A Brace of Skeet

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Perhaps it’s because you just go on and on not answering his questions,’ the Sergeant suggested.

  It took me a second or two to pin down his meaning. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘What was the question again?’

  His face took on the look of one who has bitten into a lemon. ‘I want to know why you’re so sure that Alistair Wyman committed Herbicide.’

  The pun passed me by. ‘Not him,’ I said. ‘Douglas Pender.’

  There was a pause. Perhaps he was counting up to ten. ‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘tell me why you’re so sure that Pender did it.’

  ‘A whole lot of things,’ I said. ‘You didn’t tell me that you had another witness.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been treating me as if I had a social disease?’ He took my hand. I resisted, but feebly. ‘My dear girl, I’ve been telling you what I could. But I’ve been under very specific orders from Mr McHarg not to be too open with you. He’s afraid – either that you’ll talk yourself into danger or that you’ll steal his thunder again.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that on purpose.’

  ‘You might do it in all innocence. And there have been too many instances of your father ending up in the witness box and being congratulated by the judge for making the police look like idiots. Apart from one rather juvenile witness, whose description would have fitted half the older members of the club and most of the visitors, what made you suspect Mr Pender?’

  ‘The dog—’

  ‘Alistair Wyman’s dog.’

  ‘—and he walks stiffly and he’s good at Skeet and uses Express cartridges.’

  ‘And do you by any chance credit him with a motive?’

  ‘He wants to sell out to the Leisure Complex. There’s a rumour that he and Mr Wyman were put in to vote for a sell-out. Mr Tullos was set against it. Somebody else said that Mr Tullos was ready to accept a backhander, but he could have changed his mind back again. It wouldn’t have taken much to spark off a quarrel.’

  ‘It never does,’ the Sergeant said.

  ‘But, most important of all, he told me that he and Mr Wyman had been together all Monday evening. But Mr Glencorse said that he met one of them on Monday evening. So they couldn’t have been together.’

  The Sergeant had put his arm round me in a friendly gesture, although his fingers had travelled rather further than was strictly friendly. I felt him jump and then heard him swallow. ‘When did Pender tell you about his alibi? And why? And does this have anything to do with why you’re not very proud of the way you won?’

  ‘He sat with me between the two rounds,’ I said, ‘and he was absolutely exuding malice and contempt. And he was going to be very hard to beat if I didn’t rock his equilibrium a bit. I asked him whether he’d had a visit from the police and he said that he hadn’t. So I suggested that he might be a suspect.’

  ‘Did you tell him that we were studying firing-pin marks?’ the Sergeant asked.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  He got to his feet quickly. I felt nearly chilled in the evening air with his warmth removed. ‘There’s such a thing as being almost right for the almost wrong reason,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to use my radio. Wait there.’

  He vanished round the corner of the clubhouse at a full gallop.

  *

  He was gone for what seemed to be a long time. I soon gave up turning over and over in my mind his comment about being almost right for the almost wrong reason. My theory about the murder of Herb Tullos was a frail structure. Take away any one piece and the whole was destroyed.

  There was something else on my mind which, from my strictly limited viewpoint, seemed to be of even greater importance.

  I could not hide from myself that I was attracted to Sergeant Fellowes. I might not even know his Christian name, and the few words which we had exchanged on subjects other than murder could have passed between casual acquaintances, yet I knew that he would be fun to be with, and tender. And . . . but how does one know these things? Whose is the small voice which says, ‘This person is for me?’ One’s own? I just knew that there was a magic spark.

  The Sergeant knew it too and had let me know that he knew it; and he was approaching the point of doing something about it. He might invite me out for a meal or to the theatre or to meet his mother, but he was a man. He would not be satisfied with a pal who just happened to be of the opposite sex. Somewhere along the way he would expect the last barriers to fall.

  Believe it or not, at that time I was a virgin. Only just, and it had been a near thing once or twice, but a virgin within the strict definition nonetheless. Most of my contemporaries had bestowed their cherries before they were out of their teens, sometimes before they were even into them. And it was not as though I were a prude. Sometimes, in my fantasies, I envisaged myself as a brilliant courtesan, decked in exquisite lingerie and driving men to the point of madness. In another mood, I had sometimes imagined being ravished, gently and beautifully, by a handsome man who, in retrospect, bore more than a slight resemblance to the Sergeant. But those two me’s were kept locked up in a maximum-security boudoir in my brain and only allowed out when I was alone.

  The fault, if it could be called a fault, may have lain with my parents. Theirs had been less a marriage than a passionate, physical affair going back for more than twenty years. But the most skilled practitioners are often the worst teachers. Mum’s advice had left me with no doubts as to how the physical act was performed and its dangers avoided and yet with no understanding of what, physically and emotionally, I should expect to feel. My body and my emotions sometimes insisted that it would be marvellous but my mind said that it would be ridiculous and embarrassing.

  Neither of them ever preached conventional morality to me. If they had done so, I would probably have rebelled. But when I turned to Dad as the usual fount of wisdom he said that I wouldn’t go far wrong if I thought of sex as no more than a delicious way of saying, ‘I’ll love you for ever.’ That, when I had thought about it enough, made sense. I had never felt committed enough to make that sort of declaration in that sort of way. Perhaps I never would. Perhaps I was mad to be wondering whether . . .

  He was coming back, walking slowly. He sat down beside me. I waited and he put his arm round me again, but it was not quite the same as before.

  ‘Douglas Pender didn’t kill Herbert Tullos,’ he said gently. ‘He might have done. Perhaps he should have done. But he didn’t.’

  ‘Then why did he get so upset?’

  ‘Because the motive was his and he knew that his partner, Alistair Wyman, had done the deed. We’ve been sure of that for a day or more, but we’ve been waiting for the last pieces of evidence to arrive before we moved. We’d rather hoped that they wouldn’t learn of our interest in cartridges until then. None of the firing-pin imprints that we’ve been able to examine so far matched the Express cartridges which we found in the bin. But Mr Wyman bought another gun within the last few weeks.’

  ‘Have you arrested them?’

  ‘They’re both . . . out of reach at the moment.’

  ‘And is it my fault?’

  His arm tightened. I knew that he was offering comfort in advance of some awful revelation and inside myself I cringed. ‘Douglas Pender’s sitting in his car at the front of the clubhouse,’ he said. ‘He’s dead. There are no marks of violence on him.’

  We were so quiet that I could hear the blood in my ears. ‘I’ve killed him,’ I whispered.

  ‘No. You mustn’t think that.’

  ‘Yes. Either he had a heart attack or he killed himself. Either way . . .’

  ‘Either way, it would have happened soon enough,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  He gave me a little shake. ‘And you don’t know that it had anything to do with your revelations. We would probably have made an arrest today. If he had a weak heart, that might well have brought on an attack. We just don’t know a damn thing at the moment. A police surgeon will be here soon and a Forensic team. Once we know a
bit more, it may be time to wonder who was to blame. If anybody.’

  The idea that my petty spite could have driven somebody out of the world I found shattering. That I had disliked Douglas Pender made it worse.

  ‘You were egging me on,’ I said in a small voice.

  ‘I don’t think that he killed himself over being beaten at Skeet by a girl,’ he said gently. ‘Nobody has an ego that big. They must have known that they would be suspected. I never egged you on to rub his nose in it. Nor to point out that firing-pin impressions are as individual as fingerprints.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you didn’t. But you put me under pressure to beat him.’ I felt the tears coming and for a little while I gave in to them. The Sergeant, luckily – or perhaps because of his profession – was not the sort of man who becomes helpless in the face of feminine tears. He comforted me as best he could, wiping my eyes and lending me a handkerchief; and when I recovered my composure a little I found that he was dropping little kisses around my face and neck, which began to seem more interesting than the demise of a comparative stranger. Sam, very much disturbed, snuffled at my other ear.

  I got to my feet in a hurry. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘You did that very nicely. Do you comfort all your witnesses that way?’

  ‘Only the female ones. You’re all right now?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘I don’t want you to come round to the front,’ he said. ‘Not until the police surgeon’s come and the body’s been removed. I’d send you home, but there’s no sign of your uncle yet. I may not be able to stay indefinitely. When he shows his face, I’ll take you home.’

  ‘When Ronnie goes out on the razzle,’ I said, ‘he may not come home for weeks. Is it all right if I go down and lock up the trap-houses?’

  ‘I should think so. I’m sorry that I can’t come and help, but I must wait here.’

  I nodded, to say that I understood. ‘Would you phone home for me?’ I asked. ‘Tell Mrs James . . . Oh, just tell her that I can’t come yet because my uncle’s failed to show up. Otherwise she’ll fret.’ I gave him the number for Briesland House.

  I locked up the trap-houses and gathered the spent cartridges while bright lights came and went at the upper level. Daylight was failing but I could see enough to wander round picking up the unbroken clays. The activity died at last. Soon I noticed the Sergeant watching me from the head of the steps. I knocked off and climbed up to meet him.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was almost midnight and as nearly dark as it was going to be. The sun had dipped below the northern horizon, but there was still a glow in the sky. Vehicle lights were vanishing down the road, but only the jeep, Herb Tullos’s van and two cars were parked in front of the clubhouse.

  I bedded Sam down in the jeep and went inside. The big room smelled of fresh tobacco smoke, but it held only an elderly man sitting at one of the tables with a plastic cup of coffee. He seemed to have dressed in whatever came to hand and he needed a shave.

  ‘This is Doc Hathaway,’ the Sergeant said. ‘The police surgeon.’

  The doctor nodded gloomily as if mention of his own identity had confirmed his worst fears. ‘I was getting an early night,’ he said. ‘My first in a month or more. Now I’m wide awake and I know I won’t sleep again. And I’m hungry.’

  The mention of food made me realise that a long time had passed since the snack meal which I had dished up earlier and been too tense to eat. I looked at the Sergeant and he nodded.

  There were eggs in the fridge. I used the microwave to thaw a packet of bacon and another of sausages from the freezer and then started a fry-up in the browning dish. Within a few minutes I was able to put a hot meal on the table.

  ‘This is on the house,’ I said. ‘The club owes you breakfast for spoiling your sleep.’ When I filled my mouth the taste was so exquisite that my eyes watered.

  The Sergeant was still helping himself to mustard. ‘Can you say what killed him?’ he asked the doctor.

  Dr Hathaway swallowed his first mouthful. ‘Haven’t the faintest idea,’ he said. ‘Not my job. The pathologist may be able to tell you. This is good.’ He filled his mouth again. ‘I told you he was dead,’ he pointed out, with the mouthful tucked into his cheek. ‘What more do you want?’

  ‘I could see that much for myself,’ said the Sergeant.

  ‘Ah, but could you? When the layman pronounces death, there’s hope for the patient yet.’

  We ate in silence until we had cleaned our plates. I got up, took money out of the till and fetched coffee from the machine.

  ‘But you must have some idea,’ the Sergeant said. He got up and went outside.

  ‘That young man has too much faith in my profession,’ the doctor said. ‘He’s due for a rude awakening, the first time he falls seriously ill.’

  The Sergeant returned with a large brown envelope. ‘The reason we were holding off,’ he said, ‘was that we were waiting for the clinching evidence. The old records had been microfilmed and later transferred onto the Police National Computer.’

  ‘Then I’m surprised that you ever got them back,’ the doctor said.

  ‘No more than I am. But we had to get the records in order to find out where these were being held.’ The Sergeant took some glossy photographs from his envelope and pushed one in front of me. ‘One of my colleagues brought me this set when he came up about the late Mr Pender. Who does this remind you of?’

  I studied the photograph. It was a conventional print of two police photographs showing the same man full face and again in profile. The man, who was not much older than myself, had dark, unfashionably cropped hair. His regular features were vaguely familiar, but I could not place them.

  ‘Imagine him older, with less hair and a broken nose,’ said the Sergeant.

  I tried again and it came to me. ‘Douglas Pender?’ I said.

  ‘As he later became. These are photographs of Joukie Cairns.’

  My mind was heavy with the weight of exhaustion. ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘You told me about him yourself,’ the Sergeant said patiently.

  ‘The man who shot Mr Tullos when he was a policeman?’ I said, remembering.

  ‘The same. His nose, among other things, was broken when he fell off the roof.’

  The doctor was concentrating on his coffee. Either he already knew all this or else his interest did not extend beyond the purely medical facts. It was up to me to feed the Sergeant the questions which he obviously expected. ‘Does the motive go all the way back? But why would Mr Pender – Cairns – want to kill Mr Tullos and not the other way round? But that’s a silly question,’ I added quickly. ‘You said that he didn’t.’

  ‘Before you get into more of a tangle,’ the Sergeant said kindly, ‘I’ll explain. Cairns had been involved in a series of successful robberies from jewellers’ shops. The planner and leader was this man.’ He laid another photograph on the table.

  This time, the undamaged face was easier to recognise. Despite the abrasion of the years, the features were little changed and the air of suppressed energy came across even from the yellowing photograph. ‘Alistair Wyman,’ I said.

  ‘Formerly Andrew Webster. He already had a record, but he seemed to be keeping his nose clean. We only got on to him through his arrangements for fencing the loot, but the same source tipped him off and he skipped out of the country. Almost none of the goods was recovered. We still didn’t know who he’d been working with.

  ‘Cairns tried to continue on his own, but he wasn’t the mastermind that Webster had been.’

  ‘Then where did he get the nickname?’ I asked. (‘Joukie’ is a Scots word meaning slippery or crafty.)

  ‘He probably got the credit for his partner’s guile,’ said the Sergeant. ‘He lacked the cold, logical brain. When Tullos cornered him on the roof, he shot him and then, in his panic, he fell. He was given eight years but was out in five, after which we lost sight of him. He seems to have gone abroad, where Webster was waiting for him.

 
; ‘When they thought that their misdeeds had been forgotten, it seems that they returned to Scotland, but to the east instead of the west. They set up as jewellers – perhaps because they had come to know something about jewellery, but just as likely because it gave them a chance to filter into the legitimate market as much of their old hauls as remained unfenced. And they began to live a life of quiet extravagance – good food, pricey trappings like cars and guns, and women with expensive tastes.

  ‘They might have got away with it indefinitely except that they were elected to this club, where they suddenly found themselves confronted by the one-time Sergeant Tullos. During the competition a week ago, he told the story of the rooftop confrontation. He was making it clear that he recognised Cairns.’

  ‘But . . .’ I said. The Sergeant waited patiently while I sorted out my thoughts. ‘But why did it matter so much?’ I asked. ‘Cairns had served his time, and if Mr Tullos knew Webster at all I don’t suppose there was still a case against him.’

  ‘And,’ said the doctor, taking a sudden interest, ‘Tullos couldn’t sue Cairns for his damaged knee, because the right to raise an action for damages lapses after – what is it? – three years, I think. I know because I’ve had to give evidence in injury cases.’

  ‘True, as far as it goes,’ said the Sergeant. ‘But there’s another factor which we turned up when we looked back into Tullos’s history. On legal advice which must have looked incompetent at the time, Tullos used his compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Act to sue Cairns for damages and he was awarded a substantial sum. He was unable to collect, of course, because Cairns was a prisoner without any traceable assets, who vanished into limbo as soon as he was released.’

  ‘The court order wouldn’t be time-barred?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘No. And it would have been attracting interest at fifteen per cent for all those years. Fifteen per cent, compound! It doesn’t take long to double a debt at that rate of interest. Tullos only had to take Cairns to court and he could collect a huge sum out of the apparently legitimate business. They’d be wiped out.’