For once, Dyson drove flat out, screeching round bends, racing along the straights, ruthlessly clearing the road ahead with horn and headlamps. Nield urged him on. In less than thirty minutes they were braking to a halt outside Hunt’s office.
The silence of the place increased their fears.… Office in darkness, and locked. No light in Hunt’s van. No light or sign of life anywhere. But the MG was parked beside the van—Hunt hadn’t left by car. And if not by car …
Dyson stepped to the lode and shone his torch along it. “His dinghy’s gone, sir.”
Nield joined him. Together, they gazed out across the fen, over the moonlit reeds. Dyson’s heart sank. All those hundred of acres of water and wilderness. They’d never find him in time.…
Then Nield had a flash of inspiration. He grabbed Dyson’s arm. “Come on … Through the main entrance.… Quicker to drive.”
He raced for the car, with Dyson at his heels. In a moment they were roaring out of the site, sweeping past the warden’s cottage, parking by the gate. Nield was out of the car before it had stopped—and beginning to run. The younger man quickly overtook him.
“Don’t wait for me,” Nield shouted. “Make for—Stoker’s Drove. …”
Stoker’s Drove … ! Dyson rushed ahead. Of course. Where else …? He put on speed, running now as he’d never run before, following the path he knew. In a matter of minutes he reached the dyke. As he turned along the drove towards the bend, he thought he heard voices. He stopped for a second to listen, to check the direction. Yes—voices ahead.… And another sound—waterborne, clear, unmistakable …! The laughter of a girl … They were in time after all.…
He raced on. A hundred yards to the bend now.… Suddenly a new sound reached him—a sound that almost froze his blood. A gay laugh, cut off in mid-course. Then a choking, stifled scream.…
Dyson shouted—a warning shout at the full pitch of his lungs. He was almost there. He rounded the bend and shouted again, waving his torch. In a moment he spotted the dinghy. It was tied up on the outside of the working punt. Gwenda was lying across a thwart, limp and motionless, her hair streaming in the bilge. Hunt was half standing, gazing in the direction of the shout. A second later he was across the punt and leaping ashore. By his posture, he was going to fight. Dyson braced himself for the collision. Then, as Hunt recognised Dyson, he suddenly turned and began to run. Dyson dropped the torch, hurled himself forward in a flying tackle, grabbed a leg, and brought his man down with a thud.
A confused and savage struggle followed. Dyson was tough and trained, but badly winded from his run; Hunt was heavier and more powerful. In the poor light, accuracy was impossible. They rolled together in the mire of the path, punching, clawing and jabbing at anything they could find. Only a chance blow, or exhaustion, could settle it. Once they rolled heavily over the iron spike to which the punt was moored, and Hunt took the punishment. Dyson, in his fury, was scarcely aware of pain, or of the blood that was trickling down into his eyes.
Then, as they squirmed in the slippery mud, Hunt managed to break free. It was what he’d been trying to do all along—flight was his last, slender hope. He scrambled to his feet. Dyson, up in the same instant, suddenly sensed a light along the path. Nield.… Encouraged, he rushed forward and delivered a tremendous right-hand swing at the retreating shadow—and, by luck, connected with something hard. Hunt staggered. Dyson was carried on by his own momentum. Before he could check his rush he tripped on the mooring spike, somersaulted over the punt and dinghy and fell, headlong into the dyke. As he fell, he clutched the gunwale of the dinghy and it overturned.
He came up gasping. He heard a shout—Nield yelling “Get the girl!” He needed no telling. He looked wildly around. The surface of the water was unbroken. He plunged his head down, trying to see. The thick ooze at the bottom had been stirred up, and visibility was nil. All he could do was feel. He groped around desperately, half walking in the waist-deep water, half swimming … She couldn’t be far away—there was almost no current … Then he touched something. Clothing … An arm … In a moment, he had dragged her to the bank. It had taken only seconds.…
He was just in time to witness a tableau he would never afterwards forget. Hunt, falling back, felled to the ground. Nield, standing over him with the spade he’d snatched from the punt.…
It seemed at first that Gwenda had been saved from strangling, only to die by misadventure in the muddy water of the dyke. Lying there white in the moonlight with her hair spread round her head like tangled weed, she looked a drowned Ophelia. Dyson couldn’t believe it. He flung himself down and went at once into the practised routine of the “kiss of life” … Approach from the side—girl’s head pressed back and held with both his hands—nostrils obstructed with his cheek—her mouth sealed with his own—watch for the chest to rise.… Almost at once, he got results. Gwenda gasped and started to breathe spontaneously. Back to a shuddering consciousness, back to life.…
Nield stayed with her while Dyson dragged the half-submerged dinghy from the water, drained it, and recovered the oars from the reeds downstream. The sergeant appeared to be having trouble with his right hand. “I’ll row,” Nield said. “You take the girl in the stern.” Dyson sat down, and Nield lifted Gwenda and passed her to him. “Put this round her,” he said, peeling off his jacket. Then he went back for Hunt.…
It was a nightmare journey through the fen—short in distance, but seemingly infinite in time. Dyson, soaked and battered, sat nursing Gwenda, now fully conscious and groaning with pain. He could do nothing for her except hold her close, speak soothingly, tell her it was all right now, that she’d soon be warm and comfortable. Hunt, stretched out on the floorboards, was breathing stertorously, with blood oozing from his head. Nield closed his mind to the sounds and concentrated on his rowing.…
The site at last … Now both policemen went quickly and efficiently into action. Dyson carried Gwenda to Hunt’s caravan, forced the door, lit the gas fire, helped her out of her wet clothes, and wrapped her in blankets. Nield rang for a doctor and ambulance from Newmarket. Dyson changed into an outfit of Hunt’s, and then made hot, sweet tea, laced with whisky. He tried to give Gwenda a little, but she couldn’t swallow. She lay holding her throat, crying weakly.…
The minutes dragged like hours before the ambulance came. Then, inexpressible relief, as fresh, competent men took over. A stretcher for Gwenda, and the doctor’s care. A second journey, to pick up Hunt from the dinghy.…
“You’d better go with them,” Nield told Dyson. “I’ll bring the car … Get yourself fixed up—that finger of yours looks broken. Then get along home. I’ll see you to-morrow.”
Nield made a couple of telephone calls after the ambulance had left. One to headquarters, to report the outcome of the case. Another to the Peterborough police, asking them to get in touch with Gwenda’s parents. “Tell them she’s safe but ill,” he said, “and offer them transport to the hospital. Nothing else … I’ll see them there and explain everything.”
Afterwards, he made a tour of the site. Even though he knew that Gwenda had stayed there, it took him a little while to discover where. But he came in the end to Flavia, with its revealing contents. Gwenda’s clothes and belongings. The many signs of double occupation. The fading chrysanthemums … What a nerve the fellow had had!
On the cabin table, he found the pathetic false starts of Gwenda’s letter to her parents.… It was only later he learned that the letter had been written that evening—and that by writing it, Gwenda had saved her life.…