The Killings at Badger's Drift(60)

Chapter Four

The portable pod had just arrived, giving rise to great excitement. The delivery lorry was backing away. Hydraulic machinery wheezed, four legs dropped to the ground, the shell settled into position. A man in the crowd shouted, ‘Glad - the libry’s here. You brought your books?’ Loud laughter. A woman said, ‘Robbie - run home and tell your mam the Martians have landed.’ A generator and cables were set up and a GPO line connected.

As soon as Barnaby reached the pavement he was nobbled by the white trench coat, now topped by a Fred MacMurray trilby, from the Echo.

‘Chief Inspector - do you have a statement for the press?’

‘Not at the moment.’

‘The public has a right to know.’ Dear God. Dialogue by RKO out of Universal Pictures. ‘Is it true that the most terrible murder has been committed?’

‘A suspicious death has been reported, yes.’

‘Oh come off it, Inspector Barnaby. What’s in the files?’

‘Please . . . oh please . . .’ A young girl lugging a Uher tape recorder stepped directly in his path. ‘Are you in charge of the case?’ She sounded breathless and exhilarated as if on her way to a party. ‘Local radio,’ she added, thrusting a bulbous windsocked mike under his nose. ‘If you give me something now it will make the seven o’clock news.’

‘Big deal,’ muttered Troy.

‘Has a communication relations officer been appointed yet?’ cried the reporter, showing off in front of the girl.

‘No. Give us a chance to breathe,’ said Barnaby, pushing by.

‘But Inspector—’

As Barnaby walked away he heard one of the villagers (the one who had made the remark about the library) seize his moment of fame. ‘Oh it was horrible! Horrible!’ he cried into the microphone. ‘The son did it . . . he came out covered in blood. They’ve took him away in an ambulance. They reckon he had a brainstorm. He’s queer, you see . . . it takes them like that . . .’

‘But who’s been killed?’ asked the girl.

‘Well . . . it’d be his mother, wouldn’t it?’ He gazed brightly round. ‘Am I on camera?’

Barnaby stowed the files safely in the car boot and locked it.

‘It didn’t take long for them to start sniffing round,’ said Troy.

‘Oh there’s always a village correspondent for the local rag. Does WI reports and flower shows. I expect they got in touch.’ He started walking briskly down Church Lane, Troy hurrying alongside.

As they reached the wooden footpath sign to Gessler Tye Troy asked, ‘Are you going after the suspects straight away, sir?’

Barnaby did not reply. He was breathing quickly, his face was flushed, his lips tight. For him the murder of Mrs Rainbird had shocked the case, yesterday so arid and at a standstill, into new pulsating life rich with fresh insights and possibilities. And although the killer still remained faceless his scent became strong and somewhere, not very far ahead, Barnaby could sense his quarry no longer running swift and gleeful, laughing over his shoulder but back-tracking, threshing about, sensible that the distance between them was shrinking.

Many years before, becoming gradually and sometimes sharply aware of the pleasurable exhilaration he felt at this moment in a case, Barnaby had become extremely depressed and unhappy. He had felt his role, a hunter of men, to be a base one. He had struggled for some time to work in a more disinterested manner. To pretend that this sweep of excitement as he drew the net tighter was not happening. Or that if it was happening it was nothing to be ashamed of. When that failed he went through a phase, lasting several years, when he had played the hard man, ignoring or angrily stamping on these earlier perceptions. The quarry was scum. There was only one thing they understood. Give them an inch and they’d cut your throat. It takes one to know one.

Promotion had been steady. He had done well. Three men he had caught during this period had been hanged. He had been offered a lot of respect, frequently from people he despised. But as this carapace of contemptuous hatred for the criminal hardened around him so, inexplicably, self-hatred grew until the day came when he felt he would almost rather die than be the man he was slowly turning into.

He had gone to see George Bullard, speaking in only the vaguest terms of stress and headaches, and was granted a month’s leave with hardly a question asked. He had spent the time gardening, painting watercolours, talking things over with Joyce. At the end of the month he knew there was no other job he would ever wish to do and that the shell had been broken beyond repair. And so he went back and continued: at first insecure (although never less than competent), realizing that lack of instant and extreme opinions on matters of the day made him appear insipid to some of his former colleagues who usually had a surplus of both. He was also at that time over-reacting against his former harshness, loathe to bawl out and discipline when necessary. That was mistaken for weakness. Gradually he repaired this misconception. And now he walked down a dusty country lane having come, in a way, full circle. A policeman neither proud nor ashamed of his job entering the last phase of his career and of a murder hunt, feeling excited by this and accepting that excitement as a fact of life. Part of how he was. Troy touched his arm.