Alan Hunter - Gently through the Mill

‘What a day for a blinking picnic!’

Dutt, like all cockneys, had a note of mute poetry in his soul.

‘If I had the missus here… can’t you see the nippers rousing around in them trees?’

From the radio they had had a bulletin from headquarters which told them little enough. Upcher, the yacht-owner, had been contacted and given an account of his deal. The price demanded for his craft had been twelve thousand five hundred and not ten, as Pershore had claimed, but the difference could easily be explained as a hoped-for compromise for immediate cash.

Of Pershore’s past there was nothing to relate. After twenty meritorious years at Lynton the trail had vanished into unsubstantial rumour. Griffin had got his prints, and that might lead to something, but failing this it rested solely with Roscoe — a Roscoe picked up alive and communicative.

‘Do you reckon it will be this afternoon, sir?’

Gently knew it would, with the irrational conviction that at times came to him. In every case there was a point when his vision seemed to border on the uncanny. Some people called him lucky, but in fact it went further than that.

‘We might as well have our lunch.’

The St George had put them up a wicker basket of provisions. Undone, it displayed a truly old-fashioned lavishness: there was cold chicken and salad, apple turnover, biscuits, cheese, fruit, and four thermoses of hot coffee. ‘Between you and me, sir, I reckon this Roscoe won’t be such a mug as the other two charlies.’

‘No… but he’s up against a dangerous man.’

‘He could lay for him, sir, and maybe put a bullet in him.’

‘Not Roscoe, Dutt. He’s a professional through and through.’

‘All the same, he’s in a rum position.’

They ate in silence, the countryside about them seeming to drowse in its peacefulness. Nothing passed along their lane or the road leading to the Manor. An early sulphur-yellow butterfly, unsteady in the brilliant sun, was the only moving thing to come their way.

Gently glanced at his watch, which showed twenty minutes to two. If lunch at the Manor was at one, it shouldn’t be long before Pershore and the green Bentley…

He finished his coffee and screwed up the thermos. Just to test his intuition he would have the engine running! Dutt, taking the hint, packed the plates away in the basket. It was as though they had suddenly received a message that the quarry was on his way.

‘If he sees us do you think we can hold him, sir?’

Gently pulled the door shut with a grunted reply. If Griffin had played his part properly Pershore should have no suspicion; if he had, well, there were the patrol cars to reckon with!

It was ten minutes to two when the Bentley swept past the lane-end. Pershore, sitting relaxedly at the wheel, had no eyes for the Humber lying half hidden behind the bend. Gently gave him plenty of rope. The Bentley was not being driven fast. The road from Prideaux to West Lyng, where it joined the main Norchester road, was fairly open and passed few side-turnings.

‘Of course it might be like he says, sir, just a business trip or something.’

It might, of course… the chances were even.

‘He don’t seem in no hurry — hardly doing forty.’

Was Dutt deliberately setting out to be annoying?

At West Lyng Gently almost held his breath, waiting for Pershore to choose his direction. If it were left, the man was simply going into Lynton; he had, after all, plenty of business to see to there.

But Pershore turned right, swinging his big car round leisurely through a gap in the traffic. Wherever he was heading it was not for Lynton. Gently, breathing again, pressed harder on the accelerator. On the busy main road he needed to be closer to his game.

Shimmering under the spring sun, the dark surface extended ribbon-like across the rough heathland of West Northshire. For some miles there were no hedges, and the string of traffic ahead was firmly in view. Pershore made no effort to increase his pace. He seemed quite content to hold his niche between a Zephyr and a red-and-black Velox. If he had any idea that he was being followed, he was giving not the smallest indication of it.

‘Got any idea where his nibs is off to, sir?’

Dutt, as usual, was beginning to puzzle away at it.

‘I doubt whether it’s Norchester.’

‘More like the country, sir?’

‘It could be anywhere, and that’s the truth!’

Dutt pulled out a road map and began to frown over it. In his imagination Gently was already exploring the road ahead. Apart from odd villages the next place was Swardham, then East Cheapham, which was larger, and so to the city. All of them were equally likely or unlikely — you could get to any of them by rail from Ely.

Swardham was coming up now, a straggling, charming country town with a great flint-and-freestone church tower. The main road turned left across the top of a triangular plain, and then twisted downwards past a T-junction with traffic lights.

‘Gawd, we’re going to lose him!’

Gently sensed the danger and trod on the accelerator. The traffic lights blinked red but the road was clear, and the Humber soared through like an angry tiger. On the far side there was an S-bend ending in a murderous corner, and Gently, tempting providence, passed three vehicles while negotiating it. Then the road stretched away clear again up a long incline; once more they had the traffic ahead under surveillance.

‘He’s blinking gone and lost us, sir!’

It was woefully apparent. There was nothing now lying between the red-and-black car and the Zephyr.

‘He may have opened her out…’

Gently kept the Humber sailing, but at the top of the rise, from which a long stretch was visible, there was still no sign of the majestic green Bentley.

Viciously Gently braked and reversed into a fieldgate.

‘Get on to headquarters — tell them to put a net round Swardham!’

‘He didn’t turn into the town, sir…’

‘I know — which leaves two directions. Either he went south by that by-road we’ve passed or north at the T-junction — we take our pick!’

‘After the lights I never saw him again.’

‘We’ll take a chance and try the T-junction.’

Again he had to shoot the lights, this time creating no little chaos. A constable came running and waving his hands, but subsided into a breathless salute as he recognized the car.

The junction road led to Fosterham and contained very light traffic. Gently set his foot down and saw the speedometer needle straying over ninety. On either side flashed by stony fields reclaimed from heathy breckland; a plantation in the distance loomed a long time against the sky.

Then they came to a fork, right beside the plantation. The Fosterham road continued to the right, to the left a minor road extended to Castle Ashton.

‘Here — you over the hedge!’

The luck of good detectives was with him. A farm-worker had halted his team and drill to take a swig from a bottle of cold tea.

‘Have you seen a green Bentley go past this way?’

‘A big ole car-?’

‘Yes, that’d be it.’

‘Come by a coupla minutes ago — slowed to look at the signpost.’

‘Which way did it go?’

‘W’ up there to Ash’n Castle.’

The Humber ripped away in a flurry of gear-changes. Ahead the inevitable square church-tower rose proudly from a long, high ridge of land. On the left, surprising and spectral, stood a group of remains of some ecclesiastical building; opposite to them, appended to the ridge, brooded massive and bosky earthworks. Between the two lay the village, lifting embattled up the slope.

They crossed a stream which might have served as a moat and swung up through the houses of mellowed local brick. At the top was a flint gateway and beyond it the village green. Parked there, but empty, stood Pershore’s handsome car.