The Blood-Dimmed Tide (31 page)

‘Madden, again?’ Bennett brightened at the familiar name. ‘What’s he had to say on the subject?’

‘A good deal, as it happens.’ Sinclair’s frown, which he’d worn all morning, lifted for a moment, and the smile that took its place showed a hint of self-congratulation. His ploy of sending Billy Styles to talk to his old mentor had yielded one worthwhile result, at least. ‘I haven’t had a chance to tell you, but John’s made a valuable observation. He believes Lang must have explored the countryside around Brookham pretty thoroughly prior to the murder. How else could he have known where to take the girl? He didn’t stumble on that spot by chance. If he’s had time to wander about, it suggests he might have been living in the general area. In a hotel or boarding house, perhaps. That’s where we’ll start. It’s a job for the county police forces. I’ve got a meeting of detectives from Surrey and Sussex fixed for tomorrow.’

It was this gathering in Guildford that had darkened Sinclair’s mood that morning and sent him in search of Madden. The knowledge that he was being less than frank with colleagues sat ill with the chief inspector and he made no secret of his displeasure.

‘They must have known I wasn’t telling them all I knew. At the very least, they must have wondered where I’d acquired all this information about Lang’s travels abroad.’

‘Did they ask what his occupation was?’

‘They did. I said I couldn’t enlighten them. Still, a man with that many aliases is fairly limited as to professions. I dare say they’ve put two and two together. All I could do was emphasize the police aspect of this business. Our only concern was with catching a murderer, I told them, and I laid stress on how dangerous he was, how different from the type of criminal we normally have to deal with.’

‘That concerns you, does it?’

They had moved from the drawing room into the dining room, where Mrs Beck had served them lunch, and where the dull grey light of the autumn day, flooding through the windows, lay cold on the white tablecloth. Madden had said little up till then.

‘A great deal. He carries a knife, and he knows how to use it. Those poor children he butchered aren’t his only victims. He killed a detective years ago and Vane hinted there have been other fatalities in his career. I’m insisting this search is conducted by the plain-clothes branch. I don’t want some village bobby trying to feel his collar. They can start by checking with hotel keepers and landladies, looking for single men who fit the description. If an interview’s deemed necessary, then at least two detectives must be present. And they’re to be on their guard. He’ll kill if he has to, if he feels threatened. He’s done it before.’

Casting all discretion aside, the chief inspector had then embarked on a detailed account of the visit he and Bennett had paid to the Foreign Office. His discourse took them through lunch and coffee and was still not complete when they wandered outside for some air onto the terrace, to be met by a wave of Scotch mist billowing down from the wooded ridge of Upton Hanger and sweeping up the lawn. Already the orchard at the foot of the garden had vanished, while of the great weeping beech that stood near it, only a few bare branches were visible thrusting up through the curtain of grey.

‘So that’s where we stand, John. And I’m damned if I know what to do next.’

Madden grunted. Unaware of the frosting of white droplets coating his hair and eyebrows, he had stood listening in grim-faced silence.

‘So that birthmark Beezy spotted was real. Have you been able to make use of the information?’

‘Not really.’ Sinclair shook his head. ‘Since the mark’s on his chest, it’s hidden by his clothing. Still, I’ve decided to take a long shot. We’re having leaflets sent out to all doctors in Surrey and Sussex asking them if they’ve treated any man with a large wine stain recently – not a regular patient, of course – and warning them that he’s dangerous. Helen can show you hers when it arrives, which should be any day.’

The chief inspector had been hoping his old partner would provide some insight into the problems facing him. But Madden had only one suggestion to offer, and that, by his own admission, ‘the longest of long shots’.

‘I was struck by what Vane told you – about Lang being a birdwatcher. It explains something that’s been puzzling me.’

‘What’s that?’ Sinclair dabbed at his damp face with a handkerchief.

‘I wondered how Lang had come to know about that tramps’ site near Brookham, where he took the girl. He could hardly have stumbled on it by chance. Now I understand. When I went there the next day the woods were full of birdsong. I saw a kingfisher, I remember.’ Madden’s eyes clouded at the memory.

‘And you think Lang had been there before?’

Madden nodded. ‘He must have driven past Capel Wood some time earlier and seen that it was a promising spot. He could easily have explored the stream. When Billy Styles came to see me not long ago we talked about that – about how the killer seemed familiar with the countryside. We wondered if he didn’t have a hobby that took him outdoors.’ He cocked a white eyebrow at his companion. ‘It might be worth following up, Angus.’

‘I don’t see how.’ The chief inspector scratched his head.

‘I was thinking of the societies – birdwatchers, I mean. There must be several, in both counties. You could get them to canvas their members, see if they’ve noticed any unfamiliar faces in the fields, men fitting the description. It might ring a bell.’

Sinclair grunted. He seemed less than convinced.

‘Well, it’s a possibility, I suppose. And since we’re clutching at straws anyway…’ He caught Madden’s eye and grinned. ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll put Styles on to it. He’s been sitting in Guildford twiddling his thumbs.’

They stood in silence while the mist thickened about them. Then a groan issued from Sinclair’s lips.

‘Damn it, it’s not enough. We’ll need more than luck to catch this man. Is there nothing else we can do?’

The silence which was Madden’s only response seemed to speak louder than words, and to the chief inspector his dark withdrawn gaze was a confirmation of his own worst fears, to which he now gave expression, his voice harsh with anger at the need he felt to say it.

‘Must we wait till he kills again?’

Darkness was falling – it was getting on for five – by the time Eddie Noyes left the site, waving goodbye to the McCarthys, Pat and Jimmy, both from County Mayo, but not related, they said, who’d become special pals of his, and acknowledging the raised hands of some of the others as well.

It being a Friday, and the end of their working week, the men had taken longer than usual to gather their tools and put things in order before they departed. Eddie’s last duty had been to position the moveable signs at either end of the strip of road they were working on, warning motorists to slow down, that the surface ahead was under repair. Six feet high and set in concrete, they were difficult to manoeuvre, but he had learned the knack of tipping them off centre and then rolling them along until he reached the desired spot.

It hadn’t been easy for him at first, fitting in. He’d been marked down by the others as an outsider, someone not used to manual labour, and he’d had to prove himself in the early days by taking on some of the hardest and dirtiest jobs – breaking up the old road surface with a sledgehammer, for instance, or mixing and pouring tar – before they’d accepted him as one of them.

But they were a good set of blokes, a dozen men in all, half of them Irish, and their companionship had reminded Eddie of nothing so much as his time in the ranks. Right down to the foreman, Joe Harrigan, who was a dead ringer for his first sergeant, a black-browed Mick from Donegal, who’d been a right bastard if he was crossed, but had taken care of his men just the same. Dooley had been his name. Jack Dooley. A Jerry mortar shell had done for him at Mons.

Eddie had joined the crew some months earlier when they were working on a bit of road near Hove, where he lived. Hearing they were looking for labour, he’d pitched up on the off chance and been taken on by Harrigan, who’d left him in no doubt as to what would be expected of him.

‘You don’t look to me like you’re up to it,’ he’d said bluntly, a remark Eddie had taken to refer to his small stature – and perhaps to the softness of his hands, which the foreman had seized in his own calloused palms and examined critically. ‘But I’ll give you a try. No favours, mind.’

Having been unable to find steady work since losing his salesman’s job the previous December, he’d been ready to jump at anything that was offered. The burden of providing for his mother and sister, who shared the small house they lived in in Hove, weighed heavily on him, and the fear of failing them was seldom far from his thoughts.

Continuing along the road, Eddie had reached the point where it was crossed by the path that led over the ridge to Coyne’s Farm. Busy with ramblers during the mild weeks of autumn, it was deserted now that winter was approaching. Looking back, he saw that his workmates had collected their tools and were heading off in a straggling line in the opposite direction, towards the corrugated iron shed a good half mile away which housed Harrigan’s cubbyhole of an office, storage space for their equipment and a few square yards of bare earth where those of the crew who’d chosen to save their money and sleep rough, rather than seek cheap lodgings in the neighbourhood – Eddie had been of their number – would spread their bedrolls for the night.

It had been these long hours of darkness, loud with the sound of the men’s snoring and their muffled groans, that he’d found hardest to bear. Sleepless in the midst of the closely packed bodies, breathing in the fetid air, he had felt his spirit foundering and it had taken all his resolve to rise each morning and face the new day.

Even so, when the chance to escape this purgatory had been offered him, he’d hesitated, afraid that the others might resent his good fortune. But he found he’d misjudged them. Laughing, they had watched while Pat McCarthy begged Eddie with a wink to spit in his hand in case his luck was catching. As one man they had urged him to make the most of his windfall.

At the thought of how his circumstances had changed since Sam Watkin’s unexpected appearance, the grin on Eddie’s face grew wider. (The image of a stone dropping into a stagnant pool came to his mind.) He remembered with delight the moment when the green postal van had drawn up beside him on the road and he’d heard the driver’s jovial greeting.

‘What, ho, Eddie!’

The surge of happiness he’d experienced at that instant had come from another time – from the very worst days of the war – when Sam’s bent nose had seemed like a symbol of its owner’s pugnacity, his refusal to surrender to whatever life might throw at him, and in the mud-choked horror which had become their daily existence, his spirit, like some ancient tribal magic, had cast its spell on all around him.

‘What, ho, Eddie!’

Everything that had happened since their chance encounter – his move to Coyne’s Farm and the kindness he’d received at the hands of the Ramsay household – seemed to Eddie like an extension of this marvellous power his old pal possessed, and his own spirits had risen in response, giving him fresh heart. Once more he’d resumed his long struggle to escape from what he saw as the dead hand of the past, a mysterious force that threatened always to drag him down.

For years he had suffered from a sense of inertia, a lack of will that had prevented him not only from living his life to the full, but also from making proper provision for the future. Unaware that the malady was one he shared with other survivors of the trenches, men in their thousands, Eddie had attributed it instead to a particular event: he believed it stemmed from the moment when he’d received the near-fatal wound that had ended his military career.

He could still recall the impact of the sniper’s bullet when it struck him like an iron fist, piercing his ribcage and sending splinters of bone into one of his lungs. Clear, too, in his memory were the minutes that followed. With the voices of the men around him growing faint in his ears, he had lain staring up at the darkening sky, waiting for oblivion. Knowing he was scuppered.

And even though the conviction had proved false, the memory of it had returned like a ghostly echo when he regained consciousness a few days later in a hospital ward and discovered what had happened to him in the intervening period.

‘You’re the bloke who came back from the dead,’ the doctor in attendance had told him with a grin. ‘They’d already loaded you onto the meat wagon when one of the graves party noticed your eyelid twitching. Good thing he did, or by now you’d be pushing up daisies.’

During his slow recovery – for weeks he had lain in a dreamlike state, indifferent to his future, unmoved even by the knowledge that he would not be returning to the front – a mood of fatalism had settled on him that had changed little with the passing years, and which sprung from the belief, already rooted in his mind, that he was living on borrowed time.

Having reached the crest of the ridge, Eddie quickened his pace. The long twilights of summer were a thing of the past and darkness fell swiftly at this time of year. But the sky had cleared after a spell of rainy weather and a new moon had risen in the past few days that would light his way to Oak Green later.

Shy at first of accepting the invitation that had been extended to him, he had come to delight in the hours he spent in the Ramsays’ kitchen, where the warmth of his welcome seemed like a reproach to the melancholia that so often afflicted him.

He even felt in a strange way that he had become a member of the family, part of the household at least, his presence at the kitchen table in the evenings so accepted that when Mrs Ramsay looked in, as she always did, for a few words with him, she would sit down – checking his movement to rise to his feet – and begin talking at once about whatever was in her mind, just as though a conversation they had been having earlier had been interrupted, wasting no time on formalities, but plunging straight into some topic.