Dead Weight (Three Oaks Book 11)

by Gerald Hammond

  I looked at Bruce. ‘It seems to me that you must seek an interview with the Detective Superintendent. You’d better get my film developed first. Meanwhile, we must bag the bits of rabbit for the Sergeant to keep safe. Strictly speaking the guts should go into a nylon bag, because there are traces of other chemicals which come out of polythene, but polythene will have to do. Did Mrs Horner leave any freezer bags?’

  ‘I think so.’ Bruce turned, stopped and said a mildly rude word. I said a worse one. Only the Sergeant confined himself to an outburst of tongue clicking.

  Jason had broken away from heel. I photographed him as he was consuming the last of the rabbit guts.

  *

  I headed towards home. Jason, well aware that he was in disgrace, stayed very close to heel.

  Isobel, Beth and Hannah were already at lunch under the silver birch when I arrived. I had promised Audrey that I would not name her as my informant, but the morning’s discoveries were another matter. I told them my tale, but very much in confidence, without mentioning my original source. I also described, in some detail, Jason’s fall from grace. I sensed some amusement emanating from Hannah and Isobel, but Beth, already justly indignant at the tale of Horace’s killing, was very much incensed. Jason, conscious that he had sinned and was under discussion, hid under an escallonia bush and refused to come out.

  It was time to catch up with work. In parallel with the confusingly nicknamed You, Sid (short for Cedar) would be one of our first entrants in the competitions in the coming season and, provided that he attained Field Trial Champion status, was a major hope for both breeding stock and stud fees in the years to come. He was a promising, not to say brilliant, performer but almost overeager and so sometimes given to signs of unsteadiness. I decided to concentrate on him for a while in the real world as opposed to the artificial world of dummy training. I fetched my gun, some cartridges, a game bag and Sid. Now that the sultry heat had moderated, the Moss would not be the humid and midge-ridden hell of the previous fortnight. We set off on foot.

  It seemed that Sid had suddenly matured or else had benefited greatly from a series of lessons in the wood with a dummy covered in rabbit skin fired from the launcher or pulled suddenly across his path by catapult rubber and a remote release. I had managed at last to rid him of the notion that he was ever free to make his own decisions or could disobey without bringing about his ears the wrath of his handler. The Moss was hopping with rabbits and Sid worked a perfect pattern, sending them out of the thicker cover. Sometimes I had to hold my hand because I could not be sure that neither Sid nor any courting couple was in the background; and I was waiting for a three-quarter-grown rabbit to show. A full-grown rabbit in midsummer may be a doe still feeding a litter and I always try to avoid leaving young creatures to starve underground.

  Sid had learned at last to harass rabbits in the bushes but to halt as soon as they bolted from cover. I checked him once for a mild error and he settled down. Working him became as easy as moving my own hand. When at last I had a chance of the rabbit I wanted and bowled it over in the open, Sid took a pace in its direction and then, remembering his lessons, stopped and sat. I shook a finger at him, which was usually enough of a reproof. The rabbit was motionless. A young dog can be put off retrieving by a struggling and resentful bird or rabbit. I counted slowly to ten and then sent him for the retrieve. He delivered it to my hand almost daintily.

  Somebody else was shooting on the Moss. I could hear shots coming from the direction of the small loch, usually two shots followed by an interval of variable length. Either somebody was in trouble – two shots, repeated, is a general signal of distress – or he was shooting pigeon, taking a right-and-left and then waiting until the birds regained their confidence and returned. The sound of the shots was soft, which gave me a clue to the shooter’s identity. I walked in that direction, letting Sid hunt but still ready to correct the least unsteadiness. He behaved perfectly and he knew it. He was taking pride at last in doing it right. I began to have hopes for the coming season and pity for any man who had never known the euphoria of working as a team with a favourite dog.

  The loch had been at a low level until the previous night’s rain. There was no feeder stream and yet, as if magically, the water had been replenished from an underwater spring and was back at its usual height. Not far from the new brink, a pair of large, upturned tree roots made the basis of a serviceable hide. I had made use of it myself on occasions, usually when duck were flighting in. A man was seated under a scrap of camouflage net, waiting for the pigeon to return for a drink. He was wearing ear protectors which had prevented him hearing my approach, but his spaniel nudged his arm and he looked round. I recognized Bob Guidman from the village, a round-faced, broad-spoken, smiling man of middle age who was supplementing his redundancy money by shooting pigeon and rabbits and selling them to the game dealer. He also managed to persuade several of the local farmers into contributing, in the interest of crop protection, the cost of twelve-bore cartridges, turning another profit by lightly loading his own cartridges in the much smaller twenty-eight-bore and pocketing the considerable saving. In his hands the very small but tightly choked gun was an effective killer at moderate range. Half a dozen shot pigeon had been arranged in natural attitudes at the water’s edge.

  ‘It’s you, Captain,’ he informed me. He was one of the few people I allowed to address me by my army rank, and I never knew why I indulged him. ‘Come to join me?’ He pushed his ear protectors up.

  ‘I’ll sit with you for a minute, Bob,’ I said. ‘I won’t shoot.’

  Bob’s spaniel, Moss, had been bought from me as a pup while Bob was still earning good money as an offshore welder. Moss and Sid were distantly related and knew each other well. They lay down together. I ducked under the net and seated myself on a grassy shelf. There was a small stack of plastic pigeon decoys beside Bob’s feet. These would have attracted the first comers and been replaced as soon as dead birds were available. More shot birds were laid in the shade to cool.

  I wanted to lead into the subject of Mrs Horner’s death, but the native Fifer is inclined to recoil if approached too directly. Like Beth, I prepared to work round to it obliquely. ‘I thought you’d be decoying over the rape today,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘There’s laid patches a over; and it’s nae handie tae mak decoys show ower rape. The buggers can tak a feed oniewhere, but they aye hae to come for a drink. I’ll wait for the rape stubble at the back o my hoose, efter it’s cut.’

  I nearly missed the mention but something rang a little bell in my mind. ‘Where exactly do you live, Bob?’ I asked.

  ‘In the main street. The wee hoose next to Mr Bovis.’

  Knowing those cottages, the kitchen would almost certainly be at the back. It was a bonus but I decided to leave it for the moment. ‘Was there water in the lochan on Saturday?’ I asked.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘You were here, then?’

  ‘Aye. In the morning.’

  ‘You know what happened?’

  ‘M’hm. Whisht, now.’

  We waited. I sat very still, watching through the net. Movement is the give-away. I was looking towards Old Ford Road, perhaps a quarter of a mile distant. A small group of four or five wood pigeon headed for the pool. For a moment they looked like settling on the far side of the water, out of shot, but they saw the decoy birds and swung round. I half expected Bob to let them land and take them on the ground, but he was more of a sportsman than that. As they were dropping he took a right and left. The small and lightly loaded gun made little noise but the two birds fell, leaving pale feathers floating in the air, while their fellows headed for the horizon. One bird was dead, lying in a natural position, breast down. Bob sent his spaniel for the other. Moss was wise enough to go for the one that still had a flutter left, ignoring the others. The bird had died by the time he returned with it.

  We settled again. Bob reloaded from a pocket.

  ‘I ken fine what happened,’ Bob said,
as though there had been no interruption. ‘Somebody droondit Mrs Horner in her ain water butt. Aboot bloody time, an a.’

  ‘You fell out with her?’

  A ferocious scowl sat uneasily on his usually smiling face. ‘No tae say fell oot. She aimed a kick at Moss, one time. I telled her that if the kick had landed I’d’ve tugged her heid aff and stuffed it up her erse. She set up a squawk but she never tried it again. You’re nae thinking that I droondit the auld biddy like a kitten?’

  ‘Did you?’

  He shook his head – regretfully, I thought.

  ‘No, I wasn’t thinking that,’ I told him. ‘You know that they’re holding Mr Branch for it?’

  ‘Aye. Damn shame. He’s a proper gentleman, Mr Branch, and no even ane tae haud the gullie ower the dyke.’

  Bob was always broad-spoken but now he was stretching my understanding of idiom in the Scots language to breaking point. ‘To stand up for himself, do you mean?’

  ‘Aye. He’d nivver hae said an ill word tae the bitch, let alone laid hand on her.’

  Evidently the words De mortuis nil nisi bonum did not appear on the Guidman family crest.

  ‘You may be able to help him,’ I said. ‘You were sitting here. If you were watching for incoming pigeon you’d be looking mostly about the level of the houses in Old Ford Road and any movement would catch your eye. Who did you see come and go?’

  A single pigeon came over and in his momentary uncertainty he missed it by about ten feet, behind and below. ‘I wouldna want tae drop some laddie in the sharn for daein what I’d’ve liked fine to dae mysel,’ he said at last, ‘but if it’s for Mr Branch . . . I didna see muckle, mind. Look for yersel. The trees howd the maist o’ the hooses.’

  That was true, but the trees did not make an impenetrable screen and the road level was visible here and there below the lower branches. ‘You can see where people would walk past Mrs Horner’s house and the one next to it, the McIntoshes’ house.’

  ‘Is that whose it is? I wasna paying muckle heed, mind. But whan I wis just thinking of packing up tae gae hame tae my dinner, my ee was catchit by a man and a wumman, daundering towards the main street. I couldna see fa it was, it’s ower far. And a mintie later there was a mannie on his ain went the same wye.’

  ‘What time was that?’ I asked him.

  ‘Damned if I ken. Nearing twelve, I’d guess. If it helps, a lorry came by from the quarry just efter.’

  ‘It could help a whole lot. Can you tell me anything at all about those three people?’

  ‘No a damn thing. It’s o’er far. See yon mannie?’

  I looked. There was a figure at Mrs Horner’s gate. I recognized the colour of Bruce’s golf jacket. ‘That’s Mr Hastie,’ I said. ‘Can you not remember anything about their clothes?’

  ‘See, now. The first twasome, the wumman was in a white dress. Her hair was dark.’ Bob closed his eyes in the effort of recall. A dozen pigeon flew over but it would have been the wrong moment to distract him. ‘The chiel was wearing dark strides and a light shirt, white or pale colour. The second man had fawn breeks and jacket to match, mebbe a suit. And yon, so help me, is a that I can mind.’

  Bob opened his eyes as the pigeon came round again and he was in time to catch up with the last one. The bird turned over in a puff of feathers and dropped well clear of the decoy birds.

  ‘Do you mind if I send Sid for that one?’ I asked. ‘He needs the practice.’

  Bob graciously agreed and Sid went out. I directed him by hand signals onto the pigeon which had fallen into a clump of reeds. He picked up the loose-feathered bird without enthusiasm – many dogs quite reasonably dislike filling their mouths with feathers – but he brought it perfectly to hand. I put it with the others.

  ‘I must go,’ I told Bob. ‘Have the police asked you about what you’ve just told me?’ He shook his head. I cursed the absent Detective Inspector. It seemed that he had found the evidence that suited his book and then stopped work. ‘When you see your wife,’ I said, ‘would you ask her what she saw from her kitchen window on Saturday morning?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll dae that,’ Bob said.

  I left him crouched in his hide and worked Sid back in the general direction of home. Once I was well clear I could hear the gentle popping of Bob’s shotgun as the pigeon trickled in again to drink.

  Sid was investigating a clump of gorse, which I knew overlaid a bed of rock so that there were no rabbit holes below, when I heard my name called. I looked over my shoulder to where Allan Carmichael, the photographer, was waiting at a safe distance, his camera at the ready. When I returned my attention to business, I was in time to see six or seven white scuts vanishing down the holes in a bank fifty yards away. Sid emerged from the gorse, sat and looked at me reproachfully. He had done his bit and I had let him down. I called him to heel and sat him again, unloading my gun as Carmichael arrived.

  ‘Am I spoiling something?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘Nothing that mattered,’ I said.

  ‘I would have stayed well clear except that I have your prints in my pocket.’ He produced an A5 envelope from a capacious inner pocket. We took a seat on an outcrop of the same rock that underlay the gorse. The envelope was packed with glossy prints and as he sifted through them I recognized a succession of local scenes.

  He isolated and handed over some excellent shots of the dogs working, some of them including me as a foreground figure. ‘These are splendid,’ I told him. ‘How much do I owe you?’

  He waved his hand vaguely. ‘Nothing. It was a pleasure.’

  I thanked him. ‘Could I borrow the whole packet for a day or two?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t see why not. But why do you want them?’

  ‘You were trotting to and fro on Saturday morning,’ I said. ‘You know what happened?’

  ‘You mean about Mrs Horner?’

  ‘Yes. You may have caught something or someone in the background that could be useful.’

  He looked concerned. ‘Then shouldn’t I give them to the police?’

  ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that it would be perfectly proper for me to show them to Alistair Branch’s lawyer and let him decide.’

  ‘In that case, go right ahead,’ he said, handing over his envelope. ‘I like Mr Branch. I like him a lot.’

  *

  I would have liked to call in at the hotel on the way home but eyebrows might have been raised if I had walked in with an uncovered shotgun.

  Feeding time was still in progress when I reached Three Oaks. (To the relief of Sid, who knew for a fact that he would be forgotten and left to starve if he were not on the spot when food was handed out.) The junior helpers had collected their meagre wages and gone off to spend them. Henry was helping out but, between stiffening joints and a tendency to stop and chat with each dog along the way, his contribution hardly made up for the absence of Daffy.

  I lent a hand with the distribution of the dogs’ meals and subsequent dish washing, but first I phoned the pub. Mrs Hebden answered. I asked whether she could tell me who had taken lunch there on the Saturday.

  ‘Not for sure,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘It is, rather,’ I said. ‘Mr Branch’s lawyer will want to know.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ she said immediately. ‘I feel awful about telling the police all about his spat with Mrs Horner.’

  ‘Somebody else would have told them if you hadn’t.’

  ‘It’s good of you to say so. We were quite full on Saturday and if strangers called in on the way past we’ve no way of knowing who they were. I’ll check the bookings and ask the waitresses who they can remember and I’ll phone or give Mr Kitts a note for you. Will that do?’

  ‘That will do fine,’ I said, ‘and I’m sure Mr Branch will be grateful.’

  I had finished helping out and was heading back to the house for the shower and change which were habitual to me when the physical part of the day’s work was over, when Bruce’s Vectra turned in at the gate. I
tried to escape into the house but he caught me in the hall.

  ‘A word in your ear,’ he said.

  I sighed. ‘If that’s where you want to put it,’ I said wearily. I had no intention of being kept standing on tired legs in the hall, nor of inviting Bruce into my bathroom with me. I was very dry after my hours in the open air and sunshine so I decided that drinks time had arrived a little earlier than usual and led him into the sitting room. He looked surprised and disapproving when I offered him a drink, but when he heard my beer gurgling into the glass he decided that perhaps, after all, his working day could be considered over. He then went on to prove that it was not.

  When he had filled his glass to his satisfaction, he held the cold side against his brow for a moment. I noticed that he was looking a little frayed and shop-soiled. Then he drank and put down the glass.

  ‘Better, now?’ I asked.

  ‘A very, very little. I think I’ve blown it. I tried to phone Superintendent Fraser to make an appointment to go and see him but they just took the phone number for Mrs Horner’s house. Somebody called me back on his behalf a few minutes later, which was precisely the courtesy I didn’t want. I’d hoped to have a quiet chat with the Superintendent himself where I could show him your photographs and sound him out. Your photographs came out well, by the way. I paid extra for the one-hour service – you can reimburse me for the shots of dogs carrying things. Anyway, I found myself being asked what I wanted to speak to him about and when I suggested coming to see him they said that he wouldn’t trouble me to go all the way to Kirkcaldy. The message wasn’t exactly, “Come to the point or get off the line and don’t bug us,” but words to that effect were hanging in the air.

  ‘So I had to do what I least wanted and speak to Fraser over the phone, with God knows who listening in. And he’d already heard about the rabbit skin so I was left with nothing very new to offer except to point out that the case against my client was circumstantial in the extreme, that the only physical evidence could easily have been transplanted, that as good a case could probably have been made against others and that he was holding a very mild-mannered man on the strength of evidence which might just possibly persuade a sheriff to commit him for trial but would certainly not convince a judge and jury. He listened politely and then said that he’d look into the matter and get back to me.’