Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness (14 page)

‘To demonstrate that he had contempt for women in general, and pretty young rich girls in particular?’

‘I would have thought he’d have made that point quite clearly enough with all the other mutilation,’ Ellie said. ‘The way I see it, there has to be some other reasoning behind the body-slashing—some message that couldn’t be sent by simply cutting off her hands and feet.’

‘That doesn’t make any kind of sense,’ Jed said.

‘Not to you, no,’ Ellie agreed. ‘But perhaps it made sense to him.’

She suddenly slammed her hand down on the table, so hard that two of the waiters stopped in their tracks and turned around to see what had happened. ‘Or perhaps he wasn’t trying to
tell
us
anything at all,’ Ellie continued. ‘Perhaps, on the contrary, he was trying to hide something
from
us!’

‘Like what, for example?’ Trent wondered.

‘I don’t know,’ Ellie admitted gloomily. ‘I really don’t even have the faintest glimmering of an idea.’

Thursday: The White Devil

One

Blackstone was back in Afghanistan—back in the deep, deep cave where Private Tom Yardley had saved his life.

He had the stink of cordite and blood in his nostrils. He could see both the dead Pathan warriors and his own dead comrades in the flickering light of the oil lamp. His head ached from the blow that had been so recently delivered to the back of his skull. Yet there was at least a part of his brain that knew full well that none of it was real.

He did not mind that he was only dreaming. Dreams had often been useful to him in the past. They had warned him of dangers he had not been aware of when he was conscious. They had given him clues that his awakened self had followed. It would be going too far to suggest that they had served as actual signposts in his investigations, but they had at least given hints as to where those signposts might be found.

So dreams were welcome. Dreams were old friends and allies.

*

His head is throbbing and his vision is blurred. When he hears the footsteps in the connecting passageway, he gropes for his rifle. But he knows he is in no shape to fight, and that if more Pathans are coming, then he is already as good as dead. Then he hears Tom Yardley speak, and it is like hearing the voice of an angel.

‘There were six of. them, but there’s only five here!’ Blackstone says urgently. He is still groggy, and needs to lean on Tom as they make their way back down the passageway and out through the first cave. The sunlight outside is blinding, and for a moment, he thinks he will lose consciousness again.

The Pathan is lying on the ground, where Tom shot him.

And why shouldn’t he be? Blackstone’s befuddled brain asks. What did .you expect him to do? Get up and walk away?

The Afghan is undoubtedly dead, but there is something not quite right about the wound in his chest, something that—however much he tries—Blackstone can’t put his finger on.

But why is he even trying to discover what’s wrong, he wonders. The Pathan warrior—a sworn enemy—no longer poses a threat, and that is really all he needs to know about him.

*

It was the furious knocking on the front door which brought him back to the present—which made him aware that the barren rocks of Afghanistan were no more than a memory, and that reality was a sofa in Walter Clegg’s front parlour.

The knocking ceased, and a man’s voice called out, ‘Inspector Blackstone? Are you in there?’

Official title, official business, Blackstone thought.

He reached for his gold watch, flicked opened the lid with his thumb, and saw that it was a quarter past five in the morning.

‘Inspector Blackstone?’ said the voice on the other side of the door, with increasing urgency.

Blackstone swung his body off the sofa and, clad only in his long johns, padded across the parlour and opened the door.

A uniformed constable was standing on the front step. ‘Inspector Drayman would like to see you, sir,’ he said, without preamble.

‘Why? What’s happened?’

‘A girl’s gone missing.’

Dear God, not another one, Blackstone thought.

‘Is she from the local gentry?’ he asked.

‘No, sir,’ the constable replied. ‘She’s a baker’s daughter.’

*

Inspector Drayman was sitting at his desk. He was red-eyed through lack of sleep, and his skin had turned deathly pale with worry. When Blackstone entered his office, Drayman gave him the kind of look that a drowning man might give to the possessor of a lifebelt.

‘Do you remember, when we were talking yesterday, that I said I wished I had more interesting crimes to deal with?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Well, I promise you, I never meant anything like this.’

‘Give me the details,’ Blackstone said crisply.

‘The missing girl’s name is Margie Thomas and she’s thirteen years old. Her father has a small bakery down by the river.’

‘So where did she—’

‘I’m coming to that. Her grandmother lives in Great Budworth, which is a small village a couple of miles the other side of Marston. The grandmother’s not been feeling too well recently, so it was arranged that Margie should spend the night with her. The girl was supposed to be setting off at around three o’clock in the afternoon, when she’d finished her chores in the bakery, but at the last minute her father decided he’d let her go earlier, so she could spend more time with her granny. She left home at about eleven thirty yesterday morning, but she never reached the grandmother’s house.’

‘When was the alarm raised?’

‘Not until after you and I had finished our meal together.’

‘Why did it take so long?’

‘The grandmother didn’t know anything was wrong. She assumed that the reason Margie hadn’t turned up was either because she wasn’t feeling well herself, or because the bakery had been busier than usual and she’d had to stay and help her dad. And for all the father knew, the girl was safely with her grandmother.’

‘So what finally alerted them?’

‘A postman called Tibbs. He’s a friendly feller, the sort who’ll talk to anybody. When he made the afternoon delivery, the grandmother happened to mention to him that Margie hadn’t turned up, and when he met her dad in the pub, later in the evening, he asked him if anything was wrong with her. That’s when Mr Thomas came to the police station.’

‘Do you have any idea what kind of girl Margie is?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Is she wilful? Flighty?’

Drayman shook his head. ‘From what we’re told she seems to be a very quiet—almost timid—girl. Very responsible and very obedient. It’s almost inconceivable to any of the people who know her well that she would ever have disappeared voluntarily.’

‘What action have you taken?’

‘I’ve had men out searching for her all night, but I knew from the start that, in the dark, it was almost bound to be a fruitless task. I felt a complete fool for even issuing the order.’

Blackstone nodded sympathetically. ‘But you issued it anyway. And you were right to—because, in a situation like this one, you can’t afford to ignore even the longest odds.’

‘And what do I do now it’s come light?’ Drayman asked, ‘Get the men to go over the same ground again?’

‘Yes, but this time they should be on the lookout for anybody who might have seen the girl at some stage on her journey, because if we can pin down the point at which she was last sighted, we might be in a better position to work out exactly where she was when she vanished.’

Inspector Drayman produced a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. His hands were trembling so violently that half a dozen of the cigarettes spilled on to his desk.

‘She’s already dead, isn’t she?’ he asked.

‘We don’t know that yet,’ Blackstone replied evenly.

‘Be honest with me, Sam. Please!’

‘Miracles have been known to happen,’ Blackstone said gravely, ‘but if they happened too often, they wouldn’t be miracles at all. Which means you’re right, and the chances are that she’s already dead.’

*

When Archie Patterson discovered, to his amazement, that he couldn’t face the thought of eating the generous fried breakfast his landlady had just placed in front of him, he knew immediately that something was seriously wrong.

It was true that there had been a few—a very few—occasions in the past when he’d deliberately skipped a meal. But that had been different. That had only been to compensate for the fact that he’d strayed from the path of righteous dieting on which Rose had set him. Then, he had never
wanted
to abstain had never felt any
inclination
not to eat. Now, even looking at the eggs swimming in lard was enough to make him feel slightly queasy.

‘Whatever’s the matter with you, Mr Patterson?’ asked the landlady, who had returned with a second helping of fried bread, only to find that he hadn’t even touched the first. ‘You’re not ill or anything, are you?’

‘No, I’m not ill,’ Patterson said.

‘It’s not like you to leave your food untouched like that,’ the landlady persisted. ‘Are you sure you haven’t got a temperature?’

‘I’m fine,’ Patterson said gruffly. He slid his plate across the table. ‘Could you take this away please?’

His landlady picked up the plate and walked over to the window. For a moment, Patterson thought that she was intending to examine the rejected food in a better light, but instead she lifted her eyes upwards to the sky.

She turned back towards him. ‘Well, I was wrong,’ she said.

‘Wrong about what?’

‘It’s not raining fire and brimstone after all.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I thought that if you turned down the perfectly good food I’d put in front of you, Mr Patterson, it must mean the end of the world was coming. But it seems quite a normal day outside.’

‘Thank you, Mrs Barnes, I won’t be needing anything else,’ Patterson said frostily.

‘Thank you, he says,’ the landlady grumbled to herself, as she made her way back to the kitchen. ‘If he won’t touch his food, he’s got nothing to thank me
for
, has he?’

Left to himself, Patterson lit up a cigarette—and even
that
didn’t taste quite as it should have done.

Mrs Barnes had been quite right in her assertion that the world was not actually coming to an end, he thought, but it was also true that his experiences of the previous two days had certainly soured his own vision of it.

The madam of the brothel on Waterloo Street would not get off lightly, he promised himself. He simply would not allow that to happen!

*

Every single police officer in the Northwich area had been drafted into the search for Margie Thomas, and the station itself would have been completely deserted had not Blackstone insisted that he and Inspector Drayman stay behind to hold the fort.

And so it was that when Horace Crimp entered the police station, he encountered not the duty sergeant he would normally have expected, but two detective inspectors.

‘What can I do for you, Mr Crimp?’ Drayman asked, in a tone of voice that immediately alerted Blackstone to the fact that the small bald man with a mouth full of bad teeth was not one of the inspector’s favourite people.

Instead of answering, Crimp produced a dirty toothpick from his waistcoat pocket and began probing his rotting teeth with it.

‘I’ve no time for your usual theatricals, Mr Crimp,’ Drayman said, impatiently. ‘A girl’s gone missing.’

‘So I hear, and very sad it is, too, I’m sure,’ Crimp said, removing the toothpick from his mouth, examining the results of his oral exploration that rested on the end of it, and returning it to his pocket. ‘Unfortunately, Inspector Drayman, the wheels of justice cannot cease to turn on one matter simply because another one has arisen.’

‘Mr Crimp’s a solicitor,’ Drayman told Blackstone.

‘I’d gathered that much already,’ Blackstone replied, sourly. ‘Are you going to tell us why you’re here, Mr Crimp?’ Drayman asked.

‘You have a client of mine locked up in one of your holding cells and—’ Crimp began.

‘I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed,’ Drayman interrupted him.

‘I think not.’

‘The only man in the holding cells is a narrowboat man by the name of Mick Huggins.’

Crimp nodded. ‘Just so. Mick Huggins. He is precisely the client to whom I was referring.’

‘You can’t be serious!’ Drayman exploded.

‘I can assure you I am
quite
serious. He is my client, and I would like him to be released on bail immediately.’

‘A child is missing!’

‘I’ve already made it clear to you, Mr Drayman, that I am perfectly well aware of that.’

‘And yet being “perfectly well aware”, you still expect me to take one of my men off the search, just so he can escort your thug of a client to the magistrate’s court?’

‘I object to my client being called a thug.’

‘I don’t
care
what you object to!’

‘…but that is neither here nor there, as far as the matter in hand goes,’ Crimp concluded.

He reached into his jacket pocket, produced a piece of paper and handed it to Drayman without a word.

The inspector scanned the sheet. ‘This is an order from the magistrate to release Huggins on bail,’ he said flatly, when he’d finished.

‘Indeed,’ Crimp agreed. ‘That is exactly what it is.’

‘But when did you...How did you...’

‘I paid a personal call on the magistrate. I explained to him you might find it difficult to provide an escort for my client while you have this other pressing matter to deal with. I suggested that, in order to make life a little easier for everyone concerned, it might be possible to circumvent the normal procedures if I were willing to post a bond of surety. He considered my proposition and came to the conclusion that that would be perfectly satisfactory.’

‘And how large was this bond you posted?’ Drayman asked.

‘That is really none of your business, Inspector,’ Crimp said. He paused for a second. ‘But since you seem so interested—and since I am always willing to co-operate with the police whenever it is practicable—I can see no harm in telling you it was fifty guineas.’