Hook or Crook

by Gerald Hammond

  Tony McIver was nodding. ‘So he was there until nine at least.’

  ‘He’d left the river by ten,’ Bea said, ‘although I’d seen him fishing very late on other days, probably hoping for a sea-trout. I’ll tell you how I know. I got home, washed up the dinner dishes which I’d left soaking in the sink and when I went to put my things away I realized that I’d dropped one glove. I don’t so much mind losing a pair if they’re not too expensive, but when you lose one glove the other always looks so forlorn and reproachful that I never have the heart to throw it away.’

  ‘And if you do, the first one turns up again,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. I have a whole drawer full of single gloves, if you know any one-handed ladies.

  ‘So I went back to look for it. He must have gone back to his caravan in the meantime because that’s when I saw him walking ahead of me towards Imad Vahhaji’s house. That was about ten o’clock. I found my glove almost on my friends’ doorstep and they came back from walking the dog and dragged me inside for another cup of coffee. I couldn’t see anyone fishing on my way back, and you can see quite a long way down the river from the bridge, even in the dusk. If he wasn’t fishing the furthest pool on his beat, he must have still been in the village.’

  ‘Or gone back to his caravan,’ Tony said.

  ‘But he hadn’t.’

  ‘He needn’t have met you on the path. He could have walked home while you were having your last coffee.’

  ‘The daylight was going,’ Bea said. ‘The caravan or its lights were in full view from the path. If he was there, he was sitting in the dark.’

  Tony whipped out his notebook and began to jot in his shorthand. ‘The caravan was still there?’ he said. ‘Between nine and ten on Monday?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Have you any idea at what time it left?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t think so,’ Bea said thoughtfully. ‘I heard vehicles later, around midnight, but I think that was the poaching incident.’

  I lost track of whatever else they said. In moving water, each submerged rock makes a break in the pattern on the surface. When any such break is on the move, there is a salmon below it. Over the years I had got into the habit of watching the surface of a river, and there was a fish coming up towards Eric now, I was sure of it.

  ‘Eric,’ I called softly, ‘cast straight downstream.’

  His cast was slightly mistimed so that his line had a definite snake in it, but that was all to the good. As the line straightened, it would be allowing the fly to drift naturally.

  The line straightened with a jerk as the fish took the fly and turned away. Eric pulled — too soon, I thought, but the fish was well hooked. By the time he had brought a fifteen-pound salmon over the net, the best fish of his life so far, Bea had gone on her way. But Tony McIver waited raptly to see the fish brought to the bank and was nearly persuaded to try a few casts on his own account before remembering his duty and dragging himself away.

  *

  Bea rejoined us later, looking thoughtful and saying very little. She would, if pressed, have told us the outcome of her talk with Jean Bruce, but if she was reserving it for Tony’s ears that suited me well enough. As I had told Eric, I had come to fish, not to take a ghoulish interest in a probable accident, possible murder and just conceivable suicide. Chat and fly-fishing do not mix well. Eric, who had again hooked but this time had lost a good salmon, fished grimly on, refusing even to stop for lunch.

  By early evening, when the clouds had cleared at last and the sunshine was painting the countryside in its true colours, Eric had another and smaller salmon, I had four and Bea two, all fresh run with the sea-lice still on them. It was not a big bag by some standards but it had been a bonanza day the way the Scottish rivers had been fishing that year. I gave my catch to Bea. She had few enough chances to put salmon in the freezer while we still had a week to fish. (I had a suspicion that the weather was changing and that during the next week any salmon caught would be hard earned, but I held my peace.) Eric clung to his trophies and his dreams.

  Bea set off for home. We dawdled across the bridge, enjoying the sunshine. Even after the sun came out, we had spent much of the day in the shadow of the trees.

  ‘Weren’t you curious about Jean Bruce’s story?’ I asked.

  ‘I was a damned sight more curious as to where my big fish had got to,’ Eric said. ‘My hour for nosiness is only now approaching. With a little sherry and a lot of coaxing, Bea will spill the beans. I’ve asked her to join us for dinner.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘She wanted to invite us to have dinner at her house.’

  ‘Well then —’

  ‘She was telling me that I should lose weight,’ Eric said peevishly. ‘She’s probably into the new cuisine.’

  ‘She doesn’t look as though she goes in for the new cuisine,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps she has a weight problem. Glands or something. I missed my lunch. At the hotel, I can eat what I like.’

  ‘She could be right,’ I suggested, with all the carelessness of the naturally slimline. ‘Maybe you should lose some weight.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To live longer.’

  ‘The last thing I want is an interminable old age,’ he said gloomily. ‘When the quality-of-life curve and the aches-and-pains curve begin to converge, it’s time to go.’

  ‘For your sex-life, then. It isn’t every woman that wants twenty-odd stone of flab bouncing on her.’

  ‘That’s true. I don’t know how you do it,’ he added, more gloomily than ever.

  I thought that he was still on the same subject. ‘Do what?’ I said.

  ‘Catch all those fish. You didn’t seem to spend more than an hour or so fishing. I swear I do everything exactly as you told me, but the beggars avoid me like the plague.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s the size of your shadow,’ I said lightly. But then I relented. We had come fishing to take his mind away from his loss and loneliness and it was one of those beautiful evenings that turn the mind towards thoughts of kindly deeds and words. ‘Partly, it’s knack,’ I said. ‘But part of your problem is that you don’t use your eyes. And you never use the Polaroid glasses I sold you.’

  ‘I never get to use half the stuff you’ve sold me,’ he said, still dispirited. ‘Like the net and the priest and the disgorger.’

  ‘And why do you suppose that is?’

  He thought about it. ‘Because I never catch anything except when you’re with me.’

  ‘And that’s because I have to tell you where the fish are. Put on those Polaroids.’

  We had drifted to a halt near the village end of the bridge. We put down our burdens and he dug his glasses, slightly bent, out of the bottom of his bag. Out of long habit, I was wearing mine.

  ‘Now look into the river,’ I said, pointing downstream. ‘Never bother to cast to a fish you can see, except upstream — if you can see it, it can see you. But it’s a great help to know where they are. Now, what do you see?’

  ‘Damn-all,’ he said, but he was beginning to sound interested.

  ‘All right, they’re well camouflaged. Sometimes, the first thing you see is a sliver of the pale underside. Or the shadow. But a fish is a different shape from the rocks on the bottom. Watch for that difference, especially a long shape that’s aligned with the current at that particular spot. Look in the places you’d choose to rest if you were a fish, wherever the current slackens. And be alert for any slight movement. Rocks don’t move. Next time you fish, cast to those places.’

  He stared into the water, which was clearing as the level fell. The breeze, which had ruffled the surface and hidden our threatening shapes from the fish, had fallen away. From our high viewpoint and with the reflections removed from the surface by the polarized glasses, every stone on the bottom was outlined in its own shadow. I could see three salmon.

  ‘The flat rock that just shows above the surface,’ Eric said at last. ‘Is that a fish, just this side of it?’<
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  ‘He’s found a comfortable bit of slack water, where the current divides. Now see if you can spot another one.’

  This time the silence only lasted for a few seconds. ‘I think I’m getting the hang of it,’ Eric said. ‘Near the left bank there’s a patch of sand or something very like it. Isn’t that a small fish, near the middle?’

  There was certainly a slim object lying there, but the ends were the wrong shape and any movement was only the shimmer of the moving water. The tones, also, seemed wrong. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘If it is, either it’s dead or it’s picked an unusual lie.’ As I looked, the object began to resolve itself into a familiar shape. ‘I think somebody dropped something. Do you want to fetch it out?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Then I’ll go,’ I said. It was warm in the sun and the midges were being drawn to our sweat. I was glad of the excuse to wade again. ‘You keep watching and see what moves when I start wading.’

  I descended to the river bank, entered the water and rolled up my sleeve.

  ‘There was another salmon quite near where you waded in,’ Eric said on my return. ‘I saw it move and then it vanished. What did you find?’

  I showed it to him. It was a hardwood rod with a leather thong and a staghorn end weighted with lead — a priest, the instrument for delivering the ‘last rites’ to a fish. Burned into the staghorn were the initials B.H.

  ‘I hope that I’m there when you show it to Tony,’ Eric said. ‘I want to see his little face light up. Blast these midges!’

  ‘You know what the entomology books call the midge?’ I asked him.

  ‘No. What?’

  ‘The Scourge of Scotland.’

  ‘They’re right,’ Eric said. ‘Let’s go.’

  *

  The coarse fisherman — by which is meant the seeker after coarse fish — may spend much of his day sitting on a stool, or in an armchair if he is so equipped, but the flyfisher spends the day on his feet, often up to his backside in cold water, stumbling over slippery rocks and sometimes fighting a stiff current. It was heaven to get back to the hotel for a leisurely bath and then to take a seat in the bar with no intention of getting up again ever, or at least until dinner was on the table. When Janet suggests that I am growing old I deny it vigorously, but the truth is that I am not quite as resilient as once I was.

  I had left a message for Tony McIver on the police station’s answering machine but there was no sign of him as yet. Harry Codlington was the only other customer in the bar. I nearly turned around when I saw him but I decided that nobody was going to spoil my repose.

  As it happened, Harry was in a placatory mood. He insisted on buying me a drink and then took a seat at the table that I had chosen for myself. Even the space behind the bar was now empty, but he looked around carefully and then lowered his voice. ‘I was out of order last night,’ he said. ‘I tackled that young policeman again and he said that my car’s number was noted down by some busybody traffic warden. My apologies. Put it down to a dislike of being snooped on.’

  ‘The feeling’s universal,’ I said. ‘I quite understand.’

  ‘That’s good. I don’t even know why I got so hot under the collar about it. As I think I told you, I went through for some casting lessons. I can cast a salmon line without getting into trouble, but I do a lot of trout fishing at home and when I start casting with a team of nymphs it soon becomes a quick exercise in cat’s-cradle. There’s an instructor at Granton who can analyse my bad habits and get me back on the straight and narrow in an hour or two, so whenever I’m up this way I book a session with him.’

  ‘Very wise,’ I said. I was about to add some advice about putting the heaviest fly or nymph on point and the lightest on the top dropper when Harry went on.

  ‘So, while I was there,’ he said, ‘I called in to visit my fishing pal. To see when he’d be able to join me.’

  ‘That was before he had to fly out to the States, was it?’ I asked.

  My question was an idle one but it seemed to catch Harry flat-footed. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Yes. He was to have joined me already . . . that day . . . but he had a problem and he’d phoned to say that he had to fly out and he didn’t know how long it would take.’ Harry paused. ‘He was waiting for confirmation of the booking of his flight out to America.’

  If Harry’s friend didn’t know how long he was going to be in the States, there seemed to be little point in visiting him to ask that very question, which may have been why Harry was looking as though he would have liked to call the words back. Rather than lay myself open to further accusations of snooping I said, ‘I hope he’d already coughed up his share of the cost.’

  Harry relaxed slightly. ‘Oh yes. No problem there,’ he said.

  Tony McIver turned up just then and Harry, who was still in his fishing togs, made his escape almost immediately, crossing at the door with Eric. I transacted business at long range with Sam Bruce, who had reappeared behind the bar, and Tony obligingly conveyed the money to him and brought back the drinks before settling down with us. I might be Eric’s guest but I felt obliged to stand my hand now and again.

  ‘I don’t know what Harry Codlington told you,’ I said to Tony, ‘but he’s been contradicting himself to me. He tried to tell me that he went to visit his fishing friend in Granton to find out when he’d be able to join him and almost in the same breath he said that his friend had already told him that he didn’t know how long it would take.’

  ‘Is that what you wanted to tell me so urgently?’ Tony asked.

  I was nearly side-tracked into producing our treasure trove. Eric was quicker to spot a diversionary tactic. ‘We can probe a little further if you like,’ he said. ‘See what explanation Harry can produce . . .’

  Tony flinched. ‘I’ll make any necessary inquiries,’ he said.

  ‘He’d wonder how you came to know about a conversation between himself and Wallace,’ Eric said. ‘We wouldn’t want that. Wal can open up the subject much more naturally. You know the kind of thing. “I must have misunderstood you, because I thought you said . . .” What do you think?’

  ‘I think,’ Tony said, ‘that you should learn to take a hint and drop the subject.’

  ‘Ah,’ Eric said.

  I must have been slower witted. ‘I don’t follow,’ I said.

  ‘That just shows that you’ve led a pure and innocent life,’ Eric said. ‘What Tony daren’t say aloud without breaching confidentiality is that Harry’s friend had already flown out to the States but that Harry visited that address anyway and paid court to the grass widow. Is that where his car was improperly parked?’

  ‘You would not expect me to tell you that. Now,’ Tony said, ‘what is it that you want to show me?’

  ‘I was right, then,’ Eric said.

  I glanced at the bar, but Sam had vacated his post. I pulled out the priest, unwrapped it from my handkerchief and laid it on the table.

  Tony set down his pint with a thump. Fortunately, he had already lowered the level. ‘You’ve handled it,’ he said indignantly.

  ‘So much for his little face lighting up,’ I told Eric. ‘It had been under running water for nearly a week, probably rolling around on sand,’ I pointed out. ‘If you think you could find fingerprints or bloodstains on it, you’re living in a dream world.’

  ‘Maybe so. But I can just imagine a forensic specialist telling a court that he could only find snot and pocket-fluff on it. B.H.,’ Tony added. ‘Bernard Hollister, beyond what a court would consider reasonable doubt.’ After a moment of hesitation he picked up the priest and weighed it in his hand. ‘The heaviest one I’ve ever come across. This could dent a skull all right.’

  ‘That’s what it’s for,’ Eric said.

  ‘A man’s skull. I’ll have to send or take it to Granton to be matched to the wound. Where did you find it?’

  ‘About thirty yards downstream of this end of the bridge,’ I said, ‘on a patch of sand near the bank.’

 
Tony looked thoughtful. ‘It could have been planted. Why wouldn’t the searchers have seen it?’

  ‘The water was higher then,’ I said, ‘and coloured and running faster, and there was a breeze. Today, we only spotted it because I was getting Eric to use his Polaroids and practise looking at what’s under the water.’

  ‘Even then, I mistook it for a small fish,’ Eric said.

  ‘That would account for it.’ Tony sat, idly slapping the priest into the palm of his other hand. ‘My day wasn’t entirely wasted,’ he said. ‘I found one useful witness. The district nurse was called out late on Monday night to an epileptic patient between here and Imad Vahhaji’s house. As she arrived, she saw him hurrying in this direction on foot. It was dark by then, but she’d be prepared to swear to his identity.’

  ‘Things don’t look too bright for Vahhaji,’ Eric said.

  ‘No. She also says that she saw a motor-caravan very like Hollister’s. This was later, when she was leaving. She can’t be certain, but she thinks that it came out of the hotel car-park. She walked out into an empty street, got into her car and when she looked again, seconds later, the other vehicle was coming towards her.’

  The normal hour for opening had arrived. A group of thirsty locals came in and Alec made an appearance behind the bar. Tony slipped the priest into an inside pocket where it made an unsightly bulge in his jacket. Bea joined us soon afterwards, looking smart but very feminine in something blue — a cocktail dress, I think Janet would have called it. While Tony was fetching her a sherry, more evening drinkers trickled in.

  We settled down. ‘Did you get anything from the girl?’ Tony asked Bea.

  She gave a small frown of warning. Rumours must have been circulating, because I was aware of hidden glances, and I thought that it might not be long before the Press got wind of a possible story.