questions.
'This isn't the road to Folkestone.'
The fact was incontrovertible. Pike said nothing.
The constable moved the light off his face and shone it on the sidecar. 'What's in the bag?' he asked.
'Tools.'
'Open it, please.'
Pike climbed off the saddle. He took the canvas bag out of the sidecar and laid it on the ground. It was held shut by two leather straps. He began to undo them. As he was working on the second one the light shifted off his hands. He looked up to see the policeman directing his lamp at the sidecar. Pike's eyes followed the beam. He saw the new red paintwork had been scratched, probably when he rode into the thicket. In one spot a broad flake of paint had been removed, revealing the original black surface beneath.
Pike went on undoing the strap. The light was back in his face.
'I'd like to see some identification.' The constable's voice had hardened. 'Also proof of ownership of this vehicle.'
'I've got it here,' Pike said, reaching into the bag.
He stood up, turning towards the constable, and drove his clenched hand into the pit of the man's stomach.
The policeman dropped the lamp. He arched his body.
A retching sound came from his lips. Pike withdrew the bayonet and the man clutched at his stomach, lips working. He stepped back and stabbed him a second time, in the chest. The constable fell to the ground.
He groaned once and lay still.
Pike picked up the lamp and shone it on the side of the road. A few feet away he saw a gap in the hedgerow. Placing the lamp on the sidecar, he gathered the constable's body in his arms and carried it to the spot. With some difficulty he thrust it through the gap in the hedge into a ditch on the other side.
He returned to the sidecar for the lamp and spent some minutes examining the ground nearby. He found two small pools of blood which he covered with handfuls of dirt taken from the side of the road.
Satisfied, he switched off the lamp, wiped it down with a handkerchief and then threw it as far as he could over the hedge into the field beyond.
9
Sinclair returned from lunch to find Madden bent over a map spread out on the top of his desk.
Hollingsworth stood beside him.
'I've got the Ordnance Survey map here, sir.' The sergeant was speaking. 'It's marked. Elmhurst.'
Madden looked up and saw Sinclair. 'We've a constable down in Sussex, sir. Murdered. He was killed on a back road on Sunday night.'
'Sunday?' The chief inspector joined them, shedding his jacket. 'Why didn't we hear before?' It was Thursday.
'They only found his body yesterday. I've been talking to the CID in Tunbridge Wells. The body was taken there. They could see he'd been stabbed, but it was only when their pathologist examined the corpse that he discovered they were bayonet wounds.'
'He's sure about that? The pathologist?'
'Seems to be. He was an Army doctor at Etaples for two years.'
Sinclair stood at Madden's shoulder. 'Show me.'
Madden checked the Ordnance chart Hollingsworth had brought against his own smaller-scale map.
He pointed. 'About there. Say twenty miles south of Tunbridge Wells. Very near the main road to Hastings. The constable — his name was Harris — was stationed at a village called Hythe. There it is, it's marked.'
Sinclair squinted at the Ordnance map. 'Bit off his beat, wasn't he?'
'That's why it took a while to find the body.
Elmhurst's four miles away. Apparently there've been reports of organized cockfighting in the district. The detective I spoke to said they think Harris went over there on Sunday night to see if he could catch them at it. He must have been on his way back to Hythe when he ran into trouble.'
'Where was his body?'
'In a ditch by the road. They found traces of blood someone had tried to cover up. Nothing else, I'm afraid.'
The chief inspector bent over the map. 'What do you think? Did he try to stop him? Damn it, I told them to exercise caution.'
'We don't know that it was him.' Madden scowled.
'Yes, but let's suppose it was.' Sinclair drummed his fingertips on the desktop. 'It was late on a Sunday night. He was heading home, back to his job or whatever it is he does. But where did he spend the weekend?' He pored over the map.
'You'd have to know which way he was going.'
Hollingsworth offered his opinion. 'Which direction.'
'He was near the Hastings road,' Madden said. 'But he doesn't travel on main roads. So either he'd just crossed it, or was about to. He was going east or west.'
They studied the map in silence.
'Nothing much to the east.' Hollingsworth spoke again. 'Not till you get to Romney Marsh.'
The chief inspector's forefinger came to rest. Madden grunted an acknowledgement. 'Ashdown Forest.'
'How far is it?' Sinclair checked the scale. 'Less than twenty miles. If he was coming from there…' He clicked his tongue in frustration. 'Damn and blast!
There's ten thousand acres of that. More. We couldn't begin to search it.'
Hollingsworth cleared his throat.
'What is it, Sergeant?'
'A lot of people use those woods, sir. Ramblers, botanists, Scout troops. They could be a help.'
'What we would do well to avoid at this juncture,' the chief inspector enunciated clearly, 'is a massacre of Boy Scouts.'
'Yes, sir, but we could ask them to keep an eye open. Through local police stations. Any sign of fresh digging. All they need do is report it.'
Sinclair looked at Madden, who nodded.
'Good idea, Sergeant. We'll get word out.'
Sinclair waited until Hollingsworth had left the office. Then he spoke: 'I had lunch with Bennett.
Nothing from the War Office as yet. He's tried to give them a nudge, but they move at their own speed over there.'
Madden remained bent over the map. Sinclair studied him benignly. 'Take this Sunday off, John. I'll be at home.'
'Are you sure, sir?' Madden looked up. They had agreed that one or other should be within reach of a telephone during the weekends.
'I am. Consult Mrs Sinclair, if you have any doubts.
She will assure you that the garden requires my urgent attention.'
The chief inspector had noted an alteration in his colleague's appearance of late, a lightening of the shadows. There seemed to him at least one possible explanation for it. 'If I were you I'd get out of London,' he suggested, with guileless innocence. 'Treat yourself to some country air.'
She was waiting for him at the station. The red Wolseley two-seater was parked where he remembered it, in the shade under the plane tree. Her tanned forearms resting on the steering-wheel reminded him of the moment beside the stream when they had kissed.
'Father's off shooting pheasants.' She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. 'We've got the whole day to
