McBride he found the Scotsman’s eyes had hardened.
‘John Madden…’ He ruminated on the name. ‘I’ve heard it said you were once a policeman.’
‘That’s true. But not any more.’
‘You wouldn’t be doing their job now, would you?’
‘It depends what you mean.’ Sensing the challenge coming from the other man, Madden sought to stare him down. But the dark gaze met his without flinching. ‘I’m aware the police are looking for him. But I doubt it’s for murder any longer.’
‘We’ve only your word for that.’
‘It’s more likely they want him as a witness.’ Madden shrugged. ‘That’s my belief, at any rate.’
‘Yes, but all this is police business, Mr Madden. I’m asking you again – what’s it to you?’ McBride moved a little away, as though to take the other man in. To see him clearly.
Madden hesitated. He looked at the faces around him. Marked as they were by age and exhaustion – and by something more, a loss of hope past healing – they still showed expectation. It seemed that the words he was about to speak mattered to them. They wanted to hear his answer.
‘As I said before, I’m not a policeman any longer.’ He had waited some time before replying. ‘But I happened to be the one who found the body of the child who was murdered at Brookham, and the memory haunts me. I never believed Beezy was the killer, even if others thought differently, but it’s possible he saw something that day. Perhaps the murderer’s face. I’ve been trying to find him in my own way, and I’ll continue to do so, come what may.’
McBride grunted. ‘Well, there’s an honest answer,’ he conceded. ‘But it’s still the law’s work you’re doing, and Beezy had no cause to help them. In their eyes he was guilty as charged.’ He peered at Madden. ‘Tell me the truth, now. What would his word be worth to you, anyway? An old tramp like him?’
‘As much as any other man’s.’ Madden spoke quietly, but the renewed murmur from the fire showed he had an attentive audience. ‘It’s you who should explain, McBride,’ he went on. ‘You say Beezy had no cause to help the police. What are you implying? That all this was nothing to him? That he didn’t care if some child was murdered? Frankly, I don’t believe you. But if that’s the case, let him stand up now and tell me so himself.’
His words brought a sigh from the listeners seated round the fire. McBride lifted his gaze from the flames.
‘Ah, well, he can’t do that, poor man,’ he said softly. ‘Even if he wanted to, which I doubt. He did have something to say, though, you’re right about that, something to tell anyone with an ear to listen, and it might have been you, Mr Madden. But the sad fact is he died on this spot not three hours ago.’
‘The devil’s mark? What did he mean by that? Didn’t he describe the man at all?’
Madden’s hopes – initially raised – had quickly been dashed by what the Scotsman had to tell him.
‘Oh, he had a great deal to say at the end, poor fellow, but most of it was gibberish. Once we’d laid him down on the ground over there, he never moved.’
McBride nodded in the direction of the fire, burning low now, where most of the men who’d been sitting earlier were recumbent, some propped on elbows conversing in low voices, others snoring, deeply asleep. Seated among them, knees drawn up and head hanging limply between his circled arms, was Joe Goram. The gypsy had joined the group some time earlier, offering what remained of his bottle of gin like a ticket of admission as he sat down. It had gone the rounds and come back to him empty, at which point, having inspected it glumly, he’d settled himself in his present position, prepared to wait patiently until Madden had completed his business.
Before that, McBride had taken Madden to the edge of the clearing, past where Topper was asleep, and pushed aside the ferns growing there to show him Beezy’s body. Madden had shone his lamp on the corpse, moving the light slowly up from the cracked boots and canvas trousers, tied at the waist with a length of cord, over the old tramp’s torso, which was clad in a torn flannel shirt topped by a buttonless waistcoat, to his bearded face. He had held the beam steady while he bent close to examine the features, noting the missing right earlobe that had been mentioned in the police circular issued earlier that summer.
‘I’m not a doctor, but at a guess I’d say he died of bronchitis.’ McBride had made no attempt to hurry Madden, holding the ferns back while he made his slow examination of the tramp’s remains. ‘He had an attack earlier this year, Topper said. Anyway, he coughed and coughed and couldn’t clear his chest. In the end he must have suffocated. When it seemed there was no hope of him getting better, Topper had the idea of sending a message to your wife. But by then it was too late.’
Satisfied at last, Madden had turned away from the body and they moved closer to the fire, seating themselves at McBride’s suggestion on a pair of flat stones close to where Topper was sleeping.
‘We’ll share out Beezy’s clothes and possessions tomorrow. It’s our way. Then we’ll bury him.’
Madden shook his head. ‘The police won’t be satisfied with that, I can tell you now. They’ll want to recover the body.’
‘Of course they will.’ McBride seemed unconcerned. ‘But they know about this place. Once or twice a year we get a visit from the law. You can tell them he’ll be in a shallow grave just over there in the bushes, where he’s lying now. We’ll have moved on by then. A sip of whisky, Mr Madden?’
The Scotsman had produced a bottle from the pocket of his greatcoat and he offered it to his companion. Madden took a swallow from the neck for hospitality’s sake before returning it to its owner’s hand. He’d been eyeing McBride with some curiosity. Though showing all the marks of vagrancy in his dress and personal appearance, he was clearly a man of some education.
‘Each of us has his story, I suppose, though I never discovered Beezy’s.’ It was as though he’d read Madden’s thoughts. ‘But I dare say his experience was much like the rest of ours.’
‘And what’s your story, Mr McBride?’ Madden accepted the proffered bottle and took another sip.
The Scotsman chuckled. ‘I wondered if you would ask. But I’ve no great tale to tell. Despite collecting some souvenirs from the war’ – his hand went to the scar on his neck – ‘I emerged in one piece. But I seemed to have lost some bits of myself just the same. I’m told others had a like experience. Suffice to say the world looked different to me.’
He pulled up the collar of his coat as a sudden sharp breeze blew through the clearing.
‘My wife, meanwhile, had set out on a journey. To Canada, as it happened, and not alone.’ He shook with silent laughter. ‘But that wasn’t the reason I took to the road. No, I set off thinking I would walk for a while, and the walk grew longer. Mind you, I had some help along the way…’ He tapped the bottle with his finger. ‘I made only one discovery. There’s an invisible line in our lives, and once it’s crossed we can never go back. Invisible, that is, until we’ve crossed it, and then it’s all too plain.’ He turned his head and regarded Madden in silence. ‘But to return to Beezy…’ McBride straightened, stretching his cramped muscles. ‘I know next to nothing about him. This was the first time we’d met. They turned up a week ago – he and Topper – and even then he was in no fit state to hold a conversation.’
‘So he didn’t speak of the murder at all?’ Madden couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘He dropped some of his belongings near the scene of the killing, you know. That made me think he might have seen something that caused him to run off.’
‘Oh, I dare say you’re right about that.’ He nodded. ‘Beezy indicated as much to me.’
‘Then he did talk to you about it?’ Madden tried to understand what the other man was saying.
McBride shook his head. ‘I haven’t made myself clear. We had no conversation as such. When Topper went off three days ago to seek out your gypsy friend he asked me to keep an eye on Beezy for him, which I did. I brought him water and tried to keep him warm. He was talking a good deal, but making little sense.’ The Scotsman paused, frowning. ‘I knew about the murder at Brookham, of course. We all did. And I knew the police had been looking for this man. So I was able to guess what it was he was raving about. He kept speaking of blood…’
‘Of blood?’
‘That was the word he kept repeating. And then there was a man who was trying to wash it off. He wasn’t telling me a story, you understand, he was babbling.’ McBride looked keenly at Madden. “‘I saw him washing off the blood…” He said that many times. “I saw him washing off the blood, but it wouldn’t wash off… no… no…”’ The Scotsman mimicked the hoarse, drained tones of an exhausted man. ‘He went on that way, repeating himself, over and over, and coughing in between. Then he said something else, in a different voice, and I was struck by it. “He had the devil’s mark on him…” That’s what he said. “The devil’s mark… I saw it plain.”’
‘Just that? Nothing more?’
‘No. But he said it more than once, and I heard him right. You can be sure of that.’ He offered the bottle once
