Stone Killer (10 page)

The Chief Inspector stepped clear of the barricade, and began to walk up the High Street. Despite all the other clearing up they'd done, none of the officers in charge seemed to have thought to turn off the shop window illumination. That probably wouldn't have been noticed much earlier in the day. But now – as darkness began to fall – the windows took on a cheery appearance quite at odds with the abandoned emptiness of the shops themselves, an effect made even more bizarre by the merry twinkling of the Christmas fairy lights.

It was all a scene that no one in Whitebridge could ever have expected to see, Woodend thought. It was as if an alien way of life had invaded the town – and completely taken it over.

He reached the bank, pushed open the door, and entered. There was no one in evidence, but the single eye of the camera, still pointed at the door, would soon inform those deeper inside the building that he had arrived.

It was perhaps a minute before the door behind the counter opened, and the hooded man with the submachine gun stepped through it.

‘Come closer!' he ordered. Then, when Woodend had reached the middle of the room, he barked, ‘That's far enough!'

‘Whatever you say,' Woodend agreed.

‘It's well over an hour since I rang your headquarters and said I wanted to see you,' the man with the gun said angrily.

‘Is that right?' Woodend asked.

He reached into his jacket pocket with his right hand. Maitland/Apollo, noticing the move, raised his submachine gun so that it was pointing directly at the Chief Inspector.

‘Oh, for Christ's sake, relax! I'm only reaching for my packet of fags!' Woodend said.

‘You want a
cigarette
?' Apollo/Maitland asked incredulously.

‘Yes.'

‘Now?'

‘There's no need to sound so surprised about it,' Woodend said. ‘I like to smoke when I'm nervous – an', for some strange reason, nervous is what I'm feelin' at the moment.'

‘How do I know it's not a trick?' Apollo/Maitland asked.

‘A trick?' Woodend repeated. ‘Just what do you think I've got down there in my jacket pocket? A knife? A bazooka? A couple of platoons from the Parachute Regiment?'

‘You may take out your cigarettes, but you must do it very slowly and carefully,' Apollo said.

‘Fair enough,' Woodend agreed.

He extracted the packet of Capstan at a speed which would have made slow-motion film look hurried, took a single cigarette out of it, and lit up.

‘I know what you're doing,' the other man said.

‘Is that right?' Woodend asked, puffing on his cigarette and then blowing out the smoke. ‘An' what might that
be
, exactly?'

‘You're hoping to avoid answering my question.'

‘I wasn't aware you'd asked one.'

‘Don't try to be clever with me. I asked why it had taken you so long to get here.'

‘No, you didn't,' Woodend contradicted. ‘You
informed
me that you'd asked for me over an hour ago. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you did mean to ask what took me so long. The answer's simple – I can either be the investigative detective you said you wanted me to be, or I can be your little pal who's always droppin' in for a chat. But I can't be both.'

‘A few moments ago, you said you were nervous, but I don't think that's true,' Apollo said. ‘You're not
really
afraid of me, are you?'

‘No, I'm not,' Woodend agreed. ‘But I am afraid of what you might
do
in here. Which is why I'm workin' as hard as I can to get you what you want. Which is why I went to see your wife.'

‘My wife!' Apollo said, trying – and failing – to make it sound as if he had no wife, and hence had no idea what Woodend was talking about.

‘You can't have expected to keep your identity secret for long, Major Maitland,' Woodend said. ‘So why bother at all?'

‘It's one of the rules of warfare never to reveal more to the enemy than you absolutely need to at the time,' Maitland said.

‘But I'm not the enemy,' Woodend pointed out.

‘Yes, you are,' Maitland told him. ‘You're not working for me because you want to – you're doing it because you have no choice.'

‘How about the two lads you've got with you in the back of the bank?' Woodend wondered. ‘Did they have any choice?'

‘Yes, they did. I warned them of the risks – but they insisted on coming with me anyway.'

‘Aye, I've served under officers I'd gladly have gone through hell with,' Woodend said. ‘Come to think of it, that's usually where they took me. But you did wrong to bring them on this particular operation, Major. It's not their fight. So why don't you make amends while you still can?'

‘Make amends?'

‘You know
exactly
what I'm talkin' about. Those two men of yours are in as much trouble as you are, but if you lift the siege right now, I'll do my level best to see that they get off as lightly as they possibly can.'

‘They stay here,' Maitland said firmly. ‘We
all
stay here until you've done what I want you to.'

Woodend shrugged. ‘Well, at least the powers that be can't say I didn't try,' he said, almost to himself.

‘How is my wife?' Maitland asked.

‘She asked me to tell you to give up.'

‘Answer the question, you bastard! How is she?'

‘How do you expect her to be? She's drained physically, but she's still very angry an' bitter inside. An' she's deeply worried about you.' Woodend took another drag on his cigarette. ‘You're deeply worried about
each other
,' he continued. ‘You must be very much in love.'

‘We are.'

‘How long have you been married?' Woodend asked.

‘Two years.'

‘An' is it the first marriage for both of you?'

‘You could find that out from the records,' Maitland said.

‘Yes, I could,' Woodend agreed. ‘But records take time, an' I thought you were in a hurry.'

‘I've been married once before,' Maitland said, ‘but it's Judith's first marriage.'

‘Strange that a woman as attractive as her should have stayed unattached for so long,' Woodend mused.

‘Just what exactly are you suggesting by that remark?' Maitland demanded angrily.

‘I'm not
suggestin'
anythin',' Woodend said. ‘I'm thinkin'. I'm tryin' to build up a picture in my mind. It's the way I work.'

An' that's the truth, he thought.

Because however much Monika told him they needed to cut corners on this one, he couldn't. This was how he investigated, and he felt too old to start learning new tricks now.

‘Judith … Judith did talk about having one serious relationship before we met,' Maitland said.

‘An' why did it end?'

‘I don't know, exactly. She didn't say much about it. I don't even know the man's name, to tell you the truth. But I do get the impression that he let her down rather badly.'

Posh-speak, Woodend thought. Working-class girls get ‘chucked' – officers' ladies get ‘let down rather badly'.

‘Tell me about your wife's business partner, Stanley Keene,' the Chief Inspector said.

‘You surely don't think he's the man she had the serious relationship with, do you?' Maitland asked.

‘No, I don't. As far as I can tell from just one meetin', he's as bent as Dickie's Hatband.'

‘Then why are we wasting time even talking about him?'

Woodend sighed. ‘If you want me on this case, you're goin' to have to learn to trust my judgement, Major Maitland,' he said. ‘I'm interested in him because I'm interested in anybody who's played a significant part in Judith's life. An' don't worry about givin' me the wrong impression – I'll form my own opinion of him whatever you say. But I'd still like to hear what you think.'

‘We'd never have become close friends – I'm not at ease enough with homosexuals for that to have ever happened – but I like him well enough. And he does have a certain integrity about him. Many men would have distanced themselves from Judith after she was imprisoned, but Stanley's stuck by her like a faithful hound.'

‘What's he like as a businessman?' Woodend asked.

‘It was Judith's drive and energy which built the business up in the first place, but she was of the opinion that once it
was
set up, a trained monkey could have run it.' Maitland paused. ‘She wasn't referring to Stanley, of course. She's always had the greatest respect for Stanley's abilities.'

‘Which makes it all the stranger that she didn't leave him to run the business once she got married,' Woodend said.

‘Are you playing games with me, you bastard?' Major Maitland demanded, angry again.

‘How do you mean?' Woodend asked innocently.

‘I'm not a fool, you know,' the Major said. ‘I've done some interrogating myself, so I know a thing or two about it. And it's quite a common trick to ask a question about one thing when what you're really after is the answer to quite another one.'

‘So you think I was askin' questions about Keene because what I really wanted was answers about Judith?'

‘Well, weren't you?'

‘Perhaps partly,' Woodend admitted. ‘But it is rather interestin', don't you think, that when Judith had the opportunity to go an' live in married quarters with you, her husband, she chose instead to continue runnin' her caterin' business in Whitebridge?'

‘She told me she didn't want to leave her home town. We decided that when I left the Army, we'd settle here.'

‘Aye, Stanley Keene told me as much,' Woodend agreed. ‘But at one point she
was
goin' to move, wasn't she?'

‘Well, yes, I suppose so.'

‘An' then she suddenly changed her mind – an' that was shortly after she'd met Clive Burroughs.'

‘Are you saying that you think the Dunethorpe Police were right – that Judith was Clive Burroughs' lover?' Maitland asked hotly. ‘Because if you are, then I've no further—'

‘No, I'm not sayin' that at all,' Woodend interrupted him. ‘I believe, as strongly as you obviously do, that they didn't have any kind of
sexual
relationship at all. But the timin' of her change of mind is too coincidental for me to completely rule out the possibility that Burroughs had some influence on it – that he had some kind of hold on her.'

‘I simply can't accept that – and I'd rather that you didn't either,' Maitland said.

‘I won't tell you how to fight battles if you don't tell me how to conduct investigations,' Woodend countered. ‘An' now we've got all that out of the way, would you like to tell me why I'm here?'

‘To brief me, of course,' Maitland said. ‘A good commander always ensures that he's well briefed by his men who are out in the field.'

Bollocks! Woodend thought. It wasn't a briefing you wanted, it was reassurance. You're like a doubting kid who constantly needs to be told that Father Christmas does actually exist.

‘You really don't need to carry on with this siege any more, you know,' he said aloud. ‘I've got my teeth well sunk into this case now, an' I won't give up until I've got a result. So why not let the hostages go? An' while you're at it, why not come out yourself?'

Maitland laughed. ‘I was wondering when you'd start to show your true colours,' he said. ‘I was wondering when the concerned policeman would recede from view, and the hardened negotiator would rear his ugly head.'

‘Oh, for God's sake, grow up!' Woodend said impatiently. ‘Stop thinkin' of yourself as some romantic storybook hero, and start seein' yourself for what you really are.'

‘And what am I?'

‘You're a desperate man who wants to get his wife freed, an' doesn't care who else gets hurts in the process. You're a feller who's either goin' to get shot dead by a police marksman or will spend the next twenty-odd years in gaol. I want to help your wife – I honestly do – but after what you've put those people inside through, I don't give a damn what happens to you.'

Maitland laughed again. ‘You certainly speak your mind, don't you?' he asked.

‘I'm well known for it around Whitebridge Police Headquarters,' Woodend replied.

‘Or is this just another one of your games?' the Major wondered. ‘Are you, perhaps, just
playing
the part of the bluff, honest policeman?'

Woodend sighed. ‘I don't care what you believe,' he said. ‘An' I don't care what you think about me personally. But understand this. If just
one
of your hostages is hurt in
any way
, then I'm off the case.'

‘You shouldn't bluff with such a weak hand,' the Major said.

‘This is no bluff,' Woodend told him. ‘The Chief Constable may order me to continue with the investigation, but I won't do it. He may threaten me with the sack, but I still won't do it.'

‘Then he'll put another officer on the case.'

‘But you don't
want
another officer on the case. You want
me
. I've told you my terms – an' you take them or leave them.'

‘It was never my intention to hurt any of the hostages,' the Major said. ‘You believe that, don't you?'

‘I believe that you've put twenty innocent people in danger, an' that they'll probably have nightmares about it for the rest of their lives,' Woodend told him. ‘So whatever else you do, don't go lookin' for a good conduct medal from me, Major Maitland.'

Woodend turned round, and headed for the door.

‘I haven't said you can go yet,' Maitland called after him.