Mad Dogs and Scotsmen (Three Oaks Book 7)

by Gerald Hammond

  His nostrils flared slightly but he decided against joining battle. ‘The man had identification on him,’ he said, ‘including a work pass with his photograph. There can be no doubt that he was Jake Spurway and that he was employed by Cook and Simpson. If, as you suggest, the woman was Miss Otterburn, secretary to the managing director, then they were colleagues.’

  ‘That would seem to follow,’ said Henry.

  ‘Colleagues,’ Tirrell repeated. ‘But they can hardly both have been working in the firm’s best interests.’

  ‘Unless they were in competition with each other in the hope of a reward or promotion,’ Henry said.

  The Inspector took a few moments for thought, frowning, and decided to shy away from speculation. ‘We haven’t found any envelope. You say that the young woman took it?’

  Henry nodded. ‘The last that I saw of it, she was tucking it into her underwear.’

  ‘I wonder,’ the Inspector said absently. ‘You’ve spoken with her so you’re entitled to an opinion. Would she have been one to act on her employer’s behalf? Or on her own? Or even for some other party altogether? Would she have been capable of taking single-handed initiative or was she being led by somebody else? You’re sure that you didn’t overhear anything else, something that might give me a clue to her real motivation? What do you think?’

  He was only thinking aloud. I decided that he had a blasted nerve, seeking our opinions after ticking me off, but there was no point saying so. ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  Henry was less inclined to pass up the chance of pontificating to a policeman. ‘Starting from the beginning,’ he said, ‘it seems that Noel Cochrane came away from his work with some valuable information. It may have had to do with a forthcoming takeover or a new cure for the mange, that doesn’t matter. Jake Spurway, the MD’s fixer, came after it. He is said – by an unreliable authority – to have wanted it on his own behalf. Spurway may have been acting in his employer’s interests and Miss Otterburn may have tried to cut a piece of the action, on her own behalf or with a partner.’

  The Inspector seemed ready at first to bite Henry’s head off, or at least to invite him to give his long-deceased grandmother a lesson in egg-sucking, but Henry’s words seemed to have started a train of thought. ‘But he has to be the prime suspect for the murder of Harriet Williams and clearly he kidnapped and interrogated Mr Noel Cochrane,’ he pointed out.

  ‘He may have done so on his employer’s behalf,’ Henry pointed out. ‘Excessive force but well intentioned. He may not have meant Miss Williams to succumb. We’ve been assuming that Spurway was the villain, but that was because Miss Otterburn told us that Spurway had turned his coat. And, of course, one tends to think of coshing as a male form of violence; but when we saw Miss Otterburn swing that umbrella, I was reminded that behind every violent man there’s a woman screaming, “Kill the bastard!” Has Donald Aggleton recovered enough to say who hit him?’

  The Inspector decided to open up. ‘Mr Aggleton recovered consciousness this morning. His memory is patchy but he thinks that he was hit from behind and never saw his attacker. He is adamant that he was acting alone and trying to recover some material, the nature of which he refuses to discuss, on behalf of his employers.’

  ‘He’d be bound to say that,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Of course.’ Tirrell dismissed the thought as not having been worthy of mention. ‘He says that he knew about this place and was heading in this direction when he saw Spurway driving by in what must have been your car, the old one. He decided to spy on him. After that, his memory seems to be genuinely patchy.’

  ‘Then where is his car?’ I asked.

  ‘We found it in a car park in Cupar,’ said Tirrell.

  ‘Miss Otterburn,’ Henry said, ‘seems to have been making up to Jake Spurway and yet we saw her lay him out with a lead pipe hidden in her brolly. You shouldn’t close your mind to the possibility that she was the evil genius from the beginning.’

  ‘I’m not,’ said Tirrell patiently, ‘any more than I’m closing my mind to the fact that I have only your words for these critical pieces of evidence. We have found no trace of the envelope, containing something apparently of great value, which you tell us you heard Spurway claim to recover from Cochrane and you saw Miss Otterburn remove from Spurway’s unconscious body.’

  Henry and I exchanged glances in which surprise was mixed with a trace of excitement. It is not every day that one gets suspected of involvement in high-level chicanery.

  ‘Well, you can search me,’ Henry said at last.

  ‘I intend to have both of you searched,’ said the Inspector. ‘Not that it will do me much good. Mr Cunningham had ample time to dispose of a hundred microfiches – if that is really what this is all about.’

  ‘And again you have only our word for what was said,’ Henry acknowledged. ‘Tell your minions to do their damnedest, Inspector. I only ask that you tell the young ladies to warm their hands.’

  ‘You should be so lucky!’ I said.

  I heard one of the WPCs suppress a faint snort of amusement but Inspector Tirrell flushed. He sent them outside and called in a male constable to perform the search.

  *

  Half an hour later, after being searched apologetically by the young constable – with warm hands – we were back in our two chairs and Inspector Tirrell had resumed his dominant position in front of the dead fire.

  ‘Since you were rash enough to leave the scene,’ he said to me, ‘you realize that your house will have to be searched.’

  ‘You have a warrant, or whatever they call it?’ Henry asked.

  ‘I could get one, although strictly speaking I wouldn’t need it. Are you going to be awkward?’ The Inspector was still looking at me.

  ‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But you do realize that that damned woman almost certainly ran off with the microfiche, if that’s what it was? And, even if she didn’t, that searching my house would surely be a waste of time, because I could have left the envelope with a friend, put it in the post to myself or hidden it anywhere along my route?’

  ‘I do. But I’m under orders.’

  I can be as awkward as the next man on my day, probably more so, but this did not seem to be the time for more than a token objection. ‘Personally,’ I said, ‘I don’t give a damn provided that I get a written undertaking that you’ll reinstate any damage and leave the place more or less as you found it. But my wife may have something to say. We were searched once before, unnecessarily and unproductively, and she regarded it rather as an indecent assault. If she says it’s all right, go ahead. If not, try to get a sheriff to sign a warrant and I’ll have a dozen lawyers tripping you up.’

  Wisely, Tirrell decided to ignore any question of remedial work. ‘Call her up and put it to her, then.’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘You want permission to search without a warrant, you ask her yourself. She’ll probably set Irma on you. I’m going home now. You may come with me if you insist.’

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  He came to stand over me. The Inspector’s words and tone were firm enough but I could see that he was uncomfortable. The perfect moment for being bloody-minded might not yet have arrived, but it would have to do. ‘I am hungry,’ I said. ‘I am also a busy man. We’ve been nothing but co-operative. You have already searched us. Either arrest me or get the hell out of the way.’ I began to get up, forcing him to step back.

  There was a sudden change of tone. ‘Please wait. One minute.’ Tirrell stepped between the chairs and left the building, leaving us alone together for the first time since my return. Through the open doorway I could see him speaking on a personal radio.

  ‘Here’s a turnaround!’ Henry said comfortably. ‘The Inspector is, as he says, under orders and he doesn’t like them one damn bit. On what he’s got, I don’t think any sheriff would issue a search warrant and if he goes ahead without one and is wrong you can raise a stink. He forgot my portable phone. Do you want to call your solicitor?’

>   ‘I won’t bother. There’s nothing in the house I’m ashamed of. Warn Beth, if you like. As far as I’m concerned, home is a roof for keeping the rain off whatever I happen to be doing at the time, but she thinks of it as an extension of herself.’

  ‘All right,’ Henry said, producing his phone. ‘Beth will undoubtedly chew the Inspector’s balls off.’ He sounded rather pleased at the prospect.

  The Inspector returned a few minutes later. ‘There’s been a delay,’ he said. ‘You can go home now – accompanied, of course.’

  ‘A delay to who or what?’ Henry asked sharply.

  ‘There are people coming,’ Tirrell said. He turned away before we could ask any more awkward questions.

  In the event, we were kept waiting for some little time while the Inspector wound up his operations at the Bothy. Realization seemed to dawn simultaneously on all of us that we had been on our feet for a long time. Rather than walk to my car, Henry and I and the two male constables packed into Tirrell’s Range Rover and were driven round to the mouth of the track where I had left my car.

  That was where we hit a snag. The car had vanished.

  The sense of déjà vu roused me to fury. This was not my clapped-out old banger but my newest toy, apple of my eye, and it might well have vanished while I was being unnecessarily delayed by the Inspector. I drew breath, preparing to blow my top.

  Henry forestalled me. ‘Don’t waste time, John. Whoever took it is probably half a mile up the road, trying to restart it. Get back in the Range Rover.’

  Tirrell did not waste time asking questions. He directed his driver towards the main road and just short of it we came on my abandoned car. When the engine died on him the driver had managed to freewheel into a track which slanted downhill at an easy angle, but the car was still in full view of the road. The Range Rover pulled in to the side and we walked down. One window had been broken but otherwise it was undamaged.

  The sense of relief that flooded through me did not extend to allowing Tirrell to impound the car for forensic examination. As I pointed out, rather forcefully, I had great need of the car and its contents, whereas what he was likely to learn from an examination by his technicians could equally be discovered by means of a quick inspection and the taking of samples outside my front door. Whether proof that some individual had at some time driven my car could be of any possible use to him was something which, I said, I would leave unexplored.

  Tirrell seemed ready to argue from a position of strength. I resolved the matter by getting into the car, in my indignation almost falling over a tine harrow which the local farmer had left inverted nearby while he replaced some of the spikes. I pressed the secret switch and ground the starter. After a few seconds, during which time Tirrell was ordering me to cease and desist, the engine fired and I drove off. Half a minute later the Range Rover was large in my mirror. I was relieved to see that Henry was aboard it; Inspector Tirrell would have been quite angry enough to leave him stranded. There was another police car following the Range Rover.

  The cavalcade turned in at the Three Oaks gates at last and I pulled up behind Mike Coutts’s car, which was still sitting where he had parked it the previous evening. Tirrell came out of the Range Rover like a clay pigeon out of a trap but, before he could vent his spleen on me, Beth came out of the house with the cordless phone and pushed it into Tirrell’s hands. ‘For you, Inspector.’ Then she rounded on me. ‘You’ve missed lunch again. You know damn well you’re supposed to be on a regular regime. There’s a snack on the kitchen table. For Henry too.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said humbly.

  The mixed grill on the kitchen table was still piping hot and rather more than a snack. The long morning of activity had given us both an appetite. Inspector Tirrell arrived in the kitchen doorway and looked with distaste at us gorging ourselves. I was sure that I heard a faint rumble from his stomach.

  It seemed only polite to say something. The Inspector, after all, was a sort of guest in my house. ‘Starting your search, Inspector?’ I asked vaguely.

  ‘That was the Procurator Fiscal on the phone,’ he told me. ‘Your solicitor is already with a sheriff in chambers, asking for an interdict to prevent me from applying for a search warrant unless he is present to oppose it. The words “frivolous” and “vexatious” were bandied about. The Procurator Fiscal pointed out that the sheriff has no power to make any such order, but it was an effective delaying tactic as well as a way of rubbing my nose in the fact that you knew I was coming. And a fat chance I’d have of getting a warrant,’ he added bitterly, ‘when both Miss Otterburn and that damned journalist had left the scene. What I’d like to know is how your solicitor came to know so much detail about the case.’

  Beth who, during this harangue, had been on the phone to Hugh Morris about a replacement window for the car, left the room quietly and I heard her getting Sam up after his nap.

  ‘I did not phone him,’ I said. ‘As I told you, I didn’t give a damn if you searched the place. I still don’t.’

  ‘Well, it’s going to look bad.’

  ‘To whom?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Anybody. Everybody.’

  Tirrell, clearly, was under pressure. He went out onto the gravel and sent away most of his search team. He returned accompanied by one sergeant. Beth came back with Sam. Remembering that the police had been on the go for at least as long as Henry and myself, she offered them food. They refused a cooked meal, but apparently it was permissible to accept a chair and a sandwich, even from members of the public who were being obstructive at the time.

  Henry looked round from his seat at the scrubbed table that filled the middle of the large kitchen. The two policemen, in a vain attempt at effacement, had taken the two basket-chairs by the Raeburn which were, perhaps coincidentally, the most comfortable in the room if not the house.

  ‘What are we waiting for now?’ Henry asked.

  Inspector Tirrell hastily swallowed a large mouthful of egg and cheese sandwich. ‘If I knew that,’ he said, ‘I still couldn’t tell you.’

  Sam chose that moment to go off into peals of laughter. Children can be remarkably adept at reading the emotions of their elders.

  ‘Oh, them!’ said Henry.

  *

  As the afternoon wore on without any sign of a second wave of visitors, Inspector Tirrell settled himself on the seat below the kitchen window, prettily framed by a clematis in full blossom, and kept an eye on the scene, occasionally exchanging a few words with some distant colleague by way of his radio. It was turning into a beautiful evening of soft light and the music of birds but the Inspector did not seem to be getting any pleasure out of it. From time to time a dog on exercise would detour to sniff his ankle and would receive a look which dared it to proceed further.

  His sergeant, however, Cox by name, showed an intelligent interest in the running of the kennels and even lent a hand by carrying dogfood for the girls, firing blank cartridges and later throwing dummies on the lawn while I instilled steadiness into young spaniels who wanted nothing more than to hurl themselves impetuously into the game. Later still, he played with Sam on the sitting-room floor until the exhausted child was ready for bed.

  The daylight faded, the day’s work was as nearly finished as it ever is and a meal was dished up – later than usual in view of the lateness of Henry’s lunch and mine. Henry and Isobel had stayed to eat with us, as was their habit in times of stress. We were interrupted when the sound of tyres on the gravel warned of the arrival of an otherwise silent car.

  By then the two policemen had withdrawn to the sitting room, Inspector Tirrell again making do with a sandwich and a cup of coffee. Sergeant Cox was also provided with a sandwich but, unknown to his superior, Beth had repaid him for his assistance by feeding him a hot meal, course by course, as it came off the stove. The Sergeant was still young enough to have an appetite. We heard his footsteps go to the front door and return, accompanied. The sitting-room door closed again but we could hear, faintly, the murmur of voices.<
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  ‘The Inspector,’ Henry said, ‘will be enjoying the pleasure of explaining why the promised search has not been carried out.’

  That reminded me. ‘You never said why you got the lawyers to kick up such a fuss about the Inspector looking the place over,’ I reminded Beth.

  She looked at me without expression. ‘You think I should have welcomed them? We still haven’t got quite straight after the first time and that was – what? – about five years ago.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ I said, ‘on that occasion they did turn up several things I thought had been lost for ever. I think you’re up to something.’

  ‘Did you know that there’s a bobby in uniform outside the gates?’ Hannah asked. ‘And another lurking at the back?’

  That broke my train of thought. ‘I didn’t, I said, ‘but I can’t say that I’m surprised. Nothing would surprise me any more.’

  ‘The village will be wondering what we’ve been up to,’ Isobel said.

  ‘They’ll have made up their minds,’ Hannah said. ‘You wouldn’t believe the stories that’ll be going around by now.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Beth. ‘Tomorrow we’ll spread a rumour that we asked for police protection because there was so much money in the house.’

  ‘Before you get us burgled,’ I said, ‘you’d better check up on our insurance. And the shopkeepers will double the price of everything.’

  Ten minutes later, when we had finished eating, Inspector Tirrell appeared in the kitchen door with Sergeant Cox at his shoulder and beckoned to me.

  But we in the kitchen had resumed a technical discussion of far more immediate importance. From time to time one gets a spaniel pup which is unduly finicky about its food and needs to be coaxed or jump-started into eating; but when three young dogs which had formerly been greedy feeders simultaneously go off their victuals just at a time when there is a noticeable change in the appearance and texture of the basic feed, it is time for some fresh thinking. Beth, a realist, took the view that the dogs would soon start eating again when they got hungry. Hannah wanted to return to our previous brand even if it could not claim to be as rich in calcium and vitamins. Daffy had been overcoming resistance with the aid of blends of added flavourings and wanted to continue along those lines while Isobel, ever the scientist, wanted to turn the whole thing into a research project.