by Jim Kelly
Several villages nestled in the low, slow hills, Wimpole, Meldreth and Barrington being the main parishes. The river’s spring lay at the village of Ashwell. Unbidden, a memory crystallised, of Joy on the weekend she’d brought Ben home for the first time, and they’d all gone swimming in the Rhee. They’d met boyfriends before but this was quite plainly a more serious relationship, because Brooke could see how proud his daughter was of the dashing submariner.
The sudden sense of despair was like a physical blow. He forced himself to take up the map again, studying the river’s spidery route over the chalky hills. He knew all the villages well, and each one had its rural sub-station – a house, with a decent garden, and a blue lamp over the door. Later the constables would be at home for tea and he’d ring round and alert them to what might be on their doorsteps.
‘What’s that?’
Claire was at the door, smiling, but then she saw Brooke’s face.
‘What’s wrong?’ she said, walking briskly up to him and placing a hand flat on his chest.
‘It’s Ben,’ he said, knowing he’d done the right thing, to make sure he told his wife, and that he didn’t try to hide the truth. For the first time since Burr had broken the news he felt the constriction in his chest ease, as if he had been given leave to breathe more deeply.
She had a full shopping bag, and she hadn’t put it down, but he told her everything, everything the American had said.
‘So we don’t know for sure,’ he said at last. ‘But at least we know what probably lies ahead. She’ll be home in a few hours, but she’ll have Iris, and it doesn’t seem right to say it in front of the child.’
She shook her head. ‘No, later. But tonight, Eden, at all costs. Joy wants to celebrate because there’s a letter from Luke. Good news, thank God. She’s taken it with her to reread if she gets the chance, but she wants you to read it out loud after supper because you’ve got the same voice. Let’s get through that, and see Iris off to sleep. Then we’ll tell her.’
They chopped carrots, leeks and onions and rolled some chopped rabbit in flour, but every now and then Claire came to a full stop, and just looked at her hands. Brooke poured them each a glass of wine, and they plodded on, and finally it was finished, and he heaved the dish into the oven. Brooke gave her a hug and was holding her head under his chin when they heard the rusty hinge on the gate squeal.
‘There’s a letter from Luke,’ said his daughter, bursting in, Iris in her arms so that she could hand the baby to Brooke, although Joy always complained he held her like an unexploded bomb.
‘I’ll read it after the food,’ he said.
‘I’ll change Iris and she can have her bath and some food,’ said Joy. ‘Then we’ll have some peace and quiet if she’ll go down, which she might, because Mrs Mullins said she’d been lively all day and hadn’t had her nap.’
She lifted the baby up and addressed her seriously. ‘If you’re good, granddad will read you a story.’
It was remarkable, thought Brooke, how domestic routine could smooth over crisis and grief. Joy disappeared upstairs and he remembered The Times. Trying to keep busy, he went to his chair in front of the fire where he kept the papers, but a brief search revealed the edition he wanted had already been used with the kindling. He checked his watch: it was too late now to ring the newspaper’s library in London. It would have to wait.
Typically, Iris didn’t sleep, so they let her lie on the floor in front of the hearth while they ate. After food they all trooped into the front room and flopped down in the old chairs, Joy rocking the baby.
Brooke washed up with Claire and then he read Luke’s letter out loud.
His son admitted that he had indeed done precisely what his father had told him never to do: he had volunteered, and was now in field training. He was unable to say more. He didn’t need to anyway, because he must have guessed they could provide their own detail. Churchill wanted commandos to launch lightning raids on the enemy. The newspapers had already carried accounts of such raids on Guernsey and the coast of occupied France.
It’s certainly keeping me fit, wrote Luke. We have to swim out into the loch in full kit, then come ashore, then hike ten miles along a line of telegraph poles. You have to run to the first, then walk to the next, then run to the third, and so on. Here’s the devil. The whole platoon has to get there by the set time or you have to do it again. So if someone flakes out we have to carry the bugger.
‘“Loch” is clever, said Brooke. ‘Just in case we hadn’t guessed. Jo says the army’s set up a training camp at Fort William for the commandos, up in the mountains at an old house. I hope he’s gone by the time the winter comes.’
‘I don’t,’ said Claire, bitterly. ‘I hope he stays there for the Duration.’ She cast a glance at Brooke, which was intercepted by Joy, who looked away.
Brooke ploughed ahead with Luke’s news: ‘We’re off soon. I hope I’m not seasick. After that I won’t be able to write. Kiss Iris for me. Don’t let Joy eat all the cake.’
Brooke folded the letter.
‘She’s asleep,’ said Joy, looking at the baby.
Claire looked at Brooke.
‘What is it?’ said Joy. ‘I know it’s bad news. It’s been as clear as day since I came home. Dad’s got his blank face on and you won’t look at me, Mum.’
‘It’s bad news about Ben,’ said Brooke.
Two hours later Joy was in her room with Claire.
There’d been no tears at first, but when they had come, she’d given Iris to her mother to put to bed and Brooke had sat with her, holding her hand, trying not to say anything that was trite or might raise false hopes.
Brooke left a note saying he had to go to the Spinning House to make some calls. Then he shrugged on his coat, listened to the silence in the old house and, opening the door, slipped out into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It took two hours to track down four village police constables on the upper reaches of the River Rhee: one was at home, one was out on a night beat, and the others were ARP wardens, on their rounds. Eventually he briefed them all, and managed to answer their questions – principally, what exactly were they looking for? Brooke said the fuel leak must originate at the point at which the gang was adulterating the petrol: a barn, a garage, a farm outbuilding. At some time regular supplies of pilfered petrol had to roll in – and the kerosene with which it would be mixed. There must be a workforce – perhaps two, three or half a dozen men. There must then be regular deliveries outward-bound, or lorries coming in to take it away in bulk. So – an ‘operation’ of some kind, which must be suspicious to those living nearby, which suggested a relatively isolated location. And then there was the tell-tale smell of fuel. And possibly local black spots in ditches and channels where spills would have killed fish, and rats. Brooke suggested they keep enquiries casual and low-key, but talk to gamekeepers, water bailiffs, farmers and postmen.
After two hours he could do no more, so he set off back home, walking away from the city centre. When he reached Newnham Croft, would Joy’s light still be on? He felt torn between the need to be near her, and an understandable urge to keep grief at a distance. The street was silent, the release from his office a relief, so that he found he could no longer keep at bay more disturbing thoughts: what was it like to escape, and dream of seeing your family again, and then be captured, and for it to become apparent that your life was over? He imagined a woodland clearing and a summary firing squad, and Ben realising that he wouldn’t see his wife again, or hold his child.
The city was so quiet, as he turned down an alleyway, that the burst of static – when it came – echoed off stone walls, unnaturally loud and close, as if he had the headphones of the radio cupped to his ear. He stopped, finding the contradiction disturbing: the city was dormant, nothing moved within sight, and yet this sound – and now he could discern the tumbling words – was upon him, and circling him, and then bouncing back off the high college walls.
‘Hauxton Junct
ion, assistance immediate. Over.’
Brooke heard this repeated three times as he ran towards King’s Parade, his Blakeys clashing on the flagged pavement. At the corner of Silver Street he saw the radio car at last, parked in the cold canyon that ran between the high walls of Queens’ College. The echoing stone had amplified the crackling radio signal.
The driver was a police constable, due for retirement in a few years, and way beyond service age. His name was Boyle and he’d been stout in his prime; now he was wedged between the seat and the steering wheel. He reported that a water bailiff had gone into the Blue Ball Inn on the water meadows beyond Newnham and asked the landlord to ring the Spinning House: he’d spotted several scraps of sky-blue material caught in the nets of a fish hatchery on the river. They looked like remnants of a dress matching the description of Peggy Wylde’s clothes on the day she disappeared.
‘Just scraps?’ asked Brooke.
‘Yes, sir. Floating on the surface.’
Brooke knew the fishery, and it was just above Byron’s Pool.
‘I can raise the local constable and get them collected,’ said Boyle.
‘I think we should attend, Constable,’ said Brooke, sliding into the passenger seat and picking up the radio handset. His mind raced: had the tell-tale dress been swapped with something less distinctive as the couple made their escape? With each step in the case, the degree of premeditation seemed more apparent. He felt wide awake, and a trip out to the country was as good as lying awake on his bed.
A snaking lane, bounded by hedges, led from the edge of the town into the gentle hills to the south. After half a mile a line of poor terraced houses came into view, the pub in the middle, converted from an old cottage. The Blue Ball was a favourite of the city’s porters and college servants because it lay beyond the city boundary. It provided a panelled, coal-lit snug – a home from home – but beyond the prying eyes of the proctors.
The landlord, a former colleague of Doric’s from Michaelhouse, shook Brooke’s hand and introduced the water bailiff, who was called Potter.
‘I read the piece in the paper,’ he said, kneading a tweed cap, ‘and it looks to be what the girl was wearing, so I thought you’d want to know.’
Brooke thanked him and they set out in a line, tracking across a hillside and down to the towpath. Potter looked decrepit but he took the first stile with ease, using an old stick as a support. The river was hardly visible despite the moonlight, but quite audible as the current sucked at the bank, and turned in eddies around tree roots and sand banks.
They passed Byron’s Pool – Brooke caught sight of the diving boards on the opposite bank – and then they were in open country, pale fields glimpsed between the hawthorn and willow.
A path branched off and took them towards a cottage. A light shone from the open door where a woman was waiting with a lantern. Beyond her Brooke glimpsed the interior of the house: a single room, a peat fire, eel traps hung from the rafters, and a bed of straw and blankets – a glimpse into the past, a lonely reed cutter’s cote perhaps, on the eve of the Civil War. Between two poles in the kitchen garden, dead rats were hung up by their tails.
Potter fetched a long pole with a hook which hung from the rafters and a set of waders from beside the fire. Beyond the cottage a cut had been dug, a water channel which ran parallel to the main river, carrying its flow, trickling through cages and nets. Hauxton Junction lay ahead, the spot on Aldiss’s map where the two main tributaries, the Rhee and the Granta, met to form the Cam.
The cut, which was about twenty feet across, plopped and flopped with fish, held within their meshed cages. The silver-white splashes stood out starkly in the gloom. Brooke felt he could hear them too, scales clashing, air bubbles rising, tail fins splashing. It was a strangely disturbing sound because he’d always thought of the world beneath the river itself as rumbling and deep, but now he imagined the sounds as sharper, piercing and less peaceful.
Potter had hardly spoken since they’d met, but Brooke imagined he ran the hatchery – or more probably managed it for the colleges, which owned the upper river. At the end of the cut where it met the main channel, a set of poles supported a final net. Beyond that was the junction itself – a broad expanse of water filmed with algae, lit by reedy moonlight. Caught between the final poles were three pieces of floating material – all sky-blue.
‘We’ve to be careful,’ said the old man. ‘If the poles break the nets’ll fail and the pike’ll by loosed in the river.’
This was clearly the real crisis: that the net might fail if they blundered in to get the evidence, and then the precious pike – an ornament to dinner tables at college – would swim free. He’d dined on the fish at Michaelhouse one evening and had found the flesh meaty and slightly muddy, while the dons had pronounced the feast first class. Brooke wondered if it was one of those delicacies lauded because of its rarity rather than its flavour. He did recall the teeth: serried rows, razor sharp, each one needle thin.
Potter sat on a log bench and struggled into the waders, then stepped into the cut, the long pole held over his head with both hands. The invasion caused a frenzy amongst the fish, which began to rise up, rolling over each other, mouths gasping.
Deftly the old man extended the pole and hooked up the nearest two pieces of cotton, ferrying them back to Brooke; the edges were torn, the material itself punctured with holes. The third piece was further out and clearly snared by a pole. For a minute Potter struggled to get it free. Then patience snapped and he used both arms to pull the billhook back with a violent tug.
His back was turned to them, but they heard him clearly. ‘Christ Almighty,’ he said, taking a sudden step backwards, his hands flailing in a sudden panic, so that he tipped into the water.
For a moment Brooke thought nothing had changed: the moonlight still caught the scrap of blue cotton, but then, like an oily, pale apparition, a body surfaced, turning turtle as it did, so that the pale neck and calves came into sight. The fish, sensing more danger, set about a chaotic thrashing.
The body, now free from its underwater snare, began to drift towards the open river, and the final net failed. The bailiff, recovering, managed to hook it back towards the bank, and they all dragged it onto the grass, while the pike scrambled for freedom in the wider river.
A single large eel followed them like a snake, inscribing a series of ‘S’s over the dark surface.
It was a woman, the sky-blue dress reduced to tatters. Brooke’s eye caught the palm of one hand and saw the myriad lacerations of the pike’s teeth. He knew that when the torch beam lit her face he’d recognise her in a particular way, because although he’d never seen her alive, he knew the family now so well, and the photograph they’d used for the WANTED poster had been pin-sharp and clear.
Peggy Wylde’s face was extraordinarily pale, almost luminous, the colour of the eyes now hooded behind a glassy membrane. The odd detail which everyone would remember was the blood, which ran glistening in wet rivulets down her legs and arms and neck – freely, as if she were still alive.
Boyle knelt down to see if he could feel her breath between the blue lips, but the slightly bloated flesh, and the glazed eyes, told Brooke she’d been dead for several days.
The still-flowing blood told a lie. The pike had nibbled at the flesh but these wounds were puckered and bleached. The blood ran from black leeches which dotted her neck and legs, secreting their magic enzyme, which had stopped the wounds from clotting.
They stood back in silence as the cold corpse bled.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
‘You look like you could do with cheering up,’ said Rose King, from behind the counter of her all-night mobile tea hut on Market Hill.
‘It may never happen, you know,’ she added, reaching for the metal teapot with one hand, her cigarettes with the other.
‘Do you think I can fit you in?’ she said, nodding to the city’s central square. It was the dead watches of the night. Market stalls, locked up and shrouded in tarpau
lins, stood in shadowy rows. The surrounding buildings – the stark new Guildhall, St Mary’s Church, the narrow, gabled shops in neat rows, the college spires beyond – seemed to brood on the desolate scene.
There wasn’t another human being in sight.
Mobile tea huts had popped up all over the city to cater for servicemen and civil defence workers, ARP wardens, fire watchers and the rest. Most were run by volunteers, like the WRVS, but Rose’s stall was a family business, a feature of Market Hill since the last war.
‘I’ll join you before the rush starts,’ said Rose. ‘Bacon roll?’
Brooke took one of the chairs and slumped down. The Black Russian failed to raise his spirits. He’d had to wait an hour for an ambulance to arrive at the Blue Ball, where they’d eventually stretchered the body. Establishing cause of death would have to wait for Dr Comfort’s mortuary: there was no point now summoning the pathologist because they’d had to move the body to the bank and so there was no scientific benefit to viewing the scene of the crime. Had the girl drowned? Had the girl been drowned?
The radio car took Brooke back to the Spinning House, where he’d typed up a brief report for Carnegie-Brown. The Borough’s number one priority was to track down Bruno Zeri.
Sleep was out of the question. Dawn was just a few hours away. He felt himself in a familiar state of limbo – poised between night and day. There was a measure of guilt in his decision not to go home, apprehensive of what he might find. Iris had not slept through the night yet, and Joy would be struggling still with the news about Ben.
Rose’s tea hut, en route to Newnham Croft, had proved irresistible.
She worked now behind the counter, griddling the bacon. The light flooded out around her, as if she were on stage. She had grey hair tied back under a bright red scarf, her face delineated by lipstick and eyeliner, a pair of earrings catching the eye. A platoon of soldiers suddenly clattered into the square and crowded in front of her, demanding tea and sausages, a cloud of cigarette smoke hanging over them. She began to slosh tea into mugs lined up on the counter. From the chat it was clear that they were a crew of gunners from the ack-ack barrage on the eastern edge of the city, stood down for another night.