Gently Floating

by Hunter Alan

  Gently nodded. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said. He rose, turned towards the door. He met a man coming in through the door. The man had approached the door on tiptoe.

  The man was nearly as tall as Gently and he had angry yellowish-grey eyes. He had a hard, broad frame with flat shoulders and large but well-formed hands. He was in his late thirties. He had a small moustache. He had Vera Spelton’s blunt nose. He had Vera Spelton’s wide mouth, but without Vera Spelton’s smile. His mouth and face and body were taut and his eyes were fastened on Gently’s. He wore an old dragged tweed jacket and a faded red cotton shirt and dungaree trousers and ragged plimsolls. He went flat-footed very slowly. In a tight, low-pitched voice he said:

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Routine inquiries,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh, and who are you supposed to be?’ the man said. Gently told him.

  ‘I get it,’ the man said. ‘Getting V on her own. Seeing what you could make her spill. A copper. A screw. A human ferret.’

  ‘Oh, don’t take on, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘It’s only a policeman about a boat. I’ve told him that our boats are always booked up and he’s just going and he wasn’t naughty. You shouldn’t’ve come interfering.’

  ‘V,’ David Spelton said, ‘go and set the table.’

  ‘But I’ve set the table,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘I have really, you can go and look.’

  ‘Well, get on with your fretwork,’ David Spelton said. ‘I want to talk to this gentleman alone. Maybe we’ve got a boat he can have, I’ll see about it. You finish that wall-bracket.’

  ‘No, we haven’t any boats,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘He’ll have to go to those people.’

  ‘V, just do what I say,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘All right, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said.

  She rose, smiling at neither of them. She glided round her brother. She vanished. David Spelton closed the door, leaned on it.

  ‘I don’t know if there’s a law against it,’ he said. ‘Getting a subnormal person on their own and trying to work on them in that filthy way. But I’m going to find out, you can depend on that. And if it’s an offence, I’m going to prosecute you. You think you’re fireproof because you’re a policeman, but you bloody aren’t fireproof.Not with my sister.’

  ‘It isn’t an offence,’ Gently said. ‘Murder is. Investigating it isn’t.’

  ‘And that covers every dirty little trick,’ David Spelton said. ‘That’s your excuse when you’re caught out.’ He came away from the door, went round the writing-table, leaned on the chair-back, stared. ‘I heard what you were getting at,’ he said. ‘I know how your putrid mind is working.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ Gently said.

  ‘People like you make me sick,’ David Spelton said. ‘Harry French interfering with V. It takes a policeman to think up filth like that. And you get her alone and keep feeding her with it, trying to plant it in her mind. But she isn’t as stupid as that, you know. She’s got her way of protecting herself. Because it’s a lie. A damned lie. The dirty lie of a dirty mind.’

  ‘Is it off your chest?’ Gently said.

  ‘What’s the point of talking to you,’ David Spelton said. ‘Of course you’ve got a skin like a plastic fendoff, you wouldn’t be in your line of business if you hadn’t.’

  ‘I might think you’re afraid of something,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh of course, of course,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a sister before I came here,’ Gently said. ‘I came to see you. About something quite different.’

  ‘And V just fell into your clutches,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘You weren’t eavesdropping early enough,’ Gently said. ‘She told me some very interesting things which I didn’t know enough to prompt her in. What kept you so long at the yard after you saw me try the doors?’

  David Spelton stared, said nothing.

  ‘And now you’re puzzling me,’ Gently said. ‘Suppose you drop the moral indignation before I find it significant?’

  ‘Oh, very clever,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘What were you afraid I should get out of her?’ Gently said.

  ‘You’ve a thing about me being afraid,’ David Spelton said. ‘I’m not afraid, not of people like you. Only of the injury you might do to my sister. And it’s got to end here, you understand? You’re not shoving that lie at her again. Hawk your filthy ideas around to other people, but let V alone. Or you’ll have me to deal with.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you just have walked in here,’ Gently said, ‘if your motive was to protect your sister from me?’

  ‘I mean what I’m saying,’ David Spelton said. ‘Your being a policeman isn’t going to protect you.’

  ‘Yet you waited to eavesdrop,’ Gently said. ‘Till our interview was over. As though you wanted to hear what I was going to ask her, which you wouldn’t have done if you’d come straight in. And Harry French’s body turned up in your slipway.’

  ‘I’ll forget myself in a minute,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘I think you’ve already forgotten yourself,’ Gently said. ‘Why were you going to knock Harry French down?’

  The knuckles of David Spelton’s hands paled over the carved wood of the chair-back. His stare was less steady. He drew the chair a little towards him. He said:

  ‘You’re trying to build a case against me, is that it?’

  ‘Routine inquiries,’ Gently said.

  ‘You can’t fix one against young French. Now you’re trying me for size.’

  ‘Just asking questions,’ Gently said. ‘Why does everyone assume we’re after young French?’

  ‘Well, I don’t fit,’ David Spelton said. ‘You’re cooking it up first to last. Harry French never had anything to do with V. We never saw Harry French round here. He wasn’t welcome, you understand? We hate Harry French’s guts in these parts. If he’d stepped over that threshold I’d have kicked his arse, that’s how welcome Harry French was here. He never met V, he never talked to her, you’re up the spout with the whole deal. And come to that, he didn’t run after women. That’s the only decent thing I know about him.’

  ‘But you seem to have had something against him,’ Gently said.

  ‘Am I saying I didn’t?’ David Spelton said. ‘I’m not afraid to admit I hated his guts. You can hate a man’s guts without killing him.’

  ‘It’s sometimes a preliminary step,’ Gently said.

  ‘It probably was in this case,’ David Spelton said. ‘But I didn’t kill him all the same for that, nor I’m not shedding tears because someone else did. I couldn’t care less, that’s my position. I’d rather forget Harry French ever existed. It’s just a bloody nuisance he wound up in our slipway and brought you and all the other ferrets trading their muck here. And if that’s the lot you can get out. I’ve better things to do than talking to you.’

  ‘More profitable things, perhaps,’ Gently said.

  ‘A darned sight more profitable,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘Like arranging a purchase with John French,’ Gently said. ‘Now his father is out of the way and can’t prevent it.’

  The chair jumped. David Spelton let go of it. He came round the table, stood close to Gently. He had a puffiness about his eyes and a slight tremor. The eye-whites were bloodshot.

  ‘Like that, is it?’ he said. ‘You’re full of reasons why I should have killed him. If it wasn’t the one it was the other, and you’re going to make something stick.’

  ‘Will it stick?’ Gently said.

  ‘You rotten louse,’ David Spelton said. ‘I wouldn’t have your job for the Bank of England. I’d sooner scrub bottoms for a living.’

  ‘Compliments aside,’ Gently said.

  ‘I ought to belt you,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘It’s been tried,’ Gently said. ‘But it never seemed to help anybody.’

  ‘Yes,’ David Spelton said, ‘I ought to belt you.’

  ‘Look,’ Gently said, ‘this is getting us
nowhere. You might stack up an assault charge for yourself, but I’ll still want the answers to my questions. Cool off. It’s doing you no good. You don’t act it well enough. You’ve lost too much sleep.’

  ‘I’d love to belt you,’ David Spelton said.

  He raised his fist. Suddenly, he was sprawled on the floor. ‘I told you, you’d lost too much sleep,’ Gently said. ‘That one was free. Don’t do it again.’

  David Spelton got up off the floor, hesitated, didn’t do it again. He looked at Gently several times. Then he got out a cigarette and lit it. He went over to the window, looked out of the window. People were passing on the cinder path. David Spelton blew a lot of smoke at the window. He turned his back to it, blew smoke at the floor.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t have done that. It’s true, I haven’t had too much sleep. We’re working overtime. A rush job. In the sheds. You can see it.’

  ‘How long have you been working overtime?’ Gently said.

  ‘A fortnight,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke. ‘It’s double pay if you put the men on it. The price won’t stand double pay.’

  ‘So you’d be there on Tuesday night,’ Gently said.

  ‘Jackie and I,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘Till what time?’ Gently said.

  ‘Midnight,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke.

  ‘All the time,’ Gently said.

  ‘All the time,’ David Spelton said. ‘V fetched us a Thermos and sandwiches before she went to bed. Round about nine or just after.’

  ‘Did you step outside at all?’ Gently said.

  ‘Only to the toilet,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘Where’s the toilet?’ Gently said.

  ‘Top end of the sheds. You can see it,’ David Spelton said.

  Gently looked out of the window, saw a separate timber structure in a fenced piece of ground attached to the sheds. Next to the fence was a small cut grown up with reeds and then rough rond on which lay a decaying boat. Then the first bungalow. Gently said:

  ‘Do you remember seeing anything when you went to the toilet?’

  ‘Such as what?’ Dave Spelton said.

  ‘Such as any activity on the river,’ Gently said.

  ‘Yes,’ David Spelton said, ‘twice likely. Why should I remember anything like that?’ He blew smoke. ‘I don’t remember seeing anything,’ he said. ‘You can ask Jackie. He was out there too.’

  ‘Something coming by late,’ Gently said. ‘Without lights. Wouldn’t you have noticed it?’

  ‘If I’d seen it,’ David Spelton said. ‘But I didn’t see it. I can’t help you.’

  ‘You didn’t see Harry French?’ Gently said.

  ‘No,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke.

  ‘Harry French didn’t call at your sheds?’ Gently said.

  ‘No,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke.

  ‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘Well, let’s hear some more about Harry French. Why you hated him, that sort of thing. Why you were going to belt him. What he wouldn’t sell you.’

  ‘I thought you knew it all,’ David Spelton said. ‘You wouldn’t want to listen to the lies I’d tell you.’

  ‘Lies or truth, I want to listen,’ Gently said. ‘A lie often has the truth in the shape of it.’

  David Spelton smoked a little, made a motion with his head. ‘Then we’d better go across to the sheds,’ he said. ‘Jackie can tell you why we loved French, you can believe Jackie, he’s not a liar. Jackie’s the honest one of the family. Comes of being the eldest son.’

  ‘I’d sooner hear it from you,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh, I’ll add my lies,’ David Spelton said.

  He moved to the door, opened it. Vera Spelton stood smiling in the hall. David Spelton looked at her, jerked his head towards the stairs. Vera Spelton didn’t do anything, made no acknowledgement.

  ‘V,’ David Spelton said, ‘you won’t get that wall-bracket finished.’

  ‘Oh I’m tired of fretwork,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘I’m coming across to the sheds too.’

  ‘Not this morning, V,’ David Spelton said. ‘We’ve got some business to clear up. It’s dull, it won’t interest you. Come this afternoon. We’ll do some painting.’

  Vera Spelton pouted. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to do something on the yacht.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see about it,’ David Spelton said. ‘This afternoon. But stay in this morning.’

  ‘Yes, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said. She smiled again but didn’t move.

  ‘Well, run along then,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘Yes, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said.

  David Spelton nodded, turned, went out. Gently followed. Vera Spelton danced after them.

  ‘V,’ David Spelton said over his shoulder.

  ‘Yes, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘Yes, Dave. Yes, Dave.’

  She kept behind them. David Spelton was silent. He led the way to the door near the noticeboard. He knocked twice on the door. The door was opened by a youngster in a boilersuit. They went through it and into a wide but shallow shed. A seagoing yacht was being built in the shed. The yacht was planked up and had the coamings fitted and there was a light in her and men were working in her and her planking was painted with pink priming. Her counter overhung a wall bench at the back of the shed, her bows overhung a slipway at the front. Doors were closed across the slipway, but wash came up it from passing boats and the sound of the wash was greatly magnified by the hollowness of the shed. The air in the shed was heated and motionless. It smelled of raw timber, varnish, tar and tobacco smoke. In the unvarnished mahogany coamings of the yacht were lines of countersunk brass screwheads and the screwheads were new and yellow and the mahogany very smooth. An electric hand-drill burred intermittently inside the yacht; accompanying the burr was the soft clash of a push screwdriver. David Spelton looked at Gently, said:

  ‘She’s an East Coast Restricted Class. Thirty-three feet long. If we built them sideways we could manage a thirty-six foot job and just about screw her into a slipway. Bigger than that we can’t handle them. Not without rebuilding and sacrificing our quays.’

  ‘So,’ Gently said.

  David Spelton laughed. ‘You’ll get the idea in a minute,’ he said. ‘We taught the Frenches their business here, too damn well we taught them.’

  He went to the yacht. A ladder with padded rests leaned against her gunnel. David Spelton climbed the ladder, leaned over the coaming, said something. The sound of the electric hand-drill stopped, the light in the yacht was hidden for a moment. A capped head came out of the hatch, turned towards Gently, said something. David Spelton came down the ladder. A man in tan dungarees followed him.

  ‘My brother Jackie,’ David Spelton said. ‘Sorry he isn’t dressed for company.’

  ‘Yes, I’m Jack Spelton,’ the man said. ‘What’s all this worrying about now?’

  David Spelton said: ‘You’ll soon find out. The Superintendent’s just getting his spike in. Seems he’s heard of our business relations with the firm next door. He wants you to tell him all about them.’

  ‘Oh,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘What’s that to him?’

  ‘You’d better ask him,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘What’s that to you?’ Jack Spelton said to Gently. ‘You’re rare curious, aren’t you, about our affairs?’

  Gently looked at Jack Spelton. Jack Spelton was several years older than his brother. He had a pinched version of his brother’s face and his nose was sharper and he squinted a little. He had slack cheeks with deep lines in them and the wrinkled forehead of a dyspepsia sufferer. He was leaner built than his brother and less tall. He had the beginning of a stoop. He had greyed hair. Gently said:

  ‘Just some routine questions.’

  ‘They’re never anything else,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘We like to get our facts straight,’ Gently said. ‘And your quarrel with Harry French is one of the facts.’

  ‘Sounds like nosiness to me,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘We don’t
know anything about Harry French. Except I pulled him out of the bottom slipway and stuck him in the rigger’s shop to drain. You know that, what more do you want?’

  ‘You’ve heard what I want,’ Gently said.

  ‘Well, I don’t like getting pulled off a job,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘There’s too much of it going on. We’ve got work, some of us.’

  He squinted at Gently, pulled a pipe out of his pocket, stuck it in his mouth, didn’t light it. He drew on the pipe several times. He took it out of his mouth again, smacked his lips.

  ‘All right then,’ he said. ‘It was over the Blackwater contract. Now you’re as wise as you were before.’

  ‘Don’t tell him any lies,’ David Spelton said. ‘He’s got a nose for lies like you have for rot.’

  ‘Shut your trap, Dave,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘If you want me to tell the tale then keep out of it. It was in fifty-six or fifty-seven, the time they had the first Boat Show.’

  ‘Go on,’ Gently said.

  ‘The first Boat Show,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Cowells of Burnham were showing a yawl, a smart ocean-racing job. Forty-seven-six long, ten-nine, six-three, Columbian pine on oak frames, a bit narrow by our standards. I know Paul Cowell, met him during the war, he was up this way on an Admiralty contract. He booked a lot of orders for the yawl during the show, American mostly. More than he could cope with. So he got on to us to build him five, so be we could get them under the bridge. We reckoned we could do that all right on a low spring. All we had to do was to find room to build them.’

  ‘And we didn’t have to look far,’ David Spelton said.

  ‘Just keep quiet, Dave,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘If you’ll step over to that window,’ he said to Gently, ‘you’ll see where we could’ve built the Blackwater yawls.’

  Gently stepped over to the window. From the window one looked at the house and the marshes to the right of it. But between the house and the marshes there lay a strip of meadow, neglected, partly overrun with brambles and elders. The meadow faced the rond adjacent to the sheds. It was separated only by the cinder path and by a dyke.

  ‘That’s it,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Clay foundations. Doesn’t flood. We’ve got planning permission, what’s more, we went into it years back. That’s the only place we can do anything. We mustn’t build on the rond any more. But we can put in a slipway and launch over the path and that’s all we need to build boats over there. And then we could build jobs of any size, provided they’d go through the bridge afterwards.’