The Blood-Dimmed Tide jm-2

by Rennie Airth

  On reaching the arched entrance to the yard he found a scene of bustling activity within. Two farmhands armed with sticks were prodding a young porker across the cobbles towards an open lorry which stood in the centre of the space, already half-filled with squealing pigs. Fascinated, he watched as the men dropped their sticks, grabbed hold of an ear each, and then, with their other hands clasped beneath the beast’s belly, heaved it up and onto the back of the vehicle. Neither of the pair had noticed his arrival, and nor had George Burrows, who was standing by the gate to the sties, controlling the flow. Someone else had, however. A small figure in blue with mud-stained legs and hair that shone gold in the sunlight came flying across the cobbles towards him.

  ‘ Billy!’

  The little girl flung herself without fear into his arms, trusting him to catch her. He whirled her around in the air before putting her firmly back down again.

  ‘Hullo, Lucy!’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just visiting…

  Their friendship had been sealed on one of Billy’s weekend visits to Highfield when Lucy Madden had discovered, in the course of a walk they had taken in the woods together, that not only was the sergeant unaware of the existence of chiffchaffs, he didn’t even know the difference between a shrike and a shrew. Never having encountered such ignorance in an adult before, she had taken instant pity on him and made him the object of her special attention ever since.

  ‘Come and see the hogs.’ She dragged him by the hand over to the lorry. ‘They’re going to slaughter,’ she informed him with relish.

  ‘Slaughter?’ Billy eyed her doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, there’ll be lots of blood.’

  George Burrows, apple-cheeked and sturdy, waved a welcome. His dark-haired daughter Belle stuck shyly to his side.

  ‘Is Mr Madden about?’ Billy called out to him.

  ‘Yes, he is…’ Madden’s voice came from beyond the gate where George was standing. He emerged from the darkness within, brushing straw from his trousers and stamping mud from his boots. ‘Billy, how nice to see you. I heard you were in the neighbourhood. Helen and I were hoping you’d find time to look in.’

  They shook hands – or tried to. Lucy was unwilling to relinquish possession of the one she was holding, so Billy was forced to offer his left to Madden’s grip.

  ‘Billy’s come to visit us.’

  ‘Don’t you mean Sergeant Styles?’ Her father looked at her askance.

  ‘No… Billy!’ She swung on his arm.

  ‘I’ve been stuck in Guildford, sir, catching up on all the details. But I managed to get over to Brookham this afternoon, so I thought I’d stop in on my way back. I’m hoping to see Will, too.’

  Before glancing down at his daughter’s golden head, Madden caught the younger man’s eye.

  ‘Mrs Burrows said to say your tea’s ready in the kitchen, Lucy,’ Billy told her. ‘Yours and Belle’s.’

  ‘Aren’t you coming, too?’ She clung to his hand.

  ‘In a minute.’

  ‘Run along now, darling,’ Madden said. ‘Both of you. Go and fetch Belle.’

  They waited until the two little girls had left the yard, hand in hand. Then Madden spoke again, ‘I understand you’ve got a lead at last. Mr Sinclair rang me earlier this week. He said they’ve been given a list of names in London they’re working through, and the killer’s may be among them. He also said it was a feather in your cap.’

  Madden’s grin of congratulation made Billy flush with pleasure. ‘I had a piece of luck, sir. The chief inspector sent me down to Henley last week. Did you know a girl’s body had been taken from the river there?’

  ‘Mr Sinclair told me that some time ago. But I’d like to hear the whole story.’ Madden clicked his tongue with impatience. ‘It’ll have to wait till later, though. I’m just off to pick up Rob. He’s been spending the afternoon with a friend in Godalming. You’ll stay for dinner, won’t you?’ Taking the sergeant’s pleased smile of acceptance for granted, he went on, ‘That’ll give us time to talk. But walk me to my car now. Tell me briefly how things stand.’

  Only too happy to oblige, Billy embarked on a swift summary of his visit to Henley, relishing the grunt of approval he received when he explained how he’d come to hit on the idea of the killer making use of the car park at Waltham Manor. The esteem in which he held Madden had never lessened. Nor had he forgotten the debt he owed to his old mentor under whose once stern eye he had learned some of the most important lessons of his life. (And not all of them having to do with being a policeman, either!)

  ‘So he picked her up by chance. He couldn’t have known she’d be walking along that road. But he knew where to take her, all right.’ They had paused at the entrance to the yard. Madden’s scowl took Billy back a decade. ‘I can’t make up my mind about this man. At first I thought he must have seen the girl at Brookham and come back looking for her. But I doubt that now.’ With a sigh, Madden glanced at his watch. ‘Billy, I have to go. What was that you said about seeing Will Stackpole?’

  ‘I rang him earlier and told him I’d be looking in here. He said he’d try and come by.’

  ‘Good! Stay and have a cup of tea with May. You can talk to Will when he arrives. Then come over to the house.’ Madden walked briskly to where his car was parked. Smiling, he called back to Billy. ‘You could do me a favour and bring Lucy when you come. She’ll count it a treat to have a ride with you.’

  ‘You ought to hear Will on the subject of the search the Surrey police are making for that tramp, sir.’ Billy grinned. ‘He says they haven’t got the first notion how to go about it.’

  Madden’s grunt was enigmatic. Crouched before the fire, he prodded the blaze with a poker. Lit by only a pair of lamps, the drawing room lay in shadow.

  ‘He says they don’t know the countryside, most of them, and don’t understand how these tramps can disappear if they’ve a mind to.’

  Adding another log to the flames, Madden rose, brushing off his hands. He stood tall in the firelight, looking down at Billy, who was seated in an armchair. ‘It’s not like searching for a man in a town or city,’ he said. ‘There you go to his family and friends, or his accomplices, if he has any. You scour his neighbourhood. These tramps never stay long in one place, and once they decide to make themselves scarce, it’s hard to know where to begin looking for them.’

  ‘Will said, most likely he’s been getting help from other vagrants, other tramps.’

  ‘He’s right.’ Madden seated himself across the hearth from Billy. ‘Mind you, if Beezy had killed that girl, and they knew, they’d have given him up by now. Or at least not protected him. He’ll have needed food, of course, and that means someone’s been getting it for him. Topper, most likely. If you ask me, they’ve joined up again. I’ve tried to get word to him.’

  ‘To Topper, sir?’ Billy was all ears. ‘How could you do that?’

  ‘A lot of these vagrants call at Helen’s surgery: she let it be known a long time ago that they could get medical treatment from her if they needed it. I’ve sent messages by one or two asking Topper to get in touch with us. So far without result.’

  Billy took a sip from his glass of brandy. It had been a day of many pleasures. Earlier, he had spent an hour at the farmhouse chatting to May Burrows while she strung beans in the kitchen. Looking at her pink, composed face, he’d remembered the teenage girl with bobbed hair whom he’d once had to question; now May was a young matron with two children of her own, the younger, a baby boy, still in his cradle.

  She had seated him at the table where the two little girls were still occupied with their tea, a generous meal in the Burrows household, containing elements of both breakfast and supper in it, and where Billy had had no choice but to submit to the maternal instincts of Lucy Madden, which had taken the form of pressing on him spoonfuls of her soft-boiled egg and morsels of thickly buttered toast steeped in honey.

  Later, another old friend had put in an appearance. Will Stackpole
had cycled over from the village and Billy had spent some time discussing the case with the constable, whom he had first met years before, during the Melling Lodge investigation.

  The autumn evening had been drawing in by the time he’d driven down the avenue of limes, clothed in yellow leaves now, to the Maddens’ front door, where Helen had been waiting to relieve him of Lucy’s still-voluble presence, returning with her half an hour later, bathed and clad in pyjamas, to say her goodnights, a process which the little girl managed to prolong by a series of well-honed stratagems, causing her brother, who was trying to do his home-work, to roll his eyes in despair. Finally, Helen had lost patience.

  ‘Lucinda Madden! That will do. Say goodnight now to Sergeant Styles.’

  ‘He’s not Sergeant Styles. He’s Billy!’

  While Madden was helping his son wrestle with a problem of arithmetic, Billy had wandered outside onto the terrace and stood for a while gazing out over the garden at the dark woods of Upton Hanger, lit by a thin sliver of moon that evening, remembering a visit he’d made earlier that year when the air on this very spot had been sweet with the mingled scents of jasmine and roses. Now, only the faint smell of burning leaves reached him.

  Helen had soon returned from putting Lucy to bed and before long it had been Rob’s turn to be dispatched upstairs. To his bitter disappointment: he was sure his father and Billy were going to discuss the Brookham murder and had hoped for an opportunity to eavesdrop on them.

  With the children safely in bed, Helen had taken the two men in to dinner, where the conversation had turned to the subject of Billy’s forthcoming marriage. The Maddens were yet to meet his fiancee, and Helen was insistent that this oversight be repaired.

  ‘It’s time you brought Elsie to see us. Lucy must be made to accept the situation.’ She could seldom resist teasing the sergeant, whose regard for her husband, though it touched her deeply, sometimes made him tongue-tied in their presence. ‘You do realize she thinks you belong to her. I hope she won’t feel rejected now.’

  Once dinner was over, however, and with the excuse of a heavy day ahead of her, she had bid them goodnight, saving her last words for their guest.

  ‘I won’t ask what you and John are going to talk about, though I can guess. And welcome as you always are, Billy, dear, I sense a hidden hand behind your visit today. You can tell Angus Sinclair I’m not deceived.’

  On which note, and with Billy speechless in his chair, she had left them by the fire.

  The younger man stifled a yawn. He still had to drive back to Guildford – he’d taken lodgings in the town – but there was a question he wanted to put to his host before leaving.

  ‘You said earlier, sir, when we were at the farm, how you thought at first the killer might have seen the Bridger girl before – marked her out, as it were. I know you changed your mind, but what made you think that in the first place? If you don’t mind my asking…’

  ‘No, I don’t mind, Billy.’ Madden smiled, as though in acknowledgement of this sign that the habit of paying careful attention had taken such healthy root in his protege. ‘In fact, the whole business puzzles me. I’ve been trying to make sense of it. Let me explain…’

  Billy sat forward, doubly alert now.

  ‘At first I thought it a strange coincidence when I found Alice Bridger’s body that the murderer had hit on a tramps’ camp site to commit the crime. It only occurred to me later it was much more likely he knew about the spot in advance. He carried the girl’s body through thick brush in order to get there. The odds were against him having come on it by accident. That’s what made me think he might have had her in mind as prey, that he’d already scouted out a place nearby where he could take her.

  ‘But later I discarded the idea. It implied he must have been hanging around Brookham for some time before, waiting for his opportunity, and there was simply no evidence to support that. No reports of strangers lurking in the neighbourhood that day, or the days preceding. I decided he must have been driving through the village, just as we were, and came on her by chance. But that left the first question unanswered… how did he find his way to the tramps’ site?’

  Scowling, Madden rubbed the scar on his forehead. Noting the familiar gesture – and aware from times past of the depth of preoccupation it signalled – Billy smiled to himself.

  ‘Do you see what I’m saying? He’s not a pure hunter of opportunity, this man. He only acts when he’s prepared.’ Madden’s scowl deepened. ‘From what you’ve told me, I’d guess that at Henley he’d already inspected the manor grounds, perhaps that same day, and knew he could take any victim he picked up there. As for Bognor Regis, I’m familiar with that piece of coastline where the girl was abducted. There are long stretches of reeds and scrubland along the shore. No shortage of cover, I mean, and I’ll wager he knew it.’

  ‘And it must have been the same at Brookham – that’s what you’re saying,’ Billy broke in. ‘He only picked her up because he knew there was a place nearby he could take her. That spot by the stream.’

  ‘If his behaviour’s consistent, that seems to be the case,’ Madden agreed. ‘But it means he must have been in Capel Wood earlier, for some other reason, and I’ve been racking my brains, trying to think what it might be.’

  Billy thought for a moment. ‘He could be a hiker, sir. The countryside’s full of ramblers.’

  ‘Yes, I’d thought of that.’ Madden shook his head. ‘But it still doesn’t explain how he found the tramps’ site. It’s not a spot you’d stumble on by chance. He’d have had to leave the path, for one thing, and that’s no easy matter. The undergrowth’s dense. Discouraging. No, he’d have needed a reason, as I said, a particular purpose.’ Madden scowled. ‘That’s what’s been puzzling me. How did he find it? What took him there in the first place?’

  14

  It was nearly two o’clock before Sam Watkin got to Coyne’s Farm that Friday. Earlier, he’d been delayed in Midhurst making his weekly report to Mr Cuthbertson, who’d been held up himself by a talkative client, forcing Sam to sit outside his office for half an hour or more, twiddling his thumbs.

  He’d used the time to write out a report in his notebook of the work that would have to be done at Hobday’s Farm, over Rogate way, where he’d been earlier that morning. One of the chimneys on the farmhouse had come down since his last visit, smashing the roof tiles beneath it and leaving a hole as big as your head which went straight down to the room below, where the floor had been damaged. The repairs would have to be done before the next rains came, which might be any day now – the spell of fine October weather they’d been enjoying for the past few days couldn’t last – and if the owners didn’t want a deteriorating property on their hands, they’d better do something about it quick.

  Such, at any rate, was the news that Sam eventually gave to Mr Cuthbertson after he was shown into his office, a pleasant, airy room that looked out over the old Market Square onto St Ann’s Hill. Mr Cuthbertson had rubbed his chin.

  ‘Oh, they won’t be pleased to hear this.’ He’d caught Sam’s eye and they’d both chuckled. ‘They do so hate paying out money.’

  The banks, he meant. The ones that owned so many pieces of property hereabouts now. The terrible slump in prices in 1929 had led to foreclosures left and right. Sam himself had been among the victims. He’d owned a small farm, part of what had once been a large estate just the other side of Easeborne, bought when he’d come back from the war. With the help of a loan from the bank, of course. Well, that had gone.

  But he’d been luckier than most. It had been Mr Cuthbertson, of Tally and Cuthbertson, a firm of estate agents in Midhurst specializing in farming land, who’d been charged with handling the business and in spite of the painful circumstances, which had ended with Sam and his family having to move out bag and baggage, all their belongings piled onto a cart drawn up in the yard, and which by rights ought to have turned them into enemies, they’d somehow managed to hit it off and Sam had departed with Mr Cuthbertson’s
offer of a job in his pocket.

  What he was paid to do now was keep an eye on the farms in the district which the firm had on its books. Farms that were for sale, but attracting no buyers, not in present conditions. The Depression had bitten deep into the country and farmers had suffered along with everyone else. It was a matter of hanging on if you could and hoping for better times. Sam spent his days driving from one property to another, inspecting buildings for any damage and keeping an eye out for undesirable trespassers, gypsies in the main, and moving them along where necessary.

  Mr Cuthbertson called him ‘our factor’ when he introduced him to clients. “This is our factor, Mr Watkin.’ It made Sam chuckle. He’d been a lot of things in his time: farmworker, stable lad, a boxer in a fairground booth for one whole summer; and a poacher on the side. He’d even been an officer, to his eternal wonder. Having somehow survived two years in the trenches, he’d still been alive and kicking when the powers-that-be began their policy of promoting from the ranks. Lo and behold, Sam Watkin had found himself a second lieutenant! A ‘temporary gentleman’, as the saying was then. The phrase still brought a smile of derision to his lips.

  After the war he’d considered emigrating to Canada, or perhaps Australia, but Ada Witherspoon, daughter of the landlord at the Dog and Duck in Elsted, had said, ‘Well, you can go where you want, Sam Watkin, but don’t expect to find me waiting here when you get back.’ So they’d ended up buying a farm instead, and now he was a factor, and if you asked Sam what he thought about life he’d have said there was no sense to it that he could see, none at all. It was just one darned thing after another.

  The business of the roof had been quickly settled. Mr Cuthbertson had told Sam to get hold of a workman if he needed one, but to see to the repairs himself. There was no point in calling in a firm of contractors. They’d only charge the earth.