Golden Mile to Murder Read Free Page B

war.’
    â€˜And so he did,’ Hanson said, sounding indignant even at the possibility that anyone could even consider thinking otherwise. ‘I don’t know what case he was working on when he died, but it’s obvious to me that whatever it was, he was getting so close to cracking it that the villains had him killed.’
    â€˜That’s one way of looking at it,’ Turner agreed.
    â€˜And what’s the other way?’
    Turner hesitated for a second. ‘There have been rumours buzzing around the station,’ he said. ‘No, not even that. There’ve been the merest
hints
of rumours. Have you heard any of them?’
    â€˜No, sir.’
    Turner sighed again. ‘There’s just the two of us here, son, and this conversation is strictly off the record. So stop pissing about and open up for me.’
    Hanson shrugged awkwardly. ‘I may have got a little bit of the buzz,’ he admitted, ‘but I didn’t pay attention to it.’
    â€˜What if those rumours are true?’ Turner demanded. ‘What if Punch really was up to what they say he was up to? If that comes to light, it’ll leave the Blackpool force with its reputation tarnished, and Edna Davies will be forced to face the fact that she never really knew the man she’d been married to all those years.’
    â€˜I hadn’t thought of it like that before,’ Hanson admitted. ‘But you’re right – there’s no question about that. So what do we do about it? Try and get Mr Woodend off the case?’
    Turner shook his head. ‘That wouldn’t work,’ he said. ‘Dick Ainsworth’s the head of CID for this county, and once that bastard’s made his mind up about something, there’s no changing it.’
    â€˜Well, then . . .’
    â€˜So we’re going to have to content ourselves with just minimising the damage.’
    â€˜And what would that entail, sir?’ Hanson asked, sounding as if he were not entirely happy with the way the conversation was going.
    Turner placed an avuncular hand on the sergeant’s shoulder. ‘Charlie Woodend’s not a man for tackling any investigation mob-handed,’ he said, ‘but he will need at least one man on his team with some local knowledge. I’m going to suggest that that man is you. It will be your job to give the chief inspector all the help he needs in solving the murder – you’re quite right about everybody on the force wanting the bugger who killed Punch caught – but you’ll also be there to steer him away from any of the grey areas we’d much rather he didn’t go into. Do you understand what I’m saying, Sergeant Hanson? Am I making myself completely clear?’
    The younger detective thought about it for a few moments. ‘Yes, I think so, sir,’ he said finally.
    â€˜And you’ll do it?’
    Hanson nodded. ‘Whatever else may or may not have been true about Mr Davies, he was a bloody good feller to work for, and I’d like to see him buried with honour.’
    Turner turned his gaze back towards the sea again. A breeze had blown up and the fluffy blue-grey waves were considerably higher than they’d been a few minutes earlier.
    Everything changes, he thought. The weather. The seasons. The way people look – and what they expect out of life. If the rumours were true, then Punch Davies had certainly changed from the earnest young bobby he’d been a few years earlier into a different kind of man entirely. But then wasn’t what he’d been through with his kid enough to change
anybody
? Well, whatever had happened had happened, and Punch was dead. Sergeant Hanson wanted to see him buried with honour, and so did everybody else. So what would be the
point
in raking up the muck now?

Four
    W oodend sat at a corner table in the saloon bar of the Rising Sun, his gaze fixed vaguely on the women’s toilet into which Monika