Cousin Once Removed

by Gerald Hammond

  A weight of many tons had dragged his eyelids shut. He pulled them open by brute force. Another pair of eyes stared unblinking into his own. Tanya, the old springer spaniel, boon companion on a thousand forays, was almost retired from active work. She lay stretched full length. Her muscles were taut and quivering. She was waiting for the word but she knew better than to set off without it.

  Keith fought aside the cotton-wool mists which blew across his mind. He had no strength to lift a hand. He managed a movement of one finger, a flick with his eyes and the merest breath of a whisper and let his eyes close. He was not sure that he had made any sound at all. But when he forced his eyelids open again the spaniel was gone. He thought, as he faded away again, that he had heard the yip which she always gave when she got up after sitting, when her stiff joints pained her. But once she got moving she would be all right.

  Chapter Four

  For several days Keith drifted along below the threshold of consciousness, mistily aware from time to time of people doing unspeakable things to him and of Molly’s voice calling on him to awake. Out of habit, he resisted. He rallied briefly, aided by a doctor with a syringe, in order to mumble a brief but fairly coherent statement to a policeman who looked vaguely familiar.

  Then he was away again into a world of dreams, some sick and some pleasantly erotic, to wake on what he learned was the fourth morning, limp as a wet cloth, still sleepy, ravenously hungry but allowed no more breakfast than he could take through a tube in his arm, and with no worse than a dull ache in his shoulder. When he moved, a bolt of rusty lightning skewered his shoulder and side.

  If he was at a low physical ebb, at least his mind was sharp again. As soon as he woke he knew where he was. He had been a visitor to the hospital in Newton Lauder before, and a patient in it twice. Even, he thought, possibly in this very room. But not under the same doctor. The man who came to examine him was young, fit-looking in the way of young doctors, and a stranger; he appeared to have written his own name on his lapel-badge in a cultivated doctor’s hand, totally illegible.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ was Keith’s greeting.

  The doctor nodded. ‘Good sign.’

  Keith supposed that it was reasonable to treat the statement as such. ‘Please let me have something to eat,’ he amended.

  The doctor finished the preliminary phase of his examination and nodded again. ‘Light diet from this evening,’ he said to the accompanying sister – a hard-faced old prune, Keith thought – ‘and he can come off the drip now.’

  ‘I’d prefer a heavy diet, starting now.’

  ‘You couldn’t eat it. And if you did, you couldn’t keep it down.’ Which Keith admitted to himself was probably true.

  The doctor started to unwrap Keith’s shoulder.

  ‘What the hell happened to me?’ Keith asked. ‘Was I shot?’

  ‘The police will be asking you much the same question shortly. All I can tell you is that there was a phone call for an ambulance – anonymous, I believe. I’m told that they’d given up looking for you and written the call off as a hoax when an old spaniel joined them and started herding them up the hill like a couple of sheep. Anyway, you were brought in here, bleeding like a stuck pig and bound up, quite effectively, with some ripped-up pieces of ladies’ intimate apparel. The theory has been voiced that you did the ripping-up and got skewered for your trouble. You had a short arrow sticking out of your shoulder, front and back, which your helpers had very sensibly left in place.’

  ‘Crossbow?’ Keith asked.

  ‘I wondered. But never having seen a crossbow arrow, bolt or – I believe I’m right? – quarrel, I’d no data to go on. The police have it now.’

  ‘Only one with a square shaft is a quarrel,’ Keith said.

  The doctor finished his unwrapping and carefully peeled away the dressings. ‘You seem to heal well. No sepsis.’

  Keith turned his face away. The sight of his own damaged flesh was not for a totally empty stomach. ‘When can I get out of here?’

  The doctor delegated the rebandaging to the old prune and straightened up. ‘God knows, we don’t want to keep a precious bed occupied any longer than we have to,’ he said. ‘Do you have anyone to nurse you at home?’

  ‘Yes.’ Keith hoped that Molly would acquiesce.

  ‘In that case, and if you keep up your progress, you might get home in about a week. But it’ll be bed for you, or at least chair-bound convalescence, for another week. I’ll want to take out the stitches a week from tomorrow, or you can get your own doctor to do it if you’re at home.’

  ‘What’s the date?’

  ‘Third of August, I think.’ The doctor looked at his watch. ‘Yes.’

  ‘In nine days time,’ Keith said, ‘the grouse season opens.’

  The doctor was inclined to be sympathetic. He did a little shooting when time permitted and he knew how much the opening day of the grouse meant to a devotee. But facts were facts. ‘It opens without you,’ he said. ‘Put it out of your mind. You seem to be very resilient to shock, but you lost a lot of blood.’

  ‘I’ve been a donor around here for years. Now I’d like some of it back.’

  ‘You’ve already had it back at an extortionate rate of interest. You were just about drained when they brought you in and still losing. And then we had to operate to close a damaged artery and repair some muscles. Apropos which, even if you’re fit to stagger on to a moor on the twelfth, which I doubt, you wouldn’t be able to stand the jolt of a gun on that shoulder.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel the jolt from a four-ten.’

  ‘I think you’d feel the thump of a fly landing on it,’ the doctor said. ‘And if you can hit grouse with a four-ten, you’re a damn good shot.’

  ‘I am a damn good shot,’ Keith said.

  ‘Well, you’ll not be any damn good by the twelfth. Nor yet when duck and partridge come into season. Save yourself for the pheasants in October. Better still, wait until the hard weather pushes the geese on to Blatchford Loch.’

  ‘I don’t have permission for Blatchford Loch,’ Keith said irritably. It was a sore point.

  ‘I have. And if you’ve been a good boy I’ll take you. A dawn flight,’ the doctor said persuasively, ‘and not too much walking. But if you don’t believe me, ask sister for a mirror and take a good look at yourself. I won’t wait. I hate to see a grown man cry.’

  The prune-like sister departed in the wake of the doctor, leaving Keith’s rebandaging to a young nurse who giggled at everything he said. She fetched him a mirror and Keith inspected himself with a growing sense of horror. He had known that some day he would awake to find himself an old man with an old man’s face, flesh wasted and jawline broken, and now it seemed that the day had come. Looking closely, he could see more silver hairs than usual in his black thatch. He lay back with a groan which sent the young nurse scurrying for the old prune.

  *

  When the peaceful boredom was at last broken, it was by the kind of ordered pandemonium which only an invaded hospital can produce. It began with a precautionary visit from the doctor. Then two policemen, stolidly pushing Keith and the furniture from place to place and back again, clearing a space along the wall of the small side-ward. Next came a file of half a dozen men, some embarrassed and some amused, all much of a height and colour, who shuffled into a line along the wall.

  Through the middle of the line Chief Inspector Munro made his entrance, a tall, lean figure with a long and moody face. His uniform, as usual, was immaculate but slightly ill-fitting, as though no uniform could ever adapt itself to his Hebridean frame.

  Keith and the chief inspector had developed, over the years, a relationship which vacillated between respect and revulsion, occasionally extending as far as a grudging affection. But this was Munro at his most official. ‘It would not be reasonable,’ he began in his careful West Highland speech, ‘to ask whether you have seen any of these men before –’

  ‘I’ve seen nearly all of them.’

  ‘You will oblig
e me by not speaking just yet. I wish you to tell me whether the man who telephoned you and then met you is in the line-up.’

  Keith was an experienced witness. He thought carefully. ‘The man who met me is not in the line-up,’ he said.

  ‘You are sure?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Munro nodded. ‘Very well. Clear the room.’ He went out with the others and Keith could hear voices in the corridor. Munro returned, carrying a large, flat cardboard box and accompanied by a constable in uniform. Munro took the only chair, leaving the constable to perch uncomfortably on the windowsill and balance his notebook on his knee.

  ‘You noticed the man second from the right?’ Munro asked.

  ‘The one who looked as if there was a nasty smell under what little nose he had? I noticed him. He was almost the only man present who I hadn’t seen before – I’ve been breathalysed by more than one of them. He’s a certain resemblance to his father.’

  ‘Aye.’ Munro looked gloomier than ever. ‘That was Brian Batemore. You’ll oblige me, in future, by naming the sons of less influential men. It is as well that this did not happen before the last election or after the next one.’

  ‘Is Dad throwing his weight around?’

  ‘Not yet, but it is probably only a matter of time.’

  ‘I didn’t accuse anybody,’ Keith pointed out. ‘I said that a voice on the phone claimed to be Brian Batemore, and that a man met me.’

  Munro looked thoughtful. ‘Did the man who met you have the same voice as the man on the telephone?’

  ‘It seemed similar,’ Keith said. ‘He didn’t say much after we met and you know how the telephone distorts a voice. I didn’t notice any accent.’

  ‘No accent?’ Munro said sharply. ‘You have surely not heard the real Brian Batemore. He has one of those Oxford accents and a haughty voice as if the Queen herself should take off her hat to him.’

  ‘His father sounds the same. And he shouts.’

  ‘So does this one. He has no alibi for the time when you were injured – but no more, I suppose, do a million others. He admits to knowing where the Foleyhill place is, and so do all the locals. Well, father or no father, we shall have to keep an eye on that young man. Now. . . .’ Munro lifted the cardboard box on to Keith’s feet and untied an encircling string. ‘What do you make of this?’

  ‘Crossbow,’ Keith said. He studied the brass and aluminium weapon in Munro’s hands. ‘Barnett Commando. Two hundred and twenty pounds draw weight. Is that the bolt that hit me?’ Keith took the short arrow into his left hand. ‘Fifteen inch alloy hunting bolt with the broadhead tip. Bloody vicious. If I hadn’t moved just as he fired, I wouldn’t’ve stood an earthly.’

  ‘The crossbow has your name on it,’ Munro said.

  ‘It has a little sticky label on it, of the kind we stick on all goods sold from my shop. We’ve never stocked that model. The label could have been transferred from a trout rod or a dog whistle. Where was the crossbow found?’

  ‘About two hundred yards from where we found the deer’s carcass and the stain of your blood. That would be beyond the range of the crossbow?’

  ‘Well beyond its accurate range, but within its killing range.’

  ‘You could not see the one place from the other for the foliage between.’ Munro drummed his fingers on the lid of the box. ‘Wait outside,’ he said to the constable. But when they were alone he fell silent again.

  ‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Keith said, ‘so I’ll say it for you. We’ve come to know each other over the years. There’ve been times I’ve maybe been up to a little something. There’ve been a damn sight more times you’ve thought I was up to something when I wasn’t. And you want to know whether I’m up to something now.’

  ‘Aye,’ Munro said gratefully. ‘That is just about it. Not that you’d be telling me.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ Keith said. ‘I’ve no irons in the fire just now.’

  ‘And you’re not looking into something on behalf of somebody else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We shall no doubt be seeing in due course,’ Munro said, ‘as we’ve seen in the past. Do you think that you were lured up there in order to be killed?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Keith said. ‘Not by those two. I was still looking at the girl when I was hit –’

  ‘I never doubted it,’ Munro said.

  ‘– and she was just as surprised as I was. I think that they lured me up there in order to frame me for a poaching charge. But why, I don’t know. Once more, time may tell.’

  ‘Very likely,’ Munro said. Time, in the past, had often told him that Keith was holding back information for his own purposes. He looked ready to say more, but turned the subject. ‘We most likely have a case of attempted murder,’ he said. ‘But we don’t know for sure. If we treat the case as such they will no doubt put in somebody from C.I.D. in Edinburgh. If, for the moment, we treat it as a probable accident, we can keep it local. But it is a matter for yourself to decide. It is your neck that may be at risk.’

  Keith quite understood. At that time, C.I.D. in Newton Lauder was kept at a lowly level, anything more serious than the theft of underwear from the washing lines resulting in an invasion of senior officers from Edinburgh, highly critical of the rural force and intolerant of local understandings.

  ‘Let’s call it an accident until you trace those two and find out what they have to say,’ he suggested.

  Munro departed soon thereafter. Keith felt guilty at withholding a wealth of information and conjecture; but if he had got his hands on something with an unseen value he wanted to be the first to know it.

  Chapter Five

  Unlike most prunes, the prune-like ward sister turned out to have a soft heart, susceptible to younger men with the dark good looks which Keith was fast recovering. She allowed him several dietary privileges and an occasional laughing cuddle at the bedside.

  Despite these comforts Keith wanted to get home, and by dint of making himself thoroughly obnoxious and also of promising exemplary behaviour at home he secured his release on the fifth day of consciousness, to the tune of much head-shaking and many grim warnings.

  He was wheelchaired to the car and sat with baby Deborah on his knee while Molly drove him home. Getting out of the car was a mighty effort and he tottered with swimming head, leaning heavily on Molly’s shoulder, into the house and through to the kitchen where he flopped down thankfully into the basket-chair. The dogs pushed their heads at him in welcome.

  ‘You’re supposed to go to bed,’ Molly said.

  ‘And so I shall in due course. For the moment, I’m going to sit for an hour and then walk round the kitchen, and sit for another hour and walk round the house, and then sit for a third hour and walk round the garden.’

  Molly raised her eyebrows but she knew better than to argue when Keith was in stubborn mood. ‘I was just going to the shops when you phoned,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you home for at least a week yet. There’s nothing in the house but baby-food and those dried snacks we brought back from France.’

  ‘I need feeding up,’ Keith said. ‘But start with a dried snack.’

  ‘Read the instructions to me, then.’

  Keith squinted at the tiny print. ‘Videz le contenu. . . . Dump the contents into a small casserole.’

  ‘Got it. Keith, who’d do a thing like that to you, and why?’

  ‘I don’t know who, not yet. As to why . . . I’d have a bet that it’s to do with those guns we bought in France. That makes sense of our car being gone through and Sir Henry Whatsit wanting to get an option on them. Dosez le volume. . . . Bung in a cupful of water.’

  ‘Yes.’ Without complying, Molly looked at him. Her clear, brown eyes were troubled. ‘Keith, are you still in danger?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so. What happened must have been an accident, or a stupid impulse, or a foul-up. I mean, even if the guns were a danger to somebody, or especially valuable to them, I can’t see that anybody had anything
to gain by knocking me off.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Why, then?’

  Keith expected some reference to his capacity for making enemies. Molly surprised him. ‘Suppose there was something wrong with one or more of those guns. Say they were stolen, or faked, or they’d been obtained by fraud or used in a murder or something. Somebody thinks he’s got away with it. Then he finds out that you’ve bought them. What’s next?’

  ‘Eh? Oh. Remuez bien. Give it a stir. So I bought them. So what?’

  ‘So this. Keith, how often have you given evidence in cases involving guns?’

  ‘A dozen or more, I suppose.’

  ‘And about antique guns?’

  ‘Seven or eight.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Molly said. ‘You’ve even been asked to investigate cases of fraud and things, and you’ve been consulted by the police. And anybody who knows you or reads your articles can see that you get involved. You never let go. You’re the one person who’d be certain to spot whatever-it-is. What do I do next?’

  ‘Portez à ébullition. Bring to the boil. Well, I haven’t spotted whatever-it-is.’

  ‘You will,’ Molly said with quiet confidence. ‘Keith, are you going to tell the police what you find out?’

  ‘We’ll decide that when we find out anything. Are you afraid?’

  ‘Not for myself.’ Molly stood beside him and ruffled his hair. ‘I’ll only be the poor little widow who puts them straight back on the market at a fat mark-up without noticing a damn thing. But, Keith, are you safe?’

  Keith ran his hand up and down her leg while he thought about it. It felt wonderful, but his body was in no condition to respond. ‘Damned if I know,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll take precautions. When you go shopping, call in on Janet and Wallace and find out whether they gave anybody our address in France. And I’ll give you a note to pop through Ronnie’s door.’

  ‘And,’ Molly said, ‘I don’t think you should go walking round the garden. Crossbows are too easily bought. It’s boiling. What comes next?’ She pulled reluctantly away from him.