A Shot at Nothing

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Distract people when they’re trying to tell you something. We turn right here, I think.’

  ‘We do. We ought to have let Oliver lead.’

  ‘It was you told him to follow.’

  ‘So it was. Finish the bit about the Eurasian girl, Clare.’

  ‘Oh yes. She taught me how to do it, you see. I know lots of very painful and incapacitating things now. I can’t wait to try them. But…the first time that dyke came near me after that, I showed her how it worked, too. Not actually broke her neck, you know, but she passed out, and asked to be moved. She said I was dangerous, of all things.’

  ‘Hmm!’ I commented cautiously. ‘So all that rigmarole was to tell me you’ll be breaking somebody’s neck if and when I can tell you…confirm for you…who killed your husband?’ If it wasn’t all a flight of fancy.

  She didn’t immediately answer, but silently drove another mile. We were on an open main road now, two-lane and not busy. The speed mounted. My BMW maintained a steady distance behind.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll probably do that, Philipa, but not for the reason you’re thinking. Not because he—or she, I’ll say—killed Harris. No. He was due for it. He’d been asking for it for ages. Begging for it. For landing me right in it, that’s what.’ She turned her head and glanced at me, not what I would wish at something over eighty. For one moment, I’d swear, she had forgotten she was driving.

  ‘Watch the road, for God’s sake!’

  ‘You’re not listening. Landed me right in it, by using my gun. I know I fired only one barrel. D’you think I don’t know how to handle a shotgun! I fired one barrel, and dropped the gun outside the French windows. Somebody fired the other one. I mean…must have done, because they’d both been fired when they found it.’

  ‘Where you’d dropped it—outside the French windows?’

  ‘Yes. Exactly.’

  ‘But how could anybody have done that? Just think. They would have had to pick up your gun from where you’d dropped it and run round the front after you, sneak inside the house, and when you were safely inside the sitting-room they’d have gone into the gunroom…’

  I left that hanging, waiting for her objection. She made no response. She didn’t even nod.

  ‘In spite of the fact that the door was supposed to have been locked,’ I added.

  ‘It was locked.’

  ‘So you didn’t glance inside there, in order to check—’

  ‘I didn’t go near the gunroom,’ she said sharply. ‘I wanted to get to a phone.’ She jerked a quick, angry glance at me. ‘I thought he was dead already, from what I’d seen through the hole in the glass. I didn’t try to get into the gunroom, because I knew the door was locked. It was they who said it was unlocked, the police, they who said they could just walk in when they tried it. They said I’d gone in there and…and finished off what I’d started. That was wrong. That was a damned lie. Oh hell, now I’m lost. What’s the way from here?’

  ‘Why don’t you pull over and wave Oliver past, and he can lead?’

  ‘How clever of you,’ she said acidly. But she did it. Oliver hummed past, and settled down to a more reasonable speed.

  ‘Keep to the point,’ I said, once she’d relaxed. ‘This man—assume a man for now—he would have had to follow you into the house and wait until you went into the sitting-room, then somehow get into the gunroom, shoot your husband…then he must’ve run out smartly, because Oliver was there moments after you’d put the phone down.’

  She was silent for a long while, as though wondering whether to trust me with a morsel of truth. Then she said quietly, ‘Nobody could have got in after me. I ran round to the front—dropped the shotgun on the terrace and ran round. And I slammed the front door after me. Then Oliver came. The door’s got a Yale lock, and locks itself. Like all front doors, I suppose. I had to unlatch it for Oliver to get in.’

  ‘But he said…said he found you in a state of collapse on the settee.’

  ‘Well, yes…’ She grimaced, then flashed me a quick grin. ‘I was waiting, see. Waiting in the hall with no light on, looking out from the stained glass windows. As soon as I saw it was Oliver getting out of the car, I unlatched the door for him. Then I ran back to the sitting-room.’

  ‘He told me you were on the settee, by the phone, almost passed out.’ I insisted on getting this correct. It was necessary to extract every item of truth meticulously.

  ‘Well…I would be, wouldn’t I! For Oliver. To give him a chance to revive me—make him feel all big and masculine. Once I’d seen it was him, I ran back quickly.’

  ‘You’re a wicked woman,’ I told her severely, watching her profile, and catching just a hint of a self-congratulatory smile.

  And a woman, I thought, who, believing she had shot her husband, had been remarkably calm and with everything in control.

  ‘So nobody else could’ve got in?’ I asked, tying it down.

  ‘Oh no. I can’t see how it would’ve been possible.’

  ‘But if…I only say if, you realise…if you didn’t enter the gunroom and shoot him yourself, how else could it have happened? You’d dropped your gun outside…I suppose that’s the truth?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ It was a plain statement. She didn’t even trouble to nod in emphasis.

  ‘And nobody could’ve picked up your gun after you’d dropped it, followed you in, and fired the shot that killed Harris?’

  ‘I don’t see how they could,’ she commented casually.

  ‘But you said you heard the shot.’

  ‘Yes. That was while I was phoning.’

  I sighed. It was no wonder the police hadn’t believed her. She tied her own story in knots.

  ‘Not while you were phoning,’ I said. ‘No—don’t interrupt, just drive. You’d already done your phoning. It was the first thing you did after getting back inside. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been peering out of the stained glass window, expecting a police car…and pleased to see it was Oliver.’

  She kept her eyes on the road, but I saw the same quirk at the corner of her lips.

  ‘You’re quick, aren’t you!’ she said. ‘Perhaps you can find out the truth.’

  ‘Please don’t try to distract me. You said you heard a shot. Do you mean while you were genuinely phoning, or when you were pretending to, for Oliver’s benefit?’

  ‘The second,’ she said firmly. ‘While I was sitting with the phone in my hand, pretending I’d just phoned, waiting for him to walk in.’

  It was not surprising that the police hadn’t believed her. The actions she’d described didn’t seem to fit the image of a distraught woman who’d just experienced a traumatic experience on the lawn in the pouring rain. But perhaps that hadn’t been entirely true. She seemed always to produce whatever best fitted her self-image.

  ‘You heard one shot?’ I asked. ‘Singular? That means: not two.’

  ‘Yes. It usually does. One shot. Somebody else fired that.’

  ‘All right. One shot. That might just have been acceptable. Crazy, but somehow valid…if you didn’t fire it. It’d be a kind of alibi for you. But you went and spoiled it, Clare, you really did. You must have realised that, surely.’

  ‘I didn’t realise anything. How much further is it, for heaven’s sake? How did I spoil it?’

  ‘By telling them you’d heard two shots after your own.’

  ‘Yes…well…that’s because there were two, one I’ve told you about, and one when Oliver was there with me in the sitting-room. Comforting me.’ She shot me one of her short, searching glances. ‘I was surprised he didn’t back me up on that. It was kind of more distant, that last shot, as though it was outside the house.’

  ‘Thunder—’

  ‘No!’ she cut me off sharply. ‘I know a gunshot when I hear one. My father tried to get me out on shoots. I heard plenty then, close and distant. That night—I heard one close and one distant.’

  I considered this, not knowing what to think
.

  ‘But Clare,’ I ventured, ‘how could there have been two, after your own first one? Even if you fired the second shot yourself, that’d be only two. Even if you fired it directly at him—oh, you’d hear that one right enough—how could there have been a third? They don’t make three-barrelled shotguns, do they?’

  Silence. Oliver was slowing for traffic. We hadn’t done any stopping for minor details such as lunch.

  ‘There were two,’ she said at last, stubbornly shaking her head.

  ‘But that was what led to the guilty verdict. I’ll bet it was. They’d have assumed you were lying. There would’ve been no point in a third shot. For no reason? At nothing?’

  She was silent.

  ‘So you gained nothing by lying about a third shot.’

  ‘It wasn’t a lie.’ She thought a moment about that, then she added, ‘But I would’ve done.’

  Then she clamped her lips tightly together, and her jawbone became prominent, as though she had revealed a wondrous truth, and already regretted it.

  I considered her profile thoughtfully. She was frowning now. Then, abruptly, and with a shock that made me dizzy for a moment, I realised what she meant, and a whole tangle of tiny details suddenly unravelled in my mind.

  ‘Good grief, Clare! You can’t be thinking that!’ There was no response. ‘Are you telling me…but he couldn’t have had time…he hurried to you.

  ‘He had plenty of time. There I was, on that settee. I’d unlatched the front door for him, and run back. He knew where I would be—but he didn’t come. Not straight away, he didn’t. Not rushed to me. I waited .

  ‘How long?’ I whispered.

  ‘I don’t know. Two or three minutes. Perhaps four. Then he came. Philipa, you’re forgetting something. He didn’t come because of my phone call; he came because of the burglar alarm going off, when Harris opened the French windows, I suppose. He told me that—sort of—when he came in and saw me half collapsed on the settee. Said he’d had a look around, but whoever it was who’d broken in by way of the French windows, they’d hopped it. I suppose, at that time, he thought that was what the hole in the glass was all about. I’m sure he must have…

  She bit her lip to silence. Ahead, Oliver was trying to juggle with the traffic, and at the same time not lose us. Clare concentrated on her driving.

  I waited until we were again in the clear. Then I said, ‘But Clare…’ It was a croak. I cleared my throat. ‘Clare, when did you hear the shot? When, exactly—the first of the extra two you said you heard. When did you hear it?’

  ‘Only…only a minute or so…less, perhaps…before he walked in on me.’ She flashed me a quick, desperate glance. ‘And I wasn’t really ready for him!’

  ‘You heard a shot, then he walked in. Did he say he’d heard one?’

  ‘He just stood and stared at me. I didn’t ask him about a shot. He didn’t say anything about hearing a shot.’

  ‘Oh Clare…you heard a shot, and then there he was in the room with you, and in next to no time. So you assumed…oh my God, Clare, are you telling me you invented another third shot, to fit in with the time he was there, with you, in the sitting-room?’

  She shook her head violently. ‘I didn’t invent it,’ she persisted. ‘I heard it.’

  ‘But there was no point in a third shot. It doesn’t come into it. It didn’t do anything. You were ridiculously stupid to say such a thing.’

  ‘I didn’t invent it,’ she stubbornly repeated. ‘It was just…that I said it and I didn’t have to. That was all I did for Oliver, because, of course, he couldn’t have fired that one, because he was with me. So I said it.’

  ‘And landed yourself in prison, with a raving dyke for company.’

  ‘As it turned out.’

  ‘Oh Clare…Clare…’ I mumbled, and hell, how she must have loved him!

  ‘But I did hear it.’

  ‘Get it into your head, will you, Clare: there was no third shot.’ I shouted it, competing with the Porsche’s engine.

  ‘There was. Mine and two more.’

  I could see no point in arguing with her about it, but had to consider what she had said about her intention to deal with her husband’s killer. I had to consider it in the light of the fact that she seemed convinced that the killer was Oliver. Did she intend to kill him with her treasured head-lock, or did she hope to kill him with kindness—to love him to death?

  ‘It looks as though we’re here,’ she told me.

  I hadn’t noticed; didn’t know where I was.

  I had expected something resembling a large police station, as I knew them. But this place more resembled a barracks, with a multi-storey concrete building jutting up behind it. The building was the County Police HQ, I discovered. The barracks housed a police training unit, a forensic lab, and the Black Museum.

  It was to this last that Oliver took us.

  ‘Look at your guns first,’ he suggested as we stretched our legs. ‘And we might scrounge a lunch in their canteen afterwards.’

  It suited me. It suited Clare. We entered a lobby, manned by a civilian, or at least, by someone in a smart double-breasted suit and a flowered tie. Oliver said we wanted to see Charlie Green, and to tell him it was Oliver Simpson with two ladies he’d be pleased to see.

  The clerk winked. Charlie probably had a reputation for being pleased to meet ladies, singly or in multiples. He took up a phone, and in two minutes Charlie was with us, a large, bustling, beaming man.

  ‘Oliver!’ He came forward with both hands thrust forward, one to grip Oliver’s, one to beat him on the shoulder. ‘Heard you got hurt. This arm, is it? Serves you right. You forgot what I’d taught you. And these dear ladies are…’

  We were introduced. His eyes dwelt on Clare, admiring her pert beauty, no doubt, and perhaps her expertise with a shotgun, as he’d heard it.

  ‘You’ve come to see the Collings collection,’ he guessed, inaccurately as it happened.

  ‘I’ve come to take them away.’

  In the Porsche? How many shotguns could be slid behind the twin seats? He smiled knowingly. No van was parked outside, where we might have left it.

  ‘You’ve come to claim them, and I’m desolated,’ he told her. ‘The place will seem empty without your guns. But you simply sign a receipt when we deliver them in our van. How’s that?’

  ‘That will be ideal,’ said Clare, who, I saw, was quite impressed by him, though he was a little overpowering for my taste.

  ‘Come through to our museum,’ he invited, half raising one arm as though to place it round her shoulders. But she flicked him a smile that the Eurasian girl had probably taught her, and he backed off a little.

  Charlie Green was, Oliver told me later, the firearms expert for the county. He trained the teams authorised to be issued with firearms as necessity dictated. He knew guns, from pistols to howitzers. What Charlie Green didn’t know he couldn’t look up in learned treatises on the subject, because he’d written most of them himself.

  He took us round his collection of weapons, which had all been used in crimes. Most were permanent acquisitions, as they dated back to the times when their users had been hanged, and thus couldn’t reclaim them, or because their original users wouldn’t want to see them again under any circumstances. But some, such as Clare’s collection, they treated as loans, as their value guaranteed that eventually they would be claimed. Clare’s were different. Only one of them had been fired, and thus could claim a legitimate place in the Black Museum section. The rest Charlie had appropriated after the forensic squad, wild with enthusiasm, had drained from them the last morsel of evidence usable at her trial. These had their own special separate display.

  She was lucky, he was not too shy to mention, that they had fallen into his hands: there was nobody who could have better maintained them, and restored them to their pristine beauty.

  And indeed, they were beautiful, considered as the result of dedicated attention from craftsmen, even artists, in that field. Their ultimate ugly
purpose one could overlook. The craftsmanship was awe-inspiring.

  They were not, as at Clare’s, kept in cabinets, but nearly covered a whole wall, and were mounted at identical angles—military precision, one assumed, being appropriate. They gleamed, they shone, their delicate engraving could have been, cumulatively, a life’s work.

  We walked slowly along the display. They were mounted in chronological order, the earliest being in singles, as these dated from the seventeenth century, but I saw, as we came closer to modern times, they were more often in matched pairs, which I supposed added to their value.

  The critical shotgun was separate from the rest, and had its own place of honour, lying on a shaped pad of black velvet on an inlaid table. A brass plaque mounted on a walnut base was engraved with the information that this was the weapon with which Clare Steadman had killed her husband on 5 September 1986. It was a Winchester model 97, we were informed. To make the point, two discharged cartridge cases lay beside the gun.

  ‘Of all the nerve,’ said Clare. ‘It’s a disgusting display.’

  ‘It is the one, though?’ I asked.

  ‘How do I know that?’ she demanded, angry with me because she had to be angry with somebody. ‘It was nearly dark, pitching down with rain. I just grabbed one up, and as there were two unused cartridges in Harris’s shooting jacket…’ She shrugged.

  Oliver and Charlie strolled over to join us. I expected an explosion from Clare, but she was mercifully silent, so that Charlie was able to display his learning by launching into what was obviously a prepared lecture on the display. I could sense that Clare was simmering beside me. He was preaching to a woman who already knew the most intimate details of her guns (her father reminded me a little of mine; perhaps he, too, had wished for a son) and to two people over whom his enthusiasm washed with barely a ripple. From Durs Egg to Browning, from Winchester to Purdey, and Holland and Holland. I walked, awestruck, in front of a fortune. My so-called wealth might have purchased a dozen of them.

  ‘Wonderful, wonderful,’ Charlie murmured. ‘Your father, dear lady, knew what he was about.’

  ‘I’ll thank you for taking care of them,’ said Clare, not, I thought, with too much conviction. ‘I was terribly worried that the rain…’