Free Last Respects by Catherine Aird

been green. He was also keen. He had noticed Horace Boller take out his rowing-boat on the River Calle for the third time that afternoon and kept a wary but unobtrusive eye open for his return. If it had been a fishing trip that Horace Boller had been on then he had been unlucky, because he had come back empty-handed for the second time.
    Brian Ridgeford did not have a boat. He didn’t own a boat himself because he couldn’t afford one: and as his beat did not extend out into the sea a grateful country did not feel called upon to supply him with one in the way in which it issued him with a regulation bicycle. What he did have—as his sergeant never failed to remind him—was a perfectly good pair of legs. He decided to use them to walk upstream along the river bank to Collerton.
    As he remarked to his wife as he left the house, ‘You never know what’s there until you’ve been to see.’
    â€˜Curiosity killed the cat’ was what she said to that: but then she hadn’t been married very long and hadn’t quite mastered the role of perfect police wife yet. She was trying hard to do so though because she added, ‘It’s a casserole tonight, darling.’
    The only piece of good advice that the sergeant’s wife had given her was to cook everything in a pot that could stand on the stove or in the oven without spoiling.
    â€˜Good.’ He kissed her and got as far as the door. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ forecast Brian Ridgeford unwisely.
    He too still had a lot to learn.
    The remark wasn’t exactly contrary to standing orders. It was just flying in the face of some sage advice given by one of the instructors at the Police Training School. ‘Never tell your wife when you’re going to be back, lads,’ he’d said to the assembled class. ‘If you’ve told her to expect you at six o’clock then by five minutes past six she’ll be standing at the window. At ten minutes past six she’ll have her worry coat on and be out in the street looking for you. By quarter past she’ll have asked the woman next door what to do next and by half past six she’ll be on the telephone to your sergeant.’ The instructor had delivered his punch-line with becoming solemnity: ‘And the tracker dogs’ll be out searching for you before you’ve had time to get your first pint down.’
    None of this potted wisdom so much as crossed Brian Ridgeford’s mind as he stepped out of the Police House door. He was thinking about other things. All he did do was pause in the hall where the hydrographic map of the estuary hung. He had to stoop a little to look at it properly.
    It was a purely token obeisance.
    Depths in metres reduced to Chart Datum or approximately the level of Lowest Astronomical Tide meant very little to a landlubber like himself. He was, though, beginning to understand from sheer observation of the estuary something about drying heights. It was a form of local knowledge—almost inherited race memory, you might say—that seemed to have been born in the Boller tribe. Constable Ridgeford was having to learn it.
    It was just as well that he had delayed his departure from the house for a moment or two. It meant that when the telephone bell rang a few minutes later he was not quite out of earshot. His wife came flying down the path after him—casserole forgotten.
    â€˜Brian! Brian … stop!’
    He halted.
    â€˜You’re wanted, darling.’
    He turned.
    â€˜They’ve found a dinghy,’ called out Mrs Ridgeford.
    â€˜Ah …’
    â€˜An empty one.’
    He retraced his steps in her direction.
    â€˜On the shore,’ she said.
    â€˜That figures.’ He absent-mindedly slipped an arm round her waist. ‘Whereabouts?’
    â€˜Over at Marby.’
    â€˜Right round there?’ Constable Ridgeford frowned. The tiny fishing village of Marby-juxta-Mare was on the coast the