Thin Air

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Next I want the house searched. Guns, humane killers, anything in the least out of the ordinary. There’s not much else to be done until this rain lets up.’ The remaining SOCO claimed the umbrella and set off towards the house followed by the borrowed constables.

  That left Ian with WDC White to do his shorthand for him. ‘You won’t be needing me any more,’ I said.

  ‘Obviously not,’ Ian said. ‘You go home and type up what you’ve got so far.’

  ‘Couldn’t Miss White do that?’

  ‘What shorthand do you do?’ she asked.

  ‘Pitman.’

  She smiled and shook her head.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘When I get around to it.’

  ‘You’ll get around to it straight away,’ Ian said, ‘unless you want your guilty secret spread around Newton Lauder.’

  WDC White smirked at me. Ian ushered her into the car. Ronnie was waxing restive because Wallace had suggested that, of the two vehicles, the DAF was probably in better condition than the Land Rover. When Ian beckoned to him, he came willingly and they were soon absorbed in the business of taking his statement.

  I had no intention of walking in the downpour. While I waited for a lift home in the jeep or for the rain to go off, I took a seat on one of Duggie’s trestles and jotted down a bit more of my own statement.

  Wallace joined me on my trestle, leaving Miss Mather to sulk on her own. ‘What was that about a guilty secret?’ he asked me.

  I smiled.

  My so-called guilty secret was that, several years before, my peripheral involvement in a rather nasty case had triggered an idea. My agent was nagging me to get back to real work after several years of writing up Keith Calder’s cases under a soubriquet borrowed from a large and irritable old gentleman whom I had met, with his pair of black Ladradors, on a shoot where we were both acting as pickers-up. With considerable help from Ian on police procedures and from a psychologist friend, Analysis of a Rape had been born.

  In this, two characters stranded in a refuge hut during a blizzard had recognized in each other the assailant and victim in a much earlier crime. The book had then flashed back to track their earlier histories, showing how each had been predisposed, he by his fear of rejection and she by her fear of sin, to commit or suffer the crime. The rape itself had been recounted frankly but, I hoped, without salacity and I had gone on to describe the effect on each party of the investigation, trial and thereafter. Then, meeting again after a lapse of years, old wounds were opened, fear and guilt were exposed. During a long and emotional wait for rescue, recrimination had become compassion and the two had come to terms with themselves and each other.

  Alice’s reaction to reading the final draft had been to weep over the denouement and then announce that nobody must ever know who had written it. So another nom-de-plume had been chosen.

  The book might have flared in paperback and then died the death. But it was picked up by a major and respectable publisher and, immediately after its publication, several churches, backed by the Women’s Liberation Front, had demanded that it be banned. WAR (Women Against Rape) had immediately announced that it was an exact and compassionate exploration of the subject and should be made compulsory reading in schools. As a result I was interviewed, in silhouette and with my voice disguised, on three different chat shows. The book went to umpteen editions, boosted my revenue from Public Lending Rights to the permitted maximum and was still being translated into languages that I had never even heard of.

  Apart from Ian himself (and, I thought, others of the Calder family who were well able to keep a secret) Newton Lauder was unaware of the authorship, although the bank manager probably had his suspicions. We were never more than slightly extravagant but it was impossible to disguise the fact that we were spending more liberally than before. It was generally assumed that we were living beyond my means, an image which was quite in keeping with the general belief that Alice and I were still unmarried. I rather enjoyed my reputation among the thrifty Borders Scots, to whom debt was an unspeakable sin.

  So I smiled at Wallace and told him that it was none of his damn business.

  *

  To judge from the waving of his hands, Ronnie was attempting to explain the trajectory of bullets fired upwards at various angles. I wished WDC White joy in trying to record his explanations and turn them into a formal statement. By the time they finished, the rain was beginning to abate.

  Wal joined Ian at the car. ‘Do you need my statement?’ he asked.

  ‘Not urgently. I don’t suppose you saw any more than I did,’ Ian said, ‘but you may have noticed something useful. Can you come back tomorrow?’

  Wallace pretended a laugh. ‘No way! The shop was closed today. Tomorrow it opens come hell or high water or Keith will want a better reason than a sudden death. And, with everyone else away, I’m the one who has to open it.’

  ‘Go home,’ Ian said after a pause. ‘I’ll catch up with you when I need you. I wanted Ronnie to go round the outside of the house with the SOCOs and see if he could see signs of anybody hurrying that way. Until the ground dries, we’d be doing more harm than good. From a long shot it’s become an impossibility, but I’ll have to go through the motions. Come back tomorrow, Ronnie. For the moment, I want to interview Miss Mather.’

  ‘And the best of luck,’ Wal said softly. ‘She’s about due to blow her top.’

  Ian snorted. ‘Well, she’s not going to blow mine,’ he murmured. ‘Her humane killer’s locked in the boot of what’s left of her car. And I have the key. We haven’t found Old Murdo’s humane killer yet, by the way.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Ronnie said, ‘it’s staring you in the gizz.’ He pointed at a T-shaped object hanging on the wall in a dark corner of the barn. I had taken it for a piece of plumbing or a device for turning underground stopcocks.

  ‘That thing?’ Ian said. ‘We were looking for a sort of pistol.’

  ‘It is a sort of pistol,’ Wal said. ‘But the operative part is shaped like one of those long torches. When you tap the end against the beast’s head, that fires the cartridge and shoots the bolt in. But a bull with a hernia may not feel much like being tapped on the skull, so it comes with a long handle to wield it by. Happy now? We must go. Where’s Ronnie got to now?’

  Ronnie had wandered into the back of the barn and was in conference again with Miss Mather. I went to fetch him. ‘The engine’s a’most new,’ he was saying.

  ‘It’s not the engine I’d be worried about,’ said the vet, ‘it’s the rest of it. I might know a farmer who’d buy it for the sake of the engine.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘If I find you a buyer,’ Miss Mather said, ‘will you fill up my insurance claim form for me? Please?’

  I decided that the vet was not as silly as she seemed. Explaining, within the confines of an insurance claim, how her car had managed to drive itself into a tank of dung and then be wrecked by the possibly well-intentioned actions of a man now deceased was a task that was not to be entered into lightly. Ronnie evidently agreed with me. He turned away without a word.

  We piled into Keith’s jeep. At the road-end we met a large caravan towed by a police Range Rover. Two minutes later Wallace pulled up outside Tansy House.

  ‘Coming in?’ I asked.

  Ronnie and Wal raised eyebrows at each other.

  We ran up the steps through the last of the raindrops. Pandemonium arrived as we were wiping our feet in the hall. As Alice came out of the kitchen, Peter hurled himself at me, shrieking with pleasure, while Jane toddled after to grab at the basket which now held my share of the rabbits. I put down the basket of rabbits and hefted both children up, one under each arm.

  Alice was visibly alight with curiosity but, as always, her instinct as a hostess came first to the fore. ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘You must all be hungry.’

  ‘Just starving. These bug . . . burgh . . . beggars,’ Ronnie said, glancing at the two children, ‘ate it a’. Didn’t leave me a bite.’
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  ‘Can you both stay for a meal?’

  ‘Is there any food left in the house, after the lunch you provided?’ I asked her.

  ‘Ample. I shopped yesterday.’

  ‘I’d be glad,’ Ronnie said. He lived alone.

  ‘Janet’s away until tomorrow night,’ Wal said. ‘I’d only be having a bar snack at the hotel. If you’re sure?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Alice said. ‘Just keep these two out of my hair for a while. Who’s going to tell me what on earth’s going on?’

  ‘Not while little ears are listening,’ I said. ‘We’ll fill you in later.’

  What I liked to think of as the Age of Affluence had made little difference to the comfortably plain sitting room except for a new carpet and curtains and some fresh upholstery to my uncle’s old chairs. Ron and Wal settled and I dropped a child onto each of their laps.

  My offer of drinks was accepted. Since the dawning of the Age of Affluence, my drinks cupboard was a great deal better stocked than ever before. In particular, I could indulge a taste for the better malt whiskies. I poured three of these plus an extra beer for Ronnie and orange juice for the children.

  Ronnie put Jane on the floor and got up to collect his drinks – but not out of eagerness, I was surprised to note. He took the two glasses from me but put them down again on the mantelpiece, out of reach of small hands, and glowered at the large-scale map that I had hung on the wall. A frown of deep thought sat uncomfortably on his beetling brow.

  ‘Will you two keep an eye on the kids?’ I asked. ‘I’d better go and start typing up Ian’s statements for him.’

  ‘Bide a wee,’ Ronnie said. ‘How far was . . . it . . . moved, afore I saw it?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I think it was still within a yard of where it fell,’ I said. ‘Duggie rolled it over once to start his artificial respiration.’

  ‘Then I doubt if Ken McKee’s to blame for an accident.’ Ronnie planted a large finger on the map. ‘Here’s where I think he took his air-shot from, but even if he’d moved to the furthest corner of his own land—’ Ronnie picked up a book and used the spine as a straight edge. ‘Aye. I thought as much. From there to where . . . it . . . was lying, the corner of the barn would have been in the road.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘No. I’ll have a look, the morn.’ He sat down and took Jane back on his knee.

  ‘Keep each other company for a minute,’ I said.

  I carried my drink through to the study. I only intended to make a token start to Ian’s typing, to have something to show in case of a sudden enquiry as to how I was getting on. But, as always when words began to make patterns on the screen of the word processor, time lost all meaning. It seemed only a few seconds later when Alice called me through and I realized that I was left with only Duggie Bracken’s statement to finish. My drink was untouched.

  The scene in the sitting room was much as I had left it. Peter and Wallace were using Lego to create a structure vaguely resembling Edinburgh Castle. Ronnie was helping Jane with an educational puzzle involving the placing of shaped blocks in matching holes. He seemed to be making heavier weather of it than she was, but I hoped that he was only pretending. The children, I saw, were already bathed and in pyjamas.

  ‘We eat in twenty minutes,’ Alice said. ‘You can take them up to bed and tell them their story.’

  ‘Can we come and listen?’ Wallace asked.

  ‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘It’ll be much too intellectual for you. Stay down here and tell Alice what’s been happening. Help yourselves,’ I added unnecessarily.

  I gathered Jane up. Peter, as usual, took hold of my trouser pocket and we climbed the stairs. It was the one moment of any day when I felt truly paternal.

  As the professional story-teller of the family, this duty usually fell to me. But it was never easy to pitch it at a level that Jane, only just three, could understand and yet interest Peter who was either six or seven. However, I embarked once more on the saga of two children who continued to outwit a wicked ogre who sometimes took on a remarkable resemblance to Ronnie, keeping it simple until Jane fell asleep and then building to a gentle climax. Each had inherited Alice’s dark copper hair and their heads glowed in the lamplight. When Peter’s grip on my sleeve relaxed, I kissed them both and tiptoed out of the room.

  Chapter Four

  The uncle from whom I had inherited Tansy House had used the former dining room as a study and Alice, although occasionally regretting the lack of a separate dining room, had insisted that I continue the arrangement. We were taking our places at the table that occupies the dining end of the sitting room when the front doorbell chimed. Alice darted to it before I could get up and came back with Ian Fellowes. He looked drawn.

  ‘Another grass widower,’ she said. ‘Sit down with us, Ian. The food will stretch. Do you want to wash first?’

  ‘He can’t break bread with his suspects,’ I said.

  Ian glanced at the table, sniffed the savoury smells and swallowed. I guessed that he had been sustained by no more than the sandwiches and coffee that are the usual portion of police in the field. ‘I could break suspects with my bread,’ he said. ‘Not that I think any of you qualify as suspects. Ronnie and Wal have an excellent alibi – me – and you, Simon, weren’t out of my sight for more than a few seconds. I’ll wash.’

  He was back in a minute, looking better but still the policeman rather than the sociable Ian, and took the extra place that Alice had set. I offered him a drink but he shook his head. ‘I shan’t count myself off duty until this is over,’ he said. ‘Have you done that typing for me?’

  ‘Nearly finished,’ I said.

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘It’s still on disk. You can read it off the screen if you like, or I’ll finish and print it and bring it to you in the morning.’

  To have opened a bottle of wine would have seemed like a celebration of death. But whisky was a proper drink for a wake and beer was permissible. The mind generates its own etiquette at times of disaster. I brought beer to the table while Alice served the meat. The evening light was beginning to fade. I switched on the lamps. When I went to draw the curtains I saw that more lights than usual were showing at Easter Coullie Farm and I shivered.

  ‘You know what’s happened?’ Ian said to Alice.

  ‘Most of it, I think. Wallace told me what he knew while Simon was typing.’

  Ian looked faintly distressed. Any detective would vote for a law that forbade the public from speaking to one another. He filled his mouth and chewed, making little mewing sounds of pleasure, following it with a sip of water. ‘The whole case has turned on its head again,’ he said. ‘The one thing I can say for sure is that Ken McKee didn’t kill Old Murdo accidentally by letting off a shot at a crow.’

  ‘Ronnie was just working that out,’ I said. ‘The corner of the barn would have been in the way.’

  ‘Right.’ We waited while Ian filled his mouth again. ‘The pathologist came back in person,’ he said at last, ‘to give me the result of the X-rays. I don’t know that you’re going to believe this. I’m not sure that I believe it myself.’

  ‘Believe what?’ Wallace asked.

  ‘So I’m glad I caught you here,’ Ian said. ‘With Keith away, I’ve no other source of quick and specialized advice.’ He filled his mouth and started chewing again while looking thoughtfully at the water jug.

  I decided that Ian had not set out to tantalize but simply was unaware that we did not yet know what he was talking about. There was one quick way to bring him back to the real world. ‘Have your ferrets had a meal?’ I asked Ronnie.

  He caught on immediately. ‘Aye. Alice gied me a dishie and some milk and bread. That’ll do them for now.’

  Ian returned to the present. ‘The X-rays,’ he said. ‘They show a flattened metallic pellet that had passed most of the way through the brain. It is obviously too small to be a conventional two-two bullet. His opinion, and mine, is that it’s an airgun slug. Impossible to
say, until he gets it out, whether it has rifling marks – if, indeed, any marks survive the damage.’

  ‘Wow!’ I said. That did indeed turn the case on its head. We waited for Ian to go on, but he had filled his mouth again. ‘Didn’t the pathologist say that it had passed through a thick part of the skull?’ I asked.

  Ian nodded.

  ‘Was his skull thin, then?’ Ronnie asked.

  Simultaneously, Ian shook his head and shrugged. I interpreted the combination to mean that the pathologist had given him no more than a preliminary opinion.

  ‘Well, I don’t get it,’ Wal said. ‘The common air rifle is restricted by law to an energy level – twelve foot-pounds, I think – which is reckoned to be safe. A lead slug wouldn’t penetrate a normal skull.’

  Ian had recovered the power of speech. ‘That’s why I stopped here when I saw the jeep outside. I need your help. You’ – he looked at Ronnie – ‘are a stalker with experience of a wide range of firearms. You’ – he switched to me – ‘have been writing up all of my father-in-law’s cases, so you must have picked up at least some smattering of the subject. And you, Wallace, are a partner in a gunshop. Yes,’ he added quickly as Wallace began to object, ‘I know. You’re the fishing and business partner. But you often deal with airguns. Right?’

  ‘I sell them,’ Wal admitted. ‘Sometimes I work on them, to the extent of replacing springs and washers. But Keith’s the expert.’

  ‘All the same, give me an opinion. How difficult a job is it to fit a more powerful spring?’

  ‘Given basic tools, heat and a little knowledge,’ Wal said, ‘any fool can make a spring. I’ve done it myself. But to make a new mainspring for a particular airgun, that’s a different matter. A coil spring gets fatter as it’s compressed. Also, a heavier gauge spring won’t compress as far, because the wire’s thicker. It would be easy to get it wrong.’

  ‘It’s a job for a gunsmith?’