I produced the annotated list of potential suspects. He was interested, but he drew in a sharp breath when he saw some of the names and his long face took on the expression of one who has found, after putting on his slippers, that the cat had messed in one of them. ‘Out of the question,’ he said. He snatched a pencil off my desk and ran it through several names. ‘A magistrate, a regional councillor and my own doctor,’ he said. ‘What are you thinking of?’
All three vocations had in the past produced exponents of more serious crimes than poaching but I decided not to argue the point. ‘I’m not thinking anything,’ I said feebly. ‘This isn’t a list of suspects, it’s a comprehensive list of people who know the ground well . . . for elimination purposes.’
‘Then eliminate these gentlemen—’
He was interrupted by the telephone. Superintendent McHarg came on the line. He wished, he said, to discuss my last report.
‘Things have moved on since that was written,’ I said. ‘I’ve just dictated another report. Shall I give you the gist of it or will you wait until you get the fax copy?’
‘Play the tape to me over the phone.’
‘Mr Munro’s with me, sir,’ I said.
‘Let the old fool hear it too.’
‘I heard that,’ the Chief Superintendent said hotly.
‘He—’
‘And I heard him,’ Mr McHarg said. If there was any apology in his tone, the telephone failed to transmit it. ‘Play the tape.’
I made an apologetic face at Mr Munro, plugged a lead into the tape recorder, attached a rubber sucker to the phone and started the tape. Chief Superintendent Munro listened intently to my taped voice. Superintendent McHarg must have done the same although he was strangely silent when the taped report had finished – wondering, I had no doubt, whether to castigate me for crying wolf or to enquire why I was sitting on my arse – his usual expression – instead of dashing about in the snow, doing something clever.
‘I thought we had agreed,’ Munro said loudly – I held out the instrument, to make sure that Mr McHarg could catch his words – ‘that Mr Kerr would return of his own accord in the fullness of time and that you would concentrate your efforts on the poaching incidents at McKimber Estate.’
‘There’s a possibility,’ I said, ‘that the two cases are connected.’
Mr Munro might be old, as policemen go, but he was far from being the old fool Mr McHarg had called him. ‘You think that Mr Kerr may have entered McKimber grounds in pursuit of what I believe they call a “runner” and have disturbed the poacher at work? But the keeper states that he was not visited that night.’
‘He did hear an engine. The poacher may have been interrupted before he could begin work,’ I said. ‘Or there’s the possibility that Mr Kerr himself was the poacher—’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ Munro exploded.
That was quite sufficient to make up Mr McHarg’s mind for him. ‘Sergeant,’ he said sharply.
‘Sir?’
‘You may have something there. Or you may not. There are gaps in the evidence. Not your fault,’ he added with uncharacteristic generosity. ‘Between the contractor’s operations and the weather, what evidence there might have been is buried. Then again, the period between your leaving the scene and your return is barely accounted for. It would only take one witness – any one witness – to be mistaken or lying to make a gap that Kerr could very easily have slipped through.’ (Mr Munro grunted agreement.) ‘At this stage, if we were to fetch the digger driver back from Spain or start digging up the water main, we’d have our balls in a sling if Kerr did return, hungover but otherwise unharmed. I don’t think that he will, but he might. In view of the weather . . . we’ll wait. Continue with your enquiries. I’ve a good mind to send you some help.’
‘The road over Soutra is blocked,’ Munro said with satisfaction.
McHarg pretended not to have heard him. ‘If the digger driver – Campbell, is it? – fails to return on his due date, we might make a bid for extradition. But,’ he added quickly, ‘if somebody has to fly out to Spain, don’t go getting any ideas that it’ll be you. And when the thaw comes, we can bring in the thermal imaging cameras and sniffer dogs. Until then, carry on. If Mr Munro won’t sign your mileage claim, bring it to me. And keep me posted. You understand?’
‘Of course, sir,’ I said. ‘It might be useful to have all mobiles keep an eye open for Hempie Wright.’
‘I’ll fix that. What’s the number of his van?’
‘I don’t know. Swansea couldn’t tell me. If you know the number they can tell you the owner’s name but not the other way around.’
I heard him snort. ‘You’re about as much use as a crick in the neck,’ he said.
‘Before you hang up,’ Mr Munro said, ‘I will speak to the Superintendent.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Your shift is almost over. Go home and change your wet clothes before you catch your death of cold. I appreciate your zeal but would prefer that you tempered it with a little common sense.’
I gave him the phone, grabbed up my shoes and cleared out in a hurry. When superiors fall out, the wise man climbs a tree and pulls it up after him.
Chapter Five
Like any other citizen, a policeman needs to protect his modest savings against inflation if he is to know comfort in later life. The best investment is to buy a home. Here, the rootless nature of the job and the rules of service put the copper at a disadvantage; but obstacles are for surmounting and I had been lucky. Edinburgh property values had boomed and I had sold my Old Town tenement flat for substantially more than the amount of my mortgage. This had enabled me, with the aid of the building society and the approval of Mr Munro in one of his rare moods of bonhomie, to buy a small but comfortable flat in the better part of Newton Lauder.
We had an evening date. Deborah had let herself into the flat, bringing several of the pigeons which we had gathered at the big shoot, a favourite recipe of her mother’s and a bottle of Keith’s wine.
It was snowing again as I reached home, but Deborah had lit the logs in the grate and the flat was warm and welcoming. From the kitchen came a smell that nearly had me dribbling down my chin. The hot bath and change into dry clothes, to which I had been looking forward, seemed irrelevant but I took them anyway.
I had never realised that the humble woodpigeon could be such a delicacy. We dined well on pigeon pie, washed up and settled on the couch to watch a film on the box.
The film wound itself up to a predictably emotional finish. I got up, turned off the set, started a longplaying tape of assorted music and made coffee.
We talked. Inevitably our talk turned towards the two mysteries at McKimber. I would not usually discuss police business with an outsider, but Deborah and her family can be very discreet when discretion is called for and her knowledge of local affairs and personalities exceeds even that of her father.
I was still carrying Allan Brindle’s list, by now heavily annotated, creased and crumpled. Deborah smoothed it out on her knee. ‘Let’s see the list of dates when McKimber was poached,’ she said. I produced it. ‘I thought so.’ She put her finger on a name. ‘This lad was working on an oil-rig all winter. Two weeks on and two off. His dates couldn’t possibly fit. And Johnny Bates came ratting with me last month. He brought his only airgun and it was a one-seven-seven. And look here . . .’
Mr Youngson and Chief Superintendent Munro had cast doubt on most of the more respectable names on the list. Now Deborah began to eliminate many of the beaters. It said a lot about her life-style that she knew so much intimate history about most of the rougher characters in and around Newton Lauder. When she had exhausted her local knowledge she looked the list over again with a critical eye.
‘Eleven possibles,’ she said, ‘including six probables. And by far the most likely name is Hempie Wright – not as the main character, his feet are too small, but as the occasional companion.’
‘And nobody seems to have set eyes on him since Saturday night,’ I said. ‘I
suppose that he and Ian Kerr wouldn’t have gone off to raise hell together?’
‘Un-uh. They didn’t get on. Ian caught Hempie nicking from his barn and gave him a leathering. I’d rather believe that Hempie had . . . disposed of Mr Kerr and made himself scarce. I don’t believe it, but I could believe it easier than the other thing.’ She gave me back my lists. ‘Tell me about Andy Nairn,’ she said.
‘He can’t be the poacher,’ I said. ‘He’s away too much.’
‘Of course not, you ass! But it’s interesting to know what somebody’s really like when you’ve only seen him performing. On stage, he comes over as larger than life. Terribly macho and sort of dangerous. You could imagine him leading a motorcycle gang, terrorising a small town and raping innocent maidens like me. Could we give him an invitation when he gets back from his tour?’
‘To dinner, you mean?’
‘I hadn’t thought of dinner,’ she said in a thoughtful tone. ‘I was thinking more of rabbiting, or a day at the clay pigeons.’ Deborah’s idea of a social occasion differs from that of most of her sex.
‘You’d be disappointed,’ I told her. ‘Rape would come very low on the agenda. He comes over as a well-mannered laddie who enjoys a quiet life in the country. He was studying piano, he told me. His father had a financial setback, so he joined up with a few friends who’d formed a spare-time group to make a little money on the side and they caught on. The rest seemed to happen of its own accord. It hasn’t gone to his head. He doesn’t take himself seriously, though he’s deadly serious about his singing.’
‘And he gave up the piano?’ Deborah said sadly. She was picturing a concert pianist lost to the world.
‘He doesn’t mind that. He doesn’t think he’d ever have made the top rank. He says that it’s a relief, not having to protect his hands all the time.’
The fire was burning badly. I got up to rearrange the logs. When I was seated again, she turned and leaned back against me, pulling my arm around her shoulders. ‘He may be a country chiel,’ she said, ‘but he’s wrong about one thing. I bet I could have walked through McKimber woods without making a sound. The wind would have swept the beech leaves into piles, leaving most of the ground bare.’
‘Maybe. But he was waiting, on a quiet night, listening for the sound of birds’ wings. Would he have missed the sound of somebody getting over or under or through the fence? You know how sound travels along the wires, especially the squeak as the wire’s pulled through a staple.’
‘If I wanted to pass the fence quietly, I’d roll under the bottom wire.’
‘But that supposes that you wanted to sneak through,’ I pointed out. ‘Ian Kerr had no reason to do that. Even if he was running off with a woman or going on a skite, it wouldn’t have made any difference if he’d shaken hands with every Gun on McKimber.’ It was looking less and less likely to me that Ian Kerr had gone off of his own accord. ‘And I bet you couldn’t manoeuvre a dead body past the fence without making it twang like a harp. Why didn’t you mention the handicapped son?’ I asked.
‘I’d forgotten all about him,’ she said. ‘Or, to be truthful, I suppose I’d pushed him to the back of my mind. I haven’t seen him for years. They keep him quietly at home and never mention him. It’s become a local convention to avoid the subject. Nobody ever asks after him. The Kerrs seem to prefer it that way.’
‘Is he violent?’
I felt her laugh silently. ‘No. Just a bit dottled.’
‘And his father? You’ve known Mr Kerr longer than I have. I’ve only met him twice for a few minutes each time. Would he be the type to commit suicide?’
‘I’d think not,’ she said slowly. ‘When things got too much for him, he’d get it out of his system by having a flaming row with somebody, or going on the bash, or . . .’ She stopped dead.
‘I know about the other woman,’ I said. ‘Or women.’
‘Oh. Well that doesn’t seem to make him the sort of person who’d kill himself. Does it?’
‘I suppose not.’
We fell silent, thinking.
Our relationship had been an unusual one for a permissive age. We had developed a deep friendship which was delicately balanced between passionate and platonic. Each of us was aware of the other’s sexuality. But Deborah was physically shy, forthcoming with minor caresses but wary of any deeper intimacy. I thought that she was a virgin rather than that she had suffered in an affair, and later I learned that I was right.
Shortly before I met Deborah, I had ended an affair with a lady solicitor who had been so sexually voracious that for a time sex had become no more than a tedious chore. I was in no hurry to re-activate that side of my life. I was content to wait. Some day the time would be right and sex, this time with love, would once again be as marvellous as it had been when I was young and the world of love was new. Deborah, putting a different interpretation on my restraint, seemed to feel both grateful and, at times, slighted.
As we talked, and perhaps because our minds were far away, these inhibitions had faded into the distant background. Our bodies may have been doing our thinking. A caress had become a fondle, a peck on the cheek became a fullblooded kiss. My hand, which had been holding hers, had found a happier resting place. I realised suddenly that we were both short of breath. Her eyes, which had been reflecting the firelight, were now closed; and if she had moved her elbow an inch she would have discovered that my body was almost painfully aware of hers.
I pressed gently on her shoulder and she came round as if I had hauled her. We were in a kiss which I thought and prayed would never end. The touch of lip and tongue was magical as never before, an irresistible incitement to explore more deeply. I felt a surge of joy. The moment was right at last. If it were to happen now, by mutual desire, it would be the ultimate perfection and we would enter a new age of wonder.
The telephone blew the moment to hell and further. My erection subsided. Deborah, very pink about the ears, smoothed down her skirt and moved away from me.
I picked up the phone. A woman’s voice said, ‘Sergeant Fellowes?’
So it was police business.
‘This is Mrs Brindle. Allan just spoke to me on the radio. He said to tell you that the poacher’s here.’
‘I’ll come straight away,’ I said.
*
As it turned out, that promise erred on the optimistic side. I would have set off immediately, but Deborah first insisted that I clad myself suitably – which, in her view, meant sweaters, wellingtons and my old oilskin coat complete with hood – and then decided that she was coming with me.
Several minutes were wasted in futile (on my part) argument before she added what proved to be the clincher. ‘If it’s still snowing,’ she said, ‘you’ll get stuck in your own car. But I’ve got Dad’s jeep.’
‘Give me the keys.’
‘It’s not insured for you,’ she said. ‘If you prang it you pay for it.’
I gave in, not very gracefully.
We left the flat together after another delay while she put a guard on the fire and switched off the percolator. The snow had stopped again, but recently. The moon was up in a clearing sky. While Deborah swept her arm over the jeep’s windscreen, I grabbed my police radio and the McKimber walkie-talkie out of my car. Then we were away.
While Deborah drove – carefully and in four-wheel drive – I first used my personal radio to report my journey to Control. ‘Is there a car in the vicinity of McKimber Estate?’ I asked.
‘There’s a car returning from the site of a road accident near Dryburgh,’ Control told me. ‘They could be at McKimber in fifteen or twenty minutes.’
‘Ask them to circle the estate, looking for wheel tracks, and then to stand by in case I need help,’ I said. ‘I’m on my way to a poaching incident.’
I fumbled in layers of clothing to pocket the radio. Then I switched to the other one. Its controls were unfamiliar and I wasted some time talking to myself and listening to nothing before I managed to make contact with the keeper.
‘Mr Brindle? Over.’
‘Where are you, Sergeant? Over.’ His voice was muted, as though he was speaking softly and very close to the microphone to avoid alerting his quarry.
‘Approaching McKimber, arriving . . .’ I looked out at a changed landscape but was lucky enough to recognise the gates of Tundle House. ‘In about five minutes. Over.’
‘There’s two of them and I think I’ve got the buggers cornered,’ Brindle said. ‘Park at position B and move quietly to . . . Got the map there? Over.’
The map was in one of my pockets. ‘Got it. Over.’
‘Come to the K in McKimber. I’ll be near the letter R. Over and out.’
With some difficulty I got out the map and tried to read it by the faint illumination from the dash. Fortunately I had already studied it with care. Rendezvous B was at the back of the big house. The name of the estate was spread over its acres. It seemed that Brindle had pinned down his quarry in a large peninsula of woodland which jutted into an area of level fields. Anyone trying to escape through the fields would cast a long shadow across the snow.
‘Up the main drive,’ I told Deborah, ‘and round the back of the house.’
‘You’ve got it,’ she said.
‘Go down to sidelights as soon as you’re in at the gates.’
The snow in the driveway was unblemished by wheel tracks, but Deborah held the middle between bushes which sprang black out of nothingness. The house reared up in front of us. She coaxed the jeep round to the back, crawling as quietly as the small vehicle could manage, and parked beside some outbuildings. Around the house was a tangled web of footprints. Some faint grooves suggested wheel tracks which had been made between the two falls of snow.
‘You wait here,’ I said. ‘Lock yourself in.’
‘Hold on. I’m coming—’
‘No you are not. This could get rough.’
‘All the more reason—’
For once, I was more determined than she was. ‘Promise, or I’ll handcuff you to the steering wheel.’
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