Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11)

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘To cap it all, when the trees are in leaf the one place in the village street from which you can see at least part of the way along Old Ford Road is at the bridge where the burn passes under the street, just where the pavement’s very narrow. Nobody ever lingers there.’

  While Bruce was speaking, Beth and Hannah had appeared in the doorway, ready to foregather for the end-of-working-day drink and debriefing. They hesitated quietly rather than interrupt and perhaps make him lose the thread of what he was saying, but when he looked round and came to a halt they found seats. Bruce, the perfect guest, again rose to act as barman. Isobel joined us before he had finished and there was a squeezing-up on the settee. Daffy had visited and helped out with her usual explosive energy but had vanished again.

  ‘Were you saying that our – um – junior staff couldn’t help?’ Beth asked as Bruce settled for an upright chair.

  ‘No, I’m not saying quite that,’ Bruce said. ‘Just that circumstances were against them and there are large gaps in the information just where we wouldn’t want them. Frankly, a herd of camels could have wandered around Old Ford Road that day with only about a ten per cent chance of anybody noticing.’ He paused and looked around thoughtfully. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t pick your combined brains,’ he said at last. ‘I wouldn’t be revealing anything that won’t be the subject of endless gossip within a day or two. Conversely, your local knowledge may suggest how to fill some of the gaps and you’ll also know what those gaps are if you get the chance to pick anything up in conversation.’

  I was on the point of objecting to becoming an unpaid inquiry agent but Henry, Beth and Hannah were obviously pleased. Isobel, however, shared at least some of my reservations. ‘Aren’t you rushing things a bit?’ she suggested. ‘Surely, it will be ages before Alistair can come to any trial and by that time the facts will all be out in the open.’

  ‘The facts are never all out in the open,’ Bruce said. ‘Only the ones brought up in evidence. Whether they’ll be the right facts is open to argument, which is what advocates are for. What’s more, Mr Branch will have to be brought before a sheriff for a committal proceeding shortly. There’ll be a small delay because, what with holidays and a slipped disc, they’re having difficulty providing enough sheriff court time. But the point is that, although I’ll ask for bail, it would be unusual and the police, at least as far as the Inspector is concerned, intend to oppose it. Once he’s committed for trial he’ll have several months in a remand centre to look forward to. How would you enjoy being taken out of circulation and into a cell, to await a trial for something you know you didn’t do?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ I said. There was a murmur of agreement.

  ‘When you’re young,’ said Henry, ‘a month is for ever because it’s a large percentage of your life so far. When you get old, it becomes a growing percentage of the time you’ve got left.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Bruce said. ‘The best chance of saving Mr Branch from that fate would be to convince the police or the fiscal’s office that they don’t have a case, before the committal proceedings.’

  ‘A thin chance, wouldn’t you say?’ asked Hannah.

  Bruce shrugged. ‘I’ve done it before. Once. Maybe I can do it again. So let’s make a start.’ He began to shuffle through his papers.

  ‘If you say so,’ Hannah said. ‘I’ll kick off, shall I? It’s not much help. Mr Cunningham asked me to call at the shop so I went in to buy a roll of Polos. The news of Mr Branch being arrested was all over the place. I only had to mention his liking for those small cigars and it all came out with very little prompting because Mrs Branch had bought sixty – six tins of ten – to take to him. That cleaned them out, but it didn’t matter because he was the only regular purchaser and they’ll have some more before he gets through sixty.’

  ‘A pity,’ said Bruce. Henry gave a grunt of annoyance.

  ‘But,’ said Hannah, ‘and it’s a big but, the reason they were short of them was because Mr Jordan also bought several tins last week to hand around. He said he wasn’t going to waste good cigars to celebrate a fifth grandchild, born in Tasmania to an estranged daughter-in-law who couldn’t even be bothered to send him a Christmas card.’

  ‘So anybody, any man for miles around, could have had an unsmoked one available,’ Bruce said. ‘That’s just dandy!’

  ‘But surely,’ Beth said, ‘if Alistair’s DNA was on the butt—’

  ‘I’m not so worried about that,’ Bruce said. ‘We can argue that anybody could have picked up a butt. It’s the ash that worries me. Let’s move on.’

  ‘I did my bit. I paid a visit to the pub,’ said Henry.

  ‘Of course,’ Isobel put in.

  Henry ignored the interruption. ‘The news doesn’t get a whole lot better. On Saturday morning, Alistair looked in early and had a quick pint. He had June with him. He bought a bottle of cheap white plonk—’

  ‘Plonk can’t be anything but white,’ I put in. ‘It comes from vin blanc.’

  ‘Don’t nit-pick. Where was I? Alistair said that Betty was trying out a new recipe and he only had red wine in the house. He soon left, saying that Betty was in a hurry for the wine. Mrs Hebden had made a statement to that effect and also repeated Alistair’s story of his quarrel with Mrs Horner. She told me that she didn’t mean to say anything about it but it just slipped out.’

  Bruce sighed and then shook his head. ‘What it is to be garrulous! The fact that Mr Branch was in a hurry and therefore had a reason to go by the front way doesn’t mean that that’s the way he went, nor that if he did walk by the quicker way he encountered Mrs Horner. He is adamant that he returned by the track on the other side of the houses. He also adds something very significant. He says that as he passed Mrs Horner’s garden wall he heard her voice saying, very loudly, “What on earth are you doing?” I was in two minds whether to advise him to include mention of that in his statement. In the event it turned out to be immaterial, because Mr and Mrs Pelmann, in the next garden along Old Ford Road, heard it too.’

  ‘The Pelmanns don’t live in the house next door,’ said Hannah. ‘They live about three houses further on. The house next to Mrs Horner’s belongs to some people called . . . called . . .’

  ‘McIntosh,’ said Beth. ‘I only know that because they called and asked if we would keep their daughter’s pet rabbit while they’re away. I said that we weren’t equipped for domestic rabbits.’

  ‘All of which may be perfectly true,’ Bruce said, ‘but doesn’t alter the fact that the Pelmanns were in the garden of the house next door, belonging, as you so rightly insist, to the McIntoshes. Apparently, they were asked by the McIntoshes, who have a summer cottage in the Dordogne, to look after the house and garden in their absence. Unfortunately their eyes were down because, taking their responsibilities seriously, they were weeding a rockery and their hearing was focused on the television in the sitting room beyond the open French windows. According to their son they were waiting for the qualifying session for the Formula One race to be broadcast, intending to get home before the actual qualifying period began. But at least they were keeping an eye on the time and they agree that when they heard Mrs Horner’s voice it was eleven twenty-five, give or take a minute or so. They saw nobody go by and heard nothing else. The inspector thinks that that fixes the time of death but the pathologist gives a rather wider margin.’

  ‘This is all very well,’ Isobel said, ‘but aren’t you missing an important point?’

  ‘Very possibly,’ Bruce said. ‘But which one?’

  ‘The point is that if Alistair didn’t have an uncharacteristic fit of temper and if the death wasn’t an accident, whoever did it must have been a local who knew Alistair’s habits and had heard the story of his quarrel with Mrs Horner. Almost certainly someone who had watched his comings and goings. She was a quarrelsome woman, much given to making enemies. Were the Pelmanns numbered among them? They, of all people, could have seen Alistair go by and have witnessed the dropping of a
cigar butt and a doggie doo.’

  ‘As far as we know,’ Bruce said, ‘the Pelmanns rubbed along well enough with Mrs Horner. She made enemies, true enough. You yourself, John—’

  ‘I had words with her,’ I admitted. ‘She referred to Ash as a bandy-legged, flat-faced, flea-infested, evil-tempered pug. But I don’t know that you could call her an enemy. An ill-wisher, perhaps.’

  ‘There are plenty of those. And there is at least one person who benefits from her death.’

  ‘That will be the nephew,’ Henry said.

  ‘You didn’t hear that from me,’ Bruce said stiffly. ‘Mr Branch remembers seeing the Pelmanns but reached his own back door, next after Chez MacIntosh, without seeing or being seen by anyone else. Mrs Dalton, mother of Steven, was in her kitchen with the window open and she heard Mrs Branch say, “Hello dear,” but she’s rather vague about the time or even the day. Her husband was away in Wormit, pottering about in his yacht.

  ‘Francis, the boy who found the body, visited the last house in the road –’ Bruce scrabbled through the notes. ‘Incidentally, he never did explain to my satisfaction what he was doing in Old Ford Road that morning.’

  For once, mine was the local knowledge because I had several times shot in Brian Jordan’s company or picked up behind him. ‘The last house is that of a Mr and Mrs Jordan,’ I said, ‘and their daughter Clare. Francis fancies himself very much in love with Clare, who doesn’t know that he exists and doesn’t want to know.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain what he was doing in Old Ford Road.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ Henry said. ‘Gazing at the outside of the loved one’s dwelling.’ Henry had been young once, a very long time ago.

  ‘It’s such a shame,’ said Beth. ‘Audrey, one of our junior team, would do anything for him but Francis ignores her.’

  ‘Which is probably just as well,’ Bruce said, ‘if she’d do anything for him. But whatever Clare may think of him, her mother obviously favours his suit. She opened up to him. At eleven twenty-seven a lorry went past, coming from the sand-pit. She knows the time because she heard the telephone ring while she was in the bathroom and by the time she reached the phone it had stopped, but her answering machine gave her the time of the message. She could hardly make out the words for the noise of the vehicle. The driver may have seen somebody. I’ll follow it up.’

  ‘Some of the houses along the village street look across the field. Somebody may have seen something,’ said Hannah.

  Bruce shuffled his papers and produced another page. ‘Our team of investigators hasn’t made progress along there yet. The house on the corner, backing towards Mrs Horner’s gable, has a walled garden matching hers so there wasn’t a lot to be seen. The house is from about the same period as the houses in Old Ford Road. They think that the next two houses along the village street were empty at the crucial time and only the first one has any sort of view towards the Old Ford Road houses. Beyond that there’s a rise in the field which cuts it off. They had gumption enough to look across the field from the back of Mrs Horner’s house and that was their conclusion.’

  ‘The house on the corner belongs to Roland Bovis,’ Isobel said. ‘He lives there alone – his wife left him earlier this year.’

  ‘I think you can pass him by,’ I said. ‘He was at an auction in Kirkcaldy on Saturday. Which reminds me, Henry. He bought a Macnaughten hammer-gun because it was going cheap and he wants somebody who has a certificate to uplift it and deliver it to that dealer down in the Borders where you do your trustee bit. It may be rubbish or it may be the bargain of a lifetime, we won’t know until we see it.’

  ‘I know the dealer you mean,’ Henry said, ‘and I’ll be heading that way fairly soon. But Kirkcaldy’s rather out of my way. Can’t we get it picked up before then?’

  ‘We’ll see what we can do,’ I said. ‘I’m promised a share of the profit, so if it comes off I’ll cut you in.’

  ‘No need for that,’ Henry said. ‘I’ve had my share from you already in free booze. Apropos which . . .’ He held up his empty glass.

  *

  I sat and tried to do some constructive thinking about the business while the others picked away at the edges of the mystery without making any further progress. It was impossible to remain detached while around me the discussion was raging and I found myself drawn back into the argument. Eventually, a sense of exhaustion took over. My mind and, I think, those of the others rebelled against weighing up neighbours, visualizing them picking up a late-middle-aged female by the hips and stuffing her head first into a water butt. By tacit agreement we drifted off the subject. It was not until the next morning that anything new emerged.

  There had been a long-awaited storm in the night – lightning and at times almost simultaneous thunderclaps followed by a short period of heavy rain. The sunshine had returned in the morning, but benevolent and without the humid closeness of the previous few days. Suddenly the weather was just what weather should be, not too anything. Birds were bathing in the lingering puddles. Small, puffy clouds sailed across the bluest blue. Colours were brighter, breathing was easier and most of the world was in holiday mood. Not the farmers, who had suffered laid cereal crops and the seeds knocked down from the oilseed rape. I too was grudging in my pleasure – the beautiful day had infected the dogs, who wanted to play rather than work and had to be allowed to blow off steam before they would come to order.

  Anger would have put at risk much of the progress already made. I used up most of my reserve of patience taking each dog undergoing training onto the stubble of winter wheat beyond the garden gate for a quick reminder of what had gone before, reinforcing my leadership of the pack. I was replacing the last dog in his kennel, with a sigh of thankfulness that the worst was over and that by tomorrow they would be in a more receptive mood, when Beth called me to the phone.

  ‘Mr Williamson,’ she said. It was enough. Andrew Williamson was the tenant farmer of the land behind Three Oaks, a crabby, elderly man who resented the ready permission which I had received from his landlord to shoot and train dogs on the farmland. He also had a profound contempt for every breed of dog other than working collies and believed them all to be potential sheep-worriers only awaiting an opportunity to get off the leash.

  I took the phone. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Captain Cunningham?’ He always called me Captain although, or perhaps because, I had made it clear that I would rather be addressed as Mister. ‘Ane of your dugs is rampaging among the sheep again.’

  ‘It’s never happened yet,’ I said, ‘and it’s not happening now.’ Such incidents had never been down to dogs in my care and I could be certain that every one of them, apart from two being walked by our helpers and which I could see through the kitchen window, was safely kennelled.

  ‘Aye it is,’ he said. ‘I was awa to shoot the bugger. Then I minded you saying you’d sooner dae it yersel. So come on and I’ll be watching to see it’s done richt.’

  That was not how I remembered our previous discussion but he had hung up before I could say so. I was tempted to call him back and tell him to do his own dirty work. But if I turned my back it was probable that some perfectly innocent pet would be shot. If there really was a savage dog among his sheep and he tried to carry out the execution himself with his .22 rifle, which was almost as old as himself, the most likely outcome would be a seriously injured dog to be put down. If it had to be done, I would indeed prefer to do it myself.

  I fetched my .243 Anschutz deer rifle and a few cartridges from the gun-safe and set off up the long slope towards the farm buildings, following a track beside an overgrown hedge. There was a stile at the top which let me onto the tarmac farm road.

  Williamson was waiting for me at the corner of his barn, a gleam of triumph in his narrow eyes and his rifle under his arm. Despite his age he was wiry and fit. He led the way along the farm road to a tubular gate beyond which was a large pasture. ‘There!’ he said.

  There must have been two hundred sheep in t
he field and not one of them was paying any attention to a spaniel which was patrolling the further hedge. ‘That is not one of my dogs,’ I said, ‘and it’s not worrying your sheep.’

  ‘It was worrying them, I’m telling you. Now go ahead. Shoot the bugger.’

  ‘I’m not going to kill a perfectly innocent spaniel just because you don’t like other people’s dogs. And if you harm it, I’ll be pleased to give evidence on behalf of the owner. What’s more, I could make a damn good guess whose dog that is.’

  I took out my silent dog-whistle. I was fairly sure that Alistair Branch had stuck with the signals to which June had been trained. At the first set of pips on the whistle I saw the distant dog’s head come up. I waved and whistled again and in a flash she was eating up the ground as a spaniel can.

  Williamson fondled his rifle. ‘If you take aim at that dog –’ I began.

  He sneered. ‘You’ll what? Shoot me?’

  ‘No.’ I stooped to be nose to nose with him and stared him in his watery eyes until he looked away. ‘But I’ll take it off you and bend it over the gatepost. And don’t think the fact that you’re decrepit will stop me.’

  He seethed. For comfort, I reminded myself that one would have to be very unlucky to be killed by a single .22 bullet, but he kept his rifle properly pointed at the ground. I could hear him muttering threats but I tuned him out.

  The spaniel came on and slithered to a halt in front of me on the gateway mud, panting and slavering. I saw the light die out of her eyes as she recognized me. She sat, quivering, and held up a paw. It was an urgent plea for help if ever I saw one. I bent down to give her a pat. Her heart was beating furiously.