F. Cottam - Dark Echo

Sacrifice, he said, as though reading my mind. But there’s no point in dwelling on the past, is there? He switched his cane, idly. A man must live in the present, he said. And a wise man must secure his future.

The riddles in which he spoke seemed to carry the chill of foreboding through the warm air. Everything about him felt and sounded threatening. I shivered.

Shame about poor Mick Collins, he said. He still had not turned to face me. He could fight, could Collins, Spalding said. It would be churlish not to concede the fact. He could fight. But could he love, Janey? That’s the question.

Janey. It was what Mick had called me only in our tender moments together.

It was then I saw Harry Spalding cast no shadow on the pavement.

I hurried away from him. But he had one more trick. He had stopped my watch. Later in the day I took it back to Connards and their man took the back off it and could find nothing wrong with it at all. He blew on the movement and it started again. He was mystified. I was relieved that the trick was only temporary, the magic simply mischievous and not permanent. But I know now that Spalding really is a monster. He has known who I was all the time and toyed with me. He is evil and powerful and deranged. Can it be a coincidence that three women from the vicinity have gone missing while he is in our midst?

I think a clue was presented and ignored by all of us at Tommy and Nora’s party back in May. Little Bonnie came down and raised her arm and pointed at something and screamed. Tommy has long recovered from the shock of it, of course. And Bonnie, thankfully, has no conscious memory of the event. Tommy even jokes about it, saying that Bonnie was pointing in the direction of Blackpool Tower. It’s a vulgar eyesore, Tommy says. It has earned his daughter’s scorn. And he’s right that she was pointing in that direction. But I think she may have been pointing at something a lot closer than the tower across the bay at Blackpool. I overfly the town and know the lay of it. I can close my eyes and see a map of it painted accurately on my mind. And I know that Bonnie pointed that evening precisely in the direction of the house rented for the summer by Harry Spalding on Rotten Row. You could draw a line from Bonnie’s pointing finger to the tower and it would pass through Spalding’s garden. What secrets does he harbour there? I wonder. What summoned that little girl’s unconscious accusation and her scream?

July 16th, 1927

I have rowed bitterly with Vera Chadwick. She does not think my evidence compelling enough to take to the police. She thinks her Liverpool detective would laugh in my face presented with my accusations. I’m not making accusations, I told Vera. I am merely raising suspicions. Surely the police need to follow all lines of enquiry if they are to solve the mystery of the disappearance of the three missing girls?

You cannot make accusations against a rich and popular visitor to the town, Vera says. The evidence simply is not there. You will look like a bigoted fool, taking against a stranger simply because he is a stranger and not a Southport man born and bred. And the culprit is likely to be a local man, her fiancé says. Only someone who knows the ground could stalk the victims and evade capture without leaving witnesses or clues. He’s from Ainsdale or Crossens. He is not a stranger to the terrain. He is likely to be someone inconspicuous, superficially unremarkable. And this is all well and good and makes perfect sense, of course. But Spalding was able to ghost through enemy lines on the Western Front not a decade ago, wreaking havoc and eluding capture. The taking of three women would be child’s play to a man with his deadly predatory skills.

I should have kept my own counsel. I had hoped for an ally in Vera’s detective, or a least a sympathetic hearing for one of the closest friends of his intended. I fear that the real problem for Vera is less the subject of Harry Spalding than my own past Fenian connection. She is loyal enough to stay my friend despite that. But she doesn’t want our friendship known about by her police detective. Perhaps she fears it would compromise him. As I said, I wish I had kept my own counsel. But there is something concrete I can do myself. And I intend to do it tomorrow. Vera is right in one regard. I have no hard evidence. Tomorrow I believe I might be able to provide myself with some.

I made the preparations earlier today, shortly after my angry exchange with Vera. I motored down to the Giroud hangar where Pierre was in his overalls stripping the turbine yet again on the troublesome Sopwith they bought. The Sopwith is supposed to be an easily maintained aircraft. It has a reputation for being relatively trouble-free. But theirs isn’t.

Did you come to thank me for the champagne, Pierre said. He looks more handsome in his blue overalls with grease smeared across his face than he does in black tie and tails. He looks more the man of action, which of course he is. He and his brother both.

I want to fly early tomorrow, I told him.

Of course. How early is early?

Dawn.

He did something French with his mouth, a sort of shrug of the lips, and nodded. The Tiger Moth?

I shook my head. The Hawker Siddeley, I told him. And I need it fully equipped.

He smiled at that. You want us to mount the machine gun?

Almost all of their aircraft once belonged to the Royal Flying Corps. The brothers Giroud made a killing on military surplus when it was still cheap. I’m quite surprised they did not buy a tank just to tow their aeroplanes through the soft sand on the beach to the landing strip.

Not armed, Pierre, I said. But fully equipped.

Of course, he said. I will see you here tomorrow at dawn. And the Siddeley will be ready for you.

July 28th, 1927

I am just returned from Liverpool. I do not think I have ever felt more exhausted in my life. Detective Chief Inspector Bell of the Liverpool Constabulary had finally acceded to my request for an audience. Perhaps it was the newspaper headlines that persuaded him to grant me half an hour of his precious time. Three days ago Helen Sykes became the fourth woman from our little corner of South Lancashire to disappear. The other women were not worth a splash in print on their own account. Too poor and too plain, I expect. But Helen is both well-off and beautiful. I use the present tense in the hope that she still lives. But each day that passes makes that less likely, as even DCI Bell was moved to agree. Helen has no motive for orchestrating her own vanishing act. And she has no reason for ignoring the appeals to allay concern by coming forward made in every edition of the Post and the Echo and the Visitor sold by those bellowing urchins from the hoardings on the streets.

Bell is senior to Vera’s policeman in rank. And he showed no sign whatsoever of recognising my name when I was ushered into his office. He made me wait. But I waited in an anteroom rather than in the general waiting area, with its green linoleum and scatter of flattened cigarette ends and stink of sweaty desperation. The anteroom was bad enough. It had a large brass lock on a door which whooshed on its steel frame, flush with the floor and the top of the lintel it hung so heavily in. The green canvas chairs and heavy brown varnish and silence of the anteroom could not have symbolised confinement more solidly without bars and handcuffs. The only way out was when they came to escort me to Bell.

The Detective Chief Inspector’s office was replete with the shields and rosettes of achievement on all four walls. Liverpool is a port city and a town as rough as they come and he looked as hard as granite. He was slender and cold-eyed where I had expected him to be stout and bellicose. But there was steel in his handshake as he rose from behind his desk to greet me and offered me a seat. Please, he said, gesturing to the stiff-backed chair. The one word carried the thick, adenoidal character of unschooled Scouse. I know it from my father’s yard. Mr Bell, I knew instantly, had come up on merit earned on the streets through the police ranks. I noticed then a glass case on the wall with a truncheon and a constable’s helmet displayed inside it. And I had no doubt they had belonged to him at the outset of his career. I could see him on Scotland Road under the street lights at closing time, putting violent drunks to punishing rights at the business end of that hardwood club.