Dead game, p.1
Dead Game, page 1
part #1 of Keith Calder Series
DEAD GAME
Gerald Hammond
© Gerald Hammond 1979
Gerald Hammond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1979 by Macmillan London Ltd.
This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
I have tried very hard to create characters who bear no resemblance to any real persons. If any unlucky combination of name, place, description, profession and/or other factors causes embarrassment to anyone, I can only offer to buy them lunch while I apologise. (This invitation is, of course, as fictitious as the characters.)
G.H.
Chapter One
The ambulance jounced away down the track behind the fire-engine, followed in its turn by a short and sad procession of cars. The two big vehicles lurched straight ahead, while the cars felt their way carefully between the ruts and potholes like Rangers fans among Celtic supporters.
Two vehicles remained on the patch of turf where the track ended at a gate to a field of stubble. The van was brown with green panels. It was not camouflaged, but it settled back into its surroundings, modest and unassuming, while the police Land Rover, orange on white, dominated the scenery as if on point-duty.
The uniformed inspector of police looked round at the creased and folded countryside, with moors above and fields around and the red-brown froth of tree-tops foaming in the valleys below, all glowing in the late afternoon autumn sunshine. The inspector had the long, moody face of the true Celt. He came from Lewis, and the comparative lushness of this lowland country still surprised him and left him ill at ease. He sighed, turned to the van, knocked curtly and climbed inside. The sergeant who followed him in was a local man, hefty and rubicund.
Despite a number of obvious modifications the outside of the van betrayed its origin as a mobile bank, but internally the front half at least bore more resemblance to a modern cabin cruiser. The driver’s and passenger’s seats had been replaced by swivel armchairs which were now unlocked and turned to face the flapped table bolted to the centre of the floorspace. A settee or bunk ran along the offside wall. A partition cut off the rear half of the interior, and along this was a compact galley. In the near corner, beside a door to the rear half, stood a unit in which a small television set and an amateur-band radio were conspicuous. Incongruously, a smell like peat-smoke was in the air, competing with the smell of cooking. The inspector thought that it smelled like the croft he grew up in.
From a basket under the table a black Labrador bitch raised her head and tensed, but she relaxed on a word from her master although her eyes were alert.
Keith Calder, who was drying glasses at the sink, deliberately finished his work and put the glasses away in a fiddled mahogany rack. He was a handsome man in a black-haired, gipsyish way, and this, he knew, was a disadvantage in his dealings with other men. His build was that of an athlete.
Calder hung up his cloth and only then acknowledged the presence of the two policemen, although in that confined space only an insensate object could have missed them.
‘Now, Mr Calder,’ the inspector said. ‘I’ve kept you waiting, but at least you could wait in comfort.’
Keith Calder nodded. ‘Sit down,’ he said. The inspector and the sergeant took the armchairs, but Keith sat at the end of the bunk where he could monitor the progress of a panful of meat. ‘I’d have been here making a meal, anyway,’ he said.
The policeman nodded. ‘I’m Inspector Munro,’ he said, ‘and this is Sergeant Ritchie. I’m not needing to tell you what it’s about. We’ve taken short statements from the others and let them away home. They were cold and shocked.’
‘And important?’
‘Aye, they’re not the sort of folk to offend lightly,’ the inspector admitted. ‘I’ll get their full statements the morn.’
‘But tonight it’s my turn.’
‘I left you to last, Mr Calder, because you had a fine, warm place to wait in, with food and a dram and a change of clothing.’ The inspector looked around him. ‘That’s a fine smell. Pheasant, is it?’
Keith Calder raised his eyebrows. ‘How would it be pheasant on the first day of the season?’
‘I was thinking that it might be one of today’s.’
‘A pheasant is not worth the eating without hanging. Partridges, man. I’m making a game stew – two partridges and a rabbit. You’d be welcome to share it when it’s ready.’
‘No, thank you.’
‘As you like. A dram, then?’
‘Not on duty.’ Nor any other time, his tone suggested.
‘Too bad.’ Keith poured a tot for himself from a Johnny Walker bottle and winked at the sergeant.
‘You will not be drinking too much of that if you are driving, I hope,’ said the inspector. ‘I would not like to be interviewing you again so soon. Now, I will just ask you a few questions. Sergeant Ritchie will be making notes, so do not go too fast for him. Later, we will have a statement typed up for you to sign.’
‘Fair enough. There’s to be a fiscal enquiry?’
‘That’s for the fiscal himself to decide, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Now, your full name?’
‘Keith Donald Calder.’
‘Age?’
‘Over twenty-one.’
‘Thirty-seven,’ said the sergeant.
‘I’m not quite thirty-six,’ Calder said.
Inspector Munro smiled faintly. ‘Address?’
‘No fixed abode. This is my home. This van.’
The inspector grunted. ‘There is no need to be thrawn, Mr Calder,’ he said. ‘I am not after you for any offence just now. But I need an address where I can reach you. Otherwise, if we put you down as a vagrant, I’ll have to keep you under my hand until the need for your evidence is past.’
Keith Calder shrugged. ‘I can always be reached through my sister. She acts as my secretary and poste restante, and I’m in touch with her by phone or radio at least once a day. Put care of Mrs Elsie McKinness.’ He spelt out a Perthshire address.
‘Ah. That’s how we got the message through the Dundee police?’
‘Not quite.’ Calder nodded at the radio. ‘My sister listens for me twice a day, and takes messages between times. But I couldn’t raise her this time, so I got through to somebody else. I have a licence to transmit.’
‘I never doubted it,’ the inspector said patiently. ‘Your occupation?’
‘Itinerant gunsmith and shooting instructor.’
‘And dealer?’
‘To a limited extent.’
‘Right. Now, would you tell us in your own words about the events of today.’
Calder hesitated. ‘I’ve a pretty thorough memory for anything that I noticed at the time. Do you want every tiny detail.’
Inspector Munro made a gesture of uncertainty. ‘That is just the trouble, Mr Calder. We don’t know yet what we’re investigating. Very likely it will turn out to be a big nothing – as far as the law is concerned, but not for himself of course. On the other hand, if it turns out to be a matter for us, then we’ll need every detail. So just tell us about the day, if you will, and I’ll tell you if you’re saying too much or too little. But take as long as you like.’
Calder looked into space for a moment, his grey-green eyes pensive. ‘Several weeks ago,’ he said at last, ‘I was invited by Sir Peter Hay to come on today’s shoot. I’ve been asked before, and always accept if I can. Sir Peter owns most of the land around here, and he’s a member of the local syndicate. I gathered that several of the syndicate members wanted to make up a party for opening day – this is the first of October, in case you hadn’t noticed, and pheasant shooting opens today. Only three of the members could get away, as it’s mid-week. As a result it was rather a mixed bag of guests, not all of them local. Some of them had come a fair way.
‘We met at the farm-house, a dozen people altogether including myself. I’d met most of them before, either here or on other shoots, or as clients. In fact I think I’d done work for most of them at one time or another, and I’m re-stocking Sir Peter’s best gun for him just now.’
‘Did they all seem to know each other?’ asked the inspector.
‘I couldn’t say – I was almost the last arrival. I certainly didn’t notice any introductions being made. But I did notice that there seemed to be some embarrassment – not needle, just a feeling that two or three of them shouldn’t be talking to each other because of a court case or something.’
‘Who were those?’ the inspector asked.
‘Offhand, I don’t remember. Could it be important?’
‘Probably not. Go on with the story of the day.’
‘All right. Well, Hamish Thomson – the big chap with all the hair – he acts as gamekeeper although I don’t think he’s full-time, and he was organising the whole thing, but I think he was very much following the orders of Sir Peter, who heads the syndicate.’
‘Why did you think that?’
‘Because he seemed to avoid the best pheasant coverts. Understandable, with only three of the syndicate present – they’d want to leave plenty on the ground, but just give us enough sport for a worthwhile day. And he gave the syndicate members the easiest day of it, though to be fair he gave the older guests an easy time of it too, and left the uphill work and the hard going to the younger guests.’
‘There were no beaters as such?’
Calder shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid the kind of shoot that gets paid beaters is the perk of the rich, or of estates that charge the foreigners a packet to have half-tame birds driven over their heads. But you can still manage with a large party if you split it in half and organise it well.
‘Hamish took us up to the top in the Land Rover and gave us a beat along the bit of moor, for grouse. He took the standing party up first and then came back for us athletes and took us to the other end, and we beat towards the butts. It wasn’t very profitable, because the grouse season opened about seven weeks ago and the birds are getting pretty wily. Then we walked down through a small wood, supposed to be for pheasants but we only got three plus a blackcock and some pigeon. Then across the top pasture in a long line, picking up a few hares, and downhill again through another small wood. The seniors went to the bottom and stood while we drove down to them, and this time there were some pheasants all right.
‘Game-bags were getting pretty heavy. Hamish walked up and fetched down the Land Rover and took the bag aboard and also the frailer brethren, but we of sterner stuff walked across the lower fields for hares again, although I could see a stream and bushes below us that were fairly hopping with pheasants.
‘That brought us all to the barn at the top of this wood – Oak Wood, they call it, though there are precious few oaks in it now. We ate our sandwiches in or around the barn, and Hamish had laid on coffee in a couple of big flasks, and some drinks.’
The inspector raised an eyebrow, and the sergeant looked up. ‘Was much drink taken?’
‘Not a lot, that I noticed. Most of us had a tin of beer with our lunch, and a dram to follow. And there was something different for Lady Hay. I certainly didn’t notice anybody over-indulging, and they all seemed pretty steady afterwards. When there’s been a boozy lunch you hear people shouting at each other to be careful.’
‘Did they all stay together?’
‘Lord, no!’ The late sun which had glowed through the cabin and struck ruby lights off the surfaces was down now and Keith Calder reached up and switched on a pair of fluorescent lights. The roomlet brightened up. ‘We moved about, went for a stroll so as not to stiffen up. Went round the back of the barn for a pee, Lady Hay being there. That sort of thing. But I didn’t notice anybody being out of sight for more than a couple of minutes. And then some of the dog-owners got into an argument, and to settle it Hamish got a couple of rabbits out of the Land Rover and we did a little test in turn with Hamish judging and a pound each in the kitty. A double retrieve, one of them out of sight. Hebe won it for me,’ he added with satisfaction, and hearing her name the bitch looked up and her tail gave a thump. ‘Come to think of it, I picked up a fiver, so there must have been five of us in it.’
‘And then?’
‘Then Hamish loaded the aged and infirm into the Land Rover again and Sir Peter drove them round and back to the bottom of the wood, and on a whistle signal we started down.’
‘What was the order of people at that time?’ the inspector asked in his soft and careful West Highland diction.
Keith Calder grimaced in an effort of memory. ‘Three of us with dogs went down the inside of the wood. David McNeill, the tall chap with the face like a parrot, he went down the middle. He’s a councillor, somewhere around the Forth, I think, and has something to do with the building industry. I was on his right, and on his left was Ron McLure, the man who died. I hardly knew him, but he was a heavily-built man with protruding teeth, and he had a strong Glasgow accent although he practised in Edinburgh. He was an architect, I think. But you probably know all this.’
‘Never mind,’ said Inspector Munro. ‘Go on.’
‘Outside the wood on our right, that’s the west side, was Derek Weatherby, the stout, grey-haired man. He had his daughter Janet with him – the girl of about fifteen.’
‘Was she shooting?’
‘Oh, yes. She has her own twenty-bore which I stocked for her – a lot of my work’s in guns for youngsters – and she’s getting quite good. Anyway, her father’s the farmer here, and a member of the syndicate.
‘On the left flank, outside the wood on the eastern side, was Andrew Payne. I gather he has a factory, somewhere around Edinburgh. He’s tallish, bald and expensively dressed, in case you’ve forgotten him, and he looks like a bloodhound with a lot on its mind. Hamish was further out on the same flank and a bit forward, because that’s slightly the more downhill side. The wood runs down the hill but a bit diagonally, if you follow me. The birds try to slip out downhill, and Hamish was there to encourage them to follow the line of the wood down to the standing guns.
‘We set off down Oak Wood –’
‘Time?’
‘About two-thirty.’
‘And kept the same formation?’
‘As far as we could. You’ve seen the place. It’s nearly half a mile long by about sixty yards broad on average, wider in bits. Here and there are some deciduous trees of various sizes, and undergrowth of brambles and so on, and there are clearings where it’s rocky and broken. But much of it has been re-planted forestry-style with conifers, and in those strips it’s hellish hard going, all ridges and furrows, and since the furrows aren’t quite at right-angles to the line of the wood you tend to squeeze up towards one end. It was hard going, as I said, and the midges were still out in strength, and where it’s really thick you don’t often see each other, so it was difficult to keep a straight line.’
‘Would that not be getting dangerous?’ the inspector asked.
‘In those conditions, it’s only safe to shoot overhead, and as far as I know that’s what everybody did. He wasn’t shot, was he?’
‘We won’t know that until after the post mortem.’
‘No, I suppose not. Well, we worked down the length of the wood, downhill and slightly across the slope, all the way. We got a number of pheasants ourselves, but we flushed a whole lot and sent them down the hill, and it sounded like a small war at that end. I know I was carrying a brace and a large hare in my bag, and Weatherby and his lassie on my flank had done better. I heard plenty of shots on my left as well, but I don’t know how they connected.
‘At last we got to the bottom. I was pretty damn tired after that rough going. At the bottom, we were looking down from the top of the banking just above where we are now. The standing guns were in the field the other side of the track. From my left to right were Captain Hodges, the old sea-dog. He shoots as if he’s steering a clipper. He’s a fierce-looking little man, but I’ve had some dealings with him and he’s as mild as they come really. He lives up in Fife somewhere. Then Mr Oxter, who makes me think of a rather large gnome, but in a flabby, pasty way. He’s a solicitor, practising somewhere around Dundee, but I believe he’s semi-retired now from something I heard him saying. Then Sir Peter, and Lady Hay next to him. And lastly, on the right of the line as I looked at it, William Hook. I believe he’s another solicitor by training, but he’s something very senior in one of the new local authorities. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, though – he looks much more like a farmer than Weatherby does – all muscles and sunburn. Probably gymnasium and sun-lamp, but we can’t all have open-air jobs.
‘We were looking down from the top of the banking as I said. There was quite a scattering of pheasants on the stubble. Oxter and Lady Hay were working their dogs, and the rest of the standing party were picking-up by hand. Oxter’s dog, I remember, was having the very devil of a job. He was trying to retrieve a runner. He’s only a small Cocker, and the runner was a cock almost as big as himself and a damned sight angrier.
‘Then Sir Peter looked up and asked where McLure had got to.’
The inspector, who had been glaring at Keith’s shelf of books as if betting himself that they were only there for show, roused himself and broke in. ‘Now, stop just a minute,’ he said. ‘That was the first time that he was missed?’
