The Old windmill is a ruined structure on the marshes near Manham, once part of the infrastructure that drained the wetlands and later concealed Carl Brenner’s wildlife-trapping operation. Its history as a practical waterworks, its gradual disappearance into overgrown land, and its illicit use converge when the Police search it for Jenny Hammond and find only cages of animals and birds. The empty raid exposes the gap between a place’s apparent abandonment and what is being done inside it.

Setting and history

A hundred and fifty years before the events of the novel, the windmill was one of the prominent features of Manham. It was not a corn mill but a wind-powered pump, one of hundreds used to drain the marshes across the Broads. Its original function belonged to a landscape reshaped by human engineering: the pumps helped keep wet ground drained and usable.

By the time David Hunter encounters the windmill in the course of the investigation, that working history is almost entirely obscured. The structure has become a decaying husk, its former vanes gone; only a gap in the crumbling masonry marks where they were mounted. Waterlogged ground around it has gradually been reclaimed by scrub woodland, leaving the tower nearly hidden. The setting thus appears to have withdrawn from ordinary human use, even as its concealment makes it valuable to people who want to operate out of sight.

Hidden use and the trapping operation

The windmill is not actually unused. Carl Brenner keeps trapped birds and animals there, including rare birds and wildlife such as otters. Dale Brenner explains that Carl does most of the trapping, while the two men anticipate a market among collectors for live animals and eggs. The windmill serves as a holding place for what they intend to sell, rather than merely as a landmark or abandoned building.

Dale’s account also shows how the operation changes under pressure from the search for the missing women. Carl fears that the Police will search the windmill, so Dale helps move the animals elsewhere while Dale is away from his usual role. They take most of them to outhouses for a few days, intending to wait until the search has passed. When Dale steps into one of the traps and can no longer help, Carl has to return the animals alone. Dale recalls that Carl was furious, although the injury was accidental.

After the search, the animals are back at the windmill. Dale says Carl has nowhere else to put them and will not risk moving them again while Police activity continues. Carl still goes there every day to keep them alive until he can sell them, though few have been sold. The place is therefore not a temporary hiding spot in the sense of a single visit: it is the operation’s regular base, and the animals require ongoing attention even while their keepers try to avoid detection.

The raid and its outcome

The Police plan a coordinated operation against the windmill, the Brenner house, and Dale Brenner’s cottage. The simultaneous raids are intended to prevent either man or their families from warning the others, while maximizing the chance of recovering Jenny alive. Mackenzie joins the team assigned to the windmill. Because the approach runs along a narrow, overgrown track, officers park at the edge of the woods and proceed on foot; an armed response unit, paramedics, and an ambulance are also on hand.

The windmill raid does not produce the expected encounter. Mackenzie is left among cages containing frightened birds and animals, and a sergeant reports that the team has searched everywhere without finding anyone. The cages confirm that the windmill has been used for the trapping enterprise, but the people the Police hoped to seize are absent. Nor does the raid recover Jenny. The building’s concealed location has helped keep the illicit activity out of sight, but the planned intervention arrives after its human occupants have gone.

Narrative significance

The windmill’s history and present use are set against each other. A structure once associated with the drainage of a whole marsh landscape has become a private refuge for an illegal trade in captured wildlife. Its abandonment is real in one sense—the pump has ceased to perform its old function and the building is crumbling—but misleading in another: the site is still active, only for purposes its ruined appearance helps conceal.

The failed raid sharpens that contrast. The Police reach the place they have identified as a likely hideout and find unmistakable evidence of human activity in the cages, yet no one to question or arrest. The windmill is not empty of consequence; it is empty of the people the operation needs to find. Its role in the search for Jenny also links the investigation’s urgent human stakes with the animals held there, whose lives depend on daily care and whose captivity continues even as their keepers evade the Police.