River of Darkness

5

Dressed in her maid's uniform and white lace cap, Ethel Bridgewater sat at the kitchen table reading yesterday's News of the World. Her attention had been caught by a half-page advertisement for something called the 'Harlene Hair-Drill', which promised users of the company's products 'a luxurious wealth of gloriously beautiful and healthy hair'.

For some time now Ethel had been considering having her own hair bobbed — more and more of her friends were doing it — but she was reluctant to take the step. Though a plain young woman, she possessed a head of rich chestnut hair and felt instinctively it would be a mistake to get rid of this crowning asset.

She was reading the advertisement for a second time when the door to the stableyard opened and Carver came in. He didn't speak, and neither did she. They seldom exchanged a word, going about their duties in silence when they happened to meet.

Glancing up, Ethel received a shock. Carver's looks had been transformed since their last encounter before the weekend. His moustache had disappeared and, shorn of this covering, his mouth was revealed as thin with a marked downward turn at one corner where a small scar was visible. It was entirely in keeping with their relationship that it did not even occur to the maid to pass comment on his changed appearance.

Ethel rose from the table and began to busy herself preparing tea for her mistress, Mrs Aylward. Carver opened the stove door and took out a plate of food which had been left there for him. He ate at irregular hours, and the cook, Mrs Rowley, who lived in the neighbourhood and would not be back to prepare dinner until later that afternoon, had been taught to leave his meals warming in the oven. He brought the plate over to the table, collecting a knife and fork from the kitchen cutlery, and began to eat.

Ethel hurried over the tea things. Once she had taken the tray into the drawing-room there was dusting work she could do upstairs. In truth, she didn't like to find herself alone with Carver for any length of time. If asked why, she would have found it difficult to give a reason. Certainly he had never offended her in any way. But his presence had a strange — almost physical — effect on her. After a while the air seemed to get closer, as though some unseen agent were consuming the oxygen, and Ethel would find herself becoming breathless. As soon as the kettle boiled, she made the tea and took the tray out.

Carver, whose real name was Amos Pike, carried his dirty plate to the sink and cleaned it. He washed and dried his utensils, returning everything to its place.

Using the hot water remaining in the kettle he made himself a cup of tea and brought it to the table. He picked up the newspaper and read it carefully, paying particular attention to the news columns. Satisfied, he washed and dried his cup and went outside into the yard.

Mrs Aylward's house, though modest in size, boasted a set of stables at the rear. Built by the previous owner, an enthusiastic horseman, they were no longer used for that purpose and had been converted into a storeroom and garage. Pike lived in a room on the floor above.

Employed primarily as a chauffeur, he was also charged with keeping the garden tidy. But his duties there were minimal, Mrs Aylward's interest in horticulture being confined to a conservatory that she had added to the house, attaching it to the side of her studio.

His job that day was to clean the greenhouse windows and he had already done the inside. Now he set up his ladder on the gravelled path that ran alongside the structure and mounted the steps with a bucket and mop. He worked automatically, his brow grooved with some inner preoccupation, his glance unfocused.

Pike had unusual eyes. Flat and brown, they seldom gave any clue to what he was thinking. Many people found them disturbing.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Bennett rose as Sinclair and Madden entered his office. 'Inspector!

I'm relieved to see you in one piece.' He came round from behind his desk and shook Madden's hand.

'A pity you didn't nab him when you had the chance,' Sampson offered. The chief superintendent, in a mustard-coloured suit and matching tie, was already in his chair. He grinned to show he was making a joke. 'There were two of you, weren't there?'

Bennett looked at him sharply, but made no comment.

He took his own chair at the table by the window. The others joined him.

'Well, Chief Inspector?'

Sinclair opened his file. 'On the positive side, sir, we now know it's only one man we're looking for, and the military connection is solidly established. Mr Madden assures me that what he built in the woods was an Army dugout, down to the last detail. One of the villagers reported hearing a police whistle at the time of the attack. Police whistle, Army whistle they're one and the same. He seems to have acted as though he were going "over the top".' The chief inspector's tone indicated his distaste for the cliche.

'Apparently he wore a gas mask at the time.'

He took two pieces of paper from his file and passed them across the table. 'Those are drawings which the Fletcher child made later — as you know, she hasn't spoken yet. We didn't know what they meant until Inspector Madden realized they were an attempt by her to draw a gas mask.'

Sampson scowled. 'We haven't seen these before,' he said.

'I didn't include them in the file,' Sinclair admitted.

'They seemed to have no bearing on the case.'

'We'll have everything in future if you don't mind, Chief Inspector.' Sampson's small eyes had turned hard.

'As you wish, sir.'

Bennett stirred restlessly. 'But what are we dealing with here?' he demanded. 'What's this man about? Is he a lunatic? Have we any idea?'

Sinclair shook his head. 'He may prove to be, sir.

But I'm inclined to regard him as sane. Frighteningly so. Whatever mayhem he committed in Melling Lodge, all his preparations leading up to it, as well as his getaway, show the most detailed planning.

'And considering the events of Saturday, I'd say he kept his head to a remarkable degree. Instead of persisting with his attack on Mr Madden and the constable, he cut his losses and ran for it while he still had a chance to escape. We have eyewitness reports of him riding through both Oakley and Craydon and the most extraordinary thing, as far as I'm concerned, is that apparently he was going at no more than twenty miles an hour. Granted he didn't want to attract attention, but he must have felt an enormous urge to put his foot down. The man's an iceberg.'

Sampson clicked his tongue with impatience.

'Now, as to sightings, I'm afraid the news isn't good. After Craydon he effectively disappeared. That's to say, we've had any number of reports of motorcyclists travelling about the countryside, but given it was a Saturday afternoon, that's hardly surprising.

Some of them were stopped by the police, but without result. He seems to have vanished.'

Bennett hesitated. 'At our last meeting you indicated that the robbery was designed to mislead us. Are you still of that view?'

Sinclair looked unhappy. 'That seems less likely now,' he conceded. 'But I'm still puzzled as to why he would risk returning to Highfield.'

'No, really, we can't have that.' Sampson came to life, striking the table with his fist. 'There's a perfectly obvious explanation and it's staring you in the face.

The man's a thief — I've said so from the start. He buried what he stole because he didn't want to be caught with it on him. Two weeks later he went back to collect it. He assumed the police would have left the area by then, and he was right. Madden's presence in the woods was pure chance. My God, he even brought a bag with him so he could load the stuff and take it away. Just look at the facts, man.'

He thrust his head forward, brilliantined hair glinting in the sunlight that came through the window.

'Let me offer you another suggestion, Chief Inspector.

Have you considered that this man may be simply a loner who holed up in those woods? Who saw Melling Lodge as a tempting target and set out to rob it, but lost control of himself I'll grant you he may be deranged. But calling this hole a dugout! Why not say he simply built himself a shelter? Of course he has an Army background — the same is true of most able bodied men in this country. He built what he'd been taught to build — a place to sleep and protect himself from the weather. And as for this gas mask, He picked up the single large drawing and squinted at it. 'I'm glad you know what it is, Madden, because I'm damned if I do.'

He put down the piece of paper and turned to Bennett. 'What is certain, sir, is that the child was a key witness and she was allowed to go to Scotland out of our control and protection. I have strong reservations about that. I think it was an error of judgement.

But it's done.' He made a dismissive gesture.

'Let's concentrate now on what we know and what we can find out and stop cooking up wild theories unsupported by evidence.'

There was silence. Bennett coughed. He looked at Sinclair.

The chief inspector was gazing at the ceiling. 'A loner holed up in the woods who has a motorcycle.

No, I don't think so.' He shifted his glance to Bennett.

'Sir, this man has a job, I believe. He seems to move only at the weekends. Now, it's true he may have returned to collect what he stole. But we must look at the crime as a whole. The bayoneted victims were all killed within seconds of each other — the evidence is clear on that point. He didn't "lose control". He broke into that house with the intention of killing the occupants, and we still don't know why.' He paused deliberately. 'As for Sophy Fletcher, I made my decision on the basis of medical advice — that returning her to her family was the best measure we could take, both for the child herself and as regards the possibility of our obtaining any testimony from her in the future. I've heard nothing to make me change my mind.'

He fixed his cool grey eyes on Sampson. The chief superintendent's muddy complexion turned brick red.

Bennett looked from one to the other. He seemed to be enjoying the confrontation.

'Very well.' He shifted in his chair. 'What now?'

Sinclair consulted his file. 'We're still going through the list of discharged mental patients supplied by the War Office. Other police authorities are helping.

That's a long job. We've put out a general description of the man we're looking for, and the motorcycle and sidecar. Harley-Davidson, through their agents, will supply us with a list of purchasers in the last three years — since the end of the war. We'll start with that, concentrating on the Home Counties.

We may have to extend it later.'

'He could have bought it second-hand,' Bennett observed.

'We'll check those registrations, too. But we have to face the fact he may have stolen the machine, and it may be on false plates.' Sinclair straightened the papers in his file. 'Inspector Madden has come up with an idea that we think might be worth pursuing,' he went on. 'Of course, we've already consulted the Crime Index and there's no criminal on record with a modus operandi remotely resembling this man's. But in spite of that, we'd like to put out a general inquiry to other forces to see if they have anything similar to this case in their records.'

'Surely-' Bennett began, but Sampson cut him off.

'That sounds like a waste of time to me. Several people slaughtered in a house? I think we'd have heard about it, don't you?'

'Yes, indeed, sir.' Sinclair turned his tranquil gaze on the chief superintendent. 'But what if he tried and failed? I'm thinking of an abortive attempt, or perhaps an assault with a weapon similar to the one used at Melling Lodge. Some case still unsolved and unexplained.'

Bennett was pondering. 'How would you do it?' he asked. 'Through the Gazette?'

'Yes, sir.' The Police Gazette, containing particulars of crimes and criminals sought, was circulated daily to all forces of Britain and Ireland. 'We'll list some general information about the case, type of wound and so on, and see if it draws a response.'

Sinclair closed his file. He paused, as though gathering himself. 'Sir, there's one further point I'd like to make. While every effort should be made to track this man down by orthodox police methods, we should recognize the special problems we're faced with and be prepared to look at other ways of approaching the inquiry. Taking up the point you made earlier, as to whether he's sane or not, I think it's time we considered calling in an expert in the field of psychology.'

There was silence in the room.- Bennett shifted uneasily in his chair. Sampson, beside him, raised his head slowly and fixed his gaze on the chief inspector.

'We have a unique situation here,' Sinclair went on, seemingly unaware of the effect of his words. 'We're dealing with a man without criminal connections whose motives we don't understand. My most immediate fear is that he may commit a similar crime or crimes unless we apprehend him. I'd feel better in my own mind if I was sure we hadn't neglected any possible line of investigation.'

Bennett was busy drawing a doodle on his notepad.

He didn't look up.

It was Sampson who spoke. 'I'm surprised to hear you say that, Angus. Really I am.' His tone had changed to one of puzzlement. 'We all know what happens when you bring outsiders into these cases.

Before you know it, every half-baked soothsayer and trick cyclist will be telling us how to solve it.'

'I think you're exaggerating, sir.'

'Am I?' The chief superintendent reached into his top pocket and pulled out a newspaper clipping. 'From this morning's Express. I happen to have it with me.'

With his other hand he fished out a pair of spectacles and placed them on the end of his nose. 'A lady by the name of Princess Wahletka, a well-known psychic, has offered her services to the police to assist them in solving "the frightful crime of Melling Lodge" — I'm quoting, of course. "They have only to ask, and I am ready to put all my powers at their disposal."' He grinned. 'If you want to take her up, she's appearing nightly at the Empire Theatre in Leeds.'

Two red spots had appeared on the chief inspector's cheeks. 'Excuse me, sir, but you're trying to equate a medical practitioner with a quack.'

'I'm not trying to equate anything, Angus.' The chief superintendent was genial. 'I'm just giving you a friendly warning. So far the press hasn't known how to handle this case — they're as baffled as you are, if you like. Start calling in psychologists and you'll hand them an open invitation. Do you know what this is?'

He shook the clipping under Sinclair's nose. 'This is the tip of your bloody iceberg, is what it is.'

'Chief Superintendent!' Bennett spoke sharply.

'I'm sorry, sir.' Sampson sat back. The smile remained on his lips.

The deputy drummed his fingertips on the table.

He avoided Sinclair's glance.

'Thank you, Chief Inspector,' he said. 'I'll consider your suggestion. Gentlemen, this meeting is concluded.'

He rose from the table.

'That was highly educational. I trust you were taking notes.' Sinclair's file landed with a thud on his desktop.

'I thought the clipping was a nice touch. He just happened to have it with him. And did you notice Bennett back-pedalling for all he was worth? All in all you won't see a finer example of the Ripper complex in action.'

'The Ripper, sir?'

'Jack of the same name. By the time he was done there wasn't a smart alec between here and Temple Bar who didn't have a theory as to who he was and how to nab him, and the only point on which they agreed was that the police were a bunch of lamebrained incompetents who couldn't catch cold in an igloo.'

Madden was grinning.

'You may laugh, but there are people in this building who still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about it. They're terrified of opening the door, even a crack.' The chief inspector sat down at his desk. 'Don't blame Bennett,' he said. 'He understands what we're up against. But if we call in an outsider and the newspapers get hold of it — and the chief super will see to it they do — all hell will break loose. Careers are made and lost over cases like this one, and I don't mean yours or mine. Bennett's own future is at stake.'

Late that afternoon the telephone rang on the chief inspector's desk. 'Hullo… yes, he's here. One moment, please.'

He signalled to Madden. Then he got up and left the office. Madden picked up the phone.

'John, is that you?' Helen Blackwell's voice came to him from a long way off. 'Lord Stratton rang Father this morning. He told us what happened to you and Will… Are you all right?' Her voice swelled and faded on the trunk line.

'Yes, I'm fine…' Surprise robbed him of words.

He didn't know what to say to her. 'I'll see you in a fortnight?' he asked anxiously.

Her reply was lost in the crackle of the faulty line.

'What?' he called out. 'I can't hear…'

'… less than that now…' he heard her say. Her soft laugh reached his ears, then the line went dead.

A few minutes later Sinclair returned. With a glance at Madden he seated himself at his desk. 'Och, aye!' he remarked.

Billy Styles was at Waterloo station a good ten minutes before the time he had been ordered to report; it was only a short ride in the bus from Stockwell, where he lived with his mother. Mrs Styles had been widowed young — Billy's father had died of tuberculosis when he was only four — and she had had to support them both, by working first as a waitress in a tearoom in the high street, then later as a factory hand in a wartime munitions plant. Billy himself had tried to enlist in the last year of the war, when he was eighteen, but had been turned down by the doctor who examined him on the ground that he had weak lungs; a shock to the young man, who had never suspected he had any such flaw in his physical constitution.

His suspicion that the doctor was conducting some form of private vendetta against the conscription policy was strengthened when some time later he passed a medical examination to gain entry into the Metropolitan Police without incident. The memory rankled with Billy, who felt cheated of his due.

He had spent the past fortnight working with Sergeant Hollingsworth. Assigned space in a small office beside the chief inspector's, they had toiled over the list of discharged mental patients, dividing it up into regions and dispatching individual rosters to the various police authorities around the country. A number of ex-patients had already been interviewed and the results collated and assessed.

The work was grinding and repetitive, but after experiencing initial boredom with it, Billy had found increasing satisfaction in the process of gradual elimination which he and the sergeant, under Madden's supervision, were engaged in. He had been allowed to study the cumulative file: a history of the case, which Chief Inspector Sinclair kept up to date.

When he read the details of the attack on Madden and Stackpole in the woods above Highfield he felt fresh pangs of jealousy and envy. He felt it was he who should have been with the inspector, rather than the village bobby. Sometimes, in his imagination, he saw himself in the trenches under Madden's command.

The inspector appeared with three minutes to spare and they walked on to the platform together.

'Do you know what this is about, Constable?'

'No, sir.' Billy had to add a skip to his step to keep up with Madden's long stride.

'Let's find a compartment first.'

The telephone call had come the previous evening.

Sinclair had looked across at Madden and raised a thumb.

'That was Tom Derry,' he said as he hung up. 'He's a chief inspector now — head of the Maidstone CID.

We worked on that Ashford murder together. He thinks he may have something for us.'

Derry had read the item about the Melling Lodge murders in the Police Gazette two days previously, but had not made the connection in his mind right away.

'He didn't handle the case himself,' Madden explained to Billy as the train drew out of the station.

'But then he recalled one or two details from the file.

We'll find out more when we talk to him.'

Billy listened in silence. Pride stirred in him. For the first time he felt Madden was treating him as a colleague. He was tempted to join in, to offer some observation of his own, but decided, on balance, it would be better not to speak. If the inspector wanted his opinion he would ask for it.

'Where do you live, Constable?'

They had the compartment to themselves. The train moved at a steady clip through the green fields and hedgerows of Kent, a countryside still unmarred by the spreading stain of pink and white suburban villas.

'Stockwell, sir.'

'With your family?'

'Just my mother, sir. My father's dead.'

'Was he killed in the war?'

'No, sir. He died before.' For some reason he couldn't rationalize, Billy felt ashamed. It was as though he wished his father had perished in the conflict, rather than from a common disease. He wished, too, that he himself had worn a soldier's uniform, if only for a day. 'My uncle Jack now Mum's brother — he was killed on the Somme.'

Billy hesitated. He could read nothing from the inspector's expression. Yet he knew he had been in the same battle. It was common knowledge at the Yard.

One of the sergeants had told him Madden's battalion had been in action on the first day. Out of seven hundred men, the sergeant said, fewer than eighty had survived to answer their names at the evening roll call. Billy couldn't conceive of such an event, of so many men being cut down in such a short space of time, and he wanted to ask the inspector about it. But when he looked at Madden's face as he stared out of the window he decided it might be better not to.

Derry's office at Maidstone Central Police Station overlooked a corner of the market square. A profusion of pink geraniums overflowed two terracotta pots on the ledge outside his window and the chief inspector was busy watering them when Madden and Styles were shown in. He parked the can on the ledge outside and came over to shake their hands.

'How's Mr Sinclair? Bearing up? Be sure to give him my regards when you see him.' He had a bony, intelligent face and a swift glance, which showed mild surprise at the youthful appearance of Styles.

'Mr Sinclair wanted to come himself, sir. But the assistant commissioner called a meeting this morning.'

'Here's the file,' Derry said. He handed Madden a buff folder. 'But let me give you the gist of it so you'll know why I rang the Yard.'

He directed his visitors to a pair of chairs and then seated himself behind his desk.

'It happened in the first week of April when I chanced to be on leave. I was only away for a fortnight, but by the time I got back it was all over. The derectives handling it felt they had a cast-iron case.

They were even more sure when the fellow topped himself.'

'He was in custody, was he?' Madden inquired.

'They were holding him in the cells downstairs. He tore his shirt into strips and managed to hang himself from the bars.' Derry shook his head regretfully. 'I looked over the file, of course, but I have to say I didn't feel any doubts at the time. It seemed solid.

Based on what I read, I reckon he would have swung.'

Madden balanced the folder on his knee. 'But you changed your mind when you saw our item in the Gazette?'

'I wouldn't go that far. Let's say I'm in two minds right now. I just have a nasty feeling we might have picked up the wrong man.'

'Even though he hanged himself?' Madden was surprised.

Derry shrugged. 'Caddo — that was his name — always admitted stealing the goods he was caught with. Perhaps he thought he couldn't escape conviction on the murder charge either, though he did maintain the woman was dead when he entered the house, and he never changed his story. Still, whatever happened he was going to spend a spell in prison.'

'I see he was a gypsy.' Madden had opened the file.

'A full-blooded Romany. They do say you can't lock them up for any length of time. They won't abide it.'

Derry reached behind him and brought in the watering-can from the ledge outside. 'Caddo lost his wife a couple of years back. He was alone. A man can come to the end of himself, don't you think?'

Madden didn't look up from the file.

'He owned a horse and caravan.' Derry brushed off his hands. 'He used to visit the district regularly — it's near a village called Bentham, about ten miles east of here. He had an arrangement with a local farmer, a tenant of the Bentham Court estate, and used to camp on his land for a few weeks in return for mending his pots and pans and doing other odd jobs.'

'Any past history with the police?' Madden was paging through the folder.

'Nothing serious. There was an allegation of sheep stealing a few years ago, but nothing came of it. A case of grab the nearest gypsy, if you ask me. The trouble started when the man he dealt with left the region and a new tenant took over the farm. Chap called Reynolds. He didn't care for gypsies, it seems, and he told Caddo when he turned up at the end of March that he'd give him a week to find a new site and then he wanted him off his land. They had a blazing row in front of witnesses. Caddo was heard to make threats. Next thing, Reynolds went to the bobby at Bentham and accused Caddo of having poisoned his dogs.'

Madden looked up sharply.

'What?' Derry raised a ginger eyebrow.

'That was something we left out of the Gazette item, sir. The dog at Melling Lodge was poisoned a few weeks earlier. Do you remember what was used on Reynolds's animals?'

Derry nodded. 'Strychnine,' he said. 'How about the other?'

'The same.' Madden weighed the file in his hand.

The two men looked at each other. Derry clicked his tongue in chagrin.

'Damn it!' he said. He looked away.

'Did they search his caravan?' Madden wondered.

'The bobby did. Nothing turned up. Of course, he could have got rid of the stuff. Anyway, the constable spoke to him sharpish. Told him Reynolds wanted him off his land within twenty-four hours. It was a Saturday. The murder happened the same evening.'

'Caddo admitted going over there, to Reynolds's farm.' Madden was back in the file. 'He said he didn't have anything special in mind.'

'That was his first statement.' Derry pointed at the folder. 'He made another later and he was more forthcoming. Admitted he meant to do Reynolds harm. Said he thought of setting fire to his barn.'

'That would have been what time?'

'After six, Caddo said. It was starting to get dark.

His story — his second version — was that he approached the house and saw lights on and the back door standing open. He waited a few minutes and then went closer. He didn't see anyone about. He'd lost his nerve about firing the barn — so he said — but he thought he might slip inside and help himself to whatever he could find. When he got to the door he noticed the lock had been smashed, but he couldn't hear anything so he went inside. He took a bag from the kitchen and started putting things in it — a clock from the mantelpiece, some knives and forks from a canteen of cutlery. He found his way to Reynolds's study, opened his desk and pocketed twenty quid and a gold watch.'

'Where was Reynolds all this time?'

'Less than a mile away, looking for some sheep.

With his dogs dead he was having a hell of a time running his flock and a number of them had strayed.

He had a neighbour with him, fellow called Tompkins, who'd come over to lend a hand. Tompkins saw Mrs Reynolds before they went off, so that put the husband in the clear. Both men were out of sight of the house for an hour — that could well have been a factor.'

'Might have saved their lives,' Madden remarked.

Derry cocked his head. 'You think it was your man?'

'It could be, sir.' Madden scowled in frustration. 'So what did Caddo do then?'

'He went upstairs, just to take a look, he said, to see if there was anything worth lifting. His story is he found Mrs Reynolds's body in the bedroom and got out of the house as fast as he could and ran all the way back to his camp-site. They picked him up in his caravan on the Ashford road next morning.'

Madden was wondering. 'Since you didn't know about the poisoned dog, what made you think there might be a connection with Melling Lodge?'

'The murder itself,' Derry replied. 'The woman having her throat cut that way and her body thrown across the bed. And… well, this is a strange thing to say, you'll think… but the fact that she wasn't raped.

Just like your Mrs Fletcher.'

'That struck you as strange?'

Derry nodded. 'He dragged her out of her bath and threw her on the bed. Why? She was naked, a good looking woman, too. I mean, why didn't he rape her?'

He looked uncomfortable. 'Hell of a thing to find yourself wondering,' he muttered.

'If it's any consolation, sir, Mr Sinclair had the same reaction.' Madden returned to the file. 'What about the murder weapon?' he asked.

'According to our pathologist, probably a cut-throat razor. Caddo had one. It was tested, but nothing came up.'

'Prints?'

'None.' Derry got to his feet. 'I dare say you'd like to have a look at the place, Inspector.'

'I would, sir.' Madden ordered the papers in the file. 'What would be the best way of getting there?'

'I'll take you myself,' Derry said. 'This business is like a bone in my throat. I have to know one way or the other.'

It turned out Derry had his own motor-car — one of the new 20 h.p. Ford five-seaters. The cars were being offered on the market at only 205 pounds and Billy had a secret yearning to possess one, though he hadn't learned to drive yet.

They left Maidstone by the Sheerness road, but soon turned off it and drove through the rolling chalk uplands of the North Downs. The August sun was hot on their faces and the breeze in the open car was welcome. At Bentham, a village nestling in the fold of a green valley, Derry stopped outside a set of wrought iron gates. He pointed up a long, straight drive, treeless but flanked at its furthest point by a pair of ornamental ponds. In the background, a handsome Palladian facade was visible.

'Bentham Court,' he said. 'The guidebooks call it an architectural gem. A family named Garfield own it now. Reynolds is one of their tenants.'

They drove on for another mile, then branched off the road on to a narrow rutted track that ended at a patch of bare earth beside a chalky stream.

'This was Caddo's camp-site. Reynolds's farm is a mile or two away.' Although he hadn't handled the case, the chief inspector seemed to have taken the trouble to familiarize himself with the details. 'There's a path that runs along the stream.'

They returned to the road and continued on the winding paved surface until they came to another dirt track, which Derry took, steering the car down a gentle gradient to the stream bed, which he crossed slowly, the water creaming about the wheels, and then ascending the grassy slope on the other side. A slate roofed farmhouse with a whitewashed barn behind it came into view. Sheep dotted the green contoured landscape on either side of the roadway. As Derry pulled up near the house, a man in rough clothes came out of the barn. He stopped some distance from the car and stared at them. There was no hint of greeting in his manner.

'Mr Reynolds?' Derry got out of the car. 'We haven't met. I'm Chief Inspector Derry, from Maidstone.

This is Inspector Madden, and Detective Constable Styles. They're from London.' When the man didn't respond, he asked, 'Would you like to see our warrant cards?'

Reynolds shook his head. 'I thought I'd done with you lot.' He came closer, but didn't offer to shake hands.

'Inspector Madden has some questions to ask you.

And we'd like to have a look around, if that's all right?'

'I don't understand.' He was about forty, Billy judged, but somehow older. Unshaven and wearing a dirty, collarless shirt, he looked like a man who had lost interest in how he appeared to others. His eyes were dull and uncaring. 'I thought the bastard hanged himself.'

'Can we go inside for a moment? We won't bother you for long.'

'No,' Reynolds said flatly. He glared at them.

Madden spoke: 'I understand how you feel, Mr Reynolds, but please oblige me.' Billy was struck by the gentle tone of his voice. 'I'm working on another case and I believe there may be a connection. You'd be doing me a great service if you'd help us.'

The man didn't reply at once. He stared into Madden's deep-set eyes, until Billy began to think that some silent communication was passing between them. Abruptly he turned away. 'Go in, if you want to,' he said, over his shoulder. He walked off.

Madden led the way through the front door, which opened into a small brick-paved entrance hall where they had to pick their way through a litter of muddy boots. Beyond was a sitting-room smelling of stale cigarette smoke. Sunlight streaming through smeared window-panes fell on a heap of dirty laundry lying on the floor in the middle of the room. An overturned ashtray spread its contents over the surface of a low wooden table where a pile of dirty plates and cutlery was stacked.

The house was like the man, Billy thought. Something had gone. Snapped. He followed Madden and Derry to the kitchen at the rear of the house, where the inspector examined the back door: a fresh section of wood in the jamb, still unpainted, showed where the lock had had to be repaired.

They returned to the hallway and went upstairs.

The low-ceilinged bedroom displayed the same signs of neglect as the rooms below. The double bed was unmade, the bedclothes pushed aside, and the glassed top of the dressing-table was dulled by a thin coating of dust. Two framed photographs stood on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. One showed a smiling young woman with a wreath of flowers in her fair hair. The other was a picture of Reynolds in a private's uniform.

Billy saw the dark buttons on the tunic and knew what they meant. Reynolds had served in the Rifle Brigade. Black-buttoned bastards.

The bathroom was across a narrow passage and Madden walked from one room to the other. Billy saw that he was pacing out the distance between the big ball-and-claw-footed bath and the bed. It looked to be about twelve feet, the young constable reckoned. He saw what Derry had meant. Why drag the woman all the way to the bed and not rape her? If he'd wanted to kill her, why not do it in the bathroom? He realized that the same questions could indeed be asked about Mrs Fletcher's murder.

Before they left the bedroom his eye was caught by a leather-bound volume on the bedside table. He glanced at the title. It was a collection of poems by a writer Billy had never heard of. Opening the book, he found an inscription in the flyleaf: To my dearest darling girl, with all my love, Fred.

Outside, Madden stood in front of the house and let his gaze wander over the gently sloping hillside.

The chalk downland was bare of cover.

'Shall we talk to him now?' Derry asked. He had just seen Reynolds appear from a fold of land below them. He had a young dog at his side. When it trotted away, he summoned it back, slapping his thigh, making the animal come to heel.

'In a moment,' Madden replied.

He walked round to the side of the house. Derry and Billy followed. They found him gazing up the hillside behind the farmhouse at the crest of the ridge, about half a mile away, where a small coppice of beeches stood.

'There!' The inspector pointed. 'I want to have a look at that first.'

As they walked up the cropped grass of the shallow incline Madden told the chief inspector about the dugout in the woods on Upton Hanger. 'We haven't made that public — we're being careful about what we put out. He used a rifle and bayonet for four of the five killings. And we think he was wearing a gas mask when he broke in.'

Derry grunted. 'Sounds to me like you've got a weird one,' he commented.

Billy, walking a respectful two paces behind them, thought that was putting it mildly.

The coppice covered only an acre or two. The leaf carpeted ground beneath the trees showed no sign of having been disturbed. Madden stood in the shade at the edge of the treeline and looked down at the farmhouse. The barn behind it was set a little to one side, and from where he stood he had a clear view of the kitchen door and the backyard. Watching him, Derry saw the crease of frustration notched in his forehead.

'This is the spot…' Madden glanced left and right along the bare crest of the ridge. 'We know he likes to watch them first.'

He took off his hat and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Derry noticed the ragged scar running along his hairline. The sense of familiarity he usually felt when he met another policeman was missing with Madden. He recognized that this grim-faced inspector was different.

'Sir?' Styles's voice reached them from inside the wood. 'There's something here, sir. A cigarette tin, I think…'

Madden spun on his heel and strode over to where the constable was standing behind a low bank. As he approached Billy went down on his haunches.

'Don't touch it!'

The two older men joined him. He pointed, and they saw the glint of metal in the deep shade beneath the bank. Madden crouched down.

'You're right, Constable.'

Taking a pencil from his jacket pocket he lifted the cylindrical cigarette tin off the ground and held it up.

'No label,' Billy said regretfully. He felt he'd earned the right to make a comment.

'The man we're after smokes Three Castles,' Madden explained.

'If it's his it's been here since early April. You won't get a print off it now,' Derry remarked.

'True. But we'll take it with us, anyway. Constable — handkerchief!'

Billy reached into his pocket, recalling, as he did so, the shame he had felt the last time he'd been required to produce one. As Madden was passing the tin over to him, he paused and looked at it more closely, holding it up to the light. 'Do you see that burn mark?' he asked Derry, and the chief inspector nodded. The inside of the tin was blackened. 'I want to search this patch of ground. We're looking for a piece of cloth, probably burned or charred. Anything that would serve as wadding. This tin's been used as a Tommy cooker. You can brew a cup of tea on it if you haven't got a stove handy. The troops used to put wadding at the bottom and soak it in methylated spirits.'

Billy, with the tin safely stowed in his pocket, was already examining the ground around him. Madden and Derry joined in the search. To Billy's chagrin, it was the chief inspector who found what they were looking for.

'Isn't this what they call two-by-four?' Derry was down on his heels brushing away the dead leaves.

Madden picked up the ball of charred cloth. A small square of flannel, unconsumed by the flames, was still visible. He took out his own handkerchief and wrapped it around the burned fragment. Then he returned to the spot where Billy had found the tin and got down on his knees. The other two watched as Madden laid his long body against the low bank in front of him and peered over the rim. They were a dozen yards from the edge of the coppice. Nevertheless, the inspector had a clear line of sight through the trees to the Reynolds's farmhouse below.

'There… that's it!' Madden growled his satisfaction.

When they went back down the hill Reynolds was nowhere to be seen. As before, his figure emerged suddenly from a hidden hollow in the slope. The dog was trotting at his heels. It stopped and pricked up its ears as they approached. Reynolds waited, hands in pockets, his face expressionless.

Madden wasted no words. 'Can you remember what time it was, Mr Reynolds, when you left the house and when you returned? It matters to me how long you were absent.'

Reynolds blinked. He swallowed. 'We left the house, Ben Tompkins and I, just after half past five and came down here looking for strays. We were back soon after half past six. Say twenty to seven at the latest.'

'It was dark by then?'

He nodded.

'You were out of sight of the house all the time?'

'Pretty well. We were further down.' Reynolds turned and pointed away. 'There's a dip in the land, it's not obvious from here.'

'I know you didn't see anything,' Madden said.

Billy was surprised again by his tone. His manner with Reynolds now was businesslike, impersonal. Yet Reynolds was responding readily to his questions. 'But did you hear anything? It's important.'

'No, I already told the police.' For the first time he seemed eager to help.

'Nothing at all? Think hard.'

Reynolds frowned. 'What sort of thing?'

Madden shook his head. 'I'm not going to say. I don't want to put it in your mind.'

Reynolds stared at him. 'I know I didn't hear anything,' he said. 'But I remember Ben saying something 'What was that?' The inspector leaned closer.

'We'd found a ewe caught by her leg in a cleft down by the stream. We were just easing her out when Ben looked up. I remember now…" He kept staring at Madden. 'He said, "Did you hear that? It sounded like a whistle."'

It was after seven when Madden got back to the Yard.

Sinclair was waiting in his office.

'We're lucky Tom Derry's in charge at Maidstone.

There aren't many who would have smelled a rat.'

They stood together at the open window and watched as a pleasure-steamer, strung with coloured lights, moved slowly downriver. 'But is it our rat?'

'I think it is, sir. The razor, the dogs, the whistle.'

'And the fact she wasn't raped?'

'Especially that.'

The sounds of a jazz band drifted up to them through the gathering dusk.

'No evidence of a bayonet this time,' the chief inspector remarked.

'That doesn't mean he wasn't carrying one. You can't see the front door of the house from the coppice.

He couldn't have known whether Reynolds was at home or not.'

'So, assuming it was our man, he must have been ready to kill him, too, and he'd have wanted better than a razor for that. The razor's for the woman.'

'It looks that way,' Madden agreed heavily.

Sinclair turned from the window with a sigh and went to his desk. 'I must get home. Mrs Sinclair is threatening divorce on the grounds of desertion.' He eyed his colleague. 'And so should you, John. Get some rest.' The chief inspector viewed Madden's pale face and sunken eyes with concern. Did the man never sleep? 'There were differences, though.' Madden sat down at his desk and lit a cigarette. 'He was in more of a hurry than he was at Melling Lodge. He was in and out of that house in a matter of minutes. There was no sign of him when the gypsy arrived just after six.

And there was none of the preparation. He must have poisoned the dogs on Friday night — Reynolds found them on Saturday morning. He killed Mrs Reynolds the same evening.'

'He took his time at Highfield,' Sinclair agreed.

'Perhaps he's getting a taste for it.' He shuddered at the thought.

'But it wasn't done on the spur of the moment,'

Madden insisted. 'He knew the lie of the land. He lay up in the wood waiting for sunset. He must have picked out the coppice on an earlier visit.'

'An earlier visit…' Sinclair echoed the words. 'But why did he go there in the first place? Or Highfield, come to that. And what was it that caught his eye?

What brought him back?'

He slid a pile of papers into an open drawer.

'I keep telling myself it's the women. It must be the women. But he never touches them. So could it be something else?' He looked at Madden questioningly.

The inspector shook his head. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I just don't know.'

Madden left Scotland Yard in the early evening and walked along the Embankment to Westminster.

With summer drawing to an end the city was filling again. Sitting on the upper deck of an omnibus bound for Bloomsbury he looked down on pavements crowded with young women, typists from government offices hurrying home at the close of the working day.

He could remember a time before the war when the same sidewalks would have held only clerks in bowler hats and high stiff collars. He liked the change that had come about.

Late that morning a telegram had been delivered to his desk by one of the commissionaires. It was from Helen Blackwell. can you meet me in London this evening query. She gave an address in Bloomsbury Square and a time: six o'clock.

The two weeks were only just up and Madden hadn't dared to hope that he would hear from her so soon.

Earlier, at the regular Monday conference in Bennett's office, he had given an account of his trip to Maidstone and the conclusions he and Sinclair had drawn from it.

'We think it's the same man.'

Chief Superintendent Sampson had responded with incredulity. 'Now look here, Madden, you've got a gypsy who hanged himself in police custody. That sounds like a pretty fair admission of guilt to me. And where's the connection with the Highfield murders? Granted a woman had her throat cut in each case. But the man who killed those people at Melling Lodge also robbed the house. We know that. The stuff taken from the farmhouse was lifted by the gypsy. You can't have it both ways.'

'The Bentham case was reported in the newspapers,'

Sinclair interjected. 'I believe our man might have read about the robbery and decided to do the same at Melling Lodge. I still think he was trying to mislead us.'

'You think. You believe.' Sampson scratched his head.

'The trouble with this inquiry is it's all guesswork.'

'Nevertheless, we have to consider the possibility that these two cases are linked.' The chief inspector was insistent. 'And, if they prove to be, the implication is serious. Even chilling. It means we have a man committing murders, seemingly at random, for motives which are a mystery to us. I repeat, it may be necessary to look at fresh ways of approaching this investigation.'

Watching Bennett's face, Madden couldn't gauge his reaction. The deputy assistant commissioner listened without comment.

The address Madden had been given was that of a handsome Victorian house in Bloomsbury Square with a brass plate beside the door on which the words 'British Psycho-Analytical Society' were engraved. A receptionist was seated at a desk in the otherwise bare entrance hall.

'I'm afraid you're a little late for Dr Weiss's address,' she told Madden. 'It must be almost over by now.'

He explained his presence.

'Dr Blackwell? Isn't she the fair-haired lady? You can wait for her down here if you like, or you could go up.' She pointed to the stairway behind her. 'Just slip in quietly, no one will mind.'

Madden went up a flight of carpeted stairs lined with portraits of solemn-looking men in formal attire.

When he reached the first floor he heard a voice coming from behind a closed door. He opened it quietly and found himself looking into a large room where perhaps forty people were seated in rows of chairs. Facing them was a short, dark-haired man who stood behind a table carpeted in green felt on which a jug of water and a glass rested beside a pile of notes.

He was addressing the gathering.

'… but since the issue of abnormality has been raised, may I say that I believe — and here I am quoting Professor Freud again — that the impulses of sexual life are among those which, even normally, are the least controlled by the higher functions of the mind. Generally speaking, we know that anyone who is abnormal mentally is abnormal in his sexual life.

What is perhaps more interesting is that people whose behaviour in other respects corresponds to the norm can, under the tyranny of the sexual instinct, lose the capacity to direct or control their lives.'

Madden saw Helen's fair head in the second row of chairs. There were some empty seats at the back of the room and he took one.

"… something you said earlier. Does that mean you would sanction perversions?" A middle-aged man in the front row had risen to ask a question. Madden had missed the first part of it. 'More generally, it does seem to me and to others outside the profession that everything in the world of psychiatry revolves around sex. Or perhaps I've misunderstood you, Dr Weiss?'

'It is more likely that I have misled you.' The speaker was smiling. 'My English is not as fluent as I would wish.' To Madden it seemed that he was fully at home in the language, although he spoke with a strong accent. 'But let me say first that, speaking as a psychiatrist, I would not normally use the word "perversion" as a term of reproach in the sexual sphere. To put it bluntly, most of us enjoy some degree of "perversion" from the norm.'

An embarrassed ripple of laughter came from the audience. At that moment Helen Blackwell looked over her shoulder and her eyes met Madden's. His heartbeat quickened. For a moment her face seemed to register surprise. Then she smiled.

'However' — Dr Weiss leaned forward, resting his hands on the table — 'on the more general question, while I would not agree that "everything" in our work has to do with sex, I cannot deny the central position occupied by this most imperious of instincts. Let me be plain. I regard human sexuality as the single most important force in our lives, both as individuals and as members of society. Consider only how it lies at the very root of our capacity to love human beings other than ourselves. Truly, the seed of our happiness.

'But the tale does not end there, sad to say, and this is evident from much of the work being done in my profession. The sexual instinct flows like a river through our lives, and if, for many, it is a broad sunlit stream, for others it can be a source of pain and anguish. A river of darkness. Aphrodite appears to us in many aspects, some of them strange and terrible.

We should regard her with awe.

'In this connection, and to answer more fully your earlier question, I cannot do better than draw your attention once more to the writings of Professor Freud, whose work has figured so largely in our discussion this evening. As my old teacher has observed, even the most repulsive sexual acts can be transformed by the human mind into idealized creations. I will close with a quotation from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, freely translated: "The omnipotence of love is never more strongly proved than in aberrations such as these.

The highest and lowest are always closest to each other in the realm of sexuality."'

The speaker smiled at his audience and bowed. A polite round of applause broke out as he began to collect his notes from the table in front of him. There was a shuffling of feet and chairs. Madden made his way to the front. Helen awaited him, her eyes meeting his when he was still some way off and then holding them in her steady glance as he approached.

'John, dear…' She shook his hand. 'I was so afraid you wouldn't be able to come at such short notice.' As people milled about them she moved closer to him. 'I got back yesterday evening and found an invitation to this lecture waiting at the house, so I decided to take a chance and come up.'

She was wearing a dark high-waisted dress with a matching velvet toque. A fringed shawl of red silk was draped loosely about her shoulders. Her glance shifted and he became aware of a figure standing beside them.

'Franz, how lovely to see you again.'

'Helen, my dear…' Dr Weiss took her hands in his and kissed them, first one then the other. He was perhaps half a head shorter than she was and she smiled down at him.

'This is my friend John Madden.'

'Mr Madden.' Dr Weiss brought his heels together and executed a brief bow. His dark wavy hair was flecked with grey at the temples. His liquid brown eyes, crinkled at the corners by a smile, held a look of rueful intelligence.

'Inspector Madden. John works at Scotland Yard.

You must have read about those terrible murders in Highfield…'

'Indeed. Our papers carried several reports.' He looked at Madden curiously.

'I stayed with Franz and his family in Vienna before the war,' Helen told Madden. 'He and Father are old friends and I went there to study German.'

'We still miss you.' Dr Weiss regarded her fondly.

'Mina was devoured by envy at the thought that I might see you on this trip. Mina is my wife,' he explained to Madden. 'She was not alone. Jakob insists that he remembers you well and wants to know when you will return.'

Helen laughed. 'Since Jakob was only three at the time, I find that hard to believe.'

'Some memories we carry in our hearts.' Dr Weiss touched his chest.

'Dear Franz… please give them both my love, and tell them I will come back and see you all again.'

'But not yet, please!' Dr Weiss held up his hand.

'Vienna is not a place one should choose to visit at present.'

'Are things still so bad?'

'Bad enough. Expressed in our currency, the modest fees I am receiving for these lectures will seem like a fortune.' The doctor smiled wryly. 'An illusory one.

They say soon it will take a suitcase of banknotes to buy a loaf of bread.'

'Oh, Franz!'

'Still, we learn through suffering — isn't that what the Greeks have taught us?' He became animated.

'Last winter we had to burn some of our furniture to keep warm. When patients came to the house I would wrap them in blankets and lay them out on the couch.

Professor Freud, as you may know, has developed a technique of free association in analysis,' he bent towards Madden again, 'but it's hard for a patient to concentrate on retrieving some memory from the past when all he is wondering is whether he can reach the end of the session without turning into an icicle!'

Helen Blackwell's laughter brought Madden the memory of a grassy bank and the sound of a blackbird's call.

'So here I am, earning a crust as they say.' He glanced about him. 'The Society feels it would be of benefit to introduce psychoanalysis to a wider public in Britain. Well and good, I say. Unfortunately, to most outsiders psychiatry equals Freud equals sex.' He looked droll. 'One has only to mention his name in front of a roomful of Englishmen and half a dozen of them turn red with embarrassment.'

A figure was hovering behind him. Dr Weiss looked round. 'Yes, of course — forgive me. I shall only be a moment longer.' He addressed Helen. 'I leave for Manchester tomorrow. Then Edinburgh. But I shall return to London in a week and I will get in touch with you. Perhaps we could have lunch together? Yes?'

'Of course, Franz. But you must come down to Highfield and see Father again.'

He took her hands and kissed them as before. He bowed to Madden — 'Inspector.' With a smile at them both, he turned and joined a group of men waiting behind him.

Helen took Madden's arm and they moved off down the aisle between the chairs.

'Are you one of those half-dozen, John Madden?'

'Certainly not.'

'Yes, I believe you're blushing.'

They went down the stairs and out into the soft evening light. The plane trees in the square were bowed under the weight of summer foliage. The air was warm and heavy with the dust of the city.

'Would you like to hear about Sophy? She started talking again a week ago. I spoke to Dr Mackay in Edinburgh. So far she hasn't mentioned that night, and when Dr Mackay asked her about it she went silent for another two days. It was a warning — "Keep off!" But she hasn't asked for her mother, and Dr Mackay thinks she knows and accepts that she won't see her again.'

He told her about the drawings. 'We believe the man who broke in was wearing a gas mask. I don't know if you've ever seen one. They're quite hideous. A child would have been terrified.'

They continued slowly around the square. She kept hold of his arm, walking close beside him, her body brushing against his.

'Would you like to have dinner?' he asked, unsure how to proceed. He didn't want her to think he was taking anything for granted.

'Yes, please. I haven't eaten all day.' She looked directly at him. 'Then could we go back to your place?

I'm staying with a girlfriend in Kensington. I'd like to take you there, but she's terribly strait-laced and I simply haven't the courage.'

She smiled into his eyes and he smiled back, his heart lifting. He found it hard to believe there was anything in the world for which she did not have the courage.

They sat across from each other in the restaurant.

Candlelight brought out the glint of gold in her hair.

She told him about her marriage.

'I met Guy when we were students, but he gave up medicine and decided to read law instead. He was still doing that when the war began. Each time he came home on leave it was harder. I had to try to remember why I'd married him, why I'd loved him. When he was killed, all I could think was that I'd failed him and now I'd never have a chance to make it right.'

Madden's wife had been a schoolteacher. They had been shy with each other, still strangers after two years of marriage. He had difficulty now recalling her features, or those of their baby daughter who had died at the age of six months, within days of her mother.

During the war he had come almost to forget them, as though their deaths had ceased to matter in the great slaughter going on around him. Later he had tried to recover his feelings, to mourn afresh, but they remained dim in his memory and he never spoke of them now.

Instead, he talked to her about the case. He told her about the murder of the farmer's wife at Bentham.

'We haven't put it out, but we think it was done by the same man. We don't understand his reasons for killing. We can't find a motive that makes sense.'

She wanted to know what had happened to him and Will Stackpole in the woods at Highfield. Lord Stratton had told them little about the ambush and she was shocked when she heard the details. 'You could have been killed, both of you. Was it terrifying, being trapped like that? Were you very afraid?'

'Not really. Not enough-' He stopped, conscious of what he had said. When he didn't go on, she asked, 'Was that how you felt in the war?'

He nodded. He found it hard to speak. 'Towards the end, yes. There seemed no point in being afraid any more. Either you survived or you didn't. But when I felt the same thing up in the woods, it was as though I'd never escaped from it — that feeling that nothing mattered any longer.'

She took his hand in hers.

The past two weeks had not been easy ones for Helen Blackwell. The problem of fitting an affair into her busy, tightly structured life had occupied her mind at length. But she had also found herself wondering whether she was wise, after all, to involve herself with a man so clearly suffering from inner torments.

Her wartime work had taught her much about the effects of prolonged exposure to trench warfare. Everywhere in the land there were men who woke each morning unable to control their trembling limbs and eyelids, who started at the sound of a door being slammed and dived for cover when a car backfired. She knew what mental efforts were required by those who remained active and in command of their lives.

Returning to London, she had not been surprised to feel a renewal of physical desire when they met. The mysterious bonds of sexual attraction drew her to this silent man. There was no wishing them away. What she was unprepared for was the sudden rush of tenderness that had filled her when she glanced over her shoulder and found his anxious, troubled eyes searching for hers.

Later, he took her to his rooms off the Bayswater Road. To rhe shame of peeling paint and stained wallpaper and the sour smell of rented furniture. Here was a truth he could not hide from her: that he had ceased to care how he lived. A photograph of his dead wife and child, standing on a side table, was all he had salvaged from his past. She asked him their names and he told her. Alice and Margaret. Margaret after his mother, who had died when he was a boy.

When he began to speak, to make some apology for the place he had brought her to, she stopped his lips with hers. 'Come.' She took his hand and led him into the bedroom.

At the sight of her naked body, white and gold and rose-tipped, he started to tremble, and when they lay down together he continued to shake helplessly. She held him in her strong arms, saying nothing, pressing his body to hers, her cheek to his. After a while she began to kiss him, first on his face and throat, then on his chest, her breath warm on his skin. His body was marked by wounds: one shaped like a star under his breastbone, the legacy of a bullet that had passed clean through him, somehow missing his heart, the other a jagged ridge of tissue on his hip from the same shrapnel blast that had torn his arm. Her lips moved freely over his scarred body, until he could bear it no longer. When he reached for her she was ready.

'I've thought about this every day.'

He was inside her in a moment, but this time she checked him. Slowed him. 'It's so lovely… let's make it last.'

Even so, for him it was over too soon. Too soon.

But she kissed him and held him to her and he heard her soft laugh again.

'What was it Franz was saying?' Breathless beneath him.

He fell asleep and dreamed of a youth named Jamie Wallace who had once been a student at the Guildhall in London. One of the young men with whom Madden had enlisted and trained, he'd been the possessor of a sweet tenor voice and had often entertained the other men with ballads of the day. On the first morning of the Somme he and Madden had found themselves side by side in the forward trench. All night the artillery bombardment had sounded. At sunrise it ceased and a small miracle had occurred. Larks arose from the blasted fields and canals all around and the sky had been full of the sound of them. 'Do you hear that?'

Jamie Wallace had asked, his face lighting up. In Madden's dream his lips framed the same silent question. Do you hear that? A moment later the whistle had sounded for the start of the attack and the men had gone up the ladders into the lark-filled morning.

Madden awoke in tears to find her asleep beside him, her hair spread out over the pillow. Before undressing she had draped her red silk shawl over the bedside lamp and at the sight of her body, naked and glowing in the rosy light, his grief dissolved. As he drew up the sheet to cover them she reached out in her sleep and he moved quickly, easing himself into the circle of her arms, careful not to wake her.

Hefting his leather holdall, Amos Pike climbed over the stile, glancing back as he did so to make sure he wasn't being followed. As always, he was taking a roundabout route to his destination. He had grown up on the edge of a wood where wild things lived — foxes and badgers and a range of smaller predators — and had learned early from his father how skilled most were at disguising their rracks.

When he came to a ditch separating two fields he stepped into it and continued on his way, unseen, walking with long springy strides in the shadow of a hawthorn hedge. Today was Tuesday, not a day he normally had off, but Mrs Aylward had gone to visit her sister in Stevenage for the week, taking the train, and apart from chores in the garden his time was his own until Friday evening. Usually he could count on being free one weekend out of two, though Mrs Aylward would occasionally change her plans at the last minute and when she did so he was expected to conform, cancelling his own arrangements. He did so without complaint. His job had advantages of a rare kind. Unlooked-for opportunities had come his way.

He was approaching a small hamlet, a group of cottages at a crossroads surrounded by fields and orchards, and he paused in the shade of the hedge for several minutes while he scanned the scene. It was nearly one o'clock. Those of the inhabitants who were home would most likely be eating lunch. He didn't wish to be seen by anyone. Satisfied, he walked on and came to a narrow dirt track that led to a gate in the back fence of a small thatched cottage, separated from the rest of the village by an apple orchard and unploughed fields.

He unlatched the gate and went into the garden.

Pausing to run his eye over the small patch of lawn and the bed of hollyhocks and sweet peas growing against the cottage wall, he decided to spend an hour later trimming the grass and weeding the bed. He made a practice of keeping the place tidy, reasoning that if he did so it would discourage others from offering the same service to the occupant of the cottage. Pike had no interest in the garden, or its owner. It was the long wooden shed at the side of the lawn that was of concern to him and he aimed by indirect means to keep others away from it.

Depositing the holdall on the ground beside the door of the shed, he unstrapped it and took out a brown-paper parcel, which he carried across the lawn to the kitchen door. He entered the house without knocking.

'Who's there?' The husky quaver came from a room inside.

Pike didn't reply, but he walked from the kitchen through a hallway into a small parlour at the front of the cottage where an old woman sat by the lace-netted window nursing a fat tabby.

'Is that you, Mr Grail?' The eyes she turned towards him were covered with a greyish film. In spite of the heat she wore a woollen shawl tucked over the shoulders of her faded quilted gown. 'I was expecting you last week.'

'I couldn't come, Mrs Troy,' Pike said, in his cold voice. 'I had to work.'

'I ran out of tea.' The timid voice held a note of apology. 'I had to borrow some from Mrs Church.'

Pike frowned. 'You should have said you were short.' He saw her flinch at his words and tried to check the natural harshness of his tone. 'I brought you a packet. Plus some shortbread. You asked for that.'

'Did you bring me any fish?' She spoke in a near whisper, turning her face away, as though afraid of his response.

'No.' He was losing patience. Her existence meant nothing to him, beyond the fact that it should continue.

'They don't sell fish where I am,' he lied brutally. 'I brought you eggs and bacon and ham. And bread and rice. I'll put it away in the larder.'

A minute later he was outside again, crossing the lawn to the shed. Had Winifred Troy still possessed her sight she would hardly have recognized the structure.

Pike had replaced the former roof with sheets of corrugated iron, boarded over the single window and fitted a new door equipped with a heavy padlock opened by a key, which he kept about his person at all times.

The shed dated from a time, some years before, when Mrs Troy and her husband, who had since died, had let the cottage to an artist from the city. With their agreement he had built a studio in the small garden and had used the cottage as a weekend retreat and holiday home. By far the most radical alteration Pike had made was to knock down the end wall and install a pair of stable doors in its place. These opened on to the dirt track which ran through the fields and orchards for half a mile before joining a paved road.

Wrinkling his nose at the musty, airless smell, Pike latched the door shut behind him. It was dark in the shed and he lit a paraffin lamp at once. In the artist's day there had been ample illumination from a pair of skylights in the roof, but these had gone. Amos Pike disliked the idea of being overlooked.

The space inside the shed was mainly given over to a large object, covered with a dust cloth, which stood in the middle of the cement floor. Pike removed the cloth with a flick of his wrist: a motorcycle and sidecar were revealed beneath.

The shed quickly grew hot, the radiation of the lamp combining with the hot sun on the corrugated iron roof to turn the room into an oven. Pike took off his shirt. His heavily muscled body bore a number of scars, large and small. He put his holdall on a table and took from it a half-gallon tin of red paint and a pair of brushes. He had bought the paint in a hardware store that morning after having been assured by the salesman that it would adhere to metal. He prised off the lid of the tin with a chisel, spread a sheet of newspaper on the floor and sat down cross-legged. He began to paint over the black bodywork.

His movements were precise and, like all his physical actions, governed by a sense of economy and order.

This pattern of behaviour had been acquired at an early age and was the result of an event in his life so catastrophic he had only been able to continue his existence by recourse to a system of interlocking disciplines that guaranteed him control over his every waking moment.

Tormented for years by the terror and anguish of his dreams, he had lately found them diminished both in power and frequency. While he could not have framed such a thought himself, it was as though his subconscious had finally worn itself out and ceded the battlefield to his iron will.

Having lived with his grandparents for some years, he had gone for a soldier at the age of sixteen and found a way of life ideally suited to his needs, the strict demands of military practice fitting easily into his own more rigorous code. He had prospered to the extent of his capacities and by the time war broke out had already attained the rank of sergeant. For a while he had been employed as an instructor at a training depot, but when his battalion was posted to the front he had assumed his former position as a company sergeant.

Wounded on several occasions, he nevertheless managed to survive in rhe lottery of trench warfare, and the summer of 1917 had found him, now a company sergeant major, engaged with his battalion in the British offensive south of Ypres at the start of the months-long agony that would later be called Passchendaele.

During the bitter struggle for control of the Menin Road, Pike's company had come under heavy fire from the German artillery. Crouched behind a tree stump he saw a man's head blown off as neatly as if it had been hewn with an axe, the trunk stumbling on for several paces before collapsing. Next moment he was flung high into the air by an exploding shell that buried itself in the ground a few yards away.

He awoke to find himself lying in a crater with the battle still raging around him. Concussed and barely conscious, he listened to the fluttering sound of shells as they streamed through the upper air overhead. A great cloud of smoke and dust hung over the battlefield.

He saw men running past him on their way back to the lines, but when he opened his mouth to call to them no sound issued from his lips.

He slept for a few hours, but woke towards evening and realized for the first time that he had received a slight wound to his wrist. Although his limbs were undamaged he found he had no desire to move from where he was, lying on the slope of the crater, staring up at the violet sky. From habit he removed the field dressing sewn into the flap of his tunic and poured iodine into the cut on his wrist. He discovered he still had his water-bottle with him and he drank from it.

At that moment he became aware that he was not alone in the crater. A man from his own company named Hallett lay on the opposite slope, curled up on his side, hugging his blood-soaked tunic. He was calling out faintly, begging for water. Pity had never stirred in the icy heart of Amos Pike, and he watched in silence as the man died.

During the night it began to rain, a hard, driving, relentless downpour, which turned the dry, powdery dust of the battlefield into a quagmire. The battle resumed before dawn. German mortar shells whistled overhead. Smoking clods of earth were flung into the crater. By the blanching flare of a rocket Pike saw troops moving forward weighed down with rolls of wire and pigeon baskets, picks and shovels, but he made no attempt to attract their attention.

Morning came. The body of Hallett had vanished.

He saw nothing but mud all around him. Mud and the stumps of trees, and bodies, or parts of bodies nearby he spied a hand holding a mug, nothing more.

The crater became a lake of liquefied mud and when he dozed off he slid down the slope and had to claw his way back up, covered in clayey ooze. The rain had stopped and presently the sun came out. Pike slept again. When he awoke he discovered that the mud had formed a hard crust about his body. It would have been a simple matter to break it, but he found he was content to lie where he was, immobile, his limbs held fast in the mud's embrace.

He began to review his life, and as he did so a strange image took shape in his mind. He saw himself wrapped in a winding sheet like an Egyptian mummy, unable to move, the prisoner of a rigid and unforgiving regime that was slowly grinding his life to dust.

He felt a fierce urge to break out, to burst his bonds.

Yet the winding sheet spoke to him of death and he knew that if he decided to lie there, unmoving, he would presently die. And that that, too, would be a solution.

He endeavoured to fix his mind on the problem, to come to some kind of decision. As the mud continued to harden about him he heard a sucking sound and Hallett's bloated body surfaced in the crater, coming to rest on the slope beneath his feet. One of the eyes had remained open and it settled on Pike with an accusing glare. He felt an urge to turn away, but found he couldn't do so without cracking the shell of mud coating his neck and jaw. Part of him wished to stay as he was, stiff and unmoving; another part longed for release.

Early next morning a pair of stretcher-bearers found him and brought him back to the British lines, still encased in his suit of mud. He was put in the hands of a medical orderly, who freed him by tapping at the shell with a cook's ladle as though he were cracking an egg, peeling off the covering a piece at a time.

'There!' he said. 'Just like a new-hatched chick.'

The words had a powerful effect on Pike. All of a sudden he felt free. Reborn! A dark urge, like a dragon waking, stirred in his entrails.

The battalion medical officer pronounced him concussed and he was dispatched, via a casualty clearing station, to the base hospital at Boulogne where they kept him for a week and then returned him to his company.

Pike's battalion had been withdrawn from the line and was resting in a rear area near a village in the midst of farming country, some of it still being worked by peasant families.

As soon as he got back he began to cast around.