The Blood-Dimmed Tide

by Rennie Airth

Most of the holiday activity was centred there, he noted. The regatta was long over, but there were still a few campers in the fields lower down, their tents easy to pick out against the green meadowgrass, while the river, though no longer ‘chock-a-block’, remained busy with pleasure craft and other waterborne traffic.

  Upstream, in the opposite direction, the view was different. They were close to the outskirts of the town, standing on a section of paved path that soon petered out into a dirt footway which continued along the tree-clad river bank. For several miles, according to PC Crawley. Billy had already got the constable to show him the spot where Susan Barlow’s body had been taken from the water. He’d been able to do that, though not much more.

  ‘I only got posted here six months ago, Sarge,’ Crawley had explained defensively when Billy tried to find out how the original search had been conducted. He’d had to turn to the file for more, and discovered that the searchers had concentrated their efforts on the stretch of river below the bridge, which made sense. That was the direction a floating object would take, after all. It was pure chance alone that had brought Susan Barlow’s body to rest on the bank upstream.

  Billy had spent some time studying the site, a small cove on an outer bend of the river. The log beneath which the remains of Susan’s body had been found was still there, drawn up on the bank now, a piece of rotting tree trunk, stripped of its bark. It was possible to imagine how the current, swinging around at that point, might have carried the body, semi-submerged, into this shallow inlet. Trapped beneath the log, half-buried in the mud, it would have remained unaffected by the subsequent rise and fall of the river. A belt of undergrowth, separating the cove from the path, screened it from sight on the landward side, and its presence there had not been noted until some weeks ago when a couple in a rowing boat had pulled in to the bank and been greeted by the grisly spectacle of the girl’s arm, or what was left of it, protruding from the mud.

  Assuming it was a case of murder, how had she got there?

  Not the obvious way. Not by walking up the river on her own and encountering some stranger bent on rape and murder. Having examined the route carefully, Billy was certain of that now. Though hidden from the water by brush and overhanging branches, the path was mostly visible to the open fields it skirted on its inward side, and these all showed signs of having been used as camp sites during the summer. What was more, it was clearly a well-used footway. Even today, when the holiday season was over, they had encountered two families with small children and had passed a group of hikers camping out in one of the riverside meadows. Billy simply couldn’t picture the man - this careful killer - seizing hold of the girl in broad daylight, overpowering her and dragging her off to some secluded spot, all the while with the danger of discovery hanging over him.

  No, it couldn’t have happened that way.

  ‘Come on, Crawley.’

  Billy turned his back on the river and led the constable up a flight of shallow stone steps and across a small gravelled garden, bordered by flower beds, to the lane where he’d left his car. This was the same road Susan Barlow had taken when she’d walked into Henley to buy her packet of oranges; and the one she’d used to get home, too. Or so he believed now. Only she’d never got there.

  He paused on the pavement, looking up and down the narrow lane. A picture was forming in his mind, and the image wasn’t pleasant. He saw the girl in her pink dress, with her brown paper packet clutched in her hand, walking in the shade along the grassed verge. He saw the car drawing up quietly behind her...

  What words had he got prepared, the smooth-tongued stranger? What invitation had proved so irresistible that Susan Barlow had been persuaded to climb into the car and join him in the front seat? Billy scowled at the thought.

  ‘Are we going back to the station now?’ Crawley asked hopefully. ‘It’s getting on for lunch-time.’

  An hour later the constable’s stomach was rumbling with hunger and Billy, too, was unsatisfied. He was beginning to think Deacon might be right. There was no way of proving that Susan Barlow’s death had resulted from murder.

  Sinclair had warned him of the likelihood that his journey would be wasted. ‘These old cases have gone cold, I’m afraid. We’ll be lucky if we find anything new. But keep an eye open for any similiarities to the Brookham murder.’

  Billy had started from the supposition that Susan Barlow had been a victim of opportunity. There was obviously no way the murderer could have known she would be walking into town that morning. But he must have been hunting, all the same, Billy felt, on the lookout for prey, and that argued he’d had somewhere in mind to take any child who fell into his hands. Given where the body was eventually found, it meant he’d already reconnoitred the river bank and found some spot upstream where he could park his car discreetly.

  Returning to his own vehicle, Billy had spent the next sixty minutes with an increasingly unhappy Crawley exploring the winding, tree-shaded road that led to what the constable assured him had been Mrs Barlow’s cottage. He already knew that the bereaved mother had moved away, unable to bear the associations which the place held for her. Pausing only briefly, he’d continued driving along the lane, noting several spots where a car might have been driven off the road and parked under cover of trees and bushes, but none which seemed to offer the kind of privacy that the killer would surely have wanted.

  Billy took it for granted that the girl must have been rendered unconscious, chloroformed perhaps soon after she’d got into the killer’s car (if that was what had happened). Her abductor could hardly have driven his passenger past her own house without provoking some reaction on her part. But where had he taken his captive?

  As he pondered this question, Billy’s eyes kept flicking towards the mileage indicator. They had already covered two and a half miles since leaving the town centre.

  Not back to Henley, certainly. So it must have been beyond the Barlow cottage. But while this fitted the facts, such as they were - the girl’s body could easily have floated some way down the river before coming to rest on the bank - Billy just couldn’t picture the killer taking her any great distance.

  Quite apart from the urgency of his desire, he must have been aware of the danger she represented for him. It didn’t matter whether she was conscious or not, every moment she spent in his car placed him in dire peril and he would have wanted to do what he had to do as quickly as possible, so as to be rid of her damning presence.

  Billy’s glance went back to the dashboard. Three miles now. According to the map he’d studied before setting out, they would shortly be linking up with the main road to Reading. It was far enough. He looked for a place to turn round and noticed a signboard on the road ahead. It bore a name - Waltham Manor - printed in gold against a green background, and below that, in smaller letters, the words ‘Members Only’.

  ‘What’s this, then?’ he asked, braking to turn onto a strip of dirt road. Ahead of him he saw a pair of gates standing open in a high stone wall.

  Constable Crawley, who hadn’t said a word for the past half hour, though his stomach had been audible, now produced a sound that in other circumstances Billy might have taken for a snigger.

  ‘Constable?’

  ‘It’s a sort of club, Sarge. They call themselves gym... gymnos ... gym somethings...’ He was quaking with suppressed laughter.

  ‘What are you trying to say?’ Billy demanded. Christ! Where did they find them? ‘What sort of club? What do they do?’

  Crawley let out a hoot of laughter. ‘They take their clothes off...’ he gurgled.

  ‘You mean it’s a nudists’ club?’

  The constable nodded, wordless now. His downy cheeks had turned bright red.

  Billy stopped the car and stared at him. He shook his head, then started to reverse, intending to back onto the paved road, but at once felt a heavy drag on the steering wheel.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  They got out. Just as Billy suspected, the front near-side tyre had punctured on a sha
rp stone. A few moments later, having opened the boot, they made a further discovery.

  ‘There’s no jack,’ Crawley announced.

  ‘Brilliant deduction, Holmes.’ Billy kicked the flat tyre in frustration. He was thinking of the long drive he still had back to London. ‘Come on...’

  Beyond the gates of Waltham Manor, where a sign warned them this was private property and trespassers would be prosecuted, an elm-lined drive led to an imposing stone mansion with a handsome portico. A further sign, marked ‘Reception’, directed them to a gravelled parking area at the side of the house from which point a long white paling fence was visible.

  ‘Is that where they take their clothes off?’ Billy asked. There were only a dozen or so cars in the parking lot. Business must be slack, he thought.

  The constable nodded. ‘There’s a lot of ground fenced in at the back of the house. You can’t see in from any side. When they started up they used the whole garden, I was told. But then the local lads began shinning up the wall to peep over, so they had to build that fence.’ He emitted his peculiar hooting laugh. ‘Now everything goes on inside there and they’ve let the rest go.’ He nodded towards the parkland further off, where the bushes had grown into tangled thickets and the grass, uncut, was knee high.

  A brick path at the end of the parking area led to a door in the side of the house. Billy opened it and was startled to see a young man, apparently wearing nothing, sitting at a long table in the middle of the room, reading a magazine. He glanced up as they entered, his bored expression changing to one of consternation at the sight of Crawley’s uniform.

  ‘My name’s Styles. Detective Sergeant Styles.’ Billy showed him his warrant card. ‘We’ve had a puncture outside your gates and we’ve got no jack. I was wondering if someone here could help.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask Dorrie,’ the young man said, getting to his feet; he was, after all, wearing bathing trunks. ‘Just a mo ...’

  He disappeared through a door at the back of the room, leaving them alone.

  ‘Cor! What do you think of that, Sarge?’ Crawley was grinning from ear to ear.

  Billy ignored him. Instead he turned his attention to a framed scroll got up to look like parchment that was hanging on the wall behind the table. Headed The Gymnosophist’s Creed, it went on for several paragraphs.

  The door opened and a young woman entered, wearing a white linen robe, belted at the waist and reaching to her knees. She had short brown hair, fashioned into rolls at the back of her neck, and a quick, birdlike glance.

  ‘Hullo, boys. What’s the problem?’ She grinned, as though to excuse the familiarity.

  Billy explained their predicament again.

  ‘Sergeant, is it?’ Smiling, she eyed him with interest.

  ‘Yes ... Styles. And this is Constable Crawley.’

  ‘My name’s Doris... Doris Jenner.’ She held out her hand to Billy and as she did so her gown fell open and one of her breasts, quite bare, was revealed for a moment. Unflustered, she covered it swiftly. ‘Sorry about that... you get careless working here.’ She remained smiling. ‘It’s a jack you need, then? Mr Rainey would have one - he’s the manager - but he’s out at present. Tell you what, I’ll see if one of the members can help. Wait here.’ Her glance shifted for an instant to the constable, beside Billy, and she smothered a laugh. Then she turned and went out.

  Billy looked at the young PC. He was staring after her, mouth hanging open, face the colour of a ripe tomato.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Constable!’ Billy’s patience snapped. ‘Pull yourself together. Haven’t you seen a naked woman before?’

  ‘No, Sarge, I haven’t.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  A minute later Doris Jenner returned with a set of keys and they went outside into the parking area where she retrieved a jack from the boot of one of the parked cars. Billy handed it to the constable.

  ‘Off you go. Change the tyre, then bring the car up here.’ He felt a compelling need to dispense with the other’s company, if only for a quarter of an hour.

  ‘What, me, Sarge?’

  ‘Yes, you, Crawley.’ A sudden suspicion struck Billy. ‘You can drive, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The young man was affronted.

  ‘Get on with it, then.’

  Hands on hips, Billy watched him stride off, boots crunching on the gravel. He turned to find Doris Jenner observing them with a crooked grin.

  ‘How’d you get landed with that one?’

  Unable to think of a fitting response, he changed the subject. ‘You wouldn’t have such a thing as a cup of tea, would you?’

  ‘Of course, Sergeant. Come inside.’

  She led him through the outer room, where the young man in the bathing trunks had resumed his place at the table, into an adjoining office furnished with a desk and some easy chairs grouped around a low table. The walls were hung with paintings showing men and women as God made them dancing in the open air or stretched out on the grass in decorative poses.

  ‘Nymphs and shepherds,’ Miss Jenner said drily, cocking an eye at them. ‘Make yourself at home. I’ll be back in a minute.’

  Billy used the time she was away to run through in his mind the results of the day’s inquiries. They were scant. He felt he could report to Sinclair with some assurance that the circumstances surrounding Susan Barlow’s death were suspicious enough to warrant further investigation. But beyond that he could only offer speculation unsupported by evidence.

  ‘Is this your first time in a nudists’ club?’ Doris Jenner had returned with a tea tray and a plate of biscuits. She declined Billy’s offer of a cigarette, but pushed an ashtray over to his side of the glass-topped table.

  ‘Yes, but I’ve read about them.’ Billy reached out for his cup. ‘I thought the fad was dying out.’

  ‘It is.’ She’d seated herself opposite him, modestly drawing the robe tightly around her, but tucking her bare feet up on the chair so that Billy found himself gazing at a pair of rosy knees. There was a teasing look in her eye and he was glad he wouldn’t have to report this encounter to Elsie Osgood, who had a jealous streak which he didn’t take lightly. ‘A couple of years ago the parking lot would have been packed. We were turning people away. I give them another year at most.’

  ‘Have you been here since it opened?’ Billy lit a cigarette.

  She nodded. ‘I was working in an office in Henley when I heard they were looking for staff. It’s not a bad job, if you don’t mind taking off your clothes.’ Her crooked grin displayed the tips of her small, pointed teeth. ‘Well, most of them. Only the members strip down completely.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ Biting into a piece of shortbread, Billy returned her grin. The thought of Constable Crawley’s hunger pangs aroused no tremor of remorse in him.

  ‘So what brings the law up this way?’ She put down her cup.

  ‘Routine inquiries.’ His comic policeman’s voice brought a bubbling laugh from her lips. ‘It’s true, though.’ He went on in more serious vein. ‘A young girl disappeared in Henley a while back, and her body’s only recently been recovered from the river. We’re trying to establish her movements, based on where it was found. It’s no easy job. She went missing three years ago.’

  Doris Jenner was gazing out of the window. Her eyes had grown misty. ‘Poor kid ... I remember when it happened... Susan... Wasn’t that her name?’

  ‘You’ve got a good memory.’ Billy was impressed.

  ‘Not really... it was something else, something that happened to me that day... or rather it didn’t...’ She smiled mischievously. ‘Now don’t get me started, Sergeant.’ She reached across the table for his cup and refilled it.

  Billy waited for her to go on. He was enjoying their conversation. There was a flirtatious edge to her manner that flattered his male vanity. ‘Go on,’ he prompted.

  ‘You don’t want to hear about it.’

  ‘Maybe I do.’ He was half-flirting himself, but his words held a germ of
truth. One of the reasons he was a good detective - quite apart from the skills he’d acquired - was a basic curiosity in his nature. He was interested in people - why they were who they were. He didn’t have to force himself in that direction. It came naturally. And he listened as he always did, out of habit now, as he had once observed John Madden listen.

  Doris Jenner collected herself in her chair. Her brown eyes twinkled. ‘All right, then. But remember - you asked.’ Her glance was provocative. ‘It all has to do with a boyfriend I had then - his name was Jimmy. He was a member here. That’s how we met. Jimmy lived in Birmingham, but he used to drive down every Saturday in a big fancy car. You couldn’t mistake it, and I used to sit at the desk outside and watch for him through the window.’ She smiled, her eyes hazy with reminiscence.

  ‘We never let on, of course. The staff’s not allowed to fraternize with members. But I always had Sundays off and when I’d finished work on Saturdays I’d leave on my bike as usual and cycle down the road to Henley, and after a few minutes Jimmy would roll up behind me in his big car and we’d load my bike into the back and off we’d go!’ She laughed. ‘I thought he was going to marry me, I really did... he’d sort of hinted at it...’ She stretched her arms and sighed.

  ‘Well, anyway, that particular Saturday I sat there at reception all morning waiting for him to turn up and he never did. I kept looking out of the window hoping to see him arrive. Once I thought I’d spotted his car, but it wasn’t his, it was someone else’s, and I almost burst into tears. I couldn’t believe he’d let me down. I’d had my birthday two days before and Jimmy had promised to take me to London that evening. We were going to go dancing. I was sure he was going to pop the question...’ She lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. ‘I can laugh about it now, but I’d never been so miserable in my life, and when I went back to Henley that evening I was ready to jump into the river myself. That’s when I heard about the girl... Susan...’

  She stared at her hands. Billy sat silent.

  ‘I was living in lodgings at the time and my landlady told me the police had been knocking on doors up and down the street asking if anyone had seen her. She knew the girl’s mother, my landlady did. She said although they were still searching in the town, everyone knew the poor kid must have fallen into the river. I went up to my room and lay face down on the bed, and I must have stayed that way for half an hour when suddenly it hit me! There I was, snivelling and feeling sorry for myself, but what that girl’s mother must have been going through! And at that very same moment! So that’s why I remember that day, because it taught me something.’ Her look was defiant.