The Midden

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘In the first place I very much hope that the exercises we have practised will prevent any such eventuality, and in the second I look to you all to act on your own initiative. The only thing I would not say is you are police officers. That is imperative if we are not to cause the suspects to go to ground in a big way. You can be hikers who’ve lost your way or anything that seems reasonable at the time. Just don’t say you’re ice-cream salesmen.’

  On this hilarious note the Inspector wished his men good luck and the surveillance teams set out across the fell. It was 11.30. Four miles away on the road behind the Middenhall Unit C reported that no cars had travelled through their observation points since 9.30 and could they please pack up. Since they were having to use the public phone box in Iddbridge the call only got through to Rascombe when a detective from Stagstead drove up to the Mobile HQ at 01.41.

  ‘Of course they can’t go home now,’ said Rascombe irritably. ‘They have replacement officers to take over at the end of each stint.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I know that,’ said the detective, ‘but the road is up for repair by the river and no one can use it anyway. There’s no real need to watch it at all.’

  But Inspector Rascombe was not to be persuaded. ‘All the more reason for keeping our eyes on it,’ he said. ‘If anyone comes down it when it’s closed, it must mean they are using it for some very sinister purpose. Stands to reason.’

  ‘But nobody is using it. How can they?’

  ‘Never mind how,’ said the Inspector. ‘Just tell them to keep an extra eye open from now.’

  ‘Cyclops-style, sir?’ said the detective and hurried out into the night before the Inspector could work the remark out and tell him not to be fucking impertinent.

  *

  In his room the Major played with his old radio. He was puzzled. He was picking up the strangest messages, none of which made sense to him. Inspector Rascombe’s admonitions about radio silence were being ignored. The Major was astonished to learn, with quite surprising clarity and a flow of obscenities, that someone called Rittson had just fallen in a ‘fucking stinking stream or something’. In fact it turned out to be a sheep-dipping bath and the Major was beginning to wonder what extraordinary even he had just been privy to when the person called Rittson was told furiously to maintain radio silence.

  ‘Must be the Marines over on Meltsea Marshes,’ the Major thought, and turned off his radio and went to sleep.

  *

  Out on the fell the ten constables moved forward in a strange series of small rushes as Inspector Rascombe had ordered. First two men would stumble forward and halt in a semi-crouching position while another four moved up and past them to be followed by the rest. In this curious and supposedly sheeplike fashion they moved forward against the driving rain and the searing wind. Around them genuine sheep scurried away into the darkness, only to stop and stare back at their weird imitators. And so the small group crossed the open ground, scrambled over drystone walls and, in the case of Detective Constable Rittson, fell into the sheep-dip.

  By 2 a.m. they had reached their first objective, the wood on the far side of the lake, and were peering across the water at the Middenhall. The building was almost entirely in darkness and only one light burned in the house itself. But on the outside floodlights shone out onto the lake and were reflected there among the waterlilies. ‘Bloody difficult to see anything with those fucking lights,’ said the detective called Mark, ‘and they can spot us dead easy.’ They crawled back into the wood and tried the other side. The lights were still quite bright.

  ‘He said we had to go up to the farmhouse,’ said Larkin. ‘So I reckon we’d better.’ He and Spender set off round the lake and over the little bridge by the sluice gate and made their way up the drive towards the Midden. Behind them Rutherford had decided there was a patch of dark shadow at the corner of the Middenhall where the dustbins were and, leaving Mark to try the other side where there were a number of azalea bushes, he scurried across the lawn and had got to within ten yards of the house when something moved in front of him.

  Unable to see what exactly it was, he obeyed orders and went into sheep mode, crouching down on all fours and at the same time trying to keep his eyes watching his front. In fact he had disturbed a family of badgers. There was a clang as a dustbin lid fell, a grunt and a slight noise of scrabbling. Detective Constable Rutherford turned and trundled himself away across the lawn and back over the wooden bridge. ‘No bloody good,’ he told the others. ‘They’ve got someone round the back on the look-out. I reckon we’d best be off.’

  The first phase of Operation Kiddlywink had been a complete failure.

  24

  By Friday even Inspector Rascombe was becoming discouraged. Three of his squad were off sick, one with a nasty condition of the skin caused by the sheep-dip, one with a twisted ankle. The third had gone down with pleurisy. As he reported to the Chief Constable, ‘That place is so out of the way and awkward to cover we’re having real difficulty.’

  The Chief Constable imagined they were. His own private investigations weren’t getting anywhere either, and he was beginning to think Auntie Bloody Bea had thought the whole caper up on her own to take Lady Vy away from him. This opinion was reinforced by an acrimonious telephone call from his father-in-law in the course of which Sir Edward had told him in certain terms exactly what he thought of him and had let drop the information that for once his daughter was showing good sense by setting up house with a raving lesbian. There had been other intimations of trouble ahead in Sir Edward’s outburst. He was lunching shortly at Number 10 and he intended to raise the matter of the Chief Constable’s deplorable tendencies with the PM. It had been a most unpleasant monologue, punctuated by denials that he put drugged youths in his wife’s bed and that he was ‘into’ garbage bags, parcel tape and used bed sheets.

  ‘Are you seriously expecting me to believe you didn’t insert a basting syringe into the bugger’s mouth and dose him with a mixture of Valium and whisky?’ Sir Edward shouted.

  The Chief Constable was. Most emphatically. He’d never heard such a dreadful accusation.

  ‘Well, I do believe it,’ his father-in-law stormed, ‘because that idiot daughter of mine hasn’t the brain of a head-louse and she couldn’t have invented that story in a month of Sundays. You drugged the bugger and you tied him up in tape. And I know you did. And if you think . . .’

  Sir Arnold did. He spent hours at night compiling the names, addresses and sums of money involved that seemed his only protection now. All the same, he did nothing to discourage Inspector Rascombe. The idiot couldn’t do any harm and he just might dig up something in his investigations in the Stagstead area.

  *

  Even Miss Midden had other things on her mind by that time. Every year in early August the Porterhouse Mission to the East End sent a number of children to the Middenhall. It had been a practice that dated back to the period shortly after the War when the Dean had brought reading parties up to the fell country and had stayed over at Carryclogs Hall with Brigadier General Turnbird, himself an old Porterhouse man and a very muscular Christian. The youngsters had originally been housed in bell-tents in the grounds of Carryclogs where, apart from some desultory hymn-singing and the occasional Bible-reading by the General’s daughter Phoebe, they had had the run of the estate and the river Idd, which was quite shallow at that point.

  ‘It is good for our townies to have a glimpse of Arcady,’ the General had once explained to a deputation of neighbouring farmers who had come to complain that sheep had been stampeded over walls, cows had been subjected to vicious attacks with catapults, and a number of stooks of hay had been set alight by boys smoking while playing hide and seek. The farmers hadn’t caught the reference to Arcady and wouldn’t have given a damn if they had.

  In the end their opinions and the rents they paid prevailed. Even before the General died the Mission had moved over to the Middenhall, which was sufficiently isolated to spare the farmers their previous depredation
s. There within the confines of the estate wall the multi-sexed and many-coloured group, some of whom came from Muslim families and consequently did not benefit from Miss Phoebe’s readings, spent a fortnight exploring the woods and one another’s bodies before going back to their homes in the now largely middle-class area on the Isle of Dogs where the Porterhouse Mission still operated. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Miss Midden’s insistence, which fitted in with the Dean’s own inclinations, that the contingent of Porterhouse undergraduates who accompanied each year’s batch be doubled in size to deal with the children, it is doubtful if the yearly visit could have continued. At least a dozen times in the past two summers elderly residents had returned to their rooms after dinner to find their belongings had been ransacked and items stolen, and on one awful occasion Mrs Louisa Midden had been approached by a fourteen-year-old with a very unnatural offer. Mr Joseph Midden, her husband and himself a retired gynaecologist of some repute, had been so appalled – as much by his wife’s moment of hesitation before refusing as by the actual offer – that Dr Mortimer had had to be summoned to deal with his arrhythmia.

  Now, as the coach carrying the children came down the drive, Miss Midden felt a strange sense of unease. The presence of so many inquisitive young minds in the grounds was a danger she should have foreseen. She would have to do something about the air-raid shelter in the walled garden. She had been so preoccupied with Timothy Bright’s affairs that she had entirely forgotten the Mission. As the tents were erected on the far side of the lake Miss Midden put padlocks on all the doors in the walls of the kitchen garden and decided to make her next journey. She had a long talk with Timothy Bright in the privacy of the sitting-room, and made a phone call. Then she drove to the bus station and travelled south again.

  The time had come to act.

  *

  The same thought was in Inspector Rascombe’s mind. The arrival of a coach containing thirty children indicated such an enormous orgy of paedophilia that he could hardly believe the report that came in to him from the surveillance team on the Middenhall road.

  ‘Thirty? Thirty children and some young men and women? In a coach? Christ, this looks like . . . I don’t know what it looks like. But it’s definitely the biggest one, this, has to be. I think we’ve got them this time, lads.’

  As a result of this information the Inspector, reporting directly to the Chief Constable, asked if he could make the investigation Top Priority.

  Sir Arnold hardly heard him. He was reading a letter from a firm of solicitors informing him that his wife intended to begin proceedings for divorce on grounds that would end his career. His Top Priority now was to stop the bitch. But he agreed, and Inspector Rascombe summoned a meeting of the Serious Crime Squad to outline the second phase of Operation Kiddlywink.

  As usual, Sergeant Bruton raised awkward questions. He had been studying the details of the people living at the Middenhall. They were all in their seventies or older. ‘That place is full of geriatrics,’ he said.

  Inspector Rascombe was unimpressed. ‘So what?’ he said. ‘It’s old men like that fancy little children. The only way they can get it up, the filthy bastards. We may be on the verge of uncovering the first Senior Citizens Sex Scandal.’

  ‘But half of them are married or widows. There are three unmarried old biddies up there,’ the Sergeant objected. ‘They can’t all be into child abuse.’

  The Inspector considered this for a moment and found an answer. ‘Maybe not, but it could be they’ve been threatened and are too frightened to talk. Hard-core perverts with a sadistic streak would frighten the lights out of old ladies.’

  Plans for surveillance penetration of the Middenhall went ahead. ‘It’s a clear night on the weather forecast. So we’ll close in around 01.00. I want the two-man surveillance teams in on the ground where they can video the action and install listening equipment which will relay information when to hit the place. One unit will be here in the wood and the other will be behind the house. You’ve got rations for forty-eight hours and we should have the case wrapped up by then.’

  That was Friday.

  *

  On Saturday Miss Midden struck. At 8 a.m. she left her boarding house in Clapham and presented herself at Judge Benderby Bright’s town house in Brooke Street. The door was opened by a manservant, an ex-Metropolitan policeman who doubled as a bodyguard. Judge Bright’s life had been threatened too often to let him feel safe except on the high seas. Even a Force Ten gale was mild compared to the feelings he had aroused among the members of families whose relatives had been sentenced to the maximum terms he could impose. He was not a popular man.

  The bodyguard studied Miss Midden critically. ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘I have come to see Judge Bright. It is important. And no, I have no appointment.’

  ‘Well, you’ve come at the wrong time. Judge Bright is still in bed. He rises late on Saturdays but if you will leave your name and address –’

  Miss Midden interrupted him. ‘Go and wake him and say to him, “Auntie Boskie’s shares.” I shall wait here on the doorstep and he will see me,’ she said. ‘“Auntie Boskie’s shares”.’ She turned her back and the man shut the door.

  Inside he hesitated. Miss Midden didn’t look like a nutter, but one never knew. On the other hand she had an air of authority about her and an impressive confidence. He picked up the house phone and woke the Judge, and, having apologized profusely, repeated Miss Midden’s message and the fact that she wanted to see the Judge. The effect was hardly what he had expected.

  ‘Don’t let her get away,’ Judge Bright shouted. ‘Bring her in the house at once. I’ll be down instantly.’

  The manservant went back to the door and opened it. ‘You’re to come in,’ he said and prepared to grab her if she tried to run for it.

  ‘I know,’ said Miss Midden and stepped past him. She was carrying the hold-all.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to search that, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘You may open it and look inside and you can feel the outside,’ said Miss Midden. ‘You will take nothing out.’

  The man looked inside and understood precisely what she meant. He hadn’t seen so many banknotes since an attempted raid on a bank in Putney. He showed Miss Midden into the sitting-room and before he could leave Judge Bright arrived in a dressing-gown. He was, as usual, in a filthy temper and he didn’t like being woken with enigmatic messages about Boskie’s shares. It had been bad enough late the previous night to be phoned by a demented Ernestine with the news that Bletchley had bungled his suicide attempt and had merely blown most of his teeth away with a very large starting pistol. ‘The damned fool must be mad,’ he had told her. ‘Why didn’t he use a shotgun and do the thing properly?’

  ‘I think he tried, but he couldn’t get his big toe onto the trigger. It’s really too awful. He doesn’t look at all well. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Go and get him a proper revolver,’ said the Judge. ‘A forty-five should do the trick, even with a skull as thick as his is.’

  Now he turned an eye, the same terrible eye that had struck terror into several thousand of the nastiest villains in England, on Miss Midden. He judged her to be a very ordinary woman. He was wrong.

  ‘Do sit down,’ said Miss Midden.

  ‘What?’ demanded the Judge. It was less a question than an explosion. Outside the door the ex-policeman trembled and wondered whether to rush in or not.

  Miss Midden struck again. ‘I said “Do sit down”,’ she said. ‘And stop staring at me like that. You’ll do yourself a mischief.’

  The Judge sat down. In a long and frequently forceful life he had never been told to sit down by an unknown woman in his own house. And she was right about doing himself a mischief. His heart was doing something eccentric, like racing and missing beats.

  ‘Now then,’ she went on when he had made himself slightly less uncomfortable, ‘I have a question to ask you.’

  She stopped. Judge Benderby Bright was
making the most peculiar noises. It sounded as if he was choking. His colour wasn’t any too good either.

  ‘I want to know whether you want to see your nephew Timothy again.’

  The Judge goggled at her. Want to see that infernal little shit again? The woman must be mad. He’d kill the bastard. That’s what he’d do if he ever laid eyes on the damnable swine who had stolen all Boskie’s shares. See him again?

  ‘I can see that you don’t,’ said Miss Midden. ‘That’s as plain as the nose on your face.’

  The nose on the Judge’s face was not plain, not in his opinion at any rate. It was thin and distinguished. It was also white and taut with fury. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he yelled. ‘You come into my house with some infernal nonsense about my sister’s shares and –’

  ‘Oh, do stop behaving like a fool,’ Miss Midden shouted back. ‘Just look in that hold-all.’

  For a moment, an awful and extended moment, the Judge thought about hitting her. He had never hit a woman before, but there was a time and a place for everything, and the drawing-room at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning, before he’d even had a cup of tea, seemed a suitable time to him. With admirable restraint he controlled himself.

  ‘Go on,’ said Miss Midden. ‘Don’t just sit there looking like a totem pole on heat. Take a dekko.’

  Judge Benderby Bright wasn’t hearing straight. He couldn’t be. Nobody, and he meant nobody, in his entire life had treated him in this appalling manner before. He had been subject to the most disgusting abuse from men and women in the dock. He could deal with that – he rather enjoyed sending them down for contempt. But this was a completely new and dreadful experience for him. He did what he was told and peered lividly into the bag. He peered for a long time and then he looked up.

  ‘Where . . . where the bloody hell did you get . . .’ he began but Miss Midden was on her feet. She had a look on her face he hadn’t seen since his mother found him feeling the parlourmaid up in the pantry one late afternoon. It had unnerved him then, and Miss Midden’s look unnerved him now.