‘I’m n-not very good with people,’ Wallace said.
‘You’re trained for business,’ Keith said. He looked at Wallace, and was visited by one of those moments of human insight which, for him, were usually vis-à-vis women. ‘People aren’t difficult in a shop,’ he said. ‘They know who you are, and some of them even know what they want. They ask a few technical questions and they’re grateful to you for taking their money. And you know the rudiments of guns and fishing tackle. Hell, I thought I was going to have to take on and train some gum-chewing teenybopper!’
‘All right. If I can help.’
Keith gave a sigh of relief. ‘Are you O.K. upstairs?’ he asked. ‘Want a dog for protection?’
Wallace shook his head. ‘The flat smells as if I’ve been burning old socks,’ he said, ‘but it’s habitable. And I can’t think of a reason why anyone should come back again. But I need some time off to get the barge cleaned and dried out.’
‘You’ll have enough time, and I’ll see if I can get you some help. Janet Weatherby might give you a hand.’
Wallace turned pink and fell over his feet. Because of his extreme bashfulness, his relationships with girls had been few and unsatisfactory, confined mainly to toothy blue-stockings and, later, the hefty and rubicund daughters of canal-side farmers. Janet’s young, golden beauty had overwhelmed him and, he was sure, had reduced him to such a state of gibbering idiocy that she would surely never look at him again without laughing.
With no heed to Wallace’s incoherent mutterings, Keith opened the strong-room. He sorted through the hand-guns in his stock and decided that Munro was right. He took out the Webley and Scott and a box of ammunition and stepped back into the shop, tucking the empty pistol for the moment into the waist-band of his trousers.
The man from the insurance company looked at him coldly. ‘You can’t take stock away,’ he said.
‘It’ll come back.’
‘And it’s an offence to carry that thing around with you.’
Keith had taken enough. He nodded at the basement door. ‘You should take a look in there,’ he said with sinister emphasis.
The basement was dark and the wooden steps had floated away. The insurance man stepped into five feet of water.
Keith left Ronnie and Wallace to fish him out. In a corner of the shop was a pile of secondhand gun bags, cartridge belts and binocular cases. Keith began to turn it over. He was sure that there was a holster in there somewhere.
*
Chief Inspector Munro’s forebodings had left Keith doubtful but inclined to play safe, so he drove rather than walked up to the canal bridge. On the way he kept his eyes open and his senses alert, but there was no menace to be seen. A group of firemen were tending a pump that was emptying the Town Hall basement. Windows everywhere were open to the drying breeze, and furniture was standing in the sun. Six patient policemen in waders were picking their way slowly along the bed of the canal.
Andrew Gulliver, grey haired and immaculate as ever, was coming along the towpath. Keith got out of the car and walked to meet him, very conscious of the two pounds of revolver over his heart.
When he saw Keith, Gulliver came forward with his hand out. ‘Keith, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask after Molly, because I’ve just phoned the hospital for myself.’
Anxiety flared up in Keith. ‘There’s been no change in the last hour, has there?’
‘Nothing. If there’s anything I can do . . .’
‘You could replace that icicle down at my shop with a human being,’ Keith suggested.
Gulliver raised his eyebrows. ‘Cantley’s manner may be irritating, but he’s efficient.’
‘If he looks down his nose at me once more, I’ll take him to the cleaners.’
Gulliver looked amused. ‘You’re welcome to try,’ he said, ‘but Cantley’s no easy mark.’
‘Ask him how he got his feet wet,’ Keith suggested. ‘But I’ll be deeply grateful if he can let me clear up and get back into business.’
‘Your cover includes wilful damage, and the police report is quite specific on the point. So try not to worry, and we’ll be as quick as we can. Will it help if we release the undamaged stock almost immediately and give you clearance for a fire sale of the rest?’
‘What about the shop itself?’ Keith asked.
‘Produce three quotations, for work agreed with Cantley.’
‘Thanks. And in a hundred years I’ll get the cheque?’
‘That’s outwith my control,’ Gulliver said.
Keith grunted. ‘The bank manager’ll be asking me out to lunch again. He always does that for his three biggest overdrafts. I can stand the lunch, but the man bores me rigid. One other thing. The chap who saved the shop from burning down, he was operating the barge. He’s scared shitless that you’ll be making a claim against him. He touched the lock-gate just before it went, but he swears it was only a nudge. Can I set his mind at rest?’
Gulliver laughed for the first time, but it was a grim laugh. ‘Set it at rest,’ he said. ‘The main reason I came through was to see whether we had grounds for an action against the Canal Authority. In strict confidence?’
‘Of course.’
‘The hinge-poles were rotten through and through.’
*
To the embarrassment of the W.P.C. on duty, Keith sat for two hours at the bedside of his unconscious wife. Never would he have admitted it, but he was terrified. He took such comfort as he could from the ever-repeated statement that she was ‘holding her own’, but to see her so inert, and so bandaged that one eye and half her face were hidden, unnerved him. For most of the time he sat silent, willing her to survive and trying to project by sheer force of will some kind of comfort from his mind to hers, wherever it might be.
Suddenly he got up and went to find a public telephone. Chief Inspector Munro was still in his office. ‘Frazer’s firearms certificate,’ Keith said. ‘Was the pistol entered in a spiky handwriting or a round one?’
‘The round one,’ Munro said promptly. ‘Mrs Calder’s. And the same in your shop register.’
‘Thank you.’
He went back to Molly’s bedside.
Chapter Six
A gloomy trio assembled at the hotel before Keith arrived – Sir Peter, the considerate host, acknowledging the solemnity of the occasion by wearing his best kilt; Ronnie, rough-hewn as ever, anxious for his sister, heart-sore for his brother-in-law and determined to show nothing; and Janet who, during Lady Hay’s frequent absences, often acted as Sir Peter’s companion, amanuensis and adoptive daughter. Janet had gone especially to church to pray for Molly’s recovery, and yet a part of her mind was imagining Molly dead and Keith turning to her for comfort. These three, with Keith and Molly, formed a coterie that might hardly meet for months, yet there was a bond of common thought between them. In twos or threes or all five together they worked and played and sported as a team, and when trouble threatened any one of them there was no need to ask the others for help.
Keith’s tardiness gave Sir Peter time to marshal the others in a corner of the lounge for a brief conference. ‘We’ve got to keep his mind off Molly, or he’ll have a breakdown.’
‘He’s taking it badly?’ asked Janet.
‘Very. I never saw him look so . . . destroyed. Or anyone else.’
‘Perhaps I could distract him?’ said Janet.
Sir Peter shook his head.
‘And perhaps you couldn’t,’ said Ronnie. ‘But it might do him a power of good to clour the hell out of somebody. I could pick a quarrel with him . . .’
Sir Peter considered this seriously, but shook his head again. ‘He’ll need you more as a friend. We’ll get Hamish to act as a punch-bag if we need one. For the moment we’ll not get Keith’s mind off what’s happened, but he’ll not fret so much about Molly if we keep him thinking about who and how and why. You know how he shuts out everything else when he’s got his teeth into a problem.’
Janet and Ronnie nodded in unison
. They knew how Keith was.
‘Exactly!’ Sir Peter said briskly. ‘And, Ronnie, you’d better see that Briesland House is kept in order. If you let it turn into a slum, that sister of yours will gralloch the pair of you when she comes home.’
*
Keith had bathed his face in cold water and combed his hair, but he was still dressed for wildfowling. The waiter nearly turned him away but recognised him just in time to avoid trouble. In his present mood, Keith would have picked a fight with the devil.
Janet thought that Keith looked ten years older. Sir Peter took one look at his grey face and decided against any delay. Within two minutes he had swept his party into the dining-room annexe where he had booked the only table, had drinks served and the meal ordered. When action was needed, Sir Peter was accustomed to obtaining it.
Keith wondered why nobody asked about Molly. ‘She’s got more tubes in her than a set of the pipes,’ he said desolately, ‘and she doesn’t move at all, not an inch.’
Sir Peter broke the silence. ‘Did they say anything?’ he asked.
Keith looked through the ceiling and into space. ‘They must be hopeful,’ he said. ‘At least, they didn’t smile brightly and say that of course she was going to be all right. They spoke about the danger of this and the possibility of that, which is what they say when they think you’ve got a chance of making it.’ He noticed with surprise that there was a very large whisky in his hand, so he drank it.
Sir Peter glared compellingly at Janet and Ronnie. Janet picked up the signal. ‘I’ve been out of touch all day,’ she said. ‘Has anything more turned up about who did such a thing, or why?’
‘Mm?’ It took Keith a few seconds to pull his mind back from its restless wanderings. ‘Not a lot more than we knew this morning. The fuzz have my register for a year ago, and it shows the pistol being sold to Frazer on the 24th. In Molly’s writing. The notebook we kept for people taking guns away on appro’s missing. Munro thinks that that may be what he wanted destroyed. Maybe it’s missing because he got lucky and found it in Briesland House before he bumped into Molly, but with Sergeant Ritchie at the front door and Molly at the back it seems unlikely. Or he may have been after something quite different. As I told Munro, if he was shot with the Hammerli pistol that was found near him, then my records couldn’t matter a damn because he’d bought it himself.’
‘Can you not mind any deals in pistols about that time?’ Ronnie asked. ‘There can’t be so many small arms in a place this size.’
Keith shrugged. ‘I sell about one a month, sometimes more.’
‘That many?’
‘Yes. It’s not as many as it sounds, because the same man may buy several or he may be trading an old one in for something better. Some of them go to the staff of a security firm. I set up their guard-dog training scheme, and part of the deal was that they buy any arms from me. Some of the rest go outside the town – it’s not every dealer wants the fuss and bother that you get with the police over firearms. But there’s about twenty certificated pistol-owners in the town or close about, and I’d guess that twice as many own off-certificate pistols. And, of course, I wouldn’t know about anybody who doesn’t buy from me.’
‘I’m surprised the police allow so many,’ Sir Peter said.
Keith laughed bitterly. Back on familiar ground, he shook off his listlessness. ‘They don’t like it, but they can’t help themselves. If you’re of good repute and have a reason for owning a firearm – and that includes collecting – the law gives them no discretion at all, they must give you a certificate. They can dilly and dally and hum and haw and muck you about, and they can pretend that they have more powers than they’ve really got, but in the end, if you push it, they’ve got to give it to you.’
Sir Peter was still puzzled. ‘I thought security men were supposed to be unarmed.’
‘They are. But this firm does a lot of bodyguard work. If, say, Middle Eastern royalty is coming over for the grouse or to visit around the big houses, the police would rather have him guarded by stolid, local ex-cops than by a bunch of trigger-happy Arabs.’
Janet ducked under the waiter’s arm. ‘But do you remember?’
‘I wouldn’t have let any away on trial,’ Keith said. ‘I make customers try them out in the basement. Molly would be the one to ask. I remember Frazer collecting the Hammerli, because I’d already resold the Browning that he was trading in, and it was a relief to me when he completed the deal. I wouldn’t know what day it was except from the shop’s records.’
‘But who are all these cowboys?’ Ronnie asked. ‘Target shooters?’
‘Some. The Rifle and Pistol Club has a lot of members out here. And some have pistols for using. A couple of security guards live here for handiness, but they may be guarding bullion or bigwigs anywhere in this quarter of Scotland. The butler in one of the big houses has one, because of some valuable paintings. I can’t say much more, because most of my sales are confidential, but Mr Stevens, the manager of this hotel, makes no secret of the fact that he keeps a Colt automatic under his pillow. He bought it a year ago, after he got mugged; but he never had it on loan.’
‘Mugged?’ said Sir Peter. ‘In Newton Lauder?’
‘I think you were away then. Anyway, it was kept gey quiet.’
‘What happened?’ Janet asked.
‘It’s a good story,’ Ronnie began.
Sir Peter gave him a warning frown. ‘Let Keith tell it.’
Keith put down his knife and fork and refilled his glass from the whisky bottle that stood between himself and Ronnie. ‘About late last September or early October, wee Dougie Cruikshank–’
Sir Peter snorted. ‘That little beggar!’
‘The same. He found himself a new racket. Late at night, usually Fridays, he dressed up as a little old lady and robbed men coming home from the pubs.’
Janet forced a laugh. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him,’ she said. ‘But why the little old lady bit?’
For the first time, Keith produced the shadow of a smile. ‘Afterwards, he told me why. He could wear a hat with a veil. And it was against a man’s instincts to fight with him, dressed like that. And, for the sake of a tenner or two, nobody was going to tell the police – or his own wife – that he’d been mugged by a little old lady. His pals would laugh at him, and his wife wouldn’t believe it.’
Sir Peter smiled, while his shrewd eyes noted that Keith had relaxed as he spoke. The raconteur was taking over from the concerned husband. ‘Dougie was always enterprising. What went wrong?’
‘It worked a few times,’ Keith said. ‘Dougie wasn’t very forthcoming as to how many. He must have thought that he was onto a good thing for life. But then he went and held up Mr Stevens, who meekly handed over the hotel takings which he’d been fetching along to the night safe at the bank.’
‘He’d think it was Christmas,’ Janet said.
‘Not really. When Dougie found that he’d got his hands on about a thousand quid, he was horrified. Nobody was going to stand that sort of a loss without going to the police, who’d have put it down to him in about one minute flat. So he tried to give the money back. But by then Stevens had got up his courage and his suspicions, especially about the gun, and he tackled Dougie and fetched him into the police station. They got me out of bed to unload and examine the weapon, and I identified it as a cap-pistol. Mr Stevens didn’t think it was funny, but Sergeant Ritchie was just about rolling on the floor, he thought it was the funniest thing that ever happened.
‘They didn’t know what to charge Dougie with at first, seeing that he’d given the money back without being asked, but eventually they compromised. Dougie pleaded guilty to carrying an imitation firearm with intent to commit a felony, or something. I was called to testify that it was an imitation, which is how I came to know about it. He was let off with a fine in lieu of jail. He grumbled about it to me afterwards. It was bloody wrang, he said, that the fine cost him more than he’d made off the muggings. I think he’s gone back to pinching l
ead off roofs now. I told him that if he ever found his way up onto Briesland House roof he’d do the return journey head first and non-stop.’
Keith fell silent and seemed about to descend again into despondency.
‘Getting back to skeletons and things,’ Janet said quickly, ‘who could have wanted old Frazer dead?’
‘We don’t know that he is dead,’ Keith said. ‘It may not be his skeleton. And we don’t know that whoever-it-was was shot. A hole can happen in a skull in lots of ways. It could have happened last week, with somebody chucking something off the bridge. Time enough to wonder about it when the pathologist’s done his stuff.’ His shoulders drooped.
‘Assume that it’s Frazer,’ Sir Peter said. ‘Assume that he was shot and that the bullet’s still in the skull, and not too badly damaged. Would the barrel of the pistol be too far gone by now for them to prove that the bullet came out of it?’
‘We don’t know that the pistol’s been under water for the whole year. It could have been thrown into the canal a few days ago.’
‘Assume that it’s been in the canal for a year,’ Sir Peter persisted.
‘After being fired?’
‘Assume that too.’
‘I’d be guessing.’
‘So guess.’
Keith sighed, but he concentrated. ‘Fresh water for a year,’ he said. ‘Could be. The modern styphnate primer’s strongly anticorrosive, and the ratio of primer to powder is highest in small-bore cartridges like the two-two. If they find the bullet. That Hammerli’s chambered for the Long Rifle cartridge. The bullet could have gone right through the skull. If there ever was a bullet,’ Keith added.
The Revenge Game Page 5