The Wages of Desire

by Stephen Kelly

  AT THE POW CAMP, CHARLIE KINKAID AND THE OTHER MEN IN his group had resumed their job of clearing away what was left of the stone foundation of the farmhouse. On the previous evening, in the mess, Charlie had mentioned to Taney that he’d found a small bone amid the rubble. Taney had told Charlie to forget the bone—that it certainly belonged to an animal.

  “God only knows how many rats and other bloody animals have scurried through that place in the past ten years,” Taney had said.

  Taney had a point, Charlie thought. The old basement probably had attracted its share of rats, badgers, foxes, skunks, and the rest. But he wondered, too, how much, if anything, Taney knew of the case of the O’Hares.

  Either way, Charlie had gone to work that morning feeling uneasy. He knew that if he tried to tell Taney the story of the O’Hares, the boss would only order him to forget it. Taney brooked no delays on the job. Not only that, but the news of Ruth Aisquith’s death clearly had upset Taney. Indeed, news of the Aisquith woman’s death had sent a rumble of unease through the prison camp generally and had been the main topic of conversation at tea on the previous night and at breakfast that morning, though neither he, nor any of the other male workers at the camp, had known Ruth Aisquith, really. She’d kept to herself.

  As the morning wore on and he struck no more bones, Charlie felt better about his decision not to mention the O’Hare case to Taney. Then, too, he’d spent the morning helping to clear a different portion of the foundation than the one in which he’d found the bone on the day before. When he later moved to the place where he’d found the bone, Charlie had been digging only a minute when he felt the point of his spade bite into something hollow-feeling; he vaguely heard the thing crack as his shovel struck it. He eased his shovel from the ground and bent down to sort through the loose soil.

  Wallace spent the morning taking statements from the workers at the camp whom he’d missed on the previous day. Nearly everyone told him roughly the same story about Ruth Aisquith: They hadn’t known her well; she’d kept to herself; they’d known she was a conchi but didn’t hold it against her, necessarily, though they found the idea distasteful under the present circumstances, with the Nazis marching over nearly all of Europe and North Africa.

  Wallace essentially agreed with that point of view. On the previous night, he’d sat alone in his flat for an hour considering the question of whether he wanted to continue his occupational deferment. He’d found that speaking to Vera about the subject had eased his mind a bit on the subject; the fact that she also seemed to believe in the idea of him being “indispensable” to the war while remaining home had comforted him. He liked Vera. She was nice-looking and smart, and had a kind of hardiness and confidence that he found attractive. Still, he’d found his thoughts turning from her to his cousin, Alan, whom the Germans had killed on the beach at Dunkirk. He continued to believe that Alan had performed a duty that he himself was avoiding, and he did not want to live through the war and its aftermath troubled by a sense of self-imposed ignominy. If he could manage it without it seeming foolish or weak, he would endeavor to speak again with Vera on the subject.

  Now, though, he was walking down the muddy “lane” between the tents, nearing the last of the tents on his left, when he heard someone say, “Sergeant!” He turned to his left and saw Nora, the small, quiet woman whom he’d met the previous day in the field, standing between the tents.

  “Hello,” Wallace said. He smiled.

  “May I speak with you?” Nora spoke in a near whisper.

  As Wallace began to walk toward her, Nora turned and moved toward the rear of the line of tents. Wallace followed her there, where they were out of sight of the rest of the camp. He was glad to see that Marlene Suggs did not seem to be around. He hadn’t liked Suggs and believed, as had Vera, that Suggs sought to control Nora through a veneer of “kindness” toward her. On the previous day, Nora had struck Wallace as uneasy and timid.

  Nora held her hands together tightly and looked beyond Wallace, as if checking to ensure that no one had seen him follow her.

  “What’s the matter?” Wallace asked.

  “I’m a little nervous, I suppose,” Nora said. She didn’t look directly at him.

  “Why?”

  Nora glanced quickly around—again, as if checking to ensure that they were alone. “It’s about Ruth,” she said. “I didn’t tell you everything yesterday. I couldn’t.”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  “I didn’t want Marlene to hear. Ruth didn’t like Marlene, you see—though I suppose that really doesn’t matter any longer. Also, Mr. Taney mustn’t know. If he finds out that I’ve spoken to you I could lose my posting. This isn’t such a bad place to be, all things considered. It’s better than fire-watching duty in London.” She finally looked at Wallace.

  “Why are you afraid of Taney?”

  “He’s the real power here; Captain Walton’s not much more than a figurehead. It’s Mr. Taney makes the decisions and runs the place. Everyone who works here knows that. You don’t want to get on his bad side.”

  “Did Ruth get on his bad side, then?”

  Nora looked at the ground for an instant, then at Wallace. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I heard them arguing once; they were behind the tents just as we are now. I was passing on my way from the latrine.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Well, I suppose that you might call it a lover’s quarrel.”

  “Meaning that Taney and Ruth were at it?”

  Nora looked away again. Wallace realized that the idea of Taney and Ruth “at it,” as he had so gracelessly put it, embarrassed her. “Sorry,” he said. “Do you mean that Ruth and Taney were lovers?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But he pleaded with her, like, and I’ve never heard him speak like that. Normally he’s in charge, giving orders.”

  “Pleaded with her? About what?”

  “He asked her to give him more time. That’s how he put it. ‘More time.’ She said she’d try but couldn’t guarantee anything. She seemed to have no fear of him. I hadn’t suspected that she’d known him any better than the rest of us did, which is hardly at all. And he’d been generous enough to allow her to go into the village in the early morning to visit her grandmother’s grave. That raised a few eyebrows around here, given that Taney is not a man who doles out favors. But she spoke to him as if none of that meant anything to her.”

  Nora glanced around nervously again. The voices of two men walking down the “lane” came from the other side of the tents.

  “I have to go,” Nora said.

  Wallace touched her arm; she looked at his hand in surprise. “Thank you,” he said.

  “I thought I should tell you. I’m worried that Mr. Taney became angry with her and, well, you know.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Nora smiled briefly then hurried up the rear of the line of the tents. Wallace stepped back into the muddy lane. As he did so, he saw Corporal Baker jogging toward him from the direction of the farmhouse. Baker reached Wallace red-faced and perspiring.

  “Captain Walton sent me to find you,” he reported. “He wants you to come to the farmhouse site as soon as possible.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “One of the men digging there has found bones—human bones. A skull.”

  “A skull?”

  “Yes, a small skull. A child’s skull.”

  Miss Wheatley moved as quickly as her girth allowed up the High Street in Winstead toward Vera. Lamb and Rivers, having finished with Gerald Wimberly, had returned to the car a few minutes earlier, and the three of them had been discussing possibly having lunch in the pub.

  “Miss Lamb!” Miss Wheatley yelled, waving at Vera. “Miss Lamb!”

  Vera sighed. “Oh, no.”

  Her father looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve spoken to her a couple of times, the last time just this morning. She’s a bit of a village crank. I told you about her yesterday; she’s th
e one who’s on the warpath about the nuthatch. She’s put up a bunch of boxes for the birds to nest in around the village and has convinced herself that this man, Tigue, is stealing the eggs from them. She told me that when she finds starling fledglings in the boxes she wrings their necks and throws them away, as starlings are competitors of the nuthatch.”

  Lamb looked toward Miss Wheatley.

  “Miss Lamb!”

  Lamb, Rivers, and Vera moved down the street to intercept Miss Wheatley, who, when they reached her, pulled up and slapped her right hand to her heart. “Oh, Miss Lamb,” she said, her bosom heaving from her exertions. “Miss Lamb, I’m so glad I caught you.”

  Lamb put his hand on Miss Wheatley’s shoulder. “Slow down, please, miss,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes,” Miss Wheatley said. “Quite all right. I’ve just been running, you see.”

  “Yes, I see that,” Lamb said. “Do you need water?”

  “No, no, I’m fine.” She looked directly at Lamb. “It’s Mr. Clemmons, you see.”

  “Mr. Clemmons?” Lamb asked. Just as Tigue had rung a bell in Lamb’s mind on the previous day, so now did the name Clemmons. After returning to the nick and before heading home on the previous night, Lamb had dug through the constabulary’s newspaper archive and retrieved the story from the Hampshire Mail of about a month earlier that had reported the beginning of the construction of the prison camp on what the paper referred to as “the old Tigue farm”—a story that also contained a brief recounting of the suicide of Claire O’Hare, which the paper’s editors considered the most newsworthy event to have hit Winstead. Lamb’s recollection of Tigue’s name earlier that day had caused him to return to the story and refresh himself on the details of the O’Hare case. And, indeed, in reading the story, memories of the case, which had engendered its share of coverage in the Mail in its day, had begun to flood Lamb’s mind.

  He recalled that DI Ned Horton had handled the inquiry and that Horton—who had retired many years earlier—had concluded that Claire O’Hare’s husband, Sean O’Hare, had spirited the couple’s twin boys to Ireland. He also recalled that, for a brief time, Horton had suspected that a farmhand who had worked for the Tigues and had a prior conviction for pedophilia might have fiddled with the twins in some way; the man had assaulted a thirteen-year-old girl in Southampton four years earlier and spent two years in jail. But Horton had failed to turn up any useful evidence to support his suspicions. The story on the construction of the prison camp had repeated this aspect of the old story, along with the man’s name—Albert Clemmons. The story also asserted that Clemmons had left Winstead shortly after Horton had wrapped up the case and never returned.

  “Do you mean Albert Clemmons?” Lamb now asked Miss Wheatley.

  “Yes, yes. Albert Clemmons.”

  Lamb touched Miss Wheatley’s arm, hoping to calm her. “I’m sorry, miss, but do you mean the same Albert Clemmons who worked on the Tigue farm twenty years ago?”

  “Yes, yes, that’s him,” Miss Wheatley said in a tone that suggested that such ancient history meant nothing to her and that Lamb was not responding quickly enough to her plea for assistance. She pointed toward the village. “We must go! I must take you there! He lives in the wood behind my house.”

  “But didn’t Albert Clemmons leave Winstead years ago?” Lamb said.

  “He did—but he returned this spring. He normally comes to my back door, you see, usually at twilight, and I give him what I have left over. Scraps of this and that; fresh vegetables if I have them.” She stopped and put her hand to her heart again. “Oh, my,” she said.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Lamb asked. He was not yet entirely certain of what, exactly, had upset Miss Wheatley.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.” She looked at Lamb queerly for an instant. “Are you the captain, then?”

  “Chief Inspector.”

  Miss Wheatley wiped her brow. “Oh, then you must come. I went to check on him, as I said, but couldn’t find him. I called his name but no one answered. I thought perhaps he’d merely left for a while, as he sometimes does, though he likes it here and I’ve never begrudged him his place in the wood.”

  “Do you mean Mr. Clemmons?” Lamb asked again, just to be sure.

  “Yes.”

  “And did you find him?”

  “Yes, I did. Yes.”

  “And is he hurt?”

  “No, he’s not hurt.”

  “What is wrong with him, then?”

  Miss Wheatley looked at Lamb as if she thought the question ridiculous. “Well, he’s dead, Captain!” she said. “Dead!”

  FIFTEEN

  WALLACE STOOD ALONG THE EDGE OF THE RECTANGULAR HOLE IN the ground that once had served as the foundation of the farmhouse, looking down at a small, gray human skull. It lay on its side in the clot of earth in which Charlie Kinkaid had shoveled it to the surface. Captain Walton and Taney stood with Wallace.

  Charlie also showed Wallace the bone he’d found on the previous day. “I thought it belonged to an animal,” he said.

  Wallace had no idea what sort of bone Charlie Kincaid had handed him, but figured that it was human. Given the skull, which clearly was human, he couldn’t assume otherwise.

  “It’s one of the O’Hare boys,” Charlie said. “I’d bet my life on it. I never did believe that Sean cared for the boys; he didn’t give a damn for them. Now that we’ve found the one, the other one has got to be here, too.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?” Taney asked.

  Kincaid delivered to Taney, Walton, and Wallace a brief explication of the O’Hare case and his long-held suspicion that Sean O’Hare hadn’t cared enough for his sons to spirit them away.

  “Bloody hell,” Taney said. “This will bloody well hold things up.”

  Wallace turned to Walton. “You’ll have to stop the work here until we figure out what has happened,” he said.

  “Of course,” Walton said.

  “But we can’t do that,” Taney protested. “It will put us behind.”

  Wallace turned to Taney. He thought of what Nora had just told him. He wondered if Taney had fancied Ruth Aisquith and Ruth had rejected him.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid we have no choice but to stop,” Wallace said, choosing diplomacy for the moment.

  “But the bleeding Italians are going to be arriving by the boatload as soon as you please and we’ve no place to put them,” Taney persisted. “Besides, you’ve no authority to close us down.”

  “You’re wrong, there, sir,” Wallace said. “This skull could be the result of a homicide, therefore making this pit a crime scene.” He smiled, ever so slightly, as if to add, so sod off.

  Taney turned to Walton. “You can stop this nonsense,” he said.

  Walton shrugged and turned to face Taney. “I’m afraid I can’t, and even if I could, I wouldn’t.” He glanced down at the skull. “This is a child—someone’s child. I think we can delay things around here for a few days to discover, if we can, why and how this child died.”

  Taney shook his head and made a hissing sound of displeasure. “You’re bloody useless,” he said to Walton.

  Miss Wheatley led the way up the path from the High Street, past Tigue’s house and through the meadow, to her cottage, with Lamb, Rivers, and Vera following.

  Vera had asked her father if she could accompany him and Rivers to the scene. Once again, Lamb’s first thought had been that he should not allow Vera to see Albert Clemmons’s dead body. But as he looked at her, he found himself questioning what, exactly, he was hoping to shield her from, and why. She must face death eventually, and it was better that she do so with him in attendance. He surveyed her as she stood in the road dressed in her ill-fitting auxiliary constable’s uniform; as ridiculous as the uniform was, Vera wore it with dignity. He thought of how young she continued to seem to him—how young she indeed was. But he saw in her eyes resilience and strength of character, traits he’d always known she possessed.
Besides, he was her father, not her bloody knight in shining armor. He nodded to her and said, “All right.”

  As Miss Wheatley’s cottage hove into sight, Lamb smelled decay on the air and immediately understood that encountering Clemmons’s body was going to be more unpleasant than standing over the freshly dead body of Ruth Aisquith had been. Although he did not like facing dead bodies as a rule, he found the fresh ones bearable, but he could not stomach those that had begun to decompose. The smell was bad enough, of course, but the stench of decaying bodies also invariably reminded him—as it reminded Rivers—of the ten months the pair of them had spent together in northern France during the previous war. Rotting bodies had been a feature of the landscape there, along with mud, well-fed rats, and barbed wire. Despite the number of dead bodies Lamb had seen then and since, in his police work, the bloating and settling of the corpses, the buzzing flies and burrowing maggots, and the darkening of the skin continued to distress him. He wondered now if he’d made the right decision in agreeing to allow Vera to see the body.

  They followed Miss Wheatley to the rear of her cottage and entered the wood behind it. Lamb realized that this wood was the same one that backed onto the cemetery and that they were entering the wood from its opposite side. As they walked, Miss Wheatley told them of her latest encounter with Albert Clemmons. Clemmons had grown up in Winstead, and she’d known him as a boy, she said. (“He was rather a nice little boy, actually. Very polite.”) He was about thirty when the events involving the O’Hares had occurred. Until that time, most people in Winstead had not known that Albert had served time in jail for diddling with a young girl in Southampton. He’d managed to keep that a secret. But Horton’s brief investigation into Clemmons’s background had “let the cat out of the bag” and, soon after, Albert had fled the village in disgrace, Miss Wheatley said.

  Then, during the previous April, a filthy disheveled man had built a lean-to in the wood behind her cottage. Miss Wheatley had, she said, “marched into the wood” to confront the man and run him off.