Blackstone and the Heart of Darkness

by Sally Spencer

  Drayman looked thoughtful for a second. ‘Well, that certainly clears up one mystery.’

  ‘And what mystery might that be?’

  ‘The mystery of how an experienced blaster somehow managed to blow himself up.’

  ‘You think he might have been murdered, too?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Too?’ Drayman repeated. ‘Why, who else do you think thinks that?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve misinterpreted what I said completely. What I was meaning to suggest was that if Yardley thought there was some kind of smuggling ring in Marston, then he was clearly losing his mind in some way. And if he was losing his mind, that would explain why he made his fatal error with the explosives.’

  ‘So you dismiss the possibility of a smuggling ring out of hand?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Let me explain to you a little about robbery and fencing,’ Blackstone suggested. ‘It isn’t always easy to steal really valuable jewels, but it’s never easy to sell them on. Say you’ve got a diamond necklace, worth hundreds—or even thousands—of pounds. If it’s that expensive, it will also be that well known, and there’ll be no market for it in England. So the thief’s faced with two options. Would you like to take a guess at what those options are?’

  ‘I suppose he could break up the necklace and sell the individual diamonds.’

  ‘He could, but if he does that, already he’s reducing its value—because the parts will never be worth as much as the whole.’

  ‘And his other option, I imagine, is to try and sell it abroad.’

  ‘Exactly! But he’s got to get it abroad first, and the only way to do that is by ship. Now, at each and every stage of the journey, there’s the possibility of things going seriously wrong...’

  ‘I’m sure there is.’

  ‘...but the danger’s greatest at the British customs and the foreign customs. Because these customs officers are highly trained. They know all the likely places they’ll try to hide them—in suitcases with false bottoms, in hidden compartments in baby carriages which actually have a baby in them at the time, crammed up the smuggler’s own back passage...’

  ‘They don’t really do that, do they?’ Drayman said, horrified. ‘They don’t really stick them up their own back passages?’

  ‘Indeed they do,’ Blackstone said. ‘You’d be surprised how much you can hide up an arsehole if you really want to.’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘But we’re getting off the point. Let’s suppose that a group of very smart criminals put their heads together and come up with an unlikely method of smuggling—a method that the customs officers would never even think of.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ Drayman said.

  ‘In a way, this new method is no more than a variation on the false-bottomed suitcase trick, but before they can implement it, they have to get the goods themselves to Marston.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ll come to that in a minute. Now, getting the jewels here could be a problem, because the chances are that they’ll have been stolen from houses and shops that are hundreds of miles from the village.’

  ‘I still don’t see—’

  ‘But it’s no real problem at all, when you think about it—because the goods can be brought here, quite safely, by narrow-boat.’

  ‘Good God, that’s a ludicrous idea!’

  ‘You’re wrong about that. It isn’t ludicrous at all. In fact, it’s a very sensible and a very practical plan, given that Marston is connected to large parts of the country through the canal network.’

  ‘But it would be so slow!’ Drayman protested.

  ‘That’s all to the thieves’ advantage, because no one—and that includes the police who are trying to track the jewels down—would ever expect them to move the goods slowly.’

  ‘So they bring the jewels to Marston and hide them in this new variation of a false-bottomed suitcase?’ Drayman asked sceptically.

  ‘That’s right. They take the jewels to the salt works—’

  ‘And hide them in at the bottom of a big pile of loose salt?’ Drayman said, chuckling. ‘And then, I suppose, they all go to church and pray that when they need the jewels again, they’ll be able to find them.’

  ‘They don’t hide them under a pile of salt,’ Blackstone said. ‘They hide them in a block of salt.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They put the jewels on top of a heap of hot salt in a mould, pour more hot salt on top of it, and then let the salt set into a hard block. Once that’s done, they load the block—along with thousands of other blocks which are almost identical—on to a narrow-boat, which takes it to Liverpool, where it’s loaded on to a ship that is sailing to wherever it is they’ve got a buyer for the goods.’

  ‘It’s a very clever idea,’ Drayman admitted, ‘but it’s so incredible that I would have thought it belonged more to the realms of fiction than to real life.’

  ‘Ten minutes ago you thought it was incredible that smugglers would make use of their backsides to hide the goods, but you’ve come round to the idea now, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘So maybe in another ten minutes, the salt-block idea won’t look so fanciful, either.’

  ‘You’ve only got this Tom Yardley’s word that there’s a smuggling operation in the village.’

  ‘Tom Yardley’s word is all I need.’

  ‘Perhaps it is. But you knew him and you trusted him, whereas I never even met the man, so his word carries no weight with me at all.’

  ‘What are you saying? That before you’ll even consider taking me seriously, you’re going to need to see a lot more in the way of solid evidence?’

  ‘Yes,’ Drayman agreed. ‘I think that’s exactly what I’m saying.’

  *

  Though Jed Trent had tried to start up a conversation several times during the course of the meal, Ellie Carr had either not heard him at all, or—if she had—had grunted as few words as possible in reply.

  Now, as the waiter cleared away the last of the dishes, Trent said in a very loud voice, ‘Would you like to tell me what the problem is, Dr Carr?’

  Ellie jumped. ‘Do you have to shout, Jed?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I do—if I’m ever to get through to you,’ Trent told her. ‘I don’t know where your mind’s been all night, but it certainly hasn’t been here with me.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Ellie said defensively.

  ‘I’ve worked that out for myself. But what about!’

  ‘About Emma Walsingholme’s corpse.’

  ‘Don’t start that again,’ Trent warned her. ‘There’ll be no breaking and entering while I’m around.’

  ‘Of course there won’t,’ Ellie agreed primly. ‘I would never suggest anything like such a course of action.’

  ‘But you did suggest exactly that course of action,’ Trent reminded her, ‘—just this afternoon.’

  ‘This afternoon, I was much younger—and much more foolish—than I am now,’ Ellie said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Jed, let’s stop talking about what might have happened—but never did—and try to concentrate our minds instead on something that has actually occurred.’

  ‘All right,’ Trent agreed.

  ‘I’ve been looking at the police reports on the condition of Emma’s body when they found it, and it’s pretty gruesome reading.’

  ‘I imagine it is. There’s no pleasant way to describe a girl who’s had her hands and feet cut off, and her face slashed.’

  ‘Yes, that is pretty horrific,’ Ellie Carr agreed, almost indifferently, ‘but I’m much more interested in the rest of her injuries. There were cuts and slashes all over the body—and I’m wondering why.’

  ‘Do you really need a reason? The man who did it was a lunatic. Shouldn’t that be enough for you?’

  ‘It would certainly be enough—if he hadn’t been such a very methodical lunatic.’

  ‘What’s methodical
about slashing a woman to pieces?’

  ‘Nothing at all. But if he’d done it while she was wearing her clothes, the dress would have been reduced to ribbons. And from what I’ve read, it wasn’t.’

  ‘So he took the dress off her. Maybe he got a bigger thrill out of killing her when she was naked.’

  ‘Maybe he did. But why did he then put the dress back on her?’

  ‘It beats me.’

  ‘It beats me as well. What was the point of all those cuts?’

  ‘To demonstrate that he had contempt for women in general, and pretty young rich girls in particular?’

  ‘I would have thought he’d have made that point quite clearly enough with all the other mutilation,’ Ellie said. ‘The way I see it, there has to be some other reasoning behind the body-slashing—some message that couldn’t be sent by simply cutting off her hands and feet.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any kind of sense,’ Jed said.

  ‘Not to you, no,’ Ellie agreed. ‘But perhaps it made sense to him.’

  She suddenly slammed her hand down on the table, so hard that two of the waiters stopped in their tracks and turned around to see what had happened. ‘Or perhaps he wasn’t trying to tell us anything at all,’ Ellie continued. ‘Perhaps, on the contrary, he was trying to hide something from us!’

  ‘Like what, for example?’ Trent wondered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ellie admitted gloomily. ‘I really don’t even have the faintest glimmering of an idea.’

  Thursday: The White Devil

  One

  Blackstone was back in Afghanistan—back in the deep, deep cave where Private Tom Yardley had saved his life.

  He had the stink of cordite and blood in his nostrils. He could see both the dead Pathan warriors and his own dead comrades in the flickering light of the oil lamp. His head ached from the blow that had been so recently delivered to the back of his skull. Yet there was at least a part of his brain that knew full well that none of it was real.

  He did not mind that he was only dreaming. Dreams had often been useful to him in the past. They had warned him of dangers he had not been aware of when he was conscious. They had given him clues that his awakened self had followed. It would be going too far to suggest that they had served as actual signposts in his investigations, but they had at least given hints as to where those signposts might be found.

  So dreams were welcome. Dreams were old friends and allies.

  *

  His head is throbbing and his vision is blurred. When he hears the footsteps in the connecting passageway, he gropes for his rifle. But he knows he is in no shape to fight, and that if more Pathans are coming, then he is already as good as dead. Then he hears Tom Yardley speak, and it is like hearing the voice of an angel.

  ‘There were six of. them, but there’s only five here!’ Blackstone says urgently. He is still groggy, and needs to lean on Tom as they make their way back down the passageway and out through the first cave. The sunlight outside is blinding, and for a moment, he thinks he will lose consciousness again.

  The Pathan is lying on the ground, where Tom shot him.

  And why shouldn’t he be? Blackstone’s befuddled brain asks. What did .you expect him to do? Get up and walk away?

  The Afghan is undoubtedly dead, but there is something not quite right about the wound in his chest, something that—however much he tries—Blackstone can’t put his finger on.

  But why is he even trying to discover what’s wrong, he wonders. The Pathan warrior—a sworn enemy—no longer poses a threat, and that is really all he needs to know about him.

  *

  It was the furious knocking on the front door which brought him back to the present—which made him aware that the barren rocks of Afghanistan were no more than a memory, and that reality was a sofa in Walter Clegg’s front parlour.

  The knocking ceased, and a man’s voice called out, ‘Inspector Blackstone? Are you in there?’

  Official title, official business, Blackstone thought.

  He reached for his gold watch, flicked opened the lid with his thumb, and saw that it was a quarter past five in the morning.

  ‘Inspector Blackstone?’ said the voice on the other side of the door, with increasing urgency.

  Blackstone swung his body off the sofa and, clad only in his long johns, padded across the parlour and opened the door.

  A uniformed constable was standing on the front step. ‘Inspector Drayman would like to see you, sir,’ he said, without preamble.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘A girl’s gone missing.’

  Dear God, not another one, Blackstone thought.

  ‘Is she from the local gentry?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir,’ the constable replied. ‘She’s a baker’s daughter.’

  *

  Inspector Drayman was sitting at his desk. He was red-eyed through lack of sleep, and his skin had turned deathly pale with worry. When Blackstone entered his office, Drayman gave him the kind of look that a drowning man might give to the possessor of a lifebelt.

  ‘Do you remember, when we were talking yesterday, that I said I wished I had more interesting crimes to deal with?’ he asked bitterly. ‘Well, I promise you, I never meant anything like this.’

  ‘Give me the details,’ Blackstone said crisply.

  ‘The missing girl’s name is Margie Thomas and she’s thirteen years old. Her father has a small bakery down by the river.’

  ‘So where did she—’

  ‘I’m coming to that. Her grandmother lives in Great Budworth, which is a small village a couple of miles the other side of Marston. The grandmother’s not been feeling too well recently, so it was arranged that Margie should spend the night with her. The girl was supposed to be setting off at around three o’clock in the afternoon, when she’d finished her chores in the bakery, but at the last minute her father decided he’d let her go earlier, so she could spend more time with her granny. She left home at about eleven thirty yesterday morning, but she never reached the grandmother’s house.’

  ‘When was the alarm raised?’

  ‘Not until after you and I had finished our meal together.’

  ‘Why did it take so long?’

  ‘The grandmother didn’t know anything was wrong. She assumed that the reason Margie hadn’t turned up was either because she wasn’t feeling well herself, or because the bakery had been busier than usual and she’d had to stay and help her dad. And for all the father knew, the girl was safely with her grandmother.’

  ‘So what finally alerted them?’

  ‘A postman called Tibbs. He’s a friendly feller, the sort who’ll talk to anybody. When he made the afternoon delivery, the grandmother happened to mention to him that Margie hadn’t turned up, and when he met her dad in the pub, later in the evening, he asked him if anything was wrong with her. That’s when Mr Thomas came to the police station.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what kind of girl Margie is?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Is she wilful? Flighty?’

  Drayman shook his head. ‘From what we’re told she seems to be a very quiet—almost timid—girl. Very responsible and very obedient. It’s almost inconceivable to any of the people who know her well that she would ever have disappeared voluntarily.’

  ‘What action have you taken?’

  ‘I’ve had men out searching for her all night, but I knew from the start that, in the dark, it was almost bound to be a fruitless task. I felt a complete fool for even issuing the order.’

  Blackstone nodded sympathetically. ‘But you issued it anyway. And you were right to—because, in a situation like this one, you can’t afford to ignore even the longest odds.’

  ‘And what do I do now it’s come light?’ Drayman asked, ‘Get the men to go over the same ground again?’

  ‘Yes, but this time they should be on the lookout for anybody who might have seen the girl at some stage on her journey, because if we can pin down the point at which she was last sighted, we might be in a be
tter position to work out exactly where she was when she vanished.’

  Inspector Drayman produced a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. His hands were trembling so violently that half a dozen of the cigarettes spilled on to his desk.

  ‘She’s already dead, isn’t she?’ he asked.

  ‘We don’t know that yet,’ Blackstone replied evenly.

  ‘Be honest with me, Sam. Please!’

  ‘Miracles have been known to happen,’ Blackstone said gravely, ‘but if they happened too often, they wouldn’t be miracles at all. Which means you’re right, and the chances are that she’s already dead.’

  *

  When Archie Patterson discovered, to his amazement, that he couldn’t face the thought of eating the generous fried breakfast his landlady had just placed in front of him, he knew immediately that something was seriously wrong.

  It was true that there had been a few—a very few—occasions in the past when he’d deliberately skipped a meal. But that had been different. That had only been to compensate for the fact that he’d strayed from the path of righteous dieting on which Rose had set him. Then, he had never wanted to abstain had never felt any inclination not to eat. Now, even looking at the eggs swimming in lard was enough to make him feel slightly queasy.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter with you, Mr Patterson?’ asked the landlady, who had returned with a second helping of fried bread, only to find that he hadn’t even touched the first. ‘You’re not ill or anything, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not ill,’ Patterson said.

  ‘It’s not like you to leave your food untouched like that,’ the landlady persisted. ‘Are you sure you haven’t got a temperature?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Patterson said gruffly. He slid his plate across the table. ‘Could you take this away please?’

  His landlady picked up the plate and walked over to the window. For a moment, Patterson thought that she was intending to examine the rejected food in a better light, but instead she lifted her eyes upwards to the sky.

  She turned back towards him. ‘Well, I was wrong,’ she said.

  ‘Wrong about what?’

  ‘It’s not raining fire and brimstone after all.’