The valley pressed in warmly overhead like a big sister, sheltering and calming as the river raced noisily by, crashing into black and amber rocks worn smooth by its ancient torrent. Beyond the allotments, a bosky strip rose up steeply to cornfields dotted with an occasional cottage or beast hovel.
At the old Tilt Wheel, Billy lay flat on the ground and slid under a scribble of barbed wire. A few seconds later, he was inside listening to the randy clamour of sparrows above his head and the urgent rush of water beneath his feet.
Scored by ancient utility, the main tilt floor lay like a plan drawn in sand. Iron tools and old bits of equipment stood around, as if dropped only moments ago by workers who have just stepped outside for a breather. Strange machinery hung in the air like dragons frozen in flight. Slender alders and elderberry, had rooted in cracks in the stone floor. They struggled towards the light of glassless windows. A scatter of owl pellets betrayed a roost in the rafters. Billy could not resist gathering one up. He sat on a stone step and began unpicking its outer case of mammal skin. Inside he found a tiny shrew skull, all the little teeth and bones stripped clean enough for a museum display case. Laying them out beside him, he had almost a complete skeleton when he stopped and reminded himself abruptly that this was not why he had come to the mill. He put the tiny bones aside and thought of Tommy Loveday.
Tommy had survived a terrible war. He had flown countless missions over enemy territory, suffered burns and flack injuries. Then on a day of strange coincidences, he had died in this curious, redundant shell. If only, Billy wished, he could unravel the mystery as easily as he had the owl pellet.
How did Tommy fall? He examined the stone floor and tried to imagine how he could have lost his footing and fatally plunged to the water below. The floor was like a maze, made up of different stone levels, steps, ridges and channels. Two vertical shafts, big enough to hide a coffin, were open to flowing water beneath. Certainly, he had to move with care, but every feature was obvious, none concealed or deceptively drawn. The more he looked, the more he failed to understand how Tommy could have fallen accidentally.
'So there you are, still poking your snotty nose in to other people's business.' The voice belonged to old Sutcliffe. He was standing in the Tilt's broken doorway, a steaming silhouette, drawn in sunlight, tinted green by the canopy of limes above him. 'I knew I'd eventually get thee by the sen. I knew it. I just needed to wait.'
'Whaddyer want? Leave me alone, I've done nowt to you.'
'Maybe, but you know who did, you little shit. You know who killed my Stan.'
'I don't. I've told you the truth. I saw nowt, heard nowt. If I knew, I'd tell thee.'
'Somebody paid him fifty quid. He had it on him when they found him. The coppers showed it me in the envelope. Not a penny spent. Why? Who gave it to him? Where'd he get fifty quid that I didn't know nowt about? We was a team. We shared everything.' He stalked menacingly towards Billy, an insane spark glowing in his eyes. 'You know sommat. You're covering up for somebody. Who is it?'
'I'm not. I don't understand it myself. I'm as keen as you to get to the bottom of it. That's why I came here today.'
'Why do you care? What's in it for thee? If you think there's more cash – well there isn't.'
'I know that. This's not about money. I just want to find out. I came here to learn something, anything, some clues - anything that'll ...'
'Liar,' Sutcliffe screamed, looking about wild eyed and shaking. He grabbed an iron bar from an old work bench and advanced on Billy. 'You know who killed my Stan. Somebody shot him. Somebody, who was not man enough to feight him fair-and-square. I think it were the same one that got him into this mess - then killed him to shut him up. You know who it is. You're not leaving here until thar tells me his name.'
Billy backed away as the old man came towards him brandishing the iron bar. 'Honest, Mr Sutcliffe, I swear, I don't know what's going on. If I knew I'd tell thee.'
Grimy tears stained Sutcliffe's face as he advanced. Misery glazed his eyes, adding to his crazed look. He drew back the metal bar like a baseball player about to strike. Tears welled in Billy's eyes. He could see the old man was mad with grief and hungry for revenge on somebody – anybody.
Sutcliffe drew back the bar and swung it with all his might.
The floor disappeared beneath Billy's feet. He felt himself tumbling backwards as the iron bar swept passed his head. The light vanished as he plunged. An instant later, he was in the water splashing around trying to find something to hang onto. His fingers clawed at slimy stonework, pulling off skeins of thick green algae. The river dragged him under the building and slid him out through a stone-sided leet, slippery with algae and smooth iron stained accretions. Then he was outside blinking at the bright sky through the woodland canopy above him. Buoyed along unceremoniously he thrashed his limbs trying to gain a foothold.
At last, the current pushed him aground. He lay on a shingle bank under the curious gaze of a cow. The animal blew steam from its nostrils as it reached through barbed wire for the sweetest grasses. Billy stared back at it. He heard the distant sound of a heavy truck labouring along the valley road beyond the old Tilt, and was struck by how far away it seemed, yet how clear, like the muted sounds in a street after snow has fallen.
'Are tha all reight?'
Billy spun around looking for the owner of the voice. It was a skinny old man standing above him on the riverbank. He had a garden rake in one hand and a sooty kettle in the other. 'Tha's picked a reight rum day for swimming.'
Billy stumbled to his feet and looked about, hoping to find some plausible excuse for his situation. 'I fell,' he said weakly. 'Somebody was chasing me and I fell.'
The old man chuckled silently. 'Nay lad, tha were weshed out o' that leet. I saw thee shoot out like a shuttle. Tha's been laiking about inside. You're not suppose to go in there you know. They don't put them signs up all over telling thee to keep out for nowt. A bloke were killed in there a bit back. You're lucky the same thing didn't happen to thee.' The old man took off his cap, wiped his face with it, and replaced it on his baldhead with practised precision.
Billy shivered, inwardly agreeing with the old man. Water lapped around his thighs. Cold drove control from his limbs and he swayed, shivering. Gazing around, he looked for a way up to dry land. The tall banks were sheer and slippery.
'Here grab this. I'll give thee a pull up.' The old man extended his rake. 'I use it to fill me kettle. I can't reach the watta otherwise. These banks are just shale. They give way as soon as you step on 'em.' He leaned out extending the rake as far as he could. 'Grab hold, sithee.'
Billy scrambled up the crumbling shale onto firm ground. 'Oh thanks, Mr.'
'Eyup, tha looks nithered,' said the old man, peering over spectacles held together with silver wire. 'Come wi me. I were just going to mash. Tha's dropped in just at reight time.' He started laughing soundlessly, setting his scrawny body shaking. Billy eyed him sideways wondering if he was having a fit.
'Did tha hear that?' the old man spluttered, laughter turning his face bright red. 'Dropped in. Huh, I said tha dropped in. Dropped in watta more like.' Laughter turned to coughing, ending his gleeful outburst for lack of air.
Billy worried the old chap might expire before he got his cup of tea, but luckily he recovered quickly and led him away to his allotment.
In a shed, constructed from a variety of old doors, bits of air raid shelter and patches of tarpaulin and canvas, he found a comfortable rocking chair, a kitchen table with two stools drawn up to it, and a warming, pot bellied stove. A battered kitchen dresser occupied one corner. On its worktop a spirit stove, tea caddy and a bottle of Camp coffee stood at the ready.
'I can do thee a bacon banjo if th' art hungry,' the old man offered, tears from his near death laughter experience still rolling down his sweating face.
'No thanks, tea will be champion,' said Billy. 'Can I help thee to mash it?'
'Nay lad, sit thee sen down. I'll do it. I've to be reight caref
ul with this paraffin stove. It's bloody jiggered. I burnt me chuffin eyebrows off yesterday.' He whipped off his cloth cap and held it under Billy's nose for inspection. 'Sithee, it even set me cap alight. I thought I were a gonna.'
Billy watched the old man as he made the tea. It was done with enough thoroughness and ceremony to shame a geisha. The kettle's position on the stove was accepted only after several minute adjustments. Enamel mugs, from the dresser, were brought out and polished on a rag. A brown teapot was warmed up with a swirl of hot water, which was emptied out through a window. Milk, in a Tizer bottle, appeared from a cooling bucket of river water under the table. Finally, a teaspoon on a string was plucked from a nail in the wall.
'I hope tha dunt take sugar, cos there is none. I stopped taking it cos of rationing.' He adjusted the position of the waiting cups unnecessarily and stared at the kettle as if urging it to whistle. After eyeing Billy critically for a moment, he moved to the dresser and rummaged to find an army blanket. 'Here, get thee things off and dry 'em. Put this round thee sen. Tha can hang thee clothes in front of t'stove. They'll soon dry in that heat.'
Billy blushed and tried to stop shivering. 'I'll be OK,' he said, unconvincingly, not quite ready to strip off in front of a stranger.
'Don't worry thee sen,' the old man said, understanding the boy's predicament. 'I waint look at thee bare bum. But if tha don't get dry tha'll be dee-ad before tha get's home and thee mother'll kill thee.' He opened the top of the cast iron stove and added a few sticks of firewood and a cob of coal. Billy slipped out of his clothes and wrapped himself in the coarse blanket.
Soon the cosy little hut was even warmer. Billy's dripping clothes hung from a sisal line, stretched in front of the stove. They were soon steaming in the fierce heat. He had stopped shivering and was now watching the old man quietly roll a cigarette. 'My dad smokes Wills Stars,' he told him.
'Stars – oh does he? Blimey, he must be a millionaire, thee father.'
Billy cast him a bewildered glance, which the old man seemed to think was hilarious.
'I like this Virginia. I've smoked it for years. It's cos if I have to roll it mi sen, I don't smoke as many. It's a mug's game smoking tha knows. It costs thee a fortune, and all it does is make thee badly enough to cough thee clogs irons up.'
Silence settled on them again as the old man licked the cigarette paper with the tip of his tongue and stuck it down, gently stroking the seam.
'You said something – err - about a man who was killed in the old tilt,' Billy probed tentatively.
A small flame erupted in the old man's cupped hands, as he lit his cigarette. 'Aye, a few years back. He were a local lad. I knew him a bit- err - Tommy sommat,' he said, through clouds of blue smoke.
'Loveday,' Billy prompted. 'Tommy Loveday.'
'Aye that were it - a Walkley lad. I remember it ever so well. I were digging up at the top end near the river. It's horrible to think that while I were up there that young fella were gasping for his last breath, just thirty yards away on t'other side. He never shouted nor nowt. I'd 'ave heard him.'
'Did the police talk to you about it?'
'Nay, they come and saw him next door, but he's as deaf as a bell rope. He wouldn't even know if it were thundering, if it didn't come with lightning built in.'
Billy gasped, astonished. 'I heard they talked to two gardeners?'
'Oh aye they did, but not to me,' he said dismissively. 'They went to see Patrick an' all, a bit further up. He came round here afterwards, telling me all about it. He's never got any fags, old Patrick. He's always on the 'scrounge for a smoke. He loves an excuse to come and chat and get a fag off me.' He laughed and shook his head. 'I don't mind. He's a good sort old Patrick. He always buys me a pint in the Walkley Cottage. We go in there for her lamb pies, tha knows – bloody lovely.'
'Can you remember what happened?'
'Of course I can - I'm not soft.' He eyed Billy huffily, drawing deeply on his cigarette. 'A young bloke were shot over in the old Tilt.'
'He wasn't shot.'
'He was tha knows, I heard it!' he argued fiercely. 'Believe me lad, I know what gun fire sounds like. I were in South Africa. I went reight through from Rietfontein to Ladysmith. Lance Corporal Francis Simmons, that's me. I were killed twice and wounded more times than tha's had Yorkshire Pudding. By God, them Boers could shoot. They could hit a threpny dodger in a jar of tanners from a hundred yards, dead easy. Believe me lad, I know what a gunshot sounds like.'
'But he wasn't shot! There were no bullet wounds,' cried Billy. 'He fell and banged his head. He died of drowning.'
'Look lad. I heard the shot. And so did Patrick.'
'Did he tell the policeman?'
'Of course, why wouldn't he?' He gazed at Billy, clearly annoyed that he had not been believed. 'Come wi me, we'll go and see Patrick. Tha can ask him thee sen, since tha dunt believe me.' He stopped himself suddenly, and peered at Billy wrapped in the old army blanket. 'Oh no, tha can't can tha? Thars got nowt on. Well, we'll go and see him when thee clothes are dry. He'll tell thee.' He turned to the stove, mumbling under his breath, and began testing the dryness of Billy's clothes. 'Mark my words lad, that poor bloke were shot, no matter what nobody tells thee.'
………
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
After school, Billy pushed his bike up steep, leafy streets, approaching with some trepidation, Doctor Hadfield's curious octagonal house at the gates of a grand Victorian villa. The last time he'd been in the area, old Sutcliffe had jumped him and tried to crush him beneath his bicycle. The incident was still fresh in his mind, especially after his latest encounter with the crazed old ruffian.
The doctor's Austin Ruby Saloon was not in its usual parking spot, but he was not concerned. It was barely four-thirty; the doctor would not arrive home for his brief break before evening surgery for another half hour or so. Billy settled on the doorstep to wait.
Sunlight slanted across well-kept lawns and sparkled on the polished leaves of holly, and rhododendrons, twitching to the antics of foraging wrens and blue tits. It felt good to rest. His fall down the Old Tilt's shaft had raised painful bruises. Sunning himself eased them. He watched a pair of red squirrels flick about the lawn. Sunlight created a brilliant nimbus around them. Drowsiness weighed on him as the creatures jerkily chased each other, seeming to switch on and off like the electric toys they had in glass cases at the seaside.
Billy's eyes blurred, his lids felt heavy, and his mind drifted in the warmth. …..Tommy Loveday clutched a bloodless gunshot wound and toppled backwards into pitch-blackness. Billy felt the hot burst of the gunfire in his hand, but there was no gun. The weary, incessant drone of a Wellington Bomber filled his head - then Doctor Hadfield's voice intruded, at first squawking from the pilot's radio, but then pushing in upon his daydream.
'Hey wake up! What's wrong? Are you waiting for me?'
Bemused, Billy groped to recover his senses. There was something he needed to remember. It was vitally important, but it had gone, flushed out of his mind by waking. He knew its crucial importance, but he could not recall it. Rubbing his face, he peered up at the doctor, silhouetted against a golden afternoon sky. 'Sorry – I must 'ave ...'
'Come in - I'm late. If you don't mind, we'll talk while I change?'
'OK, I'm sorry. I wanted to ask you …'
'Can you make tea without scalding yourself? There's a tin of beans somewhere. Is the milk sour?'
Billy found the milk jug beneath an incongruous crocheted cover, held in place by three little china cows. He sniffed the contents, glaring disapprovingly at the girlie cover. 'It's on the turn a bit, but it should be OK.'
The doctor had vanished into an adjoining room leaving him alone in a semi-circular space, furnished with what he could only think of as junk shop rejects: a battered settee, sagging arm chair, garish aquamarine kitchen dresser with a matching sink unit, both stained like a map of the American states. A table covered with books occupied the middle of the room.
&nbs
p; 'I'll have to get a fridge. Does your mother have one? You can keep milk three or four days,' said the doctor, an odd note of wonder in his tone. 'I swear I have not had decent milk since I went up to Oxford. I barely recognise a cup of tea unless it has curdled floaters on it.' He appeared briefly in the doorway, lathering his face with a silver handled badger. 'Are you any good at beans on toast?'
Billy wanted to say no, but the doctor had gone again. 'I'll try,' he mumbled lamely.
'What is it that you want, old boy?' called Hadfield. 'Forgive my bluntness, but I realise this is not a social call. How did you know I'd be here anyway? Have you found the bread? There's a grill thing in the Belling. It's a bit fierce but works OK.'
'Somebody said a shot was fired when Tommy Loveday was killed ...'
'Tommy Loveday! Crikey, you're doing him now are you? I thought it was Mrs Loveday's death you were investigating.'
'They're linked - well – err - possibly.'
'Wow, you are certainly worth that old hat, my boy. Where is it by the way - still under arrest?'
'I want to know what the post mortem said,' Billy called to the open door. 'Can you look it up in some records, or something? It's only five years ago.'
'Five years? Crikey! Have you any idea how many people have died in the last five years? Absolutely squillions!'
'Maybe, but they didn't all need a post mortem. I looked it up in the library. You only need a post mortem if you die a bit funny.'
'A bit funny eh?' said the doctor, appearing in the doorway. He looked scrubbed and shiny, and was putting the final touches to a pink tie. 'You mean in a clown suit or something?'
Billy ignored the quip. 'It's important,' he said. 'There's a killer loose out there.'
Doctor Hadfield looked at him and scowled. 'Crikey, Billy, are you sure you're not forty-eight years old and my father in disguise?' He bent to look at his reflection in a spotty mirror, and fiddled with his tie. 'Oh I don't know, Billy. I'm a bit busy.'
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