Part 24 (1/2)

*You throw like a girl,' Maybury jeered.

*Would you like me to show you how a real girl can throw?' I asked and the inspector grimaced.

*Just do it, Perkins.' He was red with frustration. *And, if you do not retrieve your equipment, Maybury, the cost of replacing it will be docked from your wages.'

Perkins fell short again and hauled in, while Maybury went down the bank to wrench at his rope from a different angle.

*Perhaps we could hire a rowing boat,' I said as, with another grunt, Perkins let his missile go and this time it landed perfectly, plunging into the water about two feet beyond the mound.

*At last.' Inspector Pound exhaled. *Reel it in, Perkins.'

Perkins pulled the rope and the end of the hook rose above the mound, but the barbs engaged and it began to float towards us.

*It's heavy.' Perkins adjusted his grip and Maybury took hold of the rope too.

The green surface broke, leaving a trail of muddy water in its wake as the mound ploughed steadily along now.

*It is about the right size,' Inspector Pound said and Perkins slipped, his foot going over the edge, letting go of the rope as he s.n.a.t.c.hed at his colleague to save himself, and the two men tumbled backwards, falling into the nettles behind them. Inspector Pound put his foot on the rope as it snaked back into the ca.n.a.l.

*Imbeciles,' he said under his breath, but Sidney Grice was not even looking at them. His attention was fixed on the mound which had rotated a quarter turn with the sudden release of tension, and something reared out of the slime, grey and pocked with decay, unreal and yet unmistakeable, a mud-clogged nose and an eaten lip bobbing in the filth five yards away.

Sidney Grice's face was triumphant.

*Not a bad morning's fis.h.i.+ng,' he said. *Inspector, allow me to introduce you to the eponymous hero of Rigoletto, otherwise known as the late Mr James Hoggart.'

34.

Buckets and Sacks *And I thought the ca.n.a.l smelled bad,' Sidney Grice said, clamping his handkerchief firmly over his nose and mouth as the body was heaved up out of the water and deposited supine on the weed-choked towpath.

Perkins and Maybury turned away and Inspector Pound took a few steps backwards, but I had smelled death before many times, fresh on my father's table and old in the dysenteric field hospitals of Natal, and I would not let it overcome me. I swallowed hard but stayed my ground. If Sidney Grice could stand with the rotting man at his feet, so could and so would I. If only it had not been the face.

His face was half-eaten by rats and decay. The eyes and their lids had gone as had the upper lip and half the lower and most of the nose, the cavity in its place bubbling with a brown froth, and the left ear was missing and something slug-like oozed out of the crater in its place.

I could probably have coped with that face but it was the vapours of corruption that really unbalanced me. They hissed out of him in a last lost word.

I stumbled back. *I did not know.' But n.o.body was listening to me.

*Send into the factory for some buckets of water,' Sidney Grice called to the inspector, who jerked his head towards his men, who ran back the way we had come and across a wooden bridge over a bricked drainage ditch.

The body wore tails and a high-collared s.h.i.+rt with a black tie, sagging but still in an extravagant bow. His boots were still on his feet.

*Looks like he was going to the opera.' Inspector Pound leaned forwards but stayed well back.

*He was.' Sidney Grice suppressed a choke.

The inspector produced his bottle of camphor oil and emptied it on to his handkerchief.

*You said you had none left,' my guardian said.

*Not so.' Inspector Pound's voice was m.u.f.fled. *I said I had none to spare.'

The constables returned with two metal pails and dowsed the face and hands and upper body carefully, under Sidney Grice's instruction. Several of the dead man's fingers had been chewed off, and he was wearing a canary yellow waistcoat, badly shredded.

Sidney Grice walked clockwise slowly round the body, stopped, and then walked counter-clockwise.

*No obvious frontal wounds.' He turned to Inspector Pound. *You might as well take him to the morgue, but please make sure that the clothes are not thrown away this time and that the pockets are searched.'

The inspector's mouth tensed.

*All right, men, get this body moved.'

*What?' Perkins asked in horror.

*How?' Maybury asked.

*Take the buckets back to the factory,' Inspector Pound said patiently, *and ask for some spare sacks to roll it on to.'

*I think we will leave them to it,' Sidney Grice said to me. *I expect you could do with a cup of tea.'

Back at Gower Street I rushed to my room to get out of my boots and dress. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands and face and blew my nose, and went back to my room and smoked a cigarette out of the window and drank a large gin very quickly, then another more slowly with a second cigarette. I sprayed myself with Fougere, but the stench still filled my nostrils and a taste clung in my mouth. My living flesh was saturated with putrefaction.

35.

Caligula Inspector Pound cleared his desk. He pushed everything on to the floor, instantly turning a mess into chaos. He sat behind the desk in a creaky swivel chair as we sat facing him on two old uprights.

*Well, we have found out how he was killed.' He put down a plain brown cardboard folder. *I was worried that the corpse would be too decayed for that but the surgeon tells me there is no doubt about it a a stab wound in the back of his neck. The skin and muscles were too rotted to tell him anything, but the bones of his spine had been separated from the base of the skull by a short sharp blade.'

*A professional job then,' Sidney Grice said and the inspector nodded.

*It reminds me of a murder we had in seventy-eight. A Sicilian steamer captain found floating in the East India Docks with the same sort of wound. We never caught the culprit and the crew were very nervous about talking to us but, from what we could piece together, it was the work of a hired a.s.sa.s.sin. There is a lot of rivalry between the various family gangs there.'