‘I’ve brought your dydle back.’
The recumbent figure sat up slowly and scratched its ear.
‘Yew din’t have to wake me up… I was havin’ a lovela sleep! An what ha’y’ been dewin’ with my dydle — tha’s got a lump took outta the handle!’
Gently shrugged and handed it up to him.
‘It’s fair wear-and-tear.’
‘Not a lump like that i’nt! I suppose yew’ll tell me a pike bit it?’
‘You wouldn’t be so far out.’
Gently moved a few steps towards Cheerful Annie’s wherry and Pedro, his legs dangling over the bows, stopped playing a moment. But Gently seemed to change his mind. He turned back to where Thatcher was tenderly replacing the dydle with his other junk.
‘Ah well… just one more bit of business! I want the dinghy again.’
‘What arter the way yew messed her up this mornin?’
‘I shan’t mess her up this afternoon.’
Thatcher hesitated doubtfully. The nick out of the dydle seemed to have dropped his opinion of policemen by a few points.
‘That i’nt them carrs again, I s’pose?’
‘No — it’s that old mill across on the other bank.’
‘Yew can mess a boot up there, dew yew’re got a mind to.’
‘You come with me and keep me out of mischief.’
Thatcher fingered the obnoxious bullet-score pointedly. It was almost humorous to watch his mind working…
‘Verra well, my man! Five bob — take it or leave it.’
‘It’s too much, you old sinner. But I’ll take it — if you row!’
Thatcher climbed down from the cabin-top and drew in the dinghy. Everyone was watching as Gently stepped aboard. Thatcher winked at them ponderously over the policeman’s shoulder… he’d got his head screwed on, the wink seemed to say.
‘Are yew all set, ole partna?’
Gently was arranging his feet.
‘Then here w’go, an’ the best of luck!’
On the bows of the wherry Pedro continued to play his sentimental tune. It followed them for quite a distance as the dinghy turned downstream.
‘I’ve just about finished, ole partna.’
Gently could slip easily into an imitation of Thatcher’s vernacular.
‘We’ll ha done by s’arternoon, an leave yew all t’get on with it, together.’
Thatcher wasn’t going to be hurried. He rowed with a slow, steady, waterman’s stroke which made even a dinghy seem monumental. And Gently wasn’t in a hurry. He trailed stubby fingers in the sun-warm water. Two middle-aged men, one comfortably disreputable, the other comfortably respectable, you expected them to pull into the bank at any moment and to get out their rods. Why else would they be sauntering downstream in that antedeluvian dinghy?
‘I reckon yew b’long here somehow, bor… yew don’t pick our natter up that easa.’
‘W’blast, there’s nothin tew it. I onla got to listen t’soma yew carryin’ on.’
Thatcher gave a little chuckle and twisted his head appreciatively. Not many foreigners could master the sly, dry North-shire tongue with its pace and familiar lilt and abundance of glottal stops.
‘Well then, who was’t, arter all?’ he inquired, lifting an oar to accommodate a patch of floating weed.
Gently hunched his shoulders lazily.
‘We’ll know in a bit… my sergeant is going to pick him up.’
‘I’ll have a quid on that was Joe Hicks.’
‘I’d take you, too, if I was a betting man.’
Thatcher chuckled again and rowed on methodically. He wasn’t doing so badly out of Gently, when you came to weigh it up. Fifteen bob in the morning, five in the afternoon.
‘But what about all that monna?’
The thought of cash had recalled the box of notes.
‘Aren’t the kids goin to ha’ that now, when yew’ve got the bloke yew want?’
Gently fed himself a peppermint cream. ‘It’s still stolen property.’
‘But blast — yew can stretch a point! Yew know their ole man’s dewin’ time.’
‘They’ll be taken care of… don’t worry about that.’
‘But that monna was theirs. That say so on the box!’
‘The person who was being so lavish would have to prove his title.’
Thatcher rested on his oars. The point really seemed to worry him. His grizzled brows contracted as he wrestled with the problem.
‘But are yew pos’tive that was stolen?’ he asked at last, ‘ha yew foun’ out where that come from?’
‘W’no, ole partna — but it’s a hundred to one it was stolen from Mr Lammas.’
‘Well, there y’are, then!’ A hundred to one was nothing to Thatcher. ‘Dew yew aren’t pos’tive, why not give them little kiddoes the benefit o’ th’ doubt?’
‘To be honest, I wish I could… but it isn’t in my power.’
Thatcher studied him seriously before dipping his oars again. There was a penetration in his hazel eyes surprising in its calm power. ‘Yew got yourself mixed up with a rum lot, bor, I’m buggered if yew ha’nt!’ he observed sadly.
Gently gave an almost imperceptible shrug. ‘We’re all a rum lot, bor… there i’nt much t’chewse atween us,’ he replied.
They had rounded the bend which cut off Upper Wrackstead and entered the long, reed-lined Mill Reach. At the other end was a bend which would bring Wrackstead Bridge and village into view, but the Reach itself gave no premonition of these nearby haunts of men. From a boat, its solitude was complete. One saw nothing but the tall reeds and scrub marsh trees above them. The majestic, rusty brick tower of a ruined drainage-mill pointed, if possible, the sense of remoteness and desolation. Even under a June sun, even in the presence of some passing holiday craft.
‘Yew aren’t a-goin’ to tell me yew don’t know who done that job, jus’ when yew’re going to lay hands on him.’
Thatcher was still puzzling about it. The police worked in mysterious ways!
‘I know who did it.’ Gently was talking softly, as though to himself. ‘Only nobody would believe me… unless I produced the man.’
‘Then how dew your bloke know who he’s arrestin’, dew yew han’t told him?’
‘I’ve told him where he’ll find him. There won’t be any room for mistake.’
Thatcher brooded on it for a moment.
‘Don’t that put yew in a rum position?’
‘It could do, I suppose… if I were inclined to let it.’
Their eyes came together, Gently’s mild ones, Thatcher’s questioning.
‘Dew he knew what yew’ve told me, yew might not have so long to go, ole partna.’
‘Yes… he’s handy with a gun.’
‘Ah, an’ don’t care if he use it.’
‘They get handier all the time… that’s the reason one has to stop them.’
Thatcher slewed round in his seat to bawl out a speeding motor-cruiser. The offending helmsman was completely silenced by such a barrage of pungent English.
‘But what sort of blokes d’yew reckon they are, who go about killin’ other people?’
Now they were getting near the mill and one could see the low, square doorway.
‘They’re all a bit twisted… they’ve had a left-handed deal.’ There was a dyke and a sluice-gate, and a sunken houseboat in the dyke.
