The Blood-Dimmed Tide jm-2

by Rennie Airth

  Lang struggled to fight back. He was naked to the waist, his body slippery with sweat and with the blood that ran down from his forehead, and he clawed at Madden’s arm, seeking to break the iron grip on his throat, striving to free his hand so that he could strike with the hammer again. But his strength was no match for his adversary’s and gradually, choking from lack of breath, he sank to his knees in the straw.

  Quickly, Madden shifted his position, bending the wrist he was holding up behind the other’s back. The hammer Lang held was now trapped between them, and Madden let go of his throat and caught him once more around the neck in a lock with his free arm. Kneeling behind him, he saw their faces side by side in the mirror, his own flushed and straining, Lang’s bloody and twisted with pain.

  ‘Let go.’

  Breathless himself from the struggle, Madden growled in his ear, but his words had no effect. Lang’s only response was to jerk his head back savagely, seeking to catch his antagonist unawares.

  ‘Drop it, I say.’

  He tightened his grip on the other’s wrist, twisting it further.

  The face in the mirror glared at him, and Madden increased the pressure, bringing a cry from his captive’s lips.

  ‘Let go, or I’ll break your wrist.’

  He hoped for some sign of surrender. None came. When their eyes met in the mirror, Lang bared his teeth in a snarl.

  With a wrenching jerk of his hand, Madden made good his threat. The snap of sinews breaking was echoed by a piercing scream. The hammer dropped from Lang’s nerveless fingers and he collapsed face down in the straw.

  His thoughts now all for the child who lay unmoving behind him, Madden paused only long enough to pick up the hammer and hurl it into the shadows behind him. Quickly checking Lang’s body for other weapons, he found a small sheathed knife in one of the pockets of his trousers and he threw it after the hammer. Feeling safer in his mind now, he stumbled over to where the girl lay and bent to gather her in his arms. But he found the task beyond him. Weakened by the struggle he’d just been through, he could only wait, kneeling in the straw beside her, and hope that the trembling in his limbs would stop and his strength would return.

  The sound of movement behind him made him look round and he saw that Lang had rolled over and was lying on his back staring up at the lamp which hung from the wall above him. His breath came in hoarse gasps and he was muttering to himself, but in a foreign language which Madden could make no sense of. He bent over the girl once more and this time managed to lift her clear of the straw mattress on which she’d been laid. Summoning up his strength, he was on the point of clambering to his feet, when he became aware that something was happening behind him. He glanced round and saw that Lang had got to his knees. Like a wounded animal he was resting his weight on one arm, while the other hung limp. His pale brown eyes gleamed yellow in the lamplight.

  ‘Stay where you are.’ Unsure what the other intended, Madden made his meaning plain. ‘Don’t come near us.’ He felt no pity for the broken figure. But he shrank from the thought of inflicting further injury on him.

  While he was speaking Lang had straightened slowly and now he was kneeling upright, resting on his heels. A red welt at his throat marked the place where Madden’s hand had gripped him; below it, spread across his chest, his birthmark showed plain. Bright strawberry in the lamplight, it mingled with the blood that had run down from his forehead. Seeing the state he was in, Madden spoke again.

  ‘It’s over, Lang. The police will be here any minute. They know who you are and what you’ve done. It’ll go easier with you if you give yourself up.’

  His words brought no immediate response. The yellow eyes remained fixed on his. Sensing the hatred in their pale depths, Madden braced himself for whatever might follow. He watched as the other man licked his bloodied lips.

  ‘C‘est fini, tu dis?’

  The muttered words were barely audible and before Madden had properly registered them, Lang’s expression changed. A grin appeared on his face. Ghastly as a death’s head, it flickered across his features. He bared his teeth.

  ‘Bien, alors…’

  Without warning, and with a sudden convulsive movement, he reached up behind him and unhooked the lamp from the nail where it hung. Using the momentum of its descent, he whirled it around like a plane’s propeller… once… twice… and then, with no pause in the movement, hurled it against the back wall of the barn near to where Madden crouched with the girl in his arms. As the glass shattered, his cry pierced the darkness.

  ‘C‘est fini!’

  At the same instant the hay burst into flames.

  With only a moment to react, Madden flung himself from the spot, clutching the girl to him. Together they rolled across the barn, away from the roaring inferno which the piled hay had become in seconds. Fuelled by the spilt oil, the fire pursued them, carried by the straw strewn on the floor. As Madden staggered to his feet he saw the nearest piece of canvas go up in flames and then all was hidden in a cloud of billowing smoke. With only his sense of direction to guide him he stumbled towards where he knew the doors must lie, running at once into a densely packed mass of objects covered in canvas which he’d supposed were there for storage and which formed an obstacle course through which he tried to find a path, holding the girl’s body close to his, trying to shield her face from the smoke that already filled the barn and from which he knew they must quickly escape; or succumb to.

  The fire itself followed close behind them, and a piece of burning wood falling from the roof beside them served as a warning that it would not be long before the whole structure came down on their heads. But the approach of the flames proved a blessing, too, bringing light as well as blistering heat, and with their help he was able to find his way to the broad corridor he remembered and to stumble between the lines of stacked hurdles already on fire through the wide open doors and out into the stableyard.

  Into the blessed, blessed night.

  Reeling, his head spinning, coughing up smoke and spit, Madden staggered away from the burning building, and as he did so the sound of raised voices came to his ears and he saw a party of men, one of them with a lamp, issue from the kitchen garden. Only when he spotted the burden they were bearing among them and noticed the dog shuffling in their wake did he remember the man he’d helped from the pit. So long ago, it seemed. Several of the group were already running across the cobbles towards him: he recognized the dark-browed foreman he’d spoken to. But all that was consigned to some distant past.

  ‘Is she safe?’ Harrigan’s voice rang out above the others. ‘Have you got her? Is that the lass?’

  They crowded around Madden to peer at the girl, but he could find no words with which to reassure them. A great tiredness had come over him, he wanted to lie down and sleep. But he knew he could not do so as long as the child was his to care for, and he was struggling in his mind with this conundrum – how to resolve it – when his thoughts were interrupted by a sound, sudden and shocking, like the scream of an animal in pain.

  ‘What in God’s name…?’

  Harrigan swung round, the others with him. Looking back towards the burning barn they saw coming through the doors, staggering, spinning around like some demon conjured from the fiery depths, a shape consumed by flames. Blazing like a torch, it came across the yard towards them, weaving from side to side, hardly human, but still shrieking in agony until all at once the sound ceased and the figure collapsed in a smoking heap from which the stench of burning flesh arose, rank and pungent.

  Shocked into silence, the men stared. It was Harrigan who found his tongue first.

  ‘Is that him?’ he asked.

  Madden nodded. He was swaying on his feet now. ‘Do something… help him if you can.’

  But he turned from the sight himself and moved as quickly as his stiffening legs would take him away towards the line of stalls, where the injured man from the garden had been borne, and where a light already burned. He had felt the girl stir in his arms a mo
ment before and knew he must spare her any further horror.

  The others lingered, several of them trying vainly to bat out the flames that continued to lick at the now smouldering corpse.

  But not for long. Having watched their efforts for a minute or so, standing to one side, not lifting a hand himself, Harrigan called a halt.

  ‘Never mind that,’ he growled. ‘One of you fetch some water. Bring it up to the stalls. It’ll be needed.’

  He cast a last glance at the smoking remains, shapeless now in the darkness.

  ‘Let the bastard burn.’

  34

  It was late by the time they reached the village, after nine, and Billy asked the two detectives to drop him at the gates to the Maddens’ house. They were both with the Guildford CID and he’d spotted their familiar faces at the Midhurst police station earlier. Surprised to see them there, he learned that they’d been investigating a case of robbery at Haslemere, just over the Surrey border, when word of the events at Coyne’s Farm had reached them and they had driven down into Sussex to discover for themselves what was going on.

  ‘It’s all over now,’ he’d told them. ‘They’ll be bringing Lang’s body in soon. But since you’re going back to Guildford you could do me a favour and drop me off on the way. If I don’t get to Highfield sometime tonight, my life won’t be worth living.’

  Billy wasn’t exaggerating. When the chief inspector had discovered Madden’s disappearance from the stableyard, he’d hit the roof, and it had been Billy’s bad luck to be the one in the firing line.

  ‘Do you mean to say you let him walk out of there? In the condition he was in?’ Sinclair had been white with anger.

  What Billy had wanted to say was that he hadn’t let anyone go anywhere. That what with the chaos in the yard caused by the swarm of police and firemen, not to mention the casual onlookers who’d been drawn to the spot and who’d had to be shepherded away, it had been impossible to keep an eye on everything. That he didn’t have a crystal ball and there was no way he could have guessed that his former chief would suddenly take it into his head to walk off without a by your leave.

  But if a dozen years on the force had taught Billy anything, it was that there were times when all you could do was bite your tongue, and he’d stayed silent.

  ‘Just pray nothing’s happened to him on the way, Sergeant.’ The chief inspector had been incandescent. ‘Just hope he hasn’t had an accident, or run off the road.’

  He’d ordered Billy to get himself to Highfield without delay, saying that he, Angus Sinclair, wanted to hear before the night was out that Madden had returned home safe and sound, and that in the event of there being any other sort of news to report, the sergeant might well consider embarking on a new career.

  ‘And you might just remind him that leaving the scene of a crime without police permission is an offence punishable by law, and that he ought to know better.’

  Which had given Billy something to grin about, at least, as he’d set off.

  Not dealt with by the chief inspector had been the question of how he was supposed to get himself back to Midhurst, never mind Highfield, but luck had been on his side and he’d encountered Inspector Braddock in the parking area by the road. Hearing what was afoot, the Midhurst commander had hurried back from the station, and having no immediate need for his car and driver had told the latter he could take Billy as far as the town.

  ‘After that, you’re on your own, I’m afraid.’

  Whatever doubts Billy might have had regarding his former mentor’s surreptitious departure had been removed when he’d spoken to the uniformed sergeant in charge at the parking lot. He’d had a word with Madden when he’d left in his car some time earlier.

  ‘He asked me to make his excuses to the chief inspector if I saw him. To tell him he felt he had to get home.’

  None of which had come as any surprise to Billy when he considered the events of the last few hours. He himself was still shaken by what he’d been through, and could recall the apprehension he’d felt on hearing from the man left behind by the foreman at the roadworks that Madden had set off in pursuit of Lang alone. Leaving the party of police that was assembling behind him, Billy had sped up the path on his own and on reaching the crest of the wooded ridge had instantly seen the huge fire blazing down in the valley, away to his right. Thwarted at first by a hedge that ran alongside the path, he’d eventually found a way through to a farmyard where a sight met his eyes that had turned his blood to ice.

  Silhouetted against a blazing barn were two men standing on either side of a smoking shape that lay on the cobbles between them. Even before he’d reached them Billy had known instinctively that what he was looking at were the remains of a human being.

  ‘Who is it?’ he’d shouted to them, unable to contain his anxiety. And then, ‘Police…’ when they’d turned inquiring faces his way.

  ‘Some bastard who tried to kill a lass,’ one of them had answered him bluntly, a tough looking customer with several days’ growth of beard on his cheeks, but a bloke Billy would happily have flung his arms around and kissed.

  A few moments later, having been directed by the two towards a lighted stall at the side of the yard, his relief had been complete. There he’d found Madden, his face swollen at the temple and blackened by the fire’s ash, and with a burn mark showing on the back of his hand, sitting on the straw-covered floor with a young girl cradled in his arms. Close by them, lying on the cobbles, was another figure, that of a man dressed in an army greatcoat, whose eyes were shut and whose hand rested on the head of an old Labrador curled up beside him.

  A group of roughly dressed men stood about them and Billy had had to push his way through to reach his old chief, whose face had lit up at the sight of him.

  ‘Ah, Billy… there you are.’

  Pale beneath the caked ash, Madden’s features bore the stamp of exhaustion. He was in his shirtsleeves and Billy saw that his tweed jacket was wrapped around the girl, whose head rested on his shoulder.

  ‘She’s asleep, poor child.’

  Billy had offered to take the girl from him, but Madden had seemed reluctant to let her out of his arms.

  ‘Better not to wake her.’ His eyes were bright and staring and it was plain from his dilated pupils that he was suffering from shock.

  It was at that point that one of the men standing around had drawn Billy aside. A heavy-browed Mick by the name of Harrigan, he’d identified himself as the foreman of the road crew.

  ‘I sent a man down to Oak Green to ring for an ambulance. That was after we found Sam Watkin over there.’ He’d nodded towards the figure in the greatcoat. ‘Sam was crawling through the kitchen garden, trying to get to the yard. He’d been stabbed. Aye, and knocked on the head. I reckon he tried to save the lass. He’ll be all right, though. That coat of his is padded. The knife didn’t go in too deep.’

  He’d told Billy he and the others in his gang had rushed up from the road on Madden’s heels and had got half way to the village before they’d spotted the fire behind them… and come pelting back.

  ‘You’ll have to ask your fella what happened.’ He gestured towards Madden. ‘We’ve not bothered him with questions. You can see he’s done in. One thing I can tell you, though – the lass isn’t… hurt.’ Harrigan’s cheeks had flushed and he’d looked away in embarrassment. ‘You take my drift. She woke up for a moment and told us she was feeling sick, but that was all. Your bloke said it was from the chloroform he gave her. That bastard out there.’ The foreman jerked his thumb towards the doorway. ‘Well, he won’t be doing it to another, will he?’

  While they were talking the clatter of boots on the cobbles outside had signalled the arrival of the main police party. The sight of blue uniforms crowding into the cramped stall had seemed to reassure Madden and Billy had coaxed him at last to hand over his burden into the care of a burly sergeant, who had wrapped the child in his coat and settled down with her in a corner.

  Madden had struggled then to r
ise to his feet.

  ‘I don’t know what’s come over me. Give me a hand, would you, Billy.’

  Helped up, he’d appeared unsteady on his legs and Billy had led him out of the packed stall into the yard where the cold air had revived him. Finding an upturned bucket to hand, he’d persuaded Madden to sit down.

  ‘I had to break his wrist, Billy. He wouldn’t have it otherwise.’

  Slumped over his knees, staring at the ground between his feet, Madden had given a brief, fragmented account of what had occurred to an audience which by now included several of the Midhurst contingent. Not once had his glance strayed to the shapeless, black form, guarded by a pair of constables, that lay still smouldering on the cobbles not far from where he sat.

  ‘It was Lang who set fire to the barn. He must have known he wouldn’t survive it. But he wanted to kill us, come what may.’

  He hadn’t yet made sense of the experience, come to terms with it. Billy had seen that. But there’d been no time to talk. Just then the chief inspector had appeared, entering the yard by the kitchen garden, and Billy had signalled to him. Out of breath after his brisk walk up from the road, but already informed by runner of the part Madden had played in the rescue of the girl, Sinclair had stood before them, wordless.

  ‘Ah, John…!’!’

  Seeing the state his old partner was in, he’d directed him to sit quietly and wait for transport of some kind to arrive, an order Madden had seemed happy to obey. Taking Billy with him, the chief inspector had then crossed the yard to examine the remains of their quarry. Lang’s smoking corpse lay on its back with one hand raised, the fingers bent. Where the face had been, only charred flesh remained.