Alan Hunter - Gently Down the Stream

‘It’s just a hunch… but I’ve a feeling he may be right under our noses.’

‘You’ve got a lead?’

‘No, nothing you can really call one.’

‘Then damn it, man, stop trying to complicate the issue any further!’ The super was really annoyed. ‘I’ve spent all day coming round to your idea and now you want to slide out of it.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘And it’s the only one that fits the facts. If he hasn’t skipped, where the blasted hell is he?’

Gently’s shoulders hunched. ‘I don’t quite know.’

‘And nor do I — and nor do five score policemen who’ve been raking the marshes for him. If it was Hicks who killed Annie Packer he’d be in a cell by now — but he isn’t, and it wasn’t! Do I have to go on my knees?’

Gently shrugged again and said nothing.

‘Very well — we agree on that one. Hicks is where we’ll never get him. That leaves us to deal with whoever was making use of him — and whoever did kill Annie Packer. Now by your own results we’ve narrowed it down to three, Marsh, Paul and Mrs Lammas, and what we’ve got to decide is whether we should charge one, two or all three of them. They were all on the spot. They all had good reasons! Perhaps you can tell me if you’ve got any favourites among those three.’

Gently shook his head. ‘It works out pretty even. We can deduce that Linda Brent thinks it’s Paul, but against that it was Mrs Lammas who was inquiring where her husband would be and her prints were on the gun-drawer. On the other hand this Marsh would seem to have the strongest motive and looking forward to Annie Packer, he’s the only one with sufficient physical strength to have handled the body as it must have been handled. No… I haven’t any favourites. On the evidence, I wouldn’t dare have.’

‘Then we know where we are.’ The super’s jaw jutted decisively. ‘We shall charge all three with conspiracy to murder and to my way of thinking that’s just about the truth.’

‘But it won’t stand up.’

‘Why won’t it stand up?’

‘Because you haven’t got Hicks… a good defence will simply romp home. They can hang it on him in just the way it’s been planned. If you can’t get Hicks you’ll never get a verdict.’

‘They may rat on each other — it’s been known before today.’

‘But you can’t bank on that.’

‘And there’s bound to be some other evidence!’

‘I’d like to see it before making a charge.’

The super didn’t snarl, although he looked as though he would have liked to. But he knew sense when he heard it and this, he knew, was sense. So he contented himself with putting a band-saw edge into the tone of his next remark.

‘Then if we never get Hicks, what in the thirty-seven blue moons of Gehenna are we something-well going to do?’

Gently produced a peppermint cream from somewhere and began chewing it with insubordinate slowness.

‘I haven’t got a solution… I only know I’m not happy with the facts. Of course there’s some routine-work we haven’t covered yet, like the outgoings from Mrs Lammas’ banking accounts, and what Marsh’s servants know about his movements last night. I’m not expecting too much from either source. For the rest I just don’t know. I’ve got a hunch that there’s a penny due to drop.’

‘But what are you going to do, man?’ exploded the super, not at the moment a great backer of hunches.

‘I’m going to charge Linda Brent… can I borrow your phone?’

The super watched him malevolently as he dialled a number. There had been times before when Gently had made the great man want to tear his close-cropped hair…

‘This is Chief Inspector Gently, Central Office, CID. I’ve a statement for you… give me a machine, will you? This evening Linda Brent, etc., wanted by the Police for questioning in connection with the murder of James William Lammas, was taken into custody and charged with conspiring to defraud while an employee of Lammas Wholesalers Ltd.’

‘You’ll never make it stick, Gently!’ rapped the super as the phone was replaced.

Gently supplied himself with another peppermint cream.

‘I don’t really mind if I don’t,’ he replied wearily.

Move in Lammas case — Gently Charges Linda Brent. It was bannered beautifully across the morning paper which lay by Gently’s cup of tea.

Outside, the river-dwellers were stirring about their business. Pedro was off fruit-picking again, Thatcher was digging for worms, the slattern was getting off to school her own and Cheerful Annie’s offspring.

‘I see you’re findin’ out things, sir,’ sniffed Mrs Grey as she set down the breakfast bacon. She had always a tear to command since the rumour about her nephew being seen had got about.

‘We do our best, Mrs Grey.’

Gently beat Dutt to the crispest-looking rasher.

‘You haven’t found my poor sister’s boy, sir, not with all your tryin’ — and I don’t reckon you will, now, either.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Mrs Grey. It’s surprising how they turn up.’

‘I know, sir. But don’t it stand to reason? He’s done away with himself, that’s what he’s done, and I say Heaven forgive them what druv him to it!’

And the poor lady went out in a storm of tears.

Gently made a face as he took the mustard.

‘Another theorist, Dutt… and not a bad one at that.’

‘Yessir… we’d look silly if he comes to the surface somewhere.’

‘We’d look sillier still if he had a. 22 bullet in him!’

The sun was beaming down with its customary splendour. Nothing was going to spoil this paragon of Junes. On the wicked and the innocent alike it spread its glamour. Colour seemed a new invention, the air a crystalline liquid. Even Thatcher had a romantic look, scruffing away with a handleless trowel — he might have been some old earth god about his masonic delvings.

‘What’s three half-crowns worth to you?’

Thatcher looked up quickly.

‘We want the use of a dinghy… yours will do, if it doesn’t leak too much.’

‘Ah, but wait yew a minute, bor!’

Nobody made snap deals with Thatcher.

‘Dew yew want it all day that might come a bit more… tha’s what yew might call the Season at this end of June!’

But Gently didn’t want it all day, and the seven and six changed hands. Dutt was allotted the oars, Gently seated himself in the stern and Thatcher shoved them off with professional panache.

The river was shut-in all the way to the dyke and the shack where the jacket had been found. Snaked roots of alder reached out from either bank, screens of reed, bramble and wild currant formed a barrier to the eye. The carrs were a secret place. They warned you off with their stockaded boundaries. To get in there you must be prepared to have the clothes torn off your back, the shoes from your feet, and you must suffer beating, scratching, soaking and an overlay of mud…

‘Not a place one would choose for a man-hunt, Dutt.’

‘No, sir… you takes the words out of me mouth.’

‘But a good place to hide something, other things being equal.’

Gently had the map on his knee and it was necessary equipment. They went past the dyke twice before spotting where it lay. Its mouth was concealed by a floating reed-hover, but even had it not been one would have had difficulty in recognizing the grown-over inlet.

‘Get your head down, sir!’

Gently didn’t need telling. The alder twigs whipped and stung them as Dutt poled in with one oar. In the slip of a dinghy they had to crouch double and every few yards the inch of keel was touching sugarily on the mud. But they weren’t sticking fast — that was the point to be proved! Yard by yard, they were continuing to find clean water ahead. You could get a dinghy up there. Especially if there was only one of you…