‘Now — you tell me! What have we got?’
‘Well… it’s half a set of choppers!’
‘Yes, Dutt… half a set of choppers — and they’re going to hang a certain party!’
He seized on the object in triumph and straightened a back which had suddenly ceased to ache. Here it was, the unarguable proof — the final fact, the fact that hung!
Dutt stared dumbly at the muddied denture. ‘But I don’t quite see, sir-’ he was beginning, when two things happened which he didn’t see either. The first was a vicious hiss from across the pool and a rattling crash in the twigs behind them. The second was Gently’s tackle that sent him flying face-first into the mud.
‘Keep flat!’ bawled Gently, ‘Keep your head down on the ground. If you show a couple of inches you’ll maybe stop a. 22 bullet between the eyes!’
The rotten planks of the quay gave a modicum of cover, but they looked uncomfortably penetrable. Gently eased himself towards them until he could peer through one of the gaps. Not a sound, not a movement came from the direction from which the shot had been fired. Over there it was all green reeds and a single, scrubby alder. To get there one would have to skirt the dyke and make a rush through the slopping marsh and tangled undergrowth… a perfect target all the way. He had picked his spot well, the man with the gun.
‘Can you see him, sir?’
Dutt was spitting the mud out of his mouth.
‘No, Dutt — and we shan’t! He doesn’t want to be seen.’
‘You don’t think he’s hooked it, sir, after taking a pot?’
‘Not him… this is too important. He’s got us on his list.’
By way of testing the hypothesis Gently reached across for his jacket, which was lying folded under a bush. He rolled it into a tight wad and suddenly poked it up above the level of the planks. Almost simultaneously a bullet kicked it out of his hand…
‘That’s tidy shooting with a silenced. 22!’
‘Here, but wait a minute, sir!’
Dutt had crawled up beside him.
‘We’ve got a banger too — I never signed in that Webley yesterday!’
Gently stared. ‘You mean we’ve got it here?’
‘Yessir. Right up there in me pocket.’
‘In your pocket!’ Gently craned his head. Dutt’s jacket was hanging on a snag, about three yards behind them.
‘If we can get that down we’ll have this geezer in a jam, sir. It’s the old. 38, and I know which I’d sooner be behind!’
‘Also it’ll make a noise.’ A gleam came into Gently’s eye. ‘But how the devil are we going to get it down, with Davy Crockett sitting in the rushes?’
Tantalizingly the jacket hung there, only just hooked on to a snag. A quick spring… a sweep of the arm! But a vigilant bullet was waiting for just such a move.
‘We’ll have to knock it off with the dydle, Dutt.’
Dutt pulled a face. ‘A fine mess it’ll make.’
‘So would a bullet in the back — even a little. 22!’
Gently squirmed towards the dydle, trying to keep himself perfectly flat. He couldn’t quite have succeeded, since when he was halfway towards it there was a warning hiss and something plucked a loose part of his shirt.
‘That lad’s quite a marksman. I wonder what he’ll be like when someone’s firing back!’
But he managed to get the dydle and tow it back to where Dutt was crouching.
Now came the difficult part — raising the dydle to the level of the jacket. Dydles were no light-weights and the amount of leverage one could get while in a prone position was inconsiderable, to say the least.
‘Let’s anchor the butt-end under the planks.’
It was done and they both braced themselves.
‘We want to get it first time — we shall have to show ourselves a bit!’
How they managed it remained a mystery. A couple of bullets sliced by as the dydle wavered in mid-air. Then it fell with a thump, a white flake carved from the haft… and wonder of wonders, Dutt’s jacket had come down on top of it! Gently hooked it up with his toe. Yes… the Webley was still in the pocket. He slipped off the safety-catch and spun the magazine.
‘To the left of that tree, sir — I see the rushes twitching!’
Gently had seen them too, but it wasn’t at the rushes that he aimed. When the healthy crash of the. 38 rang out a bough shivered in the solitary alder… and there followed the splashes of hastily retreating footsteps.
‘Let me get after him, sir!’ Dutt was on his feet in a moment. ‘Just give me that gun — I’ll teach him the way to shoot at people!’
Gently signified a negative and rose more leisuredly.
‘You’d be easy meat, Dutt. He couldn’t ask anything better than for you to follow him in there.’
‘But we can’t let him go, sir — he’s the bloke what we’re after! And if he’s in that marsh we can stow him up with a cordon-!’
Gently shook his head again and clicked the safety back on the Webley.
‘No cordons, Dutt, and no following… there’s been enough bloodshed round here already. And I want him alive when I get him. I doubt whether I should, if we stowed him up with a cordon.’
‘But you can’t just let him go!’ It outraged all Dutt’s police-instincts. ‘If we don’t get him now we may never have another chance, sir. And don’t forget we never see him — we can’t swear to who he was if we don’t catch him!’
Gently smiled a frosty smile. He weighed the Webley in his hand.
‘But we know who he was, Dutt… we knew from the very first bullet. And we know where to find him — because he doesn’t know we know! Now let’s forget about the drama and do some routine work on this denture. When it comes to the fun and games, you’ll get your share along with the rest!’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
There was a little more animation about Upper Wrackstead in the middle of the afternoon. For one thing it was early closing in the village and some of the river-dwellers worked there. For another, it was the hour of gossip, when all the chores ought to have been done. And then there were freelances like Pedro, who couldn’t make up their minds to work in the afternoon and others like Thatcher, who didn’t work anyway.
Quite a number were there to witness Gently drive up alone in the police Wolseley.
He locked the doors casually and took his time about getting off the dydle. A couple of kids stopped chasing each other to stand and drink in the spectacle.
‘When are y’going t’lock up Mrs Grey, mister?’
Gently grinned at them amiably.
‘She did for old Annie — she did, din’t she?’
‘Sid — Teddy!’
It was the slattern screeching from her companion hatch.
‘Just yew come away from there an stop cheekin’ the pleeceman!’
Reluctantly the youngsters heeded the voice of fate.
Gently shouldered the dydle and humped it over to Thatcher’s houseboat. The gentleman in question lay snoring on his cabin-top, his hands clasped sedately over his shapely paunch. Not far away sat Pedro. He was playing sadly on his concertina. The nostalgic Italian music seemed somehow to harmonize with Thatcher’s magnificent snore.
‘Oi!’
Thatcher broke off in mid-thunder.
