Body of a Girl

by Michael Gilbert

“We found six or seven big eels. Inside the donkey. Birnie sold them in the market and reckoned he got more for ’em than the old moke was worth. There’s a silver lining to every cloud, if you know where to look for it. Mind how you go round that stanchion. It’s slippery.”

  They climbed back onto the flank of the lock, crossed the upstream lock gates and made their way back onto the towpath.

  Mercer said, “I imagine you get bodies coming down from time to time.”

  “Regular,” said Mr. Brattle.

  “When you spot one going past, I suppose you report it to the police.”

  Mr. Brattle looked at him as if he had said something particularly stupid. “Why would I do that?” he said.

  “You mean you let them drift past and do nothing about it?”

  “Certainly not. I get the old punt out quick, and I pull ’em ashore. On the Surrey side, naturally.”

  “What’s wrong with Middlesex?”

  “Attendance fee at the inquest, son. It’s a guinea in Middlesex. Thirty bob in Surrey. You’ve got to think of things like that.”

  “I suppose so. How much did Birnie get for his eels?”

  “I can’t remember the precise figure. But it was more than five quid. Why?”

  “Just a thought,” said Mercer. “Tell me something, Mr. Brattle. How long does it take a body to surface?”

  “Depends on a lot of things. Age. State of health. Sort of clothes he was wearing. I’ve known a heavy pair of boots keep a body down for a month. On the other hand”—Mr. Brattle paused to light his pipe—“I remember one which came up almost straight away. Can you guess why?”

  Mercer shook his head. Mr. Brattle’s riddles were too hard for him.

  “Wooden leg.”

  “Can you imagine any case where the body might not come up at all?”

  “Why yes,” said Mr. Brattle. “I can. Mind you, this is just a theory of mine. And I can’t see as how anyone’s going to prove whether it’s right or wrong. Do you know just what would happen to you if you went over that weir?”

  “I don’t like to think.”

  “I’ll tell you. First you go straight down to the bottom. Then you’d scrape along the bottom. Then you’d come up, nearly to the surface but not quite. Then you’d be drawn back towards the face of the weir. That’s what we call the back lash. Then you’d go down again.”

  “How long would that go on for?”

  “You can’t tell. That’s my point. Not long ago I happened to see an old petrol can go over the weir. It wasn’t floating high. It must have had some liquid in it. It was one of the old-fashioned two-gallon sort. You don’t see a lot of them about nowadays. It was painted bright green. I remember saying to myself, I wonder where that’ll bob up. And I stopped to watch.”

  Having reached this point in his story, Mr. Brattle stopped to relight his pipe which had gone out.

  Mercer said, “And where did it come up?”

  “That’s just it. It didn’t. But—when I was going past, about a week later, I’m blessed if it didn’t pop up right under my nose, thirty or forty yards from where it had gone in. It had been working its way along, see. A few inches at a time. In the end it got into a cross eddy, and that brought it out.”

  “And it had been going round and round for a week.”

  “That’s what I judged. Now take a dead body. What happens to it?”

  “It sinks.”

  “Right. First it sinks down to the river bed. And it lies quiet there for several days.”

  “Unless it has a wooden leg.”

  “Unless,” agreed Mr. Brattle gravely, “it should happen to have a wooden leg. Next, it gets blown up. Distended, as you might say, by the gases of its own corruption. And that brings it to the surface. That’s what you might call the normal proceedings. But suppose the body happens to fall over the weir. You get my point?”

  “You mean,” said Mercer slowly, “that the bashing it would get would drive all the gas out of it, and it might never surface at all.”

  “That’s precisely my meaning.”

  “It would roll along the bottom, and finish up in the sea. What was left of it by that time.”

  “I’ve never seen it set down scientifically, but I remember explaining it to a doctor I was taking out in one of my boats, and he said he thought it was a very interesting theory.”

  “I think so too,” said Mercer.

  They were in sight of the boat-house by now and they could see that Venetia had already run a punt out, and was unshipping the pole. She looked trim and workmanlike in jeans and sweater.

  “Sensible girl,” said Mr. Brattle. “She’s left the cushions behind. Always soaks the cushions, someone learning to punt.”

  Two hours later, damp but happy, Mercer brought the punt slowly upstream to Mr. Brattle’s landing stage. Venetia sat at the far end, paddle in hand.

  “Don’t use that,” said Mercer. “Let me see if I can bring it in myself.”

  “Stick the pole in forrard if you want to stop the boat.”

  “O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” said Venetia. She jumped ashore with the painter and made fast. “What are you planning to do next? Have a hot bath and change.”

  “I’ve got a better idea than that,” said Mercer. “We’ll have a hot drink.”

  Venetia said, “That’s a good idea.”

  Mercer’s receiving set picked up the fractional moment of hesitation before she said it, and he grinned to himself. He said, “We’ll go in my car, shall we. I’ll drop you here on the way back and you can pick yours up.”

  “Fine.”

  It was a few minutes after six when they got to The Angler’s Rest. It had the nice fresh feel of a pub which has just opened for the evening and has had no time to start smelling of stale beer and cigarette smoke and people. They went into the private bar.

  “Just because it’s the first time you’ve come out with me,” said Mercer, “there’s no need for you to pretend you like beer. I’m going to have a whisky and ginger wine. Technically known as a whiskymack.”

  “That sounds terrific.”

  He went out to get the drinks, and Venetia watched him thoughtfully as he walked to the bar. A practised hand at the game, she thought. Good technique, based on a lot of experience. Not an entirely agreeable face. A fighting body.

  He came back with the drinks, put one down on the table in front of her, and stood with his back to the newly-lighted fire.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said. “The murderers you’ve caught, the armed robbers you’ve disarmed, the state secrets you’ve saved.”

  “Nought out of three.”

  “I don’t believe it. All the real-life policemen I’ve read about have done things like that.”

  “They don’t write their own memoirs. There’s a little man up in London who does it for them.”

  “There must be some truth in them.”

  “There’s kidney in a steak and kidney pie—sometimes.”

  “You’re starting to steam. Sit down. Stop being modest. Talk.”

  “All right. But I’ll get us another drink first. Put that one back.”

  “If you’re planning to get me tight, I ought to warn you that I’ve got a terrific head for drink. The last man who tried it ran out of money, and I had to buy the last two rounds myself and drive him home.”

  “I’ll bear it in mind,” said Mercer.

  The second drink went down smoothly.

  “Go on,” said Venetia.

  “You really do want the story of my life?”

  “Every sordid detail.”

  “Well,” said Mercer, “I hardly like to mention it in the presence of the Oldest Member, but I went to a primary school.”

  “The Oldest Member—oh, you mean that stuffed pike. He does look a bit like the club bore, doesn’t he. Was it fun?”

  “I enjoyed it. I was stronger than most of the other kids and I used to give them hell. Then I got a scholarship to a grammar school. I didn’t
like that at all.”

  “Because the boys were bigger than you and gave you hell.”

  “It wasn’t only that. There are good grammar schools and bad ones. This was a bad one. It tried to be like a public school. Houses and prefects and fagging and beating and all. I suppose your brother went to a public school.”

  “He went to Wellington. It nearly bust Daddy to send him there.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  “I’m not sure. Go on, what did you do?”

  “I quit. I don’t mean I ran away. I just stopped going. I was nearly sixteen. There was nothing much anyone could do about it. Or that’s what I thought. Then I found something out and I’ve never forgotten it. You can’t buck the system. I couldn’t get a job. The first thing they all asked was, how many ‘O’ levels? When I said, I haven’t got any of those, they said, thanks very much, next please! So I joined the army. And that’s where I had a bit of luck. The mob I was with were posted to the Gulf. It was a cushy life, with lots of spare time. I used it to learn Arabic. Mostly from Arab girls I was dating.”

  Mercer looked at Venetia out of the corner of his eye when he said this. She was grinning. She said, “I suppose they’d sleep with anything white in trousers.”

  “Mostly, one took one’s trousers off.”

  “You know perfectly well what I mean.”

  “Yes,” said Mercer. “And you’re wrong. Arab girls are far cleaner, and far more choosy than most English girls I’ve met.”

  The landlord came in at this moment and Mercer ordered another drink. Venetia said, “I’ll have soda in mine this time. Go on.”

  “I took to Arabic. It’s a fine language, with lots of subtle shades of meaning. Did you know that there are a lot of words in Arabic which mean three different things according to the way you pronounce them?”

  “In English, too,” said Venetia.

  “I got a few jobs as an interpreter. Even some elementary Intelligence chores. I liked that. So I wangled a transfer to the Military Police. I learned a lot from them. I thought I knew something about dirty fighting. It took a broken arm and three cracked ribs to convince me how wrong I was. Then, just as I was really getting stuck in, we were moved, almost overnight, to B.A.O.R. in Germany.

  “That sounds typical of the army,” agreed Venetia.

  “Well, I’d done my five, and arresting drunken squaddies in bier halls didn’t appeal to me. So I got out, and joined the Metropolitan Police. My time in the M.P. helped. I got accelerated promotion. I was a sergeant by the time I was twenty-four. The police have got a lot more sense than the army. When they found I could speak Arabic, they used it. I joined ‘K’ Division and worked down in the docks. There are a lot of Arabs and Lascars and all such there. They speak their own lingua franca and are a very peaceful bunch on the whole. When I got bored with that I volunteered for an attachment to help the Ruler of M’qua. You won’t have heard of it. It’s south of Muscat. It’s the size of Hampstead, and about as rich. My job was to organise the Ruler’s police force for him. I enjoyed that. I wouldn’t have minded finishing my service there. I had the rank of inspector and was boss of my own show.”

  “Let me guess the next bit,” said Venetia dreamily. “You made a pass at the Ruler’s favourite wife, and had to leave hurriedly.”

  “You think I’m making all this up, don’t you?”

  “Certainly not. I think it’s fantastic.”

  “It wasn’t the Ruler’s wife. It was his son.”

  “You made a pass at him?”

  “No. He cut his old man’s throat and took over. He didn’t like me, so that was that, and I was back in England.”

  “Was that when you got that—” She leaned over and ran the tip of her finger down the side of his face.

  “My duelling scar? No. That was in my next post. Dear old Southwark. I got savaged by Crows.”

  “Crows?”

  “Not birds. Men. And in my opinion you can take the whole of the Middle East, Limehouse, the docks, Soho, the lot, and they’re milk and water beside that little patch of London due south of the City. For real savages, the Elephant and Castle beats darkest Africa into a cocked hat.”

  Venetia said, “You’d better take me home now.” She said it regretfully. She looked warm and happy but not, Mercer thought, in the least bit intoxicated. The last drink had been a double. Perhaps she really had got a hard head. He said, “When do I get my next lesson?”

  “Do you need another one?”

  “Certainly. It’s that little twiddle as you put the pole in that I haven’t quite mastered yet.”

  They both laughed, and were still laughing as they came out into the public bar, and saw Willoughby Slade standing there talking to a fair-haired boy, who seemed to be upset about something. Willoughby saw his sister, and said “Hallo”, and then saw Mercer and said “Hallo” again, in quite a different tone of voice. “Here comes the law. What have you been up to, Venetia?”

  “Minding my own business.”

  “All right. Hint taken.” He swung round on Mercer, a movement of studied grace, designed to demonstrate the width of his shoulders and the suppleness of his hips. “I hear you came to the house looking for me the other night.”

  “That’s right. I must just have missed you.”

  “Now you’ve found me.”

  “If you want to talk to your friends,” said the fair-haired boy sulkily, “I’ll be going.”

  “It’ll keep,” said Mercer.

  He made for the door, held it open for Venetia, and followed her out quickly. When they were in the car he said, “I don’t know about your capacity for alcohol, but I thought your brother was pretty well tanked-up already. Does he always get like that so early in the evening?”

  “Some evenings.”

  “And who was the friend?”

  “A boy from the office.”

  “I see,” said Mercer. They drove, in silence, back to Brattle’s boathouse.

  Detective Massey was sitting in the room over an empty shop opposite Bull’s Garage. He had been there for two hours, and he was cold, and stiff, but he had no intention of quitting. He was watching Johnno.

  The little man operated from a lighted kiosk behind the petrol pumps, where he sat, on a tilted wooden chair, studying the racing pages in two evening papers and occasionally making notes with a stub of pencil. There was a telephone in the kiosk, and there had been three calls, one in and two out. Massey had made a careful note of the times. He had no reason for doing this, except that he had been taught at detective training school that times were important. “At 21.46 hours I was maintaining observation when—” Hullo! Another customer. Johnno popped out, had a word with the driver, took the keys to unlock the filler cap, and started to operate the petrol pump. The driver got out to stretch his legs. He walked round the car to watch Johnno, then strolled into the kiosk, to pay for the petrol. More talk, then he came out and drove off. Only just in time, too. Johnno was shutting up shop. Pumps locked. Lights switched off. Kiosk locked.

  By this time Massey was downstairs. He used the back entrance to the shop. His big motor-bicycle was parked in the yard. Johnno, he knew, kept a showy little sports car in one of the sheds behind the garage. It was fast, too. But not as fast as Detective Massey’s M.V. Augusta 700. Here he came. Side lights on, but no headlights as yet. This suited Massey very well. He could keep his own lights off and be in no fear of losing Johnno’s tail lights.

  Half an hour later they were on the outskirts of Slough. So far it had been easy, and Massey was pretty certain that he hadn’t been spotted. But now it was going to get tricky. There was enough traffic in the streets to allow two cars and a van to get between him and Johnno. The trouble was the traffic lights. Slough seemed to be full of traffic lights. If they changed at an awkward moment—As he was thinking about it, it happened. The van ahead of him braked. The lights turned from amber to red. Johnno was over, and scooting away down the High Street.

  Massey swung his bicycle to th
e right into a side street, then turned left into a long and nearly empty street parallel to the High Street, and went down it fast. After a couple of hundred yards he reckoned he must be level with Johnno again, or even ahead of him, and he swung left, back into the High Street.

  Johnno’s car had disappeared. To his left he could see the van and the cars, released by the lights, coming towards him. To the right he had a clear view, under the streetlamps, for four or five blocks.

  Massey did some quick thinking.

  If Johnno had turned right he would have seen him. Therefore he had turned left. Therefore his destination was somewhere in the confused nest of streets which lay off the left-hand side of the High Street. He started to search.

  After half an hour he gave it up, and started home. To relieve his feelings, he let the powerful machine out. Halfway back to Stoneferry he overtook Johnno jogging sedately homewards.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Mercer’s alarm clock called him at four. By half-past four he had picked up Detective Prothero, and his car was heading north. At seven o’clock they stopped for breakfast at a big hotel south of Banbury.

  The sun was up now. It was a fine day of early autumn. Mercer said, “Have you got any idea where we’re going or what we’re going to do when we get there?”

  “No idea,” said Prothero. “Never ask questions. Do what I’m told. Simpler in the end.” He belched comfortably and loosened his seat belt a couple of notches.

  “I’ll fill you in,” said Mercer. “We’re making for a town in South Staffordshire, called Heckmonwith. We’re going to have a talk with the parents of a girl called Maureen Dyson. And with anyone else who can tell us anything about her.”

  Prothero digested this information, with his breakfast, for some miles, and then said, “Was she the one we found on the island?”

  “I hope so,” said Mercer.

  Porson Street, Heckmonwith, was a row of neat, two-storey, semi-detached houses, and the neatest of the lot was number twenty-three, which had a shingle with the name, ‘The Nest’ painted on it in italic script. The front path was freshly reddened, the stones on either side freshly whitened, and every flower in the geometrically-shaped flower beds knew its place, and kept it.