by Alex Walters
How could he have heard a voice in this cacophony?
But he had. He was sure of it. He could hear it, echoing in his head. The strained voice of a child, caught momentarily on the gusting wind. Calling out. A voice in need. Perhaps in pain.
Reason told him he had imagined it, that it had been a trick of the keening wind and his own imagination. Reason told him he should return indoors, warm himself up, go back to bed. Forget all this. Forget everything.
But something else kept him out here, wondering whether he should venture further into the darkness.
Then he thought he saw something in the thick undergrowth. A movement, two glinting eyes.
The pale face of a child, staring.
'Sam!' he called before he could stop himself. And he wondered why, what that name had meant to him. It belonged to a story he had once heard, somewhere in another life, but which he had long forgotten.
With hope fading, he realised there was no alternative. He stumbled forward, pushing against the rising wind and the driving rain.
The drenched undergrowth was thickening beneath his feet, around his ankles, as he forced himself forward, and he realised he had lost his bearings. He turned, looking for a glimmer of light from the house he expected still to be behind him, but there was only darkness. Working by instinct, he cautiously moved forward.
It took him a moment to realise the ground was falling away beneath him. He was on a slope, the gradient dropping away unexpectedly. He took another step, doubting his reason, unable to recall any such slope in the proximity of the house.
The riverbank. But that had been somewhere else. Somewhere far away.
Then he was falling, the oozing ground striking his face, his shoulders, his back, as he tumbled headlong through the rain and the wind.
He came to an abrupt halt, his body striking jarringly against a solid object. Brickwork, part of a wall. And beyond that a yawning hole, and somewhere the acrid smell of burning…
In front of him, despite the ebbing darkness, he could see the face again, the child's staring eyes.
'Sam!' he called once more, desperate, still not knowing why.
Chapter 27
Winterman was in early, despite the snow. It took him a few minutes of rooting about in the kitchen to find a tea caddy. He lit the small gas hob, boiled a kettle and succeeded in making himself a pot of tea. There was no milk, but the fragrant warm liquid felt like an achievement in the cold unfamiliar environment.
Winterman poured himself a cup and, after a brief look around the main office, made his way upstairs to his own room. He sat down at the desk and looked around. An ugly and loudly ticking clock above the door told him it was still only 6.30am.
The dream had rattled him. It wasn't so much that it had been a nightmare – he was accustomed to those. It had been the content. Like all his dreams, however vivid, it had melted away rapidly on waking, and he had been left with little more than impressions, emotions, fading images. Pouring rain, yet again, and the wind. The familiar devastating sense of loss.
Winterman rose and stepped over to the office window. He needed to know more about Framley. Hoxton had called him a local, but he wasn't really. He knew well enough that in these parts a visitor even from the next village was likely to be treated as an incomer. Winterman was a city boy, even if the city was barely more than a large town.
He turned back from the window, tensing as he heard the slamming of a door from somewhere downstairs. He glanced at the clock. Still not yet seven. Mrs Sheringham presumably. He had no idea what time she normally started work, but was hardly surprised to discover she was an early bird.
He opened his office door noisily and called her name, keen to ensure she shouldn't be startled by his presence. There was silence from down below. He descended the stairs, his empty teacup clutched in his hand, calling out her name again.
Mrs Sheringham's office was ahead of him, the door closed. He stepped forward and twisted the handle, but the door was locked. She had not, he had noted, included a key to her office in the set she had given to him. Feeling irrationally jittery, he pushed open the door of the main office. Mary was sitting behind Marsh's desk, a copy of the previous day's newspaper spread in front of her. She looked up as he entered. 'Oh! You frightened the life out of me.'
Winterman stood in the doorway, mildly embarrassed by his previous anxieties. 'I'm sorry. I thought you were Mrs Sheringham.'
'I'll need to decide how to take that.'
'You're in early. To be honest, I didn't really expect you in at all.'
'I couldn't sleep. Thought I might as well try to do something useful.'
'Any help welcome. But don't do too much.' A thought struck him. 'How did you get here?'
'I cycled. I sometimes do. You can't rely on the buses out our way even at the best of times.'
'But it's pitch black out there.' He looked past her towards the office windows. He was exaggerating slightly, but the leaden skies were far from welcoming.
'That's winter for you.' She spoke as if alerting him to a hitherto unnoticed phenomenon. 'I'm used to leaving home in the dark this time of year.'
'But the roads must be lethal.' He realised that he did genuinely care about the risks she must have taken.
'Not as bad as you'd think. And I was very careful.'
'I'm glad to hear it.' He suspected that his tone was giving away more than he intended. 'We can't afford to lose any manpower at the moment.'
She smiled at him, her eyes mischievous. 'Manpower?'
'You'll want a cup of tea. You must be freezing.'
'You sound like my mother. But yes, thanks. That would be nice.'
He wandered back through into the poky kitchen, wondering precisely what kind of emotions he was wrestling with. Something more serious than he'd intended, certainly.
'Still no milk then?' He turned to see she had followed him into the small room. Involuntarily, he took a step back. 'I'll pop out later. See if I can track some down.'
'That would be good.' He busied himself boiling the kettle, spooning out the tea, pouring on the water. She watched him with what he assumed was mild amusement. He decided there was no point in putting off the moment much longer. 'Mind you, you can have too much tea. Why don't you let me buy you a proper drink? After work.'
She said nothing for a moment, but her sense of amusement grew more evident. 'That's very kind of you. Thank you for the invitation, Ivan.'
He handed her the steaming cup of tea. 'Does that mean you accept?'
'I'll have to think about it.'
He had been expecting this, but was untroubled. It as, after all, just the first move in a much longer game. 'You–'
'The thing is, Ivan,' she spoke his name with an unexpected emphasis, 'that you come with something of a reputation.'
'A reputation?' He wondered what gossip had been shared amongst the team. 'Nothing bad, I hope?' He spoke lightly, but could sense that he was not fooling her.
'I suppose that depends. On what one's looking for.'
'I'm not sure I really understand,' he said, though he understood all too well.
'You have a bit of a reputation as a – well, I think womaniser is perhaps the word.'
'Oh. I see. And where did you hear this?'
'I have my sources.'
'You don't want to believe everything Hoxton tells you.'
The smile momentarily turned into a laugh. 'George? I don't believe anything he tells me.'
George, Winterman thought. So Hoxton had a Christian name too. 'Who then?'
'As I say, I have my sources. Are you saying they're wrong?'
'I–' He stopped, not even sure what the honest answer might be. He wondered what rumours had been circulating about him. No wonder Mrs Sheringham had seemed so frosty. 'I think it's a bit of an overstatement.'
'But then you're a man.'
'I can't argue with you there. So what have they been saying about me?'
'Oh, you know…' She turned and made her
way, her teacup balanced in her hand, back into the main office. She sat down behind her desk, tucked unobtrusively in a corner of the room behind a row of filing cabinets. He followed her, pulling across the chair from Marsh's desk, and sat down opposite her.
'I don't really know,' he said. 'What they're saying, I mean. But I imagine it's worse than the truth.'
'So what is the truth?'
'The truth is…' He hesitated again. 'The truth's nothing. Nothing much at all. I mean, when I was younger, when I was an undergraduate–'
'You were one for the ladies?'
'That's a long time ago.'
'You're a changed man?' Her tone still conveyed amusement rather than scepticism.
'Yes.'
'Now that you're married?'
He said nothing for a moment. 'Who told you that?'
'Isn't it true?'
He took a long slow sip of his scalding tea. 'Sort of.'
'You're sort of married?'
'I think that sums it up.'
'I'm an old-fashioned girl. I tend to believe you're either married or you're not.'
'You'd think so, wouldn't you? But it's a long story.'
'It usually is. And no doubt you'd like the opportunity to tell it to me.'
It wasn't going quite the way Winterman had hoped, and for a moment he was tempted to throw in the towel. 'I'd prefer you knew the truth.'
She nodded, as though she had just made up her mind. 'So would I. Okay. You're on. You can buy me a drink.'
'Really?' He blinked, startled by the unexpected turn in the conversation.
'Assuming you still want to. I'll call Mam and tell her I'll be a bit late back. Not too late, mind. Just the one.'
'One drink it is then. And I'll give you and your bike a lift home. You'll probably get home earlier than usual.'
'Don't get ahead of yourself. We'll see.'
'We'll see,' he agreed.
Well, he thought, it was at least a start. But to what, he wasn't sure.
Chapter 28
Mrs Sheringham arrived just after eight, and showed no surprise that two of her colleagues were already in the office. It occurred to Winterman that this in itself might be enough to set tongues wagging, but there was nothing much he could do about that.
By eight thirty, the whole small team had assembled in the main office. The snow was still thick on the ground, but no more had fallen in the night and most of the local main roads had been at least partially cleared.
'It's not the end of it though,' Hoxton predicted. He was lying slouched in his chair, his feet propped on a metal waste-paper bin. 'There's more to come.'
'Feel it in your water, do you?' Marsh was aimlessly flicking through one of the morning's newspapers, waiting for Winterman to call the meeting, such as it was, to order.
'Feel it in the air, more like,' Hoxton said. 'Never known it so cold.'
'If you're right,' Winterman observed, placing himself in the centre of the group and striving to exert some authority, 'it's all the more reason why we should move quickly. Make the best of things while the roads are clear.'
'All ears, guv.' Hoxton leant back and gazed at Winterman with apparent rapt attention.
'I'm open to any better suggestions,' Winterman said, glancing back at Hoxton's blank visage, 'particularly from those who've got the most local knowledge, but I think we need to get down to some legwork. We've got two – maybe even three – potential cases here, and almost nothing in the way of evidence.'
'So where do we start?' Hoxton made the question sound like an initiative test.
'We've got almost nothing on the children,' Winterman said. 'We'll get the forensic reports which might give us some clues – for example, about precisely where in the fens the bodies might have been all this time – but I'm not building my hopes up.' He turned to Mrs Sheringham. She was sitting beside Mary's desk, her posture implying she had some important copy typing waiting in her office. 'We don't even seem to have any reports of missing children that might relate to these bodies. Mrs Sheringham, can you speak to HQ, see what regional records they've got on missing persons?'
'I've already put in a request, Inspector,' she said predictably. 'Asked them to pull out records of any missing children. I said to go back to the start of the war.'
'What did they say?'
'They didn't sound very optimistic. The wartime records are a mess. They moved offices four or five times, to my knowledge, and they were bombed once. Records were destroyed or lost. And I don't know how much effort was really put into keeping them in the first place.' She spoke as if barely able to conceive of such negligence.
'I imagine they had other priorities,' Winterman offered.
'I imagine they had to make do with a skeleton staff of wastrels and incompetents,' Mrs Sheringham corrected. 'Most of whom certainly had other priorities.'
'Meanwhile,' Winterman said, 'we need to get back out to Framley. I want to have a chat with Callaghan's father, this academic.'
'The prof,' Hoxton said. 'Reckon he'll be able to tell us much?'
'He can give us a view on his son, if nothing else. And we can perhaps get him to corroborate Callaghan's movements.'
'Unless Callaghan's primed him already,' Marsh said. 'A father's testimony won't be worth much.'
'That depends on the father,' Hoxton said. 'No great love lost between Callaghan and the prof.'
'Anyway, it's a route we need to explore,' Winterman said. He turned to Hoxton. 'So who else should we speak to? We can do a door to door in the village, but we'll be pushed if there's more snow coming.'
'No chance of any backup resource?' Marsh asked.
'I can't see them rushing to push manpower in our direction. We need to make best use of what we've got.'
'We should start with the pub,' Hoxton said. 'If the local landlord doesn't know it, it's not worth knowing. Especially that nosy beggar. Excuse my French, ladies. '
'Not a bad thought,' Winterman said. 'Who else?'
Hoxton shrugged. 'Everyone and no one, really. Fisher had no close friends, as far as I'm aware. No real neighbours either, for that matter.'
Marsh leaned forward. 'What about Hamshaw?'
'Hamshaw?'
'Lord Hamshaw, that would be, since his elevation,' Hoxton said.
'The MP?'
'Former MP,' Hoxton corrected. 'Sir Thomas Hamshaw.'
Winterman had a vague memory of the man in question, a red-faced slightly pugnacious figure who had risen to some junior ministerial role in the dying days of the war. Winterman assumed Hamshaw had lost his seat in the '45 election. 'Why him?'
'Something Mrs Griffiths – Mary's mam – said yesterday, just in passing. She said it was a coincidence that both bodies had been found on Hamshaw's land. That old cottage, where Fisher found the first body – that had been one of Hamshaw's tenancies apparently. The farmland opposite Mary's house belongs to Hamshaw. Wouldn't be surprised to find Fisher's cottage belonged to Hamshaw as well. He was turfed out of the vicarage when they relieved him of his duties. Can't see he'd have been able to afford anything of his own, so perhaps Hamshaw stepped in to smooth things over. Another coincidence, if so.'
'Not that much of a coincidence,' Hoxton observed. 'He's the nearest there is to local gentry in that part of the world. Family's ruled the roost there for generations. Owns half the land in them parts.'
'Now he's been ousted by a Labour man,' Winterman mused ironically. 'Makes you think.'
'There's maybe more than one farmhand got tired of tugging his forelock. But I think it was a shock to him. Subservience runs deep in these parts.' Hoxton shook his head. 'Like as not, Hamshaw'll have nothing useful to tell us. But he'd have known Fisher well in his vicaring days, and there's not much of importance happens around here without Hamshaw knowing about it.'
'Worth a try, anyway,' Winterman said. 'We should think about using young Brain on some of the door-to-door stuff. He's got his own job to do, but I don't imagine his duties are too onerous, so we can pro
bably co-opt unofficially to give us a hand. He seems enthusiastic enough.'
'He's that all right,' Marsh said. 'I'll have a word with him.'
Winterman turned to the others. 'Let's go to it. Before the snow comes down again.'
Chapter 29
'I can't pretend your presence is welcome,' Professor Callaghan said, 'but it's hardly a surprise either.' He was standing at the open front door, regarding Winterman and Hoxton with a mix of suspicion and contempt.
And a good morning to you, Professor, Winterman thought. Clearly not a man for the conventional courtesies. 'I'm sure you appreciate why we're here, sir.'
'I'd expected you earlier.' Callaghan's tone managed to imply that inefficiency could be added to the list of their manifest failings.
'You'll appreciate that we're very busy, sir.'
'No doubt. Though not too busy to detain my son overnight. I've already lodged a complaint with the chief constable.'
'I'm sure he'll give it his full attention, sir,' Winterman said. This kind of pomposity seemed, oddly, to have become even more prevalent since the war. Perhaps it was because the likes of Callaghan felt less secure about their social position. 'Though your son wasn't detained. He spent the night at Reverend Fisher's house and then volunteered himself at Framley Police Station. He's been extremely co-operative in assisting us with our enquiries.' Winterman smiled faintly. 'Speaking of which, I wonder if we might come in. It is rather cold out here.' He glanced up at the house, a sizable Victorian villa situated at what was clearly the more socially aspirational end of the village. These houses would have been built in proximity to the railway for the prosperous middle-classes moving out of the city.
Callaghan stared at him for a moment, as though considering rejecting his request. 'Please come in, gentlemen. Unfortunately, my housekeeper is a little unwell, so I'm unable to offer you any refreshments.'
Winterman presumed that refreshments would not have been forthcoming in any circumstances. 'Of course, sir. We're on duty in any case.' As if the old boy might have been about to ply them with a whisky and soda.