by Nicola Upson
Penrose’s mind was racing as he tried to connect Webster with the events of the last few weeks, but somehow he forced himself to concentrate on the urgency of Teddy’s disappearance. ‘There’s no reason to assume that Inspector Webster will harm your son,’ he said, praying that he was right. ‘I suspect that Teddy is being used to get to your husband. Where is Mr Moorcroft now? You said he was angry with you for letting Teddy go.’
‘Yes, he was. He went crazy when I told him what had happened, and there was nothing I could say to pacify him. He said he was going to get Teddy back, and then he left. I assumed he was on his way to the station.’
‘Had he read the note by then?’
‘Yes, I left it in his study.’
‘Do you know what it said?’
‘No. Webster told me that it was just a formality to do with the body found on our land.’
‘Will you go and see if it’s still there?’
‘Yes, of course, but aren’t we wasting time?’
‘It’s important, Mrs Moorcroft. Please look for me.’
‘All right. I won’t be long.’ She was as good as her word, returning in just a few minutes. ‘It’s a postcard, not a note,’ she said. ‘I found it in the wastepaper basket, but I don’t understand what it means. It looks like a quotation from something.’
‘Read it to me.’
‘It says: “The evidence of the man at the Martello tower freed us from all suspicion. All that could be done was to return a verdict of wilful murder.”’
‘Is that it?’
‘No, not quite. There’s a line underneath that says “A Warning to the Curious”.’
Penrose recognised the title of the story immediately. ‘Is it a picture postcard?’ he asked.
‘Yes, from somewhere called Aldeburgh.’ She pronounced the name of the seaside town with three syllables and a strong American inflection. ‘Do you know where that is?’
‘It’s on the Suffolk coast, about two or three hours from here. Listen, Mrs Moorcroft—I haven’t got time to explain everything now but I need you to trust me. I think that’s where Inspector Webster has taken Teddy, and he wants your husband to follow him. That’s what this is about. I have no idea how Webster is connected to these men, but I think his ultimate goal is to get your husband to confess to something he did many years ago. As it says in the quotation, he wants the verdict of the man in the Martello tower.’
‘You think Robert killed someone?’
‘I think Robert and the men who have died were all involved in a girl’s death when they were at King’s, and one by one they’re being made to pay.’
‘By this man Webster?’ She was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again there was a new determination in her voice. ‘Get Teddy back for me. Please. I don’t care what happens to Robert, but I want my son.’
‘I will—I swear I will.’ It was the second promise that Penrose had made and he had no idea if he could keep it, but it was the only comfort he had to offer. ‘Is your little girl with you?’
‘Yes. I’m not letting her out of my sight.’
‘And Teddy’s friend from school? Where is he?’
‘His parents came to collect him last night as soon as they heard what had happened. Thank God they did. Why on earth didn’t I listen to you when you asked me to take the children somewhere safe? If I had, Teddy would still be with me.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. If I’m right, Teddy has only been taken to lure your husband to the Martello tower, nothing more than that.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’
‘I’m going after them,’ he said, ignoring the question, ‘but in the meantime I want you and Evie to stay where you are and I’ll send some officers out to stay with you until we know it’s safe.’
‘Thank you—I mean that. And Inspector?’
‘Yes?’
‘Tell Teddy I love him, and I’ll be waiting.’
Penrose put the telephone down and went to make George Clough’s day. ‘Sorry, Penrose. I know you’re waiting for those files but we’ve had a call from the Daily News and I’ve had to come clean about the man we’ve got in custody. As soon as Penny’s finished typing up the statement, I’ll send her across to you.’
Penrose waved the apology away. ‘It’s not important now,’ he said, shutting the office door behind him. ‘What do you know about Thomas Webster?’
‘Webster?’ Clough looked at him in surprise. ‘He’s been with us for about five years, I suppose. He transferred from Bristol as a sergeant and was promoted eighteen months ago. He can be a bit hot-tempered and he takes himself and his work far too seriously, but he’s a damned good copper. Why?’
Penrose explained, and watched the superintendent quite literally age before his eyes. ‘But he can’t possibly be involved in any of this,’ Clough objected. ‘He’s been working flat out on the assaults.’
‘Which could easily have given him the perfect cover,’ Penrose argued, thinking back to the time that he had bumped into Webster at the Evelyn Nursing Home. ‘And because he’s been flat out, can you honestly say that you always knew where he was?’
‘No,’ Clough admitted. ‘Like I said, he’s a good man and I gave him a free rein.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Jesus, Penrose, I might as well hand my card in now. What the hell am I going to do if you’re right?’
Clough’s head was sunk in his hands and Penrose looked at him with sympathy. ‘Let’s make sure first. I’m going to drive over to the Martello tower now and see—’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘But sir, there are things that need to be done from here and surely you don’t want to let anyone else in on this before we’re sure? Think of the consequences.’
‘Webster is my officer, Penrose. If anyone has a right to understand why he’s doing this, I do. You’re in charge of this one and that’s understood—but I want to be there. All right?’ Penrose nodded reluctantly. ‘Good. Now tell me what else you need.’
‘Some reliable officers out at Angerhale to look after Virginia Moorcroft and her daughter. Someone needs to alert the Suffolk force and get them out to Aldeburgh as back-up. Ask for Detective Inspector Donovan if he’s available—he attended Westbury’s murder in Felixstowe, and he seemed to know what he was doing. It’ll take us a while to get out there, so I want that tower watched in the meantime—but only from a distance. On no account is anyone to approach the building unless Webster shows signs of leaving. And most importantly of all, I want every scrap of information you can find me on Webster. He told me once that he was brought up in Cambridge as a boy, so I need the details on that and his career record since. We need a check on his house, too, just in case I’m wrong and he’s taken the boy there. Is there someone you can trust with that?’
‘Yes, I think so. Give me five minutes to brief him and then we can go.’
‘While you’re doing that, I’m going to call my sergeant and ask him to come up here.’
Clough nodded and Penrose left him to it. He brought Fallowfield up to date for the second time that day, then waited impatiently at the front desk for the superintendent to join him. ‘A lady left this for you, sir,’ the man on duty said, handing him a note. He opened it immediately, recognising Josephine’s handwriting, and quickly read the results of her morning’s work in Park Street. The letter had reached him just in time, and the information about Ernest Cleever gave him an idea.
Clough appeared, shaking his head. ‘You’ll have to go without me, Penrose. The morning paper’s just come out and all hell’s broken loose. People are already causing trouble in the market square and I can’t leave anyone else to deal with it. Will you keep me posted on Webster, though? I want to be the first to know.’
‘You will be.’
‘And I’ll make sure everything else you asked for is covered.’
‘Thank you, sir. One other thing . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Ellen Cleever, the girl who
se file I asked for—I think she might be at the bottom of this, and she had a brother called Ernest. He’d be about Webster’s age. Would you do some digging on him for me?’ He gave Clough Josephine’s note. ‘This will help with the background.’
The superintendent glanced through it, struggling to read the unfamiliar hand. ‘You think Webster and this Ernest Cleever might be connected?’ he asked.
‘More than that, sir,’ Penrose said on his way out of the door. ‘I think there’s every chance that they might be one and the same person.’
22
Aldeburgh had changed very little since the days of M. R. James’s story: the long sea front and charming red-brick cottages; a handsome flint church and two white windmills on the horizon; wind-beaten fir trees and heath land to the north, then, to the south, the distant Martello tower. And at the margins of it all, the heaving, dirty, life-affirming North Sea, tugging at an ever-changing shoreline with ruthless deliberation. Penrose had only been here once or twice before, but the town had made a strong impression on him with its combination of the tamed and the wild, and today the latter had the upper hand; an easterly breeze—always present on this coast, even on the mildest of days—stirred the dry grass which lined the sandy road and sent iron-grey clouds scudding across a pliant sky.
The old Martello tower was about a mile out of town, separated from the last row of houses by a long stretch of sand and shingle. It was one of several tiny forts built along the coast during the Napoleonic wars to protect England from an invading French army, and although the towers had never been tested for that purpose, many of them had gone on to be used by coastguards as an excellent foil to smugglers. Penrose guessed that this one had been allowed to fall derelict, and Webster had chosen well: regardless of its presence in James’s story, the Martello tower gave him the perfect private stronghold in which to play out the final stages of his plan—remote and protected, and with an uninterrupted view that made it impossible to approach without being seen. He recognised Moorcroft’s Jaguar and the dark saloon car among a small clutch of vehicles parked where the road began to dwindle, and left his Daimler at the end of the row. Webster’s car was locked and a quick glance through the window told him nothing, so he walked over to the nearer of the two police cars, glad of the fresh air; the last few days and another long night were beginning to take their toll, but the sharp sea breeze and open skies revived him a little. ‘Have you seen anyone?’ he asked, getting into the back seat.
‘Not yet, sir, but there’s definitely someone in there. Every now and again you can see a torch or a lantern moving about inside.’ Donovan handed Penrose the binoculars, and he trained them eagerly on the building. ‘We can’t have been far behind them because the bonnet on the Jag was still warm when we got here, but there’s been no sign of anyone on the move.’
‘So you don’t know if the boy’s all right?’
‘No, sir. I haven’t set eyes on him.’
Penrose paused, trying to second-guess Webster’s objectives. There was no doubt in his mind that what Webster wanted most of all from Moorcroft was a confession, but it was impossible to calculate what he might do if and when that was achieved. Until now, his actions had been cold and deliberate, with each of the four murders planned and executed to ruthless perfection, but Penrose knew what it was like to care desperately about a case and be thwarted in its investigation—and he was convinced by their brief meetings that Webster had cared about catching the rapist in Cambridge. The false arrest would have been a bitter blow, and that, coupled with a lack of sleep and the emotional strain of abducting a child and confronting Moorcroft, would surely make him volatile and unpredictable. Penrose was no longer as confident as he had been that Teddy was safe, and waiting for Webster’s next move seemed too big a risk to take. ‘I’m going over there,’ he said, having dismissed the alternatives. ‘If I try to talk to him before this goes any further, I might just be able to get the boy out. Wait here, but be ready to come if I signal.’
‘But he’ll spot you long before you get there,’ Donovan objected. ‘What if he’s armed? You’re a walking target across that sand.’
‘I know, but have you got any better ideas? The longer we leave it, the worse it’ll be for the child.’
Donovan nodded reluctantly and Penrose got out of the car. It was mid-afternoon now and the air was damp, with only a pencil-thin line of light between the sea and the grey pall of sky. The squat, brick-built tower sat menacingly on the horizon and he began the long walk towards it, choosing the most overt approach across the sand. The tide was receding, but the sea had done its work and the going was heavy and damp underfoot; when he glanced back towards the town, the marks he had left on the broad stretch of beach were deep and meandering. As he drew near to the tower, an ever-decreasing spit of shingle parted the sea on the left from a river on the right, and after that there was nothing of comfort—just a vast expanse of water which, on a bleak November day, could easily have marked the edge of the world. The unassailable sense of solitude which exhilarated Penrose whenever he walked on a windswept beach was entirely absent now, and all he was left with was a profound unease.
Aldeburgh’s Martello was of a quatrefoil design, four smaller towers joined together rather than the single cylindrical forms found at Felixstowe and elsewhere; even without any knowledge of the tensions inside, Penrose would have found its quiet hostility forbidding. He walked round the building, sensing more acutely than he ever had before that his every move was carefully watched. The only way in was through a narrow doorway on the landward side, about fifteen feet up from beach level and accessed across a dilapidated bridge which connected the tower to a raised cliff path. He clambered up the bank and set foot on the fragile wood, expecting at any moment to be stopped or challenged, but nothing hindered his progress and he began to fear what might already have happened inside. The walls of the building were several feet thick, designed to resist cannon fire, and once through the door he was faced with a choice: to continue into a warren of rooms on the same level, or to follow a dark stone staircase down to the ground floor. There was a flicker of light from below so he headed towards it. The steps were slippery, the air fetid with damp and decay, and he was pleased to emerge into a wide open space which must originally have been used as a storeroom for provisions and ammunition.
But there his relief ended. When his eyes grew accustomed to the dimly lit room, he was aware of someone standing just a few feet away from him. A powerful torch was suddenly switched on, blinding him for a moment, and he heard Webster’s voice from behind the glare. ‘Afternoon, sir. I was hoping you might be able to join us.’ He shone the beam obligingly round the room, and Penrose took everything in. A series of iron rings was set at intervals into the curved outer wall and Robert Moorcroft was tied to one of them, his face cut and bruised, a rag stuffed into his mouth. His body was slumped on the floor but his eyes were frightened and watchful; he stared pleadingly at Penrose, seeing an ally now in the man he had always regarded as his adversary.
On the other side of the room there was a makeshift camp bed, and Penrose saw the small form of a child, covered entirely by blankets. ‘Teddy?’ he said, his voice echoing round the hollow chamber, but the boy on the bed lay ominously silent and still, and Penrose prayed that he was drugged rather than hurt. The room was bleak, and the few lighted candles did little to offer any cheer. In the lull that followed each distant wave, he could hear the steady drip of water from the ceiling. ‘I need to know he’s all right,’ he said, turning back to Webster.
‘That’s up to his father.’
He gestured to his captive and Penrose saw the gun for the first time, an old Webley revolver, cradled in Webster’s left hand. It was no surprise to him—he had expected Webster to be armed—but still the weapon sent a shiver of recollection through him, a stark reminder of those moments a few months before when he had lain on the ground, watching the blood drain from the wound in his shoulder, honestly believing he was about to di
e. As Moorcroft strained ineffectively at the ropes which held him, trying to get to his son, Penrose signalled to him to stay calm. ‘What do you want?’ he asked. ‘Why have you brought them here?’
‘I want him to acknowledge what he did,’ Webster said calmly. ‘The truth has stayed buried for too long, and I want it out in the open. I want Robert Moorcroft to say sorry for the life he destroyed back then, and all the lives that have been ruined since.’
‘You mean the truth about Ellen Cleever?’
‘About Ellie, yes. The girl he raped and killed.’
‘Was she your sister? Is your real name Ernest Cleever?’
Webster smiled, but shook his head. ‘No. Ernest was just the poor bastard who could never get over losing the sister he worshipped. He’s in Pentonville now. I went looking for him, and found him doing a stretch for burglary. Another stretch, to be more accurate. Like I said—all the lives that have been ruined since then. That really was one hell of a Christmas.’
The bitterness in his voice was so acute that Penrose could almost feel it as a physical presence in the air between them. ‘So what was Ellen to you?’ he asked. ‘Who are you in this story?’
‘That’s just what I was explaining to our friend here.’ He took a photograph from his pocket and held it up to Moorcroft’s face, and Penrose saw confusion there followed swiftly by recognition. ‘I was ten years old,’ he said angrily. ‘That little boy from the choir whom you all bullied and pushed around—unless you wanted something, of course. And that Christmas you wanted her.’ He let the photograph fall to the floor and Penrose bent to pick it up. In the light of one of the candles, he looked down at an attractive girl with long dark hair and pale skin, pictured with a small, blonde chorister and laughing into the camera as she borrowed his top hat for the photograph. There was something in the girl’s spirit which reminded him of Bridget when they first met, and he could see from the expression in the young Tom Webster’s face that he had adored her.