forehead. Seeing the state he was in, Madden spoke again.
‘It’s over, Lang. The police will be here any minute. They know who you are and what you’ve done. It’ll go easier with you if you give yourself up.’
His words brought no immediate response. The yellow eyes remained fixed on his. Sensing the hatred in their pale depths, Madden braced himself for whatever might follow. He watched as the other man licked his bloodied lips.
‘C‘est fini, tu dis?’
The muttered words were barely audible and before Madden had properly registered them, Lang’s expression changed. A grin appeared on his face. Ghastly as a death’s head, it flickered across his features. He bared his teeth.
‘Bien, alors…’
Without warning, and with a sudden convulsive movement, he reached up behind him and unhooked the lamp from the nail where it hung. Using the momentum of its descent, he whirled it around like a plane’s propeller… once… twice… and then, with no pause in the movement, hurled it against the back wall of the barn near to where Madden crouched with the girl in his arms. As the glass shattered, his cry pierced the darkness.
‘C‘est fini!’
At the same instant the hay burst into flames.
With only a moment to react, Madden flung himself from the spot, clutching the girl to him. Together they rolled across the barn, away from the roaring inferno which the piled hay had become in seconds. Fuelled by the spilt oil, the fire pursued them, carried by the straw strewn on the floor. As Madden staggered to his feet he saw the nearest piece of canvas go up in flames and then all was hidden in a cloud of billowing smoke. With only his sense of direction to guide him he stumbled towards where he knew the doors must lie, running at once into a densely packed mass of objects covered in canvas which he’d supposed were there for storage and which formed an obstacle course through which he tried to find a path, holding the girl’s body close to his, trying to shield her face from the smoke that already filled the barn and from which he knew they must quickly escape; or succumb to.
The fire itself followed close behind them, and a piece of burning wood falling from the roof beside them served as a warning that it would not be long before the whole structure came down on their heads. But the approach of the flames proved a blessing, too, bringing light as well as blistering heat, and with their help he was able to find his way to the broad corridor he remembered and to stumble between the lines of stacked hurdles already on fire through the wide open doors and out into the stableyard.
Into the blessed, blessed night.
Reeling, his head spinning, coughing up smoke and spit, Madden staggered away from the burning building, and as he did so the sound of raised voices came to his ears and he saw a party of men, one of them with a lamp, issue from the kitchen garden. Only when he spotted the burden they were bearing among them and noticed the dog shuffling in their wake did he remember the man he’d helped from the pit. So long ago, it seemed. Several of the group were already running across the cobbles towards him: he recognized the dark-browed foreman he’d spoken to. But all that was consigned to some distant past.
‘Is she safe?’ Harrigan’s voice rang out above the others. ‘Have you got her? Is that the lass?’
They crowded around Madden to peer at the girl, but he could find no words with which to reassure them. A great tiredness had come over him, he wanted to lie down and sleep. But he knew he could not do so as long as the child was his to care for, and he was struggling in his mind with this conundrum – how to resolve it – when his thoughts were interrupted by a sound, sudden and shocking, like the scream of an animal in pain.
‘What in God’s name…?’
Harrigan swung round, the others with him. Looking back towards the burning barn they saw coming through the doors, staggering, spinning around like some demon conjured from the fiery depths, a shape consumed by flames. Blazing like a torch, it came across the yard towards them, weaving from side to side, hardly human, but still shrieking in agony until all at once the sound ceased and the figure collapsed in a smoking heap from which the stench of burning flesh arose, rank and pungent.
Shocked into silence, the men stared. It was Harrigan who found his tongue first.
‘Is that him?’ he asked.
Madden nodded. He was swaying on his feet now. ‘Do something… help him if you can.’
But he turned from the sight himself and moved as quickly as his stiffening legs would take him away towards the line of stalls, where the injured man from the garden had been borne, and where a light already burned. He had felt the girl stir in his arms a moment before and knew he must spare her any further horror.
The others lingered, several of them trying vainly to bat out the flames that continued to lick at the now smouldering corpse.
But not for long. Having watched their efforts for a minute or so, standing to one side, not lifting a hand himself, Harrigan called a halt.
‘Never mind that,’ he growled. ‘One of you fetch some water. Bring it up to the stalls. It’ll be needed.’
He cast a last glance at the smoking remains, shapeless now in the darkness.
‘Let the bastard burn.’
34
It was late by the time they reached the village, after nine, and Billy asked the two detectives to drop him at the gates to the Maddens’ house. They were both with the Guildford CID and he’d spotted their familiar faces at the Midhurst police station earlier. Surprised to see them there, he learned that they’d been investigating a case of robbery at Haslemere, just over the Surrey border, when word of the events at Coyne’s Farm had reached them and they had driven down into Sussex to discover for themselves what was going on.
‘It’s all over now,’ he’d told them. ‘They’ll be bringing Lang’s body in soon. But since you’re going back to Guildford you could do me a favour and drop me off on the way. If I don’t get to Highfield sometime tonight, my life won’t be worth living.’
Billy wasn’t exaggerating. When the chief inspector had discovered Madden’s disappearance from the stableyard, he’d hit the roof, and it had been Billy’s bad luck to be the one in the firing line.
‘Do you mean to say you let him walk out of there? In the condition he was in?’ Sinclair had been white with anger.
What Billy had wanted to say was that he hadn’t let anyone go anywhere. That what with the chaos in the yard caused by the swarm of police and firemen, not to mention the casual onlookers who’d been drawn to the spot and who’d had to be shepherded away, it had been impossible to keep an eye on everything. That he didn’t have a crystal ball and there was no way he could have guessed that his former chief would suddenly take it into his head to walk off without a by your leave.
But if a dozen years on the force had taught Billy anything, it was that there were times when all you could do was bite your tongue, and he’d stayed silent.
‘Just pray nothing’s happened to him on the way, Sergeant.’ The chief inspector had been incandescent. ‘Just hope he hasn’t had an accident, or run off the road.’
He’d ordered Billy to get himself to Highfield without delay, saying that he, Angus Sinclair, wanted to hear before the night was out that Madden had returned home safe and sound, and that in the event of there being any other sort of news to report, the sergeant might well consider embarking on a new career.
‘And you might just remind him that leaving the scene of a crime without police permission is an offence punishable by law, and that he ought to know better.’
Which had given Billy something to grin about, at least, as he’d set off.
Not dealt with by the chief inspector had been the question of how he was supposed to get himself back to Midhurst, never mind Highfield, but luck had been on his side and he’d encountered Inspector Braddock in the parking area by the road. Hearing what was afoot, the Midhurst commander had hurried back from the station, and having no immediate need for his car and driver had told the latter he could take Billy as far as the town.
‘After that, you’re on your own, I’m afraid.’
Whatever doubts Billy might have had regarding his former mentor’s surreptitious departure had been
