No Birds Sang

by John Buxton Hilton

  But Milner continued to behave as if he were anything but a villain. He did not seem affected by the threats; his torment seemed to go genuinely deeper.

  Stammers turned to his constables.

  ‘Take him to hospital. Casualty ward.’

  ‘I don’t need a hospital,’ Milner said. ‘It’s only a scratch.’

  ‘Any scratch on you is going to get V.I.P. treatment, Milner. I’ll make sure of preserving you. See what they say, Constable. I don’t think they’ll keep him, and if they don’t, take him to Divisional H.Q. and detain him. Tell Detective-Sergeant Pollitt to refresh himself from the files, and then start taking a statement. I’ll be along sometime this afternoon to finish it.’

  He looked challengingly at Milner. The adjutant approached.

  ‘The C. O.…’

  ‘Yes. We’re through.’

  As they were getting back into Derek’s car, they heard the soft thump of another smoke bomb. Number Two had presumably moved up to be Number One on the Bren.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Sorry from two points of view,’ Derek said. ‘I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away. And I shouldn’t have given the impression that I normally do.’

  He was still annoyed, translating his anger to some extent into his driving: he overtook a farm tractor with little to spare in face of an oncoming oil-tanker.

  ‘Sorry, Simon.’

  The hair’s breadth seemed to sober him. He touched his foot-brake and brought their speed down to forty-five.

  ‘I talk like that—and I know that the maximum fine is twenty quid. He got that last time: unauthorised entry on to Ministry of Defence property. It’s all I can get him for. I know. I’ve tried. By the way, does he interest you?’

  ‘I’m trying not to let him.’

  ‘Sorry again, Simon. I promised both you and Elspeth …’

  But after another half mile, he started again.

  ‘It was a couple of years after the war that I first came across Milner. I was a detective-constable. He was one of my first assignments after I came off the beat. He’d been picked up out there, charged with unauthorised entry. There wasn’t a training programme on at the moment, so he wasn’t personally at risk, nor was he jeopardising anybody else. He pleaded guilty, and didn’t plead any extenuating circumstances. They fined him a fiver and kicked his arse out of it. In his statement, he said he fancied the look of the countryside, and as all was quiet, he’d stepped over the wire for a stroll. We took it at its face value. There was a lot of local feeling about the area, and the bench weren’t entirely unsympathetic. If the patrol had just given him a gentle warning and sent him on his way, we’d all have been saved a lot of trouble.

  ‘But there was a bit more to it than the public or the bench ever saw. We’d had to inform MI5 as a matter of routine; and you know what those buggers are, once they get a new card on the index. I had to answer a lot of questions that wouldn’t otherwise have been asked. But the case died on us. Milner was as naive as he looked. And, after all, Yarrow Cross never had been a hot-bed of military secrets. Especially in 1947, there wasn’t much to be learned there that the Home Guard couldn’t have told a man. Milner went back to Lancashire, and even MI5 seemed satisfied.’

  Stammers changed down for a T-junction.

  ‘A couple of years later Milner was back, poking about in the old village. Again he’d chosen a quiet day, and he wasn’t in anybody’s way. But he ran into a picket of the maintenance unit and landed back in my basket. Why, why, why? Why had he travelled from his home, the other side of Manchester, with no visible reason to bring him into the county? No relatives here, no friends, no connections that we could establish. And you saw his style: disarming honesty. He went as far as admitting that he had a reason—but he said it was strictly personal. That was as far as we got: I sweated out two six-hour stints with him and hardly got him out of the courteously smiling stage. The MI bods sent two chaps down—and they got no further than I had. There was something. Milner didn’t take the trouble to deny it. But it didn’t lie in our line of country: he said that over and over again; if he told us, we wouldn’t believe him; if we believed him, we wouldn’t be interested. There’s a devilish obstinacy about the man. I’ve often thought, when it comes to questioning, a suspect’s only got to keep his nerve, and he’s got you beat. Milner did keep his nerve. He didn’t even forget his manners. He wasn’t truculent, he wasn’t crude, he didn’t get het up. He just declined to talk.

  ‘I was still a nobody on the case, anyway very junior; the operational decisions were not mine. While I was out on something else, a couple of the heavy lads visited his cell and roughed him up a bit. I don’t know who; I could guess, but I didn’t ask. Needless to say, it didn’t work; it was the last thing on earth to do with a loner like that. It tightened him up more than ever—with a difference. Up to now he’d been thoroughly friendly—even when at his most uncooperative. Now he just turned everything off. But he didn’t complain. Somehow, I’d known all along he wouldn’t. It was still part of the price he was prepared to pay for something he was keeping to himself. Fined twenty quid—the maximum—and took a hell of a wigging from the bench that left him serenely unmoved.’

  They were on a real main road now, jammed between lorries and unable to pull out into the centre lane.

  ‘That’s more than twenty years ago, Simon, and the bugger comes back for more.’

  ‘Obviously, you put in a lot on the background.’

  ‘The police in his home-town couldn’t have been more helpful—or more knowledgeable. A well known character back home; very staid, very well dug in, very highly respected. Good record in the war-time R. A.F. We walked all round him many times. And to hear him apologise to the magistrates, for the trouble he’d caused—whilst paying his fine spot cash, all ready for them in new notes in a sealed envelope—you could understand why everybody called him a gentleman. Now, a quarter of a century later, he’s nosing about in the same ruined cottage …’

  ‘Which you’ll now have to dig over,’ Kenworthy said quietly.

  ‘That will be difficult. The military …’

  He stopped for traffic lights, negotiated the turning into town.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll be lucky,’ Kenworthy said. ‘Perhaps MI5 will take it right out of your hands, or at least turn it over to Special Branch.’

  ‘Would you call that luck?’

  ‘If anyone offers to take work off my hands, I don’t complain.’

  ‘You’ve outgrown letting cases matter to you, haven’t you?’

  Stammers manoeuvred them into the hotel carpark.

  ‘No, but I’ve always regretted it when I’ve let it happen.’

  Derek switched off the ignition, but paused for a moment before opening the door.

  ‘I’d like to talk to you some more about this one, Simon, I’m convinced there’s nothing in it for Special Branch.’

  ‘Any time you like,’ Kenworthy said. But he said it mechanically.

  Chapter Four

  They did not talk shop over lunch. Diana was clearly peeved that they were late, but she did not actually say anything. Elspeth was faintly amused by it. Derek went off alone for the afternoon, leaving Kenworthy to drive the women on a round trip of ruined priories. And then Derek was late home for supper, which made Diana privately very angry indeed, though she still kept up a semblance of outward aplomb. It was for ten minutes over the whisky, after the women had gone to bed, that the men had their first chance for anything but small talk.

  ‘MI5 are interested, Simon, not to say pressing. Yet they must know there’s nothing on that range but outsize small-arms targets.’

  ‘The odd weapon still on the classified list?’

  Derek made guttural noises. ‘Simon, you know as well as I do there’s nothing there. And if you’re looking for secret weapons, you don’t go and stand in the firing-line. Besides, you’ve seen Milner. You’ve heard me talk to him. The man’s not a spy. He’s just a sodding nuisance.
But you know the law: if we can pin on him a suggestion of undesirable contacts, the face of the case changes. Otherwise it’s unauthorised entry again; there is a charge in the book, interfering with manoeuvres, but the max for that is even less.’

  ‘So. He’s a sodding nuisance. He’s an even bigger nuisance uncleared on MI5’s books than he is on yours. So what are they going to do about him?’

  ‘Leave him to us; but they’ve asked for a daily run-down. Which means three or four times as much work. Also they want him held.’

  ‘Should be easy.’

  ‘On a charge as trivial as this? Fortunately, he’s played into our hands.’

  He replenished Kenworthy’s glass with as much whisky as he normally drank in a fortnight.

  ‘Fortunately, the hospital diagnosed delayed shock. They’re keeping him overnight. Wouldn’t let us near him; but I know the consultant well enough to lift a corner of professional ethics. And there’s no doubt that Milner’s undergoing a man-size ration of remorse. Talking of going to see the corporal’s widow the moment he’s discharged. Well, that won’t be for a few days. I’m hoping for an Emergency Order under the Mental Health Act. That’ll give us seventy-two hours: extendible to twenty-eight days, with a bit of cooperation.’

  ‘Dangerous,’ Kenworthy said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, suicidal tendencies.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. You can get him held if you want to. But you’ll lose him in a trick-cyclist’s paradise.’

  ‘I’ve got a trick-cyclist I can trust,’ Stammers said.

  ‘That’ll be the day.’

  ‘No, really, Simon. I’ve worked with this chap off and on for years.’

  ‘Sorry. You know your own manor.’

  Play it careful; Kenworthy was not yet convinced that holidaying with in-laws made sense. He yawned. Elspeth had spent some of the best hours of their lives waiting for him to come to bed.

  He found her sitting up against the pillow, reading in fits and starts, trying to keep herself awake for him. She was wearing a nightie that she had made specially for this holiday. Her arms were smooth; her skin could have been an advertisement for an admass super-soap. That was the point of a holiday. There was time, at least there ought to be, to look at each other a second time; time to relish that for a day or two the pressures were off; that tomorrow was going to be as fallow as today had been.

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘Please don’t let Derek think that you’re half a step ahead of him.’

  ‘I don’t. Because I’m not. And he and I don’t think that way. Have I said something that I shouldn’t?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Has Derek said anything?’

  ‘Far from it.’

  ‘Diana, then?’

  ‘She hasn’t said anything.’

  ‘I know. That’s why I’m playing it careful.’

  He got into bed. She turned her back to him, snuggled down on to his knees, moulded her body to his.

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘Darling?’

  ‘Derek has been on a case today, hasn’t he?’

  ‘He’s on a case every day. Several, as a rule.’

  ‘Diana was telling me.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘About this man Milner. How he’s caused trouble for years, and now a man killed.’

  ‘Derek has it well in hand.’

  ‘I think he might rather like your help, you know.’

  ‘We agreed, didn’t we, that I wasn’t even going to …’

  He put an arm round her.

  ‘Simon.’

  ‘Beloved?’

  ‘I know we’re on holiday. And I know what we said before we started. But I’ve caught sight of your face several times today. I don’t know how you’re going to tolerate a week without a job to do.’

  ‘I had thought of trying. We might even find some more priories, if we look hard enough.’

  ‘That’s what I mean, Simon. If Derek does ask you—asks you direct, I mean—there’s no need to go fishing for work. What I’m trying to say is this, Simon: if Derek does ask you, outright, there’s no need to say no on my account.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind, but I’d probably say no on my own account, anyway.’

  ‘There you are, you see, only probably. You see, I’m trying to make a condition, Simon.’

  ‘Oh?’ He began to wish she would go to sleep.

  ‘This is my holiday too, and I can be as unofficial as you can.’

  ‘Thus spoke the oracle. Interpreter, please.’

  ‘If you do a case over Derek’s shoulder, I’d like to be in on it with you.’

  ‘We’ll ask the Chief Constable.’

  ‘Seriously, Simon. I don’t mean come out and sit in on interviews. I mean stay abreast, move for move, just for once. Make it our holiday case.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Chapter Five

  They breakfasted late the next morning to enable Diana to get Derek away and give her a breathing space. She was an assiduous hostess. She was a woman who obviously suffered her frustrations, but she did manage to recognise, at least for most of the time, that these were not the fault of her guests. Her guests, therefore, she treated generally with a good grace, though not always with bounding cheerfulness. And her cheerfulness, when apparent, did sometimes look like a dutiful after-thought. Simon and Elspeth soon learned that it was easier to keep her mind off its own dark louring by-ways if they stayed well away from police matters in words and innuendo.

  But after they had eaten, she handed Simon two files that were lying on the sideboard.

  ‘Derek said you might care to look through these. But only if you want to. I must say, I think he has a nerve.’

  ‘I’ll have a few minutes with them.’

  ‘He’ll be home to lunch. He hopes. And he’ll try to get an hour or two off this afternoon. He hopes.’ Diana turned to Elspeth. ‘Does Simon ever keep an appointment that he’s made with you?’

  ‘He isn’t often within a fifty-mile radius. We have most of our fun on the phone. And I have one of the finest sets of picture-postcards in the country. Usually small town High Streets where someone or other felt something go snap in his head.’

  ‘I wonder how much longer before something goes snap in mine.’

  Simon retired into the other room with the papers. And he had not leafed through many pages before he acknowledged that there was someone in the force in the Lancashire borough of Ormisher Bridge who enjoyed letting himself go with a typewriter. Perhaps the fact that carbon copies of much of this had been destined for Military Intelligence had had some astringent effect on concentration and composition. The United Kingdom police station does not keep written records about people who have no criminal history: but it is often remarkable how much is known about some local characters when information is discreetly pooled.

  And it was evident that Milner was a character in Ormisher Bridge: a drinking companion on occasion with all ranks from the Chief Superintendent down.

  Edward Garstang Milner had been born in a cotton-spinning village not many miles from Bolton, of parents, now both deceased, who had lived and worked in that jealously preserved borderbelt between upper working and lower middle class. He had won a scholarship to an unsung, but solidly productive grammar school, which he had left at the end of his fifth year, with examination results that would have justified at least another couple of years’ study. He had had no difficulty in finding himself a job in the Ormisher Bridge Town Hall, where he had become a costing clerk in the Borough Engineer’s department. In the first autumn of the war he had volunteered for the R. A.F., had trained in South Africa, and, failing to qualify as a pilot (he had badly muffed several test landings), he had ended up as a Flight-Sergeant airgunner with Bomber Command.

  There was official bumf from service records: an immaculate conduct sheet. They had dug out a report from one of his wing leaders: he had been in one or two operational near-misses�
��a wing-and-prayer home-coming more than once, half his turret shot away on one occasion. Once, twenty miles short of their base in Bedfordshire, he had survived a belly-flop landing. After demobilisation he had returned at once to Ormisher Bridge; had quietly and efficiently worked for professional examinations, and had advanced himself as far as Borough Engineer’s Chief Clerk, being regularly (and safely) entrusted with responsibilities far in excess of his paper qualifications.

  There was no history of anything to do with women. He did not seem interested. And yet the MI man who had talked to him after the second trespass had categorically recorded him as not a queer. Kenworthy could picture him losing his men-friends as they married themselves off one at a time. He was often away at weekends, but if there was any female interest in them, he kept it strictly, and successfully, away from Ormisher Bridge. In the 1950s he had moved himself from comfortable digs to a fairly expensive bachelor flat in a block that had been put up in one of Ormisher Bridge’s development schemes. There he did his own housekeeping, his own evening cooking and his own cleaning: he was—the authority for this was, again, the security man—almost pathologically tidy. He treated his household as he treated his clothes; nothing must be out of place; everything looked remarkably new all the time.

  And that, Kenworthy reflected, was probably how he treated people, too.

  In his spare time, Milner was an active man. He fished in Ribblesdale, not by any means an exclusive or expensive stretch, which accounted for at least some of his weekends. He was a competent club-cricketer, and up to his mid-forties had still been going in number five for the Ormisher Bridge Second Eleven. He rarely took long holidays, but commuted his leave so as to see at least two days’play in most test matches. He knew his way about Lords and the Oval, Trent Bridge, Headingly, Old Trafford and Edgbaston. He was a moderate and regular beer drinker, rarely missed the last hour in the Ormisher Bridge Bull; stood his corner, was always good-natured in his cups. He was a very popular member of the town’s top male ale drinking circle: the editor of the local paper, professional men, senior policemen out of uniform.