The police driver turned round to report. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said to Superintendent Underbarrow, ‘but this is it. I can’t get any farther.’
‘Right!’ The superintendent grinned at MacGregor and confirmed his worst fears. ‘Come on, sergeant! It’s shanks’s pony now.’
‘What?’ Chief Inspector Dover came roaring back to full consciousness with both fists up.
‘It’s only just up the hill,’ Superintendent Underbarrow assured him genially. ‘Shouldn’t take us more than half an hour. What size shoes do you take?’
‘Shoes?’ Dover’s piggy little eyes popped.
‘You’ll need gum boots and I’ll try and borrow a couple of oilskins for you. Rowney, you’d better come up with us and help with the luggage.’
‘Very good sir.’ The police driver switched his engine off and got out of the Land-Rover.
Superintendent Underbarrow and MacGregor began to extract themselves from the rear but Dover sat firm.
‘Just a minute,’ he said.
Superintendent Underbarrow paused. ‘Time’s getting on,’ he warned. ‘It’s no joke, getting up there in the dark.’
‘Earthquakes,’ said Dover. ‘Suppose there’s another one?’ Superintendent Underbarrow eyed him with mild dislike. This joker was a right specimen and no mistake. ‘Not much chance of that,’ he lied blandly. ‘Like lightning, you know. Never strikes twice in the same place.’
Dover sniffed suspiciously. ‘You sure?’
MacGregor opened his mouth but, at a glance from Superintendent Underbarrow, shut it again.
‘Quite sure,’ said Superintendent Underbarrow.
Eventually, gum-booted and festooned in oilskins, the little convoy set off up the hill. A group of council workmen, knocking off after another day’s unrewarding struggle with the mud, cheered and whistled them on their way. Police Constable Rowney and Superintendent Underbarrow carried the luggage between them. The suitcases were heavy but they were as nothing compared to Dover. The task of getting him up to Sully Martin was dropped squarely on MacGregor’s shoulders. The rain tippled down as they slipped and scrambled along. Here and there somebody had tried to improve the going by arranging chunks of masonry as stepping stones but the tide of mud was already engulfing them.
Dover, never an enthusiast for physical exertion in the choicest of circumstances, slithered and panted and blasphemed. Before long he got one arm round MacGregor’s neck and hung there with the grim tenacity of an obese and cowardly limpet. MacGregor’s protests that he couldn’t breathe fell on deaf ears.
‘If we go, laddie,’ promised Dover with a snarl, ‘we go together!’
Onwards and upwards. At long last MacGregor hauled his chief inspector’s seventeen and a quarter stone as far as a line of partially submerged duckboards where Superintendent Underbarrow, his good nature getting the better of him once again, was waiting for them with guidance and encouragement.
‘Not much farther now!’ he called.
‘Bloody oaf!’ muttered Dover into MacGregor’s left ear. ‘I’m warning you, laddie! Much more of him and there’ll be another murder!’
The duckboarding was only a foot or so wide and further progress could only be achieved in single file. With some difficulty MacGregor managed to wean Dover from his stranglehold and get him to lead the way. Superintendent Underbarrow brought up the rear and, finding himself next to MacGregor, resumed their interrupted conversation.
‘Aye,’ he began, ‘manual strangulation.’
MacGregor spoke back over his shoulder. ‘The murderer must have been a bit of an idiot, sir.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well, if he’d just battered Chantry’s head in with a piece of wood or a brick, you’d probably be none the wiser, would you, sir? It would have just gone down in the book as an accident.’
‘Hm.’ Superintendent Underbarrow decided after a moment’s reflection that it wasn’t worth taking offence at this implied slur on his colleagues’ efficiency. ‘He probably never thought of that.’
‘Killed in a moment of blind passion, you think, sir?’
‘Well, it can’t have been premeditated, can it? Nobody could have foreseen there was going to be an earthquake.’
‘Bit of an opportunist, eh?’
‘It looks like that to me. And damned lucky, too. Chantry’s body was found over there somewhere.’ The superintendent pointed through the sheeting rain and the encroaching twilight. ‘Looks like the back of the moon, doesn’t it? Chaos,’ he observed sadly. ‘Sheer, utter and undiluted chaos. If you lot rely on footprints and fingerprints and things like that, you’re in for a pretty thin time.’
Dover had reach the end of the duckboards.
‘Turn right, chief inspector!’ called Superintendent Underbarrow. He poked MacGregor between the shoulder blades. ‘See that, sergeant?’
‘That heap of stones, sir?’
‘The old Sally Gate – or what’s left of it. Stood here for centuries and now it looks for all the world like a pile of hard core for a motorway. They’re talking about rebuilding it, but I don’t know.’ He put a spurt on and overtook Dover. ‘We’re in West Street now,’ he told him, ‘and just along here is the line of the fault where this part of the cliff cracked. It runs right across the village. All the damage was on this side – see?’
Dover couldn’t have cared less about the blasted damage. He was too busy staring in dismay at a couple of narrow planks that had been thrown across the gaping ravine in the road. ’Strewth, they weren’t expecting him to . . . ?
They were.
Dover was rapidly reaching the end of his not very lengthy tether. After a short and completely futile argument he simply closed his eyes and left it to MacGregor and Superintendent Underbarrow to guide his hesitant feet across. They’d got him just about midway when there was a dull, heavy rumble from behind them. Even MacGregor went white.
‘What was that?’ he asked apprehensively. He was down on his knees trying to force Dover’s left foot in front of his right.
Superintendent Underbarrow hastened to reassure him. ‘They’re still knocking a few of the wrecked houses down. It’s too dangerous to leave ’em standing. Pity, really. Sully Martin was quite a pretty little place before all this happened.’
They reached the end of West Street and turned right into Cherry Lane. Superintendent Underbarrow began stamping the great clods of mud off
