Snatch Crop

by Gerald Hammond

  I made for the stoutest trunk I could see, growing close beside the narrow road. As I reached it, my foot tripped on something. I stooped. It was a fallen branch as thick as my arm and when I took hold of it I found that it was about four feet long, a formidable weapon. I laid the revolver carefully at the base of the tree where I could be sure of finding it again and tucked myself up against the trunk.

  The motorcycle was coming, too fast for the rough and narrow road, throttled back but in high gear. A blaze of light lit the scene for a few seconds before he put his headlamp off again. He was just about to pass my tree.

  I stepped out and swung my heavy weapon.

  I nearly missed him. The road was narrow but he was off-centre. The branch was just long enough to catch the end of his handlebar.

  The effect was dramatic. The front wheel turned suddenly and the bike lay down and skidded. The rider travelled on. Memory insists that he was still in a seated position like some cartoon character, but that can’t be so because he landed on his face ten yards further on, bounced into a somersault with limbs whirling in every direction and curled himself around the base of another tree just as the sliding motorbike caught up with him. The engine coughed twice more and then stalled.

  We left him alone. We had enough guns and he was not going to return to the fray for a long, long time.

  Three down and only Farquharson remained. Or had he already given up and left for Dunbar?

  Ahead was what looked like a thick stand of trees. It might be a good place to go to ground. He would be lucky to find us again by moon- and torchlight and he might not be keen to poke around in the dark if he guessed that we now had guns. We might even be able to ambush him. If he threatened us, I decided that I would have no compunction this time. I had taken enough from Mr Farquharson.

  All was quiet as we neared the trees. I pulled Delia onto the grass verge, ready to push into the thick cover. And then a voice spoke out of the darkness.

  ‘Stop right there and put the guns down in front of you.’ A voice with the habit of command, Nigel Farquharson’s voice. ‘Do it. I can still use hostages but I can manage very well without.’

  Alone, I might have run for it. If he was armed with a pistol or a rifle, I could probably have got away. I looked round, hoping that Delia had done her vanishing act. She was standing beside me, pointing the shotgun vaguely in the direction of the trees.

  ‘Do as he says,’ I told her tiredly. I laid the big revolver down. As I did so, I whistled again.

  ‘And stop making that stupid noise,’ he said. ‘I’ve been following you by the sound of it.’

  Delia was sobbing and I saw that she was sucking her thumb again. As I came down from my high into a swamp of depression my pellet-wounds, my face, my neck, my hands, all began to hurt. I also felt faintly aggrieved. A shooting man in late middle age had no right to good hearing at that high pitch.

  He came out of the wood, carrying a side-by-side shotgun. Again my butterfly mind recognised it immediately. It was one of the Army and Navy sidelocks made by the underrated firm of Squires and Hodges.

  We stood. My mind, once so full of ideas, had emptied itself.

  Footsteps sounded along the estate road. Farquharson raised his voice. ‘About bloody time,’ he said loftily.

  I felt myself slide from depression towards panic. Farquharson, on his own, might have kept us for hostages and driven us to Dunbar. Once there, rather than kill us within sight or sound of his crewman, he might have left us tied up in one of his Land Rovers on the harbour wall. It was a thin hope but at least it was a hope of sorts. But we had left behind us a trail of injured men. If one of those had recovered, we could expect no mercy at all.

  A figure came along the road at a smart trot. The face was in shadow but I thought for an uneasy moment that it was the man I had clubbed with the revolver. Then, as he came closer, I recognised Mr Taylor, the keeper. He was carrying a rather nice old Westley Richards hammer-gun.

  ‘What’s adae?’ he asked his boss. ‘I heard shots. Thought we had the poachers again.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Farquharson said. ‘Go back to your house.’

  At the risk of endangering the keeper’s life along with our own, I had to grasp at the precious straw. ‘Don’t go,’ I said desperately. ‘Our lives are in danger. Your boss is a criminal.’

  Mr Taylor hesitated, visibly doubtful. Farquharson might be his boss but the keeper had known me for years. I wondered how much weight that would carry. He had known me since I was a schoolgirl much given to practical jokes; and, as Ian says, people tend to remember the follies of youth before they notice the wisdom of maturity. The habit of a lifetime was balanced against his judgement.

  ‘I never heard such libellous nonsense,’ Farquharson said loudly. ‘If you value your job, Taylor, go away and leave us to sort this thing out.’

  ‘Your job’s up the spout anyway,’ I said. ‘If Mr Farquharson doesn’t get out of the country tonight, he’ll be arrested. If you don’t believe me, this is the girl who was kidnapped. Ask her.’

  There was a silence that lasted for a dozen heartbeats. I counted them. An owl passed silently overhead, intent on its own small drama, but nobody looked up. Only its shadow under the moon flitted across the ground between us. Then Mr Taylor made up his mind. The barrels of the Westley Richards came up. It would have been against his training and every instinct to point them directly at Farquharson, but they were pointing very close to his boss’s toes. The keeper moved in front of me.

  ‘I’ll bide and hear this out,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no skaith coming to either of these lasses while I’m around.’

  ‘He acted for Sir Humphrey Peace in a fiddle over the Sempylene shares,’ I said.

  Farquharson looked around uncertainly, but none of his men was in sight. There were three of us facing him. Mr Taylor was holding a gun and there were two more at our feet. If Farquharson wanted to stake his life, he could fire two shots and then he would have to reload. Delia might have been an unknown quantity but he must have known that I could shoot. It was a difficult decision, but one that he had to make for himself.

  ‘It’s a lot of damned nonsense,’ he said at last. ‘The police may have been poking around but they never found a shadow of a connection between Sir Humphrey and me. I’d never met the man until this young woman introduced us, at her wedding. Do as I tell you, Taylor. Go back to your house and your wife and don’t meddle with matters that aren’t your business.’

  ‘I can tell them about a connection,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, can you indeed?’ said Farquharson grimly. ‘I should like to hear about that.’

  ‘And so would I,’ said a new voice. We all turned.

  From the trees on the other side of the road Ian emerged, towed by old Sam whose tail was going like a mad thing. ‘You’d better put that down,’ Ian told Farquharson. ‘There are armed officers all around. That’s what the delay was,’ he added to me. ‘I had to assemble a posse. As soon as we moved off, Sam led us straight to you. I take it that you were whistling?’

  ‘Like a kettle,’ I said. I would have thrown myself at him except that he was obviously being a policeman for the moment rather than a husband. ‘Where’s Dad’s gun?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s in a safe place. I’m not authorised to go armed.’ Ian was speaking to me but his eyes were on Delia.

  ‘And the jeep?’

  ‘Also safe. Hello Delia. I’m relieved to see you. Are you all right?’

  When I had asked the same question she had seemed uncertain as to the answer, but now she nodded energetically.

  I thought that Ian might have been bluffing, but torches were appearing among the trees and policemen, some uniformed and others in plain clothes, came out on to the road. About half of them were indeed armed. Farquharson sighed and unloaded his gun. ‘Look after it,’ he said, handing it to the nearest officer. ‘I’m holding you responsible.’

  Sam was trying to knock me over so that he could lick m
e. I knelt down and put my arms around him. That drew Ian’s attention to my face. ‘What happened to you?’ he asked grimly. ‘Did this prisoner hit you?’

  ‘Another man hit me,’ I said. ‘The one with the freshly broken nose. He also put some shotgun pellets into me. No, I’m not bleeding to death,’ I said, as Ian made a sudden movement towards me. ‘They just feel like bruises for the moment. He’s somewhere in the woods, probably still unconscious. And there are two others. One of them may still be armed. We knocked them out,’ I added carelessly.

  ‘Did you by God!’ Ian said. ‘Could one of you lead us to them?’

  ‘I could do that,’ Delia said eagerly. In all the excitement she seemed to have forgotten about being cold, but one of the policemen found her a spare anorak.

  Ian detailed two men to take charge of Mr Farquharson and others to go with Delia. The self-important Sergeant Ferless arrived, panting. ‘Whistle up the van, and the doctor if he’s standing by,’ Ian told him. ‘Now,’ he said to me, ‘tell me the connection between Sir Humphrey Peace and this . . . gentleman.’

  ‘I don’t have to stand around here and listen to this nonsense,’ Nigel Farquharson said. ‘I’m going back to the castle. I’ll wait for you there, to come and apologise.’

  ‘He has a boat at Dunbar,’ I told Ian. Mr Farquharson gave me a look which, as far as I could tell in the poor light, was reproachful.

  ‘You’ll stay where you are,’ Ian said shortly. ‘Now, Deborah. What’s the connection?’

  But I was not going to go on before punishing him a little bit. ‘You knew all along that Mr Farquharson had been the biggest purchaser of Sempylene shares during the takeover,’ I said.

  He shrugged. ‘If we could have found any connection between them, even one single acquaintance in common other than you and your family, there would have been an arrest long ago. But your father was adamant that they met for the first time at our wedding.’

  ‘That was a bluff,’ I said. ‘To bolster it up, Mr Farquharson said something which was the biggest insult one shooting man can hand out to another and Sir Humphrey only looked amused. I thought it was odd at the time.’

  Ian nodded slowly. ‘A hundred others bought shares. There was a rumour in one of the tabloids that the firm was going to survive – planted, I’d guess, to give them an out if questions were ever raised. But that wasn’t my part of the case and I didn’t even know that Farquharson lived at Boyes Castle until you mentioned it.’ Ian paused and blew out a deep breath. ‘I nearly told you to turn around and drive home. It was only on your assurance that Mr Taylor was trustworthy that I agreed to approach him.’

  ‘And I was right,’ I pointed out.

  ‘So you were. Now, what was the connection?’

  Short of making him say ‘please’, I had pushed it as far as it would go. ‘You were asking the wrong people the wrong questions. Sir Humphrey and Mr Farquharson are members of the same rather exclusive club,’ I said. ‘I’ve no proof that they ever met, but the club holds an annual dinner. They probably met there and did the rest of their business by phone. Somebody can tell you whether they sat at the same table.’

  ‘What club?’

  ‘The Woodcock Club. It’s only open to people who’ve shot a right-and-left at woodcock in front of witnesses – which is very much more difficult than you’d think. They come at you low and fast and suddenly. I nearly achieved it once but I was over-excited and I missed the second one.’

  ‘I never heard such nonsense,’ Farquharson said. Hemmed in between the two policemen, he looked smaller. I wondered how I had ever come to feel in awe of him.

  ‘But you’re wearing the club tie,’ I said. ‘I noticed it as soon as you came into the garage. Sir Humphrey was wearing the same tie when he came out on the search-party.’

  ‘Not true,’ Farquharson said in a low voice, almost a whisper. ‘One of my guests left this tie in the house and I liked it. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘It’ll be in the club’s records,’ I said.

  Mr Taylor had been standing by, so still and silent that we had forgotten him. ‘No,’ he said suddenly. ‘No. I was one of the laird’s two witnesses when he joined the club.’ He looked at his employer while choosing his next words. He was torn by conflicting emotions but professional respect came out on top. ‘Even if your second shot was gey near the beating line, Mr Farquharson, that was a damned fine right-and-left.’

  For a moment, I thought that the laird of Boyes Castle was going to persist in his denials. Perhaps pride intervened. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ He turned away between the two officers.

  Chapter Eight

  Despite the presence of shotgun pellets under the skin he loved to touch, Ian was in no rush to pack me off to hospital but at least he had sent for the doctor. The ‘van’, when it arrived, groping uncertainly around the estate roads, turned out to be a sort of minibus, probably more often used for transporting prisoners to and from court, and I was invited inside.

  At that point, we arrived at a double impasse. I had no intention of undressing, even for a doctor, in an illuminated van where any policeman lurking in the darkness outside could enjoy the show. The doctor, however, quite understood. He was one of those hearty doctors who should never be allowed to practise medicine. He remarked that none of the three pellets visible in my legs was serious and that the others, having passed through Dad’s waxproof, could certainly wait. He confirmed that if I had had any concussion it had already passed off and – heartlessly, I thought – he said that the damage to the coat was probably more serious than the damage to my skin. He confirmed that neither Delia nor I would be endangered by a slight delay while brief statements were taken in the back of the van.

  It was then that I was invited to sit down to make my statement and I discovered for the first time that one of the pellets was lodged just where it would be pressed between the hard seat and the lowest corner of my pelvic girdle. I made my statement from a kneeling position.

  The flashing light of an ambulance was visible further along the estate road, but I could not see whether the stretchers being placed aboard were covered. Ian brought me up to date. To my secret relief, none of Nigel Farquharson’s three hirelings was dead when found, although Delia’s victim was still unconscious and the motorcyclist had enough broken bones to qualify for inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records.

  Delia herself, when she was brought back from the successful search for injured toughs, was in control of herself. Indeed, she was a bit carried away with her own contribution to our escape. Her manner to me had returned to its old adulation, but there was a tendency for my actions or decisions to be attributed to ‘us’ while our joint activities seemed to be her own.

  After that, we were left alone in the back of the van for a few minutes until Ian called me outside.

  ‘I want you to break it to Delia about her father,’ he said.

  ‘You do it,’ I told him.

  He flinched visibly. The bravest men often balk at breaking bad news to women. ‘The news isn’t as bad as it might have been,’ he said. ‘I’ve just had word. He’s going to live. In fact, he’s awake and talking.’

  That put rather a different complexion on it. ‘But she thinks that her father’s still bouncing with health and you want me to break it to her that he’s badly injured,’ I said.

  ‘It would come better from a woman. Besides, she trusts you.’

  I told him that he was a louse, climbed back into the van and asked Delia to brace herself for bad news. She took it better than I could have expected. After the first impact, she wiped her eyes and blew her nose and then nothing would do but that she be taken to see him immediately.

  Time seemed to have slipped away unnoticed and I wished that I could do the same. By now, midnight was near. In the meantime a more senior officer, whom I had not met before and never saw again, had arrived to take over and to steal such credit as remained unclaimed. Ian could now be spared and, when I point
ed out that a visit from Delia would soothe the minds and might liberate the tongues of both father and daughter, he was delegated to take her in to Edinburgh. Because I was overdue for attention in one hospital or another, I was nominated to go along and play chaperone and comforter. I would rather have obtained treatment locally and gone home to bed, but nobody was paying much attention to my wishes.

  Delia and I, and a rather anxious Sam who had missed his dinner, were put in the back of a police car. Ian got in beside the driver and we were driven, at great speed and with lights and klaxon going, to Edinburgh. I travelled in a twisted position, taking my weight on one hip and risking the addition of a slipped disc to my other woes.

  Sam was left in the car. The driver promised to walk him. I was the first to be dropped off, at Accident and Emergency. By then, spots of dried blood had glued my clothes to the puncture wounds which were definitely tender. Once those adhesions had been soaked away, the removal of a dozen shotgun pellets from not too deep under my skin was unpleasant but comparatively bearable. Only time, I was told, would heal my bruised face. The punctures, plus a score of other small wounds, were dressed with adhesive plasters.

  I was more distressed by sheer hunger. The thought of Sam’s dinner had reminded me that I had not eaten since Mrs Taylor’s soup on what was now the previous day. My heartfelt grumbles on that score persuaded a friendly nurse to go and forage in the kitchens and she brought me a hot meat pie, a slab of cake and a whole flask of coffee.

  When at last I was fed, lead-free, sterilised, Elastoplasted and dressed again in clothes that Oxfam would have rejected, the same nurse led me through miles of mostly silent corridors and pointed me in the direction of the Intensive Care unit where Bernard Thrower still lay.

  A big hospital never quite sleeps. Like a cat at rest, the body may seem relaxed but there is always a pulse of activity and a readiness to respond to any sudden emergency. Soft footsteps sound amid dim lighting and here and there will be sudden splashes of bright lights and the sound of voices. I followed voices to a side-ward and stopped in the doorway.