Dead of Winter (38 page)

Many of those travelling had belonged to the services and some were still recovering from their wounds. Noticing that an army sergeant standing in the crowded corridor outside was on crutches, Madden had given up his seat halfway through the trip, and when they had finally reached his destination he had paused long enough to help another injured soldier, this one an officer with a bandage covering one eye, who was stepping down uncertainly on to the platform behind him with the help of a cane, oblivious to the salutes which a pair of privates were offering him as they strode by.

Although it had stopped snowing during the journey, the grimy slush covering the platform was deep underfoot and Leonard suggested they take refuge in his office, which was nearby and where he would give Madden directions to the Grange.

I don’t know the young lass myself,’ he said as they plodded through the snow, down Liphook’s main street. ‘Except by sight. Will told me you wanted a word with her, but not why.’

The unspoken question required an answer. The Liphook bobby had done them a favour, after all.

‘If it’s the right girl, she was on the same train as a young woman who was murdered in London a few weeks ago. Another Pole called Rosa Nowak. She was working for me as a land girl. Apparently they knew each other. Rosa was murdered less than an hour after they parted at Waterloo. I want to have a talk with Eva. I want to know what happened on that journey.’

‘You’ve been in touch with the Yard about this, have you, sir?’

The tone of Leonard’s query was polite, but firm, and Madden smiled.

‘Yes, don’t worry, Constable. I’m not acting on my own. I’ve been helping the police with this. In fact, I may want to ring Chief Inspector Sinclair from your office later when I come back.’

‘You’ll be welcome, sir.’ Leonard looked relieved. ‘In fact it might be easier for you to do it from here than from the Grange, say. The telephone lines are jammed at the moment. It’s the Christmas season. But I can get through to the Yard all right, and if you need to ring me from the Grange you’ll have no trouble. The village exchange isn’t affected.’

Sweating slightly in spite of the frosty air, glad of the boots he’d put on that morning, Madden strode down the narrow lane. Walled on either side by dense woods, the road was more than ankle-deep in fresh snow and the louring sky threatened another fall soon. Since leaving the outskirts of Liphook he had not seen a living soul; only the cries of a flock of plovers wheeling overhead had broken the silence of the white-clad countryside all around him, and in the deep stillness he had found his thoughts drifting back to the past: to the bitter winter of 1916 when he had huddled with others around flickering spirit stoves in the trenches before Arras, trying to thaw the thick chunks of bully beef in their mess tins. Once a prey to memories of the slaughter, and to the nightmares that had plagued his sleep for years afterwards, he seldom thought of that time now. But on emerging from the woods into a landscape of flat, gently rolling contours not unlike the killing fields of northern France, he found long-forgotten images returning to fill his mind.

He had wasted little time in Liphook, staying only long enough to warm his hands at the small wood fire burning in Leonard’s office and to receive directions from the constable on how to reach the Grange.

‘There are no signposts up any more. They took them down during the Jerry invasion scare. I dare say it’s the same over at Highfield. But if you follow the road to Devil’s Lane and turn right at the crossroads, you can’t go far wrong. Watch out for a fork in the road when you reach the old mill, though. Left will take you to the MacGregors’ farm, and you don’t want to end up there.’

There seemed to have been little traffic on the lane recently – he saw no marks of tyre tracks in the virgin snow – but after he had been walking steadily for a quarter of an hour he heard the sound of muffled hoofs behind him, and, turning round, spied a pony-and-trap driven by a broad-shouldered figure well wrapped in winter garments coming his way. He moved to one side of the road to give it passage, but when the trap reached him it came to a halt.

‘Where are you headed? Can I give you a lift?’

The voice was a woman’s, though it would have been hard to judge her sex by appearance alone: clad in an old army greatcoat, she was also wearing a fur-lined cap whose earflaps, tied beneath the chin, hid most of her features.

‘I’m going to a house called the Grange,’ Madden replied.

‘Are you now?’ The answer seemed to interest the driver, and she leaned down from the trap’s seat to peer at his face. ‘Well, hop on, if you like. I can only take you as far as the crossroads, but that’ll save you half a mile’s walk.’

As Madden put his foot on the step, she reached down a gloved hand and hauled him up beside her.

‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ The face she turned to him, framed in fur, was fiftyish and weathered.

‘No. I came over from Highfield, in Surrey.’ He settled himself beside her. ‘Madden’s my name. John Madden.’

The woman had been on the point of flicking the reins; now she hesitated.

‘Not the John Madden who married Helen Collingwood that was?’

‘The very same.’ Madden grinned. ‘And you are—?’

‘Elizabeth Brigstock. Bess.’ She offered him a hand which he shook. ‘I knew your wife years ago, but only slightly. It was when we were girls. Our mothers were friends, but Helen’s died young.’

‘So she did. Before the war – the last war. I never knew her.’

‘We used to be hauled by our mas out to dances in the neighbourhood. In my case, anyway.’ She chuckled. ‘I was the perennial wallflower. I used to sit watching the couples, thinking the evening would never end. But Helen was such a beauty; she had to fend the young men off. But I did like her; she had such lightness of spirit. One of those people you were always pleased to see. I went abroad after the war and we lost touch, but I was told she’d got married again.’ She was still looking at him; but her gaze had lost focus and she seemed to be searching her memory. ‘And what was it I heard? There was some story about you …’

‘About me?’ Madden grinned. ‘I doubt that.’

‘No, I’m sure … It’ll come back to me in a moment.’ She smiled in turn and then clicked her tongue. ‘Wake up, Pickles.’ She flicked the reins. ‘Get a move on, you lazy beast.’

Soon they were travelling at a sedate trot.

‘I’m the village postlady. One of them. I have to make a circuit of the farms on this side of Liphook. I’ll get to the Grange eventually, but only later, I’m afraid, otherwise I’d offer you a lift all the way. You know Mary, do you?’

‘Mary—?’ Madden looked at her questioningly.

‘Mary Spencer.’ She returned his glance. Her eyebrows had risen fractionally; in surprise, perhaps.

‘No, but I know who she is.’ Madden paused. ‘Is she a friend of yours?’

‘Very much so.’ Steering carefully, Bess Brigstock negotiated a dead branch that had fallen on to the road in front of them beneath the weight of snow.

‘Actually it’s not Mrs Spencer I want to speak to. It’s the Polish girl who works for her. Eva Belka is the name I’ve been given.’

Expecting her to say something more – to question him, perhaps, ask him his business – he waited; but they were approaching the crossroads and Bess slowed the pony to a walk before bringing it to a halt.

‘That’s your way.’ She pointed to her right. ‘I doubt you’ll find another soul on the road today so you’d better not get lost. Make sure you take the right fork when you reach the mill.’

Thanking her, Madden stepped backwards down from the seat. When he looked up he found her steady gaze fixed on him. Her face bore an expression he couldn’t quite read: half curious, half wary.

‘I’ve just remembered what it was I heard about you,’ she said, settling the reins in her hands again. ‘My mother wrote to me while I was working in Africa and told me Helen was getting married again and how surprised everyone was.’

‘Surprised – why?’

‘Because of whom she was marrying.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Ma said he was a policeman.’

26

‘W
ELL, AT LAST
we seem to be getting somewhere, sir.’

Sinclair bustled into Bennett’s office with his file under his arm, limping, it was true, but more from habit than anything else. As though in keeping with the festive spirit, the pain in his toe had eased somewhat and he was enjoying the momentary respite from discomfort.

‘We’ve had a sighting of Ash. Tentative, but encouraging. I’ve just had word of it from Brixton. A local landlady called in at the station this morning and said she was reasonably sure he’d been staying at her boarding house until a few days ago. She said she recognized his face from the passport photograph published in the papers.’

‘Reasonably sure?’ Bennett paused in the middle of slipping some papers into a drawer to look up. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Well, bear in mind the snapshot’s an old one, taken when he was a young man, so it would have been hard for her to be certain. But in spite of that she seemed to think the resemblance was strong. The detective she spoke to at Brixton pressed her hard, but she stuck to her guns: she said she was ninety per cent sure it was the same man. And there are other factors that seemed to support her story.’

‘Such as … ?’ The assistant commissioner closed the drawer. He was on the point of leaving for his Christmas break, but had asked Sinclair at their meeting earlier that morning to keep him informed up to the last minute.

‘His behaviour, in a word.’ The chief inspector sat down. ‘He was there for a week, but his landlady saw very little of him. He didn’t mix with her other lodgers – she served them breakfast and supper – but had his meals in his room. And he always seemed to manage to slip in and out without encountering anyone. Quiet as a cat, she said.’ Sinclair’s eyes had narrowed. ‘The cat who walked by himself, perhaps. My nose tells me it was Ash and I’m acting on that assumption. Especially as we have a name.’

‘A name—?’

‘A new name. He registered with her as Henry Pratt, which suggests he has a new identity card. He may well have had it all along. A man like him would want to be prepared. He stayed with her only for a week, and that indicates he’s been switching addresses since leaving Wandsworth, which is what I’d expect. And thanks to Poole we’ve also got a ready-made explanation for why he’s remained in London. It seems he had unfinished business with this private investigator. I’m having the new name circulated to all stations in the Metropolitan area at once, and if necessary I’ll extend that nationwide.’

Lily Poole’s dramatic irruption into the assistant commissioner’s office two hours earlier had been the prelude to a flurry of action. No sooner had Sinclair dispatched Billy Styles to Paddington to speak to the detectives dealing with the Quill murder than word of Ash’s possible whereabouts had reached him via a telephone call from the station commander at Brixton.

‘And there’s something you can do since you’re here,’ he had told Lily, who had accompanied him back to his office, still carrying her bowl of what he now learned was beef dripping. ‘You say Quill spent time inside recently. Get on to records and find out whether he was banged up in Wormwood Scrubs and if so whether his sentence coincided with Alfie Meeks’s.’

The answer to both questions, it turned out, was in the affirmative. For a period of six months their sentences had been concurrent.

‘So Meeks could well have given Ash his name,’ he told Bennett now.

‘Then you believe Quill’s murder is definitely linked to the case?’ The assistant commissioner took his glasses off and slipped them into a case. He looked at his watch. Sinclair knew his superior wanted to escape – he had a long drive to the country ahead of him – but saw he was reluctant to leave with a case they were both so deeply involved in coming to a head.

‘It’s more than a possibility, but we need confirmation. I’m hoping Styles will get that at Paddington. And it’s vital we find out who this Polish girl is, the one Quill was paid to search for.’

‘Could it have been Rosa Nowak?’ Bennett asked. ‘Perhaps Ash was looking for her after all.’

The chief inspector pondered his reply.

‘I’ve been asking myself the same question,’ he admitted.

‘But on the whole I think not. From what Poole said it sounded as though Quill had been employed more recently. Since Rosa was murdered, at least, which suggests there’s a second girl involved. We need to speak to this Molly Minter again, find out exactly what it was Quill said to her. We don’t know for certain it was Ash who killed him, but reading the facts as I do, the murder bears his mark. He employs a man to do a job and then eliminates him. It’s a pattern. Wherever he goes and whatever he does, he slams the door behind him. But we’re catching up with him. The net’s closing.’

Closing, yes, but oh so slowly, the chief inspector thought as he waited in his office for further word from either Paddington or Brixton. Used to the sound of footsteps passing by in the passage outside and to the presence of Lily Poole in the room next to his, he found the silence oppressive. With Christmas a day away only a skeleton staff was on duty at the Yard, and while Sinclair would not have been averse to keeping the young policewoman with him – he’d come to admire her single-minded determination and already regretted the day when he would have to return her to Bow Street – he had turned a deaf ear to her pleas to remain by his side.

‘Think of your poor aunt, Constable. She sent you out with that bowl of dripping hours ago. It’s time you delivered it to its proper destination.’

But as she was leaving, he had checked her.

‘You distinguished yourself today. You used your wits and it won’t be forgotten. You have my word. Now go home and enjoy your Christmas.’

He might have said more. Earlier, before they had parted, Bennett had expressed his own appreciation of the young woman’s initiative.

‘It took some nerve, pushing her way into my office. But she did the right thing. I like her dash. When and if you come to write that report for the commissioner, I’ll add a word of my own. She’s just the kind of officer the force needs and I intend to make sure he knows that.’