The Hidden

A Monika Paniatowski Mystery

Severn House Publishers Limited

The west gate of Stamford Hall was (like the gates in the centres of the other three boundary walls), an impressive piece of work. Constructed by skilled ironworkers over two centuries earlier, it served as both a formidable barrier and a fine example of early industrial art. It was possible to open both sides of the gate – indeed, the grand carriages of the past had required it – but to make it easier to filter and check the traffic as it left the park, the uniformed sergeant and his team had only opened the left side, and when the big black Wolseley arrived, there was already a queue of twenty-five or thirty vehicles waiting to leave.

The sergeant opened the right-hand gate, and though he could not see the man in the back of the Wolseley through the darkened glass, he saluted smartly. Once the big black car was inside – and much to the annoyance of all those waiting to leave – he closed the right-hand gate again.

Chief Constable Ronald Pickering, sitting in the back of the Wolseley, had been far too distracted to notice the sergeant's show of respect.

Things didn't look good, he told himself, as his driver turned left and followed the boundary road which led to the Backend Woods picnic area – they didn't look good at all.

The problem was, he was only acting chief constable (and likely to remain so until George Baxter either went mad enough to be certified or grew sane enough to resign), and acting chief constables were perpetually auditioning for the job they were already doing. So every new crisis was a test – a yardstick against which he could be measured – and it was more than possible that losing one of his senior officers might be regarded by those people who mattered as being rather careless.

A roadblock had been set up about a mile and a half from the gate, and it was beyond the roadblock that there was evidence that a serious criminal investigation was already underway.

The acting chief constable quickly scanned the scene.

There were half a dozen patrol cars there, and the men who'd arrived in them were employed in taping off the whole area.

There was an ambulance there, too, and the Land Rover which belonged to Dr Shastri, the police surgeon, so it was a safe bet that Monika Paniatowski hadn't been moved yet.

'Stop right here, constable!' Pickering told his driver, and the driver brought the Wolseley to a halt close to where a square-built muscular man in his thirties was standing.

Pickering got out of the car and walked over to the man.

'Bloody terrible thing to have happened, Colin,' he said, placing a comforting hand on DI Beresford's shoulder.

Beresford – clearly red-eyed – only nodded, as if putting what he was feeling into words would have been just too much.

'Have you any idea what Monika was doing in the woods?' Pickering asked. 'Was it part of an ongoing investigation, do you know?'

And then a new thought occurred to him – one so ghastly that he almost fainted.

'She ... she didn't have any of her children with her, did she?' he said tremulously.

Because if her kids – her bloody infant twins – had gone missing, there'd be such a stink that he might as well hand in his resignation then and there!

'No, the children weren't with her,' Beresford replied. 'The twins are at home with Elena, the housekeeper, and Louisa has gone over to Yorkshire with her school, to play in a hockey match.'

'Thank God,' Pickering said. 'Now what we need to do is find out why DCI Paniatowski was —'

'She's still breathing,' Beresford interrupted him cuttingly, and with an edge of contempt just discernible in his voice. 'She can't say anything, and I'm not even sure she knows where she is, but she's still breathing – and that's something.'

'Yes, I suppose —'

'I'd have been with her myself, but I didn't want to get in the way of the doc and the paramedics.' Beresford paused. 'Anyway, I thought you might like to know that,' he continued, most of his anger now dissipated.

'Yes ... yes, of course,' Pickering said awkwardly. 'That should have been the first thing I asked, shouldn't it?'

'Well, it certainly was the first thing I asked,' Beresford admitted.

'At any rate, while I'm sure we're all praying she makes a full recovery, we're not medical men, are we, and the only thing we can do for Monika ourselves is to try our damnedest to catch the bastard who attacked her!' Pickering said briskly. He looked Beresford straight in the eye. 'I'm right about that, aren't I, Colin?' he challenged.

'Yes, sir, you are right,' Beresford agreed, though any feeling that they might be comrades-in-arms was undercut by the deadpan voice in which he delivered the words.

'So what have you done – in practical detecting terms – so far?' Pickering asked.

'As you can see, we've almost finished sectioning off this area,' Beresford said.

'Yes, yes, but what about the rest of the grounds – the funfair and the zoo? I saw a stream of cars leaving as I arrived. I assume everyone in them has already been questioned, have they?'

'No, sir,' Beresford replied. 'Most of them probably don't even know there's been an attack, but I've made sure the officers on the gate are taking their names and addresses, and —'

'Why didn't you question them first?' Pickering demanded.

'We don't have the manpower.'

'Then you should have waited until sufficient manpower arrived, for God's sake!'

'The gatekeeper tells me he's sold over eight hundred car tickets today,' Beresford said. 'If there were, on average, four people in each car, we're talking about over three thousand folk who need to be interviewed. Add to that the people who arrived on the courtesy buses from the railway station, and we're up to maybe three thousand six hundred. Then there are the ones who came on charter coaches. Even if we'd had the whole force on duty, which, this being a Sunday at the start of the summer leave season —'

'All right, all right, I get the point,' Pickering said. 'Christ, what a mess.' He looked around him, as if searching for inspiration. 'I want you to hold the fort until DCI Dixon gets here,' he said finally.

'Yes, sir.'

'Are the rest of DCI Paniatowski's team here?' he asked.

'Yes, sir.'

Of course they bloody were! Paniatowski's team had a reputation for being so thick with one another that it was said around police headquarters that if you kicked one of them, they all limped.

'Right, you have my permission to stay here as well – for the moment – but the second DCI Dixon arrives with his team, I want you all out of here.'

'We'd prefer to stay, sir,' Beresford said.

'Yes, I'm sure you would, Colin,' Pickering agreed. 'I'm sure you would. But you see, I simply can't allow that. You're far too close to this particular investigation to play any continued active part in it.'

'With respect, sir, it's because we're close to DCI Paniatowski – because we know the way she thinks and what motivates her – that we're essential to the investigation.'

'Your comments have been noted, but the decision has been taken,' Pickering said.

'If we can't investigate it as police officers, then we'll investigate as private citizens,' Beresford said firmly.

'Come on, Colin, be realistic – you can't be police officers and private citizens at the same time,' Pickering pointed out.

'I agree,' Beresford said, 'and that's why, if I'm kicked off the investigation, you'll have my resignation on your desk by the end of the day.'

'Don't be ridiculous, you'd never consider —'

'And it won't be the only one – you'll have DS Meadows's and DC Crane's resignations as well.'

'Anyone else? Will the station cat be resigning?'

'No, sir – just me, Meadows and Crane.'

Pickering sighed. 'If you're going to threaten me, DI Beresford, you should at least make sure that your threat is credible,' he said, with a new, harder edge to his voice.

'With respect, sir, it's not a threat, sir – it's a statement of fact,' Beresford said levelly.

Pickering sighed with exasperation. 'Look, I know you're upset, and I'm making allowances for that, but I really can't have you talking to me in this way. Whatever you might say now, you know, deep down inside yourself, that you'd never throw away your career like that – and if you wouldn't, then I'm bloody certain the other two wouldn't.'

Beresford looked around him, and found that the woman he was looking for was stretching yellow police tape between two elm trees.

'Could you come here, Sergeant Meadows?' he called out.

Pickering watched Meadows walk towards them. The sergeant was an enigma to him, and – he suspected – to many other men on the force. She wasn't particularly tall, and she certainly wasn't particularly curvaceous. Her dark hair was cut so short it lay on her head like a piece of black velvet. She rarely smiled, and – even at Christmas parties – never said anything even mildly flirtatious, and yet though he was at the top of the tree, and she was somewhere near the bottom, she sometimes scared him. But even so ... even so, she featured heavily in his daytime fantasies, and even more often in the darker ones he had when he was asleep.

Meadows came to a halt next to Beresford. 'Is there something I can do for you, sir?' she asked.

'No,' Beresford told her, 'I just want to keep you up to date with the latest developments.' He paused. 'Mr Pickering wants us off this investigation. What do you think of that?'

Meadows shrugged indifferently. 'It's not really my place to think about it at all, is it, sir?' she asked. 'Who is or isn't on the case is entirely the chief constable's decision.'

'Well, at least one of you seems to be capable of looking at things sensibly,' Pickering said, doing his best to keep a complacent smile from curling the edges of his mouth.

'You wouldn't argue, but what would you do if you were taken off the case?' Beresford asked Meadows.

'What would I do?' Meadows asked. 'I'd resign, so I could carry out my own investigation. I expect DC Crane would do the same.'

'Clear the way,' a voice shouted. 'Clear the way. There's a stretcher coming through.'

All heads turned towards the woods, as the paramedics appeared, carrying the stretcher between them. By the side of the stretcher, holding a drip high in the air, was Dr Shastri, her usually lively face about as animated as a dried raisin.

And lying strapped onto the stretcher – her head swathed in bandages, her skin the colour of the whitest chalk – was Monika Paniatowski.

Oh Christ, what if she never comes out of it? Beresford thought. What if she stays like this forever?

The paramedics slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, then one climbed inside, and the other closed the doors. The engine was already running, and the moment the driver was behind the wheel, the ambulance started to gently pull away.

Beresford turned to the chief constable.

'She's our boss, sir,' he said – and Pickering noticed the moisture forming in his eyes. 'We don't want to make things difficult for you, but we have to be part of the search for Monika's attacker – we don't have any choice.'

If they all resigned, the chief constable thought, it would look as if he hadn't been able to handle them properly – and that would be very bad indeed, especially if the press somehow managed to pick up on it.

'In the light of your obvious strength of feeling, I'm prepared to bend a little more than I normally would,' he said. 'I'll assign you to DCI Dixon's team, if that's what you want.'

He paused, to give them time to respond.

'Thank you, sir,' Meadows said.

'Appreciate it, sir,' Beresford added.

'But I will only do that on the understanding that you do exactly what DCI Dixon tells you he wants you to do,' Pickering said. 'That – and no more. Do you think you'll be able to work within those restrictions?'

'Yes, sir,' Beresford said.

'Of course, sir,' Meadows agreed.

And none of them believed a word of it.

'Somebody's got to be there at Monika's house to deal with Louisa, when she gets back from her match in Yorkshire,' Kate Meadows said, when the chief constable had left.

'I know,' Beresford agreed gloomily. 'I think it had better be me, because I've known her since she was a baby. She calls me Uncle Colin, you know ...'

'Yes, I've heard her.'

'And I'm almost a member of the family.'

'There's no almost about it,' Meadows told him, 'but somebody also has to stay here to make sure we don't get shafted by Rhino Dixon's band of merry men, and since you're the ranking officer from our side, I think it should be you – which means that I get to break Louisa's heart.'

Was that the real reason she thought she should go and he should stay? Beresford wondered.

Or was it that she thought that big flat-footed Colin Beresford couldn't possibly handle Louisa with the sensitivity the situation would require?

And if it was the latter, should he be offended or relieved?

It was all so confusing – but you were bound to be confused when you'd just seen your best mate being carried away on a stretcher.

'Thanks, Kate,' he said, though he almost never called her by her first name. 'I really appreciate it.'

Meadows shrugged. 'You do what you have to do.'

'Do you have any idea what the boss was doing in the woods this afternoon?' he asked.

Meadows blinked.

'No,' she said.

'Are you sure?' Beresford persisted. 'If we knew why she was here, we might have some idea why she was attacked.'

'Whoever attacked her, it had nothing to do with the reason she was here,' Meadows said.

'So you do know why she was here!'

'I'd better be going,' Meadows said. 'We don't want Louisa to learn what's happened to her mother from someone else, do we?'

A convoy of three cars, headed by a mid-range Mercedes-Benz, announced the arrival at the woodland crime scene of Detective Chief Inspector William 'Rhino' Dixon and his team.

The cars came to a halt on the road – just beyond the outer limits of the police tape – and their occupants spilled out onto the tarmac.

Even from a distance, Dixon – who stood six feet four in his stockinged feet, and was as broad as a barn – stuck out from the rest of his team.

He was not the most attractive of men, thought Beresford, watching developments from the edge of the woods. His eyes were small, his nose huge, his thick neck was inclined to lean forward under the weight of his massive head, and his skin was an unhealthy grey. When he spoke, it was with a rasping voice which came from having been a dedicated chain smoker (whenever finances permitted) since the day he put childish things behind him and graduated from the infants' school into the primary.

He had a habit of jabbing whoever he was addressing with a heavily nicotine-stained forefinger, and was reputed to be a bit of a bastard to those officers working for him.

'Still an' all,' other bobbies in the canteen would say, 'he does get results.'

Indeed he did get results, Beresford thought – but they weren't as good as Monika's.

Dixon's team gathered around their boss like adoring schoolchildren around a particularly popular teacher at sports day.

Or perhaps, Beresford thought, they were more like medieval courtiers, who were well aware that their positions in court were entirely dependent on their monarch's approval.

He groaned inwardly.

Medieval courtiers?

Had he actually used 'medieval courtiers' in a comparison with the Mid Lancs police?

He was definitely going to have to give up listening to young Jack Crane so much!

Dixon had begun to address his team. His voice, though scratchy, was quite loud, and the fact that his words were being lifted by the breeze meant that Beresford caught most of them.

'Sergeant Higgins, I want a recent picture of DCI Paniatowski on the front page of every local and regional newspaper within a fifty mile radius of Whitebridge,' Dixon said. 'The newspapers themselves will probably have plenty of photographs of Paniatowski in their own archives – but don't leave the choice to them, select the one you think is likely to be most effective. Got that?'

'Got it, sir.'

'Inspector Marsden, you're in charge of supervising the search of the woods. And bear in mind that when I say I want it searching, I mean I want it searching – just get this clear: I want each and every bloody leaf on each and every bloody tree examined as if it – and it alone – held the vital clue to the attacker; I want every blade of grass studied as if was a precious antique. And when your lads have been over it all once, I want them to go over it again. Understood?'

'Understood, sir.'

'Right, then bloody well get on with it,' Dixon said.