Snatch Crop

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘He’s gone up north. Anyway, I wouldn’t be seen dead in it. He’s probably gralloched a deer in the back of it and not bothered to clean it out. I could probably borrow Dad’s jeep if he’s at the shop.’

  ‘Phone him,’ said my lord and master, ‘while I get the contents of those birds’ crops collected. Then let’s go!’

  Dad, who was again stuck with minding the shop and inclined to get peevish about it, said that I might as well have the jeep for all the good it was doing him, rusting away in the Square. If he didn’t get it back by closing time Mum could damned well come and fetch him in the family hatchback and serve her right, because by rights she should have been in the shop but instead . . . And so on and so forth.

  So Ian left his car at the police building behind the town hall and I drove the jeep. Almost as an afterthought I collected Sam. The old dog rather enjoyed spending most of the working days in the shop where he could greet old shooting friends with a sniff and a wag, but he appreciated an outing now and again. The back of the jeep was already full, but Sam was quite used to making himself a nest among Dad’s pigeon decoys and camouflage nets.

  We left the town, passed my old home and headed towards Edinburgh. As we laboured up Soutra Hill on to the top of the Lammermuirs, Ian roused himself from a reverie and said, ‘It’s a hell of a long shot.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. There was no point denying it. ‘If it doesn’t come off, what’ll you do?’

  ‘Some of the big bugs want to haul in the directors of Sempylene and see what a mixture of bluff and veiled threats will achieve.’

  We levelled out and picked up speed again. The rain was holding off but a cold breeze tried to push the top-heavy little vehicle off the road and into the heather. ‘That could be fatal for Delia,’ I said.

  ‘That’s what I’ve been telling them.’

  ‘Well, tell them again from me.’

  ‘Then both our heads could be on the block if they try it and it works. Anyway, if word’s leaked out that Thrower’s in our hands, she’s probably dead by now.’

  We crossed the Lammermuirs in silence and I turned off to the east.

  ‘I didn’t realise that Boyes Castle was over this way,’ Ian said. ‘It’s off my patch.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Not yet. What can you tell me about Mr Taylor and the place?’

  The sun came out as we descended towards the coastal plain. I groped for Dad’s sunglasses. ‘I’ve known him for years,’ I said. ‘He used to be a beatkeeper near Newton Lauder. All through my teens I went beating for him and got invited to the Keeper’s Day at the end of the season, when the beaters and pickers-up get to shoot and the syndicate members beat for them. I didn’t see much of him after he moved to Boyes Castle as head keeper until he phoned Dad, nearly two years ago. He was in a pickle because the laird – Nigel Farquharson – had a Boxing Day shoot coming up and those of his beaters who weren’t sick or in jail had had better offers to go and beat on one of the big commercial shoots.’

  ‘Would that be the Farquharson who showed up at our wedding? The shipowner?’

  ‘I suppose you could call him that, although I don’t think that shipping’s much of an earner these days. Dad and Ronnie postponed their own shoot, gathered up a few friends and went to help him out. Mr Taylor was so grateful, I think he’d have done a human sacrifice if Mr Farquharson had let him. And I still see him occasionally when it’s his turn to bring birds to the factory.’

  Ian was quiet. I glanced sideways and saw that he was looking uncertain.

  ‘You know him well, then,’ Ian said at last. ‘Tell me this. Is he the sort of man who’d answer questions without asking why you wanted to know?’

  I thought about Dod Taylor as I remembered him. ‘Not if it concerned his birds,’ I said.

  ‘Could we cook up a good enough story to satisfy him?’

  ‘I can’t think of one, can you? He’d certainly remember whether his melanistic cock had been badly shot up. But he’s a very upright sort of man. He doesn’t drink or swear; and when he gossips it’s polite gossip rather than malicious. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Asking after relatives and mutual friends?’

  ‘That sort of thing. I’ve never heard him say a spiteful word. I think he’d hold his tongue if you spelled it out and asked him to. Let me play it off the cuff.’

  We were at the gates of Boyes Castle before Ian said, ‘I can’t think of a better approach. All right, we’ll lay it on the line and trust him.’

  ‘I think it’s best,’ I said.

  On my previous visit, Dad had been driving and we had been heading for the rendezvous point rather than the head keeper’s house, but some of the geography was coming back to me. The estate, which was parkland surrounded by a mixture of farmland and woods, seemed slightly unkempt, which was all to the good. Tidiness is the enemy of wildlife. The leaves, which were still hanging on in Newton Lauder and giving us a long autumn, were off the trees and blowing across the estate roads. After a few boss shots, which gave us occasional glimpses of the Victorian pseudo-castle built in the shape of an overgrown tower, I pulled off a road that ran between two woods of beech and drew up at Mr Taylor’s door. Like many keepers’ dwellings, his was a neat house with an immaculate front garden, backed by a shambles of sheds and enclosures.

  Mrs Taylor came to the door. I had not seen her for years but I remembered her immediately – a talkative but motherly soul who had given me sweets and always made sure that my feet were dry when the day’s beating was finished.

  She had heard that I was now a married woman and she swept us inside and led the way slowly along a corridor, uttering exclamations of pleasure at meeting my new husband and enquiries after our enjoyment of the married state which ranged between the highly personal and the frankly ribald.

  ‘Dod’s just finishing his dinner,’ she said. ‘If you’ve been driving since you phoned, you’ll not have eaten. There’s no meat left, but there’s soup and a bittie cheese and there’s tea in the pot.’ She opened the door on a bright kitchen. ‘Dod, here’s Miss Deborah come to see us and her new husband with her. Get up and tell her hello.’

  Mr Taylor must have been nearing the age of retirement but he still looked very slim and fit. As a young man he would have been no Adonis, but the years in a life that he loved seemed to have toughened rather than aged him. His rather long nose was offset by kindly eyes, a ready smile and a general air of contentment. He got to his feet but his greeting had to wait while his wife bustled about, getting us seated and adding vegetables to plates of thick soup.

  ‘I must away up to the big house,’ she said at last. ‘Mr Farquharson had visitors and I’m needed to lend a hand in clearing up after them. I’ll leave you to chat in peace.’

  Ian flicked a quick glance at me but I gave him a tiny headshake. She would be very unlikely to meet anyone other than the servants, but a warning to hold her tongue would only make her curious.

  The room seemed very quiet after she had left it.

  Although I had seen Mr Taylor at the factory for a few moments only the day before, he was meeting Ian for the first time. Custom required an exchange of news, comments on the weather and enquiries after friends. When the courtesies had been observed, he said, ‘Well, now, Miss Deborah. You never came all this way just to make your new man known to us. What can I do for you?’

  His shrewd eyes seemed to be looking right through me. No made-up story was going to satisfy him. It was a time for the truth. ‘We’ve come to you for help,’ I said. ‘We may be on a wild-goose chase but, whether we’re right or wrong, this is as confidential as anything ever can be.’

  ‘Just ask,’ he said. ‘I’ll not tell a soul. Not even Jeannie, if that’s how it is.’

  ‘Not even your pheasants,’ I said. ‘It’s as secret as that. You read about the young girl who was kidnapped from Newton Lauder about ten days ago?’

  ‘Aye.’ His look of mild amusement vanished.

  ‘She ha
d a bracelet of glass beads of an unusual colour. Two beads that looked the same turned up in the crop of a pheasant. I think that it was among the ones you brought in to us yesterday.’

  ‘There was a whole heap of birds from the Gorrington keeper with them,’ Mr Taylor said. ‘And some from Park House.’

  ‘That brings us to the first question,’ I said. ‘It was a melanistic bird with a dark red wing-tag and this year’s date. Was that yours or theirs?’

  ‘Mine for sure. I’m using a new American tagger because there’s a better range of colours. The Gorrington birds are all yellow-tagged this year. Park House don’t tag, the lazy devil! The dark red tags were this year’s releases in the Birken Wood pen. We’ve had three or four melanistics this year.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know where that one was shot?’

  ‘At Red Burn,’ he said promptly. ‘There was only the yin this time round. He’d stayed close to home. The beaters put him out of Birken Wood and Mr Henry Clevely pulled him down from quite forty yards up, a lovely shot. Och, but you maun be wrong.’

  ‘But the bird was yours?’ Ian said.

  ‘Aye. That I must admit. But I canno’ believe. No, no, lassie. The beads must have come here by some other way.’

  ‘What other way?’ I asked.

  ‘In the grain that’s in the feeders, maybe.’

  ‘Barley?’

  ‘Wheat,’ he said.

  ‘There was barley in the bird’s crop.’

  He frowned unhappily. ‘I just . . .’ Then he stopped and snapped his fingers. ‘There was gravel brought in just last week, to patch some of the tracks. The beads will have come in with it.’

  ‘Where did the gravel come from?’ Ian asked.

  ‘You’d have to ask the laird about that.’

  ‘Not just yet,’ Ian said. ‘How do we get to Red Burn?’

  ‘When you’ve finished, I’ll take you there. My under keeper’s away on a course and I’ll need to be topping up the feeder.’ Mr Taylor spoke more easily, now that he was back on familiar ground. ‘They’re not taking much from it, there’s that much feeding on the ground still, but it helps to keep them close and they’ll know where to come when the hungry part of the year comes round again.’

  Ian drained his mug of tea. ‘Thank Mrs Taylor for the soup,’ he said. ‘We were needing it.’

  We followed the keeper outside. I fetched Dad’s binoculars from the jeep and we crammed ourselves into the front of Mr Taylor’s pick-up.

  He turned off the estate road to bounce along a track that was little more than a path beaten through long grass by occasional wheels and feet. Tools clattered in the back of the pick-up. Mallard took to the air as we skirted a small lake. We followed the feeder stream into a shallow valley. Ahead of us, pheasants scurried into the bushes. The track petered out in a small area of bare earth reinforced in places with fresh gravel. We got out of the pick-up.

  Mr Taylor pulled two half-bags of grain to the tailgate of the pick-up and then paused. He nodded towards a nearby stake which bore a card with the number 3. ‘Yon’s where Mr Clevely stood,’ he said. ‘The melanistic cock took off from the top of the hill and he was still climbing.’ I looked where Mr Taylor was pointing and developed a respect for Mr Clevely. The bird must have looked as small as a starling.

  The keeper picked up both of the bags, one in each hand, but Ian took one from him and swung it over his shoulder. Mr Taylor nodded a thank you and set off at a smart pace along a path that climbed obliquely up the hill. Ian followed and I fell in behind him. When he began to flag, I gave him a helpful push. My muscles were probably more accustomed to carrying sacks of feed around than his were, but I decided to let him bear the burden. The exercise would do him good and I wanted him to realise that any heavy loads were his to carry.

  The trees at the top were very open, with plenty of undergrowth to provide shelter for the birds. At our arrival, pigeon clattered out of the branches overhead. The feeder stood in a clearing outside a now empty release pen, large enough to have held several hundred birds without any excuse for feather-pecking. Mr Taylor lifted the lid off the feeder.

  ‘You’re giving them wheat?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Aye. Still with some pellets.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest barley stubble?’ I asked.

  ‘The good Lord knows,’ Mr Taylor said, still decanting grain into the feeder. I exchanged an anguished glance with Ian. Could we be so totally wrong? Could the beads have come in with the gravel after all? ‘There was barley just over the hill,’ the keeper added. ‘The stubble was ploughed a fortnight back, but there’d be grain left along the hedge where the combine couldn’t reach it.’

  We breathed again.

  Mr Taylor folded the empty bags carefully and then led the way towards the further edge of the trees. A windbreak hedge fringed the wood, but even so Ian drew us across to where a small clump of evergreens formed a ready-made screen. We peered out like some animal from its lair.

  The ground fell away into flat farmland, a patchwork of grass and stubble and plough. A tractor was working in the distance, its noise brought faintly to us on the breeze. Below, another hedge ran away from us, separating a large pasture from an even larger field, recently ploughed. There were no sheep or cattle on the grass but I could make out one or two pheasants scratching for insects in the dung or picking clover.

  Beyond a thin strip of pines which gave shelter from the north there was a house. The hedge formed one of the boundaries of a garden run riot. Through Dad’s binoculars I thought that I could make out the dead stalks of turnips run to seed. The house, made small by distance, was partly screened by the treetops, but it seemed to be a substantial stone house, two rooms square and two storeys high with a roof of blue-black slates, set down uncompromisingly in the flat countryside. A drive followed the hedge to a road a hundred yards beyond.

  The house seemed deserted, but through the binoculars I could detect a faint heat-shimmer over one chimney and a trace of smoke. Then I noticed a slightly open window. A small splodge of a different grey seemed to be a vehicle tucked close against the back of the house.

  ‘Who owns the house?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Dashed if I know,’ Mr Taylor said. ‘I’d forgotten all about the place. An old couple lived in it, but she died at the turn of the year and he followed in the spring. It stood empty after that.’

  ‘Are those turnip-heads in the back garden?’ I asked.

  ‘They could well be,’ Mr Taylor said. ‘It was this way. The old man was a bit of a tiger. About two years back, he chased some loons out of the garden where they’d been after apples. Gave them a clout or two with his stick, they say. Their parents wanted to make a case of it, but the local bobby said that they’d asked for it. The upshot was that they paid the old chap back by tossing some turnip-seed into his garden. Just terrible, the fertility of neip-seeds. They were coming up as weeds by the thousand and he never did get rid of them all.’

  ‘The house is supposed to be empty?’ I asked.

  ‘I thought it was. I’m dashed if you mayn’t be right after all. I hope so, for the wee lass’s sake.’

  ‘There’s somebody there now.’ Ian scratched his neck. He was thinking aloud. ‘It’s still a long shot, but we’ve got to assume that there may be men, probably armed, holding a hostage. I’ll have to call Edinburgh for assistance. May I use your phone?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I don’t want to use the radio more than I have to – if they’re professionals, they’ll be monitoring the police channels. Until back-up arrives, I’ll have to keep watch.’

  ‘From up here?’ said Mr Taylor.

  ‘It’s not ideal. This is the back of the house. If they suddenly decided to leave by the front, we couldn’t stop or follow them. But the other side’s as bare as . . .’

  I had been using the binoculars. ‘Look beyond the house and beyond the road and slightly right,’ I said. ‘There’s a low hump with gorse-bushes, beyond the rape stubble, and a track r
unning up from the road.’

  ‘We couldn’t get there without being seen from the house,’ Ian said. ‘If we spook them now, we could put the girl’s life in jeopardy.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But not if there was an obvious and reasonable reason for our going there. Are those fields part of the estate?’

  ‘They are,’ said Mr Taylor. ‘Not part of the shoot, though.’

  ‘There are pigeon dropping in, just this side of the gorse,’ I said.

  Ian snatched the binoculars away from me and re-focused them. ‘By God!’ he said. ‘You’re right!’

  Chapter Six

  I checked the contents of Dad’s jeep while Ian used Mr Taylor’s phone. With Wallace nursemaiding Sir Peter, Dad had not been free to go after the pigeon for some weeks but he had lived in hope. The gear was all there, including the two guns which were almost a permanency in the locked compartment under the rear floor.

  Ian came out at last, followed by Mr Tayor. ‘My help’s there if you want it,’ the keeper said. ‘I’ve no liking for men who carry off young girls.’

  Ian paused in thought and then shook his head. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I may come back to you. For the moment, two of us at the front will be enough. Until back-up arrives, I’ll be in radio touch with my local colleagues.’

  ‘Good luck, then,’ Mr Taylor said.

  Ian dropped into the passenger seat and I drove back around the Boyes estate roads.

  ‘It’s going to take time to get the men here,’ he said. ‘If we’re hasty, we’ll turn a kidnapping into a hostage-holding.’

  ‘Or even a murder,’ I said.

  ‘Right.’

  I let the jeep slow to a halt. ‘Maybe my idea was stupid. If you were holding a kidnap victim, wouldn’t you be suspicious of a pair of pigeon-shooters setting up opposite your front door?’