The Ring of Death (17 page)

‘Must have had it in
her
, though, hey, Brian?' asked the younger plumber, nudging his partner in the ribs.

‘Bit of a ladies' man, was he?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Well, you know what us lads are like when we're offered the chance of a bit of loose,' the older plumber replied. Then, as the last two words that Paniatowski had spoken began to sink into his underemployed brain, he frowned. ‘Did you just say, “Bit of a ladies' man,
was
he”?'

‘That's right,' Paniatowski agreed. ‘He didn't look like much of a ladies' man the last time
I
saw him, but then most men don't when they've had their throats ripped out.'

‘Was he . . . was he dead?' the older plumber asked, incredulously.

‘Either that, or he was doing the best bloody impression I've ever seen in my life,' Paniatowski replied.

‘But he was only in here last night,' the good-looking electrician said.

‘No, he wasn't,' the spotty one disagreed. ‘I remember you sayin' that you wondered what had happened to him.'

‘And now you know,' Paniatowski said.

‘Was he . . . I mean, do you know if . . .?' the older plumber began.

‘If you can remember back as far as two minutes ago, you'll recall that I told you
I'd
be the one who'd be asking the questions,' Paniatowski said sharply, producing her warrant card.

‘Of course, Sergeant,' the older plumber said shakily.

‘That's
Chief Inspector
!' Paniatowski barked.

‘Of course, Chief Inspector,' the older plumber said.

Well, that was the softening-up process over and done with, Paniatowski thought.

‘The man who you all spent so much time boozing with used to go home and knock his wife about,' she said. ‘You were aware of that, weren't you?'

The four tradesmen bowed their heads like guilty schoolboys.

‘We knew they didn't always get on well together, but we never really talked about what went on at home,' the spotty electrician said.

Which was about as close to an admission that they
did
know about it as any of them was likely to make.

‘You hinted that he had an eye for the ladies,' Paniatowski said.

‘That was just our bit of fun,' the older plumber replied, back-tracking furiously. ‘Fellers like us don't go chasin' skirt. All we want after a hard day's work is a few pints.'

‘So no girlfriends?'

‘None he ever told us about.'

‘What about enemies?'

‘Enemies? Simon didn't have any of them. Everybody thought he was a good lad.'

‘Really?' Paniatowski asked sceptically. ‘Well, let me tell you, I've just been talking to his wife, and she's not exactly his biggest fan.'

‘Ah, but she's a woman, you see,' the older plumber explained. ‘Simon was more of a man's man.'

‘So he wasn't in here last night,' Paniatowski said. ‘But he was
never
in here on Thursday nights, was he?'

‘No, he wasn't,' the spotty electrician said. ‘We all miss the occasional night, but now I come to think about it, it was
always
Thursday that Simon missed.'

‘So maybe he
did
have a bit on the side, after all,' the younger plumber suggested. ‘Maybe a married lass, whose husband was always away on Thursday nights.'

‘Do you really think that if Simon had been getting a bit of married nooky he'd have been able to keep quiet about it – especially after a few pints?' the older plumber asked scornfully.

‘No, I don't suppose he would,' the younger plumber admitted.

‘And I'm bloody sure he wouldn't,' Paniatowski thought.

The butler had announced that his name was Mr Lennox.

Not
Sam
Lennox or
Jack
Lennox, but
Mr
Lennox.

Beresford considered that affectation ridiculous. After all, this was the 1970s, for God's sake. The Beatles, with their mould-breaking informality, had been and gone. Now, kids who would once have called their parents' adult friends Uncle Sid and Auntie Elsie referred to them quite openly as just Sid and Elsie. And yet, as far as this man was concerned, nothing seemed to have changed.

There were other things about the butler which were anachronisms, too. Though it was a warm summer day, he was wearing both a jacket and a waistcoat. And though Beresford was a police inspector, and he was – when all was said and done – no more than a domestic servant – he gave the impression that in deigning to grant the other man an interview
at all
, he was being gracious well beyond the bounds of necessity.

‘How many people work at Ashton Court?' Beresford asked.

‘Sir William has a staff of twelve in his service,' the butler replied.

‘And do they all live here?'

Lennox wrinkled his nose in what might have been contempt at the question or merely contempt at the situation.

‘Oh, dear me, no,' he said. ‘With the exception of myself and my lady wife, who is the housekeeper, all the staff are provided by an agency, and come in on a daily basis.'

‘Why does Langley use agency staff?' Beresford wondered.

‘Sir William has no choice in the matter,' the butler told him. ‘There was a belief in service in this country before the War, but that is now quite gone, and I shall never forgive Adolf Hitler for destroying it.'

‘I'm sure he'd be mortified to hear that, if he was still alive,' Beresford thought.

‘So what hours do the agency staff work?' he asked aloud.

‘That depends on the circumstances. If Sir William has a dinner party – and is prepared to pay out ruinous amounts of money in overtime – they will condescend to stay quite late. Otherwise, the agency minibus picks them up at six o'clock in the evening, leaving myself and Mrs Lennox to run the whole establishment alone.'

‘What about last night?'

‘Last night, they left at six, as usual,'

‘Leaving who, exactly, in the house?'

‘Just myself and my wife.'

‘Not Langley and his wife?'

‘Sir William was out attending one of the numerous functions to which he is invited. Lady Langley is away on a cruise.'

‘So what time
did
Langley get home?'

‘That, I cannot say. My wife and I, as is our custom, went to bed at around nine o'clock.'

‘That's rather early, isn't it?' Beresford asked.

The butler sniffed. ‘For you, perhaps. But we have a household to run, and that necessitates being up very early in the morning.'

‘Very commendable, I'm sure,' Beresford said.

But having seen the butler's bloodshot eyes and the broken veins in his cheeks, he did not really think it was just tiredness which drove the couple to bed so early.

It was two young boys who found the van parked in front of the loading bay of one of the derelict mills in Whitebridge's industrial wasteland.

They had not been expecting to find it. They had not been expecting excitement of any kind as they took a short-cut from their school to the games field. And – as they raced each other on their bicycles – perhaps they wouldn't even have noticed it at all, but for the fact that it was on fire.

The boys dropped their bikes, and cautiously approached the burning vehicle. It was a yellow van, with two ladders strapped to the roof. Flames were licking the paintwork on the side, making the stencilled sign which said ‘Simon Stockwell, Painter and Decorator' bubble and blister.

‘We shouldn't get any closer,' the older boy said worriedly.

‘It'll be all right,' the other assured him.

The first boy was not convinced. ‘When a car's on fire, it can blow up,' he said. ‘I've seen it on the telly.'

‘This isn't a car, it's a van,' his friend said contemptuously.

But even so, he had come to a halt.

The flames had reached the roof by now, and were greedily devouring the wooden ladders, which were encrusted at their bases with earth from Sir William Langley's estate, and would have been of great interest to Whitebridge Police's forensic department.

There were other things about the van which would have been of interest to the department, too – in fact, it would have had a field day with the vehicle – but the fire was rapidly destroying them all.

The older boy checked his watch – which he had been given for his birthday – and saw that it was twelve-forty-seven. He must remember that, he thought. Somebody, he was convinced, had deliberately set fire to the van, and the police would surely want to know all the details.

He was already starting to see himself as the star witness, who would help to solve this serious – this very
important
– crime.

The bobbies would be
very
impressed with him, he thought. They might even give him a medal.

He looked around for any signs of the master criminal who had started the fire, but the arsonist seemed to be long gone.

It was the tins of paint thinner which finally brought the process to its spectacular end. As the van had got hotter and hotter, they had begun bubbling uncomfortably, and now they could bear the strain no longer. They exploded, and in the process ignited all other flammable liquids which surrounded them.

There was a terrific boom, and the van was lifted several feet into the air, before crashing down again.

The two boys were knocked over by the blast, but were otherwise unhurt.

‘Better than the pictures, this, isn't it?' asked the elder boy, as he scrambled to his feet.

And his younger companion could do no more than agree with him.

FIFTEEN

G
eorge Baxter was not, by nature, a corporate animal, but since he was the chief constable of Central Lancs – and since chief constables were expected to put in an appearance at all kinds of functions and events – he forced himself to go through the motions, and even did his best to look as if he was more or less enjoying himself.

Even so, these events never got any easier for him to take, and he often found himself wondering – usually about halfway through the proceedings – if he should jack in his current post, and go back to being a simple street-level bobby whose only job was to hunt down criminals.

Yet even as he toyed around with the idea, he knew it was never going to happen. There
was
no going back, because there wasn't a chief constable in the entire country who would have been happy about having an
ex
-chief constable under his command.

Today, he was attending a Rotary lunch at the Whitebridge Golf and Country Club, and in order to make the whole thing as painless as possible, he had planned to arrive just as the pre-lunch drinks were coming to an end and the Rotarians were slowly making their way into the restaurant.

The moment he walked through the bar door, however, he saw that the expected exodus was far from happening, and realized that either he had got his calculations wrong or there had been some unforeseen delay.

‘What's the problem, Terry?' he asked one of the waiters who was standing near the door to the restaurant. ‘Shouldn't we be getting stuck into the grub by now?'

‘You certainly should, sir,' the waiter agreed. ‘But there's been a power cut, you see, and it's thrown everything out of kilter. You won't be sitting down for at least another fifteen minutes.'

‘Well, bollocks!' Baxter said,
almost
under his breath.

It wasn't that he disliked the Rotarians as a whole, he thought, as he headed for the bar.

Some of them
were great fellers, and the work they did for charity was outstanding.

But there were
others
who were so impressed with themselves that they were almost insufferable – and it was with one of these complacent, self-congratulatory toads that he invariably found himself stuck in a corner.

He looked around the room, and his eye fell on a red-faced man who looked so much like a country squire that the effect was to turn him into a grotesque parody of one.

‘A case in point,' he thought.

Sir William Langley, investment banker and property magnate, was just the kind of Rotarian he most disliked.

Baxter knew quite a lot – more than he would ever have cared to – about the other man, including the facts that he hadn't always been either
Sir
William
or
a banker.

Langley, he'd been told, had first gone into business in the fifties, just at the time when working-class aspirations had expanded to include ownership of their own vehicles. And he had, by all accounts, been brilliant at catering for that need, buying clapped-out cars from their middle-class owners for cash, and selling them on again at credit terms which would have made the Mafia blush with embarrassment.

But that was all behind the man now – or so he thought. He saw himself, as was obvious whenever he opened his mouth, as someone who had earned the right to be admired.

And maybe some people
did
admire him, Baxter thought, but that certainly didn't include the older members of the Golf and Country Club.
They
still remembered being summoned to their doors by a knock – sometimes quite late in the evening – and opening it to find Langley standing there, with a roll of banknotes in his hand and an avaricious look on his face. Oh yes, they remembered all right, and sometimes – when he was not present himself, they would refer to him as ‘Bumptious Bill the Banger Buyer'.

Given that Langley had had a nasty shock that morning – and then been dragged reluctantly into the middle of a major investigation – Baxter supposed he'd better go and have a word with the man. But, as it happened, that proved unnecessary, since the moment Langley noticed the chief constable standing there, he made a bee-line for him.