Backlash (27 page)

And that was true enough.

But had he really given enough consideration to the possibility that Meadows might have found the missing salesman, and that the salesman might have given them the name of Taylor Brown's partner?

‘I made a command decision,' he said aloud, to the empty room in which his first and only attempt at love-making had been such a dismal failure. ‘I did what I thought was right.'

But still the nagging doubts would not go away – still, he caught himself wondering if he would have made the
same
command decision if the fiasco with Meadows had never happened.

He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly half past six. There was really no point in going back to bed now – he might as well take a very cold, very long, shower.

‘You were rather disturbed last night, weren't you, old chap?' Timmy's father said at the breakfast table. ‘Mum was up for hours, comforting you, you know. She almost brought you into our bed, and we haven't had to do that for years.'

‘I'm sorry, Mum,' Timmy said.

‘We don't want you to be sorry,' his father said, with that mixture of firmness and understanding which he had perfected over the years. ‘We want to know what upset you so much. Was it something that happened at school?'

‘No.'

‘Well, there must be
some
reason for it.'

If this was happening to Lennie, he would find a way to talk his way out of it, Timmy thought miserably. But he was
not
Lennie. His parents would make him tell the truth in the end – they always did – and so he might as well just come clean now.

‘Me and Lennie . . .' he began.

‘Lennie and I . . .' his father said.

‘Oh, for goodness' sake, Philip, why must you always be correcting him?' Timmy's mum asked. ‘Just let him tell the story.'

‘Sorry, old chap, go ahead,' his father said, contritely.

‘Lennie and I were watching the telly yesterday, and there was this story about a woman who'd been murdered. The lady on the telly said that there was blood everywhere, and—'

‘I've told you a dozen times, you shouldn't watch things like that,' his father said.

‘Philip!' Timmy's mother warned.

‘So me and Lennie . . . Lennie and I . . . went to the woods, to see if we could find a body,' Timmy continued.

His father chuckled. ‘And did you?'

‘Yes.'

For a moment, both parents were silent, then Timmy's dad said, ‘Are you sure it was a body?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then you'd better describe it to me.'

‘It was wrapped up in this big sack, and it was just lying there.'

‘Could you . . . could you see its arms and legs? Could you see its face?'

‘Course not,' Timmy said, surprised that his dad could be so stupid. ‘Like I told you, it was in a sack.'

He sensed – though did not understand – a lowering of the tension which had enveloped the room.

‘Then how do you know it was a body?' his dad asked.

‘Because it ponged!'

His father leant across the table, and took Timmy's small hands in his own large hands.

‘It wasn't a body, old chap,' he said softly.

‘It was!' Timmy protested. ‘Honest, it was.'

His father turned to his mother.

‘The only way I'm going to convince him it wasn't a body is to go there with him myself,' he said. ‘In fact, I think we'll do it straight after breakfast.'

‘But he's got school!' Timmy's mother said.

‘It won't do him any harm to miss an hour's school,' his dad said. ‘Come to that, it won't do
me
any harm to miss an hour's work.'

He really liked his bedsit, Jack Crane decided, as he stood in front of the mirror in the communal bathroom, shaving. It was true that it consisted of little more than a bed and table and chair, but the bed was comfortable, and the table was the ideal place at which to think and read, so it served his simple needs well enough.

And this particular bedsit had an added advantage, which was that the widowed landlady, Mrs Ophelia Danvers, didn't mind him entertaining what she called ‘young ladies' overnight.

In fact, she positively encouraged it.

‘Get your fun while you're young, Jack,' she'd advised when he moved in. ‘Lord knows, I did – and I've never regretted it.'

His shave completed, he returned to his bedsit, slipped on his tie, and then headed for the stairs.

He was surprised to see an envelope lying on the mat under the letterbox, because it was much too early for the post to have arrived, but he bent down and picked it up anyway.

‘Jesus!' he said, when he examined it.

There was no stamp, no address, and the name had been painstakingly constructed from bits cut out of magazines.

Chi
ef
Inspector
Pan
ny
at
ovSKI
, it said.

Finding the word ‘inspector' had presented the sender with no problems, and ‘chief' was made up of only two different typefaces, but even if he'd spelled ‘Paniatowski' correctly, he'd have been struggling to get more than three letters from one source.

Paniatowski got a lot of crank letters, he reminded himself – most senior police officers did – but they were normally sent through the regular mail, whereas this sender had gone to the trouble of finding out where one of her underlings lived and delivered it personally.

He wondered if he should open it, and decided against doing so. It was, after all, addressed to the boss, and even if it had been written by a nutter, that gave her the right to look at it first.

He slipped the letter into his overcoat pocket, and opened the front door.

Timmy was not afraid as long as he was with his big strong dad, and he was almost skipping as they reached the bushes at the end of the woods.

‘There!' he said, triumphantly.

‘Well, you were certainly right about it ponging,' his father admitted. ‘But it's not a body.'

‘Then what is it?'

‘It's just rubbish that some irresponsible person couldn't even be bothered to take to the tip.'

But even as he said the words, Philip was wondering
why
that person had done it, because surely there was more effort involved in dumping it here than there'd ever have been in taking it to the municipal facility.

‘Well, I still think it's a dead body,' Timmy said stubbornly.

His father sighed. ‘You're going to make your poor old dad stand over that stinking sack and slit it open, aren't you?' he asked.

‘Yes,' said Timmy, realizing that, for once, he had the upper hand.

‘Well, if it saves your mum having to get up in the middle of the night, I suppose it's worth it,' Timmy's dad said.

He took his penknife out of his pocket, pulled out a blade, and gingerly bent over the sack. He inserted it at the top end of the sacking, and began to draw downwards.

It was not a difficult task. The sack had rotted almost as much as its contents, which soon began to spill out.

‘Yuk!' Timmy said.

‘Yuk indeed,' his father agreed, looking down at the rotting, scaly bodies. ‘There must be at least a hundredweight of fish in there.'

When Paniatowski arrived in the custody area, the duty sergeant was sitting at his table, eating a sausage sandwich he'd had sent down from the canteen, but the moment he saw her, he jumped smartly to his feet.

‘Have you come to see the prisoner, ma'am?' he asked.

‘That's right,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘Do you want me to accompany you?'

Paniatowski shook her head. ‘You finish your butty in peace. Just give me the key and tell me where he is.'

The sergeant handed the key across the desk. ‘He's in the cell at the end, ma'am.'

Perhaps a night under lock and key would have loosened Taylor Brown's tongue, Paniatowski thought, as she walked along the row of cells.

But she doubted it. The man's sole remaining purpose in life, it seemed to her, was to keep quiet until his aim had been achieved. Then, and only then, he'd tell her everything she wanted to know – because it wouldn't really matter any more.

She reached the cell door and slid back the peephole – and that was when she saw the pair of legs suspended in mid-air.

‘Call Dr Shastri,' she shouted over her shoulder, as she slid the key in the lock. ‘Tell her I want her here, right now.'

She wrenched open the door. Taylor Brown was hanging from one of the heating pipes which ran close to the ceiling. He was naked to the waist, but that was because the ‘rope' he had fashioned had been made from his shirt.

Paniatowski stood on the same chair that Taylor Brown had kicked over when he'd launched himself into what he must have hoped was oblivion, and felt his neck for a pulse. There was none.

‘Bloody hell – he's gone and hanged himself!' she heard the sergeant say behind her.

‘Brilliant deduction, Sergeant,' Paniatowski said, stepping down off the chair.

‘Shall we cut him down, ma'am?'

‘It's too late for that. We'll leave him there until the doctor arrives.' Paniatowski lit up a cigarette, and sucked the smoke in greedily. ‘When was the last time you saw the prisoner alive?'

‘Let me see,' the sergeant said shakily. ‘It was about half past five that Mr—' He stopped, abruptly. ‘Seven o'clock, ma'am,' he continued. ‘I make my rounds every hour, on the hour.'

Paniatowski looked up at the hanged man. His face was bloated, as such faces always were, but there was a bruise under his left eye, and another on his chin, which had nothing to do with his suicide.

‘Who was it that came to see him at half past five?' she demanded.

The sergeant looked at the floor. ‘No one, ma'am.'

‘You're in enough trouble as it is, without making things any worse,' Paniatowski said gravely.

The sergeant raised his eyes. ‘It was Mr Kershaw, ma'am.'

‘You allowed Mr Kershaw to see the prisoner?'

‘Yes, ma'am.'

‘But you went into the cell with him, didn't you?'

‘Not at first, ma'am.'

‘And what the hell do you mean by that?'

‘He said he was very worried about his wife, and he thought that if he appealed to the prisoner, man-to-man, he might get him to talk.'

‘So you just said, “Fine! Go ahead.”?'

‘No, ma'am, it wasn't like that at all. I knew it was against regulations, and I almost refused to give him the keys. But he looked so desperate that, in the end, I handed them over. But I did make him promise not to lay a hand on the prisoner while he was in the cell.'

‘And a lot of good
that
did, didn't it?'

‘He did promise, ma'am, and I think he meant it at the time. But when Taylor Brown wouldn't help him, he just lost control.'

‘So how long did you allow Kershaw to beat up Taylor Brown before you finally decided the time had come to intervene?'

‘It couldn't have been more than a couple of seconds, ma'am. I was right outside the cell all the time, and the moment I heard Taylor Brown scream, I went straight in. I don't think Mr Kershaw could have hit him more than twice.'

‘No more than twice! Well, that's all right, then,' Paniatowski said sarcastically. ‘What happened next?'

‘I told Mr Kershaw to stand clear of the prisoner, and got him out of there as quickly as I could, ma'am. He didn't resist. He was as quiet as a lamb. I think he knew he'd done wrong.'

‘Of course he knew he'd done wrong! He'd have to have been a complete bloody imbecile
not
to know he'd done wrong! What did you do once Mr Kershaw had left?'

‘I went back to the cell, and patched Taylor Brown up a bit.'

‘And how did you plan to explain his bruises to me this morning?'

‘I don't know, ma'am.'

‘Yes, you bloody well do!'

‘I was going to say Taylor Brown had attacked me, and I'd only been defending myself.'

‘And what would have happened when Taylor Brown told
me
that it was Kershaw who'd done it?'

‘I'd have said he was lying, and that Mr Kershaw had never been near the cells.'

‘That would be the second time that Kershaw had a meeting with Taylor when he wasn't even officially in the building, wouldn't it? The first time was when he got him to sign his confession.'

‘Look, ma'am, Taylor Brown was guilty then and he was guilty now,' the sergeant said. ‘I'm sorry I let Mr Kershaw into the cell. I know it was wrong. But I'm not going to apologize for trying to cover for him, because he'd do the same for me – or for any other bobby on this force.'

‘Yes, you're probably right,' Paniatowski agreed.

‘So what happens now, ma'am?'

‘To Reginald Taylor Brown? He'll be taken down to the morgue – which is what always happens to prisoners who die in police custody!'

‘I don't mean that, ma'am.'

‘Then what
do
you mean?'

‘What happens to me and Mr Kershaw?'

‘I'll need time to think about that,' Paniatowski said. ‘But if I was you, I wouldn't be planning on collecting any long service medals.'

She turned and headed for the stairs.

Why had Taylor Brown hanged himself? she wondered.

It seemed unlikely that it was because Kershaw had frightened him so much that death looked like the easy way out, because the beating Kershaw had given him was nothing compared to what he would have received in prison.