Keith felt the tiny feet of a hunch run up his spine. Until that moment, he had been sure that Dougie’s note was a distraction, intended to take the pressure off Dougie himself. But he had checked his own diary, to see whether any appointments made for that day might jog his recollection. The round dot that signified the new moon, which means no moon at all, stood out in his memory. Jock had been out with the long net on the night George Frazer died.
‘You’d need plenty of bunnies,’ Keith said, ‘before it was worth going to all the trouble of the long net.’
Jock nodded. ‘Only field wi’ plenty was at the back o’ the canal buildings.’
‘Tell me all about it,’ Keith said.
‘There was nowt to tell. Naethin’ happened.’
‘Can’t you remember?’
Jock bristled at the slight on his powers of memory. ‘I mind fine,’ he said stiffly. ‘’Snot worth using the long net much, since the mixy, so I mind a good nicht wi’t. Want to ken how often I scratched my bum?’
‘If it’ll make you feel better. At least tell me everything you remember seeing and hearing.’
Jock got up and took the radio receiver out of his bag. He walked round the area and came back. ‘She’s deep,’ he said. ‘Well, we got the nicht we were needing, black as tar wi’ clouds hiding the stars but high enough not to reflect the lights o’ the town. The doors o’ the canal shed were open and the lights spilling out, but they only fell on the hump o’er the road. I looked intil the shed. See, I’d no business being in that field. But there was only two chiels popping at targets.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Didn’t see. Didn’t care, long as they stayed put. We could hear them popping away until we was almost done. That’s why doors was open both ends, to let the smoke out, an’ there was plenty smoke because yin o’ them was using gunpowder.’
‘Are you sure?’ Keith asked.
‘Course I’m sure,’ Jock said indignantly. ‘Think I never had a muzzle-loader? You ken how the smoke an’ smell o’ black powder hangs in the air. Smelled it an’ saw it. I mind thinking it odd, ’cause both were firing six-shot pistols. I could tell by the din, about twal’ shots together, twa different calibres, an’ then a wee wait while they reloaded an’ changed targets. The mappies must ha’ been gey used to it, for they were no’ feared at a’.’
‘Well, the net went out grand. I’d made my nephew practise wi’ me in daylight. He pressed the stakes in, an’ I draped the net, an’ we went the whole length o’ the hump where the claps are. He was wanting to do the chasing, so I byded by the end o’ the net while he walked round the field an’ came back wiggle-waggle, just shooglin’ a boxie o’ matches. An’ in a wee while I felt the rabbits begin to hit the net.’
Ronnie had a long net stored in his outhouse, so Keith knew how much an alert man would hear during the wait. ‘Were they still shooting?’ he asked.
‘The last of the shots was just about when the first o’ the mappies hit the net. I’d naething to do but listen, an’ stand wi’ my hand on the top cord. There was a drunk came along the canal-bank, gey fou, shouting and swearing, an’ he must’ve fell, because he let out a great roar. I mind he was quiet after that.’
‘And that’s when you heard the last of the shots?’
‘Aye.’ Jock opened his mouth to say more, but clamped it shut again.
Keith knew the signs. ‘Was there something odd?’ he asked.
‘Not to say odd. Just that up ’til then I’d been sure there was just the twa men, but I mind now that the last three shots came so quick I jaloused another must ha’ joined them. First to last, quicker’n a man could pull the trigger twice, even on an automatic. An’ dinna’ gowk at me as if I’m dottled,’ Jock said querulously. ‘I ken what I’m at. In the army, last war, I was. North Africa an’ Italy. An’ I’m saying those shots were quick as a Spandau, not even slow as a Bren.’
‘I believe you,’ Keith said placatingly. ‘But are you sure that all three were shots? Could one of them have been made by a plank somebody’d knocked down, slapping on the floor? Something like that?’
Jock scratched his ear. ‘It’s a year past, now,’ he said, ‘and you’ve got me doubtsome. Tell you, Keith, I’m not minding what happened. No. What I’m minding’s what I thought at the time. An’ I mind thinking there was three shots, three different calibres, an’ aa three was different from they’d been afore. But just what way I dinna’ mind.’
Keith thought it over. The men had been shooting against a metal plate. It seemed very probable that Jock had been listening while George Frazer was killed. ‘Did they sound muffled? Less of an echo?’ Keith asked.
‘Something like that, maybe.’
‘All three of them?’
‘Aye.’
‘But,’ Keith said carefully, ‘if a new gun was added to the two you’d been hearing, how did it sound compared to the others?’
‘You dinna’ want muckle,’ Jock grumbled.
‘Yes, I do. Now, Jock, think and try to remember.’
Jock sighed. ‘Well . . . it was . . .’ He screwed up his face and shut his eyes. ‘It was . . . definitely . . .’ He put his fingers in his ears. ‘Bang-bang,’ he said. ‘Bang-bang-bang. Aye. It was the sharpest o’ the three.’ He opened his eyes and unplugged his ears.
‘The smallest calibre?’
‘I think so. Aye. But after all this time, it’s no more’n a guess.’
‘Never mind,’ Keith said. ‘What happened after that?’
‘We were busy, an’ I’d not time to listen. We took thirty-odd rabbits. Then we’d the net to pick up, the gear to gather. And we’d it all to hump along to the brig where my van was. I mind . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Och, naething ony use. Just . . . later, as we reached the van, there was a mannie oaring a wee boat along the canal. I heard the thowpins, an’ the drip o’ the water.’
‘And that’s the lot?’ Keith asked.
‘Aye. I told you naethin’ happened. There was anither chiel, throwing stanes in the canal. Yon drunk, like as no.’
‘Very likely,’ Keith said.
A polecat jill showed her face at the nearest hole and came out blinking into the daylight. Jock gathered her up, removed the bleeper on its tiny collar and slipped her into a bag. ‘Will you like twa o’ they rabbits?’ he asked. ‘You helped me more nor I helped you.’
‘I’d be grateful,’ Keith said.
*
Sir Peter’s other Land Rover drove into the square and parked. Keith turned back from the shop door.
Because Tweedledum and Tweedledee were similar in build and were usually seen together, Keith usually thought of them as if they were identical twins. Seeing them now, he remembered that their resemblance was superficial. Tweedledum, who got out of the Land Rover and clumped purposefully into the tobacconist’s shop, was slightly the taller with a ginger touch to his hair. His face was bovine, and Keith knew him by reputation as a tranquil man except when following the Hibernian football team, otherwise interested in little but his beer and the local girls.
Tweedledee, in the Land Rover’s driving seat, was older and his brown curls had a sheen of grey. Like his friend, he was big-boned and corpulent. He was an occasional customer at the shop; and Keith had found him gruff but knowledgeable. Because of his interest in guns and ballistics, Keith thought, Tweedledee had been as close to a friend as George Frazer was capable of having.
On sudden impulse, Keith approached the Land Rover and rapped on the window. The driver’s side of the vehicle showed a number of dents, as was to be expected from its use around the forestry tracks; it might have been used to push Keith’s car off the road, or it might not.
‘Yes?’ Tweedledee opened the door and turned in the seat.
‘Are you still loading vintage cartridges?’ Keith asked.
The man’s small eyes glinted. ‘What’s that to you?’ he demanded.
‘Not a damn thing,’ Keith said patiently. ‘I don�
��t give a yak’s turd what you load, myself. But one of my customers has picked up a Tranter revolver and he’d like to try it out. You used to do some loading with George Frazer, and you bought some black powder a few months ago. But if you’ve given it up, forget it.’
The curiosity of the enthusiast fought with Tweedledee’s waspish caution, and came out on top. ‘Does he have any cartridges?’
‘A few spent, and one unfired.’
Tweedledee grunted unpleasantly. ‘Send him along,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do for him.’
Keith nodded and walked away.
Chapter Fourteen
The rest of the day was spent in a turmoil of sorting out, pricing, labelling and arranging, and next morning the shop reopened in its temporary premises of the upstairs flat. After a brief flurry of bargain-hunters, things went quiet. The new system, established by Wallace, worked well; and Ronnie and a subdued Janet were coping.
Keith’s most urgent need was to get his stock of used guns back on the market while the season was still young. Cantley, the insurance adjuster, had released several guns for repair, so Keith removed them and himself to Briesland House, settled down at the workbench among his antique guns, and set to work.
By the following morning, he was showing progress. The five guns were dismantled and the stocks were stripped of old finish, the chequering touched up, dents and scratches raised or filled, scorch marks bleached out and the walnut sanded and burnished.
Keith felt the need for fresh air and exercise before tackling the next phase of the work. He took Sir Peter’s two Labradors for a rapid cross-country march half-way to the town and back again.
When he returned, Jessie Donald was lying in wait for him in the hall, in the hope of substituting a good gossip for the arduous business of housework. She had overcome both her fear of the dogs and her nervousness of Keith, who would cheerfully have been shot of her but for the time that she saved him on the domestic chores. She was a stocky female with brassy hair and a figure which she probably considered opulent but which Keith thought of as unhealthily fat. He also thought that Ronnie had dealt justly with her white and uneven complexion when he had compared it to the skin on a rice pudding. She had a pointed nose and small, pink-rimmed eyes like those of Jock Sparrow’s ferrets, made larger by excessive make up. Despite the unattractiveness of the composite picture she preened herself constantly. Keith thought that she had an exaggerated notion of her own sexual power. He also thought that he could well believe that there was French lace under the cheap nylon dress.
‘Will you be wanting lunch?’
‘Just a snack,’ Keith said. ‘Anything’ll do. Within reason,’ he added cautiously. Some of her culinary efforts had been startling. He tried to slip past her.
She forestalled him with a neat side-step. ‘And how’s Mrs Calder?’
‘Mending very slowly.’ Keith tried pretending not to see her and walking straight ahead.
She stood her ground. ‘When’ll she be coming home? Just so that I can have the house spick and span for her.’
‘Have it spick and span for me,’ Keith said. ‘Then you won’t have to make a special effort when Molly’s coming home.’ He pushed forward, but recoiled when Mrs Donald made it clear that she had no objection to being bumped against. On impulse, and more to avert further chatter than to elicit information, he said, ‘There’s something you might know. Who was it, up at the canal, who bought a knife with a deer’s-foot handle from my shop?’
‘It was . . .’ She paused. Neither her face nor her voice changed, but there was a flicker of guile in her small eyes. ‘It was passed around,’ she said. ‘I’m sure I don’t know who it ended up with. Was that the knife your missis was done with?’
‘Never mind that,’ Keith said. ‘If you’ve got any thoughts about it you’d better forget them. Just tell me who bought it and who ended up with it.’
‘I bet it was,’ she said. ‘And you don’t know . . .’
‘You’d better tell me.’
‘What’s it worth?’
‘The police won’t pay you anything. You’d be better telling me now than having them shake it out of you later.’
‘I don’t know nothing,’ she said. She spun away from him and headed for the kitchen. Keith thought that she had spoken the literal and grammatical truth. He nearly went after her but decided to leave well enough alone. A little stirring by Mrs Donald might be just what the pot needed.
*
Sod’s Law being as we know it, Keith was just beginning to palm his hot linseed oil, mixed with driers and turpentine and sundry secret ingredients of his own, onto his gunstocks when the telephone began to ring. Interposing a cloth, Keith picked up the receiver of the extension phone and laid it on a shelf where, he knew from experience, he could both hear and speak without handling it. He dealt with an anxious query from Ronnie about the price of cartridges and laid a block on the cradle to break the connection.
Two minutes later the phone rang again. Keith lifted the block. Wallace was calling. Keith rubbed oil into the lovely wood while he listened.
‘I’ll b-be on the way back this afternoon,’ Wallace said. ‘I got what we want.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Glasgow.’
‘I thought you were heading for Inverness.’
‘I was. Then I thought it was a hell of a long way to go without finding out whether my old friend who owes me several big favours was still there, and whether he remembered me, and whether, remembering me and my favours, he was prepared to give me access to the computer terminal in the Caledonian sub-office. Most of the accounts are stored on the computer in London. I phoned from Edinburgh, and heard that he’d taken over my old job in Glasgow.’
‘And did he let you use the terminal?’
‘L – let’s just say that he turned a blind eye,’ Wallace said. ‘By the grace of God the manager and his clerk are away, supposed to be doing an inspection of the Union, but actually at Lanark races. My pal sent the office girl on an errand to Crinan or somewhere, and went for a walk every time I wanted to use the computer. Keith, we’d better make this stick or my pal’s head will be in a sling when the bill for computer-time comes in, because I got print-outs of several hundredweight of back accounts. I’m not sure your car’ll carry it all.’
The problems to be faced by Wallace’s pal when the account came in were of no great interest to Keith. ‘Did you find evidence of fraud?’ he asked.
‘Loads, and I probably haven’t found the tenth part of it yet. But it won’t be conclusive until I see the papers in the canal shed. Could we get in there after dark, d’you think?’
Keith had promised himself that he was going to stay strictly within the law. ‘Don’t you have enough for Munro to move on?’
‘Let me spell it out for you,’ Wallace said, ‘in words of one syllable or less. What I’ve got here is a heap of lies, but it’s been edited by a skilled hand and there are very few discrepancies inside the material itself. It just doesn’t agree with what’s on the ground in Newton Lauder. If the records in the shed show discrepancies, Munro could move. Otherwise, it’ll be a matter of comparing accounts with work done around the canal, which could take months. And there’s a new urgency.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I phoned J-janet first. She’s had a wire from her parents. Her mum’s slipped a disc again, so they’re coming back in easy stages. “Probably with you Thursday,” it said.’
The movement of Keith’s hands ceased and he stared at the Jezail that hung on the wall beside his bench. ‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘we’ll take a look tonight.’
‘There are one or two things worth checking up on in advance,’ Wallace said. He spoke on for about ten minutes while Keith rubbed and rubbed with his palms, forcing the warm oil into the wood.
*
When Wallace’s call was finished Keith broke the connection and then, with a pencil, dialled Jacinthe Matheson’s number. By the time her sleep
y voice answered, his hands were at work again.
‘Cin?’ Keith said. ‘I didn’t get you out of bed, did I?’
‘No.’
‘It’s early for you to be up.’
‘I’m still in bed, you great gowk.’
‘I want to talk to you.’
‘Come over and join me.’
Keith suppressed the vision of Jacinthe in a warm bed. ‘I want you to use your memory,’ he said. ‘Lie back and relax.’
‘You’re always telling a girl to lie back and relax.’
‘And you never objected before. Listen, this really is very important. You told me that last time you saw George Frazer he kept repeating three letters. Like A.B.C., you said. Now, think back. Was that the right order?’
‘Order? For God’s sake, Keith . . .’
‘Would . . . would A.C.B. ring a bell?’
There was a pause. The line hummed. Keith rubbed. ‘Nearer, but the first letter’s still not right,’ she said.
‘Hang onto C.B.,’ Keith told her. ‘Go through the alphabet in your mind, remembering his voice and–’
‘J!’ she said. ‘That’s it. J.C.B. I remember he pronounced it Jy, the Scottish way, not Jay. He said Jy C.B.’
‘That’s what I wanted to know,’ Keith said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Come and thank me in person. I’ll wait right here.’
‘My hands are all oily.’
‘Oo, lovely! I’ll expect you, then.’ She murmured on, suggesting practices which were as delightful as they were unusual.
The movement of Keith’s hands on the rounded wood became a sensuous caress. He pulled himself together. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I’d love to, but I can’t. I’ll send Ronnie up if you’re lonely, he’s a great admirer of yours.’
‘Well, I’m not a great admirer of his. Keith, am I getting old and ugly or something?’
The Revenge Game Page 16