‘Which end?’ inquired Gently, shepherding his flock down the steps to the beach.
‘This end… up here where the pier nearly touches the sand.’
They marched laboriously through soft dry sand, the cynosure for an increasing number of eyes. Dutt led the way, the Teddy boys followed, and Copping and Gently brought up the rear. Under the pier they went, where the sand was cold and grey. A forest of dank and rusty piles enclosed them in an echoing twilight.
‘Up there,’ snuffled Jeff, indicating a girder which nearly met the sand, ‘there’s another one joins it behind… it’s in the gap between them.’
‘Get it out,’ ordered Gently to Dutt.
The gallant sergeant went down on his stomach and squirmed vigorously till he was under the girder. Then he turned on his back and began feeling in the remote obscurity beyond. He seemed to be prying there for an unconscionable length of time.
‘Have you found the hole?’ asked Gently, his voice echoing marinely amongst the piles.
‘Yessir,’ came muffledly from Dutt, ‘hole’s there, sir… it’s what’s in it I aren’t sure about… couldn’t get hold of me legs and pull me out, sir?’
Copping went to the rescue and a grimy Dutt renewed acquaintance with the light of day. In his arms he bore a bundle, also grimy. ‘This is all there was, sir… ain’t no trace of any suitcase.’
‘Open it!’ snapped Gently.
Copping broke the string and unwrapped the paper. There lay revealed a crumpled grey suit, a pair of two- colour shoes, shirt, socks, underclothes, suspenders and a blue bow tie.
‘Sakes alive!’ exclaimed Copping. ‘Look at this label — Klingelschwitz — it’s the same as in the boyo’s suit!’
‘And look at this shirt,’ added Gently grimly, ‘four nicely grouped stab-holes… same as in the boyo’s thorax.’
A sugary thump made them all turn sharply. It was Jeff going out cold on a sand that was even colder.
CHAPTER NINE
It was a hefty lunch for a hot day and Gently followed Dutt’s example of shedding his jacket and rolling his sleeves up. There wasn’t any frippery about it. Just straight roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and vegetables followed by hot apple turnover with custard. But either Mrs Davis was a demon cook, or else the Starmouth ozone had really come into its own that day… there wasn’t much in the way of conversation for quite some time.
‘Superintendents!’ muttered Gently at last, evaluating the remains of the turnover with sad resignation.
‘Never alters,’ agreed Dutt sympathetically, cutting an absent-minded slice.
‘I can’t help coming to the conclusion, Dutt…’
‘Yessir?’
‘… if it didn’t savour of insubordination…’
‘Aye, aye!’ Dutt winked at his superior over a spoonful of juicy pastry. ‘Don’t have to say it, sir. I knows well enough what you mean.’
Gently picked up his plate and placed it at some distance from himself, as though finally to sever connections with that beguiling turnover. ‘You make a pinch… you dig up some evidence… it does something to them. They’re all the same, Dutt.’
‘Yessir. Noticed it.’
‘They suddenly turn impatient. It’s an occupational disease with superintendents. At a certain stage in the proceedings they get the charge-lust. They want to charge someone. And if there’s half a case against anybody it’s the devil’s own job to head a super off and make him be a good boy…’
‘Don’t we know it, sir?’
Gently drew a deep breath and pulled out his familiar sandblast. ‘Of course, you have to admit it… there’s enough on Baines and Wylie to make the average super sit up and howl blue murder. But at the same time, it only needs the average forensic eye. Baines isn’t a liar, for instance, and Wylie’s got too scared to lie. No, Dutt, no. Our super is doing himself no good by tearing the bricks apart at the Wylie’s. He won’t find anything, and he won’t improve his standing with anyone.’
Mrs Davis brought in their cuppa, making room for the tray beside Gently. She hesitated on seeing the chief inspector’s pipe on the point of being lit and then produced, from nowhere as it seemed, a capacious glass ashtray. Gently nodded a solemn acknowledgement. Mrs Davis beamed at the still-eating Dutt. ‘Aren’t you going down to the beach now this afternoon, Inspector?’
Gently smiled wanly and unbonneted the teapot.
‘Well, sir… what do you make of them clothes turning up like that?’ queried Dutt when the tea was poured and Mrs Davis had retired.
‘They were planted deliberately, Dutt. By the person who lifted the suitcase.’
‘But how did they know where it was, sir?’
‘By deduction and observation — just as we find out things.’ Gently doused a match and took one or two comfortable pulls. ‘Obviously… they wanted that suitcase back. Whether they still intended to use the money or not we don’t know, but they feel it’s important that a large consignment of it shouldn’t be lying around loose… it would almost inevitably finish up in our hands. So their first move after settling with Max was to recover the suitcase and I can imagine they were a little upset to find it missing when they got to his lodgings…’
‘Lord luvvus, sir — that other set of prints! I’ve been puzzling my loaf about them all the morning.’
‘Exactly, Dutt… the first little slip our friends seem to have made. But I don’t suppose they aimed to be around when those prints came to light. It was just a bit of bad luck that the suitcase had vanished into thin air…’
‘So it was them who ransacked the room, sir.’
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘On account of he may have hidden the stuff somewhere.’ ‘It was a possibility they wouldn’t overlook.’
Dutt gave a little chuckle. ‘You’re right, sir… their faces must have dropped a mile when they found the cupboard was bare!’
‘A good mile, Dutt, and possibly two. It upset all their calculations. It meant they would have to hang around and look for it instead of getting to hell out of the country… and hanging around would get to be more and more dangerous as the investigation went on. At first, I imagine, they hadn’t a clue about it. They may have visited the bedroom more than once and they were certainly interested to know what we found when we got there… and then, of course, they began to think it out and perhaps make some inquiries. They found out, or possibly they knew, that Max had been consorting with Frenchy… that was an obvious lead. No doubt they gave her flat a going-over. They might even have questioned her. But there was no suitcase at the flat, and all that Frenchy could tell them — even if she came clean — was of Jeff and Bonce’s allegedly fruitless attempt to get the suitcase… Anyway, they got on to Jeff and Bonce somehow. It wouldn’t have been too difficult if they checked up on Frenchy.’
‘And then they kept them under observation, sir?’
‘Just as we would have done, Dutt.’
‘And last night they found out where the case was hidden — and left the clothes there for a false scent, sir?’
Gently nodded pontifically. ‘A false scent for a charge-happy super.’
Dutt swallowed a mouthful of tea and looked a little dubiously at the remaining shoulder of apple turnover. ‘Just one thing, sir…’
‘Yes, Dutt?’
‘I don’t want to seem critical, sir…’
‘Don’t be modest, Dutt — just come to the point.’
‘Well, sir, what I want to say is, how did they know we was ever going to find them clothes, let alone connect them with the Teddy boys?’
Gently nodded again and smiled around his pipe. ‘That’s what we want to know, isn’t it, Dutt. That’s going to be the clincher!’
