The Blood-Dimmed Tide (37 page)

The unexpected appearance of his old partner had caught the chief inspector off guard and he was still taking stock of its implications, not all of them reassuring to him. No matter what their past connection had been, the presence of a civilian in the midst of a police operation of such delicacy – and secrecy – could hardly be squared with standing regulations, and while Sinclair knew that the rules could be stretched if necessary to include a man of Madden’s reputation, he was uncomfortably aware that this was far from being the end of the story.

There was another aspect to be considered, one he could hardly ignore, and which he’d brought up immediately after greeting his old colleague at the conclusion of the gathering downstairs, and learning how he and Styles had come to arrive together.

‘Does Helen know you’re here?’

Discovering from Madden that his wife had been in town overnight and had not yet returned to Highfield when they departed, and that in consequence he had had to leave her a note explaining their absence, Sinclair had raised his eyebrows in silent comment, while reflecting on the near certainty that when the time came for a reckoning, it would be he who would pay the price. Given the degree to which he’d consulted his former partner in the course of the investigation, he could hardly complain of the situation, however, and the chief inspector was honest enough to admit to the comfort he drew from the familiar figure seated opposite him, whose opinion he was seeking once more.

‘Travel documents?’ Madden’s scowl of concentration lifted for a moment as he glanced up. ‘Yes, I should think so, Angus. Papers to support his new Identity… a passport perhaps. He’d know where to get them forged, wouldn’t he? Not here, maybe, but on the Continent?’

‘Why do you say that?’

Inevitably, the question came from Braddock, who had realized they were speaking of things to which he was not party. The Midhurst police chief had shown no disposition to question Madden’s presence. On the contrary, his face had lit up when they’d been introduced earlier and he’d wrung the other’s hand.

‘I know your name well, sir. I was hoping we’d meet one day.’

But Sinclair saw from his frown now that he felt excluded, and the realization brought him to a swift decision.

‘Inspector, I’m going to tell you something I shouldn’t. But you must keep it to yourself, now and in the future. As you may have guessed, Lang’s no ordinary sexual criminal. In fact, he’s been an agent employed abroad for intelligence purposes, and a highly successful one. I’ve already underlined how dangerous he is, but there’s also another side to him we have to consider: his skill at disguising his identity. He’s used many aliases in the past as part of his work: it’s something he’s accustomed to doing. Just as I’m sure he’s altered his appearance. It’s why we’re treating this investigation with such urgency. If he slips through our hands now, God knows when we, or anyone else, will catch up with him again.’

‘Christ Almighty!’ Braddock’s exclamation was involuntary. He shook his head ruefully. ‘I was starting to wonder… and to think, he’s been walking around Midhurst for months. I might even have passed him in the street!’

Confirmation of the wanted man’s presence in the neighbourhood had not been long in coming following the dispatch of the search teams earlier. Within twenty minutes, word had been sent back to the station that a man answering Lang’s description, a foreigner, had purchased cigars in a tobacconist’s shop not far from the post office on several occasions. Although the young woman who worked behind the counter there could not identify him positively from the poster, she said he resembled the photograph, adding that she had found him an unpleasant customer.

‘The way he looked at me,’ were her reported words.

Then, soon afterwards, a second message had been received: the proprietor of a stationer’s had recognized the features in the poster as belonging to a man to whom he’d sold sketching supplies – pads and pencils – some three months earlier.

‘He remembers the fellow was in again a fortnight ago. They were out of the kind of pads he wanted, but when the owner asked for his name and address so that he could let him know when a new supply came in, this man, Lang, said he was leaving soon to go back home to Holland and would get what he needed there.’

The information had been brought upstairs by Billy Styles, who was assisting Sergeant Cole in the CID room below. As the lunch hour approached, and shops began closing for the statutory break in the middle of the day, the men had been drifting back to the station. Among their number had been the two local detectives sent to inspect estate agents’ lists, but neither had returned with any information worth following up.

‘They’ve made very few lets to single men, and none to foreigners.’

‘Is that only in town, or on the outskirts, as well?’ Sinclair asked the question.

‘Both, sir. All three firms have rented cottages on their books, but none recent, and none to any men on their own.’

Sinclair had grimaced on hearing the news and as he looked at his watch now and saw that it was after one, another spasm of discontent crossed his features. It was all very well knowing they were on the right track – that Lang was here, or nearby – but he remained tantalizingly out of their grasp, and the chief inspector was tormented by the thought that the presence of so many police engaged in. a search of the town would soon become known and it would not be long thereafter before their quarry had shaken the dust of Midhurst from his heels.

Meanwhile, the lunch hour was on them, and the teams of detectives were returning to the station, their presence signalled by the gathering volume of sound coming from the floor below, voices and footsteps echoing up the stairwell. The chief inspector looked out of the window behind him on to the market square, lined with stalls and busy with shoppers when he’d arrived that morning, but now almost deserted. Turning back, he found Braddock’s expectant gaze fixed on him. Madden was still studying the handwritten statements he’d been passed.

‘What is it, John? What’s the matter?’

Their years together had taught Sinclair to read his old colleague’s face. Madden’s familiar scowl of preoccupation had been replaced by another expression: a frown, still, but one accompanied by a puzzled look. His fingers had gone to the scar on his forehead.

‘This book Lang had with him… it’s in the nurse’s statement

…’

‘The bird manual? Yes, I saw that. What about it?’

As Madden opened his mouth to reply, they were interrupted by the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps in the passage outside, and then, almost at once, by a hurried knocking on the door, which was flung open.

‘Sir!’ Billy Styles stood before them, panting.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’ Sinclair looked up.

‘Two of the men just back… they talked to a chemist…’ Billy struggled to catch his breath. ‘He said Lang was in his shop only yesterday… around midday… it must have been after he saw the doctor…’

‘Yes? What of it?’ Unconsciously the chief inspector snapped. The look on the younger man’s face had sent a chill through him. ‘We know he’s here…’

‘It’s not that, sir… it’s what he came in for, what he bought

…’

Billy swallowed. He caught Madden’s eye.

‘It was a bottle of chloroform.’

With a groan, Sam put the receiver down.

He’d been staring at the painting on the wall in front of him while he talked: it showed two horses grazing in a green meadow. Not yet ready to move, he allowed his gaze to wander around the small sitting room, which, to judge by the mending basket he saw lying on the sofa, a swatch of blue material protruding from the lid, and a writing desk of delicate design, must be Mrs Ramsay’s. His eye was caught by a pastel drawing of a smiling, dark-haired child of one or two. Nell, as a baby, he reckoned.

‘Oh, Christ!’ The exclamation was wrung from his lips.

Sighing, he got to his feet. Flower-patterned curtains drawn back from a sash window gave a glimpse of the garden and Sam stood for a few moments gazing out at a lily pond whose still surface, like a grey shroud, reflected the lowering sky.

‘What now?’ He spoke the words aloud, knowing what the answer had to be, but unwilling to face it as yet.

Quitting the room, he walked down the passage to the kitchen, at the back of the house, where Bess, the Ramsays’ cook, awaited him. Flushed and anxious, she had been watching for his arrival and he’d seen her red face at the kitchen window as he’d unlatched the back gate. Before he and Sal had crossed the bricked yard, the door had been flung open and Bess’s plump, white-clad figure had appeared.

‘Oh, Sam, tell me… have you any news?’

She’d been instructed by her mistress to show him to the telephone so that he could ring Ada. Back in the kitchen now, he found her shelling peas at the table, and guessed she’d been trying to keep herself occupied until his return. Her face fell at the sight of his.

‘Ada’s talked to Eddie’s sister. She rang half an hour ago. They had a card from him a week ago, she said, but he didn’t mention anything about coming home. They don’t know where he is.’

‘But how can he just disappear? It don’t make sense.’ Bess’s homely features were twisted in distress. She seemed on the verge of tears. Sam could only shake his head.

He’d been pondering the matter, though, turning it over in his mind. The process had started even before he’d arrived at Oak Green. Walking over from Coyne’s Farm, blowing on his fingers to ward off the biting cold, which had returned with the fading of afternoon, it had occurred to him that something might have happened to Eddie, either on the way over to Hove, if he’d decided, after all, to go home, or somewhere else. That he might have been hurt in an accident, got knocked down by a car, perhaps, or injured in some other way, and be lying in hospital now. Unconscious, for sure, because otherwise he would have let people know who he was, and the police would have got in touch with his family.

At first Sam had shied away from the thought. He had not given up hope then that the mystery might be solved when he spoke to his wife; that she would have had word from Hove regarding Eddie’s whereabouts. But having learned the worst now, he was forced back to his earlier line of reasoning, disturbing though it was. He saw that the nettle would have to be grasped.

‘When do you expect Mrs Ramsay home, love?’ He put the question gently to Bess. He didn’t want to share his fears with her. The poor thing was upset enough as it was. It was clear she was sweet on Eddie, which might be no more than a fantasy so far as his old pal was concerned, but was no less real to her on that account. She was sitting now, staring at the bowl of shelled peas before her, the glint of tears held back shining in her eyes. ‘She told me she’d be playing bridge.’

‘That’s right…’ Bess came back to herself with a half-sob. She pushed a strand of hair back under her white cap. ‘She’s gone over to Petersfield. She said she’d try and get back not too late…’

Sam grunted. He’d been hoping the mistress of the house would be there, either to share his burden of worry, or, better still, to tell him his fears were groundless. But he saw he’d have to act on his own.

‘Can I use the phone again?’ He got to his feet. ‘Is that all right?’

‘The phone? Yes, of course… but why?’ She looked up, blinking. ‘What for, Sam?’

‘I’m sorry, lass. It has to be done.’ He couldn’t keep his concern from her any longer, and with a sigh he reached across the table to pat her on the shoulder. ‘We need to know if anything’s happened to Eddie. I’m going to ring the police.’

Billy helped himself to a fish paste sandwich – they were the only kind left – and then refilled his cup from the tea urn. The CID office, which ten minutes ago had been thronged with plain-clothes men, was deserted. Only Sergeant Cole was there, busy sticking coloured pins into the map of Midhurst, marking out areas of the town already covered by the teams of detectives, whose brief lunch hour had just ended and whose assignments now bore an urgency that needed no underlining.

The news Billy had taken in haste to the office on the floor above had galvanized the chief inspector into action. After canvassing both Braddock and Madden for their opinions, and finding they shared his view, he had telephoned Bennett at Scotland Yard with a radical new proposal.

‘We have to go public, sir. We must see to it that tomorrow’s papers carry stories about this investigation, particularly the fact that we’re looking for a foreigner, and giving Lang’s description. I hate to do it: I think it’ll only scare him off. But better that than he kills another child.’

Billy had stood by the open door watching, his presence seemingly forgotten by Sinclair, who was listening to what Bennett was saying to him, his brow knotted in a frown, his fist clenched on the blotter in front of him.

‘Yes, sir, all the national papers, and Mr Braddock and I will deal with local editors here in Sussex.’ There’d been a pause while the chief inspector’s fingers drummed on the desk. Then he’d spoken again. ‘It seems unlikely, I grant you. But one can’t read the mind of a man like that. The information has to be taken at face value: we must assume he means to strike again.’

When the call ended a few moments later, Sinclair had turned to Madden.

‘Bennett was wondering whether Lang would really choose to endanger himself now, just when he was about to leave. What’s your view, John?’

Billy heard Madden grunt. He’d watched as a scowl came over his old chief’s face.

‘I’m not so sure, Angus. From what Vane told you, it sounds as though Lang is finding it harder to control himself. Isn’t that why he had to get out of Germany in a hurry? He’s kept a check on himself since Brookham, but it can’t have been easy. Now that he’s leaving he may feel he can afford to take risks. He may even see an advantage in it. He can leave the police investigating another of these crimes, and searching for the killer in England, while he makes his escape.’