Gently Floating (9 page)

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t have done that. It’s true, I haven’t had too much sleep. We’re working overtime. A rush job. In the sheds. You can see it.’

‘How long have you been working overtime?’ Gently said.

‘A fortnight,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke. ‘It’s double pay if you put the men on it. The price won’t stand double pay.’

‘So you’d be there on Tuesday night,’ Gently said.

‘Jackie and I,’ David Spelton said.

‘Till what time?’ Gently said.

‘Midnight,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke.

‘All the time,’ Gently said.

‘All the time,’ David Spelton said. ‘V fetched us a Thermos and sandwiches before she went to bed. Round about nine or just after.’

‘Did you step outside at all?’ Gently said.

‘Only to the toilet,’ David Spelton said.

‘Where’s the toilet?’ Gently said.

‘Top end of the sheds. You can see it,’ David Spelton said.

Gently looked out of the window, saw a separate timber structure in a fenced piece of ground attached to the sheds. Next to the fence was a small cut grown up with reeds and then rough rond on which lay a decaying boat. Then the first bungalow. Gently said:

‘Do you remember seeing anything when you went to the toilet?’

‘Such as what?’ Dave Spelton said.

‘Such as any activity on the river,’ Gently said.

‘Yes,’ David Spelton said, ‘twice likely. Why should I remember anything like that?’ He blew smoke. ‘I don’t remember seeing anything,’ he said. ‘You can ask Jackie. He was out there too.’

‘Something coming by late,’ Gently said. ‘Without lights. Wouldn’t you have noticed it?’

‘If I’d seen it,’ David Spelton said. ‘But I didn’t see it. I can’t help you.’

‘You didn’t see Harry French?’ Gently said.

‘No,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke.

‘Harry French didn’t call at your sheds?’ Gently said.

‘No,’ David Spelton said, blowing smoke.

‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘Well, let’s hear some more about Harry French. Why you hated him, that sort of thing. Why you were going to belt him. What he wouldn’t sell you.’

‘I thought you knew it all,’ David Spelton said. ‘You wouldn’t want to listen to the lies I’d tell you.’

‘Lies or truth, I want to listen,’ Gently said. ‘A lie often has the truth in the shape of it.’

David Spelton smoked a little, made a motion with his head. ‘Then we’d better go across to the sheds,’ he said. ‘Jackie can tell you why we loved French, you can believe Jackie, he’s not a liar. Jackie’s the honest one of the family. Comes of being the eldest son.’

‘I’d sooner hear it from you,’ Gently said.

‘Oh, I’ll add my lies,’ David Spelton said.

He moved to the door, opened it. Vera Spelton stood smiling in the hall. David Spelton looked at her, jerked his head towards the stairs. Vera Spelton didn’t do anything, made no acknowledgement.

‘V,’ David Spelton said, ‘you won’t get that wall-bracket finished.’

‘Oh I’m tired of fretwork,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘I’m coming across to the sheds too.’

‘Not this morning, V,’ David Spelton said. ‘We’ve got some business to clear up. It’s dull, it won’t interest you. Come this afternoon. We’ll do some painting.’

Vera Spelton pouted. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to do something on the yacht.’

‘Well, we’ll see about it,’ David Spelton said. ‘This afternoon. But stay in this morning.’

‘Yes, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said. She smiled again but didn’t move.

‘Well, run along then,’ David Spelton said.

‘Yes, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said.

David Spelton nodded, turned, went out. Gently followed. Vera Spelton danced after them.

‘V,’ David Spelton said over his shoulder.

‘Yes, Dave,’ Vera Spelton said. ‘Yes, Dave. Yes, Dave.’

She kept behind them. David Spelton was silent. He led the way to the door near the noticeboard. He knocked twice on the door. The door was opened by a youngster in a boilersuit. They went through it and into a wide but shallow shed. A seagoing yacht was being built in the shed. The yacht was planked up and had the coamings fitted and there was a light in her and men were working in her and her planking was painted with pink priming. Her counter overhung a wall bench at the back of the shed, her bows overhung a slipway at the front. Doors were closed across the slipway, but wash came up it from passing boats and the sound of the wash was greatly magnified by the hollowness of the shed. The air in the shed was heated and motionless. It smelled of raw timber, varnish, tar and tobacco smoke. In the unvarnished mahogany coamings of the yacht were lines of countersunk brass screwheads and the screwheads were new and yellow and the mahogany very smooth. An electric hand-drill burred intermittently inside the yacht; accompanying the burr was the soft clash of a push screwdriver. David Spelton looked at Gently, said:

‘She’s an East Coast Restricted Class. Thirty-three feet long. If we built them sideways we could manage a thirty-six foot job and just about screw her into a slipway. Bigger than that we can’t handle them. Not without rebuilding and sacrificing our quays.’

‘So,’ Gently said.

David Spelton laughed. ‘You’ll get the idea in a minute,’ he said. ‘We taught the Frenches their business here, too damn well we taught them.’

He went to the yacht. A ladder with padded rests leaned against her gunnel. David Spelton climbed the ladder, leaned over the coaming, said something. The sound of the electric hand-drill stopped, the light in the yacht was hidden for a moment. A capped head came out of the hatch, turned towards Gently, said something. David Spelton came down the ladder. A man in tan dungarees followed him.

‘My brother Jackie,’ David Spelton said. ‘Sorry he isn’t dressed for company.’

‘Yes, I’m Jack Spelton,’ the man said. ‘What’s all this worrying about now?’

David Spelton said: ‘You’ll soon find out. The Superintendent’s just getting his spike in. Seems he’s heard of our business relations with the firm next door. He wants you to tell him all about them.’

‘Oh,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘What’s that to him?’

‘You’d better ask him,’ David Spelton said.

‘What’s that to you?’ Jack Spelton said to Gently. ‘You’re rare curious, aren’t you, about our affairs?’

Gently looked at Jack Spelton. Jack Spelton was several years older than his brother. He had a pinched version of his brother’s face and his nose was sharper and he squinted a little. He had slack cheeks with deep lines in them and the wrinkled forehead of a dyspepsia sufferer. He was leaner built than his brother and less tall. He had the beginning of a stoop. He had greyed hair. Gently said:

‘Just some routine questions.’

‘They’re never anything else,’ David Spelton said.

‘We like to get our facts straight,’ Gently said. ‘And your quarrel with Harry French is one of the facts.’

‘Sounds like nosiness to me,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘We don’t know anything about Harry French. Except I pulled him out of the bottom slipway and stuck him in the rigger’s shop to drain. You know that, what more do you want?’

‘You’ve heard what I want,’ Gently said.

‘Well, I don’t like getting pulled off a job,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘There’s too much of it going on. We’ve got work, some of us.’

He squinted at Gently, pulled a pipe out of his pocket, stuck it in his mouth, didn’t light it. He drew on the pipe several times. He took it out of his mouth again, smacked his lips.

‘All right then,’ he said. ‘It was over the Blackwater contract. Now you’re as wise as you were before.’

‘Don’t tell him any lies,’ David Spelton said. ‘He’s got a nose for lies like you have for rot.’

‘Shut your trap, Dave,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘If you want me to tell the tale then keep out of it. It was in fifty-six or fifty-seven, the time they had the first Boat Show.’

‘Go on,’ Gently said.

‘The first Boat Show,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Cowells of Burnham were showing a yawl, a smart ocean-racing job. Forty-seven-six long, ten-nine, six-three, Columbian pine on oak frames, a bit narrow by our standards. I know Paul Cowell, met him during the war, he was up this way on an Admiralty contract. He booked a lot of orders for the yawl during the show, American mostly. More than he could cope with. So he got on to us to build him five, so be we could get them under the bridge. We reckoned we could do that all right on a low spring. All we had to do was to find room to build them.’

‘And we didn’t have to look far,’ David Spelton said.

‘Just keep quiet, Dave,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘If you’ll step over to that window,’ he said to Gently, ‘you’ll see where we could’ve built the Blackwater yawls.’

Gently stepped over to the window. From the window one looked at the house and the marshes to the right of it. But between the house and the marshes there lay a strip of meadow, neglected, partly overrun with brambles and elders. The meadow faced the rond adjacent to the sheds. It was separated only by the cinder path and by a dyke.

‘That’s it,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Clay foundations. Doesn’t flood. We’ve got planning permission, what’s more, we went into it years back. That’s the only place we can do anything. We mustn’t build on the rond any more. But we can put in a slipway and launch over the path and that’s all we need to build boats over there. And then we could build jobs of any size, provided they’d go through the bridge afterwards.’

‘Just one thing only,’ David Spelton said. ‘We don’t happen to own that bit of ground. And the late owner wouldn’t sell us that bit of ground. And he pinched the Blackwater contract himself.’

‘Dave,’ Jack Spelton said, ‘you’ll make me angry. If you’ve got any sense you’ll pipe down. It was only business. French didn’t have to sell it. You seem to forget he was a competitor of ours.’

‘I’m not forgetting,’ Dave Spelton said. ‘Dirty tricks like that I don’t forget.’

‘It was business,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Harry could’ve played ball, but he didn’t have to. I’m not saying I liked him the better for it, but he was inside his rights, he didn’t owe us that land.’

David Spelton turned his back on his brother.

‘Don’t pay any attention to Dave,’ Jack Spelton said. He raised his cap and scratched beneath it, squinted at Gently. ‘Dave’s touchy,’ he said.

‘How much was the contract worth?’ Gently said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘We never got down to the brass tacks. I hear that Frenches lost money on it . . .’

‘It was worth putting up a shed for,’ Gently said.

‘Well,’ Jack Spelton said, ‘we’d have had that afterwards, wouldn’t we.’

‘What did they sell at,’ Gently said. ‘Seven thousand, eight thousand – something like that?’

David Spelton said over his shoulder: ‘We were aiming to clear ten thousand on it.’

‘No, no, that’s ridiculous,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Might have been a couple of thou in it if we were lucky. Might have lost money, you can’t tell. Could’ve been that Harry did us a favour.’

‘Yes, he was the one for that,’ David Spelton said.

‘It’s all a gamble these days,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Everything going up, materials, labour. You have to blow boats together if you want to make any money.’

‘Like hell,’ David Spelton said. ‘We’d have cleared that ten thousand.’

Jack Spelton stuck his pipe in his mouth, clenched his teeth over it hard.

All this while Vera Spelton had been gliding and dancing about the three men.

‘So after that you wouldn’t have had much personal contact with French,’ Gently said.

Jack Spelton sucked. ‘Never did have,’ he said. ‘He went about his business, we went about ours. I never went out of my way to have words with Harry French.’

‘He didn’t visit you at all?’ Gently said.

‘Why should he?’ Jack Spelton said.

‘You didn’t see him about here?’ Gently said.

‘Unless he went by in his launch,’ Jack Spelton said.

‘He wasn’t friends, say, with your sister?’

‘Don’t think she ever met him,’ Jack Spelton said.

‘Mind you don’t lie,’ David Spelton said.

Jack Spelton squinted at his brother’s back.

‘But you knew the son, of course, didn’t you?’ Gently said.

Jack Spelton sucked. ‘That’s different,’ he said. ‘We don’t have any quarrel with young John. His old man and him are two different people.’

‘You saw him about here quite a bit?’

‘He’s always welcome,’ Jack Spelton said.

‘You get on with him, do you?’ Gently said.

‘Well, yes,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘I don’t have anything against him.’

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ David Spelton said, turning, ‘stop puzzling Jackie with your bloody cleverness. Just ask him straight, he can’t tell you a lie. He’ll only skate round the angles. Yes, John French did tell us he’d part with that land. Yes, we did know it long before Tuesday. No, John French wasn’t hanging round V. No, we weren’t trying to palm her off on him. All straight answers. Just ask straight questions. We don’t care enough about you to lie.’

‘Dave,’ Jack Spelton said, ‘have you gone right off your nut?’

‘He makes me spew,’ David Spelton said.

‘I’m beginning to wonder,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘If you can’t lay off you’d better get to hell out of it. The man’s only doing his job, after all.’

‘And what a job,’ David Spelton said.

‘That’s about enough from you, Dave,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Harry French got knocked on the head, you don’t think they can just let it pass, do you? Somebody’s got to come here looking into it, they can’t let that sort of thing go on. And he’s got to make a job of it, and find things out. He wants to nail the right bloke if he’s going to nail anyone.’

‘That’s Jackie for you,’ David Spelton said. ‘He’d sooner have you hang him than think him unfair.’

‘Your temper’ll hang you yet,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘Take a reef in your tongue. Let the man ask his questions.’ He looked towards Gently without meeting Gently’s eye. ‘Dave was spoiled by his mother,’ he said. ‘He still hasn’t grown up.’

‘I was spoiled by something,’ David Spelton said.

‘Dave,’ Jack Spelton said.

David Spelton said nothing.

‘All right then,’ Jack Spelton said. ‘There was some talk at the time with young John. He did give us to understand he’d sell us that piece when the time came. But I didn’t pay much attention to it, you know the way these youngsters talk. Wait and see how he feels about it now he can do what he likes. Reckon he may think a bit different, a bit more like his old man. Anyway, I wasn’t banking on it, and Dave didn’t talk as though he was.’