George's train home from New Street leaves at 5.25. On the return journey, there are rarely schoolboys. Instead, there is sometimes a larger and more loutish element whom George views with distaste. Remarks are occasionally passed in his direction which are quite unnecessary: about bleach, and his mother forgetting the carbolic, and enquiries about whether he has been down the mine that day. Mostly he ignores such words, though if a young rough chooses to make himself especially offensive, George might be obliged to remind him who he is dealing with. He is not physically brave, but at such times he feels surprisingly calm. He knows the laws of England, and knows he can count on their support.
Birmingham New Street 5.25. Walsall 5.55. This train does not stop at Birchills, for reasons George has never been able to ascertain. Then it is Bloxwich 6.02, Wyrley amp; Churchbridge 6.09. At 6.10 he nods to Mr Merriman the stationmaster – a moment that often reminds him of His Honour Judge Bacon's 1899 ruling in the Bloomsbury County Court on the illegal retention of expired season tickets – and positions his umbrella over his left wrist for the walk back to the Vicarage.
Campbell
Since his appointment to the Staffordshire Constabulary two years previously, Inspector Campbell had met Captain Anson on several occasions, but never before been summoned to Green Hall. The Chief Constable's house lay on the outskirts of town, among the water meadows on the farther side of the River Sow, and was reputed to be the largest residence between Stafford and Shugborough. As he walked up the gravel drive off the Lichfield Road and the size of the Hall gradually revealed itself, Campbell found himself wondering how big Shugborough must be. That was in the possession of Captain Anson's elder brother. The Chief Constable, being merely a second son, was obliged to content himself with this modest white-painted mansion: three storeys high, seven or eight windows wide, with a daunting entrance porch supported by four pillars. Over to the right there was a terrace and a sunken rose garden, with beyond it a summer house and a tennis ground.
Campbell took all this in without breaking stride. When the parlourmaid admitted him, he tried to suspend his natural professional habits: working out the likely probity and income of the occupants, and committing to memory items worth stealing – in some cases, items perhaps already stolen. Deliberately incurious, he was nonetheless aware of polished mahogany, white panelled walls, an extravagant hall stand, and to his right a staircase with curious twisted balusters.
He was shown into a room directly to the left of the front door. Anson's study, by the look of it: two high leather chairs on either side of the fireplace, and above it the looming head of a dead elk, or moose. Something antlered anyway; Campbell did not hunt, nor did he aspire to. He was a Birmingham man who had reluctantly applied for transfer when his wife grew sick of the city and longed for the slowness and space of her childhood. Fifteen miles or so, but to Campbell it felt like exile in another land. The local gentry ignored you; the farmers kept to themselves; the miners and ironworkers were a rough lot even by slum standards. Any vague notions that the countryside was romantic were swiftly extinguished. And people out here seemed to dislike the police even more than they did in the city. He'd lost count of the times he'd been made to feel superfluous. A crime might have been committed and even reported, but its victims had a way of letting you know that they preferred their own notion of justice to any purveyed by an inspector whose three-piece suit and bowler hat still smelt of Brummagem.
Anson bustled in, shook hands and seated his visitor. He was a small, compact man in his middle forties, with a double-breasted suit and the neatest moustache Campbell had ever seen: its sides seemed to be mere extensions of his nose, and the whole fitted the triangulation of his upper lip as if bought from a catalogue after precise measurement. His tie was held in place with a gold pin in the shape of the Stafford knot. This proclaimed what everyone already knew: that Captain the Honourable George Augustus Anson, Chief Constable since 1888, Deputy Lieutenant of the county since 1900, was a Staffordshire man through and through. Campbell, being one of the newer breed of professional policemen, did not see why the head of the Constabulary should be the only amateur in the force; but then much in the functioning of society appeared to him arbitrary, based more on antique prejudice than modern sense. Still, Anson was respected by those who worked under him; he was known as a man who backed his officers.
' Campbell, you will have guessed why I asked you to come.'
'I assume the mutilations, sir.'
'Indeed. How many have we now had?'
Campbell had rehearsed this part, but even so reached for his notebook.
'February second, valuable horse belonging to Mr Joseph Holmes. April second, cob belonging to Mr Thomas ripped in exactly the same fashion. May fourth, a cow of Mrs Bungay's similarly treated. Two weeks later, May eighteenth, a horse of Mr Badger's terribly mutilated, and also five sheep on the same night. And then last week, June sixth, two cows belonging to Mr Lockyer.'
'All at night?'
'All at night.'
'Any discernible pattern to events?'
'All the attacks happened within a three-mile radius of Wyrley. And… I don't know if it's a pattern, but they all occurred in the first week of the month. Except for those of May eighteenth, which didn't.' Campbell was aware of Anson's eye on him, and hurried on. 'The method of ripping is, however, largely consistent from attack to attack.'
'Consistently disgusting, no doubt.'
Campbell looked at the Chief Constable, unsure if he did, or didn't, want the details. He took silence for regretful assent.
'They were ripped under the belly. Crosswise, and generally in a single cut. The cows… the cows also had their udders mutilated. And there was damage inflicted upon… upon their sexual parts, sir.'
'It beggars belief, Campbell, doesn't it? Such senseless cruelty to defenceless beasts?'
Campbell pretended to himself that they were not sitting beneath the glassy eye and severed head of the elk or moose. 'Yes, sir.'
'So we are looking for some maniac with a knife.'
'Probably not a knife, sir. I spoke to the veterinary surgeon who attended the later mutilations – Mr Holmes' horse was treated as an isolated incident at the time – and he was puzzled as to the instrument used. It must have been very sharp, but on the other hand it cut into the skin and the first layer of muscle and no further.'
'So why not a knife?'
'Because a knife – a butcher's knife, say – would have gone deeper. At some point, anyway. A knife would have opened up the guts. None of the animals was actually killed in the attacks. Not at the time. They either bled to death or were in such a state when found that they had to be put down.'
'So if not a knife?'
'Something that cuts easily but shallowly. Like a razor. But with more strength than a razor. It could be a tool from the leather trade. Or a farm instrument of some kind. I would assume the man was accustomed to handling animals.'
'Man or men. A vile individual, or a gang of vile individuals. And a vile crime. Have you come across it before?'
'Not in Birmingham, sir.'
'No, indeed.' Anson gave a wan smile and fell briefly silent. Campbell allowed himself to think about the police horses in the Stafford stables: how alert and responsive they were, how warm and smelly and almost furry in their hairiness; how they twitched their ears and put their heads down at you; how they blew through their noses in a way that reminded him of a boiling kettle. What species of human could wish such an animal harm?