won't.'
Sinclair paused in his pacing. He stared down at the inspector. 'Have I said something to amuse you?'
'I'm sorry, sir.' Madden sought to compose his features. 'It's just that we never used to think of them that way.'
'What way?'
'You had to come home on leave to hear people talking about Huns and wanting to hang the Kaiser.
We used to call them Fritz or Jerry. And we didn't want to hang the Kaiser. We wanted to hang the General Staff. First the Staff, then the Commissariat.'
'Never mind who you wanted to hang.' The chief inspector kept a firm grip on his outrage. It didn't escape him that he had never heard Madden talk this way before. 'You had no right to do what you did.
For pity's sake! Why didn't you ask my permission first?'
'Because you wouldn't have given it,' Madden said frankly.
'At least you had that right.'
'You would have had to say no.'
'Ah! Light begins to dawn!' Sinclair's face cleared.
'You didn't need to ask. You already knew what I was thinking.'
'Well, yes, sir.' Madden was finally embarrassed. 'I thought so.'
'Amazing! I never guessed I was so transparent.
Where did you meet this Fritz?'
'At a lecture on psychiatry.'
'Where you just happened to drop in? No, please don't tell me.' The chief inspector's face showed pain.
'I'd rather not know.'
He went to the window and stood with his hands on his hips staring down at the river. After a time he looked over his shoulder. 'Well…?'
'Excuse me, sir, is this a new development?'
Sampson, late and out of breath, slid into his seat beside the deputy assistant commissioner.
'No, Chief Superintendent. But Mr Sinclair has a fresh line of inquiry he wants to follow up.'
'It's just an idea,' Sinclair explained. He and Madden sat across the table. 'But since it involves going back to the War Office I felt I ought to consult Mr Bennett.'
'The chief inspector thinks it's possible this man might have committed offences, even similar crimes, while he was still in uniform.'
'It's the element of repetition that bothers me.'
Sinclair's grey eyes bore a look of blameless innocence.
'Given that he also carried out the assault at Bentham — and I believe he did — then he seems set in a pattern.
But when did it start? There's no peacetime record of crimes like these, but we haven't looked at the war years in detail. And the fact that he arms and equips himself like a soldier makes me wonder if he didn't start then. Abroad, perhaps. In France or Belgium.
We need to ask the military to check their records.'
There was silence in the room. Finally Sampson spoke: 'Who've you been talking to?' he asked.
'Sir?'
'Have you been discussing this case with anyone?'
'No one outside this building.'
Madden was aware that Bennett's eyes were fixed on him. He stared straight ahead over the deputy's shoulder.
'And you thought all this up yourself?'
'It's no more than a long shot, sir. I don't mind admitting we're clutching at straws.'
Bennett cleared his throat. 'So we'd like them to check the provost marshal's files. I see no harm in that. I'll get in touch with the War Office again.
Gentlemen…' He rose from the table.
'Well, that was close,' Sinclair remarked, when they were back in his office. He thumbed tobacco into his pipe. 'For a moment there I thought he had the scent.'
'Sorry to put you in that position, sir.' Madden was feeling remorse. 'He was only guessing.'
'I'm happy to hear it.' The chief inspector struck a match. 'I wouldn't like to think I'd had to do with two mind-readers in one day.'
Having first extinguished the paraffin lamp, Amos Pike opened the double doors at the end of the garden shed and stepped out into the cool night air.
He wore a belted leather jacket over a khaki shirt, grey flannel trousers and boots. A flat woollen cap fitted snugly on his close-cropped head.
He looked about him. He could see no lights burning in any of the cottages. It was after midnight.
He went back into the shed, released the brake on his motorcycle and pushed the machine to the doorway.
There was a slight ramp running down from the floor to the dirt road outside and Pike mounted sidesaddle and freewheeled for a few yards until the vehicle came to rest. He set the brake and returned to the shed to close and padlock the doors.
A long canvas bag filled with a variety of objects was wedged in the sidecar. It had once belonged to an angler who had used it for transporting his tackle.
Pike had bought it at a street market in Brighton, the same day he had stolen the motorcycle from an alleyway behind a pub. One end of the bag was pushed into the front of the sidecar, the other protruded above the rim of the compartment. He checked now to see that it was secure, then lit the carbide lamp which served as a headlight, fiddling with the gas jet until he was satisfied with the size of the flame. Then he climbed into the saddle and kicked the engine into life, cutting the throttle quickly as the loud pop-pop pop noise shattered the silence of the night. Settling himself on the broad leather seat, he released the brake and set the machine in motion.
He travelled at a steady pace, never exceeding thirty miles an hour. Given the route he had chosen, a snaking tangle of back roads and country lanes, he had the better part of eighty miles to cover in order to reach his destination. Once there, he planned to spend the first part of the day sleeping — it would be Saturday — and then rise and attend to his business.
On Sunday he would follow the same routine: first sleep, then work. In the evening he would ready himself for the long ride back. Mondays were his most difficult time. Although short of sleep he would have to carry out his normal duties without giving in to fatigue. Fortunately it was something he was accustomed to doing. He had passed many sleepless nights during the war, lying for hours under artillery bombardments, leading patrols and raiding parties into no man's land. Yet he had never failed to present himself, rifle in hand, ready on the firestep to repel an enemy attack, at the ritual stand-to just before dawn.
A little after four o'clock he entered the outskirts of Ashdown Forest and turned off the paved road on to a rough track. The ancient woodland was scored with forgotten tracks and footpaths, some of them old before the first Roman had set foot in the land, and the way Pike took followed a winding course through forest and field, sometimes almost petering out, but then reappearing in the bobbing beam of his headlight.
He rode slowly. He had been this route only once before.
Dawn found him deep in the forest. He drew up beside a great red oak, which spread an umbrella of thickly leaved branches over a clearing fringed with bush and fern. Turning off the track, he steered the motorcycle into a thicket, forcing the branches aside, and stopped in a small dell overhung with holly. He switched off the engine and climbed stiffly from the saddle. From the seat beneath the canvas bag he retrieved a groundsheet, and having spread it on the grass he lay down and fell asleep almost at once.
By five o'clock on Sunday afternoon he had completed the first stage of his self-appointed task. Using an entrenching tool — a short-handled pick with a broad bladed head opposite — he had constructed a dugout similar to the one he had built in the woods above Highfield. There were some differences. He had no sheet of corrugated iron — that had been a chance find — but he planned to fashion a roof of plaited willow and osier on his next visit. Branches cut to measure would serve as rough corduroying to protect the floor from damp.
The dugout was situated in an area of dense brush a mile from where he had parked his motorcycle. He had
