for him to be in charge, of course –
but could he have made a better job of it?

I don't know, she thought. I'll
never
know – and that's a very heavy burden to have to carry through the rest of my life.

Then her mind, finally overloaded, shut down, and she fell into a troubled sleep.

Colin Beresford had gone home to catch a little rest, but that wasn't working out for him, and as he paced the bedroom he had slept in all his life – which was next to the bedroom in which his mother had quietly lost her grip on reality – he was replaying the previous day's events in his head.

When he'd ordered Meadows to leave Bolton and return to Whitebridge, she asked him if it was personal – if it had anything to do with what had happened the night before.

‘
No, it doesn't
,' he'd said angrily. ‘
It has nothing to do with what happened at all
.'

The anger had been real enough. He was convinced at that.

But had he been angry at her for making the suggestion that he would ever allow his personal life to spill over into his professional? Or had he been angry with himself, because he'd suddenly realized that that was exactly what had happened?

‘I called her back because I needed all the manpower I could lay my hands on,' he argued to himself.