Free The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake Page A

hair.
    ‘D’you think it’s a good thing?’ he asked, in a tight, severely controlled, precise little voice. His conversation is old for his years, like most only children’s.
    ‘Yes. I think so. It can be, anyway,’ I said.
    ‘Yes, I suppose so; for the right people. I shan’t get married, ever. It makes people so miserable. I’d be afraid –’
    ‘Love does make people miserable sometimes. It sounds all wrong, but it’s quite true.’
    ‘Oh, love –’ he said. He paused for a moment, then took a deep breath, and the words came out in a shocked rush, ‘Dad hits Mummy sometimes.’
    I didn’t know what to say. I could see that he was desperately in need of some reassurance. Like any sensitive child, he’s horribly torn by this squabbling between his parents – it’s like living on the side of a volcano for him; no security. I was on the point of trying to comfort him; then, a revulsion from the whole business seized me; I didn’t want to become involved, distracted. I said, a bit coldly, I’m afraid, that we’d better get on with the unseen. It was a wretched piece of cowardice really. I saw my betrayal of him reflected in Phil’s face.

6 August
    HAD A LOOK round the Rattery-Carfax garage this afternoon. Told George it might come in useful as material in a book –
nihil subhumanum a me alienum puto
is the detective novelist’s motto though I didn’t put it quite like that. Asked a number of idiotic questions which enabled George to patronise and me to discover that the garage keeps all spare parts of cars they’re agents for. I didn’t dare ask specifically about wings and bumpers – it might have made him suspicious that I was a policeman in disguise. I’ve found out already that he sometimes keeps his car there at night, though he’s got a garage attached to his house.
    Then we went out at the back. There’s a patch of waste ground, with a godless rubbish dump on it, and the Severn at the far end. I wanted to have a look at this heap of old iron – not that I thought it likely that George would have been such a fool as to deposit his damaged wing there; so I delayed him with a little conversation.
    ‘Pretty unsightly all this stuff is.’
    ‘Well, what do you suggest we should do with it? Dig a neat hole and bury it, like the Anti-Litter League?’
    George was quite up in the air. For such a self-satisfied creature, he’s curiously touchy at times. Suddenly I decided to take a risk.
    ‘Why don’t you dump the stuff in the river? Don’t you ever do that? Get it out of sight, anyway.’
    There was a perceptible pause before he answered. I found myself trembling uncontrollably, so that I had to walk away from him towards the water’s edge to prevent him seeing it.
    ‘Good God, man, what an idea! I’d have the whole town council down on my head. In the river! That’s a good one! I’ll have to tell Carfax.’ He was beside me now. ‘Anyway, it’d be too shallow at the edge. Look.’
    I was looking. I could see the bed of the river. But also I saw, twenty yards to my left, a derelict punt moored. Yes, George, it’s too shallow at the edge to conceal anything, but you might easily have taken the punt into midstream and got rid of the tell-tale evidence there.
    ‘I’d no idea the river was so broad here,’ I said. ‘I’d like to do a bit of sailing. I suppose I could hire a dinghy here?’
    ‘I daresay,’ he said indifferently. ‘A bit slow for my taste, that game – sitting on one’s fanny holding a piece of rope.’
    ‘I’ll have to take you out some day in a stiff breeze. You wouldn’t call that “slow”.’
    I’d seen all I wanted to see. The old iron on the scrap heap was very old iron indeed. A dreadful eyesore. And I was pretty sure I’d seen a rat scuttling out of it when we were walking down; with a dump and the river, it must be heaven for them. Back in the garage , we came across Harrison Carfax. I happened to mention I’d like a bit of sailing, and he