River of Darkness

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The village was empty. Billy Styles couldn't understand it. They hadn't seen a living soul on the road from the station, and even the green was deserted, though the weather was the kind that normally brought people out of doors.

The finest summer since the war!

The newspapers had been repeating the phrase for weeks now as one radiant day followed another, with no end to the heatwave in sight.

But here in Highfield, sunshine lay like a curse on empty cottage gardens. Only the headstones in the churchyard, crowding the moss-covered stone wall flanking the road, gave mute evidence of a human presence.

'They're all at the house,' Boyce said, as though in explanation. He was an inspector with the Surrey police, a thin grey man with an anxious look. 'Word got around this morning.'

Boyce had come to the station to meet Inspector Madden and Billy. In a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, no less! Billy wanted to ask who'd sent it, but didn't dare. With less than three months' experience in the QD he knew he was lucky to be there at all, assigned to a case of such magnitude. Only the August bank holiday, combined with the heavy summer-leave schedule, had brought it about. Scotland Yard had been thinly manned that Monday morning when the telephone call came from Guildford. Minutes later Billy had found himself in a taxi with Madden bound for Waterloo station.

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