Gently Where the Birds Are

by Alan Hunter

  Alan Hunter was born in Hoveton, Norfolk in 1922. He left school at the age of fourteen to work on his father’s farm, spending his spare time sailing on the Norfolk Broads and writing nature notes for the Eastern Evening News. He also wrote poetry, some of which was published while he was in the RAF during the Second World War. By 1950, he was running his own bookshop in Norwich. In 1955, the first of what would become a series of forty-six George Gently novels was published. He died in 2005, aged eighty-two.

  The Inspector George Gently series

  Gently Does It

  Gently by the Shore

  Gently Down the Stream

  Landed Gently

  Gently Through the Mill

  Gently in the Sun

  Gently with the Painters

  Gently to the Summit

  Gently Go Man

  Gently Where the Roads Go

  Gently Floating

  Gently Sahib

  Gently with the Ladies

  Gently North-West

  Gently Continental

  Gently with the Innocents

  Gently at a Gallop

  Gently Where She Lay

  Gently French

  Gently in the Trees

  Gently with Love

  Gently Where the Birds Are

  Gently Instrumental

  Gently Sinking

  Gently Where the

  Birds Are

  Alan Hunter

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Cassell & Company Ltd, 1976

  This edition published by C&R Crime,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2014

  Copyright © Alan Hunter, 1976

  The right of Alan Hunter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-873-9 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-881-4 (ebook)

  Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Cover by David Woodruffe and design by Joe Roberts

  For birdwatchers, and other men of peace

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MAN DASHED up the track between the lines of tinting trees. He was sobbing as he ran and his feet were skittering in fallen leaves. Behind him ran another man: he was calling ‘Come back you young idiot!’ Both of them could hear the siren of a police car on the main road, a distant sound. There was nothing else to hear except the rustle of their pounding feet. The trees were remote and silent: old and tall in another autumn.

  Among the trees a third man paused, hearing the sound of the running steps. His attitude was wary and he stood absolutely still. He wore, slung on his chest, an uncased camera, and at his side a pair of binoculars. He, too, heard the siren of the police car, which now seemed to be coming closer. He heard one man calling to another, but the words were indistinct. Then an anguished cry. Then a sharp crack, like the bursting of a paper bag. Then nothing except the fading siren and the clatter of wood pigeons disturbed from the treetops. They blundered through the twigs, dislodging leaves. The leaves flickered silently in the must-scented air.

  * * *

  Clearly it was going to be one of those cases which can leave a policeman a bit red around the ears.

  ‘Sit down, Gently,’ said the Assistant Commissioner. ‘No doubt by now you’ll have heard of the photograph.’

  No doubt at all. Its fame had hit the grapevine that entwined the offices of New Scotland Yard, and in fact Gently had been one of the first to hear about it, having run into Pagram in reception.

  ‘Someone has sent us a snap of a body . . .!’

  ‘So what’s unusual about that?’

  ‘This one is anonymous, old top. It’s got a message on the back in cut-out letters . . .’

  That had been yesterday, and ever since rumours about the photograph had been afloat: it depicted an IRA job, a gang killing or was an apocryphal echo of the Great Train Robbery. Plenty of theories, but few facts. That photograph was evidently giving trouble. By now it must have been exhaustively processed yet still, apparently, without much progress.

  ‘I’ve called you in for a reason,’ the AC said. ‘We’ll come to that in a moment. How much do you know about this business?’

  ‘Only what Pagram told me yesterday.’

  ‘Then first you’d better see the photograph.’

  He picked up a folder and handed it to Gently. It was fat with report sheets in several departmental hues. Gently opened it: the photograph faced him, tabbed to a card of manilla.

  ‘Take your time,’ the AC said. ‘I may as well tell you that we don’t know the subject. Let the trained brain roam over it, then come up with whatever strikes you.’

  Gently gave it his attention. It was a print of good quality, taken with sunlight coming from the right. It depicted the body of a youngish man lying on a track between tall trees. The man appeared to have crumpled and fallen on his back, with his head tilted and in profile to the camera. A bullet wound showed clearly in his right temple and blood had flooded down the cheek on to fallen leaves beneath. Age? Possible mid-twenties. Height? Obscured by the posture. Colouring? Dark (it was a black-and-white print), features, smooth-skinned. He was wearing sports shirt, slacks and tweed jacket. The jacket had leather elbow-and-cuff protectors and exaggerated lapels. Shoes, brogues, rather worn, with above them a glimpse of a fancy sock. The track, or path, where the body lay ran straight ahead under the trees, ending within a couple of hundred yards, where the trees framed a section of sky. The trees were deciduous. The pale tones of the leaves suggested that the photograph was of recent origin. On the verso: THIS MAN IS DEAD, in capitals cut neatly from a newspaper.

  Gently laid the folder open on the AC’s desk. ‘Probably taken on Saturday,’ he said.

  ‘Scintillating,’ the AC said. ‘Saturday was the only sunny day for a fortnight. What about the time?’

  ‘We’d need to know the alignment. It was either mid-morning or mid-afternoon.’

  ‘Your intuition doesn’t tell us?’

  Gently grunted. ‘I was saving that for the victim! The jacket with the patching and the socks . . . I’d put him down as a townee dressed for the country.’

  ‘A Londoner.’

  ‘Possibly. A clerk or shop assistant. Someone not too flush with money.’

  ‘The jacket came from C & A.’

  And that probably said it all.

  ‘I’ll just give you a rundown,’ the AC said. ‘You’ll find the envelope in the folder. Same lettering – it’s from a Sunday Telegraph – and the adhesive is Uhu glue. Smudges but no clear latents. Envelope and printing paper untraceable. Victim unknown to CRO Met., MIs 5 and 6, D of A and Missing Persons. Pathology says a ·22 bullet. Photograph taken within minutes of death. Bullet probably fired at close range, but exit wound out of shot.’ He paused. ‘Posted
Monday at Eastwich, arriving here yesterday morning.’

  ‘At Eastwich . . .!’

  ‘Does that suggest something?’

  Gently shook his head, eyeing the photograph. Eastwich, Plymouth, John o’ Groats, it was all the same to what was on that. ‘Just that it doesn’t begin to make sense.’

  ‘That point has also been taken, Gently.’

  ‘If the sender wanted anonymity, why post it in Eastwich when he might have posted it in town?’

  ‘Perhaps he couldn’t get to town.’

  ‘It smells fishy. We’d do better to start looking in Surrey or Sussex. Only the rest of it doesn’t make sense either, because why would he send us the print in the first place?’

  The AC’s eyes were cold behind his glasses. ‘Are you suggesting that it’s a fake?’

  ‘Is there any reason to suppose it isn’t?’

  The AC continued to stare but said nothing.

  Yet a hoax was the only plausible explanation to that almost too-immaculate photograph . . . and there were comedians enough in town to brighten their lives by playing such pranks! The police were everyone’s Aunt Sally: you kicked at their omniscience by taking a rise. And what better than a photograph of a freshly slain body, with blood still gushing from the fatal wound . . .?

  ‘I mean . . . the taking of the photograph at all.’

  ‘The pathologist has no doubts, Gently.’

  ‘But what sort of chummie goes after his man with a gun in one hand and a camera in the other?’

  ‘There could have been two men.’

  ‘But still . . . why?’

  The AC fidgeted. ‘Blackmail has been suggested.’

  ‘Can you imagine chummie standing back from the body while the blackmailer takes his picture?’

  ‘Chummie may have cleared off.’

  ‘But if the blackmailer was present he would have snapped chummie in the act.’

  ‘Perhaps he did, and that may be the pay-off. Alerting us was just putting on the pressure.’

  ‘I still think it’s dodgy.’

  The AC drew breath. ‘Then I’m glad your mind is so open, Gently,’ he said nastily. ‘Because that brings me back to my reason for asking you to step round here. That postmark is our only clue, and you are familiar with the district. So by general request we are placing the can in your no-doubt capable hands.’

  ‘You’re dropping it on me . . .!’

  The AC smiled tigerishly. ‘Who else so qualified to field a hot one? And you may as well forget about Surrey and Sussex, because they’re expecting you at Eastwich.’

  And five seconds later, Gently was outside with the photograph hung firmly around his neck.

  Leaves drifted through the chilling mist that clung to the tall trees. Leaves of copper, rust and lemon, and a few that were crimson. They rustled and tapped as they fell but landed as quietly as flakes of snow. The floors of the ancient wood were paved with them, where no foot went. But the track also was covered, and there a man hurried along. He looked neither to the right nor left and his feet rustled steadily through the drifts. At last he came to the edge of the trees. There the figure of a woman met him. For some moments they confronted each other, then she fell in his arms, sobbing. He spoke to her softly. Leaves fell near them. The woman controlled her sobbing. He took her arm, and they moved on. The mist all the while was thickening in the trees.

  Happily Aspall, the Eastwich Inspector, was a man that Gently felt he could take to. Slow-spoken, rather heavy-featured, yet with a twinkle in his grey eyes. He’d been waiting at the station with a squad car to ferry Gently through the undistinguished streets; then, arriving at his office, he’d pressed a buzzer, when a pot of tea had been quickly brought in.

  ‘The Yard filled us in with the details, sir . . .’

  The tea they were sipping was reddish and sweet. Outside a frosty mist hung about the buildings and pedestrians were hunched, with their collars turned up.

  ‘Have you a missing person who might fit?’

  ‘I’ve looked out a couple of possibles, sir.’

  Together they gazed at the typed report forms, each with an amateurish snap of the subject. William Leslie Benhall, aged eighteen, three weeks missing from an address in the town; Terence Walter Virtue, aged forty, missing from an address in Woolbridge since June. Utterly unlike, yet sharing a certain fragility of expression, a feyness.

  ‘Anything like?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  Aspall shuffled them away. ‘Sir, I suppose your people do have a reason for thinking chummie is on our patch?’

  ‘Just the postmark.’

  ‘Not very much, sir.’

  Gently shrugged and gulped tea. All the postmark was a label reading: Enter the haystack here.

  ‘Any reports that might help us – stolen guns, unusual occurrences?’

  Aspall shook his head. Already he must be thinking that the visit was a waste of time.

  ‘Any comics with a taste for police-baiting?’

  ‘We’ve got our quota of those, sir.’

  ‘This one is bright. Probably owns a good camera.’

  Aspall thought hard, but could only look glum.

  Gently sighed. ‘Right, then . . . we may as well get to the prize exhibit!’ He took out the photograph. ‘You’re local, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘See what you can make of this.’

  It was the scene in the AC’s office repeated. Aspall stared long and frowningly at the photograph. But you could tell from the first moment that it might as well have been a message in Linear B. No local knowledge was springing to his aid, no illuminating twitch of recall. At last he laid the photograph down and fingered his smooth chin.

  ‘This . . . happened on Saturday?’

  ‘At a guess.’

  ‘We had Manchester United here that day, sir.’

  ‘I hadn’t heard that they’d taken to guns.’

  ‘Well no . . . but they’re a rum old lot, sir!’

  And perhaps it had been worth mentioning, with other ideas so far to seek. In fact, Gently remembered, there’d been twenty-one arrests, and one supporter had been carrying a razor.

  ‘The subject suggests nobody?’

  ‘I’m afraid he doesn’t, sir.’

  ‘But there must be woods like that around Eastwich.’

  ‘That’s the snag, sir – we’ve got too many, and a couple of Forestry holdings on top. Of course, we could doctor the print and circulate copies to the Forest Centres. But that might take a few days, sir. And all we’re working on is a postmark.’

  ‘That wood wasn’t planted by the Forestry.’

  Aspall peered at the photograph again.

  ‘They’re certainly big trees . . .’

  ‘It’s a natural woodland. Some of those trees have seen three centuries.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s a park, sir.’ Aspall puckered his eyes. ‘A pity the print isn’t in colour.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. Just the sky . . . something about it.’

  They stared at the sky. It was evidently blue: the tone in the print declared it. On a still, sunny autumn day a brilliant, cloudless, autumn sky. Yet Aspall was right: there was something about it: almost as though it were too blue. From the tops of the trees that framed it to the track below it stretched in a single ungraduated panel . . .

  Gently struck the desk.

  ‘It’s a sea sky!’

  They stared at each other in quick interrogation. Yet plainly it fitted: to have a sky like that, you must needs have a sea under it.

  ‘Fetch me a map . . .!’

  Aspall found one and spread it over the desk. The long coastline stretched wavily southwards from Lothing in the north to the Haverwich river. Marsh, cliff, heath and sandhills spread alternatively along the shore, with one tiny triangle of trees the tip of which reached the sea.

  ‘There . . .!’

  They pored over it. At no other location
did trees touch the shore. On low cliffs, by the village of Grimchurch, was the single incidence on the whole coast.

  ‘That’s got to be it, sir.’

  Gently grunted. ‘Always provided we’re in the right county!’

  ‘We can soon check that, sir. One of our sergeants was born and bred in Grimchurch.’

  ‘Fetch him in.’

  Aspall went out. For a moment, Gently gazed at the photograph. Then he tore a strip from a pad on the desk and placed it on the photograph, concealing the corpse. Aspall returned within the minute, towing a uniform man behind him.

  ‘Sergeant Scott, sir.’

  Gently pointed to the photograph. ‘The Inspector thinks you may know that place.’

  Scott looked the photograph over cautiously, as though suspecting there might be a catch.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Why, yes sir. It’s the path through the Priory Wood at Grimchurch.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I should be, sir. I did most of my courting along there.’

  It was almost a disappointment in its comprehensive certainty. Within half an hour, out of all England, they’d put their finger on the very spot.

  A thin, small wind came in from the sea, enough to waken the leaves from their silence. Here and there a leaf lifted from the track, twirled a few times and settled again. But nobody now walked in the wood. The man and woman, both had gone. If there were ghosts among the trees they passed lightly, disturbing no leaf. Only, in the topmost branches, clinging wearily, had appeared certain small green birds, perhaps blown in from the mist and the sea, their plumage fluffed by the dank chill. Others came. They called among themselves, their notes low and quick. Then, when they were rested, they began to hunt in the twigs for food.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A SPALL’S LIEUTENANT, SERGEANT Warren, drove the car that took them to Grimchurch. A trip of thirty miles, it led through undulating country to an area of heaths and pine plantations.

  They drove with lights through a clinging mist that turned afternoon into evening, yet somehow accentuated the autumn colouring, so that trees stood out with an arresting distinctness.

  Fields were dark brown from the plough, bracken a burning russet tint.