‘Her Prince Charmin’! The man who was goin’ to take her on a glamorous cruise.’

  ‘Had she ever mentioned him before?’

  ‘No. She told us he’d asked her not to talk about him, on account of him bein’ married. We didn’t fall for that, of course.’

  ‘You didn’t believe he was married?’

  ‘We didn’t believe he existed. She was always makin’ up stories. Called herself Mrs Tonge, didn’t she? Said she was a widow.’

  ‘And wasn’t she?’

  ‘Course she wasn’t! She’s from Preston, like my Auntie Gladys, an’ my auntie told me she’d never been married.’

  ‘So why do you think she pretended she had?’

  ‘For the same reason she invented her Prince Charmin’. To try an’ convince us that she could pull men if she wanted to. We weren’t fooled. A man’d have to be blind an’ stupid to want anythin’ to do with Lucy Tonge. If you ask me, whoever killed her probably mistook her for somebody else.’

  Poor Lucy, Rutter thought. Poor miserable Lucy. Even in death, she was being denied her due.

  The note on his desk said the Chief Constable wanted to see him as soon as he came in. Well, he should have expected that, Woodend supposed. Sharks could smell blood, vultures could smell death. And Henry Marlowe – who had the worst characteristics of both of them – could smell a threat to his career even with the wind blowing in the wrong direction.

  Woodend walked along the corridor and knocked on the Chief Constable’s door.

  The previous chief constable had always got off his chair to greet his visitors at the door. Marlowe, believing that his desk enhanced his position, had never been tempted to indulge in such a dangerously democratic experiment, and merely called out that Woodend should enter.

  The Chief Constable was not alone. Sitting next to him – on the authority side of the desk – was Detective Chief Superintendent Newton.

  Newton was a comparatively new boy to the Mid Lancs Force. Woodend had not expected to like him, and the Chief Superintendent had lived up to that expectation. He reminded Woodend of some of the sergeants he had known in the Army – men who would lick their superiors’ boots as long as that gave them the right to inflict the same humiliation on those below them.

  The Chief Constable looked woefully at Woodend. ‘Two murders, by the same man, in only three days,’ he said. ‘This is a very bad business, Charlie.’

  ‘I’m aware of that, sir,’ Woodend replied.

  ‘The papers aren’t at all happy about it. And who can blame them? Scotland Yard already thinks we’re country bumpkins, and you’re not doing anything to persuade them otherwise.’

  ‘Do you have any specific complaints, sir?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Specific complaints?’ repeated Marlowe, who had an almost pathological fear of being pinned down to a definite opinion. ‘No, I have no specific complaints. They are, by their very nature, operational matters, and it would be quite improper of me to interfere.’ He turned to Newton. ‘Isn’t that right, Duncan?’

  ‘Quite so,’ Newton replied. ‘Operational matters, by their very nature, are my concern.’

  Two people, one voice, Woodend thought. And that voice was undoubtedly Henry Marlowe’s. Woodend wondered if Newton quite appreciated how willing the ventriloquist would be to throw his dummy to the wolves, should the need arise. There was a pause, while Newton waited for Marlowe to speak again. Then, when it became plain that the ventriloquist intended the dummy to have the next line, he cleared his throat, then said, ‘Would you like to outline to us the way in which you’re conducting this investigation, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘I’m followin’ procedures, sir.’

  ‘And what does that mean, exactly?’

  You shouldn’t need to ask, Woodend thought. You should already bloody-well know!

  ‘We’re tryin’ to trace the movements of both victims,’ he said. ‘We’re lookin’ for witnesses. We’re investigatin’ the victims’ backgrounds to see if there are any common factors which link them.’

  ‘And it’s all getting you precisely nowhere,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Solving a case of this nature isn’t always easy, sir,’ Woodend said, adding silently: If it was easy, you’d be doing it yourself, you bastard!

  ‘As you know, DCS Newton is not a man to second-guess those under his command,’ Marlowe said. ‘Apart from that sort of thing being inappropriate, he’s far too busy with his own responsibilities to keep looking over anybody else’s shoulder. But there may come a time when, for the sake of the Force’s reputation, he will feel compelled to step in and take charge himself. Isn’t that right, Duncan?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Newton agreed.

  ‘So there you have it, Chief Inspector,’ Marlowe said. ‘Get a result soon, or the case will be taken over by someone who can.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want you to think I don’t appreciate your custom, but two bodies in three days is rather too much of a good thing,’ Dr Shastri said.

  Paniatowski, weighed down by the case, weighed down by her life, nevertheless managed to force a weak grin to her face.

  ‘Sorry about that, Doc,’ she said.

  ‘And where will it end?’ the doctor asked. ‘I had planned to spend next July with my family in India. Will that still be possible, do you think? Or will trade be so brisk by then that you will be sending the bodies to me on a conveyor belt?’

  ‘This should be the last one for some time,’ Paniatowski said, praying that it was.

  The doctor nodded her head. ‘Good. And now, would you like to know what I and my little scalpel have discovered?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘The woman was in her mid-twenties––’

  ‘We know that. We’ve got her passport. She was twenty-six.’

  Dr Shastri feigned a frown. ‘Please, no more!’ she said. ‘Every job has its perquisites. In the case of a real butcher, he has the opportunity of selecting the finest cuts of meat for his own use. In the case of we medical butchers, we have the satisfaction of telling people things they do not already know, and thus demonstrating how clever we are. Do not deny me that simple pleasure.’

  ‘Sorry!’ Paniatowski said, and this time her grin was genuine.

  ‘The woman was in her mid-twenties,’ Dr Shastri repeated, now that the ground rules had been made clear. ‘She had had her tonsils cut and her appendix removed. Rather unusual for a non-Asian woman of her age, she was still a virgin, though she was wearing a diaphragm – so perhaps she had hopes of getting lucky. It is difficult to say with absolute accuracy, but I would guess that she had between six and nine months left.’

  ‘Left?’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘Left to do what?’

  ‘To live, of course.’

  ‘She was dying?’

  ‘Did I not mention that before?’

  ‘No. Believe me, I’d have remembered if you had.’

  ‘Then let me tell you that this woman was suffering from the same kind of inoperable cancer as the last one you brought me.’

  Twenty-Seven

  ‘So now we’ve got our common factor,’ Woodend said heavily, sliding his over-spilling ashtray from one side of his desk to the other and then back again. ‘One single point at which the life of a middle-aged prostitute an’ that of a timid young shop worker intersect. Both women, in now appears, were outpatients of the Whitebridge General Cancer Wing.’

  ‘Which, you must admit, narrows it down a little,’ Bob Rutter said, attempting a note of optimism.

  ‘Well, aren’t we the Happy Little Bunny this mornin’,’ Woodend said sourly. ‘You’re quite right, of course, Inspector. Now, instead of our murderer bein’ any man in Whitebridge an’ district, we’ve narrowed it down to the doctors, the male orderlies, the cleaners, the maintenance staff, the caterers, men who happened to be there visitin’ other sick people, people with access to the hospital’s medical records, and any feller who bothered to hang about outside the hospital so that he could follow Lucy and Betty an’ find out where they lived. So it should be a doddle from here on in, shouldn’t it?’

  This wasn’t the DCI Woodend she knew, Monika Paniatowski thought, shocked. It was Cloggin’-it Charlie’s way to encourage his team, not to make them feel like something the cat had dragged in. And then she realized that the anger he was showing was not directed at his inspector and his sergeant at all, but at the people behind the ranks – and the way he thought they’d screwed everything up.

  ‘At least we’ve built up a clearer picture of the murderer,’ she said, attempting to steer Woodend’s attention back on to the investigation.

  ‘Have we?’ Woodend asked incredulously. ‘In what way?’

  ‘We now know why he chose Betty and Lucy as his victims.’

  ‘Is that right? Well, I’m probably bein’ thicker than usual, but I can’t say that I know.’

  ‘He chose them because they were particularly vulnerable,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Because, in addition to their other troubles, they had cancer to worry about. He selected them because he knew they were so desperate that they’d probably believe whatever he told them.’

  ‘So we know he’s a meticulous planner. I’d call for a drum roll if we hadn’t already known it.’

  ‘We knew, but perhaps we weren’t fully aware of either the depth of his planning or the extent of his ruthlessness,’ Paniatowski persisted.

  ‘Good God, if that’s all we can learn from one extra death, then we really are in trouble,’ Woodend said. ‘How many more women have to be killed before we get our next clue, Monika? Two? Three? An’ how many murders will it take before we’re finally in a position to make an arrest? A dozen? A hundred? We’re lettin’ down the people we’re supposed to protect. An’ the reason we’re lettin’ them down is that we’re distracted – me included – with what’s goin’ on between the pair of you.’

  ‘With respect, sir, I think you’re wrong about that,’ Rutter interjected. ‘I don’t claim that the relationship is making our jobs any easier, but I don’t think it’s clouding our judgement either. We’re too professional for that.’

  ‘Then why aren’t we gettin’ anywhere with the investigation?’ Woodend bellowed.

  ‘Because this is the cleverest killer, and the most complicated case, that we’ve ever had to deal with,’ Rutter said.

  Woodend grabbed at his ashtray, and for a moment it seemed as if he was intending to hurl it at his inspector. Then he released his grip on it, and lit up a cigarette.

  ‘Aye, perhaps you’re right,’ he said, when a few seconds had passed. ‘Perhaps we’d still have been in this hole even if you had both managed to keep your pants on.’

  ‘And perhaps I’m wrong,’ Rutter admitted. ‘But Monika and I will both try harder from now on.’

  Woodend nodded. ‘There are other potential victims out there who need to be warned,’ he said crisply. ‘Women who attend the Whitebridge cancer wing an’ have suddenly found they’ve got a new friend who seems too good to be true – because he bloody well is! I’ll get on to the BBC local news an’ the Courier. We can rely on both of ’em to get the message across without creatin’ a panic. As for you two . . .’ he paused, undecidedly, ‘. . . do you think you can work together without your private affairs gettin’ in the way?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘No question,’ Rutter agreed.

  ‘Then get down to the hospital with all the manpower you can muster. I want everybody who works there interviewed, and all the interviews cross-checkin’. I want a list of all the patients who’ve been admitted in the last six months, so we can question their male visitors. An’ if anybody has noticed a man on his own loiterin’ outside – even just the once – then I want to know about that, too. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ Rutter and Paniatowski said in unison.

  ‘Then bloody get on with it before we have another stiff to explain away,’ Woodend told them.

  LH had had his first nervous breakdown only days after coming out of the jungle. He’d been pronounced completely cured a year later. Three months after that, he’d tried to hang himself.

  It had been during his second stretch in the mental institution that he’d begun to fumble in the darkness of his own insanity for a strategy which might help him to survive. And he’d found it. He had found it! Not the doctors who claimed to be curing him – but he himself!

  Everyone had said that what he had done in the jungle had not been his fault, he’d argued. So whose fault was it?

  Not the fault of war! Such abstract concepts were of no value to a man who had spilled hot blood.

  Then on whom could he lay the blame? On the woman he had killed, of course! If she hadn’t have been there that night, he couldn’t have slit her throat. And it was her choice that she had been there – not his!

  War was men’s business. That had been accepted throughout the ages. The woman should have known this. It was her job to stay at home – to be ready to minister to her husband when he returned from the fighting.

  From there it had been just a small step to seeing all women as traitors – traitors to the role they had been given in life, traitors to the men they had married. The enemy was not the foreigners with guns lurking outside the camp, but the women within it.

  Women had a sacred duty to their men. And even if the men died, the obligation was not at an end, for now the duty was transferred to preserving the dead men’s memory. Yet how many women took these duties to heart? Virtually none!

  It was a crime. It was a sin. And these women – these betrayers – should not go unpunished.

  Twenty-Eight

  Rutter and Paniatowski sat opposite each other in the main office of the cancer wing of Whitebridge General. It had taken a court order to get their hands of the mountains of files which they both had piled up beside them – and it would take a miracle to work their way through them in less than a week.

  In other parts of the hospital wing, detective constables were questioning the staff.

  – Do you remember either of these two women? Did you contact them outside the hospital?

  – Did you notice any male visitors who paid particular attention to any patient other than the one he was visiting?

  – Did you see anyone suspicious hanging about the grounds?

  It was a procedure which had to be followed, and it was always possible that it would get results, but neither Paniatowski nor Rutter had any faith in it.

  Mr X had been seeing both Betty Stubbs and Lucy Tonge, yet the investigation so far had not been able to turn up a single witness who had noticed him with either of the women. How likely was it then that, having walked the subtle tightrope with his victims, he would allow a casual encounter with a hospital worker to bring him crashing down?

  The phone on the desk rang, and Rutter picked it up. Paniatowski heard him say, ‘Hello? Oh, it’s you, my darling,’ and developed a sudden interest in the file in front of her.

  ‘Yes?’ Rutter said. ‘What! . . . You’re sure about that? . . . Why didn’t you tell me last night? . . . You thought I looked too tired to bother me with it . . . Yes, you were probably right . . . You’re sure that’s the name she gave you? . . . First she said she’d arranged an interview with me and then she admitted she hadn’t . . . No, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it . . . . Me, too.’

  Me, too, Paniatowski thought.

  I love you, darling.

  Me, too!

  Rutter slammed the phone down on the cradle. ‘I have to go out for a while,’ he said, his voice thick with anger. ‘You can hold the fort, can’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Paniatowski said, wondering if Bob would ever run so fast to protect her. ‘Where are you going? Is it personal business?’

  ‘Why should you even need to ask that?’ Rutter said. ‘Didn’t you hear who I was talking to?’

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski lied.

  ‘So let me be sure I’ve got this completely clear,’ Dexter Bryant said. ‘You think that their having cancer was not the main factor which contributed to their deaths. Is that right?’

  ‘The murderer could have chosen some other group to draw his victims from,’ Woodend said. ‘Women who’d recently been deserted by their husbands, for example. Or women who’d lost their jobs, and were facin’ financial hardship. The determinin’ factor, we believe, was that they should be feelin’ especially vulnerable, an’ have nobody they could turn to.’

  ‘So why didn’t he consider one of these other groups you mentioned?’

  Woodend sighed. For an intelligent man, Bryant was taking a long time to understand this simple point.

  ‘He probably did consider them,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘But in the end, he must have decided that nothin’ is as likely to make a woman as vulnerable as the thought of her imminent death.’

  ‘Let me ask you another question,’ Bryant said. ‘Is it your opinion that if there is another death, the victim will be one of the women who attended the outpatient department of the casualty ward?’

  ‘We’re hopin’ there won’t be another murder. That’s why we’re havin’ this conversation now.’

  ‘But if there were another murder?’ Bryant insisted.

  ‘If there was another murder, then yes, I would expect the victims to be one of the outpatients.’

  Bryant finally seemed satisfied. ‘Right, then. I’ll run a competition with a big prize. A holiday would probably be the best idea.’

  ‘You’ll do what?’ Woodend asked. ‘Have you lost your mind?’

  For a moment it seemed as if Bryant couldn’t understand why Woodend looked so outraged. Then comprehension dawned.

  ‘I’m sorry, that must have sounded awful, the way I put it,’ he said. ‘Here you are, talking about life and death, and here’s me coming up with the idea of a competition. But the two are connected – it’s just that my mind was running ahead of my words, and so you couldn’t see what the connection was. Shall I explain?’

  ‘I think you’d better,’ Woodend said.

  ‘If we want to see newspaper sales jump by ten or fifteen per cent, we announce a competition with a wonderful prize. We can’t do it too often, of course, because it’s so damn expensive, but it’s never been known to fail.’