by Peter Helton
The man, whose name was, as Sue had rightly said, Martin, disentangled himself from his rucksack. ‘Thanks for helping me out. I thought I was a goner this time.’
‘This time?’
‘Yes, I got chased off a jetty into Blagdon Lake once. I can’t swim. Not even without my rucksack.’
‘Perhaps you should take swimming lessons.’
‘Can’t,’ he said, laboriously untying the soggy laces on his wet boots. ‘They don’t allow naked people into swimming baths. People wearing synthetic bits of garment dyed with toxic chemicals are fine, of course.’
‘Do you go everywhere naked?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that is how we were born and I dislike clothes and I claim the freedom to not wear any. Being naked is not a crime.’
‘No, I suppose not. But aren’t there rules about that sort of thing?’
He had managed at last to take off his boots. His feet were several shades whiter than the rest of his body. ‘If you really want to know, I’ll tell you,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Mind if I sit on this?’ He opened up one of the two folding chairs I kept on the stern deck. ‘All right. It’s an offence under Section Sixty-six of the Sexual Offences Act of 2003 to expose your genitals in public with the intention of causing alarm or distress.’ He recited this in a voice that suggested this was not the first time he had had to explain the legal side of public nudity to someone like me who was vague about the law. ‘It is also an offence to harm the morals of the public. Do you think I’m harming the morals of the public?’
‘Hard to imagine. I, for one, feel completely unharmed.’
‘I’ve been in prison for this, you know? Even though it isn’t a criminal offence to go naked in public, they have thrown me in jail. For doing something the rest of God’s creation takes for granted. You don’t put clothes on other animals, so why should I be forced to?’
‘But if it’s not criminal, then how come you got jailed?’
‘The only way they could jail me was by turning me into a criminal first.’
‘How did they do that?’
‘They gave me an anti-social behaviour order, the handy ASBO. If they cannot force you to live by their rules, they give you one of those and breaking the ASBO is a criminal offence. For the rest of sixty million Britons, it is not a criminal offence to walk around naked, but for the one person who actually wants to, it is. I am the only man in Britain for whom being naked is a crime.’
‘Then why not pack it in and wear clothes? Or only go naked where no one sees you?’
‘Because my rights as a human being are at stake. Everyone’s rights. If they can criminalize something that isn’t a criminal offence to specifically punish one individual, then they can tailor-make criminal offences for whatever you believe in. And that is why I can’t back down. By going naked I am defending your rights as well as mine.’
‘I hadn’t looked at it like that. That puts it in a different light.’
He looked across at me, still dripping from his hair and nose. ‘It does, doesn’t it? I must say most people don’t give me a chance to explain myself. Except, bizarrely, police officers and lawyers and judges. They get paid to listen to you, and then they persecute you. And they get paid for that too,’ he said in a dry, bitter voice.
That reminded me. ‘I think you should empty your rucksack and dry that out; it must weigh a ton with all that water it soaked up. You can spread your stuff on the roof. But not on that thing there – that’s the solar panel.’
‘Oh, all right. You sure you don’t want to put me down on the towpath again? I can look after myself, you know. I’m used to confrontation.’
‘But you can’t swim. And now your rucksack has soaked up half the canal it would sink like a stone. Where were you heading, anyway?’
‘Erm’ – he looked up for a moment as if to get his bearings – ‘east.’
‘Where do you sleep? I mean, you can’t get into B and Bs, can you, or are there nudist B and Bs?’
‘If there are, I haven’t heard about it. No, I have a pup tent and a sleeping bag.’ He pulled both from his voluminous rucksack and unrolled the sleeping bag which glistened with moisture. A tiny camping stove and cooking pots came out next; rain cape, socks and, presumably for unforeseeable emergencies, underpants and a pair of jeans. ‘I was hoping to get to the campsite beside the Barge Inn; it’s not far from here. They know me there.’
‘You’re probably hard to forget. You mean they don’t mind you being naked there?’
‘As long as I pitch my tent at the edges somewhere. They’re very laid-back around these parts.’ He spread out the sodden contents of his rucksack on the deck and the roof. His leather wallet, stained dark with canal water, yielded one solitary ten pound note which he weighed down with a plastic cigarette lighter on the warm deck.
Dreamcatcher ambled along while I enjoyed the views for a couple of hours, without a single lock interrupting our lazy progress. I told him about my plans to moor up and do some painting.
‘What do you paint?’ he asked.
‘Anything if it stands still long enough.’ It was late afternoon. A lot of cyclists had been whizzing past us, tinkling their bells to shoo aside the walkers.
Martin knew the area well from previous ramblings and pointed out the landmarks for me: the Knoll, Clifford’s Hill, All Cannings. ‘Salisbury Plain is that way.’ He pointed south.
After another hour Martin announced that the Barge Inn and campsite should come into view soon. What also came into view was a long line of moored boats. ‘There’s always a lot of boats parked here,’ Martin assured me.
We passed at least a dozen narrowboats, most of them continuous cruisers by the looks of it. They are easy to spot. Large piles of uncut tree branches, wheelbarrows, plastic drums and big lumps of this and that covered with faded tarpaulin adorn many of them, while holiday boats normally make do with the odd flower pot. Dreamcatcher had not yet acquired any encrustations apart from the pink tandem chained up on the foredeck. I was chugging past the line of boats, hoping to find a gap into which I could insinuate my boat, when I spotted Free Spirit behind us, now close enough to see the two crew on deck, one with a large pair of binoculars trained on us.
I pointed them out to Martin who had suddenly ducked down. ‘They’ve been following me for days,’ I said. The one with the binoculars was now ostensibly scanning the trees to the north of us. ‘Do you think they could be twitchers? Bird watchers?’
‘Them? Doubt it. They’re police.’ Martin was squatting on the deck, shielding himself with his empty rucksack, clearly frightened.
‘What?’ I stared back hard at the following pair. ‘How do you know they’re police?’
‘Watch it, mate, there’s another boat coming,’ Martin called.
In my consternation I had forgotten the boat needed steering and Dreamcatcher’s bow was aiming point blank at an approaching boat whose skipper was parping his horn to let me know what he thought of it. I threw the tiller over and managed to miss the other boat by the width of a coat of paint. The chap on the other boat gave me an exasperated look as he passed and called, ‘Bloody Sunday boaters!’ and then he saw Martin in his birthday suit and added, ‘Weirdos!’, parping his horn a few more times. When I looked over my shoulder again, Free Spirit was falling behind. It looked as though they had stopped. I went dead slow myself and turned to Martin. ‘What do you mean, they are police? How do you know?’
‘I walked past their boat two nights ago and they stopped me and gave me a hard time. They started pushing me around and insulting me, just for the fun of it. They didn’t say they were police straight away, but when I started defending myself, they whipped out their IDs. Then they pushed me around a bit more.’
‘Do you remember their names?’
‘No.’
‘What rank were they – do you remember that?’
‘Detective something-or-other.’
‘You sure
it said “detective”?
‘Yes, but that’s all I remember.’
‘You didn’t see what force they belonged to?’
‘What force?’ He looked puzzled.
‘Yes, you know, Devon and Cornwall, Avon and Somerset …’
‘Oh, Avon and Somerset. Are they coming closer? They said if they caught me again, they’d make sure I go back inside. Back to jail. They knew who I was.’
I looked behind. ‘I can’t see them at all now. They’ve probably moored up at the end of the line of boats.’ Free Spirit was wide and tall but much shorter than a narrowboat and could probably even turn around without the need of a winding hole. ‘You’re out on parole?’
‘Yes. They can put me back inside anytime they like.’
‘Damn.’ I was having a much stranger day than I had planned for. ‘So, with you being naked on the deck of my boat, I am allowing you to commit a criminal act?’
‘I suppose so. You’re an accessory. Even with your clothes on. I’ll get off as soon as you park up.’
‘Don’t be daft.’ I passed the Barge Inn. It was a slightly dour building set at a right angle to the canal, but add a pub sign and a beer garden to any building and people are inclined to be quite forgiving of any architectural shortcomings. A few patrons stood or sat outside enjoying the early-evening sun as it sketched tree and boat shadows across the quiet water. I found a mooring place just a stone’s throw from the pub, though I hoped that we were done with stone throwing for today. While Martin fingered his laid-out possessions and returned them to his rucksack in order of relative dampness, I was preoccupied with the revelation that Free Spirit appeared to be crewed by two police officers. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that they were just on holiday together, or even that they were a loving couple on holiday together, with massive binoculars to watch the birds and the occasional naked man. While wearing sunglasses. Only I could not get a single fibre of my being to agree with this hypothesis. Free Spirit had let pass too many opportunities to overtake me since I grounded Dreamcatcher near the aqueduct. There they had come on me unawares because of the tight corner, but since then they had been careful to stay far behind yet never out of touch. But why would the police be watching me, and in such unorthodox fashion? I only had two things on my books and one of them, the dead-man-fishing Henry Blinkhorn affair, had been poo-pooed by the police, according to the insurance company, and I was clearly not doing my job.
That only left Verity. I had told both DI Reid and Needham about Verity and they had dismissed any suggestion that there was a meaningful connection between her and the dead body in the burnt-out bedsit or the arson at the travellers’ camp. Or had they? Needham had been unenthusiastic but not dismissive – it wasn’t really his style. I tried to recall what he had actually said. By all means look for your girl, but don’t give Reid an excuse to make your life difficult. Or something to that effect. But then he was off teaching and in his absence it was the delightful DI Reid who was in charge. It was Reid who had dismissed the idea that Verity was connected to the arson attacks. So if Needham was away teaching and Reid had no interest in Verity, then who were these two boating coppers hanging on my extremely slow tail? CID, no less, if Martin remembered the detective thing on their warrant cards rightly.
Martin meanwhile had stuffed his possessions back into his rucksack; half of it still hung over the sides because he was going to give it some more airing at the campsite. ‘Well, thanks, Chris, for pulling me from the canal,’ he said by way of farewell, getting ready to jump on to the towpath.
‘Wait a second. From here the camp site is on the other side of the pub. If the police have moored up, they might be coming down the towpath towards the pub and you’d run smack into them.’
‘What can I do about it?’
The obvious suggestion – that he put some clothes on – died on my lips. ‘How do you survive? Financially, I mean.’
He looked puzzled for a moment at this turn of the conversation. ‘I retired early. I have a tiny pension. And I own a studio flat in Bridgewater which is paid for. I get by.’
‘Still, can’t be easy on a tiny pension.’
‘Can be a struggle sometimes.’
‘How would you like to do a job for me?’
He looked even more suspiciously at me. ‘What kind of a job?’
‘I’m a painter – you can model for me.’
He snorted, uncertain as to whether I meant it. ‘Don’t you have to be a pretty girl to be an artist’s model?’
‘No. Just more or less human,’ I said, speaking from experience. ‘I need to keep up my drawing skills and models are difficult to find.’ I didn’t have to pay Verity for the last few sessions so I thought I might as well spend the money on Martin. It might save both of us from trouble tonight.
‘What’s the pay like?’ he asked. I told him the going rate. He was impressed. ‘What, per hour? Just for sitting still? Yeah, OK, I’ll do it. Though why you would want to draw someone like me is beyond me. When do you want me to start?’
‘Now. Are your jeans dry? Then put them on.’
‘Put them on? I thought artists’ models had to be naked?’
‘Sometimes. But it’s drawing clothed people I need to practise. What I want to sketch is people doing ordinary things, like eating and drinking. Get your kit on and we’ll go to the Barge Inn. You can pose for me in the beer garden with a pint and some food in front of you. A couple of hours should do for a start.’
