Pursuit of Arms

by Gerald Hammond

  “Then it’s probably the same girl,” Molly said. “Ronnie called her Butch. But how on earth would Ronnie get to know a ballerina?”

  “When we left the King’s, our way back to the car took us past the stage door and this girl was coming out. I wouldn’t have known her in flared, scarlet jeans and a fur duffel coat, but Ronnie can get quite perceptive when he’s got a drink in. He took off his hat with a flourish —”

  “Ronnie did?”

  “Believe it or not, yes. He told her how much he’d admired her performance. And he grabbed one of our business cards off me and scrawled his name and address on the back, and said to look him up if she was ever in Newton Lauder. So if it’s the same girl, she took him at his word.” Feeling that he had said it all, Keith resumed his meal.

  Molly’s eyes were wide. She felt that the subject was far from exhausted. “But, Keith, a girl like that . . . I mean, she makes an impression. She only spoke to us for a few minutes, but already Deborah’s made up her mind that she wants to be a dancer. She wants lessons for her birthday; and she’s upstairs now, practising. I only hope the ceilings can stand it. Keith, what would a girl like that see in Ronnie?”

  Keith knew exactly what she meant. Molly’s brother was a rough diamond. “Beats me,” he said. “Of course, Ronnie was wearing his best tweeds and the hat with the salmon flies. If she’s Polish, she wouldn’t realise that he talks like a tinky from the back of beyond. Has she really moved in with him?”

  “If she hasn’t, she’s going to. But that cottage . . .”

  “It’s a house. Small, but definitely a house. And don’t forget that after it was flooded, that time the canal burst its banks, you and Janet saw that the insurance money was spent on doing it up like a stately home, when Ronnie just wanted to let it dry out and buy a pair of Dicksons off me with the money. And I ended up taking a loss on those Dicksons,” Keith added resentfully. “Point is, she probably thinks he’s the Provost of Ednam.”[1]

  If Molly felt obliged to defend her brother, it was only in support of a fellow-member of the great sisterhood. “He is sort of macho,” she suggested.

  Keith dropped his fork. “Would you say that?”

  “I . . . I think so. If I’m right about what the word means. Have you ever met anyone who was less effeminate?”

  Keith admitted that he had not.

  “Ronnie with a ballerina!” Molly said, summing up. “A Polish ballerina! Wonders will never cease.”

  *

  Several days passed before Keith and Molly were able to satisfy their curiosity over Ronnie’s new domestic arrangements. The impending work for Eddie Adoni kept Keith busy. As well as the more routine details, he had to earmark alternative accommodation, in case his usual premises were required by their proper owner, and to make standby plans for the transfer of equipment. He could neither neglect the routine gunsmithing side of the firm’s business nor the dealing in antique guns, and Wallace, his partner, had to be relieved in the shop from time to time.

  He managed to break one of his journeys to call at Ronnie’s home late one afternoon. He found his brother-in-law at home but alone. Keith’s experienced eye detected signs that a lady more than a cut above Ronnie’s usual conquests was in residence. Ronnie explained that Butch was in work with the Scottish Ballet that week and rarely got back to Newton Lauder before the small hours. That much, Keith already knew. Miss Baczwynska was possessed of a souped-up Mini and drove it in a manner which spread terror among the local road users so that her comings and goings were common knowledge.

  On Molly’s behalf, Keith invited Ronnie to bring Miss Butch to Briesland House for drinks on Sunday morning, with lunch to follow.

  The C alders knew that Ronnie, who was up before dawn on most weekdays, was a reluctant riser on the Sabbath, so they were caught unprepared when the crunch of gravel and the beat of a diesel Land Rover announced the premature arrival of their visitors. Molly ripped off her apron and Keith his gardening gloves, and they met in the hall just as the doorbell chimed. Ronnie ushered his partner in with an air of proprietorial pride.

  Molly had met Butch before, but Keith had only seen her on stage and for a few minutes in a dark street so that her impact came at him fresh. She had the lithe fitness and the perfect walk of a dancer, and exuded a vitality which Keith, himself a dynamo of nervous energy, found daunting. Her auburn hair was styled short around a face that showed the gauntness of regular dieting. When she smiled, which was often, she showed large but regular teeth except for prominent upper incisors which, taken with her large and soulful eyes, gave her the look of an affectionate squirrel. She was flamboyantly dressed, in black with a scarlet cape, and clung to a capacious bag of soft leather. Keith found himself blinking. He greeted her with the cautious enthusiasm which he would have accorded to some wild animal and she responded in a deep voice, heavily accented.

  “My English is not good,” she said carefully, “but Ronnee is learning me batterer.”

  Ronnie nodded encouragement.

  Keith was wondering what on earth to say next when Deborah came clattering down the stairs. For a small girl, she always seemed to make an inordinate amount of noise. She greeted the ballerina as an old friend.

  “Come and see me dance. I’ve been practising.”

  Molly sighed with relief. “I must go on with the lunch. My family can look after you, Miss . . . Baczwynska? Is that right?”

  “You call me Butch.”

  “Do I? I mean, can I?” Molly sounded doubtful. For all her fire and fitness, Miss Baczwynska was far from butch.

  “Aabody call me that. And yes, wee one, I see you dance. But for the now, you show Ronnee. I wish to blether with your father about business.”

  “That’s all right, then,” Molly said. “Drinks in about an hour.”

  Molly retired to the kitchen. Deborah dragged Ronnie away, while leaving him in no doubt that he was, in her view, second best. Keith relieved Butch of her cape, led her into his study and gave her a chair. He watched out of the corner of his eye, to see whether the carefully gracious room impressed her, but she seemed impervious to her surroundings. Disappointed, he sat down behind the desk.

  “I explain,” Butch said carefully. “Ronnee gave me your card. It say you deal with guns, old guns.”

  “Antiques,” Keith said. “Yes.”

  “Antics, is right. I ask many chiefs who deals in these and ilka time your name is said. A big dealer and more honest than most is what is said.”

  Keith, who considered himself to be rather more than a hundred per cent honest with only rare and excusable lapses, was nettled. “You have an antique gun to sell?”

  “I have muckle antics to sell,” she said.

  Although Ronnie’s tuition seemed to be producing a not unattractive linguistic cocktail, Keith felt obliged to intervene. “You should say ‘many’ rather than ‘muckle’.”

  “Many is mair than muckle?”

  “Same meaning, but —”

  “Aha! Is not good English, muckle?”

  “Is not . . . it isn’t English at all. Muckle is Scots, many is English.”

  “So. I have many guns to sell, is betterer? I want you help me.”

  She lifted her bag from the floor. It seemed heavy. Delving among the contents, she produced a fat envelope and passed it over. Keith found that it contained between thirty and forty photographs, all professionally taken to a high standard. He turned his swivel chair away, ostensibly to get better light but in fact because he never let a client see his eyes while he was appraising guns.

  As he glanced through the photographs he felt a not unfamiliar vacuum in his guts. Each photograph showed at least one gun, several showed pairs and in one instance there was a whole matching set of sporting guns and rifles. Each specimen appeared to be in mint condition and to be guaranteed to make collectors and curators drool.

  Some of this must have shown in his posture. She broke in on his thoughts. “Is valuable,” she said. “How much you give?”<
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  “First, I’d want to see them,” he said.

  “I bring one.” She felt in the bottom of her bag and withdrew a bundle wrapped in tissue paper. “None is less good than this.”

  The bundle balanced itself in his palm. He unwrapped the tissue paper. The miquelet was in perfect condition. From a glance at its photograph he had assumed that it was one of the many Turkish pistols made to the Spanish traditional design, but on close examination of the decoration in the metal sheathing and the gilt barrel he saw that it was eighteenth century Russian. It belonged in a museum.

  On the heels of that thought came another. He laid the pistol down gently on his blotter, rotated the swivel chair again and reached into the tall bookcase for an old, leather-bound book. After some fumbling, he found the plate which he had, vaguely, remembered. He compared it with one of the photographs. “This gun,” he said. “The flintlock pistol. This or its twin was in the Kropiniev Museum in Warsaw.”

  “Is very old book,” she said quickly. “Not modern. Kropiniev was private museum of Kropiniev family. When Russians come, family take treasures away and hide them. I have papers.”

  Keith tapped the pistol with a respectful forefinger. “You have the provenance — the papers — for this one?”

  “I have here. All is OK. But they are in Polish.”

  She produced a slim docket of papers, some typed and some in a thin, spiky handwriting, much faded. On one point, she had not deceived him. They were indeed in Polish. As far as Keith was concerned, they could have referred to any subject under the sun. “We’ll have to get them translated,” he said.

  “If they say what you want, how much this one?”

  Keith picked up the pistol again. He checked that it was unloaded and then tried the mechanism. He studied the engraving under a lens and dropped a bore-light down the barrel. “I’d value it at between six and seven thousand pounds,” he said at last.

  “You have . . .?” She mimed the pressing of buttons. Keith gave her his calculator. She translated pounds into zloty. “Is good,” she said. “I take six and half.”

  For a moment, Keith was tempted. The money could be borrowed. And he would have loved to see his partner’s face if he had committed them. Wallace James had developed a new expression like that of an outraged sheep, with which he greeted additions to that part of their stock which they both knew (although Keith denied it vigorously) to be Keith’s private collection. But no. This would be too much. Besides, there were even more fascinating specimens shown in the photographs.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “Slow down a moment. If all the guns in these photographs are as good as they look, and if their papers are satisfactory, you have a whole lot of money to come. You understand?”

  She nodded. “A wheen of money,” she said, translating his words into a more familiar idiom. “Is good.”

  “Is not bad at all. My firm might buy one or two of the guns, but the sort of total we’d be talking about for the whole collection would be more than we could have lying out for the time it would take to get the best prices. What we’ll do is to sell them for you. Usually we take ten per cent, but for this kind of money we’ll do it for five. You understand five per cent?”

  She nodded and smiled her squirrel’s smile. “One in twenty. Is fair.”

  “Isn’t it just!” Keith suspected that her pleasure was in being left a margin for her own commission. “I send out a catalogue — a list — to museums and collectors, and to other dealers. I’m preparing one now. As soon as I’ve seen the guns and their papers I’ll include them and send the list out. It’ll cause a stir.”

  She nodded again. “I get papers — translated, is right word? Guns come in wee ship, will be here soon.”

  “I’ll want translations certified,” Keith said. “The Polish Embassy would do it.”

  “No embassy. I go to language department of university. Is OK?”

  “Is OK,” Keith said. Like Miss Baczwynska, he found idiom infectious.

  Chapter Two

  Losing his temper with Superintendent Munro had become a habit with Keith Calder, and one which he had almost come to enjoy as the years went by. He was in the process of doing so for perhaps the twentieth time.

  “You’ve got to be out of your tiny Hebridean mind,” Keith said.

  Munro, recently promoted from chief inspector on the retirement of his predecessor, was still too gratified to take more than his usual umbrage at Keith. Besides, he had heard it all before. His long face showed a gleam of perverse pleasure. It was his turn to administer the pin-pricks. “It is no part of my duty,” he said in a careful lilt, “to give special protection to your goods.”

  Keith took several deep breaths and decided to have one more try. “You,” he said, “are the one who gets into a knicker-wetting temper on the subject of guns in your territory. And that despite the fact that according to the last review the total of firearms fired during crimes was down. You harass the hell out of anybody who wants a small-bore rifle, although if anyone ever used such a thing to hold up a bank I never heard of it. If you were honest instead of toeing the police policy line, as handed down on tablets of stone by the Committee of Chief Constables, you’d admit that guns mostly reach the criminal via the black market, starting at the back doors of factories and armouries or from looting in transit. And yet, now that I’ve got a load coming in which would keep organised crime and the I.R.A. tooled up for years, you won’t let me use armed guards. Nor will you provide more than a couple of unarmed bobbies to see the load arrive.”

  The superintendent settled his bony frame as comfortably as he could in the hard chair. “Special precautions, in my experience, only draw attention to the fact that there is something worth stealing.”

  “Too damn many people know about this load already,” Keith said. “Whispers have been getting back to me. I’ve even had an approach from the Manpower Services Commission, wanting to know whether I couldn’t employ a few school leavers.”

  “But you’ve no real reason to believe that a crime is being planned?” Munro asked keenly.

  “Well, no. I’m just doing my duty to God and the insurance company, and keeping you informed.”

  “Don’t you fash yourself, Mr Calder,” Munro said comfortably. “It is true that the nature of your business, and your own character, have attracted trouble from time to time. But nobody steals lorryloads of arms on my patch. We’ll keep our eyes and ears open. There’ll be a pair of laddies in plain clothes to see the load into your works, and irregular visits from the cars on patrol while it’s there.”

  “Well, all right,” said Keith. “If that’s the best you can do. But I’m going to write to you, confirming what we’ve said. Things don’t often go agley. But if the day ever comes when I’m in a position to say ‘I told you so’, I want to be able to prove that I said it.”

  *

  Butch brought the documents back a week later. Keith followed her into the study. Apart from her dancer’s buttocks, which were disappointingly boyish, Keith thought that she had everything. Who was Ronnie, to hit such a jackpot? And did he have enough finesse to appreciate it? Although Keith honestly believed that he had been a model of virtue since his marriage, he was not above coveting his neighbour’s goods, especially when the goods were as nicely distributed as Miss Baczwynska’s.

  She handed over a full set of neatly typed, certified translations. He spent an hour going over them, asking for elucidation of a few points. At last, he pronounced himself satisfied. He had one or two mental reservations, but a collector would not be so hard to please. The customs documents were at least good enough to let Keith plead, in the event of a subsequent enquiry, that he had accepted them in all innocence.

  “When do I get to see the guns?” he asked.

  “Ship is leaving from Lisbon soon. After that . . . How long until money comes?”

  “If you’re looking for the cash in a hurry, we might do better to arrange an auction.”

  “No unction
s,” she said firmly. “If I wanted unctions, I go to your Crispies.”

  “Why not?” Keith asked.

  “Because I say. You put guns in your list and send out and we wait for money, is all.”

  “In other words,” Keith said, “the Polish or Russian governments might sit up and take notice if we advertised that a lot of Polish national treasures were drifting into the West?”

  “Not for you to worry about.”

  “We could stir up a little more interest if we leaked a story to the press,” Keith suggested.

  “No bloody fear,” she said.

  “That’s what I thought you’d say.”

  An importunate Deborah was waiting in the hall, hoping for an hour or two with her new friend and mentor. While Butch was still trying to escape without hurting the child’s feelings, Eddie Adoni arrived. Keith looked upwards in despair. The approach of the grouse season had brought a flood of guns for overhaul or repair and he wanted to get the work out of the way. And the arrival of Eddie suggested that the terms of the final contract were not, after all, agreed.

  Eddie looked smaller than ever in the shadow of his companion, whom he introduced as Paul York. Middle-age had taken the edge off York’s figure, but Keith put him at six and a half feet tall. He was well proportioned for his height and moved lightly on his feet. Keith found that he was shaking a hand that felt like a paving slab, but the grip was very gentle. He took them into the study which was still faintly charged with Butch’s modest perfume.

  “The guns will reach you tomorrow week,” Eddie said. “Are you all set?”

  Keith made a note. “I haven’t had final confirmation of the workshop,” he said. “But I’ve got an alternative lined up. The men are standing by. I’ve arranged for a watchman, nights and weekends, but you’re remembering that I’m leaving insurance in your hands?”