Joe Goram called out from the steps of one of his caravans as Madden rode into the encampment. A burly, dark-haired man with unshaven cheeks, his face bore a scowl that seemed permanently fixed until he caught sight of Lucy, who was wearing a blue dress with a ribbon in her hair, riding perched on the saddle in front of her father. The gypsies’ camp lay at the bottom of the farm beside the stream that ran along the foot of Upton Hanger. Madden had parked his car at the stable yard and ridden down.
‘Good morning to you, young missy.’ Waving to her, he came down the steps. His broad grin showed he had several teeth missing.
‘Hullo, Mr Goram.’ She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘May I see the puppies, please?’
‘Of course, m’dear. They’re tied up over there, behind the caravan.’
The little girl slid to the ground and ran off.
‘Don’t offer her one, Joe, I beg you,’ Madden said hastily. ‘We’ve two dogs at home, and one of them’s just had puppies herself.’
Dismounting, he shook hands with the gypsy and passed him the reins of the old mare he used for getting about the farm and which Goram inspected with his usual disparaging eye. He’d several times offered to replace it with a better animal from his own string, but Madden, no horseman, had suggested instead that he look out for a suitable mount for Lucy at some unspecified date in the future.
‘And don’t mention the pony, either. Please. We’ll talk about that next time you’re here.’
Goram didn’t hide his disappointment. ‘There’s no harm in spoiling them while they’re young,’ he ventured.
Since this was an argument Madden used himself on occasion, and one on which Helen poured particular scorn, he thought it best not to respond.
Instead, he gazed about him, taking note of the signs of bustle and activity in the encampment. The various members of Joe Goram’s family – his wife and two sons, his daughter and son-in-law – were all busy collecting and stowing items in the trio of caravans that were parked at the edge of the clearing in the shade of a beech tree. One young grandson, eyes fixed to the ground, was quartering the area, picking up bits of paper and other rubbish and depositing them in a sack.
‘You were hoping to see me, you said?’
‘Yes, Mr Madden, sir. We’ll be pulling out first thing tomorrow and I wanted to thank you again for letting us stay.’
The gypsies had first appeared four summers before. Joe Goram had presented himself to Madden, greasy cap in hand, and asked for permission to park his caravans on a patch of tree-shaded land by the stream and to graze his horses in the lower paddock, which he must have seen was empty. Over strong objections from George Burrows – gypsies had a well-deserved reputation for being light-fingered, he’d argued, it was asking for trouble to allow them on your land – Madden had agreed to let them remain. In spite of his policeman’s conditioning, he clung to the belief he’d grown up with: that people, by and large, behaved according to how they were treated.
In the course of the next few days two bridles and a set of stirrups had vanished from the stables and George had found one of his scythes missing. At the end of the week they had miraculously reappeared in the places where they had been before, and Joe Goram had dragged his elder son, Sam, by the collar into the yard and made him apologize to Madden in front of Burrows and the other two farmhands. Sam, sporting a black eye and a loose tooth, had sworn it would never happen again.
The family had returned every year since, accepting the hospitality that was offered and in return mending pots and pans, sharpening knives and doing other odd jobs about the farm. Madden had grown used to seeing the smoke from their fires drifting up through the screen of oak and beech and to catching the scent of strange spices and aromas wafting his way from their blackened cooking pots.
‘There’s something you ought to know, Joe. A young girl was murdered over at Brookham yesterday.’
‘I heard about it, sir. Mr Burrows told us this morning. Poor lass
…’ The gypsy watched Madden’s face closely.
‘The police will be questioning people in the area. Tramps in particular, but travellers, too. You may be stopped on the road.’
Joe nodded. His face was impassive.
‘I understand you were at the farm all day yesterday?’
‘That’s right, Mr Madden. I took my boys up to say goodbye to Mrs Burrows. She gave us a cup of tea.’
‘Good. I’m glad. You’ll have no trouble with the police, then. But if you do, refer them to us. To Mr Burrows or myself.’
‘Thank you, sir. I’ll do that if I may.’ Joe Goram twisted his cap in his fingers. He could think of no way to repay this man who had shown him such special favour. Who shook hands with him when they met.
‘There’s something else, Joe…’ Frowning, Madden watched as one of Goram’s sons dismantled a clothes line, thrusting the poles into a rack beneath a caravan. ‘Have you ever come across a man called Beezy? He’s a tramp, a friend of Topper’s?’
Goram shook his head. ‘I’ve not heard the name, sir. Beezy, you say?’
‘It’s a nickname, I expect. He was in the Brookham area yesterday, near where the child’s body was found.’
‘Are the police looking for him, then?’ Goram’s face was expressionless.
‘Yes, they are. They think he might have done it.’ Madden paused, considering how to frame his next remark. ‘You might hear of his whereabouts,’ he suggested.
The gypsy’s swarthy features darkened still further. He stared down at his feet. Madden studied him in silence. He had more than an inkling of what was going on in the other man’s mind.
‘There’s no need to go to the police,’ he remarked, after a moment. ‘Just get word to me.’
Goram’s face cleared. He looked up. ‘Oh, I’ll do that, if you want, sir.’ Vastly relieved, he made bold to offer his own hand to Madden, who took it at once. ‘Anything I hear, you’ll hear. You have my word on it.’
6
The coroner’s inquest into the death of Alice Bridger, held at Guildford the following Friday, was quickly concluded. As officer in charge of the case, Inspector Wright baldly described the murder scene and outlined the measures already taken by the Surrey constabulary at the start of their investigation. Apart from routine questioning, these were mainly concerned with tracking down strangers seen in the vicinity of Brookham that day.
The presence of a number of vagrants in the general area had been reported and some of them had been identified and questioned, so far without result. The search for the rest was being extended.
‘I am authorized to inform the court that we are looking for one man in particular,’ Wright stated. ‘We expect to trace him and to be able to question him in the very near future.’
Dr Galloway was equally terse. Attaching to Alice Bridger’s rape the single adjective ‘brutal’, the pathologist briefly detailed the injuries, internal and external, that she had suffered in the course of the assault, reading from a prepared statement, not looking up, aware perhaps of the presence of Alice’s parents in court. The girl had been strangled subsequently and from the amount of water found in her lungs it was likely the killer had also held her submerged in the stream. Her face had been ‘badly battered’, Galloway said, but provided no further description.
‘I’m giving the London press as little as possible to feed on,’ he’d told Madden and Helen, encountering them outside the courtroom before the proceedings opened. ‘They keep an eye on inquests.’
One of the first witnesses, Madden had testified at some length to the discovery of the body beside the stream. The coroner, a recent appointee, was plainly puzzled by his involvement in the affair.
‘Why exactly were you there, Mr Madden?’ he inquired.
‘I gave Constable Stackpole a lift from Brookham. He felt the wood should be searched without delay, rather than wait for the arrival of the detectives from Guildford.’
‘Yes, but why were you involved in the search? Surely it’s not usual for a member of the public to be engaged to that degree in a police investigation?’
