The Ring of Death (16 page)

When a murder inquiry was underway, the incident room in Whitebridge Police HQ looked much as it had done in the days when he'd been a humble detective constable, Beresford thought.

There was still a large old-fashioned blackboard at the front of the room. There were still a series of desks – laid out in a horseshoe pattern for easier communication – with a newly drafted-in DC sitting at every desk and talking earnestly on the telephone. The only thing which
had
changed, he supposed, was him. He was no longer a fresh-faced bobby looking up to the inspector for guidance – he
was
that inspector.

And he liked his new role. He really did. But there were times when – looking back on those still recent days when he'd been a sergeant, Monika had been an inspector, and they'd been out in the field together – he felt a great sense of loss.

But this wasn't the moment for nostalgia, he told himself. The boss had given him a job to do, and it was up to him to bloody well do it.

He walked the length of the room, listening at random to some of the constables' telephone conversations in their entirety and catching just a phrase or two of others.

‘So, apart from that one time he defaulted, Mr Stockwell's been keeping up on the regular payments on his decorator's van, has he?' one of the constables was asking a clerk at the finance company.

‘And Sir William Langley left the school in which year?' another was saying. ‘Yes, I do realize that would make you the oldest school secretary in the business if you'd actually been there at the time, but I assume there are records you can check . . . Yes, thank you. Did he apply to go to university? . . . Oh, you wouldn't have a record of that, even if he did.'

‘Did Stockwell ever come into your pub with a big man who walked like he might have been a soldier? . . . No, I didn't specifically say Andy Adair! Will you answer the question as I phrased it, Mr Simpson.'

‘I can assure you, sir, we are not conducting an investigation into your friend Sir William. It's merely that his name came up in the investigation we
are
conducting . . . No, I'm afraid I can't give you any details of that investigation.'

Beresford returned to his desk. The brief the boss had given him had been to try and establish a link between Simon Stockwell and Sir William Langley, and so far he'd been singularly unsuccessful. In fact, he admitted to himself, the more his team discovered about the two men, the wider the gap between them grew.

He glanced down at the team's findings so far:

Langley and Stockwell had been born at different ends of the town, twenty years apart.

Langley had gone to the local grammar school, Stockwell had attended a secondary modern.

Young Langley had been a Cub, and then a Boy Scout, the Scouting Association had confirmed. Young Stockwell had belonged to several gangs of tearaways, his probation officer had noted in his record.

Stockwell never bought a car from the other man in Langley's motor-business days, and it went without saying that now Langley had moved on to bigger and better things, Simon Stockwell was most definitely not one of the investors in his merchant bank.

Langley was a big wheel in the Whitebridge Golf and Country Club, Stockwell spent most of his free time in the Clog and Billycock.

Langley usually went to Italy for a month in the summer, Stockwell's family were lucky if they got the occasional day trip to Blackpool.

Langley was a staunch Conservative, Stockwell voted Labour when he could be bothered.

Neither of them seemed to have ever been to Northern Ireland, or to have had any significant connection with anybody Irish.

And last – but not bloody least – the Inland Revenue was adamant that Stockwell had never done any paid work for Langley as a decorator, or in any other capacity.

Beresford ran his glance over the horseshoe of desks, and once again felt the yearning to be back out pounding the streets.

He wouldn't be missed in headquarters if he slipped away for an hour or so, he managed to persuade himself, so perhaps he'd go and see how DS Cousins was getting on at Ashton Court.

FOURTEEN

‘
I
think we've found what you were looking for, Sarge,' one of the uniformed constables said, pointing to the foot of the wall which surrounded Sir William Langley's estate.

Cousins bent down and examined the two rectangular indentations – both four inches long and two inches broad – which had been made in the earth.

‘What would you say they indicate, Constable Pickering?' he asked.

‘A ladder,' Pickering said dutifully.

‘Couldn't be anything else, could it?' Cousins agreed. ‘So this is where the bastard gained access.'

Pickering knelt and ran his finger across the dip. ‘Do you think so, Sarge?' he asked dubiously.

‘Don't you?' Cousins replied.

‘Well, I don't know,' Pickering admitted. ‘There's no chance he could have brought the body in some time
before
last night, is there?'

‘No, there isn't,' Cousins said. ‘Stockwell was seen alive as late as yesterday afternoon. What makes you ask that?'

‘Well, I do a bit of gardening, you see – on an allotment,' Pickering said, in a low voice, as if he didn't want the other constable to hear him.

‘So?'

‘So you can tell when earth's been turned over by the state it's in. Its texture, and that. I think it's something to do with oxidation.'

‘Possibly it is,' Cousins said, impatiently, ‘but what's your point, lad?'

‘I think these indentations are more than a few hours old.'

‘Do you, by God?' Cousins asked. ‘Then let's go and see if we can find any more.'

They found a second set of indentations half a dozen yards further along the wall.

‘
Now
do you see why I thought it would be useful to bring a second pair of eyes along?' Cousins said.

The constable nodded. ‘Yes, Sarge.'

‘And are these indentations more recent than the others?'

‘Definitely.'

‘They're deeper, too,' Cousins mused. ‘What does that tell us?'

‘That there was more pressure on the ladder.'

‘And why was that?'

‘Because a different man – a heavier one climbed up it. Or maybe . . . maybe it was the same man, but he was carrying something!'

‘Like
a corpse
,' Cousins said grimly. ‘God, he's a cold-blooded bastard, this killer.'

‘You can say that again,' Pickering agreed. ‘To have ripped somebody's throat out like he did, and then take the body and—'

‘That's not what I meant,' Cousins interrupted. ‘I'm talking about the fact that there are
two
sets of ladder impressions, instead of just
one –
and that according to you, the first one's older.'

‘So . . . so he didn't
just
dump the body last night . . .' Pickering gasped.

‘That's right,' Cousins agreed. ‘He'd been here before, to do a dry run.'

When Colin Beresford saw the two men kneeling at the base of the wall – and examining something they obviously regarded as significant – he felt a twinge of envy which he recognized as both unworthy of him and as almost inevitable.

He coughed, partly through embarrassment, partly to let them know he was there.

Cousins looked up. ‘Something wrong, sir?'

‘No,' Beresford replied, realizing he was sounding defensive. ‘Why should there be?'

‘No reason at all,' Cousins replied reasonably. ‘I just didn't expect to see you here, that's all.'

‘Meaning I should be back at HQ,' Beresford thought. ‘Meaning I have no business abandoning my post and gallivanting about the countryside!'

‘So what have you found?' he asked aloud.

‘We think this is where he got in, sir – and that's mainly down to Constable Pickering's smart thinking, because if it had been left up to me, I'd still have been looking somewhere else.'

‘How did he manage it?' Beresford asked, trying to sound inspectorial.

‘The way we have it figured, he rested the first ladder against the wall, then climbed up it, carrying the second ladder. When he reached the top of the wall, he lowered the second ladder down on to the other side. Once he'd done that, he climbed back down again to pick up the body.'

‘Why would he have done it that way,' Beresford wondered. ‘Why not just use one ladder and drop the body over the wall?'

‘We think he didn't want to run the risk of damaging it, sir. We think he wanted it to look exactly as it
did
look when Langley found it.'

That made sense, Beresford thought.

‘Have you checked for ladder impressions on the other side of the wall?' he asked.

‘Not yet, sir, but it's our next step. I'll also have the lads look for tyre tracks on
this
side of the wall, and for anything the killer might have inadvertently dropped while he was carrying the body.'

‘He's got it all under control,' Beresford thought, disappointedly. ‘There's absolutely nothing here for me to do.'

‘Have you questioned the staff?' he asked.

‘Not yet,' Cousins said. ‘But it's down on what my wife used to call my “to do” list.'

‘
I
might as well question them, since I'm here,' Beresford said, and when he saw the puzzled look come to Cousins' face, he said, ‘It'll save you a job.'

‘I suppose it will, sir,' Cousins agreed.

The public bar of the Drum and Monkey was the haunt of men who made their living with their sheer muscle power – men who dug ditches and carried builder's hods weighed down with bricks. The Clog and Billycock, on the other hand, seemed to cater for men who were one step up the job ladder, and surveying the car park, Paniatowski counted eight tradesman's vans.

She entered the pub and went straight over to the bar, where she found the landlord half-heartedly polishing a pint glass.

‘Yes?' he said, the tone of his voice suggesting that he regarded customers as an unnecessary intrusion on his privacy.

Paniatowski showed him her warrant card. ‘I'm looking for anyone who might know Simon Stockwell.'

The landlord sniffed. ‘Then you'll want to talk to that lot over there,' he said, pointing.

There were four men sitting around the table that he'd indicated. Two of them were wearing blue overalls, which said on them that they worked for Speedy Plumbers. The other two, in brown, were employed by Hanson Electrical.

‘Just look at them,' the landlord said sourly. ‘God's gift to home improvements.'

‘He drinks with them regularly, does he?'

‘Regular enough. Most dinnertimes
and
most evenings.' the landlord said. ‘Can I get you a drink?' he asked, belatedly remembering what he was there for.

‘What brands of vodka do you stock?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Vodka?' the landlord repeated, as if the word were as alien to him as it would be to a Himalayan goat herder. ‘I don't think we stock
any
. There's no call for it.'

‘That's what I thought,' Paniatowski said. ‘Thank you for your time.'

The four men were already deep in conversation as Paniatowski crossed the room, and it was the elder of the plumbers who was holding the floor.

‘So I says to her,' he was telling the others, ‘I says, “Look, lady, I can do it cheap if you like, but cheap can work out very expensive in the long run.” An' she says to me, “Well, if you're convinced that these copper-cryptic pipes are the best, I'd better have them, hadn't I?” So copper-cryptic pipes it was.'

‘I don't think I've ever heard of copper-cryptic pipes,' one of the electricians said.

The plumber chuckled. ‘That's hardly surprisin', considerin' I'd just made the name up.'

The four men became aware of Paniatowski's arrival simultaneously, though their reactions to her were all different. The better-looking of the electricians gave her a broad smile, suggesting that, if she played her cards right, she could have him. His spotty partner, on the other hand, was already reconciled to failure, and contented himself with staring at her breasts. The younger plumber looked to his mate for guidance about the nature of the fun which was bound to follow. And the older plumber sucked in his gut – as if he thought that by this one act he could hide all the evidence of twenty years' over-indulgence in ale and fry-ups.

She knew them all, Paniatowski thought. They were the lads who had hung around on street corners and shouted obscenities after the twelve-year-old Monika. They were the callow – and callous – police cadets, who had covered their own feelings of inadequacy by picking on another cadet, simply because she had the nerve to be a woman.

On their own, they were nothing. But put them in a group, and it wouldn't take them long to persuade each other that the girl who had drunk too much – and passed out in the corner of the bar – really
wanted
all of them to have sex with her.

It was the older plumber who fired the opening salvo, just as she'd expected it would be.

‘Well, well, well,' he said, with a lasciviousness which would have been insulting if he hadn't been pathetic. ‘Just look what we've got here. And what can we do for
you
, Sweetie?'

‘I'd like to ask you a few questions about Simon Stockwell,' Paniatowski said.

‘Got you up the duff, has he?' the older plumber chortled. ‘I didn't know he had it in him.'