Alan Hunter - Gently Go Man

‘Maybe,’ Gently said.

‘You think it’s likely?’ Deeming asked.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Gently said. ‘Better ask an archaeologist.’

‘Yeah, but I’m curious,’ Deeming said. ‘I get a wild kick out here. I stop here long and it sends me, I don’t know who or where I am. You ever get a kick like that?’

‘I’m too much of a square,’ Gently said.

‘I was out here this morning,’ Deeming said. ‘You know? It sent me, I was gone for hours.’

‘Which particular hours?’ Gently said.

‘Like you’ve beat me there,’ said Deeming. ‘But man, I touch it here so hard it’s a wonder I get back in again.’

‘Try eating chocolates,’ Gently said.

‘Yuh?’ Deeming said. ‘What’s that for a crack?’

Gently shrugged, climbed up the hummock, took some steps round its perimeter. It was very roughly circular and the middle and one side seemed to have been excavated. The hollow was carpeted with needles and fir cones. There lay in it also a cigarette packet and two or three ends. He climbed down the side of the hollow and retrieved them. They were fresh. They hadn’t been in the dew.

‘You smoke Player’s?’ he demanded of Deeming.

Deeming grinned. ‘Like I do, screw,’ he said.

‘They’d be Player’s,’ Gently said, ‘in your case?’

Deeming took out his case, snapped it open, showed them.

‘I needn’t have asked that, need I?’ Gently said.

‘Sure,’ Deeming said. ‘You’re a screw. It checks. I tell you I’ve been here all the morning, and like you want to prove it. That’s being a screw.’

‘Why should I want to know you’d been here all the morning?’

Deeming opened his big palms. ‘You tell me,’ he said.

‘I’ll tell you something,’ Gently said. ‘There’s a lot of imagination being used.’

‘Imagination?’ Deeming said.

‘Yes. And Bixley hasn’t got much.’

Deeming made a face at him. ‘You’re being subtle, screw,’ he said. ‘Man, you’re the one for the sly dig. It sends me, the way you give it spin.’

Gently looked at him, puffing. He dropped the packet and ends back in the hollow.

The track bore to the right past the depression, or perhaps was joined by a second track. Neither track was distinct enough to suggest which way it was. But they rode away from the two firs at a right angle to their line of approach, the depression quickly melting back into the anonymity of the brecks. Deeming was humming to himself. It was a theme of Beethoven’s. He rode faster on this return leg, but still not very fast. The sun had strengthened as it began to set and was filling the hollows with slaty shadow. Some low mist was forming. It kept in the hollows.

Eventually the track become more regular and some low trees showed ahead of it, then they came up with a scrubby hedge, a bit of pasture, and a sheep-pen. The pasture showed more frequently. They passed a cottage with a smoking chimney. Just beyond it they went through a farmyard and through farm gates on to a narrow road. A mile further and they could see traffic passing on a hedgeless, straight, main road. It was the Norwich road. At the intersection a fingerpost said ‘Latchford 3’. Deeming turned his head, showing his teeth.

‘You’ll be back for tea, screw,’ he said. ‘You like it I break two minutes between here and town?’

He didn’t wait for an answer but wound the throttle three parts open. The machine soared off like a comet. They broke two minutes quite easily. Deeming tickered it in to Tony’s park where the other machines were still lined up, placed it precisely in the line, shut it down and dropped the rest. Bixley strutted out from the doorway, stood looking ugly with his swollen upper lip.

‘That was the coda, screw, that last bit,’ Deeming said, swinging his goggles. ‘Like I wanted you to have the full treatment, double-side L.P.’

His eyes were sparkling, he looked elated, he gave Bixley a flip on the shoulder.

‘The screw just loved it,’ he said. ‘The screw just loved every minute.’

‘Yuh, he must have done,’ Bixley said thickly.

‘Sure, he was crazy with it,’ Deeming said. ‘Like he would have gone on touching till we ran out of gas. You underestimate the screw, Sid. You underestimate him bad. But he’s wild there at the bottom of him, he’s a wild, way-out screw. And like you’d do well to remember that, Sid, if you have any deals with him. It’s crazy, the way he picks up tricks. You don’t fool him for five minutes.’

‘I’ll remember it,’ Bixley said.

‘Yeah, he’s mustard-sharp,’ Deeming said. ‘I wouldn’t try pulling the wool with this screw. He’s all round you. He digs everything.’

Gently took off the helmet and goggles, pulled his trousers out of his socks.

‘Thanks for the entertainment,’ he said. ‘It makes a change from dull routine.’

‘Any time,’ Deeming said. ‘We don’t like screws having it dull.’

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ Gently said. ‘Murder can never really be dull.’

He unlocked the Rover, got in, lit his pipe. They watched him silently. He drove away.

At the Sun it was later than teatime but his waitress fetched a tray for him in the lounge. He was surprisingly stiff from his bout of riding and his arm was aching where Hallman had punched it. He had the evening paper brought in. The Lister case had gone off the front page. The paper originated in Norwich and there was nothing in it about the business at Castlebridge. He ate his toasted teacakes sombrely, drank his tea, stared at the window.

He was back with his pipe when Setters came in. The local inspector looked relieved to see him.

‘I’ve been trying to contact you all the afternoon,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t seem to get a fix on you after you left Castlebridge. Then we got a motorist making a report about some dangerous driving in Five Mile Drove, and the car sounded a bit like yours, and you could have been there about then. Did you have any trouble?’

Gently grunted. ‘Not to say trouble,’ he replied. ‘A little playfulness, perhaps, and some polished stage-management.’

‘What this motorist reported didn’t sound very playful.’

‘It’s a matter of taste,’ Gently said. ‘It might seem boisterous to some people.’

He gave Setters an account of the events of the day. Setters sat droopingly listening, dragging on a cigarette and flicking his nails. When Gently had finished Setters sat silent for some moments, then he said:

‘It looks to me as though it’s just the reefer-boys you’ve been having a tangle with.’

‘That’s how it looks,’ Gently admitted.

‘It looks to work this way,’ Setters said. ‘They knew you saw the collector at Castlebridge, so they aimed to confuse you, and lay on alibis, and take the juice out of you too. First there was two instead of one, then there was six instead of two. So you can’t swear to any one of them, and one and all have got alibis. I didn’t realize we’d got such clever bastards in Latchford.’

‘But it wasn’t necessary,’ Gently said. ‘That’s the significant point. I didn’t recognize the collector. All the play-acting was superfluous.’

‘Bixley knew you’d suspect him,’ Setters said. ‘Maybe that’s why he set it up. That and to make you look small, which he’d want to do to keep face.’

‘But now I’m positive it was him,’ Gently said, ‘after a build-up like that. Or am I only supposed to be positive — was that the idea of it?’

‘I don’t get it,’ Setters said. ‘You’re straining my poor provincial brain. But here’s a hard fact I came to tell you — we found some sticks at Elton’s place.’

He gave Gently a side glance.

‘They were in the garden shed,’ he said. ‘There were five of them, in a box. A chocolate box. It’s got no good prints on it.’