River of Darkness jm-1

by Rennie Airth

  She was planning to walk around Shooter's Hill the path she was following circled the wooded knob, a pleasant ramble taking no more than half an hour but the sudden brisk downpour prompted her to seek shelter beneath the trees bordering the footway. The weather had changed in the last few days. The first showers after the long summer drought had dampened the dust and leaf-mould of the forest floor. Standing under the wide branches of a purple beech she breathed in the soft autumnal scents.

  On an impulse she decided to climb the hill, taking the most indirect route she could find, walking back and forth across the slope, following a line of easy contours to the summit. It was something she had not done for two years — Dr Fellows frowned on gradients — and she was pleased when she reached the top without either breathing hard or feeling the familiar warning flutter in her chest. Although it was still raining steadily, the dense canopy of leaves kept her dry. Near the summit she found a place to sit down on a leaf-covered bank beside the exposed roots of a giant beech.

  There was a good view of Croft Manor from up here. The house had been in the Merrick family for nearly three hundred years. Her two sons had been born there: William, who had just passed his thirty- sixth birthday; whose withered arm had seemed like a curse, but had proved a blessing. And her darling Tom. On his last leave they had taken a walk in the woods together, the three of them. (Her husband, Richard Merrick, had died when the boys were barely grown.) Tom had made them laugh with his tales of a winter spent in the trenches before Arras. How the hot tea froze in minutes and the bully beef turned into chunks of red ice. When he described a night raid into no man's land he made it sound like an adventure from Boy's Own. Volunteers and blackened faces, knives and coshes.

  A month later she had awoken in the middle of the night consumed by grief. The emotion was so profound — so far in excess of any nightmare's backwash — that she had roused her elder son and he had tried to comfort her. She lived through the next two days in a state of shock and confusion, unable to equate the psychological disturbance she had suffered with any known reality. Fearful of contemplating what the unknown might hold. On the evening of the second day the telegram had arrived from the War Office.

  Her darling Tom.

  She sat quietly, remembering. Grieving still. The patter of rain on the leaves overhead ceased, and presently the sun came out. Almost at once the glassed doors opened and the children slipped out and went hurrying down the yew alley towards the croquet lawn at the bottom of the garden. They had invented a game of their own, Mrs Merrick had observed, a complicated affair in which the mallets had been discarded and the hoops set up in a seemingly random pattern that only its devisers understood. Before they had reached the end of the alley the figure of Enid Bradshaw, their nanny, appeared in the doorway. She called out to them, or so Mrs Merrick judged, watching the dumb show from afar. The children paused and looked back.

  Words were exchanged, no doubt on the subject of wet feet, and then Miss Bradshaw retired into the house and the children continued on their way.

  Alison, the elder, had Charlotte's fair hair and already, at seven, her graceful gestures. She had never known her father, who had been killed in the first months of the war. William had married the young widow and together they had produced Robert, aged five. Harriet Merrick had watched her diffident son, always conscious of his handicap, grow into full manhood as he took on the responsibility of a dead man's wife and made her his own.

  She smiled suddenly. Another person had made her appearance on the lawn. She was dressed in a long skirt that might have seemed old-fashioned even before the war, and her thick grey hair was tied behind her head in a severe-looking bun. Her name was Annie McConnell and she had once been Mrs Merrick's maid when they were both young girls growing up in County Tyrone. Annie had accompanied her mistress to England when she got married and had remained with her ever since. For a while she had been Tom and William's nanny, and after that had filled the post of housekeeper. Now she was simply Annie, part family retainer, part friend. Harriet Merrick loved her dearly.

  She watched as Annie strode forthrightly down the yew alley towards the croquet lawn. From a distance her stiff black-skirted figure looked forbidding; to the children it seemed to have the opposite effect. They rushed across the lawn to greet her — Annie had been away for four days visiting her sister in Wellfleet and threw themselves into her outstretched arms. Mrs Merrick had once spent a whole day weeping in those arms.

  She thought now with pleasure of the days they would soon be spending together. William and Charlotte were taking the children to Cornwall to stay with friends. The maids would be sent off. She and Annie would have the house to themselves. They would gossip and reminisce.

  Meanwhile, Robert's small hands had been busy in the deep pocket of Annie's skirt. Whatever it was he found there seemed to give him pleasure, and Alison followed his example. Annie shot a guilty glance back in the direction of the house. Apparently contraband was being passed. Not wishing to spy further, Mrs Merrick rose to her feet and dusted off her dress. A slight movement on the slope below caught her eye and she stood still and watched as a pair of red squirrels worked busily, gathering nuts from beneath a walnut tree.

  She noticed something else as she started back down the hill: half a dozen cigarette stubs lying in a neat line on the ground near to where she had been sitting.

  It seemed someone else had found the bank a pleasant place to sit and meditate.

  Five minutes after he arrived at his desk on Monday morning Sinclair received an urgent summons from Deputy Assistant Commissioner Bennett. He was gone half an hour and returned with a thick manila envelope on which the heavy red wax seals had been broken. 'From the War Office,' he told Madden, as he tossed him the packet. He stuck his head into the adjoining office. 'Sergeant, in here! You, too, Constable.'

  Hollingsworth and Styles came in from their cubbyhole.

  Sinclair perched on the edge of his desk. There was a light in the chief inspector's eye.

  'A criminal attack very similar to the ones we're investigating took place in Belgium in September 1917. A farmer and his wife and family were murdered in their home. The assault bears a remarkable resemblance to the Melling Lodge killings. The husband and his two sons were bayoneted. The wife had her throat cut.'

  Billy's whistle brought a glower of disapproval from Hollingsworth.

  'An inquiry into the murders was conducted by the investigation branch of the Royal Military Police.

  From the file, it appears there was little doubt in anyone's mind that the killer or killers were serving British soldiers. What the War Office has sent us is a record of the inquiry. It includes a detailed crime scene report, a pathologist's findings and a verbatim record of all interrogations.'

  Madden frowned at the file cover he was holding.

  'The case is marked closed.'

  'So it is.' Sinclair slid off his desk and began to pace up and down. 'The chief investigating officer was a Captain Miller. In deciding to terminate the inquiry he wrote a memorandum to accompany the case files in which he explained his decision. It's logged in the file index, but unfortunately it's missing. Nothing sinister there, I'm told — the ministry's snowed under with wartime records. They have a warehouse somewhere in London stacked to the ceiling. We're lucky they were able to dig out what they did.'

  'Is Captain Miller available?' Hollingsworth asked.

  'No, he's dead,' Sinclair answered bluntly. 'His staff car was hit by a stray shell behind the lines. It happened a few weeks afterwards, but by then the case was wrapped up. Let me go on.'

  He seated himself behind his desk.

  'For whatever reason — we can't be sure from this distance in time — suspicion fell on a battalion of the South Nottinghamshire Regiment. On a company, rather, B Company, and just a small part of that fifteen men, to be precise. They were all questioned.'

  'Were they together?' Madden asked.

  'Apparently they all went to the farmhouse for a me
al. The battalion was being rested. They'd been in action and taken a mauling and were waiting for replacements. The point, as far as we're concerned, is that these were the only men questioned in connection with the crime. Captain Miller must have had strong reasons for thinking the killer was one of them.'

  'Then why was the case closed?' Billy Styles spoke before he could stop himself.

  The chief inspector's smile was deceptively inviting.

  'Why don't you tell us that, Constable?'

  Billy blushed bright red. Hollingsworth, beside him, was grinning.

  'Sergeant?'

  'Because he must have reckoned whoever did it was dead, sir.'

  'Just so.' Sinclair nodded his approval. 'The battalion was back in action a week later. It was that Passchendaele business. Of the fifteen men, only seven came out alive. Colonel Jenkins did some checking.

  Miller closed the case right about the time the battalion was withdrawn a second time. Which suggests he believed the murderer was one of the eight men who were killed.'

  In the silence that followed, the sound of a tugboat's whistle floated in through the open window.

  Hollingsworth cocked his head. 'Could he have had the wrong man in mind, sir?'

  'I wonder, Sergeant.' Sinclair sat forward in his chair. His eye met Madden's. 'Of the seven who came out, only four were alive at the end of the war. Their names and service records are in the file, and Colonel Jenkins was good enough to check with the Army to find out where they were paid their twenty pounds.'

  'Twenty pounds?' Billy didn't understand the allusion.

  'That's what the government gave every private soldier who came through the war. A gratuity. Two of them were paid in Nottingham, one in Brighton and the other in Folkestone.'

  Madden extracted a sheet of paper from the file and handed it to the chief inspector. 'Here's a list of the names, Sergeant.' Sinclair passed it on to Hollingsworth.

  'You and Styles find yourselves a couple of telephones and see if you can come up with four current addresses by lunch-time. But go carefully.' He raised a warning finger. 'Just say we want a word with these people. Don't start any alarm bells ringing.'

  The chief inspector waited until they had the office to themselves again. He took out his pipe and tobacco pouch and laid them on the blotter in front of him.

  His fingers beat a rapid tattoo on the desktop. 'Well, John?'

  'Was she raped?'

  'She was not.'

  Madden grunted. He was studying a fan of documents spread out before him. 'These verbatim interviews — they don't tell us much.'

  '"Yes, sir, no, sir, it wasn't me, sir." We'll have to go through 'em, just the same.' Sinclair began filling his pipe. 'Damn it, John, we might have struck lucky.

  We could come up with a name and a face.'

  But he was smiling as he went on with his reading.

  Madden said nothing,

  Sinclair struck a match, 'I've just had a large pat on the back from Bennett.'

  'Have you, sir?'

  'In front of the chief super, too. He came expecting our usual Monday morning get-together. Instead he had Bennett telling him what my "leap of imagination" had uncovered. I thought Sampson was going to be sick on the carpet.'

  Madden was grinning now. 'A leap of imagination, sir?'

  'Those were his words. I was overcome. Speechless, you might say.' The chief inspector blew out a cloud of mellow tobacco smoke. 'By the way, how is Dr Weiss? Safely back in Vienna, I trust.'

  Donald Hardy, who worked as a solicitor's clerk in Have. The fourth man, Alfred Dawkins, had had various addresses in Folkestone over the past eighteen months.

  'The police don't know where he's living at present, but they know where to find him — that's how they put it.' Hollingsworth scratched his head. 'I let it go at that, sir. Didn't want to stir them up.'

  After reflection, Sinclair issued his orders: 'John, you go to Folkestone tomorrow morning. Take Styles with you. Hollingsworth and I will deal with Mr Hardy in Have. Let's both be clear on one point. If there's any suspicion that either of these two is the man we're seeking, the help of armed officers must be sought before he's approached. I want no more casualties.'

  Lunch-time came and went, and it was not until four o'clock that Hollingsworth was able to report success in tracking down three of the four survivors.

  'The other bloke, Samuel Patterson, seems to have vanished. He left Nottingham two years ago to take a job as a labourer on a farm near Norwich, but he quit after only a few months and nobody's heard of him since. The Norwich police are trying to trace him.'

  The second man paid his gratuity in Nottingham, Arthur Marlow, was a patient in an Army hospital.

  'He's got a leg wound that won't heal. He's been bedridden for a year.'

  Before they had even left the platform at Folkestone station next morning Madden and Styles learned that Alfred Dawkins was not the man they were seeking. 'That's right, sir, only one leg. Didn't they say?' Detective Sergeant Booth of the Folkestone CID had come to the station to meet them. He was a thickset man with dark brown eyes and a watchful air. 'Lost it in the very last month of the war, or so I've been told.'

  Studying the sergeant, Billy noticed the yellowed fingers of a heavy smoker. His trousers were a little loose at the waist, possibly the result of a diet, Billy surmised. He had resolved to become more observant.

  To take note of things. He knew he was burdened with a wide-eyed quality: a sort of innocence that led him to make daft remarks and ask stupid questions, like the one that had caused him such embarrassment in the chief inspector's office the day before. It was obvious why Captain Miller had closed the case, once you thought about it. His trouble was, he didn't think about things enough. Or, rather, he opened his mouth first.

  This line of reasoning had been reinforced by a conversation he had had with Madden on the train coming down from London. The inspector had seemed in better spirits. The haunted look Billy had grown accustomed to was less marked. He had gone to the trouble of explaining to the young constable why the case they were on was proving so hard to crack.

  'Nearly all murders take place between people who know each other, so there's an obvious connection from the start. But this man kills people he's never met. At least, that's what we think, though we can't be sure. How does he pick them? What took him to Highfield and Bentham in the first instance? Is he a travelling salesman? Does he drive a van, or some other vehicle? Whatever job he has seems to take him around the country. Without a real lead, we have to accumulate all the information we can, all the details, no matter how trivial, because the answer may lie in one of them.'

  That chimed with what Billy had been telling himself. Pay attention.

  They rode through golden cornfields and orchards heavy with fruit. Then the hedgerowed fields stopped abruptly and Billy saw the silver glint of the sea below. Madden pointed to a collection of low buildings on the outskirts of the town.

  'That's Shorncliffe Camp. It used to be five, no, ten times the size. The tents stretched for miles. Nearly every British soldier who went to France passed through here. Did you know that, Styles?'

  Billy nodded. It was the first time he had heard the inspector speak about the war.

  'Towards the end they got up to nine thousand a day. They marched them down to the town and straight on to the Channel steamers and across to France. At night there were illuminated fishing boats strung out in lines all the way to the French coast.'

  On the platform at Folkestone Detective Sergeant Booth explained about Dawkins. (To Billy's satisfaction, he had lit up almost at once.) 'We haven't got his current address, sir. He moves a lot — trouble with landladies. But he's generally down in the port this time of day. I've no doubt we'll find him there.'

  'He's not the man I hoped he might be,' Madden admitted. 'But I'd like a word with him just the same.'

  Booth had a taxi waiting outside the station. It took them on a winding downhill route through the town. When they re
ached the port he told the driver to stop. Ahead of them Billy could see the harbour situated in a natural bay carved out of the chalky cliffs. In the foreground a small steamer was tied up at the wharf. A crowd of people, mostly women, were gathered in front of the gangplank. Smoke was issuing from the steamer's red and white funnel. Sergeant Booth pointed. 'There he is, sir, at the foot of the gangplank.'

  Through the press of bodies Billy caught a glimpse of a figure on crutches.

  'All those women — they're war widows going on a tour of cemeteries in France and Belgium. It's something they started last year. Perhaps you read about it?'

  Madden shook his head.

  'Alf Dawkins gets himself down here whenever there's a sailing, which is most days in the summer.

  Stands there on his crutches with his medals pinned on. You'd be surprised how many ladies put half a crown in his hand. Probably worth a couple of quid to him. Afterwards he goes over to the pub' — Booth pointed to a line of buildings a little way down the jetty — 'buys himself a drink. Two or three more likely. That's how we know him. He's been up before the bench. Drunk and disorderly.'

  'I don't want to talk to him here. We'll wait in the pub.' Madden's voice was terse.

  Twenty minutes later, sitting in a taproom smelling of fish and stale tobacco smoke, they heard the toot of the steamer's whistle. At that moment the pub doors opened and Dawkins swung in on his crutches. Short and stocky, his pale face was disfigured by red blotches. Billy noticed that one of his eyelids blinked with a nervous tic.

  Madden rose. 'I'll talk to him alone, if you don't mind.'