River of Darkness

'He has to be taught not to do this. Skin and muscle cling to the blade making it difficult to extract.

The correct method, as taught by the Army, is a short, stabbing thrust followed by a half-twist to break the friction as the weapon is withdrawn. All the wounds we have been discussing show these characteristics.'

One of the Guildford detectives held up his hand.

'Sir, are you saying a bayonet fixed to a rifle was used in these killings?'

'I am.'

'Were they all killed by the same man?'

'I believe so.' Madden paused. 'You heard what the pathologist said. "A remarkable degree of uniformity."

I'll go further and say that whoever killed them was an expert in the use of this weapon. In each case only one thrust was required. Either the man was highly trained, or, more likely, was once an instructor himself.

Possibly an Army sergeant.'

Again there was a murmur from the assembled detectives. Madden glanced at Sinclair and sat down.

'Right!' The chief inspector looked at his watch. 'If there are no more questions, I suggest we get started.' "Thank you, Chief Inspector. A fine summary, if I may say so.' Sir Clifford Warner paused at the top of the church hall steps to shake Sinclair's hand. Lord Stratton hovered at his shoulder. 'You'll keep me informed?'

'Of course, sir.'

The Surrey chief constable glanced curiously at Madden as he moved away.

'They were talking about you earlier, John.' Sinclair was filling his pipe from a leather pouch. 'Warner wanted to hear about your run-in with the Lord Lieutenant.'

'Has Raikes lodged a complaint?'

Madden's pallor seemed more striking in the morning sunlight. Sinclair wondered if he had been disturbed by the thought of the bayoneted bodies. They were colleagues of long standing, their acquaintance going back to before the war when Sinclair's eye had first been caught by the tall young detective, fresh out of the uniformed branch. Much had happened to Madden since then.

'Not that I know of, and not that I care. Let Raikes get back to doing what he does best, slaughtering innocent birds and beasts and stay out of police business.' The chief inspector struck a match. 'Oakley, you say?'

'Yes, sir.' Madden drew on the cigarette he had lit some moments before. 'It's on the other side of the ridge. I'd like to get over there. I think our man might have come that way.'

'You'll need a car, then.'

'Lord Stratton's offered to lend us one.'

'So he has. What's more I've accepted. God knows, we'll get no help from the Yard.' Scotland Yard's attitude towards motorized transport — they saw no reason why any policeman should be supplied with a vehicle when he had two perfectly good feet — was a pet grievance of the chief inspector's. Second only to his dogged and so far unsuccessful campaign to have a central police laboratory established. 'He took your side, by the way, Stratton did. He said Raikes was wrong to go inside the house and wrong to invite him along. Called him a blockhead. Quite brightened my morning, his lordship did.'

Madden trod on his cigarette. 'What about the press, sir? Have you spoken to them yet?'

'I'm meeting them at noon. Just for now, and between us, I'll not discourage the notion of a gang, if anyone brings it up. One man on his own — now that's a disturbing thought.'

They moved aside as the first group of villagers come to be interviewed gathered at the foot of the steps. Dressed as though for church, Sinclair noted.

Suits and ties for the men, hats for the women. He made his own silent prayer: Let just one of them remember something, anything, a face, a description…

A young woman knelt to tie on a toddler's bonnet.

The sight caused Sinclair's face to harden.

'I'll be seeing Dr Blackwell later,' he said. 'I'm not happy about that little girl staying in her house. She ought to be in hospital. It's something the doctor should understand. Can't she be persuaded to see reason?'

'Not an easily persuadable woman, sir.' Madden's face was a mask.

'Is she not?' The chief inspector's eyes lit up. 'We'll see about that. I intend to have words with this dragon.'

The car was parked in the cobbled courtyard of the village pub, where Madden had left his bag with the landlord earlier that morning. It was a well-worn Humber with a dent in the rear mudguard. Lord Stratton himself, bareheaded, stood talking to two of the villagers. When he saw Madden he came over.

'Inspector, I must apologize for what happened yesterday.' His thin, seamed face showed the ravages of a sleepless night. 'Raikes had no business taking me into that house, and I had no business accepting.

Well, I've paid for it.'

'Sir?'

'I can't get it out of my mind. The sight of the bodies… Poor Lucy Fletcher, laid out like a sacrifice.

What kind of man would do a thing like that? Then I find myself thinking perhaps there were more than one…'

'We don't know yet that she was raped, sir.'

'No… no… of course.' He thrust his hands into the pockets of his tweed jacket and stared at the ground. 'The villagers keep asking me… There are some things one doesn't want to know.'

'How are they taking it?'

'Badly.'

Madden sought and obtained directions to Oakley.

He drove along the same road he had travelled the day before, past Melling Lodge, where two uniformed policemen stood on duty at the closed gates and a man lugging a heavy press camera leaned against a car parked on the grass verge. A mile or so further on he came on another set of gates and another uniformed constable. He stopped the car and got out.

'Is this where Dr Blackwell lives?' Madden could see the house at the end of an avenue of limes. He only knew it from the other side.

'Yes, sir. We've got a man inside, but Mr Boyce sent me over to watch the gates. The doctor was bothered by the press this morning, they wanted to know about the little girl.'

A mile further on he came to a signpost for Oakley, turned left and followed a road that led through a saddle in the wooded ridge down to the broad open plain he had seen the day before from the top of Upton Hanger. Another signpost directed him on to a dirt road and he drove through fields where the corn had already turned golden from the long, rainless summer.

The hamlet of Oakley comprised no more than a dozen houses grouped around the church tower. Madden brought the car to a stop beside a whitewashed building with the picture of a stage-coach and the name 'Coachman's Arms' painted in faded lettering on the wall. As he was setting the handbrake a police sergeant stepped out of the doorway of a cottage across the road. He looked at Madden inquiringly. The inspector got out of the car and produced his warrant card.

'Gates, sir. From Godalming.' The sergeant touched his helmet. 'It's this Highfield business. I've been sent over here to talk to the locals. They don't rate a village bobby.'

'You'll ask them if they've seen any strangers?'

Madden drew him into the shade of a chestnut tree growing in front of the church.

'Yes, sir. And anything out of the ordinary they might have noticed these past few days.'

'We're specially interested in any cars that might have passed through the village.'

'Shouldn't be too many of those, sir. Mind you, it was a bank holiday.'

'Also cars parked at the roadside. Perhaps even off the road where they mightn't be noticed.' Madden became aware that Gates was looking over his shoulder. His glance had turned to a flat, hard stare.

The inspector turned his head and saw a man standing in the doorway of the Coachman's Arms with his hands in his pockets watching them.

He faced the sergeant again. 'I'm going to take a walk through the fields, but I'd like a word with you before you leave. How long will you be here?'

'An hour should do it, sir. Then I've got to go to Craydon — that's a few miles away — and ask the same questions there.'