Caroline Graham - The Killings at Badger's Drift

‘Put her on.’

‘It’s Mrs Sweeney here of the Black Boy. To whom am I speaking?’

‘Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby.’

‘Are you the gentleman what came in for a half and a ploughman’s the other day?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well I think you ought to come over. There’s something funny happening at the Rainbirds’.’

‘What sort of thing?’ The voice, which he recalled as flatly lugubrious, now positively rippled with excitement.

‘I don’t rightly know ... it’s almost like someone singing only it’s not like any singing I ever heard ... more like wailing, really. It’s been going on for ages.’

Afterwards Barnaby remembered that moment very clearly. As he replaced the receiver he had the strongest sense that the machinery of the case, which had seemingly ground almost to a halt with alibis, unproven and unprovable statements and, on the part of at least two people, the deliberate wish to deceive, was now moving again. Although he could not know with what speed the machinery would gather force or that a hand, as yet unknown to him, would hurl a spanner into the works with such terrible repercussions.

There must have been fifty people standing at the gate of Tranquillada. As soon as Troy cut the engine he and Barnaby could hear the sounds. A terrible keening. Mrs Sweeney left the gathering and hurried to meet them.

‘Since I talked to you I rung the bell but nobody came. I felt I had to do something.’

The two men walked up the path. No one attempted to follow. That in itself underlined the feeling of dread that permeated the hot still air. Normally, reflected Barnaby, you had to hold them back. He and Troy stood on the step. The threnody continued. Barnaby wondered how anything so apparently emotionless could produce such an effect on the heart of the listener. It stopped and started with inhuman regularity, like a needle stuck on a record. After using the knocker with no result Barnaby crouched down and shouted through the letter box: ‘Mr Rainbird ... open this door.’

The lament escalated a notch or two, became almost a screech, then suddenly stopped. Immediately the crowd fell silent. Barnaby rapped the knocker hard again. The sounds were like pistol shots in the quiet street.

‘Shall I have a go at the door, sir?’ Troy was excited. He kept looking at the people by the gate, at Barnaby and at the house, underlining the importance of his position.

‘Window’s quicker. Try to find one open first.’ As Troy ran down the side of the house Barnaby looked again at the group. Instinctively they had drawn closer together. Their shadows fell, short and squat, on the warm pavement. One woman had a toddler in her arms. As Barnaby watched she turned the child’s face away from the bungalow and into her breast. The ceramic stork stared indifferently at them all.

Barnaby turned back and noticed, for the first time, a neat pile of mushrooms on the step. What the hell was keeping Troy? He’d been gone long enough to climb in and out of half a dozen windows. Barnaby was about to raise his fist again when he heard the click of the latch and the door swung open. Troy stared blankly at the chief inspector. He didn’t speak, just stood aside for Barnaby to enter. As the older man did so he felt his skin prickle as if someone had laid a frost-covered web against his face.

He walked through the hall past a red telephone dangling on its flex, past the scarlet-stippled wall and doors, glancing into each room as he went, finding them empty. He looked for the source of a silence more terrible than the sounds had ever been and found it in the lounge.

He stood for a moment on the threshold sick with horror. There was blood everywhere. On the floor, on the walls, on the furniture, on the curtains. But most of all on Dennis Rainbird. He looked as if he had been bathed in blood. His face, like that of a warrior brave, glistened with fingers of red. Red matted his hair and gloved his hands. He wore a red soaking wet tie and a red-flowered shirt. His knees and his shoes were red. Red tears rolled down his cheeks.

Barnaby turned back into the hall. ‘Don’t just prop the wall up. Get on the phone and get things moving.’ Then as Troy moved somnambulistically across the hall, ‘Don’t touch that, you bloody fool! Use the set in the car. And don’t open that door again without something on your hands. Anyone’d think you’d been in the force five minutes instead of five years.’

‘I’m sorry ...’ Troy produced a handkerchief.

Barnaby returned to the lounge. He made his way towards the two figures in the centre of the room, placing his feet carefully on whatever unstained patches of carpet he could find.

How could one person have shed so much blood? Wasn’t there something vaguely theatrical about the scene? Surely an over-enthusiastic stage manager had been at work hurling buckets of the stuff about, preparing for a performance of Grand Guignol . And the strange thing was that over and above the sweep of disbelief and horror Barnaby felt his memory give a powerful kick. Déjà vu . But how could that be? Surely if he had experienced anything even faintly like this spectacularly nightmarish scene in the past he could hardly have forgotten?

‘Mr Rainbird ... ?’ He bent down and saw, with a fresh wave of nausea, that it was only Dennis Rainbird’s encircling arm that was keeping his mother’s head on her shoulders. Her throat had been cut so deeply that Barnaby could see the bluish white gristle of the slashed windpipe. There were cuts all over her face and neck and arms and her dress was slashed open.

The room was in a hell of a mess. Photographs and pictures were thrown about, there were cushions and ornaments on the floor, two tables were overturned, the television set was smashed. Grey shards of glass were ground into the carpet.

Barnaby said, ‘Mr Rainbird’ again and touched him gently. As if this movement activated some hidden mechanism the man started to croon gently. He was smiling; a radiant wide mad smile. The cruel simulacrum of bliss seen on the faces of earthquake survivors or parents outside a burning house. A rictus of grief and despair.

Almost twenty minutes passed, then: ‘Good God ...’ Barnaby got up. George Bullard stood in the doorway. He carried a small black case and looked around him, aghast. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

‘Careful where you step.’

The doctor stared at the two figures for a moment, his expression a mixture of pity and disgust, then picked his way gingerly across the floor. He knelt down and opened his bag. Barnaby watched as he cut into the stiff crimson cuff of Dennis Rainbird’s shirt and held his delicate wrist.

‘How long has he been like this?’

‘We got here around half an hour ago. I should think for at least half an hour prior to that. Did you sort out an ambulance before you came?’

‘Mm.’ The doctor shone a light into Dennis’ pupils. He didn’t even blink. ‘Should be here in a minute.’

‘It’s vital I talk to him—’

‘For heaven’s sake, Tom, use your sense. The man’s catatonic.’

‘I can see that. Can’t you give him something?’

‘No.’ George Bullard rose to his feet. ‘He’s made a good job of this and no mistake.’

‘How long do these states last?’

‘A day. A month. Six months. There’s no way of knowing.’

‘That’s all I need.’

‘Sorry.’

Through the net curtains Barnaby saw the ambulance drive up followed almost immediately by three police cars. There was a murmur of excitement from the crowd. The ambulance attendants, perhaps inured to scenes of carnage by years of scraping people off the motorway, seemed much less shocked by what had happened in the lounge at Tranquillada than either Barnaby or Doctor Bullard. Whilst one of them talked to the doctor the other attempted to separate Dennis from his mother. He tugged gently at Dennis’ wrist but the fingers were clamped on to her right shoulder and left upper arm as tightly as if he were hanging for his very life on a cliff edge. Patiently the man prised the fingers away one at a time and unhooked the thumb. Mrs Rainbird’s head rolled back, attached to the neck only by a thin flap of skin. The torso tipped over and slid on to the carpet. Dennis’ crooning ran down, then stopped.