Dead game, p.21
Dead Game, page 21
part #1 of Keith Calder Series
‘Now, let’s look at things in chronological order. Payne was worried. My informant, who was drunk out of his mind or he wouldn’t have been so forthcoming, reckons that if Payne loses in the arbitration he’s bust. Then he’s told that McLure smuggled a dog into the country. The penalties for that are severe, and they include the destruction of the animal. McLure could have paid quite a bit for a trained dog, and it seems to have been the only creature that he had a real fondness for. And the courts are getting tough about evasion of quarantine. Payne could’ve been expected to hit the ceiling, but instead he says to forget it, and he becomes what my informant called “chirpy as a crippet”. I think he meant cricket, but never mind.’
‘Blackmail, you think?’
‘Well, what do you think? Suddenly McLure’s dealing with the arbitration in a way that makes it clear that he’s going to come down in favour of A. Payne & Co. And then Payne learns that his tame arbiter has a firm intention of going abroad before dealing with the matter, and also learns that that’s the one thing that could hang the whole thing up for years. His attitude to that would depend on the balance between his need to get his damages for the dud job and a possible wish to postpone the risk of getting soaked for the work plus the cost of the arbitration. And, of course, he would have to weigh the chances of winning or losing with a different arbiter who might not lay himself so open to having his arm twisted. But at that point we learn that he started worrying again, so we must presume that he can’t afford to delay any longer the chance of getting his hands on the money he thinks is due him.’
‘A cash-flow problem,’ said Enterkin. ‘That can happen to the best of businessmen, although they don’t all kill for it.’
‘But they could?’
‘Oh yes, they could.’
‘And only a week or so later, down goes McLure.’
‘He’d have to be very short of working cash, not to prefer a delay.’
‘Maybe he was. Perhaps you could find out – I wouldn’t know how. But let’s look at it from McNeill’s viewpoint. He feels badly let down, he’s laying out a hell of a lot of money, and suddenly the arbiter is letting it be seen that he prefers the arguments put by the other side. As far as we can tell, he doesn’t know that McLure’s going abroad; but I don’t think that it matters. He might be just as perturbed over the whole thing going into limbo as he would be by a hostile arbiter.’
Enterkin protruded his lips, as if for a monstrous kiss, while he thought. ‘It would be nice to hypothesise a conspiracy between the two of them,’ he said, ‘but it would never work. Between them, they’ve lost so much money over the defective floor that one of them has to go to the wall. And I don’t envisage either of them accepting that role.’
‘Better to live in hope than to accept the not inevitable?’
‘Yes. And what now?’
‘More research. We came back by way of Lanark today. Joe Quaich gave us the names of the two farms that McNeill rents the shooting of, and we went to take a look at them. Usual sort of thing, a bit of moor above, some woods with a few wild pheasants, a pond that looked as if it might be good for duck-flighting – it had some hides beside it. The lower arable land was all overlooked by farm-houses, cottages, a railway and a couple of roads, which made it pretty unlikely that he’d have done any testing down there. So we went up to the moor. The farmer’d only go up there once in a blue moon, so McNeill’d only have to say “I’m going to see if I can knock off a few foxes” and nobody’d think anything of hearing shots from the moor except to bless the man who was killing foxes and reducing losses at lambing time.
‘It was as cold as chastity up there, and just as uninteresting. Not a bad moor, but the heather needs regular burning if he’s going to make the most of the grouse.’
‘Never mind the shooting prospects,’ Enterkin said.
‘Sorry. Habit of thinking. It’s mostly pretty flat and featureless, which isn’t what you’d choose for the purpose, but there were a couple of very suitable gullies. And I couldn’t find a damn thing.’
‘Would you have found it, if it had been there?’
‘Probably,’ Keith said, after a pause.
‘So what do you do next?’
‘Sir Peter’s invited McNeill to the Boxing Day shoot, and Payne’ll almost certainly be there as a syndicate member. I want to chat to both of them. I haven’t been able to get a line on any close friend of either of them, so the next step might be to break into their houses and do a search.’
‘Have you gone off your chump?’ Enterkin demanded, his voice risen to a protesting squeak. He cleared his throat. ‘If you get yourself caught, I won’t act for you.’
‘Yes you will and you know it. And don’t forget that I’ve got about a sixty-forty chance of getting jugged anyway if I can’t prove something against one of them in about the next three weeks.’
*
The ensuing weekend immediately preceded Christmas. Everyone who might have ‘assisted Keith in his enquiries’ seemed to have gone to the moon, with the annoying exception of the two suspects. Each of whom answered the telephone to a wrong-number call from Keith.
On the Saturday evening, Keith drove across country to Berwick-upon-Tweed, to visit a vet with whom he had, in younger days, hunted geese and girls around the northern estuaries. The vet listened to Tanya’s history, examined her thoroughly and dispelled Keith’s fears. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘if she’d been in quarantine she’d have come out of it several weeks ago. So there’s no point making a song and dance about it now. You didn’t need me to tell you that.’ The rest of their conversation, while still biological, was not related to veterinary practice.
Thereafter, Mr and Mrs Calder spent their time in a final assault on the flat. The Monday, which doubled as Christmas Eve, was first marked by Elsie’s husband, driving a borrowed lorry and bringing the remainder of Keith’s possessions from the farm, some of the promised bargains in stock and equipment, and a number of items of surplus furniture on permanent loan. That evening they moved into their new home.
‘After all,’ Molly said, ‘Ronnie might get out at any time, and he won’t want us under his feet.’
‘I wouldn’t want me to be under his feet either,’ said Keith. Privately, he thought that there was more than a chance that when Ronnie came out Keith would replace him.
Despite a number of improvements waiting for another day, their living-room at least was cheerful with its new paper and a blazing fire. Somehow Molly had found time to obtain a token Christmas tree and to put up some decorations. The radio played carols. They left it on.
‘I thought,’ Keith said, ‘that it was the bride that was supposed to have something old, something new . . .’
Molly laughed and took his hand. ‘The old’s the furniture, and the new’s the carpets and curtains.’
‘The borrowed is most of it.’
‘And,’ said Molly, ‘the blue is what you said when Tanya got under your feet while you were carrying your record-player.’ The spaniel looked up from the special place she had adopted under the coffee table and before the fire, and thumped her tail.
For years past, Keith had been alone at Christmas. Companionship brought a new meaning to the festival. ‘Would you like to go to the midnight carol service?’ he asked.
So they went to the service. Keith prayed for the soul of Johnny the Intermediary, and then for his own. He wondered if it would be irreverent to put in a word for Hebe.
*
Boxing Day was always the last and best major event on the syndicate shoot, all that followed being a cocks-only day for the workers on farm and estate. It was therefore treated as a social as much as a sporting occasion. This year the weather remained frosty, which was a relief to some of the less eager walkers, but the sun and the dryness of the air made for comfort.
By the time the whole party foregathered at the Hall in the late dusk for what Lady Hay erroneously believed to be sporting fare, satisfaction was general. Birds had flown high and fast. The bag was satisfactory, but there were enough hen pheasants left on the ground for the nesting season to come. Sir Peter had pulled off several magnificent (for him) right-and-lefts with the refitted Holland and Holland, and was demanding a pack of Keith’s new business cards in order to distribute them throughout his vast circle of acquaintances. Keith himself had missed disgracefully on several occasions and nobody had noticed. It had been a splendid day out.
For this one day, every available farm-worker plus the guns’ wives, relations and friends had been conscripted for beating and other duties. Molly was present as a picker-up and as official photographer. Even the gloomy interior of and big dining-room seemed cheerful as a background to the babble of cheerful voices, and the presence of nearly thirty bodies brought the temperature up to a tolerable level for much of its area.
All day, fate had thwarted any attempt by Keith to isolate either Payne or McNeill for a casual-seeming chat. He had waited until both had entered the Hall in order to search both their cars, without any useful result, and had asked Molly to slip out and search the coat of either of them if Keith should at last manage to get him alone. But a friend among the beaters had monopolised Keith while the buffet was eaten, picking his brains endlessly on the subject of portable hides, and it was only as the guests began to circulate with their drinks that he found himself free to seek out his men.
As soon as he approached McNeill, however, the tall man rounded on him and backed him into a corner.
Keith had described McNeill as ‘the tall man with the face like a parrot’, and seeing again the thin face with the big nose and bright colouring he felt that the description was apt; but he had forgotten the harshness of McNeill’s voice, the closeness of the eyes under the shaggy eyebrows and the air of angry superiority.
McNeill was certainly angry. The harsh voice that had been authoritative was now hectoring. ‘What the hell were you up to on my shoot on Friday?’ he demanded.
‘Calm down,’ Keith said. ‘I just took a walk with my wife.’
‘Walking be buggered. I know you for a bloody poacher. And do you know what I think of poaching? Armed robbery, neither more nor less.’
‘You may be right,’ Keith said, ‘but I wasn’t carrying.’
‘What d’you mean, carrying?’
‘I wasn’t carrying a gun.’
‘Well, what were you carrying then? Sulphur?’
Keith laughed at that. ‘What the hell would I be doing with sulphur on a moor?’ he asked.
McNeill’s colour heightened further. ‘Jam jars, then. Or raisins and whisky? Or the makings for dunces’ caps? I know all about you poachers, so don’t try to kid on with me.’
‘Right,’ Keith thought, ‘for that I’m going to clean you right out before next season.’ But aloud he said, ‘I wasn’t poaching at all. We just walked.’
‘Stay off my bit of shooting, or there’ll be trouble.’
‘Look,’ Keith said reasonably, ‘we did no damage and caused no trouble. There’s no law of trespass in Scotland, you know.’
McNeill’s voice had been rising, and it had a penetrating quality. Keith was sure that it was audible across the room over all the hubbub. Sure enough, Sir Peter appeared beside them, and McNeill bit off his last remark and fell back a pace in deference to his host.
‘Come now,’ said Sir Peter. ‘Can’t have a lot of squabbles going on, to spoil a good day out. You’ll oblige me by keeping your voice down. What’s the trouble?’
‘Mr McNeill is telling me that I mustn’t take my wife for a walk on the farms where he rents the shooting.’
‘I think the bastard was poaching me rotten,’ said McNeill.
‘I just went for a walk, using my eyes.’
Sir Peter caught on. ‘Mr Calder is handling a matter for me,’ said Sir Peter. ‘Was it that, Keith?’ Keith nodded. ‘He’s enquiring into the death of McLure on behalf of myself and Ronnie Fiddler.’
‘Who you know,’ Keith added, ‘from buying deer car-casses off him.’
If the allusion meant anything to McNeill, he was too poker-faced to show it. ‘I know Fiddler, but I don’t see –’
‘I’m looking for the place where the murderer tested out his method before he used it, and the traces he must have left there, and also for anyone who gets angry about it.’
He watched McNeill’s face as he spoke, but it showed only exasperation. ‘Are you, for God’s sake, accusing me of killing McLure, despite the fact that Fiddler’s awaiting trial for it?’
‘I’m not accusing anybody yet,’ Keith said. ‘I’m looking around, which the law allows me to do.’
‘You’ll have to be quick,’ said McNeill contemptuously, and then his patience broke again. ‘Blast your bloody impertinence, sniffing around trying to stir –’
‘That’s enough!’ Sir Peter spoke quietly, but McNeill stopped dead. ‘While you’re my guest you’ll please behave yourself. And, incidentally, criticism of Mr Calder’s behaviour is criticising mine. If you can’t contain your temper, you’d better leave.’
McNeill pulled himself together. ‘You’re quite right, Sir Peter, and I beg your pardon. You just stay away from me,’ he added to Keith, and to Sir Peter again, ‘Thank you for your hospitality. I hope I see you again.’
‘It seems unlikely,’ said Sir Peter.
McNeill took two paces towards the door, hesitated and then strode out.
A dozen conversations suddenly restarted.
‘I wonder,’ said Sir Peter, ‘why he said you’d have to be quick.’
‘Probably because the trial’s coming so close. I’m more interested in why he didn’t ask me what I was looking for and whether I’d found it. I must try and have a chat with Payne. I’ll try not to set off any more explosions.’
Sir Peter smiled wryly. ‘You wouldn’t succeed if you tried. He doesn’t enter quarrels easily, although I suspect a hard and resolute core somewhere. But, God, I hope it isn’t Andrew that you’re after. I wouldn’t call him a close friend, but I know him well enough to have golfed and shot and fished with him a number of times.’
Keith placed himself close to Payne in the crowd, so that at the next shuffle of conversation-partners they were bound to find themselves chatting together. Soon they were exchanging pleasantries about the day, the shoot, the company and the hospitality.
Payne was, as Keith had described him to Inspector Munro, tallish, bald and well-dressed. His height was less than McNeill’s, but Keith still found himself looking up. Apart from his clothes, which were perfection in tweed, his most notable features were a high, domed forehead which, because of his baldness, seemed to continue forever, giving him a look of inhuman super-intelligence, and his perpetually worried expression. Yet his voice, which was slightly hoarse, and his face both suggested a certain shyness and his conversation seemed modest and unassuming considering his status in the business world.
‘I believe you’re a member of the syndicate?’ Keith said.
Payne smiled shyly. ‘For the moment,’ he said. ‘But I’m thinking of giving it up next season. Pressure of business, you know, both timeous and financial. I don’t get out often enough to justify what is, after all, a fairly expensive hobby. I can get by with a little coastal wildfowling and busting some clay pigeons on Sundays. And I can probably count on occasional invitations.’
‘I expect you can,’ said Keith. ‘Let’s hope that better times come round again.’
‘I’ll drink to that! There’s plenty of business about, but money’s in short supply, so other firms put off settling their accounts for as long as possible. But you’re in business for yourself, too. Don’t you find that people are slow to settle?’
Keith, who dealt almost entirely in cash, made an evasive answer and Payne turned the conversation towards the wildfowling scene. They were still discussing the prospects for geese on the Tay when a hard-looking woman came up, captured Payne’s attention and bore him off.
Keith thought that, behind a placid and shy front and a face that looked worried in repose like that of a bloodhound, Payne showed tiny signs of genuine stress; but whether these stemmed from his cash-flow problems or from knowledge of Sinclair’s indiscretions Keith had no idea. But of one thing he was sure. If, as Enterkin suspected, Payne had faked a letter as evidence in the arbitration, Sinclair would have said nothing. But if he had not, then Sinclair would have spoken and Payne would certainly not have been so friendly.
Chapter Sixteen
Keith and Molly returned home with the tired contentment that follows a good day in the open. Keith kindled a fire while Molly fetched beer. They sat down each side of the fire, in chintz-covered wing-chairs that belonged in Aberfeldy. The radio played Grieg.
‘Did you get anything in their coats?’ Keith asked.
Molly nodded. She rooted in her bag and produced two cartridges. ‘The Grand Prix was from Payne’s pocket and the Impax from McNeill’s.’
‘Good.’ Keith examined the bases carefully. ‘So McNeill’s was a reload and Payne’s not. Yet we knew that Payne bought loading materials.’
‘Maybe he only loads one size and buys the rest.’
‘That’s right,’ Keith said. ‘He said something about clay pigeons. You use far more cartridges at that than you do in most ordinary shooting, and it’s a damned nuisance keeping two different sizes of shot. Anything else?’
‘They both had a whole lot of spent cartridges in the poachers’ pockets.’
‘That again suggests that they both reload, but it may just be good behaviour. Keep Britain Tidy.’
‘There was one other thing. Among the spent cartridges in Mr Payne’s pocket was this one.’ Molly passed it over. ‘It’s been closed up again.’
‘It was McNeill who complained to Hamish about one barrel misfiring,’ Keith said thoughtfully. ‘But whoever shot McLure must have been functioning on one barrel until he got his chance. He could have closed up a case and had it handy so that he could show it to someone and complain of misfiring, but he’d be a bloody fool to leave it in his pocket. Anyway, it doesn’t mean a lot. Closing up the crimp on an empty cartridge is just the kind of thing that a nervous man like Payne might do while talking to somebody.’
