involved.’ Isobel said that perhaps they had better take a look. ‘You and me,’ she said to Erica. ‘You two can stay with the car.’
Chapter 5: BLOODSTAINED BRACKET
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Tamsin, made unusally nervous because of her damaged and now treacherous ankle, said, ‘Do be careful! There are stories of girls being pulled from bikes. This may have happened here. That convict, you know. He may still be about and he may be desperate for money.’
As soon as the other two had left the car Hermione got out too, went round to the driver’s seat and joined Tamsin.
‘Cheer up, ’ she said. ‘If the convict pops out on them from one of the dips they can make a dash for it and I can start up the car in no time. But don’t worry. He’ll be far enough away by now. Is that ankle being a nuisance?’
‘Aches a bit. It makes me feel helpless.’
‘Yes, we shouldn’t have let you walk on it. Keep a lookout on your side and if they begin to run I’ll start the engine.’
‘They’ve picked up the bike.’
‘Yes. The front wheel looks as though it’s buckled.’
‘They’re walking away from us.’ Both girls watched as the older ones, having moved further off, stood with their backs to the car and looked into one of the dips in the moor. Then Erica went forward, while Isobel remained looking downwards. They returned at a sober pace and Hermione relinquished the driver’s seat, but Erica said, ‘I’m all shook up. It’s rather nasty. We’ve got to go to Gledge End and see the police. You drive.’
‘Well, of course you weren’t to know, miss,’ said the Superintendent of Police, ‘but it’s a pity you picked up the bicycle. We may have to depend on the handlebars for an attacker’s dabs. Still, no doubt we can manage. We’ll have to eliminate yours. Which of you picked up the bicycle? Both of you handled it? Of course we shall destroy your prints as soon as we’ve done with them. You need not think they’ll be on permanent record. Staying in one of the forest cabins are you? If I might have the number? Right. Just out for a drive, you say, when one of you spotted the bike. Just so. Thought, when you found the body, that there might have been a hit-and-run motorist? On a lonely moorland road it’s quite possible that’s just what happened. We can’t be sure until we get a full report of the injuries. A nasty experience for you ladies, but I’m bound to say that you have acted in a very public-spirited manner in looking about you and then coming straight to us to report that you found the body.’
‘I rather wish we hadn’t found it,’ said Erica when they were back in the cabin. ‘Her head was an awful mess. I’ve seen some results of accidents on the building sites, but I’ve never seen anything like that. Whoever did it, motorist or whatever, must be in a desperate flap to have dragged the body off the road and tumbled it into that dip. You’d have thought he would have chucked the bike in after it, and I wish to goodness he had. Then none of us would have spotted it and stopped to investigate, and somebody else, later on, would be carrying the can instead of us.’
‘I expect his only idea was to make his getaway before another motorist came along,’ said Tamsin. ‘You think it
‘I don’t want to think at all. Yes, I’ll have another cup of tea, please. No, nothing to eat. I couldn’t face it.’
‘Was it very bad?’ said Hermione to Isobel when their door was shut and they were in their bunks that night.
‘I didn’t go close, but Erica is pretty tough and she said it made her feel sick. I saw a lot of blood on the face and clothes, that’s all.’
‘You don’t suppose the police think
‘Good heavens, no. Why should they?’
‘Well, they might, that’s all.’
‘They wouldn’t be so fatheaded. If we’d done it we should hardly have gone haring off to the police station to report it, should we?’
‘Well, of course we would. Any decent person would.’
‘Yes, but any decent person wouldn’t have hidden the body in that hole. The person who did that wasn’t going to run straight to the police. Look, are you trying to tell me something? Don’t forget I spend my life dealing with cagey adolescents, so speak up.’
‘I’m not an adolescent and I’m not cagey, but there’s something perhaps I ought to tell you before the police spot it. You remember that Erica was a bit shaken and made me drive the car after she had seen the body?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘First to the police station and then here to unload Tamsin and you two before I put the car into the carpark?’
‘Yes, I remember all that. What about it?’
‘Well, on the way to the carpark I had a skid on some wet leaves and hit a tree. Oh, no real damage done, and I’m going to tell Erica that I’m afraid I’ve marked her paint, but it has suddenly come to me that the police might decide to take a look at the car.’
‘And think their own thoughts when they spot the marks? I shouldn’t worry. I’m quite sure the scratches made by a tree-trunk wouldn’t in the least resemble the marks made by the impact of a girl on a bike. Besides, we’ll all back you up. You know that. Anyway, I’m glad you thought of it and told me. It can’t have been very serious, or you would have told the three of us when you got back from the carpark.’
‘It was dark, so I don’t know what the damage is. It can’t be anything much, because I corrected the skid and really only skimmed the tree.’
‘Tell Erica in the morning and we’ll go down and take a look. Meanwhile, forget it and go to sleep.’
‘What did you two tell them at the police station?’
‘Only what we’ve already told you. The girl was dead. We didn’t touch the body—that is to say, Erica didn’t and I didn’t go down into the dip. We picked up the bicycle to see what the damage was and got a bit of a rocket from the superintendent because we had probably messed up any fingerprints there might be on the handlebars.’
‘That was unfair. You didn’t know at that point that the girl was dead. Was it just an accident, do you think?’
‘I have no idea. Anyway, whether she was knocked off her bike by a car or whether the convict had had a go at her, somebody had dragged her away from the roadside and tried to hide the body, that’s for sure. What’s more, whoever it was must have been in a bit of a flap, or he would have hidden the bike, too. It was a clear giveaway to leave it at the roadside where anybody passing would spot it.’
‘I don’t know so much. Leaving it at the roadside would look as though a car had hit it, so, as the convict wouldn’t have had a car, that would tend to tell in his favour, wouldn’t it?’
‘Then why try to hide the body?’
‘Oh, to make it look as though the car-driver had taken the girl to hospital, I suppose.’
In the far bedroom the subject of conversation was on the same lines. ‘Do the police think the convict did it?’ asked Tamsin.
‘I couldn’t say. The police are like the doctors. They never tell you what they’re thinking if they can possibly help it.’
‘The bicycle being damaged makes it look more like a car accident with a hit-and-run driver, wouldn’t you say?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I say. It is what the police think that counts. Go to sleep. I need to be fresh and bright when I meet them in the morning.’
‘The police?’
‘Who else? Don’t you realise there’s a fair chance they’ll decide I could have been the driver who killed that girl?’
‘But you and Isobel went to them straight away and reported finding the body.’
