The Executor (Keith Calder Book 10)

by Gerald Hammond

  Detective Inspector Fleet was still ruminating on his own half of the case. ‘When you came to see me with the table-lighter, you implied that you thought that Mary Bruce’s story was cock-and-bull.’

  ‘Because that’s what it was,’ Keith said.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Fleet said. He was sounding more human and less policemanlike by the minute. ‘She seems to have been telling the absolute truth. Her description led us to the man Dunlap – keep that name under your hat too,’ he added to Philip. ‘So I can’t help wondering whether Dunlap’s visit to Danny’s shop isn’t what set him off on the trail of the guns.’

  ‘It might have done if – what did you call him? – if Dunlap had ever been near Danny’s shop,’ Keith said. ‘Danny knew who had killed Robin Winterton, simply because whispers go round in the criminal fraternity and they all get back to him in the end. Usually, such information would be as safe as in the confessional. Danny’s reputation for care and confidentiality was his biggest asset, after Mary. This time, it suited Mary to divulge the real description, in the hope of sending me haring off again. But the table-lighter had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Dad,’ Deborah said suddenly.

  ‘Just a minute,’ Fleet said. ‘Your turn next. I don’t understand.’

  ‘Mary Bruce wasn’t just dragging a red herring. She was also trying to explain away her presence here. If Dunlap had sold them anything from here, she’d have brought it with her. But she picked up the first expensive-looking ornament to come to hand. I was sitting where your constable is now, and the table-top was reflecting the light from the window. The maid had left a few days before, the daily woman had quit and Mrs Winterton wouldn’t dream of doing her own dusting. There was a fine layer of dust on the table, but not where the lighter had been.’

  ‘I see,’ Fleet said. ‘Well, there will be a thousand more questions. But . . .’, he looked at Ovenstone, ‘for the moment, we’d better be following up what we’ve already got.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘Dad,’ Deborah said loudly. ‘Where’s Mrs Winterton?’

  The two senior officers, who had been preparing to rise, subsided slowly.

  ‘Mrs Winterton?’ Keith said. ‘What about Mrs Winterton?’

  ‘Well, maybe I’m talking rubbish,’ Deborah said bashfully, ‘and if so stop me, but you’re always telling us to see things through the other person’s eyes and I think you’ve forgotten about Mrs Winterton, because I don’t think you told her you’d pinched the evidence out of the boot of Mrs Anguillas’ car.’

  ‘No,’ Keith said. ‘I didn’t. Maybe I should have told her.’

  ‘I think you should, because Mrs Winterton came out and sent the reporters on a wild goose chase, so she must have been told to by Mr Bruce and why would she do what he told her if he didn’t have anything to put pressure on her with?’ Deborah finished, all on one breath.

  ‘You mean that Mary Bruce wouldn’t have known that the evidence was gone until she got back to Glasgow?’ Keith said. ‘And then she’d guess that I’d taken it. She wouldn’t tell Mrs Winterton that straight away. Just on the chance that Mrs Winterton mightn’t know, she’d phone as if nothing had happened. Is that what you mean?’

  ‘I think so,’ Deborah said. ‘I haven’t thought it all out. I just wondered whether Mrs Winterton would go off on an ordinary visit just then, when she must have known that you were getting suspicious. I suppose she’d just done a deal with Mr Bruce.’

  There was a hissing silence.

  Keith turned to Philip Stratton. ‘Did she put cases into the taxi?’ he asked.

  ‘Not that I noticed. But the reporters were scrambling into their cars and I was trying to persuade at least one or two of them and a photographer to stay behind. She could have done.’

  ‘Bunked, by God!’ Ovenstone said to Fleet. ‘You phone the taxi firm, I’ll use the radio in the car.’ And, to the constable, ‘You come with me.’

  Keith caught Molly’s eye and jerked his head. He gave Deborah the signal which he would have used to tell a dog to stay. She nodded back.

  When Keith and Molly returned downstairs, Ovenstone was standing over Fleet, who was still at the phone. Both men looked up.

  ‘I’d say that her best clothes have gone,’ Molly said. ‘She’s done a flit.’

  ‘Moir’s taxi dropped her at the end of the Ring Road,’ Fleet said, hanging up. ‘She could have got another taxi. But there’s been no sign of her at Turnhouse Airport.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be,’ said Keith. ‘Danny Bruce was always in the market for stolen passports. I believe he usually had a hundred or more in stock. He could fit anybody, near enough, off-the-peg.’

  ‘I don’t like this at all,’ Ovenstone said. ‘Danny Bruce isn’t the man to part with money before he’d got his hands on the goods. And yet he couldn’t bilk her in case she squealed. But she wouldn’t take off without the money. I’ve a nasty feeling we’ll find her dead in a ditch.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be Danny’s style at all,’ Keith said. ‘He prefers to be devious rather than violent. What he’d do would be to get her to do his dirty work, promise her money and get her to meet him. Then, and only then, he’d tell her that we’d got the incriminating handbag. Then she’d know the game was up. She’d have to go. He’d give her air tickets, passports and some money, with the promise of a cut sent out to Spain or Lichtenstein when he’d sold the guns.’

  The driver came in from the car. ‘The Dunbar police can’t get any answer at the vet’s surgery, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Gone, both of them,’ Ovenstone snorted. ‘I’ll bet they were airborne before we got word to the airports.’

  ‘She’s made a jolly bad bargain,’ Molly said. ‘Think what she could have had and what she’s left behind.’

  ‘She hasn’t left behind as much as she should have,’ Keith said grimly.

  *

  It was after midnight before the Calders got to their beds. Keith was hardly asleep before Molly nudged him awake again. ‘What did you do about Ronnie?’ she asked.

  Keith had quite forgotten about his brother-in-law, languishing in the cell behind some police-station. He grunted something unintelligible.

  ‘Well, is he all right?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ Keith said. ‘Just fine.’

  He went back to sleep.

  *

  Molly was on the phone to Wallace. ‘Mrs Winterton and her stepson took the shuttle to Prestwick,’ she said, ‘and then flew to Barcelona. After that, they vanished.’

  ‘Sounds like the right thing to do,’ Wallace said.

  ‘Keith’s sick as mud, because she took a lot of valuable stuff away with her, including a Minton vase, which he’s getting very uptight about, and some jade. He says he’ll follow them to the ends of the earth and bring them back to justice. Can you talk some sense into him?’

  ‘You can t-talk him out of it,’ Wallace said. ‘Point out that he can meet the legacies to Steven Clune and his sister from the price of the house and contents plus selling the less important parts of the collection. If he fetches Mrs Winterton and Michael ditto back to face t-trial, and they get off – which is always on the cards, juries being what they are – he’ll have to sell the rest of the guns and hand over the money. As things stand at the moment, he can hang on to most of the collection, play with it and gloat over it, for years.’

  Molly found her husband at his workbench on the upper floor of Briesland House. Here, two rooms had been devoted to his workshop and also housed the firm’s stock of antique guns. The weather had broken again and the view to the town was obscured by rain. He preferred to look at the wall above his bench, where the two Scottish long guns were now mounted. A sixteen-bore sidelock lay dismantled on the bench.

  Keith took the advice philosophically. He had already seen the point for himself. He told Molly that Mrs Winterton could stay where she was and rot for all he cared.

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ Molly said. ‘Why do you want to hang
on to them anyway? I thought you wanted your commission.’

  ‘I do. But that’ll go up as values rise. We’ve got a good little museum in the town,’ Keith said dreamily. ‘What I’d really like to do is to lay on a really good exhibition of gun-history, showing a good example of each style and associating them with historical events. That’d fetch the gun-buffs along. And then we could have a discreet poster advertising our stock . . . .’

  Molly lowered herself into the worn old armchair. ‘I can always tell when something’s bothering you,’ she said. ‘You don’t think it’s all over. Do you?’

  Keith swivelled round on his working stool. ‘I don’t think we know all the answers,’ he said. ‘But we may never know them all. In that sense, it probably is all over as far as we’re concerned.’

  ‘What answers don’t we have?’

  ‘There’s a connection missing somewhere. It’s all very well saying “Danny Bruce knew this” and “Danny Bruce knew that”, but he knew a little too much too quickly. The value of the collection, the fact that I was the executor, that it had gone missing, that Steven Clune was blackmailing his stepbrother. Nobody’s grape-vine’s that good. And he didn’t have time to find out all those things for himself. Somebody was feeding him with information.’

  ‘Well, don’t look at me,’ Molly said. ‘What did you hide in your drawer as I came in?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Keith said indignantly.

  Molly jerked open the drawer. ‘Oh, Keith!’ she said. ‘You haven’t got time to build yourself a copy just now. Guns are arriving for overhaul. They’re wanted for the start of the season. It’s not long off.’

  ‘They should have been put in months ago,’ Keith said. He grinned at her suddenly. ‘Can you imagine the stir there’ll be when I produce a perfect facsimile of a Scottish snaphaunce to shoot clay pigeons with?’

  ‘I can imagine the stir there’ll be if the Twelfth goes by and you haven’t got on with those overhauls,’ Molly said.

  ‘I’ll do them, I’ll do them,’ Keith said. He picked up a turnscrew. ‘Slave-driver!’

  ‘But,’ Molly said, ‘Steven Clune phoned. He says that there are some of his personal effects still stored at Halleydane House and he’d like to collect them. I said you’d meet him there in an hour’s time.’

  Keith looked out of the window. ‘I don’t want to go out in that.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Molly said. ‘The drive will do you good. Take Deborah with you.’

  Keith put his turnscrew back in the rack.

  Chapter Nine

  There was no sign of Steven Clune’s car when Keith rolled the jeep up to the front door of Halleydane House. The rain had stopped and a watery sun was trying to break through the heavy clouds, but the trees dripped and there were puddles on the gravel. The house seemed to know that it was no longer a home.

  ‘I think you’d better go for a walk,’ Keith told Deborah. ‘Try not to get your feet wet or your mother’ll blame me.’

  ‘Oh, Dad!’

  ‘Look, our slightly peculiar friend wants to uplift some of his personal effects. God knows what that mayn’t include. You’re better out of it.’

  Deborah sighed gustily. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But sometimes you can be a real drag, you know that?’

  ‘So your mother always tells me.’ She put her tongue out at him and he retorted in kind. He unlocked the front door. When he looked round, she was out of sight.

  It might be no part of an executor’s duties to safeguard the assets of the estate, but Keith was conscientious. The first frosts could be expected soon, the house might stand empty all winter before being sold and once the shooting season was in full swing he might not think of it again. It took him some time to find the various stopcocks and drain down the systems, but he was flushing the last toilet before he heard Clune’s voice calling him from the hall.

  Clune, who was understandably subdued, had brought two empty suitcases. His chattels had been stored in a wardrobe in what had once been his room. They were obviously personal, the innocuous souvenirs of his boyhood, and Keith made no objection when he began to pack them.

  The job was almost finished when Clune turned and sat down on the bed. He looked round at the muted décor. ‘This room used to have such a bright paper,’ he said. ‘I don’t remember what it showed. Toys, I think.’

  Keith could think of no reply but an interrogatory noise.

  ‘You despise me, don’t you?’ Clune said. ‘I don’t blame you. I despise myself. Not because I’m gay, although, coming back here and remembering, I can’t help wondering what my life could have been like.’

  ‘There’s never any point looking back,’ Keith said gruffly. He tried and failed to think of a topic to turn the subject.

  ‘There’s certainly nothing to look forward to,’ Clune said desolately. ‘My friend’s walked out on me. He’d looked up to me until he saw what those men reduced me to. I’m nearly broke and my only source of extra income is out of the country. In fact, once they run out of funds he’ll probably be writing to me for money. There’s a laugh! And it’s my fault. I’m the one who blew it.’

  Keith was almost wriggling with embarrassment. ‘Should you be telling me all this?’

  ‘It helps to tell somebody. And there’s nobody else now.’

  ‘A trouble shared,’ Keith said, ‘is a trouble doubled.’

  Clune ignored the hint. ‘You were kind, that time when you found me. You and that girl of yours. She’s a charmer.’ Clune, who had been looking down and picking at the coverlet, suddenly looked up at Keith with almost doglike dependence. ‘I’ve no other friends left. But at least I’m not going to be prosecuted. The police didn’t have enough evidence about blackmail. And the Fiscal’s office said that the chain of evidence connecting me with the . . . other thing was too broken. And they’ll need my co-operation, if Michael ever comes to trial.’

  Once started, Steven Clune seemed unable to stop himself. ‘It wasn’t so awful, what I did, was it? We’d been out for a meal together, Michael and I. We got on quite well, outside the family, despite our difference. Perhaps the fact that we both had that awful old woman to contend with gave us something in common. You needn’t look at me like that. It may not be how you expect a man to talk about his mother, but we can’t all choose our parents. You can’t imagine what she was like to her family. Sweetly cloying one minute, overbearing the next, very demanding and absolutely determined to get her own way.

  ‘Michael had had a skinful that night, when it all started. I don’t drink much, and anyway I was driving. The car was parked near the harbour. He said he wanted a pee and wandered off where it was dark. He didn’t come back, but I wasn’t bothered. I was sleepy and there was a superb performance of La Traviata on the car radio.

  ‘When it finished, I realised that he’d been gone an age and I went looking for him. It was black as the pit, so I started the car. The headlights caught him. I was just in time to see him roll her body off the sea-wall. There was never any doubt in my mind that she was dead. Nor about what he’d done to her first. There’s a streak of ruthlessness in Michael, especially in his dealings with women. I suppose some things take us all different ways.

  ‘The place was absolutely deserted. I got out and took his arm and started to lead him back towards the car, wondering what the hell to do. I knew what the law said I should do, I just didn’t know what I was going to do. To look at it one way, I had the power to change certain things but not the things which needed to be changed. Do you see what I mean?’

  ‘I think so,’ Keith said. ‘You could change your stepbrother’s life but you couldn’t bring the girl back.’

  ‘I knew you’d understand. Then I saw that he had the girl’s bag in his hands. I said something about it and he turned and threw it back towards where she’d gone over, but it didn’t reach the water. I left him standing and swaying and I walked back for it. I was wearing gloves. On an impulse, I tucked it under my arm. He never noticed, he was too pissed.r />
  ‘I got him back to the car and dropped the bag on the floor at the back. He started talking, babbling compulsively, the way I’m doing now. He said . . . he said that she was a tart, that she’d agreed to do it for ten quid, but that he was taking his time and she got impatient and that all he meant to do was to hold her down while he finished. He said he didn’t mean to kill her. That’s what he said, and I believed him.

  ‘I can’t say I was shocked. There have been times I’ve wanted to do terrible things to women. I’ve sometimes thought that there were too many of them in the world. Not recently, but earlier, when they shocked me.

  ‘So I delivered him to his home and wrapped the bag in polythene to preserve any fingerprints. And I used it later to get a few quid out of him. After all, he could always get money out of her, and she was my mother not his. That was fair, wasn’t it? Surely that was only fair.’

  Keith had felt a great unease in his guts as the tale went on. He had wanted to protest, but now he found that he had nothing to say. If the police were right and Michael Winterton had been responsible for other sex-crimes, they would soon prove it. Time enough then for Steven Clune to learn that his stepbrother had been worse than he had painted himself.

  ‘I’m not qualified to judge,’ Keith said. He walked to the door. ‘Come on. Finish the job and we’ll get away from here.’

  ‘Too many memories,’ Clune said in agreement. He returned to his packing, but after a moment he looked up again. ‘You’ve got a fine daughter there,’ he said shyly. ‘She’s going to be a very caring sort of person, later. If I’d met somebody like her when I was younger, my life might have been very different. The reason that I was late was that she came and sat in the car with me.’ Keith made a sudden movement. ‘I didn’t lay a finger on her,’ Clune said quickly. ‘You know I wouldn’t. Too afraid of rejection, if for no other reason. We talked. I can’t even remember what she said. But she was simple and natural and I began to see how a relationship between a man and a woman was possible. I didn’t feel lust, but I knew that I could have done. Do you understand?’