by Alex Walters
'It's not that. It's just I'm conscious Spooner's likely to interrupt us before very long.'
'I'll tell you properly later. But what you need to know is that Paul's little brother vanished.'
'Vanished?'
'In the first summer of the war. The hot summer. We used to go out to try to see the fighters going over, the three of us. One day, while out with some other friends, we managed to lose Gary, Paul's brother.'
Winterman had registered that Spooner had detached himself from the doorway and was heading in their direction. 'What happened?'
'We never knew exactly. Gary dawdled behind. We were chatting, hadn't realised he wasn't there. Then we couldn't find him. Paul never forgave himself.'
'What's this got to with Paul's disappearance?' Winterman nodded to draw her attention to Spooner's approach.
'I don't know. Maybe nothing. Paul had a thing about this for a long time. It's what drew him to the police force. But he's not talked about it for years. But then I thought – these bodies. Paul might have seen a chance to find out something. To find out what happened to Gary.'
'Anybody mind if I break up this jolly social occasion?' It was Spooner, standing watching them from some feet away.
'Sorry, sir. Mary was just explaining the list of addresses she's brought.' He waved the diary vaguely towards Spooner, his palm concealing its real nature.
'I hope it's useful bloody information,' Spooner said. 'Pardon my French, madam.' He bowed slightly towards Mary.
Winterman glanced at Mary. 'I'm sure it will be. You can give me the rest of the detail later, Mary. I'm sorry. There's a lot to do.'
'I hope we've not brought you out of your way,' Spooner said to Mary.
'I live in Framley. I couldn't get into the office today. That's why I thought I'd make myself useful and bring this up to the inspector.'
'Very commendable,' Spooner said. 'Researched it at home, did you?'
Mary said nothing, and Winterman made a mental note that there was a danger of underestimating DS Spooner.
'Come on, Winterman,' Spooner went on. 'Time to see what Pyke's got to say for himself.' He peered up at the leaden sky. 'All very well for you youngsters, but I'm sick of this bloody snow.' He turned and furnished them both with a broad but mirthless smile. 'Still, change is on its way, eh, so they say?'
Part II
March, 1947
Chapter 52
The sound of the rain woke him again.
He lay for a long time, his eyes open, staring into the darkness, listening to the sound. The rhythmic beating on the roof, the clattering of the spray against the window, the roar of the water along the gutters, spewing into the down spouts.
Endless noise. His body held as if in chains.
It was the dream again. The recurrent dream that seemed to lead him a little further forward each time. The dream that ended with him chasing Sam through the sodden undergrowth, trying to reach his little boy before–
It took him a moment to realise he was awake, that he had been awake for some time. He rolled over, expecting the cushioned silence of the snow-covered world.
It was raining.
He could still hear it. The pounding on the roof, the spray on the window, the echo of the water in the guttering.
Winterman dragged himself from under the bedclothes and stood upright, the lino cold under his feet. It took him a moment to locate the paler grey of the window, and he stumbled towards it, banging his shoulder against the unexpected solidity of a wardrobe.
He stopped and blinked, trying to regain his bearings. Everything seemed skewed, a world shifted on its axis.
He wasn't home. He was in the guest bedroom at Mary's house. The room was smaller, more cluttered, differently laid out.
But it was still raining.
Baffled, he made his way cautiously across the room and pulled back the curtains. The room looked out on to the Fenlands at the rear of the house, across the narrow road and the dyke where the child's body had been discovered. Gradually his eyes grew accustomed to the dark and he discerned the shapes that comprised this flat landscape.
And it was raining.
The snow still lay thick across the fields, but there were already bare patches where the shallower snow had begun to thaw. If the downpour continued, the snow would not survive for long, perhaps not even till morning.
It was hard to believe. The snow had been there for weeks and had seemed as if it might stay forever. It was vanishing though almost as rapidly as it had first arrived. On that, at least, Spooner had been right.
The interview with Pyke had been a tiresome business as Spooner tried to trick, cajole and finally threaten Pyke into admitting his guilt. Pyke, for his part, stuck to a relatively straightforward exposition of the facts. He refused to acknowledge his homosexuality on the grounds that, first, it was nobody else's business and, second, there was no reason to incriminate himself. For the moment, he was simply a witness doing his best to help the police with their enquiries. If they wanted to arrest him, they should go ahead and do so. But the core of his narrative – he had come downstairs and found Merriman's body out in the garden – remain unchanged.
Eventually, after close on two hours, Spooner had called it a day. He knew his threats to arrest Pyke lacked credibility. They might in due course be able to gather sufficient evidence to arrest and charge him, but all they had was circumstantial. The examination of the body and the crime scene had revealed little. The weapon was an undistinguished hunting knife. Carson had shrugged. 'The kind of thing most farmers would have around here. Just a practical tool.' There were no fingerprints on the knife, and Pyke claimed never to have seen it before.
'We ought to check whether it matches the weapon used to kill Fisher,' Winterman said. It occurred to him that they could ask Pyke, but that hardly seemed appropriate. They could check the files back at the office.
'It'll be difficult to be certain,' Carson pointed out. 'A lot of damage was done to the wound there. It may not be possible to draw any firm conclusions about the exact nature of the weapon, though I could exclude plenty of options. I'll set out all the detail in the report. Don't know if it'll help you much though.'
The footprints had been checked. There was another set, mingled with Pyke's, leading from the body to the front of the cottage, potentially supporting Pyke's version of events.
'Maybe he had an accomplice,' Spooner had suggested doggedly.
Few of the footprints were clear and none was firm enough to take an imprint, but they had attempted to sketch the design of the sole. There were, as Pyke had reported, car tyre marks leading from opposite the cottage back to the main road.
'Something fairly large,' Winterman said. 'With tyre chains.' The tread was unclear though, and it was impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions.
'Nothing that gets us very far then,' Spooner had confirmed, morosely. 'Tomorrow we start all the usual stuff – interviewing the neighbours, such as they are. Try to track down whatever car this was. In this weather, someone ought to have spotted it.'
'Assuming anyone was out to spot it,' Winterman said.
'And in the meantime we have to let Pyke go, but we keep close tabs on him.'
That had been largely it. Spooner had detailed a uniformed officer to keep an eye on Pyke's flat, but even he had little expectation that it would lead to anything. Spooner and his team had headed back to town, with a schedule of interviews arranged for the next day.
Winterman and Hoxton had been left standing at the front of the cottage. It was the mid-afternoon, early March, but the sky was leaden and it felt as if evening was already falling.
'With all due respect,' Hoxton said, 'I suspect that DS Spooner has no more idea than we have.'
'With all due respect, I think you're right.'
'And what about Marshy?' Hoxton raised the question that was on both of their minds.
'I don't know. I've been telling myself that there must be some simple explanation, but I don't know
how long I can keep believing that.'
'Marshy's always been a bit of a law unto himself, shall we say?'
They were walking back through the heavy snow towards the car. 'How do you mean?'
'Not exactly a loose cannon. He's always been good at the job. Dependable and all that. But he gets bees in his bonnet.'
'What sort of bees?' Winterman thought back to his brief conversation with Mary.
'All kinds of things. Takes the job too seriously if you ask me. Never been one of my problems.'
'You think he could have gone off on some frolic of his own?'
'It's possible. That's all I'm saying. He forgets that this is a job like any other. You do it as well as you can but you don't let it take over your life.'
Winterman was fumbling for the car keys. 'How do you mean?'
'It's like this.' Hoxton was standing on the far side of the car, peering over the high roof. 'In the job, you do your best to catch villains. You do your best to prevent crime or to solve crime when it's happened.'
'Hard to argue, George.'
'But you don't let it get to you, do you? If some villain gets away, that's life. You win some, you lose some. I put it behind me, and make damned sure I do my best to catch the bugger next time around.'
'That's the only way,' Winterman agreed. 'Anything more and you drive yourself bananas.'
'Have a word with young Marshy about that. He lets it get to him. It eats away at him. As if he's got some divine mission to put these villains behind bars. When it doesn't happen, he gets more and more frustrated. Won't let it lie.'
'Doesn't sound particularly healthy.'
'I don't want to overstate it. But he's conscientious. Where most of us would give up, he carries on. We had a case a few months back – petty breaking and entering. We'd fingered a couple of youths we thought were behind it but couldn't get the evidence to convict. I'd more or less thrown in the towel. It was hardly worth the effort for what they'd stolen. But Marshy kept at it. Went round all the pawn shops and second-hand outfits tracking down every last useless ornament, getting witness statements about who'd sold what. In the end, he got together enough of a case to get them convicted.'
'Sounds impressive.'
'Oh, it was. It's just a bit – disproportionate.'
'But that's the nature of the job. Most of what we do's a waste of time. But you never know in advance the parts that aren't.'
'I know that. But when Marshy gets the bit between his teeth, he tends not to let go.'
Winterman unlocked the car door and climbed into the driver's seat, leaning over to unlock the passenger door. He had been making light of Hoxton's comments, but the echo of Mary's words was enough to give Winterman concern.
'So what do we do about Marsh then?' he asked, as Hoxton flopped down into the seat beside him.
'What can we do? I mean, short of a fully-fledged search party. We haven't got any clue where he might have gone. All we can do is wait. Either till he reappears or till we're really sure he's missing.'
Expressed in those terms, it sounded a cold-blooded strategy, but there was no obvious alternative. 'I take it we want to stay close to home though?'
'Up to you, guv. But I'm staying here, if that's all right with you. Brain'll put us up at the station for another night, I'm sure.'
'I was thinking I'd see whether Mary can put me up again.' Before Hoxton could start jumping to any conclusions, he added, 'She said she wanted to talk to me. When she came across this afternoon. She said that she and Marsh are close. Grew up together.'
'Aye, that's right. Didn't you know? Cousins. That's one reason we wangled her the job in the office after her husband died.' He paused. 'What's she been told?'
'Not much. Brain told her we didn't know where Marsh was.'
'Brain by name and Brain by nature. But he weren't to know, I suppose.'
'Tell me about Mary.' Something in Hoxton's tone had attracted Winterman's attention.
'We're a bit protective of her, I suppose. She's been through a lot. It hit her hard when her husband was killed. Hardly surprising. Struggling to make ends meet. Two little kiddies. Then that happens. And, like I said, it wasn't even what you might call a heroic death. You couldn't even tell yourself he'd died for a purpose. She took it bad.'
'Bad in what way?'
Hoxton gazed at him for a moment, as though contemplating Winterman's motives. 'I don't exactly know what you'd call it. Delusional, I suppose. Convinced herself the death wasn't an accident. Reckoned someone had killed him deliberately.'
Winterman was slowly manoeuvring the car back on to the road. 'Why would anyone do that?'
'Because he was on to something she reckoned. Something he was looking into.'
'What sort of something?'
'She didn't know or wouldn't say. The whole thing was supposedly pieced together in her mind from bits and pieces Jim had said after he got back from Dunkirk. She reckoned he'd got some idea he wouldn't talk about. And that was why he was killed.'
'You didn't think there was anything in it?'
'What do you think? I mean, we took her seriously enough. But the truth was she had nothing to go on. When we asked her what it was that Jim had said to her, even she couldn't say for sure. It was all chat that her fevered imagination had pieced together into something more.' He eased himself back in the leather seat, warming to the story. 'I'm no trick cyclist, guv, but it's not difficult to see how she might have wanted it to be true.'
'Then at least he wouldn't have died for no reason?'
'Something like that. But she wouldn't let it rest. Kept banging away at it. Wrote letters to anyone she could think of. Chief Constable. Her MP.'
'Hamshaw?'
'Hamshaw. Very polite, I recall.'
'Every vote counts.'
'Aye, and the poor bugger needed every one he could lay his hands on in '45. Though I bet Mary's wasn't one of them. She got completely wound up in it. Had a decent office job in town but she gave that up. Her mam was tearing her hair out.'
'But Mary came through it?'
'Thanks to her mam, mainly. That and the kiddies. I think she realised that if she carried on, it was the kiddies who were going to suffer. That got through to her in the end.'
They could see the sparse lights of Framley ahead, pale in the overcast afternoon. 'You think she's still vulnerable?'
'She's been through a hell of a lot.'
'Marsh's brother?'
'You know about that then?'
'Mary told me this afternoon.'
Hoxton leaned forward, frowning. 'This afternoon? When she came across to see you. That's what she wanted to talk about?'
'Yes, that and Marsh's disappearance.'
Hoxton was staring out of the window, watching the flat fields, featureless under the snow. 'I don't feel good about this. I don't feel good at all.'
'In what way?' Winterman could see ahead the row of cottages that included Mary's house. Beyond that, the squat overgrown church tower was black against the lowering sky.
'It sounds like how she was before. Making a big deal about nothing. Making connections where none exist.'
'But Marsh's brother did die.'
'So I understand. But there was nothing mysterious about it. He drowned.'
They pulled into the roadside next to Mary's house. 'Drowned how?'
'This is all second hand. I didn't know either of them in those days, but these stories carry fast in these parts. It was that hot summer of 1940. Mary must have been about fifteen, Marshy a year younger. All the kids used to go out to try to see the aircraft going over. They cycled up to some gravel pits up north of the town to go swimming. Always dangerous, them places – a lot deeper than they look. There was a bunch of them. Gary was eight or nine. By all accounts a bit of a tearaway. They'd been swimming, were cycling back when someone noticed Gary was missing. He'd not come out with the rest of them or he'd gone back in, no one was quite sure. But they reckoned it was just like Gary to go off on his own, ta
king some stupid risk. Drowned in the gravel pit.'
'They found his body?'
'No. But them things are bloody deep. They tried to dredge it, but found nothing. Mind you, they hadn't got the manpower then to do things properly.'
'So no one knows for sure he drowned?'
'What else? If he hadn't, they'd have found the body. Got cramp or something and got pulled under. Wouldn't be the first. Marshy never forgave himself, and Mary took it hard as well. But it weren't no one's fault, other than Gary himself. I don't like the idea that Mary's harping on about that again. She was just a girl. Mind you, she's grown up quickly. It was only two or three years after that she met Jimmy, home on leave. Not much longer after that before she was married and widowed. That takes your childhood away pretty smartish.'
Winterman had the sense Hoxton was trying to move the subject on. 'What about Marsh? What did he think?'
'Blamed himself, as I say. But didn't want to admit Gary had just drowned. Kept saying there was more to it, that Gary had been snatched somehow. Like Mary with Jimmy, persuaded himself it wasn't just a stupid pointless accident. But life's full of stupid pointless accidents.'
Winterman sat for a moment, staring through the windscreen at the empty road. 'Mary has a point though, doesn't she?'
'How'd you mean?'
'Whatever the truth about Gary's death, if Marsh still believes there was more to it, then finding these bodies might have triggered something. You said yourself he's not one to let things lie.'
'So where does that leave us then? In terms of Marshy, I mean.'
'I haven't a clue. Unless Gary's disappearance gives us some lead.'
'Can't see it. Gary went missing miles from here. Can't imagine Marshy's gone traipsing up there.'
'All I can do is talk to Mary then. See if she says anything that sheds any light.' Winterman pushed open the door. 'You take the car down to the station. I'll see you down there first thing. Or tonight if I'm denied hospitality here.'
