by Roland Moore
“You’ve destroyed everything.”
“What?” Connie reeled from this statement and didn’t register the questions coming from Finch and Esther about the search. She was focused solely on Vera. What did she mean? Connie knew she had to find out. She told Esther where she was going and set off, following Vera, who had already marched on ahead. What had Connie destroyed?
Connie and Vera reached the cottage. Vera had walked ahead in silence, refusing to answer any of Connie’s questions until they got there. Sensing Connie’s reticence about entering the cottage, Vera said, “It’s all right. He’s not there. They’ve both gone. She left and then –” She struggled not to break down. “Then Michael went. He took his gun. He’s gone. You’ve cost me everything.”
“What happened?”
“You fighting my husband is what happened. Coming here with a journalist and upsetting –”
“Where’s Margaret?” Connie wondered. “Is she with Michael?”
Sitting on the dark, heavy furniture, Vera composed herself. She wrung her hands as she recounted the story.
“After you came to the cottage, Margaret ran away again – probably worried that Michael was going to blame her. Sometimes she used to like to go and stay with a friend – a school friend – in Brinford. That’s probably where she is now, until she outstays her welcome and has to trudge back with her tail between her legs.”
“And where’s Michael?”
“He didn’t seem to care that Margaret had run off. He didn’t notice. His mind was burdened with something else.” Vera didn’t know exactly what was troubling him, but his demeanour worried her.
“Did you know he was a deserter?” Connie asked.
Vera Sawyer nodded slowly. “I said I’d stay with him. I understood why he – fled. That war was different. But after he told me, it meant we were looking over our shoulders forever afterwards. That ground him down. He became edgy; obsessed about everything. Any knock at the door. Any person coming up to him. He was a shadow of himself. We lived in the East End, but there were too many people. Too many faces to worry about. So we moved away. First to Brinford – but even there there were too many outsiders poking their noses in our business. And then to here. No one ever came here. We were happy here.”
“Where’s he gone?” Connie asked. Vera shook her head.
“He took his service revolver. He’s probably not –” Vera found it hard to finish, “Coming back.”
The words chimed with Connie. Was she in a similar situation with her husband? Connie didn’t have any idea what to say about Michael. But with Margaret she felt on safer ground.
“You should go and find Margaret. Tell her he’s gone.”
Vera caught the implication. Connie thought that Michael was the bad seed in their home life, the one whom Margaret feared. With him gone, surely she’d come back? Vera snapped the notion out of Connie’s mind.
“She doesn’t like me any more than she liked him. I tried to love her like our own. When we took her in.” Vera didn’t care any more. She was ready to unburden herself – as Connie had been at Sunday Service. Connie listened as she talked about her life.
“You can’t possibly understand. You’re young.”
“What can’t I understand?”
“I couldn’t have children,” Vera stated. A blunt statement, but one that had taken the joy from her eyes. “At first, I accepted it. It was my cross to bear. But as time went on, I became down about it. The doctors thought I was deeply affected by my body’s failings.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And I know it was wrong, but I’d look longingly at other babies in the street, and obsess over family babies in a way that made mothers uneasy.” Vera gave a guilty, embarrassed smile. “Michael tried to help me through it. He said it didn’t matter and that we were better off alone. He was still wondering when a hand would grab his shoulder and he would find himself staring into the face of a military policeman – so he had his own reasons for not wanting to bring a baby into the world. As things stood, we could move quickly if there was a chance Michael might be discovered. If there were three of us, things wouldn’t be so easy.”
“So you made the best of it.”
“Four years ago, Michael made plans to buy Jessop’s Cottage. The ideal bolt hole in the middle of nowhere. And while we waited to obtain our new house, we went temporarily back to the East End. But even when we got the house and the keys were in our hands, it needed serious renovation. So he busied himself repairing the place, spending his days there while I stayed in the East End.
“It was the time of the worst bombings. The Blitz,” Vera remembered. “I used to work in an office, typing pool. And I’d overlook this school. Margaret’s school. And I used to see her – from my window – being collected by her mother. One day, I followed them. I don’t know why. Loneliness at being on my own while Michael was away. I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to see where they went.”
“But then I’d watch every day – on my way home I’d pass the pub and see this little girl sitting there. And I thought – this is no life for a child. You can’t say it was a life for a child, can you?” Vera said, wanting endorsement from Connie. None was forthcoming.
Connie wished she’d had a mother – even one who left her outside a pub while she worked inside it. At least then, at the end of the day, a warm cuddle perhaps awaited. In her eyes, anything was better than nothing.
Vera continued her confession. “When children started to be evacuated to the countryside, the East London school started emptying of pupils. But as the numbers dwindled, Margaret still came, dropped off by her mother and then picked up each day. And at the time, there were reports of people going missing – sometimes presumed dead from a bombing raid. I realised that if you wanted to disappear, then there was no better time than during the confusion with all the mass movements of the evacuation campaign. Many people were moving around the country. Going everywhere. The police had lost most officers with them having signed up to fight for the forces, so there was little chance of people being found if they went missing.”
“So you took her?” Connie asked.
“That’s when I thought. I could take this girl. I could make up a story and take her. Give her a better life.”
“What about the fact she had a mother already?” Connie spat.
“I know what I was planning was wrong, but then I realised it was meant to be.”
Connie raised an eyebrow. “How could that be?”
“Don’t you see? The Luftwaffe bombed Talbot Street on the day I was going to the school.” Vera said the words with an almost energetic zeal, as if it validated her plan. It was fate. By virtue of serendipity, the Nazis had helped the Sawyers steal a child. They had ensured that the Sawyers’ cover story was true. “With Talbot Street demolished, I went into the school.”
Connie could see that Vera felt almost altruistic in giving a new life to Margaret. She couldn’t listen to any more. She went outside for some air. She needed to clear her head.
Suddenly she heard a man whistle at her. Not a cat call, but a whistle of hello.
She spun round to find Roger Curran walking up to the garden gate. “Came to check you were okay.”
“I hope you’ve got your note pad,” Connie said. “Margaret’s gone missing too.”
As Roger Curran spoke to Vera, Connie walked aimlessly around Jessop’s Cottage. She took in the array of sheds and outbuildings. So many places where secrets could be hidden. Then a thought struck her. What if Margaret hadn’t run to her friend in Brinford but had, instead, holed up in one of the outbuildings? It was worth checking. Or perhaps it was just Connie’s desire to do something to take her mind off things. A way to avoid hearing any more self-serving justifications from Vera Sawyer. Connie looked in the sheds and buildings, one by one. Each contained the ordered paraphernalia required to run a self-contained small holding: garden tools, seed trays, bean sticks, lengths of timber. In one larger shed, Connie found a wooden seat at a benc
h and she imagined that Michael would have come here to read the newspaper. There was a tray of keys nearby and a cup and saucer with the congealed remains of tea. Above it on the wall was a small faded photograph of a group of young soldiers. Their faces weren’t clear, but it was probably Michael Sawyer; perhaps on the day when he’d joined up, full of optimism and hope. When Connie reached the last shed on the furthest perimeter of the land of Jessop’s Cottage, she found the door locked.
She tapped on it and shouted. “Hello? Margaret?”
No response.
Connie remembered the keys in the other shed and raced back for them. To her relief, after a few tries, one of the keys unlocked the door of the last shed. She entered and scanned the room. A table was in the middle of the room and assorted tools were fastened to the walls. As she walked forward, dust danced in the sunlight from the window. It all looked pretty unremarkable.
But then she noticed that a sheet covered a large lump on the table.
Suddenly fearful as to what it would reveal, Connie braced herself. Then she decided that she might need assistance. She wasn’t ready to uncover this on her own.
“Roger!” she shouted out the door. “You better come here.”
Within moments, Roger Curran puffed his way into the shed, followed by Vera Sawyer.
“I think there might something here,” Connie said fearfully, hoping against hope that they weren’t going to find a child’s body. She stood back as Roger approached the table and the large shape obscured by a sheet. He urged Connie and Vera to stand by the door. Then he took a deep breath and flung back the sheet.
“What is it?” Connie asked, from the doorway.
“I don’t know,” came the confused reply.
Connie ran over to the table. To her immense relief, it wasn’t Margaret.
But she would never have guessed what she would find instead.
There was a large stack of explosives, reels of cabling and some clocks. Some rolls of industrial tape were also stacked up, along with pliers and a soldering iron. Bomb-making equipment. Like Connie and Roger, Vera also looked genuinely shocked.
It seemed Michael Sawyer had one last big secret after all.
Chapter 17
By the time Connie had finished at Jessop’s Cottage, the sky was edging from purple to black. PC Thorne had been called in from Brinford and Connie had to wait while he went to telephone London about the bomb-making equipment they had found. As they mobilised special agents, they had instructed him to collect the evidence and to initiate a manhunt for Michael Sawyer. But as PC Thorne was the sole police officer for the surrounding area, he called in the services of the Home Guard from both Helmstead and Brinford to help him. Connie watched as the old men bagged the evidence and took it away.
Roger Curran was using this commotion to his advantage and was attempting to interview Vera Sawyer. But she was remaining tight-lipped. She broke away from his questioning only once to shout to PC Thorne:
“I think my husband has killed himself! Are you happy about that possibility?”
“Thank you for your insight, Madam. We’ll keep all possibilities open, if you don’t mind,” he replied. “The manhunt will be ongoing until we find a body.”
As Connie walked home she realised she still had the set of keys that had opened the last shed. On the ring were keys for – she presumed – the rest of the buildings around Jessop’s Cottage. She made a mental note to take them back sometime. But now her thoughts were returning to the vicarage. The Home Guard officers hadn’t had any news about Henry when they had come to Jessop’s Cottage, so she assumed it was still a fruitless search. Connie tried not to think of PC Thorne’s words in relation to her own situation. “The manhunt is ongoing until we find a body.” But she hoped that there might be some new developments when she got back; perhaps some news that the men had failed to convey to her. Maybe one of the women in the village might have found something?
Mrs Gulliver was waiting across the bridge. She was chewing her lip, fixing Connie with a thoughtful stare.
“What do you want now?” Connie wasn’t in the mood for any more hassle. She felt threadbare, emotionally wrung out, unable to deal with anything else. Some people would never help a situation. And Gladys Gulliver was one of them.
“It’s about the Reverend.” The old woman started with an edge of timidity that Connie wasn’t expecting. Was she worried about being laughed at again? But Connie’s thoughts quickly turned from any hint of concern to umbrage. Well, if that was the case, she shouldn’t be spreading rumours about Henry carrying on with another woman. That was all Connie needed. All her emotional energy was taken, she didn’t have the power to deal with false leads and gossip. Especially such ridiculous nonsense.
“I told you, he wasn’t carrying on,” Connie snapped.
Mrs Gulliver wafted her hand in a ‘don’t be hasty’ gesture. “Hear me out. Thing is, I told you about the night when I thought he was in the vicarage upstairs with someone.”
“Get to the point.” Connie had crossed her arms and was aware she was drumming her fingers on her elbows.
“But I didn’t tell you about the man chasing him.”
Connie stopped drumming. Now she was aware that her mouth had opened like a goldfish. Because of her exhaustion, she found it difficult to process this thought, let alone put anything into words to reply. Luckily she was talking to a woman who could leave many donkeys without hind legs. Gladys let the bombshell fall, waiting to see the effect it had, and then she continued talking:
“The last night anyone saw him, raining cats and dogs it was, and I was coming home from Mrs Arbuthnott’s house.”
“Right?” An air of understandable impatience was in Connie’s voice. She wasn’t one of Mrs Gulliver’s cronies leaning on a garden gate, trying to fill a few hours with tittle tattle. This information mattered. And Connie’s fuzzy brain was trying to pick out the wheat from the chaff; filtering the ramblings of a woman who enjoyed rambling.
“And as I battled up the high street against the wind, the Reverend passed me on his bicycle. He waved and I went to wave back. But I didn’t manage a wave as I was clutching my coat round my neck with one hand. Still feel bad that I didn’t wave back.”
“For pity’s sake, what happened?” Connie realised she’d make a lousy police officer, but this was like trying to tune in to a bad radio station.
“Yes, of course.” Mrs Gulliver’s eyes narrowed. Here was the juicy bit. The song amid the static. “Moments after he cycled past, this man ran after him.”
“A man?” Connie took this in. “How do you know he was chasing Henry?”
“That’s just it. He wasn’t chasing him. He was following him. Because as soon as Henry slowed by the bridge, the man slowed too. When Henry picked up speed, the man started running again. He didn’t want Henry to know he was behind him.”
“You’re sure?”
“I was going to tell you in the village hall, but you just went and laughed in my face.”
Connie felt bad. She should have listened. Was this a lead? Connie wondered if she should tell PC Thorne. But then an obvious question sailed into view through the fog of Connie’s thoughts.
“What did he look like? This man?” she said.
And even as Gladys Gulliver opened her thin lips to speak, Connie knew, with dreadful foreboding what she was going to say. She would describe a burly man in a dark suit, slicked-back hair. She may even have caught a glimpse of his blue eyes and the bandage on his right hand.
As Mrs Gulliver recited the details, Connie felt like a cheap music hall act.
“He had slicked hair.”
Connie the mind-reader.
“A big man.”
Every word fitted the man Connie was already thinking of. Ladies and gentleman, this is the man I thought you’d describe!
“There was something wrapped around one of his hands, like a bandage, I dunno.”
And Connie had a vision of herself showing a matching drawi
ng of Vince Halliday. The crowd would gasp and go wild.
When the old woman finished, she looked intrigued that Connie didn’t seem more surprised.
“Do you know him, then? This man?” she asked.
But Connie was already walking away, unsteady legs carrying her to the nearby vicarage, where a warming light was coming through the windows. She heard herself shouting a shaky “Thank you” to Mrs Gulliver as she went up the pathway to the front door.
Vince had made a meal and was laying out some tea cups. Places set for two. Him and Connie. A fire burned brightly in the hearth. Connie’s note for Henry was face down on the dining table. It still hadn’t been read, but it was no longer a current concern.
Connie entered, unsure of what to do. She had been searching for Henry, using so much energy dealing with all the hundreds of possibilities and outcomes. And now, in the space of a few minutes, she had discovered some of the truth. Vince did have something to do with his disappearance. Glory had suspected as much, but the way Vince behaved seemed genuine, the way he was playing the situation seemed –
Playing the situation.
That was it. Vince Halliday, the master con man had played her. How could she have been so stupid?
He’d said that he didn’t do anything without a reason. Well, what was his reason for following Henry? What was his reason for lying to Connie? She had a horrible suspicion that she was about to find out.
“Any news?” Vince asked, with a warm smile that looked so sincere.
Connie shook her head. She had to tread carefully. Vince wasn’t about to just open up to her and tell her what had happened. She had to work out the best way to get it out.
Connie had to play him.
But before she could speak, Vince wrong-footed her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She looked at him. Sorry for what? Was a confession about to burst out?
It was clear he was holding something back, debating whether to tell her or not. With slow, deliberate tones, he relayed some information that he knew she wouldn’t want to hear; the calmness of his tone designed to anaesthetise, or at least downplay, the effect.