Murderer's Fen

by Andrew Garve

  Gwenda read it through, and folded it. The paper was a little damp, where a tear had fallen. But she felt better for having written it.

  Hunt said, “Finished?”

  “Yes, darling … Would you like to see it?”

  He took it from her, skimmed through it, grunted. “Yes, that should lessen the shock when they see you.”

  “I hope so. Have you got a stamp?”

  He found one, and gave it to her.

  “I could go and post it myself, couldn’t I?” she said. “It doesn’t really matter about me being seen now, does it? Anyway, it’s dark. …”

  “Won’t it do after we’ve been for our row? It won’t go till to-morrow—and we’re missing all the fine evening.”

  “I’d like to know it’s in the box,” she said. “Then I’ll feel settled.”

  “Better give it to me, then—I’ll be quicker.” Hunt took the letter. “You get ready.”

  He walked to the office, let himself in, and put the letter in a file. He must remember to destroy it later. Also, the scribblings that Gwenda had left around in the cabin … He stood at the site entrance long enough to cover the short two-way walk to the post box.

  On the way back to the boat he collected the mahogany dinghy. It was larger than the green pram, much better for his purpose. He rowed to Flavia, and climbed aboard. “Ready?” he called.

  “Just coming, darling.”

  He waited, fuming.

  She emerged at last. “You’ll have to do the rowing,” she said. “I’ve got a blister.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” he said. “I need the exercise.” He helped her down. For a moment he stood in the cockpit, listening. No human sounds were audible. A dog was barking in the village—an owl hooting across the fen—nothing else.… In that wilderness of swamp and water beyond the lode, there’d be no interruptions.…

  He switched off the cabin lights and joined Gwenda in the dinghy. She untied the painter, and he pushed off.

  “The water’s quite warm,” Gwenda said, dangling her fingers.

  “Yes—it’s all this sun.…”

  “Where are we going, darling?”

  “Oh—along one of the dykes.”

  He turned off at the first junction with the lode, into a narrower channel between tall reeds. They seemed to be gliding now on a moonlit path. The only sounds that broke the silence were the faint rustle of the reeds, the splash of oars, and their own voices. If it hadn’t been for the headlights through the village, they could have been a hundred miles from civilisation.

  “Romantic, isn’t it?” Gwenda said.

  “Yes.”

  “I think I’ve been along this dyke before, but it looks so different at night.… I’ve done a lot of rowing—I’ll quite miss it.…” She chattered on, happily. Hunt put in a word from time to time—but his thoughts were entirely on what he must do.

  It would be unpleasant—he knew that. He wasn’t a sadist. He was just a man who wanted a fortune. Better not to dwell. Make it quick, when the moment came. His hands were strong, her throat was slim.… Watch out for those scratches. Kneel on her arms.… Afterwards, it wouldn’t be so bad. Just hard work. He’d have to go back to the site for his gumboots and overalls. And Gwenda’s belongings—all her clothes and things. They’d have to be buried, too. It would be quite a job—but he had the whole night before him … He mustn’t forget the tidying up. The boat would have to be cleared of all traces—the dinghy checked over. Not that anyone would be interested now. But the time for safe mistakes was almost past.…

  He turned into another dyke. Not much farther to go.… Sweat gathered on his forehead—but not from exertion. He found it almost impossible now to answer Gwenda’s words and thoughts. When she laughed, in that lighthearted way of hers, it jarred horribly. Why didn’t she shut up? God, what a time he’d had living in that boat with her.…! Well, it was nearly over.…

  PART FOUR

  Chapter One

  For once, Dyson drove flat out, screeching round bends, racing along the straights, ruthlessly clearing the road ahead with horn and headlamps. Nield urged him on. In less than thirty minutes they were braking to a halt outside Hunt’s office.

  The silence of the place increased their fears.… Office in darkness, and locked. No light in Hunt’s van. No light or sign of life anywhere. But the MG was parked beside the van—Hunt hadn’t left by car. And if not by car …

  Dyson stepped to the lode and shone his torch along it. “His dinghy’s gone, sir.”

  Nield joined him. Together, they gazed out across the fen, over the moonlit reeds. Dyson’s heart sank. All those hundred of acres of water and wilderness. They’d never find him in time.…

  Then Nield had a flash of inspiration. He grabbed Dyson’s arm. “Come on … Through the main entrance.… Quicker to drive.”

  He raced for the car, with Dyson at his heels. In a moment they were roaring out of the site, sweeping past the warden’s cottage, parking by the gate. Nield was out of the car before it had stopped—and beginning to run. The younger man quickly overtook him.

  “Don’t wait for me,” Nield shouted. “Make for—Stoker’s Drove. …”

  Stoker’s Drove … ! Dyson rushed ahead. Of course. Where else …? He put on speed, running now as he’d never run before, following the path he knew. In a matter of minutes he reached the dyke. As he turned along the drove towards the bend, he thought he heard voices. He stopped for a second to listen, to check the direction. Yes—voices ahead.… And another sound—waterborne, clear, unmistakable …! The laughter of a girl … They were in time after all.…

  He raced on. A hundred yards to the bend now.… Suddenly a new sound reached him—a sound that almost froze his blood. A gay laugh, cut off in mid-course. Then a choking, stifled scream.…

  Dyson shouted—a warning shout at the full pitch of his lungs. He was almost there. He rounded the bend and shouted again, waving his torch. In a moment he spotted the dinghy. It was tied up on the outside of the working punt. Gwenda was lying across a thwart, limp and motionless, her hair streaming in the bilge. Hunt was half standing, gazing in the direction of the shout. A second later he was across the punt and leaping ashore. By his posture, he was going to fight. Dyson braced himself for the collision. Then, as Hunt recognised Dyson, he suddenly turned and began to run. Dyson dropped the torch, hurled himself forward in a flying tackle, grabbed a leg, and brought his man down with a thud.

  A confused and savage struggle followed. Dyson was tough and trained, but badly winded from his run; Hunt was heavier and more powerful. In the poor light, accuracy was impossible. They rolled together in the mire of the path, punching, clawing and jabbing at anything they could find. Only a chance blow, or exhaustion, could settle it. Once they rolled heavily over the iron spike to which the punt was moored, and Hunt took the punishment. Dyson, in his fury, was scarcely aware of pain, or of the blood that was trickling down into his eyes.

  Then, as they squirmed in the slippery mud, Hunt managed to break free. It was what he’d been trying to do all along—flight was his last, slender hope. He scrambled to his feet. Dyson, up in the same instant, suddenly sensed a light along the path. Nield.… Encouraged, he rushed forward and delivered a tremendous right-hand swing at the retreating shadow—and, by luck, connected with something hard. Hunt staggered. Dyson was carried on by his own momentum. Before he could check his rush he tripped on the mooring spike, somersaulted over the punt and dinghy and fell, headlong into the dyke. As he fell, he clutched the gunwale of the dinghy and it overturned.

  He came up gasping. He heard a shout—Nield yelling “Get the girl!” He needed no telling. He looked wildly around. The surface of the water was unbroken. He plunged his head down, trying to see. The thick ooze at the bottom had been stirred up, and visibility was nil. All he could do was feel. He groped around desperately, half walking in the waist-deep water, half swimming … She couldn’t be far away—there was almost no current … Then he touched something. Clothing �
� An arm … In a moment, he had dragged her to the bank. It had taken only seconds.…

  He was just in time to witness a tableau he would never afterwards forget. Hunt, falling back, felled to the ground. Nield, standing over him with the spade he’d snatched from the punt.…

  It seemed at first that Gwenda had been saved from strangling, only to die by misadventure in the muddy water of the dyke. Lying there white in the moonlight with her hair spread round her head like tangled weed, she looked a drowned Ophelia. Dyson couldn’t believe it. He flung himself down and went at once into the practised routine of the “kiss of life” … Approach from the side—girl’s head pressed back and held with both his hands—nostrils obstructed with his cheek—her mouth sealed with his own—watch for the chest to rise.… Almost at once, he got results. Gwenda gasped and started to breathe spontaneously. Back to a shuddering consciousness, back to life.…

  Nield stayed with her while Dyson dragged the half-submerged dinghy from the water, drained it, and recovered the oars from the reeds downstream. The sergeant appeared to be having trouble with his right hand. “I’ll row,” Nield said. “You take the girl in the stern.” Dyson sat down, and Nield lifted Gwenda and passed her to him. “Put this round her,” he said, peeling off his jacket. Then he went back for Hunt.…

  It was a nightmare journey through the fen—short in distance, but seemingly infinite in time. Dyson, soaked and battered, sat nursing Gwenda, now fully conscious and groaning with pain. He could do nothing for her except hold her close, speak soothingly, tell her it was all right now, that she’d soon be warm and comfortable. Hunt, stretched out on the floorboards, was breathing stertorously, with blood oozing from his head. Nield closed his mind to the sounds and concentrated on his rowing.…

  The site at last … Now both policemen went quickly and efficiently into action. Dyson carried Gwenda to Hunt’s caravan, forced the door, lit the gas fire, helped her out of her wet clothes, and wrapped her in blankets. Nield rang for a doctor and ambulance from Newmarket. Dyson changed into an outfit of Hunt’s, and then made hot, sweet tea, laced with whisky. He tried to give Gwenda a little, but she couldn’t swallow. She lay holding her throat, crying weakly.…

  The minutes dragged like hours before the ambulance came. Then, inexpressible relief, as fresh, competent men took over. A stretcher for Gwenda, and the doctor’s care. A second journey, to pick up Hunt from the dinghy.…

  “You’d better go with them,” Nield told Dyson. “I’ll bring the car … Get yourself fixed up—that finger of yours looks broken. Then get along home. I’ll see you to-morrow.”

  Nield made a couple of telephone calls after the ambulance had left. One to headquarters, to report the outcome of the case. Another to the Peterborough police, asking them to get in touch with Gwenda’s parents. “Tell them she’s safe but ill,” he said, “and offer them transport to the hospital. Nothing else … I’ll see them there and explain everything.”

  Afterwards, he made a tour of the site. Even though he knew that Gwenda had stayed there, it took him a little while to discover where. But he came in the end to Flavia, with its revealing contents. Gwenda’s clothes and belongings. The many signs of double occupation. The fading chrysanthemums … What a nerve the fellow had had!

  On the cabin table, he found the pathetic false starts of Gwenda’s letter to her parents.… It was only later he learned that the letter had been written that evening—and that by writing it, Gwenda had saved her life.…

  Chapter Two

  Nield was late getting to headquarters next morning. The ordeal of the night, and particularly the unaccustomed running in the fen, had left him stiff and tired … Dyson was even later. He arrived about eleven, with a bandaged right hand and a swathed right eye—though the uncovered eye had a cheerful gleam.

  “Morning, sir … How’s Gwenda?”

  “She’s going to be all right,” Nield said. “Her throat’s still painful but there’s no serious damage. Hunt must have been stopped by your shout before he really put the pressure on—they think the girl fainted from shock. A near thing, though …”

  Dyson nodded.

  “By the way,” Nield said, “she’s had a miscarriage … Not surprising, after all she went through.”

  Dyson was silent for a moment. “Well, I shouldn’t think she’d have wanted the child, would she?—not now … That fellow’s a monster.”

  “Yes.…”

  “Are her parents with her?”

  “Yes—they got there in the early hours. I had a session with them after they’d seen her. They’ve certainly learned a lot about life in the last few days … But they’re all right—they’re good people.…”

  Dyson nodded again. “And how’s Hunt?”

  “As well as can be expected,” Nield said grimly. “Considering he was arrested with the flat of a spade.… Fractured skull—but he’ll recover.”

  “What exactly happened, sir?”

  “Well,” Nield said, “I came pounding up just after you’d socked him. He was groggy, but recovering … I knew I couldn’t manage him without you, if he fought, or catch him if he ran—and I’d no breath left for the water. So I grabbed the spade and cracked it down on his head. I was afraid we might lose them both.”

  “I thought we had lost the girl,” Dyson said. “I’ll never forget those few moments—groping around in the muck.”

  “You did well, Sarge—then and earlier.… It was your case—and I shall say so.”

  “It was you who thought of Stoker’s Drove,” Dyson said.

  “Well, yes … It suddenly came to me—where else would he have planned to take her but the place he’d already got us to dig up … I must say it was a brilliant scheme—getting the search over first. If things hadn’t gone wrong for him, we’d never have looked there again.”

  “The whole damned plot was brilliant,” Dyson said. “A trial run, eh …? What will he get for his cleverness—ten years?”

  “For attempted murder and grievous bodily harm …? More, I should think,”

  Dyson grunted. “Have you been in touch with Ainger?”

  “Yes, I phoned him this morning.”

  “Pretty rough on that poor kid, too.”

  “You’re right,” Nield said. “A lucky escape for her, of course—but I don’t suppose that’s much consolation at the moment … Hunt’s left a lot of debris.”

  Dyson nodded slowly. That was the word—debris. Human debris … He thought of Gwenda—young, impressionable, deeply in love with a man, carrying his child—and then the hideous shock, the unbelievable assault—.… Would she ever get over it? It was bad enough when violence was accidental. Dyson knew plenty about that. The shattering horror—and the emptiness … How much worse when the violence was deliberate. How much harder the recovery.…

  He looked at Nield. “What’s the form now, sir? Are we still on duty?”

  “I am, Sarge, till I’ve sent my report in … You’re on sick leave. Super’s orders.”

  “Good … Then I think I’ll take a run over to Newmarket and see how Gwenda’s getting on.”

  Nield smiled. “Going to try another kiss of life, Tom?”

  “Who knows?” Dyson said.

  Copyright

  First published in 1966 by Collins

  This edition published 2011 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-1528-8 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-1528-8 POD

  Copyright © Andrew Garve, 1966

  The right of Andrew Garve to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

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