An April Shroud. Reginald Hill

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       5

       A Pleasant Surprise

      For the second time that day, the three men got soaking wet. Papworth seemed impervious to the rain as he propelled the gun-punt over the water with strong economical strokes, but Dalziel was concerned about the old man who had rejected all attempts to make him stay ashore. His clothes were clinging to his body, accentuating its frailty, and the skin of his face seemed to have shrunk in the downpour and be clinging almost transparently to his patrician skull.

      Dalziel himself drew comfort from the thought that this time at least it was not his own clothes that were getting wet. There was a philosophy in there somewhere if he had the time or energy to winkle it out. Or a rule of life at least. He was dimly aware that his blacker moments were often survived only because he had certain usually unspecified and often arbitrary rules of life to cling on to, though whether these added up to the weight and dignity of something called a philosophy he did not know. Duty was one of them, or at least the notion that a man got out of bed and went to his work no matter what he felt like, and saw the job through if he could manage it without collapsing. It had proved a useful and necessary rule in recent weeks.

      The rowing-boat was drifting with one oar missing and the other trailing from the rowlock. The island referred to by Papworth was, Dalziel realized, a real island in the real lake, with water lapping shallowly at the roots of the trees growing there. It would be possible to land here still at the expense only of getting your feet wet, and he scanned the trees closely. They were willows mainly, packed tight together as though drawing back from the threatening waters, but the total area of the island couldn’t have been more than a quarter-acre and he felt pretty certain that Nigel was not lurking there, watching them pass.

      Nor was the boy in the boat. Papworth had asserted it was empty from the start, but Dalziel had not been so positive. You could lie in the bottom of a boat and not be seen from the shore, he suspected. But the boy was not in it and suddenly the dimensions of the problem had changed.

      Papworth jumped lightly into the boat and pulled the trailing oar inboard. From the punt Dalziel examined the rowing-bench closely, looking for he did not know what.

      ‘Where’s it come from?’ he demanded.

      ‘God knows,’ said Papworth with a shrug.

      ‘Can’t you tell?’ said Dalziel.

      ‘They don’t leave tracks,’ said Papworth. ‘And there’s no regular currents, tides, that sort of thing here. No, the wind’d move it most, and you tell me which quarter that’s in.’

      He was right. What wind there was gusted fitfully from no constant direction.

      Old Fielding who had been uncharacteristically quiet ever since they had left the shore now said, ‘There’s an oar missing. Surely if we can find that, it will give us a clue.’

      ‘Mebbe,’ said Papworth laconically. ‘But to what?’

      ‘Listen,’ said Dalziel, glowering at the impassive boatman. ‘There’s three things. The boat could have drifted back from wherever Nigel got off; or it could just have drifted away from the landing-stage in the first place and the boy’s on the road; or if he did have a spot of trouble he could be stranded on a tree or on top of a hedge or something. He can swim, can’t he?’

      ‘Like a fish,’ said Fielding.

      ‘Right then,’ said Dalziel, standing so that the punt rocked dangerously. He ignored the movement and scanned the waters. It was pretty obvious where the lake proper ended and the floods began. A line of trees and half-submerged undergrowth delineated the sweep of the farther bank and, beyond this, the geometric outlines of fields were marked where their hedges broke the surface of the water.

      ‘OK,’ said Dalziel. ‘Shout.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Shout,’ he said. ‘If he is stuck somewhere, he’ll answer.’

      They started to shout, sometimes separately and sometimes with Fielding’s reedy tenor, Papworth’s strong baritone and Dalziel’s totally unmusical bellow blending into a single dreadful cry. The damp air absorbed all their effort with indifferent ease and returned nothing.

      ‘Let’s СКАЧАТЬ