Gently in the Sun (10 page)

 And Esau? For once he’d got his eyes off the sea, he was sitting down calmly and lighting his pipe. He, too, had expression written large in every line of him: We’re here, it said, now what do you make of it?

Exactly!

Gently shook his head and seated himself, likewise. He could think of one reason only why Esau should bring him here. It was because, being here, he couldn’t be also in the village, though why Esau should want that was a deep-sea mystery. Anyway, he’d got it … and where did they go from there?

They didn’t go anywhere was what Esau seemed to say. From the fact that he’d lit his pipe you could assume that this was the spot. And he wasn’t looking at the sea, if that was any help. He was sitting there smoking and looking … straight below him.

The significance of this didn’t strike Gently for a moment, then, because it was continued, he followed the line of the fisherman’s gaze. It was fixed on a certain hollow lying close to the foot of the sandhill, a hollow in which was growing a clump of the omnipresent marram grass.

Gently rose to his feet again and wandered over to the hollow. It was about thirty feet in diameter and as symmetrical as a basin. The sides and floor were of smooth sand and bore little vegetation; at one point the edges were broken as though there somebody had been in the habit of descending. The clump of marram grass was growing exactly in the centre. It was a handsome, clean-growing colony and occupied a small mound. The effect of the whole was that of a rather neat bomb
crater – which, very likely, was just what it was.

But why did Esau want to draw his attention to a bomb crater? He looked up at the brooding figure in the hope of receiving a sign from him. But there was nothing to be had there: Esau sat silent and
monumental
: his solitary gesture was his meditation on the hollow.

Gently moved a little closer and began a more careful scrutiny. From the surface of the sand he could tell that nothing recent had occurred there.
Everywhere
it had a hard crust and bore the marks of pelted rain – rain which, he remembered, had happened three weeks ago; it was the storm which had precursed the onset of the dry spell. Apart from that there seemed little to see, except the antics of a pair of lizards. The crater was empty of everything but heat.

After all was it a joke that the fisherman was playing on him? Gently frowned through his sweat as he stumbled round the circumference. Nothing had happened here, at least while Rachel was in Hiverton, and the indications were slender of anything having happened before that. Then what was he looking for – what was the point of it? Didn’t it rather bear the stamp of Esau’s unusual sense of humour?

Just about to give it up, he came to a sudden, alerted halt. That grass! Surely there was something out of the ordinary about that? It didn’t have the rough look of the tangles round about; it was tall and clean and straight – one would almost have said it was cultivated.

And more … it had shape. Gently shifted the better to see it. Once you tumbled to the idea, it was easy enough to trace a design. The clump of grass was shaped like a cross: it was crude, but it was definite. One of its arms was longer than the others … it was, in fact, the cross of the Church!

Certain now that he’d grasped the meaning, Gently glanced up for confirmation, but the fisherman was no longer staring down at the hollow. He was still perched above, but his head was turned seaward. His vacant blue eyes were once more on the horizon.

And Gently found himself shivering in the midst of the pounding heat: shivering as though cold water had been trickled down his spine. For a moment he stood uncertain, his eyes fascinated by the cross of grass; then he turned his back with an effort and began to hurry towards the village.

Mears was sitting in his shirtsleeves when Gently re-entered the Police House. He got up immediately and did his best to look official.

‘Where’s your record of missing persons?’

‘Missing persons? We haven’t got any.’

‘Don’t you lose a fisherman sometimes?’

‘W’yes, they get drowned now and then.’

Mears departed into his office and returned carrying a manilla folder. Gently, drumming his fingers with impatience, could hardly wait to have it undone.

‘Two years ago … that was the last one. The
Rose
Marie
got run down by a drifter. Then there was the
Girl Sue
in the March of 1954. She struck a mine off Hamby. I heard the bang myself.’

‘But individual fishermen?’

‘Gone missing, do you mean, sir? There’s only one, Sid Gorbold – and that wasn’t any mystery. He was paying a maintenance order and skipped a drifter at Peterhead.’

‘And there’s nobody else missing?’

Mears was positive that there wasn’t. He’d been constable at Hiverton since August 1935, and could remember no authentic case of a person going missing. Gently listened to him moodily: he’d been toying with a theory. But there was no reason to doubt the information of Mears.

‘Have you got a couple of spades?’

Mears fetched a pair from his tool shed. He was doing his best to conceal a natural curiosity.

‘I’d like another man, and I don’t want to go through the village. Is there a way round the back here which will take us on to the marrams?’

Nockolds was impressed for the party – he didn’t like to refuse them – and Mears led the way over some meadows and rough pasture. Gently plodded along silently, without offering an explanation. At the back of his mind there was still a feeling that the fisherman might have been fooling.

When they came to the giant sandhill Esau was sitting there no longer. The hollow, undisturbed, lay shadowless under a vertical sun. A noonday peace entranced the place and it had an air of enormous distance. The only sound was the maundering of the sea which wafted softly across the dunes.

Gently turned to the gaping Nockolds:

‘You’re no stranger in these parts! Take a look at that clump of grass there – how long have you noticed it growing like that?’

But Nockolds had never noticed it, and he didn’t notice it now. To him it was just another clump, like a hundred million others.

‘Right – start digging underneath it.’

They shed their jackets with little enthusiasm. The heat coming out of that hollow had to be experienced to be believed. Gently, hands in pockets, stood over them in a slave-driving attitude. He could see, what he might have guessed, that digging out a marram clump was hell.

‘How far do you want to go down, sir?’

They were grunting at every spadeful and Nockolds, in a thick twill shirt, was already showing signs of distress. Mears was being braver about it: he had a sense of duty to support him. In putting the question to Gently he strove to keep a neutral tone.

‘Just keep going until I tell you.’

They fell to again with savage purpose. The marram clump was churned and scattered, its fibrous roots thrown up to the sun. Beneath it the sand was moist and darker, it clung to the spade and made neater digging; but it was firm and it was settled, it hadn’t been disturbed for years. Gently’s face grew steadily longer as he watched each successive spadeful.

‘Someone’s been here before, sir.’

Mears was the first to notice the signs: he leaned on his spade, the sweat pouring down him miserably.

‘There aren’t any layers, sir, like there is where it’s
natural. The sand’s all mixed together … there’s been a hole here before.’

‘Before – but how long?’

Mears scratched his head expressively.

‘Ten years or fifty, you can’t say more than that.’ But now they worked with more intentness – it wasn’t a mare’s nest, after all. Someone had been that way ahead of them, however far ahead it had been. With a certain obstinate eagerness they delved on under the caning sun.

‘What’s that you’ve got your foot on?’

At a depth of five feet they found it. By then the heaps of sand had risen higher than their heads. The sand had started to come out grey, it had been grey for the last five minutes. Nockolds, stepping back for a stretch, had set his boot on something that crunched …

‘Bones!’

He shifted his footing in a hurry. Mears, too, shuffled aside with alacrity. Gently came skidding down the wall of the hollow, his sandals burying in chill, soft sand.

‘You come out – leave Mears to finish it.’

‘Blast, but I’d never have thought …’

‘Come on out! You’ve done your job.’

Shaking a little, the poacher climbed out of the excavation. During the rest of the proceedings he sat, looking sick, on one of the heaps. Gently, getting down on his knees, directed Mears’s operations. In the end they were both of them scooping away in the hole.

‘A bit small for a man is it?’

The skeleton lay strictly oriented. The hands, with the fingers entwined, had been placed correctly across the breast. A yellowish staining had occurred due to contact with the sand. There remained some traces of shoes, but the clothes had rotted away.

‘More like a woman … a boy, at least.’

In life, the skeleton’s owner had probably measured around five feet seven.

I
F IT WAS
any consolation to Gently, he had lost the reporters’ attention. To a man they had attached themselves to Dyson and his colleagues. Here was bigger and better news – a second body found at Hiverton: already one could see the headlines staring brashly from the morning editions. One could guess, too, the speculations. If two bodies, then why not three? Had they come to the end of it yet, or were there grim finds still to be made?
THE VILLAGE OF DEATH – A REIGN OF TERROR
! – it was working up to that. A little benevolence by the god of scribblers, and a whole clutch of bodies might invigorate the ‘story’.

Probably a dozen newshawks now swarmed in the little village. Dyson had brought in extra men to try to cope with the situation. Superintendent Stock had driven over in his highly polished Humber; he had conferred with Gently over lunch, but in effect there had been only one question:

‘Do you think there’s some connection?’

If only there’d been a convincing answer! And to his
second query, ‘How did you find it?’, Gently had had nothing to say that wasn’t evasive. Esau he wanted entirely on his own – there was nothing to be gained from throwing him to the county police. The
Sea-King
would know nothing, say nothing, admit
nothing
. His assistance had been shadowy and he would certainly disclaim it.

So the super had gone away feeling dissatisfied with Gently; the fellow was holding out on him, it was plainer than a pikestaff. Dyson, too, had seemed resentful, though he was still reproachfully
co-operative
. During lunch he had twice phoned in to provide the latest progress reports.

‘It’s a woman, we’re sure of that, though we don’t know how she died. The bones seem to be intact and there aren’t any injuries to the skull. I’ve got a man taking samples of sand to see what we can recover … she’s been dead above twenty-five years: Simpson won’t go any closer than that.’

‘Has he any idea of her age?’

‘Between twenty-five and thirty-five. She was five seven and a half and her hair was darkish and worn short. She’d had some dental treatment, but we’ll be lucky to do anything with that … for the rest, we’re checking back on the H.Q. files of missing persons.’

The second call gave the result of this. It was altogether negative. On a check that went back to nineteen-twenty they had discovered nobody who fitted the facts.

‘We’re getting on to Norchester, Starmouth, and Lynton. If they can’t help us we’ll try Lewiston and Southshire.’

‘Have you been in touch with Records?’

‘Yes, we’re sending them the dental data. I suppose you’ve got nothing to add which might shed a little light?’

Gently’s mood ever since the discovery had been one of curious suspension. It seemed to have paralysed his interest in everything that had gone before. The change defied his present analysis. It presented itself in the form of an analogy. It was as though, until now, he had been walking in a certain landscape; and that suddenly the light had altered, and everything had altered with it. Altered, but was still the same! There lay the enigma that baulked his comprehension. The objects composing the landscape were each still in their place, but now, in this new light, they had secretly varied their significance.

And as suddenly he felt cut off by this novel shift of vision. He had moved into a different world from the one inhabited by Dyson and the lest. They were speaking a different tongue, there was a frontier drawn between them: he had strayed across into the picture and was as foreign as the rest of the components.

After the super had gone he phoned the Central Office, having to wait some minutes to get hold of Pagram. His associate sounded bored and he was drinking something while he talked.

‘Take advice from me, old man … the horse died years ago at this end. We’ve been flogging him like mad and he hasn’t twitched a muscle. I think you can take it for granted that Campion was outside Mixer’s rackets.’

‘Have you got on to any of her ex’s?’

‘Yes, we’ve managed to contact two. One of them is an architect by the name of Lacey. The other keeps a junk shop at the right end of Fulham Road. Podmore, he’s called, but no connection with the late chummy. Both of them clean and neither were near Hiverton. We’ve got another name, Coulson, but him we’re still chasing.’

‘What did they know about Campion?’

‘Nothing, except that she buried her grandmother.
Her
husband was a Charlie Campion, a foreman carpenter who hailed from Stepney. We dug that up at Somerset House, but there’s no sign of any of their children having married. You can think what you like.’

‘And the local records?’

‘Gone up in smoke. But we’re still asking questions.’

Gently inquired about the warehouse affair. Here everything was progress with arrests hourly expected. Mixer’s associates had been identified as old friends of the police; there were men out searching for them in all their favoured localities.

‘If only it wasn’t so flaming hot! You’ve no idea what Whitehall’s like.’

‘Have you been frying any more eggs?’

‘We tried some steak, but it just dries up.’

He lit his pipe and went into the bar. The news of the fresh discovery had quickly made its way to the guest house. At one or two of the tables they sat discussing it, but their voices sank as they saw him enter. Without looking round he knew that every head was turned.

‘A shandy with plenty of ice.’

Maurice looked as though he wanted to speak to Gently. After making the drink he stood hesitating by the counter, put off by the silence and general focus of attention. But at last he leaned over and whispered in Gently’s ear:

‘Is it right what they’re saying?’

Gently tilted his glass, shrugging. If that was all Maurice wanted, then he could wait for the evening paper. It wasn’t all, however. The bartender remained with his elbows on the counter. His appearance was less confident than it had been in the morning and he watched the progress of the shandy with symptoms of anxiety.

‘You remember what I was telling you?’

‘Hmn.’ Gently put down the glass.

‘Well, I don’t want you to think … I mean, I gave it to you straight! As near as I remember Rosie was in with me till one. If she says any different … we didn’t watch the clock, did we? I gave it to you straight, you needn’t worry about that.’

Watching him, Gently grunted again. Maurice was noticeably more nervous, less inclined to be matey. It went without saying that he had compared notes with Rosie – had her memory been bad, and the truth leaked out by accident?

‘What part of the world do you come from?’

‘Me? I belong to Starmouth.’

‘Your family lives there?’

‘Well no – not exactly. But I’ve been settled up here for a few years now.’

‘Where does your family live?’

‘In Lambeth, as a matter of fact.’

‘In Lambeth! When was the last time you were there?’

‘To tell the truth, I haven’t been home since after the war.’

The nervousness was alarm now– Maurice didn’t like this at all. In spite of the ears cocked in their direction he was letting his voice rise from its confidential whisper.

‘Look, I had some trouble, see? But it’s all over and done with! I may as well admit it – it had to do with a woman. She swore I made her do it – you know how it is – tore her clothes and got some bruises! And all the time, if she’d told the truth.’

‘How far is Lambeth from Camden Town?’

‘I don’t know! What’s that got to do with it?’

‘And how long did you say you’d known Miss Campion?’

‘I told you – since last week. And the same goes with her boyfriend.’

‘You’d better let me have your family’s address.’

He left Maurice staring after him very unhappily. The bartender had the air of being completely taken down. He began polishing glasses which were
sparkling
bright already, and when he served a customer, kept his eyes strictly lowered.

‘Pagram? It’s me again. I’ve got another assignment for you.’

As he talked Gently could imagine the airless heat trap of the Lambeth streets.

Some of the youngsters had formed a skiffle group which practised in the reading room, and Gently, on his way out, caught a snatch from it in the hall. They weren’t entirely beginners, you could tell it by their panache: just then they were improvising a rather neat calypso.

The performance ended in laughter and shrieks of applause. It was sung, Gently thought, by a certain fair-haired youth who played a good game of tennis. It depended on your age how you reacted to shock.

Did he have a premonition that he would find Esau waiting for him? He couldn’t precisely have said, but at least the event didn’t surprise him. The fisherman must have known that Gently would want to see him – no policeman was going to be satisfied by the events of that morning! At the same time, Esau didn’t need to put himself forward; and that was what he was doing, sitting there on his hedge bank.

Or was he? Gently had to admit a second of doubt
about it. The fisherman looked so unconcerned, his darkened clay resting between his teeth. He was, of course, ignoring Gently. The Sea-King paid his respects to no man. But surely he could be there for one purpose only, he wouldn’t have chosen that seat by accident?

He was there, in any case, in his odd, inscrutable fashion. Gently advanced towards him deliberately, trying to frame his opening gambit. Then –
instinctively
– he wavered. What was the use in asking questions? Hadn’t it already got beyond words with them, this majestic man and himself?

Instead, he sat down silently beside him. It seemed suddenly the only thing to be done. If there was to be any communication, then the initiative lay with Esau: Gently’s role was to wait alertly for what the other might care to impart. They had got into a peculiar relationship and one could only give it its head.

And so it began, a bizarre half-hour, unequalled by anything in Gently’s experience. Looking back on it from a distance he was still unable to make sense of it. Not a word was spoken by either, nor did they once exchange a look. If they had been a couple of statues they could hardly have sat stiller or quieter. Bizarre – and yet something did pass between them however inexplicable it was to remain. Gently became
conscious
of a growing clarity, a slow development of his earlier mood. Was the Sea-King a telepathist – could that be the explanation? Was he secretly shaping Gently’s thoughts as the smoke rose from the guttering clay?

Perhaps it was simply the other’s serenity which was being communicated to him. He sat so still, so effortlessly still, his eyes scarcely blinking or shifting direction. His face was as a mask from which all emotion had drained away: its lines contained a history, but of itself it had no expression. And sitting there beside him one had to echo that brooding serenity. It was like a sensible ether that he extended round about him. This it was, at the least, which was prompting Gently’s awareness, soothing him, persuading him that he was seeing things more clearly.

Because, in sum, what was it that this clarity embraced? It was an indefinable conviction that now he knew all there was to be known. There was nothing material to support it, no new fact to square the circle. As intangible as the pipe smoke the conviction had stolen upon his mind.
Now
… he knew it all! – Esau’s silence was to tell him that. The facts were all before him, he needed only a moment of vision. Esau had done what he could for him. He had given him the hint that mattered. For the rest it was up to Gently to recognize the picture on the canvas.

Only here, unfortunately, his vision wouldn’t carry. The very sharpness of the detail was perplexing his interpretation. The facts might well be there and he seeing them vividly, but as yet they wouldn’t assemble into a revealing viewpoint.

Was he reading too much into his fascination with Esau – was he missing something simple but crucially important?

Twice their odd communion was broken by the
passage of other people, and each time the interruption bore an interesting character. The first was when Maurice appeared on an errand into the village. On seeing them he drew back and seemed to debate whether he would continue. Eventually he did, though with some discomposure; he kept his eye on Gently as though he expected him to interfere.

The second intruder was Hawks, who was with them rather longer. It was apparent from a glance that they were his object in coming there. He came unsteadily up the road and stopped about twenty yards short of them; he remained for four or five minutes, staring hatred at one and the other.

A Hawks who had been drinking … But he contented himself with his stare. At the end of the session he lurched away again, probably to buy a last pint at The Longshoreman.

At this juncture Gently
did
risk a glance at Esau, but the Sea-King remained as unmoved as before. It was when Gently shrugged and felt for his pipe that the fisherman made his solitary gesture. Slowly, he picked up his pouch and offered it to the detective. The action was so unexpected that it seemed to carry a special point. Nothing else went with it, no nod, no inclination: just the extending of the pouch in the steady, gnarled hand.

Was it purely an accident that it happened when it did? Gently could never be certain, either then or afterwards. His reaching for his pipe had given Esau the opening – if he hadn’t chanced to do so, what device would have been used?

The audience was ended peremptorily by the
Sea-King
getting to his feet. Gently, still in a state of bemusement, let him depart without demur. He was feeling again that uneasy reaction, that suspicion that perhaps the fisherman had fooled him. Oughtn’t he to have cracked down hard on Esau – to have really put some pressure on him?