“I wouldn’t know about that,” responded Leeyes irritably. “All I can tell you is that Ridgeford’s only just come across the bell.”
“I should have thought,” said Sloan slowly, “that we should have heard, sir, if it wasn’t very lately.”
Leeyes grunted. “Good news gets about.”
“We mostly do hear,” said Sloan. It was true. The police usually heard about good fortune as well as bad. For one thing good fortune could be as dangerous to the recipient as the reverse… Sloan pulled himself up with a jerk. He was begining to think like a latter-day Samuel Smiles now.
Leeyes grunted again.
“Besides, sir, presumably the coroner would have had to know if anything had been found, wouldn’t he?”
“Coroners,” pronounced Leeyes obscurely, “only know what they’re told.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And all I know,” said Leeyes flatly, “is what my officers choose to tell me.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“And that’s not a lot, Sloan, is it?”
“The young man’s body was put into the river where the water is fresh,” responded Sloan absently, answering the implication rather than the question.
“And if that’s not enough,” continued Leeyes, aggrieved, “we’ve got Ridgeford playing pirates.”
“He’s having quite a day for a beginner, isn’t he?” said Sloan. “A body and buried treasure.”
“Hrrrrumph,” said Leeyes.
“He’ll have to remember today, won’t he,” said Sloan, “when the routine begins to bite.”
Leeyes sniffed. “He’d have me out there, Sloan, if he could…”
Sloan didn’t say anything at all to that.
“Mind you, Sloan, with my background I’ve always been interested in the sea.”
Sloan could see where this was leading.
“Did I,” said Leeyes, “ever tell you how we got ashore at Walcheren?”
“Yes,” said Sloan with perfect truth. Nobody had been spared that story. Recitals of the superintendent’s wartime experiences were well known and were to be avoided at all costs. He didn’t even “stoppeth one in three.” Every officer on station got them.
“Bit of a splash,” said Leeyes with the celebrated British understatement favoured by men of action in a tight corner.
Detective Inspector Sloan could see where this was leading, too. In another two minutes Superintendent Leeyes would have constituted himself Berebury’s currently ranking expert on underwater archeology. And then where would they be?
“I’ll see Ridgeford presently, sir,” Sloan said firmly, “and find out about the ship’s bell too.”
“And this dinghy that he keeps on about over at Marby,” said Leeyes. “You won’t forget that, will you, Sloan?”
“No, sir, I’ll see about that as soon as I can…” But before that, come wind, come weather, he had every intention of going up the River Calle.
A little later a police car with Detective Constable Crosby at the wheel and Detective Inspector Sloan in the front passenger seat swept out of the police station at Berebury for the second time that afternoon. The driver negotiated the traffic islands with impatience and then steered past the town’s multi-storey car park. Eventually he swung the car onto the open road and out into the Calleshire countryside. In a wallet on the back seat of the police car was a hastily drawn-up list of everyone who lived beside the River Calle on both sides of the river east of Billing Bridge.
“There’s a note of the riparian owners, too, sir,” said Detective Constable Crosby, “whoever they are when they’re at home.”
“The fishing rights belong to them,” said Sloan.
“Oh, the fishing…” said Crosby, putting his foot down.
“There’s no hurry,” said Sloan as the car picked up speed.
“Got a catch a murderer,” said Crosby, “haven’t we?”
That, at least, decided Sloan to himself, had the merit of reducing the case to its simplest. And he had to admit that that was not unwelcome after a session with Superintendent Leeyes…
“Chance would be a fine thing,” he said aloud.
“Someone did for him,” said the constable. “He didn’t get the way he was and where he was on his own.”
“True.” As inductive logic went it wasn’t a very grand conclusion but it would do. “Can you go any further?”
“We’ve got to get back to the water,” said Crosby, crouching forward at the wheel like Toad of Toad Hall.
Sloan nodded. In all fairness he had to admit that what Crosby had said was true. All the action so far had been in water… He said, “What do we know so far?”
“Very little, sir.”
It was not the right answer from pupil to mentor.
In the Army mounting a campaign was based on the useful trio of “information, intention, method.” He wasn’t going to get very far discussing these with Crosby if the detective constable baulked at “information.”
“Could you,” said Sloan with a hortatory cough, “try to think of why a body killed in a fall should be found in water?”
“Because it couldn’t be left where it fell,” responded Crosby promptly.
“Good. Go on.”
“I don’t know why it couldn’t be left where it fell, sir,” said the constable. “But if it could have been left, then it would have been, wouldn’t it?”
“True.”
“Heavy things, bodies…”
Sloan nodded. What Crosby had just said was simple and irrefutable but it wasn’t enough. “Keep going,” he said.
Crosby’s eyebrows came together in a formidable frown. “Where it fell could have been too public,” he said.
“That’s a point,” said Sloan.
“And it might have been found too soon,” suggested Crosby after further thought.
“Very true,” said Sloan. “Anything else?”
“Where it was found might give us a lead on who killed him.”
“Good, good,” said Sloan encouragingly. “Now, why put the body in the water?”
But Crosby’s fickle interest had evaporated.
“Why,” repeated Sloan peremptorily, “put the body in the water?”
Crosby took a hand off the steering wheel and waved it. “Saves digging a hole,” he said simply.
“Anything else?” said Sloan.
Crosby thought in silence.
“Are there,” said Sloan tenaciously, “any other good reasons why a body should be put in the water?” It looked as if they were going to have to make bricks without straw in this case anyway…
Crosby continued to frown prodigiously but to no effect.
“It is virtually impossible to hide a grave,” pronounced Detective Inspector Sloan academically.
“Yes, sir.”
“And,” continued Sloan, “the disposal of a murdered body therefore presents a great problem to the murderer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It often,” declared Sloan in a textbook manner, “presents a greater problem than committing the actual murder.”
