Ronnie materialised out of the shadows. He had an advantage of six inches over the constable and almost as many stone; and in addition he was very ugly. ‘I was driving,’ he said in a gust of whisky fumes.
The constable swallowed audibly. ‘That’s all right then, sir,’ he said.
*
Exhausted by emotion, whisky and a long, long day, Keith slept like the dead; yet throughout the night he was aware of Molly’s absence, and when he awoke soon after dawn the empty half of the bed was a disappointment rather than a shock. His head was quite clear. He had never been subject to hangovers.
In an armchair by the window Ronnie was snoring, a shotgun across his knees. When Keith started moving around, Ronnie snuffled and snorted and opened one eye. ‘I put all our ducks in your freezer,’ he said, and the eye closed again.
Keith looked with qualified affection at his unshaven and unlovely form, and went downstairs to telephone the hospital.
Chapter Seven
Keith spent the first hour of the working day up at the hospital.
The house surgeon tried to balance his words between too gloomy and too optimistic a forecast. ‘Things are better,’ he said. ‘She’s very weak, but if the bleeding doesn’t start again she should have a good chance. There are signs of consciousness returning. She’s opening her eyes occasionally, but not taking anything in yet.’
‘Can I go in and see her?’
‘Yes.’ The doctor hesitated. ‘You appreciate that we may expect some memory loss?’
‘Permanent?’
‘That depends whether it stems from traumatic shock or from physical damage. But probably temporary.’
‘Well, thank God for that,’ Keith said, his spirits rising.
‘You must remember that “temporary” can be a long time.’ (Keith’s spirits fell again). ‘If she comes round, and if her memory isn’t complete, don’t force it. I’ve warned the police not to press her for a statement until she’s ready to remember.’
A stout constable was sitting uncomfortably just inside the door of Molly’s room. He gave Keith one incurious look and went back to his fishing magazine.
‘Shouldn’t you ask me who I am?’ Keith said.
The constable grinned. ‘I might have had to, if I hadn’t been buying tackle off you for years. You sold me a new trout-rod last week.’
‘I didn’t recognise you without your Glengarry,’ Keith said apologetically.
‘You’re the only outsider allowed in without a personal say-so from the chief inspector, and any medical staff I don’t know have to be vouched for.’
Keith sat down at Molly’s bedside and took her hand. ‘The vet says Tanya’s going to make it,’ he said softly. ‘So now what about a little effort from you?’
Molly opened her one unbandaged eye. It was darker than Keith remembered, and more luminous. It studied the ceiling. Her face looked older and thinner, and Keith thought that she might turn from a pretty girl into a lovely woman. He hoped that she would live for them both to enjoy it.
*
Keith met Ronnie on the pavement outside the shop, and they climbed the stairs together.
The flat, where Keith and Molly had once lived, now resembled a junk shop in a poor way of business, with some of the original furniture, some abandoned by the intervening tenant, and much of the contents of Merganser’s cabin salvaged and drying. Wallace and Janet were sharing a pot of coffee, and were joined in conversation which, for Janet, was rather subdued, but for Wallace was remarkably animated.
‘I suppose you want coffee,’ Janet said.
‘You’re going to make somebody a rotten hostess,’ Keith retorted. ‘We’ll take a quick cup, then we’ll get down to it.’
They found seats somewhere among the disorder. Keith reported briefly on Molly’s progress, and there was agreement that any kind of improvement was a sign of recovery to come. But this was said too loudly and too often.
‘Did you get us a daily?’ Keith asked Ronnie.
‘I got the fat one with the red hair. Well, they both got red hair, but this one’s is real . . . I think. Anyway, it’s the one with skin like a rice pudding. Jessie Donald. She’s out there now. I took her out, but she’ll be able to get lifted there most mornings as long as one of us fetches her back at lunch-time, and she’ll leave us a meal in the oven.’
‘How much?’
‘Who cares?’ Ronnie said. ‘Just as long as we don’t have to go on doing it all.’
‘Did you pump her for information?’ Janet asked.
‘Pump her?’ Ronnie repeated. ‘I couldn’t stop her talking, the blatherskite. Nothing useful, mind, like where all the money comes from or when they’re next going out to poach. But an awful lot about which woman’s a bad housekeeper, who sleeps with who–’
‘And where they go their summer holidays?’ Keith put in.
‘I tried that. They aye put the kids to camp and pile into two cars and two caravans, and away they go for three weeks or more. But when I asked her where she went, she shut her big gub. She mumbled something about having a sister in Dunoon, which may be true enough. But she goes off with the others. And Jimmie Foster, who hires them one of the vans, says he’s found foreign coins and the like after getting it back.’
‘Did she say nothing about Frazer?’
‘Not a word. Except she said she wasn’t interested in the likes of him. I gather she’s hoping to marry Jock McSween, but she’s open to a better offer.’
‘Did you make her one?’
‘He couldn’t,’ said Janet.
‘I can match anything yon McSween’s got,’ Ronnie said indignantly. ‘Anything at all.’
Janet would have pursued that subject, while Keith wanted to get back to Mrs Donald and the denizens of Canal Cottages, but they were interrupted by the telephone. Munro’s sergeant, on behalf of the chief inspector, invited Keith to call at the police station for an urgent chat.
‘I’ll have to go,’ Keith said reluctantly. ‘You folk finish the first sort-out downstairs and you can go and get on with your drying-out and painting-up and whatever.’
‘I’d like to be thinking out a new system of ordering for you,’ Wallace said. ‘A fire was just what the shop needed to clear out some of the over-stocking.’
‘Most things are cheaper in quantity.’
‘Not if you end up stuck with them for the next ten years they’re not,’ Wallace said.
‘Think out what you like. We’ll talk about it.’
Keith got half-way to the door.
‘Sir Peter wants to know if you can come to the grouse, Saturday,’ Ronnie said.
‘Apologise for me. I’m too busy.’ Keith made his escape.
‘He’s not the man he was,’ Ronnie said. ‘I mind the February he had the ’flu and a carbuncle, and one of his teeth was giving him hell, but he was out on the foreshore after the geese just the same.’
*
Keith was surprised to find Munro alone in his large, barren room, for policemen abhor the lack of witnesses. Glancing around, Keith thought that the chief inspector was beginning to strive for membership of the human race. The room was still institutional and soulless, but a bunch of escallonia stood in a cheap vase, and a calendar with a print of a Dutch landscape had been hung on the wall.
Despite these signs which, for Munro, were almost frivolous, Keith thought that the chief inspector looked more than ever like a disgruntled camel, but with the added burden of a guilty secret. He whisked Keith into the room, almost pushed him into a chair and seemed to listen for a second at the corridor before closing the door and plunging into his subject without any of the preliminaries which the Highlander finds necessary.
‘The dental charts confirm that the skeleton was Frazer’s,’ he said, dropping tiredly into his chair. ‘The pathologist says that he was almost certainly shot, although he cannot say that that was the cause of death. It seems that the bullet went in through his mouth, breaking two of the teeth, and came out the back of h
is neck.’
‘Could he make a guess as to the calibre of the bullet?’ Keith asked.
‘If it was a bullet, it was deformed and deflected by the teeth before it reached the bones of the skull.’
‘And no indication as to range or velocity?’
‘None at all,’ Munro said sadly.
Munro seemed to be hesitating, so Keith filled the gap. ‘You’ve got a murder case on your hands then?’
‘It’s being treated as such.’
That was not what Keith wanted to know. ‘You’re handling it yourself?’ he asked.
Two dull red splodges showed on Munro’s cheeks and he lowered his voice. ‘They have sent down a detective superintendent from Edinburgh to take charge, with his own team. I am supposed to be what they call liaising with them, which seems to mean answering questions, lending men and organising facilities.’
‘Liaison seems to be a one-way traffic,’ Keith suggested.
‘It is that. The superintendent’s name is Blackhouse,’ Munro added.
‘You don’t like him?’ This was a fair guess on Keith’s part from the relish with which Munro had uttered the name. The ‘black hoose’ was a Highland dwelling with the fire in the middle of the earth floor and a hole in the thatch for the escape of smoke; and any suggested connection with one was taken by any Hebridean as a dire insult.
‘Liking is neither here nor there,’ Munro said, ‘but the man was not interested to hear any of the theories which I had been building up about the case.’
‘I’d be –’
‘And,’ Munro swept on indignantly, ‘he has seen fit to criticise my handling of the case, and my running of this station.’
‘Can your own super not stand up for you?’
‘Och, Mr Mackie’s just on the verge of his retirement. He’ll not be wanting to bother himself, he’s too busy with roses and cauliflowers.’ Munro sighed deeply. ‘No, I must soldier on as best I can. Meantime, this Superintendent Blackhouse has taken over all the evidence–’
‘When do I get my catalogues and price lists back?’ Keith asked.
‘– and all the investigation. He has even made excuses to keep me out of his Murder Room. But he has made himself very disliked, or I’d not know as much as I do, even. I should not be telling you this,’ Munro added.
‘It’s just between ourselves.’
‘I’m told,’ Munro said, as if the words were being dragged out of him, ‘that Mr Blackhouse is convinced that Frazer was never seen alive after August 20th, the day he spoke on the telephone to his head office. That, of course, would make your registration of the pistol to him fraudulent. And folks have been talking to him. About Frazer in his cups, fighting over women. And about you doing the same thing. I know –’ Munro held up his hand for silence ‘– that you’re a married man now. Maybe I know it a bittie better than you do, but all the same I’ve not known you get in girl-trouble since you were married Blackhouse only knows what he’s told, and you can see for yourself the directions in which he may be led.’
‘I can indeed,’ Keith said slowly. ‘Thank you.’
‘And this conversation never took place.’
‘I have forgotten what you said, but it took a great deal of integrity to make you say it.’ Keith tried to express respect and affection in a sad smile. ‘Will I be seeing you again?’
‘If we have to meet again,’ Munro almost whispered, ‘it would be better away from here.’
In the corridor, Keith paused for thought. Was the nice Chief Inspector Munro as sincere as he sounded, or was the slippery bastard pulling a fast one? Time might tell.
Keith was roused from his reverie by the sound of someone fumbling at a glass door which, he knew, led from the police garage. A woman police constable was hugging a cardboard carton and struggling with the door.
Keith would have left a male constable to struggle, but the W.P.C. was young and fair-haired and had very pretty legs. Keith opened the door and held it.
She came through, smiling. ‘I never wanted to be all that equal anyway,’ she said.
From long habit, Keith was about to make some mildly flirtatious remark. But as he looked down at the swelling blue shirt he was also looking down into the cardboard carton. It held a number of pistols, and despite their muddied and rusty condition Keith had no difficulty in recognising a Walther P38, a Spanish Star and – he blinked in disbelief – the ring trigger and shrouded cylinder of a Whitney-Beals revolver of about 1855. There was a scattering of loose ammunition.
‘Did those come out of the canal?’ he asked.
The W.P.C. hesitated and then walked on. ‘I wondered for a moment what you were talking about,’ she said over her shoulder, with a nervous laugh.
Keith walked out into the sunshine. He crossed the square to his car and leaned on the roof while he cogitated. Suddenly he said a very rude word. He said it loudly, and a passing lady looked at him angrily. Keith kicked the wing of his car, producing a shower of red dust, and went into the shop.
*
The working party had brought the shop as close to an ordered state as was possible in the circumstances and had left to pursue their own business, but the insurance man, Cantley, his spectacles gleaming under the electric lights, was lying in wait for Keith. They spent a long, reluctant hour together, making rival lists which failed to correspond. Keith’s manner was open and amicable; Cantley’s was suspicious and patronising, and he made no secret of the fact that, as far as he was concerned, the settlement figure was going to be the lowest that could possibly be considered equitable. They finished as soon as they could and parted with relief.
Keith took lunch in the public bar of the hotel, continuing his ruminations as he ate and avoiding being drawn into conversations. Then he drove out past the Town Hall.
The Indian summer was holding, producing better weather than they had known for most of the year. Ronnie’s cottage, like many others, stood open-windowed with chimneys smoking and the garden littered with soft furnishings turned to the sun.
Keith crested the canal bridge and in a few more yards turned off to his right to bump along a pot-holed tarmac road between the market garden and the gorse-spattered hillock that hid the fields where the last of the harvest was being combined. The uncompromising, stone-built shed of the Canal Authority loomed up, dwarfing the house in the foreground where George Frazer had once lived. The shed’s big doors were open, and Keith drove straight inside.
The man known as Smiler turned away from a giant lock-gate that stood against the wall and came to meet Keith. He was a stocky figure in blue overalls. His most obvious feature was the fixed smile on his round face. This should have given him a benevolent look, but there was a suggestion of the diabolic in the prominence of his canine teeth and in two curls of hair that turned up like horns above each temple. So, Keith thought, Pan might have looked if he had put on a little weight.
‘I’m looking for help,’ Keith said. ‘My M.O.T. runs out in a couple of days and one of my wings is hanging off. The garage is out of gas, and my workshop’s been burned out. Can you do a welding job for me?’
Smiler beamed at him. ‘I expect so. It’s a fiddly job, though. It’ll cost you.’
Keith raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve lost my shop,’ he said. ‘I can’t do without the car as well.’
Smiler’s grin diminished by half a whisker. ‘I was sorry to hear it. How’s your wife doing?’
Keith hesitated. ‘It’s not good at all.’ He looked around the shed. ‘I thought you’d be going like Princes Street Station, mending the canal.’
The grin came back, wider than ever. ‘We’ve costed the repairs. Now we’ve to wait for the highheidyins to give the go-ahead. I was just marking-off timber to adapt this gate. Well, let’s have a keek at your trouble.’
A man welding is blind, deaf and immobilised. As soon as Smiler had wheeled out his welding-trolley and set to work, Keith began to study his surroundings, drifting, apparently aimlessly, down the shed.
/> This contained an astonishing accumulation of materials and machinery, but despite obvious pressure for space a clear alleyway had been kept along one wall. Keith followed it along past the dredger-cum-reedcutter high on its blocks to the other big doors at the canal end of the shed. Keith manoeuvred round a heavy, inverted dinghy. Here, at the open doors, the towpath was broken by a slipway and by a deep slot which, Keith guessed, would enable whole lock-gates to be floated in and under the overhead gantry. Standing at the door, Keith could see the roofs of houses beyond the further towpath. Two hundred yards away along the empty canal he could see Merganser. Janet was moving around the deck in a bikini. Keith wondered how Wallace was surviving, exposed suddenly to so much innocent young girlhood.
At the end of the alleyway, Keith found that a large sheet of steel plate had been set up, leaning out from the wall over a bed of sand behind a framework designed to hold targets. One or more of the locals had set up a very useful little shooting gallery. Keith felt the weight of the Webley and Scott under his armpit. He was tempted to try a few shots, but refrained. The shop’s basement would be more suitable, if the fire brigade ever pumped it out. He ran his fingers through the sand.
Keith browsed among the machines and the balks of timber until he came to a pair of enclosed cubicles. The first was a fitter’s workshop, interesting to Keith but not significant. The second, Keith saw, was an office. He glanced at Smiler, who was still engrossed in his welding, and slipped inside. Quickly, Keith began thumbing through a shelf of spiked accounts.
Some minutes later, the intermittent hissing of the welding torch snapped off. Keith nearly missed the signal in his absorption, but he had time to close a file of daywork sheets and to step back from the desk before Smiler appeared in the doorway behind him. The grin was still in place, but Smiler’s eyes were cold.
‘You’ve no business to be in here.’
‘I was enjoying your calendar.’ Keith nodded to a large colour picture of a young lady who, for her own reasons, had begun to undress in open countryside and had then abandoned the effort while somewhere between clothed decency and wanton beauty.
The Revenge Game Page 7