Constable Ridgeford, though, did not know this. He was young, he was new in Edsway and, most importantly of all, he was from the town. In towns water came in pipes.
“H’m,” he said. “You’re sure about that, are you?”
“Certain,” said Boiler, although the rocks under the cliff near Cranberry Point were a long way from where he had last seen the dead man. They just happened to be the most inaccessible and inconvenient place on the coast from which to attempt to recover a body that Horace could think of on the spur of the moment.
“They’d have to take it up the cliff-face on a cradle from there, wouldn’t they?” said Ridgeford, frowning.
“Oh, yes,” said Boiler at once. “You’d never get a recovery boat to land on those rocks. Too dangerous. Mind you,” he added craftily, “the coastguards up top would probably spot it for you easily enough.”
“Er—yes, of course,” said Ridgeford.
Horace Boiler said nothing but he knew he’d played a trump card. Another of the fruits of his study of the official mind was the sure and certain knowledge that owners of them did not relish cooperation with other official services. Over the years the playing off of one department against another had become a high art with the wily old fisherman.
Ridgeford turned back to the telephone and had further speech with his superior. That officer must have put another question to him because once again Ridgeford covered the mouthpiece. “You marked the spot with a buoy, didn’t you?”
“Sorry, Mr. Ridgeford, ” lied Horace fluently, “I didn’t happen to have one with me. I was just out to catch something for my tea, that’s all.”
There were six orange marker buoys in the locker of Horace’s rowing boat. He would have to make quite sure that the constable didn’t see them.
“I took proper bearings though, Mr. Ridgeford,” said Boiler.
“You mean you could take me out there?”
“If my son came too,” said Horace cunningly. “I reckon we could get him aboard and back to dry land, whoever he is, in no time at all.”
“I’ll meet you on the slipway in twenty minutes,” said the constable briskly.
“Right you are, Mr. Ridgeford.” Horace replaced his cap and turned to go.
“And,” the policeman added drily, “I’ll bring my own rope just in case you were thinking we ought to get a new one from Hopton’s.”
Hopton’s was the ship’s-chandler on Shore Street, It was the store where the myriad of small boat owners bought the necessities of weekend sailing. Mrs. Hopton had been a Boiler before she married.
“Just as you say, Mr. Ridgeford,” said Horace. He felt no rancour: on the contrary. Like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s hero Ivan Denisovich, he was a great one for counting his blessings. As a little later he settled his oars comfortably in the rowlocks while his son pushed the boat off from the slipway, he even felt a certain amount of satisfaction. There would be a fee to come from Her Majesty’s Coroner for the County of Calleshire for assisting in the recovery of the drowned man and that fee would only have to be shared within the family.
Police Constable Brian Ridgeford settled himself in the bow and looked steadily forward, his thoughts following a different tack. He wasn’t a fool and he hadn’t been in Edsway long, but long enough to learn some of the little ways of the Boiler tribe. He had not been entirely deceived by Horace’s manoeuvres either. He had been well aware, too, that when he, Brian Ridgeford, had dropped in on Ted Boiler, carpenter and undertaker for all the villages roundabout, on his way to the slipway, to warn him that there might be a body for him to convey to the mortuary in Berebury, this fact was not news to Ted Boiler. It had been immediately apparent to the police constable that Horace had wasted no time in alerting Ted, who was Horace’s cousin. Naturally Ted had not said anything to the policeman about this. While Horace was cunning, Ted was sly and he’d just promised to keep an eye open for the return of their boat and to be ready and waiting by the shore when they got back.
The two Boilers pulled steadily on their oars while Horace did some calculations about tide flow.
“Be about an hour and a bit since I left him, wouldn’t it, Mr. Ridgeford?” he said.
“If you came straight to me,” said the constable.
Boiler turned his head to take a bearing from the spire of St. Peter’s Church and another from the chimneys of Collerton House. “A bit farther,” he said.
Both oarsmen bent to their task, while Constable Ridgeford scanned the water ahead.
Presently Horace turned his head again, this time to take in the state of the tide by looking across at the saltings. They were invisible at high water. Birds on them betokened low tide. “Turn her up river a bit more,” he commanded.
Once they reached what Horace Boiler thought was the right place the drowned man took surprisingly little time to locate. Brian Ridgeford spotted him first and the three men got him aboard without too much of a struggle. The victim of the water wasn’t a big man. He had had dark hair and might have been any age at all. That was really all that Brian Ridgeford noted before he helped Horace cover him first with a black plastic bag and then with the tarpaulin that was doing duty as a temporary winding sheet.
Once on dry land and safely in the official care of the Calleshire Constabulary—although still with a member of the Boiler family ready to put his thumb on a fee—the body made greater speed. Ted Boiler and his undertaker’s van soon set off towards Billing Bridge and Berebury. Strictly speaking it was Billing Bridge that marked the end of the estuary. Some medieval men had earned merit by building churches: if you couldn’t build a church, then you built a bridge. Cornelius Billing had bought his way into the history and topography of the county of Calleshire in 1484 by building a bridge over the River Calle at the farthest point down river that it had been possible to build a bridge in 1484.
Ted Boiler slowed his vehicle down as he bumped his way over it in a primitive tribute to his passenger, who was far beyond feeling anything at all, while Constable Ridgeford walked back to his own house, beginning to draft in his mind the details of his report. He wondered idly which day the coroner would nominate for the inquest…
Just as some men liked to toy with a chess problem so Police Constable Brian Ridgeford passed his walk considering whether he could summon a jury in Edsway—should the coroner want to sit with one, that is—without calling upon a single member of the vast Boiler family to serve on it. Like countering one of the rarer chess gambits it would be difficult but he reckoned that it could be done.
Ted Boiler’s hearse duly delivered the unknown man to the mortuary presided over by Dr. Dabbe, Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District Hospital Group. Such minimal paperwork that the body had so far acquired on its short journey from sea to land and from coast to town accompanied it and said briefly, “Found drowned.”
“Found drowned, my foot,” said the pathologist two minutes after looking at the body.
2
The company are met.
« ^ »
Found drowned, his foot,” repeated Police Superintendent Leeyes not very long afterwards.
As soon as the pathologist’s message had come through to Berebury Police Station he had summoned Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan to his office. Inspector Sloan—known as Christopher Dennis to his nearest and dearest—was for obvious reasons called “Seedy” by his friends. He was the head of Berebury’s Criminal Investigation Department. It was a tiny department but such crime as there was in that corner of Calleshire usually landed up in Detective Inspector Sloan’s lap.
In any case—in every case, you might say—Superintendent Leeyes always saw to it that nothing stayed on his own desk that could be delegated to someone else’s. That desk was usually Sloan’s.
“Found in water, though?” advanced Sloan, who was well versed in his superior officer’s little ways. He was a great one for passing the buck, was the superintendent.
Downwards.
Detective Inspector Sloan could never remember a problem being referred to a higher level—in their case the Headquarters of the County Constabulary at Calleford—if Superintendent Leeyes could possibly help it. Sloan was, though, well aware of—indeed, would never forget—some of those problems that the superintendent had in the past directed downwards to his own desk. A body found in water but not drowned sounded as if it might very well
