removed when he’d spoken to the uniformed sergeant in charge at the parking lot. He’d had a word with Madden when he’d left in his car some time earlier.
‘He asked me to make his excuses to the chief inspector if I saw him. To tell him he felt he had to get home.’
None of which had come as any surprise to Billy when he considered the events of the last few hours. He himself was still shaken by what he’d been through, and could recall the apprehension he’d felt on hearing from the man left behind by the foreman at the roadworks that Madden had set off in pursuit of Lang alone. Leaving the party of police that was assembling behind him, Billy had sped up the path on his own and on reaching the crest of the wooded ridge had instantly seen the huge fire blazing down in the valley, away to his right. Thwarted at first by a hedge that ran alongside the path, he’d eventually found a way through to a farmyard where a sight met his eyes that had turned his blood to ice.
Silhouetted against a blazing barn were two men standing on either side of a smoking shape that lay on the cobbles between them. Even before he’d reached them Billy had known instinctively that what he was looking at were the remains of a human being.
‘Who is it?’ he’d shouted to them, unable to contain his anxiety. And then, ‘Police…’ when they’d turned inquiring faces his way.
‘Some bastard who tried to kill a lass,’ one of them had answered him bluntly, a tough looking customer with several days’ growth of beard on his cheeks, but a bloke Billy would happily have flung his arms around and kissed.
A few moments later, having been directed by the two towards a lighted stall at the side of the yard, his relief had been complete. There he’d found Madden, his face swollen at the temple and blackened by the fire’s ash, and with a burn mark showing on the back of his hand, sitting on the straw-covered floor with a young girl cradled in his arms. Close by them, lying on the cobbles, was another figure, that of a man dressed in an army greatcoat, whose eyes were shut and whose hand rested on the head of an old Labrador curled up beside him.
A group of roughly dressed men stood about them and Billy had had to push his way through to reach his old chief, whose face had lit up at the sight of him.
‘Ah, Billy… there you are.’
Pale beneath the caked ash, Madden’s features bore the stamp of exhaustion. He was in his shirtsleeves and Billy saw that his tweed jacket was wrapped around the girl, whose head rested on his shoulder.
‘She’s asleep, poor child.’
Billy had offered to take the girl from him, but Madden had seemed reluctant to let her out of his arms.
‘Better not to wake her.’ His eyes were bright and staring and it was plain from his dilated pupils that he was suffering from shock.
It was at that point that one of the men standing around had drawn Billy aside. A heavy-browed Mick by the name of Harrigan, he’d identified himself as the foreman of the road crew.
‘I sent a man down to Oak Green to ring for an ambulance. That was after we found Sam Watkin over there.’ He’d nodded towards the figure in the greatcoat. ‘Sam was crawling through the kitchen garden, trying to get to the yard. He’d been stabbed. Aye, and knocked on the head. I reckon he tried to save the lass. He’ll be all right, though. That coat of his is padded. The knife didn’t go in too deep.’
He’d told Billy he and the others in his gang had rushed up from the road on Madden’s heels and had got half way to the village before they’d spotted the fire behind them… and come pelting back.
‘You’ll have to ask your fella what happened.’ He gestured towards Madden. ‘We’ve not bothered him with questions. You can see he’s done in. One thing I can tell you, though – the lass isn’t… hurt.’ Harrigan’s cheeks had flushed and he’d looked away in embarrassment. ‘You take my drift. She woke up for a moment and told us she was feeling sick, but that was all. Your bloke said it was from the chloroform he gave her. That bastard out there.’ The foreman jerked his thumb towards the doorway. ‘Well, he won’t be doing it to another, will he?’
While they were talking the clatter of boots on the cobbles outside had signalled the arrival of the main police party. The sight of blue uniforms crowding into the cramped stall had seemed to reassure Madden and Billy had coaxed him at last to hand over his burden into the care of a burly sergeant, who had wrapped the child in his coat and settled down with her in a corner.
Madden had struggled then to rise to his feet.
‘I don’t know what’s come over me. Give me a hand, would you, Billy.’
Helped up, he’d appeared unsteady on his legs and Billy had led him out of the packed stall into the yard where the cold air had revived him. Finding an upturned bucket to hand, he’d persuaded Madden to sit down.
‘I had to break his wrist, Billy. He wouldn’t have it otherwise.’
Slumped over his knees, staring at the ground between his feet, Madden had given a brief, fragmented account of what had occurred to an audience which by now included several of the Midhurst contingent. Not once had his glance strayed to the shapeless, black form, guarded by a pair of constables, that lay still smouldering on the cobbles not far from where he sat.
‘It was Lang who set fire to the barn. He must have known he wouldn’t survive it. But he wanted to kill us, come what may.’
He hadn’t yet made sense of the experience, come to terms with it. Billy had seen that. But there’d been no time to talk. Just then the chief inspector had appeared, entering the yard by the kitchen garden, and Billy had signalled to him. Out of breath after his brisk walk up from the road, but already informed by runner of the part Madden had played in the rescue of the girl, Sinclair had stood before them, wordless.
‘Ah, John…!’!’
Seeing the state his old partner was in, he’d directed him to sit quietly and wait for transport of some kind to arrive, an order Madden had seemed happy to obey. Taking Billy with him, the chief inspector had then crossed the yard to examine the remains of their quarry. Lang’s smoking corpse lay on its back with one hand raised, the fingers bent. Where the face had been, only charred flesh remained.
‘Not something you’d want to show your maiden aunt, is it?’ Sinclair’s lip had curled in disgust at the grisly sight. ‘But a comfort to some, I dare say. No chance of him turning up in the dock.’
Billy had told him what he’d learned from Madden. ‘Lang tried to kill them both.’
Sinclair had absorbed this information without comment. Then he’d shrugged. ‘I wonder how he came to end up here. I mean at this particular spot.’
The answer hadn’t been long in coming. Presently Sergeant Cole had approached them. The Sussex detective reported that he’d been speaking to Sam Watkin, the man found stabbed in the garden, who had information he’d wanted to communicate.
‘He says he heard the girl scream and ran to help. Lang was waiting for him just inside the garden wall. He hit him with a hammer and then stabbed him. But the point is he reckons he’d seen him before hanging around the farm, trying to get into the barn, fiddling with the tap outside to see if it worked. And when you consider that this same girl, Nell Ramsay, comes home from school every day at the same time, and by the same route… and that Lang’s been living not more than a mile away…’
Cole had gestured wordlessly.
‘But there’s more. The reason Watkin was over here this afternoon was to look for a pal of his who’s gone missing. A bloke called Eddie Noyes. He was part of that road gang. Watkin works for an estate agent in Midhurst. He’d fixed for Noyes to sleep in the barn and he’d asked him only the other day to keep an eye out for any stranger he saw nosing about and to tell him to shove off.’
‘So it’s possible they ran into each other and Lang disposed of him. That would have been in character, all right.’ The chief inspector grimaced. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted his pitch queered. Not if he had the girl in his sights.’ He was silent for some moments, reflecting. Then he’d sighed. ‘There’s a fire engine coming, I take it?’
‘Yes, sir. I sent a man down to Oak Green to ring for one.’
‘Tell them to search what’s left of the barn carefully. Likely as not they’ll find another body in there.’
‘America, sir. Baltimore, in fact. That’s where he was bound. He’d booked passage on a freighter due to sail from Southampton tomorrow. One of the fellows at Midhurst told me. They broke into his car and found his ticket and a lot of other stuff in a briefcase.
Billy could tell from Madden’s expression that he was having trouble following all this. His old chief’s eyes were on matchsticks, as the saying went, and his head was nodding. It was odds on that any moment he would lay it on the kitchen table in front of him and go quietly to sleep.
