‘I shall think twice another time. It’s a bit hard if you only try to carry out your ideals and a serpent turns and bites you in the heel.’
‘When we get to a telephone you’d better give a description of him to the police.
‘How can I? They would ask all sort of questions and I should have to say I’d got him into the hostel on somebody else’s ticket.’
‘I don’t suppose the police would worry about that. If he is the escaped murderer they ought to be told about him. You can describe your anorak and your rucksack, can’t you? Lucky he didn’t pinch your boots as well.’
‘I don’t suppose he could get them on. I’ve got small feet for my height. Why don’t we flag down a likely car and hitch a lift? I don’t feel like footslogging it all day. Somebody can jolly well do me a good turn for a change.’
‘Where shall we go?’ asked Erica, when they were all in the car after she had bought the tickets for the dancers’ show.
‘To identify this church hall and then south, more or less,’ said Isobel.
‘To keep out of the murderer’s way?’
‘We don’t know which is his way. I said south because we haven’t explored in that direction.’
Enquiry at the post office in Gledge End produced directions so that they found the church hall, and then Erica turned on to the outskirts of the southern end of the little town and took the road to Alderwood where there were castle ruins for Tamsin to sketch and the others to explore.
‘Although we’d better take it in turn to be with her in the car,’ said Erica, ‘in case our bright lad has taken it into his head to follow us again on that damned motorbike. Not you, Hermy. It would take Isobel or me to wipe the floor with him. Not that I think he’ll bother us again.’
They saw nothing of Adam and had forgotten all about the convict until they had the most grim of reminders. They had tea at the only café in the little town of Alderwood and then, as there was plenty of daylight left, Erica decided to make a long cast round to get back to the forest and the cabin.
The route was supposed to take them across country by secondary roads to Gledge End and so home, but proved shorter than Erica had thought, so, instead of picking up the main road at a village called Yieldrigg, she went north on another secondary road with the intention of half-circling the forest area before dropping south again.
Eventually this brought them on to the moor and Hermione soon realised that they were on the road she had taken by mistake on her first journey. There was no fear of getting lost this time, as the neighbourhood was now familiar ground. She was looking out of the side window of the back seat which she was sharing with Isobel when she spotted the bicycle. Tamsin, seated beside the driver, saw it at the same moment and said, ‘Somebody seems to have had a nasty spill. There’s a bike in the heather.’
Erica pulled up on the verge.
‘No reason for anybody to have had an accident on a road like this,’ she said, ‘unless there was a car involved.’ Isobel said that perhaps they had better take a look. ‘You and me,’ she said to Erica. ‘You two can stay with the car.’
Chapter 5: BLOODSTAINED BRACKET
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Tamsin, made unusally nervous because of her damaged and now treacherous ankle, said, ‘Do be careful! There are stories of girls being pulled from bikes. This may have happened here. That convict, you know. He may still be about and he may be desperate for money.’
As soon as the other two had left the car Hermione got out too, went round to the driver’s seat and joined Tamsin.
‘Cheer up, ’ she said. ‘If the convict pops out on them from one of the dips they can make a dash for it and I can start up the car in no time. But don’t worry. He’ll be far enough away by now. Is that ankle being a nuisance?’
‘Aches a bit. It makes me feel helpless.’
‘Yes, we shouldn’t have let you walk on it. Keep a lookout on your side and if they begin to run I’ll start the engine.’
‘They’ve picked up the bike.’
‘Yes. The front wheel looks as though it’s buckled.’
‘They’re walking away from us.’ Both girls watched as the older ones, having moved further off, stood with their backs to the car and looked into one of the dips in the moor. Then Erica went forward, while Isobel remained looking downwards. They returned at a sober pace and Hermione relinquished the driver’s seat, but Erica said, ‘I’m all shook up. It’s rather nasty. We’ve got to go to Gledge End and see the police. You drive.’
‘Well, of course you weren’t to know, miss,’ said the Superintendent of Police, ‘but it’s a pity you picked up the bicycle. We may have to depend on the handlebars for an attacker’s dabs. Still, no doubt we can manage. We’ll have to eliminate yours. Which of you picked up the bicycle? Both of you handled it? Of course we shall destroy your prints as soon as we’ve done with them. You need not think they’ll be on permanent record. Staying in one of the forest cabins are you? If I might have the number? Right. Just out for a drive, you say, when one of you spotted the bike. Just so. Thought, when you found the body, that there might have been a hit-and-run motorist? On a lonely moorland road it’s quite possible that’s just what happened. We can’t be sure until we get a full report of the injuries. A nasty experience for you ladies, but I’m bound to say that you have acted in a very public-spirited manner in looking about you and then coming straight to us to report that you found the body.’
‘I rather wish we hadn’t found it,’ said Erica when they were back in the cabin. ‘Her head was an awful mess. I’ve seen some results of accidents on the building sites, but I’ve never seen anything like that. Whoever did it, motorist or whatever, must be in a desperate flap to have dragged the body off the road and tumbled it into that dip. You’d have thought he would have chucked the bike in after it, and I wish to goodness he had. Then none of us would have spotted it and stopped to investigate, and somebody else, later on, would be carrying the can instead of us.’
‘I expect his only idea was to make his getaway before another motorist came along,’ said Tamsin. ‘You think it was a motorist and not the convict, then?’
‘I don’t want to think at all. Yes, I’ll have another cup of tea, please. No, nothing to eat. I couldn’t face it.’
‘Was it very bad?’ said Hermione to Isobel when their door was shut and they were in their bunks that night.
‘I didn’t go close, but Erica is pretty tough and she said it made her feel sick. I saw a lot of blood on the face and clothes, that’s all.’
‘You don’t suppose the police think we bumped her, do you?’
‘Good heavens, no. Why should they?’
‘Well, they might, that’s all.’
‘They wouldn’t be so fatheaded. If we’d done it we should hardly have gone haring off to the police station to report it, should we?’
‘Well, of course we would. Any decent person would.’
‘Yes, but any decent person wouldn’t have hidden the body in that hole. The person who did that wasn’t going to run straight to the police. Look, are you trying to tell me something? Don’t forget I spend my life dealing with cagey adolescents, so speak up.’
‘I’m not an adolescent and I’m not cagey, but there’s something perhaps I ought to tell you before the police spot it. You remember that Erica was a bit shaken and made me drive the car after she had seen the body?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘First to the police station and then here to unload Tamsin and you two before I put the car into the carpark?’
‘Yes, I remember all that. What about it?’