Injury Time (3 page)

On his visibly distressed return from Milwaukee, via New York where sad messages had awaited him, Norman Pace had listened to a long account of illness and death with suitable mien.

‘I can assure you, Norman, everything that could be done was done,' said Graham in careful, neutral—but unctuous—tones that he could only have picked up from the undertaker.

‘The doctor …' said an apparently brokenhearted Norman.

‘He was marvellous,' said Graham swiftly. ‘He couldn't do enough for poor Millicent.'

Norman had bowed his head. ‘I'm glad to hear it.' In fact his brother-in-law had never said a truer word. The only thing the old fool had been able to do for Millicent had been to write her death certificate. The really important thing was that he had not associated any of her symptoms—abdominal pain and vomiting leading to heart failure—with poisoning by thallium.

Even more importantly, neither he, nor the other doctor who subsequently also signed the cremation certificate, had associated those everyday symptoms with Norman, by then in faraway Milwaukee. One of the undoubted attractions of thallium as a poison was the valuable delay in the onset of symptoms—it could be as long as forty-eight hours—as well as the peerless advantages of its being odourless, tasteless and colourless.

The only drawback of thallium known to Norman was that it was not only detectable in bone after death but that it survived in cremated ashes too. The disposal of Millicent's ashes at sea thus became more than mere ceremony.

Graham Burnett and his wife, not being privy to the real reason for the scattering of the ashes at sea, saw it only as an occasion. Hence the discussion about what to wear.

‘I'm hoping for good weather, of course,' said Norman, ‘but don't forget that it's always colder at sea than ashore.'

‘That's what Neil says too,' said Graham. Neil was his son, a bright lad with all the cleverness of a born clown. ‘I don't know about you, Norman, but even so I don't think a yellow sou'wester is quite right.'

‘No,' agreed Norman, adding judiciously, ‘but then neither is my black. Not at sea.'

‘I hope you won't mind,' said Graham, ‘but Neil says he's going to wear his cagoule.'

‘I think,' said Norman with unaccustomed magnanimity, ‘that everyone should put on whatever they feel most comfortable in.'

‘So shall we say that dignified yet practical wear is the order of the day?' said Graham Burnett, who liked summing up.

Horace Boller, boatman, wore his usual working clothes for the expedition. Whether he knew it or not the fisherman's jersey which he had on complied with a long tradition of Aran knitting where each seaman's jersey was of a slightly different pattern, the better to identify the drowned.

Horace's deplorable garment could have been confused with no one else's—dead or alive. Norman Pace regarded him and his cluttered boat with distaste.

‘You do understand, don't you, that we must be outside the three-mile territorial limit before it is legal for me to scatter my wife's ashes in the sea?' said Norman, who had his own reasons for being well out to sea before unscrewing the flask containing the mortal remains of Millicent. The said flask was nestling safely in the inner pocket of the new raincoat which Norman had seen fit to purchase for the occasion.

‘Leave it to me, guv'nor,' said Boller, whose regard for the letter of the law was minimal and for its spirit nonexistent. ‘And watch that bit of coaming as you come aboard, if you don't mind. I've been having a peck of trouble with it. Now, be very careful …'

Conversation on board, stilted to begin with, thawed a little as Boller's boat turned out into the estuary from Edsway and headed for the open sea and Neil Burnett revealed himself as knowledgeable about birds.

‘Common sandpiper,' he said in response to a question from his mother. She had settled on a tasteful grey outfit with plastic raincoat handy. ‘And that's a ringed plover.'

‘I suppose that one's a little twit,' said Angela, Neil's fiancée, who had insisted on joining the party to underline her new status as a potential member of the Burnett family. She, too, was wearing a cagoule.

Family solidarity on Norman's side was represented by two late-middle-aged sisters who were his cousins. Old enough to be veteran funeral-goers and therefore experienced mourners, they were kitted out in dark slacks and blazers left over from a Mediterranean cruise of long ago.

‘I think it's a silly little goose,' responded Neil, giving Angela a quick hug.

This by-play on the part of the young ostensibly passed Norman Pace by, although he was obscurely gratified by the presence of Enid and Dora, who had not heard about the cremation in time to attend. He had taken up a rather aloof stance at the prow of the boat, looking out to sea, and letting his back give every appearance of a man thinking his own thoughts—if not actually communing with the deep. Horace Boller very nearly spoilt this
tableau vivant
by opening the throttle of the motor boat without warning just at the moment when they left the salt-marsh estuary behind and hit the open sea.

‘Tide on the turn, I expect,' said Graham Burnett knowledgeably. He audited the books of several fishing enterprises in Kinnisport and thus felt qualified to give an opinion.

‘Why are we going east and not straight out to sea?' demanded Norman, who was more observant.

‘Got to get the church at Marby juxta Mare in line while I can still see Cranberry Point, haven't I,' said Horace Boller glibly. He paused, craftily waiting for the contradiction which would indicate that anyone on board
The Nancy
knew anything about nautical miles. It was not forthcoming so he went on, ‘Otherwise I shan't know exactly how far out I am, shall I?'

Norman turned back to the bow. He'd struck a hard bargain with Boller but he didn't want the fisherman telling the whole party so. Horace Boller was still smarting from it, though, and had no intention of going half a mile further out to sea than he could get away with.

When he had gone nearly as far from land as he deemed necessary Horace put
The Nancy
about just enough to make the motor boat pitch fractionally. Mrs Burnett was the first to notice.

‘It isn't going to get rough, is it?' she asked timorously. ‘I'm not a very good sailor.'

Horace Boller throttled the engine back before grunting non-committally.

One of the effects of slowing the motorboat's speed was that it also began to roll ever so slightly.

Cousin Enid unfortunately chose to be bracing. ‘Remember the Bay of Biscay, Dora, that time we were on our way back from Lisbon?'

‘Don't remind me,' pleaded Dora. ‘It was dreadful, simply dreadful.'

Horace Boller went through a charade of examining the sea and sky and looking anxious. He reduced the speed of the motorboat until it was scarcely making any headway at all, saving fuel the while.

‘Haven't we gone far enough?' said Graham Burnett.

‘Distances at sea are very deceptive,' observed Cousin Enid. ‘It's always further than you think.'

‘And later,' hissed Neil irrepressibly to Angela.

Norman Pace, standing in the prow, was aware that the boat was now beginning to wallow in the water. He patted the flask containing the ashes. How right he had been not to scatter them on land where they might one day have been sought by a diligent constabulary. Strewing them on the waves met every possible requirement …

‘Should be all right now,' said Boller. ‘Can't see St Peter's spire at Collerton any more.'

That this was because it was behind the headland he did not see fit to explain. Instead he put
The Nancy
about, switched off the engine and suggested to Norman that he came and stood at the lee side. ‘Can't strew ashes into wind, can you?' said Boller grumpily. ‘They'll only blow back at you.'

Nothing loath, Norman clambered back into the well of the boat and then, helped by Graham, stepped up on to the seating which ran round the inside of the tiny deck. He took out the flask from the crematorium, still slightly disconcerted that that fine white dust could contain all that had come between him and the young lady from Personnel.

‘Steady as she goes,' quipped Neil unnecessarily. The nautical
double entendre
went unappreciated, all eyes being on Norman as he held the flask between his hands for a decent moment before unscrewing it. Enid and Dora, he was happy to see, were standing at attention—at least as far as they were able to in the rocking boat.

In fact, Cousin Enid, always game, appeared to be saying some private prayer—for which Norman was grateful since he found no words coming spontaneously to his own lips and the silence was a bit unnerving.

It was unfortunate that just as Enid had got to ‘Eternal Father, Strong to save, whose arm doth bind the restless wave …' a very restless wave indeed caught
The Nancy
amidships. It was even more unfortunate that this happened just as Norman was about to unscrew the flask containing Millicent.

He lost his footing and the flask at the same moment.

‘Butterfingers,' murmured young Neil, not quite
sotto voce
enough.

‘Oh, my God!' said Norman, losing his cool as well as his footing and the flask, which was now bobbing briskly away from the stationary boat.

‘It's not God's fault,' said Dora quietly in the eminently reasonable tones that must have accounted for the deaths—should they have used them, too—of quite a number of Early Christian Martyrs. On religious matters her docility was always trouble-making.

Any naval disciplinary court would have had no difficulty in holding Horace Boller—rather than God—to blame since he should never have allowed the boat to drift in the sort of sea he did, being, amongst other things, a hazard to shipping. As Their Lordships of the Admiralty were not called upon to pay for Horace's fuel—and he was—he remained untroubled.

Until, that is, Norman turned on him. ‘Quick, start the engine … Look, it's floating about … just there. Hurry, man, hurry, or we'll lose her.'

With maddening calm Horace Boller applied himself to the engine. Everyone else on board rushed to the port side of
The Nancy
.

‘Mind that coaming!' shouted Boller.

‘Never mind your blasted coaming,' shouted back Norman, who had turned a nasty shade of puce. ‘Get that engine going. Quickly, quickly … keep your eyes on her, everyone.'

The engine of the motorboat gave a little cough and then reluctantly sprang to life.

‘Follow that flask …' Norman implored Boller urgently.

‘Yoicks! Tally ho!' said Neil.

‘Neil, you are awful,' said Angela.

‘She went that way …' said Norman since the flask could now be seen only intermittently bobbing on the waves.

‘That way,' said Cousin Dora, pointing in a different direction.

‘She's over there,' said Graham's wife distantly. She'd always rather liked her sister-in-law and thought the whole expedition unseemly.

‘Where?' Norman clutched her arm. ‘Which way?'

Graham Burnett said nothing at all: but his brother-in-law's patent dismay gave him furiously to think.

So did his next exchange with Boller.

‘What sort of a tide is it?' Norman demanded, advancing on the boatman.

‘Flow,' said Boller testily. ‘Now, which way is it you want me to go?'

It was too late. Of the little flask containing the mortal remains of Millicent there was now nothing whatsoever to be seen.

‘If we don't catch her,' Norman asked the fisherman, ‘where will she fetch up?'

‘De profundis,'
murmured Enid.

‘Dead man's reach,' whispered Neil to Angela, who gave him a little shove in response.

‘Billy's Finger,' said Boller without hesitation. ‘Spit of shingle in the estuary where the tide turns …'

‘A dead spit …' murmured Neil in Angela's ear.

‘You'll find her there by morning, guv'nor,' promised Boller. ‘No problem.'

There was a problem, though.

For Norman, anyway.

Millicent's ashes had indeed fetched up on Billy's Finger in the estuary of the river Calle by morning but then so had Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby, advised (Graham Burnett would never have used the expression ‘tipped off') by Millicent's brother that there might be a message for them in a bottle.

There was.

As Millicent, his late wife, would have said, it was just like Norman to spoil the ship for a ha'p'orth of tar.

A FAIR COP

‘I don't believe it,' said Inspector Harpe flatly. ‘I just don't believe it.'

‘It's true, Harry,' said Detective Inspector Sloan.

‘It's no good. You'll have to pull the other one,' said Inspector Harpe, who was from Berebury Constabulary's Traffic Division. He was known throughout the Calleshire County Force as Happy Harry because he had never been seen to smile. He, on his part, maintained that there never had been anything so far at which to smile in Traffic Division.

Today, he would have held, was no exception.

‘Look here, Sloan, I'm ringing from the girl's father's house and there's no way I'm going to let Chummie go until I've charged him.'

‘And I,' repeated Sloan, who was Head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department at Berebury, ‘am telling you, Harry, that there is nothing that you can properly charge him with.'

‘I'll find something,' growled Inspector Harpe, ‘if I have to throw the whole ruddy book at him.'

‘If you do,' warned Sloan, more of a veteran of the courts even than Happy Harry, ‘you're laying yourself open to being done yourself for false imprisonment and arrest.'

‘He's imprisoned, all right,' said Inspector Harpe with a certain amount of satisfaction, ‘in the girl's car …'