Changelings Read online

  He was going to ask for Shapiro. At the last moment he had a better idea and asked Sergeant Bolsover if Detective Inspector Graham was in her office.

  She was trying Donovan’s number again, again without success. When she looked up and saw Sav-U-Mor’s under-manager as white as a sheet in front of her she thought something else had happened.

  She put the phone down. ‘Mr Woodall? Have there been – developments?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said, and she could hear the tremor in his voice. ‘I need to tell you what happened to my old headmaster’s wife’s poodle.’

  When he’d gone Liz and Shapiro eyed one another over her desk, neither keen to break the silence. They really didn’t know whether to treat this as a joke or not.

  ‘We were looking for someone with a bit of previous,’ said Liz. ‘This is the closest we’ve come so far.’

  ‘I’m not sure poodles count,’ said Shapiro, straight-faced. ‘I’m almost certain that people who come in here telling us about their previous don’t count.’

  ‘That could be a clever move,’ countered Liz. ‘He knew Tyler was on to it. What better way of making sure we dismissed it than coming in here in a muck sweat saying he had to confess or we might think he was the blackmailer?’

  ‘A fifteen-year-old boy holding an apricot poodle to ransom. It’s not exactly crime of the century.’

  ‘Nobody starts off with the crime of the century. They start with little crimes. If they get away with them they try something more ambitious.’

  ‘He didn’t get away with it.’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ agreed Liz. ‘He was beaten bloody by his headmaster. But he almost succeeded. But for a bit of apricot wool in the hinge of his locker, he’d have walked away with a hundred pounds – and a hundred pounds was a fortune to a teenage boy twenty years ago. He may have failed, but he learned two valuable lessons. That it’s your own mistakes that betray you: if you’re careful enough you can stay ahead of the game. And that people will pay good money to protect their families.’

  ‘Families!’ snorted Shapiro. ‘It was a poodle!’

  Shapiro had never had animals; Liz had always had them. She shook her head. ‘It was small, fluffy and utterly dependent – as far as that woman was concerned it was her baby. A hundred pounds? – she’d have mortgaged the house to get it back. And young Tony knew that. He knew she wouldn’t mess him around while her baby was in danger.’

  ‘It’s still a hell of a long way from hiding a poodle to infecting a town with cholera!’

  ‘Of course it is. But he’s all grown up now with money of his own: he can afford to think bigger. Invest a thousand, even a few thousand pounds, against a return of a million.’

  Shapiro frowned. ‘You think he bought cholera? Where?’

  ‘I have no idea. Frank, I’m not saying he did this. I’m saying somebody did, and it could have been him. Where can you buy cholera? The same places we thought of before, only this way he doesn’t have to work there, he only has to bribe someone who does.’

  ‘And he came in here,’ he said, warming to the theory, ‘because once someone knew about his youthful prank it was better that we know too. So he couldn’t be accused of hiding it. Hell, we might assume that he wouldn’t come in here to tell us about it if he was involved in the current situation.’

  ‘And do we think that?’

  ‘Beats me,’ confessed Shapiro. ‘He had a couple of opportunities that we know about, he might have had others. He had the same motive as anybody else: a million pounds. And by his own admission it’s an idea that’s occurred to him in the past. Whoever did this probably tried something similar, on a smaller scale, first. At this point in time Tony Woodall is the only person we know who fits that profile. I think we have to treat him as a suspect.’

  ‘I wonder how Tyler knew about the poodle.’

  Shapiro gave a pontifical shrug. ‘There wasn’t a court case; even if there had been, a juvenile’s record is expunged once he’s adult. It had to be from either the headmaster and his wife, or from Woodall himself. My guess is Woodall’s been at a company bash sometime, drunk more than was good for him, and told someone the story as a joke. And the other party filed it away in case one day it came in useful.’

  ‘Tyler scared the living daylights out of him,’ commented Liz.

  ‘I have news for you,’ said Shapiro heavily. ‘Tyler scares the living daylights out of me!’

  8

  Haranguing a crowd is thirsty work. Fortunately, a couple of Ron’s more thoughtful friends supplied him with cans as he spoke. Inevitably, as the pile of cans mounted the quality of his thinking diminished and the volume with which he expressed it rose. By one o’clock the gathering had heard everything he had to say three times over and was beginning to drift away in search of some lunch. Suddenly lunch seemed a good idea to Ron too. It wasn’t so much the fish and chips he fancied as something to wash them down with. Leaving a little pyramid of beer cans in the middle of Castle Place he and his mates made their way towards Fast Edna’s in the shadow of the castle.

  Ron considered himself a man who could hold his drink; and a helpful tip in that regard is always to let it away when it’s done its job. He left the others to order and disappeared into the Gents discreetly located under the wall of Castle Mount.

  He was not a particularly fastidious man. He’d seen all sorts of unsavoury spectacles in these public conveniences, contributed his fair share, was mostly content to live and let live – except of course for queers. A man had to have some standards.

  A young man in a long raincoat came down the steps behind him, cast him a furtive look and disappeared into one of the cubicles. ‘Best place for you, you queer,’ muttered Ron with routine vindictiveness, and returned to the task before him.

  Until there was a sharp intake of breath behind him, a desperate imprecation and a soft plastic clatter, and something rolled out from under the door and lay on the tiles. Ron blinked but it was still what it looked like the first time: a hypodermic syringe.

  Ron didn’t do much running these days but he could cover the ground when he had to. He raced up the steps to street level and his red-faced yell travelled a great deal further than Fast Edna’s. ‘Everybody: I’ve got him! The bastard son of a bitch, he’s down here. The blackmailer! I caught him in the act.’

  Ron wasn’t the sort of man who inspired confidence even in his friends. Most of the two dozen people who gathered round the Gents were only there to see what sort of a fool he was making of himself now. Even those who dashed down the steps for a closer look didn’t do so because of their faith in his judgement.

  Then they saw the man he’d apprehended. He was about twenty-three, with long hair and a wisp of beard framing a pale and dirty face. He was wearing a long coat that looked as if he’d decoked an engine on to it, and trainers that had been white about the last time Ron went for a run. He didn’t have ‘Blackmailer’ tattooed on his forehead but he did have a hypodermic syringe in one hand and a large block of chocolate, still in its wrapper, in the other. Ron had him by the wrists, holding up his hands for all to see.

  For a second there was silence. Even the feet on the steps came to a shocked standstill. The men stared down at him and, hunched in terror, saucer-eyed, the man with the syringe stared back.

  They fell on him like a breaking wave. Fists flew, boots swung. A couple of them found Ron and he bellowed furiously, redirecting them to the proper target. The young man disappeared under the onslaught and only a thin wail marked where he went down. After that there were just the bent backs of his assailants, the grunts of anger and triumph, the sough of heavy breathing.

  Then someone at the back of the pack, already suffering the frustration of being unable to get a kick at the ball, gave a startled squawk and flew backwards up the steps, landing in a heap on the pavement. He wasn’t hurt, except where his collar had bitten into his throat, but he had barely a moment to puzzle over how he had got here before someone else landed
on top of him. A few seconds later the pile grew to three.

  By now the scrum inside had lost interest in the man it was attacking and was trying, quite urgently, to work out who was attacking it. Those who still had their feet under them crowded back towards the door: when a fourth body hit them, more or less chest high, they panicked, broke and ran, trampling those lying bewildered on the pavement.

  Thirty seconds later, when PC Jim Stark arrived at a run, he found the public conveniences all but empty. The last three men were emerging up the steps. One had a second, bloody and unconscious, over his shoulder and the third by the scruff of the neck.

  ‘Do you realize you’re losing control of this town?’ gritted Mitchell Tyler, thrusting one of his burdens into Stark’s hands and laying the other down carefully on a handy bench. ‘He’s a heroin addict. You can see the needle tracks on his arms. The chocolate’s for if he can’t get a fix. They thought he was the blackmailer. They kicked him half to death. This one’ – he jerked Ron by the front of his jacket, looked as if he’d have liked to do more – ‘started it.’

  Stark radioed for an ambulance and a car. While they waited he looked at the man on the bench. He was breathing, which was the main thing Stark needed to know. If the casualty was breathing it was better to wait for professional help; if he wasn’t, even inexpert intervention could only better his chances. Three minutes isn’t long enough to scramble an ambulance, and after three minutes people who aren’t breathing start dying.

  There was a lot of damage – superficial, skin and flesh torn away by the force of well-aimed boots, and also structural. One cheekbone was certainly broken, and both collarbones, and nobody’s wrist was designed to bend that far. There might also be internal injuries. But he was alive, and if it had gone on five minutes longer he wouldn’t have been.

  ‘He’s lucky you came along,’ said PC Stark.

  Mitchell Tyler regarded him with only a little less venom than he reserved for Ron. He shook his head. ‘No, son. He’s unlucky you didn’t.’

  ‘I owe you an apology,’ said Shapiro. ‘I warned you not to lay a finger on anyone in this town. If you hadn’t ignored me we’d be dealing with a murder now.’

  Tyler gave a negligent shrug. ‘You don’t owe me a thing. We’re on the same side. Your town and my employers need the same thing: an end to this business, quick, before anyone else gets hurt.’

  ‘If you’ve any suggestions – ?’ murmured Liz. She was perched on the windowsill of Shapiro’s office, the canal at her back.

  Tyler turned towards her. He had the unsettling habit of moving just a little faster than he looked like he should. ‘I’ve got one for you, Inspector. Tell your husband to watch his step. I’ve heard his name in connection with this.’

  He couldn’t have surprised her more if he’d ducked behind the bentwood coat stand and turned into Superman. Her voice cracked in astonishment. ‘Brian? You’re joking!’

  ‘No.’

  One way it was funny, but another it wasn’t at all. A young heroin addict had just been kicked half to death in a public lavatory because someone had put two and two together and come up with fifteen. A middle-aged art teacher might seem an improbable suspect, but he’d been there or thereabouts often enough for it to be noticed. What had occurred to one person would have occurred to others. In the current climate of fear and suspicion it could be enough.

  She stood up abruptly. ‘That’s it. Frank, we have got to get on top of this! Before the whole bloody town spirals out of control.’

  ‘I agree,’ he said mildly. ‘I too would welcome any suggestions.’

  It’s easy to insist that something must be done, harder to decide what should be done and how. They were already doing all they could. No avenues of inquiry had been overlooked, or dismissed as not worth the trouble. They were asking the questions, they just weren’t getting the answers.

  ‘Maybe, just for the moment,’ hazarded Liz, ‘it’s more important that we’re seen to be doing something than that what we’re doing is productive. You’re right’ – she glanced at Tyler – ‘we need more presence on the streets. We need to be out there tackling this – talking to people, pulling them in if we’ve any reason to. Even if we let them go after ten minutes, the mere fact that we look as if we know what we’re doing may be enough to stop people like the Neanderthal in the cells from going out and doing it themselves.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Shapiro softly. ‘And the other thing that might happen is that everyone we question shoots to the top of the hate list. It won’t matter that we’re just doing it for show if as soon as we send someone home a gang of vigilantes picks him up again. Do you want that to happen? Do you want it to happen to Brian?’

  Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times and nothing came out. Her immediate reaction was that it was a monstrous thing to say. But it wasn’t at all, it was a legitimate question. If what she was proposing was such a good idea, why was she worried about the fallout landing in her vicinity?

  Tyler saved her the embarrassment of replying. ‘Did Woodall call you?’

  Shapiro looked at him over the glasses he didn’t wear. ‘Mr Woodall,’ he said precisely, ‘came in here. He seemed to think you suspected him.’

  ‘I knew about the business with the dog. I wanted to see how he’d react.’

  ‘He came here,’ said Liz. ‘I think he was looking for protection. Do you still suspect him?’

  Tyler regarded her at rather greater length than was strictly necessary. A ghost of a smile seemed to hover round the corners of his lips. ‘You can make a case. He had perfect access to the yoghurt pot in the first incident, good access to the school showers in the second, and limited access to the pharmacy where the other stuff turned up. Plus, he has a history of this type of crime. OK, it was a poodle, but the point is he was willing to terrorize someone for money.

  ‘The other thing is, he’s the loudest voice telling you to pay the ransom. Everyone else, as I understand it, was for holding out. Woodall was for paying.’

  ‘Everyone else was talking about their own money,’ observed Shapiro dryly.

  Tyler was looking at Liz again. He seemed to enjoy looking at Liz. ‘You’re right about one thing. You need more people on the street. It may make the blackmailer twitchy. It may have the opposite effect: make him cocky, get him to make a mistake. Whatever, it’ll make everyone else feel safer.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Superintendent Giles,’ said Shapiro. ‘But I’m not sure how many more rabbits he can pull out of the hat. We don’t have a huge deployment here.’

  Liz caught his eye. ‘I know where we can find one extra bunny.’

  Shapiro chuckled. He’d heard many epithets applied to his sergeant – applied many of them himself – but bunny was new. ‘Yes, all right. If this isn’t an all hands on deck situation I don’t know what is. But if he isn’t answering his phone – ?’

  ‘It may be on the blink,’ said Liz. ‘Quickest thing will be to send someone for him. He told me which way he was going, but it didn’t make much sense. Something about drains?’

  ‘Ask Dick Morgan, he knows the canals. Then send Mary Wilson. Tell him to tie up where he is and come back with her.’

  After she’d left the office Tyler said, ‘Who are we talking about?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Donovan,’ said Shapiro. ‘He’s off on sick leave. I think he’d be sicker still if we let him miss this.’

  Tyler frowned. ‘Then why hasn’t he called in? He must know what’s going on.’

  ‘He’s on a boat. He left on Monday, before it started.’

  ‘He hasn’t heard a radio or seen a paper in four days?’

  Until that moment it hadn’t struck Shapiro as odd. But Donovan wasn’t rowing across the Atlantic, he was cruising the canals within twenty miles of home. He’d be stopping at locks, at pubs and at shops. He’d be talking to other canal users. And four days had passed without him knowing the town was in crisis?

  Without a word he picked up his phon
e and dialled Donovan’s number. A pleasant female voice regretted that it had been impossible to connect him and advised trying again later. Still without speaking he got up and went next door.

  ‘Liz, don’t send Mary, send Morgan. Tell him to take my car’ – he handed over the keys without reservation: the new Jaguar hadn’t come through yet, he was driving a middle-aged Vauxhall – ‘and not to come back until he’s found him. He’ll know where to look and who to ask.’

  The beginnings of a puzzled frown fell out of Liz’s face, leaving it smooth with concern. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  Shapiro shrugged awkwardly. His back still hurt if he subjected it to sudden movements. ‘I don’t know. Maybe not; maybe we’re just on edge and jumping to conclusions. But it’s four days since we heard from him, and the only way he could not know what’s going on here is if he hasn’t spoken to a soul since then. Which is just about possible. He had a cold, maybe he holed up somewhere and shut the world out for a few days.’

  ‘And switched the phone off?’

  Shapiro nodded. ‘Maybe. If he didn’t want waking up? Anyway, I want to know now. If I’m overreacting, fine, there’s no harm done. But if he’s in trouble I want to know.’

  Armed with what Inspector Graham could remember of Donovan’s itinerary, DC Morgan set off in the Vauxhall and confidently expected to have found Tara within the hour. Narrowboats travel at walking speed except when they come to locks or their crew come to pubs. Fifteen miles a day is Blue Riband speed for a narrowboat. In theory Tara could be fifty miles away, but she wouldn’t be. She was travelling a loop that would take her barely twenty miles from Castlemere.

  The furthest he could have got, judged Morgan, was the Foxwell Dam where the Sixteen Foot Drain locked into the River Arrow for the leg home. He started there, at the lock-keeper’s cottage. The keeper knew both Tara and Donovan and hadn’t seen either of them. So Morgan got back in the car and followed the line of the Sixteen Foot Drain back to the engine house at Sinkhole Fen. Tara hadn’t been there either.