Alan Hunter - Gently by the Shore

The Front had become its old gay self again by evening. Everybody hadn’t arrived yet — there were still momentary appearances of towering coaches hailing from Coventry, Leicester, Wolves and Brum, dusty from long journeying, their passengers lolling and weary — but enough had already arrived, enough had checked in at their lodgings, deployed their belongings, washed, changed, tea’d, and now sallied forth, cash in hand — they really spent with a will on the Saturday night. Remote from it all, the sea looked cold. Nobody wanted the sea on that day of the week. It was there, it was the alleged attraction, but that was all… and in the setting sun it looked cold and hard.

More interesting was the local Evening and the two Londons. They proclaimed the wisdom of having chosen this week for the holiday instead of last week. Last week, of course, the body had been found and the Yard called in, but it was pretty obvious from the way things were going that it would be this week when the mystery was solved, the arrest made… BODY IDENTIFIED BY LANDLADY ran the local — Lodger Said to Have Worn False Beard: Missing Suitcase — and there was a photograph showing Gently’s back and Copping posed at the top of the steps. The Londons didn’t get it early enough to feature. They had to be content with a stop-press and no pics. But they did their best. They whooped it up joyfully. IT WAS ROGER THE LODGER — AND HIS WHISKERS WERE PHONEY, one was captioned, BODY ON THE BEACH — WHY SHAVE IT? asked the other. Yes… things were moving. It was obviously the right week to be in Starmouth, quite apart from the races.

‘Can’t help feeling we’ve been mucked about, sir,’ observed Dutt, as the two of them turned the corner at the end of Duke Street, ‘all these new people… thahsands of them… and we know for a start they haven’t got nothink to do with it.’

Gently belched… those damned sausages! ‘It’s the ones who’ve gone that worry me,’ he muttered.

‘And then again, there’s him we’re going to pinch… could be any one of them, sir. This bloke coming along here, now, the one with the tasselled hat… I wouldn’t put it past him.’

Gently clicked his tongue. ‘You can’t go on that sort of thing, Dutt.’

‘I know, sir, but you can’t help thinking about it. This isn’t like the usual job — as a rule there’s one or two to have a go at. But this time there’s not a soul, not a blinking sausage’ — Gently winced at this unkind reference — ‘not a solitary bloke anywheres who you can lay your hand to your heart about. I mean, even that bloke with the scar, sir. What have we got on him, apart from him acting suspicious? I dare say he’s up to something he wouldn’t like us to know about, but honest now, what connection is that with the deceased? We’ve often put up pigeons like him on a job.’

Gently sighed, but the sigh was interrupted by a belch. ‘This is why we get on so well together, Dutt,’ he said bitterly, ‘your cockney common sense is the best foil in the world for my forensic intuition

…’

‘Well, there you are, sir. I don’t want to look on the black side

…’

‘Of course not, Dutt.’

‘But you’ve got to admit it’s still a bit speculative, sir.’

‘Highly speculative, Dutt… which is why we’re keeping firmly on the tail of any pigeons we put up.’

‘Yessir. Of course, sir.’

‘Including your man with a scar.’

‘I wasn’t presuming to criticize, sir…’

‘No, Dutt, please don’t… at least, not after I’ve been eating dogs in that damned canteen up there…!’

‘I’m sorry, sir… they was perishing awful dogs.’

They came to a side street running along blankly under the shadow of a Babylonian cinema, a brick vault of Edwardian foundation and contemporary frontage.

‘This is me, sir,’ said Dutt, halting, ‘I can work my way round and come out on the far side of Botolph Street.’

‘There’s cover there… you don’t have to lean on a lamp-post?’

‘There’s a builder’s yard with a gate I can get behind.’

‘We don’t want our pigeon frightened… if he’s there. I’ll give you twenty minutes to get set.’

‘That’ll be about it, sir.’

‘And if he gives any trouble put cuffs on him. My forensic intuition suggests you’ll be justified…’

Dutt turned off down the side street and Gently, with a dyspeptic grimace, crossed the carriageway and joined the noisy crowd jostling along the promenade. Everything was in full swing again, the lights, the canned music, the windmill sails, the crashing and spanging of the shooting saloon… a sort of fey madness, it seemed, a rash of inferno at the verge of the brooding ocean. He turned his back on it and leaned looking out at the cold water.

Dutt was right, of course. There was precious little connection. You could say Frenchy for certain, and that was all… and what did Frenchy add up to, even if you could prove it? A friendly foreigner dressed like a Yank and generous with his pound notes… he was natural meat for Frenchy. And of course she would lie. Of course she would dig up an alibi. Quite apart from anything else it was bad business for your last boyfriend to wind up a corpse on the beach.

And after Frenchy it was all surmise. There was nobody else who tied in at all, or not in a way that looked impressive when you wrote a report. He had wandered into town, this enigmatical foreigner, he had taken lodgings, he had found a cafe to his taste and a prostitute to his taste; and then he had been, in a short space of time, kidnapped, tortured, murdered and introduced into the sea, his room ransacked and plundered of something of value. There was a ruthlessness about that… it bore the stamp of organization. But there was no other handle. The organization persisted in a strict anonymity.

So he was left with his intuition, thought Gently, his intuition that made pictures and tried to fill them in, to make them focus, to eliminate their distressing areas of blankness. One didn’t know, one simply felt. With the facts firmly grasped in the right hand one groped in the dark with the left… and if you were a good detective, you were lucky. Mere intellect was simply not enough.

He swallowed and grimaced again. If ever he ate another sausage…!

There was an air of restraint in the bar of ‘The Feathers’, as though everybody had been put on their best behaviour. It wasn’t too full, either, considering it was Saturday night. The sporty type sat drinking whisky on a high stool, and one or two other less-than-salubrious characters whom Gently remembered from the previous night were scattered about the nearby tables. But there wasn’t any Jeff and Bonce, and there wasn’t any Frenchy… in fact, Gently noticed, there weren’t any women in the bar at all, not of any kind.

He went across to the counter and settled himself on a stool, one from the sporty type.

Artie and the latter exchanged a leer, but there was no comment made.

‘The usual?’ inquired Artie, with a slight sneer in his voice.

Gently quizzed his ferrety features. ‘You wouldn’t have any milk, by any chance?’

‘Milk!’ Artie almost snorted the word. ‘There’s a milk-bar just down the road!’

‘I’m serious… I want some milk.’

Artie eyed him balefully for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and snatched a glass from under the counter. ‘Boss’s orders,’ he sneered, ‘got to treat policemen like gentlemen.’ He ducked under the counter and disappeared through the adjacent door.

The sporty type tipped up the remains of his whisky. ‘If you’re looking for your girly, you won’t find her here, guv,’ he observed spiritously. ‘Louey’s had a purge — no women, no kids, and nothing out of line from no one… getting quite pally towards the coppers is Big Louey.’