The Ring of Death (32 page)

Paniatowski did as instructed, opened the door, stepped inside the cottage – and gasped.

She had expected to find herself in a flagstoned corridor which ran right to the back of the house, where the kitchen – with its old copper boiler – would be located. She had
expected there to be several doors leading off that corridor – doors which gave access to parlours and bedrooms and storage areas.

But it wasn't like that at all!

The retaining walls – which had originally both held the house together and supported the heavy roof – had all been removed, and steel joists put in their place, so what she had actually entered was not a cottage at all, but one very large room.

And a room designed with one specific purpose in mind!

There was seating around three of the walls, arranged in tiers. And in the centre was a pit enclosed by a two-foot high concrete wall.

Paniatowski shuddered.

She thought she knew why the killer had stripped his victims naked, ripped out their throats and posed them on their hands and knees.

She thought she knew why he had put his last two victims on display in Whitebridge Rovers' stadium, and had had them facing each other.

‘Is this really what it looks like, boss?' Colin Beresford asked, in a choked voice.

‘I'm afraid it is,' Paniatowski replied, still horrified – still not quite able to grasp the enormity of it all. ‘I don't see what else it could be.'

The inspector from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said his name was Bailey. He was probably only in his early forties, but his hair was greying and the frown lines on his forehead were showing signs of becoming a permanent feature. In many ways, he looked the epitome of the over-worked, undersatisfied official who could be found in every organization.

And then you looked at his eyes, Paniatowski thought.

The eyes were pale and washed-out, yet it was still possible to read in them the horrors he had seen, and despair it had brought him.

‘Well, one thing I
can
say for certain is that they weren't trained here,' he told Paniatowski, after he'd glanced briefly around the room.

‘How can you be sure of that?'

‘If they'd been trained here, we'd have found the equipment. And we haven't.'

‘Equipment?' Paniatowski repeated.

‘They train the dogs almost like sports promoters train their boxers – except that it's a much more vicious process. Part of the training is to hang heavy weights around their necks, in order to strengthen the neck muscles. And they also have them running on treadmills.'

‘Running on treadmills! How the hell do they make dogs do that?'

Bailey laughed hollowly. ‘They give them an incentive, don't they?'

‘What kind of incentive?'

‘They have what they call the “bait” tied down at the end of the treadmill. It can sometimes be a wild animal, like a rabbit, but it's usually easier to use a domestic pet – a kitten or a small dog.'

‘Where do they get them from?'

‘Sometimes they'll snatch a pet off the street. Sometimes they'll answer newspaper adverts which offer an animal to anybody who can give it a good home. Anyway, the dog on the treadmill can see the bait, and he wants to tear it apart, as he's been trained to do, but the treadmill's moving so fast that he can't reach it however hard he runs. Later on, of course, when the training's over, the dog will often be given the bait as a reward.' Bailey grinned grimly. ‘That enough detail for you?'

‘No,' Paniatowski said firmly. ‘I'm going to pay a visit to the bastard who's responsible for all this, and before I do, I want to know exactly what he's been up to.' She looked across at the pit. ‘So there was no training in here. But there was fighting, wasn't there?'

‘Undoubtedly. You can see the bloodstains in the concrete. Besides, if there hadn't been fighting, there'd have been no need for the tubs.'

‘What tubs?'

‘Those in the corner,' Bailey said, pointing.

‘They look like baby baths.'

‘And that's exactly what they are. Before the fight begins, each owner gives the other owner's dog a thorough washing down.'

‘Each owner washes the
other
owner's dog?' Paniatowski repeated, to make sure she'd heard Bailey correctly.

‘That's right.'

‘Why?'

‘To make sure the owner hasn't put poison on his dog's fur.'

‘But surely that would poison his own dog as well,' Paniatowski said.

‘Yes, it would. But it takes longer to absorb through the skin than it does through the mouth, and by the time the owner's own dog started to feel the effects, the fight would be over.'

‘That's vile!' Paniatowski said.

‘Isn't it just?' Bailey agreed. He walked over to the tubs and bent down. When he stood up again, he was holding two tapered pieces of wood in his hand. ‘And then there's these,' he continued. ‘They're what you call “bite sticks”.'

‘And what are they used for?'

‘You can match up all kinds of dogs against each other – and the promoters often do. But the true “connoisseurs” claim that there's no fight like a fight between two Staffordshire pit-bull terriers – and Staffies have really powerful jaws.'

‘So?'

‘So sometimes one of the dogs gets its teeth deeply imbedded in the flesh of its opponent, and won't let go. Well, there's no “entertainment” in watching two dogs just standing there, is there – even if one of the dogs
is
suffering horribly. So they use the bite stick to prise his jaws apart and pull him off.'

‘How long does one of these fights go on for?'

‘Until one of the dogs is judged to be beaten. That can take hours – and I mean
literally
hours.'

‘And when the fight's over?'

‘Are you
sure
you want all the details?' Bailey asked.

‘Yes.'

‘It all depends on the condition of the dogs. If the winner's not too badly injured, then he might just live to fight another day, providing, of course, that he manages to survive his injuries without any proper medical care. If he is badly injured, then he's killed.'

‘What about the dog that loses?'

‘The very
fact
that he's lost usually means he'll never be of any use again. So they're almost
always
killed.' Bailey paused. ‘The lucky ones are shot.'

‘And the others?' Paniatowski asked, though she didn't really want to. ‘The ones that
aren't
so lucky?'

‘Listen, you don't really need to . . .'

‘Yes, I bloody do!'

‘If a dog loses, it's seen as a reflection on the poor animal's owner. He becomes a figure of ridicule to everybody else in the room. He didn't exactly
love
his dog before the fight, but he absolutely
hates
it now. So he doesn't
just
kill it – he makes it suffer for letting him down first. And he usually does that in front of all the other men who've been watching the fight. Sometimes he hacks it to death, sometimes he hangs it. Nobody there objects. Well, it's just a bit of fun, isn't it?'

‘What kind of people
are
these?' Paniatowski asked.

‘They are two kinds of animals involved in a dog fight,' Bailey said grimly. ‘There are the ones fighting in the pit and the ones sitting in the seats watching it. And it's the spectators who are the
real
animals.'

TWENTY-SEVEN

T
he chunky security guard waited until the MGA had pulled up in front of the Ashton Court gatekeeper's lodge, and then opened the side gate and ambled over to the car as if he had all the time in the world.

Paniatowski, drumming her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, watched his progress, and tagged him immediately as a slightly upgraded nightclub bouncer who confused swagger with intelligence.

The guard reached the car, removed his sunglasses, and leant casually against the bonnet.

‘I don't know why you're here, but I've got strict instructions that nobody's to be admitted unless I've been notified in advance,' he said, chomping down on his chewing gum. ‘In other words, sweetheart, you can't come in.'

‘Guess again,' Paniatowski said, holding out the search warrant and her own warrant card.

The guard gave them no more than a cursory glance. ‘Nobody's told
me
about this,' he muttered.

‘Oh, haven't they?' Paniatowski asked. ‘Maybe that's because they didn't think that
you
needed to be consulted.'

The guard shook his head uncertainly from side to side. ‘I think we'd better wait until your boss arrives.'

‘I
am
the boss, you moron, as you'd have seen for yourself if you'd bothered to look at my warrant card properly.'

‘There's no need to take that attitude,' the guard said, tensing.

‘Look, I'm having a bad day,' Paniatowski told him. ‘And that's not an apology – it's a warning. I'm going to count to ten, and if the gates aren't open by the time I've finished, I'll arrest you for obstruction, and anything else I think I might be able to make stick.'

‘Do you mind if I call through to the house, and tell Sir William you've arrived?' asked the guard, much more conciliatory now.

‘Yes, I
do
bloody mind!' Paniatowski exploded. ‘I want my visit to come as a complete surprise to that bastard Langley – and, if doesn't, I'll have your guts for garters.'

‘You really are in a bit of a bad mood, aren't you?' the security guard asked wonderingly.

‘So would you be, if you'd just come from where I have,' Paniatowski told him.

As the guard walked back to the lodge – at a much more energetic pace this time – she revved her engine, and the moment the gates were open she shot forth from a racing start.

She'd knocked the mental stuffing out of the thug at the gate, she thought – but that was nothing to what she was planning to do to his boss.

Sir William Langley was in his study when he heard the sound of the car coming up the driveway towards the house – and immediately felt the taste of fear gushing into his mouth.

He was being irrational, he told himself angrily. He had six highly trained (and very expensive) guards patrolling the grounds of Ashton Court, and if the person driving the car had been thought by them to present any danger, they would never have let him get that far.

‘Calm down!' he ordered his racing pulse and galloping heart. ‘For God's sake, calm down!'

He looked around his study, and immediately started to feel better.

It was such a soothing room, he thought. It had so much obvious
class
.

His eyes swept along row after row of leather-bound books, all of them with the brown spines and golden lettering which chimed in perfectly with the rest of the colour scheme.

He let his gaze fall for a few seconds on the large oak table at far end of the study, which he had chosen instead of a desk because, he had been told, gentlemen always
preferred
tables.

A half-turn, and he was looking at the monumental fireplace he had bought from a derelict castle in Scotland, and the skin of a tiger in front of it, and which visitors always believed – erroneously, as it happened – had been shot by one of his ancestors.

The noise of the car's engine had died away, and Sir William assumed that whoever the driver was, he was probably being dealt with by one of his employees. But now there was a new distraction – the sound of two people walking rapidly down the passageway.

‘I've told the staff, time and time again, not to run,' Sir William thought crossly. ‘In the
best
houses, the servants wouldn't run even if the whole bally building was on fire.'

The study door flew violently open, and suddenly Monika Paniatowski was in the room, with a red-faced maid at heels.

‘I . . . I told her you were busy, sir,' the maid wailed across at him. ‘I said you weren't seeing anybody. But she just barged past me.'

Langley frowned at the unwelcome intruder.

‘Really, this is
too much
, Chief Inspector,' he said haughtily. ‘I'm all for cooperating with the authorities, but if you wished to see me, it would surely have been no more than common courtesy to ring and make an app—'

‘Shut up!' Paniatowski said.

Sir William flushed, hardly able to believe what he'd just heard. ‘I beg your pardon?'

Paniatowski swung round to face the maid

‘Unless you want to be arrested, you'd better leave now,' she advised.

The maid hesitated for the briefest of moments, then took her at her word – and fled.

‘This really is most unwarranted, and I shall certainly be lodging a personal complaint with your chief constable,' Langley said.

‘Will you now?' Paniatowski asked. ‘And will you be telling him about Moors' Edge Farm, as well?'

A hint of panic entered Langley's eyes for a second, and then was gone.

‘Moors' Edge Farm?' he said. ‘Where's that?'

‘As its name suggests, it's a farm on the edge of the moors.'

‘I assumed that to be the case, but . . .'

‘Where's all the outrage gone?' Paniatowski wondered.

‘I'm sorry, but I don't . . .'

‘
A minute ago
you were furious that I'd had the audacity to tell you to shut up.
Thirty seconds ago
you were threatening me with the chief constable. I'm surprised that you've calmed down so quickly. Or maybe I'm not. Maybe that's what fear
does
to a man like you.'