Echoes of the Dead by Sally Spencer

Author:Sally Spencer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
Published: 2010-11-08T07:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

Now that Howerd has all but admitted he took Lilly to the pigeon loft, he is probably expecting his interrogator to keep hammering away at that point. But Woodend doesn’t do that. Instead, he moves on to the afternoon of the abduction.

‘It’s a lot harder to kidnap somebody than most people think,’ the chief inspector tells his suspect. ‘An’ it’s especially difficult at busy times of day – say, for example, when the market has just closed and everybody’s rushing home for their Saturday dinner.’ He pauses for a moment, to give Howerd time to consider the implications of what he’s just said. ‘So how do you grab a kid off the street, against her will, without anybody noticing?’ he continues.

Howerd says nothing.

‘I asked you a question!’ Woodend barks.

‘I don’t know,’ Howerd replies, in a cracked, croaking voice.

‘The answer is – you can’t. The kid will scream and kick and bite, because she knows you’re up to no good, and the last thing she wants is to get into your car.’ He pauses again. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t have a car, do you? You run a stall on the market, so you have a van. And, at this very moment, the forensics team are scrupulously examining that van for traces of Lilly Dawson.’

‘They won’t find any,’ Howerd says – and, for once, he sounds sure of himself.

‘Didn’t it bother you that Howerd seemed so confident you would find no evidence that Lilly had been in the van?’ Paniatowski asked.

‘No,’ Woodend said firmly.

‘Not even for an instant?’ Paniatowski persisted.

‘I said no!’ Woodend replied, with a trace of anger in his voice. ‘Look,’ he continued, in a more reasonable tone, ‘we all know that civilians have no real idea of just how good the forensic boys can be, so what I told myself at the time was that what Howerd was displayin’ was not innocence but arrogance. He’d probably done a thorough job of cleanin’ out the van, an’ so he thought he was safe.’

‘And how did you square that idea with the fact that he’d been sloppy about concealing the other evidence?’ Paniatowski asked.

‘What other evidence?’

‘The evidence you found in the pigeon loft – the lemonade bottle with Lilly’s fingerprints on it. Why hadn’t he got rid of that?’

‘At that point, we didn’t know that Lilly’s fingerprints were on the lemonade bottle, because the lab hadn’t finished checking it.’ Woodend said. ‘But you’re right, Monika,’ he conceded, ‘it’s certainly something I should have taken into consideration.’

‘Did the lab find traces of Lilly’s presence in the van?’ Paco Ruiz asked.

‘No,’ Woodend admitted, ‘they didn’t.’

‘I see,’ Paco mused.

‘So maybe Howerd was right about that, and I was wrong – maybe he had done a good enough job to remove all the evidence,’ Woodend said heatedly. ‘Then again, maybe he’d used some other vehicle for the abduction.’

Or maybe it wasn’t Fred Howerd who abducted Lilly, they all thought – though nobody actually said it.

‘So, we’ve established that if Lilly had put up a

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