Alan Hunter: Gently by the Shore

Gently shook his head and walked away from the edge. ‘Not a single shovel, Dutt… not the strap off a stretcher. Poor Louey! This is his final tragedy. He thought he was big enough to play God, but when it came to the push he couldn’t even commit suicide.’

‘You mean he — he’s alive?’ goggled Dutt.

‘Yes, Dutt, and kicking too. If we’d left the door unlocked he’d have been buried in the middle of that lot, but as it is he went down on top… he’s sitting there now, shaking the muck out of his ears.’

It was great stuff for the press, the double arrest of Louey and Streifer. It sent the Body On The Beach rocketing right back into the headlines. There were encomiums for Gently and encomiums for the Borough Police — it was only Chief Superintendent Gish who got a cold and cautious mention. But Gish didn’t mind. They were used to it in the Special, he told everyone.

All the same, it was a pity that the best angle on the story didn’t come out. It drove the reporters wild to see so much delectable copy laid for ever in the freezer. There was that transmitter under a ruined pill-box down at South Shore, for instance, with its aerial cheekily installed on the Scenic Railway… and there were the mass arrests and deportations of agents all over the country, a major operation which the British Public had an undoubted Right To Know About. But it was no use arguing. Chief Super Gish had a heart of stone. As a result of his inhuman decree the British Public were left with the vague and erroneous impression that the Body On The Beach had to do with a gang of international counterfeiters, with an element of vice thrown in by way of a gift to the Sunday papers.

BODY ON THE BEACH — VICE KING ARRESTED declared one such. BEACH MURDER TRACED TO VICE EMPIRE said a second. And it was almost pure libel — Louey only did a bit of sub-letting. After all, even revolutionary parties have to get their funds from somewhere…

But it was a London Evening that produced the really telling caption. It caused Chief Super Gish to drop dark hints about people being friendly with editors. ‘Body On The Beach’ ran a small by-line and then, in a triumph of Cooper Black, GENTLY DOES IT AGAIN! — with one of Gently’s better press photos cut in across two columns. Of course, Gently pooh-poohed it. He folded up his copy and stuck it in his pocket with scarcely a glance. But a little later, when he thought he wasn’t being watched, Copping saw him perusing that paper with more than common attention.

‘We didn’t waste no time, when you comes to think of it, sir,’ Dutt remarked with a tinge of regret, as they stood on the bridge by the station awaiting their train. ‘We comes here on the Friday night to meet a stiff what nobody don’t know about and by Tuesday tea-time we got the two geezers what done it, busted up a lot of bolshies and run in a sample of ponces and Teddiesall in a long weekend, you might say.’

Gently passed him a peppermint cream and took one himself. ‘We certainly haven’t been too heavy on the ratepayers.’

‘And me, I was just getting attached to the place, sir. I reckon it beats Sahthend hollow for some things… there’s a bloke off Nelson Street as does a plaice-and-chips that knocks you backwards.’

Gently smiled at a distant tug with an orange funnel. ‘Talking of plaice, there’s some first-rate fishing goes on off the Albion Pier.’

‘And them digs of ours, sir, they wasn’t half bad neither. I reckon I could stand a week down here with the missus next Bank Holiday…’

A train-whistle sounded close at hand. Gently consulted the watch on his clumsy wrist. Beneath them an empty motor-barge came chugging past, its skipper lounging lazily by his wheel.

‘But things change, Dutt… it doesn’t take long to alter them. Do you know what struck me most while we were on this job?’

‘No, sir. It ain’t been like our other jobs, really.’

Gently took careful aim with his screwed-up peppermint cream bag and dropped it neatly on the barge-skipper’s peaked cap.

‘Well, Dutt, it was the donkeys.’

‘The donkeys, sir?’ queried Dutt.

Gently nodded and raised his hand in salute to the barge-skipper. ‘They’ve done away with them, Dutt. There isn’t one on the beach. If you’d known Starmouth when I knew Starmouth it would make you feel older… but something like that goes on all the time, doesn’t it?’