Thin Air

by Gerald Hammond

  He altered course to meet me, stooping to give Boss a pat. ‘Hi there, old fellow,’ he said. ‘Afternoon, Mr Parbitter.’ His smile was absent but otherwise he was his usual placid self. There was blood on his hands and I felt a jolt of horror until it came to me that he would have been cutting up for mutton the ewe that Miss Mather had put down.

  For some reason, white lies stick in my throat. None of the customary platitudes would come out, simply because not one of them would have had any truth in it. The fact that Old Murdo had been the victim of a pathological disorder excused his malignancy without altering the fact. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. He could decide for himself what I was sorry about.

  He nodded. ‘You’ll come in for a minute?’

  ‘I won’t be keeping you?’

  ‘This is the slack time. There’s nothing urgent until we can start harvesting. Yesterday’s rain set everything back.’

  As I followed him indoors, I thought that a murder might also have had some delaying effect. Old Murdo had not been inclined towards hospitality and I had never been inside the house before. The sitting room was colourless, furnished economically but with an eye to comfort and very well kept. An ornate clock ticked loudly above the empty fireplace. Boss subsided on a hearthrug of gaudy pattern. The clock on the mantelpiece was flanked by a pair of the china dogs that are becoming collectors’ items.

  ‘You’ll take a dram?’ Brett asked.

  Old Murdo had liked his dram but his taste would have run to the youngest and cheapest of the blended whiskies. After the previous evening’s excesses, my stomach burned at the very thought. I decided to break with local custom.

  ‘I could manage a beer,’ I said.

  He seemed pleased. I was left alone for a minute while Brett went to wash and I wondered whether some of his father’s parsimony had rubbed off on him. He returned and poured a beer apiece and we sat on either side of the hearth.

  ‘How’s your mother taking it?’ I asked.

  ‘Better than you’d think, now that she’s over the shock. I’m fetching her home this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s rather soon, isn’t it?’

  ‘Aye, it is,’ he said. ‘I’d rather she stayed until we had the place to ourselves again. But that could be long enough. They’re out of the house now, except for sharing the kitchen. And at least they’ve brought their own milk and tea. We’ll get by. She’s set her heart on getting home and sorting us out. She’s got more spunk than many of us, my Mam.’

  Was it spunk, I wondered, or were there some loose ends Mrs Heminson was in a hurry to tidy away?

  He went on speaking affectionately of his mother. A picture began to emerge, of a matriarchal but motherly woman, wise and yet tender, which I found hard to relate to the large, tough battleaxe of her reputation. Soon my mind wandered. How had my mother looked to the stranger? I was also wondering whether I dared ask Brett how he thought his father had been killed or whereabouts he himself had been just before the murder, whether he had seen any strangers in the fields, whether he and Young Murdo had ever experimented at firing airgun slugs out of the .22 rifle, whether he had known that his father had a tumour, or any one of a dozen other things.

  Before I could formulate any acceptable questions, there was a ring at the doorbell.

  ‘I’ll see who it is,’ Brett said quickly. ‘You bide there.’

  He left me with the tick of the clock and my unasked questions for company. I heard voices at the door and Brett returned, followed by the sticklike figure of Sir Peter Hay. The old boy seemed to have tidied himself up, at least to the extent of brushing out his hair and wearing a less tattered kilt than usual. But, of course, I remembered as I got up, the call would be formal.

  ‘Don’t go, my dear chap,’ Sir Peter said to me. ‘I’ve just been giving Brett my condolences. Bad business, eh?’

  ‘Terrible,’ I said. Brett grunted. Boss, subsiding again at my feet, echoed him.

  Sir Peter evidently shared my distrust of Old Murdo’s taste in whisky. He accepted a beer and lowered his skinny frame carefully into one of the chairs. He was much more adept than I was at uttering conventional platitudes without ever quite saying that Old Murdo would be greatly missed.

  ‘The other reason I came,’ he said suddenly, ‘was to ask what you intend to do. But maybe it’s too early for that?’

  ‘It’s early days, right enough,’ Brett said. ‘When I saw Mam, she was talking as though we’d be staying on. It was as if all she wanted was to get life back to where it was before, as near as it can be. The most I could say just now is that I think we’ll be wanting to keep the farm on . . . if we’re let.’

  Sir Peter nodded his thinning, silver curls. ‘That’s really all I wanted to know. If you and your mother feel that you can manage the place, the tenancy’s yours. You’ll have Young Murdo to help, of course. Or Murdo, as I suppose we’ll have to learn to call him.’

  For the first time since I had known him, Brett was looking flustered. ‘Can we speak again, Sir Peter, once we can . . . see our way past this business?’

  Sir Peter looked genuinely astonished. ‘But surely . . . A stray bullet from a long way off, I was given to understand. That’s the word that’s doing the rounds. Or perhaps a poacher?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Brett said. ‘I surely to God hope so. I’ve no more idea than you have, but the police were asking some dashed funny questions. I can’t make head nor tail of it, but I’m sorely fashed and that’s the truth.’

  ‘That’s the way the police are. It’s their job to poke and pry. But you’ll find’ – Sir Peter leaned forward and shook an earnest finger, ignoring my attempt at a warning look – ‘mark my words, there’ll be a simple explanation. I can’t believe . . . But we’ll say no more about it until the police have done their stuff and the Fiscal’s enquiry’s been and gone.’ He sat back, satisfied that he had set the other’s mind at rest. ‘And then, what will your plans be? Do you still hope to go to Agricultural College? There’s not the fat in farming that there used to be, but there’s still a good living to be made if you’re up to date.’

  Brett sighed, relaxing slowly. ‘Murdo and Mam would be hard put to it to manage,’ he said. ‘It’s Murdo will have to go to the College.’

  ‘You’ll be disappointed, but I can see the sense in what you’re saying. Where is Murdo, by the way? And how’s he taking it?’

  ‘I don’t know what to make of him,’ Brett said. ‘He’s in one of his moods. You ken how he is. And I can’t blame him. They were close until Dad started with the headaches. After that, Murdo couldn’t seem to do a thing right and Dad was hard on him, very hard. Dad’s death’s been a shock to him all right.’ Brett frowned into the dead fireplace for a minute while he tried to plumb his brother’s feelings. ‘My guess,’ he said at last, ‘is that it’s come as a relief to him and he feels guilty for feeling that way. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Not an uncommon reaction,’ Sir Peter said.

  ‘And then seeing Mam take it so hard. It seemed better to keep him busy. He’s away down finishing off the rabbit holes that were left yesterday.’

  It was a few seconds before his words sank in. Then I felt myself jump. ‘How could he?’ I asked. ‘He left the tin of Cymag and Ronnie picked it up.’

  ‘That was a new tin. There was a bittie left in the old one, enough to do the few holes that still needed.’

  I felt an unease in my guts. ‘I don’t think you should have left him running around with the makings for poison gas,’ I said. ‘Sheila McKee broke up with him this morning. It seemed to knock the last of the stuffing out of him.’

  ‘It would,’ Sir Peter said. ‘Those two have been sweethearts since they were in primary school together.’

  ‘No,’ Brett said, mostly to himself. ‘Surely not.’ He looked at the clock. ‘He’d surely never make away of himself over the girl. Not when he knows how it would upset our Mam.’

  ‘Shouldn’t he be back by now?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ll see if
he isn’t in the yard.’

  We followed Brett out. Sir Peter’s Land Rover and another police car were crammed in beside the caravan and there were now three heads to be seen behind the caravan windows. Otherwise the scene was unchanged.

  ‘Murdo!’ Brett shouted. There was an echo but no answer.

  ‘We’ll all be easier in our minds once we’ve seen that the boy’s all right,’ Sir Peter said. ‘Hop in the Land Rover.’

  ‘Better not,’ Brett said. ‘The police have a tape across. They don’t want any vehicles past there yet.’

  Sir Peter was not deterred. ‘Then we’ll walk,’ he said.

  Boss was walking stiffly. I sent him to lie in the barn and told him to stay there. We set off across the pasture and cut round the back of the farm buildings. Nothing was said, but we seemed to walk faster and faster. I was soon panting, but Sir Peter seemed to keep up effortlessly with Brett, who was breaking into a trot.

  When we came to the bridge, we saw Murdo. He seemed to be down on his knees and peering into one of the rabbit holes, but at a second glance I saw that his head was deep in the hole so that his shoulders sealed it.

  Brett gave an inarticulate groan and broke into a run, descending the side of the gully in one leaping slither and jumping the stream. When I caught up with him, he had already pulled his brother’s head free. He gathered him up in his arms. Under the sandy dirt, Murdo looked very young, very pink and white.

  Sir Peter arrived, panting. ‘Leave him,’ he said. ‘Leave him. He’s dead.’

  ‘No.’ Brett looked older, so much older that the resemblance to his dead father was almost frightening. He turned away and splashed through the stream, then turned the body over one shoulder so that he had a hand with which to help himself up the bank. At the top, he broke into a run again along the track. I could barely keep up with him. For a short while I thought that he was right and that Murdo was still alive, but then I realized that what I had taken for groans were no more than the air being bounced out of the dead boy’s lungs. The regular sounds were more than I could bear. I slowed to a walk. Brett drew away and Sir Peter overtook me.

  When we reached the corner of the barn, the body had been laid neatly beside the caravan. The three officers had emerged and Brett was imploring them for help. One of them ran to the nearest police car.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Brett shouted after him.

  ‘We need a doctor and an ambulance. It’ll be quicker by radio. Take Mr Heminson into the house,’ he told one of his colleagues. They knew as well as I did that both the Murdos were dead.

  But Brett stood, looking down at his brother. Only when the officer who was using the radio began to relay the news to Ian, putting the tragedy into clumsy words, did Brett seem ready to turn away.

  At that moment Boss came out of the barn. He sniffed the body. I jumped forward to pull him away in case any trace of cyanide gas still lingered about the boy. But just then Boss sat back on his haunches, threw back his grizzled head and began to howl.

  Brett bolted into the house.

  Chapter Six

  As any member of the police would confirm, they are often hampered because witnesses to any event, large or small, slip quietly away if they can. For this, the Force has only itself to blame. Professional men in the public sector often see the public as a flock of sheeplike creatures whose time is of no account compared to their own and, unaccountably, the public supports that view by allowing them to get away with it. The police like to consider themselves similarly privileged. Witnesses have to wait around to be interrogated, to sign statements and for their moment in court. A dead body, being in no hurry, takes precedence.

  So Sir Peter and I were banished back to the sitting room while the routine of Police Surgeon, Pathologist, Scene of Crime Officers and Forensic Science Specialists again went into gear and ground as slowly as the mills of God but, I hoped, rather more effectively, while Brett, as next of kin and finder of the body, was put through his paces in the caravan.

  This gave Sir Peter his first chance to allow his curiosity full rein. To pass the time, I gave him a detailed account of the events surrounding Old Murdo’s death, answering his questions as best I could. While we spoke, I could see his curiosity giving way to distress. He dearly loved a mystery, but regarded all the local populace, and especially his tenantry and their families, as his personal babies.

  Much later, when I had covered the facts, some of them more than once, and we were beginning to pick over the few tenable theories, each of which Sir Peter pronounced unthinkable, WDC White appeared at the door.

  ‘Inspector Fellowes is coming to take your statements,’ she said. In a similarly reverent tone might be said, ‘The doctor will see you now.’

  ‘Did you get on all right with my word processor?’ I asked her.

  She accepted the implied slur without comment. ‘We arrived at an understanding,’ she said.

  ‘And you left it as you found it?’

  Her nose lifted. ‘I left it a lot cleaner than I found it,’ she said. ‘And I put a much needed new ribbon in your printer.’

  Ian arrived before I could find a suitable reply. ‘We may as well take you together,’ he said. ‘You may be able to refresh each other’s memories.’

  The lengthy process of taking statements began. Our accounts were virtually identical, except for my encounter with the boy that morning. When we had finished, Ian nodded to the WDC and she closed her shorthand book.

  ‘Could you not have stopped Brett from moving the body and stirring up the scene?’ Ian enquired severely.

  ‘Not without resorting to violence,’ Sir Peter said. ‘He was in a state. And, after all, none of us is a medical man. The boy might just possibly have been alive.’

  Ian shook his head. ‘The doctors agree that he must have been dead for half an hour before he was found. Almost certainly the autopsy will confirm poisoning by whichever of the cyanide gases is produced by Cymag in contact with damp earth. Brett himself could have been killed, bending down to the hole and pulling his brother out. You didn’t think of that?’

  ‘In the heat of the moment,’ I said, ‘no, we didn’t. And he’d already pulled him out before we caught up with him.’ I decided to push my luck. ‘It didn’t look like an accident.’

  Ian hesitated and then decided in favour of frankness. ‘Nor does it to us,’ he said. ‘For one thing, I’m advised that Cymag is activated by contact with the dampness in the earth. In dry conditions, that could have taken time. Somebody had scooshed water into the hole, using an empty tin that was lying nearby, before adding the Cymag. We opened up several of the other treated holes – very cautiously, I need hardly say – and none of them showed any such signs. No worthwhile prints on the tin.’

  ‘A bad business,’ said Sir Peter. ‘Tell me, if you can – were there any marks of violence on the body?’

  ‘There were some bruises, about a day old, probably inflicted by his father’s stick.’

  ‘That wasn’t exactly what I meant,’ Sir Peter pointed out gently.

  ‘No,’ Ian said. ‘You want to know exactly what I want to know. Did somebody push his head into the burrow?’

  ‘And did they?’ I asked.

  ‘You both seem to agree that his shirt looked clean and newly pressed. It would be difficult to manhandle even an unconscious person, let alone a struggling victim, into a position with his head down a rabbit hole without using his clothes as a grip. There were no suspicious marks on the flesh that we could see. But very often that’s the way of it, if death took place before bruises had time to develop. The autopsy may answer the question.’

  ‘A bad business,’ Sir Peter said again. He waited but Ian made no comment. ‘To come back to the earlier matter of the death of Old Murdo. Your men hadn’t got around to speaking to me. In fact, they had no reason to believe that I knew anything of use. But I can confirm something that you may or may not know. I had no idea of its relevance until a few minutes ago.’

  I
an nodded again to WDC White, who whipped open her book.

  ‘Simon tells me that Old Murdo died yesterday at about five past one.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Ian said. ‘I reached the scene at about ten past.’

  ‘From what Simon tells me, I surmise that Ken McKee may be under suspicion,’ said Sir Peter, carefully avoiding any suggestion that he and I might have been discussing various locals as possible murderers. ‘I got home for lunch at one. I tried to phone Ken McKee. A little matter of vermin he’s failing to control. His wife tried to tell me that he wasn’t in, but I could hear his voice in the background, shouting at his dog. That would have been between five and ten past.’

  The clock ticked a dozen times before Ian spoke. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Is it all right if the WDC uses your machine again?’ he asked me.

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said.

  Miss White took the hint and left us.

  Sir Peter stirred in his chair. ‘Does that agree with what Ken McKee told you?’

  ‘Ken McKee and his daughter have been less than co-operative,’ Ian said. ‘Up to the moment when I was called back here with the news of a second death, the girl was uttering nothing but sobs and her father was insisting that neither of them was going to say a word until Mr Enterkin the solicitor was present. McKee, in fact, might have been going out of his way to convince me of his own guilt.’

  ‘Perhaps he was drawing attention away from his daughter,’ I said. ‘She could have borrowed her father’s air cane. That could account for her tearfulness and her renunciation of Young Murdo.’

  Sir Peter made another small mew of distress. Even at his age he still regarded young females as delicate blooms, more likely to be sinned against than sinning.

  ‘I collected the air cane last night,’ Ian said. ‘Mr McKee’s fingerprints were all over it and nobody else’s. Not conclusive, of course, but it goes to support certain other evidence, not even including your own.’