Home to Roost

by Gerald Hammond

  She probably guessed that I had no handcuffs with me, but she could see that I was adamant. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘All bloody right!’

  I closed the door gently and set off. I walked as quietly as I could and although the fresh snow squeaked underfoot it also seemed to muffle sound.

  I followed the estate road to the first curve. Every tree could have hidden a hostile presence. The poachers were only known to have used an airgun, but that was not to say that they did not have shotguns with them.

  The map had shown a succession of clearings leading off to the left; and a gap in the trees seemed to lead in the right direction. I turned off, floundered through deeper snow and joined up with another set of footprints, clearly marked by the bright moonlight.

  ‘Where are you?’ demanded the radio in my pocket softly. ‘Over.’

  I fished it out. ‘Following a set of footprints along the clearings towards Letter K. Yours? Over.’

  ‘Aye. Keep coming. Out.’

  I kept coming. The line of clearings had seemed clearcut on the map, but there had been some planting and some felling since the map was drawn and the tracery of the trees, sometimes confused by snow lying on the branches, was less distinct. I decided to follow the footprints.

  After a hundred yards another set of human footprints and those of a small dog joined up with the first set. Did Allan Brindle have a companion? Then I realised that he had come across a set of the poacher’s tracks and followed them. Further on another set converged and the three seemed to proceed together. Into my mind came the story by A. A. Milne in which Pooh Bear walks round and round a small wood, following an ever increasing number of his own tracks. Surely I couldn’t have walked in a circle? In these damned, confusing woods, anything was possible. But no, because one set swung away again.

  Ahead I could see a broad splash of moonlight marking another and larger clearing. Two sets of prints and those of the dog departed to my right. I decided that the poachers had parted and that Brindle had decided to follow one of them. The other set went left and I went after it.

  I had trudged perhaps a third of the way around the open space when the footprints before me were again joined. This time it seemed that somebody had come down from the branches of a large tree to join the other. Were there three poachers then? Or had Brindle’s quarry evaded him, hidden in a tree and then joined up with his mate? I hurried on, puzzling. Both sets of footprints were small. There had been no marks to show how he had first arrived at the tree. Surely he could not have waited aloft since the snowfall began?

  I stood still and thought about it. He or they must know that clearcut tracks were being left in the snow. In such circumstances, what would I have done?

  Then it hit me. I turned and galumphed back as swiftly as I could through the hampering snow. In his boots, I would have walked on until I reached the ground under a clump of conifers, or some other place where footprints would not show. Then I would have returned, walking backwards, to a climbable tree and waited for pursuit to go past . . .

  That was what he had done. He was already at the foot of the large tree, a small figure barely distinguishable in what seemed to be white clothing. He had started to walk off, again in reverse, but when I came into view he turned and began to run. I was relieved to see that there was no sign of a gun.

  He was between me and the large clearing. Rather than cross the open he set off around the perimeter, giving me a chance to cut the corner.

  Contours were impossible to judge beneath the snow. He seemed to be at a lower level than I was, but when I launched my tackle the bank took me by surprise. I arrived in his path much sooner and travelling very much faster than I had intended – indeed, I would have shot past in front of him if I had not flung out a hand, in the hope more of arresting myself than him, and by a fluke caught and held a handful of clothing.

  The jerk swung us both off our feet. He had time to utter one very rude word in broad Scots before we fell together. There was a gut-watering groan of ice and I realised that the expanse of snow overlaid a frozen duck-pond. A flighting pond, Deborah called it later.

  We slid, pushing up pillows of snow before us. Powdery snow was forced up my sleeves and down my neck, into my eyes and hair. The tops of my boots scooped up a load of it.

  Later, I realised that we had been skidding towards the corner where the feeder stream had kept the water open. If we had reached it, we would have been in for a ducking in freezing water if nothing worse. But our mad slither brought us to a place where the tips of reeds or waterweed had been showing on the surface. It was as if I had tried to sledge on a gravel drive without, of course, the sledge. I slowed so suddenly that my captive rolled on top of me.

  We came to a halt. He rolled off my head and I sat up. He remained face down, catching his breath. He seemed to be wearing a set of loose painter’s overalls over his ordinary clothes. I still had hold of one of his sleeves.

  ‘Hempie Wright, I presume,’ I said.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘depends.’

  ‘Depends on what?’

  Instead of answering, he began to struggle, flailing around like a mad thing. I was uncomfortably aware that ice tends to be thin where reeds reach the surface but I was damned if I was letting go. I thought that he had meant to say that it depended on whether he could break out of my grip. But, if that were the case, why was he yelling his head off?

  Movement caught my eye, a black figure at the edge of the pond. Was Wright yelling to his companion for armed help? But then I recognised the sturdy figure and the thumbstick of Allan Brindle.

  ‘Calm down,’ I told Wright. ‘It’s over. You’re nicked.’

  He rolled over and sat up suddenly, producing an ominous creak from the ice. Even by moonlight I could see that his face was as pale as his overalls. He seemed to be gibbering, too overcome to speak, but he was pointing downwards.

  ‘You’ve broken a leg?’ I said.

  He shook his head violently and pointed again.

  Our slide across a corner of the pond had swept away the snow and left a long streak of darker ice. Where Wright had been lying, his body had melted the surface, forming a more transparent patch, as if a hand had been wiped across a misted windscreen.

  Beneath the ice but close to it, a pattern of light and darkness showed. I tried to convince myself that it was anything but what I knew it to be. When a companion points out an image in the clouds or in the embers of a fire, it may be impossible at first to see it. But once seen, it is inescapable. The shadows under the ice had formed themselves into a face and they refused to revert to a mere pattern of pond-weed and debris. It stared up at me, tilted roguishly, and it smiled with a grin that sent a primeval dread crawling from my fundament, up my spine and into my scalp.

  I made an effort and regained some control of my voice. ‘If I let go of you, you won’t try and run for it?’ I said to Wright.

  ‘My knees’ve gone to water,’ he whispered.

  ‘Don’t shake your head,’ I said urgently. ‘This ice is thin. Stay a few yards behind me and crawl very gently towards Mr Brindle.’

  But he made the mistake of looking down again. His nerve broke. He tore his sleeve out of my grasp, jumped to his feet and ran for the bank. Like some cartoon character, he seemed to skim over the surface by dint of sheer speed; but I heard and felt the ice crack.

  After testing the ice for himself, Brindle had wisely decided to remain on the bank. He pounced on Hempie Wright and shook him. ‘You’re no’ the one I’m after,’ he said. ‘Where’s your mate?’

  ‘Hold on a moment,’ I said. ‘There seems to be a body under the ice. I’ll join you if I can.’

  I had a choice between crossing the width of the pond over an uncertain depth of water or following where Hempie Wright had gone before. I chose the shorter course as being presumably shallower. I tried to make myself light and to walk very gently, but I was only halfway to the bank before the ice gave way and I went through. The water only came to my k
nees. From there on, I had to wade, breaking the ice as I went. I nearly repeated Mr McAlistair’s trick of walking out of my boots, but by curling up my toes I made it to the bank with my footwear complete.

  ‘Is’t Ian Kerr?’ Brindle asked quickly.

  I lay down and lifted my legs to empty my boots. Half the water seemed to run up inside my trousers. ‘Impossible to say for sure, but I’d bet money on it. Well, he isn’t going anywhere—’

  We were interrupted by the arrival of a large Labrador which I would have mistaken for Sam except that he tried very hard to lick my face. Sam had never paid me more than the scantest attention.

  He turned out to be Sam after all. As I got to my feet, Deborah came flying out of the trees and threw herself at me. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, over and over again.

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ I said testily.

  ‘But your face . . .’

  I realised that my face was stinging. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s all blood.’

  I remembered that my face had taken the brunt of my contact with the roughened ice. ‘Just scratches,’ I said. ‘I thought I told you to stay in the car.’

  ‘Yes, but I had to come and tell you. You’ll never guess what I saw.’

  ‘I can guess exactly what you saw,’ I told her. ‘You’ll never guess – oh, never mind! There’s a body under the ice.’

  ‘Ian Kerr?’

  ‘Impossible to say, but it seems likely.’ I shrugged off a sense of déjà vu and felt in my pockets. I seemed to have parted company with my police radio along the way and when I took hold of the McKimber one several bits came away in my fingers. ‘Call your wife up,’ I told Brindle. ‘Ask her to phone the police and tell them that we’ve found a body. There’s a car somewhere in this area. They’re to meet you at your cottage and one of you bring them back here. Newton Lauder can report to Edinburgh and then start the routine for a suspicious death. I’ll join you shortly but there’s something I must do first.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’ Deborah asked. The fact that she asked instead of insisting was a step in the right direction.

  ‘Better not,’ I said. ‘I’ll be with you in minutes. There’s no danger now.’ Except, I thought, that if the shape under the ice turned out to be a plastic bag I’d be in the running for being voted Prat of the Year by the Lothian and Borders Constabulary.

  I set off through the snow at a clumsy jog-trot, squelching at every step. I deviated slightly from the shortest route in order to pass the scene of my flying tackle. A rectangular hole in the snow, out on the ice, marked the fall of my radio. I did not fancy another trip on to ice which was almost certainly cracked, but it was that or pay for the radio. I shuffled gently out and retrieved it. It was unbroken but there seemed to be no point in using it. The routine for dealing with a fatality would already be in train and the question of tyre-marks in the roads around the estate had become academic. I flipped up my hood before realising that it was full of snow and jogged on towards the big house.

  No lights were showing, but this neither surprised nor deterred me. I hammered on the big front door and rang the bell and, after a long interval, lights came on and shuffling footsteps approached.

  The door was opened by the laird himself. Mr Youngson was in slippers, pyjamas and a dressing-gown. His hair was tousled and he yawned, giving a good impression of a man newly awakened from a deep sleep.

  ‘What on earth do you want, Sergeant, at this ungodly hour?’

  ‘I need to talk to you, urgently,’ I said.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I’ve just discovered a dead body in your grounds.’ To avoid repetition of the question that Deborah and Allan Brindle had asked, I added, ‘It may or may not be Ian Kerr.’

  He blinked at me and then reluctantly stood aside. ‘You’d better come in,’ he said.

  That was all I needed. He had invited me inside. I pushed past him and headed for the back of the house. He followed me, protesting loudly, but I ignored him. If I were wrong, he could have me hauled over the coals; but for once I felt sure of my ground.

  I found what I was looking for in a small cloakroom – a set of painter’s overalls, soaking wet, had been thrown down beside the door to a lavatory; in a basket was a cairn terrier, also wet; and an air rifle stood in a corner beside the corpse of a cock pheasant.

  The house managed to seem even colder than the outdoors and my teeth were beginning to chatter, but I managed to speak with reasonable clarity. ‘I thought as much,’ I said. ‘You slipped past us back to the house. It never occurred to us to put your name on the list. But when I realised that anybody who didn’t have one of the estate radios and familiarity with the estate map would be almost certain to leave tracks where Brindle or I would cross them, I thought of you immediately. And Deborah Calder was sitting in a car at the back of the house. She saw you go by.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. The anger in his voice had turned to defiance.

  ‘Hempie Wright found the body,’ I told him. ‘It scared him out of his wits. I should think that he’s babbled the whole story to Allan Brindle by now.’

  He stood still for a long moment. Then he gave a sudden shiver. ‘That would certainly give him the shock of his life,’ he said. ‘Did he do that to your face? If so, it was in panic. There’s no vice in him. But you realise that a man in that state would say whatever he thought his interrogator wanted to hear?’

  ‘And sign it,’ I said.

  He lifted and dropped his hands in a helpless gesture. ‘Come into the kitchen. It’s the only warm place in the house, but Mrs Mac gets upset if I hang around there during the day.’

  He led the way into a large kitchen, more modern than the rest of the house but featuring a solid fuel range. The warmth from this was suddenly the most welcoming sensation in the world. We stood as close to it as we could without actually scorching.

  ‘I don’t admit a damn thing,’ he said. ‘So what do you think you’re going to do about it.’

  ‘How did Ian Kerr’s body arrive in your duck-pond?’ I asked him.

  ‘I honest-to-God do not have the faintest idea. Nor, I’m as certain as one can be, does Hempie. What I told you the first time you came was the absolute truth. Have you considered suicide?’

  ‘We don’t know yet how he died,’ I said. ‘When we do, we’ll know whether accident and suicide are possibilities. But, on what we know at the moment, it seems most likely that he was murdered. If that proves to be the case, the supposition is bound to arise that he left his shooting position to gather a bird, saw something that incriminated the two poachers and was killed to shut his mouth.’

  ‘But it didn’t happen,’ he said, as if that would settle the matter.

  ‘Perhaps not. But do you think the police and a subsequent court would be more likely to believe you if the poaching matter had been cleared up, or if you were protesting your innocence of both crimes while the evidence that you were poaching is damning?’

  He thought that over in silence. I could tell that he did not like it at all. ‘You keep talking about a crime,’ he said plaintively at last. ‘But you’re forgetting that it’s my land.’

  ‘I’m not forgetting it. But you leased the sporting rights. What would you call a man who sold something and then stole it back?’

  ‘A bird released into the wild doesn’t belong to anybody,’ he said. ‘When it’s dead it becomes the property of the man who killed it.’

  ‘Not if it’s stolen out of a catching pen,’ I pointed out. ‘Technically, what you say is true. But morally? Your counsel may be able to argue that a landowner can’t poach off his own sporting tenant, but I wouldn’t want to risk a murder charge on the strength of it. Hempie Wright is certainly vulnerable and you were acting together.’

  He thought again and swore under his breath. ‘I’m an old fool,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d driven a good bargain with Jeffries, but what he paid me for the use
of the land was derisory. Peanuts! And he wants me to renew on the same terms! Do you know what that bastard charges his clients?’ he asked. ‘While I had to rely for my shooting on invitations from friends?’

  It is often a mistake to get drawn into argument. But I liked the old man. I thought that he was probably innocent of anything worse than mischief, but his attitude was going to do him no good. ‘I’ve no idea,’ I said. ‘But by the time he’s leased the rights from you, reared the poults, paid Allan Brindle and his under-keeper for a year, hired beaters and met his advertising costs, it would have to be hefty.’

  Another silence. ‘I never thought of it that way,’ he said sadly. ‘Does this have to come out?’

  ‘I’ll have to make a report,’ I said. ‘With an unsolved murder under investigation, it can’t be hidden. But do you want my advice?’

  ‘No,’ he said quickly, and then, ‘Yes. I think I do.’

  ‘Get Jeffries on the phone now, right away. Never mind if you have to wake him up. Tell him that you’ve been a fool. Admit everything. Then offer to renew for several years at the same terms.’

  ‘He’ll nail me to the wall!’

  ‘Cheap at the price if he agrees not to prosecute,’ I told him. ‘Remember what lawyers cost. And those invitations from friends will dry up if you’re convicted of poaching.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it.’ He studied my face for a long moment. ‘You’re a good sort,’ he said. ‘Go easy on Hempie. This was my folly. Envy and boredom. Hempie just came along now and again for the fun of it.’

  ‘Easily led,’ I suggested.

  He made a face. ‘Touché!’

  ‘Do it now,’ I said. ‘And then, don’t go to bed. You’ll have visitors.’

  Chapter Six

  It was not far to Allan Brindle’s house but in my wet state I was chilled through again by the time I reached its welcoming warmth. Any more hypothermia, I decided, and there would be another corpse in the case. Two other cars had found parking space around Brindle’s Land-Rover.