‘Dead,’ said Sloan.
‘What?’ exploded the Superintendent.
‘Very dead,’ said Sloan firmly.
There was an uncharacteristic silence at the other end of the telephone line. It equated with the sound of cogitation on the Superintendent’s part.
‘I don’t think, Sloan,’ said Leeyes eventually, ‘that we’re going to find who killed Matthew Steele until we know exactly why he was murdered. Or Bobby Curd.’
‘Bobby Curd, though, must have seen something,’ said Sloan. ‘Stands out a mile.’
‘Or seen someone,’ said Leeyes.
‘Probably the night Steele was buried. But as to why Steele was killed, sir, I’m afraid we’re no further forward.’
‘Though Luke Trumper wasn’t happy about the fellow pursuing his daughter.’
‘Fathers seldom are – rich fathers, anyway,’ said Sloan. He didn’t have a daughter.
‘Girls can be very wilful,’ said Leeyes, who did have a daughter.
‘I’m sure, sir.’ It was widely supposed at the Police Station that Superintendent Leeyes was henpecked: mostly on the grounds that it explained his behaviour at work. Perhaps he was chicken-pecked as well. ‘We’re going to interview Luke Trumper as soon as possible.’ He coughed. ‘They do say, sir, that he’s been up here a lot lately. Much more than usual for him, anyway.’
‘Thought Steele was too young for a son-in-law, I expect,’ said Leeyes sagely. ‘No prospects, either …’
That wasn’t what Sergeant Perkins had reported to Sloan: the prospects might have been altogether too rosy for Trumper père’s liking.
‘Some fathers, of course,’ pronounced Leeyes weightily, ‘will go to any lengths to stop their daughters getting mixed up with unsuitable young men.’
‘Not murder, surely?’ murmured Sloan, although he didn’t envy the suitors, if any, of the Superintendent’s daughter.
‘There was that old fellow who saw his daughter drown when he wouldn’t let her marry her lover,’ said Leeyes.
‘I don’t remember …’
‘You know, Sloan. Everyone knows about him.’
‘Sir?’
‘Some Scotsman or other – I forget his name now.’
‘Really, sir?’
‘A Lord, if I remember rightly.’
‘I can’t say that I …’
‘You remember, Sloan. The girl who didn’t mind the weather but who couldn’t cope with an angry father. So she and her lover set off across the loch and were drowned before his eyes.’
‘Loch Ullin’s daughter,’ faltered Sloan. He’d forgotten the winter that the Superintendent had attended classes on “Poetry and Prose”. Something his superior had heard there must have stuck.
‘That’s the man. The other fellow was Lord of Ulva’s Isle or something. Much good it did him, either.’
‘It would seem, though,’ said Sloan, rising to the occasion, ‘that Matt Steele was no young Lochinvar. But he was sharp all the same. Very sharp from all accounts.’ He hastened on. ‘All we’ve been able to do so far, sir, is to list the golfers the deceased caddied for most recently.’
‘A golfer may consider a caddy inefficient,’ declared Leeyes pontifically, ‘or even downright unhelpful, but not to the point of killing him out of hand.’
‘Not exactly out of hand, sir,’ murmured Sloan. ‘These have all the hallmarks of carefully orchestrated killings.’ He hesitated and then added ‘By someone who knew the course well enough to recreate the pattern in the sand that had been there before and also matched that in the other bunkers.’ That had been one examination, at least, that Crosby had carried out properly. ‘And it wasn’t the greenkeeper who did it because he was off sick.’
Somewhere at the back of his mind was the fact that he’d heard someone else at the Club had been ill, too, but the memory was elusive and he couldn’t for the moment remember who it had been.
‘Good thinking,’ said Leeyes. ‘So tell me, who was it that Steele caddied for last.’
‘Peter Gilchrist.’ Sloan had the answer to that ready. ‘That was when Luke Trumper and Nigel Halesworth all played together in the semi-final of the Kemberland Cup.’
‘That’s a Stableford Competition,’ said Leeyes. ‘We all went out in threesomes for that.’
‘Trumper won,’ said Sloan, ‘with thirty-three points.’
‘Doesn’t sound as if he had too much on his mind then,’ said Leeyes thoughtfully. ‘Not enough to take it off the game, anyway.’
The Superintendent might have considered that this constituted evidence. Sloan didn’t and so went on ‘The deceased caddied for Gilchrist, too, when he played Brian Southon in the second round of the Pletchford Plate. Gilchrist lost then, too.’
‘Perhaps it was Gilchrist who had something on his mind – oh, yes. Of course he has,’ said Leeyes. ‘His business. Ah, well, perhaps he’ll get the contract for the work at the Club. One of them’s going to. And soon. They’ve only got until the end of the month to get their tenders in.’
‘Peter Gilchrist lost when Steele caddied for Doug Garwood, too,’ said Sloan, turning over a page in his notebook. ‘That was quite a while ago now.’
‘Doug may be getting on but his short game’s still pretty good,’ opined Leeyes, golfer. ‘I suppose that’s what saved him.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sloan flipped over another page of his notebook. ‘And Steele caddied for Nigel Halesworth when he played Luke Trumper in the Matheson Trophy.’
‘Trumper didn’t win,’ said Leeyes. ‘I know because I was playing after him and saw it up on the board.’
‘The curious thing about the Matheson Trophy,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, policeman, not golfer, ‘is that apparently Matthew Steele bet quite a lot of money on Doug Garwood beating Peter Gilchrist in his match.’
‘You mean even though Steele wasn’t caddying for either of them?’ enquired Superintendent Leeyes alertly.
‘Yes, sir.’ He cleared his throat. ‘And Garwood did win and so, I suppose, in a way did Matthew Steele. His bet, anyway.’ Not, he added silently to himself, that being murdered constituted winning in anyone’s book.
‘Gilchrist should have won,’ declared Leeyes. ‘He’s the better player, by a long chalk although his handicap would have come into it.’
Sloan wasn’t sure about golf handicaps. Down at the Police Station their handicaps comprised such things as villains and vandals, budgets and bureaucracy, traffic and traffickers …
‘That would have helped Doug Garwood, would it, sir? Gilchrist’s handicap.’
He heard the Superintendent blow out his cheeks in an audible puff. ‘A handicap is the imposition of special disadvantages to make a better contest …’
That wasn’t how they saw their handicaps down at the Police Station but Sloan pressed on. ‘So Doug Garwood would have had to concede something to Peter Gilchrist instead.’
‘No, the other way round,’ said Leeyes. ‘Gilchrist has a lower handicap than old Doug. In his day, Doug was very good but not now he’s getting on. Gilchrist would have had to give him quite a few strokes.’
‘But he still lost to Garwood?’
‘That,’ said Leeyes, ‘is what is interesting.’
‘And so is how Steele knew that he would,’ murmured Sloan.
‘There’s no question, I’m afraid,’ said Leeyes, sounding unusually subdued, ‘that our villain, whoever he is, will have been using local knowledge all the time.’
‘It looks as if the victims were as well,’ said Sloan. ‘Both of them.’
‘And that who ever did it was a member,’ said Leeyes gloomily. ‘Not good for the Club, you know, Sloan. Something like this.’
‘That brings me, sir, to another thing …’
‘What’s that?’
‘The lab people have started taking swabs for DNA identification to compare with the traces they’ve found on the greenkeeper’s truck …and they say they’ll get over to Bobby Curd’s place, too, as soon as they can.�
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‘Quite right, Sloan.’
‘From everyone at the Club, sir.’
‘Naturally. We can’t afford to leave anyone out at this stage. Especially Luke Trumper.’
‘Exactly, sir,’ said Sloan warmly. ‘I knew you’d agree.’
‘Well?’
‘This is a bit difficult.’
‘Why?’
Basely Sloan transferred the blame.
‘The men in white suits want to include you, sir.’
‘Me?’ said Leeyes on a rising note.
‘Everyone,’ said Sloan. He took a deep breath. ‘They’ve asked me to say, sir, that everyone includes you.’
Superintendent’s voice hit crescendo. ‘Good God, Sloan, I’m not everyone.’
‘No, sir. Certainly not, sir. But, seeing you’re up for the Committee they thought you’d want to set a good example.’
Helen Ewell had found her voice again. It had not reverted to normal, though, but remained high-pitched and child-like. She had found a new audience now, too, having made her way to the professional’s shop. Still half in tears, she positively fell upon the man.
‘Oh, Jock, it was horrible,’ she cried. ‘You can’t imagine how horrible.’
‘No,’ agreed Selkirk, disentangling himself from her clasp with difficulty. ‘I don’t suppose I can.’
‘They say it’s Matt Steele, one of the caddies.’ She was still clinging to him. ‘That poor, poor boy. Who would do a thing like that?’
‘Only a madman,’ said Jock Selkirk, firmly detaching Helen’s arm from his.
‘And that poor girl!’
‘What girl?’ asked Selkirk cautiously.
‘Hilary Trumper, of course. Luke’s daughter.’
‘Ah, I guessed she was sweet on him,’ said Selkirk, slipping adroitly behind his counter out of Helen Ewell’s reach.
‘They say she was very attached indeed to Matt Steele.’
‘A mistake,’ said Selkirk dourly. ‘Not her sort at all.’
Helen Ewell stood back at last and regarded the professional as if seeing him as a human being for the first time. ‘What makes you say that?’ she asked, her curiosity aroused.
‘I know a young man on the make when I see one.’
‘Oh, Jock, how can you say that about someone who’s been murdered?’
‘It can’t do him any harm,’ said the professional reasonably. ‘And it’s true.’
He had reckoned without Helen Ewell’s womanly feelings. ‘Don’t you understand?’ she said slowly. ‘Someone’s killed him here on your course.’
‘I know that,’ said Jock Selkirk. There was no sign now of the celebrated ladies’ man nor even of the accomplished exponent of the game. Just of a very worried golf professional. ‘I’ve had the police here today, too.’
‘Here?’ She looked bewildered. ‘Whatever for?’
‘I don’t know what they came for the first time …’ he began carefully.
‘They’ve been twice, Jock? I don’t understand.’
‘But when they came back again they turned the place upside down.’
‘But why?’
‘To begin with I didn’t know what they were looking for,’ he said, tight-lipped. ‘But what they found were a pair of shoes.’
‘Shoes?’ she echoed.
‘Don’t you understand, woman?’ he said harshly. ‘They found Matthew Steele’s shoes here in my shop.
‘In here?’ She looked round the shop, totally baffled.
‘No, no, not in here.’ He jerked a finger over his shoulder. ‘Out in my workshop at the back. In a pile of shoes waiting to have new studs fitted.’
‘But …’
Jock Selkirk leaned back on his heels, ignoring her patent distress. ‘Now, woman, tell me what you make of that …’
Chapter Sixteen
Par
Detective Inspector Sloan carefully replaced the telephone receiver in the Secretary’s office and said ‘Sit down, Crosby. We need to think outside the box.’
The Constable looked at each chair in turn and chose one with the least papers on it. ‘These’ll have to go down on the dog shelf,’ he said, stacking them carefully on the floor before taking a seat. ‘Me, I thought golf was a game not a paperchase.’
‘Keeping track of winners and losers takes time,’ said Sloan prosaically. Theoretically, down at the Police Station they only had to keep track of the losers – or, rather, those who didn’t believe in law and order. The trouble was that they weren’t always the losers. Putting this engaging thought to the back of his mind for further consideration at some mythical moment when he was less busy, he pulled out his notebook. ‘Let’s see, where are we now?’
‘Getting nowhere fast,’ said Crosby dispiritedly. ‘All we know for sure is who the two victims are.’
‘Hardly a great leap forward, Crosby, I agree, but something to be going on with.’
Crosby jerked his shoulder in the direction of the course. ‘And that the deceased’s girlfriend has started to haunt the place.’
‘True. Anything else?’ Socrates had come to grief for asking questions but Sloan didn’t think he was at any risk here and now. Not with Detective Constable Crosby answering them.
‘That whoever buried Steele was a golfer?’
‘Knew the course and the game,’ said Sloan more precisely.
There was a pause while Crosby considered the ceiling.
‘Furthermore, Crosby,’ Sloan tapped his notebook with his pencil, ‘we must presume he was seen by old Bobby Curd the night he buried the body.’
‘Sure thing, sir.’
‘And knew it. Or, more sinisterly, came to know it. So he had to be killed, too.’
‘One thing leading to another, you might say,’ agreed Crosby.
There was an expression for this that they used in hospitals that had stuck in Sloan’s mind. He quoted it aloud without thinking. ‘A cascade of intervention.’
‘Pardon, sir?’
‘But as to why Steele was killed, Crosby, we’re no further forward.’
‘Someone must have a lot at stake, that’s for sure, sir.’
‘All right, then. Let’s think about what this could be. There’s the Club itself since this seems to be a golf club murder.’ He looked down at his notebook. ‘There’s this argument about the new development for starters.’
‘That’s only business,’ objected Crosby, leaving aside generations of slave-traders, marauding pirates and grinders down of the faces of the poor who had used much the same argument.
‘Business is money,’ said Sloan implacably. When it wasn’t, the firm was already halfway to Carey Street.
‘I’ve been on to the Planning people,’ said Crosby with apparent irrelevance. ‘They confirm that permission has been given for outline and detailed plans for all the proposed developments. No problem there.’
‘That must be a first,’ said Sloan sourly. ‘Anything else come in?’
‘Forensic say they’ve found lots of DNA in the greenkeeper’s truck. His – that’s Joe Briggs – Brian Southon’s and Peter Gilchrist’s – oh, and Dr Dabbe’s.’
Sloan flipped back some pages in his notebook. ‘Southon and Gilchrist are two of the men who cut the greens when Briggs couldn’t, aren’t they?’
‘Yes, sir. And their fingerprints are all over the special mowers they keep for the greens, too.’
‘Which is only what you’d expect,’ sighed Sloan. ‘You do realise, Crosby, don’t you that one day soon the detective branch is going be taken over by something called deoxyribonucleic acid?’
‘Sir?’
‘A properly taken DNA swab can’t be argued with in court.’
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Crosby kindly. ‘The lawyers will find a way.’
Detective Inspector Sloan acknowledged this with a quick grimace. ‘All the same somewhere in the next world a Frenchman called Dr Edmond Locard must be sitting on a cloud and rubbing his hands. He was right all along.’
‘What about?’
‘The exchange principle, Crosby. That two matters, be they animal, vegetable or mineral, cannot meet without leaving something of themselves on each other.’
‘That reminds me, sir. Mrs Sloan rang to ask if you had any idea when you would be home.’
‘None,’ said Sloan rather shortly. ‘I’ll ring her myself when I have a moment. Now, what do Forensic have to say about the golf club found in Brian Southon’s bag?’
‘Used with a glove and attempts made to clean it but plenty of Moffat’s and some of Southon’s prints on it.’
‘Which is only what you would expect. And the deceased’s shoes?’
‘Pulled off by someone wearing gloves,’ said Crosby flatly.
‘Which is also only what you would expect,’ sighed Sloan. ‘Tell me something I wouldn’t.’
‘No sign of Luke Trumper’s DNA or fingerprints in the greenkeeper’s truck or on Moffat’s club,’ said the Detective Constable. ‘Funny, that, isn’t it?’
‘Stymied, Sloan, that’s what we are,’ said Superintendent Leeyes.
‘Very probably, sir.’
‘Nothing adds up,’ he complained peevishly. ‘It won’t do, you know.’
Detective Inspector Sloan could only agree. He could see that the game of golf meant different things to different people - exercise, a day in the country, competitive play, a sales pitch, a pathway to promotion, sociability, a good walk spoilt …but in the case of the Superintendent, it was a milieu happily far removed from his normal workaday criminal scene and thus important.
‘I don’t like it, Sloan,’ said Leeyes. ‘I come up here for pleasure, not for more work. Besides,’ he added ingenuously, ‘the members of the Club expect an early arrest.’
‘Unless we have the figures stacked up in the wrong columns,’ said Sloan, ‘the only thing that makes sense so far is the murder of Bobby Curd.’ He would have to get back to that crime scene as soon as he could.
‘Fine lot of help that is,’ declared Leeyes richly.
‘And all we have to go on otherwise is a note of all the players who Steele caddied for most recently,’ said Sloan. There was something else nagging at the back of his mind but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was. Something that he must look into.
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