Authors: Alan Hunter
Gently North-West
Alan Hunter
was born in Hoveton, Norfolk in 1922. He left school at the age of fourteen to work on his father’s farm, spending his spare time sailing on the Norfolk Broads and writing nature notes for the
Eastern Evening News
. He also wrote poetry, some of which was published while he was in the RAF during the Second World War. By 1950, he was running his own bookshop in Norwich. In 1955, the first of what would become a series of forty-six George Gently novels was published. He died in 2005, aged eighty-two.
The Inspector George Gently series
Gently Does It
Gently by the Shore
Gently Down the Stream
Landed Gently
Gently Through the Mill
Gently in the Sun
Gently with the Painters
Gently to the Summit
Gently Go Man
Gently Where the Roads Go
Gently Floating
Gently Sahib
Gently with the Ladies
Gently North-West
Gently Continental
Alan Hunter
Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
First published in the UK by Cassell & Company Ltd, 1967
This paperback edition published by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012
Copyright © Alan Hunter, 1967
The right of Alan Hunter to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-78033-940-5 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-78033-941-2 (ebook)
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound in the UK
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
In memory of my mother, Isabella Hunter, née Andrews, formerly of Newton Lodge, Culsalmond, Aberdeenshire, who, in the short time permitted her, and among the flats and barbarians of East Norfolk, contrived to possess her son with an indelible prejudice for the land of heroes and poets. Rest her well where she lies, and greetings to my unknown Scottish cousins.
Norwich, 1966
Mr Fred Urquhart undertook the labour of vetting my Scots and vainly attempted to argue me out of three parts of it. I am to blame, he is scatheless. My best thanks are due to him for his generous endeavours.
A.H.
Pick up yer stick, Donald,
Pu’ on yer bonnet—
The North Road’s a lang ane
Wi’ queer cattle on it.
Later Border Minstrelsy
, ed. McWheeble
T
HE TWO CARS
, both Humbers, one a blue Hawk
IV
, one a bronze-and-black Sceptre, approached Tally Ho Corner by Ballards Lane and there joined the Great North Road.
Like all good journeys, this one had begun very early in the morning. Bridget, Gently’s sister, and her husband, Geoffrey Kelling, had arrived at Finchley from Somerset the evening before. Brenda Merryn had slept in Kensington, where she had a late surgery to take, but her green
1100
had slunk into Elphinstone Road shortly after 5.30 a.m. Gently, sprucely dressed in thorn-proof tweed, had answered her ring. He beheld Brenda elegant in a tailored suit and a discreet blouse with a ruffled front. She sent a look past Gently before she kissed him. She smelt like a bouquet of lilac.
‘Are your sinister relatives about . . . ?’
‘Naturally. They’re going to eat you for breakfast.’
‘I’ve told you before, George – you’re a swine!’
Gently grinned and drew her into the hall.
Bridget and Geoffrey were already in the breakfast-room, which was warm with the odours of coffee and hot bacon. Bridget was very like her brother but she had grey eyes and her chin was less blunt. Geoffrey had a thin, ascetic face and surprisingly merry brown eyes. They both rose to take Brenda by the hand.
‘My dear, you’re not quite a stranger,’ Bridget told her. ‘We live only a few miles from Bristol, you know, and Geoff has met your father in court.’
‘Yes,’ Geoffrey nodded, ‘to my utter confusion. He bowled over a respected client of mine. Taunton Assizes, ’63. If you’re a chip off old Eric I must watch my step.’
Gently winked at Bridget over Brenda’s shoulder, but Bridget firmly avoided his eye.
Mrs Jarvis, wearing a flowered dressing-gown which Gently had given her at Easter, served the sort of breakfast which in her view was
de rigueur
for intending travellers to Scotland. Because it was so early there were no papers and no radio noises in the background, and the meal proceeded with gay briskness from porridge to toast and marmalade.
Gently, finishing first, went out to switch Brenda’s luggage to the Sceptre; then he brought the Sceptre to the curb behind the Hawk and shunted the
1100
into the garage.
About him the morning air was cool. Slaty shadows lay along the road. And beyond that road was another road, and another road, and at last . . . Scotland! A whole fortnight of peaks and heather lay at the end of Elphinstone Road, waiting the twist of an ignition key, the surge of the Sceptre’s sweet engine . . .
Gently glanced at his watch: 6.10. He could hear Brenda laughing in the house; and suddenly London felt like a prison from which he could scarcely wait to break free. With a fierce longing he wanted those mountains purpling in the rainy wrack, the flowery glens, the brabbling streams, the grey, wind-wrinkled lochs. Otterburn and the North! And Brenda to go by his side. Until that moment, standing by the cars, he hadn’t guessed how much he wanted this trip.
Brenda came out of the house smiling and threw him a mock salute with two fingers.
‘We’re on time, O Highness,’ she said. ‘Take-off isn’t till 6.15.’
‘Being early won’t hurt us,’ Gently grumbled ungraciously. ‘What’s my sister forgotten this time?’
Bridget had forgotten her toilet-bag, as usual, and in fact they were two minutes late getting away.
Traffic was blissfully light when they first struck the A1. After Hatfield, they were drifting along at a steady, murmurous sixty-five, the Hawk leading, the Sceptre a precise thirty yards behind. Some early commuter traffic was meeting them but their own lane was thinly sown, and they were comfortably improving on the average which Gently had estimated in his travel-plan.
He drove relaxedly, his hands lying light on the wheel, his left thumb hooked in the perforated spoke, his right hand extended along the rim. When he made a straight-through change it was a wrist- and not an arm-movement and the revs swelled or levelled to an imperceptible take-up. The Sceptre had been serviced two days before and she was handling like silk. She’d also been polished, vacuumed and valeted, and had her tyres upped three p.s.i.
They cleared the Stevenage motorway and bored on towards Baldock. The sun was standing up on their right in the blue fire of a June sky. Early June had been wet, following a cold, late spring, but since the beginning of the week the weather had turned brilliant.
‘Ah,’ Brenda sighed. ‘This is the life for a jaded receptionist.’
Gently smiled without turning his head. ‘It’ll rain when we get to Scotland,’ he said.
‘Not in my Scotland it won’t,’ Brenda said. ‘It may rain in yours, but not in mine. There’ll be sun on the bens and the glens. I crossed a gypsy’s palm with silver.’
‘There’ll be mist, there’ll be rain,’ Gently said. ‘Then the brightest sun of all. Then the longest and softest evening. Then the rain and the rain and the rain.’
‘Hm,’ Brenda said. ‘Gently the Rain King. You’re a romantic, that’s your trouble. But I’m a realist, I dabble in magic. I’ve witched the weather and it shan’t rain.’
They reached the limits at Baldock and Gently closed up on the slowing Hawk. A big transporter was hammering towards them, leaving a trail of smoke along the street. His eyes on this, Gently failed to notice a car come shooting up in his mirror, and a moment later a dark blue Cortina cut across in front of him with squealing tyres. He hit the brakes. The polite Sceptre ducked and obeyed. Smoke, fumes and the thunder of the transporter broke over and around them. Through a grimy mist Gently saw the Cortina swing out past the Hawk and pull away, then they were through the blackest of the smoke and coasting into slightly dimmed Baldock.
‘Well, the bloody swine!’ Brenda exclaimed, her green eyes flashing. ‘Did you ever see such an exhibition – and breaking the speed limit on top! Did you get his number, George?’
Gently shook his head. ‘Too busy.’
‘But you’re not going to let him get away with it?’
‘What do you suggest – that I chase him?’
‘Yes – something!’ Brenda stormed. ‘Good Lord, he’s a menace, he’ll kill someone. And you, you’re a policeman, George – it’s up to you to do something!’
Gently cocked a grin at her. ‘Cool down,’ he said. ‘I’m just a Whitehall copper on his holidays. If I went chasing every firebrand on the A1 I’d never make it to the Border.’
‘But he might have smashed us.’
‘Not him. He knew I’d reach for my anchors.’
‘And he was breaking the speed limit.’
‘Very naughty. I hope they catch him and sting him for it.
‘Oh, oh,’ Brenda cried. ‘But you didn’t see him, and I did. He had long red hair and a red beard, and he looked the most conceited man in the world.’
‘He probably travels in hair-restorer,’ Gently said. ‘That would account for the chip on his shoulder.’
‘He’s a devil,’ Brenda said. ‘I think he’s a bank-bandit. And you’re just letting him slip through your fingers.’
She jerked a cigarette from a tin on the shelf, put the lighter to it and puffed smoke meanly. She glared at Gently. Gently winked, sent the Sceptre gliding through the lights after Geoffrey.
They strode on again northwards, by Biggleswade, Sandy, St Neots. Gently pointed out a lay-by where had occurred a vicious killing he had investigated. The victim, an R.A.F. warrant officer, had been brought there in a van; then his body had been cut to ribbons with Sten-gun fire to confuse identity and suggest a revenge motive.
‘You know such nice people,’ Brenda commented. ‘You’re such a status-making acquaintance. Did you catch the murderer?’
‘No, he escaped. He was a Pole. His countrymen got him.’
‘What did they do to him?’
‘Oh, gassed him one night.’
‘I see. What you’d call a happy ending.’
‘It was an amusing case,’ Gently said. ‘There was a woman in it. She got strangled.’
Then on by Huntingdon and Alconbury, where the A1 took the line of Ermine Street, and by Stamford, Grantham and Newark, crossing the cantle-cutting Trent. Names were different, houses were different, with more of stone and less of brick; a drystone wall or a strange poster told of the miles they’d left behind. London, the south, were slipping away, their soft grain and prim surface; and the north was coming down to meet them, ruder, franker, more elemental. Even the A1, the unchanging A1, uniform in surface, sign and traffic, choosing always the featureless line of country, couldn’t quite conceal the tang of the North.