'He maintained his innocence until the end.'
'But he'd already given himself away by then,' said Perivale with a note of triumph in his voice. 'He could not give a convincing explanation of where he was at the time of the murder. That was his undoing, Sergeant. He had no alibi and I taunted him with that fact.'
'He claimed that he walked away from Lenham to think things over and then returned in a calmer frame of mind.'
'Calmer frame of mind – balderdash! The fellow was in a state of sustained fury. He had to be to inflict such butchery on his victim. It was an assault of almost demonic proportions.'
'I know. I visited the scene of the crime.'
'Then you'll have seen how secluded it was. Hawkshaw chose it with care so that he'd not be disturbed.'
'But how did he persuade Dykes to join him there?'
'That's beside the point.'
'I don't think so,' said Leeming, remembering one of Colbeck's notes. 'Dykes would hardly agree to meet him in a private place when he knew that the butcher was after him. He'd have stayed drinking in the Red Lion where he was safe. And what proof is there that Hawkshaw was in that part of the woods, anyway?'
'He was seen there by a witness.'
'After the event. Yet there was no blood on him.'
'You're dragging up the same feeble argument as the defence,' said the barrister. 'Because there was no blood on him, they argued, he could not have committed such a violent crime. Yet there was a stream nearby. Hawkshaw could easily have washed himself clean.'
'What about his clothing? He couldn't wash blood off that.'
'Quite right. That's why his coat mysteriously disappeared.'
'His coat?'
'Yes,' continued Perivale, almost crowing over him. 'That's one little detail that you and the Inspector missed. When he went to that fair in Lenham, Hawkshaw was wearing a coat. A number of witnesses testify to that, including his son. Later, however, when he was observed by the youth returning to the farm, he had no coat on and was thoroughly dishevelled, as if he'd been involved in vigorous exercise. In other words,' he said, coming to the end of his peroration, 'he discarded his coat because it was spattered with the blood of his victim.'
'Was the coat never found?'
'No – he must have buried it somewhere.'
'Then why wasn't it discovered? The police searched the area.'
'They were only looking for a certain part of Joseph Dykes's anatomy that had gone astray – a fact that tells you everything about the mentality of the killer. Taken together, the missing coat and the absence of an alibi put Hawkshaw's neck into the hangman's noose. Hundreds of people were at that fair with more arriving every minute. If Hawkshaw really had walked off towards Ashford, somebody must have seen him but no witnesses could be found.'
'So where do you think he was?'
'Searching the wood for a place to commit a murder.'
'In the hope that Dykes would happen to pass by later on?'
'He enticed him there somehow.'
'I wouldn't be enticed by an angry butcher with a meat cleaver.'
'You never met Nathan Hawkshaw,' countered the barrister. 'He was an evil man and capable of any ruse. You never saw the murder dancing in those black eyes of his. When I had him in the dock,' he said, raising a finger, 'I showed the jury what he was really like. I put him under such stern cross-examination that this decent, kind, popular, reasonable man that all his friends claimed him to be suddenly turned into a snarling animal. I've never seen such a vivid expression of guilt on the face of any prisoner.'
'You have no reservations about that trial then?'
'None whatsoever.'
'What's happened since has not alarmed you in any way?'
'I'm upset that two men have died unnecessarily and in such a brutal way, but I have no fears at all for my own safety. When I led the prosecution in that trial, I was doing my bounden duty.'
'And you believe that you convicted the right man.'
'Without a scintilla of doubt,' said Perivale, lapsing into his courtroom manner. 'The evidence against Nathan Hawkshaw was quite overwhelming. Any other barrister in my place – including your Inspector Colbeck – would have done exactly the same thing as me and striven hard for a death sentence.'
'I hope that you won't make a habit of this, Inspector,' said Gregory Newman with a laugh. 'If you keep taking me away from my work, the foreman will start to dock my wages.'
'I won't keep you long.'
'We could hardly talk in the boiler shop.'
'That's a pity,' said Colbeck. 'I'd have been interested to see more of what goes on in there.'
'You really like locomotives, don't you?'
'They fascinate me.'
'They fascinate lots of people, Inspector, but only if they're running along railway lines. You're the first person I've ever met who wants to see how they're built.'
'Very noisily, by the sound of it.'
Newman grinned. The two men were standing outside the railway works in Ashford. A train was just leaving the station, adding to the industrial uproar and sending up clouds of smoke into an overcast sky. Colbeck waited until it had rolled past them.
'I like to know the way that things are put together,' said Colbeck. 'I come from a family of cabinetmakers, you see. As a boy, I was always intrigued at the way that my father could take a pile of wood and turn it into the most exquisite desk or wardrobe.'
'There's nothing quite so fancy in making a boiler.'
'It takes skill and that impresses me.'
'You wouldn't say that if you worked here,' said Newman. His grin was inviting. 'What can I tell you this time, Inspector?'
'I'd like to hear how far you've got.'
'In what?'
'Your search for the man who did kill Joseph Dykes.'
'Not as far as we'd like,' conceded the other, 'but we won't give up. The trouble is that we have such limited time. That holds us back.'
'Us?'
'Me and the friends helping me.'
'How many of them are there?'
'A handful,' said Newman, 'and you can include Win Hawkshaw as well. Nobody is more eager to track down the culprit than Win.'
'Do you have any suspects?'
'Yes, Inspector. One, in particular.'
'Why didn't you mention him before?'
'Let's be frank about this. You didn't come to Ashford because you thought Nathan was innocent, did you? You only came to find out who killed Jake Guttridge and now you have the murder of the prison chaplain on your plate.'
'All three murders are closely linked.'
'But only two of them have any interest for you,' said Newman.
'That's untrue. If you have any new information relating to the murder of Joseph Dykes, I want to hear it.'
'Why?'
'I told you, Mr Newman. I like to know the way that things are put together, whether they're desks, wardrobes, steam locomotives or crimes. I thrive on detail.'
The other man scratched his beard as he pondered. Like Winifred Hawkshaw, he had a deep distrust of
