As the car headed into the screaming wind he sat silent and glowered. His attitude affected the others. Hill was thinking the atmosphere inside was as icy as outside. Brant drove with more than usual care, not daring to risk a single hairy moment with Masters in his present mood. Green was damning Joan Parker’s eyes. He guessed she must be haunting Masters day and night. He could visualize her by day—in a cell. He wondered what she would look like by night—out of prison. His imagination was not up to it. Joan Parker was not like any woman he’d ever known. A hell of a figure! So slim that he thought she would break in two if she tangled good and proper with a man the size of Masters.
*
Before three o’clock they were nearing Rooksby. Cutting across flat countryside unrelieved except where rows of windswept trees showed the courses of lodes, canals, dykes and drains. All running straight as arrows for miles. Sluggish, dull water, lapping a few inches below the tops of banks. Whipped by the wind into fan-shaped ripples. The earth as dark and heavy as treacle where it had been winter dug. Grass growing tuftily: red near the roots as grass on fitties always is. The dead remains of samphire and bobbly sea pinks standing up from smooth bare mud. A rare patch of early aconite or snowdrop showing up golden or livid in the gloom. Farm labourers’ cottages clinging in lonely pairs, stark, unlovely and seemingly as lifeless as the bare trees planted as windbreaks.
Green said: ‘This place would drive anybody to murder.’
Masters said nothing for a moment. Just as Green was beginning to think him an offensive big-head he said: ‘German doctors are investigating the effects of weather on the human psyche. They’ve established that more people suffer coronaries in hot weather than cold. More people get headaches in close, oppressive weather . . .’
Green interrupted. ‘I could have told them that. And how wind affects people. Look how the Wogs are driven mad by khamseens.’
Masters knocked his pipe out in the ashtray. ‘Suggesting that Englishmen may be driven to murdering parsons by cold nor’easters?’
‘Why not? They’re depressing, aren’t they?’
‘Parsons?’
‘Cold winds. And murderers are manic depressives—or some of them are.’
The car bumped over a level crossing outside a deserted station. The sign said it was Rooksby-le-Soken Halt. Apart from the station house and a few tumbledown coalsheds there was no sign of habitation. They came to the outskirts of the village three-quarters of a mile on. First a couple of dozen new council houses, characterless in immature gardens: monuments to poor taste and bad siting. The road jinked to avoid them. Brant cursed all planners. ‘They couldn’t have straightened out this death trap while they were at it, could they?’
Hill said: ‘And look what they’ve built just round the corner!’
They went on slowly. Masters gazed across an asphalt playground at a new school. Through the boundary palings he saw single-storied, glass-walled classrooms strung out in great wings from a brick-built nucleus. Lights were burning, illuminating an end-on view of rows of children, listening to teachers, with their hands in the air, reading. He got the impression the kids were miserable. There seemed to be no vivacity in the fish tank. Probably the weather. And because it was nearly the end of a long day.
‘If the parson was knocked off in one of those showcases it must have been a public performance,’ Green said.
‘The footlights would be off on Sunday night.’
There was a gap of two hundred yards before the start of the older part of Rooksby. Half-way along it, cornerwise on to the road, was a tall factory building. The brickwork had a whitish, dusty coating. The small, square windows showed dim, rounded patches of light as though snow had piled up inside the frames. Green said: ‘It’s a flour mill. The dust gets everywhere.’
As they went past, a second side came into view: the front elevation. The sign showed Green had been near the mark: Rooks by Instant Potato. Green said—probably for the first time in his life—‘My mistake. Spud flour. My missus uses it for cottage pies.’
Hill said: ‘Cottage? Or Shepherd’s?’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘One’s got slices of spud on top. The other’s got mash. I can never remember which.’
The road narrowed between old buildings. Only the pavement on their left survived. There was no room for the other. The Road Narrows and Extreme Care signs had to be on overhead arms sticking out from the walls. No space for posts. Masters said: ‘Keep your eyes open for the station. It must be about here somewhere and it won’t have room outside for as much as a blue lamp.’
So far they had passed no shops. There was just enough variety in the shape, size and age of the houses to give Rooksby its first hint of character. Then came near-disaster. A barrow—a modern seesaw of tubular alloy on pneumatic tyres—was the cause. The crossroads—a little lane hidden by high walls came in at right angles—was unexpected. So was the barrow. It shot out at a trot. A middle-aged man the motive power. Dressed in a shopkeeper’s coat of pale brown drill. His scrubby hair peaked at the top and his ears stood out like red jug handles. His load was a pyramid of multi-coloured buckets and bowls in plastic. Brant swore. The force of his foot on the brake lifted him from his seat. There was the bray of a ratchet as Hill dragged on the handbrake. The Vauxhall responded humpily. Its bows dipped to a stop less than a foot from the barrow.
The man appeared to be unaffected. He backed his trolley and brought it and himself alongside Brant. He said: ‘You want to watch it, mate.’
Brant, red and angry, said through his teeth: ‘You crossed without warning. I’m on the main road. I’ve got the right of way.’
‘Not in Rooksby you ain’t. People that live here have the right of way—always. Not outners.’
Brant said: ‘Careful. Or I’ll have you for not being in proper control of that contraption.’
The man cackled with laughter. ‘You’ll what? You just try it, mate. Go on. Try it. You’ll have another think coming.’
Brant glanced round at Masters for instructions. Masters growled: ‘Drive on. And keep a look out for the police station.’
The man neighed even louder, and edged the corner of his trolley across Brant’s offside front wheel. ‘Police station? What police station?’
Green said: ‘Are you trying to say there are no police in Rooksby?’
‘Oh, aye. There’s two on ’em. But they haven’t got a police station. Only a front bedroom. And I wouldn’t go there if you know what’s good for you. They’re too busy with parson’s murder to do with outners. But if you do go, I’ll go as well.’
‘What for?’
‘To say how you came speeding through here and nearly killed me.’ He grinned in triumph. ‘They’ll believe me against all outners. They allus do. Speeding through here’s the only cases they get to show they’re earning their money.’
Masters growled angrily. What he said was drowned in the hissing of heavy brakes and a blast on a horn behind them. Green jumped in his seat. The shopkeeper cupped his hand and shouted, shrill above the pounding of the heavy engine, to the driver of the ten-tonner: ‘Shan’t keep you more’n a sec, Ted. These outners was speeding through and nearly killed me. Just warning them.’ Ted was thick set and florid, and muffled against the cold. He leaned half out of his cab and roared: ‘Get the perishers out of the way, Perce. Quick! I’ve got to get to Barrett’s and back with a load before knocking off.’
Perce did as he was told. Hastily. He pulled his trolley clear and said derisively: ‘Shove off! And don’t come by here again in a hurry.’ Ted honked behind. Masters grunted. Brant set the car in motion and Green said to Perce: ‘I’ll get you, loop lugs. See if I don’t.’
The road widened out into a square. Brant pulled to the left. Ted accelerated past him to storm out of sight on the far side. Hill said: ‘This is it.’ Brant stopped level with a board where a notice warning about the dangers of the Colorado Beetle flapped in the wind. Masters got out and looked over the c
ar roof at the two cement-rendered police houses. Semi-detached at the upper storey, with a broad tunnel between them at ground level. A face appeared momentarily at the window above the tunnel. A few seconds later a door half-way down the side of the tunnel opened and a plain-clothes man hurried out to them at a muscle-bound half-run. He introduced himself: ‘Nicholson. Detective Superintendent.’
They trooped down the tunnel and up a flight of uncarpeted stairs with a rope balustrade. Nicholson said: ‘This is the office. Part of both houses, but belonging to neither, if you see what I mean.’
Masters was impressed. He’d often worked from drab stations. This was more comfortable and lived-in than he had expected or hoped for. There was a bright fire with a bucket of coal and a heap of fuzzy peat blocks on the hearth: two easy chairs and the carver from an old dining set: on the table a red chenille cloth stained with ink blots and fringed with bobbles: on the floor a square of straw-coloured, broadloom Armadillo matting. In an alcove was a modern sink unit with a two-burner gas ring and a kettle on the draining board. Nicholson introduced a young constable: ‘P.C. Crome. He was the one called to the body.’ He turned to Masters. ‘Crome’s one of the two stationed here in Rooksby. The other is Senior Constable Vanden, who’ll be seeing the kids across the road after school before reporting back for a cup of tea.’ He raised his voice. ‘And talking of tea, jump to it, Crome, lad. Our visitors’ll want a pot of hot and strong, and I’m feeling dry myself.’
Masters was summing up Nicholson. The superintendent was heavily built and still fair-haired where a dark man might have turned grey. He put Masters in mind of a retired professional footballer. He moved with the forward slant and the stiff, hunched gait of a man who had done too much physical training earlier in life and was now taking no exercise at all.
The tea came up dark in blue and white banded mugs. Masters gulped a mouthful and said to Nicholson: ‘You called us in a bit quick, didn’t you?’
‘I knew we’d have to have you as soon as I saw the body. Too fishy right from the word go. And when we couldn’t find either a weapon or a bullet after an hour’s search, I told the C.C. that I reckoned you’d like to get here today rather than tomorrow. And he agreed.’
Green had joined them. ‘He was shot, you say?’
‘Shot, yes. But we couldn’t find the bullet.’
‘Bullet hole in the wall, ceiling, floor? In a bit of furniture?’
Nicholson didn’t like Green’s patronizing tone. He said, stiffly: ‘We looked everywhere.’
Green narrowed his eyes and opened his lips in disbelief. Masters forestalled any remark. He said: ‘Perhaps we could start at the beginning.’ Green took the hint, walked over to the fire and started warming his hands. Hill and Brant were with Crome at the sink. Nicholson said: ‘There’s not much to tell.’ He set his mug down and lit a cigarette. Masters guessed he wasn’t quite sure how and where to start.
‘Crome was on early turn this morning. At eight o’clock he was standing on the corner of the square opposite here.’
‘Where the main road runs out?’
‘That’s it. It’s the best place for keeping an eye on the early heavy stuff going through. Anyhow, about five past eight . . .’
‘Was it still dark?’
‘Darkish. Sunrise was about a quarter to eight, but it’s a dull day. Anyhow, one of the local builder’s men ran up to Crome and told him they’d just found the parson dead in the school.’
‘The school we passed on the way in?’
‘That’s the new school. This was the old one. Used to be the Church School. In use up to Christmas, but the Comprehensive opened in the new year, so the old one closed down.’
‘What were the builders doing? Pulling it down?’
‘No. It’s been rented by the potato factory as a despatch store. They’ve got brickies and chippies in turning one classroom into offices and making a loading bay out of the school hall.’
Masters could see it in his mind’s eye, using his own first school as a stage setting. An old building with a flagged hall that was too cold and draughty to be used as anything but a corridor. He remembered it with a little burst of nostalgia. How happy he’d been there. He used to ring the handbell—a coveted honour. He said: ‘The workmen clocked in at eight and found the body?’
‘That’s right. It’d been empty since they left on Friday afternoon.’
‘Was the school locked over the weekend?’
Nicholson grimaced in disgust. ‘Was it hellers like! You’ll see for yourself. The playground wall’s been knocked down to let in the lorries and the wall of the school itself has been knocked out at the back to make the loading bay.’
‘So anybody could get in and out as they wanted. And probably unseen.’
‘If they wanted to. Certainly they could by dark. Mark you, there were some planks nailed up in the gap in the school wall, but they only had to be prised aside.’
Masters began to fill his pipe. He asked: ‘Where’s the body now?’
‘Still there. Just as it was found.’
‘What?’
Nicholson shrugged. ‘When I knew you were coming up straight away I thought you’d like to see him just as we found him. The weather’s as cold as any mortuary slab so I didn’t think it would do any harm.’
He didn’t say so, but Masters’ opinion of Nicholson went up a few notches. He contented himself with: ‘That was a useful idea. Had I known, I wouldn’t have wasted time here.’
‘No hurry. The electric’s still on in the school so you’ll have plenty of light.’
‘What about the workmen? Are they still there?’
‘They’d got some other job they could do so we let them collect their tools and push off. My sergeant’s in charge at the school.’
Masters picked up his coat. He said: ‘I suppose they nailed up the entrance because they’d left their tools in the school. Anything reported missing?’
‘Nothing. I thought of that one.’
They moved towards the door. Green, behind them, said: ‘Have we got anywhere to stay?’
Nicholson said: ‘There’s five pubs in Rooksby, but only one with any accommodation—the Goblin. We’re not what you might call a holiday centre . . .’ Masters shivered inwardly at the thought, ‘. . . but a few commercials come this way now and again. Binkhorst can let you have two singles and one double. All right?’
Masters going first down the stairs said: ‘Who’s Binkhorst? The publican? Is he foreign?’
‘He’s not, but his wife is. Italiano. You’ll find a lot of foreign-sounding names in Rooksby. Dutch mostly. Like Vanden, our other constable here.’
Green said: ‘Why?’
‘They came over to do the draining ages ago. They made Rooksby their centre and settled here.’
Green said: ‘So we’re dealing with a crowd of Boers. I had a hunch they were something like that.’ He turned to Crome, arriving last at the foot of the stairs. ‘Who’s the character called Perce who shoves a barrowful of buckets about the streets?’
‘That’ll be Percy Jonker, sir. He keeps the ironmonger’s. He’d be fetching a load from his warehouse to the shop if you saw him.’
‘I saw him. Ironmonger! Troublemonger more like. He’ll be behind iron bars if he’s not careful. Tell him to watch it or I’ll shove his nose up his own backside and make a wheelbarrow trundle out of him.’
Masters asked: ‘And who is Ted who drives a ten-tonner for the potato factory?’
‘Ted Blount, sir. Our local boxer.’
‘He looked a bit of a bruiser. And what, or where, is Barrett’s?’
‘Barrett’s farm, sir. Big potato growers. If that’s where Ted was going today he’d be in a hurry.’
‘He was. But why?’
‘They’ll have opened up a clamp, sir, and they’ll be wanting to get all the potatoes moved before night in case the frost sets in.’
They’d reached the car. Masters said to Nicholson: ‘How far’s the school?’
<
br /> ‘About a couple of hundred yards.’
‘In that case d’you mind if we walk? I’d like to see the village. Sergeant Brant can bring the car along. And I don’t think there’s any need for your constable to come.’
Crome was disappointed. He hung back as the others set off. Green didn’t like the thought of being out in the cold wind, but he felt relieved he wouldn’t have to drive in failing light through more narrow streets with the chance of ten-tonners bearing down on him from behind. Nicholson pointed out the Goblin facing across the square. Leaning against the wind they moved past the drab war memorial and out along the single pavement of the main road. Masters felt that not only the weather was depressing. On their side they passed little houses with doors opening directly from front rooms on to the narrow path. Across the road were death-trap shops lit by low-powered bulbs. Masters wondered whether the youngsters of Rooksby stuck to the place when they grew up or whether they swelled the belt-fed migration to the south-east. He decided the Dutch element would probably stay on, perpetuating their isolationist enclave, while the native British would flee to more congenial areas, glad to be free of drab, flat surroundings and dour neighbours.
They came to another crossroad: a replica of the spot where they had met Perce, except that here two of the corners were shop premises. A private grocer and the Co-op shop in direct competition. They turned left round a high wall of old bricks newly rebuilt. The nameplate said: Church Walk.
Masters and Green Series Box Set Page 21
