Madden raced up the hill, peering into the woods on either side of the path, looking for any sign of life in their dark depths; listening for any sound. In an agony of mind at the thought of the savage act that might be taking place within a stone’s throw of where he was, under cover of the deepening dusk, he called out the girl’s name as he ran.
‘Nell… Nell…’
He was hoping to disturb her assailant if they were near, but tormented by the fear that he was already too late: that the horror he had come on at Brookham was even now being re-enacted.
Out of breath by the time he reached the top of the hill, he paused, heart pumping, to take in the wide sweep of country beyond whose outlines were still visible in spite of the dying light.
Before him, the path ran straight as an arrow down the slope, heading for the distant Downs, themselves hidden from view by the clinging mist. To his left were the lights of a village, which he took to be Oak Green, and to his right, some distance off the path, and separated from it by a hawthorn hedge, a farmhouse with darkened windows. Nothing stirred in the fields: the countryside seemed deserted.
He set off again, jogging down the hill, looking left and right, but after only a few steps he paused, arrested by the sight of an object lying on the path ahead of him. It was some way off still, but he could just make out its white shape in the gathering dusk. Gripped by a sense of foreboding, he ran flat out down the slope, but even before he reached it he knew that his fears had been realized.
Gasping, he picked up the white school hat with its characteristic ribbon. The elastic beneath the brim was broken.
‘Nell!’ In desperation he shouted out her name again. ‘Nell!’
There was no answer. But in a silence broken only by the sound of his own heavy breathing, he heard a faint noise coming from the other side of the hedge and realized after listening hard for several moments that it was a dog’s whine.
‘Who is it? Who’s there?’ He called out again, and this time was rewarded by a bark.
Madden tore at the hedge, which at first seemed impenetrable, until he discovered a gap in the dense foliage nearby. Plunging through it, he found himself in an apple orchard; beyond was what looked like the brick wall of a kitchen garden. It had a gate in it.
Again he heard the dog’s whine, this time mingled with a man’s groan. It was coming from the garden. Madden raced across the orchard and went through the open gate, almost tripping and falling as his foot caught on something. Looking back, he saw a hand reaching up and realized that a man was trying to drag himself out of an old compost pit beside the path. A dog crouched by the lip, whimpering.
‘Wait!’
Madden turned to help him, and as he hauled the man from the pit by his arms he saw that his head was wet with blood. But it was his stomach that he clutched as Madden laid him groaning on the ground. Distressed by the scene, the dog, an old Labrador bitch, growled and bared her teeth.
‘There, now…’ Madden calmed her, and then drew her to lie by the injured man, who was still holding his stomach. Pulling open the old army greatcoat he wore, Madden discovered a spreading stain on his shirt.
‘Lie still,’ he urged him.
But the man tried to resist, pushing himself up. ‘Not me… not me,’ he gasped, struggling to rise, while the dog whined beside him. ‘Nell!’ He pointed across the garden. ‘Nell!’
‘Where?’ Madden looked in the direction indicated. He could see nothing. ‘What’s he done with her?’
In a fever to go on, he hesitated. He felt he couldn’t leave the injured man. Tearing off his coat, he tried to lay it on the prone figure. ‘Keep still,’ he pleaded with him. ‘You’re bleeding.’
But the man wouldn’t heed him. ‘Not me,’ he repeated, desperation turning his words into a cry. ‘Nell… Nell…’ His finger continued to point. Madden saw the anguish in his face.
‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘I’ll find her.’
Springing to his feet, he raced across the garden and came to another gate, also open. Beyond it was a large stableyard backed by a farmhouse: it was the same one he’d seen earlier from the crest of the ridge.
Breathing heavily, he halted for a moment at the edge of the cobbled space to look about him. Darkness had fallen in the last few minutes, but he was still able to make out a line of stalls to his right, facing the house. Further off, at the very end of the yard, a barn was visible, its lofty roof silhouetted against the moon that was rising behind it. There was no sign of life in any of the buildings.
About to run on, he hesitated, disturbed by something he had sensed rather than seen, a change so slight he was not sure at first whether it wasn’t something he’d imagined. The perception had occurred at a moment when the darkness in the yard had seemed to deepen, and as he peered narrow-eyed into the blackness before him he saw what it was: there was the faintest suggestion of illumination coming from inside the barn, a vertical sliver of light at the point where the doors met, so thin it hardly seemed to be there at all.
He leaped forward, sprinting across the yard, his footsteps ringing on the cobbles. Reaching the doors, he hauled the heavy wooden sections open and saw a glow of light coming from the far end of the cavernous structure.
‘Gaston Lang!’
Madden roared out the name at the top of his lungs.
‘Show yourself!’
Striding forward between piles of hurdles lining the barn on either side, he called out again.
‘Lang! Gaston Lang!’
Wanting only to stop what might be in progress beyond the dark, canvas-covered shapes he could see in front of him now; not caring if he alerted the man he had come for, he moved swiftly, hoping to surprise him nonetheless with the speed of his approach. Seeing a way through the heaped objects in front of him he took it, peering from side to side, but taking no other precaution in his haste to reach the back of the barn where the light was brightest.
He came to a tall shape from which the canvas had been thrown back and saw it was a wardrobe. The lighted area at the back of the barn was just beyond and he paused as he reached it, wary now. The illumination, he saw, came from an oil lamp hanging from a nail in one corner above a heap of straw. His gaze swept the area. He saw an old washstand and a wicker basket filled with farm implements; near it was a pony trap standing with the shafts upraised.
Of Lang and his victim there was no sign.
Or so Madden thought, until his glance returned to the lamp and he saw the mirror leaning against the wall beneath it. Reflected in the glass was a sight that brought a cry to his lips.
‘Oh, God!’
Half hidden in the hay the body of a girl lay sprawled. The skirt of her gymslip had been pulled up baring her thin white legs.
‘No!’
He ran to her side, and, crouching, felt for her pulse. It throbbed faintly against his fingertips. He caught a whiff of anaesthetic on her shallow breath.
‘My poor child…’
Her face had been turned away from him as she lay and he saw it was undamaged. When he reached to pull down her skirt he found her white pants in place and the sight of them brought tears of relief to his eyes. Covering her legs, he stooped to take her in his arms, glimpsing his own face in the mirror above as he did so – and then behind it the shocking sight of a half-naked figure that sprang out from the open door of the wardrobe with arm upraised and launched itself across the short space that separated them.
With a cry, Lang struck.
But Madden had seen the hammer descending, and he flung himself to one side, avoiding the blow by a hair’s breadth, letting the force of it carry his assailant stumbling past him into the hay where he lost his footing and fell forward, striking his head against the mirror, cracking the glass. Dazed and bleeding from the forehead, Lang dropped the hammer, and the time it took him to retrieve it, burrowing in the hay, gave Madden the few seconds he needed to scramble to his feet. As his attacker turned with arm upraised to strike again, he closed with him, catching hold of his wrist with one hand and with the other seizing him by the throat, and then, with his fingers sunk deep in the other’s flesh, shaking him savagely, like a rat, from side to side, the rage that possessed him so great he could readily have torn his head from his shoulders.
Lang struggled to fight back. He was naked to the waist, his body slippery with sweat and with the blood that ran down from his forehead, and he clawed at Madden’s arm, seeking to break the iron grip on his throat, striving to free his hand so that he could strike with the hammer again. But his strength was no match for his adversary’s and gradually, choking from lack of breath, he sank to his knees in the straw.
Quickly, Madden shifted his position, bending the wrist he was holding up behind the other’s back. The hammer Lang held was now trapped between them, and Madden let go of his throat and caught him once more around the neck in a lock with his free arm. Kneeling behind him, he saw their faces side by side in the mirror, his own flushed and straining, Lang’s bloody and twisted with pain.
‘Let go.’
Breathless himself from the struggle, Madden growled in his ear, but his words had no effect. Lang’s only response was to jerk his head back savagely, seeking to catch his antagonist unawares.
‘Drop it, I say.’
He tightened his grip on the other’s wrist, twisting it further.
The face in the mirror glared at him, and Madden increased the pressure, bringing a cry from his captive’s lips.
‘Let go, or I’ll break your wrist.’
He hoped for some sign of surrender. None came. When their eyes met in the mirror, Lang bared his teeth in a snarl.
With a wrenching jerk of his hand, Madden made good his threat. The snap of sinews breaking was echoed by a piercing scream. The hammer dropped from Lang’s nerveless fingers and he collapsed face down in the straw.
His thoughts now all for the child who lay unmoving behind him, Madden paused only long enough to pick up the hammer and hurl it into the shadows behind him. Quickly checking Lang’s body for other weapons, he found a small sheathed knife in one of the pockets of his trousers and he threw it after the hammer. Feeling safer in his mind now, he stumbled over to where the girl lay and bent to gather her in his arms. But he found the task beyond him. Weakened by the struggle he’d just been through, he could only wait, kneeling in the straw beside her, and hope that the trembling in his limbs would stop and his strength would return.
The sound of movement behind him made him look round and he saw that Lang had rolled over and was lying on his back staring up at the lamp which hung from the wall above him. His breath came in hoarse gasps and he was muttering to himself, but in a foreign language which Madden could make no sense of. He bent over the girl once more and this time managed to lift her clear of the straw mattress on which she’d been laid. Summoning up his strength, he was on the point of clambering to his feet, when he became aware that something was happening behind him. He glanced round and saw that Lang had got to his knees. Like a wounded animal he was resting his weight on one arm, while the other hung limp. His pale brown eyes gleamed yellow in the lamplight.
‘Stay where you are.’ Unsure what the other intended, Madden made his meaning plain. ‘Don’t come near us.’ He felt no pity for the broken figure. But he shrank from the thought of inflicting further injury on him.
While he was speaking Lang had straightened slowly and now he was kneeling upright, resting on his heels. A red welt at his throat marked the place where Madden’s hand had gripped him; below it, spread across his chest, his birthmark showed plain. Bright strawberry in the lamplight, it mingled with the blood that had run down from his forehead. Seeing the state he was in, Madden spoke again.
‘It’s over, Lang. The police will be here any minute. They know who you are and what you’ve done. It’ll go easier with you if you give yourself up.’
His words brought no immediate response. The yellow eyes remained fixed on his. Sensing the hatred in their pale depths, Madden braced himself for whatever might follow. He watched as the other man licked his bloodied lips.
‘C‘est fini, tu dis?’
The muttered words were barely audible and before Madden had properly registered them, Lang’s expression changed. A grin appeared on his face. Ghastly as a death’s head, it flickered across his features. He bared his teeth.
‘Bien, alors…’
Without warning, and with a sudden convulsive movement, he reached up behind him and unhooked the lamp from the nail where it hung. Using the momentum of its descent, he whirled it around like a plane’s propeller… once… twice… and then, with no pause in the movement, hurled it against the back wall of the barn near to where Madden crouched with the girl in his arms. As the glass shattered, his cry pierced the darkness.
‘C‘est fini!’
At the same instant the hay burst into flames.
With only a moment to react, Madden flung himself from the spot, clutching the girl to him. Together they rolled across the barn, away from the roaring inferno which the piled hay had become in seconds. Fuelled by the spilt oil, the fire pursued them, carried by the straw strewn on the floor. As Madden staggered to his feet he saw the nearest piece of canvas go up in flames and then all was hidden in a cloud of billowing smoke. With only his sense of direction to guide him he stumbled towards where he knew the doors must lie, running at once into a densely packed mass of objects covered in canvas which he’d supposed were there for storage and which formed an obstacle course through which he tried to find a path, holding the girl’s body close to his, trying to shield her face from the smoke that already filled the barn and from which he knew they must quickly escape; or succumb to.
The fire itself followed close behind them, and a piece of burning wood falling from the roof beside them served as a warning that it would not be long before the whole structure came down on their heads. But the approach of the flames proved a blessing, too, bringing light as well as blistering heat, and with their help he was able to find his way to the broad corridor he remembered and to stumble between the lines of stacked hurdles already on fire through the wide open doors and out into the stableyard.
Into the blessed, blessed night.
Reeling, his head spinning, coughing up smoke and spit, Madden staggered away from the burning building, and as he did so the sound of raised voices came to his ears and he saw a party of men, one of them with a lamp, issue from the kitchen garden. Only when he spotted the burden they were bearing among them and noticed the dog shuffling in their wake did he remember the man he’d helped from the pit. So long ago, it seemed. Several of the group were already running across the cobbles towards him: he recognized the dark-browed foreman he’d spoken to. But all that was consigned to some distant past.
‘Is she safe?’ Harrigan’s voice rang out above the others. ‘Have you got her? Is that the lass?’
They crowded around Madden to peer at the girl, but he could find no words with which to reassure them. A great tiredness had come over him, he wanted to lie down and sleep. But he knew he could not do so as long as the child was his to care for, and he was struggling in his mind with this conundrum – how to resolve it – when his thoughts were interrupted by a sound, sudden and shocking, like the scream of an animal in pain.
‘What in God’s name…?’
Harrigan swung round, the others with him. Looking back towards the burning barn they saw coming through the doors, staggering, spinning around like some demon conjured from the fiery depths, a shape consumed by flames. Blazing like a torch, it came across the yard towards them, weaving from side to side, hardly human, but still shrieking in agony until all at once the sound ceased and the figure collapsed in a smoking heap from which the stench of burning flesh arose, rank and pungent.
Shocked into silence, the men stared. It was Harrigan who found his tongue first.
‘Is that him?’ he asked.
Madden nodded. He was swaying on his feet now. ‘Do something… help him if you can.’
But he turned from the sight himself and moved as quickly as his stiffening legs would take him away towards the line of stalls, where the injured man from the garden had been borne, and where a light already burned. He had felt the girl stir in his arms a moment before and knew he must spare her any further horror.
The others lingered, several of them trying vainly to bat out the flames that continued to lick at the now smouldering corpse.
But not for long. Having watched their efforts for a minute or so, standing to one side, not lifting a hand himself, Harrigan called a halt.
‘Never mind that,’ he growled. ‘One of you fetch some water. Bring it up to the stalls. It’ll be needed.’
He cast a last glance at the smoking remains, shapeless now in the darkness.
‘Let the bastard burn.’