by Deryn Lake
‘But Reg is more troublesome?’
‘Reg lost his wife some years ago and has been indulging in dalliances ever since.’ Nigel sighed. ‘But, alas, that is the nature of man. To seek comfort at a woman’s breast.’
Potter stood up, feeling a little nauseous. ‘Well, thank you so much, Mr Cuthbert-Campbell. It has been most enlightening.’
Nigel thrust out a hearty hand. ‘A pleasure, young fellow. If ever you should feel like joining The Closed Loop just let me know.’
Potter had a brief mental picture of himself swearing enthusiastic oaths with drunken fellow revellers and shook his head.
‘Not for me, sir, though thank you all the same. Too busy with police work I’m afraid.’
Nigel raised his eyebrows in sympathy. ‘It was ever thus, my friend. But be of stout heart.’
‘I’ll try,’ answered Potter as he staggered out into the night air.
Belle had been sobbing for the last hour, terrible heart-breaking cries that shook her body involuntarily and caused her skin to grow red and mottled. Melissa felt at the end of her tether, longing for the noise to stop, yet feeling it her duty to sit with her sorrowing granddaughter and pat her hand, murmuring, ‘There, there darling,’ every so often.
It had all started much earlier in the day when Melissa had been contacted by Susan Richards and told, in an almost unrecognizable voice, that Debbie had been murdered the previous night. Fortunately Hugh had been in and had comforted his wife with all the stoicism of an Afghanistan veteran. But after the initial shock and a couple of stiff drinks, they had turned to one another and realized that Isabelle – out playing with a friend – had to be told.
‘I can’t face it, Hugh. I truly can’t,’ Melissa had said, meaning every word.
Hugh had straightened his back. ‘Very well. I’ll do it.’
He had telephoned his gardening job and cried off and when his granddaughter had come in, little fair plaits swinging out from her head, eyes clear and bright, he had been almost military in his approach.
‘Belle, my darling, I have something of a serious nature to tell you.’
‘Yes, Daddy?’
‘I want you to be a very brave girl, sweet.’
She had looked at him knowingly, momentarily like an adult. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to see Debbie any more.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because she died last night.’ He didn’t say anything about how, or where, or any of the grisly details, of which he only knew half himself. ‘I’m sorry, Belle. Be a gallant little soldier.’
She had stood silently for a moment before a deluge of tears gushed down her face and her lower lip started quivering.
‘Oh, Daddy,’ she said, and she had flung herself into his arms.
She had been weeping ever since. In fact Melissa had wondered to herself how one small individual could produce so many tears. She felt every day of her sixty-one years and was tired and unhappy into the bargain.
‘Belle, oh my little Belle, can I get you some toast with oozing butter and a nice cup of sweet tea?’
Her granddaughter’s body had been racked with an extra loud sob.
‘N–n–no, thank you, Mummy.’
‘But, sweetheart, you haven’t eaten a thing since you came in.’
Belle answered dramatically, ‘Debbie hasn’t eaten anything, has she, Mummy?’
Melissa stopped her patting and stared at Belle, thinking that the child had been watching the wrong sort of television.
‘Now, darling, what made you say that?’
‘Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Dead people don’t eat.’
‘Well, their bodies don’t. But their souls might.’
‘I don’t believe we go to the arms of Jesus.’
Melissa was silenced, not because of what Belle had just said but because she felt too exhausted to argue. The mystery of whether there was an afterlife was as deep to her as it always had been. Sometimes she believed it, particularly when she thought of genuine clairvoyants and the visions they had. At other times she thought that the human race was just like electric light switches. Turned off. Now she could think of nothing to say. Silently she stood up.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To get you something to eat. And if you don’t want it, I’ll have it.’
‘Don’t leave me, Mummy.’
‘Just for a few minutes, darling.’
‘I’ll be frightened.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Debbie’s ghost might come and haunt me.’
‘Nonsense. There are no such things as ghosts.’
‘But you saw my father after he had died. I heard you telling Daddy about it.’
‘I was imagining it,’ said Melissa firmly, and went out of the room, leaving the door ajar. Belle let out such a piercing scream that Hugh came running up the stairs, two at a time.
‘What’s the matter with her?’
‘She thinks Debbie’s ghost is coming for her.’
‘I’ll deal with her. Go downstairs, Melissa, you look done in.’
It was with gratitude that Belle’s grandmother made her way to the living room and poured herself a weak gin and tonic before going into the kitchen to stroke Samba, who was purring in his basket.
Dickie Donkin was heading for the coast. He loved the sea, loved its moods and its changing colours. When he had been a boy, he had had a collection of postcards from places with exotic names – he had never known where they had been – but the one thing that attracted him was the differing shades of the mighty ocean. Dazzling peacock from somewhere called Crete, another vivid emerald from Madagascar. All the colours of blue that one could possibly imagine. One he had particularly liked was of a small island surrounded by sapphire waters with a great abbey built on it. It had ‘Greetings from Mont St Michel’ written on it. Dickie thought now that that had been his favourite.
He knew, though nobody had told him, that the police wanted to question him and that was why he was deliberately going in the opposite direction. They frightened him. They seemed to know things without being told. He knew that they had realized that he had killed his stepfather. But the idea of dumping his weighted clothes in Bewl Water, swimming out to where the reservoir deepened, then swimming naked back to the shore and Farmer Packham’s barn to dress in fresh gear, had saved his life. There had been nothing to pin him to the actual murder. And the good old farmer had given him a firm alibi. Said he had looked in during the night and seen Dickie sleeping like a babe.
The tramp smiled at that memory and walked resolutely on, his goal to get to Fairlight Glen, where he could rest a little and contemplate the ocean. Aching though his feet were, he plodded onwards until eventually he left the houses behind and there, overlooking the mighty monster – as he affectionately nicknamed the sea – someone had thoughtfully put a wooden seat, big enough for three. ‘In Memory of Alf Adkins who sat in this spot daily’ had been written on a small plaque attached to the back. Thinking of Alf, Dickie had lain down on the bench and fallen asleep.
He awoke slowly, muzzy as usual, but after blinking his eyes several times he saw that someone was leaning over him and smiling. Dickie smiled back, showing his rotting brown teeth.
‘Hello, sonny. Having a little kip, were we?’
Dickie swung his legs down and looked earnestly at the person speaking to him. It was a schoolboy dressed in a uniform of some kind. And then slowly the fog from his brain lifted. It was a policeman. Instinctively Dickie started to run but there was a restraining hand on his shoulder.
‘You’re Richard Donkin, aren’t you?’ said the boy.
Dickie nodded. The game was up. There was no point in struggling.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ the boy said very gently. ‘We just want to ask you a few questions, that’s all.’
A tear ran down Dickie’s dirty cheek as the handcuffs were put on him and he was led to a nearby police car where a small girl dres
sed as a policewoman got out and stared at him.
‘Did he cause any trouble?’ she asked.
The boy laughed. ‘No. He’s as gentle as a lamb, aren’t you, Dickie?’
Dickie nodded. ‘Yes,’ came out of the cavern of his throat, and he managed to smile at the boy once more.
Jack Boggis was holding forth loudly. ‘I tell you that this damned village is haunted. Talk about Midsomer Murders. I should think the author – whoever he or she was – must have based it on Lakehurst. Another child last night! I’m seriously thinking of putting my house on the market.’
‘Goodie!’ shouted an unseen listener from the bar.
Jack shot them a look of pure malice and took a sup of ale. ‘As I was saying, Doctor, it really isn’t a village fit to live in.’
‘Well,’ began Kasper in his beautiful accented voice, ‘these particular murders are taking place outside. I mean, those fields belong to Sir Rufus Beaudegrave. They are not, strictly speaking, part of Lakehurst.’
‘They’re near enough. In my opinion there’s a madman on the loose. He’s clearly a child-hater and a danger to the whole community.’
‘You’re hardly a child, Mr Boggis. If your theory is right, you have nothing to fear.’
‘And that’s telling you,’ shouted the unseen listener.
The vicar walked in quietly and stood listening to the exchange of words. In other circumstances he would have been smiling, because Jack Boggis was such an old woman in his opinion, but tonight he felt stretched to his limit. The murder of two innocent children on two consecutive nights had shocked him profoundly. He had been to church and prayed that the malefactor would be caught, that the babes would be received in the hereafter, that harmony could soon be restored to the village. And he had felt slightly guilty because however hard he concentrated on the presence of evil, glorious golden Patsy had crept into his thoughts and he had wished that she lived close to him so that he could have confided his feelings to her.
Kasper spoke. ‘If you are feeling nervous, Mr Boggis, perhaps you could come into my surgery and I will give you a prescription.’
Jack had snorted like an angry old mule. ‘Tranquilizers. I don’t want any of them things, thank you all the same. Ruin you once you start on those. I knew a woman once who was still on some anti-depressant thirty years after her husband died. And still going on about feeling on the verge of suicide.’
‘You will always get those types, of course,’ Kasper said sadly.
‘May I join you?’ asked Nick.
‘All right,’ answered Boggis, none too affably.
‘I heard what you said just now and have met quite a few of them in my time,’ the vicar added. ‘I think they are attention-seekers deep down.’
‘Not so deep,’ Jack answered gloomily. ‘They dine out on being ill. As my old father used to say, “They enjoy bad health”.’
‘Well, at least they enjoyed something,’ shouted the wag from the bar, and there was general laughter.
Nick was vividly reminded of just how tough a creature mankind was. Here was this small village in Sussex, currently threatened by some evil being who could murder children and dress them up like some obscene sacrifice, yet in the face of all that the residents could still find something to laugh about. That surely must be the greatest blessing of all; that in the face of danger and menace they could still retain their sense of humour. He raised his glass to the unseen joker and said ‘Cheers’.
SIXTEEN
Tennant gently removed his arms from the lovely warm body of Olivia and fifteen minutes later crept out of her house and was on the road to Lewes. He called in at his own flat, had a shower and put on some different clothes. Then he drove into the police headquarters and spent two hours on the computer. He looked through every case of child murder that had happened anywhere in the United Kingdom in the last ten years, but could find nothing quite as freakish as this. He looked through all the reports of the house-to-house calls made in the village of Lakehurst and its surrounding dwellings. He then brought up on the screen the case of the murder of George Munn and the interviews with his stepson, who was the number one suspect. Admittedly Dickie’s fingerprints were round the cottage but then he had lived there as a boy until the horrible attack which had hospitalized both him and his mother.
That had been when Dickie was fifteen but George had not cleaned the house much and it was not enough to get a conviction. As for Dickie’s alibi, it was cast iron. Jacob Packham had sworn that he had looked in his barn twice and had seen Dickie sleeping in the hay. Reluctantly, the case had been dropped.
Now he had been arrested again. He had been spotted by a patrol car in the unlikely place of Fairlight Glen and had been brought into the nearest police station. He had spent the night in the cells – poor bugger, thought Tennant – and was being transferred to Lewes in the morning. Tennant considered Dickie seriously for a moment or two and his instinct told him that the man was harmless. Autistic but harmless. He decided to leave the first interview to Potter and he would tell him to go easy on the poor old sod. Tennant made a note to himself to call in the psychiatrist who worked with cases of autism. Having done this, he got into his car and headed back to Lakehurst.
On arrival he was pleased to see Potter there ahead of him.
‘Mark, what brings you out so early?’
‘I spent most of the night patrolling the fields. And before you say anything, sir, I know you didn’t ask me but I just wanted to check that the lunatic wasn’t going to strike for the third time.’
‘That was good of you. By the way, go and get one of the WPCs to have another word with Miss Dunkley. She must have gut instincts about this case.’
‘Talking of instincts I went to interview the chief of the archers last night. It took me an hour to recover! But he does have one interesting theory.’
‘Which is?’
‘That the children were blood sacrifices to ensure that the crops would be good. It’s an old ritual apparently.’
‘I wonder,’ answered Tennant.
‘What?’
‘Sussex is full of ancient beliefs and according to Chris O’Hare they are still very much alive and kicking.’
‘Are you going to see him or shall I?’
‘Me. I want you to go to Lewes. They’ve arrested Richard Donkin apparently. I want you to interview him very gently. You probably won’t get anything out of him, he barely speaks.’
‘No, but he can sing. So the vicar told me.’
Tennant laughed aloud. ‘Perhaps you should base your enquiries on an opera.’
‘Which one?’
‘The Knot Garden, perhaps.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Very. Tippett was the composer.’
‘I should have thought something more light-hearted.’
‘Try Land of Smiles,’ said Tennant, and grinned to himself at Mark Potter’s expression of total incredulity. ‘Or perhaps La Wally might be more up your street.’
Melissa thought that she had never known such a terrible night. It was so awful that early the next morning Hugh had called Dr Rudniski to their house to give Isabelle a sedative. The child was hysterical, refusing to sleep or to be left alone, saying that the ghost of Debbie was coming to torment her if they left her by herself. He had given Isabelle an injection which she had attempted to avoid, threshing round the bed until Hugh had held her down. Twenty minutes later and the fretful child was out cold. The three adults had gone downstairs and stared at one another.
‘Of course, it is understandable,’ said the doctor. ‘She has lost her best friend in a horrible way. It is no wonder that she is upset.’
Melissa thought that had she been twenty years younger – and single – she would have found him dashingly attractive and wondered why he wasn’t in a relationship. But then she thought that generally speaking the young women of Lakehurst were nothing special, which the Polish doctor definitely was. She stood up.
‘It was very good of yo
u to come and visit us at this early hour. Let me get you some coffee.’
The clock was striking seven as she came in bearing a tray with coffee and a selection of biscuits. Hugh was speaking.
‘It has been a bit of a problem coping with a youngster. I particularly worry about the effect on Melissa.’
‘Don’t fret about me, darling, she has been a real joy. That is, most of the time.’
Kasper, looking at her, thought she looked drawn and tired, but small wonder when she had been up all night with a screaming child.
‘I do not wish to speak out of turn, Mrs Wyatt, but I think perhaps you should get away for a few days. It would do you good. Lakehurst is not a happy place to be at the moment.’
‘But I can’t leave Hugh on his own. Not with Belle in her present state. It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘Nonsense, my darling, I’ve looked after a battalion before now. One nervy little girl is nothing by comparison. I think you should go to your sister’s.’
‘I’m sorry, Hugh. I’m not going and that is that.’ She turned to the doctor. ‘How do you like your coffee?’
‘Black without sugar, please.’
‘Of course. Very wise. No additives.’
They sat in silence, Hugh munching on a biscuit, the doctor thinking about the whole sad set-up and just wishing he could do something more than give Belle injections to take away her horrific fantasies.
Dickie Donkin was terribly sad. In fact, he felt at his lowest ebb. He had spent the night in a horrible cell, which stank with the odour of its former resident. The bed had been hard, the lavatory grim, the whole place giving him a sense of being like a caged bird when he was a man born to roam the country. Yet it had happened to him before and he had been set free that time.
I’ve got to play my cards right, he thought. He had no idea what the words actually meant, though it was good to think them, that was for sure. He had been given breakfast that morning and had made an effort at washing himself, running a damp flannel over his neck and dabbing it under his arms. Then he had sat on the bunk and waited to be called.