The Sedgemoor Strangler and Other Stories of Crime

The Sedgemoor Strangler

“Listen.”

“What is it?”

If there was a sound, it was not obvious. All Emma could catch was a scent, the mock orange drifting across the lane from one of the cottage gardens. On this warm June night, hidden among the withies with her dreamboat of a man, she was thinking only of romance.

“Kiss me.”

“No. Listen. Can you hear a rustling sound?”

Emma was not minded to listen. She curved her hand around his neck to draw his face closer to hers.

He resisted, bracing his shoulders. “It’s all around us. What is it — insects?”

With a wriggle of her hips, she let him know she wasn’t lying naked on the ground to discuss the wildlife of Somerset.

“Just listen.”

“There’s nothing,” she murmured. “It’s only the wind, I expect. Come on, lover.”

He was not her lover yet, and he would not relax. “Wind? There’s no wind.”

She hesitated. Until this minute, he had seemed so confident, so appreciative of her. She really wanted him. Their first passionate coupling would be ruined if she lost her patience.

He insisted, “There isn’t a breath of wind tonight.”

“Then it must be the withies growing.”

“The what?”

“All around us.”

This was true. On a hot day on Sedgemoor, a crop of these fine willow wands may get taller by two or three inches. After dark the process continues, more slowly, yet, in the still of the night, it is audible. The rustle he had heard was the sound of growth itself. Months back, in winter, the withies had been pruned to the stump. Now taller than a man’s reach, with graceful foliage, they testified to the richness of the earth that nourished them. This mud that Emma was lying in — call it earth, silt or topsoil — was the lifegiver. All you had to do was push a willow-cutting into the ground and it would sprout roots and grow.

The crop screened the couple from the row of stone cottages across the lane. A withy bed is not the ideal place to lie down and make love, but you have to take what you can find in the flat landscape of the moor. These two had gone to some trouble to avoid being seen. His car was parked outside the village, up a track leading to a field. They had approached from around the back of the crop, away from prying eyes, regardless that the fading light would shortly bring them privacy anyway. But there: lovers are not good planners. Persevering, stepping with care to avoid the nettles, eventually they had found this space between the tall willow wands.

The secretiveness was more at his insistence than Emma’s. Nobody would recognise her. She was not from withy-growing people. Her parents were middle-aged hippies who ran one of the many “alternative” shops in Glastonbury, selling trinkets and jewellery with so-called occult properties. Emma had rebelled against all that in her early teens, found work pulling pints in a pub for better money per week than her parents made in a month. She made new friends there. It was such a treat to mix with people who earned enough to take you out for a meal and buy you the occasional present.

By now she was becoming just a little impatient with her partner. “Is there a problem?” she asked, but trying to put some concern into her voice. “Haven’t you done it outdoors before?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Nobody’s about, and if they were, it wouldn’t matter. They don’t know who we are.”

Reassured, or goaded into action, he turned on his side and drew her towards him, slid his hand down her back and over the rise of her hip and announced, “Your backside is covered in muck.”

She giggled. He was no better at sweet-talk than she was. She squirmed closer, presenting all of her bottom for him to pass his hand over, supposedly to brush off the specks of earth. The undressing had been one-sided up to now. His own rump was still enclosed in denim and whatever he wore underneath. Still, Emma didn’t mind — if it led to a result. All blokes were different. This one definitely needed coaxing.

She located his belt and unfastened it. He tensed. She freed the top button of his jeans.

This man was not much of a stud. He came prematurely, when Emma was thinking of other things. Asking herself “Is that it?” she lay in the mud and looked at the stars.

No, that was not it. Presently she felt his hands around her throat.

The tourist board calls this place the Wetlands or the Levels; to the inhabitants it was, is now and ever shall be Sedgemoor. It needs no glamorizing. It has more of legend, mystery and tragedy than anywhere else in England. If you have heard of Sedgemoor, you probably connect it with the bloody battle that was fought there in 1685, when the Duke of Monmouth’s pitchfork rebellion was crushed by the King’s Army. Sedgemoor as the locals speak of it ranges far more widely than the battlefield. It is the entire tract of marshland bounded by Bridgwater Bay in the west and the Mendip and Quantock Hills inland. When the Ice Age ended and the waters rose, the region became a stretch of sea, with a few tiny islands. Ultimately the sea receded, drew with it a mass of clay and left a ridge that formed a natural dyke. Sedgemoor was enclosed, a vast floodplain waterlogged each winter by rivers that overflowed. Flooding may devastate, but it also spreads deposits of fertile silt across the earth. In times relatively modern, drainage systems were introduced, and with them cattle, cider-orchards and withy beds.

The talk in the public bar at the Jellied Eel in Bridgwater was the usual: who was laid off work and who was about to be. The modern economy had punished the people of Sedgemoor worse than most. Few of those in the pub had full-time work. Farming, the main employer, had shed thousands of workers as a result of automation, quotas and food scares. Beef, dairy products, cider, all were in decline. The demand for withies was negligible. The only viable industry was the peat, and that was not a major employer. Peat-cutting machines were job-cutting machines.

The young woman behind the bar, washing glasses, was not thinking about employment. Unemployment was Alison Harker’s dream, lifelong unemployment, sunning herself on a yacht in a Mediterranean bay. She had met a man across this bar two weeks ago who was capable of turning the dream into reality. Her pale, Pre-Raphaelite looks, the oval face and the long, red hair, had appealed to him at once. She knew. Some fellows practically drooled at the first sight of her. Tony was one of these, a pushover. He had only dropped in for a quick pint after doing some business in the town, and she wouldn’t normally have expected to see him again, but he returned in a couple of days, his eyes shining like chestnuts fresh from their husks. She knew she could have him whenever she wanted, if she wanted — so cool was she about the prospect until someone told her his Mercedes was outside, with the chauffeur sitting in the front listening to the cricket on the radio. Then her knees wobbled.

Their first date was a Saturday lunch at the best hotel in town. She thought about adjourning to one of the rooms upstairs for the afternoon, but she didn’t want him to get the impression she was easy, so she kept him (and herself) in suspense.

The next time he offered her an evening meal at a restaurant up near the coast, in the village of Stockland Bristol. She’d heard that it was highly regarded for its cooking, a place that catered mainly for tourists and people from “up out” who could afford the prices.

Somewhere along the route they were forced to stop because the narrow lane was blocked by cars. There was an emergency in the field on their left. Rather than sitting in the car to wait, they got out to look. It was a situation familiar to anyone from the moors. A cow had stumbled into the ditch and was up to its shoulders in mud and water. A Sedgemoor ditch is more than just a furrow at the edge of a field. It is more than a stream. It is broad, deep and dangerous, kept filled in summer to act as a barrier between fields and provide drinking water for the animals.

A lad scarcely old enough to be in charge of a tractor had tied a rope around the cow’s neck and was giving full throttle to this old Massey-Ferguson in the hope of hauling the beast out. The mud was doubly defeating him. The wheels were spinning and the cow was held fast. Alison saw that the poor animal was in danger of strangulation. It was making no sound, yet the distress in its eyes was obvious. The taut rope was around the throat in a knot that could only tighten as force was applied. Reacting as a farmgirl, she ran across to the kid on the tractor. She had rescued cattle from ditches herself and there was a right way to secure the rope. The boy didn’t like being told this by a woman dressed as if she had never been near a farm, but it was obvious from the way she spoke that she was experienced. At her bidding the lad backed the tractor far enough to slacken the tension. She took off her shoes and tights and handed them to Tony. After hitching the skirt of her new midi dress under her knickers, she let herself some way down the side of the ditch. Up to her thighs in the murky water, she strained to loosen the rope. It took all her strength. Twice the cow sheered away, almost dragging her into the ditch. At the cost of some torn fingernails, she finally untied the knot and attached the rope properly behind the cow’s horns. She scrambled up the bank and told the boy to try again, pointing out where the tyres would find a better purchase.

The tractor took up the strain and the rope tightened. With a tremendous squelching sound and much splashing the cow was plucked out of the mire and enabled to scramble up the bank, where it stood shocked, silent, dripping mud.

On the way back to the car, Tony said, “So you’re not just a pretty barmaid.”

Alison grinned. “Pretty muddy. I’m going to make a mess of your car.”

“Blow the car. I’m more worried about your dress. Keep it hitched up until your legs dry.”

“I can’t go to a restaurant in this state.”

“Leave it to me.”

“I mean I wouldn’t want to. I look disgusting like this.”

“You don’t.” And he meant it. He might have been looking at the treasure of Troy. “But I understand how you feel. Don’t worry. The people who own the restaurant live upstairs. They’re sure to have a shower.”

Typical of a man to dismiss the problem so lightly, as if it didn’t exist.

“I can’t march in and ask to use their shower.”

“I can. They know me.”

The chauffeur produced some clean paper tissues from the glove compartment and Alison wiped off the worst of the mud. If she had known Tony better, she might have asked him to help, but this was only their second date and they had made minimal body contact on the first, so she coped while he acted the gent and stared fixedly across the fields like a birdwatcher. As it happened, this saved an awkward explanation, for when she opened one of the tissues she found a lipstick imprint, obviously made by some previous passenger. Amused, she folded the tissue again and tucked it into her handbag thinking she might tease him when she knew him better.

You can only do so much with a few paper tissues. She sat self-consciously next to Tony in the rear seat of the elegant car with her smeared legs exposed while they were driven six miles to their destination, an old stone house converted into a restaurant. Tony explained the problem and the woman owner took Alison upstairs as if a shower for the guests was the usual pre-dinner appetizer. The private bathroom was immaculate, with fluffy white towels and everything gleaming. After showering, Alison trimmed her damaged fingernails. Then she looked at her clothes. She was relieved to find that the specks of mud on her dress had already dried, and they rubbed off, leaving no mark anyone else would notice.

Sipping red wine at the candlelit table, she admitted she had been brought up on a farm and was used to dealing with cows. “My people are dairy farmers. Generations of them.”

“Locally, you mean?”

She nodded. “We know the moors. Grandfather used to keep a boat tied to the back door because the winter floods were so bad years ago. They regularly got several feet of water. The fields still get flooded to get a nice, rich covering of silt, but it’s under control these days.”

“So why did you leave? What brought you to Bridgwater?”

“My pig-headed attitude. Women are supposed to do the same work the men do, or near enough, up to your knees in dung and silage. I wouldn’t have minded, but they told me my brother Henry, who is seven years younger than I am, was going to inherit the farm and everything father owned. Blow that. I left.”

Tony’s face creased in concern. “Do you mean they would have left you penniless?”

She smiled. “It’s not quite so melodramatic. I was expected to work for my brother when the time came. He would have given me a wage.”

“But there was no question of you sharing the farm?”

“No chance.” To shift the attention from her family, she asked Tony about his work. She already knew a certain amount. He was the new money, a marshland millionaire, the owner of a fleet of digging machines that stacked sliced blocks of peat in tidy walls. He lived in an architect-designed villa in the Brue Valley and he had a bigger house in Gloucestershire. He was thirty-four, not bad-looking, curly-haired, dark and as tall as she would have wished.

“Here’s a confession. I got my start through inheritance,” he told her with a flicker of amusement, “but I didn’t cut out any sisters. I don’t have sisters. My Dad saw the potential of peat years ago, before the price jumped, in the days when they called it turf-cutting. He was in there before Fisons, or any of them.”

The peat that was Tony’s fortune is the principal asset of the moors. Where there is shallow water, there are reeds, and the reeds of five thousand years ago fell into the swamps, rotted down and were compressed. Many generations later, mankind discovered that the soggy brown fibrous stuff had a use. It was cut from the ground, stacked, dried and used mainly for fuel. Some clever entrepreneur even shipped it to Japan to be used in distilling whisky. But what transformed peat-cutting into an industry was the nineteen-sixties’ boom in natural fertilizers. Millions of people living in tidy suburban homes with patches of garden at front and back wanted the peat to nourish their soil. In the new wood-and-glass garden centres all over the country it was stacked high in bright plastic sacks, and the profits were high as well. An acre of Sedgemoor that you could have bought for five pounds in 1939 was worth at least ten thousand now.

And no one had ever seen Tony with a wife.

After the meal they drove through the lanes to a village at the west end of Bridgwater Bay that smelt of the sea. A bulwark of enormous quarried stones had been heaped along the front to keep back the highest tides. They clambered up and found a place to sit among the stones and watch the sunset. It would lead to some kissing, at the least, Alison assumed. First, there were things she wanted to know. “Have you brought anyone here before?”

He shook his head. “Never been here.”

“How did you know it was here, then?”

“I didn’t. The lane had to lead somewhere.”

They listened to the mournful, piping cry of a curlew and stared at the sunset reddening the shallow channels that lay on the vast expanse of mud. Down by the water, the tiny figure of a fisherman was manoeuvring a sledgelike structure across the mudflats, bringing in his catch of shellfish from the nets further out. Soon the tide would turn. Along this coast the Bristol Channel has a rise of nearly forty feet and the water rushes in at the rate of a galloping horse, so timing is crucial for the fishermen.

Alison picked up the conversation again. She had not forgotten the lipstick mark on the paper tissue. “Where do you take your girls, then?”

“What do you mean — ‘take my girls’?”

“Women, if you like. Birds, or whatever you call us. Where do you take them after dinner in that restaurant?”

Tony turned to face her. A hurt look clouded his features. “I’m not the playboy you seem to think I am.”

She asked the big question, trying to sound casual. “Married?”

“Do you think I would be here with you if I was?”

It was as good an answer as she was likely to get without spoiling the evening. She guessed there was something he didn’t want to discuss at this minute, like a recent divorce, or a failed relationship. She didn’t mind if he had a past, as long as it was over for good. You expected a man to have experience. She had a certain amount herself, come to that.

As if that cleared the way, he kissed her for the first time. He held her bare shoulders and traced the line of her neck. She could feel the links of his gold bracelet heavy and cool against her flesh. She pressed close and rested her head in the curve of his neck and shoulder. But they did not have sex, there in the setting sun, or later. She was not ready to suggest it, and nor, apparently, was Tony. They returned to the car and Hugh the chauffeur drove them back to Bridgwater. After being so direct with her questions Alison half-wondered if she would be invited out again, but Tony suggested another meal the next week.

Over the next days she gave sober thought to her needs, sexual and material. No amount of wishful thinking was going to transform this man into a great lover. He seemed content with kisses and cuddles so toe-curling that she was reminded of her pre-teens. So she considered the trade-off. Whoever got hitched to Tony need never work again. She pictured herself in the designer clothes she had seen in expensive magazines at the hairdresser’s. With her looks and figure it would be an injustice if she never got to wear such things. She thought of the holidays advertised in the travel agent’s window. She weighed the other advantages: being driven about in the car; the choice of two houses; a swimming pool; meals in posh restaurants.

I wouldn’t be ashamed of him, she reflected. His looks are all right, quite dishy, in fact. He must be intelligent, to be running the business. He treats me with respect. I haven’t noticed an aggressive side to him. And his work keeps him busy. Wicked thought: if I felt the urge to go out with blokes who appealed to me more, I could probably get away with it.

At the pub where she worked was a man Alison knew from experience would make a more passionate partner than Tony. She had slept with Matt Magellan more times than she cared to admit. Matt understood her needs. He was a tease and an out-and-out chauvinist, but when it came to sex he treated her right. He seemed to know instinctively the fine mix of flattery and passion that inflamed her. His touch was magic. She’d known him since childhood, which was a pity, because she could remember him at fourteen when he didn’t come up to her shoulder and she’d refused to go out with him for fear of making an exhibition of herself. He had put on some inches since then, but he was still below average height. A lovely mover, though, comfortable with his physique, beautifully co-ordinated on the dance-floor, regardless of what sort of dancing it was. More than once, she had caught herself wondering if she loved him. But how can you love a slaughterman who drinks in the pub each night and has about as much ambition as the cattle he kills?

“Fill them up, Ally,” he called over to her. His round.

She went to his table to collect the glasses.

“Have one thyself?” he offered.

“No thanks.”

“A half, then?”

“Not even a half.”

“Saving thyself?”

She reddened. “What do you mean?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Who were treated to a tasty supper out Stockland Bristol way the other evening?”

One of Matt’s drinking friends, John Colwell, a particular enemy of Alison’s, said, “Tasty supper and tasty afters, I reckon.”

Her contempt came as a hiss. She could neither confirm nor deny that kind of remark with any dignity. After filling the glasses she carried them to the table and made sure she slopped Colwell’s cider when she placed it in front of him.

Matt said, apparently for the amusement of his fellow-drinkers, but not without bitterness, “She’m given up cider for champagne.”

Every barmaid is used to suggestive remarks from the customers and Alison generally laughed them off. This was not like that. It was edged with malice. She said witheringly, “It isn’t the cider I’m sick of.”

Back behind the bar, she turned up the music to drown the crude remarks they were sure to be making about her, thinking how unjust it is that nobody remarks on the company a man keeps. Why shouldn’t she go out with a stranger? What a dreary prospect only ever spending time with clodhopping yobs like that lot.

With no other customers to serve, she picked up the local paper and read once again about the murdered girl they had found at Meare Green a week ago. Only seventeen, poor soul, naked as a cuckoo, and strangled. They reckoned she must have been lying among the withies three weeks before she was found, her clothes beside her. She came from Glastonbury, fifteen miles away, so the police had worked out that she was taken there in a car. It was about the only thing they had worked out. They were still appealing for witnesses. Some hopes, Alison thought. Meare Green always looked empty of inhabitants.

The girl’s name was Emma Charles and she had worked as a barmaid. From the picture, one of those brightly lit studio shots with a pale blue background obviously taken when she was still at school, she was dark-haired and pretty, with thick eyebrows, a wide, sensuous mouth and dimples. There was a lot of speculation that she may have met her killer in the pub. Glastonbury, with its legends and ley-lines, has more than its share of freaks and weirdos passing through or camping there in the summer. The girl’s parents owned an “alternative” shop that went in for incense-burning and astrology, mandalas and mysticism. They were pictured in their tie-dye shirts, the father with a blond ponytail, the mother with cropped hair and a large Celtic cross hanging from her neck. But it seemed that Emma had left home and had not spoken to either of them for weeks.

It was easy to identify with her.

The report went on to state euphemistically that Emma was known to have had several close friends. Detectives were questioning a number of men believed to have associated with her.

“So when are you going out with him again?”

Startled, she looked up from the paper. Matt was by the counter. She had not noticed him, assuming that he and the others would be busy with their drinks for some time. His question was best ignored.

He said, “I want three packets of crisps, vinegar-flavoured.”

Alison reached behind her and put them in front of him without a word. He dropped a couple of coins on the counter and said, “Keep the change. You never know when you might need to catch a bus home.”

The next Saturday she went with Tony to see a film called Seven, about a serial killer. She’d have preferred a Woody Allen film which was showing in Glastonbury, but Tony wasn’t keen. He seemed to dislike Glastonbury as much as she found Bridgwater a bore. Seven shocked her with its violent scenes, well-made as it undoubtedly was, but she didn’t admit this. “I couldn’t believe in the story,” she said when they had their drinks later. “Murder isn’t so complicated.”

“What do you mean?”

“Real serial killers aren’t like that. They simply repeat the same method several times over. They’re not inventing wild new ways of killing people.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Tony.

“They’re not that intelligent,” she went on. “They can’t be. Take the case of that girl who was found at Meare Green.”

“That’s not a serial murder.”

“You can’t say,” she pointed out. “It could turn out to be.”

His eyes slid downwards, staring into his drink. “All right,” he conceded. “What were you going to say about the woman at Meare Green?”

“Just this. She was strangled. Manually strangled, the paper said. That means with his bare hands instead of using her tights or something, doesn’t it? Now, if that bloke did a second murder, you can bet he’d do exactly the same thing, with his hands around the woman’s throat. That’s how the police catch these people. They call it their m.o. It’s Latin, isn’t it?”

“You seem to know a lot about it.”

“If you’re a woman, you need to know.” She had a sense that he wanted to end the conversation, but something was spurring him on.

“You’re saying this man, whoever he may be, isn’t capable of thinking of some other way of killing the next one?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know anything about him.”

“I know he’s thick.”

“You can’t say that. He might have a degree in astrophysics.”

“Intelligent men don’t murder people just at random. Serial killers are thick, so they do the same thing and get caught.”

“The guy in the film wasn’t thick. He changed his m.o.”

Alison smiled. “And still got caught. Serve him right.”

It was still warm when they left the pub, so she suggested they walked back to her flat. He told Hugh to drive the Mercedes round to her street and wait there. Having a chauffeur constantly on call was not always such a useful arrangement. It was not unlike having a chaperon.

“Do you ever go anywhere without Hugh?” she asked as they strolled through the silent streets, his arm around her waist.

He laughed. “Does he cramp my style, do you mean? I give him days off sometimes.”

“Then do you drive the car yourself?”

“I use taxis.”

The Mercedes was waiting in her street when they reached it, on the opposite side from her flat, the lights off.

She looked up at him. “Coffee?”

“Another time.”

“I have a phone, you know. You could call a taxi.” As she spoke, she thought this is wrong. I shouldn’t be rushing him.

He took her hand and squeezed it gently. “I appreciate the offer. I’m due back in Gloucester tonight. An early appointment tomorrow. Shall I see you next week? When’s your night off? Saturday again?”

“Saturday.”

They kissed. Then he walked across to the waiting car.

A man with an old-fashioned haircut with sideburns and a parting at the side came into the pub a couple of evenings later and didn’t buy a drink. He went straight to Matt’s table and started talking to the group. After a while he took a notebook from his pocket and wrote things down. Then he moved to another table. Matt and his friends stared after him and talked in lowered voices among themselves.

Alison was uneasy about this stranger disturbing the customers. She went across to Matt’s table and asked who he was.

“Fuzz,” said Matt. “Wants to know if anyone here knew that girl who was strangled. We told ’un there’s no sense in coming to Bridgwater asking about a girl from Glastonbury.”

“Why is he here, then?” said Alison.

“He says they’ve been to all the pubs in Glastonbury, including the one she worked in, and now they’re extending their enquiries.”

“She’s never set foot in here.”

“That’s what we told ’un.”

“He’s wasting his time, then,” said Alison. She returned to the bar counter and continued to watch with disfavour the detective go from table to table.

Finally, he walked across to her. His blue eyes assessed her keenly. The voice had a note of Bristol in it, that soft, unhurried way with words that can be so disarming. “Detective Sergeant Mayhew, Somerset and Avon CID. You don’t mind if I ask you a couple of questions, do you, my dear?”

“What about?”

“I’m sure you know by now,” he said, bringing colour to her cheeks. “I watched you go to the table under the window and ask the lads what I was up to. Fair enough. You have a job to do. I could be dealing in drugs for all you know. But I’m not, am I? What’s your name, love?”

She told him, adding, “That dead girl has never been in here to my knowledge.”

“Maybe her killer has, though.”

Shocked by the suggestion, Alison retained enough of her composure to say, “We’ve no way of knowing.”

“I don’t expect you to know, miss. How could you?” He took a leisurely glance around the room. “But you want to be on your guard.” While Alison tried to look unimpressed, the sergeant went on, “It was a barmaid who was murdered. We’ve questioned a number of local men she knew, and they seem to be in the clear. The chances are that he isn’t a Glastonbury man. More likely he’s the sort of fellow who comes into the pub once or twice and chats up the pretty girl who serves him. You’ve met a few of them I dare say?”

“Hundreds.”

“A certain amount of charm, good looks, gift of the gab. Pushing their luck, trying for a date?”

“Some do.”

“Anyone lately?”

She shook her head. Strictly speaking, Tony fitted the profile, but she excluded him. A man too timid to come in for a cup of coffee at the end of an evening was hardly likely to strangle you. “No one I can recall. What makes you think he’d come to Bridgwater?”

“He wouldn’t want to show his face in Glastonbury, would he?”

“I suppose not.”

“Could be Burnham he tries next, or Langport. Burnham and Langport aren’t my patch. Bridgwater is, and that’s why I’m here, giving you advice.”

Alison said nothing. Let him give his damned advice. She didn’t have to thank him for it.

He asked, “Are there any other girls employed here?”

“Two others help at the weekends. Sally and Karen. It’s lads, apart from them.”

“I may look in again, then, Miss Harker, but you’ll do me a favour and pass on my advice, won’t you?”

After he had gone, business at the bar was brisk and the level of noise rapidly returned to normal. Alison was too busy serving to give any more thought to the murdered woman until near closing time, when she went to Matt’s table to collect empties.

Matt grasped her by the wrist. He had a powerful grip. “I hope you told the copper about your fancy man, him you spent last Saturday night with. Seems to me, he’s got to be a suspect, going out with barmaids.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Matt.”

“Ridiculous, is it? I’d have said he’s just the sort of bloke they’re after, the kind that moves from town to town looking for a woman foolish enough to go out with him.”

“Let go of my arm.”

“We all know he’s got wheels. With that great car of his, he could have driven the poor lass from Glastonbury out to Meare Green and strangled her. I’d say you have a duty to mention him to the police — if you haven’t already.”

“I bet she hasn’t,” said John Colwell.

“Don’t you have any brains in your head?” said Alison, wrenching away her arm, which had become quite numb where Matt had gripped it. “Tony’s car is driven by a chauffeur. If he wanted to murder anyone — which I’m sure he doesn’t — do you think he’d have the chauffeur drive them to the spot and wait in the car while he did it? What’s the chauffeur going to think when he comes out of the withy-bed without the girl? Oh, get with it.”

“Happen he gives the chauffeur an evening off,” said Matt.

“When he does, he uses a taxi.”

“Who told you that?”

“He did.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?”

She rubbed her arm. It was turning red. She wouldn’t be surprised to find a bruise there. “You’re so puerile, you lot. As a matter of fact, Matt, if I wanted to report anyone to the police, it ought to be you. See this mark coming up? If they’re looking for someone violent to women, I can give them a name.”

“They’d laugh at you,” he told her.

“And I could tell them you have a rusty old Cortina you drive around in.”

John Colwell grinned. “He does, and all.”

Alison had neatly turned the fire on Matt. He could squirm, for a change. “Talk about suspects. What’s to stop you from driving over to Glastonbury and picking up some unfortunate girl and killing her?”

Matt tried to laugh it off. “Little old me, the Meare Green strangler?”

“Killing’s your job, isn’t it?”

His friend Colwell grinned. “She’s got you there. You’ve got to admit she’s got you there, Matt.”

The seed of anxiety was sown, not about Matt, whom she’d known all her life, almost, and not about Tony either. The worry was over her personal position. She could get into trouble for failing to mention Tony to the police. He fitted the profile Detective Sergeant Mayhew had given her: not a local man, but with charm, good looks and the gift of the gab, the sort who visits the pub only once or twice and gets friendly with the barmaid. She knew Tony was harmless. Well, she felt certain he was harmless, which is almost the same. A guy who passed up the chance to make love after buying her expensive meals was hardly likely to strip the clothes off her and strangle her. Unfortunately Matt or his cronies were liable to make mischief and tell the detective about Tony’s visits to the pub and his evenings out with her. She knew that crowd and their so-called sense of humour. They would think it hilarious to embarrass her, forcing her to answer questions from the police about her dates with Tony. For Matt, who was jealous, it would be a kind of revenge.

Sergeant Mayhew had said he would probably be back at the weekend, to talk to the other barmaids. Alison decided it was in her interest to be on duty on Saturday after all, in case anything was said. If she handled this right, she could get to Sergeant Mayhew before Matt did. She and the other girls could monopolise him.

She spoke to the manager next day and fixed it. She would take Thursday off and come into work Saturday. Then she called Tony on his mobile and said unfortunately she couldn’t go out with him on Saturday as she’d been compelled to change her shift. He was relaxed about it and good enough to suggest they met the following week.

Thursday was an opportunity of doing some detective work of her own. She had thought of a way of finding out more about Tony’s recent past. In brilliant morning sunshine that brought extraordinary clarity to the scene she cycled six miles though the lanes, past fields where sheep and cattle grazed and the wild iris, kingcup and sweet gale abounded. At the edge of the lane, baby rabbits crouched and butterflies swooped up. Her destination was Stockland Bristol, the restaurant she and Tony had visited the previous Saturday.

The woman owner remembered her, of course, as the customer who had showered in her bathroom. “Did you leave something behind, my dear?”

“No. It’s just...” Alison hesitated, uncertain how to phrase this. “The gentleman I was with — Tony — Mr Pawson — he’s a regular customer of yours, I gather.”

“I wouldn’t say regular. Occasional describes it better. We’re always glad to see him, though. Is anything wrong?”

“Oh, no. Well, to tell you the truth, I’ve become rather attached to him.”

“I’m pleased for you, my dear. He’s a charming gentleman.”

She fingered her the ends of her hair. “I don’t know how to ask this. It’s a terrible cheek. I thought, being a woman, you might understand.”

“What on earth is the matter, my dear?”

Alison blinked hard, and succeeded in getting a tear to roll down her cheek. “I keep thinking about the times he came here before. Is there anyone else — I mean is there another woman — he brought here recently, say in the past six weeks?”

Eyebrows raised, the woman said, “It wouldn’t be very discreet of me to say so, would it? We owe our patrons some confidentiality over such matters.”

Alison’s hopes plummeted.

“However,” the woman went on, “since he has only ever brought gentlemen before who were obviously businessmen, I can set your mind at rest without seriously breaking any confidence. Is that what you wanted to know?”

Alison sang as she pedalled home through the lanes.

Detective Sergeant Mayhew’s second appearance in the Jellied Eel couldn’t have been more convenient for Alison. He came in about six on Saturday evening, well before Matt usually arrived. John Colwell was already there, but he didn’t matter, because he wasn’t the sort to start a conversation. He wouldn’t make trouble.

Just to be certain, Alison came from behind the bar to greet the policeman and escort him across the room to meet the other barmaids. He made his pious little speech about the wisdom of rejecting invitations from customers they didn’t know.

Karen, blonde and with more brass than a cathedral, was moved to say, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why should we be careful? Only one girl is dead, and she was in Glastonbury.”

Sergeant Mayhew shook his head slowly at Karen’s naivety. “This isn’t your run-of-the-mill murder. Men who kill girls they go out with can easily get a liking for it. And if they do, it’s a pound to a penny they move on to another town.”

“What is he — some kind of sex-maniac?”

“I can’t answer that, miss.”

“The Glastonbury girl was stripped and raped, wasn’t she?”

He pondered the matter. “Difficult to tell. She wasn’t wearing anything, it’s true. But the body had been lying there some time in hot weather when it was found. Even the best pathologist can’t tell much from a decomposing corpse.”

Karen screwed up her face at the thought, and Sally steered the conversation back to the living end of the investigation. “I expect you’ve got the names of all the local weirdos and rapists. I hope they all get questioned.”

“That’s been done, miss. The trouble with this case is that we don’t know which day the girl was murdered, so it’s no use asking people like that where they were at a particular time.”

“How will you find him, then?”

Karen said cuttingly, “The way they always find them. Through a tip-off.”

The sergeant didn’t seem put out by the comment. “Young ladies like yourselves can certainly help. Be alert. Get on the phone to us if anyone you don’t know tries to ask you out.”

“Will you be calling at all the pubs in Bridgwater?” Sally asked.

“That’s a question I’m not at liberty to answer, miss.”

Karen quickly followed up, “We’ve been picked out. Why?”

“I just made myself clear, miss. There’s nothing I can add. Just be on your guard — here, and specially on your way home.”

Alison decided this was the cue to usher him out. “Would you like a drink before you go?” She knew he was likely to refuse. To her profound relief, he looked at his watch and agreed he ought to be on his way.

“I can tell you why this pub is being targeted,” said Karen after the sergeant had left, her eyes as wide as beermats. “One of those perverts on their list has been seen drinking here. They can’t arrest him without proof.”

“Keep your voice down, Karen. You’ll upset the customers.”

“Sod the customers,” said Karen. “We’re the ones at risk.”

For all her bluster, Karen was only a relief barmaid. When Alison told her firmly to drop the subject, she obeyed. For more than an hour, the public bar returned to normal. Then Matt came in and joined John Colwell and the rest of their crowd. When Alison next looked across, Karen was at their table in earnest conversation, undoubtedly passing on her version of what Sergeant Mayhew suspected.

Later, in a quiet moment behind the bar, Alison told Karen, “If you say one more word about that murder, I’m going to report you for upsetting the customers.”

“Upsetting that lot? You must be joking.”

But the damage was done. Matt came over to order another round and leered at Alison. “Police were in again, I hear, still looking for the barmaid strangler. They’m watching some pervert, that’s for sure. Must be frustrating for ’em, knowing the bastard who did it and not being able to nail him. People have a public duty to report things, I say.”

She busied herself with the order, trying to ignore him. In topping up the first of the five beer glasses, she spilt some.

“Losing your touch?” said Matt.

She said nothing.

“Don’t suppose you told ’un about your evening out with the peat millionaire.”

She stood the fifth of the glasses on the counter and said the price.

He held out a ten-pound note. “You know the old saying? ‘Gold-dust blinds all eyes’.”

She said through her teeth, “Get lost, Matt.”

“Think about that.”

“One more word, Matt, and I’ll spit in your glass, I swear I will.”

He grinned. “Go ahead. But I’ll have my change first, if you don’t mind, not being a millionaire myself.”

She turned to the till and took out her anger on the keys. Then she slammed his money on the counter, avoiding his open hand, and went to the next customer.

Matt’s words stayed with her. She went to bed with her thoughts too turbulent for sleep. She hated admitting it to herself, but there was some truth in what he had said. Tony’s money was an attraction. Her romantic notions had focused on the life he could so easily provide for her. Persuaded that he was generous and inoffensive, tall and good-looking, she could grow to love him, she had told herself. He seemed attracted to her, else why would he have invited her out? She had these looks that turned men’s heads, not always men she wanted, so she was fortunate when it happened to be someone she could kiss without flinching. More than that, she had yet to discover. But it was the high life that beckoned.

I feel safe with him, she reasoned. He’s a pussy-cat to be with. If I had the slightest doubt of his conduct, I’d talk to the police. Is that a delusion? After all, when I go out with him, I’m backing my own judgement with my life.

About four in the morning, aroused from a short, disturbing dream, she needed a cigarette. She reached for her handbag and felt inside for the pack she knew was there. She didn’t often smoke these days. Delving deep into the bag, she withdrew the pack and with it came a paper tissue, neatly folded, unlike the others she stuffed into the bag. Remembering where she had got this one, she switched on the light, opened out the tissue and spread it in front of her. The lipstick print looked unusually vivid, and in her heightened state she felt that those slightly-parted lips were about to say something to her. She folded it quickly and returned it to the bag.

When she woke, it was almost ten. Sunday. She was not on duty until twelve. She shuffled into her small kitchen and switched on the kettle and the radio and started performing those automatic actions that would shortly provide her with the coffee she needed to clear her brain.

The radio was tuned to the local station and the newsreader was going on about some incident in the Iron Age Village reconstruction at Westhay, near Glastonbury. Alison continued to potter about without paying much attention. He was saying, “... was found in the largest of the roundhouses by one of the staff when he came on duty this morning. The woman has not yet been identified. A press statement is expected from the police later this morning. Last month, the body of Emma Charles, aged seventeen, from Glastonbury, was found at Meare Green, some twelve miles away. No one has been arrested for the crime.”

Roused from her stupor, she reached for the volume switch. Too late. They were talking about the weather. She stood by the radio clutching the front of her nightdress in frustration.

This had to be another victim. They wouldn’t have mentioned the first girl unless there were similarities. Sergeant Mayhew’s warnings about a possible serial killer were justified.

Alison knew the Iron Age village from being taken there as a schoolgirl. She had squatted with her classmates inside one of the reconstructed dome-shaped huts of wattle and daub, smelling the peat-fire that smouldered in the centre, not really listening to their teacher twittering on about the people who lived on the moors oodles of years ago in huts like that. The history lesson had made less impression than the cosy atmosphere in the building itself. The snug interior had appealed. She had imagined herself sleeping there contentedly under thick furs, her feet warmed by the fire. In no way could she picture it as a murder scene.

The next bulletin would be on the half-hour. She drank her coffee, showered and dressed.

Part of the main statement at the press conference was broadcast live at ten-thirty. “The Peat Moor Visitor Centre, where the victim was found, has been closed to visitors while the scene is examined by forensic experts. The dead woman, who is believed to be in her early twenties, was white, with dark, shoulder-length hair, slimly built and about five foot six in height. She was unclothed. Her clothes were found beside the body inside the reconstruction of a prehistoric Iron Age hut. She appears to have been strangled. We appeal to anyone who saw a woman of this description, in a black sleeveless dress with shoulderstraps, black stole and black shoes with silver buckles, in the area yesterday evening, either alone or in company, to get in touch with Glastonbury Police. We also wish to hear from anyone who knows of a woman of this description who did not return home last night.”

No reference this time to a possible connection with Emma Charles’s death. Possibly the police were more cautious than the radio station. But if strangulation was the cause of death and the victim was unclothed, the chances were high that Emma’s killer had committed a second murder.

By lunchtime, when Alison came into work, still shaky with the news, the pub was buzzing and there was a rumour that a barmaid at the King’s Arms in Langport was missing from home.

Another barmaid in another town. Just as Sergeant Mayhew had warned.

On the one o’clock television news the story was confirmed. An unmarried woman of twenty-two called Angie Singleton had been identified. Saturday was her day off. She was last seen leaving her parents’ house at six-thirty that evening. They had assumed she was meeting two of her girlfriends at the pub where she worked and going on to a disco in Glastonbury.

“My God,” said Karen to the pub in general. “I’m chucking up this job. He’s done Glastonbury and Langport. He’s got to come to Bridgwater next.”

“Don’t panic, love,” one of the older men called across. “They’ll catch the bloke this time. That poor lass who was found over at Meare Green had been dead three weeks. This one is fresh. They pick up all kinds of clues at the scene of a murder. By now they know exactly who they’re looking for. They’ll have the colour of his hair, the shoes he wears, the make of his car and the size of his John Thomas, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“You watch too much television,” Karen said with scorn. “Real cases aren’t solved that easily. How do you think serial killers manage to do in seven or eight women without getting pulled in?”

Alison kept out of the argument. She, too, was frightened. In truth, she was also relieved that she wasn’t the focus of attention she had expected to be.

But later in the day the spotlight turned on her again. A man she had never seen before came into the bar and asked for her by name. He spoke first to Karen, whose silly reaction was to give Alison a boggle-eyed look that meant this could easily be the strangler. The stranger was in his thirties, in a leather jacket, red tee-shirt and jeans. His dark eyes assessed Alison with alarming intensity. He approached, leaned over the bar, beckoned to her to come closer and said in a tone nobody else could possibly overhear. “I’m DI Briggs, Glastonbury Police. I have some questions. Would you step outside to my car for a few minutes?”

She was about to say, “How do I know?” when she realized she was looking at a police ID card masked from the rest of the room by his jacket. She asked Karen to take care of things for a few minutes.

In the car, he came quickly to the point. “This man you’ve been going out with. Tony Pawson. You know who I mean?”

Her skin prickled. She was in trouble now, and so was Tony.

“How did you meet him?”

“He’s a customer.”

“A regular?”

“I wouldn’t call him a regular, no.”

“Chatted you up and made a date, did he?”

“Something like that.”

“When did this start?”

“About three weeks ago. We’ve only been out three times altogether.”

“Where did he take you?”

“Twice for a meal. And once to a film.” Her voice trailed off revealingly. Until this moment it had not occurred to her that Tony’s choice of film was going to interest the police.

“Where?”

“The film? Here in Bridgwater.”

“The meals.”

She was mightily relieved to pass over the film and discuss the meals. “The first was just up the road, at the Admiral Blake. And he also took me to the Levels Restaurant at Stockland Bristol.”

He asked for dates and times. She told him each outing had been on a Saturday, her day off.

“Have you slept with him?” Responding to the look he got from Alison, he added, “I wouldn’t ask unless—”

“No,” she cut in. “I haven’t.”

“When I say ‘slept’—”

“You can put down ‘no’. We had a few evenings out together, that’s all. Ask his driver if you don’t believe me.”

“The driver came too?”

“He waited in the car. If anything happened, he would know. His name is Hugh, and he drives Tony everywhere.”

“You’re saying Pawson doesn’t drive? Is he banned?”

“I’ve no idea. I can only tell you what he said to me. Sometimes he uses a taxi.”

He was frowning. “Let’s have this totally clear. On three dates with Pawson, there was no sex.”

“I’ve said so.”

“It wasn’t suggested, even?”

“I don’t know why you’re pursuing this. I felt perfectly safe with him.”

“Maybe the others did.” He shook his head, chiding himself. “Disregard that. I’m thinking aloud.”

She felt her skin prickle. “Those girls were raped. It said in the paper they were raped.”

DI Briggs hesitated. “If I tell you something confidential, can I trust you?”

She shrugged, guessing that he wasn’t doing her a favour. Why tell her anything in confidence unless it was to undermine her? “I suppose so.”

“In a case like this, we don’t release all the details. Some things are known only to the killer and ourselves. Then, you see, we can tell if we’ve got the right bloke. The signs are that there was sex in both these cases, but it wasn’t forced. It was consensual. Do you follow me?”

She stared at him in disbelief. “You mean they let him make love to them?”

“And then he killed them. Were you with Tony Pawson yesterday?”

She shook her head.

“Why not? It was your day off.”

“I changed my day. I took Thursday instead.”

“Did you go out with him Thursday?”

“No. I expect he was at work.” She didn’t volunteer the fact that she had spent Thursday checking on Tony’s previous visits to the restaurant at Stockland Bristol.

“Any reason why you changed your day off? Was he due to go out with you last night?”

“Those are two different questions.”

“Answer the first one, then.”

“I changed over because Sergeant Mayhew said he was coming back to the pub at the weekend. Some stupid rumours were being put about and I didn’t want people discussing me behind my back.”

“Rumours about you and Tony Pawson?”

“Yes, and there was no foundation for them. I’ve told you the truth about my evenings with Tony.”

“But you didn’t tell Sergeant Mayhew.”

“He didn’t know anything about them.”

“So you didn’t say anything? A police officer was asking about strangers coming in and chatting you up, inviting you out, and you didn’t say anything?”

Her nervousness was being supplanted by annoyance. “Listen, Tony is nice to me. He treats me decently. Your sergeant was here on a murder inquiry. Do you seriously expect me to give you his name as a suspect?”

He started to say, “If you had...” Then he stopped and fitted the phrase into another question. “If you hadn’t been working yesterday, would you have gone out with Pawson?”

“Probably.” As she realized what he was suggesting, she felt her own fingernails pressing deep into her thighs.

“These rumours. Who exactly was putting them about?”

“Some fellows in the pub.”

He insisted on more than that. She was forced to admit under more questioning that she had been seriously involved with Matt at one time. Matt obviously interested him. He knew about the old Cortina he drove and his work as a slaughterer. This brought the questioning to an end, but the inspector hadn’t finished with her. He wanted her to return with him to the pub and point out Matt.

After DI Briggs had finished questioning him and left, Matt behaved like the star witness meeting the press, holding forth to the entire pub about Tony, referring to him as “our barmaid’s fancy man” and insisting that he would be arrested before the day was out for the murders of the two women.

That evening Alison finished work at six and walked in steady rain through the streets of Bridgwater, longing for a few quiet hours at home, free of the tensions in the pub. She was thinking she would not stay in the job much longer. The sight of Tony’s Mercedes outside the house where she lived made her say out loud, “Oh, God!” and reach for a railing for support. Her first impulse was to turn and walk away. But the car door opened and Tony actually ran towards her, opening one of those huge golf umbrellas. “You’re drenched. Come under this, for pity’s sake.”

Controlling herself, she told him she was almost home and didn’t care about getting wet, making it as plain as she could that their friendship was at an end.

With no chance of being invited in, he asked if she would step into the car for a moment because there was something he wanted to tell her.

Alison couldn’t face explanations. She changed tack completely and used the excuse that she was wet through. She asked him to let go of her arm.

He said, “You believe I killed those women, don’t you? I’ve had two long interviews with the police. Do you think I’d be at liberty now if they knew I was a murderer?”

She said truthfully, “I can’t believe you killed anyone.”

“You’re afraid of me. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Tony, all I am is tired. I’ve had a hard time lately. I just want to get home.”

His voice rose at least an octave. “That’s why I want to talk to you. I know you’ve been bothered by the police. I don’t blame you if it turns you right off me. I want the chance to say sorry.”

“Consider it done. I’m tired and wet through.” She started walking away and he stepped in beside her, turning to face her, appealing to her with those soulful brown eyes.

“Tomorrow, then?”

She said, “No. It’s over, whatever it amounted to. Let’s leave it like that.” She was at her front gate.

In an odd, troubled voice that she found chilling, he said, “Can’t you understand? I’m not willing to leave it like that.”

Frightened now, she ran up the path to the front door, let herself in and slammed it.

Later, she plucked up courage to look out of the window and was relieved to see that the car had gone.

The murder of Angie Singleton, the Langport barmaid, had happened on Saturday night, when Alison would have gone out with Tony if she had not changed her plans. He had been free that evening. The more she thought over what she had learned, the more uneasy she felt. These murdered women had consented to sex, so they must have fancied the man who eventually put his hands around their throats. Suppose it was Tony. Just like her, they could have been attracted by his money, allowed themselves to be driven out into the country, probably treated to a meal somewhere, and gone with him afterwards. The difficulty she had with this was in understanding what turned him from the gentle, diffident man she knew into a strangler. Did sex transform him? Was it something deep in his psyche that made him hate the women he went with? Maybe his reluctance for sex came from a recognition that he couldn’t control his violence. By not insisting on a physical relationship, had she saved her own life?

That same evening, she phoned the Glastonbury Police. DI Briggs and Sergeant Mayhew were with her inside the hour. She handed them the paper tissue with the lipstick imprint and explained where it had come from.

“It’s been on my conscience. If Tony really is a suspect, it’s just possible that this is the mouth-print of the first girl, Emma Charles. I read in the papers that her bag was found beside her. I suppose you can check whether she had a lipstick similar to this.”

DI Briggs agreed with an air of resignation that forensic science was equal to the task. “We could have done with this the first time you were questioned. This will take at least another week to check. The lab run all kinds of tests.”

“It’s still a long shot,” Alison pointed out.

“Let us be the judges of that,” he said, leaving her with the clear impression that he knew a lot more about Tony’s involvement than he was willing to admit. “Meanwhile, if you value your life, have nothing to do with this man. If he pesters you, call us straight away.”

Ten days went by and there was no arrest. In the Jellied Eel, Matt was increasingly critical of the police. “They know who did it. We all know who did it. So why don’t the buggers pull him in? If they don’t act soon, some other woman is going to get stiffed.”

Colwell, quick to fuel Matt’s complaints against the police, said, “’Tis evidence they lack. These days they want a watertight case, or the Prosecution Service isn’t interested. I was talking to a copper not so long ago and he told me there are murderers and child molesters known to the police, no question, and they can’t touch them. They just don’t have the evidence.”

“I gave them evidence enough,” said Matt.

“All you gave they is hearsay and rumours,” chipped in one old man who was weary of all the bluster. “You don’t know nothing of what happened down Meare Green or Westhay.”

Matt’s credibility was in question and he was loud in his defence of it, hammering the table with his fist. “I don’t know nothing, eh? Why do you think we’ve had the police call here three times, then, questioning a certain party about the company she keeps?”

“They questioned thee, come to that,” the old man pointed out, and got a laugh for it.

“Took a statement from I,” said Matt, reddening suddenly. “That’s different. There’s no suspicion attached to me.”

“So you tell us.”

“I had information, didn’t I? Spoke to the driver of that there Mercedes that sat outside on certain occasions when we couldn’t get a decent service at the bar. And why couldn’t we get served? Because the staff was otherwise occupied, flirting with a fat cat, as she believed. Fat cat be buggered. She were flirting with a bloody tiger.”

Alison heard this in silence and pretended not to listen, knowing it would only encourage Matt if she got involved. If only to put a stop to the innuendo, she longed for an early arrest.

“So what did he tell ’ee, that driver?” Colwell asked Matt.

“Told me his boss used to drink in Glastonbury until a few weeks ago.”

“Glastonbury?” Colwell was impressed.

“Then he switched to here. He likes this pub.”

“The beer?”

“The decor, he reckons.” Matt’s eyes swivelled towards Alison and a huge laugh went up from the table.

“Doesn’t mean he strangles barmaids,” said the old man, “else why is young Alison still with us?”

“I warned her in time, didn’t I?” said Matt. “Probably saved her life by telling her what she were getting into.”

“He hasn’t been back since the police were here,” said Colwell, as if that confirmed Tony’s guilt.

“Made his getaway, I reckon,” said Matt. “One of them South American countries that don’t do the extra...”

“Extradition,” Colwell came to his rescue. “With his money he can afford to live down in Brazil for the rest of his life.”

“In that case, we can all relax,” the old man said. “There won’t be no more stranglings on Sedgemoor.”

Alison knew how mistaken they were. Tony had not left Sedgemoor. In the past week he had tried to phone her at least a dozen times. Anticipating this, she was not answering calls, but she was certain it was Tony because she checked each time with the computer voice that gives the last caller’s number. She didn’t tell the police. For one thing, she wasn’t truly scared of Tony, and for another she now felt ashamed of handing the lipstick stain to DI Briggs. If it turned out to have no connection with the case, she was going to despise herself. She just wished Tony would give up phoning. Her only genuine fear was that he would turn up at the pub. If he ever did, Matt and the others were liable to lynch him — or whatever passed for a lynching on Sedgemoor.

Whenever Matt came in, the conversation turned to the stranglings. Lately the slurs and reproaches had become more dangerous. No longer were they speculating when an arrest would be made. The talk was now of a police force incapable of acting because the legal system was weighted in favour of the criminal. “They’re bloody impotent,” Matt told his cohorts. “They dare not make an arrest in case it doesn’t stick. They know full well who did it, and they can’t touch him. He’s laughing at them.”

“Wouldn’t do much good if they nicked him,” said Colwell. “Once upon a time a man like that would have been topped. The worst he’ll get is life, and that’s no time at all these days. He’ll be out in five or six years to start all over again, strangling women. A devil like that wants topping.”

“He won’t get no life sentence,” said Matt. “They’ll say he isn’t right in the head. He’ll see a bloody head-doctor and be out inside a year. Rehabilitation, they call it.”

“Rehabilitation, my arse,” said Colwell. “He wants putting down like a mad dog.”

“Who’s going to do it, though?” one of them asked. “Not I.”

Silence descended like the last edge of the sun.

Colwell started up again, letting the words come slowly, as if he had already calculated their effect. “I could tell you a way. They dealt with a sex pest when I were a lad living up Burnham way, on the estuary. He was a right menace to all the women. Can’t recall his name now, but I know the police couldn’t do nothing about him. He were soft in the head or something. Anywise, the men took care of him. One night he disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“What happened to him?” Matt asked.

“He were never seen again.”

“Come off it, John. You just said you could tell us about it.”

“And so I did.” Colwell seemed to savour the attention he was getting. “He were given a ride on a mud horse.”

“What’s that?”

“Come closer. I’ll tell thee.”

The rest was delivered in a voice pitched deliberately low. All Alison heard were some laughs at the end that made her flesh creep.

“When you think on it,” Colwell finished up in his normal voice, “it’s foolproof.”

“If it worked once,” said Matt, “it could work again. Save the police a heap of work, wouldn’t it?”

Alison seriously thought of speaking to Tony if he phoned again, warning him not to set foot in Bridgwater or anywhere near it. She had no idea what a ride on a mud horse meant, except that it was a death sentence.

The next day, Saturday, Tony didn’t phone at all. Alison hoped he had seen sense at last and given up.

This was her day off. She spent it quietly, watching a movie on TV for most of the afternoon, the sort she liked, with pirates and gorgeous women in crinolines and nothing more violent than the baddies being poked with swords and falling into the sea. Later, she went out for some shopping. Among other things, she picked up a copy of the Bridgwater Mercury. Seeing the headline, she felt pole-axed. MERCEDES CLUE IN BARMAID STRANGLINGS.

The police had now established that a black Mercedes had been seen parked by the entrance to a field at Meare Green one evening in the week Emma Charles was thought to have been murdered. A similar vehicle had been seen in the car park at the Peat Moor Visitor Centre on the Saturday night Angie Singleton was killed there. The Police National Computer had been used to check on the owners of all Mercedes registered in Somerset.

Until this moment she had not been willing to believe Tony was the strangler. How could she have been so stupid, going out three times with a man like that, and actually inviting him to spend the night with her?

She needed a brandy, or something, just to stop this shaking. The Jellied Eel was only a short walk up the street. She stuffed the newspaper in with the other shopping and made her way there, moaning to herself like a demented person.

The bar was empty except for three old men playing dominos. Karen was on duty, looking bored. She said, “You look terrible, darling. What’s up?”

Alison produced the newspaper. “Haven’t you seen this?”

“Of course I have. First thing this morning.”

“I only just saw it. God, I need a brandy.”

Karen reached for a glass and pressed it to the brandy dispenser. “Surely you knew he was odd?”

“He wasn’t odd with me.”

“You’re bloody lucky, then.”

“I’ll drink to that.” Alison shuddered, took a sip, and felt better as her throat warmed.

“Why do you reckon you were spared, then?” Karen asked.

The answer came candidly, with no artifice. “I don’t know. He never threatened me, never tried anything heavy. There wasn’t a hint of it. He was a slow starter, if you know what I mean.” She added in the same honest vein, “The police told me something I suppose I can tell you now. They said he wasn’t violent to those women. It wasn’t rape. They let him do it to them.”

“Go on,” said Karen in disbelief.

“So I wonder if they were killed because they hustled too much. You know?”

“Forced the pace?”

“Yes. And if he wasn’t much good at it, lacking confidence, or something, maybe he lost control and strangled them.”

Karen grimaced as she visualised the scene. She drew in a sharp breath. “Nasty.”

“As you say, I had a lucky escape.”

“You don’t know how lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“Only that he was in here asking for you this afternoon.”

Alison wondered if she had heard right. “What? Haven’t they picked him up? I thought he was under arrest.”

Karen shook her head. “But it’s all right. He’s no danger to you now, love.” She glanced across at the domino-players and lowered her voice. “Matt and some of the lads were here. They grabbed the bastard.”

“Oh, no!”

“What’s the problem? He’s guilty as hell. They took him off in Matt’s car. He’ll be riding a mud horse by now.”

“Doing what?”

“You must have seen them in Bridgwater Bay — those things the fishermen use to cross the mud. Like something between a surfboard and a sledge?”

Alison knew at once. Simply hadn’t linked the name with the contraption. The mud horses were used at low tide to slide over the most treacherous stretches of the flats, where a man would swiftly sink into the ooze if he tried to stand upright. The fisherman would lean on the superstructure, letting it bear his weight while he propelled it with his feet. And they had put Tony on one of these?

The grotesque thing reared up in her mind.

“I’m going to call the police.”

Karen shrilled in alarm, “You can’t do that. You’ll get them all arrested.”

“It’s vile.” She ran across to the public phone.

“Don’t be so bloody dense.” Karen pushed up the hinged flap on the bar and dashed after her. The domino party suspended play and watched in awe.

Alison had the phone in her hand and was dialling the emergency number. “Keep away from me, Karen.”

Karen made a grab for the phone and felt the force of Alison’s foot against her belly. The kick would not have disgraced a karate expert. Karen was thrust backwards, tipped off balance and slid across the wood floor.

Alison made her call. It took some explaining, but she conveyed the urgency of the matter.

After a short interval filled with foul language from Karen, who was too winded to fight, a police car arrived outside, with siren wailing. A constable in uniform came in and asked for Alison.

Inspector Briggs was waiting in the back seat of the car. Alison got in beside him and it moved off fast. He had been at a meeting at Bridgwater Police Station when the emergency call came in, he explained. A response car was already on its way to Stolford, the village at the west end of the bay where the mud horses operated.

“He’ll be dead by now,” said Alison. “They’ll have tipped him into the mud and left him to die. I don’t care what he’s done. That’s no way to treat anybody.”

Briggs weighed what she had said. He glanced at his watch. “We should be in time.”

“No chance. They’ve been gone for hours. ”

“You’re forgetting something, miss. If they’re planning what you say, they have to wait for low tide, and it isn’t due for another half-hour.”

“I hope to God you’re right.”

“Still like the man, do you?”

She didn’t answer.

Briggs said, “You heard about the sightings of the car?”

“I saw it in the paper.”

“That isn’t all. This morning we had the result of the lab tests on the tissue you handed in, the one with the lipstick mark you found in his car. It’s a variety called Love All by Miss Selfridge. Emma Charles was carrying a lipstick of that brand in her bag, just as you expected. It’s the proof we needed.”

“Why didn’t you arrest him this morning, then?”

“We were just about to nick him. The meeting I mentioned was to finalise the arrest. I’m from Glastonbury, remember. We had to liaise with our colleagues here.”

Liaise with colleagues. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

Briggs aired his theories as to a motive. “You know why you weren’t killed like the others? Because it didn’t come to sex. That’s when he’s dangerous. It’s all love and roses until he climaxes, and then some kink in his brain turns him lethal. Maybe he’s just bad at sex, and knows it, and takes out his resentment on the women. Or it could be a power thing. Whatever, the reason, you’ve been dating Jekyll and Hyde.”

There was a sense of urgency now. Siren blaring across the countryside, the car swallowed the fast road towards Hinkley Point, only marginally cutting its speed after turning right along a minor road. The hedges along the lanes were eight or nine feet high at this northern edge of the moor, making it impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. Alison knew from her cycle ride to Stockland Bristol through lanes very similar that farm traffic used these ways. The driver seemed to have blind faith that any approaching tractor would hear the siren and have time to move aside, into a passing point.

But cows were less amenable. Suddenly the way was blocked by the back end of one tractor that would not be making way, for it was herding about sixty Friesians back to the field from the milking sheds. Black and white cows filled the lane, ambling along at a leisurely rate. They could not be moved aside, turned back or hustled.

Betraying no emotion, Briggs ordered the siren and light to be turned off in case they panicked the cows. The patrol car was forced to crawl behind the tractor.

A message came over the radio. The first car had reached Stolford. They had spotted some people out on the mud and were going to investigate.

“If they really mean that, they’ll regret it,” said Briggs in his deadpan voice. “It’s suicidal walking on the flats.”

Five or six minutes were lost before the cows were all off the lane and the farmer eased the tractor up to the gate and waved the car by.

Stolford was less than a mile off, and still there was no view of the coast. Finally they reached a cluster of farm buildings and cottages that had to be it. The pulsing blue light of the first police car was visible ahead, on the skyline. They crossed a humpback bridge, moved up the ridge that kept the tide from encroaching, and pulled up beside the other police car, and got out. Matt’s rusty Cortina was standing nearby.

Beyond a thin bank of shingle and scattered rocks, the mudflats opened out, a vast no-man’s-land exposed by the low tide. Somewhere below the grey outline of the Welsh headland, the soft oozy mass met the water of the Bristol Channel. A couple of miles to the left at the western extremity of the bay was the citadel-like structure of Hinkley Point, the nuclear power station, the hum of its turbines carrying to them. Five miles in the other direction was the resort of Burnham-on-Sea.

“I can’t see anyone,” said Alison.

“They’ll be way out. You want field-glasses.”

The low sun reflecting on the streams and channels dividing the mudflats produced a pattern like lacework across the scene, but by no stretch of the imagination could it be described as anything but desolate. Gulls and wading birds patrolled the margins.

No one was in the second police car. An elderly man with a dog stood beside it.

“Where did the policemen go?” Briggs asked him.

The old man gestured vaguely across the great expanse of mud with his stick. “They tried, but they had to come back. Then they were off up the coast path like blue-arsed flies.”

“Which way?”

He nodded towards Hinkley.

“Has the tide turned yet?”

“Any time now.”

“Did you see the other men go out?”

The old man nodded. “They took two of my son’s mud horses without so much as a by-your-leave. Serve ‘em bloody right if they come to grief, I say.”

Briggs opened the boot of the car and took out a pair of binoculars.

He made an agonizingly slow scan of the shoreline along the limit of the mud. Then he put down the glasses and said to his driver, “We’ll have to cut them off ourselves. They’re heading towards Steart.”

“With Tony?” Alison asked.

“Pawson? No. He’s still out there.”

Appalled, she cried out, “Where?”

He pointed. “You could easily take it for a piece of wreckage, but it looks to me like a man up to his waist in mud.”

“What? Let me look.”

He handed the glasses across and Alison looked through, getting only a blur at first, and then, as she worked the focus control, a clear sight of a large seabird, a herring gull that took flight just as she spotted it. A slight move to her left and she was presented with the disturbing image of a man held fast by the mud with little more than his torso above the surface, his arms held high, and waving. No one was near.

“Oh, my God!”

This, then, was Matt’s idea of justice, leaving a man stranded in mud that would hold him helpless until the huge tide rushed over him and drowned him.

“We’ve got to get out there and save him.”

“We can’t reach him,” Briggs told her in his staid voice. “We’d go under ourselves. The best we can do is radio for help, and I’ll see to it.

But we can nick the idiots who did this to him. You wait here. For Christ’s sake don’t do anything stupid. The tide comes in so fast you’d have no chance at all.”

He was in the car and had slammed the door before she could react. It reversed and drove away fast. She turned to the old man and asked, “Do you have a phone?”

He shook his head. “What would I want with a phone?”

She turned and looked at the nearest farmhouse and saw the telephone wires leading to it. She wasn’t convinced that Briggs wanted Tony to survive; his laid-back manner suggested otherwise. It would be easy for him to delay and say later that he’d been distracted in the chase. She resolved to call the emergency services herself. She dashed down the slope and across the little bridge towards the farmhouse.

Before reaching there, she was aware of a movement to her left and a glimpse of a tall man, smartly dressed, with a black tie and grey suit, standing out of sight against the wall of a barn. She stopped and turned towards him. His face was known to her, yet in her agitated state she couldn’t place him until he spoke.

“Were you looking for help, miss?” The voice, quiet, considerate, with just a suggestion of deference, prompted her memory. Of all people, he was Tony’s chauffeur, Hugh. It wasn’t so remarkable she had failed to recognise him. After all, she knew the back of his head far better than the front.

She blurted out the words, “Tony is—”

“I know,” he said, as calm in his way as Briggs. “I was waiting outside the pub when they bundled him into their car and drove off. It’s all right. I phoned ten minutes ago from the car. There’s a rescue helicopter on its way.”

“Thank God,” she said. “Oh, Hugh, how could they do this?”

He shook his head. If he knew anything at all about the suspicion Tony was under, he was unlikely to speak of it. So the headshake was in disbelief at the savagery of Matt and his friends. “I followed their car some way and then lost them in the lanes. When I got here they were halfway across the mud.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Out of sight behind the farmhouse.”

“Over there?”

“I’ll show you. We can move it closer now.”

He led her around the side of the farmhouse to where the Mercedes stood. He opened the front door and Alison got in. This was the first time she had not been seated in style in the rear seat. Hugh got in beside her and started up.

Under the stress she was in, she put her hand over his arm and squeezed. “Thank God you’re here.”

His pale blue eyes crinkled at the edges in amusement. How is it, she thought, that some men have this capacity to give you confidence?

Instead of turning right, to go over the humpback bridge and up on the ridge beside the police cars, he swung the car towards the road.

“Where are we going?”

“Not far.”

Not understanding, she said, “We don’t want to go away from here. We want to see what’s happening.”

He said, “Relax.”

Relaxing was far from her mind. They headed off along the lane, out of the village and away from the waterfront where everything was happening. The air rushed through the open roof, blasting her ears and tugging her hair back.

She cried out in alarm, “Hugh, what’s going on? I want to be here. I want to get out.”

“Shut up.”

The rebuke came like an electric shock. Alison did go silent, but only because she was so stunned. Even in this emergency he shouldn’t have spoken to her like that.

The Mercedes belted between the high hedges. Anything coming towards them would have no chance of stopping in time.

She gripped the safety belt with both hands, trying to understand what was happening, wondering if Hugh had some plan of his own for going to Tony’s aid from a different stretch of beach. What else could explain this?

Then they left the road. A sudden swing of the wheel and they were bumping through an open gate into a field. About thirty yards on, out of sight of the lane, he braked.

Alison felt for the door handle. To her total amazement, Hugh leaned right over and pressed down the lock. Then he grabbed her right arm and forced it under the safety belt. He snatched the slack part of the belt and jerked it so tight that she was held rigid against the seatback. His hand slipped under the collar of her blouse and pressed against her neck, and she understood.

Hugh was the strangler.

He had killed those other women after driving them out to some lonely spot and having sex with them. Suspicion had fallen on Tony because of the car, but it was his chauffeur who was the killer, using the car on days when it wasn’t required. The tissue marked with lipstick proved it. Poor Emma Charles must have sat here, in this seat beside Hugh, and placed the used tissue in the glove compartment in front of her.

Now she herself was about to die because she had found him at the scene. He must have been unable to stay away, compelled to watch Tony being dragged across the mud on the mud horse just to be certain that someone else took the rap. No doubt he had fed Matt with lies about Tony’s guilt.

His hand was halfway around her throat, choking her. She managed to blurt out the words, “This won’t save you. They know all about you.” Of course they did not, and of course he knew it.

He swung towards her, still with his right hand gripping her neck, manoeuvering himself out of the driver’s seat, across the divider where the handbrake was. He was trying to get fully over her, to get a better grip on her throat. She felt his knee slide across her thighs. His weight was on her, his hot breath in her face, both hands around her neck. He braced, straightening his arms to bear down on her.

With her left hand — the only one that was free — she clutched at his wrist and tried desperately to break the grip that would asphyxiate her in seconds. Hopeless.

She stared up at him, and saw his teeth bared with the effort. His face was outlined by the blue sky. Some instinct for survival sparked an idea in Alison’s brain. She realized that his head was poking through the gap in the roof. Instead of clawing at his hands, she groped upwards, behind him, reaching above the windscreen. Her vision was blurred. The blood supply to her brain had almost ceased.

Her middle finger located a button just below the roof. She pressed it. There was a whirring sound as the electrical control activated the sliding roof. She kept her finger on the button.

Hugh gave a yell, more of fury than pain. His grip on Alison’s neck loosened. The roof panel had already closed against his chest, and then, as he ducked, it trapped him even more effectively by closing against his neck. There was no way he could bring his head through the gap.

In the car, his stranglehold loosened. Alison gasped for breath, found the catch of the seatbelt and released it. She unlocked the door, squirmed from under Hugh’s legs and fell out onto the grass. She didn’t stop to see if he had any way of escaping. Sobbing, she stumbled to the gate and up the lane.

About the same time, an RAF rescue helicopter passed over, heading inland towards Woolavington. The crew estimated that Tony Pawson had been within two or three minutes of death when they snatched him from the rising tide.

Two weeks later, Tony took Alison for a meal at the restaurant in Stockland Bristol. They went by taxi.

They had many more meals out before he asked her to marry him. No one could accuse Tony of rushing things. In fact, Matt Magellan and John Colwell were out of prison by then and drinking again at the Jellied Eel, but with one difference. Alison had long since given up her job as barmaid and was spared having to serve them.

She and Tony were married in St Mary’s, Bridgwater, the following spring. Hugh the chauffeur was not among the guests. He was a long-term guest elsewhere, with a recommendation that he should remain so for the rest of his life.