River of Darkness

'He was near the Hastings road,' Madden said. 'But he doesn't travel on main roads. So either he'd just crossed it, or was about to. He was going east or west.'

They studied the map in silence.

'Nothing much to the east.' Hollingsworth spoke again. 'Not till you get to Romney Marsh.'

The chief inspector's forefinger came to rest. Madden grunted an acknowledgement. 'Ashdown Forest.'

'How far is it?' Sinclair checked the scale. 'Less than twenty miles. If he was coming from there…' He clicked his tongue in frustration. 'Damn and blast!

There's ten thousand acres of that. More. We couldn't begin to search it.'

Hollingsworth cleared his throat.

'What is it, Sergeant?'

'A lot of people use those woods, sir. Ramblers, botanists, Scout troops. They could be a help.'

'What we would do well to avoid at this juncture,' the chief inspector enunciated clearly, 'is a massacre of Boy Scouts.'

'Yes, sir, but we could ask them to keep an eye open. Through local police stations. Any sign of fresh digging. All they need do is report it.'

Sinclair looked at Madden, who nodded.

'Good idea, Sergeant. We'll get word out.'

Sinclair waited until Hollingsworth had left the office. Then he spoke: 'I had lunch with Bennett.

Nothing from the War Office as yet. He's tried to give them a nudge, but they move at their own speed over there.'

Madden remained bent over the map. Sinclair studied him benignly. 'Take this Sunday off, John. I'll be at home.'

'Are you sure, sir?' Madden looked up. They had agreed that one or other should be within reach of a telephone during the weekends.

'I am. Consult Mrs Sinclair, if you have any doubts.

She will assure you that the garden requires my urgent attention.'

The chief inspector had noted an alteration in his colleague's appearance of late, a lightening of the shadows. There seemed to him at least one possible explanation for it. 'If I were you I'd get out of London,' he suggested, with guileless innocence. 'Treat yourself to some country air.'

She was waiting for him at the station. The red Wolseley two-seater was parked where he remembered it, in the shade under the plane tree. Her tanned forearms resting on the steering-wheel reminded him of the moment beside the stream when they had kissed.

'Father's off shooting pheasants.' She took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. 'We've got the whole day to ourselves.'

The tables outside the Rose and Crown were crowded with lunch-time customers. Heads turned as they drove by.

Helen laughed. 'That'll set tongues wagging.'

But her smile faded as they passed the locked gates of Melling Lodge. 'I get so angry whenever I think about it. There was no reason why it should have happened. The vicar saw fit to preach to us last Sunday on the mysterious workings of Divine Providence. I asked him afterwards if he thought the murders were an Act of God. He hasn't spoken to me since.'

Madden put his hand on hers. 'No reason, perhaps.

But there might be an explanation. Have you seen Dr Weiss again?' It felt strange to play the role of comforter.

'Franz came down for lunch the day before he went home. He said you'd met, but he didn't say what you'd talked about.'

'I asked him to be discreet. I was breaking the rules by going to him as it was.'

Later, when they reached the house, he gave her an account of his conversation with the psychiatrist, speaking freely, as he always did when they discussed his work, shedding the reserve he would normally have shown with an outsider. He had never felt the need to keep any knowledge from her; he could think of no fact from which she might shrink.

'It's not what I imagined,' she admitted. 'I thought it was blind chance that brought him to that house. If Franz is right, he must have seen Lucy earlier. Does that mean he was in Highfield?'

'Most probably. But we don't know when. Or why he came here.'

They ate lunch in the arbour on the terrace, looking out over the sun-bruised lawn. The green leaves of the weeping beech were changing to russet, and beyond the orchard the rising wave of Upton Hanger showed tints of red and gold.

Later, she suggested going for a walk. 'I want to see the place where you and Will were shot at. I asked him to show me, but he refused. He didn't dare say it was no business of a woman's, but I could see he was longing to.'

She waited until the maid had finished clearing the table and taken the tray inside. 'I've given Mary the afternoon off. We'll have the house to ourselves when we get back.'

Her eyes bore an unmistakable invitation and Madden felt the blood stir within him. He had never known a woman like her. One so open in her desire, so free of shame or pretence. When they set off down the lawn, she called to the dog. 'It's all right, Molly.

You can come this time.' Laughing when she caught his eye.

They went through the orchard to the gate at the bottom of the garden. He paused, crossing the stream, to sniff the air. 'We'll have rain later.'

'Why, John Madden! I didn't know you were a country man.' She grasped his hand and let him draw her up on to the bank.

'I grew up on a farm. I didn't move to London until after my father died.' He realized how little he had told her of himself. How much she had taken on trust.

'After Alice and the baby died I left the force. I couldn't continue with the same life. I had an idea of going back to the land.'

'Why didn't you?'

'The war came instead.'

'And afterwards…?'

'It didn't seem to matter any more.'

Nothing had, he might truthfully have said, until he had met her.

When they reached the circle of beeches with its bowl of dead leaves — deeper now with the fresh falls of autumn — he recalled the image that had come to him before, of treading on a mattress of dead bodies.

At their last meeting she had urged him not to block out his memories of the war. 'That's why your dreams are so intense. You must try to bring all that back into your conscious mind.'

He thought she hadn't understood and had tried to explain. All he wanted to do was put the past behind him.

'I know how you feel. It's like Sophy not speaking about that night. She wants to pretend it never happened. But our minds won't let us do that. We have to remember before we can forget.'

He owed her so much already. The anguish of the past was receding, the abyss no longer yawned at his feet. He didn't know how the miracle had occurred, only that he had found it lying in her arms, and in the assurance of her measured glance. He wanted to tell her these things, but could find no words that would not make some fresh claim on her, a claim to which he felt he had no right. He still thought of himself as damaged. Not a whole man.

He showed her the spot on the path where he and Stackpole had been standing when the first shots were fired and pointed out the thicket on the slope above.

'I think he recognized Will and knew he was a policeman. I was just bending down to look at the footprint when I heard him draw back the bolt of his rifle.'

'What was he doing up there?' She shaded her eyes, scanning the dark line of ilexes.

'We're not sure. He might have returned to collect what he stole from the house. He'd already started digging.'

'He was mad to come back. He could so easily have been caught.'

'According to Dr Weiss, that wouldn't have stopped him. He says he acts from compulsion.'

She looked at the beech tree where Madden had taken cover, sliding her fingers into the jagged hole gouged in the side of the trunk. When he asked if she wanted to climb up to where the dugout was, she shook her head quickly. 'No, let's get away from here.'

The rain he'd predicted arrived in a blustery squall and they turned for home. By the time they reached the bottom of the ridge and crossed the stream it had become a downpour. The orchard offered no cover and they ran hand in hand to the shelter of the weeping beech. Madden saw that the lights were switched on in the house. Helen had seen them, too.