The Reckoning (7 page)

‘As things stand, though, we're no closer to finding a motive for Gibson's murder than we were on the day he was shot. In fact, based on what we know about him now, it's hard to think of anyone less likely to get himself topped. But somehow Ozzie managed it.'

With that gloomy prospect weighing on his mind, Madden had spent the next two hours wandering about the town with his assiduous guide, whose eagerness to be of help made him an agreeable companion and from whose lips he received a detailed account of the shooting and of the subsequent search for the killer.

‘What nobody understands is why he wasn't spotted,' Boon told him, echoing the words of his superior. ‘I mean, both before and after Mr Hammond saw him walk off. It's as if he suddenly appeared and then disappeared . . . like . . . like . . .'

The young officer struggled to find the right image.

‘Like a genie into a bottle?' Madden offered.

‘Yes, sir, just like that.' Boon beamed. ‘And the amazing thing is there must have been lots of walkers out on the Downs that day – there always are at this time of year – and there's nowhere to hide. It's all open country.'

They had reached the village of Kingston, where Boon had paused to point out Gibson's cottage, and as if to underline his words they were overtaken just then by a party of ramblers. At least a dozen in number, and of both sexes, the men were dressed in twill or corduroy trousers, the women for the most part in tweed skirts and sensible shoes. Armed with staffs and walking sticks – and each with a knapsack – they strode on in determined manner, one or two of them calling out a greeting as they went by.

Madden watched them pass without comment. But the sight gave him food for thought, as he remarked to Billy later when they met up again.

‘The killer can't have known Gibson would be fishing that day. Didn't you say he was away for a few days before he was shot? So either the killer came on him by chance or he already knew Gibson's habits, which means he'd been here before and was waiting for him to come back. It all boils down to the same question: was Gibson deliberately chosen as a victim, or was it just blind chance?'

Billy had been waiting for him outside Gibson's cottage with the news that Chivers was still busy with his visitor, but that he'd been lent the key. They could go in and look around. Madden thanked Boon and, telling his young guide he needn't linger, followed Billy inside.

‘Vic's praying you'll find a picture in here that you recognize,' he murmured to Madden as they went through a small entrance hall, where a raincoat hung from a peg, and a pair of waders like the legs of an otherwise invisible man rested on the
paved floor, into the silent house beyond. ‘To quote him, he's hoping you'll pull a rabbit from the hat.'

The hope proved a vain one. Although all of the pictures in the house, whether paintings or photographs, had been removed from the walls, they were found to have been stacked in wooden crates collected in the study ready for shipping to London, or whatever other destination Edward Gibson had in mind for them. One of them held what seemed to be family photographs – some in frames, others collected in albums – but after the two men had spent half an hour going through them, Madden was forced to admit that he was no closer to recognizing Gibson's face than before.

He had looked hard at two in particular, both of them studio portraits of Oswald as a young man. In one he was pictured sitting in an affected pose with his legs pushed to one side, while his face and the top half of his body were turned to face the camera. Two locks of his lank, dark hair had been carefully combed to frame his temples. His expression was contemplative.

Billy had chuckled on unearthing it from a stack of framed photographs already gathering dust in one of the crates.

‘I remember seeing that one when I was here before,' he said. ‘It was on the wall by the desk. I thought for a moment it was that bloke – what's his name – Oscar Wilde? But it's Ozzie all right.'

Madden said nothing. He simply shook his head.

The last photograph was the study that Billy had seen hanging above the table where Gibson kept his stamp albums, and showed him in the uniform of a First World War officer. Seated with his cap clamped under one arm, he stared back at the camera with a solemn expression. The long locks had vanished: his hair was cut short and he wore a moustache.

Madden studied it for a long moment. But again he shook his head.

‘They all looked like that when they came out to France,' he
said. ‘Those young men . . . they were so determined to do their duty. They had no idea what was waiting for them.' He glanced at Billy. ‘I'm sorry. It's no good. We never met.'

Billy squinted at the photograph. ‘Knowing what we do about Ozzie, I can't help thinking it was a mistake to put him in uniform. He wasn't exactly cut out to be a soldier, was he?'

Madden shrugged. ‘He was the right age, and that was all that counted then. Anyway that's an Army Service Corps badge on his cap. He was a supply officer. It's doubtful he saw any action.'

‘So much for pulling a rabbit from the hat. All things considered, I doubt if I've ever spent a more useless day. I achieved absolutely nothing.'

Madden held out his cup to Helen and she filled it from the teapot. It was after midnight and they were sitting together at the kitchen table while Madden ate a long-delayed supper. Despite getting to Waterloo at what had seemed like a reasonable hour after his return from Lewes, he had had to wait a further hour before his train left and then spend an even longer period sitting in the station at Guildford while their own locomotive – which, according to an announcement broadcast on the loudspeaker, had developed ‘brake trouble' – was detached from the carriages and replaced by another. It was not until a few minutes after eleven o'clock that they had finally rolled into a deserted Highfield station.

Expecting to find Helen in bed, he had instead discovered her in pyjamas and dressing gown curled up in a chair in front of the dying fire with a book on her lap, fast asleep. Or so he had thought until he bent to kiss her and she opened her eyes.

‘I couldn't think what had happened to you.' She had circled his neck with her arms and drawn him down to her. ‘So you had no recollection at all of him?' she asked now.

‘Absolutely none. Lewes didn't jog my memory at all, and neither did Gibson's face. I'm just where I was. It's a complete mystery how he came up with my name.'

He fell silent, peering into his cup. As his wife watched, he put a hand to his brow, touching a scar that showed there near the hairline. It was a legacy of his time in the trenches.

She studied his face.

‘Are you worried about this?' she asked.

‘Not really,' he began, then checked himself as he found her eyes fixed on his. (They were dark blue, and Madden had always felt she had the power to see into him: that she could read his innermost thoughts.) ‘Well, yes, to be truthful. All we know for certain is that a few days before he was killed Gibson had a visitor and that directly afterwards he started to write that letter to the commissioner with my name in it. It's hard not to think the two must be linked. But what the police are wondering – and so am I – is whether that visitor was the same man who shot Gibson a few days later.'

‘What do you think?'

‘He could be.' Madden gnawed at his lip. ‘But I'm hoping he's not.'

‘Because then you wouldn't be involved.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Is there any way of finding out?'

‘There might be. What I need to know is whether that doctor up in Scotland had an experience similar to Gibson's. Did someone call on him in advance? Was he threatened or given some kind of warning? If so, it suggests that Gibson's letter might well be connected to his murder; and that somehow I'm involved in it too, though I can't for the life of me think how.'

Madden frowned.

‘The trouble with that idea is that it doesn't quite fit the facts. If his visitor had frightened him, Gibson would have rung the Lewes police. He was a timid soul. His reason for writing that
letter – or starting it, at any rate – seems to have been to get in touch with me; nothing more. But why is a mystery. And just as puzzling is how he knew I had once worked at the Yard.'

Smothering a yawn, he looked at his watch.

‘No, we can't go to bed yet.' She took hold of his hand. ‘You haven't told me how you mean to find out about the doctor in Scotland, and whether or not he had a visitor like Mr Gibson did – whether the pattern was repeated.'

‘Oh, that . . .' He smiled. ‘Well, Billy can certainly help by asking the police up there to enquire, but that might take a while. I want to get this cleared up as quickly as possible, and I've thought of a shortcut.' His smile widened. ‘I'm going to put Angus to work.'

‘Angus . . . !'

‘He's sitting up there in Aberdeen with his sister, twiddling his thumbs, probably bored stiff. Ballater's not that far away: a couple of hours at most. I looked it up on the map. Chances are he knows some of the local police. And they'll certainly know him – by reputation at least. He ought to be able to ask a few questions without upsetting anyone. I should think he'd jump at the chance.'

6

R
ISING LATER THAN USUAL
next morning, Madden came downstairs to discover that Helen had already had her breakfast and was preparing to leave the house.

‘I'm sorry, darling, I couldn't wait. I've got to drive into Guildford later this morning. I've got two patients in the hospital there and I really must look in and see how they're doing.'

As a doctor, Helen was one of the privileged few with a petrol allowance.

‘By the way, Violet rang yesterday. She and Ian are back from Moscow. He has to stay up in London for the time being – he's needed at the Foreign Office – but she's coming down at the weekend. I asked her to lunch on Sunday, but she insists that we go to the Hall. They're going to have to put the place in order, she and her brother, and she wants our advice.'

Madden helped her into her coat at the front door. She kissed him.

‘When you ring Angus ask him how his cold is. He was coughing and sneezing when he left home, and I was a bit worried about the long train journey that he had ahead of him. Give him my love.'

A short while later, after he had breakfasted, Madden rang the number Angus Sinclair had left with him and, after a lengthy
wait while the call went through several exchanges, found himself talking to a terse lady with an accent even more clipped than the chief inspector's, who told him she was Sinclair's sister, Bridget, and that her brother had gone for a walk and would not be back for at least an hour. Aware that his former colleague had a testy relationship with his sibling – both were widowed and, in the course of time, their reunions, never easy, had become trials by ordeal, at least in the telling – Madden contented himself with enquiring after Sinclair's health, and on being told it was excellent, left a message to say that he would ring again later in the day.

In fact, the chief inspector – for so he was still referred to by many, in spite of his retirement – had enjoyed a new lease on life since abandoning London for the quiet of the countryside, losing the grey, harried look he had worn during his last years at the Yard, when wartime restrictions on staffing and recruitment had placed an ever-increasing burden on him. Attached to his cottage and garden now – in particular to his roses – he had even contrived to shed the gout that had afflicted him at the end of his career, a cure that he was inclined to view as miraculous, although his doctor took a more prosaic view of it.

‘He's finally accepted my advice,' Helen had reported, ‘even if it wasn't entirely voluntary. At last he's eating sensibly and cutting down on alcohol. If he wants to send up a prayer of thanks, it ought to be to the rationing board. A monkish diet is just what Angus needed. Sadly, it won't last. Things will improve and, when they do, I expect to see him limping into my surgery again.'

Thanks to the delay in getting in touch with his old chief, Madden had time to review the revelations of the past few days, with their disturbing intimation that he might be connected, however unknowingly, with the death of Oswald Gibson. He went over in his mind the interview he and Billy had had with the murdered man's brother and their subsequent visit
to Lewes. The case was so strange, and its link to the shooting in Scotland so inexplicable, that as the day wore on (and in spite of his confident assertion to Helen) he found himself wondering if he wasn't being too hasty in taking his old colleague's cooperation for granted. The mantle of retirement had settled comfortably on Angus Sinclair's shoulders: there was no reason to suppose he would want to shed it.

But the need he felt to resolve the question – if for no other reason than his own peace of mind – would not allow him to sit idle, and as soon as he returned home from the farm that afternoon he placed another call to Aberdeen.

‘Two murders – both apparent executions: that presupposes the same killer in each case. But what's still not clear is whether the victims were chosen.'

It was Sinclair himself who had answered the phone, with the welcome news that his sister had gone out to play bridge and consequently their conversation would be undisturbed.

‘That's the question, Angus. Were they deliberately targeted?'

‘Because of who they were, you mean? But isn't it possible they might also have been handy victims? This man Gibson went fishing regularly, you say, which suggests that he was out in the fields on his own for long spells. What we don't know is whether the doctor was also an easy mark.'

One of the fruits of their long friendship – and of the investigations they had worked on together – was the appreciation each had gained of the other's qualities. Once his fears had been settled on the score of his former colleague's reaction, Madden had known that Sinclair's sharp, retentive mind would be turned like a searchlight on the puzzle presented to him.