Peter Lovesey - Swing, Swing Together

“Resuscitation?” asked Cribb, who had forced his way to the front.

“Yes, mate,” someone replied. “It’s doing no good. They’ve been at this for twenty minutes. Poor blighter’s dead as mutton.”

Harriet, still on the fringe of what was going on, heard a murmur and made out someone standing up. Several men around her removed their hats. A voice intoned, “ ‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’ The ninetieth Psalm, Verse 12.”

It could not be anyone else but Jim Hackett.

As people replaced their hats and dispersed in all directions in case someone should ask them to assist with whatever happened next, Harriet was enabled to move to the front. Jim Hackett it was who had worked unavailingly to persuade air into the dead man’s lungs. Mr. Bustard had held the ankles.

Cribb had not met Bustard and Hackett, so Thackeray made the introductions, taking care not to mention rank. They shook hands across the corpse like football captains before a match.

“Where did you find the poor fellow?” Cribb asked.

“Out there,” said Bustard, indicating the water with his thumb. “Floating face downwards. Jim picked him out of the river and we brought him here and tried resuscitation. Jim had lessons in lifesaving, you know.”

“But raising the dead wasn’t included, eh?” said Cribb, adding, before Jim could supply a text, “This one must have joined the majority before you hooked him out of the water. Does anyone know who he is?”

“If his clothes are anything to go by, he’s out of the top drawer, or was,” contributed Thackeray. “It looks as if he’s wearing a Norfolk jacket under that waterproof. Perhaps there’s something in the pockets.”

“I don’t approve of pilfering from the dead,” said Bustard in a scandalized voice.

“For identification,” said Thackeray, red-faced. “I was thinking that he might be carrying a pocketbook.”

They examined the jacket and found the pockets empty. So were the pockets of the waistcoat and trousers.

“He didn’t want to be recognized,” decided Bustard. “Suicide probably.”

“Nice class of person, too,” insisted Thackeray, examining the lining of the jacket.

They looked down at the pale face marbled with lines of mud. Thackeray was right: the features matched the tailoring. It was a fine Roman nose with narrow nostrils and a black moustache beneath it. The lips were thin, but neatly formed, the teeth well cared for. He could not have been much over thirty-five.

“We ought to tell the law,” said Hackett.

“By now, somebody has,” Cribb cryptically remarked, bending to rearrange some hair that was plastered over the dead man’s forehead. “You’re a lifesaver, then, Mr. Hackett. Which resuscitation drill do you favour, the Silvester or the Marshall Hall?”

“Silvester.”

“As taught by the Royal Humane Society,” said Cribb. “Clear the throat, attend to the tongue, place a support under the back, loosen the garments and begin working the arms in the approved manner. You did all that?”

“Of course he did,” said Bustard. “I was holding the ankles. That’s my blazer underneath him.”

“You had no cause to hold him by the neck?”

“Lord, no! This was lifesaving, old sport, not strangulation.”

“So I understood,” said Cribb, stooping to make a closer examination. “I only asked because of these marks. It looks to me as if someone gripped him from behind. They must have used a lot of force to leave the marks of their fingers on his neck.” He pulled aside the loosened collar so that everyone could see the set of marks, purple on the white flesh. “Perhaps you grabbed him by the neck to take him from the water, Mr. Hackett?”

“No, guvnor. I took hold of his clothes first and then I held him under the arms, like.”

Cribb stepped over the body to examine the left side of the neck. A similar formation of bruises was displayed there. “If this was suicide, I’m the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“A very God-fearing man,” commented Jim Hackett.

“Are you quite well, miss?” Thackeray asked Harriet.

The colour must have drained from her face. “I think so. The shock. I am not used to such things.” In truth the sight of death frightened her less than she would have supposed. The real horror that gripped her was Cribb’s discovery-the marks on the neck, marks similar to those on the murdered tramp at Hurley. Cribb was not saying so yet, but he might as well have blown a whistle and shouted to everyone within earshot that this was murder, a second brutal and callous murder within an hour of his three suspects reaching Oxford. If she had done what he had asked her to do, identified Humberstone, Gold and Lucifer as the three she saw the night the tramp was killed, this second man need not have died. She had shirked her responsibility, put off the moment when she had to be definite, and this was the consequence.

“It’s a good thing Jim’s got a sharp eye,” said Bustard. “I’d never have spotted a body in the water on my own. Wouldn’t have noticed a confounded whale swimming by this morning. I was still thinking about the college barges. Handsome things! The carving on them-magnificent!”

“Impossible to ignore,” said Cribb, although Harriet remembered him advocating the impossible ten minutes before. “Is that why you were on the river-to see the barges?”

“The barges and any other delightful objects visible in Oxford early in the morning,” said Bustard, glancing Harriet’s way. “We like to be about before the river gets too cluttered, don’t we, Jim? We were going up to Osney to see the mill. We started from Folly Bridge.”

“Is that rowing boat yours?”

“Hired for the morning, yes. One’s supposed to see Oxford from a punt, I believe, but I’ve never trusted the things.”

“You had a skiff like ours when I saw you last,” said Thackeray.

“In Goring, yes. Now for my confession,” said Bustard. “We abandoned it at Benson two hours after we saw you. Jim was game to carry on, but I was feeling the effects of too much sun. We had some tea and caught the four o’clock bus to Oxford. We’re putting up at the Gentle Bulldog by Folly Bridge. B. and B. for seven and six. Very comfortable.”

“That’s worth knowing,” said Thackeray.

“We were up early to look at the barges,” said Bustard. “Then we decided to come this way. When we got to those vile gasometers, we nearly changed our minds, but the stretch ahead looks altogether more salubrious.”

“Apart from what you find in the water,” said Cribb. “Hello, the bluebottles are buzzing this way. I thought it wouldn’t be long.”

A uniformed constable of the Oxford City Police came heavily along the towpath with two men in attendance who must have fetched him. “Stand aside, if you please,” he said breathlessly as he arrived. “Is this the body?”

“It’s the only one I’ve noticed,” said Cribb.

“Did you discover it?”

“No, but-”

“Better get on your way, then. We don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry crowding round it. Who’s the man that took it from the water?”

“Jim Hackett,” Bustard loftily announced, with a hand towards his companion.

“Hackett,” repeated the policeman, taking out his notebook and pencilling the name carefully inside. “What’s the nature of your employment, Mr. Hackett?”

Hackett frowned.

“Your job,” Cribb explained.

“Oh. Removals.”

“Nobody can get a piano up a staircase like Jim Hackett,” said Bustard.

“Who is your employer?” asked the constable.