by Rennie Airth
Madden paused at the foot of the path. 'Now, my idea is, if he laid up anywhere it wouldn't be on this side, towards Lord Stratton's land and his keepers, it would be in the other direction.' He pointed west along the ridge, away from the village. 'Let's climb up a bit, then look for a way across.'
All along the length of the path the ferns and undergrowth on either side had been trodden down.
'That lot from Guildford, they just spread out in a line and walked up the hill,' Stackpole said, in disgust.
'Then, when they got to the top, they spread out some more and came down again.'
'How much of the woods did they search?' Madden was sweating freely in the stifling heat.
'No more than a mile across. The keepers scouted around a bit, but they didn't find anything.'
Two-thirds of the way up the slope they came to a track branching to the right, and Madden took it. The trampled undergrowth continued for some distance, then the ferns sprang up again and the forest seemed to draw in on them. The inspector kept his gaze on the ground ahead, though the footpath showed no sign of recent use. The narrow track was littered with dead twigs and leaves.
Thunder boomed, louder than before. The air was close and still. Stackpole swatted a midge. 'You can't see more than a few yards,' he complained, his glance probing the bushes on either side of them.
'Look for a broken branch,' Madden advised. 'Anything that seems disturbed.'
The path began to descend and they came to a natural bowl in the side of the hill, circled by a ring of lofty beech trees. The track went around it, resuming its straight course on the far side. Taking a short cut, the two men walked across the shallow depression. Successive generations of dead leaves had given the surface a soft, yielding quality, and midway across Madden was assailed by a sudden sharp memory of a trench, springy with bodies like a mattress, and the eyes of dead men staring up at him. These fragments of a past he had tried to forget came without warning, often accompanied by dizziness and a feeling of vertigo, and he hurried to regain the footpath.
'How far have we come?' He saw that Stackpole was looking at him with concern, and realized he must have paled in the few seconds it had taken them to cross the bowl.
'More than a mile, I'd say, sir. Dr Blackwell's house is below us.' He pointed down. 'You can see it from further on.'
Lightning crackled in the darkening sky, followed almost at once by a loud peal of thunder. A sudden gust of wind brought a shower of leaves and twigs from overhead.
'Let's find some shelter,' Madden suggested.
A short distance along the path they came to another clearing where a huge sweet chestnut stood.
The spreading branches, decked with graceful leaves shaped like spearheads, provided ample protection from the fat raindrops that were starting to fall.
'Good place to stop for a bite, sir.' The constable was still anxious about his companion.
'Why not?'
They settled down under the tree. Madden peeled back the top of the tin of sardines. Stackpole sliced bread with his pocket knife. The constable had brought two bottles of beer with him. They ate and drank, sitting comfortably with their backs against the deeply scored trunk, while the sky at first grew darker, and then brightened. By the time they had finished eating the sun had come out again, but at that moment it began to rain in earnest and they sat in the shelter of the great tree and watched the drops falling like a shower of golden coins through the sunlight.
'It won't last,' Stackpole predicted with the assurance of a countryman, and after a minute he was proved right. The rain ceased. Perversely, however, the sky began at once to darken again and the thunder continued to roll.
Madden had been thinking. 'I don't believe he'd have picked a spot too far from Melling Lodge. Can we find a path to the top of the ridge? I'd like to have a look around up there.'
'We passed one a quarter of a mile back.'
Gathering the remains of their lunch, they set off again, retracing their steps. Lightning flashed, followed by a detonation of thunder. Madden increased his pace, striding out along the path. They had come to the circle of beeches where the footpath bent like a bow, and this time the inspector followed it, avoiding the bowl of leaves. The dusty track had darkened in colour with the earlier shower. Madden's eyes were fixed on the ground ahead of him. Suddenly he halted.
'What is it, sir?' Stackpole hurried forward.
'Stay where you are!'
The constable stopped in his tracks. He stood rooted.
Madden crouched down. On the damp earth in front of him, fresh as a newly minted coin, a footprint had appeared. The heel had a piece missing. His eye skipped swiftly past it and he saw others. They were coming in his direction. He looked over his shoulder at the path behind him: his own footsteps showed in the damp dust, but no others.
'Sir, what is it?'
'Quiet!'
Madden looked to his left: there was only the circle of beeches with the empty bowl at their centre. To his right the slope rose steeply to a line of ilexes, their leaves blowing silver and green in the gusting wind.
A dense growth of holly filled the spaces between their trunks, forming an impenetrable screen. As he stared at the thicket a familiar sound came to his ears, borne on the breeze: the oiled click of a rifle-bolt being drawn back.
'Down!' he roared. 'Get down!'
Madden dived to his left, where the nearest beech tree stood, and as he did so the silence exploded.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The shots came in rapid succession and the ground beside Madden's head erupted as he rolled frantically towards the tree. Another shot rang out and a chunk of bark as big as a fist struck him in the face. Next moment he was safe behind the massive trunk.
He looked back and saw the constable lying flat on the path, his face white and shocked. 'Move!' he yelled. 'The trees!'
Galvanized by the command, Stackpole rolled over.
The earth where he had lain leaped into the air as the sound of two further shots coincided with a loud crack of thunder. The constable scrambled to his hands and feet and plunged behind a tree trunk.
Madden counted in his head: six. He looked around him. He was near the edge of the bowl, but where he was it was shallow, only inches deep. Stackpole was luckier. A few paces from where he crouched behind the tree, the floor of the depression was at least a couple of feet below the rim. Madden's experienced eye skipped from the row of ilexes to the lip of the bowl, working out angles of fire. His terror of a few moments ago had been replaced by a familiar numbness.
'Will!' He used the constable's name, speaking in a low voice. 'Can you hear me?'
'Yes, sir.' The hoarse whisper barely reached him.
'Stay behind that tree, but move back into the dip behind you. When you're there, get down on your stomach and crawl around the edge. Be sure to keep yourself pressed up tight against the side. Don't worry, he won't be able to see you from where he is. When you get to where the path straightens, stand up and run like hell!'
Stackpole was silent.
'Will?'
'I'm not leaving you, sir.'
'Don't be a damn fool.' His officer's voice came back to him easily. 'Do as I say. Now!'
The constable began to back away from the tree trunk. When he reached the edge of the bowl he slid down into the depression and began to crawl on his stomach, away from Madden, back the way they had come. Another shot rang out and bark flew off the side of the tree where he had been crouching.
Seven. A Lee-Enfield rifle held ten rounds in its magazine.
His mind cold, Madden waited for the inevitable to happen. Soon now the man would descend from the screen of holly to hunt them down. When that happened, he planned to spring to his feet and run along the path in the opposite direction to Stackpole, splitting up the available targets. He knew their attacker was expert with a bayonet. Whether he was also a marksman was something he would discover in the next few minutes. Still in the grip of the numbness that had
taken hold of him after the first shots, Madden viewed the prospect with a fatalism bordering on indifference.
Thunder echoed, further off now. Then he heard another sound: the smashing of undergrowth. It came not from the line of ilexes but from higher up the slope. Taking a gamble, Madden sprinted across a dozen feet of open ground to the next beech tree in the circle. Pressing his body to the trunk, he waited for the answering shot. None came.
Again he heard noise, more distant now. He peered around the tree and caught a glimpse of a figure high up, near the crest of the ridge.
'He's moving!' he shouted. 'I'm going after him.'
Madden flung himself at the slope, tearing through the waist-high ferns, forcing a path through the dense undergrowth. Skirting the barrier of holly bushes, he came on the path left by his quarry, a line of snapped branches and flattened ferns leading up the hill, and he followed it. Stackpole's shout sounded behind him.
As Madden neared the crest the underbrush thinned and the ground became slick with pine needles.
Emerging from the straggling firs he saw the figure of a man running along the top of the bare ridge half a mile away. He was carrying a bulky object slung across his shoulder.
'I'm coming, sir…' Stackpole's voice was close, and a moment later he joined the inspector red-faced and gasping.
Wordlessly, Madden pointed. They set off in pursuit.
The line of the crest was uneven, broken by bumps and hollows, and twice they lost sight of their quarry as the ground dipped, only to see him again toiling up the next rise. Then he changed direction suddenly, veering off to the right, and when they reached the spot they found they were at the top of the path that ascended the ridge from the fields around Oakley. The hamlet lay beneath them surrounded by the broad sweep of farmlands.
The cough and stutter of a motorcycle being kicked into life sounded faintly.
'Blast!' Madden sank to his haunches.
'There he goes!' Stackpole started down the path, but the inspector called him back.
'It's no use. You won't catch him.'
They watched as a motorcycle and sidecar emerged from the treeline below and moved slowly along the rutted track through the cornfields. The rider, hunched over the handlebars, did not look back.
Madden cupped his hands like binoculars over his eyes. 'See what you can make out. Anything at all.'
The constable copied him. They crouched in silence.
'Cloth cap,' Stackpole panted. 'Just like Wellings said.'
'Black bodywork on the sidecar. What make of bike is that?'
'Harley-Davidson… I think. Hard to be sure from here. There's something in the sidecar, sir. Could be a bag.'
Madden stood up. 'I've got to get down to Melling Lodge and ring Guildford. I want you to stay here.
We have to know what road he takes when he reaches Oakley. As soon as you're sure, come down to the house.'
'Yes, sir.' Stackpole's gaze was riveted to the valley floor.
Madden turned and went plunging down the steep hillside.
Blue uniforms milled in the forecourt of Melling Lodge. To the chief inspector, as he stepped from his car, it seemed as though the scene of two weeks before was being re-enacted. The familiar form of Inspector Boyce materialized from the pale shadows cast by the limpid evening light.
'Sir.' He shook hands with Sinclair. 'We've been in touch with the Kent and Sussex constabularies.
There'll be officers on the look-out for him all over the south-east.'
Sinclair spied Madden's tall figure approaching.
'John?' His voice held a note of concern.
'I'm fine, sir.' They shook hands. 'Not a scratch. He missed us both.'
Sinclair looked at the two men. 'Any chance of him heading north or west?'
'It doesn't seem likely,' Madden replied. 'Stackpole saw him take the Craydon road. That rules out God aiming and Farnham to the west. If he passed through Craydon he'd come to the main road between Guildford and Horsham. He could have turned north there, but they're watching for him in Guildford. So either he turned south, towards Horsham, or he kept going east to Dorking and beyond.'
'That's assuming he sticks to the main roads,'
Sinclair felt bound to point out.
'Quite, sir. If he knows the back roads…' Madden shrugged.
'And he could cut up to London, if he wanted.'
'I don't think so.' The inspector shook his head.
'He's a country man.' Then he shrugged a second time. 'I'm guessing,' he admitted.
Boyce coughed. 'We've something already, sir.
Three witnesses saw him ride through Oakley this afternoon, two women and a man.' He took out a notepad. 'Same basic description. Big fellow in a brown jacket and a cloth cap. One of the women thought he had a moustache. Brown hair, she said.
About the bike, the women just saw a motorcycle and sidecar, but the man — he's a young chap called Maberley — he said it was a Harley, no question. There was a brown leather bag in the sidecar, the top of it was sticking out. Maberley saw that — he was interested in the bike, so he looked hard. Said the bag was like a cricket bag.' He checked his notepad. 'Oh, and the sidecar's painted black or dark blue.'
'And what do we have up there?' Sinclair asked Madden. He nodded towards the woods of Upton Hanger.
'A big hole that's been filled in, Stackpole says. He went up again and found it in a thicket above the path, well hidden.'
Madden explained how he'd stopped to examine the footprints. 'He must have seen us from above and realized we'd picked up his tracks. It's possible he recognized Stackpole as being a policeman.'
'How so?' the chief inspector asked.
'We know he's spent time in the woods, but he might have been in Highfield, too. If so, he'd know the village bobby by sight.'
The constable, like Madden, still in his shirtsleeves, appeared before them. 'I've got hold of a couple of spades from the toolshed, sir,' he said to Sinclair.
'We're ready when you are.'
Boyce looked at his watch. 'Nearly seven.' He called to one of the uniformed officers. 'Bring some flares from the van. We're going to need them.'
It took them forty minutes to reach the circle of beeches. From there Stackpole led the party up the hillside, past the line of ilexes, to an area dense with holly and tangled brush. Earlier, the constable had discovered a way into the thicket, a narrow entrance made to resemble an animal's track and masked by dead branches. The men had to crawl in one at a time.
Sinclair and Madden were the last to enter. The chief inspector had lingered at the bottom of the slope to examine the beech tree where Madden had sought cover.
'A narrow shave,' he observed, running his fingers over the bullet-gouged trunk. 'You must have had some anxious moments, John.'
Madden recalled the eerie calm that had possessed him. It was a throwback to his time in the trenches, and the realization sent a chill through him.
The mound of earth discovered inside the thicket was about ten feet long at its base and in the rough shape of a triangle. Some soil had already been shifted and lay in a heap beside it.
'Looks like he was digging it up when you disturbed him,' Boyce remarked, dusting off the knees of his trousers. 'What's he got down there, I wonder?
Not another body, I hope!'
The answer wasn't long in coming. The first constable detailed to dig struck a metallic object with the first thrust of his spade. He bent down and hauled out a silver branched candlestick from the loosened soil. A few seconds later a second was uncovered. Then three silver cups were unearthed, all bearing inscriptions noting that 'Captain C.S.G. Fletcher' had won them in target-shooting contests. They were found beside a rolled-up cloth, which contained a collection of jewellery comprising a garnet necklace, two gold rings, seven earrings — only four matched — and a locket on a golden chain.
Lastly, a mantelpiece clock, mounted in Sevres china, was pulled from the clinging soil. The porcelain was cracked and a piece wa
s missing.
'That's all that was on the list,' Boyce commented.
Under the canopy of trees it was rapidly growing dark and Sinclair gave the order for the naphtha flares to be lit. Thrust into the ground at intervals around the site, the naked flames brought an air of ceremony to the grim proceedings, as though some blood sacrifice was being offered to the deities of the forest.
The digging continued, with the officers working in pairs now, jackets shed and sleeves rolled up. Six feet down the spades struck another obstruction. This time the object proved harder to dislodge, but eventually a broad strip of corrugated iron was uncovered and passed up. Brushed clean and laid out on the ground, it became the receptacle for a variety of other items retrieved from the loose earth near the bottom of the hole: a piece of tar soap, a length of two-by four, several wooden slats, cut to measure, numerous cigarette stubs, a piece of bacon rind, a bottle of Veno's cough medicine, a half-eaten jar of cherry jam, empty tins of Maconochie's stew.
One of the diggers handed up an earthenware jar.
'What's that for?' Boyce wondered aloud.
'Rum.' Madden spoke from the shadows. 'A half gill unit. Standard issue.'
Sinclair glanced at him. The inspector stood on his own in the shadows, away from the flickering light.
His face was expressionless.
The two men working in the pit handed their spades up and began climbing out.
'I reckon that's all, sir,' one of them said to Boyce.
'Wait!' Madden came forward and peered down into the hole. 'I want all that loose soil cleared out, Constable. Back you go.'
Boyce started to say something, but the chief inspector held up his hand to silence him.
The two constables resumed their labour. Madden stood over them while they shovelled earth out. After a few minutes, he said, 'Right, that'll do.' He helped the pair out and then jumped down into the pit himself. 'Let's have one of those flares over here,' he said.
It was Sinclair himself who brought it over. The others gathered around. The excavated hole was in the shape of a blunt T, the two arms branching out only a little beyond the thick central trunk, where Madden was now standing. He pointed behind him to the head of the T where a broad step had been cut into the back wall.