by Rennie Airth
Weiss paused. His sympathetic glance rested on the inspector. 'I speak only as an analyst,' he said gently.
'My knowledge of this is second-hand — it comes from the many patients I treat in Vienna. Yours, I suspect, is more immediate and more personal.'
Madden made no reply at first. Then he responded with a brief nod.
'So! Having established that, we can at least form a theory as to why the man you seek has begun — begun now — to commit these crimes. A theory, mind you!'
Dr Weiss raised a warning finger. 'But if we accept it, we can see a possible line of inquiry emerging. What you have told me about his behaviour suggests that the link with his wartime service is more than merely causal.'
'I'm sorry, I don't…'
'The killing of these two women derives from some experience in childhood — or so I believe.' The doctor's features were screwed into a deep frown. 'But the details overlying it — the dugout, the gas mask, the furious attack and bayoneting of the others — these seem like a refinement of the original action. An addition to it even.'
'An addition?' Madden was alert at the word. 'You're saying he might have committed a murder of this kind during the war?'
'And is now seeking to perfect the act. Yes, that is a possibility.' Dr Weiss nodded vigorously.
'While he was in the trenches?'
'Oh, no!' Weiss shook his head with equal urgency.
'The killing, if it took place, would have been quite separate from the general carnage. The woman is crucial to the act.'
'But while he was a soldier? Behind the lines, perhaps?' Madden felt a spark of excitement. 'We could ask the War Office. It would be in the provost marshal's records.'
'Only if the military authorities investigated it,' Dr Weiss cautioned. 'And only if it actually occurred.
Remember, Inspector, this is all supposition.'
Madden smiled grimly. 'To a policeman it sounds more like a lead.'
Weiss acknowledged the remark with a lift of his head. He swallowed what remained of his drink.
When his eyes met Madden's again his mood had darkened. 'I find myself in an unusual position, Inspector.'
'Why is that?'
'I have to hope that everything I have said to you is wrong. That this man is not as I imagine him to be.'
'But if he is?'
'Then you should be prepared for the worst. I judge him to be a psychopath, an extreme case. One who has lost touch with reality. He does not see his victims as human beings, but as objects of gratification. Be sure, however, he is not killing at random. Those women meant something to him. Those particular women.
Otherwise he would not have taken such pains to prepare himself, particularly in the case of Melling Lodge. One must assume he saw them earlier, either in their homes or in the neighbourhood, and was struck by some aspect of their appearance. Whatever it was, it brought him back.'
Dr Weiss paused. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts.
'I can offer you only general pointers,' he went on.
'By all means consider them, but don't confuse what I say with established fact. It is likely he lives in a fantasy, and this will make it difficult to predict his actions. Take his return to Highfield, for example. A foolish decision, on the face of it. But in his own world the reasons would have seemed compelling.
Perhaps he wanted a memento of Mrs Fletcher — a piece of her jewellery. A trophy, if you will. It's not unknown in this sort of case.' He looked hard at the inspector. 'I don't say that was the reason, mind you. I seek only to indicate the problem you face in trying to understand his behaviour.'
Madden was struck by the doctor's sombre expression.
'Perhaps you recall my remarks the other evening regarding the sexual instinct. Here is a man in whom it has been crushed, almost extinguished, for years.
This is the river of darkness I spoke of. Now that it has broken free, nothing will check it. Shame, disgust, morality — these are the normal barriers to perversions and acts of sexual desperation. But against the kind of force I see acting through this man they are helpless.
He is driven by compulsion.'
'You're saying he won't stop killing?' Madden nodded.
'We've been afraid of that.'
'No, I'm saying something different.' Weiss shook his head sadly. 'I'm saying he can't stop.'
8
'How could you do it, John? Have you taken leave of your senses? Do you know what will happen if this gets out?' The chief inspector's tone was anguished.
He paced up and down in front of Madden's desk. The door to the adjoining office was firmly shut. 'If Sampson gets even a sniff of this he'll go straight to the newspapers. My God — I can see the headline now!
"Yard Calls In Hun!"'
'Dr Weiss is an Austrian, sir.'
'I doubt the chief superintendent will appreciate the distinction. I can assure you the newspapers won't.'
Sinclair paused in his pacing. He stared down at the inspector. 'Have I said something to amuse you?'
'I'm sorry, sir.' Madden sought to compose his features. 'It's just that we never used to think of them that way.'
'What way?'
'You had to come home on leave to hear people talking about Huns and wanting to hang the Kaiser.
We used to call them Fritz or Jerry. And we didn't want to hang the Kaiser. We wanted to hang the General Staff. First the Staff, then the Commissariat.'
'Never mind who you wanted to hang.' The chief inspector kept a firm grip on his outrage. It didn't escape him that he had never heard Madden talk this way before. 'You had no right to do what you did.
For pity's sake! Why didn't you ask my permission first?'
'Because you wouldn't have given it,' Madden said frankly.
'At least you had that right.'
'You would have had to say no.'
'Ah! Light begins to dawn!' Sinclair's face cleared.
'You didn't need to ask. You already knew what I was thinking.'
'Well, yes, sir.' Madden was finally embarrassed. 'I thought so.'
'Amazing! I never guessed I was so transparent.
Where did you meet this Fritz?'
'At a lecture on psychiatry.'
'Where you just happened to drop in? No, please don't tell me.' The chief inspector's face showed pain.
'I'd rather not know.'
He went to the window and stood with his hands on his hips staring down at the river. After a time he looked over his shoulder. 'Well…?'
'Excuse me, sir, is this a new development?'
Sampson, late and out of breath, slid into his seat beside the deputy assistant commissioner.
'No, Chief Superintendent. But Mr Sinclair has a fresh line of inquiry he wants to follow up.'
'It's just an idea,' Sinclair explained. He and Madden sat across the table. 'But since it involves going back to the War Office I felt I ought to consult Mr Bennett.'
'The chief inspector thinks it's possible this man might have committed offences, even similar crimes, while he was still in uniform.'
'It's the element of repetition that bothers me.'
Sinclair's grey eyes bore a look of blameless innocence.
'Given that he also carried out the assault at Bentham — and I believe he did — then he seems set in a pattern.
But when did it start? There's no peacetime record of crimes like these, but we haven't looked at the war years in detail. And the fact that he arms and equips himself like a soldier makes me wonder if he didn't start then. Abroad, perhaps. In France or Belgium.
We need to ask the military to check their records.'
There was silence in the room. Finally Sampson spoke: 'Who've you been talking to?' he asked.
'Sir?'
'Have you been discussing this case with anyone?'
'No one outside this building.'
Madden was aware that Bennett's eyes were fixed on him. He stared straight ahead over the deputy's shoulder.
'And you t
hought all this up yourself?'
'It's no more than a long shot, sir. I don't mind admitting we're clutching at straws.'
Bennett cleared his throat. 'So we'd like them to check the provost marshal's files. I see no harm in that. I'll get in touch with the War Office again.
Gentlemen…' He rose from the table.
'Well, that was close,' Sinclair remarked, when they were back in his office. He thumbed tobacco into his pipe. 'For a moment there I thought he had the scent.'
'Sorry to put you in that position, sir.' Madden was feeling remorse. 'He was only guessing.'
'I'm happy to hear it.' The chief inspector struck a match. 'I wouldn't like to think I'd had to do with two mind-readers in one day.'
Having first extinguished the paraffin lamp, Amos Pike opened the double doors at the end of the garden shed and stepped out into the cool night air.
He wore a belted leather jacket over a khaki shirt, grey flannel trousers and boots. A flat woollen cap fitted snugly on his close-cropped head.
He looked about him. He could see no lights burning in any of the cottages. It was after midnight.
He went back into the shed, released the brake on his motorcycle and pushed the machine to the doorway.
There was a slight ramp running down from the floor to the dirt road outside and Pike mounted sidesaddle and freewheeled for a few yards until the vehicle came to rest. He set the brake and returned to the shed to close and padlock the doors.
A long canvas bag filled with a variety of objects was wedged in the sidecar. It had once belonged to an angler who had used it for transporting his tackle.
Pike had bought it at a street market in Brighton, the same day he had stolen the motorcycle from an alleyway behind a pub. One end of the bag was pushed into the front of the sidecar, the other protruded above the rim of the compartment. He checked now to see that it was secure, then lit the carbide lamp which served as a headlight, fiddling with the gas jet until he was satisfied with the size of the flame. Then he climbed into the saddle and kicked the engine into life, cutting the throttle quickly as the loud pop-pop pop noise shattered the silence of the night. Settling himself on the broad leather seat, he released the brake and set the machine in motion.
He travelled at a steady pace, never exceeding thirty miles an hour. Given the route he had chosen, a snaking tangle of back roads and country lanes, he had the better part of eighty miles to cover in order to reach his destination. Once there, he planned to spend the first part of the day sleeping — it would be Saturday — and then rise and attend to his business.
On Sunday he would follow the same routine: first sleep, then work. In the evening he would ready himself for the long ride back. Mondays were his most difficult time. Although short of sleep he would have to carry out his normal duties without giving in to fatigue. Fortunately it was something he was accustomed to doing. He had passed many sleepless nights during the war, lying for hours under artillery bombardments, leading patrols and raiding parties into no man's land. Yet he had never failed to present himself, rifle in hand, ready on the firestep to repel an enemy attack, at the ritual stand-to just before dawn.
A little after four o'clock he entered the outskirts of Ashdown Forest and turned off the paved road on to a rough track. The ancient woodland was scored with forgotten tracks and footpaths, some of them old before the first Roman had set foot in the land, and the way Pike took followed a winding course through forest and field, sometimes almost petering out, but then reappearing in the bobbing beam of his headlight.
He rode slowly. He had been this route only once before.
Dawn found him deep in the forest. He drew up beside a great red oak, which spread an umbrella of thickly leaved branches over a clearing fringed with bush and fern. Turning off the track, he steered the motorcycle into a thicket, forcing the branches aside, and stopped in a small dell overhung with holly. He switched off the engine and climbed stiffly from the saddle. From the seat beneath the canvas bag he retrieved a groundsheet, and having spread it on the grass he lay down and fell asleep almost at once.
By five o'clock on Sunday afternoon he had completed the first stage of his self-appointed task. Using an entrenching tool — a short-handled pick with a broad bladed head opposite — he had constructed a dugout similar to the one he had built in the woods above Highfield. There were some differences. He had no sheet of corrugated iron — that had been a chance find — but he planned to fashion a roof of plaited willow and osier on his next visit. Branches cut to measure would serve as rough corduroying to protect the floor from damp.
The dugout was situated in an area of dense brush a mile from where he had parked his motorcycle. He had scouted the area some months before and marked the spot where he meant to dig. After that he had left it untouched while other matters occupied his attention.
The task he was engaged on took considerable time, but rather than becoming impatient he found his satisfaction — or, rather, his sense of imminent satisfaction — growing almost daily. He felt like a vessel waiting to be filled. Soon he would overflow…
He had discovered this deliberate approach after his attack on the farmhouse at Bentham, which had proved to be a disappointment. He had observed the house and the woman for only a few hours before racing down the slope in a frenzy of excitement. His relief then had been fleeting.
At Highfield he had spent five weekends spread over three months preparing himself. He had observed his prey for many hours. The long period of waiting had given him pleasure of a kind he had never known before. A sense of expectation, slowly ripening, yet indefinitely postponed. Up till the very last moment he had been undecided, and although his physical relief and satisfaction at the climax had been intense, he still felt a sweet regret when he thought of those days.
Having made a complete circuit of the bushes surrounding the dugout to ensure it was not visible from any quarter, he struck out in a north-westerly direction, walking for more than two miles through a mixture of woodland and open pasture. His goal was a low hill planted with oak and beech, which he climbed on reaching it.
Searching for a vantage-point, he spent some time moving from one spot to another before settling on a leaf-strewn bank hard by the exposed roots of a giant beech. Beneath him, at the foot of the hill, a water meadow stretched for a hundred yards to a moss covered wall. On the other side of the wall lay a handsome stone-built manor house and garden.
From where he sat Pike could trace the outline of a path that crossed the water-meadow, bending in a semi-circle to accommodate the margins of a pond, and then straightening until it reached the house where it met another path running along the outside of the wall. This second footway led to a wrought-iron gate, which opened on to the garden.
Pike's cold eye picked out a route from the gate through a shrubbery to an alleyway that ran between high yew hedges and ended at a lawn in front of the house. A pair of tall glassed doors, similar to the ones at Melling Lodge, gave access to the house. Pike saw himself running up the yew alley at dusk. As he played and replayed the scene in his mind he began to get an erection.
On his only previous visit he had watched the family who lived in the house eating Sunday lunch at a table, shaded by a trellised vine, that stood on a stone-paved patio at the side of the lawn. The leisurely meal had taken nearly two hours to complete, and Pike had sat motionless throughout, tantalized by the flickering cinematographic quality of the scene as sunlight and shadow played on the figures seated beneath the vine. The children had been allowed down from the table before the end of the meal and run shrieking into the yew alley, one chasing the other.
Pike had ignored them. He had eyes only for the woman.
He sat for an hour, smoking four cigarettes, without seeing any sign of life. Then one of the glassed doors opened and a maid appeared carrying a heavily laden tray. She began to lay the table. Pike glanced at the sky. Sunset wasn't far off. He wondered how the woman's hair would look by candlelight.
His attention was momentarily distracted by two boys wearing shorts who appeared below him walking barefoot along the path through the water-meadow.
They carried rods and lines and they paused for several minutes beside the pond as though debating the merits of fishing it. Eventually they continued on their way and vanished from sight around the corner of the garden wall. Pike knew there was a village less than a mile away. He had driven through it once.
When he looked at the house again he became aware of fresh activity. The door opened and a grey haired woman in a long skirt stood on the threshold looking out into the garden. A spaniel put its head out of the door beside her knee. Pike frowned. Dogs were troublesome, an unwanted distraction. The woman remained in the doorway for only a few moments, then went back inside the house. The sound of a motor-car engine reached him faintly. The garage and main gate lay on the other side of the house, out of sight.
Pike extinguished his cigarette. Reaching into the deep pocket of his leather jacket he took out a pair of binoculars.
The door opened for a third time. A younger woman wearing a light cotton dress trimmed with red braid stepped out on to the lawn. Pike caught his breath. She was carrying a broad-brimmed straw hat with a trail of red ribbons. He put the field-glasses to his eyes and watched as she shook her head, freeing the hair that clung to her neck.
His mouth had gone dry.
The woman looked up at the sky. Then she glanced over her shoulder and spoke to someone inside the house. Her skin was very fair and Pike imagined it might carry a light dusting of freckles.
A man came out of the house on to the lawn. He said something to the woman and she smiled and moved closer to him. He put his arm around her waist.
The sight brought a low growl from Pike's lips. She belonged to him now.
Several hours later he retraced his steps to the hole he had dug and collected his canvas bag. He had already removed some of its contents, including tinned food and a Primus stove. On his next visit he planned to complete the dugout and make it habitable. Then it would be a matter of waiting until the moment was ripe.