The Midden (26 page)

'What if they're coming the other way, sir?' a detective asked, and was rewarded with a scowl
which the Inspector turned into a smile.

'Very good point, very good point, glad you raised it,' he said in an almost staccato
parade-ground voice. 'Vehicles proceeding in a north-south direction will be intercepted...' the
pointer waved vaguely around in search of a suitable crossroads and finally settled on Iddbridge
five miles away, 'Here. Or alternatively, here.' This was a cattle track some two and a half
miles down the Iddbridge road. But before there could be any discussion of the various problems
this might entail Inspector Rascombe had turned to another issue. 'I myself intend to direct
Units D and S, which will be surveillance units covering the farm, the house and the estate. I
intend to establish a mobile base in the approximate area here at Six Lanes End. We will move at
night and hopefully be able to interpolate the estate grounds under cover of darkness and work in
twenty-four-hour shifts depending on the circumstances obtaining at the time...'

For another three-quarters of an hour the Inspector droned on and it was only when Sergeant
Bruton had scribbled 'Must look up "interpolate" in dictionary' for the fifteenth time to keep
himself awake that Rascombe got back to the nature of the crimes they were supposed to be
investigating.

'We have,' he said, 'to be on the particular look-out for any child or children plural being
taken into the Middenhall area and hopefully taken out again...Yes, Sergeant?'

'You can't be suggesting that Miss Midden can have anything to do with child abuse, can you,
sir?' asked Sergeant Bruton almost in spite of himself. 'I mean she's, well...I mean...' He gave
up.

'When you've been in the Force as long as I have, Sergeant,' said the Inspector, who had in
fact been in a shorter time than Bruton, 'you will learn that the outward appearance of some of
the nastiest villains is in direct contradistinction to their horribleness. Remember that,
Sergeant, and you won't be taken in. And of course vice versa.'

By the following night, the various units were in position around the Middenhall. Operation
Kiddlywink, the codename Rascombe had chosen, had begun.

By the time Miss Midden got home that night it was well past midnight and she was exhausted.
And elated.

'I think a nightcap is called for,' she said, and took a bottle of sloe gin she had made
before Christmas and poured herself a glass. Then she looked doubtfully at the Major. The poor
man was looking so wistfully at the bottle, and he had behaved himself with Timothy Bright.

'All right,' she said. 'You too. Get yourself a glass. We've cause for celebration. I don't
know how much money is in that hold-all but at a rough guess I'd say getting on for half a
million pounds. There's a parcel in there which must contain money as well. He was to take it to
Spain and deliver it to someone there. So, cheers. And don't look so stunned. It's only
money.'

The Major was stunned, so stunned that he hadn't touched his sloe gin. 'Half a million? Half a
million?' he stammered. And she said it was only money. Major MacPhee had never been in the
presence of so much money in his entire life. And he had never been in the presence of a woman
who could treat such an enormous sum with such disdain. He couldn't find words to express his
shock.

'It may be less and it may be more,' Miss Midden went on. 'What does it matter? It's a great
deal of money. That's all.'

'What are you going to do with it?' he managed to ask.

Miss Midden sat down at the kitchen table and grinned. It was an exultant grin with a hint of
malice. The Major was a weak man and he needed to know that he wasn't going to lay his hands on
any of the cash. 'I am going to sleep with the shotgun beside the bed. That's the first thing I'm
going to do,' she said. 'And after that we shall see.'

She finished her sloe gin, picked up the hold-all, and went through to her office to fetch the
gun and a mole-trap. Mole-traps were useful for catching things other than moles. Like hands.

Once in her bedroom she emptied the hold-all and put the money in a cardboard box on top of
her old mahogany wardrobe. After that she stuffed the bag with empty shoe boxes and some old
clothes. Finally she put the mole-trap, now set and open, in the middle with a piece of paper
over it. She also locked the door and wedged a chair under the doorknob. Then she went to
bed.

Outside, the weather had begun to change. A night wind blew across the open fell and with it
there came rain, gusts of rain which blew against the window. Miss Midden slept soundly. She had
begun to accomplish what she had set herself to do. It had very little to do with money.

It was still raining in the morning when a motorcycle turned up and a man with a brown paper
parcel came to the back door. Miss Midden opened the door reluctantly. 'Package for Major
MacPhee,' he said and handed it over with a receipt for Miss Midden to sign. She put the parcel
on the kitchen table and watched him ride off. Then she went up to the old nursery with Timothy
Bright's breakfast.

'I'll get you some clothes,' she said. 'The Major isn't your size. He's too small, but I think
there are some things of my grandfather's that will fit you.'

Timothy Bright thanked her and started on his porridge and bacon and eggs. At least the food,
wherever he might be, was good. He hadn't eaten so well for ages. And even his terror had left
him. He was beginning to feel safe.

Miss Midden returned with a pair of blue dungarees, an old shirt without a collar, and a
sweater that had holes in the elbows. There was also a pair of boots that looked as though they
had been used in the garden and had rusty studs on the soles. The boots were several sizes too
big for him and had no laces.

'But don't think about leaving the house,' she told him, 'or showing yourself at the windows.
I want only one other person to know you are here.'

'What other person?' Timothy Bright asked in alarm.

'The one who brought you here,' said Miss Midden, and went downstairs to find the Major
standing at the kitchen table looking at the brown paper parcel.

'Well, don't just stand there. Open it and look at the goodies inside,' she said.

'But I don't know what it is. I haven't sent away for anything. I can't think who sent it to
me.'

Miss Midden started doing the washing-up. 'One of your admirers down at the hell-hole,' she
suggested. 'Some old flame. Mrs Consuelo McKoy, probably. She thinks you're a real Major. That
comes from living in California too long. Fantasyland.'

Behind her the Major got some scissors and cut through the parcel tape. For a moment he was
silent and then she heard him gasp. She turned and looked at the things lying on the table. They
were not goodies. They were anything but goodies. They were revolting. Miss Midden had never seen
anything like them in her life. And she certainly never wanted to see anything like them again as
long as she lived. She looked up at the Major with utter disgust.

'You filthy animal!' she snarled. 'You utterly revolting...you bloody pervert. Into children.
Little children. You are the lowest form of animal life...not animal. Animals don't go in for
torturing little children. Bah!'

But Major MacPhee was shaking his head and had gone a horrid patchy colour. 'I never sent off
for these,' he stammered, 'I swear I didn't. I really didn't. I don't know where they come from.
I don't like this sort of thing. I never...'

Miss Midden said nothing. She was thinking hard. For once she was inclined to believe the
Major. If he had sent off for them, he wouldn't have been fool enough to open the parcel in her
presence. She was sure of that. He'd have taken it off to his room and gloated over these
revolting photographs and magazines in private. On the other hand...Hand!

'Don't touch them,' she said. 'I'll get a box and a piece of cloth. Just don't handle
them.'

In fact she used a pair of gloves and put the filthy stuff, the product of sick and
profit-conscious minds and a product for sick and evil minds, into a cardboard box very
carefully.

The bewildered Major watched her and kept shaking his head sorrowfully. 'Not me, not me,' he
repeated, almost on the point of tears.

'More to the point, why you?' said Miss Midden. 'Ask yourself that question. First him under
your bed, naked and knocked about. And now this obscenity.' She stopped. This was getting really
dangerous. Someone was setting the Major up. And she'd be with him. She was damned if she would.
And with all that money in the house it was even more dangerous. She would have to move
quickly.

'We've come back early,' she announced. 'Weather changed or something. Anyway we are back. Put
that filth in the back of the car and cover it with a...No, put the box in a dustbin bag.' And
leaving the Major wondering what was going on in her mind, she dashed upstairs and hurled the
contents of the hold-all out onto the bed where the mole-trap went off. Then she packed the money
back into the bag and went downstairs. She put her old hat on, and a raincoat, and went across to
the barn.

Five minutes later she was down at the Middenhall. There was no one about. They were late
risers and she was able to sneak past the front door and round to the back of the house without
being seen. In the walled garden, during the war, there had been a deep air-raid shelter with
concrete steps going down into the darkness. The entrance was covered with brambles and a
self-sown buddleia, and grass grew over the mound. As far as she knew nobody had ever found the
entrance but she had known it was there since she was small. It had terrified her then when she
once went down it with her cousin Lennox. There had been water lying six inches deep in the
passages and the cold and dark and Lennox's claim that it had been used for torturing prisoners
had given her the horrors.

But now she needed that deep and hidden shelter. She clambered through the undergrowth,
cleared away the earth over the iron door, and finally opened it. Then she fetched a torch from
the car and the hold-all and went down into the darkness. The water was still there perhaps the
same water she had waded through thirty-two years before. This time Miss Midden was unafraid. She
was determined. Someone had thrown down a challenge to her. There was nothing better for her. She
loved the fight.

At the very end of the passage, past rooms with rusted iron bunks on either side, the torch
picked out what she had been looking for. It was a long narrow slot halfway up the concrete wall.
Lennox had said it was for putting the dead bodies of men who had been shot down there. What use
it had really had she had no idea. But it was out of sight of the door and anyone peering in
would never spot it unless they came right into the room. She slid her hand along it and found it
was dry. It would do. Then she pushed the hold-all in and went back for the box of obscene
magazines and photographs and brought them down too, first removing the box from the plastic
dustbin bag and putting in the hold-all containing the money to keep it dry in the sodden
atmosphere of the old shelter. When that was done she splashed back and climbed the steps to the
entrance and very carefully stared through the shrubs to make sure no one was about. After that
the earth and grass went back over the iron door and by the time she returned to the old car
there was hardly a sign that anything had been disturbed. Miss Midden went back to the house. It
hadn't even been necessary to tell anyone at the Middenhall that she was home from her holiday.
She had seen no one.

For the rest of the day she worked in the house and planned her next move. Outside the sheets
of rain came down and the wind blew so that even the sheep seemed to huddle under the bank and
the thorn trees along the old drove road. By nightfall the rain had grown even heavier and the
wind continued to howl through the copse behind the Midden and across the chimney tops.

For the officers engaged in Operation Kiddlywink it was not a night to be out in. But
Inspector Rascombe was adamant. A dark, wet and windy night was just the sort the paedophiles at
the Middenhall would choose to stay indoors and watch pornographic videos. They certainly would
not be on the look-out for teams of policemen dressed in arctic camouflage suits borrowed from
the Royal Marines and intended to make them look like sheep safely grazing across Scabside Fell.
He had assembled his men on the Parson's Road. From there they had to cross two miles of rough
country to the Middenhall, and the night was very dark, wet and windy indeed.

'Now, when the advance party has established itself in the park opposite the house and the
auxiliaries are ready to move forward to the farm, I want you to move with the utmost care.
Rutherford, you and Mark will go forward round the lake here...'

At this point a constable opened the door of the British Telecom van the Inspector had
borrowed as his Headquarters and the wind blew the Ordnance Survey map up the wall. The Inspector
and Sergeant Bruton managed to get it straight again and Rascombe continued his briefing.

'As I was saying, you will rendezvous with Markin and Spender here at the bottom of the drive
and attempt to make a visual survey of the house both back and front. Are there any
questions?'

Sergeant Bruton had a great many, but he knew better than to ask them. Instead, a detective
constable wanted to know what he ought to do in the event that he was stopped and asked by one of
the suspects what he was doing.

'In the first place I very much hope that the exercises we have practised will prevent any
such eventuality, and in the second I look to you all to act on your own initiative. The only
thing I would not say is you are police officers. That is imperative if we are not to cause the
suspects to go to ground in a big way. You can be hikers who've lost your way or anything that
seems reasonable at the time. Just don't say you're ice-cream salesmen.'