Alan Hunter - Gently by the Shore

‘No prints worth having?’

‘Nothing anybody’s heard of.’

‘You haven’t traced that taxi?’

‘Not so’s you’d notice it.’

Gently clicked his tongue. ‘It’s a wet Monday all right, isn’t it? Is Dutt anywhere handy?’

‘He’s hanging about waiting for someone to bail Frenchy.’

‘I want him for a job… one of your own men will have to watch our Frenchy.’

The phone at the other end was laid down and Gently whiled away the odd moments watching two raindrops making tracks down the ebony panel in the back of the box. Then Dutt’s chirpy accents saluted him from the receiver.

‘Yessir? You was wanting me?’

‘Yes, Dutt… I want you to do a little scouting in your old pitch in Botolph Street. There’s a lock-up garage there where Louey keeps his car. You might find out if anyone noticed the car being used on Tuesday night…’

‘Yessir. I think I knows the very garage you’re talking about.’

‘Stout fellow, Dutt. And don’t forget your mac.’

‘No, sir! Don’t you worry!’

Gently eyed the rain-swept vista outside his box with a jaundiced stare. ‘And while we’re at it, Dutt, get them to send a car to pick me up at South Shore… I’ve had all the constitutional my constitution will stand for one wet day!’

There was a hiatus in the proceedings and the super, excellent man, had scented it out with his keen, service-minded nostrils. Gently had come to a standstill. His case was bogging down. He had pushed it up the hill with his bulky shoulder until he was in hailing distance of the top and now, with the deceptive vision of arrests and charges dead ahead, he was stuck fast as though he had run into an invisible barrier. It was a sad sight, but not an unexpected one. The super had had a strong intuition all along that this was how it would wind up. Because he knew something about secret agents, did the super. He had come across them before in his long career and he could tell Gently, if Gently was harbouring any illusions, just how slippery these birds inevitably were…

‘You see, they plan their murders… that’s the vital difference between them and the ordinary homicide. They know what we’ll do and they take damn’ good care to protect themselves.’

Gently looked up from a large-scale map and smiled with an irony which the super was unable to appreciate. ‘In fact we’re… “faced with a planned execution, the details of which have been efficiently erased”.’

‘Precisely.’ The super cast him a suspicious glance. ‘We may as well face it, Gently. We’re not infallible. We make use of our skill and technique to the best of our ability, but the people on the other side start with an enormous advantage and if they use it intelligently then we’re batting on a pretty sticky wicket.’

‘I know, I’ve heard it once before today. We haven’t got Streifer, we can’t prove he did it and’ — he rustled the map on his desk — ‘we don’t even know where it was done.’

‘Well — those are the facts, Gently, and you’d better add that we’ve exhausted most of the chances of improving on them. Oh, I don’t want to be discouraging, and I’m certainly not disparaging all the sound work you’ve put in getting this case into perspective, but you are scraping the bottom of the barrel now and getting precious little for it — and every hour that passes makes it less and less likely that we shall lay hands on Streifer. This isn’t his first job here, you must remember. The Special have been after him before without finding hide nor hair of him and there’s no reason to expect they’ll be luckier this time.’

‘You think I should write my report?’

The super’s grizzled brows knitted in a frown. ‘I’m not saying that, Gently. I’ll leave you to be the judge of when you can no longer usefully continue the investigation. The point I’m making is that we should look at the thing realistically. For instance, those men of mine at the stations and the bus terminus.’

‘You can have them back now,’ Gently shrugged.

‘And the two men you put on the taxis… they’ve checked and re-checked every hackney-carriage driver in town.’

Gently looked obstinate. ‘That taxi must be somewhere.’

‘You say it must — but your only evidence is Wylie’s and Baines’s statements. I wouldn’t be inclined to give it too much weight if I were you.’

‘They’d no reason to lie.’

‘They’d every reason to lie. They wanted to make it seem that Frenchy was the principal… it could just be that she’s as innocent as she says she is.’

Gently shook his head impatiently. ‘Baines wasn’t lying. The statements agree except where Wylie is trying to whitewash himself.’

‘The fact remains that no taxi driver in town remembers the incident and nobody’s got records of such a journey. Of course it’s just possible that it was a taxi licensed at Norchester or Lewiston that picked them up… you know the distances, you can judge how likely it would be.’

‘I’m sorry… but that taxi has got to be found.’

‘Then what do you suggest — a general check-up of all the taxis in a fifty-mile radius?’

‘It may come to that, though first I would like your men to re-check their re-check… it’s surprising how repetition sometimes jogs people’s memories.’

The super gave Gently what from meaner men would have been classed as a dirty look.

‘Very well… you know your job. But remember that I’ve got plenty of routine work going begging when you’re through with the bottom of the barrel…!’

It was a good exit line and the super duly acted upon it. Gently folded up his map with a sigh and stowed it in the drawer with the Moriarty. He didn’t blame the super. He would have felt exactly the same in the great man’s shoes. Police routine didn’t stop because a couple of Yard men were trying to hatch a murder charge… it just became more difficult. And when the murder charge didn’t look like hatching anyway, well then the Yard men started to become a nuisance about the place. The trouble was that the super hadn’t got an incentive any more. He was reasonably happy with the way things had panned out. His corpse was no longer an unsolved mystery, he had pinched a small handful of auxiliaries in the case and if the principal had made tracks for a far country it wasn’t through any dereliction of the super’s duty… All that really concerned the super now was the propitiation of Christopher Wylie and the making of his peace with the chief constable.

Gently sighed again and unhooked his clammy raincoat. There were times when being a Central Office man wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Accoutred for the fray, he went along to the canteen for a preliminary cup of tea. It was a quiet time there. He had the gloomy room all to himself. Behind the scenes could be heard the chink and clatter of washing-up in progress, but the only other excitement the place afforded was the distant view of someone working on a car under a tilt. Gently sauntered to the window to watch the operation while he sipped. There was something soothing about watching other people grapple with their troubles.

And then, perhaps inspired by the tea, a dreamy expression crept into his eye. He drew closer to the window. He pulled back one of the blue cotton curtains. At one stage he was even pressing his nose against the pane.

Finally he put down his cup half-finished and let himself out into the yard by the side-door.

It was an elderly car of the high-built and spacious days, and the elderly man who worked on it, though not high built, was spacious also. The dungareed rear end of him which protruded from the bonnet was particularly spacious, and so too was the language which rose in a muttered stream from somewhere in the interior. Gently hooked his fingers in the climb-proof wire fence which surrounded HQ property and conducted a leisurely survey.