Blood and Judgement Read Free Page B

you say something about a policeman?”
    “That’s right,” said Ray. “We found a copper, outside the gate. Showed him where to go. It wasn’t so thick, then.”
    “That’s all right, then,” said Petrella, “he ought to hear us if we shout altogether. Oy!”
    Two trebles and one busted treble joined the chorus. A faint shout answered them. They turned to their left and started to climb toward it. Soon the ground levelled out and their feet crunched on a cinder track. Then down again, sharply, toward an iron fence. The shout came again, to their left, and much nearer.
    They found Police Constable Farrer standing by the gate.
    “Wotter night,” he said. “Oh, it’s you, Sergeant. Here she is. Lock’s busted. You push her and she’ll open. I took one look inside to see they weren’t making it all up, then I came out.”
    “Quite right,” said Petrella. He switched on his big torch. The gate was no more than a section of the rusty iron fence, which had been equipped in ages long past, with hinges on one side and a lock on the other. It was so long since it had been used that the path beyond, straight down through the bushes, was now hardly visible.
    “Halfway down on the left, in the bushes, just off the path, if you can call it a path,” said Farrer. “Been there some time, I’d say.”
    The lock of the gate had rusted and snapped. Petrella pushed against the resisting weed and grass beyond and squeezed through the gap. He kept, as much as he could, to the side of the path, but it wasn’t easy in that sloping, sodden wilderness. Every time he felt his feet slipping he remembered that the reservoir was immediately below him. He found her easily enough. He saw what must have caught the boys’ eyes earlier in the evening. The sole of a brown shoe, set at that unmistakable angle which means, at once, that the shoe is not a derelict cast-off but is attached to a human body.
    She was lying on a shelf of earth which ran parallel with the bank of the reservoir and about halfway up the slope. It was an exaggeration to say that she was buried. She was lying in a slight dip, and the grass had grown round her and the leaves had blown over her.
    If she had been a yard or two further in from the path, he thought, she might have lain there until the Day of Judgement, when all hearts are opened.
    Petrella switched off his torch and climbed slowly back to the top of the bank. He had a decision to make. Clearly there was nothing to be done before morning. In fact, trampling round in the dark they might already have done more harm than good. On the other hand, even in cases of this sort, to waste no time was the inflexible rule. He had worked things out by the time he had got through the gate and heaved it shut behind him.
    “There’s no sense in you staying on guard, Farrer,” he said. “There’s nothing to guard against, and all you’ll catch will be double pneumonia. Get the station to send a man up at first light. One man should do. There’s no need to make a lot of fuss. I don’t suppose we should get many people up here anyway.”
    This reminded him of something else. He turned to the boys, who were standing in a row like sparrows hopeful of further crumbs from a promising feast.
    “I’ll get the driver to take you home,” he said. “Your mothers and fathers will want to know what you’ve been up to. Well, you can tell ’em – tell ’em everything – except where the body is. If we have a crowd up here first thing tomorrow, I’ll know who’s to blame and I’ll come after you with a belt.”
    Ray exposed his gap teeth in a beautiful smile. His prestige was going to be so heightened by his return home in a police car that nothing else mattered.
    “I won’t tellum,” he said.
    Having got rid of his assistants, Petrella had a word with the anxious man at the main gate, the resident secretary of the Sports Club.
    “Of course you can use our telephone, Sergeant,” he said. “As a matter of fact,