Martineau drew his attention to the leisurely approach of a County policeman in uniform. They watched the man saunter toward a blue-painted police pillar.
“Going to make his contact,” Devery guessed.
When the P.C. was a few yards from the pillar, the red light on top of it began to flash in and out. The man did not quicken his pace. He strolled to the pillar, turned off the light, opened the door and took out the telephone.
“Here’s where he gets further news about robbery-violence in Granchester,” said Martineau.
But the constable’s attitude changed too abruptly. His back was turned to the men in the Jaguar, but his interested, almost tense attitude was unmistakable. What he was hearing was more immediately and personally important than any crime in Granchester. As he listened he looked around at a red-and-white bus which was approaching at speed. It was a North Western Lines single-decker, bound for Bradford via Halifax.
As the bus drew near the policeman’s attitude became strained. He scarcely had time to hear all the message. He gabbled something into the phone, slammed it into its box, and ran out signaling to the driver of the bus. The bus rushed past him and stopped twenty yards beyond him. He sprinted after it and boarded it. The bus went on its way up the hill.
“What do you make of that?” Martineau asked.
“Accident up the road,” Devery surmised. “Fatal accident, happen.”
“When you were in uniform, did you run so hard to a fatal accident?”
“Well no, I don’t suppose I did.”
“There’s lots of work, lots of responsibility, and little glory attached to a fatal accident,” said Martineau. “I’m thinking he’d have listened longer and let the bus go, to give the motor patrol a chance to beat him to it. He’d reckon it was their job, anyway.”
“Yes sir. But it’s certainly none of ours.”
Martineau thought about that. “I think we’ll go after that bus, Devery,” he said.
They followed the bus up to the dark rolling moors. In a few minutes they were close behind it. The County policeman was still standing on the step of the bus, looking ahead.
“Overtake,” said Martineau. “We might be wasting time.”
In the long black car they fairly zoomed past the bus, but it was still in sight behind them when they saw a car standing beside a lonely farmhouse. Near the car there was the small figure of a man in the road, looking their way. This, then, was the source of the Comity policeman’s message.
The man looked at them expectantly as they approached. He was a small, neatly dressed man, and they guessed that he was a commercial traveler. Devery drew up the car beside him.
“Police?” the man asked.
“Yes,” said Martineau.
“It’s about three hundred yards further up, in the dip there,” the man began.
“Get in the car,” said Martineau, reaching to open the rear door.
The man got in, and they went on in silence. He seemed to think that they knew all about the matter in hand.
Devery said quietly, from the side of his mouth: “The County people aren’t going to like this, you know.”
Martineau looked at him, and he said no more.
They were driving up to the skyline. There was a crest, then the gradient eased. There was a short level stretch of road before the climb began again. This was the “dip” which the traveler had mentioned. From it, all that could be seen was four hundred yards of gray road, a slope of dark moorland, and the limitless gray sky.
“Just here,” the traveler said.
When the car stopped he was out before them, hurrying into the waste of dark grass and heather.
“Hold it!” Martineau called. “Don’t go jumping about there.” He knew what it was. He felt that he had known for some time, ever since he had seen the P.C. board the bus.
The traveler waited, and allowed the detectives to lead the way. They stepped carefully over the rough ground, looking about them as they walked. Ten yards from the road there was a small hillock. Behind the hillock, on bare black peat hag, lay the body of a girl.
The girl had been young, smart, and pretty. She lay where she had been dropped, and she was graceful even without life in her. Her head was thrown back, and there were bruises on her tender throat. Her right wrist was linked to a ripped leather bag by a bright steel chain. Besides the marks on her neck, part of a great dark bruise was visible on her chest above the neckline of her dress. Her eyes were wide open, and Martineau reflected sadly that the last thing they had seen had been the face of her murderer. Her eyes had photographed him, and his image had been filed away in a remote cell of her brain. Now the brain could never recall that picture. It was unobtainable.
There was no sign that the girl had been “interfered with.” Her skirts were around her legs, her stockings intact. The inspector thought bitterly: “A nice, clean, bloody inhuman murder.”
“It’s the girl from Gus Hawkins’ office, and she’s dead,” he said over his shoulder to Devery. “See if you can reach Headquarters from here. If you can’t, go down to the farmhouse and phone.”
As Devery got into the police car the North Western bus drew up, with passengers staring through the windows like goldfish in a tank. The County policeman dropped from the step and came bounding toward the hillock.
“Steady,” said Martineau. “Watch where you’re stepping.”
The authority in his voice halted the constable, because he was used to authority. But: “Who’re you?” he demanded.
“Inspector Martineau. C.I.D., Granchester City. Has anybody boarded that bus since you did?”
“No,” said the P.C.
“Then send it on its way. Otherwise the passengers will be getting out and messing up the whole place.”
The uniformed man did not like the order, but he could see the sense of it. He turned and waved to the bus driver. The driver nodded, put the bus in gear, and drove off.
“Now, what’s all this?” the P.C. demanded.
“Let’s get back to the road.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” said the man, still obeying. “This is some sort of a fast move. I saw your car pass the bus. You’re off your manor.”
“I’m aware of it,” said Martineau. “But I think it’s a City job. Did you get a message about a robbery-violence in Granchester, and a girl being snatched?”
“Sure I did. And I guess this is the girl.” The man’s voice was angry. Probably this was the first time he had ever been closely associated with a murder, and but for the City men he would have been the first policeman on the spot. No doubt he would feel that he had been robbed of an opportunity to attract favorable notice.
Martineau seemed about to reply, then he lapsed into a thoughtful silence. Anyone who knew him could have told the frowning constable that he and his annoyance were not only ignored, they were completely forgotten. Martineau was thinking of the job: the murdered girl, and the murderers. How he was thinking of them! It was a City job, all right. Like gray vermin the men had emerged from the smoke. Soon, no doubt, they would be returning to it.
The girl was employed by Gus Hawkins, and the ripped cash bag with the steel chain told her story. Gus Hawkins was a bookmaker, and everybody knew that the bookies had had a good day yesterday. Not one favorite had won. Probably Gus had been shouting the odds at Doncaster, and he had come home loaded. This morning he had sent the girl to the bank with a bagful of money. She had been waylaid. The chain had been too strong, and the thieves had taken both girl and bag. Maybe she had recognized one of them. Anyway, one or more of them had been the death of her. Strangled, by the look of her. Strangled for a few hundred pounds of punters’ money.
For a long time Martineau had been expecting something of the sort to happen. In England, the safe country, where policemen went unarmed and the criminal world had a climate less violent than most other lands, employers and businessmen not only disregarded the possibility of robbery in the street, they asked for it. Near any bank, in any town, on any weekday morning, possible victims could be seen from the elderly commissionaire and small shortsighted clerk transporting the payroll of a big factory, to the office boy or shopgirl going casually to and fro with a handful of fivers. They asked for it. And when they sent out a young girl with money chained to her wrist, they asked for murder.