The Blood-Dimmed Tide (43 page)

Pale beneath the caked ash, Madden’s features bore the stamp of exhaustion. He was in his shirtsleeves and Billy saw that his tweed jacket was wrapped around the girl, whose head rested on his shoulder.

‘She’s asleep, poor child.’

Billy had offered to take the girl from him, but Madden had seemed reluctant to let her out of his arms.

‘Better not to wake her.’ His eyes were bright and staring and it was plain from his dilated pupils that he was suffering from shock.

It was at that point that one of the men standing around had drawn Billy aside. A heavy-browed Mick by the name of Harrigan, he’d identified himself as the foreman of the road crew.

‘I sent a man down to Oak Green to ring for an ambulance. That was after we found Sam Watkin over there.’ He’d nodded towards the figure in the greatcoat. ‘Sam was crawling through the kitchen garden, trying to get to the yard. He’d been stabbed. Aye, and knocked on the head. I reckon he tried to save the lass. He’ll be all right, though. That coat of his is padded. The knife didn’t go in too deep.’

He’d told Billy he and the others in his gang had rushed up from the road on Madden’s heels and had got half way to the village before they’d spotted the fire behind them… and come pelting back.

‘You’ll have to ask your fella what happened.’ He gestured towards Madden. ‘We’ve not bothered him with questions. You can see he’s done in. One thing I can tell you, though – the lass isn’t… hurt.’ Harrigan’s cheeks had flushed and he’d looked away in embarrassment. ‘You take my drift. She woke up for a moment and told us she was feeling sick, but that was all. Your bloke said it was from the chloroform he gave her. That bastard out there.’ The foreman jerked his thumb towards the doorway. ‘Well, he won’t be doing it to another, will he?’

While they were talking the clatter of boots on the cobbles outside had signalled the arrival of the main police party. The sight of blue uniforms crowding into the cramped stall had seemed to reassure Madden and Billy had coaxed him at last to hand over his burden into the care of a burly sergeant, who had wrapped the child in his coat and settled down with her in a corner.

Madden had struggled then to rise to his feet.

‘I don’t know what’s come over me. Give me a hand, would you, Billy.’

Helped up, he’d appeared unsteady on his legs and Billy had led him out of the packed stall into the yard where the cold air had revived him. Finding an upturned bucket to hand, he’d persuaded Madden to sit down.

‘I had to break his wrist, Billy. He wouldn’t have it otherwise.’

Slumped over his knees, staring at the ground between his feet, Madden had given a brief, fragmented account of what had occurred to an audience which by now included several of the Midhurst contingent. Not once had his glance strayed to the shapeless, black form, guarded by a pair of constables, that lay still smouldering on the cobbles not far from where he sat.

‘It was Lang who set fire to the barn. He must have known he wouldn’t survive it. But he wanted to kill us, come what may.’

He hadn’t yet made sense of the experience, come to terms with it. Billy had seen that. But there’d been no time to talk. Just then the chief inspector had appeared, entering the yard by the kitchen garden, and Billy had signalled to him. Out of breath after his brisk walk up from the road, but already informed by runner of the part Madden had played in the rescue of the girl, Sinclair had stood before them, wordless.

‘Ah, John…!’!’

Seeing the state his old partner was in, he’d directed him to sit quietly and wait for transport of some kind to arrive, an order Madden had seemed happy to obey. Taking Billy with him, the chief inspector had then crossed the yard to examine the remains of their quarry. Lang’s smoking corpse lay on its back with one hand raised, the fingers bent. Where the face had been, only charred flesh remained.

‘Not something you’d want to show your maiden aunt, is it?’ Sinclair’s lip had curled in disgust at the grisly sight. ‘But a comfort to some, I dare say. No chance of him turning up in the dock.’

Billy had told him what he’d learned from Madden. ‘Lang tried to kill them both.’

Sinclair had absorbed this information without comment. Then he’d shrugged. ‘I wonder how he came to end up here. I mean at this particular spot.’

The answer hadn’t been long in coming. Presently Sergeant Cole had approached them. The Sussex detective reported that he’d been speaking to Sam Watkin, the man found stabbed in the garden, who had information he’d wanted to communicate.

‘He says he heard the girl scream and ran to help. Lang was waiting for him just inside the garden wall. He hit him with a hammer and then stabbed him. But the point is he reckons he’d seen him before hanging around the farm, trying to get into the barn, fiddling with the tap outside to see if it worked. And when you consider that this same girl, Nell Ramsay, comes home from school every day at the same time, and by the same route… and that Lang’s been living not more than a mile away…’

Cole had gestured wordlessly.

‘But there’s more. The reason Watkin was over here this afternoon was to look for a pal of his who’s gone missing. A bloke called Eddie Noyes. He was part of that road gang. Watkin works for an estate agent in Midhurst. He’d fixed for Noyes to sleep in the barn and he’d asked him only the other day to keep an eye out for any stranger he saw nosing about and to tell him to shove off.’

‘So it’s possible they ran into each other and Lang disposed of him. That would have been in character, all right.’ The chief inspector grimaced. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted his pitch queered. Not if he had the girl in his sights.’ He was silent for some moments, reflecting. Then he’d sighed. ‘There’s a fire engine coming, I take it?’

‘Yes, sir. I sent a man down to Oak Green to ring for one.’

‘Tell them to search what’s left of the barn carefully. Likely as not they’ll find another body in there.’

‘America, sir. Baltimore, in fact. That’s where he was bound. He’d booked passage on a freighter due to sail from Southampton tomorrow. One of the fellows at Midhurst told me. They broke into his car and found his ticket and a lot of other stuff in a briefcase.

Billy could tell from Madden’s expression that he was having trouble following all this. His old chief’s eyes were on matchsticks, as the saying went, and his head was nodding. It was odds on that any moment he would lay it on the kitchen table in front of him and go quietly to sleep.

‘By freighter, you say…’ Madden frowned with the effort of trying to keep up. ‘Not one of the liners. It sounds as though he was taking precautions. Did they find a passport?’

‘Yes, they did, sir. French. In the name of Victor Lasalle. There was a file of business correspondence, too, letters and invoices. They made out this Lasalle was an art dealer. Some of the letters were from galleries and the like with fancy letterheads. All forged, most likely, which may explain that package he was expecting. Why it took so long to arrive.’

Billy glanced over his shoulder at the door. He was wondering when Helen would appear. He’d arrived himself ten minutes before, walking down the darkened driveway to the house, where he’d seen Madden’s car standing by the front door, and felt relief for the second time that day. The fear that the other man might have suffered some mishap on the way back from Midhurst – that he wasn’t in a fit state to drive – had made the sergeant’s own journey an anxious one.

Seeing the entrance hall dark, Billy had walked round the side of the house to the kitchen where a light was burning and found Madden sitting at the table before the remains of a meal, alone and nodding.

‘Come in, Billy, come in…’ Blinking, he had half risen. The sergeant couldn’t imagine why he was still up. ‘Helen’s on the phone

… she’s trying to find out for me about that girl… if she’s all right. And the man who was stabbed, too. I should have stayed, I know. But I had to get home.’

Billy had been grateful for the chance to reassure him. Grinning, he’d described the eventual arrival of the ambulance, which had occurred just as he was leaving.

‘It took a while to get there. There’s a road to the farm, but it’s in bad condition; hasn’t been used for ages. Someone had gone down to Oak Green to fetch the child’s mother, and you can imagine the state the poor woman was in. But the girl herself was fine. She’d woken up by then and was more worried about the bloke who was stabbed, Sam Watkin, than anything else. Him and his dog. Turns out they all know each other. So when the ambulance arrived, Nell said she wouldn’t get in unless the dog came too. And she stuck to her guns, what’s more. They had to give in.’ Billy had chuckled. ‘She’s a fine girl, sir, full of spirit. She won’t be put down by what happened to her. You’ll see.’

Billy added these last words to his account, knowing they would please his old mentor, and heard Madden grunt in approbation. Then he seemed to hesitate.

‘You’ll find Helen’s upset,’ he said, touching the lump on his temple. The size of a pigeon’s egg now, and tinted with iodine, it gave Madden’s face a lopsided look ‘She caught Rob down here, trying to find out what had been going on, and gave him a fearful ticking off. Just bear with her, if you would?’

It was a remark the like of which Billy had never heard coming from Madden’s lips before, and he was still wondering what to make of it when he heard the sound of quick footsteps approaching in the passage outside.

‘They went to Petersfield, not Chichester…’ Helen began speaking even before she had pushed the swing door into the kitchen open. ‘I spoke to the doctor who examined the girl. She’s quite unharmed. A mild case of shock, nothing more. They’ll keep her in overnight…’

As she swept into the kitchen her eye fell on Billy and she paused. He’d already risen to his feet, but the words of greeting he’d been about to utter died on his lips when he saw the high colour in her cheeks and the anger in her eyes.

‘The man’s stab wound is quite serious – he’s lost a lot of blood – but it wasn’t deep enough to damage any vital organs.’ Ignoring Billy, Helen went on speaking to Madden. ‘He’s also got a fracture of the skull. But the doctor said he’s fit and strong and should recover well.’

She stood by the table looking down at her husband. After a moment she reached out, turning his head a little to one side so she could examine the lump on his temple.

‘Do you know, I can’t remember how that happened?’ Madden spoke to Billy through the crook of Helen’s arm. ‘It might have been something falling from the roof when we were coming out of the barn. But I simply don’t remember.’

It came to Billy that what Madden was trying to do was alert him. That his casual tone was an attempt to defuse a bomb that was about to go off. Helen’s silence, her refusal even to look at him had left the sergeant puzzled and wondering. Too late he saw what was about to happen.

‘How could you do it?’ Without warning she turned on him. ‘How could you let this happen?’

Billy was struck speechless.

‘I spoke to you only this morning. I begged you to take care of him.’

‘My dear-’ Madden tried to check her, but she brushed his hand aside.

‘You had no right to put him in danger. He should never have been allowed to get near this man. Yet you let it happen.’

It made no difference that her charges were unfair. Fairness didn’t come into it. Billy saw that. Her distress, the fury she’d felt on learning of what had befallen her husband, was its own justification. The situation called for a sacrificial lamb, and there were no other candidates present. But he was cut to the quick by her words. Her good opinion had always mattered to him and he knew that the loss of it would leave him forever the poorer.

‘I thought I could trust you. I believed he’d be safe as long as he was with you. So tell me, how could this have happened?’ She demanded an answer, peering into his face, refusing to release him from her gaze. ‘You, Billy… I’m asking you. How could you have -’

‘Stop it, Mummy.’

Cut short by the child’s cry, Helen turned. She saw her daughter standing by the door. Lucy’s tear-filled eyes had the puffy look of one just aroused from sleep. The cord of her blue dressing gown trailed on the floor behind her.

‘Why are you being so horrid to Billy?’

‘Lucinda Madden!’ Knocked off balance, Helen struggled to recover. ‘Go to bed this instant.’

‘No.’

Defiant, the little girl came forward into the kitchen. She took up a position in front of the sergeant. Pale with the enormity of her rebellion, she faced her mother. ‘Not till you promise,’ she declared, her voice quavering.

‘Promise what?’

‘That you won’t be horrid to him any more.’

‘And why should I do that?’

‘Because he’s our friend.’

Helen stared back at her daughter. She seemed in shock, and Billy saw, with a flash of insight, that her anger had been only a disguise, something to cling to. That knowing how close Madden had come to death that afternoon had thrown her emotions into turmoil, pushing her to the edge of collapse. It was with an enormous effort that she gathered herself now and spoke.

‘Because he’s our friend?’ She looked down at the small figure before her, as though in puzzlement. Then a smile came to her lips. ‘But of course he is. And thank you for reminding me, my darling. I promise not to be horrid again.’

She stooped and kissed the little girl.

As she straightened, Billy saw that tears had begun to stream down her cheeks. Madden had already risen and he came to her side at once. Taking her in his arms, he drew her away from the table and they stood together, not speaking, but holding each other so closely they might have been one.

Wide-eyed, Lucy looked at Billy for an explanation. The sergeant put a finger to his lips.

‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he whispered in her ear, and hand in hand they tiptoed out together.