Gently Sinking

Book 0: George Gently

by Alan Hunter

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

When a dilapidated cargo ship sinks, killing the illegal immigrants packed in below decks, the man responsible goes free, but not for long. Two weeks later hi is found dead in bed with a knife in his back. Human trafficker Thomas Blackburn lived and died in the heart of London's West Indian community and, when the attitude of the local murder squad Chief Superintendent is deemed likely to aggravate race relations, George Gently is called in to oversee the case. But as tempers flare within the community, fuelling the fires of racial conflict, time is not on his side . . .

Release date: April 3, 2014

Publisher: C & R Crime

Print pages: 209

Sample

THE SS NAXOS ISLAND was a cargo vessel of 3,500 tons. She was built on the Tyne in 1921. She was owned by a Greek shipping company called Europa Maritime. She was registered in Panama. She had a German captain, Greek officers and a Portuguese crew of eight. She was on charter to a London import-export agency run by one Thomas Blackburn. She was plying between Kingston, Jamaica, and West India Dock, London. She carried sugar to London and mixed cargoes to Kingston. She made ten to twelve trips annually. She could be represented as seaworthy.

On 1 October 1967 the Bergen Line MS Venus, returning from an autumn cruise to the Canary Islands, was proceeding up-Channel in a full SW gale. At 0217 hours she picked up distress signals from a vessel identifying herself as the Naxos Island and giving a position 25 miles SSE of Start Point. The Venus was 40 miles SW of Start Point and running at reduced speed because of heavy seas. She put out a general call. The call was received by two vessels in the near neighbourhood of the Naxos Island. One of these, the Jason Line MS Matilda, was within seven miles of the given position. She altered course immediately. She saw a number of distress rockets. When she reached the position she encountered oil and floating wreckage and discovered a waterlogged lifeboat. She picked up a survivor from the lifeboat. He gave his name as Soloman Lord Roberts of Kingston, Jamaica. He was black. He was not of the known complement of the Naxos Island. Three other bodies, presumed to come from the wreck, were washed ashore during the week following at Beesands and Strete, in Start Bay. One was identified as the Captain, Carl Ritter. The other two were Afro-Caribbean.

Soloman Lord Roberts was landed at Plymouth and met there by the immigration authorities. As a result of his interrogation police action was taken in both Kingston, Jamaica, and London. In Kingston, Jamaica, police raided the office of Hamish McClure, Thomas Blackburn’s corresponding agent, finding nothing but meticulous records of legitimate trading activity. In London they raided Blackburn’s office in Hale Street, Poplar. There they found records exactly corresponding to Hamish McClure’s. McClure and Blackburn, and Blackburn’s two partners, James Osgood and Frederick Grey, emphatically denied all knowledge of illegal immigrant traffic. Blackburn suggested Ritter was responsible. Ritter’s character was known to be equivocal. Soloman Lord Roberts confirmed that Ritter had been one of his contacts in Kingston.

Meanwhile Europa Maritime claimed insurance and Blackburn negotiated a fresh charter.

On 18 October he was found dead in his flat in Chiswick. A cheap sheath-knife had been thrust in his back. There were no prints on the handle.

The body was naked and lay on the bed. A short while before death he’d been with a woman.

The case interested the Home Office.

They suggested Gently should be put in charge.

‘You stay, Gently.’

The Assistant Commissioner (Crime) poked a finger at the chair from which Gently was rising. It was the morning conference of 19 October, and Gently had chosen a seat next to the door. Nine times out of ten he’d have slipped through that door before the AC spotted him . . . today, he’d guessed it wouldn’t work, and it didn’t. Slowly, he sat again.

Outside it was raining. Through the huge, naked window one looked down at faintly gleaming roofs. From the AC’s new office you could still see the Thames, though no longer the cliffs of County Hall.

The Thames was ebbing, fast and yellow, shouldering by the piers of the bridges. A dark police-launch with a dragging pennant was sliding over the tide upstream. The same Thames as at Whitehall, yet here . . . more distant.

Inside, the office smelt of new paint and new furnishings, while the AC still hadn’t got round to unpacking his college photographs. The window was too large, you looked down too far. People below in the streets were computer dots, the cars dashes.

And of course . . . rain. London, England, 19 October.

‘You’ve done your homework?’ the AC asked, when the door closed behind the last policeman.

‘Yes.’ Gently touched his file.

‘Good. Then you’ll know what I’m going to ask you.’

‘I’ve an idea.’

‘We have to check, that’s pretty obvious in the circs. And the truth, mind. No black mark if you’re pulled off the case for being honest.’

Gently stared empty-faced at yellow-grey sky over Bankside.

‘Because everyone’s so certain—’

‘The Home Office is – and so am I.’

‘White people also use knives.’

‘So do chefs and Boy Scouts. But get it out of your head, if it was ever there, that Blackburn was killed by a white person. He was running that racket. A score of immigrants, maybe more, went down in his ship. The Naxos Island was rotten. She wasn’t properly insured. Blackburn knew about that. And we couldn’t touch him. So the immigrants fixed it – and between ourselves, not much grief.’

Gently shrugged. ‘Simple.’

‘Oh, it’s simple,’ the AC said. ‘The way a race riot is simple, and lynching parties. All straightforward. Drop a man into this case with simple feelings about colour and all of a sudden a big step forward. We’ll have caught up with the States.’

Gently hesitated. ‘Are you suggesting . . .?’

The AC shook his head. ‘MI5 have a listening-post. This isn’t political. Yet. Of course, they clapped a D-notice on it and every paper killed the story, but we can’t wrap it up for keeps. Not without a Star Chamber. The best we can do is soft-pedal it, play it down, stick with the book. Then grit our bloody teeth and hope. Still, I suppose we’re used to that.’

Down by the Pool a tug was hooting, mournfully cheery through the rain.

‘Why pick me?’ Gently said. ‘I’ve no great experience with the black community.’

‘Aha,’ the AC said. ‘Our well-known humanist. You were picked from on high. Angel needed, send for Gently. Somebody up there loves you.’

‘I’m not that sort of angel,’ Gently said.

‘So you’re the fool who’s going to rush in.’

‘I don’t know how I’d shape with black suspects.’

‘Say one raped your wife. Try that.’

The AC pulled off his glasses and stared small-eyed at Gently. Though a panel at the top of the big window stood ajar it still felt close in the office. On a cabinet near Gently stood a stack of reference books, their new plastic bindings smelling sour. Behind the plastic-smell lingered the paint-smell and a faint odour from the composition floor.

‘I’m not married.’

‘Oh God! Your sister.’

‘I don’t think my sister—’

‘You have a girl-friend.’

The AC swung his glasses at Gently, thrusting, determined to pin him down.

‘I’d be angry, of course.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Boiling angry . . . that’s natural. But I can’t see the colour of his skin making it different . . . whoever did it, I’d be angry.’

‘He’s here illegally. A black immigrant.’

‘A rapist. They come all colours.’

‘He’s living on state handouts. Never worked in his life.’

‘Plenty of white criminals of that description.’

‘But this one’s black and violent. And your girlfriend hurt. Screaming for you.’

Gently grinned. ‘You’re hamming it,’ he said.

‘You’d strangle that bastard.’

‘Just arrest him. I might even feel sorry for him, the way you tell it.’

The AC drew breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You probably pass. But I had to find out. Race relations is something the best of us slip on, and there isn’t room for slipping here.’

He resumed his glasses, settling them in place with a quick, decided movement. Gently flickered the pages of his file. The tug gave two more reproachful toots.

‘May I ask a question?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is it a conviction I’m after?’

The AC stared.

‘It just seemed to me there was a way out,’ Gently said. ‘Chummie goes back quietly on a quick ship to Jamaica. No case, no trial. No headlines. No casualties.’

The AC closed his eyes. ‘Tempting,’ he said. ‘But not for us. Handle it that way, and you’re inviting every disgruntled illegal immigrant to use a knife.’

‘It may come to that. Lack of evidence.’

The AC opened his eyes with a bang. ‘There’d better be evidence, Gently,’ he said. ‘You asked a question. I’m answering it.’

‘The hard way.’

‘Yes.’

Gently shrugged, rose with his file. ‘I’m the fool, then. I’ll get over there and make motions like rushing in.’

‘Wait,’ the AC said.

Gently stopped.

‘Two things. One is they’ve pulled in Blackburn’s partners. Blackburn kept records hidden in his flat, and they implicate Osgood and Grey. Offences contravening the Immigration Act. They’re holding them on remand at Chiswick. That happened last night, not in the file. Other thing . . .’

His glasses dipped again. He looked steadily at Gently’s blank face.

‘Sorry it had to be you,’ he said. ‘If it blows up, I’m behind you.’

The rain was continuing, delicate, indefinite. Gently drove through it in his new Sceptre with its gold coach-line and crimped wheels. Along Cannon Street, round St Paul’s, into Newgate Street and up West: the car soothing him with its polite potential and aura of current trend. At Divisional HQ he learned the officer i/c the case was at Blackburn’s flat in Calonne Road. He drove to Calonne Road, wipers stroking all the way.

Calonne Road was a pleasant street lined with plane trees that were beginning to shed. One side was terraced; the houses were late Victorian, ornately architected in yellow brick. Blackburn had lived at 72, a detached house with stone-framed bays. It had a massive portico. In the macadamized forecourt stood a black Super Snipe and a dark blue Viva.

Gently parked and went in. A constable on the door directed him upstairs. The hall of the house had been reconstructed to give separate entries to four flats. Blackburn’s flat was on the first floor and had the landing enclosed to form a vestibule.

Inside Gently found three men engaged in a very thorough search. One of them, tall, heavy-framed, jumped up from the floor as Gently entered.

‘Chief Inspector Tallent?’

‘That’s me, sir.’

He was an officer Gently didn’t know, a youngish man with small, pale eyes and a white stripe in his brown hair.

They shook hands. Tallent introduced him to the members of his team: Inspector Makin, sad-faced, balding, and a good-looking youngster named Stout.

‘Found anything fresh?’

‘ ’Fraid not, sir. But I thought it was worth a try. You’ll have heard what we found yesterday. The devil had hidden it pretty well.’

Stripey, they’d call him, behind his back, though certainly nowhere else. Tallent was mean-mouthed, hard-voiced, had the fists of a boxer.

Proudly he revealed to Gently a section of skirting-board that tipped outward to reveal a wall-safe.

No doubt a good cop, but a tough one. The wrong man here.

‘Blackburn lived alone?’

Gently moved about the dishevelled room. It was the lounge. Good, modern furniture, wall-lighting, deep carpet. An expensive radiogram. A pile of LPs with ‘Sergeant Pepper’ on top. In a divider-bookcase reference-, year-books and a balance of sensational paperbacks.

‘Yes, sir. It was his daily help found him.’

‘Neighbours know anything?’

‘Nobody heard it. The flat below here is empty.’

‘See any visitors?’

‘No, sir. But there’s an outside stairway to the garden. Back of the garden is a service road. You don’t need to enter by the front door.’

‘Who last saw him alive?’

‘A tenant called Baker. Has the other flat downstairs. He saw Blackburn come in around 9.30 p.m. According to the post-mortem he was dead by about 10.’

‘You checked Blackburn’s office.’

‘We checked. He left there about 4.’

‘And in between?’

‘Don’t know, sir. Report says he’d eaten a meal.’

Gently had seen Blackburn’s photograph and had read his dossier in the file. Age forty, he’d been a handsome man with dark, curling hair and dark eyes. He came from Yorkshire, and his family lived there. He’d worked for a shipping company in Hull. Five years ago he’d moved to London and set up office in Poplar. No record. The legitimate side of his business was quite profitable.

‘He’d been with a woman. Nobody saw her?’

‘Seems not,’ Tallent said. ‘From what people say he was pretty cautious about the way he had visitors. They’ve heard them talking, laughing in here, playing music, romping around, but never seen them come and go. Must have always used the back way.’

‘You’ll have talked to Osgood and Grey?’

‘Yes, sir. They’re playing it close.’

‘What about the office staff?’

‘A clerk and a typist, sir. Nothing there.’

‘Let’s see some more of this flat.’

Tallent pushed open a door to reveal the bedroom. The double bed on which the body had been found had been stripped and the bedding removed. Here too the furniture was expensive. An elaborate bed-head was upholstered in white leather. A matching dressing-table, occupying one wall, had multiple mirrors and its own lighting. A fitted wardrobe held costly clothes.. . .