Pursuit of Arms

by Gerald Hammond

  Keith pulled his mind back from the pit. “Right,” he said.

  “You spoke to the police at the north junction and then drove through Newton Lauder again, and you turned back to drop Deborah with Janet at the flat?”

  “At the shop,” Keith said. “Wal was out.”

  “That was sensible,” Molly said briskly. “I knew she was there, because I phoned up to find out what had happened to the two of you. And I knew something bad had happened because Janet told me the state you were in and she said that police-cars had been rushing around. Now, when you got to the factory, who was there . . .? Was Mr Munro there?”

  Keith seemed to shake himself awake. “He was there. He’d arrived while I was dropping Deborah. There were two police-car crews and the ambulancemen and one of the men I’d hired to do the unloading. He’d turned up late. That’s how he was alive.”

  “The others were dead? All of them?”

  “I don’t know.” Keith dropped his voice to a whisper. “The driver of the lorry. Four policemen — Ritchie had sent out two extra on my say-so. And three of the labourers I’d hired. That’s . . . seven?”

  “Eight,” Molly said.

  “Oh, dear God! And I’m to blame!”

  Molly had still not caught up with all the facts, but one thing she knew for sure — nothing was ever Keith’s fault. “Don’t you go thinking those sort of thoughts. I’m sure it was nothing of the sort.”

  “If I’d been quicker off the mark —”

  Molly dragged one of his hands off the wheel and gripped it tightly, for her own comfort. “Then you’d probably have been killed too,” she said.

  “But if I’d gone round the circuit the other way, I could have diverted the lorry or something. I don’t know what.”

  “No, you don’t,” Molly pointed out firmly. “You’re only guessing. Was it very terrible?” She had decided that it would be better for Keith to talk it out now.

  Keith gave a shuddering sigh. “I never saw up close,” he said. “They kept me hanging around in the car while they thought of more and more questions. There was nothing to be seen. No lorry, of course. But I . . . I saw them taken to the ambulances, and none of them were walking. I think one or two must have been alive, because I could see that they were being given oxygen, but at least one or two had their heads covered. I couldn’t tell which was which at that distance, but somewhere among them would have been Willie Adams. I hired him to help unload. He is — or was — unemployed. I thought I was doing him a favour. Then that chap McNaught came out, the prematurely bald one —”

  “The man who buys the tackle for the Police Angling Club?”

  “That’s him. He went behind the wall for a puke and came back looking green. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to return. He said it looked as if they’d been made to sit down in a row and then been clubbed. He was going to tell me something else, but he had another attack of the heaves and by the time it was over Munro was asking me more questions. Munro was all grim and uptight and wouldn’t tell me anything.” Keith choked.

  “And all for the sake of a few guns.”

  “Not exactly a few . . .” Keith suddenly slammed his fist against the steering-wheel and swore again. “I’ve just remembered. Butch’s guns were on that lorry.”

  “Oh, dear!” Molly said as mildly as she could. “How did that happen?”

  “Eddie’s guns were coming from his warehouse in Gourock. Butch’s antiques came off a ship which docked in Port Glasgow. It seemed a sensible arrangement. I asked Eddie and he didn’t mind.”

  “Does Butch know they’ve gone?”

  “I don’t suppose so, in the circumstances,” Keith said. He put his head down again. “Oh, dear God . . .!”

  *

  As Superintendent Munro had suggested, because of Keith’s nature and of his professional activities he was a natural attracter of trouble to himself and those around him, so that Molly had had more than normal experience of treating those suffering from physical or psychological shock. Her methods were her own. She hauled Keith inside and forced a large measure of whisky into him, followed by some hot food. Then she drove him, still protesting, upstairs and into a long, hot bath, and thence to his bed. She left him to his fretting while she used the telephone to arrange for the return of Deborah from the shop and the collection of the car for repair. Then, when she judged that the whisky had passed far enough through his system for safety, she fed him three tablets which had been prescribed for herself on an occasion when one of Keith’s exploits had brought her to the brink of a breakdown.

  Keith, half doped and more than a little drunk, felt far from sleepy. But he knew that Molly was right. He stretched and relaxed and then forced his mind to ignore the disasters of the day and to dally with more soporific subjects. He slept, restlessly at first. But when Molly came to bed she teased him into wakefulness and they made love. Afterwards, he dropped into deep and healing sleep.

  In the morning Molly left him, still dozing, and it was nearly midday before he joined her downstairs, shaved but still dressing-gowned, wan but in control of himself again. “What did you hit me with last night?” he asked.

  “Enough,” Molly said.

  “Enough is right. Yesterday . . . it wasn’t all just a bad dream?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What’s been happening?”

  “I only know what’s been said on the radio, which is no more than you told me. Could you manage some breakfast?”

  “I think I could.” Keith sounded surprised. “Something to tempt a delicate appetite.”

  “Tea, scrambled eggs and toast?”

  “That sounds suitably invalidish. Is Munro still in charge of the case, do you know?”

  “The radio said something about the Serious Crimes Squad being called in.”

  Keith dropped into one of the Windsor chairs. “I was hoping he’d be too busy to come pestering me,” he said. “But if they’ve put somebody else in, he’ll have nothing better to do than subject me to one of his tongue-lashings. And for once, he’ll have a wee bit of cause. Well, it’ll make a change for him, but I could have done without it just now. I’m not ready to face people yet. Has Wal been after me?”

  “I phoned to say that you were taking the day off, to get over things. There isn’t anything urgent. An order came in the post for one of the tap-action flintlock pistols in the catalogue, but I said I’d deal with it. So you just relax. Do some gardening.”

  “Does Butch know yet that her antiques have gone adrift?”

  “I told Ronnie to tell her.” As Molly spoke, the doorbell rang.

  “In that case,” Keith said, “that’s probably her, come to scratch my eyes out.”

  “I think she’s in Edinburgh,” Molly said. “I’ll go. If it’s for you, shall I send them away?”

  Keith thought about it. “Not if it seems important,” he said. “I don’t feel like going out to face the world yet. Stupid though it is, I’d have the feeling that people were pointing me out behind my back as the man who made yesterday’s cock-up. But if the world comes to me, I’ll see it.”

  “Well, all right,” Molly said as the bell rang again.

  Keith braced himself for the impact of the world from outside. He hoped that the visitor was a canvasser, a salesman, a customer, but he knew that on this day of all days it was too much to hope for. As long as it wasn’t Munro . . .

  It was Munro, neat as always in his uniform but with a look of angry exhaustion about him. Keith nodded to the chair opposite. The superintendent folded his lean frame and sat down with a sigh.

  There was a silence. Neither man felt ready to speak.

  Despite the tensions which seemed to clog the very air, or perhaps because of them, Molly became the perfect hostess. She poured another mug of tea.

  “Aye,” Munro said. He sounded more Highland than ever. “I could just be doing with that.”

  “Have you eaten? It’d be no trouble . . .”

  Munro waved
his hand vaguely. “I could not be eating just now.”

  “You’ve been up all night?” she asked.

  “Not quite that. At four this morning I was put off the case, displaced by the Serious Crimes Squad. I managed a while in my bed. Then I was up again and visiting a widow. It seemed to be the one thing for me to do.”

  Silence fell again.

  “It’s you, then,” was all that Keith could find to say.

  The superintendent fixed him with a look which Keith could only feel to be accusing. Just when Keith was about to burst into excuses and apologies, Munro spoke. “Say it, then.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Don’t shilly-shally, man,” Munro said irritably. “Say it.”

  “Say what?”

  Munro sighed. “You are the duine uasal who was wanting to be able to say ‘I told you so’. You will never have a better chance to say it. So enjoy yourself. I was wrong, and two men died.”

  “Two?” Molly put in. “Not eight?”

  Munro shook his head. “One of my men had a thin skull. So also had one of the labourers.”

  “Willie Adams?”

  “No. The young man Campbell with the stripe in his hair. So if you want to remind me of what you said, now would be the time.”

  “I’d forgotten saying anything of the sort,” Keith said. “Put it out of your mind. I’ve been calling myself every name I could think of. Because if I hadn’t gone dashing off round the countryside —”

  “You behaved with sense,” Munro said. “And it was your actions which prevented a worse tragedy. It is time that you were told the rest. You know that the men were clubbed? The plan may have been to leave it at that or to kill them some other way. But the foreman’s van was standing there and offered them the chance to make a clean and certain sweep in silence and without leaving any evidence behind. The unconscious men were loaded into the back of the van and a piece of plastic pipe left by the workmen was led from the exhaust to a hole punched in one of the back doors. They left the engine running. Your warning brought our men on the scene in time, but another minute would have been too late.”

  “All the same,” Keith said, “I shouldn’t have gone to the factory at all. If I’d gone the other way to meet the lorry, then —”

  “If I’d listened to you and posted a larger, armed guard,” Munro said, “or if I’d stayed in my office to take your message —”

  “Hoy!” Molly said. It came out louder than she had intended. The two men, who had quite forgotten that she was in the room, stared at her. She blushed but plunged on. “I never thought I’d live to see the day when you two would be sitting down, in the face of a disaster, and each wanting to take the blame. Instead of beating your breasts and crying mea culpa — are those the right words?” she asked anxiously.

  “I think so,” Keith said.

  “It’s what Ralph Enterkin said when he trod on Brutus. Instead of crying and . . . and trying to exonerate each other, why don’t you do something?”

  “Like what?” Keith asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s for you to decide. You’ve never been stuck before.”

  “There is nothing to be done,” Munro said heavily. “The whole case is out of my hands. The Serious Crimes Squad has taken over. They have set up an incident room in an adjoining factory and my sole function is to provide them with men and equipment. I am not even being consulted, just asked to make a statement like any ordinary witness. I am already almost a leper. I am the man who failed. And it will be worse if . . .” Munro stopped and rubbed his face. Keith had never seen him so distressed. “The reason I came here, Mr C alder . . . Keith . . . was to ask whether that letter of yours must come out.”

  “I don’t see how it can be stopped,” Keith said. “I sent a copy to Eddie Adoni, and he’ll have passed it on to his insurers already.”

  “That is it, then,” Munro said forlornly. “I am in bad enough odour as things stand.” He shook his head. “When my superiors learn that I turned down a written request for extra protection —”

  “When the press hears that I’ve lost half a million quid’s worth of a client’s guns,” Keith said, “plus about half as much again for Butch’s antiques —”

  “You’re doing it again,” Molly said. “It’s not like you, Keith, to be so negative.”

  “You’re the one who’s always telling me not to get involved,” Keith pointed out.

  Molly sighed in exasperation. “I’m not trying to encourage you to leap on a white horse and go gallumphing off in all directions, trying to recover the guns single-handed and being a damned nuisance to everybody, which is about your usual style. But the thing you do well, and which comes in useful, is using your local knowledge and what you know about guns and things to puzzle it all out. Surely it’s better that you and Mr Munro try to come up with some answers of your own than that you sit here mumping and wait for the axe to fall. Mr Munro, would the man who’s in charge now be helpful and sympathetic?”

  “Oh, aye,” Munro said. “Sandy Doig and I started our careers together. We were good friends once. He’s a chief superintendent now. He’s got further than I have, further than I ever will with this in my record.”

  “He’s a fair man?”

  “He is that. I see what you’re getting at, Mistress Calder. I must not take official action in the matter, being off the case. But if, from the facts of the matter or from local knowledge, I could make a contribution to the solution of the case or to the conviction of the culprits, he would certainly give me credit in his report. It would go a long way to wiping the blot off my copybook.”

  “It’s a tall order,” Keith said. “What will Doig be doing now?” Molly was pleased to note that he had lifted his head. His face had come part-way to life again. He was becoming interested. She turned away to hide a smile. Keith, in pursuit of whatever game, was a different being from Keith moping.

  “He will be going by the book,” Munro said. “He is a man of routine. Very thorough, but not an original thinker. He will rely on road-blocks, searches, house-to-house enquiries, informants, known offenders, modus operandi and forensic evidence.”

  “Good enough in their way,” Keith said. “For all we know, they’re turning up the goods at this very moment. But we have to move on the assumption that it may need something a little more tailor-made to turn up a whacking great vehicle which seems to have been magicked out of existence.”

  “He has a helicopter search going,” said Munro, “and a dozen of my men out looking for tyre marks among the forestry.”

  “Give me some camouflage netting and three different colours of paint,” Keith said, “and I’ll hide a dozen vehicles in that forestry. There’s mile upon mile of it, and some of it’s forty years old and been thinned twice. They’ve been felling on Low Top and Long Brae, and replanting on Yarrow Hill, so the tracks and firebreaks have been criss-crossed by machinery and trailers. And it’s been dry as a bone for a month past. I don’t hold out much hope of a reallocated beat-copper spotting the signs of an artic going by.”

  “Ronnie would, though,” said Molly.

  “That’s true,” Keith said. “And, as Sir Peter’s stalker, he can wander around up there without anyone paying attention to him.”

  “Keith knows the countryside,” Molly said, “and the gun trade and the local people. And you know, or can find out, what Chief Superintendent Doig and the rest of the police are doing or not doing.”

  Munro still looked like a moody camel, but that, Keith knew, was his natural expression. The deep gloom which had surrounded him on his arrival had lifted. He was almost smiling. “I can’t deny,” he said, “that you have beaten the police . . . beaten me to the punch before now. By the Lord, it’s worth a try!”

  “Come through into the study,” Keith said. “We’ll set up our own incident room and use the telephone to get things rolling.”

  Alone at last in the kitchen, Molly sighed with relief. Now she was free to get on.

 
Chapter Five

  The phone-call from Paul York interrupted Keith and the superintendent while they were marking a large-scale map with routes which the lorry could and could not have taken, preparatory to calling on Molly’s brother. Keith took the call, covered the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Eddie Adoni’s agent, mincer and security man.” He switched on the amplifier so that Munro could hear both sides of the conversation.

  “This is a hell of a pickle,” York said.

  “It’s that and more,” Keith said. “Where were you? I thought you were going to travel with the goods.”

  “I was going to follow them. But Eddie kept me talking — mostly about watching out that you didn’t put anything over on him — and the lorry set off before I was ready. Then I was hurrying to catch up and I got caught in a speed trap, which cost me more time. I was nearing Newton Lauder at high speed when I heard a news flash about the hijacking, so I turned round and went back to confer with Eddie. He wants me to ask what you’re doing about it.”

  “What the hell are you getting at, York?” Keith demanded.

  “Don’t get on your high horse. Eddie’s inclined to hint that you know something, but we don’t think you’re at the back of the hijack. Not your style at all. I wouldn’t put it past you to switch guns on Eddie, palm off some older junk on him — if there is such a thing — and then charge him for overhauling it. Maybe giving His Nibs a kickback to sweeten some side-deal. But you’ve become too much the respectable businessman to get involved in robbery with murder. You’ll be taking an interest, if only because of the boxes we were carrying for your friend. You’ve a reputation for dodging around very fast when the shit’s flying. What I want to know is, are you collaborating with the police or are you hunting your own line?”

  Keith sensed that he was being led onto dangerous ground, an impression confirmed by Munro’s sudden look of concern. He decided to talk much and say little. “I’m not withholding anything from the police,” he said. “But as far as they’re concerned I’m only the man the guns were in transit to but never reached. I’ll certainly be keeping my own ear to the ground. After all, I have a responsibility to the owner of the other boxes.”