'Oh, I know who you mean,' Nigel realised. 'The Catseye man. He was clever, no doubt about it.'
Sparky was driving my car and I was dozing in the back. We were making our way towards the M62 and then on to Bridlington. It was six thirty a.m.' the sun was shining and in the North Sea the fish were swimming on borrowed time.
'He was more than clever, Nigel,' Dave asserted. 'He was a genius.'
'Well, I wouldn't say a genius,' Nigel argued.
'Of course he was. It was on this very road that he had his inspiration. He was driving along, one foggy night, and this cat was coming towards him. Percy saw how its eyes glowed in his headlights and when he got home he invented the Catseye.
Nigel didn't comment, but Dave was undeterred. 'Next morning,' he continued, 'he was driving back from the patent office when he saw the very same cat, but this time it was walking away from him. Percy dashed straight home and invented the pencil sharpener.'
I'd heard it eight times before but I had to smile, or maybe Nigel's guffaws were infectious, or perhaps it was just that I was pleased they got on so well together. At first, when Nigel joined us, it was open warfare between them. Then they learned each other's strengths and weaknesses and now they ganged up against me. I regarded it as one of my successes. Dave went through my selection of cassettes, ejecting each after a short burst. 'God, you don't half listen to some crap,' he pronounced.
The rustling of paper told me that Nigel was struggling with the Telegraph we'd had to stop for. After a while he said: 'Hey, this sounds a bargain! P amp; O are doing two on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander for seventy-nine pounds, and that includes a car!'
'Sounds good,' Dave agreed. 'I wonder what sort of car it is?'
I wasn't going to get any sleep so I opened my eyes and sat up. Nigel folded his paper and offered it to me, but I declined, so he stuffed it in the door pocket. We were on the motorway, south of Leeds, overtaking a string of lorries through the semipermanent roadworks near the M1 junction.
'Speed cameras, Dave,' I warned. 'Slow down, or the bastards'll get you.'
'No,' he stated, 'they'll get you:
'Well slow down the nV He slowed down. We left the roadworks behind and Nigel was admiring the view. 'What are those?' he asked, looking out of his window. 'I seem them every time I come this way and wonder what they are.'
Dave glanced across and I peered out of the back window. 'What are what?' Dave said.
'Those buildings, in that field.'
Long and low, red brick with slate roofs, they were a familiar sight to me, but to Nigel, from Berkshire, they were a novelty.
Tusky sheds,' Dave stated.
Tusky sheds?'
'Rhubarb sheds,' I explained. 'They grow rhubarb in them. Norfolk has its windmills, Kent has its oast houses, and we have rhubarb sheds.'
'Right!' Nigel exclaimed. 'Right! And I suppose that's a toothpaste quarry over there, and that old mill is where they used to make blue steam!' He pulled the Telegraph out again and started reading the obituaries.
'They're rhubarb sheds!' Dave snapped at him. 'Like he told you.'
'Just once,' Nigel pronounced, 'just once it'd be nice to get a sensible answer to a sensible question.' He read a few more deaths then pretended to be asleep.
'Nigel,' I said, assuming my mantle of authority. 'They are rhubarb sheds. It grows best in the dark. This area south of Leeds is the country's major producer of rhubarb.'
'Have you ever had rhubarb crumble?' Dave asked him.
'No,' he snarled.
Dave glanced back over his shoulder. 'Ring our Shirl,' he told me, 'and tell her to get a rhubarb crumble out of the freezer. Nigel's in for a treat.'
The arrangement was that the three of us were going back to Dave's house for fresh-caught fish, and chips made with his home-grown potatoes. I asked Nigel to pass me my phone and dialled Shirley.
We'd forgotten it was not quite seven in the morning, and Shirley wasn't too pleased at being disturbed again. She's a pal, though, and soon forgave me, but couldn't help with the crumble. They were out of them. 'Bring some rhubarb back with you,' she suggested, 'and I'll make him one.'
The east coast suffers from what are known as sea frets. One hundred yards inland it can be a scorcher, but a thick mist rises off the water, blotting out the sun and turning July into November. Today we had a mother and father of one.
We groped our way along the pier, between plastic-clad holiday makers forced to desert their rooms while the maid changed the sheets, and were accosted by the touts who work for the boats. Seven blokes in scruffy clothes hadn't come to sample the fun fare and we were putty in their hands. Dave put up a struggle, giving nearly as good as he got, and insisted that we go in a boat that was only half-filled. Just before we cast off, however, we were ordered to switch into the boat tied alongside, which was also half-full, so now we were in one that was crowded.
On the trip out I explained to Nigel how to put a bunch of mussels on his hook and how to feel for the bottom with the big lead weight.
Because of the weather, and because it was just a three-hour trip, we would only go into the bay. We shivered, shoulder to shoulder, and waited for the boat to stop.
The skipper switched the engine off and gave the order to start fishing. The boat, bristling with rods, looked like a floating hedgehog. I felt my weight hit the bottom, reeled in a couple of turns and showed Nigel how to do the same.
'Now wait for a bite,' I said.
'And then what?'
'Strike and haul it up.'
'That simple.'
'Yep.'
The first tangle came after about ten minutes of waiting. Someone at the other side of the boat started winding in, a chap along from me struck and started winding, then Dave, me, Nigel and everyone else in the boat.
'Stop reeling in!' yelled the skipper.
It took him nearly fifteen minutes to unravel the ball of spaghetti that we eventually lifted out of the water. We repeated the exercise six more times and that was the three hours up. 'Is it always this much fun?' Nigel asked.
The other four made straight for the pub while we went looking for a fishmonger. 'I don't suppose you have any cod with the heads and tails still on?' Dave asked in the most promising one.
'Sorry, sir,' the man replied. 'It's all been filleted.'
'Oh. In that case, can I have six large portions, please?' Shirley and their children, Daniel and Sophie, would be eating with us.
I noticed that the salmon was only ten pence dearer than the cod. 'I think I'd prefer a piece of salmon,' I said.
Dave turned on me. 'You can't have salmon. We've supposed to have caught it.'
'Well, I caught a salmon.'
'They don't catch salmon.'
'Of course they catch it. Where do you think it comes from?'
'It comes from a farm. They farm it.'
I turned to the fishmonger. 'Was the salmon wild?' I asked him.
'It wasn't too pleased,' he replied. Everybody's a stand-up comedian these days.
We couldn't find a rhubarb shop so we joined the others in the pub and let them have a smell of our fish. Dave and Nigel had a couple of pints and I settled for halves because it was my turn to drive. They talked about the job most of the way home while I concentrated on staying awake. 'So were you two on the Ripper case?' Nigel
