Hole in One (12 page)

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Authors: Catherine Aird

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BOOK: Hole in One
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‘When did you last see him?'
‘Tuesday.'
‘Where?'
‘At home.' She faltered. ‘I don't usually come up here.'
‘Whose home?'
‘Oh, mine, or rather, my parents',' she said lightly. ‘He hasn' t got one. At least, not what you'd call a home. He shares his college digs with a crowd.'
‘Not private,' nodded Sloan.
Sergeant Polly Perkins came to life and said in a friendly way ‘Your mother and father like him then?'
‘Oh, yes,' she said tepidly. ‘Mother particularly.'
Polly Perkins did her wise-woman party piece. ‘Fathers seldom like the young men their daughters bring home the first time they come.'
Hilary Trumper flashed her a grateful look. ‘You're right there.'
‘Fathers tend to see daughters as their little girls for a lot longer than they really are,' said Sergeant Perkins with every appearance of sympathy, suppressing all mention of those fathers whom she had come across in her work who had assumed little girls to be much older than they really were.
And gone to prison for it.
‘They don't believe that these days we've got minds of our own,' said the girl fiercely.
Sergeant Perkins was a model of empathy. ‘They do find it difficult.'
‘And to make it worse,' said Hilary Trumper, clearly aggrieved, ‘Daddy hasn't a lot of time for economists.'
As far as Sloan was concerned, Trumper
père
was not the only one who didn't have a lot of time for economists.
‘He's a proper businessman, you see,' said the girl, quite unconscious of the non sequitur.
Neither of the police present needed telling that. Trumper and Trumper's vehicles were everywhere in the county.
‘Is he a golfer, too?' asked Sloan.
‘Yes and no.'
‘Which?' asked Sloan. Yes or no was the more usual mode in the police way of questioning.
‘Yes, he belongs,' she said, sulkily, ‘but no he doesn't play much. And he only belongs,' she added, ‘so that he knows what's going on and can pick up business in the Clubhouse.'
‘I don't suppose he's the only one,' said Sloan.
‘It's here that he met Matt,' she volunteered. ‘He caddied for him once and then I met Matt one day when I came up to collect Dad.' She fixed the policeman with a defiant look. ‘Because of not drinking and driving.'
‘Much safer,' said Sloan. ‘Talking of which, why did you use the word “safely” just then when you were talking about your friend Matt?'
‘Did I?' she flashed him a disarming smile. ‘I didn't mean to. Matthew must be halfway there by now.'
‘So why are you here now, miss, when he isn't?'
‘I'm finding out all I can about the game while he's away,' she said, ‘so that we can play together when he gets back.' She set her jaw. ‘I'm going to surprise him with my grasp of it.'
‘How long is he going to be abroad?' asked Sloan. He would have to look up Lasserta in his atlas.
‘Most of the academic year,' sighed the girl. ‘It's part of his course.
‘That's a long time when you're young,' said Sergeant
Perkins kindly.
‘Very,' she said. ‘But these days it's not so bad because we can keep in touch quite easily.'
‘By telephone?' said Sloan.
‘By text message,' she said in a way that was meant to make Sloan feel old.
And did.
‘Every day – that's all the while he can charge up his mobile, of course. He said it might be difficult sometimes while he was travelling.'
‘These messages,' said Sloan.
‘Yes?' The breathlessness in her voice had come back.
‘Have you stored them?'
She flushed. ‘Well, yes …why shouldn't I?'
‘Might we see them?'
Sloan watched the blood drain out of her face as she fumbled in her pocket for her mobile and automatically noted that the hand that offered it to him had a tremor that hadn't been there before.
Casual Water
‘Nasty attack of the squitters,' said a whey-faced Joe Briggs, greenkeeper. He was still moving with the extreme caution common to those who have been recently ill. ‘Don't know what brought it on.'
‘If you ask me,' said his wife, ‘it was that pork pie.'
‘Can't have been,' said the man flatly. ‘We all ate that and no one else has been ill.'
‘We must be grateful for small mercies, then, mustn't we?' His wife turned to Detective Constable Crosby who, being unmarried, had been observing the enactment of this domestic exchange with detachment. ‘I've never seen anything like it,' she said.
Joe Briggs stirred uneasily.
‘Couldn't stop going,' said his wife graphically. ‘No sooner was he back in his chair than he was back on the …'
The greenkeeper waved a hand and essayed a weak smile. ‘I think they call it Montezuma's Revenge …'
‘Or Delhi Belly,' said Crosby, who has never been farther afield than Calais and that only for the day.
‘I don't hold with foreign food,' said Mrs Briggs.
The greenkeeper summoned up some reserve of strength from somewhere to protest. ‘We didn't have any foreign food.'
‘That's as may be,' said his wife. She rounded on Crosby. ‘What I want to know is when he'll be fit to go back to work. Can't have him sitting here all day.'
‘What did the doctor say?' countered Crosby.
She sniffed. ‘Gave him something to stop the runs but it didn't, did it, Joe?'
‘No,' he agreed wanly.
‘And told you to drink a lot,' she said, ‘but you didn't, did you?'
‘Didn't feel much liking drinking anything,' he admitted. ‘Afraid of being sick if I did.'
‘Nasty,' said Crosby. ‘When did it come on?'
‘Middle of the week,' said Mrs Briggs before the man could speak.
‘Wednesday,' he said. ‘I know it was Wednesday because Thursdays and Fridays I always keep free to cut the greens for Saturdays and Sundays and I couldn't possibly get myself there. Not nohow.'
‘He worried about that,' said his wife, ‘but as I told Mr Pursglove, Joe couldn't even stand for long let alone push those great big mowers about.'
‘I don't push them,' protested Joe Briggs. ‘They're diesel driven.'
Both Detective Constable Crosby and Mrs Briggs dismissed this as irrelevant.
‘So was it Wednesday that you had the pork pie?' asked Crosby.
‘Tuesday night,' said his wife for him.
‘What did you have Tuesday while you were at work?' asked the Detective Constable.
‘What I always have,' replied the man pallidly. ‘Sandwiches.'
‘There was nothing wrong with his sandwiches,' said Mrs Briggs, bridling.
‘I put them up myself. Sardine, they were.'
Joe winced visibly at the mention of food.
‘And where were they while you were out on the course on Tuesday?' asked Crosby.
‘In my snap-tin, like always,' replied the greenkeeper.
‘And where did you leave the snap-tin then?' persisted a terrier-like Crosby.
‘In my bothy,' said the greenkeeper. ‘On the side, there. By my flask.'
‘Like always,' said Crosby for him.
‘That's right. But what's all this got to do with the police?' asked Briggs.
‘Everything,' said Detective Constable Crosby with empressement. ‘Or nothing,' he added fairly.
‘Do you know something we don't?' demanded Mrs Briggs. ‘If so, I'd like to know what it is before Joe gets any worse.
‘We don't tell people what we know,' said Crosby with dignity, ‘or let them know what we don't know.'
‘Great,' said Mrs Briggs sarcastically.
‘It can be useful to let people worry about it a bit,' said Crosby, taking his leave.
 
There had been no sign of the Superintendent since he had departed hot-foot in search of the Men's Captain. Sloan himself was now established once more behind the desk in the Secretary's room instead, his notebook open at a fresh page.
He was relishing a moment's peace and quiet without Crosby when Molly from the bar knocked and put her head round the door. ‘Message for you from Mrs Sloan, Inspector. She wants to know when she should expect you home.'
Sloan looked up. ‘What did you tell her?' he asked with interest.
Molly gave a slow smile. ‘Same as I always say when the gentlemen's wives ring up to find out where they are.'
‘What's that?' he asked curiously.
‘That I haven't seen them myself but that I'll tell them their wife has rung when I do.' She gave another of her slow smiles. ‘There's no way round that, is there?'
‘None,' said Sloan heartily. ‘Molly, you're a great loss to the Diplomatic Corps.'
‘Thank you, Inspector.'
‘Now, have you seen Sergeant Perkins anywhere?'
‘I haven't seen her myself, Inspector, but I'll tell her you're asking for her when I do.'
 
‘I could well have left my nine iron out on the course, Inspector,' admitted Gerald Moffat. ‘I'm not sure.' He looked older and more vulnerable than he had done out in the bar. He was less didactic, too. ‘I'm not getting any younger, you know.'
Sloan had persuaded the man out of the Clubroom and into the Secretary's office.
‘But it wasn't handed in,' said Moffat, ‘and so I had to buy another.'
‘I see,' said Sloan, who always allowed himself to buy another rose when one died – even though it had to go into new ground, ground that wasn't rose-sick.
‘Things aren't what they were. Nothing's safe these days,' complained Moffat.
The police view – which was a longer one – was that nothing had ever been safe, but all Sloan said was ‘Can you remember when you last used that particular club? It's for bunkers, isn't it?'
‘And for long grass,' said Moffat. ‘Get off the fairway on some holes here and you'd need it then.'
‘So you'd have last used it when?' asked Sloan patiently.
‘I'd have to think,' scowled Moffat. After a moment his face cleared. ‘I remember. It was on the tenth about a week ago. I sliced my shot on the fairway and got in between the trees so I had to play a squeeze shot to get out. Did for my chances of the Kemberland Cup for this year, I'm afraid.'
Sloan said ‘That would be one of your competitions, I take it?'
Moffat nodded. ‘You'll have seen some of the Cups over the mantelpiece in the Clubroom, Inspector.'
He could hardly have missed them. Or the reinforced glass
cabinet full of other silver cups, salvers and trophies. They didn't have any of those at the Police Station. The victories over there were recorded in prison sentences, in a public protected from crime, and in the maintenance of a state in which law and order prevailed. Achieved but not rewarded with silver ornaments, those successes. Their failures, on the other hand, were writ large in newspaper headlines.
Sloan tried another tack. ‘When did you realise that you'd lost it?'
‘Oh, that's easy.' He let out an involuntary sigh. ‘Yesterday. I was playing the short fifteenth and overshot the green.' He gave the policeman a sharp look. ‘“Never up, never in”, you know.'
Sloan didn't know.
‘Got in the rough – dead in line, though – but much too far behind the pin. Thought I'd try a squeeze shot with a bit of spin to hold it on the green and then I found the damn club wasn't there.'
‘So?'
‘Had to take a five iron instead. Not the same thing at all. A really open face is what you want there. Lost the hole, of course.'
Sloan began to see why golf has been so famously described as a good walk spoilt.
‘I was one down at the fourteenth so naturally it was important,' carried on Moffat.
So was finding out who it was who had killed the young man in the bunker at the sixth. ‘Of course,' murmured Sloan trying to sound sympathetic at this cruel turn of fate for the golfer. The cruel turn of fate of the murder victim was what was really on his mind. He didn't alter his tone because one of the lessons that had been dinned into him by that peerless mentor, his first Station Sergeant, had been always to agree with an interviewee whenever you could. “Lulls 'em into a
false sense of security,” he'd been wont to say before charging a suspect.
Sloan was fairly sure that Gerald Moffat wasn't a suspect: only that someone had wanted him to be, which was very different. ‘Did the club do the trick for you when you last used it?' he asked Moffat with every appearance of interest.
‘That day on the tenth?' he said. ‘I'm afraid not. Eric Simmonds beat me in the Kemberland Cup but he's been ill ever since and had to give his next opponent a walkover.'
 
‘So, sir, I reckon it wasn't food poisoning that made the greenkeeper ill.' Detective Constable Crosby was reporting back to the Clubhouse.
‘Someone wanted him out of the way,' pronounced Sloan mordantly.
‘While they borrowed his truck to take the body over to the sixth,' said Crosby. The truck was something that rankled with Crosby. He didn't like walking.
‘While they dug a hole,' said Sloan.
‘That reminds me, Crosby, very soon we must have a little chat with this man who comes in at night.' He flipped over the pages of his notebook. ‘Bobby Curd. Find out where he lives, will you? And let me have the results of the DNA tests on the truck as soon as they come back …'
‘May I come in?' Police Sergeant Perkins put her head round the door of the Secretary's office. She was bearing a tray loaded with man-sized brown rolls.
‘Tummy time,' pronounced Crosby eagerly.
‘Technically I think we're off-duty while we eat and eat we must,' said the policewoman. She pointed to the food and said doubtfully ‘I hope I've chosen the right things for you two. It wasn't easy.'
‘We're not fussy,' said Sloan.
‘Only hungry,' said Crosby.
‘I didn't mean that,' she said. ‘It's their menu. It's all in golf lingo. They call this little lot an “eagle” and it's an “albatross” if you have a hard-boiled egg with it.'
Crosby said ‘As long as it'll go down red lane, it's all right with me …'
‘Gammon's a “slice”,' said Polly Perkins, ‘and “shank” is cold roast lamb.'
‘Well, I never,' said Crosby between mouthfuls.
‘It doesn't matter what it's called,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, taking a bite. ‘It's good.'
‘Cheese is a “wedge”, whatever that might be,' said Polly Perkins, ‘and chicken is …'
‘We'll never guess,' said Sloan ironically.
‘“Birdie”?' suggested Crosby insouciantly.
Polly Perkins favoured the Constable with a long look before she said ‘And orange juice is a “squeeze”. Me, I'd rather call a spade a spade any day.'
‘Me too,' said Sloan. ‘So we can call this case a …'
‘Balls-up?' suggested Crosby.
‘A matter of motive,' said Sloan coldly. ‘That is, we know how the victim was killed, where he was buried, and probably when.'
‘But not why,' agreed Sergeant Perkins.
‘Or who he is,' pointed out Crosby.
‘Or where he was killed,' concurred Sloan. ‘All of which we shall need to know.'
‘All in good time,' said Police Sergeant Perkins. Time was a great healer in domestics. So was a spell in a cell.
‘Anyone want that beef roll?' asked Crosby.
‘There's a lot to be done,' persisted Sloan. ‘There's the locker room to be searched for a club and a pair of shoes for starters.'
‘Even though we don't know if they're there,' said Crosby, his mouth full.
‘And we need to talk to the Planning people at the Council about this new development.'
‘Do people kill for planning permission?' enquired Sergeant Perkins with the detached interest of one who spent most of her time among those without much in the way of possessions.
‘They kill for money, which comes to the same thing,' said Sloan.

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