‘Did I really just think that?’ she wondered aloud, as she used her free hand to pull a cigarette from the packet on her dashboard. ‘Did I actually let that thought pass through my mind?’

  Being, been – and eventually to become!

  Christ, she was sounding just like Charlie Woodend in one of his more philosophical moments. In fact, now she considered it, the longer she worked with Cloggin’-it Charlie, the more she was starting to sound like him in all sorts of ways. Which was not necessarily a bad thing, she supposed – as long you were also willing to accept that promotion wasn’t important to you, and that pissing off superiors was a natural function of any decent working bobby.

  She reached a second roundabout on the new road, and saw Mad Jack’s Field up ahead of her. A number of official vehicles had already arrived on the scene, and instead of parking parallel to the pavement – as they would normally have done – were positioned at ninety degrees to it, so that their backsides stuck out into the road almost as far as the white centre line.

  Paniatowski nodded her approval at this clumsy arrangement. Mobile floodlights would have been better, of course, but since such modern equipment was considered a frivolity by the quill-pushers who controlled expenditure in the Mid Lancs Constabulary, car headlights shining on to the field would serve almost as well – until, of course, their batteries went flat.

  Paniatowski parked in a free slot. For a moment her hand hesitated over the dashboard, then she switched off both the engine and the lights. Enough car batteries were already being sacrificed in the interests of justice, she decided. The MGA, on this occasion, could be spared the humiliation.

  A young constable, standing on guard duty, watched Paniatowski climb out of the car.

  Nice legs on the sergeant, he thought. Very nice legs. Nice face too. Her blonde hair was lovely, and so were her green eyes. Her Slavic nose was perhaps a little too large for Lancashire tastes, but he’d have tolerated it – if he’d ever been given the chance.

  ‘Evening, Clive,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Mr Woodend here?’

  The eyes were blue, not green, the constable corrected himself. Piercing blue. Somehow, they managed to both allure him and to scare him off.

  ‘I asked you if Mr Woodend was here,’ Paniatowski repeated.

  The constable coughed awkwardly. ‘Sorry. I was miles away for a minute. No, he’s not turned up yet, Sarge.’

  Paniatowski stepped off the pavement and started to cross the field. The constable continued to follow her with his eyes. Nice narrow waist, he thought. Breasts which, without being over-large, would give you something to hang on to. True, she was much older than he was – possibly even pushing thirty – but that was no reason why she shouldn’t feature in his guilty fantasies the next time he locked the bathroom door securely behind him.

  Two more uniformed constables were standing on guard in front of the bonfire, one of them two feet to the left of the central hollow, the other two feet to the right. Sticking out of the hollow itself was a rounded female bottom wrapped in a brightly coloured sari.

  ‘Who the hell’s that?’ Paniatowski demanded.

  ‘Dr Shastri, Sarge,’ one of the constables replied.

  ‘Dr Shastri? The new police surgeon? Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s what her credentials say.’

  Now there was a real turn up for the books! Paniatowski thought. It had seemed incredible enough when the brass had appointed an Asian to the post. That the Asian in question was also a woman was little short of a miracle.

  The doctor seemed absorbed in her work. Paniatowski lit up a cigarette, then turned her attention back to the constable.

  ‘Who found the body, Walter?’ she asked.

  The constable pointed. A little way away from the bonfire was a small group made up of a fourth constable, a man and a woman, and two boys of ten or eleven. The couple had chosen to position themselves some distance from the boys. They held their bodies as stiff as statues, but their eyes were taking in the scene with all the interest of keen television viewers who had unexpectedly found themselves dropped into the middle of an episode of Z Cars. The boys, in contrast, looked more worried than intrigued. They were finding it hard to stay on one spot, and but for the presence of so many uniformed policemen they would undoubtedly have legged it long ago.

  Paniatowski drew on her cigarette, and walked over to the group.

  The man was wearing a thick duffel coat with the hood up, and had a prominent Adam’s apple. The eyes behind his thick glasses glared at Paniatowski, as if he resented the fact that she had freedom of movement while he was confined to one spot.

  ‘What happened?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to keep that to myself until a detective finally deigns to turn up,’ the man said.

  Paniatowski produced her warrant card again. ‘I am a detective.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ the man asked.

  ‘Can you read?’ Paniatowski countered.

  The man examined the warrant card in exaggerated detail. He was probably some kind of clerk, Paniatowski decided – the kind who wore a blue blazer with the top pocket stuffed with ballpoint pens.

  ‘Well, I never,’ the man said, having completed his examination.

  Paniatowski sighed audibly. ‘You were going to tell me what happened,’ she reminded the man in the duffel coat.

  ‘Oh aye. So I was. Well, we were takin’ a short cut across the field, the missus an’ me. Weren’t we, love?’

  The woman, her hair in curlers under her headscarf, nodded.

  ‘Anyway, we come across these two nippers,’ the man continued. ‘Screamin’ their heads off, they were. Well, we calmed them down a bit, and then they told us about the body. Once we were sure they weren’t just taking the mickey, I told my missus to go and ring the police. I thought I’d better stay here myself – sort of on guard, like.’

  ‘You seem to have behaved quite properly and responsibly, sir,’ Paniatowski said, not at all surprised when a beam of complacent pride came to the man’s face. ‘Have you already given your name and address to this officer?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Then you might as well go home.’

  ‘Just like that?’ the man asked.

  What was he expecting? Paniatowski wondered.

  A medal?

  Or did he perhaps think that his initial involvement entitled him to a grandstand view of the rest of the case?

  ‘We really don’t need you any more, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Humph, it’s a wonder anybody bothers to do their duty,’ the man said. ‘Come on, Mabel, let’s be gettin’ home.’

  Paniatowski waited until the couple had gone – the man storming off, the woman following meekly in his wake – then she knelt down so that her eyes were at the same level as those of the two boys.

  Two frightened, blackened faces stared back at her. She ran her index finger down the larger boy’s cheek, and some of the blacking came off on it.

  ‘I didn’t know we had any commandos in Whitebridge,’ she said, looking at the tip of her finger. ‘Would you like to tell me what you were doing here? On some kind of mission, were you?’

  ‘We . . . we was just cuttin’ across the field, like that man was,’ the older boy said.

  ‘No, you weren’t,’ Paniatowski contradicted him. ‘If you were just taking a shortcut, you wouldn’t have gone right up to the bonfire and found the body. Is the bonfire yours?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then whose is it?’

  ‘The Stott Street Gang’s.’

  ‘It stinks of petrol,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Did you notice that?’

  ‘No,’ both boys said quickly.

  ‘Funny, it was the first thing that struck me. Why do you suppose it smells of petrol?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ the older boy said.

  ‘You don’t like the Stott Street Gang very much, do you?’ Paniatowski asked, gently.

  ‘They always make fun of our bonfire,’ the younger boy said in a rush. ‘An’ that’s not fair. Theirs is bigger, but that’s only ’cos they’re older.’

  Paniatowski gave him the sort of smile that one underdog reserves for another. ‘And you thought that if theirs just happened to burn down, so close to Bonfire Night, they’d never be able to rebuild it in time. Is that right?’

  ‘No . . . we . . .’

  ‘Where did you get the petrol from?’

  ‘My dad’s garage,’ the younger one mumbled.

  ‘You could have killed yourselves,’ Paniatowski said. She turned to the constable. ‘Make sure their parents find out about what they’d be doing, will you, Ted?’

  The constable nodded. ‘Oh, I will, Sarge. You can bank on that. I’ve got two holy terrors of my own at home, an’ if they’d been up to anythin’ like this, I’d tan their arses so they couldn’t sit down for a week.’

  Paniatowski wheeled round and walked back towards the bonfire. It was a crazy thing the boys had being planning to do, she thought – and she hadn’t been joking when she’d said they could have been killed. She hoped that the parents would give the kids such a bollocking that they’d never hear the word ‘petrol’ again without wetting themselves.

  That said, she felt a grudging admiration for the kids’ spirit.

  The police surgeon had apparently completed her initial examination, and was standing beside the bonfire waiting to be questioned. She was younger than Paniatowski had expected, and – in the sergeant’s opinion – far prettier than any woman outside Hollywood had the right to be.

  They shook hands, then Paniatowski said, ‘What can you tell me?’

  ‘The victim’s probably in her late forties,’ Dr Shastri said. ‘I’d guess that she’s been dead for less than two hours, though I’ll have a clearer idea when I’ve got her on the slab.’

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Her throat’s been cut. It’s a very neat slash, inflicted from behind. I’d say that the knife was extremely sharp, and the killer certainly seemed to know what he was doing.’

  ‘So you’d guess he’s killed before?’

  ‘I would not be prepared to go that far. He could just have been lucky. Or perhaps he’s been practising on dummies.’

  ‘But you don’t really believe either of those things, do you?

  ‘You are quite right, of course. It looks like the work of a professional.’ Dr Shastri smiled, to reveal a set of small, regular, pearl-white teeth. ‘As my old professor of anatomy in Bombay would have said, in this business you can’t really call yourself a proper butcher until you’ve had the experience of working with some real meat.’

  ‘By the cringe, but it’s a rare thing in these days of everybody standin’ on their dignity to hear a sawbones like you bein’ poetical,’ said a deep voice just behind them. ‘I think we’re goin’ to enjoy workin’ together.’

  Three

  The police surgeon and the detective sergeant turned their heads. Standing just behind was a man dressed in a hairy sports jacket. He was a big man in every way. His head was large; his facial features looked as if they might have been blasted out of a mountainside. His heavy torso was supported by trunk-like legs and feet clad in size ten boots. He was the sort of man who caused little old ladies to take a tighter grip on their handbags, until, that was, they noticed his benign expression.

  Paniatowski positioned herself between the doctor and the new arrival. ‘Dr Shastri, I’d like you to meet Chief Inspector Woodend,’ she said. ‘Chief Inspector Woodend, this is Dr Shastri.’

  ‘A very nice introduction, Monika,’ Woodend told her. ‘The court chamberlain couldn’t have done it better.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’

  ‘Call me Charlie,’ he told the doctor as he shook her small delicate hand in his large paw.

  ‘Charlie it will be,’ Dr Shastri replied, smiling. ‘And you must call me––’

  ‘I’ll call you “Doc”,’ Woodend interrupted her. ‘We always call the police surgeon “Doc”. So you think our killer knows his onions, do you?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Sorry, lass, that’s probably not a term they use much in medical school. What I meant was, you think that he’s – at the very least – a gifted amateur?’

  Dr Shastri nodded. ‘Yes, I would have to say that he was.’

  From somewhere close by came the unexpected sound of a tinny mechanical bell.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Sounded to me like an alarm clock,’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘An’ where is it?’

  ‘Inside the bonfire?’

  There had been the smell of smoke in the air before the clock went off – smoke from the countless cigarettes which were being puffed at all over Mad Jack’s Field; smoke which the wind carried from the shift-work factories on the edge of town and the rows of terraced houses whose owners still stuck stubbornly to using solid fuel. But this smoke had an entirely different taste to it.

  It was wood smoke! Woodend thought. More than that – it was the kind of wood smoke which is thrown out as the flames lick persuasively around branches which have, as yet, refused to co-operate with the conflagration.

  The Chief Inspector had only just completed his analysis when there was a loud ‘whoosh’, and one side of the bonfire burst into bright, dazzling flame.

  The sudden heat – cutting through the chill November air – pricked against the skin of everyone close enough to feel the effect. The roar of the flames – and already it was a roar – filled their ears like the warning of an angry lion.

  The flames spread rapidly, greedily devouring the petrol that the older of the boys had thrown on the bonfire earlier. Twigs inside the inferno crackled. Thicker timbers groaned their resistance. Bright red sparks were already dancing above the apex of the bonfire to form a glowing halo.

  In the distance, a woman screamed. Somewhat closer, a panicked man shouted that someone should call the fire brigade. No one had expected this. No one knew what was really going on.

  Dr Shastri was still close to the blaze, Woodend noted – far too close for a woman who was dressed from head to foot in the kind of loose, flammable material that flames thrive on.

  The Chief Inspector took a step nearer the doctor, grabbed her arms in his powerful hands, and swung her clear of the fire as if she weighed no more than a doll. Once he’d placed her on the ground again, Woodend turned quickly back to the bonfire. The flames had spread rapidly, so that now they formed a fiery canopy over the hollowed-out middle. It could only be a few seconds – at the very most – before bits of flaming wood began falling on the corpse which was still lying there.

  Paniatowski had seen the same danger as he had, and was kneeling down in order to do something about it.

  Woodend pulled her back from the flames. ‘Leave the body to me!’ he shouted.

  ‘But, sir . . . !’

  ‘Get all these other silly buggers safely out of the way!’

  Woodend moved closer to the fire, and sank down on to one knee. He tried to see straight ahead, but the intense heat and smoke made normal vision impossible. His hands groped blindly in front of him, and the right one brushed against what could only be the dead woman’s ankle.

  He knew that, to make the cleanest job possible of pulling the dead woman clear, he should probably locate her other ankle with his free hand, but his brain – which was registering the fact that his eyeballs felt as if they were frying – counselled speed over elegance.

  Wrapping his thick fingers firmly around the ankle he already had hold of, he took a step backward.

  The dead body wouldn’t move! The bloody thing was snagging against something!

  He was tempted to take a deep breath before trying again, but the only effect of that would be to draw even more of the sodding smoke straight into his bloodstream.

  His cheeks felt on fire now, and he could smell cooking meat which he hoped wasn’t him. Behind him he could hear a distorted voice – it sounded like Paniatowski’s – screaming that he should come away. He ignored it. One more pull, he told himself – one last big effort on his part – and he would have the corpse free of the inferno.

  It came away with such ease this time that, for a moment, he almost lost his balance. He swayed, and in the second or so it took him to readjust his weight, the fiery arch collapsed into the hollow.

  The bonfire swayed dangerously, then a part of it began to topple forwards. Woodend dragged the corpse clear of this new danger – but not before the blonde, curly hair which topped the victim’s head had caught on fire.

  Paniatowski was suddenly by his side, her jacket in her hands. As a coughing fit coursed through Woodend’s body and forced him to double up, he saw his sergeant drop to her knees and use her jacket to smother the victim’s head.

  Woodend’s lungs began exacting their full revenge for what he had put them through. His chest heaved. His head swam. All the noises around him melded into a single, unpleasant cacophony, and he began to doubt that he would ever breathe normally again.

  The attack passed, and Woodend cautiously straightened up.

  Paniatowski was barking instructions into her police radio. ‘Get a fire engine here, Bob! Quick as you can! Get a bloody fire engine!’

  ‘Who were you talkin’ to?’ Woodend asked, coughing again – though not as badly this time. ‘Was it Rutter?’

  Paniatowski nodded. ‘Yes. How are you feeling, sir? Up to carrying on for a while longer?

  ‘Just about. As long as I don’t make any sudden moves.’

  ‘Then you’d better see this.’

  Paniatowski bent down and picked something off the ground. Straightening again, she held it for her boss to inspect.

  Woodend did his best to focus his still-streaming eyes on the object. Part of it was black and frizzled, the rest yellow and curly. In other circumstances, he thought, he would probably have recognized it immediately for what it was. But these weren’t other circumstances. His brain was still too fuddled, his body still complaining about being poisoned. He hadn’t been sick yet, but he was in absolutely no doubt that he soon would be.