Gently Down the Stream (17 page)

‘Have a go with the net, sir?’

It was anything for a change.

Gently wiped a streaming brow with a muddy hand and passed over the dydle.

‘I’ve just about covered the dyke … try your luck in the pool. Come to think of it, it’s probably the likelier place.’

He scrubbed his hands in the grass and got out his pipe. There was no doubt that a professional dydler would earn all he could make at the job! He ought to have requisitioned a boat and some Constables … that would have been the way to tackle it. But when you got hold of a lucky break it gave you a feeling of inevitability.

Dutt brought in his first netful. Even the mussel shells were getting scarce. Solemnly they felt their way through the atrocious mixture, the obscene and glutinous mixture. And then … and then …

‘Here sir, would this be anythink?’

It was Dutt who made the strike. From a handful of mud he was separating a smallish, horse-shoe-shaped
object, part of which gleamed rosily through its porridge-like envelopment.

Gently almost held his breath.

‘Go on, Dutt … scrape the mud off it!’

Dutt obliged, with a look of perplexity.

‘Now – you tell me! What have we got?’

‘Well … it’s half a set of choppers!’

‘Yes, Dutt … half a set of choppers – and they’re going to hang a certain party!’

He seized on the object in triumph and straightened a back which had suddenly ceased to ache. Here it was, the unarguable proof – the final fact, the fact that hung!

Dutt stared dumbly at the muddied denture. ‘But I don’t quite see, sir—’ he was beginning, when two things happened which he didn’t see either. The first was a vicious hiss from across the pool and a rattling crash in the twigs behind them. The second was Gently’s tackle that sent him flying face-first into the mud.

‘Keep flat!’ bawled Gently, ‘Keep your head down on the ground. If you show a couple of inches you’ll maybe stop a .22 bullet between the eyes!’

The rotten planks of the quay gave a modicum of cover, but they looked uncomfortably penetrable. Gently eased himself towards them until he could peer through one of the gaps. Not a sound, not a movement came from the direction from which the shot had been fired. Over there it was all green reeds and a single, scrubby alder. To get there one would have to skirt the dyke and make a rush through the slopping marsh and tangled undergrowth
… a perfect target all the way. He had picked his spot well, the man with the gun.

‘Can you see him, sir?’

Dutt was spitting the mud out of his mouth.

‘No, Dutt – and we shan’t! He doesn’t want to be seen.’

‘You don’t think he’s hooked it, sir, after taking a pot?’

‘Not him … this is too important. He’s got us on his list.’

By way of testing the hypothesis Gently reached across for his jacket, which was lying folded under a bush. He rolled it into a tight wad and suddenly poked it up above the level of the planks. Almost simultaneously a bullet kicked it out of his hand…

‘That’s tidy shooting with a silenced .22!’

‘Here, but wait a minute, sir!’

Dutt had crawled up beside him.

‘We’ve got a banger too – I never signed in that Webley yesterday!’

Gently stared. ‘You mean we’ve got it here?’

‘Yessir. Right up there in me pocket.’

‘In your pocket!’ Gently craned his head. Dutt’s jacket was hanging on a snag, about three yards behind them.

‘If we can get that down we’ll have this geezer in a jam, sir. It’s the old .38, and I know which I’d sooner be behind!’

‘Also it’ll make a noise.’ A gleam came into Gently’s eye. ‘But how the devil are we going to get it down, with Davy Crockett sitting in the rushes?’

Tantalizingly the jacket hung there, only just hooked on to a snag. A quick spring … a sweep of the arm! But a vigilant bullet was waiting for just such a move.

‘We’ll have to knock it off with the dydle, Dutt.’

Dutt pulled a face. ‘A fine mess it’ll make.’

‘So would a bullet in the back – even a little .22!’

Gently squirmed towards the dydle, trying to keep himself perfectly flat. He couldn’t quite have succeeded, since when he was halfway towards it there was a warning hiss and something plucked a loose part of his shirt.

‘That lad’s quite a marksman. I wonder what he’ll be like when someone’s firing back!’

But he managed to get the dydle and tow it back to where Dutt was crouching.

Now came the difficult part – raising the dydle to the level of the jacket. Dydles were no light-weights and the amount of leverage one could get while in a prone position was inconsiderable, to say the least.

‘Let’s anchor the butt-end under the planks.’

It was done and they both braced themselves.

‘We want to get it first time – we shall have to show ourselves a bit!’

How they managed it remained a mystery. A couple of bullets sliced by as the dydle wavered in mid-air. Then it fell with a thump, a white flake carved from the haft … and wonder of wonders, Dutt’s jacket had come down on top of it! Gently hooked it up with his toe. Yes … the Webley was still in the pocket. He slipped off the safety-catch and spun the magazine.

‘To the left of that tree, sir – I see the rushes twitching!’

Gently had seen them too, but it wasn’t at the rushes that he aimed. When the healthy crash of the .38 rang out a bough shivered in the solitary alder … and there followed the splashes of hastily retreating footsteps.

‘Let me get after him, sir!’ Dutt was on his feet in a moment. ‘Just give me that gun – I’ll teach him the way to shoot at people!’

Gently signified a negative and rose more leisuredly.

‘You’d be
easy
meat, Dutt. He couldn’t ask anything better than for you to follow him in there.’

‘But we can’t let him go, sir – he’s the bloke what we’re after! And if he’s in that marsh we can stow him up with a cordon—!’

Gently shook his head again and clicked the safety back on the Webley.

‘No cordons, Dutt, and no following … there’s been enough bloodshed round here already. And I want him alive when I get him. I doubt whether I should, if we stowed him up with a cordon.’

‘But you can’t just let him go!’ It outraged all Dutt’s police-instincts. ‘If we don’t get him now we may never have another chance, sir. And don’t forget we never see him – we can’t swear to who he was if we don’t catch him!’

Gently smiled a frosty smile. He weighed the Webley in his hand.

‘But we know who he was, Dutt … we knew from the very first bullet. And we know where to find him –
because he doesn
’
t know we know!
Now let’s forget about the drama and do some routine work on this denture. When it comes to the fun and games, you’ll get your share along with the rest!’

T
HERE WAS A little more animation about Upper Wrackstead in the middle of the afternoon. For one thing it was early closing in the village and some of the river-dwellers worked there. For another, it was the hour of gossip, when all the chores ought to have been done. And then there were freelances like Pedro, who couldn’t make up their minds to work in the afternoon and others like Thatcher, who didn’t work anyway.

Quite a number were there to witness Gently drive up alone in the police Wolseley.

He locked the doors casually and took his time about getting off the dydle. A couple of kids stopped chasing each other to stand and drink in the spectacle.

‘When are y’going t’lock up Mrs Grey, mister?’

Gently grinned at them amiably.

‘She did for old Annie – she did, din’t she?’

‘Sid – Teddy!’

It was the slattern screeching from her companion hatch.

‘Just yew come away from there an stop cheekin’ the pleeceman!’

Reluctantly the youngsters heeded the voice of fate.

Gently shouldered the dydle and humped it over to Thatcher’s houseboat. The gentleman in question lay snoring on his cabin-top, his hands clasped sedately over his shapely paunch. Not far away sat Pedro. He was playing sadly on his concertina. The nostalgic Italian music seemed somehow to harmonize with Thatcher’s magnificent snore.

‘Oi!’

Thatcher broke off in mid-thunder.

‘I’ve brought your dydle back.’

The recumbent figure sat up slowly and scratched its ear.

‘Yew din’t have to wake me up … I was havin’ a lovela sleep! An what ha’y’ been dewin’ with my dydle – tha’s got a lump took outta the handle!’

Gently shrugged and handed it up to him.

‘It’s fair wear-and-tear.’

‘Not a lump like that i’nt! I suppose yew’ll tell me a pike bit it?’

‘You wouldn’t be so far out.’

Gently moved a few steps towards Cheerful Annie’s wherry and Pedro, his legs dangling over the bows, stopped playing a moment. But Gently seemed to change his mind. He turned back to where Thatcher was tenderly replacing the dydle with his other junk.

‘Ah well … just one more bit of business! I want the dinghy again.’

‘What arter the way yew messed her up this mornin?’

‘I shan’t mess her up this afternoon.’

Thatcher hesitated doubtfully. The nick out of the dydle seemed to have dropped his opinion of policemen by a few points.

‘That i’nt them carrs again, I s’pose?’

‘No – it’s that old mill across on the other bank.’

‘Yew can mess a boot up there, dew yew’re got a mind to.’

‘You come with me and keep me out of mischief.’

Thatcher fingered the obnoxious bullet-score pointedly. It was almost humorous to watch his mind working …

‘Verra well, my man! Five bob – take it or leave it.’

‘It’s too much, you old sinner. But I’ll take it – if you row!’

Thatcher climbed down from the cabin-top and drew in the dinghy. Everyone was watching as Gently stepped aboard. Thatcher winked at them ponderously over the policeman’s shoulder …
he’d
got his head screwed on, the wink seemed to say.

‘Are yew all set, ole partna?’

Gently was arranging his feet.

‘Then here w’go, an’ the best of luck!’

On the bows of the wherry Pedro continued to play his sentimental tune. It followed them for quite a distance as the dinghy turned downstream.

‘I’ve just about finished, ole partna.’

Gently could slip easily into an imitation of Thatcher’s vernacular.

‘We’ll ha done by s’arternoon, an leave yew all t’get on with it, together.’

Thatcher wasn’t going to be hurried. He rowed with a slow, steady, waterman’s stroke which made even a dinghy seem monumental. And Gently wasn’t in a hurry. He trailed stubby fingers in the sun-warm water. Two middle-aged men, one comfortably disreputable, the other comfortably respectable, you expected them to pull into the bank at any moment and to get out their rods. Why else would they be sauntering downstream in that antedeluvian dinghy?

‘I reckon yew b’long here somehow, bor … yew don’t pick our natter up that easa.’

‘W’blast, there’s nothin tew it. I onla got to listen t’soma yew carryin’ on.’

Thatcher gave a little chuckle and twisted his head appreciatively. Not many foreigners could master the sly, dry North-shire tongue with its pace and familiar lilt and abundance of glottal stops.

‘Well then, who was’t, arter all?’ he inquired, lifting an oar to accommodate a patch of floating weed.

Gently hunched his shoulders lazily.

‘We’ll know in a bit … my sergeant is going to pick him up.’

‘I’ll have a quid on that was Joe Hicks.’

‘I’d take you, too, if I was a betting man.’

Thatcher chuckled again and rowed on methodically. He wasn’t doing so badly out of Gently, when you came to weigh it up. Fifteen bob in the morning, five in the afternoon.

‘But what about all that monna?’

The thought of cash had recalled the box of notes.

‘Aren’t the kids goin to ha’ that now, when yew’ve got the bloke yew want?’

Gently fed himself a peppermint cream. ‘It’s still stolen property.’

‘But blast – yew can stretch a point! Yew know their ole man’s dewin’ time.’

‘They’ll be taken care of … don’t worry about that.’

‘But that monna was theirs. That say so on the box!’

‘The person who was being so lavish would have to prove his title.’

Thatcher rested on his oars. The point really seemed to worry him. His grizzled brows contracted as he wrestled with the problem.

‘But are yew
pos’tive
that was stolen?’ he asked at last, ‘ha yew foun’ out where that come from?’

‘W’no, ole partna – but it’s a hundred to one it was stolen from Mr Lammas.’

‘Well, there y’are, then!’ A hundred to one was nothing to Thatcher. ‘Dew yew aren’t pos’tive, why not give them little kiddoes the benefit o’ th’ doubt?’

‘To be honest, I wish I could … but it isn’t in my power.’

Thatcher studied him seriously before dipping his oars again. There was a penetration in his hazel eyes surprising in its calm power. ‘Yew got yourself mixed up with a rum lot, bor, I’m buggered if yew ha’nt!’ he observed sadly.

Gently gave an almost imperceptible shrug. ‘We’re all a rum lot, bor … there i’nt much t’chewse atween us,’ he replied.

They had rounded the bend which cut off Upper Wrackstead and entered the long, reed-lined Mill Reach. At the other end was a bend which would bring
Wrackstead Bridge and village into view, but the Reach itself gave no premonition of these nearby haunts of men. From a boat, its solitude was complete. One saw nothing but the tall reeds and scrub marsh trees above them. The majestic, rusty brick tower of a ruined drainage-mill pointed, if possible, the sense of remoteness and desolation. Even under a June sun, even in the presence of some passing holiday craft.

‘Yew aren’t a-goin’ to tell me yew don’t know who done that job, jus’ when yew’re going to lay hands on him.’

Thatcher was still puzzling about it. The police worked in mysterious ways!

‘I know who did it.’ Gently was talking softly, as though to himself. ‘Only nobody would believe me … unless I produced the man.’

‘Then how dew your bloke know who he’s arrestin’, dew yew han’t told him?’

‘I’ve told him where he’ll find him. There won’t be any room for mistake.’

Thatcher brooded on it for a moment.

‘Don’t that put yew in a rum position?’

‘It could do, I suppose … if I were inclined to let it.’

Their eyes came together, Gently’s mild ones, Thatcher’s questioning.

‘Dew he knew what yew’ve told me, yew might not have so long to go, ole partna.’

‘Yes … he’s handy with a gun.’

‘Ah, an’ don’t care if he use it.’

‘They get handier all the time … that’s the reason one has to stop them.’

Thatcher slewed round in his seat to bawl out a speeding motor-cruiser. The offending helmsman was completely silenced by such a barrage of pungent English.

‘But what sort of blokes d’yew reckon they are, who go about killin’ other people?’

Now they were getting near the mill and one could see the low, square doorway.

‘They’re all a bit twisted … they’ve had a left-handed deal.’ There was a dyke and a sluice-gate, and a sunken houseboat in the dyke.

‘Yew mean they’re ordinara people?’

‘Yes … ordinara people.’

‘Onla suffns pushed’m into’t.’

‘Suffns pushed, and they’ve pushed back.’

Thatcher turned the dinghy with his oar and it floated gently into the mill-dyke. Above the sluice-gate, grotesque, sun-bleached, rose the ruined paddle-wheel, like a symbol from a lost world.

‘So yew aren’t realla agin’m …?’

‘No … I just want to stop them.’

‘Yew’re goin t’give’m another push.’

‘It isn’t me who does the pushing.’

The dinghy touched on the bank. Thatcher shipped his oars with a quick, suddenly irritable movement. Gently continued to sit trailing his fingers. About the mill there was an air of unnatural quietness.

‘W’here she is, dew yew want to see her.’

Thatcher’s voice had taken on a roughness. Gently nodded, but didn’t stir.

‘Would there be any works left in her?’

Thatcher silently tied the painter.

Reluctantly, Gently climbed out on to the bank. In front of the mill it was firm and clear. Behind and beside it a thick growth of bush willow hid the surrounding marshes, but just here it was rough, hummocky turf.

‘Tha’s the door dew yew’re goin in.’

Thatcher had climbed out too and was standing close behind him.

‘Mind y’head as yew go through … they dint build it t’take six-footers.’

Gently went forward towards the gap and Thatcher followed a pace in the rear.

But before they could enter there was an interruption. The smart, uniformed figure of Superintendent Walker emerged from the mill. And along with him, ducking their heads, came five other people – Mrs Lammas, Paul, Pauline, Hansom and Dutt.

An assembly of eight, they stood staring at each other on the hummocky turf in front of the mill.

‘Gently, I’d like to know what the devil you’re playing at!’

The super began angrily and then broke off, aware of an undefinable tension which had somehow sprung up.

What was it? What had happened?

Everyone was standing there like statues!

‘Gently, I might as well tell you …’

Gently wasn’t listening to him. Nobody was listening to him. Pauline Lammas had covered her face, Paul was staring frantically in front of him, his mother’s eyes were ferocious burning coals. But why? What was causing it? Nobody had as much as spoken a syllable!

‘Gently …’

The super glared from one to another, desperately trying to comprehend the unbearable strain. It couldn’t last, this! Something would have to give somewhere. They stood as though rooted by a frightful supernatural power – Gently too, poised on his toes, and Thatcher, looking as though he had seen the devil.

And still it went on!

Sweat began beading on the super’s brow.

He wanted to say something, to take charge somehow. But his throat had gone dry and his brain seemed paralysed. He looked at Hansom. Hansom’s mouth was open to its fullest extent. He looked at Dutt. The sergeant had a sort of grinning frown on his face. Had they all gone mad? Was it the super who was mad?

‘Someone … somebody!’

He couldn’t recognize that croak as his own.

‘I’m asking you …!’

It might have been a scene from another planet.

And then, very, very slowly, something did begin to happen. At first it was little gasping coughs, almost as though somebody were muttering to himself, but then it increased both in volume and pitch.

Paul was laughing. But what laughter!

With his lips drawn tight across his teeth, he was sending out great rippling screams of laughter, laughter that iced the blood in the super’s veins.

‘Stop it – stop that row!’

Paul only shrieked the louder.

‘Slap his face … we’ve got to stop him!’

It didn’t occur to the super to slap Paul’s face himself.
He daren’t move either … now! He was petrified like the others. Instinctively he knew that a movement would trigger off something.

‘
Ha, ha, ha, ha!
’

From bank to bank the crazy laughter echoed.

In the hot afternoon sun the super shivered and sweated at the same time. Was nothing going to break it? Would it go on for ever?

If only one understood … if one knew who …!

When the end came, it was almost an anti-climax. The enormous tension snapped as inexplicably as it had begun. There was a cry from Dutt, a sudden flurry of movement. A heavy body went one way and a silenced .22 Beretta the other.

At the same moment, as though part of the same mechanism, Mrs Lammas struck her son a blow on the face, a blow that well nigh felled him to the ground.

‘Get the cuffs on him, Dutt!’

‘Yessir. You bet, sir!’

Gently had not been tender and Thatcher was in no condition to resist. Over by herself Pauline Lammas was sobbing brokenly, Paul was gasping and holding his face. Mrs Lammas stood exactly as she had stood during the whole incident. Her eyes were fixed on Thatcher as though she would turn him into stone.

‘But who in the hell is this fellow?’

The super spoke dazedly, still trying to catch up.

Gently motioned to Dutt.

‘Get him up on his feet.’

‘I’m asking you, Gently!’

‘In a minute – get him up!’

It was anti-climax now and still incomprehensible. The super couldn’t place Thatcher. He just didn’t belong in those handcuffs!

‘You understand what I’m saying?’

Thatcher was breathless, but he understood.

‘Very well, I take it you do – and you must know what to expect! I hereby charge you, James William Lammas, with the murder of your chauffeur, Joseph Hicks, and I must warn you that anything you say may be taken down in writing and used in evidence.’