Pursuit of Arms

by Gerald Hammond

  They intercepted Deborah, on her way home from playing with her friend at the market garden but indignant that her better friend, Jean McLelland, had not joined them. She climbed cheerfully into the car, always ready for an outing. Munro stopped at Briesland House while Keith spoke to Molly. Keith joined Deborah on the back seat and they set off again.

  “You remember coming out with me yesterday?” Keith asked.

  “When we drove fast and had the accident?”

  “You could put it like that.”

  “I remember,” Deborah said.

  “You probably know that something happened at the factory and people were hurt. We think that the bad men may have been watching to see where we went. If we all go back over the same roads, would you be very clever and remember who we saw and what cars we passed?”

  Deborah might be young but, like all of her sex, she knew when she held trumps. “If I remember something important, can I have ballet lessons?”

  Keith waited, but Munro did not seem to have heard. “We’ll see,” Keith said, and he knew that, in retrospect, those words would be construed as a binding commitment. “Yesterday,” he said, “the first time we came along this way, was anybody following us?”

  Deborah shook her head. “Mr Ledbetter’s taxi passed us, going the other way,” she said, “and I looked round to see who was in it.”

  “Good girl,” Munro said over his shoulder.

  “The lorry we’d passed was still behind us,” Deborah said. “It had ‘Removals’ painted on it.”

  “She’s a good reader,” Keith said proudly. “You can scoot on through the town. If they weren’t following me, they were watching from up on the main road.”

  “They couldn’t see you here,” Munro protested as the streets closed round them.

  “True. But the west side’s all houses and occupied shops. The kind of places I might have been going to are all up Canal Street or View Street, and they could have watched me all the way if I’d turned up in that direction.”

  “They could have been waiting for you at the edge of the town.”

  “Did anybody follow us through the town?” Keith asked Deborah.

  “No.”

  “That settles that,” Keith said. “We’ll head for the factories.”

  “This is all very well,” Munro said. “But you’re assuming that the criminals had access to a great deal of local knowledge.”

  “It sticks out a mile that that’s exactly what they had.”

  Munro thought it over so intensely that he nearly went through a pedestrian crossing on a red light. He braked just in time. “Doig will be pulling in the local crooks for questioning, but there are none in this league.”

  “I don’t see them opening their mouths to Doig,” Keith said. “You can move on now. I’d guess that they bribed some local small fry. I’ll try to find out through somebody who owes me a favour.”

  “Small crooks shouldn’t owe gunsmiths favours,” Munro said indignantly.

  “Dougie Scott does, remember? My evidence got him off a poaching charge. I know he’s usually guilty as hell, but this time he wasn’t.”

  They were nearing the industrial estate. Munro slowed right down. “I don’t want to be seen around here,” he said, “and in your company.”

  “Stop at the road mouth if you can,” Keith said. “If not, drive on and find somewhere less conspicuous to park.”

  There was no police activity at the entry although the bright colours of police cars could be seen deep in the industrial estate. Munro parked, but he kept his engine running and his foot on the clutch.

  “Relax,” Keith said. “There’s no law says you can’t chauffeur me around while my car’s in dock, even if you have slipped a disc. What are friends for? Listen, Deb. We turned in here, remember? I spoke to the policemen and we came out again. Was anybody hanging around?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Anybody with the cars?”

  “There was a van outside that place.” Deborah pointed to the loading bay of a packaging factory. “Just as we were leaving, a man came out and started putting boxes into it.”

  “Sure that’s all?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Right. So we came back here and stopped, ready to turn the way we’re facing now. Who did we see?”

  Deborah’s small face screwed up in effort. “Sir Peter’s big, old car went by. I looked after it, and Mrs Bruing was getting into her Mini outside the Spar shop. A few ladies were pushing prams or walking with dogs. But I didn’t notice who they were,” Deborah added anxiously.

  “Doesn’t matter. Drive on, McDuff, but slowly. Deborah, we’re just coming to the really important bit. We came out this way. What did we see?”

  “There was a little white sports car. A Spridget.”

  “So there was!” Keith said. “About here. A girl was driving. A farmer’s daughter from somewhere south of the town.”

  “You couldn’t get by at first,” Deborah said. “Mr McLelland was coming the other way with his tractor and trailer, fetching straw bales. Then you went whizzing along. Whizzing along,” she repeated.

  Superintendent Munro did not take the hint but maintained his usual sober pace. “What next?” he asked.

  Deborah sighed. The trip was turning out to be much less exciting than she had hoped. “I don’t remember anything else until three cars came round the bend from the main road. First there was another Mini. I think it was the one which parks in the square, but it wasn’t the usual man driving, it was a woman.”

  “It is a big car we’re wanting to know about,” Munro said.

  “Let her tell it in her own way. But, Deb, you mustn’t say ‘woman’. Say ‘lady’.”

  “Then there was a Beetle,” Deborah said, “and there was an old man driving it. He was going slow. Behind that there was a big car which seemed to want to get past the Beetle but it had to wait until we’d gone by. It had a whole lot of people in it.”

  “Men?”

  “I think so, all except the driver. A lady was driving.”

  “Could there have been as many as six people in the big car?” Keith asked.

  Deborah looked down at her fingers and then nodded uncertainly. “I think so,” she said.

  Munro stopped the car and reversed into a field-gate rather than arrive again within sight of the road-block. “That was all?” he asked.

  Keith reworded the question. “There was nobody else as far as the main road?”

  “No, Dad.”

  “And in the main road we only saw two big lorries?”

  “And we nearly hit one of them,” Deborah said with enthusiasm.

  “But not quite,” Keith said. He had been trying to forget the incident. He met Munro’s eye in the mirror.

  “Your guess sounds good,” Munro said. “At least there was a big car in a hurry, full of men. It is the woman driving I don’t like.”

  “How did you know that it was a woman?” Keith asked Deborah.

  “She was like Mrs Beattie. That’s what made me look at her.”

  “Mrs Beattie, your teacher? Square face. Straight, dark hair. About as tall as your mum, but stout. Like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “She couldn’t have been a man with long hair?”

  Deborah shook her head. “She had a lot of bosom, just like Mrs Beattie. And I saw her again later and she was wearing a skirt.”

  “When?” both men said together.

  “Aunt Janet took me up to the flat while she made their tea. I was looking out of the kitchen window. She walked along the back lane, from Birch Street towards The Avenue.”

  “From your right to your left?” Keith caught Munro’s eye in the mirror again. “She was walking south, towards here. That could make sense.”

  “It would, if she had just dumped a stolen car and was heading towards a rendezvous.” Munro agreed. “Could the lassie describe the car?”

  “Can you, Toots?”

  “It was big,” Deborah sai
d. “Sort of brown. About the colour of Mr Smiley’s new Range Rover.”

  “Bronze,” Keith said. “An excited man could mistake it for red.”

  “What about the make?” Munro asked.

  “She’d be guessing. Let’s head back into the town and see whether she recognises any shapes.”

  They visited two small carparks but saw nothing, according to Deborah, resembling the large, bronze car. The parking spaces in the square were almost full. Munro tucked himself and his car into a quiet corner and waited. Keith took his daughter’s hand and walked her round while she studied the larger cars from the front and side. Suddenly, she stopped. “Like that blue one, but boxier at the back.”

  They returned to Munro’s car. “Granada Estate,” Keith said, “or something very like it.”

  “If only the rest of the public were as observant,” Munro said. “We shall have to breed from the wee one.”

  “No doubt we will, but let’s get her safely married first. Do you have enough to get you out of the muck?”

  “It just might do the trick,” Munro said.

  *

  Superintendent Munro escorted Deborah up to the flat over the shop where, with the help of Janet James, he made sure that he was in possession of every detail that she could be induced to remember. Then, limping theatrically and leaning on a stick borrowed from Wallace, he went to visit his former friend, Chief Superintendent Doig.

  Keith, meanwhile, had borrowed the superintendent’s car. Dougie Scott did not rank among Keith’s friends and only marginally among his acquaintances, but Keith had heard the old rogue’s address read out in court and the name New Row had stayed in his memory. A few enquiries in that short and unattractive cul-de-sac brought him to the door of a scruffy cottage where a stout and cheerful woman with purple hair told him that Dougie was ‘up Deer Hill’.

  That was all that Keith needed to know. He drove a couple of miles into the hills east of the town, left the car among a screen of trees and took to his feet. He knew the ground well and knew enough of Dougie Scott to make an accurate guess as to where he would find him. His way climbed through stubble and uncultivated grazing land onto heather, and he came gently over the crest. Sure enough, a squat figure showed up. Dougie was crouched comfortably, his back against a boulder, where the whole southern slope of the hill and the country beyond was laid out before him. In his right hand he held the old, brass binoculars through which he was studying the scene, while with the other hand he was fondling the head of a grizzled lurcher.

  Keith walked very softly. What breeze there was was in his face and neither man nor dog sensed his presence until he spoke.

  “Hullo, Dougie.”

  The dog would have gone for him, but the man stopped it with a sharp word. If Dougie Scott was surprised he was too well-schooled a villain to show it. He was a coarse man, pot-bellied but fit-looking, dressed in a filthy old macintosh and a tweed fishing hat.

  “Well, Mr Calder,” he said calmly. He puffed a large and battered pipe and waited.

  Keith seated himself on an outcrop of rock. “What in God’s name are you smoking?” he asked.

  Dougie smiled faintly. “My own mixture.”

  “I bet. It smells as if it’d do you more good spread under your rhubarb. But each to his taste. Dougie, I want your help.”

  “Ah!” Dougie nodded slowly. “I told you I was obliged to you, and I am.”

  “I only told the truth,” Keith said. “I saw the dog that killed the deer and it wasn’t yours.”

  Dougie dropped a hand to the dog’s neck. “I don’t use old Speedy to run down deer. But there’s many wouldn’t have bothered to speak up for him. They’d’ve let an old dog be put down before his time.”

  “Were you up here yesterday?”

  “No harm in that, is there?”

  “Some,” Keith said. “But I’m not greatly concerned if you were spying out the movements of the deer, in preparation for a foray at dawn or dusk. That may be my brother-in-law’s business, but it’s not mine and I won’t tell him if you don’t. He likely knows, anyway.”

  “It’s no crime to watch the deer,” Dougie said. “He’d need to catch me with a poached beast. And he’ll never do that. Old Speedy’s past it now, poor old lad. We’re both ageing, only fit to sit in the sun and watch the deer go by.”

  Keith suppressed a grin. The pathos had been consummately artistic. “And no way would you get a firearms certificate, with all those convictions behind you. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You old sinner,” Keith said. “I ken damn fine you’ve got an old army rifle hidden away somewhere, quite illegal and off-certificate. Did you think I couldn’t guess why your pal McFlodden bought three-o-three ammunition on his own certificate after he’d bulged the barrel of his own three-o-three and put it away?”

  Dougie played a little tune on his pipe. “You going to make trouble for me, Mr Calder?”

  “Not if you help me out,” Keith said. “There was a lorryload of guns stolen yesterday. You heard about it?”

  “Everybody’s heard that, Mr Calder. A bad business. Two men died, so I’ve heard. I knew one of them.”

  “A blue articulated,” Keith said, “although it’s possible that the trailer already had camouflage paint on it. You’d have been watching the deer tracks, but you couldn’t have missed a thing like that on the Oldbury Farm road or the forestry tracks.”

  Dougie thought it over while he puffed furiously on his pipe. Keith began to wonder whether he was sending smoke-signals, and leaned aside to evade the worst of the pollution.

  “Nothing like that,” Dougie said at last.

  “I didn’t expect it,” Keith said. “If they came this far it would likely have been after dark. You’ve seen nothing suspicious yesterday or today?”

  “I’ve not seen a soul but foresters. And a wagon-load of sheep.”

  “The hijack was carefully planned,” Keith said. “They seem to have had a lot of local knowledge. During the past month or so, has any stranger been spying out the land or asking questions?”

  “Not that I’ve seen or heard.”

  “Then somebody local has been acting as their consultant.”

  “Not me, Mr Calder.”

  “Of course not you,” Keith said impatiently. “You’re too small a fish to swim with the sharks. But you’re on nodding terms with everybody on the shitty side of the law around these parts, and I’ve seen you coming out of High Tavern, which is where every disreputable character goes to do his boozing. So go and chat with your crookeder friends. Listen. Ask questions but be careful. See if you can’t find out who’s been helping an outside gang with local information. Do that for me and I’ll see if I can get you into some legitimate deer control. But, if you cross me, there may come another time when you’ll look round suddenly and find me there, and you won’t care for it at all.”

  Dougie smiled, showing gaps in his yellow teeth, and knocked his pipe out on his heel. “Another time,” he said, “you’d not have the smell of my tobacco to guide you. Well, I’ll see what I can find out. I’m not doing it for threats or bribes, mind, but because one of those lads, Willy Fife, is my cousin’s son. Instead of deer control, though, could you get me taken on as an assistant keeper for three months?”

  “Maybe I could,” Keith said. He knew that there is no keeper to match a reformed poacher, but he would have to do some fast talking to persuade any estate or shooting tenant to let Dougie Scott within a mile of their pheasants.

  “Just three months, mind,” Dougie said. “To renew my Benefit.”

  Chapter Seven

  Molly was unable to express by more than a lifted eyebrow her irritation at the sudden task of providing dinner for nine. Keith was sometimes given to impulsive hospitality, but when Molly had once protested she had found herself disarmed by the presentation of a microwave oven and a well-stocked deep-freeze.

  When the Calders saw from the dining room window that Ronnie had brough
t Butch as an extra and uninvited guest, Molly felt free to utter a wordless exclamation of disgust.

  “I’m not too pleased either,” Keith said. “I’d been hoping to keep out of Butch’s way until the shit stopped flying.”

  “Well, you’ll have to make do with a shaving off everybody else’s steak, or go vegetarian. The freezerman’s due next week.”

  “Maybe she won’t stay to eat.”

  “I should be so lucky!” Molly said. “She’s dressed for dining out.”

  “Take my steak and fry me some sausages,” Keith suggested.

  “What sausages?”

  Ronnie ushered his lady in. He was looking subdued and with good reason. Butch was, as Molly later put it, “Up to high do”. Superintendent Munro arrived only seconds behind them, so Keith left the two ill-assorted men to entertain each other and herded the fulminating Butch into his study. He pulled out two chairs, and when she remained obstinately standing he sat down, not behind his desk where he might seem to be taking shelter but out in the open.

  “You lose my damn guns,” was her opening shot.

  “I didn’t lose them,” Keith said reasonably. “I never received them. The whole damn lorry was stolen.”

  “No matter. They were in your charge.” In her agitation, she set off around the room in a clockwise direction. “You make a ball-up. I sue. I sue the hell out of you.”

  Keith ducked as she passed behind him, but for the moment her attack was only verbal. “I didn’t guarantee safe delivery,” he said. “I told you — in writing — that your boxes could have space on the lorry if you wanted it, but that it was up to you to take out insurance. So you wouldn’t get anywhere in court. Did you insure?”

  She had paused to listen to him, but now she set off again, anticlockwise this time, her athletic, dancer’s stride carrying her over the carpet so fleetly that the wind of her passing ruffled his hair. “What that does with it?” she demanded. “I not want insurance, want my bleedering guns. That . . . that wagon was to be protected.”