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in the sea?’
    â€˜Perhaps because he wanted it to be found.’
    It was possible, Woodend thought, but not likely. The most obvious explanation was probably the accurate one: that Davies had been killed where he’d been found. Woodend closed his eyes – a trick he’d learned helped him to concentrate his mind. There were two explanations for Davies being under the pier, he reasoned. The first was that he’d been following someone, the second that he’d gone there for a meeting.
    â€˜What sort of case was Inspector Davies workin’ on the day he died?’ he asked Turner.
    â€˜As far as I remember, he was running three investigations.’
    â€˜An’ they were –?’
    â€˜A suspected car-theft ring, a series of cat burglaries in Poulton-le-Fylde, and a hit-and-run case in Fleetwood.’
    None of which seemed to have any connection with the Golden Mile, Woodend thought – not that he could rule out that possibility altogether. He noticed a stall selling seafood further down the sands, and reached into his pocket for some change.
    â€˜Just nip down there an’ get us a ration of Morecambe Bay prawns, will you, lass?’ he asked Paniatowski, holding out the money to her.
    Paniatowski gazed down at the hand as if the sight of it offended her, then, slowly and reluctantly, took the coins and headed off towards the stall.
    Woodend waited until she was out of earshot, then turned to Turner and said, ‘I’m tryin’ to give that lass plenty of slack, Ron, but I’m findin’ it bloody hard work. She’s as brittle as treacle toffee, you know – an’ not half as sweet.’
    â€˜She’s not had it easy,’ Turner said.
    â€˜I can see it might be hard work bein’ a woman in a man’s world,’ Woodend conceded, ‘but she’s goin’ to have to come to terms with that if she wants to be successful. An’ she’s goin’ to have to learn to recognise it when people are on her side.’
    â€˜When I say she hasn’t had it easy, I’m not talking about the ragging she’s had since she’s joined the police,’ Turner told him. ‘I’m talking about before.’
    â€˜Go on,’ Woodend said.
    â€˜Before I was transferred here, I’d spent my entire working life in Whitebridge. I knew her family at the time Monika was growing up.’
    â€˜And –?’
    â€˜Her stepfather was a Whitebridge lad called Arthur Jones. He met Monika’s mum in Berlin in 1945. She and Monika were refugees running away from the Russians, and Jones was part of the Allied army of occupation. In a way, it’s a good thing Jones married Blanca Paniatowski, because if he hadn’t, she and Monika would have been shipped back to Poland with the hundreds of thousands of other refugees.’
    â€˜In what way
wasn’t
it a good thing?’ Woodend asked.
    â€˜I’m coming to that. Jones had what you might call “expectations” when he brought his new family back to Whitebridge. You see, though he’d started out as a private in ’39, by the time the war ended, he’d risen through the ranks to captain. Well, that’s a common enough story. It wasn’t
too
difficult to get a field promotion if you were halfway competent and managed to dodge the German bullets.’
    Woodend – who had both dodged more bullets than he cared to remember
and
turned down a commission twice – grinned. ‘So what happened to Captain Jones when he returned home?’ he asked.
    â€˜Like I said, he had expectations. He’d developed tastes above his station in the army, and he thought he could continue to live the same privileged life in Lancashire. It didn’t take long for reality to sink in. There weren’t enough fancy jobs to go round in Whitebridge, and from having a personal valet and an officers’ mess where he could drink with gentlemen, he