River of Darkness - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 6

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Madden found the chief inspector on the church hall steps talking to Helen Blackwell. The doctor was wearing a man's white linen jacket with the cuffs rolled up over a light summer dress. She greeted Madden with a smile.

'Dr Blackwell has been giving us a statement.'

Sinclair's grey eyes held a hint of wry amusement. 'She has also explained to me her reasons for wanting to keep Sophy Fletcher at her house, rather than send her to hospital. I found her arguments… persuasive. The child will stay here.'

'Thank you again, Chief Inspector.' The doctor shook his hand warmly. Her eyes brushed Madden's.

'Good morning to you both.'

Sinclair's nod was approving as he watched her walk away. 'A fine-looking lassie.' He gave Madden a sideways glance. 'Dragon indeed! You might have warned me, John.'

'Nothing from Oakley, I'm afraid, sir.' Madden was smiling. 'The press are waiting for you at the pub. I bumped into Ferris.'

'Is that rodent here?' The chief inspector's face darkened. 'It must be the smell of blood.'

'He's already guessed we've got problems.'

'He doesn't know the half of it. Come with me.

There's something I want to show you.'

Inside the hall a low hum of voices sounded from a line of tables where detectives were taking statements.

Madden saw Styles, bent over a pad, sitting opposite an elderly woman in a black coat and hat. Inspector Boyce was at another table before a growing pile of statement forms. With a nod to him, Sinclair picked up his file and led Madden to one side, out of earshot.

He removed two typewritten sheets of paper clipped together from the folder and handed them to the inspector. 'Have a look at that.'

It was the post-mortem report on Lucy Fletcher.

Madden spent several minutes studying it. Sinclair waited until he had finished.

'So he never touched her.' Eyes narrowed, the chief inspector stood with folded arms. 'Ransom looked everywhere. Vaginal swabs. Anal swabs. He even tested the poor woman's mouth. Not a trace of semen.'

'He grabbed her, though, just as we thought,'

Madden said. ' "Bruises on the upper arms…"' he quoted.

'He grabbed her and dragged her up the stairs to the bedroom and cut her throat. Why didn't he rape her? There was nothing to stop him. She was naked under that robe. What was he doing there? Why was he in that house?'

Madden was silent.

'He killed her with a razor, Ransom thinks. But it wasn't the colonel's — that was with his shaving things in the bathroom. We found no trace of blood on it.

He brought his own.'

Madden put the report back in the file. 'Did you show this to Dr Blackwell?' he asked.

'Yes. Why?'

'They were childhood friends. She needed to know.'

Sinclair sighed. He pointed to the pile of forms in front of Boyce. 'Go through those, John. See if you can find anything. I must talk to the press. When I come back we'll sit down together. The assistant commissioner's called a meeting for tomorrow morning.

The Yard is making its concern clear,' he added drily. 'I expect to be told they want an early result.'

'I doubt they'll get one this time.' Madden weighed the file in his hand.

'Spare a thought for me tomorrow when I'm telling them that.'

The tea urn had appeared again; it was sitting on a table by the door. Madden poured himself a mug and took a sandwich from the heaped plate beside it. He collected the pile of forms from Boyce and settled down in a quiet corner.

The statements, short for the most part, were mainly testaments to the unchanging nature of village life. Most of those questioned had seen the Fletchers at church on Sunday morning — for the last time, tragically. Several of them had spoken to Lucy Fletcher afterwards. 'Such a lovely lady,' Mrs Arthur Skipps, the butcher's wife had said, unprompted, and the detective interviewing her had let the remark stand.

Such a lovely lady.

Tom Cooper, the Fletchers' gardener, had been one of the last to see them alive. Although he was free on Sunday, he had gone over to Melling Lodge in the late afternoon to water the roses growing beside the kitchen-garden wall. The long drought had made it a difficult summer for him and he was determined not to see his labours go for nothing. Colonel Fletcher had found him busy with a watering-can and chided him in a friendly way for working on his day off. The colonel had been in his 'usual good spirits'. Later, Mrs Fletcher and her daughter Sophy had walked by and Cooper had waved to them. They were talking about the puppy the Fletchers were planning to buy for Sophy and her brother when they returned from Scotland at the end of the summer.

Lord Stratton, in his statement, said he had taken the Lord Lieutenant and his wife to dine with the Fletchers on Saturday evening. It had been 'a pleasant occasion'. The Fletchers had talked about their plans to drive through France later that summer to visit friends in Biarritz.

Helen Blackwell, who had also been at the dinner, was more forthcoming. Sophy Fletcher was to have spent the whole summer with her uncle and aunt Colonel Fletcher's brother and his wife — at their home outside Edinburgh. An attack of measles had kept her in Highfield, however, and her brother James had been sent on ahead. She was due to have travelled to Scotland by train the following week in the company of her nanny, Alice Crookes. Shortly thereafter the Fletchers had planned to leave for France.

The last part of Dr Blackwell's statement, an account of her urgent summons to the house on Monday morning, was given in cold medical language.

She had examined each of the victims in turn and pronounced them dead. Rigor was starting to recede and she had estimated the time of death at a little over twelve hours earlier. She said 'something' had made her look under the bed in the nursery. She employed the same phrase as she had used with Madden to describe Sophy's condition when she found her. 'Profound shock.'

The question of strangers in the village over the weekend was dealt with in several of the statements.

Frederick Poole, the landlord of the Rose and Crown, reported a busload of passengers in a Samuelson motor coach stopping at the pub for lunch on Saturday. The company had alerted him ahead of time. As far as he knew, all those who alighted from the bus had boarded the vehicle again later. Apart from that, there had been upward of a score of motorists and cyclists who had called in at the pub on Saturday and Sunday.

None had stuck in his mind. All had continued their journeys.

Freda Birney, the wife of the owner of the village shop, Alf Birney, reported seeing two hikers picnicking by the stream between the outskirts of the village and Melling Lodge on Sunday just before twelve o'clock. She had been taking the dog for a walk before preparing lunch for her family. Madden made a note to have the hikers traced and questioned.

Running his eye over the next statement in the pile, he paused, went back and reread it carefully, checked the name of the interviewing officer, and then put it to one side.

Billy Styles pushed the form across the table, watched the man sign it, said, 'Thank you, sir, that'll be all for now,' then leaned back in his chair and stretched. His tenth interview of the day. Harold Toombs, the village sexton. Billy had had to fight to keep a straight face as he wrote it down. Toombs had spent the weekend working in his garden. He had neither seen nor heard anything out of the ordinary.

It was a matter of amazement to Billy that he was still part of the investigation. After his experiences of the day before he had expected to find himself back in the CID pool at Scotland Yard.

Detective Sergeant Hollingsworth, who'd brought him the news, seemed equally surprised. A stocky, nut-faced man with twenty years on the force, he affected to find Billy's presence among them a source of wonder. 'Can't think what the guv'nor has in mind.

No bloodhounds in your family tree, are there, Detective Constable Styles? No hidden talents we're not apprised of?'

On receiving word, Billy had experienced a moment of elation, quickly followed by one of foreboding as he contemplated the prospect of spending another day under the dark glance of Inspector Madden.

But thus far, beyond a polite, 'Good morning, sir,' from Billy, and a distracted nod in response from the inspector, they hadn't exchanged a word, and Billy had found himself mildly bored as he recorded the villagers' bald accounts of the long, sun-drenched weekend.

Now he saw Madden, sitting in the corner of the hall, beckon to him. He rose from the table and went over. 'Sir?'

Madden held out a statement form. 'Yours, I think?'

Billy glanced at it. 'Yes, sir. May Birney. Her father owns the village store.'

The inspector eyed him. 'Well, did she, or didn't she, Constable?' he asked.

'Sir, she wasn't sure.' Billy shuffled nervously. 'First she said she did, then she changed her mind. Said she must have been mistaken.'

'Why did she do that? Change her mind?'

'Sir… sir, I don't know.'

Madden stood up so abruptly Billy had to spring backwards. 'Let's see if we can find out, shall we?'

With a nod to Boyce he strode from the hall. Billy hurried after him.

The village store, a few minutes' walk away down Highfield's only paved road, was situated between the pub and the post office. Alf Birney, plump, with a fringe of grey hair like a monk's tonsure, came from behind the counter to show them into a curtained-off toom at the back of the shop.

'It's not right this should have happened,' he muttered.

'Not to a lady like Mrs Fletcher. Not to any of them.' He shifted a carton of custard powder off a chair to make room for Madden. 'I can remember when she was a child. She used to come to the shop every Saturday to buy her sweets. Little Lucy He left them there, and a minute later his daughter came in. May Birney was no more than sixteen. She was dressed in a dun-coloured work smock, her bobbed hair cut in a fringe across her pale forehead.

'Get it straight in your mind now, girl.' Her father's voice came from beyond the curtain. 'Tell the inspector exactly what you heard.'

Miss Birney stood before them, nervously twisting her fingers. Madden looked at Billy and nodded.

Taken by surprise — he'd assumed the inspector would handle the questioning — Billy cleared his throat. 'It's about this business of the whistle you say you heard.

Or didn't hear.' He spoke loudly, and watched her flush and steal a glance at Madden, who was seated at a table in the middle of the room.

'You were out walking the dog, you said,' Billy prompted her.

May Birney stared at her feet.

'Tell us again what happened.'

The girl said something inaudible. 'What?' Billy heard himself almost shouting. 'I didn't hear. What did you say?'

'I said I told you before but you said I was imagining it.' She spoke very quickly looking down.

'I never said that-' Billy checked himself. 'I asked you if you were sure you'd heard a police whistle and you said, no, you weren't-'

'I said like a police whistle.'

'All right, like a police whistle, but then you said perhaps you'd been mistaken and you hadn't heard it at all. Do you remember saying that?'

The girl fell silent again.

Billy stepped nearer. He felt Madden's eyes on him.

'Now listen to me, May Birney. This is a serious matter. I don't need to remind you what happened at Melling Lodge on Sunday night. Stop saying you're not sure or you don't remember. Either you heard something or you didn't. And if you're making all this up…!'

The girl turned bright red.

Madden spoke. 'Would you like to sit down, May?'

He drew up another chair for her. After a moment's hesitation, the girl complied. 'Now let's see, I'm a little puzzled, what time did this happen?'

'Around nine o'clock, sir. Might have been a little later.'

'Was it still light?'

'Just getting dark.'

'You were walking the dog?'

'Yes, sir, Bessie. She's getting old, you see, and needs to be taken, but if you put her outside, she just flops down, so Mum and me, we take her down to the stream and make her walk a bit.' She kept her eyes on Madden's face.

'Then you heard what sounded like a police whistle?'

'Yes, sir, like that. The same sort of sound.'

'Just once?'

May Birney hesitated, her brow creased in concentration.

'Well, sir, it was like I said' — she shot a glance at Billy — 'first it was there, then it sort of faded away, and then it came back just for a moment.'

Madden's brow creased. 'Was there a breeze blowing?' he asked.

The girl's face lit up. 'Yes, sir, that was it. That's what happened. It came and went on the wind. I heard it twice. But it was so faint…'

'You wondered if you'd heard it at all?'

She nodded vigorously. Shooting another defiant glance at Billy, she said, 'I just wasn't sure.'

'But you are now?' Madden leaned forward. 'Take your time, May. Think about it.'

But she paused for only a moment. 'Yes, sir,' she said. 'Now I'm sure. Positive.'

On their way back to the church hall, Madden paused outside the Rose and Crown. A low brick wall enclosed the cobbled yard in front of the pub and he sat down on it and took out his packet of cigarettes. 'I believe you smoke, Constable?'

'Thank you, sir.' Surprised and pleased, Billy fumbled with his matches. Madden accepted a light. He sat for a while in silence. Then he spoke.

'This job we have,' he drew on his cigarette, 'it gives us a lot of power in small ways.'

'Sir?' Billy didn't understand.

'It's tempting to use it, particularly with people who… who don't know how to defend themselves.'

Billy was silent.

'Do you understand what I'm saying, Constable?'

He shook his head.

'Don't take the easy way, son.' Madden looked at him now. 'Don't become a bully.'

The cigarette in Billy's mouth had turned to gall.

'Now go and see if Mr Boyce has something for you to do.'

The following morning the inspector went from cottage to cottage on the Melling Lodge side of Highfield, inquiring whether any of the occupants had heard a whistle on Sunday evening.

The third door he knocked on was opened by Stackpole. The village bobby, still in his shirtsleeves, carried a small curly-haired girl in the crook of his arm whom he introduced as 'our Amy'.

'Can't help you, sir,' he told Madden. 'It wasn't me that whistled, that's for certain. Sunday evening the wife and I were over having supper with her parents.

They live on the other side of the green.'

A tow-haired boy peered out of a doorway behind him. Madden heard a baby's wail.

'Pardon me for saying so, sir, but young May Birney isn't what I'd call a reliable witness. Got her head in the clouds half the time, that young lady. She's sweet on a lad who works for one of Lord Stratton's tenants, but her parents are dead set against him. I've seen her down by the stream, mooning about.'

Madden smiled. Like all good village bobbies, Stackpole made everyone else's business his own. 'In the end, she seemed quite sure she'd heard it,' he said.

'Could have been something else,' the constable suggested. 'Jimmy Wiggins whistling up his bitch.

Or one of his lordship's keepers.'

'Perhaps.'

The inspector gave an account of his visit to Oakley the day before. 'I didn't take to Wellings. He didn't strike me as being truthful.'

'I'm not surprised,' Stackpole observed. 'Lies as he breathes, that one.'

'Gates said he handles stolen goods.'

'You weren't thinking…?' The constable raised an eyebrow.

'The stuff taken from Melling Lodge?' Madden shrugged. 'It did cross my mind. What's your view?'

Stackpole shifted the little girl to his other arm.

'I'd say if someone offered Sid Wellings a set of silver candlesticks, or a piece of jewellery, he'd snap it up.

But by the time you talked to him he must have known what happened at the Lodge and if he had any connection with it, even by chance, he'd have been wetting himself.'

Madden nodded. 'All the same, next time you're over there, speak to him. Ask him the same questions.

What was he doing over the weekend? Who did he see passing through the village? Let him know we're not satisfied with his answers.'

Stackpole looked at the inspector curiously. 'Do you still think he came through Oakley, sir?' And then, after a pause: 'It is "he" we're looking for, isn't it? Not some gang?'

'We believe it's one man,' Madden confirmed. 'But keep that to yourself for now. About Oakley, I'm not sure. He had to have some kind of transport. We think he was carrying a rifle, and when he left he must have had what he took from the Lodge. I don't think he could have come into the area on foot, even through the fields, without someone spotting him.'

'A rifle, sir?'

'He killed them with a rifle and bayonet — we're fairly sure of that. All except Mrs Fletcher.'

'Is he a soldier then?' Stackpole scowled.

'I doubt it. There's no military camp anywhere near.

An ex-soldier, more like it.'

'Plenty of them about.' The constable pressed Madden to come in for a cup of tea, but he declined the offer. Stackpole himself was due at Melling Lodge to join the party searching the woods. 'Between you and me, sir, it's a waste of time. Even with Lord Stratton's keepers helping. Most of these lads are town-bred.

They'll more likely step on something than see it.'

An hour later Madden was back at the church hall.

He had found no one to confirm May Birney's story of the whistle. Sergeant Hollingsworth was seated at the table where Boyce had been the day before. The Guildford inspector was supervising a check of all boots in the village.

'He's got a fingerprint team with him, too, sir.

They'll take the prints of anyone who called regularly at the Lodge.'

'Anything else?' Madden began leafing through the pile of statements on the table.

'Only the lady doctor, sir. She came by, asking for you. It's to do with the little girl.'

'What about her?' Madden looked up quickly. 'Is something the matter?'

Not that I know of, sir.' Hollingsworth scratched his head. 'Dr Blackwell just wants a word with you.

But she said it was important.'

Madden broke the police seal on the front door of Melling Lodge and went inside. The house lay in semi-darkness, with the curtains pulled. The metallic smell of blood was still strong in the hot, musty air.

Standing in the flagged hall, he pictured the scene as it must have happened. The man with the rifle bursting into the drawing-room from the terrace, glass and wood splintering, the maid with the coffee tray turning, mouth open, ready to scream- In! Out! On guard!

The commands he'd once been taught came back to him, accompanied by a sickening image.

The killer had caught Colonel Fletcher before he could reach the guns in the study, then the nanny in the kitchen, running from room to room down the long passage.

In! Out! On guard!

Why such haste? Madden wondered. What was driving him?

Racing up the stairs he had encountered Lucy Fletcher, dropped his weapon and seized her by the upper arms. He was big and strong, judging by the size of the footprint in the stream bed, if it was his.

Madden saw him picking up the woman by the arms and holding her clear of the floor — they had found no heel marks dragged across the carpet — carrying her into the bedroom and flinging her across the bed like … Lord Stratton's words returned to him: like a sacrifice.

He saw the white throat hideously slashed, the cascade of golden hair…

The nursery, papered with daffodils and bluebells, was at the end of the passage upstairs. It contained two beds, one unmade. Dolls and stuffed toys sat in a row on a wooden shelf. A model aeroplane hung from the ceiling. Madden took a laundry bag off its hook behind the door, emptied it and put in fresh clothes from the cupboard and two pairs of girl's shoes retrieved from a foot locker. Other items went into a brown paper bag he found on top of the cupboard.

A uniformed officer had been posted in the forecourt outside. At Madden's direction he made a list of everything taken from the nursery, which the inspector signed.

'I'm removing these articles from the house,' he told the constable. 'My compliments to Mr Boyce and see that he's informed.'

The avenue of limes led to a pleasant half-timbered house with a garage on one side where a red Wolseley two-seater was parked. The maid, whom Madden had seen upstairs on his previous visit, answered the doorbell.

She led him straight through the drawing-room out into the garden. Dr Blackwell was seated in an arbour at one end of the terrace with a little girl beside her. Sophy Fletcher had waist-length fair hair.

She was dressed in a blue muslin frock belted with a yellow sash.

At the sight of the inspector she sprang from her chair and threw herself on to the doctor's lap, burying her face in her shoulder.

Shocked, Madden halted. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to alarm her.'

He turned to go back inside the house, but Helen Blackwell called out to him, 'Don't go, please.'

To the child, she said, 'Sophy, this is Inspector Madden. He's a policeman.'

The little girl, her face still hidden, gave no response. Madden could see her body trembling.

'Come and sit down,' the doctor urged him. 'I want Sophy to get used to being with strangers again.'

Privately she wondered if it wasn't the inspector's grim aspect that had upset the child. She saw that Madden was carrying a bag in each hand.

'You'll have some lemonade with us, won't you?'

She sought to lighten the deep frown with a smile.

'Mary, pour the inspector a glass, would you?' A jug and glasses stood on the table in front of them.

Madden tugged open the laundry bag. 'I brought some of Sophy's clothes from the Lodge,' he explained.

'How very kind of you.' She was touched by his gesture. 'I was going to ask about that. This is something Mary ran up.' She patted the blue muslin back. 'Luckily Sophy left a pair of shoes here on her last visit.'

'You wanted to talk to me?'

'Yes, please. Later…?' She glanced down at the fair head. 'Could you stay a little while?' He nodded.

'I have a patient to see in the village, but I shan't be long.'

She watched as he sat down and began emptying the brown-paper packet he had brought. He took out several dolls and a teddy bear and began arranging them in a circle on the grassed flagstones in front of him. Mary hovered. The inspector looked up. 'Do you have any old tea-cups?' he asked. 'The more chipped the better. And perhaps a jug of water?'

Dr Blackwell nodded to the maid, who went into the house.

'Sophy…' She nudged the small figure on her lap.

'Look what the inspector's brought.'

The child didn't move. Her face stayed sealed to the doctor's shoulder.

The maid returned with a tray bearing an array of china. She put it on the ground beside Madden. He began to lay out the crockery, rattling the cups and saucers as he did so. Helen Blackwell felt a small movement. The child had turned her head. She was watching out of the corner of her eye.

Madden put a cup and saucer in front of each toy, then placed the jug of water in the centre of the circle.

'Someone will have to pour,' he announced.

Mary started forward, but Dr Blackwell checked her with a gesture. The little girl was stirring. She climbed slowly off the doctor's lap. Keeping a wary eye on Madden she approached the circle of figures and dropped to her knees in front of them. She studied the group for several seconds. Then she picked up the teddy bear and placed him at the head of the circle near Madden's feet. Her eyes met his. Whatever she saw in the inspector's sombre glance seemed to reassure her and she lifted the jug of water and began to pour.

Dr Blackwell rose. 'I must go and see my patient,' she said, without urgency. 'Can I leave you here for a little while, Inspector?'

He nodded in answer.

'Sophy, I'll be back soon.'

The child, absorbed in the business of filling the cups, made no reply.

When the doctor returned half an hour later she found the arbour deserted. Mary was standing at the edge of the terrace with folded arms looking out over the garden. Helen Blackwell joined her and saw Madden and Sophy, hand in hand, at the bottom of the lawn, near the orchard.

'Did he take her down there?' she asked the maid.

'No, she took him, ma'am.' Mary smiled. 'She's showing him the garden.'

'Is she talking to him?' Dr Blackwell hardly dared to hope.

'No, just pointing.'

As she spoke, the little girl lifted her hand and indicated the weeping beech at the edge of the lawn.

They went there together and vanished from sight beneath the drooping branches. After a minute they reappeared. The child stood close to Madden with her head bowed while the inspector bent over her and carefully picked the twigs from her hair.

'He's talking to her,' Mary observed.

Dr Blackwell said nothing. She found herself feeling breathless in the hot midday sun.

'Let's go inside.' She drew the maid away. 'I don't want her to see us watching.'

From the drawing-room window they observed the little girl lead Madden back to the terrace. At the bottom of the steps she halted and reached up her arms to him. He lifted her easily, and in a moment she had attached herself to him, winding her arms about his neck and pressing her cheek to his shoulder.

He stood still, as though stunned, then turned and slowly mounted the steps to the terrace. Helen Black well saw the tears on his cheeks.

'Oh, ma'am…' Mary said beside her.

The doctor moved away from the window.

'Mary, would you go and ask Cook to get Sophy's lunch ready?' she said. 'I'll bring her through in a moment.'

As soon as the maid had gone Helen Blackwell sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette. She felt drained of energy. She wanted to sit quietly and think.

But there was something she had to do at once, an urgent problem that needed solving, and after less than a minute she extinguished the cigarette, ran her fingers through her hair and went out on to the terrace to speak to Inspector Madden.

'She wants to send the child to Scotland? Och, John, I can't let her do that.'

'It might be the best thing, sir.'

They were sitting in what Mr Poole, the landlord of the Rose and Crown, called the snug bar, a panelled recess at the back of the taproom. He had set it aside for the use of the police. The main bar was shut — it was the middle of the afternoon — but they could hear the barmaid at work cleaning up. She was singing a song Madden remembered from the war.

K-K-K-Katy, my beautiful Katy,

You're the only g-g-g-girl that I adore…

'What will I tell the Yard?'

'What Dr Blackwell told me. It's her professional opinion. The child would be better off with her family — she still has a brother alive, remember — and also more likely to recover if she's away from here.'

Sinclair frowned discouragingly. 'You say her aunt and uncle are coming down from Scotland for the funerals?'

'Yes, on Friday. Dr Blackwell would like Sophy to go back with them.'

'The child hasn't said a word yet?'

'No, but Dr Blackwell thinks she will soon. Start speaking 'Well, then?' Sinclair raised his eyebrows.

'The doctor believes it's unlikely she'll talk about what happened that night. In fact, she may have blocked it out of her mind. Repressed memory, I believe it's called.' Madden paused. 'Dr Blackwell's already spoken to someone in Edinburgh — a psychologist — who could start treating the child right away.'

'Takes a lot on herself, your Dr Blackwell does.'

'Not mine, sir. Very much her own woman, I'd say.'

'Would you, now!' Sinclair snorted. 'Damn it, everything she says makes sense.' He took out his pipe and began to fill it. 'This doctor in Edinburgh…?'

'Another woman, sir.' Madden smiled. 'A Dr Edith Mackay. She had a full medical training and then studied to become a psychologist. Apparently she specializes in children. Sophy's aunt and uncle are only half an hour out of Edinburgh. She could see the child regularly.'

'Very well.' The chief inspector held up his hands in surrender. 'But if the girl says one word about what happened that night 'Her uncle will get in touch with the Edinburgh police immediately. Dr Blackwell promised that.'Sinclair lit his pipe. 'Anything else?'

'Only this.' Madden took two folded pieces of paper from his jacket pocket. 'Dr Blackwell gave Sophy a pad and some crayons and she started drawing straight away. Always the same thing, the doctor said.' He handed the papers to Sinclair who examined the childish scribbles. The same balloon and string design covered both sheets of paper with little variation.

'What does it mean?'

'Dr Blackwell has no idea. But she thought we ought to see it.'

The chief inspector handed the papers back. He said, 'I'm about to break the law. I'm going to ask Mr Poole to serve us a drink. Then I'll tell you what happened at the Yard this morning.'

'Like the curate's egg, it could have been better and it could have been worse.'

Sinclair set two glasses of whisky on the table in front of Madden. He shut the hatchway to the taproom, picked up his pipe from the ashtray and sat down.

'Parkhurst started off chairing the meeting' — Sir George Parkhurst was the Assistant Commissioner, Crime; effectively head of the CID — 'but he only spoke for ten minutes. Held forth on the undesirability of massacres in the Home Counties, pointed out that the words "police baffled" were already appearing in the press, and then handed everything over to Bennett.'

'That's good, isn't it?' Bennett was the Deputy Assistant Commissioner. He had a reputation for sharpness among detectives who'd come into contact with him.

'Up to a point.' Sinclair glanced sideways at Madden.

'Chief Superintendent Sampson was also present, and he'll be taking a hand in the investigation.'

'Sampson of the Yard?' Madden kept a straight face.

'You may find it amusing,' Sinclair said acidly, 'but take it from me, the man's a menace. I dare say he's already pictured the headlines. "Another Triumph For Sampson Of The Yard!"'

'They're not putting him in charge, are they?'

'Not yet — but he hasn't suggested it. He wants to sniff around a little first, get the feel of it. After all, other headlines are possible. "Sampson Of The Yard Falls Flat On His Face. Sampson Of The Yard Doesn't Know His Arse From A Pineapple."' The chief inspector looked wistful. 'He's playing it canny for the moment. He and Bennett will oversee the investigation, but it's still ours.'

He tapped out his pipe in the ashtray.

'I gave them a summary of our inquiries to date.

That we've no reason to suspect any local involvement in the murders. We think they were killed by an outsider. Norris, from Guildford, was there. He still believes more than one man was involved. Said the victims downstairs and Mrs Fletcher were almost certainly killed by different people. Sampson agreed with him.'

'Why did he do that?' Madden scowled.

'To create difficulties for us?' Sinclair shrugged.

'Who knows? I should warn you, he doesn't care for me. Wouldn't mind seeing me fall flat on my face. The point is, we're still officially searching for more than one man. So be it.'

He emptied his glass.

'But the important thing was, Bennett supported us on the bayonet theory. Over Sampson's objections, by the way — he said the medical evidence was inconclusive. Did you know there were more than sixty thousand soldiers in mental hospitals at the end of the war? Most of them shell-shocked, poor devils, but there must have been some of the other kind.

Bennett's going to talk to the War Office. We'll get a list of patients who've been released and start running them down. He'll also ask them to look into Colonel Fletcher's military service record. Did he have a run in with one of his men? Some deep-held grudge?' The chief inspector shook his head. 'Motive's still our main problem. I told them that. Revenge is a possibility, but this notion of an armed gang losing their heads and going berserk is pure balderdash, and Bennett knows it. Those killings were deliberate.'

At the coroner's inquest, held in Guildford the following day, verdicts of murder by person or persons unknown were returned in the case of all five victims. The coroner, an elderly man with red-veined cheeks and a drooping eyelid, spoke of the horror felt 'not only in Highfield, but here in Guildford' at the 'heartless, brutal murders of Colonel and Mrs Fletcher'.

'He seems to have forgotten about the maid and the nanny,' Sinclair remarked to Madden afterwards. 'Not to mention Mr Wiggins, the poacher.'

They were standing in the street outside the courtroom.

Madden nodded to the Birneys as they went by with a group of villagers, heading for the station. The public benches had been crowded.

Helen Blackwell had been one of those testifying.

She had arrived with Lord Stratton and a tall, silver haired man whom she seemed to resemble. Now she brought him over.

'Chief Inspector, I'd like you to meet my father, Dr Collingwood.' Sinclair shook hands. 'And this is Inspector Madden.'

Dr Collingwood told them he had been driving through France with friends when word of the murders had reached him. 'I thought I'd got over the shock, until I drove past Melling Lodge yesterday evening.'

He had the same dark blue eyes as his daughter, and he looked at her with concern. 'My dear, this has been harder on you than you realize. You seem quite worn out.'

It was true, Madden thought. She was paler than he remembered, tense and stiff-backed, and for the first time her manner with him was cool and distant.

'Don't treat me like a patient,' she scolded her father. 'Anyhow, my main worry's over now, thanks to Mr Sinclair.' She turned to the chief inspector. 'I can't thank you enough for agreeing to let Sophy go to Scotland.'

Sinclair tipped his hat to her and bowed. 'You should thank Inspector Madden, ma'am. He was a most persuasive advocate.'

Dr Blackwell looked at her watch. 'We ought to go. Sophy gets anxious if I'm away too long.'

Dr Collingwood moved off towards Lord Stratton's Rolls-Royce, which was parked nearby. Sinclair accompanied him. Dr Blackwell lingered.

'I almost forgot,' she said. 'Sophy keeps doing those squiggles. But today she produced something different.

Or, rather, it's the same, only bigger.'

She opened her handbag and took out a sheet of drawing paper. It bore a single, enlarged version of the smaller figures the child had drawn earlier.

'I can't think what she means by it.'

She gave the drawing to Madden, who studied it.

'It looks like a balloon,' the doctor said. 'But why does she keep repeating it?'

Madden stared at the drawing, frowning. 'Has she ever done anything like this before?'

'I don't think so. Mary says not. To tell the truth, I haven't the faintest idea what's going on in her mind.' Or yours, Inspector, Dr Blackwell thought, as she turned away and went off to join her father and Lord Stratton.

Walking briskly, briefcase in hand, Chief Inspector Sinclair threaded a path between the headstones and joined Madden where he was standing in a corner of the Highfield churchyard.

'Has something happened, sir?' Madden had been expecting him earlier — in time for the funeral service — but there had been a message from Scotland Yard to say the chief inspector would be delayed.

'Later, John.'

Sinclair nodded to Lord Stratton, who was with a small group of mourners making their way from the graveside. The sexton was already at work filling in the twin graves of Charles and Lucy Fletcher. A silent line of black-clad villagers filed through the churchyard gate.

'I've something to show you.' He hefted his briefcase.

Lord Stratton led one of the group aside, a lean, suntanned man with greying temples.

'That's Robert Fletcher, the colonel's brother,' Madden told the chief inspector. 'He and his wife came down from Edinburgh yesterday. They're going to leave things at Melling Lodge as they are for the time being. They want to get Sophy back with her brother as soon as possible.'

They watched as the two men crossed the churchyard to where a black-suited figure stood in the shade of a cedar tree. Madden recognized the florid features of Sir William Raikes, the Lord Lieutenant.

'I'd better go, too, and pay my respects to his nibs.'

Sinclair glanced at his companion. 'No need for you to trouble yourself, Inspector.'

Madden was glad to be left on his own. The funeral scene took him back to his youth. He'd been too young to remember his mother's death, but his father had perished in a barn fire when he was sixteen. The boy, home on holiday from the Taunton grammar school where he was a scholarship pupil, had helped to drag the body from the blazing timbers. The sight of the charred corpse, shocking to him then, now seemed like a foretaste of what had awaited him on the fields of northern France. His father had been buried in late summer. It had been a day like today.

Helen Blackwell's face, white beneath a veil, appeared before him. 'Inspector, I've come to say goodbye.' Her voice was strained. 'My father and I are going up to Yorkshire to stay with friends for a few weeks. I imagine you'll be gone by the time we return.'

Madden stared at her. Finally he spoke. 'Yes, we're moving out this weekend. The Surrey police will stay on for a time.'

'I hardly dare ask — have you made any progress?'

'Some…' He checked himself. He felt the need to be open with her. 'Hardly any, I'm afraid. It's a case where the answers aren't obvious.' He wanted to say more, to detain her further, but the words dried in him.

She smiled briefly and held out her hand. He felt her firm grip for the last time.

'Goodbye, then, Inspector.'

She rejoined her father. Madden followed her figure with his gaze as they left the churchyard together.

'It makes fascinating reading, doesn't it?'

Sinclair stood with his hands on his hips while Madden sat studying the typewritten pages. Both men had removed their jackets in the stifling heat of the snug bar.

'Good of Dr Tanner to let us know finally. A pity he couldn't have told us earlier. But, then, the government chemist is a busy man. It moves me to think that one day the police will have their own laboratory.

It moves me even more to know I haven't a hope in Hades of being alive to see it!'

'Tanner's sure about it being tobacco ash?' Madden asked.

'I put the same question to him. He said there's no doubt in his mind. He'll swear to it.'

'What made you look there?' Madden was curious, but not surprised. The chief inspector's meticulousness was legendary.

'The lavatory bowl was clean, but there seemed to be dust on the rim. Now that was strange, I thought.

The rest of the bathroom was spotless. So I took some scrapings and sent them off with the other stuff.'

'Colonel Fletcher didn't smoke, did he?'

'No, he gave up three years ago, on doctor's advice.

Nor did Mrs Fletcher.' Sinclair cocked his head. 'And somehow I couldn't see the upstairs maid sneaking a quick fag in the master's bathroom. No, it was our man, all right. He likes a cigarette now and again you'll see.'

' "Traces of blood in the handbasin and on the hand towel…"' Madden was reading from the chemist's report. ' "Blood group B…"'

'We were lucky there. Mrs Fletcher was the only one in the household with that group. It's quite rare.

He cut her throat and then washed and dried his hands.' Sinclair began to pace up and down the small room. 'He was in hell's own hurry coming in, but afterwards he had the leisure for a wash and brush-up.

Time for a smoke, even.'

Madden looked up. 'The robbery was a blind, wasn't it?'

'It's starting to look that way,' Sinclair agreed. 'Mrs Fletcher's jewellery case was lying open on the dressing-table.

He grabbed a few pieces. The same downstairs.

A brace of candlesticks, that clock off the mantelpiece in the study, Colonel Fletcher's shooting cups. Anything that shone or looked fancy. He should have thought a little while he was doing that. Put himself in our shoes.'

'What's he done with the stuff, I wonder?'

'Thrown it away?' Sinclair shrugged. 'I'll wager it won't turn up at the pawnbroker's. Not unless he's careless or greedy, and I've a nasty feeling he's neither.'

The chief inspector took out his pipe and pouch. He pointed with the pipestem at the file. 'And now comes the really interesting part. Read on, Macduff.'

Madden bent over the report again. Sinclair filled his pipe. From the taproom next door the sound of voices signalled the arrival of opening time.

'My God!' Madden looked up. 'Can we be certain of these times?'

'Reasonably so — Tanner's own words. I spoke to him on the telephone.' The chief inspector lit his pipe.

'It's a question of the moisture content of the tobacco.

Three of the cigarette stubs found by Wiggins's body were recent, no more than forty-eight hours old. Four had been lying there longer — up to three weeks.

Tanner's sure about those. It's the other six he won't commit himself on, except to say the condition of the tobacco suggests a longer period still. I tried to press him, but he wouldn't be pinned down. They could be many weeks old, he said, even months.'

'Months?' Madden grasped the implication at once.

'He must have sat there and watched them,' he said.

'Long before he did anything. There's a good view of the house and garden from where Wiggins was killed.

He must have come back to the same spot over and over…'

'And watched them… as you say.' Sinclair took his pipe from his mouth. 'I've no idea what we're dealing with here,' he admitted. 'But I know this much — we'll have to think again.'

Promptly at ten o'clock the following Monday morning, Sinclair and Madden were shown into the office of Deputy Assistant Commissioner Wilfred Bennett at Scotland Yard. Office space at the Yard was assigned on the basis of seniority, in ascending order.

The lowest ranks worked at the top of the building where they had the most stairs to climb. Bennett occupied a comfortable corner suite on the first floor with a view of the Thames and the tree-lined Embankment.

He was speaking on the telephone when they went in, and he motioned them to an oak table lined with chairs that stood by the open window. London was still in the grip of a heatwave and no breeze stirred the white net curtains. Coming to work that morning, Madden had sat on the upper deck of an omnibus, but even there he had found the air humid and stifling.

He thought with regret of the quiet upstairs room in the Rose and Crown, which he had occupied for the past week. Waking from tortured dreams he had sensed the countryside breathing silently around him, the woods and fields stretched out like a sleeping giant under the starry sky.

As Bennett hung up, the door opened and Sampson entered. The chief superintendent was in his mid fifties, a heavy-set man with brilliantined hair and a muddy complexion. He greeted Sinclair and Madden warmly. 'Another scorcher! And they say it's going to get worse.'

Madden had had few dealings with him, but he knew that the air of bonhomie was a front. Sampson's reputation at the Yard was that of a man whom it was wise not to cross.

Bennett seated himself at the table with his back to the window. His glance rested on Madden for a moment, taking in his hollow-eyed appearance. Sampson sat down beside him.

'Until this case is resolved, I intend that we should meet every Monday morning at this time to review the progress of inquiries and discuss whatever action needs to be taken.' Slight, no more than forty, with dark, thinning hair and a quick, decisive manner, Bennett was known to be one of the coming men at the Yard. 'Chief Inspector?'

'Since we last talked, sir, there have been some new developments. I'll run through them for you.'

Sinclair opened his file. Elegant in a dove-grey suit, he had the knack of looking cool on the hottest day.

'First, the footprint by the stream. Thanks to Inspector Boyce and the Surrey police, we've established that the boot that made it doesn't belong to anyone residing in Highfield. While we can't assume it was worn by the man we're seeking, there's a strong likelihood it was, and if it should prove to be his, it's almost as good as a fingerprint. You'll recall the sketch of the cast I showed you, with the wedge missing from the heel?'

Bennett nodded.

Sampson spoke. 'The "man"?' His small eyes, black as currants, were crinkled with puzzlement. 'I thought it was agreed at our last meeting that it's likely more than one person was involved.'

'Yes, sir, but as I said, there have been new developments.'

Sinclair regarded him blandly.

'Go on,' Bennett said.

'We've identified all the fingerprints lifted from Melling Lodge apart from three sets. One of them is a child's — we're assuming it belongs to the Fletchers' son, James, who was not in the house at the time of the attack. The other two have been sent to the Criminal Records Office. They're being checked now.

'On Friday I received from the government chemist, somewhat belatedly, the results of tests made on various items sent to him for analysis. In consequence, Inspector Madden and I have made certain deductions.

Qualified, of course. But disturbing none the less.'

He gave a brief summary of the chemist's report relating to the ash and blood traces found in the bathroom and the cigarette stubs retrieved from the woods.

'Sir, this man, and I say man,' he glanced at Sampson, 'because I cannot conceive that this crime was carried out by a gang or group of men, was in the neighbourhood of Melling Lodge many weeks beforehand.

He seems to have made repeated visits in order to observe the Fletcher residence. I'm increasingly inclined to view the robbery as a blind, an attempt to mislead us. I believe his sole intention was to murder the members of the household.'

Sampson spoke again. 'Pure supposition,' he said genially.

Bennett looked uneasy. 'There's a lot of theorizing in what you say, Chief Inspector-'

'And precious little evidence to back it up,' Sampson cut in. His tone was friendly, almost jocular.

'Come on, Angus, we don't know who smoked those cigarettes. We don't know whether one or more men broke into the house, and we don't know that they didn't panic in the middle of what started out as an ordinary robbery.'

'Strictly speaking, that's true, sir,' Sinclair agreed.

He seemed unruffled. 'And you're right. We lack hard facts. An eyewitness, for example. So far we've found no one who noticed anything amiss, or even out of the ordinary that day. I find it hard to believe that a gang of men could have moved in and out of the area without someone spotting them. But one man — now that's possible.'

Sampson pursed his lips, plainly unconvinced.

'Then, if it was a gang, shouldn't we have heard something by now?' Sinclair continued.

'Not necessarily. Not if they're professionals.'

'If they were professionals, sir, they would have done a better job of robbing the place.'

The chief superintendent's muddy complexion darkened. 'Are you finished?' he inquired.

'Not quite.' Sinclair turned to Madden. 'Inspector?'

Madden consulted his notebook. 'The Fletchers owned a dog,' he said. 'A Labrador. It died about three weeks ago, apparently of old age. In view of what Dr Tanner had to say about the cigarettes, I tried to get in touch with the local vet, but he's on holiday, in the Hebrides.

'However, I spoke to the Fletchers' gardener, Cooper, and he was able to tell me where he and the colonel had buried the animal. We dug up the remains on Saturday morning and I had them brought up to London for Dr Ransom to examine.'

'That must have made his weekend,' Bennett observed.

Madden's smile flickered briefly. 'He rang me this morning, sir. He found a heavy dose of strychnine in the dog's stomach. There's no doubt it was poisoned.'

'There's no doubt it ate poison,' Sampson interrupted in a tired voice. 'You're making assumptions again, Inspector.'

'Possibly, sir.' Taking his cue from Sinclair, Madden adopted a conciliatory tone. 'But I did speak to Lord Stratton and he assured me that his keepers are categorically forbidden to lay poison of any sort on his land.'

Bennett cleared his throat. 'All right, I've heard enough. From now on, unless we discover anything to the contrary, we'll proceed on the assumption that this is the work of one man.'

'As you wish, sir.' Sampson ran a hand across the slick surface of his hair. His face was expressionless.

'Now, I've been in touch with the War Office,'

Bennett resumed. 'They sent one of their people round, a Colonel Jenkins. He'd already looked into Colonel Fletcher's military record and found he was one of the most popular officers in his regiment. With all ranks — he made that point. As for our other request, he'll have a list of names of discharged mental patients ready for us by the end of the week.'

He rested his elbows on the table.

'No doubt you've all read the Sunday papers. The general opinion seems to be that we're in the dark, and for the time being I'm afraid we'll have to swallow that. We can hardly tell the public that a madman armed with a rifle and bayonet is roaming the countryside.

I'll put out a statement later about various lines of inquiry being pursued. Do you agree, Chief Inspector?'

'Yes, I do, sir.' Sinclair sat forward. 'But I'd like to add to what you've said. We must be careful at all times what information we put out. We've no reason to assume the man we're looking for doesn't read the newspapers. He'll want to know what we know about him. Let's keep him in the dark as much as possible.

Either you or I can speak to the press, when necessary.

Other officers should be directed not to discuss the case.'

'Very well. I'll so order it.' Bennett suppressed a smile. He stood up. 'That will do for now. We'll meet again next week. Chief Inspector, a word before you go…'

Bennett moved to his desk. The other men rose.

Sampson and Madden left the room. The deputy waited until the door had shut behind them. 'I take it that last remark was aimed at Mr Sampson.'

'Sir?' Sinclair looked mystified.

'I'm told the chief superintendent has many friends among the press.' Bennett sat down at his desk.

'Sampson of the Yard — isn't that what they call him?'

Sinclair thought it best not to respond.

'I'll issue an order as you suggest. But don't count on him obeying it. He's the senior superintendent in the force and he may not consider it even applies to him. He has, moreover… special connections in this building. You'd do well to remember that. We both would.' Bennett looked wry. 'In any case, it's not that that I want to talk to you about.' He sat back. 'Are you sure you've picked the right man to assist you in this case?' he asked bluntly.

This time the chief inspector's surprise was unfeigned. 'Madden's a fine officer, sir.'

'I don't deny it. Or he was…" Bennett held up his hand quickly. 'I know his history, Chief Inspector.

What happened to him before the war. His wife and child… I can't pretend to know what he suffered in the trenches, what any of them suffered, though it's plain to see on his face. But there's no point in beating about the bush. A lot of people think he was lucky to be taken back into the force at his old rank.' He glanced at Sinclair. 'I'm not one of them, incidentally.

But when I look at him now, he seems exhausted.

Burned out. So I ask you again — is he the right man?'

Sinclair took his time replying. 'I've known John Madden since he was a young constable,' he said finally. 'I picked him out because I thought he had the talent to make a good detective, and I was right.

It's an odd trade, ours. Hard work will get you only so far. There comes a moment when you have to be able to see through the facts, the mass of them that collect, to find what's important, what's significant.

Madden has that gift. I was bitterly disappointed when he decided to leave the force.' The chief inspector paused. 'With the bank holiday there weren't many names to choose from among those on duty, and Madden was the obvious pick. I've thought about it since. Whether I'd have chosen someone else if I'd had the opportunity. The answer's no, sir.' He looked straight at Bennett. 'I have the man I want.'

The deputy nodded his head briskly. 'That's plainly spoken,' he acknowledged. 'Let's hope you're right.'

A list of patients discharged from mental wards in Army hospitals, running into several thousand, arrived from the War Office three days later. It was delivered by Colonel Jenkins in person. He deposited the thick manila envelope on Sinclair's desk, but declined the chief inspector's invitation to sit down.

'I've been detailed to help you in any way I can. I thought we'd better meet.'

Even in civilian clothes, the colonel cut an unmistakably military figure in his sharply pressed trousers and Brigade of Guards tie. His manner was curt, with an edge of impatience, as though he thought his time could be better spent. Madden eyed him coldly.

'He's an old staff officer,' he told Sinclair, after the colonel had gone. 'It's written all over him. We didn't see much of them in the war. They never came near the front.'

Working out of Sinclair's second-floor office, Madden and Sergeant Hollingsworth began the lengthy task of breaking down the list of discharged patients into subsections to be sent to the various police authorities around the country.

'We'll ask them to find out if any of these men have a history of violence,' the chief inspector said.

'Though, given recent events on the continent of Europe, and the fact that they were all soldiers, the question seems redundant.'

Madden asked for Detective Constable Styles to be assigned to assist them. Sinclair was amused. 'I see you haven't given up on that young man yet.'

'He'll make a decent copper one day,' Madden insisted. 'He just needs standing over.' He glanced at the chief inspector. 'I seem to remember someone doing the same for me once upon a time.'

In another life, he might have added. The years before the war seemed far off now. He'd been a husband and father then, but that, too, was in a different world when he had been a different person.

The abyss of the trenches lay between.

On Friday morning, soon after they had gathered for work, the telephone rang. Hollingsworth answered it.

'For you, sir.' He handed the instrument to Madden.

'It's that constable in Highfield.'

Stackpole was waiting to greet him as he stepped off the train.

'It's a pleasure to see you again, sir.' He shook Madden's hand warmly. 'We've got him this time.'

The constable's broad, tanned face was split by a smile.

'Knowingly making a false statement, obstruction of justice. With any luck we can put the little weasel away for a spell.'

'Yes, but I want to know exactly what he saw that night.' They walked quickly down the platform towards the exit. 'Have you talked to Lord Stratton?

Can we use his car?'

'No need, sir.' Stackpole's smile flashed beneath his thick moustache. 'Dr Blackwell's offered to give us a lift.'

Madden stopped. 'I thought she'd gone to Yorkshire.'

'I should have gone to Yorkshire.' Helen Blackwell stepped out of the deep shadow of the platform shelter in front of them. She held out her hand to Madden. 'I would have gone to Yorkshire. But my locum managed to fall off a horse and break his leg and it's taken till now to find a replacement. He's due to arrive this afternoon.'

Remembering her pale face in the churchyard, he was pleased to see the colour back in her cheeks. She looked flushed in the bright morning sun. They went out of the station into the road. The Wolseley twoseater was parked in the shade of a plane tree.

'Meanwhile, as Will says, I'm going to Oakley. I have two patients to see there. I've a feeling they're the same people you want to speak to, but although I've used all my wiles on him, he refuses to tell me.'

'Now, Miss Helen!' Stackpole blushed bright red.

He left them to pull out the car's dicky and dust off the seat.

Dr Blackwell watched him, smiling. 'Poor Will. He kissed me once, when I was six and he was eight, and he doesn't know to this day whether I remember it or not.'

Madden burst out laughing, overcome by the pure pleasure of being in her company again.

She looked at him critically. 'You should do that more often, Inspector,' she said.

During the short drive to Oakley, Madden told her the reason he had come from London.

'So you got the story first from Fred Maberley?' She spoke over her shoulder to Stackpole, who sat crouched in the dicky, clutching at his helmet. 'He rang me, too. And then I had a call from Wellings. He seems to think his wrist's broken.'

'He'll have worse than a broken wrist by the time I've done with him,' the constable growled in her ear.

She glanced at Madden and smiled. 'I hope Fred wasn't too rough with Gladys.' Her gloved hands spun the steering-wheel and they left the paved surface for the dirt road that led to Oakley. 'He sounded shamefaced when he rang me.'

'Got what she deserved, that young lady,' Stackpole offered. 'What did she expect — going off to Tup's Spinney with a piece of trash like Wellings?'

'Shame on you, Will Stackpole. Just because Fred's her husband doesn't give him the right to hit her.'

'No, but…' Stackpole subsided in the dicky.

The single road through Oakley showed more signs of animation than on Madden's previous visit. Several women, weighed down with shopping bags, clustered in front of the village store. Further up the road, outside the Coachman's Arms, three men stood talking, their heads close together, like conspirators. Dr Black well parked in the shade of a chestnut tree growing on the lawn in front of the small church.

'Would it be all right if we saw Gladys Maberley first?' Madden asked her.

'Perfectly. From what I can gather, Mr Wellings is the more gravely injured of the two.' He hadn't seen her this way before. She was in a light, almost joyful mood. With a smile at them both she picked up her doctor's bag and walked off towards the pub.

Stackpole led the way to a whitewashed cottage at the end of a row of houses. The front door was opened by a broad-shouldered young man with blunt features.

He was dressed in rough farm clothes.

'Fred, this is Inspector Madden, from London. We'd like a word with Gladys.'

He muttered something inaudible. Head bowed, he led them into a small kitchen where the young woman with bobbed hair Madden remembered seeing with Wellings was sitting at a table. She had a cut lip and a blackened, swollen eye. The other eye was red and swimming with tears.

'Well, Gladys Maberley!' The constable removed his helmet. 'You look like you could do with a cup of tea.'

As the woman started to rise, the young man spoke for the first time. 'Let me, Glad,' he muttered. He busied himself with a kettle at the sink.

'This is Mr Madden,' Stackpole said. 'He's come all the way from London to talk to you, Gladys.' He put his helmet on the table and pulled out a chair for the inspector and another for himself. 'So tell us what you've been up to — and mind!' The constable wagged a warning finger. 'Don't leave anything out.'

Twenty minutes later they were standing outside the door of the Coachman's Arms. Stackpole was grinning with delight. 'I can't wait to see the look on his face, sir.'

Inside, the smell of stale beer lingered in the taproom. Wellings was seated with his right arm resring on a bar table. Dr Blackwell was at work, strapping his wrist in a tight bandage.

'Not broken, just sprained,' she said to them, as they came in. 'Mr Wellings will live to fight another day.'

'I want to lay a charge.' Wellings shook his other fist at Stackpole. 'Have you got that? He came at me with a shovel. That's a weapon in my book. Do you hear what I'm saying, Constable?'

'I hear you, Mr Wellings.' For the second time that day Stackpole removed his helmet. He had stopped grinning.

Helen Blackwell snapped her bag shut. 'I'll leave you now,' she said. She went out.

Wellings ran his fingers through his slicked-back hair. Stackpole spoke to him. 'You'll remember Inspector Madden?'

'Who?' Wellings looked over his shoulder and noticed the inspector for the first time. 'What's he doing here?'

'We'll ask the questions.' The constable sat down at the table.

'I'm not answering any questions until I hear what you mean to do about Fred Maberley.' Wellings looked defiant.

Madden seated himself. 'Two weeks ago you made a statement to Sergeant Gates. In view of what Gladys Maberley has just told us, I now realize that you failed to tell the truth on that occasion.'

'Says who?'

'Shut your gob, you piece of filth.' Stackpole spoke in an even tone. 'Just listen to what the inspector's saying.'

Wellings flushed. He glared at the constable.

'You knowingly made a false statement to the police. That constitutes an obstruction of justice, a serious matter at any time, but given the circumstances of the case we're investigating, exceptionally grave. You will very likely go to prison, Mr Wellings.'

'What?' He turned white. 'I don't believe you.'

'I will ask you now — what were you doing on the night of Sunday, July the thirty-first? I am speaking of the late evening, after the pub was closed.'

Wellings licked his lips. His glance strayed to the bar. 'You wouldn't have a fag, would you?' he asked.

Madden took out his cigarettes and placed them on the table with a box of matches. He waited while Wellings lit up.

'Gladys and I' — he took a long pull on the cigarette — 'we went to Tup's Spinney.' He blew out the match.

'What time?'

'About half past eleven, maybe a little earlier.'

'Where was Fred Maberley?'

'Asleep.' Wellings's smile flickered and went out.

'While you were there did you see or hear anything?'

Madden asked.

Wellings nodded. 'A motorbike. Just after we got there. It went past us through the fields.'

'In which direction? Away from Upton Hanger?'

Wellings nodded again.

'What make of motorcycle? Did you notice?'

He shook his head.

'What did you see?' Madden persisted.

Wellings puffed on his cigarette. 'When I heard it, I got up and went to the edge of the trees. I thought it might be someone else coming to the spinney. You know…' He grinned knowingly at Madden, but received no sympathy from the inspector's glance.

'There was a moon up, I saw it clearly. A motorbike and sidecar.'

'A sidecar — you're sure of that?'

'Yes, I'm sure. At first I thought there was someone in it, you know, a passenger, but then I saw there wasn't.'

Madden and Stackpole looked at each other.

'Let me get this clear,' the inspector said. 'There was something in the sidecar?'

'That's right — a shape. That's all I could see. Like I said, at first I thought it was a passenger. But it just didn't look right, not for a person. It was too low.

There wasn't much showing over the rim of the sidecar.'

'How fast was it travelling?'

'Not fast. He was watching for the ruts.'

'He? You saw the rider?'

Wellings shook his head. 'Just his shape. Big bloke.

He was wearing a cloth cap. That's all, Mr Madden, I swear. It was only for a few seconds, then he was gone, heading back towards the road.'

Madden stared at him. 'You could have told us this two weeks ago,' he said.

Wellings said nothing.

The inspector stood up. 'Stay here.' He signed to Stackpole and the two of them went outside into the road. The constable filled his lungs with fresh air.

'I suppose he'll get off now, the little bastard.'

'Not at all.' Madden shook his head firmly. 'No bargain was struck. We're going to charge him. But don't tell him that yet. Get his statement first. Then tell him, but leave it for a few days. He may remember something more.'

Stackpole's grin returned. He took out his notebook.

'Before you go back in, I need a telephone.'

'There's only one in Oakley, sir, at the post-office counter. That's in the store. You'll have to go through the Guildford exchange.'

Five minutes later Madden was connected with the Scotland Yard switchboard. He caught Sinclair on his way out to an early luncheon appointment.

'We need to get the Surrey police on to this, sir.

They'll have to go over their tracks, question the same people in the same villages. On this side of the ridge, at least.'

'But now we've something specific. A motorcycle and sidecar. A big man in a cloth cap. Well done, John!'

'We've Stackpole to thank, sir. He doesn't miss much.'

'I'll be sure to mention that to Norris when I speak to him. What was he carrying in the sidecar, I wonder?'

Madden thought. 'Assuming he had a rifle with him, he wouldn't want to cart it around in the open.

Perhaps a bag of some kind?'

'Hmmm…' The chief inspector mused. 'It was after eleven when Wellings saw him. Say he quit Melling Lodge around ten o'clock, what was he doing for the next hour? It wouldn't have taken him that long to get back to his motorcycle.'

They fell silent. Then Madden spoke: 'I'll be back in a couple of hours, sir-'

'No, you won't, John. There's nothing we can do from here at present. You need a break. Take the weekend off. I'll see you at the office on Monday morning.'

'But I think I should-'

'Inspector!'

'Yes, sir?'

'That's an order.' Sinclair hung up.

Coming out of the shop, Madden saw Helen Black well sitting in her car in the shade of the chestnut tree. Two women stood with folded arms chatting to her, but they moved off as he approached. She accepted, with a smile, his offer of a cigarette. When he bent over to light it, he caught a whiff of jasmine, reminding him of the evening he had gone to her house.

'I don't know whether it's unusual,' he began, 'but you are the first woman doctor I've met.'

'Not unusual at all. Twenty years ago there were barely a dozen of us in the whole country. Of course, the war helped.' She drew thoughtfully on her cigarette.

'It's terrible to say that, but it's true.' She glanced up at him with a smile. 'My grandfather was a gentleman, you know. That's to say he did nothing.

When Father came down from Cambridge and said he wanted to be a doctor the old boy nearly had a fit. He thought it was almost as bad as going into trade. And the funny thing was, Father was just the same. "You can't," he said. "You're a woman." But we got over that.'

Sunlight filtering through the chestnut leaves touched her hair with gold. He already regretted the moment of their parting. He wondered if he would ever see her again.

'I took over the practice after the war. Most of the villagers seem happy enough with the change. That is, apart from one or two.'

She was smiling broadly and he saw she was looking at Stackpole as he approached from the direction of the pub.

'How's my patient, Will?' she called out.

'Sicker than when you saw him, Miss Helen.' The constable tapped his jacket pocket. 'I've got his statement, sir, signed and sealed.'

'We think the man we're after came through here on a motorcycle,' Madden explained to her. 'It's a start.'

'Don't wait for me, Miss Helen,' Stackpole said.

'Are you sure, Will?'

'I've still got Gladys Maberley's statement to write out, and then I want to have a word with Fred. Get him calmed down. The post van will be through in an hour. I'll get a lift back to Highfield.'

Madden shook his hand. 'Good work, Constable.

You'll get those statements off to Guildford?'

'First thing in the morning, sir.' He touched his helmet and was gone.

Madden walked around to the passenger side. She reached over and opened the door.

'You don't have to go back to London right away, do you?'

It sounded more like a statement than a question, and Madden shook his head.

'Come back to the house and have lunch with me.'

She smiled at him as he climbed in and then, unaccountably, laughed.

'What is it?' he asked. And when she didn't reply, 'Why are you laughing?'

'I'm ashamed to tell you.' She started the car. 'I was thinking about my locum falling off his horse.'

She seated him in the arbour on the terrace with a glass of beer.

'I'll be back in a minute.'

Madden looked out over the sunlit garden at the woods beyond, rising like a green wave. The heat of the day was still building. He sipped his beer. It was a moment of peace, rare in his life, and he wanted to arrest it and clasp it to him: to stop time in its tracks.

He heard a noise and looked round, expecting to see her. But it was Mary, the maid. She was carrying a wicker hamper and a plaid blanket.

'Good afternoon, sir.'

'Hullo, Mary.'

She smiled at him and put down the basket with the blanket on top of it, then went back inside the house, but returned in a moment with a pair of cushions.

'I thought we'd have a picnic'

Helen Blackwell stepped from the doorway on to the terrace. She had shed her skirt and blouse of the morning and was wearing a cool chemise-type dress of white cotton. Her hair, freed from the ribbon she used to tie it back, lay on her shoulders. Madden saw that her legs were bare.

'Thank you, Mary,' she said to the maid. 'That will be all.'

She picked up the cushions and the blanket. Madden assumed the burden of the hamper. Together they went down the steps from the terrace. As they started across the lawn the black pointer he remembered from his first visit rose from a pool of shadow beneath a walnut tree and joined in the procession behind them.

They reached the orchard at the bottom of the lawn and passed beneath plum trees heavy with sun-ripened fruit. The buzz of wasps sounded loud in the dappled shade. A stone wall marked the boundary of the garden. She opened the gate and let him through, then closed it quickly before the dog could follow them.

'Not you, Molly.'

The animal whined in disappointment.

'Stay!' she commanded, without explanation. She smiled at him. 'You can't come on a picnic dressed like that. At least take your jacket off.'

He did as she said, then stripped off his tie as well and draped both garments over the green wooden gate.

They were close to the edge of the shallow stream.

On the other side, the woods came down almost to the water, but where they were a carpet of meadow grass extended for a short distance downstream. He followed her until their way was blocked by a thicket of holly bushes.

'This is the tricky bit,' she said. She slipped off her shoes and stepped down from the bank into the stream. 'Be careful, the stones are slippery.' She moved slowly through the ankle-deep water, holding the cushions and blanket in a bundle above her head.

When she was past the bushes she climbed up on the bank again.

Madden took off his shoes and socks and put them on top of the hamper. He rolled up his trousers and stepped down into the cool water. She was waiting on the bank, hand outstretched, to take the basket from him.

'I used to come here with my brother, Peter, when we were children. It was our secret place.'

They were on a small patch of grass enclosed by bushes. Close to the bank, water-lilies tugged weakly at their stems in the faint current of the stream.

'He was the pilot, wasn't he?'

'You remembered…' Her deep blue gaze brushed his. 'That was such a terrible night. All I could think of was how we'd been young together — Lucy and Peter and David and I — and now they were all dead.

And then I looked into your eyes and saw that you must have been in the war, too, and I couldn't stop thinking about all those dead… the ghosts we live with.'

He wanted to speak, but could find no words, and he looked away.

She studied his face for a moment, then began to spread the blanket and cushions on the grass. Madden retrieved his shoes and socks. About to put them on, he was arrested by the sight of her sitting beside him. She was leaning on one hand, her legs tucked to the side, looking down, her face hidden by the fall of thick, honey-coloured hair. In the stillness that enveloped them the whirr of a pigeon's wings sounded loud overhead. Not knowing what to do or say, he unfastened the sleeve of his shirt and began to roll it up.

'Shrapnel.' She spoke, and he felt the touch of her fingers on his forearm where the scars were spread like strewn coins.

'I worked in an Army hospital for a year. I know all the wounds.' Her fingers stayed on his skin. Her touch went through him like fire. 'And that scar on your forehead…' She took her hand off his arm and raised it to his head, sliding her fingers under the lock of hair that fell across his brow and running them gently across the skin. 'That's most likely a shell fragment, too.'

Madden began to tremble. Her face was close, but their eyes didn't meet. Her glance was fixed on his forehead. He saw a faint line of sweat on her upper lip and the golden hairs on her forearm. He put his arm around her waist, clumsy, unsure of what he was doing, but when he bent to kiss her, her hand went from his forehead to the back of his neck and she pressed her lips to his, meeting his tongue with hers, kissing him deeply.

She drew him down and in a moment they were lying stretched on the blanket, side by side. He could feel his heart racing, the blood drumming in his ears.

Then she moved again, pulling him over her until she was on her back and he was above her. They continued to kiss. When he put his hand on her hip she caught it with hers and held it and then brought it to her stomach and pressed it there. He began to fumble with her dress, but she reached down herself and drew it up and then took his hand again and brought it to her bare stomach at the top of her pants and guided it down inside them. He felt the stiff curly hair and then the wetness.

She reached for him, and he broke their kiss to tear open his trousers. When she took him in her hand he groaned. She let go of him to push at her pants and he joined his hand with hers and together they stripped them off her. She spread her legs to receive him and cried out when he entered her.

He never knew how long they were together. To him, it seemed only moments, and then his body was shaken by spasms and he felt her bucking and reaching for him. She cried out again.

They lay together, unmoving. In the silence he heard a blackbird call in the woods across the stream.

Her breathing, hot in his ear, slowly abated. His weight lay on her, crushing her, he thought, but when he sought to shift it she held him imprisoned in her arms.

'Stay with me,' she pleaded, and they lay together.

Her thighs held him fast, both slippery with sweat.

Finally she relaxed, sinking under him, and he moved and lay alongside her. She turned her head so that her face was close to his and when he kissed her she responded, bringing her hand up to his cheek, stroking him. He looked down at her body. Her long legs, one bent over the other, were flushed in the sunlight. Moisture shone in her dark golden bush. He could smell his semen mixed with their sweat. He was close to tears.

'John…?' Her eyes were open, she was smiling at him. 'Your name is John, isn't it?' Her soft laughter in his ear gave him the release he needed and his laughter joined with hers. 'Oh, God! I wasn't sure I had the nerve… and you wouldn't speak.'

'Speak?' At first he didn't understand. And then, when he did, he couldn't tell her that he had never imagined such a scene. Had never pictured himself lying in her arms, lying between her legs. That he no longer thought of his life as holding such possibilities.

'I knew it that first night. It was awful, I suddenly found myself wondering what it would be like to… make love with you. And then I remembered poor Lucy lying there with her throat cut and Charles and the others and I couldn't believe I was thinking that.'

She was silent, looking away. Then she turned her head and smiled into his eyes. 'They talk about the demon rum, but I think it should be the demon sex.'

He put his arms around her. She rested her head on his chest. A light breeze stirred the bushes around them, bringing relief from the heat. 'After the war, after Guy was killed, I had an affair with a man. I needed someone. But I found it didn't work, I didn't really care for him, and I had to stop it…'

Madden thought of his own barren life. But he couldn't bring himself to speak of it. Instead, he asked, 'There's been no one since?'

She laughed softly against his chest. 'How did St Paul put it? Marry or burn?' Then her brow creased and she looked up at him. 'Oh dear, I never even asked, I just took it for granted — you're not married, are you?'

He shook his head. 'I was. But it was years ago.' He needed to tell her. 'We had a child, a little girl. They both died of influenza. It was before the war.'

She held him in her steady gaze. 'I saw that when you looked at Sophy. I didn't know what it meant. She knew… she felt something. The way she went with you…'

She kissed him and then released herself from his arms, sitting up and covering her legs as she did so.

She ran her fingers through her hair.

'I must pull myself together. My new locum will be here in an hour and I have to get him settled in.

Then Lord Stratton's giving me a lift to London. I'm spending the night with my aunt and catching the train to Yorkshire tomorrow morning.'

She smiled down at him.

'You were laughing earlier because the other one fell off his horse,' Madden said. 'Why?'

'If he hadn't, you and I wouldn't be here now.'

'But that was before…' He was amazed.

'Yes, but I knew this was going to happen.' Her eyes held his. 'Are you shocked?'

He drew her down to him.

She said, 'I never even gave you any lunch. There's still time.' He felt her breath on his lips. 'Or we could make love again. Though I don't know… can we?'

Smiling, she slipped her hand between his legs and took him gently, like a bird, in her folded palm.

'Oh, yes…'

They left the hamper with the blanket and cushions by the garden gate.

'I'll get Mary to collect them later. I haven't the strength now.'

She watched, smiling, as he put on his tie and jacket, and then they walked arm in arm through the dappled shade of the orchard until they came in sight of the house, when he started to pull away from her.

She kept his arm in hers and drew him into the shade of the weeping beech, near the side gate.

'I'll be away for a fortnight.' She kissed his cheek.

'When I get back I'll find some excuse and come up to London.'

He watched her turn and leave, the pain of loss already sharp in him. He was afraid she would soon start to regret what she had done. That the next time he saw her it would be only to hear excuses and embarrassed explanations.

As though she had read his mind, she turned and came back to him. 'Hold me for a moment.'

He wrapped his arms about her and they stood like that. Then she drew back and kissed him full on the mouth.

'In two weeks,' she said.

Madden awoke in terror, thinking he was under shellfire, and then lay sweating in the darkness as the rumble of approaching thunder grew louder.

His sleep had been tormented by a familiar nightmare, a racking image that dated from the first time he had been wounded when he had lain in a casualty clearing station and watched an Army surgeon, his white smock drenched with blood, saw off the leg of an anaesthetized soldier. Awake, Madden could recall the surgeon completing the operation and tossing the shattered limb into a corner of the tent with other amputated fragments. In his dream the bloodstained figure kept sawing and sawing while the soldier's mouth stretched wide in a soundless scream.

Peace returned to his mind with the memory of Helen Blackwell's kisses and the feel of her body pressed to his. Along with the throb of renewed desire came a yearning for the anchor of her calm, steady glance.

The room where he awoke was the same one he had used before in the Rose and Crown. He had returned to the village intending to catch a train to London.

Instead, either on a whim or because he could not tear himself away, he had spoken to the landlord, Mr Poole, and fixed to spend the night there.

During his hours of sleeplessness an idea had come to him — he'd been thinking of his childhood, and days spent in the woods with his friends — and after breakfast he walked up the road from the pub to the village shop, where Alf Birney, tonsured and aproned, greeted him from behind the counter.

'We thought you'd all gone back to London, sir.'

His voice held a hint of reproach.

'We'll be back and forth, I expect.'

'You haven't caught any of them yet, have you, sir?'

'Not yet, Mr Birney.'

Madden bought half a loaf of bread, a tin of sardines and a packet of biscuits. Coming out of the store he was hailed by Stackpole, who was walking by. 'I didn't know you'd stayed on, sir.'

'It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. Mr Sinclair gave me the weekend off. There's something I want to do.' He looked at the constable, bronzed and smiling under his helmet. He felt a warmth for this man who had kissed Helen Blackwell. 'Are you busy today?'

Stackpole shook his head. 'Saturdays are usually quiet. We've got the wife's sister and her brood coming over at lunchtime. Now, if I could find a good excuse to get away…' He grinned.

'Let's walk along,' Madden suggested. 'I'll tell you what I have in mind.'

Stackpole listened carefully while he explained.

'I see what you mean, sir — he didn't care about tossing his cigarette stubs around so if he'd eaten anything there we ought to have found some traces.

Maybe a tin or a crust or an empty packet.'

'More than that,' Madden admitted. 'We haven't put this about, but we're fairly sure he kept coming back to the woods over a long period so that he could watch the Fletchers.'

'And I never knew it!' The constable looked grim.

'No fault of yours,' Madden hastened to assure him.

'He must have taken good care not to be seen. I think Wiggins only came on him by chance.'

'Still, I see what you mean, sir. He might have had some other spot up there. A hide, or a lair.'

'How well did the police search the woods?'

'Search?' Stackpole's snort was contemptuous. 'They just tramped around, flattening things. They gave up after four days, and none too soon, if you ask my opinion.' He raised his hand in greeting to a pair of men sitting on a bench in the forecourt of the pub.

'Tell you what, sir. If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to get out of my jacket — you could do the same — then we could go up there and take a look around.'

They walked on until they reached the Stackpoles' cottage near the end of the village. While the constable got ready, his wife sat with Madden in the small parlour. A plump, curly-haired young woman with a deep dimple, she seemed unawed at finding herself in the presence of a Scotland Yard inspector.

'Just you see you get home in good time, Will Stackpole,' she called through the doorway. 'There's the lawn needs mowing, and the baby's chair's broken again.' To Madden, she said, 'You've got to keep after them.'

The constable came in in his shirtsleeves carrying a brown-paper packet. 'I see you bought some things at the shop, sir. I've got a few bits myself. We'll have enough for a bite of lunch.'

'What's this, then?' his wife inquired of the ceiling.

'A picnic in the woods?'

She missed the inspector's deep blush.

A uniformed constable sent from Guildford was on duty outside Melling Lodge, but Stackpole said there wouldn't be one there after the weekend.

'We'll just lock up the gates, and I'll keep an eye on the place. Mr Fletcher will come down from Scotland to see what needs doing. The Lodge will go to young James, I'm told, but that won't be for years.

Can't see anyone wanting to live there. Not for a while, anyway.'

Water still sprayed from the fountain in the forecourt.

The Cupid figure, bow drawn, cast a shadow on the white gravel at their feet. Madden noticed that the ivy clothing the walls of the house was freshly trimmed.

'Tom Cooper's been told to keep up the garden,'

Stackpole informed him. 'Poor old Tom, he hates having to come here now. This was a happy house.

Anyone in the village will tell you that.'

They walked down the terraced lawn to the gate at the bottom of the garden and crossed the stream on the stepping-stones. A rumble of thunder broke the stillness of the morning. Clouds like hewn marble darkened the sun.

Madden paused at the foot of the path. 'Now, my idea is, if he laid up anywhere it wouldn't be on this side, towards Lord Stratton's land and his keepers, it would be in the other direction.' He pointed west along the ridge, away from the village. 'Let's climb up a bit, then look for a way across.'

All along the length of the path the ferns and undergrowth on either side had been trodden down.

'That lot from Guildford, they just spread out in a line and walked up the hill,' Stackpole said, in disgust.

'Then, when they got to the top, they spread out some more and came down again.'

'How much of the woods did they search?' Madden was sweating freely in the stifling heat.

'No more than a mile across. The keepers scouted around a bit, but they didn't find anything.'

Two-thirds of the way up the slope they came to a track branching to the right, and Madden took it. The trampled undergrowth continued for some distance, then the ferns sprang up again and the forest seemed to draw in on them. The inspector kept his gaze on the ground ahead, though the footpath showed no sign of recent use. The narrow track was littered with dead twigs and leaves.

Thunder boomed, louder than before. The air was close and still. Stackpole swatted a midge. 'You can't see more than a few yards,' he complained, his glance probing the bushes on either side of them.

'Look for a broken branch,' Madden advised. 'Anything that seems disturbed.'

The path began to descend and they came to a natural bowl in the side of the hill, circled by a ring of lofty beech trees. The track went around it, resuming its straight course on the far side. Taking a short cut, the two men walked across the shallow depression. Successive generations of dead leaves had given the surface a soft, yielding quality, and midway across Madden was assailed by a sudden sharp memory of a trench, springy with bodies like a mattress, and the eyes of dead men staring up at him. These fragments of a past he had tried to forget came without warning, often accompanied by dizziness and a feeling of vertigo, and he hurried to regain the footpath.

'How far have we come?' He saw that Stackpole was looking at him with concern, and realized he must have paled in the few seconds it had taken them to cross the bowl.

'More than a mile, I'd say, sir. Dr Blackwell's house is below us.' He pointed down. 'You can see it from further on.'

Lightning crackled in the darkening sky, followed almost at once by a loud peal of thunder. A sudden gust of wind brought a shower of leaves and twigs from overhead.

'Let's find some shelter,' Madden suggested.

A short distance along the path they came to another clearing where a huge sweet chestnut stood.

The spreading branches, decked with graceful leaves shaped like spearheads, provided ample protection from the fat raindrops that were starting to fall.

'Good place to stop for a bite, sir.' The constable was still anxious about his companion.

'Why not?'

They settled down under the tree. Madden peeled back the top of the tin of sardines. Stackpole sliced bread with his pocket knife. The constable had brought two bottles of beer with him. They ate and drank, sitting comfortably with their backs against the deeply scored trunk, while the sky at first grew darker, and then brightened. By the time they had finished eating the sun had come out again, but at that moment it began to rain in earnest and they sat in the shelter of the great tree and watched the drops falling like a shower of golden coins through the sunlight.

'It won't last,' Stackpole predicted with the assurance of a countryman, and after a minute he was proved right. The rain ceased. Perversely, however, the sky began at once to darken again and the thunder continued to roll.

Madden had been thinking. 'I don't believe he'd have picked a spot too far from Melling Lodge. Can we find a path to the top of the ridge? I'd like to have a look around up there.'

'We passed one a quarter of a mile back.'

Gathering the remains of their lunch, they set off again, retracing their steps. Lightning flashed, followed by a detonation of thunder. Madden increased his pace, striding out along the path. They had come to the circle of beeches where the footpath bent like a bow, and this time the inspector followed it, avoiding the bowl of leaves. The dusty track had darkened in colour with the earlier shower. Madden's eyes were fixed on the ground ahead of him. Suddenly he halted.

'What is it, sir?' Stackpole hurried forward.

'Stay where you are!'

The constable stopped in his tracks. He stood rooted.

Madden crouched down. On the damp earth in front of him, fresh as a newly minted coin, a footprint had appeared. The heel had a piece missing. His eye skipped swiftly past it and he saw others. They were coming in his direction. He looked over his shoulder at the path behind him: his own footsteps showed in the damp dust, but no others.

'Sir, what is it?'

'Quiet!'

Madden looked to his left: there was only the circle of beeches with the empty bowl at their centre. To his right the slope rose steeply to a line of ilexes, their leaves blowing silver and green in the gusting wind.

A dense growth of holly filled the spaces between their trunks, forming an impenetrable screen. As he stared at the thicket a familiar sound came to his ears, borne on the breeze: the oiled click of a rifle-bolt being drawn back.

'Down!' he roared. 'Get down!'

Madden dived to his left, where the nearest beech tree stood, and as he did so the silence exploded.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

The shots came in rapid succession and the ground beside Madden's head erupted as he rolled frantically towards the tree. Another shot rang out and a chunk of bark as big as a fist struck him in the face. Next moment he was safe behind the massive trunk.

He looked back and saw the constable lying flat on the path, his face white and shocked. 'Move!' he yelled. 'The trees!'

Galvanized by the command, Stackpole rolled over.

The earth where he had lain leaped into the air as the sound of two further shots coincided with a loud crack of thunder. The constable scrambled to his hands and feet and plunged behind a tree trunk.

Madden counted in his head: six. He looked around him. He was near the edge of the bowl, but where he was it was shallow, only inches deep. Stackpole was luckier. A few paces from where he crouched behind the tree, the floor of the depression was at least a couple of feet below the rim. Madden's experienced eye skipped from the row of ilexes to the lip of the bowl, working out angles of fire. His terror of a few moments ago had been replaced by a familiar numbness.

'Will!' He used the constable's name, speaking in a low voice. 'Can you hear me?'

'Yes, sir.' The hoarse whisper barely reached him.

'Stay behind that tree, but move back into the dip behind you. When you're there, get down on your stomach and crawl around the edge. Be sure to keep yourself pressed up tight against the side. Don't worry, he won't be able to see you from where he is. When you get to where the path straightens, stand up and run like hell!'

Stackpole was silent.

'Will?'

'I'm not leaving you, sir.'

'Don't be a damn fool.' His officer's voice came back to him easily. 'Do as I say. Now!'

The constable began to back away from the tree trunk. When he reached the edge of the bowl he slid down into the depression and began to crawl on his stomach, away from Madden, back the way they had come. Another shot rang out and bark flew off the side of the tree where he had been crouching.

Seven. A Lee-Enfield rifle held ten rounds in its magazine.

His mind cold, Madden waited for the inevitable to happen. Soon now the man would descend from the screen of holly to hunt them down. When that happened, he planned to spring to his feet and run along the path in the opposite direction to Stackpole, splitting up the available targets. He knew their attacker was expert with a bayonet. Whether he was also a marksman was something he would discover in the next few minutes. Still in the grip of the numbness that had taken hold of him after the first shots, Madden viewed the prospect with a fatalism bordering on indifference.

Thunder echoed, further off now. Then he heard another sound: the smashing of undergrowth. It came not from the line of ilexes but from higher up the slope. Taking a gamble, Madden sprinted across a dozen feet of open ground to the next beech tree in the circle. Pressing his body to the trunk, he waited for the answering shot. None came.

Again he heard noise, more distant now. He peered around the tree and caught a glimpse of a figure high up, near the crest of the ridge.

'He's moving!' he shouted. 'I'm going after him.'

Madden flung himself at the slope, tearing through the waist-high ferns, forcing a path through the dense undergrowth. Skirting the barrier of holly bushes, he came on the path left by his quarry, a line of snapped branches and flattened ferns leading up the hill, and he followed it. Stackpole's shout sounded behind him.

As Madden neared the crest the underbrush thinned and the ground became slick with pine needles.

Emerging from the straggling firs he saw the figure of a man running along the top of the bare ridge half a mile away. He was carrying a bulky object slung across his shoulder.

'I'm coming, sir…' Stackpole's voice was close, and a moment later he joined the inspector red-faced and gasping.

Wordlessly, Madden pointed. They set off in pursuit.

The line of the crest was uneven, broken by bumps and hollows, and twice they lost sight of their quarry as the ground dipped, only to see him again toiling up the next rise. Then he changed direction suddenly, veering off to the right, and when they reached the spot they found they were at the top of the path that ascended the ridge from the fields around Oakley. The hamlet lay beneath them surrounded by the broad sweep of farmlands.

The cough and stutter of a motorcycle being kicked into life sounded faintly.

'Blast!' Madden sank to his haunches.

'There he goes!' Stackpole started down the path, but the inspector called him back.

'It's no use. You won't catch him.'

They watched as a motorcycle and sidecar emerged from the treeline below and moved slowly along the rutted track through the cornfields. The rider, hunched over the handlebars, did not look back.

Madden cupped his hands like binoculars over his eyes. 'See what you can make out. Anything at all.'

The constable copied him. They crouched in silence.

'Cloth cap,' Stackpole panted. 'Just like Wellings said.'

'Black bodywork on the sidecar. What make of bike is that?'

'Harley-Davidson… I think. Hard to be sure from here. There's something in the sidecar, sir. Could be a bag.'

Madden stood up. 'I've got to get down to Melling Lodge and ring Guildford. I want you to stay here.

We have to know what road he takes when he reaches Oakley. As soon as you're sure, come down to the house.'

'Yes, sir.' Stackpole's gaze was riveted to the valley floor.

Madden turned and went plunging down the steep hillside.

Blue uniforms milled in the forecourt of Melling Lodge. To the chief inspector, as he stepped from his car, it seemed as though the scene of two weeks before was being re-enacted. The familiar form of Inspector Boyce materialized from the pale shadows cast by the limpid evening light.

'Sir.' He shook hands with Sinclair. 'We've been in touch with the Kent and Sussex constabularies.

There'll be officers on the look-out for him all over the south-east.'

Sinclair spied Madden's tall figure approaching.

'John?' His voice held a note of concern.

'I'm fine, sir.' They shook hands. 'Not a scratch. He missed us both.'

Sinclair looked at the two men. 'Any chance of him heading north or west?'

'It doesn't seem likely,' Madden replied. 'Stackpole saw him take the Craydon road. That rules out God aiming and Farnham to the west. If he passed through Craydon he'd come to the main road between Guildford and Horsham. He could have turned north there, but they're watching for him in Guildford. So either he turned south, towards Horsham, or he kept going east to Dorking and beyond.'

'That's assuming he sticks to the main roads,'

Sinclair felt bound to point out.

'Quite, sir. If he knows the back roads…' Madden shrugged.

'And he could cut up to London, if he wanted.'

'I don't think so.' The inspector shook his head.

'He's a country man.' Then he shrugged a second time. 'I'm guessing,' he admitted.

Boyce coughed. 'We've something already, sir.

Three witnesses saw him ride through Oakley this afternoon, two women and a man.' He took out a notepad. 'Same basic description. Big fellow in a brown jacket and a cloth cap. One of the women thought he had a moustache. Brown hair, she said.

About the bike, the women just saw a motorcycle and sidecar, but the man — he's a young chap called Maberley — he said it was a Harley, no question. There was a brown leather bag in the sidecar, the top of it was sticking out. Maberley saw that — he was interested in the bike, so he looked hard. Said the bag was like a cricket bag.' He checked his notepad. 'Oh, and the sidecar's painted black or dark blue.'

'And what do we have up there?' Sinclair asked Madden. He nodded towards the woods of Upton Hanger.

'A big hole that's been filled in, Stackpole says. He went up again and found it in a thicket above the path, well hidden.'

Madden explained how he'd stopped to examine the footprints. 'He must have seen us from above and realized we'd picked up his tracks. It's possible he recognized Stackpole as being a policeman.'

'How so?' the chief inspector asked.

'We know he's spent time in the woods, but he might have been in Highfield, too. If so, he'd know the village bobby by sight.'

The constable, like Madden, still in his shirtsleeves, appeared before them. 'I've got hold of a couple of spades from the toolshed, sir,' he said to Sinclair.

'We're ready when you are.'

Boyce looked at his watch. 'Nearly seven.' He called to one of the uniformed officers. 'Bring some flares from the van. We're going to need them.'

It took them forty minutes to reach the circle of beeches. From there Stackpole led the party up the hillside, past the line of ilexes, to an area dense with holly and tangled brush. Earlier, the constable had discovered a way into the thicket, a narrow entrance made to resemble an animal's track and masked by dead branches. The men had to crawl in one at a time.

Sinclair and Madden were the last to enter. The chief inspector had lingered at the bottom of the slope to examine the beech tree where Madden had sought cover.

'A narrow shave,' he observed, running his fingers over the bullet-gouged trunk. 'You must have had some anxious moments, John.'

Madden recalled the eerie calm that had possessed him. It was a throwback to his time in the trenches, and the realization sent a chill through him.

The mound of earth discovered inside the thicket was about ten feet long at its base and in the rough shape of a triangle. Some soil had already been shifted and lay in a heap beside it.

'Looks like he was digging it up when you disturbed him,' Boyce remarked, dusting off the knees of his trousers. 'What's he got down there, I wonder?

Not another body, I hope!'

The answer wasn't long in coming. The first constable detailed to dig struck a metallic object with the first thrust of his spade. He bent down and hauled out a silver branched candlestick from the loosened soil. A few seconds later a second was uncovered. Then three silver cups were unearthed, all bearing inscriptions noting that 'Captain C.S.G. Fletcher' had won them in target-shooting contests. They were found beside a rolled-up cloth, which contained a collection of jewellery comprising a garnet necklace, two gold rings, seven earrings — only four matched — and a locket on a golden chain.

Lastly, a mantelpiece clock, mounted in Sevres china, was pulled from the clinging soil. The porcelain was cracked and a piece was missing.

'That's all that was on the list,' Boyce commented.

Under the canopy of trees it was rapidly growing dark and Sinclair gave the order for the naphtha flares to be lit. Thrust into the ground at intervals around the site, the naked flames brought an air of ceremony to the grim proceedings, as though some blood sacrifice was being offered to the deities of the forest.

The digging continued, with the officers working in pairs now, jackets shed and sleeves rolled up. Six feet down the spades struck another obstruction. This time the object proved harder to dislodge, but eventually a broad strip of corrugated iron was uncovered and passed up. Brushed clean and laid out on the ground, it became the receptacle for a variety of other items retrieved from the loose earth near the bottom of the hole: a piece of tar soap, a length of two-by four, several wooden slats, cut to measure, numerous cigarette stubs, a piece of bacon rind, a bottle of Veno's cough medicine, a half-eaten jar of cherry jam, empty tins of Maconochie's stew.

One of the diggers handed up an earthenware jar.

'What's that for?' Boyce wondered aloud.

'Rum.' Madden spoke from the shadows. 'A half gill unit. Standard issue.'

Sinclair glanced at him. The inspector stood on his own in the shadows, away from the flickering light.

His face was expressionless.

The two men working in the pit handed their spades up and began climbing out.

'I reckon that's all, sir,' one of them said to Boyce.

'Wait!' Madden came forward and peered down into the hole. 'I want all that loose soil cleared out, Constable. Back you go.'

Boyce started to say something, but the chief inspector held up his hand to silence him.

The two constables resumed their labour. Madden stood over them while they shovelled earth out. After a few minutes, he said, 'Right, that'll do.' He helped the pair out and then jumped down into the pit himself. 'Let's have one of those flares over here,' he said.

It was Sinclair himself who brought it over. The others gathered around. The excavated hole was in the shape of a blunt T, the two arms branching out only a little beyond the thick central trunk, where Madden was now standing. He pointed behind him to the head of the T where a broad step had been cut into the back wall.

'That's where he slept,' he said. 'Those wooden slats are for duckboards, to keep the floor dry, and the piece of tin is for the roof He came forward. 'And this is a firestep.' He mounted a low projection at the foot of the T, bringing his head and shoulders up over the lip of the trench. 'What we have here is a dugout.'

'Like in the war, sir?' The question was Stackpole's.

'Like in the war.' Madden's voice was scored with bitterness. 'That muck you see — the soap and the stew and the rum — it's what they had in the trenches. Even down to the cough medicine — we used to live on the stuff.'

He looked up at Sinclair. 'I'll tell you what he did, sir. He took a swig of rum, the way we used to before an attack, and then he went down there and blew his bloody whistle and charged into that house and killed the lot of them. And that's not all-' Madden pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper which he handed up to the chief inspector. 'Do you remember those drawings Sophy Fletcher made? This is another one.'

Sinclair held up the paper to the light. The men gathered around, peering over his shoulder.

'That's a gas mask,' Madden said. 'When he broke in he was wearing one, and that's what the child saw — some goggled-eyed monster dragging her mother down the passage. It explains why she hasn't said a word since.'