‘I’ve been asked to hang on,’ said Masters.
‘Well I hope they hurry up. I’ve been away from home long enough. I want to get going.’
Crome and the two sergeants clattered up the stairs. As they came through the door the phone crackled. Masters waved an impatient hand, demanding silence. While he listened the three tip-toed over to get their coffee. Masters said ‘Sir’ occasionally. Made a few notes as he listened. The conversation ended. He still held the phone. ‘Another job,’ he told Green. ‘That was Commander Curtis. Williams is coming on now.’ He put the phone back to his ear. Green grimaced. Masters said ‘Sir’ again and listened intently. The call lasted another three minutes. Then Masters put the receiver back on the cradle and said: ‘No rest for the wicked. Who’s got an AA book?’
Commander Williams, still a Yard man, but seconded now to the Home Office, was National Co-ordinator of Regional Crime Squads. Appointed to deal with organized crime, his duties sometimes spilled over into other areas. Green knew that if Williams was concerned, the new case could well be long lasting. He said to Hill: ‘Get on to H.Q. and tell them to let my missus and yours know we won’t be home tonight or for the next week, likely. Tell them to tell her I’ll need some clean shirts and I’ll phone the address through tonight.’
‘Do any of you ever read the newspapers?’ asked Masters.
‘When do we get time?’ Green said.
‘Good lord, chief. Not all those women?’ said Brant.
Masters nodded.
‘What perishing women?’
‘We’ll discuss it in the car,’ Masters replied. ‘Route from here, through Boston and Louth to Hawksfleet and Finstoft.’
The car felt its way carefully out of Rooksby and sped north-east. Masters sat back and filled his pipe with Warlock Flake. The rain came more heavily. Brant set the wipers going. The wind whistled past the car, taking the gathered raindrops away in feathery spatters. If anything, in this part of the journey, the land grew flatter. Fen country. Bulb country. Grey. Bending the knee to the dominant wind.
‘What about these women?’ Green asked.
Masters replied: ‘Five, respectable, married women. Middle class. All of an age . . .’
‘What age?’
‘Late thirties, early forties.’
‘What’s happened to them?’
‘All five disappeared in the last month. Four of them found, dead and buried.’
‘No sign of the fifth?’
‘Not yet. But she shouldn’t be far away. The other four were found about two hundred yards apart, buried in the dunes at Finstoft.’
Green said: ‘Mass murder?’
‘It looks like it. A lunatic at large.’
‘How were they killed?’
‘Throttled.’
‘Sexually assaulted, I suppose?’
‘They’re carrying out tests.’
‘Which will probably be inconclusive as they’re all married women. What about their clothes? Disarranged, removed, anything of that sort?’
‘I’ve no details.’
‘Where does Williams come into this?’
‘He’s really doing some co-ordinating this time,’ Masters explained. ‘Although all these women were found in Finstoft some of them lived in Hawksfleet. Hawksfleet’s a municipal borough with its own police force. Finstoft’s a county borough. So its coppers are part of the Lindsey force.
‘Lindsey?’
‘Administrative part of Lincolnshire. Like the Ridings of Yorkshire. Both forces are interested—or should be—but there appears to be a bit of buck passing.’
‘Meaning the Hawksfleet people have been looking for them and the Finstoft people’ve found them, but neither crowd wants the job of taking on the case. I know. We’re Joe Soap again. But this time we’ve got two lots to please.’
‘Or neither,’ Hill said. ‘I mean the National Co-ordinator’ll have told them to give us a free hand, won’t he?’
Masters said: ‘Maybe. We’ll assume he has.’
Green said: ‘I’ll bet neither side has dredged up any leads for us.’
‘They haven’t.’
‘Typical. So how many suspects are there? Thousands?’
‘Over a hundred thousand in Hawksfleet and about thirty thousand in Finstoft,’ said Masters. ‘All jumbled up into one nice, cosy conurbation. “Inextricably linked” was Williams’ phrase. He sounded as if he thought it would take some sorting out.’
‘I’ll bet. On the east coast in a north-east gale. Cosy’s about the right word for it.’
The conversation lapsed. The countryside changed. Small rounded hills. The Wolds. Louth with its tall-spired church. Green said: ‘A bit different from Boston Stump.’ Nobody replied. The air in the car was heavy with smoke. The next signpost said Hawksfleet—13 miles: Finstoft—15 miles. Green said: ‘I’m going to have fish for lunch.’
‘Hawksfleet or Finstoft, chief?’ Brant inquired.
‘Finstoft. Where the bodies are there shall we be also.’
Green grunted but made no comment. When they came to the outskirts of Hawksfleet, Hill had to ask the way twice. They arrived at the Finstoft police station just before one o’clock.
Superintendent Bullimore was pleased to see them. He was in uniform. Bulky, but wasp-waisted. His belt split him in two. His face podgy and shapeless, covered in small red veins, from the tip of his purplish nose to the lobes of his ears. The result of long beats in strong cold winds. Little hair; and what there was of it, grey, to match his eyes. His fingers stiff-jointed through living in a hard-water area for too long. He said: ‘When the National Co-ordinator rang me to say you were coming I could have sung the Alleluia chorus. I could, straight.’ His U’s were broad, all alike, with no differing shades. It sounded strange to the southerners. Masters said: ‘As bad as that, is it, sir?’
‘Bad? We’re living in a madhouse here. Five murders all at once and we haven’t had one in over twenty years. We need somebody who’s more used to killings than we are to sort this lot out, I can tell you. But we won’t talk at the moment. What you’ll need is a bite of dinner.’
‘Please.’
‘Well now, you can go straight to your hotel about a mile away, or we can pop up the hill to a pub on the High Street where we can have a drink and a lemon if you like.’
‘Lemon?’ Green said.
‘Aye. Lemon. Fish, lad, fish.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’ve never heard of it? Well, you know a plaice when you see one?’
‘Yes.’
‘Got red spots on. Right? And a sole’s got yellow spots. Well a lemon looks like a plaice and has yellow spots. Some say they’re half and half—crossbred like. Others just say they have characteristics of both. I don’t mind. I like ’em and I eat ’em. Lemons!’ His lips-smacked as he said it.
Green said: ‘And for me.’
They all five squeezed into the Vauxhall and drove up the hill to the Prawner, sandwiched between a new supermarket and a wear-now-pay-later tailor’s. The wind when they got out of the car was still cold, but now had the tang of salt in it. A skin-stinging rain struck them on the cheeks. They were glad to reach the Snug in the Prawner.
*
Back at the station after lunch Bullimore said to Masters: “You’ll be wanting our notes to read. What about a verbal briefing?’
‘If you could let us have the story. I’d like all four of us to hear it. It’ll save passing your paperwork round each one in turn.’
‘Good for you. I prefer to hear things straight out myself. Come on in here.’ His room had an open fire, and not much more in the way of comfort. The furniture was yellow-varnished. The floor covered in bottle-green linoleum. The uncurtained window looked out on to a small parade ground and a row of lock-up garages. Great slashes of wind-blown rain struck the panes almost horizontally. Masters took an upright chair too small for him and motioned his colleagues to seat themselves.
Bullimore said: ‘By heck, you’re a big cha
p. I bet your mam would rather feed you for a week than a fortnight.’ Masters didn’t reply. He took his pipe from his breast pocket, where he kept it, bowl to the top, wedged upright with a white silk handkerchief. He had opened the brassy tin of Warlock Flake and was rubbing a fill in the palm of his left hand, with the heel of his right, before Bullimore spoke again.
‘Five women missing and we’ve found four of them. Frances Burton, Brenda Pogson, Cynthia Baker and Joanna Osborn—in order of disappearance from their homes. The one we haven’t found is Barbara Severn, but she went missing second, after Mrs Burton and before Mrs Pogson.
‘Now I’d better tell you that only two of them—Burton and Osborn—are Finstoft women. The others come from Hawksfleet. And in Finstoft we haven’t had anybody reported missing—except a few kids who run away from home and are lugged back again pretty quick—for over six years. In Hawksfleet they have a few more go off untraced because . . . well, they’re a port, and they get quite a lot of young lasses hanging round the docks. Sailors and fishermen coming ashore with pay to spend are easy pickings. And every now and again one of these girls disappears. But even Hawksfleet doesn’t get respectable married women going off unbeknown to anybody. Leastways not in groups of three at a time.’
Masters said: ‘So before you found any of their bodies you were interested in these women—as missing persons?’
‘That’s right. Mrs Burton was last seen on the evening of January the tenth. Her husband didn’t report to us until the twelfth. Said he thought she’d gone off without warning him to see her mother and he didn’t want to make a fuss by bringing us in. We did the usual—hospitals and railway stations, circulated descriptions etcetera, etcetera, to try and trace her. Then about three days later the Hawksfleet people chipped in with Mrs Severn—her we haven’t found yet.’
‘That would be the fifteenth of January. But at that time you still didn’t suspect murder?’
‘No reason to. It looked like a bit of a coincidence, but there was only one in each borough. It was when Hawksfleet got to hear about Mrs Pogson on the nineteenth and Mrs Baker on the twenty-fifth that they started to sit up and take notice. Our last one, Mrs Osborn, was on the twenty-eighth.’
‘You then began to treat the disappearances as murder?’
‘We did. But we’d nothing to go on. No sign where any of them were. Until this Tuesday. There’s a chap called Tolley. Has a little dog. He walks it along the front here in all weathers. We all know him. Bit of a character. Used to be a window cleaner. On Tuesday he was out along the dunes, past the end of the town and beyond the embankment. When there’s an easterly wind and spring tides you never know what’s going to be washed up in the dunes. Anything from an old cod’s-liver barrel to a transistor radio. And if you happen to have the time, and an old sack to sling over your back, and a terrier dog that’s been taught to nose things out—well, who knows what you might not find.’
‘And Tolley’s dog found—now let me see—which one did he find? Not necessarily the one that disappeared first,’ said Masters.
Bullimore replied: ‘I can see you’ve got all your buttons sewn on. Mrs Baker it was. And she’d been number four to go missing. She’d been buried close to the water’s edge—just above normal high water mark. But when you’ve got a high wind with the springs the water comes in further. Right up the beach to the dunes behind and sometimes further than that. Last week-end’s gales and high seas uncovered the body—or some of it. The dog found a bit of rag sticking out of the sand. He was worrying it when Tolley reached him. Tolley called him off, but he wouldn’t leave what he’d got, so Tolley went to investigate. He thought it might be something worth digging out because the terrier didn’t often make mistakes.’
‘And that’s how Mrs Baker was found?’
‘Aye. The Hawksfleet people identified her, and we decided that if five women with a lot in common had all gone missing at about the same time, and we’d found one of them, it was likely we’d find the others. We prodded the rest of the beach first, with long spikes, but we had no joy. Then the tide came in again and so we started prodding among the dunes. By Wednesday night, besides Mrs Baker, we’d got Mrs Osborn, Mrs Burton and Mrs Pogson, in that order. We’re still trying to find Mrs Severn.’
Master said: ‘So far all the bodies have been found in your area, but they’re a mixture of Hawksfleet and Finstoft women. Were you a bit undecided as to which one of you should carry out the investigation?’
‘Not really. I knew they were my responsibility, but it seems likely half the work will have to be done in Hawksfleet. That means a lot of liaison both ways, so we decided it would be better if a third party were called in, who’d have experience of this sort of thing which we haven’t got, and who’d not be afraid to step over the boundary from one patch to the other.’
‘So you asked the Yard for help.’
‘No. I asked ’em for you. Yesterday. They said I couldn’t have you as you were on that murdered parson case. Then today I was told you’d be here by one o’clock.’
‘Our business in Rooksby finished sooner than we expected.’
‘So I heard. Now you’ve got a lunatic to catch. And the sooner the better. Since the news got out on Tuesday nobody’s dared go on the streets after dark. It makes it better for us, but it’s a bad thing really.’
‘I’m sure it is.’ Masters got up and stretched his legs. ‘Your notes will tell us what you’ve done so far.’
Bullimore slapped the file on his desk. ‘It’s all here. Hawksfleet’s reports as well as ours.’
‘Good. But before we start, I want to know about this area. I’ve never been here before. Give me a potted history. What sort of people are they?’
‘Is that how you go about it?’ asked Bullimore.
‘I find it helps if I know the type of people I’m working among.’
‘I’ve told him before, Super,’ said Green. ‘Everybody’s alike if you take a cross section. But he won’t have it. He’s one of these moderns. Psychology of crime.’
Bullimore said a little tartly: ‘If that’s what he wants he can have it. It brings home the bacon, doesn’t it?’
‘Sometimes,’ Masters said modestly.
‘More often than not from what I’ve heard. So here goes. We’re what you’d call an isolated community here. You’ve only got to look at a map to see it. We can’t move north because of the Humber. We can’t move east because of the North Sea. That leaves us two directions—south and west. And even so you’ve got to go a hell of a way before you get anywhere.
‘Before the war the only people who wandered our way were trippers and visitors from Sheffield and Leeds who came to see t’watter as they called it.’
‘Is it different now?’ Masters asked.
‘Very. In some ways. You’d know more about the effects of migration on culture and such-like stuff than I do. But what I can say is that we’d very little except home-grown culture here. And I’ll tell you why. Hawksfleet started making money from trawling in the First World War. Selling fish to the services made rich men of quite a few who would have been on the bread-line else.’
‘Why?’ said Green.
‘Because you couldn’t fish in a big enough way in the days before ice-making to make a lot of money. Then when the war came you could bring anything ashore and sell it in any state you liked to a ready-made market. That’s when this place started to boom. Of course some of the owners and lads who should have benefited didn’t. The owners who gave all their ships for minesweeping and the fishermen who manned them got nowt out of it but a chance of being blown up and drowned. But money came in, and it started dividing the community up into what-d’you-call-its—levels . . .?’
‘Strata?’
‘That’s the word. Financial strata. Some pretty plumb ignorant people found themselves on the top of the pyramid. And you know what happens then? They’re the biggest bloody snobs you can get. And what happens at the top works its way down. Every level of income was too g
ood for the one below it. Talk about caste system! It was pathetic. And there was nobody to bust it wide open. Nobody came and went. Those who were here—well, the better-britched ones—were sitting pretty, and the others couldn’t afford to go. And like I said, there wasn’t much culture. Some tried to get a bit. Those who could afford it. But it wasn’t easy for anybody who hadn’t the brass to belong to clubs and societies and to travel.’
‘The last war changed it all?’
‘You’d never believe it. We’re pretty exposed here, you know. Straight opposite trouble as you might say. So we got a big influx of troops. And of course Hawksfleet was a station, not only for the minesweepers, but for the navy and freighters too. And our own lads and lasses were called up and went away all over the world. That began it. They didn’t let things settle back to what they had been when they came home. And of course there’s more cars and travel now than there was, so we’re not cut off quite as much. So we’ve levelled out a bit. You haven’t got the divisions you once had.’
‘But there are remnants of class-consciousness.’
Bullimore lit a cigarette and twirled the match into the fire. ‘Aye. Remnants. Not so much among the youngsters, but from about forty upwards they’re still fighting to hang on. From forty to about fifty-five they’re not too bad because they got a bit better education than their parents. There’s an old saying in Finstoft that you could only make money round here in the old days if you could manage to put two aitches in piano. If you’d got a degree all you’d get was a job as a draft clerk. Opening and closing windows.’
‘You’re not pulling your punches,’ said Masters.
‘I’m not. I’ve seen grown men and children insulted and hurt for no reason other than the fact that they couldn’t afford to dress as well as some others. And by the same token I’ve seen some fawned on as couldn’t hold a candle to a good dustman. I don’t know which I’ve thought the worst of. Those who did the fawning or the ones on the receiving end.’
‘It makes you sick to think about it,’ said Green. ‘If these women were the sort who stuck their noses in the air, they deserved what they got.’
Masters and Green Series Box Set Page 38
