Sinclair felt bound to point out.
'Quite, sir. If he knows the back roads…' Madden shrugged.
'And he could cut up to London, if he wanted.'
'I don't think so.' The inspector shook his head.
'He's a country man.' Then he shrugged a second time. 'I'm guessing,' he admitted.
Boyce coughed. 'We've something already, sir.
Three witnesses saw him ride through Oakley this afternoon, two women and a man.' He took out a notepad. 'Same basic description. Big fellow in a brown jacket and a cloth cap. One of the women thought he had a moustache. Brown hair, she said.
About the bike, the women just saw a motorcycle and sidecar, but the man — he's a young chap called Maberley — he said it was a Harley, no question. There was a brown leather bag in the sidecar, the top of it was sticking out. Maberley saw that — he was interested in the bike, so he looked hard. Said the bag was like a cricket bag.' He checked his notepad. 'Oh, and the sidecar's painted black or dark blue.'
'And what do we have up there?' Sinclair asked Madden. He nodded towards the woods of Upton Hanger.
'A big hole that's been filled in, Stackpole says. He went up again and found it in a thicket above the path, well hidden.'
Madden explained how he'd stopped to examine the footprints. 'He must have seen us from above and realized we'd picked up his tracks. It's possible he recognized Stackpole as being a policeman.'
'How so?' the chief inspector asked.
'We know he's spent time in the woods, but he might have been in Highfield, too. If so, he'd know the village bobby by sight.'
The constable, like Madden, still in his shirtsleeves, appeared before them. 'I've got hold of a couple of spades from the toolshed, sir,' he said to Sinclair.
'We're ready when you are.'
Boyce looked at his watch. 'Nearly seven.' He called to one of the uniformed officers. 'Bring some flares from the van. We're going to need them.'
It took them forty minutes to reach the circle of beeches. From there Stackpole led the party up the hillside, past the line of ilexes, to an area dense with holly and tangled brush. Earlier, the constable had discovered a way into the thicket, a narrow entrance made to resemble an animal's track and masked by dead branches. The men had to crawl in one at a time.
Sinclair and Madden were the last to enter. The chief inspector had lingered at the bottom of the slope to examine the beech tree where Madden had sought cover.
'A narrow shave,' he observed, running his fingers over the bullet-gouged trunk. 'You must have had some anxious moments, John.'
Madden recalled the eerie calm that had possessed him. It was a throwback to his time in the trenches, and the realization sent a chill through him.
The mound of earth discovered inside the thicket was about ten feet long at its base and in the rough shape of a triangle. Some soil had already been shifted and lay in a heap beside it.
'Looks like he was digging it up when you disturbed him,' Boyce remarked, dusting off the knees of his trousers. 'What's he got down there, I wonder?
Not another body, I hope!'
The answer wasn't long in coming. The first constable detailed to dig struck a metallic object with the first thrust of his spade. He bent down and hauled out a silver branched candlestick from the loosened soil. A few seconds later a second was uncovered. Then three silver cups were unearthed, all bearing inscriptions noting that 'Captain C.S.G. Fletcher' had won them in target-shooting contests. They were found beside a rolled-up cloth, which contained a collection of jewellery comprising a garnet necklace, two gold rings, seven earrings — only four matched — and a locket on a golden chain.
Lastly, a mantelpiece clock, mounted in Sevres china, was pulled from the clinging soil. The porcelain was cracked and a piece was missing.
'That's all that was on the list,' Boyce commented.
Under the canopy of trees it was rapidly growing dark and Sinclair gave the order for the naphtha flares to be lit. Thrust into the ground at intervals around the site, the naked flames brought an air of ceremony to the grim proceedings, as though some blood sacrifice was being offered to the deities of the forest.
The digging continued, with the officers working in pairs now, jackets shed and sleeves rolled up. Six feet down the spades struck another obstruction. This time the object proved harder to dislodge, but eventually a broad strip of corrugated iron was uncovered and passed up. Brushed clean and laid out on the ground, it became the receptacle for a variety of other items retrieved from the loose earth near the bottom of the hole: a piece of tar soap, a length of two-by four, several wooden slats, cut to measure, numerous cigarette stubs, a piece of bacon rind, a bottle of Veno's cough medicine, a half-eaten jar of cherry jam, empty tins of Maconochie's stew.
One of the diggers handed up an earthenware jar.
'What's that for?' Boyce wondered aloud.
'Rum.' Madden spoke from the shadows. 'A half gill unit. Standard issue.'
Sinclair glanced at him. The inspector stood on his own in the shadows, away from the flickering light.
His face was expressionless.
The two men working in the pit handed their spades up and began climbing out.
'I reckon that's all, sir,' one of them said to Boyce.
'Wait!' Madden came forward and peered down into the hole. 'I want all that loose soil cleared out, Constable. Back you go.'
Boyce started to say something, but the chief inspector held up his hand to silence him.
The two constables resumed their labour. Madden stood over them while they shovelled earth out. After a few minutes, he said, 'Right, that'll do.' He helped the pair out and then jumped down into the pit himself. 'Let's have one of those flares over here,' he said.
It was Sinclair himself who brought it over. The others gathered around. The excavated hole was in the shape of a blunt T, the two arms branching out only a little beyond the thick central trunk, where Madden was now standing. He pointed behind him to the head of the T where a broad step had been cut into the back wall.
'That's where he slept,' he said. 'Those wooden slats are for duckboards, to keep the floor dry, and the piece of tin is for the roof He came forward. 'And this is a firestep.' He mounted a low projection at the foot of the T, bringing his head and shoulders up over the lip of the trench. 'What we have here is a dugout.'
'Like in the war, sir?' The question was Stackpole's.
'Like in the war.' Madden's voice was scored with bitterness. 'That muck you see — the soap and the stew and the rum — it's what they had in the trenches. Even down to the cough medicine — we used to live on the stuff.'
He looked up at Sinclair. 'I'll tell you what he did, sir. He took a swig of rum, the way we used to before an attack, and then he went down there and blew his bloody whistle and charged into that house and killed the lot of them. And that's not all-' Madden pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and extracted a folded sheet of paper which he handed up to the chief inspector. 'Do you remember those drawings Sophy Fletcher made? This is another one.'
Sinclair held up the paper to the light. The men gathered around, peering over his shoulder.
'That's a gas mask,' Madden said. 'When he broke in he was wearing one, and that's what the child saw — some goggled-eyed monster dragging her mother down the passage. It explains why she hasn't said a word since.'
Part Two
But now hell's gates are an old tale;
