Bury in Haste (13 page)

‘Sorry, Thorny,’ Don said. ‘We were a bit busy. We had a barrel sprung a leak, and Harry was down in the cellar dealing with it for the best part of an hour.’

‘Not to worry,’ the constable sighed. ‘It’s back to knocking on doors for me, see if anyone else saw this man, but I can’t say I’m hopeful.’

He started with the three houses between the pub and the open road that led to Gadwell. As he expected, nobody had seen the stranger. It was a Monday, which meant Minecliff’s housewives were all occupied with their laundry, just as they had been three weeks before.

It was a quarter to three, and he’d only had a sandwich for his lunch. Deepbriar headed back towards the police house, thinking he had time to snatch a cup of tea and a slice of Mary’s cake, if those vultures from Falbrough hadn’t eaten it all. As he turned in at the gate he heard the hand bell being rung in the school yard, announcing the end of afternoon play time. The sound brought him to a stop. He swung round and hurried back down the road, and was just in time to see the last pupil, a boy in a tattered jumper, overlong shorts and with woolly socks gathered at the ankles, dashing across the yard from the outdoor privy to the Victorian brick building that had been Minecliff’s school for over a hundred years.

‘I hope none of our pupils have been misbehaving themselves,’ Mrs Harris said, once the normal pleasantries were out of the way, and the constable was settled in the visitor’s chair with a cup of tea and a plate of ginger biscuits before him. ‘Nobody trying to climb on to Mr Coe’s shed from our roof?’ She added innocently.

Deepbriar had been caught attempting that feat in answer to a dare, during Mrs Harris’s very first year as headmistress. He swallowed hastily and nearly choked on a ginger crumb.

‘Another old pupil of mine came to mind this morning,’ Mrs Harris said, giving the constable a chance to recover, ‘when I cycled past Oldgate Farm. Poor Mr Pattridge, he was devastated by John’s death, and I’m afraid Tony had spent so long in the shadow of his brother that he had no hope of redeeming himself. People tended to think of him as a rogue, even as a child, but I think most of it was merely an attempt to be noticed. He had a good brain.’

‘His father never rejected him,’ Deepbriar said, ‘but he took it hard when Tony didn’t even get in touch with him over Christmas.’

‘Did he not?’ Mrs Harris’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. ‘That’s strange. I met Tony in Belston last year, about the middle of December. He was out with little Barbara Baker. They were friends at school, before her mother died and she went to live with her grandparents in Belston. That was during the War of course, her father was in the army.’ She smiled. ‘They made a good-looking couple, I confess I hoped I might soon be hearing of an engagement. I gathered the pair of them had been shopping, and I’m sure Barbara said she’d helped Tony choose a present for old Mr Pattridge.’

‘If she did I’m afraid he never received it,’ Deepbriar said.

The headmistress shook her head sadly. ‘A shame, I always thought Tony might have turned out well, given time. Well, Thorny, it’s nice to sit and chat but I have got work to do. How can I help you?’

‘I’m looking for information. I was wondering if there were any lads out of school on Monday the third. I know one or two of them are inclined to play hooky, especially on a Monday.’

Mrs Harris sighed. ‘That’s unfortunately true. It’s a perennial problem. Why are you interested in that particular day?’

Deepbriar explained about Bronc’s disappearance, and the stranger who had been seen talking to him. ‘In my experience, young lads are pretty observant. If one of them happened to be hanging around outside the village there’s just a chance they might have seen something.’

‘I’Il check the registers,’ Mrs Harris said, rising from behind her desk. She smiled, taking a packet of biscuits from a drawer to replenish the nearly empty plate. ‘You seem hungry, Constable, do have another ginger nut.’

‘It was about something that happened three weeks ago, Mrs Pratt,’ Deepbriar said, standing outside a council house three doors up from Honeysuckle Cottage where Joe and Emily Spraggs lived. ‘It’s all right, he’s not in trouble.’

‘That makes a change,’ the woman said harshly, rubbing her damp and wrinkled hands together. ‘Young beggar. And now he’s got the measles if you please, as if I ’aven’t enough to do without running up and down stairs all day! You’d best come in.’ She nodded at the stairs. ‘First door on the right. I got me washin’ to finish.’

Kenny Pratt lay on a narrow bed under a couple of blankets, with an old rug and his school coat spread on top. He looked up in alarm as the large uniformed figure loomed in the doorway.

‘It’s all right, Kenny,’ the constable assured him. ‘Whatever it is you’ve been up to, we’ll wait till you’re better before we run you off to gaol. Can’t have all the prisoners catching the measles, can we?’

The boy grinned, only a little uneasy. ‘Ain’t done nothin’,’ he said.

‘How about playing hooky three weeks ago?’ Deepbriar lowered himself warily on to the room’s only available seat, a rather rickety three legged stool.

‘You ain’t lockin’ me up for that, Mr Deepbriar,’ Kenny replied, his confidence returning.

‘Not this time. Not if you do something for me.’

‘Like what?’

‘Help me if you can. See, we’re looking for somebody, and there’s just a chance you might have seen him.’ He described the stranger, and how he’d left the Speckled Goose at about one-thirty on the day Kenny had decided to skip school.

Kenny shook his head. ‘Didn’t see ’im,’ he said. ‘Saw somebody else though.’

‘Who was that?’

‘Old Bunyard.’

‘That’s Mr Bunyard to you,’ Deepbriar reproved him. ‘When was this?’

‘Bell ’ad just gone arter lunch, ’bout ’alf past one. ’E was on them crutch things, goin’ up the ’ill towards the old aerodrome. Cussin’ an’ swearin’ ’e was, but ’e was gettin’ along all right. I kept me ’ead down, didn’t want ’im seein’ me.’

‘You didn’t see anyone else? Somebody you might recognise even if he didn’t live in the village?’

‘Old Bronc you mean?’ The boy shook his head. ‘Everyone knows ’e’s gone missin’, I’d ’a’ said if I’d seen ’im.’

‘And you didn’t see anything else out of the ordinary that day?’ Deepbriar was disappointed, it had been a long shot but he had great faith in the inquisitive nature of small boys.

‘I saw a car parked up the lane. A sports car it was. Ol’ Bunyard, I mean Mr Bunyard, ’e ’ad to squeeze past it.’

‘The lane to the aerodrome?’

Kenny nodded.

‘So, it was parked where nobody could see it from the village,’ Deepbriar said thoughtfully. ‘I don’t suppose you took down the number?’

‘Nah. Give up takin’ numbers, that’s kid’s stuff. Know what it was though, one o’ them new Austin-Healeys. Bright red it was, just like on one o’ them cards you get in tea packets.’

‘Like collecting the cards do you?’

‘Yeah.’ Kenny’s pale eyes lit up. ‘I like the cars, but them new sports stars are best. I already got Len Hutton, an’ Roger Bannister an’ Gordon Richards.’

Deepbriar fished in a pocket and pulled out four cards, only slightly crumpled. ‘Mrs Deepbriar’s been getting through a lot of tea lately. Let’s see. I appear to have Stanley Matthews, Alec Bedser, Denis Compton and Billy Wright.’

‘Wanna swap one of ’em?’ Kenny asked eagerly. ‘I got two Len Huttons.’

‘Tell you what Kenny,’ Deepbriar said. ‘If you promise not to play hooky any more, you can have these.’ He paused, looking the boy sternly in the eyes. ‘But you’d better mean it.’

‘I promise,’ the boy said at once.

Deepbriar handed over the cards. ‘You break your word and you’ll catch something worse than measles,’ he warned.

The search for Bronc went on for two more days, but nothing new came to light. On Wednesday evening Inspector Stubbs returned with Constable Deepbriar to the Minecliff police house, shutting the office door behind the two of them.

‘I’m out of ideas,’ the inspector said despondently. ‘It doesn’t look as if we’ll ever find out what happened to the old man. The case isn’t closed, but until some new evidence turns up there’s nothing left to be done. I’m off to look into some burglaries the other side of Falbrough. Minecliff’s all yours again, constable. Sergeant Jakes is taking care of the paperwork and tying up what loose ends he can, have a word with him if you get anything new.’

‘I’ll do that, sir.’ Deepbriar hesitated. ‘Nothing came up about that car I suppose, the one young Kenny saw in the lane off the Gadwell Road?’

‘No. We tracked down three Austin-Healeys, and one of them belongs to a minor villain in Belston, so I sent a man to have a word with him. Turns out he had a cast iron alibi for that day, which is what I’d expect if he’d been up to something, but we’ve got no grounds to dig any deeper. It was a bit of a flimsy connection.’

‘Right. I’ll get on with the case of the missing pig then,’ Deepbriar said. ‘I don’t think Bert Bunyard will stay away from home much longer, not with the winter coming on. I’ll go and have another word with Humphrey in the morning.’

‘Good luck.’ Stubbs held out a hand. ‘Thanks for your help, constable, it’s been good working with you. If you ever decide to move over to plain clothes, let me know, I reckon we could use you in CID.’

As Thorny Deepbriar cycled out to Hurdles Farm next morning he pondered the inspector’s words. He’d often dreamed of becoming a detective, yet now the chance had come he wasn’t sure what to do. Minecliff was his home, and as a village bobby it had been his patch for ten years. He knew every man, woman and child who lived there, and he’d never given any serious thought to leaving.

Deepbriar rounded a bend in the road, and saw one of those individuals who made up his little world; whether this one was man or child, he wasn’t quite sure. Humphrey Bunyard stood in the gateway of Hurdles Farm, his puddingy face red and screwed up as if he’d been crying. Seeing the constable he hopped from one foot to the other, remaining always inside his invisible boundary, but clearly very agitated. ‘Gone!’ he shouted. ‘All gone!’

‘W
ho’s gone, Humphrey? Your Dad? But he’s been missing for a few days, why get so upset now?’

Humphrey Bunyard shook his big head, his mouth gobbling frantically. ‘Gone!’ He was so distressed that he seemed to have mislaid the rest of his limited vocabulary, and as soon as Deepbriar was within reach he grabbed the sleeve of the blue tunic and pulled the constable towards the house.

Humphrey took Deepbriar indoors, not releasing him until they were in the kitchen. He pointed at the old black stove, where a crumpled piece of greaseproof paper lay beside a frying pan. ‘It’s gone,’ he said. ‘I’m hungry.’

Deepbriar looked around, seeking the reason for the young man’s agitation. He was puzzled. Clearly Humphrey wasn’t referring to food, for there were three thick rashers of bacon on a plate, and a basket of eggs on the table, along with half a loaf of bread, which looked edible, if rather stale. Nor was the stove itself the cause of the problem, for a comfortable heat could be felt radiating from it.

The simpleton picked up the greaseproof wrapping and waved it under the constable’s nose. ‘Gone!’ He shouted, impatient at the policeman’s stupidity.

‘Ohhh.’ Deepbriar exhaled mightily in relief and understanding. ‘You’ve run out of dripping! That doesn’t matter, Humph, you can cook without it. That bacon’s got plenty of fat. Look.’ He moved the frying pan on to the hot plate. Within minutes there was a delicious scent wafting through the old farmhouse. Smiling, his distress forgotten, Humphrey went into the larder at the other side of the kitchen and returned with three more rashers. ‘Three for you, three for me, and two eggs each,’ he chanted, as if reciting well-learned lines. He selected four large eggs from the basket, then cut thick slices of bread from the loaf.

They sat companionably on either side of the big scrubbed table and Deepbriar did full justice to the breakfast, even though it was his second in as many hours. ‘You’ve been busy, Humphrey,’ he said, as, comfortably full, he leant back and looked around him, sipping at a mug of earthy brown tea. The kitchen was noticeably cleaner and tidier than on his last visit. ‘The place looks very smart.’

‘Like my mum, she made it nice,’ Humphrey said, his brow creasing as he sought for words to explain. ‘I used to help her.’

‘That’s very good. Your mum would be proud of you. But what are you going to do when you run out of more things? Will you walk to the shop?’

Humphrey shook his head vigorously. ‘I can get bread,’ he said, ‘from the baker.’

‘Yes, but the baker won’t bring you sugar, or salt, or tea. And what about money? You’ll have to pay him. Besides, who’s going to take your beasts to market? You can’t cope for long without your Dad. Do you know where he went?’

‘No.’ Humphrey stared at his empty plate.

Deepbriar persisted. The youngster might not be able to say exactly where his father was, but he knew something. ‘The longer he stays away the more trouble he’ll be in. Do you understand? I have to find him.’

He changed tack, seeing Humphrey had his obstinate expression firmly in place. It was the only time he looked like his father. ‘You know he never needed that plaster on his leg, don’t you?’

Humphrey guffawed. ‘He took it off when he came indoors. It was our secret. Me and Dad laughed.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘That was funny.’

‘But the joke’s over now. You and me are friends aren’t we, Humph? I need you to help me. Do you know where he is?’

The big head shook again. ‘No,’ he said, giving Deepbriar a sidelong look, evidently torn. ‘He went up the hill.’

Up the hill. There were plenty of hills around Minecliff, but he thought he knew which one Humphrey was talking about. Bert Bunyard had been going up one of them when young Kenny saw him, and that particular lane would take him to the old aerodrome.

Deepbriar leant across the table and patted Humphrey on the shoulder. ‘Good lad,’ he said, convinced that he had his answer. The airbase was securely fenced, with great rolls of barbed wire put up before it was abandoned, because of the risk from all the unexploded munitions left behind after the War. Apart from the possibility of blowing himself up, it was the perfect place for a man on the run. If Bert was foolhardy enough to find a way in, there’d be plenty of places for him to hide, and room enough for a whole herd of pigs, come to that.

Thorny Deepbriar stared through the tangles of wire at the line of defensive works and gun emplacements, many of them barely visible under mounds of brambles. As he worked his way round the perimeter of the old wartime airbase, one building was nearly always in plain view, providing a point of reference in the jumble of abandoned huts and unrecognisable bastions of concrete. This was a grandiose stone structure, solid and square, which looked very much out of place amid the detritus left behind by the air force.

The mausoleum was over a hundred years old, the site chosen because the plateau above Minecliff commanded a wide view of the surrounding countryside. This monument to the dead had almost outlived the Abney-Hughes family who built it; there were only a couple of ancient female cousins left now, who would presumably join their ancestors in the impressive tomb when their time came. The last funeral had taken place there in nineteen thirty two; as a child Deepbriar had seen the procession go by, and he had a clear memory of the magnificent hearse pulled by four horses, plumes of black feathers nodding as they walked slowly up the hill towards the mausoleum. In those days it had stood alone amidst a sea of grass; somehow the building had survived the War untouched, despite being stranded in the middle of an airfield.

Beyond the mausoleum Deepbriar glimpsed the remains of a runway. Grass was coming up through cracks in the concrete; the servicemen had moved out six years ago, it didn’t take long for nature to take over.

He’d walked nearly the whole way round the perimeter, fighting his way through hedges and ditches, sometimes up to his ankles in mud. It looked as if his guess had been wrong, and yet the more he thought about it, the more certain he became. There were air-raid shelters all over the site. Any one of them could hide a pig, and no sound would reach the village if it was being kept underground.

If it hadn’t been for the badger tracks, he’d have missed it. He was walking on rough grass alongside a ploughed field when he noticed the narrow path worn in the headland, and going straight across his path. The track appeared to vanish under the remnants of a dead tree, but when he bent down to investigate he realised that a couple of the branches had been carefully propped up against the fence. Once he moved them he could see the neat tunnel cut through the brambles, and the wire. A man could pass through easily, hardly even needing to bend down.

On the other side of the fence the badgers obviously went straight on, heading for some destination of their own, but there was another track, this one with several clear imprints left by size nine boots. Bert must have been careful on the approach, presumably taking a long stride from the ploughed land, but here he had made no attempt at concealment.

The trail led Deepbriar to a Nissen hut, one of half a dozen lined up on a large concreted area. A thin wisp of smoke spiralled out of a tin chimney at one end. Peering through a window, partly obscured by a protective metal mesh, the constable could see inside. Bert Bunyard was reclining in an ancient armchair alongside a pot-bellied stove, open at the front to display a red glow. He was surrounded by a scatter of rusting food tins, screwed up brown paper bags and empty bottles. More tins, evidently full, stood on a shelf, along with a crate of beer and several packets of tobacco, and below them lay a discarded plaster cast, split open to display the hidden hinges down one side. A blue haze of cigarette smoke hung over the scene.

Stepping quietly, Deepbriar retraced his steps, following a trail of loose splodges of mud and some other darker wetter substance, smeared with imprints from the now familiar boots. The smell, also familiar, grew stronger as he progressed. He found Ferdy Quinn’s prize sow, as he had expected, in an underground shelter.

The animal looked up at him, grunting a welcome and pushing against the makeshift barrier of upturned trestle tables Bunyard had erected to keep her away from the entrance. She looked well enough, with a thick bed of straw under her feet, although it was in need of cleaning. There were scraps of food in a wooden trough alongside a bucket of water.

‘I reckon you’ll be glad to get home, eh?’ Deepbriar said, leaning down to scratch the sow’s back. ‘Won’t be long now, but I’ll deal with Bert first, if you don’t mind.’

Using the ever-visible mausoleum as a marker, Deepbriar found his way back to the hut where he’d seen Bunyard. A faded sign on the door announced that this had been the N.C.O.’s mess.

The hinges squeaked a little as Deepbriar went in. Bert Bunyard jerked round and stared up at the intruder, his ruddy face blanching, his jaw dropping open to reveal two rows of broken and nicotine stained teeth. Behind him on the wall a poster shouted that ‘Careless talk costs lives!’

‘Morning, Bert,’ Deepbriar said cheerfully. ‘Looks like you’ve made yourself pretty comfortable. Almost seems a shame to disturb you.’

Deepbriar used the telephone box on the edge of the village to summon a police car so he could take Bert Bunyard to Falbrough for questioning. Leaving his prisoner in one of the cells to reflect on his crimes, he spent nearly an hour on the necessary paperwork, then he had to wait for Sergeant Jakes to return from lunch, as it would be the sergeant’s job to conduct the interrogation.

Bert was uncooperative, insisting that he was innocent, despite the smell of pig on his clothes and the clear trail from the sow’s makeshift sty to his own bolt hole. ‘Found ’er I did,’ he said, when Jakes pressed him on this point. ‘Couldn’t leave the beast to get knocked down on the road, could I?’

‘Then why not keep her at Hurdles Farm until the owner was traced?’ Jakes asked.

‘Ain’t got a pig sty,’ Bert growled, ‘use your ’ead, sergeant.’

‘So, lacking a pig-sty, you immediately thought the ideal place to accommodate a pig would be an air-raid shelter, on land belonging to the Air Ministry.’ Jakes said sarcastically.

Bunyard glowered at him and clamped his mouth shut.

‘We’ll have another go in the morning,’ Jakes told Deepbriar, once Bert had been removed to the cells again. ‘And in the meantime I’ll sort out exactly what we’re going to charge him with. I reckon we can get the theft of the pig to stick, but I’m not so hopeful about the arson or the criminal damage.’

‘He stole that plaster cast from the village hall,’ Deepbriar pointed out. He’d brought the prop back with him, and it stood in the corner of the CID room, filthy and slightly dented.

‘Petty theft,’ Jakes said gloomily. ‘We’d better go up to the airbase, and see if he’s been up to any more mischief.’ He brightened. ‘If he’s been poking around and digging up unexploded bombs maybe we could get him on something really serious. How about suspected treason?’

Deepbriar gave one of his rare chuckles. ‘If only you could. Old Bert’s been running rings round the law all his life, I’d love to see him taught a bit of respect. Though I wouldn’t go so far as wanting to see him hang,’ he added considerately.

Jakes nodded. ‘He might just have made a mistake choosing to break in through that wire fence. It needs a bit of thought, but I’d say we’ll be able to put the wind up him a bit. Come on, let’s go and take a look at the evidence.’

A telephone call to Quinn’s farm established that Ferdy had gone to market and wouldn’t be back until late, so, thinking it best to get the animal home, Jakes and Deepbriar escorted old Bob to the aerodrome to identify the pig formally. They were joined a little later by young Alan, pushing a hand cart.

Since getting permission to enter the airfield by the gate, and then waiting for the key holder to be contacted and persuaded to come and let them in would have taken too long, they decided to manhandle the sow out through the gap in the fence. Having presumably grown fond of her temporary home, the pig proved reluctant to be moved, and the constable’s uniform was in a sorry state by the time she was off Ministry property and secured in the handcart.

Jakes had stood at a safe distance yelling advice, careful to keep his shiny shoes out of the muck, but then Matilda, squealing indignantly as young Alan held desperately to one hind leg, managed to flick out the other in a hefty kick. A large gobbet of mud was flung off her trotter to hit the detective sergeant squarely between the eyes and drip messily on to his coat, which gave Deepbriar a feeling of intense satisfaction.

It was nearly five o’clock when Deepbriar returned home. ‘Thorny, at last!’ Mary greeted him at the door, glancing anxiously back towards the living room as she spoke. ‘Somebody’s here to talk to you.’

‘I can’t see anyone now,’ he protested, taking off his boots and brushing ineffectually at the smears of pig muck on his trouser legs. ‘Lord knows how I’ll get this blooming stuff off. Careful love, don’t come to close or you’ll end up smelling like a farmyard too.’

‘Give me that tunic and go up and change. Bring the rest of your things down and put them in the scullery so I can deal with them. Do hurry, she’s been waiting for hours.’ She bustled away without further explanation, taking his tunic with her, and Deepbriar went obediently upstairs, grumbling under his breath. If it was that wretched Emerson woman …

Ten minutes later the constable appeared at the living room door, accompanied by a strong waft of carbolic, which failed to completely suppress the smell of pig; the odour was amazingly persistent. A woman was sitting in his favourite armchair, her bleached hair arranged in a fancy knot at the back of her head, her heavy make-up failing to disguise her years; at least fifty five of them, Deepbriar guessed.

‘This is Mrs Spraggs,’ Mary Deepbriar announced, bringing him a cup of tea. ‘She’s been waiting for you since two o’clock.’

‘Mrs Joseph Spraggs,’ the woman elaborated, and Deepbriar recognised the voice he’d heard in Falbrough police station, arguing with Sergeant Hubbard some three weeks before. ‘I was told you might be able to help me. I must have spoken to a dozen different policemen about my Joseph, but nobody will listen.’