“You think he’d come?”
It was obviously a relief to the manager that Mosley was going to handle it himself.
“Is it clear to go out there? No red flags up?”
“No firing before half past three. But stick to the track. There’s a lot of loose stuff at the edges.”
Mosley made his way from the office-block to an outlying working, amid the thunder of hoppers tipping tons of crushed stone into the kilns. Men in safety helmets watched him pass—but showed no desire to catch his eye. Equivocal was the word for the attitude to authority here. Undoubtedly they would have condemned Hunter without a voice of dissent. They would probably have sent him to Coventry—even at the rock-face, where team-work was vital. But it was a different matter, and no call for applause, when the law came to a work-site. They might co-operate, they might not. It was quite unpredictable.
Mosley came up to where he could see Hunter, working on the flank of a party of eight. He was drilling, boring for the next charge. The foreman came towards Mosley.
“Hunter?”
The movement of Mosley’s head scarcely qualified as a nod. The foreman called Hunter’s name, an echo against the rock walls. Hunter looked back once over his shoulder, then concentrated on his drill.
“Hunter!”
Men had stopped working. Drills were silenced. A mechanical digger was motionless, a great yellow dinosaur. Only Hunter carried on with his task of the moment, as if his work was all that mattered to him.
“Over here, Hunter!”
Hunter turned off his drill and laid it down, turned slowly and inspected Mosley derisively. The motor of the compressor was rattling on in the background.
“Reckon your chances, do you, Mosley?”
He was red-chested and sweating, the strength of his body insolently challenging under his trousers and shirt. In spite of the warmth of the day, Mosley was still wearing his coat. Hunter began to amble towards him, his boots slithering over shifting rubble. He came within five yards of the detective.
“Not much of you, is there, Mosley?”
“The law’s bigger than either of us. And if you have anything else in mind, we’ll find room for it on the charge-sheet. You’re a big man, Hunter—bigger than a nine-year-old. That’s why I’ve got a warrant for you.”
“Don’t come the clever bugger, Mosley.”
Mosley did not move his head. He did not stiffen his posture. The circle of workmen was motionless.
“I’ve a good mind to teach you a lesson, Mosley.”
“Save your sort of lesson for the younger end.”
A man laughed. That could act as the final goad. Hunter came closer, his uncouth right hand hanging self-consciously loose, as if he were role-playing in a Main Street shoot-out.
“It’s up to you, Mosley. Here I am.”
The circle seemed to have come in closer, though no man had been seen to move. There was no telling what they would do. They had traditional loyalties, and the likes of Mosley ranked low in them. Also, they were of a breed that had not lost the instincts of herd communication. Laughter could unify them. That could be useful to Mosley at this moment.
“What I need is a sling and five stones from the brook,” he said, but that was good for no more than a titter. It was too far removed from their realities.
“You want a stone? Here’s one for you.”
Hunter picked up a rock twice the size of his fist and juggled it casually up and down in his hand. Then he retracted his forearm and took aim from his hip.
“Drop it, Hunter!”
The man who spoke was behind Hunter’s shoulder, needed only half a step to be within arm’s length. Hunter turned his head a fraction and saw that his mates were now hemming him in. Mosley drew handcuffs from his coat pocket and advanced on him with one of them dangling. Hunter stood still while Mosley adjusted the manacle on his wrist.
The foreman ordered the men back to the rock-face. Men from the office and the kilns were standing watching as they walked to the car. Mosley fixed Hunter’s wrist to the frame of his passenger seat. Hunter made a sudden attempt to free himself, a massive spasm of strength, hoping perhaps that the metalwork would split asunder. But it held. He must have hurt himself badly, but he showed no sign of that. He sat silent. They had travelled some three or four miles before he spoke.
“How’s the boy?”
“Not off the danger-list yet. Whatever happens, you’ll answer for it.”
“I didn’t hit him that hard.”
“You didn’t know how hard you were hitting him. And you didn’t care. And you’d no call to be hitting him at all.”
“That kid snivels. There’s his like a-plenty on his mother’s side.”
“You half kill a lad for a snivel?”
“There was more to it than that.”
“What, then?”
Hunter reflected a long time.
“I’m quick-tempered. The ale does it. I swear I’ll stay off it.”
“And how often have you said that?”
Another half-mile of silence. They drove through a cheesy smell of silage. Mosley wound up the window on his side.
“What will I get, Mosley? Does it have to be time? They won’t take the kid, will they?”
“That depends on a lot of things. There’ll be a lot of people walking all round you: welfare workers, probation officers.”
The thought of it clearly disgusted Hunter. He looked away. They were coming out of Crawdon before he spoke again. Mosley took the hump-back bridge with a good deal more respect for his springs than Ormerod had shown the other night.
“Your word will count for something, won’t it, Mosley? I came quietly.”
“What do you expect? A pound from the poor-box for not throwing that stone at me?”
“I’ve learned my lesson, Mosley, so help me Christ I have.”
“You haven’t told me yet what the lad had done to deserve it.”
They were not many miles from Bradburn now. Hunter looked away again.
“I want to piss,” he said presently.
Mosley found a loop of superannuated road that served as a lay-by, unlocked Hunter, let him go up to the hedge without encumbrance. He did what he had to do, came back buttoning his flies.
“You couldn’t have stopped me then, Mosley, if I’d had a mind to cut loose.”
“We’ve have got you. You’d only have made matters worse for yourself. You don’t think I care what they do to you, do you?”
“You might. I could help you, Mosley.”
“That’ll be the day.”
“You’d like to know what happened to Lottie Pearson, wouldn’t you? The kid’s told you all about that, hasn’t he—the same as he told his mother.”
“What has the kid told me?”
There had been no further word from the hospital. That was the frustration of frustrations. But he had to leave the timing to Godfrey. Godfrey knew what he wanted the boy’s head to be full of.
“You’ll have been to see the missus too, I suppose?”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t. I nearly did. Then I thought to myself, I won’t put her in the position of having to shop you. I’m giving you your chance to make your statement first. That way it’s up to you with her, when you’re out and about again.”
Hunter digested this. They were still parked. Mosley had not yet switched his engine on.
“You’re not such a bad bugger, are you, Mosley? You’re not like some of them. You think about things.”
“The sooner I can stop thinking about you, the better I shall like it.”
“You want to know what happened to Lottie Pearson. I can take you to where her belongings are buried.”
“Where you buried them.”
Hunter turned his face to Mosley.
“That’s not all that clever. I suppose the kid told you that. There’s no crime in burying old clothes.”
“And where did you bury her?”
“That’s where the kid got it wrong. That�
��s why I saw red. Mosley—I’m trying to be straight with you.”
“It doesn’t come all that easy, does it?”
Mosley had not put the cuff back on him. Mosley leaned forward to his ignition switch.
“The sooner I’ve got you indoors, the sooner I can clock off. Unless you care to tell me where I can find Lottie Pearson.”
“She went off somewhere, didn’t she?”
“And Matthew Longden paid you to get rid of her things?”
“Not Matthew Longden.”
He seemed to be getting a good deal of satisfaction from putting Mosley right.
“Not Longden. Lottie Pearson herself. She’d been carrying stuff down to one of their sheds, a few at a time. She told me what she wanted done with them. She gave me five quid for it and there’d be another five when she knew I’d made a proper job of it. She said bury them up in the woods. Wrap them up in a blanket. Shape it up like a body. Leave the earth so that anyone could see there’d been digging.”
“What had she in mind? What was she thinking of? All right, so we’d think it was a body. We’d dig it up. We’d find it wasn’t a body. That makes no sort of sense to me at all, Hunter.”
This time Mosley did start his engine, crept forward to the exit from the lay-by, waited for an oncoming van and eased them out into the road.
“How the hell do I know what she was thinking of? I only knew what she asked me to do. She was a queer woman, you know.”
“You didn’t think to ask her?”
“She wanted to make things awkward for Longden—after what she’d had to put up with from him. And she didn’t tell me that. She didn’t have to. It stuck out a mile. And she said she’d be back. She was up to something, and I don’t know what. And that’s God’s honest truth, Mosley.”
Mosley chose a series of one-way alleys that led them into the police-station yard without running the curious eyes of the shopping streets. He delivered Hunter at the desk and started on the paper-work.
“Don’t forget, Mosley. I’ve been helpful. Put in a word for me.”
Chapter Ten
Spring was advanced. The sun shone. Clover and ladies’-smocks, dog-daisies and vetches shimmered in the hay-fields. Sap rose in oak, ash and alder; leaves and blossoms broke. And if the blood surged afresh in the veins of Mosley’s people it did not inspire any increase in the common fund of naughtiness. Yet Mosley, who was normally proud of how rarely he needed to call on the law’s retribution seemed to have started a vendetta against crimes of an unusual—and trivial—nature. Within the space of a week, he submitted more crime reports for the decisions of his superiors than they usually saw from him in the course of a year. There was a comfortless conference between the Assistant Chief Constable and his Detective-Superintendent.
“What’s got into Mosley? I’ve stamped No Action on one case-report after another. When does he come up for a routine medical? Ought we to have a quiet word in the MO’s ear, do you think? Suggest a spell of mental rest? Might we even breathe the words—” the ACC’s eyes sparkled with short-lived hope—”premature retirement?”
“I fear that Mosley would argue volubly,” Grimshaw said, “as he has already done in my office. His commission is to seek out and prosecute breaches of the law. It would be illogical to harass him for doing so. That is the innocent line he is taking.”
“But I ask you. He’s suggesting a charge against Councillor Bootherstone for exposing for sale—how has he expressed it?” The ACC sought the relevant papers. “Exposing for sale a native leveret in the month of June.”
“It is an offence,” Grimshaw said. “Under the Hares’ Preservation Act of 1892. There is no close season for rabbits and hares, but—”
“Damn it, Grimshaw, I know the law. But it was the Chief’s wife he was selling it to. And it wasn’t exposed. The carcase had been in his deep freeze since last January. Bootherstone swears it had got lost there. Moreover, Bootherstone is the best friend this force has among elected representatives. No Action, Grimshaw, and I’ll get my wife to give a dinner-party for the Bootherstones.”
“A wise move, I’m sure, sir.”
“And what’s this other thing? Colonel Mortimer, of all people …”
Mortimer was President of the Royal British Legion, Chairman of the Borough Justices, Vicar’s Warden and a fire-eating reactionary. He believed that the sane world had come to an end with the termination of National Service.
“Being the person in charge of a captive balloon in flight, leaving it unattended at its moorings. Has Mosley taken to reading Jules Verne?”
“No, sir. Technically, an offence was committed. Mosley is relying on Article 67 of the Air Navigation Act of 1976 and the subsequent Regulations.”
“What has Colonel Mortimer ever had to do with Air Navigation?”
“In the Jubilee Park, sir, last Saturday week. The Colonel was using a captive balloon to draw attention to the forthcoming Church Fête. Actually, Mosley could also have got him for using it to emit an advertisement or other communication audible or visible from the ground. He appears to have been missing on that cylinder.”
“That sort of balloon doesn’t count. It’s only a toy.”
“I fear not, sir. This one fell within the provisions of the order by exceeding two metres measured in any straight line, including any basket or other equipment attached. Mosley was scrupulous about measuring it. And it appears that the Colonel had to leave it for two minutes to go and have a pee, thereby contravening—”
“Couldn’t Mosley have minded it for him? Wouldn’t that have been nearer his conception of the role of a detective-inspector?”
“I haven’t fathomed Mosley’s inner reasoning on this one yet, sir.”
“Well, I’ve already told Mortimer that the case will not be proceeded with. But this latest—” the ACC temporarily lost coherence—“Mrs. Roffey …”
Someone had once called Mrs. Roffey a mixed metaphor: she was at once battle-axe and battle-ship—Past President of the Townswomen’s Guild, Major Spoke in the Inner Wheel, Senior District Organizer of the WVS, Marriage Guidance Counsellor and a tower of resource in any community catastrophe.
“Whilst acting as a sheet collector for a charity, being accompanied by an animal.”
“A Flag Day, sir. The Save our Pit-ponies Association. You signed the permit for it yourself. Mrs. Roffey was an authorized collector, but was minding a King Charles spaniel for a friend who had gone into Boots. Guide-dogs only, in Boots.”
“And?”
“It’s contrary to by-laws, sir.” Grimshaw thumbed the manual. “Ah, here: no one to assist without written authority—collectors to be no less than thirty yards apart—no collector to be accompanied by an animal.”
“How well do you know Mrs. Roffey, Tom?”
“Whenever she speaks to me, I stand to attention with my thumbs in line with the seams of my trousers and my feet at an angle of thirty degrees.”
“Go and see her and apologize for Mosley’s zeal. And Tom—is Mosley trying to prove something? You don’t think he could be an undercover terrorist, do you? A card-carrying Commie? Why has he started this war against the bulwarks of Bradburn society?”
“I wish I could see more clearly what it is he has in mind, sir.”
“Mind? You still cling to your hypothesis that Mosley has a mind? Isn’t it the simple truth that he’s off his trolley?”
“No, sir. I almost wish that I thought that that was true. I’m afraid that Mosley is being disingenuous. And that has me worried. Of late he has been even more devious than usual—and I wish I knew what he was bloody well up to. It all seems to date from that telex that we had in from Greater Manchester.”
It was a young man who had slipped out again without giving his name who had gone into the police station at Stockport of all places to hand in Lottie Pearson’s airline ticket. There had been a very particular look on Mosley’s face when the message had been passed to him. Somehow, when he had made his meticulous report abo
ut finding Lottie’s buried belongings, he had made no reference to events in the life of Betty Longden. Certain interesting parallels had not yet been noticed by Grimshaw or the ACC, and Mosley had not yet seen it appropriate to enlighten them. Perhaps he wanted to avoid confusion.
In the meantime, Mosley was showing no signs of impaired mental capacity in the management of his private life. Mosley was an eager amateur cricket umpire at club level, almost pathologically obsessive in his devotion. No call of duty, the scent of no random trails was allowed to interfere with his appointments on the field. On Saturday afternoons he exchanged his raincoat for a garment of starched linen, which he also invariably wore unbuttoned. He even set aside his homburg, always appearing on the greensward in a yellowing old panama. On Saturday afternoons he suffered no worries on the subject of transport: he had no objections to using his own vehicle in the service of cricket. Mosley was what might have been called an umpire’s umpire: a solemn guardian of the gravity of the game, an encyclopaedic fountain of its laws; and as inflexible about them as he could show himself about springtime native hares, publicity balloons and unlawfully paraded King Charles spaniels.
On the fourth Sunday in June, Mosley’s team, Bradburn Second, was playing away in Hadley Dale, a cherished fixture. Matthew Longden was an active vice-president of the Hadley Dale side, which he financed with a generosity that would have been appreciated on some county grounds. Nothing was ever lacking in equipment or the traditional courtesies. At the height of her tenure, Lottie Pearson had had oversight of the catering, which was enlivened by her often very loud comments on a game of which she had a phenomenal lack of understanding. During her first year as principal tea-maker it had also been necessary—and difficult—to persuade her that players coming into the pavilion steaming from the wicket vastly preferred unimaginative English sandwiches to mountainous flans topped by Alpine summits of whipped cream.
There was very little level ground in Hadley Dale, and the cricket field comprised most of it, though not all of that was flat. There was a notorious falling away in one corner of the deep field.
This afternoon was as near perfect for rural play as an afternoon could be. The climate to which Mosley’s people have had to adjust themselves may be a ruthless mould of character, but during ten weeks of the year they can live in reasonable hope of the occasional idyllic day. The smell of freshly mown turf was sweet to the nostril, and the prospect of Bradburn Second’s opener seemed unassailable as he widened his shoulders after playing himself in. Douglas Bowers was powerful, if not entirely consistent. He was a mainstay, to be relied on in four matches out of five. Yet he was unpopular, in spite of the matches that he had won for his side—perhaps because of them. There was something about his dedication that smacked of the unnatural. For all his fanaticism, he was no cricketer by flair. But he had gone a long way towards making himself one by application. For five years he had been paying for private winter coaching in the indoor nets at Bradcaster, resolute to learn all that was teachable in the way of stroke-play. It was not in the temperament of the rest of his team to find this at all admirable. They did not care for lamp-oil virtuosity. The occasional brilliant failure was greatly preferable.
Mosley by Moonlight Page 8