Fell of Dark

by Reginald Hill

  ‘I cannot confirm or deny that. I don’t speak Italian.’

  ‘Fair enough. Finally Mr Ferguson says that Mr Thorne later made a rather enigmatic remark about having seen a blue-tit and a white-tit on the mountains the day before. Being an ornithologist, Mr Ferguson naturally took particular note of the comment and says he did not understand it. Did you understand it, Mr Bentink?’

  ‘Not really. As I said, he has a peculiar sense of humour.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was another long pause.

  Finally I said, ‘Is that it, then, Superintendent? Am I wasting my day here purely because one or two people have reported to you one or two easily explicable circumstances and events?’

  Melton held up his index finger. The telephone, as if commanded, rang.

  He listened carefully for a moment or two, murmured an inaudible reply and put down the receiver.

  ‘Will you excuse me for a moment, Mr Bentink?’

  ‘If I must.’

  ‘I think it best.’

  He went out.

  I lit another cigarette and, with no one watching I allowed myself to puff away with the feverishness of the troubled mind. I looked at my watch. It was three o’clock. We had been in the station too long to be able to cling any longer to the illusion that we were merely indirect witnesses. Melton obviously had serious suspicions.

  I could not see how these suspicions could possibly set into certainty; on the other hand, I could see no easy way of dissipating them. But I could see that the lie I had told about not meeting the girls again would, if discovered, be very hard to explain away. I toyed with the idea of confessing to it and winning Melton’s approval for my frankness. But he would see as clearly as I did that this was a confession only circumstance would have forced from me, and value it accordingly. In fact, I had a great deal to lose and nothing to gain from admitting the truth. Or so it seemed to me then. After all, I thought, the only two witnesses of our meeting are both dead.

  This macabre thought displeased me so much that I stood up and wandered round the room seeking some kind of distraction.

  But I was soon interrupted. The door opened behind me and I turned expecting to see Melton. Instead, Copley came in, stood there looking at me with what seemed real menace in his stance and gaze.

  ‘Ah, Inspector,’ I said, ‘are you finished with Mr Thorne?’

  He backheeled the door shut with a crash.

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Where is the superintendent?’

  ‘Sit down,’ he said.

  ‘I said, where is the superintendent?’

  He came forward, put his right hand on my shoulder and thrust me most vigorously into the chair behind me. I tried to get up again but his hand in my chest prevented me.

  ‘What in the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I finally managed to snarl through my indignation. ‘I demand to see Mr Melton. I will not be treated like this.’

  ‘Shut up, Bentink,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a man to man talk.’

  ‘Fetch the superintendent.’

  He smiled, showing two rows of great yellow teeth.

  ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you? They all like to talk to the superintendent. He’s sympathetic. He’s fair. He’s so bloody fond of underdogs, he’ll end up getting shagged in the street. But I’m different. Very different.’

  I was seething with anger, but my reason began to get control and I recalled all I’d ever read about interrogation technique. The alternation of sympathy and aggression in the persons of two different questioners was one of the first principles as I recalled, and I told myself I must regard Copley with the same suspicion as I had Melton. But I still felt a pang of fear as I looked up at this thick-set, muscular figure which loomed over me like a mountain peak.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, Bentink,’ he said, ‘I’ve been talking to that fancy friend of yours for several hours now. He gets upset easily, doesn’t he? And I’ve heard a lot of interesting things.’

  I leapt up now and faced him.

  ‘What have you done to him? Where is he?’

  He stood only a foot away from me and smiled into my face.

  ‘You do get worried about him, don’t you? You’re very protective. Like a mother hen with her chicks. Or a young lad with his girl.’

  I looked at him with contempt.

  ‘I don’t have to listen to you. I’m going.’

  I turned to the door, but my arm was gripped from behind and I was dragged back into the centre of the room.

  ‘I’ll have you in court for this, Copley!’ I cried as he released me and took a position between me and the door. ‘I’ll have you in your own jail.’

  ‘You will? You think you’ve got rights, don’t you, Bentink? You think you’re entitled to the same treatment as an innocent man.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Here’s what I mean. I think you’re guilty, Bentink. In fact I know you’re guilty. You’re a rapist, Bentink, and a strangler, Bentink. You and your fancy boy, both.’

  I stood speechless. Would he dare say this unless he believed it?

  He answered as if he had read my thoughts.

  ‘I haven’t come up here to question you. I’ve just come to tell you. I know. We’ve got enough evidence on you even if you never open your mouth again.’

  He stood there menacingly triumphant. I collected my wits. This must be a try-on. They had gone further than I would have believed they dared. But it could only be a try-on.

  Shaken, but certain, I composed my features, essayed a smile, and said, ‘Surely you should be charging me then, not acting in this ludicrous manner?’

  I felt he would have hit me then had not the door opened and Melton came in.

  He took in the scene at a glance and motioned with his head to the door. Copley went out without a word.

  ‘Superintendent, I wish to protest about the behaviour of that officer. He has manhandled me and used threatening and abusive language.’

  ‘Really?’ said Melton. ‘I’m surprised. Inspector Copley is an extremely enthusiastic and energetic policeman, but he never oversteps the mark. What did he say exactly?’

  ‘Say! He said that I was guilty of this crime, he said that there was a homosexual relationship between Mr Thorne and myself. He even said he had enough evidence to get a conviction at this moment! Do you consider statements like this over-stepping the mark or not?’

  I brought my fist down on the desk in an imitation of Melton’s own earlier gesture. I had been uncertain of his own sincerity then, but I myself was passionately sincere.

  He let a silence grow between us until the muscles of my face began to ache slightly at holding their expression of anger.

  Then he said, ‘Inspector Copley’s fault as I see it has been anticipatory rather than slanderous in nature.’

  Again a silence. The implications of his remark sank slowly in.

  ‘After all, Mr Bentink, he has not said a single thing, it seems, which I do not believe to be true.’

  SEVEN

  I think that if I had been guilty this is the point at which I would have confessed. Copley’s violence was nothing beside the quiet certainty of this man.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ I found myself saying. ‘But I didn’t do it.’

  ‘Mr Bentink,’ he said softly, ‘is there anything in your story you would like to change? Or anything you would like to add?’

  I looked at him wretchedly, my mind still telling me it could be a trap. Like coming in and saying your accomplice had confessed. I said nothing.

  ‘Mr Bentink, I have a statement here from Mr Samuel Cooper of the Wyrton Boys Club, supported in all essentials by five other members of the Club. Mr Cooper states that yesterday he and his friends were on the fells and they saw you and Mr Thorne twice. Once at the time and place you yourself described. The second time, later. From a greater distance. He says he saw Mr Thorne and yourself talking to Miss Lindstrom and Miss Herbert.’

  ‘At h
ow much greater a distance?’ I asked dully.

  ‘About a quarter of a mile.’

  I looked up.

  ‘But one of the party had a pair of binoculars. It was through these that you were seen.’

  I reached forward and put my hands on the edge of the desk.

  ‘All right. I lied. We did meet the girls. But remember I lied before I knew the significance of the time.’

  He leaned back and looked up at the trap-door above his head.

  ‘Indeed I will. I find it very interesting that you lied before you were certain that we knew the significance of the time.’

  ‘One lie’s not enough to arrest me on, is it, Superintendent?’

  ‘Of course not. We usually reckon on at least one major lie per witness, innocent or guilty. But there are other things. There’s Mr Thorne’s shirt, for instance.’

  ‘His shirt.’

  ‘Yes. Among other things his friend, Marco, told us, one we found very interesting was that Mr Thorne asked him to get rid of a shirt. He gave it to him all bundled up and, in fact, asked him to burn it. Fortunately the heating of the hotel is done by electricity, so it was impossible for Marco to do this. So he just thrust it into one of the dustbins outside the kitchen. Where we found it. It was soaked in blood.’

  I was aghast for a moment. Why the introduction of a blood-stained shirt should make the case against us more certain, I could not tell, but the very idea of bloodstains seemed damning. But I quickly recovered.

  ‘But that was sheep’s blood, Inspector. Surely your labs can tell you that? And in any case the girls were strangled. No one said anything about blood.’

  ‘Very true,’ said Melton. ‘And of course our labs did tell us it was only sheep-blood. Though how his shirt came to be covered in sheep-blood is interesting in itself. But I am quite prepared to believe that Mr Thorne’s motive in giving the shirt to Marco was merely to dispose of an item of clothing which by accident had become distastefully stained. If it had been more sinister, he would have got rid of it himself.’

  ‘Well then,’ I said, part triumphant, part bewildered.

  ‘I have just received another lab report,’ he said. ‘A rather curious one, they thought. In cases like this, everything is checked very carefully of course. And traces of blood were found on Miss Herbert’s hand, and on her bra. Sheep’s blood.’

  I remembered White-bra’s half-pleased embarrassment as I stared at her breasts and the way she had raised her hand to cover them.

  ‘But that’s where we met them. Just after Mr Thorne’s shirt got stained.’

  ‘What a pity you hadn’t told us this earlier. It would have sounded so much more convincing.’

  I couldn’t help agreeing with him.

  ‘In any case, how did Mr Thorne come to be stained with sheep’s blood?’

  I was so concerned with this new turn of events that I answered over-casually.

  ‘He cut its throat.’

  Then seeing his face, I hastened to add, ‘It was dying, in pain, trapped on the rock-face.’

  ‘So he cut its throat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see.’

  There was a fastidious note in his voice which I did not think was assumed.

  ‘The girls helped him.’

  ‘To cut its throat?’

  ‘No. To get back to the top. That’s when Miss Herbert must have got the blood on her hand.’

  ‘And on her bra? How did it get on her bra? There was none on her blouse.’

  ‘She wasn’t wearing a blouse. Just a bra.’

  ‘You surprise me.’

  ‘It was the heat,’ I said desperately. ‘They had taken their blouses off just as we’d taken off our jackets.’

  ‘So you found yourself alone on a sunny fell-side with two extremely attractive and half-naked girls?’

  ‘You might put it like that.’

  ‘Is there any other way of putting it? What happened then?’

  ‘Nothing. We went on our way.’

  ‘Saying nothing? Without comment?’

  ‘Of course not. We thanked them. Then left.’

  ‘That’s how it happened?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Allow me to suggest another possible train of events.’

  He adjusted himself in his chair, arranged his fingers in the now familiar structure, coughed gently and began.

  ‘You, a thirty-three-year-old businessman having grave difficulties with a crumbling marriage, and Mr Thorne, a thirty-two-year-old teacher, who left a university post because of a homosexual relationship which developed with one of his pupils and who has spent the past three months in an asylum recovering from a breakdown, you two have come on holiday to the Lake District. Your clothes and your behaviour draw attention to yourself. It’s almost as if you are expressing some kind of intellectual scorn of the plane of existence on which most people move. Mr Thorne is quite blatant in his own sexual oddities and you yourself seem to tolerate if not participate in these. You romp with him, you share a bedroom with him, you bathe naked with him, in a manner which can only be described as exhibitionistic. You meet these two girls in the bar. You personally display considerable interest. Your friend, whose tastes are manifestly different, less. But when you meet them again, half-clad, the following day, Mr Thorne perhaps aroused already by his slaughter of the sheep, perhaps stimulated by the danger of the situation, danger which he tells Marco that same night he needs to make a relationship with a woman possible, is as eager as you are to get his hands on these girls. They, however, are not co-operative. Willing to flirt, perhaps, but no more. You want more. It is very difficult for one man to rape a woman without first inducing at least partial unconsciousness. Perhaps this is all you intend. But you go too far. Finished, you drag their bodies to the nearest place of concealment, roll them in, then continue on your way. And a few hours later you can take a bath in public with every sign of merriment.’

  ‘Slim evidence,’ I managed to say.

  ‘Perhaps so, Bentink. But there is something more. Your friend, your accomplice, Thorne, has confessed.’

  As I have indicated, if they had tried this one earlier, I would have been very ready for them, but now it was believable. Anything was believable. It was with no emotion at all that I saw Melton stand up and I waited for him to recite the formula of the charge which television again has made so familiar to all of us. But if that was his intention, he never started it. From below there came an ear-piercing scream followed by a confused babble of voices. It sounded as if a small riot had broken out. I found out later that what happened was that Sarah’s parents had arrived at the police station. They had been taken there after identifying the bodies. As they were being led along the corridor below, Peter had been brought out of the room where Copley had been interviewing him.

  Mrs Herbert had already heard that the police thought they had the men. Now face to face with this guilty-looking figure, her control snapped and she flew at him screaming and tried to drive her nails into his eyes. A constable who seized her by the shoulders was savagely punched by her husband. Even Copley got involved in the fray.

  Melton rushed to the door and flung it open.

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ snarled Melton at the man outside with more passion than I thought him capable of.

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ said the constable, stiffly at attention.

  ‘Watch him,’ snapped Melton, jerking his head at me. Then he strode away down the stairs.

  I am not a man of action. Normal emergencies make me become more static than ever. I liked to weigh all the facts before acting. Jan despised me for it, said that if I caught her with another man, I’d need a board meeting before I’d decide what to do. She might have been right. But now I did not make a decision. I just acted.

  I kicked that poor policeman in the stomach as he came through the door, then brought both my fists down on his shoulders as he doubled up.

  The result was not quite what it usually is on the
pictures. Firstly, he did not collapse unconscious on the floor but knelt there making violent and nauseating gurgling sounds. Secondly, I felt as if I’d broken my wrists.

  The constable was trying to get up so I thrust him with my foot out into the corridor where he hit the wall with a great thump and slid down it in a most cinematic way.

  I closed the door, jammed a chair against it, seized my knapsack and rushed over to the window.

  It was so stiff I thought it must be somehow locked. I put my shoulder to it but the only result was that I cracked one of the large panes of glass. Finally I sat on the desk and attacked it with the sole of my shoe. The congealed paint which held it shut gave way suddenly and it swung open, letting in a blast of sodden air.

  There was still no sound at the door behind me. Some concern for the man outside made me pause a second. But the very recollection that I had attacked him was incentive enough to drive me on. I slung my knapsack over my shoulder, lowered myself to the full stretch of my arms from the window-sill, and dropped to the yard below.

  I landed awkwardly and my heart pumped so hard, I thought it would drive the blood through my ear-drums.

  But with a resilience I did not know I possessed, I was up in a flash and over the small wall at the back. There I crouched in the wet grass, the rain still blowing hard down from the fells. I peered into the drizzle. That at least would give me shelter from pursuit, but what I soon would need was shelter from the rain.

  I was not sure why I had escaped, but I was determined that I was not going to be brought back like a drowned rat after only a couple of hours’ freedom.

  But I had to get away from the vicinity of the station. As yet all the activity was still confined indoors. But any second they would be outside looking for me.

  I scrambled along on all fours, following the wall. After about fifty yards it stopped and became a hedge. I peered through. I had left the station area behind and was now at the back of one of the neighbouring private houses. It looked deserted.

  I reached into my knapsack, pulled out my hat and my plastic raincoat, and put both of them on. Then I forced my way through the hedge and stood in the middle of a small vegetable garden at the bottom of a long lawn.