Murderer's Fen Read online

  “Twice a day, please.…”

  Hunt smiled. “Okay—twice a day.… Darling, I can’t tell you how much better you’ve made me feel. I’m sure this trouble will soon pass—and we’ll get married and live happily ever after.… Right?”

  Susan nodded. “I love you so much, Alan.…” She smiled a little, too. “I even love you for wanting to ‘give me my freedom’. … !”

  Chapter Eight

  Nield spent the evening in a major reappraisal of the case.

  For a short time in the fen, he’d felt grimly sure that Hunt was in fact Gwenda Nicholls’s murderer. The proof had seemed almost within his grasp.… Now he was far from sure. The suggestion behind the anonymous letter—the strongest evidence for murder and the strongest evidence against Hunt—had proved baseless. There had been no foul play at that spot. The writer had been mistaken. The letter had therefore lost all its relevance—and the case was transformed. If a body had not been buried at the place the letter indicated, there was really no reason to suppose that a body had been buried anywhere—or, indeed, that there was a body.… Certainly there was no firm evidence.… So now the other possibility had to be considered.

  Nield’s thoughts switched back to Gwenda Nicholls. Who could tell what might have passed through her mind on that journey to Peterborough?—assuming the journey had been made. So much turned on what she was really like. Hunt’s picture had been of an emotional, unstable, desperate girl. The parents hadn’t recognised the picture. Which of them had been right? Parents, particularly the strait and narrow ones, were sometimes the last to know their children. If Gwenda had been unstable, she might have changed her mind again. At the last moment, she might have found the ordeal of confession more than she could face. Her parents had seemed kind enough at heart—but there would certainly have been a terrible scene. Anger and tears, bitter denunciations, endless questioning—and afterwards, perhaps, a constant reverting, an intolerable nagging.… It was all very well for the parents to say they would have helped—but on what terms? Generous, ungrudging, genuinely forgiving—or humiliating.…? Perhaps Gwenda had known them better than they knew themselves.… She might have preferred at least to postpone the ordeal. She might have gone off temporarily, to think over what she would say, to explore some alternative. If she had decided to do that, she would understandably not have told Hunt in the car, for fear he would try to dissuade her again. And it would explain why she hadn’t wanted him to drive her up to the house.… It was possible.…

  Then there was Hunt himself.… Assuming murder had been done, there was still a circumstantial case against him—even disregarding the letter. There was the motive and the opportunity and the disappearance.… But now Nield wondered if he’d paid enough attention to the points in Hunt’s favour. Some were minor, some were negative—but together they made up quite a defence. Nield mentally listed them—as earlier he’d listed the points for the prosecution.…

  Nothing in Hunt’s remarkable story had been disproved. He hadn’t been caught out in any lies. There wasn’t the slightest evidence that he’d seduced Gwenda. On the contrary, her parents had been sure that he’d had almost no contact with her. The fact that she hadn’t seen him off when he’d left the hotel seemed to bear that out. A girl who’d had an intimate holiday affair would surely have been present on the quay, however discreetly.… And it certainly wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the real seducer had given Hunt’s address to the girl. There were types who’d have thought that amusing.…

  As for the trip to Peterborough, it could have happened. Indeed, Nield reflected, there was a kind of evidence that it had. The girl’s telephone call to the Bakers’ had to be taken into account here. After all, she’d made it herself, and presumably of her own free will. If she’d decided to let Hunt take her home, it was fully explained. But otherwise, why would she have made it …? A tricky point—but surely in Hunt’s favour.…?

  Then there was Hunt’s general manner. He’d shown not a trace of guilt at any time. In fact, in the early stages he’d appeared quite carefree. Nield found it hard to believe that he’d have been quite so nonchalant at that first interview if he’d murdered a girl over the week-end. Fear, if not conscience, would have led to over-acting—and Hunt’s manner had been exactly right. The arrival of the police car certainly hadn’t bothered him at all. Later on, he’d become worried and angry—but that was natural, considering what he stood to lose from wrongful suspicion. Looking back, Nield could find no fault with his demeanour at any point. He’d been completely frank—to the point of lunacy, if he’d been guilty. He hadn’t had to say that Gwenda was pregnant—he could easily have thought of some other explanation for her call.… He hadn’t had to stress his eagerness to marry Susan Ainger—to volunteer the information that he’d worked in Norwich and changed his job to be near her.… Again, he’d missed opportunities that a guilty man would surely have taken. That question he’d been asked about Gwenda’s state of mind in the car, for instance. He could, easily have attributed a few words to her which would have supported the idea that she might have been backsliding. Instead, he’d merely said she was gloomy.…

  Finally, there was the total lack of material evidence. No trace of blood on any clothing, no signs of violence anywhere.… Of course, you could have murder without blood. If Hunt had strangled the girl—and with a powerful man and a slightly-built woman it was the obvious method—there’d have been no blood. But in that case Nield would have expected to find scratches on him. A choking girl would claw wildly.… And there’d been no scratches. Gloves could have taken care of the hands—though not those heavy gloves in the caravan, they’d have been too clumsy.… Other gloves, perhaps.… But there was still the unmarked face.…

  Uneasily, Nield looked back on his handling of the case. Perhaps he’d been concentrating too much on trying to disprove Hunt’s story—because of the letter—and not enough on trying to confirm it. Gwenda Nicholls could have disappeared voluntarily. Hunt could have been telling the truth. The time had come to seek positive evidence on both points.…

  First, the disappearance.… Nield was at his office at an early hour next morning, organising a “missing person” drive on a basis of urgency. Much of the work was routine … Reproduction of Gwenda’s picture in large numbers.… Description and photograph to all police stations by the usual channels.… Ditto to all national newspapers, and those local ones serving the East Anglian area—with all available information about the girl’s last known movements.… Ditto to the B.B.C. and the other TV networks.… Special inquiries to be instituted in Peterborough itself …

  Next, Hunt’s story—and in the first place, the movements of his car.… Had anyone seen it parked near the corner of Everton Road soon after eight-thirty on the Saturday evening. A smart, cream MG sports in a quiet suburban road shouldn’t have been entirely inconspicuous, and an appeal to the public might bring results … More requests to radio and TV, and to the local papers … It might be worth asking, too, if any of the villagers at Ocken had seen or heard the car leave or return to the caravan site that Saturday evening. P.C. Blake could look into that.…

  What else in Hunt’s story was subject to checking? The Norway end—there might be something there. Some line on the possible identity of the real seducer, if Hunt wasn’t the man.…? A long shot, but worth trying. The Norwegian police could be asked to get a list from the hotel of all British male guests whose stay there had overlapped with the Nichollses’. Then the names and addresses could be followed up at home.… Not that any man would readily admit to the police that he’d seduced a girl and given someone else’s address—especially a girl whose disappearance would soon be widely publicised, who might even have killed herself. But some view might be formed after questioning.… Better to have the list, anyway. Nield drafted a message and dispatched it to Oslo.

  Now for the local check-up.…

  “I think, Sergeant,” Nield said, “it would be as well if you made the initial Pe
terborough inquiries yourself—you know the set-up, and it’ll save time.… Will you get over there right away?”

  Dyson nodded.

  “Drop in on the parents first and let them know what we’re up to—they’ll get a shock, otherwise, if they see the girl’s face on the telly.… Then inquire at all the exit points—and make as much stir as you can. Take plenty of photographs with you—and don’t forget about the suitcase she was carrying, and the way she was dressed. With her looks and appearance she must have been pretty striking.… Okay?”

  “All right,” Dyson said. “I’ll keep in touch.”

  A bit of a rift had opened between the two policemen since their abortive expedition to the fen—marked on Nield’s part by a slight irritation and a tendency to underline the obvious and on Dyson’s by a slight sullenness.

  Nield had fully explained to Dyson the grounds for his reappraisal. Dyson had argued about some of them. The picture of Gwenda’s supposed mental attitude to her parents, of her renewed agitation at the last moment, had failed to convince him. The fact that Hunt had told of Gwenda’s pregnancy could surely be explained by his need to supply a satisfying reason for her voluntary disappearance. The fact that he’d stressed his eagerness to marry Susan Ainger amounted to little—since the purpose of his move from Norwich would have emerged sooner or later in any case.… But, in general, Dyson had been obliged to concede much substance in Nield’s points.…

  All the same, he had no enthusiasm for the new direction the inquiry had taken. Maybe he was prejudiced against Hunt, as Nield had charged. Dyson preferred to call it a hunch. It wasn’t true that he’d completely made up his mind about the man at that moment of reckless driving in Ocken village—but he’d seen him then as a taker of risks and a man of swift reactions—two qualities of any successful plotter and murderer. From that moment he’d disliked and distrusted him—and everything that had happened since had strengthened his feelings.

  He couldn’t accept, as Nield did, that the anonymous letter was no longer relevant. He wasn’t persuaded, as Nield was, that Hunt couldn’t have moved the body from its shallow grave on a misty night without leaving signs. In Hunt’s place, with a life sentence hanging over him and twelve hours of darkness in which to operate, he felt he would have managed it somehow.

  In short, he didn’t believe that Gwenda Nicholls was still alive—much as he’d have liked to. He didn’t believe that she’d ever been back to Peterborough, and he expected nothing from the national hue and cry that had now been started.… Nevertheless, being a policeman still, and a sergeant under orders from a chief inspector, he would do his duty. He would conduct his own inquiries with as much zeal and efficiency as though he’d been hopeful of success.

  He went first, as instructed, to Everton Road. Mr. Nicholls was back at work, but Mrs. Nicholls was in. Dyson told her of the nation-wide search for her daughter that had now begun, carefully avoiding any nuance of word or expression that would diminish her hopes. He left as soon as he could.

  From Everton Road, he drove to the railway station. None of the staff he talked to there remembered the girl. Saturday night was always a busy one, he was told—she might have passed through or she might not. Before leaving, he noted the routes and stops and destinations of all the trains that had left Peterborough after 8.30 p.m. that night. Special inquiries could be made later along the lines.

  From the station, he went to the bus terminal. The problem there was even more difficult. On Saturday night, most of the city’s buses would have been crowded—and the girl could have boarded one at any point and been lost in the throng. Dyson talked to conductors, pinned up a photograph and description of Gwenda in the canteen where the busmen rested, and enlisted the help of a couple of inspectors to pursue the matter throughout the day.

  From there he moved on to the taxi ranks, the hotels, the coffee bars, the pubs and restaurants, scattering his photographs. Slowly, a deep depression descended on him. Not because of the negative answers, which he’d expected—but because of the picture. The girl’s face, with its charming smile and its freshness, enormously appealed to him. Every time he showed it to someone else, he found himself studying it again—and hating Hunt more than ever. …

  By nightfall he was exhausted. But he’d left his mark on Peterborough—and the questions he’d asked wouldn’t end with the people he’d met. The search, pointless or not, was on.…

  Chapter Nine

  National interest in the case began to build up from the moment Gwenda Nicholls’s picture was flashed on television screens that evening. Within minutes, Nield and Dyson and the special staff they’d organised were taking telephone calls from people who believed they’d seen the girl. This was the usual result of a “missing person” appeal, and it raised no hopes. Many of the reports were too vague to be helpful; some were from obvious crackpots; a few seemed worth following up. As Nield had expected, the supposed sightings were taking place in widely scattered parts of the country, and nearly all the field work had to be passed to the various local forces.

  The first public references to Hunt came with the morning newspapers. The quality papers had contented themselves with printing Gwenda’s photograph and description, but several of the popular papers mentioned her visit to Ocken. The Record’s report was the starkest. Miss Nicholls, it said, had spent the Saturday afternoon and evening with Mr. Alan Hunt, sales manager at the Cosy Caravan site, Ocken, and had subsequently been driven by him to Peterborough, where she lived. Nothing further had been heard of her.

  During the morning, a dozen newspapers rang up Nield or sent reporters. He told them that no hard news of the girl had yet come in; declined to enlarge on the previous day’s official hand-out; sidestepped questions about the possibility of “foul play”, which was naturally in their minds in view of all the fuss; and referred them to Hunt for further information about Saturday’s events. He said nothing about the anonymous letter.

  It was in the evening papers that the story of the “Missing Redhead” hit the headlines in a big way. By now there had been time for interviews—with the Nichollses, with the Bakers, with Hunt himself—and the drawing of conclusions from the mounting facts. Gwenda’s parents had talked very little, confining themselves to saying what a good daughter Gwenda had been and how anxious they were that she should return home. Hunt, on the other hand, had talked a great deal. His account of what had happened differed in language from what he’d told the inspector, but in substance it was the same—and what with the seduction, the pregnancy, and the mysterious disappearance, it made splendid copy. He’d evidently had to answer a lot of questions, and some of them had been probing—but his honest perplexity came out in the printed word as it had in conversation.… All the same, his photograph in one of the papers was captioned “The Man Who Saw Her Last,” while another one had a significantly detailed paragraph about Susan Ainger, “Mr. Hunt’s Fiancée,” with a picture of Copper Beeches and a gossipy item about Henry Ainger and his thriving property companies. A local paper had revived the “Newmarket Heiress” story and caption. The Press, like the police, had obviously found Hunt’s story remarkable. None of the papers mentioned the anonymous letter. Hunt, too, had kept quiet about that.

  Telephone calls continued to pour into Nield’s headquarters all through the afternoon and evening. One was from Hunt, sounding more perturbed than ever and asking anxiously if there was any news of Gwenda. Another was from Mr. Nicholls, who’d just read about Hunt’s fiancée in the papers and noted the snide captions and was in a state of great distress. Nield soothed him as best he could. In the early evening a report came through that seemed to offer a ray of hope—a ticket collector at Stamford thought he remembered a girl getting off a Peterborough train who had answered to the description circulated. But a subsequent check established that it had been someone else. Nothing came in from Peterborough itself. No one reported having seen a cream MG sports car standing in Everton Road. From P.C. Blake came a message that he’d been unable to fin
d anyone in Ocken who’d seen or heard the cream car on the move on the Saturday evening. Though, as Nield said, a negative report like that had little value. …

  Around seven o’ clock, a telegram arrived from the Norwegian police. The Vistasund Hotel, it said, was now closed for the winter. The proprietor had gone to America, and the staff was dispersed. An answer to Nield’s inquiry would be sent as soon as possible, but getting the information would take time.

  “Blanks all round,” Nield said gloomily. With only short breaks, he and Dyson had been working continuously for thirty-six hours, and both of them were feeling pretty tired. Dyson hadn’t even had Nield’s hope to buoy him up, and looked as though he might hand in his resignation at any moment.

  “You’d better get some food, Sergeant,” Nield said.

  At that moment there was a disturbance in the outer lobby—the sound of a raised voice, and fierce argument. A young constable looked in. “Are you free, sir?” he asked Nield. “There’s a man who …”

  Before he could make an announcement, someone brushed past him. A short, stocky man, with a sheaf of papers under his arm, and a blazing face. He stormed up to Nield. “Are you the inspector in charge of the Gwenda Nicholls case?”

  “I am,” Nield said.

  “Then I’d like a word with you in private.… My name’s Henry Ainger.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nield studied him for a moment. “I see, sir … Well, you’d better come into my office.” He led the way into an inner room and drew out a chair for his visitor.

  Ainger ignored it. “What the hell do you think you’re up to, Inspector?”