“I can see that, lad. Where was it?”
“There’s a little clearing about a mile in from road, directly west from where lorry was. We come across this shelter. A big tree’s been uprooted and the roots make a bit of a cave. Somebody put branches all around, made a roof from a piece of tin and everything. Real snug t’was, sir. There’s moss laid on the ground and there’s an old blanket on top. The safe was tucked away in the corner. The place must’ve been used for a lover’s meeting.”
“Good deduction, Constable. I doubt a man would go to
the trouble of walking into the woods so he could wank off into a rubber. Anyway, I know the place you mean. It’s at the bottom of a slope.”
“That’s it, that’s the one.”
“We used to play cowboys and Indians there when I was a nipper. That was our fort. I do believe it’s been a popular spot for courting couples for a long time.”
He didn’t add that he and his pals liked to creep up on the couples whenever they could and spy on them. Early sex education. He also didn’t add that he himself had used the tree cave when he got older. He’d even taken Clare there once, but she wasn’t fussy about it. She said there were too many creepy crawlies for her liking. She was a clean sheets and firm mattress sort of girl.
“Sir?”
“What?”
Eagleton gave him a cheeky grin. “Just curious, sir. Were you a cowboy or an Indian?”
“An Indian of course, you twerp. The cowboys had to stay in the Fort to keep watch. Very boring. Us Indians could creep through the forest and then swoop in on them making blood curdling, whooping noises. Then we got to scalp them. I liked that part. Gave me a chance to pull Percy Somerville’s hair. He played with us sometimes in the summer.”
Eagleton and Pearse both gaped at him. “Sir Percy?”
“He wasn’t
sir
then, just a pimply, fat little nipper who we all picked on. Poor bugger. He could have told on us but he never did. I think he saw it as his duty to allow the peasants to vent their centuries’ old anger. He knew he could get revenge when he inherited the manor and took over as magistrate.”
“Do you think the, er, the safe is relevant?” asked Pearse.
“If we had any way to know who used it, maybe. But we don’t and it might have been there since Roman times.”
The constable looked doubtful. “Roman times, sir?”
“Never mind. Did you find anything else? A monogrammed hankie, a cigar paper?”
“No, sir, but this is rather odd.”
Pearse dived into his box again and took out a small pencil.
It was an indelible pencil. The same kind that somebody had used to draw a heart and the word “love” on Elsie’s round young buttock.
“It was on the blanket.”
Dr. Murnaghan said Elsie’d had sex recently, but if he could detect semen, it meant she and her lover hadn’t been the ones to use the rubber. What if she’d spent the night in the Fort? She could have parked the lorry, then left early in the morning, intending to drive it to the manor. The lorry had broken down, and she’d set off on her bicycle.
Where had her lover got to, and who was he?
Eagleton was clearly eager to show him more finds.
“All right, Constable. What’ve you got?”
“These cigarette butts were strewn around the area.” He handed Tyler an envelope.
“Woodbines. Great. Too bad most of the country smokes Woodbines.”
Tyler sent the constables home, then together with Gough he went through the litter and debris that the other officers had brought in. There was nothing that stood out that seemed related to the case. He packed it all back into the gas mask boxes. He was glad to have finally found a use for the things.
“That’s it for tonight, Guff. Go home. We’ll get onto that vehicle registration list first thing.”
They closed up the station and Tyler was about to cross the street to his house, but almost on their own accord, his feet turned left. Home was the last place he wanted to be. He was
officially off duty now and he could go for a beer. His head was quieter and the warmth of the day still lingered on the night air. There was a fragrance to it, but that could have been the lavender scent that surrounded him like a miasma. A dog barked from its kennel. With no streetlights and the houses all blacked out, it would have been dark indeed without the moonlight.
Alice was right; the news from the front was bad. According to Churchill the
RAF
was winning this particular fight – the Battle of Britain, as he called it – but Tyler had his doubts. The Luftwaffe was still sending over a lot of planes. He looked up at the moon, serene and indifferent in the star-dotted sky. It was possible that in one of the cities there was a raid going on at this very moment, people dying, getting injured, frightened, possessions gone forever. Here in this little country town it was quiet, only a soft rustle from the trees and shrubs in the front gardens of the houses he was walking past.
Initially, after the declaration of war, when nothing much happened, a lot of Brits had moaned about what a phony war it was and all, a political ploy to scare people into compliance. The country had needed work and this was one way to create it. However, since May, Hitler had put paid to that theory. Ever since the occupation of Belgium, the collapse of France and Holland, and then the shocking disaster at Dunkirk, the country now knew the Germans were in deadly earnest. This sceptred isle was in real danger of being invaded. As for the silver sea, the U-boats appeared to be invincible, and it seemed a random chance that any shipping got through at all.
Shite. If England collapsed, what then?
Suddenly, there was a flash of light, sharp and brilliant, that vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Somebody had lifted a parlour curtain. He realized he was walking past the Walker house. He might as well see how Bobby was faring.
“Psst. Tom. Over here.”
A man was standing at the side of the house in the entry between the Walker house and the neighbour’s. In the dim light, Tyler could just make out Fred Walker, Bobby’s dad. He was holding a pigeon, which cooed softly.
“Evening, Fred. How’s your lad doing?”
Walker shook his head. “Not grand. He’s not good at all. We had to have the doctor in and he’s ordered him off to the hospital in Shrewsbury. To the loony ward.”
“What?”
“Oh, they try to pretty it up by saying Bobby’s suffering from battle fatigue and he needs a good rest, but what they mean is he’s gone crackers. I seen it lots in t’other war.”
“I’m sorry about that, Fred, but it’s probably true, he does need a good rest. He had a bad shock this morning. He must have told you about the poor gal who was killed on Heath Road?”
“Ay, he told us.” Fred stroked the pigeon gently. “Why don’t you walk back to the coop with me. I’ve got to put this one to bed. She’s tired. She’s flown more than three hundred miles to get back home. She’s one of my champions. Look at these wing feathers.” He spread out the bird’s wing. “I used to release the birds in France, but we can’t do that anymore so I have them shipped up to Scotland. One of the chaps in the club liberates her from there. She’s going to have a special supper tonight to celebrate.” He opened the door of the pigeon coop. The other birds gave their liquid coos of welcome. Fred removed a band from the bird’s leg and slipped out a tiny piece of thin paper. “This records the date and time when she was released. I do the same when I have birds to send off from here. The army used these birds all through the last war to carry messages. Most of them survived. Gunfire, hawks, storms, they got through it all. And look, I can hold her in the palm of my hand.”
Fred was a small man who had gone bald at an early age. Tyler could hardly remember seeing him without his cloth cap. Tonight he was bare headed, and it made him seem naked and vulnerable.
“When you say pigeon,” Fred continued, “most people think of the fat, slow birds that waddle around the churchyards, but racing pigeons are athletes. I have to train them at least three times a week so they can build up their stamina. They’re just like any other competitive creature, they’ve got to stay fit.” He placed the bird inside the cage. “Our Bobby has always been athletic. He must have got it from his mum, not me. I’m useless but he was a good little football player, wasn’t he, Tom?”
“He was that. The best.”
Fred was watching to make sure the pigeon was eating. “Do you remember that day they held the trials for the under-sixteen football club in Whitchurch?”
“I do indeed. It was bloody cold and miserable. Your Bobby was the best by far. He played his heart out. He got in easily.”
Fred still didn’t turn from the coop. “He’s always been the kind of lad that if you knocked him down, he’d get right up again.”
Tyler thought Fred was weeping but in the darkness he couldn’t see him properly.
“He will again, Fred. You’ll see. You’ve got to give it time.”
“They were like the four musketeers, weren’t they? Your lad, ours, Dennis, the scamp, and Wilf Marshall.”
“It’s a rotten shame about Wilf.”
“Bobby hasn’t said much about Wilf. Hasn’t said much about anything is truth of the matter.”
“Mine neither.”
“Funny how life goes, in’t it, Tom? My old man was a tough bloke who spoke with his hands first and asked questions later. I remember thinking when he was whaling the tar out
of me or one of my brothers that I’d do it differently if ever I had a son. So when Bobby came along I stepped back, left him more to his mother. I never laid a hand on him.… Perhaps that were a mistake. It made him too soft. It didn’t do him no good when he went in the army. They don’t want soft lads there. They take ordinary decent fellows that have been raised to respect them that are not as strong, like the elderly and the unfortunate, that sort of thing. The army takes these lads and wants them to become killers. It’s not surprising some of them crack, is it?”
He started to cry, the dry, hard, shattering tears of a man who had never expressed any sort of feelings since he was a child. Awkwardly, Tyler patted him, then finally put his arm around his shoulders and comforted him.
T
YLER DECIDED TO FORGO THE PUB AND CHECK IN
at home.
Janet was listening to the wireless, tapping her foot to the lively music. She smiled with delight when she saw him.
“Dad. I was wondering when you’d be home.” She screwed up her face at him. “Gosh, Dad, you look beat. Can I get you some tea? Have you had your supper?”
“Mom said she’d leave something in the oven for me.”
“Sit down. I’ll get it for you.”
“You know what, pet? I don’t have much time. I’ve got to go out again. If you can make me a fried egg on toast, I’ll double your allowance.”
“I’ll keep you to that.”
“I’ll come and keep you company while you slave.”
He followed her into the kitchen, happy it was just the two of them.
Janet peered into the pantry. “You’re in luck. We’ve got one egg left. And there’s a sausage. Do you want that as well?”
“Just the egg, thanks.”
She put some lard into the frying pan and broke the egg into it. She was obviously enjoying making the food for him and he was touched.
“Where’s the bread? I’ll cut it myself.”
She pointed at the loaf of bread in the larder and he brought it out, slicing off two thick pieces.
“You can fry these in the fat.”
He sat down at the kitchen table, loosening his tie.
“ Where were you?” Janet asked.
He paused, unsure how to tell her what had happened, but she forestalled him.
“Granddad told me about the girl being killed. It’s the talk of the village.”
“Is it, indeed?” No wonder the Ministry of Defence was putting on such a campaign about keeping information close to the chest. He supposed one of the constables must have said something.
“Is that what you were called out about?” Janet asked.
“It was.”
“It’s so horrible to think about, Daddy. I’ve seen the Land girls in town and they’re such a jolly lot. Do you know who did it?”
“Not yet.”
Janet looked at him, her expression fearful. “Granddad said she had been raped and then shot.”
“She was shot but there was no rape.”
“He says it was probably an escaped Jerry from the camp. He thinks we should send all those internees back to London and put them in jail, or better still, hang them. He says they’re all dangerous criminals.”
“Your grandfather is wrong about that.” He bit back what he’d been about to add: “the stupid old coot.” He didn’t want his daughter to be caught between two loyalties. As far as Tyler was concerned, Walter Lambeth was an ignorant, hard-headed cuss who wouldn’t recognize an independent thought if it bit him on his backside.
“The men at the camp are mostly Jewish refugees who escaped from the Nazis. Good blokes who got caught in the squeeze. Oi, I like my eggs soft.” Janet had been splashing hot fat over the egg.
“Sorry.”
There was something in her voice that made him gaze at her more closely.
“Don’t worry about it, pet. I didn’t mean to sound sharp with you. I know this news is very upsetting.”
She gulped. “It’s not only that Dad. It’s something else. Something I have to talk to you about.”
Crikey. Both of his children were acting as if they had the troubles of the world on their shoulders. He stood up and gently removed the frying pan from the stove. His bread was in danger of burning.
“I’ll finish this. You sit down and tell me what’s the matter.”
She did as he said, and he slid the hardening egg onto his fried bread and slipped it onto a plate. He sat down opposite her and chomped on his sandwich. Egg ran out of the sides and down his chin. He licked it off with his fingers.
“You’ve dripped egg on your shirt,” said Janet.
“Shite.” He rubbed at it with his handkerchief.
“It’s Granddad …” She swallowed hard.
“Has he been giving you a hard time? You weren’t late again, were you?”
“No. It’s not that …”
“Spit it out, Jan. I’m all ears.”
She answered quickly. “I think he’s into the black market.”
Tyler mopped up the remains of the egg with his bread. “What makes you say that?”