Hole in One (18 page)

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Authors: Catherine Aird

Tags: #Mystery

BOOK: Hole in One
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Dormy
‘All roads leading from the Billing crossroads,' barked Detective Inspector Sloan into the microphone. ‘We need roadblocks on the four of them. Urgently. He could have gone anything up to twelve miles by now.'
‘And turned off anywhere,' muttered Crosby. He was itching to go somewhere fast but at the moment there was nowhere to go fast. Instead he was following fresh orders and proceeding – by driving, against all his instincts, at a sedate pace, back in the direction the Golf Club.
‘True.' Sloan sank back in the passenger seat, thinking hard. ‘They're checking that the girl hasn't just gone home or to any friends or family.'
Detective Constable Crosby didn't really care whether chases were wild goose ones or not.
‘And that he hasn't already dropped her off somewhere and just gone home.'
Presumptions of innocence didn't appeal to Crosby either.
‘What we have to do,' said Sloan, half-aloud, ‘is to work out where a man would take a girl if he wanted to do away with her quietly.'
‘Me, sir? I'd stage a hit and run,' said Crosby. ‘All you need is a narrow road between high banks. And no witnesses, of course.'
This revealing train of thought was interrupted by another crackle from the microphone.
‘Vehicle in question seen travelling through Little Barling village,' reported an unknown voice. ‘Going in a southward direction.'
Crosby had braked and already half-turned the police car before the message ended.
‘Find and keep in view,' ordered Sloan. ‘Do not approach.'
A man who had killed twice wasn't going to balk at a third time.
The microphone crackled back. ‘Understood. We've got two vehicles coming north to meet him head-on if he's still on that road.'
‘Block it before the first turn-off,' commanded Sloan.
‘I bet he's heading for the woods,' said Crosby, completing the about-turn and running up through the gears.
‘Then so are we,' said Sloan. ‘Get moving, Crosby. It doesn' t do to hang about at a time like this.'
 
‘That you, Margaret? Chris here.' He heard the coins drop down in the payphone as he rang home. ‘I'm nearly on my way.'
‘Is that a promise?' she enquired sweetly.
‘Sort of,' he said.
‘Just a few loose ends?' she suggested with fine irony.
‘In a manner of speaking, yes.'
‘Do you think you'll make a player?'
‘Give me roses,' he said fervently. ‘Any day.'
‘No need to be like that,' she said, patently disappointed.
‘Listen love, I've got to go back to the Golf Club first …'
‘Go back? Where are you then?'
‘The hospital,' he said awkwardly.
‘The hospital? Chris, what's happened? You're not hurt, are you?'
‘Not really.'
‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?' she demanded fiercely. ‘Tell me … quickly …no messing about, now.'
‘We had a little run-in with a villain, that's all. Nothing to worry about.'
‘Nothing to worry about?' she echoed on a rising note. ‘What happened?'
‘Crosby floored it and rammed a guy we were chasing.
Didn't do the car a lot of good and Crosby's got the mother and father of black eyes. We got him,' he added.
‘And you?' she said, dismissing captured villains as irrelevant.
‘Nothing serious.'
‘That's not an answer.'
‘Bruised.'
‘Where?'
‘Everywhere,' he said. ‘He had the girl in the car, you see …' That was paramount.
‘What girl?'
‘Tell you later,' he said, suddenly very tired. ‘Crosby caught it though when the guy tripped him up. He was making for the woods south of Little Barling. The girl wouldn't have stood a chance if he'd got there without anyone knowing.'
Margaret Sloan shuddered. ‘But he put up a fight?'
‘I'll say.' He brightened. ‘So did Crosby.'
She sighed. ‘You'd better bring him back with you.'
‘I've got to see the Super first and then we'll be on our way.' He hesitated and then said, ‘And that is a promise.'
 
‘I still don't get it, Sloan.' The Superintendent was sitting on one of the wooden seats outside the Clubhouse, one eye on his subordinate, the other on a foursome playing the eighteenth hole.
‘None of them appreciated that the deceased was a student of business studies and economics,' said Sloan.
‘Come to that, neither did I,' said Leeyes frankly, ‘but what's it got to do with his being murdered?'
‘Everything, sir,' said Sloan. ‘Most people overhearing what he did wouldn't have understood its significance.'
‘Its significance was what I don't understand,' grumbled Leeyes with some asperity. He said at his most Churchillian, ‘Pray explain …'
‘The trouble started when Gilchrist played Doug Garwood …'
‘I don't know about Gilchrist,' interrupted Leeyes, ‘but I would have sworn Doug Garwood was as straight as a die.'
‘I'm sure he is,' said Sloan. ‘But Peter Gilchrist is only half straight.'
‘Crooked,' said Leeyes succinctly.
‘Up to a point,' agreed Sloan. ‘But not to the point of murder.'
‘Sloan, I am not prepared to sit here all afternoon and …'
‘What Gilchrist urgently needed to know from Garwood,' said Sloan hastily, ‘was whether or not his company Calleshire Consolidated was going to tender for the development work at the Golf Club.'
‘Go on.'
‘Garwood almost certainly told Gilchrist privately that they weren't. He didn't have to, of course, but I think he did.'
‘It would have been like him. So?'
‘So Gilchrist could then go ahead and fix the price of the tender with his two pals, Luke Trumper of Trumper and Trumper (Berebury) Ltd., and Nigel Halesworth of United Mellemetics. Probably on the usual understanding that he would divvy the profit with them afterwards. Remember, his firm was known to be short of work anyway so in that sort of set-up he'd naturally be the one to get it.'
‘Bid rigging,' divined Leeyes on the instant. ‘That's what that's called.'
‘Definitely against the law,' agreed Sloan tacitly.
‘So that's why Matt Steele could be so sure that Peter Gilchrist would let Doug Garwood win the Matheson Trophy,' snorted Leeyes.
‘Well, sir, he's not going to beat Garwood, is he? Not when he owes the man a favour. And it's easy enough to lose your own ball.'
Leeyes still sounded dissatisfied. ‘I don't see where murder comes in to this,'
‘It didn't until Steele also caddied for a match between Gilchrist and Brian Southon, a match that Southon arranged by making sure that Eric Simmonds was ill enough to have to give him a walkover.'
‘And?'
‘Matt Steele caddies for that match, too, with old Beddoes.'
‘Who still doesn't hear a thing.'
‘Matt Steele does, though,' said Sloan warmly. ‘He hears Southon, who you know is Garwood's number two at Calleshire Consolidated, make up some cock-and-bull tale and informally suggest a bit of recompense on Doug's behalf for Doug having given Gilchrist the info.'
‘Opportunity makes the thief,' said Leeyes sagaciously.
‘You can imagine how he put it – valuable commercial information, Doug not liking to ask himself, and all that guff.'
‘I can,' said Leeyes grimly.
‘Brian Southon probably extracts some reward from Gilchrist either in cash or in the shape of favourable treatment from Gilchrist's firm at the expense of his usual suppliers. The sort of thing that'll do him a bit of good with Doug, perhaps.'
‘Business is business,' said Leeyes ineluctably.
‘What Southon didn't know,' said Sloan, leaving this pagan sentiment aside for the time being, ‘is that Matt was present both times and put two and two together.'
‘What they both forgot,' said Leeyes grandly, ‘was
pas devant les domestiques
.'
‘Pardon, sir?'
‘It's how the French warn you about loose talk. They say “not in front of the servants”.'
‘Quite so, sir.' That must have come from the winter of the Superintendent's “French Without Tears” evening class. ‘Very wise of the French.' Sloan coughed and, trying not to sound
sanctimonious, changed tack. ‘And what neither of them had studied, sir, was the Old Testament.' He had his Mother's Bible Class to thank for this. Her Sunday lunchtime mantra was that the Bible was better than any of his text-books on crime.
Superintendent Leeyes rose suddenly to his feet, pointed and said ‘Look out. That shot's going to be out of bounds.'
‘The Second Book of Kings,' Sloan persisted. ‘I understand it was forbidden to have it read aloud in monasteries at mealtimes on account of its being too exciting.' That came from his Mother's Bible Class, too.
‘Sloan, if I find you've been having me on …'
‘Chapter Five,' said Sloan. ‘Elisha wouldn't accept anything for the good turn he did Naaman but Elisha's servant Gehazi had overheard all and tried to get something out of Naaman all the same.'
‘I still don't see why …'
‘I think that's when Matt would have thought it would be a good idea to put the screws on Brian Southon for acting like - er – Gehazi.' He hesitated. ‘And cut himself into the action, so to speak.'
‘Big, big mistake,' pronounced Leeyes. ‘Southon wouldn't have stood for that. Couldn't have. Besides, once you pay dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane.'
Detective Inspector Sloan placed that quotation without difficulty. It had come straight from the evening class “Kipling - A Man For All Time”, when for at least two weeks the Superintendent had tried to treat those twin impostors “Triumph and Disaster” just the same.
And failed.
‘It seems that Steele was a bit of a chancer anyway,' said Sloan. ‘Out for what he could get, girlfriend included.'
‘Doug Garwood wouldn't have stood for anything that wasn't hunky-dory,' declared Leeyes, ‘that's for sure.'
‘Southon's got much too much to lose by then. He'd be out on his ear if Steele split on him to Garwood, and he couldn' t have afforded that. Not with a wife into antique silver. Besides …'
‘Besides what?'
‘Besides that's not all, sir.'
‘Go on,' said Leeyes gruffly.
‘Steele was also present when the three contenders for the development work played with each other. They'd all chosen to enter the Kemberland Cup together.'
‘Good communication in a natural setting is what you need when you're setting up a cartel,' declared Leeyes authoritatively. ‘And no records.'
‘Something that Crosby said brought it to mind.'
‘Crosby? Are you sure?'
‘He drew my attention to the fact that when you kicked one of them, they all limped.'
Detective Inspector Sloan gazed down the eighteenth hole, a recission of the many shades of green, and thought about Gilchrist, Trumper and Halesworth all playing together under an English heaven so that they could rip off their own Club.
‘Any sector where there are very few competitors is vulnerable to an agreement in restraint of trade,' said Leeyes horta-tively. ‘The Club made a big mistake in wanting to keep the work in-house.'
‘Those three wouldn't have taken any notice of Matt Steele overhearing them either because they hadn't cottoned on to his being such a bright cookie. They didn't know their chat would have been right up his street seeing as he was reading business studies and economics and had heard Doug Garwood being asked into the bargain.'
‘And where does the girl Hilary Trumper come in?' asked Leeyes, his eyes still on the fairway in front of him. A working life-time with police estimates had left him still unable to
distinguish between economy and economics and he automatically shied away from both words.
‘She says that Matt passed some of his suspicions about the cartel on to her.'

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