Leave the Grave Green

The floor of the hall was covered in sisal matting and lined with well-used-looking rubber boots, the walls hung with working gear—oilskin jackets and hats, bright yellow slickers, coils of rope. Smith led them through a door on the left into a sitting room as workaday as the hall.

The room was warm, if spartan, and Kincaid saw Gemma let go of her collar and take out her notebook. Smith stood by the window, still sipping from his mug, keeping an eye on the river. “Tell us how you found the body, Mr. Smith.”

“I came out just after sunup, same as always, have my first cuppa and make sure everything’s shipshape for the day. Traffic starts early, some days, though not so much now as in the summer. Sure enough, upstream there was a boat waiting for me to operate the lock.”

“Can’t they work it themselves?” asked Gemma.

He was already shaking his head. “Oh, the mechanism’s simple enough, but if you’re too impatient to let the lock fill and drain properly you can make a balls-up of it.”

“Then what happened?” prompted Kincaid.

“I can see you don’t know much about locks,” he said, looking at them with the sort of pity usually reserved for someone who hasn’t learned to tie their shoelaces.

Kincaid refrained from saying that he had grown up in western Cheshire and understood locks perfectly well.

“The lock is kept empty when it’s not in operation, so first I open the sluices in the head gate to fill the lock. Then when I open the head gate for the boat to enter, up pops a body.” Smith sipped from his cup, then added disgustedly, “Silly woman on the boat started squealing like a pig going to slaughter, you’ve never heard such a racket. I came in here and dialed nine-nine-nine, just to get some relief from the noise.” The corners of Smith’s eyes crinkled in what might have been a smile. “Rescue people fished him out and tried to resuscitate the poor blighter, though if you ask me, anybody with a particle of sense could see he’d been dead for hours.”

“When did you recognize him?” asked Gemma.

“Didn’t. Not his body, anyway. But I looked at his wallet when they took it out of his pocket, and I knew the name seemed familiar. Took me a minute to place it.”

Kincaid moved to the window and looked out. “Where had you heard it?”

Smith shrugged. “Pub gossip, most likely. Everyone hereabouts knows the Ashertons and their business.”

“Do you think he could have fallen in from the top of the gate?” Kincaid asked.

“Railing’s not high enough to keep a tall man from going over if he’s drunk. Or stupid. But the concrete apron continues for a bit on the upstream side of the gate before it meets the old tow-path, and there’s no railing along it at all.”

Kincaid remembered the private homes he’d seen upstream on this side of the river. All had immaculate lawns running down to the water, some also had small docks. “What if he went in farther upstream?”

“The current’s not all that strong until you get close to the gate, so if he went in along there,”—he nodded upstream—“I’d say he’d have to have been unconscious not to have pulled himself out. Or already dead.”

“What if he went in here, by the gate? Would the current have been strong enough to hold him down?”

Smith gazed out at the lock a moment before answering. “Hard to say. The current is what holds the gate closed—it’s pretty fierce. But whether it could hold a struggling man down… unlikely, I’d say, but you can’t be sure.”

“One more thing, Mr. Smith,” Kincaid said. “Did you see or hear anything unusual during the night?”

“I go to bed early, as I’m always up by daybreak. Nothing disturbed me.”

“Would a scuffle have awakened you?”

“I’ve always been a sound sleeper, Superintendent. I can’t very well say, now can I?”

“Sleep of the innocent?” whispered Gemma as they took their leave and Smith firmly shut his door.

Kincaid stopped and stared at the lock. “If Connor Swann were unconscious or already dead when he went in the water, how in hell did someone get him here? It would be an almost impossible carry even for a strong man.”

“Boat?” ventured Gemma. “From either upstream or down. Although why someone would lift him from a boat downstream of the lock, carry him around and dump him on the upstream side, I can’t imagine.”

They walked slowly toward the path that would take them back across the weir, the wind at their backs. Moored boats rocked peacefully in the quiet water downstream. Ducks dived and bobbed, showing no concern with human activity that didn’t involve crusts of bread. “Was he already dead? That’s the question, Gemma.” He looked at her, raising an eyebrow. “Fancy a visit to the morgue?”

CHAPTER

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