Detective Inspector Skelgill Boxset 1, page 22
part #1 of Detective Inspector Skelgill Series
Skelgill sighs and slips off the barstool. Leaving his pint and his trophy where they stand, he casually makes his way through a door marked for the gents. They are situated across a yard at the back of the pub. But Skelgill is merely using this route to make an inconspicuous exit. A ginnel leads from the yard into the main street, and from there he can pick up a taxi. But, just as he passes the door of the toilets, out stumbles the wag, more than a little the worse for wear – though jubilant, nonetheless.
‘Skel, marra – yer won it off yer own back!’
‘Aye, thanks – it’s bat, isn’t it?’
38. READING
Skelgill, en route to the office on Friday morning, becomes diverted by an ‘all-cars’ emergency call following a bizarre incident on the northbound M6. Evidently, a hostile convoy of animal-rights protestors and ramshackle hippies’ charabancs has been shadowing a travelling circus. As they neared junction 41 these wacky races had abruptly halted owing to a sizeable and probably mutually intentional coming together of those in the van. The entire carriageway was blocked by debris, a minor pitched battle broke out between the opposing forces, and assorted exotic species of animals were reported to be roaming southbound and in adjacent fields (although this proved to be somewhat exaggerated). By the time Skelgill reaches the scene, however, things have cooled down, and several of the protagonists (all of the hairy variety, it seems) are being led away towards a fleet of brightly marked police patrol cars. Skelgill makes himself useful by circulating among the smouldering groups and unceremoniously snuffing out any remaining flickers of enmity with a few well-chosen words of Anglo-Saxon wisdom. This action ultimately wins him the respect of the parties, and in no time he is enjoying strong tea and home-made rock cakes inside an immaculate gipsy caravan with a trio of exceedingly attractive female acrobats (although he half suspects this is a ploy to keep his policeman’s nose from poking where it isn’t wanted). Thankfully nobody has been seriously injured in the confrontation, which was more handbags than handguns, and the vehicles are soon safely lined up on the hard shoulder. The circus elders opt to continue their journey towards Scotland, and not press charges (and, yes, they’ll go right now, thanks, and – no thanks – they won’t need an escort) in return for the police sending back the new age travellers whence they came. Skelgill is later amused to hear of a twist in the tale, concerning a pair of enthusiastic constables who radioed to say they had cornered a group of escaped llamas, while simultaneously a farmer’s wife was telephoning to report that strange men in black were rustling her valuable rare-breed wool-alpaca flock.
*
When, finally, he does arrive at Penrith, shortly before lunchtime, Skelgill finds himself shaking his head and wondering if he has imagined the whole affair. The same goes for the bewildering events of the previous evening, until he notices a neat display of objects on his cabinet: his forsaken Man-of-the-Match trophy, a cheap gold-effect winner’s medal in a flip-up black plastic display case and – touchingly – what appears to be the bruised and scuffed match ball. He phones George at the front desk.
‘Hey up, George.’
‘Skelly – didn’t see you come in. Hear the clowns were out in force on the M6 this morning.’
‘Aye, very good, George – and that was just our lot.’
‘What can I do you for?’
‘I just wanted to say thanks – I presume it was you who put this cricket stuff in my office?’
‘No problem, lad.’
‘I was a bit distracted last night.’
‘I hear the Chief’s given you forty-eight hours.’
Skelgill makes a hissing sound.
‘How come that’s got out?’
‘You know how word gets around. Apparently Smart’s been putting it about that it’s his case, all bar the shouting.’
*
Skelgill’s strategy for this stage of the process owes something to DS Jones’s supportive remark along the lines of good old-fashioned police work. But reading is anathema to him, unless he has an angling or climbing magazine to hand – or one of his beloved Wainwrights; Skelgill generally relies upon his subordinates to do the leg-work when it comes to analysing the great mass of information that can accumulate during an investigation. Today, however, he has determined to put his nose to the grindstone and catch up with some of the details, and he begins with a series of reports that relate to the more peripheral characters. DS Jones has compiled these, and she has headed each with a short note that highlights the most salient aspect. The first concerns the hotelier, Mrs Groteneus, and carries the emboldened legend, “No trace of Groteneus spouse.”
According to Mrs Groteneus, her husband had left her some ten years earlier to return to his native South Africa, to Johannesburg. It appears that technically they are still married, though she has lost touch with him and claims not to have heard from him since. Nor, it seems, has anyone else, as the Jo’burg cops can find no record of such a person. Of course, the man could have gone somewhere different altogether, and Mrs Groteneus would be none the wiser. Skelgill toys with the idea of Mr Groteneus having never left the premises (or, at least, the grounds) – which would provide an explanation for the hotelier’s anxiety in the presence of the police search unit. And, certainly, if anyone knew how to creep undetected around the hotel it would be her. There was also the mysterious episode with the missing master key.
‘Come off it, Skelgill.’ He turns the page with a certain finality.
“Drugs suspect.” The next report concerns the shady Ron Bunce. It seems DS Jones’s hunch is correct. While Ron Bunce has no criminal record to speak of (although two dubious acquittals for alleged grievous bodily harm), there is an official file being kept, since he is suspected of trafficking drugs out of Africa and into Europe via the British colony of Gibraltar. But Skelgill has already pointed out to DS Jones his difficulties with the hitman-theory, and the notion that a drugs connection would somehow extend to Ivan Tregilgis seems improbably tenuous. Yes, there is a possible legal action – the threat of which does not appear to be giving Bunce any sleepless nights – and in any event Tregilgis’s death would not make that go away.
“Smith trail cold.” Thus is headed the third report. Background investigations centred on Grendon Smith have so far drawn a blank. Nobody as yet has been forthcoming from the companies suspected of involvement in his alleged ‘cash-for-projects’ scheme, nor has anything turned up amidst Ivan Tregilgis’s admin that indicates Smith had been formally put on notice of legal action. The only fingerprints on the blackmail letter received by Krista Morocco belong to her, a PC from Charing Cross (who’d sheepishly warned them in advance that he’d been eating his morning bacon roll at the time she’d handed it in), and Skelgill. A survey of staff in the London office of Goldsmith-Tregilgis & Associates has concluded that there has been no contact with Smith since he left. And at the present time his home telephone is disconnected for non-payment, and his mobile is diverting to voicemail.
Skelgill sits back and consults his watch. One o’clock. He stands up, extracts his wallet and car keys from his jacket, hoists up the venetian blind and promptly climbs out of his already-open office window. Under normal circumstances, as the newly installed saviour of the station’s honour for his exploits on the cricket field, he would take the long route to the canteen to bask with ingenuous modesty in the many rays of adulation that will surely be directed his way. But today that prospect is heavily overshadowed by the prospect of staring eyes that know he is to be removed from the Bewaldeth case.
He drives the short distance into the centre of Penrith and parks at a small supermarket. Inside he buys a sandwich, which he quickly dispatches while heading on foot to his favoured fishing-tackle shop. The sounds of radios playing and occasional voices drift from open windows of the small houses that crowd the kerb. The sun is cracking the cobbles and melting the tarmac. But to Skelgill’s trained weather eye a change is clearly in the air. High up in the blue, great swirling mares’ tails of cirrus are sliding in from the west: an innocuous-looking advance cavalry, but harbingers nonetheless of a glowering legion of great grey clouds that will inevitably follow. The forecasters have got it right.
The consensus in the tackle shop is that the rain will come by midday tomorrow. The mother of all depressions is whipping itself into a frenzy over the Atlantic, in preparation for a charge at Britain: it is predicted to rout the prevailing anticyclone. Skelgill points out that he will be enjoying pie and chips and ale in his local by then, given that he plans to be out on Bass Lake well before dawn.
His spirits buoyed by this thought, he purchases some treble-hooks and a couple of wire traces, and even contemplates buying a mean-looking plastic plug, the type of lure that imitates an injured fish when retrieved jerkily through the water. Generally he manufactures his own plugs; indeed his two most successful models started their lives as a pool cue and a paintbrush handle respectively. The latter has been particularly prolific through the winter months, but has suffered a loss of form more recently – hence Skelgill’s musings over an eleventh-hour substitution. In the event, after some deliberation, he decides to stick with his tried and trusted rig.
Retracing his steps he returns to his desk by the same clandestine means he left it, only to find that without the protective blind in place his office has filled up with flies. Now he spends the next ten minutes variously swatting and shepherding them out, according to his prejudices about their habits or value as bait. For blowflies and clegs the outlook is not good, whereas craneflies and lacewings can have greater cause for optimism unless they behave with singular stupidity and refuse to go quietly.
Aerial distractions eliminated, Skelgill settles down for an afternoon of further reading. He purses his lips in an act of concentration. Some years back he attended an NLP training course, and had been classified as a ‘visual’ person. This had delighted him, confirming a phobia that had begun at school with an aversion to essays and comprehension, and which continues to this day with a dread of challenges such as he faces now. He gathers himself, pen poised – and then gets up and digs in his pocket for change for the hot drinks machine.
*
It is just after three-thirty p.m. when DI Smart’s weaselly countenance insinuates itself into the narrow gap between Skelgill’s door and the jamb.
‘Alright, Skel?’
Skelgill looks up, squinting, his expression darkening. He doesn’t consider DI Smart a friend, and is clearly not endeared by his use of the familiar. DI Smart is undeterred.
‘Hear you were cock of the walk last night. Nice one.’
Skelgill shrugs.
‘Didn’t see you there.’
‘Leave.’ Smart sidles uninvited into the office and rests an elbow upon Skelgill’s cabinet. ‘Went for a meal in Manchester. New afro-asian fusion restaurant. First outside London.’
Skelgill, still unsmiling, gives a faint nod of disinterest. DI Smart might remind him of Dermott Goldsmith – both carrying a weighty chip on their shoulder – in Smart’s case concerning all things Mancunian.
DI Smart’s eyes rove hungrily around Skelgill’s office, like a shoplifter casing a new store. He picks up the cricket ball and weighs it in his hand, as if he knows what he doing. But then he makes a clumsy attempt to flip it, and it falls with a clunk and rolls obligingly towards Skelgill’s desk, affording him the opportunity to make further ground.
‘How’s the case going?’
He reaches out casually to pick up one of DS Jones’s reports that lies on Skelgill’s in-tray. But Skelgill is too quick for him and slaps a proprietorial hand on the item in question.
‘Between you and me, Smart,’ (Skelgill lowers his voice to the level of the conspiratorial) ‘I’ve cracked it. Have it all tied up by Monday morning.’
DI Smart jerks back, his cadaverous features becoming even more pallid than their usual lifeless hue.
‘Right. Nice one.’
His left eye seems to develop a tic.
Skelgill stares implacably.
‘Was there something?’
‘Er – no. I just, er – came to say well done.’
He replaces the ball beside Skelgill’s trophies, and then gestures towards the pile of admin.
‘'I’ll leave you to it. Nice one.’
He backs out of the office with a curt nod.
Skelgill takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. He gazes for a moment into space, his expression becoming troubled. Then he turns back to the hopeless task that lies before him.
39. BACK ON BASS LAKE
Skelgill paddles watchfully beneath a lowering ceiling of cloud that might have been hewn from Lakeland slate. Dawn is on hold, and even the birds are subdued; save for a cackling mallard that breaks ranks, somewhere in the reeds, finally getting last night’s joke. Otherwise only the occasional resonant plop of a brown trout sipping an unlucky mayfly from the surface punctuates the silence.
Periodically Skelgill cranes over his shoulder, trying to discern his position from the indistinct silhouette of Skiddaw in the east. After a few minutes more – now satisfied – he draws in his dripping oars and allows the boat to drift. Hand over hand, he weighs anchor, though in the windless valley he could probably manage without. Bassenthwaite Lake lies mercury-flat in its shallow basin; the air, heavy and humid, blankets the water.
Now that Skelgill is becalmed, the midges that have trailed him from the hanger at Peel Wyke move in – perhaps exacting revenge for their cousins displayed about his office walls. He pulls down his Tilley hat and raises his collar, scowling as he resists the Lilliputian torture. Swiftly he hooks up a pair of slippery dead baits, and casts them out thirty degrees either side of the stern. Setting down the second of the rods, he yields to the agony – death by a thousand bites – and rubs fish scales into his hair and ears as he vanquishes the invisible assassins.
Indeed, he spends the next few minutes protecting himself from the no-see-ums. He fits a beekeeper’s veil beneath his hat, and rummages for repellent in a tin of tackle, rubbing it on the back of his hands. Then he casts about as if he is trying to decide what to do next. At three-thirty a.m. it is still too dark to employ a plug to good effect – and, anyway, his back is stiff from bowling and he does not relish the awkward style that plugging demands. Instead he opts for his trusty perch rod, rigged at the tip with a small piece of bent-over lead (formerly part of a water pipe) and a size ten hook on a dropper eighteen inches above. As a finishing touch he adds a juicy wriggling brandling, and with a flick of his wrists he sends the whole arrangement spinning a chain’s length to starboard. He waits half a minute, and then begins a slow, deliberate retrieve. Almost immediately there is a bump. Then a bump-bump. Then he strikes – and – yes! – the fish is hooked.
On many a drunken night he has argued angling’s corner: the greatest feeling on earth – scoring a goal or hooking a fish (this is after certain other experiences have been excluded by mutual agreement). Man’s primitive emotions at play: the tribal battle versus the solitary hunt. Of course, such a debate leads to inevitable stalemate, with neither party sufficiently qualified to understand the other’s perspective. But for him – more of a lone wolf than a pack dog – there is nothing to approach these sublime split seconds of solitary anticipation and triumph. I did it. And I did it my way.
The perch is giving a good account of itself. A pound and a half, he would guess. He plays it unfussily, then draws it unerringly into his waiting landing net. He unhooks it carefully with pliers on a piece of old carpet, and in the waxing light admires its tiger stripes and hump-backed profile, the pike-scarred warrior that it is. He raises its jagged dorsal fin, as always, remembering his father’s hissed warning upon his very first catch – words that came too late; blood was already streaming from his palm, tracking his lifeline. That small specimen was sent spinning in his agony; now he weighs the fish carefully in one hand, gripped from below, revising his guess upward to two pound (worth three in the pub later). Then he leans over the bow and reverently feeds the creature back into the meniscus, feeling its kick as it realises its freedom.
He wipes his hands on his jacket and taps out a satisfied drumbeat on his thighs. Maybe it’s going to be his day?
But this view is soon tempered. On the very next cast he snags a sunken obstacle. It had felt like a take and instinctively he struck – driving the hook deeper. It is not an uncommon problem on Bass Lake; all manner of debris flows down the Derwent and passes through its waters en route to the sea. Patiently he hauls in the anchor, and by waggling one oar manoeuvres the boat so that he can tug from the opposite direction. But still the hook won’t come free. It is a matter of brute force or bust. He increases the pressure, winding down until the tip of the rod arcs into the water. Now, steadily he lifts, grimacing through barred teeth. And then – it gives – not a snap, but a shift – and slowly he is able to bring up his catch – it breaks the surface with a hiss, glistening black and slimy – a long-sunken branch.
The revelation recalls his dream – nightmare, in fact – from which he was released by his alarm barely an hour ago. He was here on the lake – playing a great fish – hanging on, rather. For he’d hooked the fabled Mameluke (a childhood appropriation) – a blind Ice Age monster, as old as the lake itself. It dived deeper than he knew the lake to be, and threw his boat about at will. And yet, though he could win no line, suddenly the creature began to tire, and its fearsome pull became an immense dead weight. Inch by inch he reeled it in, but when it broke the surface there was no fish – but a jet-black suit of armour like those that guard the passage at Bewaldeth Hall. Foul water spouted from the helmet – and the visor fell open, as if in an anguished gasp for air. Inside was a staring skull – its jaw flapping – the rank breath of stagnant death filled the air – it was the missing husband, Groteneus!
