The Reckoning (4 page)

His words brought a tired smile to Edward Gibson's lips.

‘They won't hear it from me, rest assured. But I should warn you, some of the newspapers have been on to me already, asking questions. It's not every day a man gets shot in broad daylight. It won't take much to get them going. I'm surprised they haven't picked up on that Scottish report yet.'

‘They're bound to – and soon. But I'd rather not do their work for them.'

‘Quite so.' Gibson made as if to get up. ‘But fair's fair. Can I count on you to keep me informed about the investigation? I don't want to be left in the dark.'

‘We'll stay in touch, I promise.'

‘Then I'd better get back to those papers.' He heaved himself up. ‘You wanted a word with Mrs Gannet, is that right? She's in the kitchen. I'll send her through.'

‘What did I tell you, Billy? This is one of those cases. It's going to give us both grey hairs, you mark my words.'

Tilting his chair back, Vic hoisted his feet up on his desk. They had returned from Kingston a short while before and he had sent out to the nearest pub for a couple of sandwiches, which they were washing down with cups of tea before Billy caught his train back to London. The CID offices were situated on the first floor of Lewes police station, and on their way in Vic had introduced him to a detective-sergeant and two constables, who were busy sorting through statements collected from parties of hikers and ramblers who had been out on the Downs on the day Gibson had been murdered.

‘We know the shooter didn't escape this way, via Lewes,' Vic said. ‘I've been hoping he might have been spotted walking cross-country towards Brighton. But no luck so far, I'm afraid.'

‘If Gibson was his target – if it wasn't a random killing – then he must have known he'd be fishing there.' Billy had been turning the problem over in his mind. ‘He must have had some idea of his habits; that suggests he made some earlier visits to Lewes.'

He had been looking over the file compiled by the pathologist while he chewed on a cheese sandwich. The police photographs of Gibson's body lying face-down on the bank had added little to what his colleague had already told him. Other pictures taken at the mortuary later showed the effects of the bullet, which struck him at the base of the skull and exited through his jaw, leaving an ugly wound.

‘The sawbones made an interesting point,' Chivers had told him. ‘If you want to make a clean job of topping someone, that's the best spot to shoot them: it breaks the spinal cord, severs the brainstem. Death's instantaneous.'

‘So he knew what he was about?'

‘It looks that way.'

Billy put down the file. He took a sip from his tea.

‘What I'd like to know is who that visitor was who got Oswald so upset. And did the letter he was writing have anything to do with this business?'

These facts, both new, had emerged in the course of the interview they had had with Gibson's daily, a spry old party named Edna Gannet, who had not only proved to be more observant than most, but could also put two and two together. As she'd been quick to point out.

‘As soon as I saw the chair, I knew. He didn't have to say nothing. And I could tell he was put out. I'd heard him in the study going on about it, muttering to himself. “Some people,” he was saying. “Some people . . . !”'

Small in stature, and with a face as brown and wrinkled as a prune, Mrs Gannet had seated herself on the sofa at Chivers's invitation and regarded them both with a steady, birdlike stare. Unprompted, she had given them a brief description of her late employer.

‘He was a nice gentleman, very quiet, very polite. But he couldn't be doing with fuss. He hated being bothered. Fishing was what he liked best, I soon learned that. The first thing I'd do when I arrived was fix him his lunch – a sandwich, say, or a cold sausage with a piece of cheese – and he'd take it with him when he went off; and either I'd see him when he got back or I wouldn't, depending on how late he stayed out.'

Asked whether there'd been any change in Gibson's behaviour prior to his death, she had replied in the negative. But when Billy, remembering what Edward Gibson had told them, asked if she thought her employer had had something on his mind, she had surprised both detectives by giving the question what appeared to be long and serious thought.

‘He did have that visitor,' she had ventured, finally.

‘What visitor?' Chivers had been the quicker with his question.

‘Don't know who it was.' Edna Gannet had shrugged. ‘I never did see. But I heard the front door slam and Mr Gibson's footsteps when he walked back from the hall to his study. He was going on about something, talking to himself. In a rare state, he was.'

Further questions had elicited a more coherent account of the episode, which, it turned out, had occurred the previous week – on the Tuesday, Mrs Gannet thought it was. She had arrived at the cottage at her usual hour, which was midday, but via the backyard and the kitchen door, having looked in on a friend who was ailing and whose own cottage lay on the other side of a small orchard at the back of Gibson's house. As she had entered she had heard the front door slam and her employer
returning to his study. Shortly afterwards, having also heard his subdued mutterings and overcome with curiosity, she had knocked on the door on the pretext of asking him what he wanted for his lunch and had found him sitting at his desk ‘with a look on his face that'd turn milk sour'.

Later, when she'd returned with the Spam sandwich he'd requested wrapped in greaseproof paper, she had found him busy at the desk writing a letter. He had barely looked up, she said.

‘Yes, but how do you know he'd had a visitor?' Billy had asked.

‘By the chair, of course.' To Edna Gannet it had been obvious. ‘See, he had this stamp collection and he kept it on a table in the corner with a chair next to it, so he could sit down there when he wanted to. But the chair had been moved: it was standing in front of the desk, so he must have had a visitor.' Her glance had been triumphant. ‘Anyway, how did the front door come to slam, and who else could he have been talking about, muttering that way? “Some people . . . some people . . . ”'

Before leaving, the two detectives had looked in at the study where Edward Gibson was at work, the desk in front of him awash with files and papers, to ask him if his brother had mentioned being upset by a visitor, when they had spoken on the phone.

‘It's the first I've heard of it,' he had told them. ‘Perhaps that was what he wanted to talk to me about.'

‘Mrs Gannet saw him writing a letter afterwards.' Looking around, Billy had noted the position of the chair she had mentioned. It had been returned to its proper place beside a table in the corner, where a pile of stamp albums lay. On the wall above was a photograph of a young man in military uniform and it took Billy a moment or two before he recognized Oswald Gibson's features in the youthful image. ‘We're wondering if the two were connected – the caller and the letter.'

In response Gibson had turned his hands palm upwards, showing them to be empty. ‘I wish I could help,' he had said. ‘But I'm as much at a loss as you are.'

The station clock at Waterloo was showing ten minutes past five when Billy got back to London. A journey that was supposed to have taken less than two hours had taken three instead. Along with the other passengers he had endured the delay philosophically, there being not much else one could do these days. The optimism felt in the country at large when the war had ended two years earlier had all but evaporated; the expectation that life would soon be back to normal now seemed a distant dream. Food was still rationed, clothing hard to come by, housing in short supply and petrol all but unobtainable. It seemed hardly reasonable in the circumstances to expect the trains to run on time; and they didn't.

‘Grey hairs, Billy. Grey hairs . . .'

Vic Chivers's parting words as he had waved his colleague off were still echoing in Billy's mind as he left the station in a taxi. Although Gibson's murder remained a Sussex case, the two detectives had agreed to keep in touch and Vic had promised to let Billy know if the possible leads they had uncovered earlier that day led anywhere.

‘We're going to have to talk to everyone in the village,' he had said. ‘Maybe one of them caught a glimpse of Gibson's visitor. In a small place like that strangers are noticed. It'd be useful to get a description. And then there's that letter. Just who was he writing to? I wonder. At least we know it wasn't brother Edward.'

On the off-chance that the address on the envelope might have been noted, Vic had decided to return to Kingston to ask in the village shop, which also served as a post office. When Billy wondered aloud whether it was worth the trouble, his colleague had chuckled.

‘You city lads don't know about village life. You wouldn't believe how nosy people are. I'd lay odds they'll be able to tell me whether or not Gibson posted a letter last week. The only question is: did someone take a peek at the address?'

But he'd been under no illusions.

‘Odds-on it'll turn out to be a wild goose chase,' he'd predicted, pessimistically, as they waited on the platform together. ‘Whatever the problem with this caller was – and just because it got Oswald in a state doesn't mean it was serious – we've no reason to think it had anything to do with him getting topped a week later. Same goes for the letter. The inquest's tomorrow and, as things stand, I've got sweet fanny to tell the coroner, and not much prospect of any improvement in that department. Grey hairs, Billy. Grey hairs . . .'

Given the hour, Billy would have liked to call it a day and go straight home to Clapham, where he lived. But he was carrying the bullet used to kill Oswald Gibson in an envelope in his pocket and he went instead to the Yard, so that he could leave it with the ballistics lab. The one recovered by the police in Scotland was on its way south and would arrive the following day. Before departing he looked in at his office and found a message on his desk to ring Detective-Inspector Chivers in Lewes.

‘You won't believe what I've got to tell you . . .' By the sound of it, Vic's gloom had lifted at a stroke. ‘Ozzie never posted that letter, never finished it even. His brother found it among the stuff in his desk, dated last Tuesday. He'd started writing it on a pad and it was still there: he hadn't torn the page out. He must have begun the letter, then changed his mind. But he didn't destroy it.'

Billy listened as Vic recounted how he'd gone first to the post office, only to discover that Gibson hadn't posted any letter there for some time, and had then called in at the cottage to see if Edward had found anything interesting among his brother's papers.

‘He'd been trying to ring me at the station. He'd only just come across the pad.'

‘Well, what about it, Vic?' Billy sensed that his old pal was enjoying drawing the story out. There'd better be a good punchline, he thought irritably. ‘Who was he writing to?'

‘The commissioner of Scotland Yard!'

There was a long pause.

‘Crikey!' Billy breathed out the word. He was dumbstruck.

‘And that's not all. He starts off by apologizing, saying how sorry he is to bother such a busy man, et cetera – this is Ozzie all over – but he's trying to get in touch with someone who worked at the Yard a long time ago and he wonders whether they might have knowledge of his whereabouts . . .'

‘Yes, but who was it, for Christ's sake?' Billy's patience had run out.

‘I thought you'd never ask. It turns out to be a bloke we both worked with. But you knew him a whole lot better than me.'

Vic chuckled.

‘Does the name Madden ring a bell?'

3

M
ADDEN FILLED IN THE
last form, signed it and then added it to a stack of papers, which he handed to George Burrows, his farm manager, who was standing beside him, looking over his shoulder.

‘That's done,' he announced. ‘You can send them off.'

‘There's nothing but paperwork with this lot,' Burrows grumbled. ‘They've got a form for everything.'

‘Yes, but we mustn't complain.' Madden eased a stiff muscle in his back. ‘Not when we're being treated like royalty.'

The word was one his wife had used, not without a touch of envy. Helen was a GP, the village doctor, and while a new National Health Scheme was in the wings, it was yet to pass through Parliament and no one knew how well it would work out for either patients or physicians. Farmers, on the other hand, were already the anointed (another of Helen's words). Under the terms of the recently passed Agricultural Act, they had acquired fresh status. Needing to feed the population while keeping down costly food imports, the new Labour government had acted to increase domestic production, promising farmers guaranteed prices and assured markets for most of their produce and, where necessary, showering them with subsidies.

‘Royalty?' Burrows sampled the word suspiciously. ‘Aye,
well, I'll believe it when I see it.' His face brightened. ‘I've got the accounts for you to look at, sir. It's been a decent year.'

‘Let's leave them till tomorrow, George.' Madden stretched. ‘I should be getting home.'

With the last of the autumn ploughing just completed – the tractor had been busy until well into the afternoon – it had been a long day, but when they left the cobbled farmyard by its arched entrance Madden was able to feast his eyes on a broad vista of freshly turned soil stretching all the way to the stream at the bottom of his land, which ran the length of the valley and was overlooked by a long, wooded ridge called Upton Hanger. As he paused to take in the view he caught sight of the swaying backs of his dairy herd as they made their slow way up from the unploughed fields on a sunken track towards the cowshed for milking. The sound of a horse's hooves mingled with the squeak of wheels interrupted his reverie. He turned to see Fred Thorp, one of his farmhands, exiting the yard in a dog-cart loaded with bulging sacks.