‘Just an observation,’ Peach said. Two shelves of Pelican psychology ranged behind his head. Nasty little blue spines. Titles like The Hothouse Society and Alienation and Charisma. Something of an expert on the subject, Peach.
‘Just in case you haven’t noticed, Chief Inspector, my wife’s in a terrible state,’ George said, calmer now, ‘and the way you’re conducting this interview isn’t exactly helping matters.’
‘I know your wife’s in a terrible state.’ Peach’s tone of voice implied that, in his opinion, this ‘terrible state’ had nothing whatsoever to do with the disappearance of the baby. Implied, therefore, that he was privy to the secrets of their marriage. Implied, in fact, omniscience. Such a very cheap yet complex remark. Vintage Peach.
George said nothing.
The Chief Inspector shrugged. He stood up. Walked to the window and back, twisting one palm against the other. ‘Believe me when I say this,’ he said. ‘If there is anything irregular going on here, I shall discover it. Believe me.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Good.’
‘We’ve been here over an hour,’ George said, ‘and my wife’s exhausted. May we go now?’
Peach spread his hands. They were empty of questions.
As George guided Alice towards the door (grief had made an invalid of her), Peach appeared to relent. ‘We’ll do everything in our power,’ he assured the couple, ‘to find your son.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ George muttered.
Whichever way you looked at it, it was true.
*
Nobody could have predicted the effect that the news of the baby’s disappearance would have on New Egypt. During the last two weeks of June the apathy lifted. Rumours flew the length and breadth of the community on giant wings. At first people talked of a kidnapping, a ransom — even a child molester. But then talk of an escape crept in. Stealthily, very stealthily. The few who still harboured dreams of escape themselves gathered in obscure corners of the village — under the disused railway bridge, behind the cricket pavilion, at the back of the greengrocer’s shop — to discuss whether it was possible and, if so, how it could have been done. Dinwoodie held the floor, his bony hands marshalling facts, attacking the air, his extravagant grey hair tumbling on to his high shoulders, into his eyes. The greengrocer also advanced several interesting theories. The two men could often be seen returning through the summer dusk to the privacy of Dinwoodie’s garage. In the light of a single naked bulb, surrounded by tools and grease and the dismembered limbs of motorbikes, they would squat on fruit crates, they would whisper and gesticulate, they would rail and connive. ‘It is time,’ Dinwoodie had been heard to say, ‘to make a stand.’
Towards the end of the month things began to escalate. Dinwoodie founded a secret revolutionary organisation. He called it the New Egypt Liberation Front. It was dedicated, he said, to one simple political goaclass="underline" freedom from oppression. He was just hours away from distributing the first copies of his manifesto when Peach led a dawn raid on his house. Hazard broke Dinwoodie’s arm in a scuffle by the garage door. The greengrocer, who had stayed overnight to assist with the printing, escaped unseen over the garden wall. The police confiscated (and subsequently burned) all the political material they could find and Dinwoodie, clutching his useless arm below the elbow, was arrested and hauled off to the station for questioning. The NELF was officially disbanded. It had lasted slightly less than twenty-four hours.
But the unrest spread. Several crimes were committed. A police officer was attacked by an unknown assailant in the dark alley that ran behind the post office. Dinwoodie’s repeated cries of Fascists carried from his cell in the police station to the road outside where his mother and his sister waited with blank faces and nervous hands for his release. Even more disturbing, perhaps, PC Fox reported the existence of ‘a number of wreaths and assorted bunches of flowers’ on Tommy Dane’s grave in the churchyard. The story of that desperate bid for freedom in the forties had been revived and was being retold in graphic and inflammatory detail through the village. They were witnessing, Fox suggested, the first stirrings of a Tommy Dane cult.
Once again Peach reacted with speed and efficiency. He imposed a curfew. Anybody found on the streets of New Egypt after nine p.m. would be arrested immediately. The offender would be liable to the severest penalties. Peach called an emergency meeting in the church hall to explain his decision. He had introduced the curfew, he maintained, in order to safeguard ‘our future’, the children of the village.
‘We cannot risk another tragedy,’ he declared in his most sombre voice.
George wasn’t fooled.
Two days later the discovery of the white toy dog beside the river became common knowledge and people began to talk of a drowning. George smiled to himself at this shift in public opinion. Rumours of escape were dangerous, subversive. Rumours of death, on the other hand, were quite harmless and acceptable. Peach must have leaked the information with that specific end in mind. George shook his head. How gullible, how fickle people were. How shrewd Peach was.
At the beginning of July a heatwave hit the area. The sky burned white and the clouds hissed like steam. The sun beat down on the drum of the land. People retreated indoors complaining of headaches. Volunteers for the search-parties dwindled. The gossip withered and died away. Now everybody had forgotten about him — even his mother and his sister had given up their vigil — Dinwoodie was quietly released. As apathy descended with a vengeance on the population, so the pressure on the police department began to lift — a perfect example of what Peach liked to call the scissor effect. The grass on the village green turned brown. The leaves on the trees were so dry that they clicked as if they too were made of wood. Rain became a memory. Peach declared a drought. He issued a comprehensive list of instructions pertaining to the use of water: no washing of cars, no lawn sprinklers, no baths. Now people really had something to moan about, something nice and trivial. The search-parties continued, consisting entirely of police officers. Lines of sweat-drenched uniforms could be seen combing the long grasses and the bramble-patches in the vicinity of the river. Peach ordered Dolphin, a powerful swimmer, to drag several hundred feet of the river-bed. No new clues turned up. No fresh evidence. One white toy dog. That was all that remained of Moses Highness. It was a strange time to talk of a drowning but no other conclusion could be drawn.
Towards the middle of the month, almost five weeks after Moses’s disappearance, George was summoned to Peach’s office, alone this time. A far less combative, far wearier meeting. One look at Peach’s face and George guessed.
‘Nothing new, then.’
‘Nothing new,’ Peach admitted. ‘We’ve tried everything, exhausted every possibility.’ He sighed. ‘I can only conclude that Moses, your boy, drowned in the river. We shall never know exactly how.’
George hung his head for an appropriate length of time. When he looked up, the necessary tears filled his eyes. ‘There’s really no hope?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Of course I knew there was a possibility that Moses might have, might have drowned. I just never — ’ His voice faltered and he looked away. His acting had definitely improved.
‘Well,’ Peach said, ‘I’m making it official, as from today,’ and he consulted his calendar, ‘July the fourteenth. We can’t have any loose ends, you understand. Not in a matter like this.’ He paused. ‘There will be the funeral to take care of.’
‘I know.’
‘If there’s anything I can do — ’
George scanned the Chief Inspector’s face for its usual irony. Not a trace. Genuine compassion then. Peach could be almost likeable at times. That was what made him so dangerous.