Peter Lovesey - Swing, Swing Together

Towser stood on one of the rowing thwarts with his forepaws on the side, a small fox terrier mainly white in colour, with brown patches on the head and tail. From his collar a leather lead hung slackly, its other end attached to the rowlock. He had given up barking now that they were near. He was growling instead, a low, reverberating sound like a boiler with the vent open.

“Leave this to me,” said Thackeray, taking the polony from Hardy with all the authority of the only canine expert in the party. “Keep a reasonable distance from him. That’s just right. You’re downwind of him there. I want him to get a good scent of the sausage before I offer it to him.”

Their vantage point was ten yards from the bank. Thackeray approached the snarling Towser with gladiatorial confidence, keeping the polony wrapped and tucked out of sight under his left arm.

The skiff was moored at the bow and lay at a narrow angle to the bank, held steady by the current. To reach the dog, he would need to board by the bow.

He approached indirectly, in the long, sweeping curve of an experienced tracker, covertly removing the cheesecloth from the polony as he drew level with the bank. Two yards more and he would have been aboard, but the unexpected intervened. He had underestimated the length of the lead trailing from Towser’s collar. The terrier bounded onto the bank just ahead of him, stretching the lead taut against his shins. The impetus of his movement lifted the end of the lead over the rowlock, and the dog was free.

Ignoring Thackeray and the polony, it rushed at Hardy, baying with predatory passion, and sank its teeth into his leg.

“Beautiful!” declared Sergeant Cribb, a man not often given to aesthetic pronouncements.

A perfect set of teethmarks was displayed on Hardy’s left calf, uncovered for inspection in his room at the Barley Mow. He lay face down on the bed moaning faintly as Harriet dabbed the wound with iodine.

“Believe me, Constable, I’d never have asked you to do such a thing,” Cribb went on. “Quite beyond the call of duty. I don’t know who it was that thought of this, but it’s the ace of trumps. Exhibit number one! There’s a commendation in this for someone.”

“It was Constable Hardy’s own idea to purchase the sausage,” said Harriet generously.

“Good thinking,” said Cribb. “Give the dog a scent of meat and then show it your leg.”

“It wasn’t quite like that,” said Harriet. “Constable Thackeray was holding the polony and-”

“Thackeray, eh?” said Cribb. “I thought this had the stamp of Scotland Yard on it. Stout work, Thackeray! I should have known that if there was a dust with a dog, you’d be in the thick of it. And when the evidence was firm, so to speak, you disconnected Towser from Hardy and secured the beast to the boat again?”

“ That’s right, Sarge.”

Thackeray’s emphasis sought to convey that Cribb’s assumptions were not correct in every respect, but it was lost on the sergeant. “Capital work! The suspects won’t have any notion of the evidence we’ve secured. They’re paddling blissfully up to Culham at this minute to spend the night in the backwater, quite unaware of what was going on while they were drinking. I forgot to ask you if you recognized them, Miss Shaw.”

That question again. Harriet had hoped it had been forgotten in the excitement over Hardy’s leg. “They could well be the men I saw on Tuesday night, but I am not ready to swear to it yet. My view was partially obstructed downstairs and the conditions were altogether different, as you must appreciate.”

Cribb nodded tolerantly. “We’ll see if we can get you a better view of them on the river tomorrow. Actually, you must have come quite close to it today. You can’t have been too far behind them. A nifty piece of rowing, gentlemen.”

In the short pause that followed, Hardy did not stir a muscle, even when Harriet in her unease tipped some iodine directly onto his perforated skin. “We-er-came by train, Sarge,” Thackeray confessed. “We left the boat at Goring.”

“If you remember, you left a message there asking us to make the best speed we could,” Harriet quickly added in support, “but up to then we followed their route most faithfully. We established conclusively that they spent last night on an island at Shiplake.”

“You did?” said Cribb, still absorbing the information that they were without a boat.

Rapidly, Harriet moved on to a breathless account of the meeting with Mr. Bustard and Jim Hackett, on the principle that if she bombarded him with detail, something sooner or later would make an impact. It turned out to be Jim Hackett’s habit of quoting from the Bible.

“Do you remember any of the texts?” Cribb asked.

“ ‘Be sure your sin will find you out’ was one, and there was another about giving account for idle words on the day of judgment.”

“I remember a third,” said Thackeray enthusiastically. “ ‘Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.’ Psalm 104. Thirty-five verses. I learned it at school.”

“I wonder if Jim Hackett did,” said Cribb. “Did he have much else to say?”

“Very little,” answered Thackeray. “He corrected Bustard once, I remember, a question over where they’d bought a veal and ham pie. Bustard said it was the George and Dragon at Wargrave, but Hackett insisted it was the Dog and Badger. The way he said it made me think he was talking about the contents of the pie. Which reminds me, would anybody like a slice of polony before we all retire? It wasn’t touched by Towser, I promise you. I’ll use my pocketknife, if nobody objects.”

“Just what I could do with,” said Cribb, his spirits quite restored. “How about you, Miss Shaw?”

“I would rather not,” said Harriet. She was about to add that she had eaten very well at the Railway Hotel, but stopped herself in time. “The smell of the iodine is too strong for me, I’m afraid.”

“A piece for our intrepid hero, then?” said Cribb, clapping his hand on Hardy’s inert thigh. “Got to pull yourself together, man. You’re lying there as though you’re settled for the night.”

Hardy came swiftly to life, rolling onto his side. “Pull myself together? What for, Sergeant?”

Cribb consulted his watch. “For a train journey. In just over an hour you’re going to be at Culham Station to catch the eleven-fifteen to London. It’s a local, the landlord tells me, so you can change at Twyford Junction and with luck you’ll get a connection to Henley before morning. I want you at the mortuary at seven, when the keeper gets there, to compare your dog bite with the tramp’s. We know his name now, by the way. Another vagrant identified him yesterday. He’s called Walters, known among the tramps as ‘Choppy.’ It’s still a mystery why anyone should want to kill him. He kept to himself, but he wasn’t disliked. Stayed mostly in the Thames Valley, but always on the move. Anyway, when you’ve had a look at Choppy’s bite, arrange for drawings to be made of it. And yours, of course. After that, take a cab to Marlow, locate the Crown at the top of the High Street, and check the register for Humberstone, Lucifer and Gold. Then make your way to Oxford and wait for me at the central police station in St. Aldate’s. Any questions?”

“How am I to get to Culham Station from here, Sergeant?”

“You walk, Constable.”

“My leg is injured.”

“I’m aware of that. A stiff walk should do it good. Roll down your trouser leg and have a slice of polony. I can’t send anyone else, can I? You’re exhibit number one! The sooner you’re cheerfully on your way, the sooner the rest of us can get to bed.”