Alan Hunter: Gently by the Shore

They left the station and plodded over a lift-bridge which carried the main road into the town. Below them a cloudy muddy-banked stream flowed pacifically, bearing on its bosom tugs with barges and smaller traffic. Further down two torpedo boats were moored at the quays, opposite them a lightship undergoing a refit, and one or two stream-drifters. Above the bridge was the yacht station, its staithe packed three-deep with visiting holiday-craft.

‘It’s a ruddy port!’ exclaimed Sergeant Dutt, dropping his bags gratefully as Gently paused to admire the scene.

‘Of course it’s a port,’ said Gently, ‘where do you think your breakfast bloater hails from, Dutt?’

‘Yus, but I thought it was like Margate — not like flipping Pompey!’

Gently grinned. ‘There’s a Margate side to it too,’ he said. ‘Look, Dutt — a ship-chandler’s. Have you ever seen a ship being chandled?’

‘Can’t say as how I have, sir, come to think of it.’

‘You should,’ said Gently, ‘your education is lacking. It’s the duty of every intelligent citizen to see a ship being chandled, at least once…’

They proceeded across the bridge and down into the sun-baked street leading along the quays. Ahead of them now was the Town Hall, a handsome red-brick building in a style that was purely Dutch. In fact, the whole thing might have been Dutch, thought Gently, there was a strong Continental atmosphere. Coming in, now, through all those marshes with their cattle and windmills and sails… And then again it was full of overtones which kept him in a strange frame of mind. He couldn’t settle himself to the idea of being out on a case. It was having been here so long ago that upset him, perhaps, the having known the place as a child his mind was baulking and refusing to come to grips with what he was doing. It showed itself in his facetiousness, in the way he twitted Dutt.

But it was no good: he was here on business only. Nostalgic memories didn’t mix successfully with homicide, and he just had to shake himself into an alert and receptive state of mind.

‘There’s a cafe over there,’ he said to Dutt, ‘let’s drop in for a cup of tea before we check in.’

‘I was just going to mention it, sir,’ panted the sweating Dutt, ‘only you seemed to be in such a hurry!’

Gently clicked his tongue. ‘I’m not in any hurry,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody as patient as corpses, Dutt, especially when they’ve come out in a rash of stab-wounds…’

Superintendent Symms of the Starmouth Borough Police paced his office with military stride, a tall, spare man with close grey hair and a little clipped moustache. Inspector Copping, his man of parts, was being strong and silent in a corner.

‘And that’s it, gentlemen,’ said the super, in tones as clipped as his moustache, ‘we know nothing — we can find out nothing. We’ve got a corpse, and absolutely nothing else. There were no clothes and hence no laundry marks. You’ve had the prints and they’re not on record. We’ve checked the Missing Persons’ list for months without getting a lead and we’ve shown a slide at all the cinemas in town with no better result. In fact, gentlemen, it’s a sticky sort of business, and I feel I ought to apologize for calling you in at all. But you understand how I’m placed. There are people above me who pretend to believe in miracles.’

Gently nodded gravely. ‘It’s our principal business to carry the can.’

‘And you were specifically asked for, Gently — after that Norchester case of yours Central Office means only one person around here.’

‘It was one of my luckier cases,’ agreed Gently modestly.

‘So you see, it was out of my hands.’ The super paused, both in stride and speech. He was genuinely grieved at having to pass on such a stinker.

‘It’s a job for the file,’ put in Inspector Copping from his corner, ‘there’s just no angle to it. He might have been jettisoned from a ship, or dumped there, or dumped somewhere else and washed up there. He might even have been shoved out of an aircraft and finished up there. There’s no end to the ways he might’ve come — I’ve put in hours thinking up new ones.’

Gently nodded a mandarin nod and stuffed a clumsy hand into his pocket. They had some peppermint creams in that cafe, and he had bought a whole pound.

‘The body was even discovered by a halfwit… so far as we can make out he chivvied it around trying to wake it up.’

Gently made sympathetic noises over a peppermint cream.

‘And then this blasted Lubbock got the seconds on him and tried three methods of artificial respiration.’

‘He’s been reprimanded,’ said the super grimly, ‘there’ll be no more of that sort of thing from Lubbock.’

‘And all the beachcombers for miles jamming around… it was like Bertram Mills’.’

There was a silence, during which the only sound was a sugary chewing from Gently.

‘So you see that calling you in is simply a face-saver,’ went on the super, recommencing to stalk. ‘The lads higher up know there’s no chance, but the thing got too much publicity. They daren’t just sit tight and let it fade away.’

Gently shuffled a foot. ‘Well, as long as you aren’t expecting too much…’

‘We aren’t.’ Inspector Copping laughed with a little conscious bitterness.

Gently laid a peppermint cream on the super’s desk and appeared to study it, as though seeking inspiration. ‘This halfwit who found him

…’ he began vaguely.

‘They call him Nits,’ supplied Copping. ‘He’s cracked all right — ought to be in a home. Real name’s Gibson. Lives with his mother in one of the Grids.’

‘And you checked up on him?’

‘Naturally.’

‘He wouldn’t have been carrying a knife of any sort?’

Inspector Copping hesitated a moment and then plucked something from his pocket and threw it down on the desk in front of Gently. It was a cheap one-bladed penknife, and its one blade was broken. Gently poked it with a stubby finger.

‘Of course there’s no connection…?’

‘None,’ rapped Inspector Copping.

Gently picked it up. ‘I’d like to keep it for the moment, all the same…’ He opened and closed the little blade with a naive curiosity. ‘Did you find out anything else about him?’ he asked. ‘Has he got any friends — does anybody employ him?’

Inspector Copping grunted. ‘He isn’t employable. He hangs around the beach and people give him money, that’s all. He spends it in the cinemas and amusement arcades. Everybody knows him, but nobody wants anything to do with him.’

‘Has he ever given any trouble?’

‘A visitor made a fuss about him once and we pinched him for begging. It took three men to bring him in. He’s stronger than he looks.’

Gently revolved the peppermint cream with care. ‘About the deceased,’ he said, ‘when did he die?’

‘The report says between eleven and twelve p.m. on Tuesday.’

‘When did you find him?’

‘Lubbock saw him at five-ten a.m. on Wednesday.’

‘So he’d only taken five hours to get where he was… it isn’t very long. What was the state of the tide?’

‘Low slack water. If he came in on the tide he must have grounded at about four.’

‘That cuts it down another hour…’ Gently stared at his white sugar tablet with elevated brows. ‘The local currents… the ones just off-shore… what’s their direction?’

Copping glanced at his superior.

‘There’s nothing just off-shore,’ supplied the super, ‘it’s a perfectly safe beach at all states of the tide. There’s a north-south current further out, about half a mile. It accounts for a few damn fools every season.’

‘Do you know the speed of it?’