An April Shroud. Reginald Hill

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       3

       A Nourishing Broth

      The teal had dropped back to the surface and followed at a safe distance.

      ‘I had a friend,’ said the ugly man in a pseudo-American accent, ‘got badly hurt trying to screw a duck.’

      ‘Oh, yes?’

      ‘Yeah. He had this thing, you know, about having relationships with the whole of creation. But the duck didn’t see it that way. Took half his nose off. After that he changed his scheme, went for the spiritual communion thing more, you know.’

      ‘Just as well perhaps,’ said Dalziel. ‘He might have had trouble with ants.’

      The other laughed approvingly.

      ‘That’s true, man.’

      He thinks he’s tested me, thought Dalziel. Now I’ve passed his little shock test, he’ll try to patronize me.

      ‘Charley there, the boy with the wooden whanger, now he goes in more for this kind of kick.’

      He squatted behind the punt gun and made firing noises more appropriate to a howitzer.

      ‘No, Hank, you’ve got it wrong,’ protested Tillotson amiably. ‘I like a bit of sport, that’s all. I say, these floods are rather jolly though. I bet a lot of birds will come back. It must have been fine fowling country, this, before they drained it.’

      ‘See what I mean?’ said the other. ‘He’s just aching to get this old phallic symbol jerking off again.’

      At last Dalziel had penetrated through the pseudo-mid-Atlantic flip speech style to a couple of recognizable vowels. He liked to know where he was with people and basic information about background was a good place to start. It gave him something to occupy his mind, to keep out the greyness which threatened to seep in whenever he relaxed.

      ‘Not many ducks in Liverpool,’ he said. ‘My name’s Dalziel. Who’re you?’

      The dark man looked at him assessingly before replying, ‘Hank Uniff.’

      Dalziel laughed, a short sharp offensive bark which acknowledged that there hadn’t been much chance of his interlocutor being called Jim Smith or Bill Jones.

      ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘How was the funeral?’

      ‘Full of images, man,’ said Uniff. ‘Hey, Charley, great funeral, huh? I mean, when they dropped the coffin in the hole, well, it was just about waterlogged. Cheerist, what a splash!’

      ‘Yes,’ admitted Tillotson as he passed them in practice of his new technique which involved thrusting the pole into the water off the bows and walking the whole length of the punt. It was inevitable, thought Dalziel, that one so obviously born a victim would sooner or later step over the side.

      ‘Yes,’ repeated Tillotson, ‘it was rather like a burial at sea. Full fathom five, Tom Bowling, all that. Did you get some good pictures, Hank?’

      ‘I shot off a whole roll,’ replied Uniff. ‘But did I get the light right? It wasn’t easy to judge and that creepy preacher man didn’t help by complaining.’

      He cradled his camera protectively as if an attempt were being made to wrest it from his hands.

      ‘Didn’t Mrs Fielding object?’ queried Dalziel.

      ‘Bonnie? Hell, no. I mean, why, man?’

      ‘Hank’s an artist,’ explained Tillotson, passing them again at a smart trot. His new technique was certainly moving the punt along much faster, but at the expense of direction if one assumed that the rowing-boat was taking the shortest route home. It was now almost out of sight and several points to the nor’-east.

      Dalziel pulled his coat collar more tightly round his neck and resisted the temptation to take charge of the vessel. He was the super-cargo, not the captain. But something of his feelings must have shown to Uniff who grinned maliciously at his discomfiture and began to whistle ‘The Skye Boat Song’.

      ‘What kind of artist are you, Mr Uniff?’ asked Dalziel.

      ‘What kinds of artist are there, man?’ replied Uniff.

      ‘Well,’ replied Dalziel, irritated, ‘there’s con-artists, and there’s shit-artists, and there’s …’

      But his catalogue of abuse was interrupted by the forecast disaster. Tillotson drove the punt forward into a half-submerged hedge, the bows rose in the air, Tillotson screamed and went over the side, Uniff and Dalziel fell together in a tangled heap from which Dalziel recovered just in time to see his suitcase slowly toppling into the water.

      Furious, he rose and put his huge hand into the face of Tillotson who was trying to clamber back on board.

      ‘My case!’ he yelled. ‘Get my bloody case!’

      Recognizing that this was an essential condition of readmittance, Tillotson pursued the case which СКАЧАТЬ