Gently by the Shore

by Alan Hunter

  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.’

  Gently lifted his eyebrows. ‘It’s not a bad thing to be in most lines of business … what’s yours?’

  ‘What’s mine?’ The sporty type affected jocularity. ‘Ho-ho! I’ll keep on drinking what I’m drinking, and thank you very much!’

  ‘I mean your business,’ said Gently evenly.

  ‘Oh, me business … I was going to say it was the first time a copper ever asked me … well, there you are! I’m what you might call a Turf Consultant.’

  ‘You mean a tipster?’

  ‘Now guv, when we’re trying to add dignity to the profession …’

  ‘And you make a living at it?’

  ‘A bit of that and a bit of working with Louey. You don’t run a bookie’s business on your own.’

  ‘Well, you seem to do all right at it.’

  The sporty type squirmed a little, but was relieved of the necessity of making a reply by the return of Artie with the glass of milk. He slammed it down perilously in front of G
ently.

  ‘It’s on the house … with Louey’s compliments.’

  Gently nodded and drank it slowly. He really needed that milk. Its soothing coolness flooded into his digestive chaos like a summons to order, nature’s answer to a canteen sausage. He drained the last drop and regarded the filmy glass with a dreamy eye. There were just a few things in life …

  ‘Louey got company?’ he asked Artie.

  ‘Nobody who’s worried by policemen.’

  ‘Tut, tut, Artie! I’m sure Louey wouldn’t approve of that attitude … I was just wondering if he could spare me a few minutes.’

  ‘Why ask?’ retorted Artie, ‘just walk right in like every other cop.’

  Gently shook his head. ‘You’ve got the wrong impression, Artie … you must have been rude to a policeman when you were a little boy.’ He slid off the stool and went over to the door. Then he paused, hand on the knob. ‘I suppose you didn’t have sausages for tea, Artie?’

  * * *

  Louey’s office was a comfortable room which exhibited a good deal of taste and some quiet expense. The walls were papered in two colours, maroon and grey, the floor was completely carpeted in grey to match and the pebble-grained glass windows, being on grey walls, had maroon curtains relieved by hand-blocked designs in dark blue. The furniture was in keeping. It was of discreet contemporary design showing Scandinavian influence. On the walls hung two coloured prints of race-horses after Toulouse-Lautrec, and under one of the windows stood a jardinière of cream wrought-iron containing a pleasant assortment of indoor plants. There was a short passage separating the office from the bar: it had the effect of reducing the canned crooners in the arcade to a distant, refined murmur.

  Louey sat sprawled in a chair by his desk when Gently entered. He was nursing a cat on his knees, a black-and-white tom with a blue ribbon round its neck and a purr like an unoccupied buzzsaw. On another chair was seated the parrot-faced man, still garbed in his dubious evening-dress and still armed with his yard of gold-plated cigarette-holder. Louey greeted Gently with a smile from which his gold tooth shone.

  ‘Pleased to see you, Inspector. I was wondering if you would honour us tonight.’

  ‘Indeed? Then I won’t be interrupting any business.’

  Louey laughed his comfortable laugh and chivvied the tom with a huge hand. ‘No business tonight … it’s been a bad day for the punters. Not a favourite came home at Wolverhampton. A bad day, eh, Peachey?’

  The parrot-faced man mumbled a nervous affirmative. He seemed equally apprehensive of both Gently and Louey. His small pale eyes wandered from one to the other, and he sat in his chair as though it were a penance to him.

  ‘Peachey’s my clerk,’ explained Louey, seeming to linger on the words, ‘he’s a good boy … very useful … aren’t you, Peachey? Very useful! But sit down, Inspector, make yourself at home … as a matter of fact, we’ve just been talking about you.’

  ‘Really?’

  Louey smiled auriferously. ‘The evening papers … probably exaggerated … still, we feel you deserve congratulations. The inspector has got a long way in twenty-four hours, hasn’t he, Peachey – eh?’

  Gently selected a chair upholstered in blue candy-stripe and swung it round, back to front. Then he seated himself heavily. Louey continued to smile.

  ‘Will you have a drink …? Some more milk, if you prefer it?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll just smoke.’

  Louey swept up a silver box from the desk and inclined his gigantic frame towards Gently.

  ‘Try one of these … Russian. It’s a taste I’ve acquired.’

  ‘Thanks, but I smoke a pipe.’

  ‘You watch your health, Inspector.’

  Such a polite and obliging Louey, thought Gently, as he stuffed his pipe-bowl. Who would have expected such polish from the Goliath who had bawled out the bar last night? There seemed to be two of him … one for out there and one for in here, a Jekyll and Hyde Louey. He glanced around the room. Certainly it wasn’t furnished by a moron …

  ‘You like my office?’ Louey leaned forward again with a lighter.

  ‘It’s not the usual sort of bookmaker’s office.’

  The gold tooth appeared. ‘Perhaps I’m not the usual sort of bookmaker … eh? But most of my business is done in the outer office. I keep this one for myself and my friends.’

  His eyes met Gently’s, frank, steady, even the sinister effect of the fleck in the pupil seeming softened and modified. We are equals, they were trying to say, you are a man like myself: I recognize you. When we talk together there is no need for subterfuge …

  ‘So you don’t know that prostitute, Frenchy?’ demanded Gently roughly – so roughly, in fact, that Peachey dropped his cigarette brandisher. But the grey eyes remained fixed unwaveringly upon his own.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Inspector … apart from warning her to leave the bar once or twice.’

  ‘Does he know her?’ Gently motioned towards Peachey with his head. Louey turned slowly towards his trembling clerk.

  ‘Go on … tell the inspector.’

  ‘I’ve s-spoken to her once or twice …!’ Peachey had a whining, high-pitched voice, oddly reminiscent of Nits.

  ‘Nothing else but that?’

  ‘N-no … honest I haven’t! Just in the bar … a joke …’

  ‘You’ve never seen her with this fellow?’ Gently whipped out one of the doctored photographs and shoved it under Peachey’s nose. The unhappy clerk shot back a foot in his chair.

  ‘Tell him,’ rumbled Louey, ‘don’t waste the inspector’s time.’

  ‘No … n-never … I never seen him at all!’

  ‘Then you know who he is?’ snapped Gently.

  ‘I tell you I never seen him!’

  ‘Yet you recognize the photograph?’

  ‘I never … I tell you!’

  Louey broke in with his comfortable laugh and reached out a great hand to tilt the photograph in his direction.

  ‘I think he can guess, Inspector … it isn’t difficult, with all this talk of beards in the evening papers.’

  ‘I’m asking Peachey!’ Gently snatched the photograph out of Louey’s fingers. ‘You recognized him – didn’t you? You didn’t have to stop to work it out!’

  ‘It’s like Louey says!’ burst out Peachey in desperation, ‘I read about it in the papers … just like he says!’

  Gently eased back in his candy-striped seat and laid the photograph on the corner of the desk. Louey studied it with interest, leaning his massive bald head a little to one side.

  ‘They’ve touched it up neatly … the beard looks quite convincing.’

  Gently felt for his matches but said nothing.

  ‘No doubt he’s a foreigner,’ mused Louey, ‘what part of the world would you say he came from … Inspector?’

  Gently shrugged and struck a match.

  ‘Of course, he could be a first-generation American … eh?’

  Gently puffed a negative stream of smoke.

  ‘Perhaps not. I’ve a feeling I’m wrong.’

  Gently reached out to drop his match in an ashtray.

  ‘Maybe Central European is nearer … or further east. Behind the Curtain, even?’ Louey’s eyes drifted slowly back to Gently, strong, assured.

  ‘The Balkans?’ suggested Gently quietly.

  The grey eyes smiled approval. ‘That would be my guess, too. Or perhaps we could be more definite … after all, the cast of feature is very distinctive. Shall we say Bulgarian?’

  Gently nodded his mandarin nod.

  ‘And – I think – a cultivated man … possibly Sofia?’

  ‘As you say … possibly.’

  Still smiling, Louey fondled the purring tom which continued to loll on his knees. It stretched itself and yawned contentedly. Then it flexed its claws with an exaggerated expression of unconcern, whisked its tail and tucked its head under one of its paws.

  ‘Rain,’ said Louey, ‘it’ll make the going soft … eh, Peachey?’
r />   Peachey was sitting with his mouth open and giving an imitation of someone expecting an atomic bomb to explode.

  ‘Then there’s the other one …’ murmured Gently, absently blowing a smoke-ring. ‘You were saying, Inspector?’

  ‘The man with the scar, doesn’t he strike you as belonging to the same racial group?’

  There was a pause broken only by the muted skirl of electronic jazz. Louey’s fingers paused halfway along the tom’s back. Even Gently’s smoke-ring seemed to pause and hover, exactly between the three of them.

  ‘Do I … know him, Inspector?’ queried Louey in a finely-blended tone of frustrated helpfulness.

  ‘You should do. He was here last night.’

  ‘Last night? You mean here in the bar?’

  ‘I mean here in the office – this one or the outer one.’

  There was a further pause while Louey shook his head perplexedly. ‘I don’t know … it’s rather puzzling. I’m afraid I’m not acquainted with a man with a scar – it’s a conspicuous scar, I suppose, something that stands out?’

  ‘Very conspicuous.’

  ‘And he was here in the office?’

  ‘He left at nine thirty-one.’

  ‘Someone saw him leave?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Louey looked hopelessly blank. ‘If I knew his name, Inspector …’

  ‘I intended to ask you for it.’

  Louey sighed regretfully and reached out for the silver cigarette-box. ‘He couldn’t have been in here … I was here myself the whole evening. And as for the other office—’ he hesitated in the act of selecting a primrose-coloured cigarette – ‘Peachey!’

  Peachey jerked as though yanked by a wire.

  ‘You were in the other office at half past nine … Peachey!’

  ‘B-but boss—!’

  ‘Now no excuses – you were working there till ten – you didn’t leave the place except to fetch me something from the bar. He was getting out accounts, Inspector … we do a good deal of postal work.’