Last Respects (2 page)

He steadied the oars in the rowlocks and considered the state of the tide. He was always conscious of it but particularly when he was out on the water. It wasn't far off the turn and he certainly wasn't going to row a body back to Edsway against the tide. The reasoning sped glibly through his mind as he took enough bearings to mark the spot in the water where the body was floating. Already he heard himself saying ‘I couldn't lift it aboard myself, of course, Mr Ridgeford. Not on my own, like. I couldn't tow it back either. Not against the tide … not without help. I'm not as young as I used to be, you know …'

Half an hour later he was using just those very words to Police Constable Ridgeford. Brian Ridgeford was young enough to be Horace Boller's son but Horace still deemed it politic to call him ‘Mister'. This approach was one of the fruits of his study of the ways of the official mind.

‘Dead, you said?' checked Constable Ridgeford, reaching for his telephone.

‘Definitely dead,' said Horace. He'd taken off his cap when he stepped into the constable's little office and he stood there now with it dangling from his hand as if he were already a mourner.

‘How did you know it was a man?' asked Ridgeford.

The question didn't trouble Horace Boller. ‘Floating on its back,' he said.

‘I'll have to report it to Headquarters,' said Ridgeford importantly, beginning to dial. A body made a change from dealing with old Miss Finch, who—difficult and dogmatic—insisted that there were Unidentified Flying Objects on the headland behind Marby.

‘That's right,' said Horace.

Ridgeford frowned. ‘There may be someone missing.'

‘So there may.'

‘Not that I've heard of anyone.' The constable pulled a pile of reports on his desk forward and started thumbing through them with one hand while he held the telephone in the other.

‘Nor me,' said Horace at once. It had been one of the factors that had weighed with him when he decided not to bring the body in. It hadn't been someone local or he would have heard. ‘But then …'

Ridgeford's attitude suddenly changed. He stiffened and almost came to attention. ‘Is that F Division Headquarters at Berebury? This is Constable Ridgeford from Edsway reporting …'

Horace Boller waited patiently for the outcome.

A minute or two later he heard Ridgeford say ‘Just a moment, sir, and I'll ask the fisherman who reported it. He'll know.' The young constable covered the mouthpiece of the telephone with his free hand and said to Horace, ‘Where will that body fetch up if it's left in the water?'

Boller screwed up his face and thought quickly. ‘Hard to say exactly, Mr Ridgeford. Most probably,' he improvised, ‘under the cliffs over on the Kinnisport side of the estuary.' He waved an arm. ‘You know, where the rocks stick out into the water. Not,' he added, ‘for a couple of days, mind you.'

He stepped back, well pleased with himself. What he had just said to the policeman was a complete fabrication from start to finish. Left to itself the body of the dead man might continue on its course up river to Collerton for the length of a tide or two but then either the change in the tide or the river current would pick it up and bring it back downstream again. Then the timeless eddies of the sea would lay it up on Billy's Finger as they had always done since time began.

Constable Ridgeford, though, did not know this. He was young, he was new in Edsway and, most importantly of all, he was from the town. In towns water came in pipes.

‘H'm,' he said. ‘You're sure about that, are you?'

‘Certain,' said Boller, although the rocks under the cliff near Cranberry Point were a long way from where he had last seen the dead man. They just happened to be the most inaccessible and inconvenient place on the coast from which to attempt to recover a body that Horace could think of on the spur of the moment.

‘They'd have to take it up the cliff face on a cradle from there, wouldn't they?' said Ridgeford, frowning.

‘Oh yes,' said Boller at once. ‘You'd never get a recovery boat to land on those rocks. Too dangerous. Mind you,' he added craftily, ‘the coastguards up top would probably spot it for you easily enough.'

‘Er—yes, of course,' said Ridgeford.

Horace Boller said nothing but he knew he'd played a trump card. Another of the fruits of his study of the official mind was the sure and certain knowledge that owners of them did not relish cooperation with other official services. Over the years the playing off of one department against another had become a high art with the wily old fisherman.

Ridgeford turned back to the telephone and had further speech with his superior. That officer must have put another question to him because once again Ridgeford covered the mouthpiece. ‘You marked the spot with a buoy, didn't you?'

‘Sorry, Mr Ridgeford,' lied Horace fluently, ‘I didn't happen to have one with me. I was just out to catch something for my tea, that's all.'

There were six orange marker buoys in the locker of Horace's rowing-boat. He would have to make quite sure that the constable didn't see them.

‘I took proper bearings though, Mr Ridgeford,' said Boller.

‘You mean you could take me out there?'

‘If my son came too,' said Horace cunningly, ‘I reckon we could get him aboard and back to dry land, whoever he is, in no time at all.'

‘I'll meet you on the slipway in twenty minutes,' said the constable briskly.

‘Right you are, Mr Ridgeford.' Horace replaced his cap and turned to go.

‘And,' the policeman added drily, ‘I'll bring my own rope just in case you were thinking we ought to get a new one from Hopton's.'

Hopton's was the ships' chandler's on Shore Street. It was the store where the myriad of small boat-owners bought the necessities of weekend sailing. Mrs Hopton had been a Boller before she married.

‘Just as you say, Mr Ridgeford,' said Horace. He felt no rancour: on the contrary. Like Alexander Solzhenitsyn's hero, Ivan Denisovich, he was a great one for counting his blessings. As a little later he settled his oars comfortably in the rowlocks while his son pushed the boat off from the slipway, he even felt a certain amount of satisfaction. There would be a fee to come from Her Majesty's Coroner for the County of Calleshire for assisting in the recovery of the drowned man, and that fee would only have to be shared within the family.

Police Constable Brian Ridgeford settled himself in the bow and looked steadily forward, his thoughts following a different tack. He wasn't a fool and he hadn't been in Edsway long, but long enough to learn some of the little ways of the Boller tribe. He had not been entirely deceived by Horace's manoeuvres either. He had been well aware, too, that when he, Brian Ridgeford, had dropped in on Ted Boller, carpenter and undertaker for all the villages roundabout, on his way to the slipway, to warn him that there might be a body for him to convey to the mortuary in Berebury, this fact was not news to Ted Boller. It had been immediately apparent to the police constable that Horace had wasted no time in alerting Ted, who was Horace's cousin. Naturally Ted had not said anything to the policeman about this. While Horace was cunning, Ted was sly and he'd just promised to keep an eye open for the return of their boat and to be ready and waiting by the shore when they got back.

The two Bollers pulled steadily on their oars while Horace did some calculations about tide flow.

‘Be about an hour and a bit since I left him, wouldn't it, Mr Ridgeford?' he said.

‘If you came straight to me,' said the constable.

Boller turned his head to take a bearing from the spire of St Peter's church and another from the chimneys of Collerton House. ‘A bit further,' he said.

Both oarsmen bent to their task, while Constable Ridgeford scanned the water ahead.

Presently Horace turned his head again, this time to take in the state of the tide by looking across at the saltings. They were invisible at high water. Birds on them betokened low tide. ‘Turn her up river a bit more,' he commanded.

Once they reached what Horace Boller thought was the right place the drowned man took surprisingly little time to locate. Brian Ridgeford spotted him first and the three men got him aboard without too much of a struggle. The victim of the water wasn't a big man. He had had dark hair and might have been any age at all. That was really all that Brian Ridgeford noted before he helped Horace cover him first with a black plastic bag and then with the tarpaulin that was doing duty as a temporary winding sheet.

Once on dry land and safely in the official care of the Calleshire Constabulary—although still with a member of the Boller family ready to put his thumb on a fee—the body made greater speed. Ted Boller and his undertaker's van soon set off towards Billing Bridge and Berebury. Strictly speaking, it was Billing Bridge that marked the end of the estuary. Some medieval men had earned merit by building churches: if you couldn't build a church, then you built a bridge. Cornelius Billing had bought his way into the history and topography of the County of Calleshire in 1484 by building a bridge over the River Calle at the furthest point down river that it had been possible to build a bridge in 1484.

Ted Boller slowed his vehicle down as he bumped his way over it in a primitive tribute to his passenger, who was far beyond feeling anything at all, while Constable Ridgeford walked back to his own house, beginning to draft in his mind the details of his report. He wondered idly which day the Coroner would nominate for the inquest …

Just as some men liked to toy with a chess problem, so Police Constable Brian Ridgeford passed his walk considering whether he could summon a jury in Edsway—should the Coroner want to sit with one, that is—without calling upon a single member of the vast Boller family to serve on it. Like countering one of the rarer chess gambits, it would be difficult but he reckoned that it could be done.

Ted Boller's hearse duly delivered the unknown man to the mortuary presided over by Dr Dabbe, Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital. Such minimal paperwork that the body had so far acquired on its short journey from sea to land and from coast to town accompanied it and said briefly: ‘Found drowned.'

‘Found drowned, my foot,' said the pathologist two minutes after looking at the body.

CHAPTER 2

The company are met
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‘Found drowned, his foot,' repeated Police Superintendent Leeyes not very long afterwards.

As soon as the pathologist's message had come through to Berebury Police Station he had summoned Detective-Inspector C. D. Sloan to his office. Inspector Sloan—known as Christopher Dennis to his nearest and dearest—was for obvious reasons called ‘Seedy' by his friends. He was the head of Berebury's Criminal Investigation Department. It was a tiny Department but such crime as there was in that corner of Calleshire usually landed up in Detective-Inspector Sloan's lap.

In any case—in every case, you might say—Superintendent Leeyes always saw to it that nothing stayed on his own desk that could be delegated to someone else's. That desk was usually Sloan's.

‘Found in water, though?' advanced Sloan, who was well-versed in his superior officer's little ways. He was a great one for passing the buck, was the Superintendent.

Downwards.

Detective-Inspector Sloan could never remember a problem being referred to a higher level—in their case the Headquarters of the County Constabulary at Calleford—if Superintendent Leeyes could possibly help it. Sloan was, though, well aware of—indeed, would never forget—some of those problems that the Superintendent had in the past directed downwards to his own desk. A body found in water but not drowned sounded as if it might very well be another of the unforgettables.

‘Brought in from the estuary,' expanded Leeyes. ‘Someone reported it to Constable Ridgeford.'

Sloan nodded. ‘Our man in Edsway.'

‘He's young,' added the Superintendent by way of extra identification.

Sloan nodded again. He wasn't talking about the body. Sloan knew that. The Superintendent had meant the constable.

‘Very young.' The Superintendent at the same time contrived to make youth sound like an indictment.

Sloan nodded his head in acknowledgement of this observation too. He even toyed with the idea of saying that they had all been young once—including the Chief Constable—but he decided against it. Medical students, he knew, when certain specific diseases were being taught, were always reminded that the admiral had once been a midshipman; the bishop, a curate … Anyway it was quite true that constables did seem to come in two sizes. Young and untried was one of them. Old and cunning was another. The trouble was that the first group had seen nothing and the second lot—the oldies—had seen it all. The latter tended to be world-weary about everything except their own lack of promotion. On this subject, though, they were apt to wax very eloquent indeed …

‘And,' carried on Leeyes, ‘I don't know how much of a greenhorn Ridgeford is.'

The only exception to the rule about old and disgruntled constables that Sloan knew was Constable Mason. He must be about due for retirement now—he'd been stationed over at Great Rooden for as long as anyone could remember. The trouble with Constable Mason from the hierarchy's point of view was that he had steadily declined promotion over the years. More heretical still, he had continually declared himself very well content with his lot.

‘I don't,' said Leeyes grumpily, ‘want to find out the hard way about Ridgeford.'

‘No, sir,' said Sloan, his mind still on Mason. The bizarre attitude of that constable to his career prospects had greatly troubled Superintendent Leeyes. If the donkey does not want the carrot there is only the stick left—and there has to be a good reason for using that. Consequently a puzzled Police Superintendent Leeyes had always watched the crime rate out at Great Rooden with exceedingly close attention. Mason, however, was as good as any Mountie in getting his man. This, he said modestly, was because he had a head start when there was villainy about. He not only usually knew who had committed the crime but where to lay his hands on the culprit as well.