was now in a far more cheerful frame of mind.
‘He’s come down to roost in Lambeth this time, Mr Raymond Ash. I’ve just heard from the station there. And he didn’t move far: just up the road from Brixton. He registered as Henry Pratt at a boarding house off the Stockwell Road last Monday and his new landlady swears it’s him. She didn’t recognize him from the photograph published by the papers, but when they showed her a blow-up of Ash’s face she changed her mind. Unfortunately he’s out at the moment; he left early this morning. But the place is being watched by the local police and I’ve got four armed detectives on their way over there.’
‘What about Billy and Grace?’ Madden asked. As before, he had stood by the window looking out; though now at a changed scene. Gone were the footprints he had seen earlier on the path leading up to the house. The snow that had fallen had covered all trace of them.
‘I’d half a mind to recall them,’ Sinclair had replied. But they were past Leatherhead already and after some thought I decided to let them proceed. If we haven’t laid hands on Ash by the time they get to Liphook they’ll have to bring the girl back. Let’s wait and see, shall we?’
Despite having his hands full, the chief inspector had paused long enough to add a few more details to the brief state of play he’d given his old colleague.
The detectives I’ve sent over will wait for Ash inside the boarding house. I don’t want him spotting them. I’ve supplied them with a search warrant and they can have a look at his room while they’re waiting. I’m still hoping we’ll get our hands on something, some piece of evidence that will tie him to at least one of these killings.’
Sinclair had saved till last his news about the van bringing the Petersfield police contingent to Liphook.
‘They went into a ditch, if you can believe it. One of them had to walk to a neighbouring farmhouse to ring headquarters. Apparently the farmer’s going to pull them out with his carthorse. They’ll arrive in due course. Oh, and I spoke to Helen. She said Rob had just got back and now you were the only absentee. I told her she needn’t worry about there being no trains to get you home: Styles can drop you off at Highfield when he and Grace return to London.’
30
At half-past four, having received no further word from Sinclair, Madden went outside to look at the weather. The fresh snow that had fallen earlier had blanketed the yard and he saw the deep tracks crossing it that Mary Spencer and her son had left when they had walked up to the Hodges’ cottage ten minutes earlier.
Persuaded that the crisis was all but over now — the information Madden had relayed to her had done much to lift her spirits — she had decided to pay her Christmas call on the old couple as planned and had taken her son with her.
‘Bess will you keep you company,’ she told Madden.
In keeping with the festive spirit, before setting out she had got Freddie to turn on the lights of the Christmas tree, and they had all watched as he got down on his knees and crawled underneath the drooping branches of the fir to find the switch.
‘Well done, Freddie.’
Twinkling prettily among the green branches, the coloured bulbs had added a further note of cheer to what was now a more relaxed atmosphere.
‘I don’t want to disturb Evie for the moment,’ Mrs Spencer had added before leaving. ‘ looked in on her a minute ago and she was fast asleep. Better she gets some rest now, don’t you think?’
Madden glanced at his watch. All being well, and provided the snow held off, the car with Billy and Grace in it would arrive in less than half an hour and from that point on matters could be left in their hands. His own part in the drama of the past few weeks would be over; and none too soon. Not even the imminent arrest of the man they had been seeking, this cold-blooded killer, could assuage the deep grief which the revelations of the afternoon had brought him. The senselessness of Rosa Nowak’s death had left him with a feeling of despair, of helplessness in the face of destiny. But could even fate be held to blame, he wondered? No inexorable chain of events had led to the young girl’s murder. Chance alone had decreed it. Cruel chance.
Yet black though his mood was, he knew where the cure for it lay, and as he turned to go inside, he took refuge in the thought that his business here would soon be done and that before long he would return home, to the house where he had found his own happiness, and where all those he loved were gathered now under the same roof for the first time in many months.
‘You must come over to Highfield in the New Year and visit us,’ he told Bess when he went back into to the kitchen. ‘Helen would love to see you again.’
‘Do you think so?’ Left by their hostess with the task of preparing some mulled wine, she was standing by the stove stirring a saucepan, and she flushed with pleasure on hearing his words. ‘I’ve been thinking about her ever since we met this morning, remembering those days.’
‘You must come and spend a weekend.’
She smiled and then bent to sniff at the aroma of spices rising from the saucepan.
‘Do you know, this takes me back. I was a FANY during the war — the last one, not this one — and whenever we got hold of a bottle of wine we’d gather in one of the tents and warm it up with whatever we could find. Then we’d get tipsy together.’
‘A FANY … I might have guessed,’ Madden chuckled. He’d seated himself at the table. ‘We thought the world of you ladies. The way you dashed about the Front in your ambulances.’
‘Ha!’ Bess scoffed at his words. But her glance had turned inward and for a moment she stood lost in memory, her face damp from the steam that rose from the bubbling saucepan.
‘We did think of it as an adventure,’ she admitted, after a pause. ‘At first. We were so determined to be jolly. We kept telling each other these were the best days of our lives. But they weren’t really. It’s one thing to read about war; it’s quite another to see it in the flesh. When it was over, when I came home, I was convinced it would never happen again, the carnage: that men would never inflict such suffering on each other again, no matter what the cause. How wrong I was …’
She turned her blunt, weathered countenance towards him. Madden saw the question in her eyes before she asked it.
‘This man the police are searching for — who is he?’
‘Ash is his name, though he’s used others in the past.’
‘I take it he’s no ordinary criminal?’
It was clear she expected an honest reply, and Madden hesitated for only a moment before responding.
‘Far from it. He’s an assassin. A killer for hire. The police have known about him for years: he left a string of victims on the Continent before the war. Once he broke into a house in France and massacred a whole family. He’d been paid to kill the husband but when the others — the man’s wife and daughter — saw him he shot them too. He’s gone to great lengths all his life to hide his identity: not to leave any witnesses behind. That’s why he wanted to kill Evie, and still would if he got the chance. She’s the one person who can send him to the scaffold.’
He paused. Impressed by the strength of character he sensed in her, he’d been carried away and he wondered for a moment if he’d said too much; spoken too brutally. But when he met her level gaze he realized his fears were groundless. She had taken in what he’d said without flinching.
‘It’s always a shock to find out such people exist.’ She spoke after a short pause. She’d been weighing her response. And hard to understand how they continue to live in their own skins. To breathe like ordinary human beings.’ She shook her head. ‘He must have no feelings.’
‘None at all,’ Madden concurred. Only a black heart. That’s how a woman who knew him when he was a boy described him to me. He was sixteen when he killed for the first time.’
‘Dear God.’ She put a hand to her brow.
‘But he’s come to the end of his rope. They’re closing in on him. It won’t be long now.’
With a sigh she turned back to the stove. But before she could resume her task the peal of the telephone sounded and she cocked an ear.
‘That must be for you.’
