'I hadn't come to push,' said the man. 'I've come to negotiate.'
He proved a hard bargainer, totally uninterested in payment by results. It wasn't till he had folded the pound note Dalziel gave him into a one-inch square and thrust it deep into some safe apparently subcutaneous place that he began to push. The effort was in vain. Finally Dalziel dragged his own scene-of-crime gum-boots out of the chaos in the back of the car and joined him in the water. Slowly the car edged forward but once it reached the up-slope its weight combined with the water resistance proved too much.
'Sod it,' said Dalziel.
They sat together on the rowing-boat and smoked. Dalziel had already had the one post-breakfast cigarette he allowed himself nowadays, but he felt the Situation was special.
‘ They'll be coming back soon?' he asked between puffs.
'Half an hour,' said the boatman. 'Not long to put a man in the earth.'
'Good,' said Dalziel. 'I'll beg a lift from the undertaker. Who’re they burying?'
‘Mr Fielding,' said the boatman.
‘Who's he?'
'Mrs Fielding's husband,' was the unhelpful reply.
'Mrs Fielding was in the boat with you?'
Dalziel reached into his pocket, produced the emergency half-bottle he always carried with him in the car, took a long draught and offered it to his companion.
‘ Ta,' he said, and drank.
‘You didn't make that in your garden shed,' he added when he'd finished.
‘No. Are you Mrs Fielding's…?'
He let the question hang.
He let the question hang.
‘I work up at the house. Most things that need done and can’t be done by lying around talking, I do.'
‘I see. Not a bad job if you play your cards right,’ said Dalziel with a knowing smirk. 'Have another drink. That was Mrs Fielding's family, was it?'
Why he should have been interested in anything but getting his car out of the flood and back into working order he did not know. But time had to be passed and the habit of professional curiosity was as hard to change as the habits of smoking or drinking or taking three helpings of potatoes and steamed pudding.