He was in fact beginning to be overwhelmed by waves of fatigue. He was not so much constantly falling asleep as constantly being jerked awake. At one point he wiped steam away from the window—Ormerod had actually changed down to negotiate the zigzagging narrow street of Crawdon: not Mosley’s responsibility, an enclave of Chief Inspector Marsters’s territory. He saw three men step back into shadows at their approach: Bertie Lee from Strubshaw Bottoms, Alf Carter from Gunley. Both had spent a substantial proportion of their inadequate lives under lock and key. It was bad to see them in each other’s company, even more suggestive that they should be as far from their natural haunts as Crawdon. But the worst feature of all was that the third man in the company should be Jack Pearson.
But Mosley’s eyes fell shut again. Ormerod challenged his shock-absorbers as he hurled them at the hump-back bridge at Crawdon End. For once in a while, Mosley let duty recede into the night.
Chapter Eight
A report had to be written, and Mosley’s was succinct, clear, factual and suppressed anything in the nature of theorizing. He made no attempt to suggest any conclusions, restricting himself austerely to material facts as actually known.
Detective-Superintendent Tom Grimshaw decided to suspect foul play and mounted a forward tactical headquarters at Hadley Dale, telling the ACC that even if this proved ultimately to have been an extravagance, it was no bad thing to set the machine up and let freshly lubricated cogs turn once in a while.
Men with whippy sticks flogged the grass and undergrowth of the woodlands and hillsides. Savage-fanged dogs were allowed to sniff at the clothes that had belonged to Lottie Pearson, and scampered off inanely to follow trails over Matthew Longden’s estate and its surrounds: without result.
The same garments were subjected to every ingenuity of contemporary technology in forensic laboratories. A great deal of information was deduced as to their age, provenance and the length of time that they had been in the ground. Much was learned of the history of Lottie Pearson’s lingerie, but nothing whatever about its owner’s present whereabouts.
Tom Grimshaw himself interviewed Matthew Longden at great length, and when he had finished, the Superintendent exchanged views with Mosley about the man. It was obvious that Grimshaw had been very favourably impressed indeed by Longden, a man after his own heart, of whose sort there were not nearly enough left in the world today.
Mosley received this opinion with a lack of emotion that might possibly have denoted concurrence, but did not volunteer to expand his own thoughts on the subject in any way.
It was Mosley’s right, according to the manuals, since all this was taking place in his operational area, to be kept informed of all phases of the exercise, and to be available for consultation on all issues that might require a local guide. His own part in the actual investigation was restricted to leading a team that filled in a questionnaire to be answered by every man, woman and child in Hadley Dale who could be contacted. There were three main questions. Had they seen anything at all of Lottie Pearson after the departure of the television company? Had they heard anything out of the ordinary on any night last week? And when was the last time that they had seen Lottie Pearson, spoken to her, or seen anyone else speaking to her? The results were so negative that it seemed as if no one in Hadley Dale had even known the woman.
Then, Lottie Pearson’s name by now having climbed into the news, a message was transmitted from a police station in the Greater Manchester area.
On Thursday of last week, a man had called in at that station bringing a folder of airline tickets that had been inadvertently left in a telephone kiosk. It rather looked as if Lottie had been ringing the airport to confirm a check-in time. The duty officer had contacted the airline desk, and it seemed as if Lottie Pearson had also done the same thing as Betty Longden, for the passenger manifest showed her as having flown to Amsterdam at about the same hour on the Friday as Mosley had been watching for her in Bradbum.
The forward tactical headquarters was dismantled, the co-operation of the Dutch police was promised and Mosley again became the undisputed king-pin in his area. One weekday morning not long after this, that area became involved in a man-hunt. All Superintendent Grimshaw’s reserves, official and unofficial, were called into play. The man who was being hunted was Mosley and the message that was to be got to him was that he was to report at once to Dr. Godfrey at the cottage hospital. The reason that he could not be found was that he was already there: the last place in the county where anyone would have thought of looking for him.
Earlier on, before it was known that he would be wanted, he had actually been sighted. He had been seen going into a toy shop in one of Bradburn’s pedestrianized precincts, where he had made an odd purchase. He had asked first for a construction kit with which unskilled fingers could assemble some species of space vehicle. And when he was told that they were temporarily sold out of such outfits, his disappointment was as keen as a schoolboy’s who had been saving up for the thing for weeks. Had they any other playthings to do with space-travel? The girl produced a pocket-size electronic game in whose panel a phalanx of winged marauders could be taken on explosively by a battery of rockets. He played with it for so long that he did not notice that a queue was forming behind him at the counter. He paid for the thing, pocketed it and made his way to the hospital. He was served by a better intelligence network than the one that served Grimshaw.
Dr. Godfrey held out a rubber-gloved hand to be shaken. A grey-haired, uncorpulent little man of Mosley’s age—though he managed it better—he was wearing a white coat, sparingly spattered with human blood.
“Glad you were able to get here. Are you feeling strong in the stomach? I’ve got something I want you to look at.”
They were in a consulting-room close to an operating-theatre.
“I want you to look at these before you see the patient. I had some Polaroid photographs taken before we cleaned him up.”
Godfrey slid the pictures over to Mosley.
“You wouldn’t credit that people expect us to believe the stories they tell us. And we’ve heard them often enough, we expect them. They have to call an ambulance when things have got out of hand. Then they think up the nature of the accident. Look at these injuries—and we are asked to believe that the young gentleman fell out of a tree.”
The photographs showed weals across the back, the flesh torn over the right shoulder-blade, bruising on both sides of the spinal column, shreds of cotton vest clinging to exudations of congealed blood.
“Two broken ribs. Other lesions that could not possibly have happened on his way out of a tree. No one’s going to tell me that this wasn’t done with a buckle-belt.”
“Bernard Hunter?”
“You know the folk, do you?”
“I know the family. I’ve been expecting this.”
“You mean you knew this was likely to happen—and you’ve let things slide till it has?”
Mosley did not defend himself, simply looked at him with grave, patient eyes.
“I’m sorry, Jack,” Godfrey said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I know what you’re up against. Some people need a full-time policeman of their own. But I’ll tell you this—and this is why I wanted you here today—this one is going the whole way. I’ll have the man who did this in gaol, no matter what that costs the ratepayer. And I’m having no damned clever lawyer playing layman’s games with medical evidence. That’s happened to me once too often. We need a definitive statement from the lad. He’s too frightened to talk. I want you to help me with him—and to be on hand when he does.”
“Won’t he admit he was thrashed?”
“Up to now he sticks to his mother’s statement: he fell out of a tree he’s been forbidden to climb. He’s afraid that if he opens his mouth, he’ll be thashed again when he gets home.”
“Surely he won’t be in a fit state to talk now?”
“He isn’t. But we’re going to try. I’m going to break all the rules. We’ve given him sedatives
and pain-killers, and in the normal run of things I wouldn’t have a visitor near him. But we’ll be cruel to be kind, and I’ll give him a knock-out jab when he’s said what we want to hear. He’ll dream better dreams when he’s got it off his chest. He’ll come out of shock quicker if he’s nothing to wrestle with.”
Bernard Hunter did not look a well child at the best of times. The bed and the hospital paraphernalia seemed to accentuate both his frailty and his pallor. He was lying propped up in the mystery-land between induced sleep and wakefulness—though there was no doubting that he was still conscious. The sight of Mosley reinforced the fear in his eyes. And although he was only nine years old, a degree of artfulness had entered into his soul. Maybe he even had the wits to shelter behind the medications.
“I don’t want to die,” he said, and his voice was a pitiful squeak.
So that was what was complicating matters. He knew that the Watlington child had been brought here, found dead on arrival, after the glue-sniffing asphyxiation. Bernard was scared by the thought of a hospital. Georgie Watlington’s death had hit him very hard at the time.
“You’re not going to die, Bernard,” Godfrey told him, with the right kind of laugh. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a patient in here who looked less like dying. You’re going to feel a bit sore for the next day or two, but we can do something about that. And Mr. Mosley has come here because he’s your friend. Mr. Mosley knows all about you. He knows what happened. He knows the truth. He just wants to hear you tell us about it yourself, then everything’s going to be all right.”
The boy opened his eyes and looked directly at Mosley. He could only believe that this was another of the deceptions of the inexplicable adult world.
“I know it wasn’t glue-sniffing this time,” Mosley said. “Or did your father find out about that? Is that why he beat you?”
If he had heard of it, Hunter might well have become violent. His temper was sudden and savage. When beer was swilling about inside him, he was capable of anything. The boy’s head moved on his pillow and he closed his eyes.
“Shall I prove to you that I know it wasn’t glue this time? I know you’ll never do that again. Shall I tell you how much I trust you, Bernard? I went to Skidmore’s this morning, as soon as I heard you were in here, and I tried to buy you a space-rocket kit. And those kits, you know, Bernard, they come complete with little tubes of glue. I wasn’t frightened of buying it for you. I know I can trust you now to use these things properly.”
Bernard’s expression did not change.
“But they had no space-rockets in stock. So I bought you this instead.”
Mosley’s hand, already in his pocket, brought out the electronic game. Bernard opened his eyes. Dr. Godfrey spoke into his consciousness.
“Look what Mr. Mosley has brought you.”
Bernard rested his eyes on the present.
“A few hours from now, you’ll be sitting up playing with it. You’ll be taking it to show them at school. And now I want you to tell us why your Mum beat you.”
Bernard’s weak face showed impatience with such ignorance. “It wasn’t my Mum.”
“Who was it, then?”
The child fought feebly with inevitability. “My Dad.”
“And what did he beat you for? Was it the glue?”
“No. You said I wasn’t to tell him about the glue.”
“What, then?”
“He said I was telling lies. But they weren’t lies.”
“What lies? I’m sure you wouldn’t tell lies, Bernard.”
Bernard retreated for a moment as the drugs were taking hold of him. “Mrs. Pearson,” he said at last.
“Mrs. Pearson? What about Mrs. Pearson? Do you mean old Mrs. Pearson or young Mrs. Pearson?”
“Mrs. Pearson up at the house. I think somebody killed her.” Wide eyes; the consuming fear that only the truly naïve can suffer.
“But nobody killed her, Bernard. We thought somebody might have, but now we’ve found out where she went.”
It was difficult to see how deeply Bernard was considering this. He did not seem able to follow even such simple reasoning.
“I think my Dad killed her. I saw him …” The boy swallowed and took a convulsive breath. The effort brought a renewed spasm of pain over the upper half of his body.
Godfrey was beginning to be restive. He put a restraining hand on Mosley’s knee. “We’ve heard what we want, Jack. Anything else can wait till tomorrow.”
Bernard had started to cry. The ward sister had moved near to the bed and was looking on with concern. Godfrey stood up and mouthed silent words to her, asking her to bring him a hypodermic. Mosley submitted and also stood up.
Chapter Nine
Mosley did not travel up to Hadley Dale on the school bus this time. He demanded transport at the Bradburn station on the grounds that he was bringing in a man who might be violent. Of the two available vehicles, one was out at a by-pass collision, the other scouting for vandals on one of the estates. He was told, reasonably enough, that he could have whichever first became available. But Mosley was not in a reasonable mood. He was as near to being on edge as anyone in the Bradburn nick had ever seen him. He did not seem to want to delay by as much as five minutes his encounter with the Hadley Dale bully. He announced to a stunned outer office that for the first time in his career he was going out on duty in his own private motor: he still used the old-fashioned word.
“Had you better not have someone with you, sir, if he’s as dangerous as that?”
“There’s Joe Ormerod in the village.”
“Yes, well, I wouldn’t want to start mixing it with Joe,” the desk sergeant said. But by then he was talking to himself.
Mosley drove up to the limit. On Stonemill Bank he got behind a sand-lorry and had to fall back hastily to overtake it on a broad bend. Then it suddenly occurred to him that he must have driven through Marrington, though he could not remember having seen the village today, let alone negotiating its bizarre corners. His mind was divided between Ted Hunter and a conversation he had had with Dr. Godfrey before leaving the cottage hospital.
Mosley had asked his old friend what he remembered about Matthew Longden from Longden’s Bradburn days. Godfrey had looked contemptuous: he was a man who kept his own counsel, and his views on his fellow-citizens rarely coincided with those commonly held.
“A criminal, Jack, if ever there was one.”
“A criminal? You mean doctoring people’s books?”
But Godfrey had nothing but scorn for this too.
“A crime to you, Jack Mosley, is something you look up in the statute book. Those aren’t the real crimes. The real crimes are against human relationships.”
“And friend Longden?”
“You knew him in those days, Jack.”
“I did, yes, but—”
“Didn’t you ever know how he treated his wife? Nothing against the statute book there. Nothing there that isn’t done in proper society. But ask anyone who knew her. Or, let’s put it another way. Ask any of those who tried to know her—who discovered that she wasn’t allowed to be known. Ask Mr. Councillor Bootherstone. Ask Colonel Mortimer’s wife. Ask the redoubtable Mrs. Roffey—”
“Why talk in riddles, Dick?”
“Because I’m sending you to the horse’s mouth. You people are always cracking on that you’ve no room for hearsay. Well—go to those who know …”
So Longden had treated Betty badly. Mosley had certainly never suspected it, in the days when he had known both of them. But who was to know what went on in a marriage?
And so he’d tried the same sort of thing on with Lottie Pearson, had he? Anyone less like Betty Longden than Lottie it was hard to imagine. It seemed highly possible that after the initial euphoria things had worn thin between Matthew and Lottie. It was likely that they would. They came from different worlds. Maybe they’d had their rows, and then if one of the television crew had made a pass at her—if she’d found it quite amusing for him to make a p
ass at her—
The simplest explanation still seemed that Lottie had left voluntarily. But why the repetitions? Why the sand in the porridge? Why the airline tickets in the call-box? And what was he going to be able to get out of Bully Hunter—that young Bernard Hunter already knew?
Mosley was impatient to tread on the accelerator, but again he saw a lorryload ahead, this time of live chickens, obviously destined for Crabtree, up Mallowdale. There would be no hope of getting round that for the next three and a half miles. He cut his losses and turned into a gated road across upper dale farmland. It meant half a dozen stops and starts, assaulting rusted gate fastenings. It played audible havoc with his suspension. But it gave him an illusion of space and decency, even if he hardly ever got out of second gear and his speedometer needle rarely rose above fifteen. There was something to be gained from absorbing the landscape. His mind was rocking between ugly prospects, but the environment remained in perspective: smoke from a farmhouse chimney, the panic of a lamb whose mother had wandered a few yards out of sight, the unpermissive whistle of a man out of temper with his dog.
Mosley drove into Hadley Dale village, and the spectators remained discreetly in the background. Men had been saying all day that he’d be up for Hunter. He looked in the direction of the Hunters’ house, as if he were debating whether to call there first. It might help, if he could squeeze a few feckless admissions out of the wife before tackling the man. But Mosley did not go to her. His first call was the police-house—but Joe Ormerod was eight miles away, taking down particulars of a suspected outbreak of sheep-scab. Mosley drove straight on to the quarry, and the manager did not need to be told what he was here for.
“He’s working out on the West Star. Albert Boardman’s gang. Shall I have him fetched?”
Mosley by Moonlight Page 7