Hole in One

by Catherine Aird

  ‘That,’ she said with suspicious docility, ‘would be a great help.’

  ‘As soon as the course is opened again, that is,’ he said. ‘There’s been a bit of trouble at the sixth this morning.’

  Chapter Nine

  Halved

  The little bit of trouble at the sixth was getting bigger – or, at least, more visible.

  ‘Definitely a fractured skull,’ pronounced Dr Dabbe, straightening up.

  ‘Definitely male,’ contributed Crosby helpfully.

  ‘As I say to anyone in Accident and Emergency who’ll listen,’ said the pathologist, wagging a finger, ‘“No head injury is too trivial to ignore”.’

  ‘Yes, doctor.’ It was a lesson that the Station Sergeant at Berebury Police Station was always trying to din into his underlings, too. In its way their cells there were almost an out station of the Accident and Emergency Department of the hospital. Especially on Saturday nights.

  ‘Even they,’ added Dr Dabbe sardonically, ‘couldn’t have missed this one.’

  ‘No, doctor.’

  ‘I can’t be sure, Sloan, until I’ve had a better look but I’m tending towards the injury being from a sharp instrument rather than a blunt one.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan made a note and asked the doctor again the question that mattered next in the hierarchy of an enquiry. ‘How long dead?’

  ‘Don’t rush me, Sloan.’

  ‘No, doctor, of course not.’ One of Sloan’s early lessons from his first Station Sergeant had been that you caught more bees with honey than with sticks. So he added handsomely, ‘There’s no hurry.’ He didn’t know at this stage if this was strictly true but murder, once being done, would always be there, waiting upon justice. And Blind Justice never tired of holding her scales.

  ‘Let me see,’ said Dabbe, immediately demonstrating that the old saw about bees and honey worked, ‘where are we now?’

  ‘Thursday,’ said Sloan.

  The pathologist stroked his chin. ‘If you pushed me, I’d say, clinically, seven or eight days. But that’s only a guesstimate.’

  ‘Thursday or Wednesday,’ said Crosby, counting backwards on his fingers. ‘Last week.’

  ‘I can’t be quite sure until we know when he was last seen alive, of course,’ said the pathologist, hedging his bets.

  ‘Commonsense says he was buried on Sunday night,’ pointed out Sloan, ‘seeing as Sunday must be the busiest day here and so the risk of someone finding him by accident in daylight the greatest then.’

  ‘But I would say killed somewhere else for sure.’ The doctor waved at Burns to start packing his bags. ‘Get him up and bring him round to me and I’ll see what else I can tell you about your Riddle of the Sands.’

  ‘There are certainly no signs of a struggle hereabouts that we can see,’ agreed Sloan, continuing with his own thoughts. ‘So far, that is.’ He would instigate a wider search as soon as he could.

  ‘There’s no blood in the sand,’ said the pathologist flatly. ‘That clinches it.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to look for it on somebody’s carpet, won’t we?’ said Crosby cheerfully.

  Detective Inspector Sloan only hoped it wasn’t going to be his blood and the carpet that of Superintendent Leeyes.

  ‘Of course I’ll help you, Inspector. What exactly is it you want to know?’

  Sloan had found Alan Pursglove, the Secretary of the Golf Club, hovering in the Club Room.

  ‘That is, I’ll help you if I can,’ amended the man, keeping one eye on the door of his office. ‘Your man Leeyes has taken over my room and I can’t get in there myself.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan took his time to respond to the remark, savouring this instance of lese-majesty to the full. It wasn’t often he heard his superior officer referred to quite so casually. The good books advised visualising bullies in embarrassing situations as a defence mechanism but hearing the Superintendent cut down to size by one of his peers in this way gave him a perverse pleasure that was much better than thinking of the man half-dressed or henpecked. ‘What we need to know first,’ he said eventually, ‘is when a player was last down in that bunker.’

  Pursglove, a short tubby fellow, nodded briskly. ‘I can see that would be useful to you.’ He shot Sloan an alert glance. ‘Let me think how we can work it out. It doesn’t happen often, you know. Not there.’

  Sloan said dryly ‘We think someone might have been counting on just that.’

  ‘So few golfers go out alone these days,’ continued the Secretary, ‘that I think we can say that this would have been noticed, and so they could be asked.’

  ‘Who else would know someone had been in that bunker?’ Confession might be good for the soul but Sloan hadn’t yet met a sport where players advertised their failures.

  ‘Molly, the bar lady,’ said Pursglove, ‘usually hears all the bad luck stories.’

  Sloan made a note to seek out Molly.

  ‘And if they were playing in a match or competition,’ reasoned Pursglove slowly, ‘the odds are they’d have lost the hole.’

  Sloan said he could see that they might.

  ‘And if it was a medal round, Inspector, it certainly wouldn’ t have been forgotten by the player.’

  ‘Medal?’ Sloan’s knowledge of medals was limited to those awarded to the police force. In the nature of things few of those came the way of the Criminal Investigation Department, bravery in this area being difficult – if not impossible - to measure. It didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

  ‘Medal play is when you add up the number of strokes …’

  ‘Strokes?’

  ‘Shots, then,’ said Pursglove. ‘But it’s usually called “Stroke play”. It’s a question then of getting the lowest total score of all those playing in the same medal competition.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan, rose-grower par excellence, decided that soon he was going to have to find out the differences between competitions, matches, and medal rounds. But not now. Now he just needed to know how a body had arrived at the sixth hole.

  Literally.

  ‘Must have been at night, of course,’ said Pursglove immediately when this was put to him. ‘And we don’t have gates. Anyone could drive in.’

  ‘But not on to the course, surely?’

  Pursglove opened his hands. ‘Why not? The greenkeeper goes almost everywhere in his truck – he wouldn’t have time to walk and get the greens cut.’

  ‘Almost everywhere?

  ‘There are some holes even he can’t get to with wheels,’ conceded the Secretary, ‘which is why we can’t use electric buggies here. After all, the course covers a great deal of hilly and uneven ground.’

  ‘But not the sixth?’ After all the pathologist had got to the spot quickly enough.

  ‘That’s quite accessible,’ agreed Pursglove at once.

  Sloan nodded. Even now someone should be following his instructions and checking the area for tyre tracks. And the greenkeeper’s truck for DNA evidence.

  ‘The course’s official yardage amounts to over three and a half miles, you see,’ the Secretary informed him, ‘and quite a lot of that is up and down The Bield.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan had never measured the area of his rose beds.

  ‘And it’s the longest in Calleshire,’ said Pursglove with pardonable pride.

  Detective Inspector Sloan was quite sure his roses were the best – whatever the opinion of the judges at the Berebury Horticultural Show in a bad year.

  ‘That’s not including some spare ground at the south end, Inspector. You’ll see it on our map of the course – when I can get into my office I’ll show you.’ He looked alertly at Sloan. ‘We’re letting that section go for development …’

  ‘Ah …’ Strictly speaking development was a civil matter but in Sloan’s book anything that spelt money could spell crime. And development spelt money if anything did.

  ‘Only some of the Committee are still unhappy about it,’ ended Pursglove.

  Detec
tive Inspector Sloan’s head came up quite automatically. ‘A Club divided?’

  The Club Secretary chose his words with practised care. ‘There are those members who want to sell and take the money while the going is good.’

  ‘Jam today rather than jam tomorrow.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Big money?’ Building land must be at a premium out here.

  ‘Very big money,’ agreed the Secretary.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they want to build a thirty-bay driving range with the proceeds,’ said Pursglove. ‘For starters, that is.’

  Sloan nodded. Presumably that would be a money-spinner.

  ‘And upgrade the facilities in the Clubhouse with the extra money. New changing rooms and so forth.’

  He could see that that would be a boost to the Club, too.

  ‘Oh, and a new car park.’

  ‘Major works,’ agreed Sloan. That car parks were a boon anywhere and everywhere went without saying in some quarters. Including thieves’ dens.

  ‘Exactly.’ The Secretary said ‘So the committee commissioned a feasibility study.’

  ‘Kicked it into touch?’

  ‘Only in a manner of speaking,’ said Pursglove. ‘United Mellemetics’ technical people said there would be no problem.’

  ‘And those against?’ At a guess that would be where the problems would be.

  The Secretary grimaced. ‘They said a lot.’

  In Sloan’s experience it was always the opponents who said the most.

  ‘They want the money spent on building a decent road round The Bield so that the older members can use buggies.’

  ‘Nobody gets younger,’ said Sloan prosaically.

  ‘And a small Dormy House.’

  Sloan paused just long enough at this for the Secretary to feel the need for further explanation.

  Pursglove said ‘Somewhere for golfers to stay overnight. Dormy means that you’re in a position in a match where you’re as many holes up as there are holes left and therefore you can’t be beaten.’

  ‘Bully for them,’ said Sloan.

  ‘It literally means that you can’t lose even by going to sleep.’

  In the police service you could often lose by going to sleep: that was the trouble.

  The Secretary went on: ‘And there’s what you might call a third party view as well.’ The man essayed a grin. ‘A third party of one. A member called Moffat, Gerald Moffat. He doesn’t want either outcome. He says the status quo is good enough for him.’

  ‘A member, man and boy?’ They had some dinosaurs on the Police Committee, too.

  ‘Worse than that.’ Alan Pursglove looked rueful. ‘His grandfather was a founder member and don’t we know it!’

  ‘This development …who wants to do it?’ Sloan didn’t know whether that sort of work could relate to an unknown body in a bunker. It was too soon to say.

  ‘The Committee decided,’ said Pursglove, somehow conveying that he didn’t agree with his Committee but as Secretary wasn’t in a position to say so, ‘that the work should be done by the firm of a member. They thought that then it would be bound to be done more sympathetically by people who knew the game and the course well than anyone who didn’ t …’

  Detective Inspector Sloan was sure that a murderer had known the course and the game well, too.

  ‘Without upsetting players and so forth,’ said Pursglove.

  There was probably no one more upsetting than a murderer, mused Sloan but to himself. Murderers offended against the Queen’s Peace – and that was only for starters.

  ‘There’s no shortage of firms anxious to tender,’ said Pursglove, pursuing a quite different train of thought. ‘There’s United Mellemetics, Trumper and Trumper, and Gilchrist’s lot for a start. I daresay Calleshire Consolidated will want to make a bid for the work, too. They usually do for any work in the area that’s going.’

  ‘I see.’ Sloan scribbled some names down in his notebook.

  ‘I expect you’ll have heard of them, won’t you?’

  Calleshire born and bred, Detective Inspector Sloan knew them all. Deciding that this was no moment to explain the difference between knowing a firm and it being known to the police, Sloan reverted to the subject of the bunker at the sixth.

  ‘That bunker’s not overlooked,’ said Pursglove thoughtfully, ‘so I would have thought you could dig at leisure.’

  Sloan could only dig at leisure. And the garden of his suburban semi-detached house was very much overlooked.

  ‘Ideal spot, really,’ the Secretary was saying. ‘For whoever did the digging, I mean,’ he explained. Looking up at Sloan, he said shrewdly ‘The professional will have a note of Visitors but you’ll be wanting a full list of members, Inspector, won’t you?’ His face took on a business-like expression as he said in the way of Secretaries world-over when there was trouble in the offing. ‘I think I’d better call a Committee meeting.’

  ‘Just a few questions,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan comfortably.

  ‘What about?’ asked Jock Selkirk. The professional visibly braced himself against his counter.

  ‘Visitors.’

  ‘Visitors?’ echoed Jock Selkirk, warily eyeing the two policemen standing in the professional’s shop. ‘What sort of visitors? Are you talking about players who’ve bought tickets for their rounds or teams from other Clubs playing against Berebury in matches?’

  ‘Non-members who have paid to play,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, taking in his surroundings of golf bags and clubs and balls and the smell of leather shoes. At the same time he was trying to take the measure of the man in front of him. The professional was not tall but decidedly well-built. He had a good head of wavy black hair, cut short, and the sort of jaw that women called rugged.

  ‘Or who should have paid but have gone out without tickets,’ supplemented Detective Constable Crosby to whom the degrees of perfidy had not been spelled out too clearly in training.

  ‘You’ll have records,’ suggested Sloan persuasively.

  ‘No problem.’ Selkirk rummaged about in a drawer behind the counter and brought out a book of receipts.

  ‘Any of them stand out at all?’ asked Sloan, pocketing the book.

  The professional started to shake his head and then stopped and gave a short laugh. ‘No – wait a minute. There were a couple of guys last month who beat up the course.’

  Crosby lifted his head. ‘Vandals?’

  ‘No. Scratch.’

  ‘Gave up?’ asked the Constable.

  Selkirk gave Crosby a hard look. ‘I mean really good players who play to the scratch score. It’s seventy-one here at Berebury.’ He tightened his lips into a wry smile. ‘Don’t get half enough of those, not men who play to the scratch score. They’re mostly Sunday morning types or old fogeys here who haven’t ever played to bogey.’

  Crosby began to look faintly interested. ‘Nothing to do with the march, I suppose?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ The professional gave the Constable an even harder look. ‘I’m talking about par,’ he said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan pacifically. There were those who needed to have the differences between floribunda, rambling and climbing roses explained to them. ‘Anyone else who stood out at all?’

  Selkirk frowned. ‘There was a south paw.’

  ‘A left-hander?’

  ‘You tend to notice them in my line of business.’ The professional waved a hand at a display rack in the corner. ‘I have to stock clubs for those on the wild side but I don’t reckon in the nature of things to sell that many.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Sloan. It was too early for the pathologist to have told him whether the blow to the head of the man in the bunker had been struck by a left-handed man or not. Or, come to that, by a woman. He produced his notebook. ‘Any way in which you can tell who was the last player in the bunker at the sixth?’

  ‘Well, I can tell you someone who was in there on Sunday morning,’ said Selkirk
briskly, ‘and that was Brian Southon because he came in here afterwards and wanted advice on shanking …’

  Sloan reminded himself that non-rosarians didn’t know about rugosa roses either.

  The professional said ‘He wanted me to look at his grip but I reckon he’d been trying to green it and went too far. Lost the hole, of course.’

  ‘Is it a difficult one?’

  Selkirk shrugged. ‘Not by my standards. “Tee it high and let it fly” is what I tell ’em. Four hundred and forty-five yards, par four. Bit of a dog-leg but easy enough if you let the wind be your friend. Never up, never in, of course.’

  ‘It’s the wind that sorts out the men from the boys, isn’t it?’ said Sloan. It was the only bit of golfing lore that he knew.

  ‘A fair wind helps,’ conceded Selkirk, ‘but I always tell beginners it doesn’t turn a tyro into a player.’

  ‘Any promising youngsters taken up the game lately?’ asked Sloan casually.

  ‘Nobody who’s going to win the Open,’ responded Selkirk tartly.

  Sloan reminded himself that they had their own working shorthand of speech down at the Police Station too. Criminal argot was something that all policemen learned early on, too. “Let’s be having you” didn’t mean much outside of the world of cops and robbers but it meant plenty to them. He must remember that golfing argot would be something different.

  ‘When did the greenkeeper go off sick?’ he asked.

  ‘Joe Briggs? Last Tuesday – no, Wednesday. That’s right. They were worried about the greens for the weekend but some of the members on the Greens Committee got together and cut most of them.’ The professional gave the police inspector a meaningful look and said ‘You’re not the only one round here asking questions.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I am,’ said Sloan equably.

  ‘There’s a girl called Trumper, Hilary Trumper, wanting to get to know the course.’

  ‘She’s not the only one,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘Could you take us round sometime, too?’

  Chapter Ten

  Penalty

  Detective Sergeant Polly Perkins might spend much of her time with some very off-beat members of her own sex but she was up to the style of the Ladies Section of the Berebury Golf Club, too.