Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs

by Simon Brett

  “Nick! Harry mentioned someone else called Nick. He’d played their games with them.”

  “But where are we going to find him?”

  “He works on one of the farms. I’ll ask Irene Forbes. She may know.”

  §

  When Ted’s car drew up beside him, Nick was on a tractor with a fork-lift attachment, lowering a huge cylinder of hay over a fence to a circling herd of hungry cows. He was aware of Jude and Ted’s presence, but ignored them till the bale was grounded. Then he climbed over the fence and used a knife to cut the string around the hay, forcing the eager animals back as he did so. Only after he had methodically coiled up the string round his hand and crossed back over the fence did he look full on at his visitors.

  He folded the arms of his plaid working shirt and said nothing. His eyes, buried in weather-beaten folds of skin, were cautious.

  “Nick?” A curt nod acknowledged that that’s who he was. “My name’s Jude and this is Ted. Look, I’m sorry to interrupt you like this, but I want to know if you’ve ever heard of Fort Pittsburgh.”

  There was an aching silence. Jude was beginning to be afraid he was never going to say anything, when finally he spoke. “Long time since I’ve heard Fort Pittsburgh mentioned.”

  “But do you know what it is, where it is?”

  Again he left a silence before he said, “Chalk pit. Out on the Downs.”

  “Could you tell us how to get there?”

  “Why?” he asked, with a suspicion of strangers that went back through generations.

  “Because I believe a friend of mine is being imprisoned in Fort Pittsburgh.”

  The words sounded melodramatic, but Nick took them seriously. “Who’s imprisoned her then?”

  “Either Lennie Baylis or Brian Helling.”

  The effect of the names was instantaneous. “We’d better get out there!”

  Ted Crisp began, “If you show me the way—”

  “We’ll go in the tractor. It’s cross-country.”

  §

  The March sky was already darkening as the tractor lumbered off the track and started across fields. On the higher parts of the Downs the ground, though wet, was fairly firm. When they got into the dips, the going would be stickier. But the tractor’s high wheels rode steadily over the terrain.

  In the enclosed cab, conditions for the three of them were cramped and stuffy.

  “It’s a kids’ name—Fort Pittsburgh,” said Nick, suddenly loquacious. “If you were brought up in Weldisham, you used to go a long way out of the village to play. Lots of secret places you could find. All our kids’ games were kind of military…lots of building camps, having pitched battles, stalking your friends, trapping them. It wasn’t like in a city. We didn’t have many toys and stuff, so we…as the expression goes…made our own entertainment. Just a few of us…and some of the games we invented were pretty rough.”

  Neither Jude nor Ted Crisp said anything. They were too anxious for words, and so they let Nick’s monologue roll.

  “Anyway, all around the Downs we had our camps, forts we called them, and we invented names for them. Well, I didn’t do much of the inventing. Lennie and Harry did that. They were in charge. Lennie had heard of Pittsburgh and he thought it sounded American and flashy, so when we found this old disused chalk pit, it became Fort Pittsburgh.”

  “A chalk pit?” said Jude.

  “Yes. In the middle of some woods. Very overgrown. Great place to play and…” He seemed to lose impetus. “That kind of thing.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Well, we…As I say, our games were pretty rough…cruel, you could say. I’m sure they’d be called cruel nowadays, but then…that’s how kids were…Like I said, Harry and Lennie were the leaders…And Brian Helling always wanted to play with us…and we didn’t want him to…you know, because he wasn’t from the village…he only spent time up there when his mum was working. His mum was a cleaner…and Brian was a mummy’s boy…and he was a bastard…and…Like I said, kids can be very cruel…”

  “So one day Lennie said we’d play this trick on Brian. I wasn’t keen, because I knew what Lennie’s tricks were like, but you didn’t argue with him, nor with Harry. You just went along with them. So, anyway, Lennie told Brian yes, he could come and play with us. He could come to this special place we’d found which we called Fort Pittsburgh. So Brian came along with us, all innocent and, like, very cheery because he thought now he was part of our gang, and we…”

  There was a silence. “What, Nick?”

  “We tied him up and left him in a cave overnight. In what we called the Prison. The Fort Pittsburgh Prison.”

  “How old was he then?”

  “Seven…eight…I don’t know. It’s not something I’m proud to have been involved in, but Lennie had a very strong personality and, like I said, kids are cruel. So anything that happens between Lennie and Brian goes back a long way. They both got a really cruel streak and if they’ve captured someone, they—”

  But the farm worker’s narrative got no further. The tractor had reached the edge of a thick tangled wood. He brought it to a halt.

  “We walk the last bit,” said Nick.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “You can’t just leave me here,” said Carole, as she felt the nylon rope being tied around both her wrists. After the other man had departed, he’d let her out of the cave again and kept her tethered by the one arm. She’d tried to engage him in conversation, but without success. He’d given her permission to relieve herself and even given her some food.

  Why did he bother? She knew they’d agreed to leave her there to die.

  “Back in the cave now.” Brian Helling jerked the rope taut, less gentle than he’d been the day before. He pulled her face round to face his. “I’m going to write about you, you know, Carole Seddon.”

  Panic snatched away her breath. “Write about me?” she managed to say. “What on earth do you mean? There’s nothing to write about me.”

  His answer made her feel even bleaker.

  “Oh, there will be. A Diary of Decay. That’ll be the breakthrough book for me. A minute dissection of how someone actually dies…How long it takes them to die…What actually happens to their body…and to their mind.”

  Carole fought off terror with cold logic. “If you’re going to make that kind of detailed observation, you’ll have to come out here. You’ll draw attention to my hiding place.”

  “No way. I know this area. I grew up round here. I know every copse and fold of the Downs. I’m a good tracker, a good countryman. Nobody’ll find me out here.”

  “They will if you keep coming out in a Land Rover.”

  “I won’t use the Land Rover after today.”

  “Somebody must know where you are.”

  Brian Helling shook his head complacently. “Only Lennie Baylis. And he’ll keep quiet.”

  Carole clutched at a straw. “Will Maples! He tipped you off and told you where to find me. He knows where you are.”

  “As you know,” said Brian quietly, “if you were listening to what Lennie and I said, we’ve both got something of a hold over Will Maples. Incidentally,” Brian went on, aware of the cruelty of what he was about to say, “Will rang through on the mobile earlier. He told me two friends of yours had arrived at the Hare and Hounds looking for you.”

  “What did they look like?”

  “Chubby woman with blonde hair, big fat chap with a beard. Needless to say, Will didn’t tell them anything.”

  A shadow of despair engulfed Carole.

  Brian Helling tugged on the rope. “Better get you back in your little niche, hadn’t we? I’ve got to be off.”

  “When will you be coming back?” asked Carole, trying to make it sound like the most casual question in the world.

  He let out a dry chuckle. “Oh, I don’t think I should tell you that. It’d spoil the fun.”

  “So what is going to be the fun for you? Killing me? Watching me die?”

  “I suppose
so, yes. But,” he said rather primly, “it’s not just random cruelty. There’s a practical side as well. Writers need experience. There are some things you can’t make up. You have to live through them. All my other books were rejected, not because they weren’t horrifying enough, but because they weren’t authentic enough. They lacked that little bit extra that can only be given by firsthand experience.”

  “And you didn’t get that first-hand experience when you set fire to Heron Cottage?”

  “No.” He spoke with genuine regret and a frightening objectivity. “I wasn’t able to watch my mother die. Pity, I’d been looking forward to that for a long time.”

  “So she couldn’t give you the authentic material you were looking for?”

  “No.”

  “So…you couldn’t get what you wanted when you killed your mother…Whereas I, on the other hand, can go to my death with the great satisfaction of knowing I’ve helped you, for the first time in your life, to write a publishable book?”

  He didn’t like the scorn in her voice. He lashed out and slapped her face hard, hissing, “Yes.”

  “Well, don’t bother putting me back in that smelly cave. Why don’t you just kill me with your knife?” Carole demanded defiantly. “Get it over with. Watch me die here and now. Sit with your notebook and describe every last twitch of my body. I’m sure that would add the necessary ‘authenticity’ to your precious book.”

  “Oh no,” said Brian Helling, with an icicle of a smile. “That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t fit. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I have to watch someone die in the Prison of Fort Pittsburgh.”

  “Why?”

  His face clouded with painful memories. But the only explanation he could give was, “I have to do it.”

  He tugged on the rope, again with unnecessary harshness. “Come on, it’ll be dark soon. Time to settle you in for the night, Carole. Though in fact what we’re talking about is nights and days, and more nights and days…You won’t be coming out of there again.”

  “But you’ll be coming in to watch me?”

  “I must make sure my Diary of Decay is authentic.”

  “Well, may I at least have another pee before—”

  “No!”

  This time the tug on the rope was so hard that Carole fell to the ground. Brian Helling dragged her upright and pushed her towards the undergrowth-hidden entrance to the cave.

  When she tried to resist, he hit her hard around the head. He had lost the restraint that previously curbed his violence. He was very dangerous.

  Cowed, Carole could do nothing but what he wanted. She dropped to her knees and then rolled sideways into the rank darkness.

  She could still feel the tension on the rope, and waited for him to follow her in and truss her up again. He’d tie her legs, and shackle her once again to the tree root. And that was the position in which she would stay, for the rest of her life. Which wouldn’t be very long.

  Then one day perhaps another walker, wandering off the beaten track across the Downs, would stumble on her catacomb. And another set of female bones would be found to feed the mills of gossip and conjecture that ground endlessly in the village of Weldisham.

  Carole Seddon had often thought her life was unimportant. Never till that moment had it felt so essential. She dreamed of being back in a hot bath at High Tor, and she knew how unlikely that dream was ever to be realized.

  She lay on the slimy floor, breathing the chill, dank air, waiting for her murderer to come into the cave after her.

  There was a moment of stillness, then a shout, and a yank on the rope that almost pulled her arms from their sockets. She was aware of herself screaming.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Suddenly, mercifully, the rope was released.

  There were sounds of confusion, shouting, possibly fighting, from outside. Then the entrance to the cave was once again darkened by a human body.

  And Carole heard the most welcome sound of her life. It was the anxious voice of Ted Crisp asking, “Are you all right, Carole? I’ll kill the bastard if he’s hurt you.”

  She felt Ted’s strong arms helping her out and, once she was upright, fell into them. His body felt huge and wonderfully solid.

  It was still just light at the foot of the chalk cliff. Carole took in Nick, holding a tyre iron, guarding the Land Rover to prevent Brian Helling’s escape by that route. Beside him was a sight almost as welcome as led Crisp—Jude.

  But Jude was looking upwards with fear in her eyes and there was shouting from above them.

  Carole, still holding Ted Crisp’s hand, moved backwards to see what was going on at the top of the cliff.

  Brian Helling had scurried up a narrow diagonal ridge across the chalk face. An escape route from Fort Pittsburgh that they’d found in their childhood games. But, at the top of the cliff, knowing the way Brian would come, stood Lennie Baylis.

  The sergeant was much heavier in build than his opponent, who looked effete and slightly ridiculous in his trademark beret and black coat. The leather was scored with white chalk marks where Brian had scrambled against the cliff.

  They faced each other for a moment in silence, then Brian Helling’s escape was cut short as Lennie Baylis’s heavy body slammed into him. For a moment it looked as though the lighter man had lost his balance and would fall back down the chalk. But somehow he managed to grab hold of his assailant and, watched with appalled fascination by the four below, the two bodies grappled together on the cliff top, re-creating a long-remembered childhood conflict.

  There was a sound like a gasp and, gradually, the bodies separated. As in slow motion, one slipped away from the other. Then, gathering momentum, the body slithered down the face of the cliff, leaving a livid smear of red on the discoloured chalk.

  At the top, with bloodied knife in hand and an expression of triumph on his face, stood Brian Helling.

  FORTY-NINE

  Jude had rung the police on her mobile. Brian Helling offered no resistance when Ted Crisp tied him up with the orange nylon rope. The murder of Lennie Baylis seemed to have calmed him down, perhaps provided a resolution to emotions that had tortured him throughout his life.

  The police arrived in a convoy of Range Rovers. They were very solicitous, and a female officer looked after Carole. Respectful of the state she was in, they kept their questioning to a minimum and, once reassured that Brian Helling hadn’t touched her sexually and that she really did feel all right, allowed her to fulfil her fantasy of ending up that night in a hot bath back at High Tor.

  There would be more questions later, but, they implied, not until Carole felt ready to answer them.

  Jude went back with Carole, but neither felt like talking. Carole promised Jude she’d ring through if she woke in the night feeling bad, but she didn’t think it’d happen. The emotions of the previous twenty-four hours had left her so drained she didn’t feel anything, except extraordinarily tired. She could sleep for a week.

  §

  The police were back to Carole earlier than she’d expected. The very next morning, in fact. But her visitors weren’t from the teams investigating the three Weldisham murders. They comprised an assistant chief constable, resplendent in his uniform, and a female detective constable in designer plain clothes.

  They were polite, but went straight to the purpose of their visit. “Mrs Seddon,” said the assistant chief constable, “we’re here in connection with the late Detective Sergeant Baylis.”

  “Yes. It must be dreadful for his family.”

  “Of course.” He dismissed the family with a perfunctory wave of his hand. “I need to understand, Mrs Seddon, how much you knew about Detective Sergeant Baylis.”

  “Not a lot. I met him first a few weeks back. He was called out to Weldisham when I reported my discovery of the bones in South Welling Barn.”

  “And you saw him after that occasion?”

  “Yes, once or twice. He encouraged me to let him know how my thoughts were going about the…well, I suppos
e I have to call it the ‘case’. He seemed very concerned that I should keep him up to date with anything I’d observed round the village.”

  “Didn’t you think that was odd?”

  “Well, I suppose a bit…He did seem to take a very personal interest in the case.”

  A look passed between the assistant chief constable and his sergeant. It seemed to confirm some conjecture that they’d shared before the meeting.

  “Did Detective Sergeant Baylis say anything to you about drugs, Mrs Seddon?”

  Some instinctive caution made Carole decide to forget the conversation that she had overheard at Fort Pittsburgh. “Well…He did say that Brian Helling had got involved with drugs…that Brian owed a lot of money to some men in Brighton.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  Her answer seemed to satisfy the assistant chief constable. “Mrs Seddon, I must request your complete confidentiality in this matter. Please don’t talk about it to anyone, least of all the press. The fact is that Detective Sergeant Baylis had been under internal police investigation for some time…”

  “About drugs?”

  “Yes. Baylis used to be based in Brighton and there were allegations that he…got rather more friendly than he should with certain club owners…That he from time to time turned a blind eye to deals that…As I say, these were only allegations, which were in the process of being investigated when he died…”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Precisely. Now what will happen to that investigation in these new circumstances…Well, who can say at this point? Obviously, if the investigation is wound up, that will save Sergeant Baylis’s family a good deal of suffering…”

  Might also save you a good deal of adverse publicity, thought Carole.

  “As yet, as I say, no decisions have been taken about the inquiry, but, because of its sensitive nature, I hope I can rely on your…absolute discretion.”

  “Of course.” Carole’s cases were solved. She had no interest in the unsavoury past deeds of the late Detective Sergeant Baylis.