by Alex Walters
Hoxton stumbled backwards, toppling at the edge of the road as the earth below crumbled under the flooding. He fell back into the deeper water, his voice choked as he tipped backwards. A moment later, he was paddling frantically, unable to swim, caught by some unexpected undertow.
Even in the last few minutes, the floods had risen noticeably higher. The waters were lapping around Winterman's calves. The Jaguar was shifting, buoyed by the flood, buffeted by the powerful current. Mary was clutching at the door, calling for Graham to climb out after her.
Winterman waded forward into the water. He was soaked from the rain and the chill of the river was barely discernible.
Mary looked over her shoulder, registering for the first time that Winterman was there. 'Graham's in here. I've got to get him out.'
The waters were halfway up the car's bodywork, and the vehicle had moved noticeably, the bonnet swinging round at an angle to the road. Beyond the car, in the grey haze, Hoxton floundered in the water.
Winterman forced his way forward, waist-deep by the time he reached Mary's side. 'Are you okay?'
'Don't worry about me. Just get Graham out of the car.'
'You get on to solid ground. Head for Spooner. I'll look after Graham.'
She hesitated for a moment, reluctant to leave her son. 'Just get him out.' She forced her way back to where Spooner was already wading out to meet her.
Winterman peered through the car window. Graham was cowering in the far corner of the back seat, terrified. 'Hello, Graham.' Winterman spoke as calmly as he could manage. 'We need to get you out of the car and back onto dry land. It's a smart motor, this one, but it wasn't designed to be a boat.'
Graham managed a weak smile in return. As Winterman held out his hands, the boy crawled slowly across the seat towards the open window.
Winterman was reaching for the boy's small hands when an arm suddenly folded around his own neck, choking off his breath and dragging him back from the car. He reacted a second too slowly, his fingers scrabbling vainly for a grip on the car bodywork.
'Sorry, guv,' Hoxton gasped. 'You don't get rid of me that easily.' His arm was hard against Winterman's throat.
Winterman was caught off balance, his fingers tugging at Hoxton's arm. Just as he was despairing of freeing himself, his feet found some purchase on the submerged ground. He pulled forward and jabbed his elbow hard into Hoxton's stomach. As he stumbled back, the older man momentarily loosened his grip on Winterman's throat.
Winterman twisted himself from Hoxton's circling arm and pulled away. They were close to the edge of the road. His arm hindered by the damp weight of clothing, Winterman swung his fist hard against Hoxton's face.
Hoxton crumpled backwards, landing with a gentle splash in the grey water. Winterman watched him for a moment, trying to work out whether Hoxton was still conscious, until his attention was caught by Mary's cry from the road.
The Jaguar had moved further and was tipping into the rising flood. Winterman pushed through the water, reaching for the door handle as the car shifted again. Its rear wheels were already slipping down into the deeper water.
Winterman could hear Mary calling from behind him. As the car moved once more, he caught site of Graham's white face, framed in the window.
The pale face of a child, staring.
'Sam!' he called out before he could stop himself. And then he wondered why, what that name had meant to him. It was as if the name belonged to a story that he had once heard, somewhere in another life, but which he had long forgotten.
The pale face of a child, staring.
He had assumed, without questioning, that the face in the recurrent dream was Sam's, the boy reproaching him for his failure to protect his young life. But it was the same face in front of him now.
The car moved again and, gaining momentum, it disappeared from sight, sliding off the road into the depths of the water.
Behind, he heard Mary scream. Not looking back, he flung himself into the frozen water, thrusting himself down into the murky depths.
At first, he could see nothing. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he made out the long black shape of the Jaguar, a yard or two below. He pushed further down, feeling the roof and the doors and the open window. Water had flooded into the car and, with the pressure equalised, Winterman pulled open the door. He thrust himself inside and saw Graham, curled into a corner of the interior. There was a pocket of air trapped inside the car, but it was impossible to see whether the boy remained conscious. Winterman took the boy in his hands, manoeuvring him carefully through the door. Kicking hard against the sodden earth, he thrust the two of them up towards the light and air.
It took longer than he expected to reach the surface, long seconds that felt like hours. Then his head exploded from the water, and, gasping, he raised Graham's limp body into the air.
The boy stiffened, taken aback by the sudden shock of air, and began to cry. Winterman had no breath left to offer comfort, but, grasping Graham beneath his arms, he kicked powerfully towards the higher ground where Mary and Spooner were waiting.
He stumbled as he felt the hard road surface beneath his feet, then staggered upright, lifting Graham towards Mary who wrapped the boy tightly in her arms.
Spooner put a hand on Winterman's shoulder, steadying him. Winterman doubled up, gasping for breath, his strength suddenly gone. Still half choking, he scanned the expanse of grey water, its surface pitted with the endlessly falling rain. There was no sign of Hoxton.
Mary was clutching Graham, the boy staring over her shoulder at the man who had saved his life.
The pale face of a child, staring.
'Good work, lad,' Spooner was saying. 'Now, if you fancy one more trip down there, you could go and rescue my bloody car.'
Chapter 68
The sound of the rain woke him again.
He lay for a long time, his eyes open, staring up into the darkness, listening.
Then he twisted over in the large double bed, limbs tangled in the heavy blankets and eiderdown, the chill of the bedroom striking his exposed face and hands.
There was silence. No sound of rain. No sound out there at all.
Just the nearby sound of breathing. Mary, breathing softly, fast asleep on the other side of the bed.
He rose silently and crossed the room, picking his way in the darkness, careful to avoid any noise that might wake Mary. He pulled back the curtains and stared out into the star-filled night.
The waters had receded, though the riverside fields were still flooded. There had been severe flooding even in town, the waters reaching unprecedented levels. His own house had escaped unscathed, apart from some flooding at the far end of the garden.
He had half expected that the dreams would cease. And perhaps they had. They had, at least, changed in character. He no longer had the sense of chasing through the rain, plunging after the same lost child. Perhaps Sam was at rest. Or perhaps at least one lost child had been saved.
But the rain was still there. Still haunting his dreams. Perhaps it always would be.
Because the rain was still falling. And, though he had found some shelter with Mary, Winterman wondered whether it would ever really stop.
Chapter 69
There were no answers.
Days earlier, when the floods had subsided sufficiently to allow normal life to resume, Winterman and Spooner had interviewed William Callaghan. It was a formal interview, but William was being treated only as a witness, no longer as a suspect in Fisher's murder. Hoxton's body had been swept away in the flood and had not yet been found, but the working assumption – for Spooner at least – was that Hoxton had killed both Fisher and Merriman. It was a convenient assumption, and Winterman hadn't pressed Spooner to provide a motive.
After the events in the flood, they had discovered William, still hunched in the back of the Wolseley, apparently in a state of physical and mental collapse, scarcely able to respond to their questions. When assistance had finally arrived, he had been shipped to a hospita
l on the outskirts of Cambridge, his father assuming responsibility.
Two weeks later, his physical health apparently improved, he had been moved to a convalescent home in the north of the country. It was a converted country house, another legacy of the families whose circumstances had declined in the course of the century. It was surrounded by an imposing tree-lined estate, but its interior was given over to shoddy plasterboard walls and endless beige and khaki corridors. Like all such places, it gave Winterman the creeps.
William's father was waiting to greet them as he had promised. 'I'm not sure I should agree to this,' he had said on the telephone. 'William's in a very delicate condition. He needs time to recover.'
'With respect, sir,' Winterman had responded, 'the decision isn't yours. This is still a murder investigation. His doctor has confirmed that his physical condition is satisfactory.'
'It's not his physical condition I'm concerned about,' Callaghan said. 'His nerves took a battering. I don't know that he's ready to be interrogated yet.'
'Just a few questions, sir. At this stage.'
As he met them in the entrance hall, Callaghan made one further attempt to dissuade them. 'William's not well. He's really very highly strung. You can't put this off for a few more days?'
'There are a lot of unanswered questions,' Spooner said. 'We're hoping that William will fill in a few of the gaps. We'll be very gentle.'
'You made it clear that this isn't a formal interview, Superintendent. He won't need a solicitor present?'
Spooner gazed at him for a moment, as if considering possible responses. 'No, sir. Not at this stage. We just need him to answer some questions. Your son has behaved oddly, but we've no reason to believe he's guilty of any criminal acts.'
There was another pause, and Winterman had the sense of some unspoken communication between the two men.
'Very well, Superintendent. Though I should warn you that my son is not necessarily a reliable witness.'
'Is that so, sir? And why do you say that?' Spooner's tone sounded genuinely curious.
'I've told you, Superintendent, William's not himself. He hasn't been for a while. He's a touch obsessive.'
'There seems to be a lot of it about in these parts,' Winterman observed. 'Must be something in the water.'
'All I'm saying, Superintendent,' Callaghan went on, with a barely perceptible stress on Spooner's senior rank, 'is that you shouldn't give undue credence to anything my son might say.'
'You're saying he's delusional?'
'Just prone to exaggeration. And the medication leaves him a little confused.'
'We'll bear that in mind, sir.'
In the event, Callaghan's advice was both merited and hardly necessary. There was no easy way to judge the veracity of William's account, but it was clear that he would not cut a credible witness if any of it ever went to trial. Although that consideration, Winterman suspected, was largely academic.
They found William, following his father's directions, in a private room on the second floor of the building. The room, with a polished floor and oak furniture, looked a cut or two above the austere utilitarianism of the building's public areas. Presumably the professor was paying for his son's care.
William was hunched in a high-backed chair facing the window. He was dressed in pyjamas and slippers, a thick plaid blanket tucked around his knees. He looked a pale emaciated shadow of the figure Winterman had interviewed only weeks before.
William blinked as they entered, seemingly bewildered by their presence. The professor had sought to join the meeting, ostensibly to protect his son's interests. Spooner had politely but firmly resisted, on the assumption that the father's presence would prove inhibiting. Looking at the young man's blank visage, Winterman wondered whether the presence of a familiar figure, even his father, might have provided some reassurance.
'William, it's me, DI Winterman. This is my colleague, Superintendent Spooner. We just want to ask you a few questions. Is that all right?'
William stared at him for a second, as if he had barely understood the question, and then nodded slowly. 'My father thinks I'm incapable. He's no doubt told you.' His voice had a slight tremble, but sounded coherent enough.
'He said you'd been unwell.'
William laughed, with no obvious sign of mirth. Then he looked from Winterman to Spooner. 'And how much do I trust you two?'
It was a reasonable question, Winterman told himself, after William's experiences with Marsh and Hoxton. He had no cause to trust the police. 'I don't know. How much do you trust us?'
'I trust you, I think, DI Winterman. I don't know why, but I do. As you for, DS Spooner, I don't know you enough to say. But it probably doesn't matter much anyway. You'll either listen to me or you won't. There's not much more I can do either way.' His voice was still uncertain, but he sounded calmer. It was as if he'd reached the end of some quest, though it was impossible to tell whether his objective had been achieved or simply abandoned.
'Tell us about the bodies,' Winterman said quietly.
William was silent for a moment. Again, it was as if he had barely taken in the question. 'I found them, the children's bodies.'
'Where did you find them?'
'They were buried. Just shallow graves. In the marshland behind those buildings. Where you found me.'
'The three bodies?'
There was another, longer silence. 'No, more. At least one more. I don't know.'
'How did you come to find them?' Winterman thought back to the marshy fenland.
It was relatively close to the road and the village, but not an area anyone would have reason to search. It was unused ground, too marshy to cultivate. At that moment, it remained under several feet of water and impossible to investigate.
'It was the reverend. His ghost story.'
Chapter 70
Winterman glanced at Spooner, who had lowered himself onto a sofa in the far corner of the room, clearly content for Winterman to take the lead.
'You were heard in the pub asking Fisher something about a ghost story.'
William blinked, as though this was news to him. 'Was I? I was drunk, I suppose. But then the reverend was drunk when he told me about it the first time. He was often drunk. I'm not surprised. We were both in the pub one night. Both three sheets to the wind. The rev kept himself to himself. Would tell you to bugger off if you tried to approach him. But that night, for some reason, we started talking. Or he did. I don't know what sparked it – something about his wife and daughter. You know they died.'
'I heard the story,' Winterman said, recalling now that it was Hoxton who'd told it. 'How his wife left him–'
'For my father?'
'So I understand. Your father's a widower?'
'He's divorced. He's what they call a ladies' man. Insatiable.' William almost spat out the word. 'He picked up Fisher's wife and, I imagine, threw her out when he'd had enough. One among many. It was the story of my childhood.' There was an edge to the final words that Winterman couldn't interpret.
'But Fisher wouldn't take them back?'
'The rev was deep into his cups by that stage. Not responsible for his actions. He was daggers drawn with my old man. They'd been that way for a year or two, and my father had made sure that Fisher was well and truly ostracised from village life. By the time she came back, Fisher knew where she'd been. He wasn't going to let her back in.'
'And the ghost story?'
'He was talking about his wife and child. Then he said that sometimes he saw his daughter, out there in the fens.' William stopped. 'It sounds ridiculous, but I believed him. Or I felt he was speaking some kind of truth. He told me he'd seen his daughter. Her figure, hazy in the distance, skipping across the marshland. That she wasn't alone. There were other children. Lost children. That's what he said. Lost children trying to find their way home.'
'He was talking about the spot where you found the bodies?' Perhaps, Winterman thought, Callaghan had been right about his son's mental state.
'Yes
. I didn't take it seriously. But the idea haunted me. It made me think.'
'About what?'
'About things that no one round here talks about.'
'Tell me.'
William paused and looked at Spooner. 'You can ask him. He should know. He's been around long enough.'
'Go on, son,' Spooner said gently. 'Don't keep us in suspense.'
'When I was a child,' William said, 'even before the war, there were rumours about children going missing. I never knew for sure. It was the stuff kids tell each other. Someone four villages away who didn't come home from school. Someone's second cousin who'd gone off on his bike and never came back. You know.'
'You said yourself,' Winterman said. 'Stuff that kids tell each other.'
'Just before the war, a local child did go missing. Little girl called Morton. Vanished on her way to school. No one ever found her.'
'I remember that one, anyway,' Spooner said from across the room. 'Little monster, by all accounts. Always getting into scrapes. We reckoned in the end that she'd got herself into one scrape too many. Got herself trapped somewhere. '
'But you never found a body,' William said.
'That's the way it is sometimes,' Spooner said. 'She'll turn up when we least expect it. Sometime when they demolish a building or dig out a ditch. They'll find her poor little bones underneath. Wouldn't be the first.'
'In any case,' Winterman said, 'that's one child. It doesn't mean there was anything in the other rumours.' He looked over to Spooner. 'Do you recall any similar cases before the war, sir?'
Spooner shrugged. 'Not that I remember. There are always missing persons reports and some of them were probably children. They usually turned up safe and sound after a few hours.'
'Doesn't sound like much,' Winterman said to William.
'Then the war came,' William said. 'The evacuees. That all happened so quickly, within weeks of war being declared. There were dozens round here, mainly sent up from London. I was just a child myself, and suddenly – within a matter of two or three weeks – all these other youngsters had arrived.'
