‘Mr McAlistair?’ I asked.
‘That’s me.’ He was short and thickset with a round face centring on a small, black moustache. His coat and what I could see of his trousers looked expensive and much too fine for squelching around among excavations, but the effect was marred by black wellingtons and a safety helmet. ‘You’d be Sergeant Fellowes?’
I said that I was.
‘You wanted to ask me about Saturday afternoon? Go ahead, then.’ His manner was brisk and businesslike to the point of being overbearing.
‘Mr Kerr, the farmer at Miscally, was last seen in the little wood there,’ I said. ‘That would have been between three and three thirty on Saturday. By six, he had vanished without trace.’
‘Well, I can’t help you,’ he said. ‘I had to leave around five, when the action was just warming up. And I was placed well back in the woods. Never saw anybody moving around except the Guns. Hardly saw a pigeon either. That all? It’s a cunt of a day. Let’s get this over.’
‘You brought a party of five,’ I said, ‘including yourself. Who were the others?’
He glared at me, as though about to ask whether I suspected one of his guests of making away with the farmer. A moment’s thought must have convinced him that the question was reasonable. ‘Andrew Nairn was one,’ he said. Again there was that suggestion of name-dropping.
I looked the question at him.
‘Andy Nairn. Surely you’ve heard of the Edinburgh Rock?’
I wasted several seconds in trying to associate the name with the rock on which Edinburgh Castle stands. Then I made the connection. ‘Andy Nairn the rock singer?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said impatiently. ‘We’ve done some business together so I asked him along. He bought Tundle House, just over a mile from here – more for his parents than for himself, although it’s his home on the few occasions when he’s not on tour. He was at the other end of the ride you’ve just come down. The others were employees of mine.’ He waited for me to finish scribbling. Evidently he was well used to giving dictation. ‘Two of them, my surveyor and the accounts clerk, wanted to be together, so the keeper placed them in a clearing right over at the far side of the woods. They won’t have seen anything.’
‘That leaves one more,’ I said.
‘Ron Campbell,’ he said. His brash manner showed a trace of what might almost have been embarrassment. ‘He might be able to help you – he was placed somewhere over this side.’
‘Is he a large, rather silent man with a local accent?’
‘That sounds like Ron.’
‘He’s the one I most wanted to see,’ I said. ‘If I’m right, he was positioned at the edge of these woods.’
Mr McAlistair fell silent. I thought that he was waiting for me to speak and yet I waited. There was something in the air. ‘Ron’s always seemed to be a good man,’ he said suddenly. ‘In the normal way of things, he’d never harm a soul. I just hope he hasn’t done something stupid this time. I’ll tell you this. It’s better that you hear it from me than in the form of a garbled rumour.’ He fell silent again.
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘I won’t jump to conclusions.’
‘You’d better bloody not!’ he said. ‘But Ron . . . Ron used to work for Ian Kerr, partly. The way it was, the two farms, Miscally and Nuttleigh’s, they came to an agreement years ago about sharing machinery. Leased some of it from me, bought the rest on a bank loan. Ron worked for the pair of them, driving and maintaining the combine, the drier, the tractors and all the ploughs and harrows. But he came to me one day, when I was looking for a driver. He didn’t say much, but I gathered that Kerr had lost his temper over something trivial and Ron was damned if he was going to put up with it. For one thing, when Ian Kerr takes a scunner he doesn’t let go of it in a hurry. He likes a peaceful life, does Ron. He took a scunner of his own, to Kerr. Swore he’d never set foot on Miscally again.
‘So I took him on. He’s the best digger driver I’ve ever had. I’ve seen him, for a bet, toss a golf-ball out of his bucket and into a hat. In fact, I won money on him. Just over there, it was.’ McAlistair jerked his head towards the pipe-track.
The suddenness of the information almost took my breath away. ‘You mean, he’s the driver of the digging machine down there?’ I said. ‘I’d better go over and speak to him.’
The small moustache lifted in what might have been a smile or a sneer. ‘You’ll have a long walk. He’s taken his wife away to Spain on one of those cheap winter packages. He was driving the digger here until Saturday morning. They left for Gatwick on Sunday. I think he chose the date so as to miss out on Miscally.’
‘Who was his travel agent?’
‘How the hell would I know?’
‘When do you expect him back?’ I asked.
‘Not for another ten days. Kerr will surely have turned up by then. You’d much better go and speak to Andy Nairn. The keeper put him at the other end of that ride you’ve just come down.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Snow’s coming soon. Ron may have made a bad guess. If the weather holds us up on this job, we may still be on Miscally ground when he gets back. Is that the lot? I have more to do than stand around talking.’
‘One more question,’ I said. ‘Does Ron Campbell usually take away the injectors for cleaning?’
‘Often, yes. Always, if he saw black smoke at the exhaust. Very fussy about machinery is Ron. I noticed on Saturday that he’d removed them. I meant to mention it to him but I forgot; and on Sunday night I had a sudden picture in my mind of him going off to Spain with the injectors in his pocket. But I wronged him. I checked on Monday morning and they were back in place. That’s your lot.’
He turned and stumped away without giving me a chance to confirm that I had finished with him. When he began to cross the soft backfill he began to sink into the mud. He made the mistake of slowing down, became bogged and walked out of one of his wellingtons.
I climbed the slope with difficulty and walked back to the car. The clouds were darker overhead and the light was colourless, yet I felt warm. Perhaps the exercise had heated me. Or it may have been the glare that Mr McAlistair had sent in my direction when he turned and saw me watching him floundering in the mud, although I am fairly sure that I had managed to keep the smile off my face.
A few large flakes of snow were in the air by the time I reached the car, flakes so light and fluffy that they seemed to hang almost motionless. The wind had suddenly stilled and there was a hush in the air. I had intended to look for Allan Brindle and Mr Youngson, but within a minute the snow was falling as though determined to make up for a black Christmas. Within minutes, the scene was seasonable, pretty and worrying. If the snow kept up, the roads would soon be dangerous and the estate roads impassable without four-wheel drive. It was a scene to be enjoyed from behind double glazing and in front of a fire, drink in hand.
I decided to head for the office and write reports while the weather did its worst with the evidence. If Ian Kerr was still unaccounted for in the spring I would start looking for him again.
The tarmac roads were already slick. The steering felt disconcertingly light. It was as well that I kept my speed down, because after a mile or two a sudden white-out cut off all view of the outside world. I changed down and braked very lightly, slithering a little and waiting for the crunch, but came to a halt without hitting anything. The wipers began to cope again but the view through the windscreen was of a uniform whiteness. I crawled gently forward, assuring myself that there were no cliffs hereabouts and hoping for a clue as to where the verges of the road might be.
Dark shapes smudged faintly. I seemed to be safe for another yard or two. There was a gateway ahead and a small sign. I eased closer. The snow hesitated for a moment and I could read, ‘Tundle House’.
Along the road I might meet another driver, equally disoriented, coming the other way. The driveway to Tundle House seemed to be sheltered by tall conifers. If I had to wait it out, I might as well do it in the company of a possibly useful witne
ss. I pulled very gently into the driveway and crawled towards where I supposed the house must be. This soon took shape beyond a white expanse which I took to be gravel – a well-proportioned, two-storey house with crow-stepped gables. It was the middle of the day but lights were showing bright.
I got out of the car and ran and skidded to the front door. A porch kept the snow off me while I waited.
The bell was answered by an unimpressive young man in corduroys and an old sweater. ‘You’re parked on the lawn,’ he said, ‘but never mind for the moment. You’d better come inside. If you’re selling something, you’ll be out again in a moment, but we won’t stand and argue with the door open.’
He led me through a hallway and into a living room where a log fire burned, supplementing the central heating. A huge, yellow Labrador, sprawled across the hearth-rug, glanced at us disinterestedly but soon resumed a rhythmic snoring. The house and its furnishings were old-fashioned, well kept and had what I can only call a grannyish charm. Some hi-fi equipment on a corner table looked almost outlandish.
‘Did you want to phone for help?’ the young man asked.
‘I was looking for Andrew Nairn.’
‘You’ve found him. What can I do for you?’
‘You’re Andy Nairn?’ I said stupidly.
He sighed. ‘Do I have to put on the gear and makeup and grease my hair? And, by the way, I don’t give interviews.’
I had only seen him once or twice on television, and that by accident. He looked, of course, smaller in real life and his voice was educated, not the brash mid-Atlantic accent of show business. The whole image was different, but when I studied his features in isolation I could make out the wide-set eyes, the prominent cheekbones and above all the distinctive mouth which had hammered the music at an enraptured audience.
I identified myself and explained my visit.
‘You’d better give me your coat and sit down,’ he said. ‘It seems that I do give interviews after all.’
He hung my coat over a chair beside a radiator and sat down opposite me in a wing-chair covered with a printed material featuring a pattern of flowers and some improbable tropical birds.
‘You’re not my idea of a rock singer,’ I told him.
He made a face. He must have been told the same a thousand times. ‘I didn’t set out to be that. It just happens to be the only thing I do well. I’d heard about the farmer disappearing,’ he said. ‘There was something about it on the radio. I was wondering whether I should come to you before I do my own disappearing act – I go off on a European tour in a couple of days. But I don’t know that I can help.’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘No more do I. Let’s find out, shall we?’
He grinned, nodding.
The door bumped open and an elderly lady came in with a tray. Andrew Nairn was less than thirty, so I guessed that he had been a late baby – his mother must have been drawing the pension. The room came into focus. It had seemed outrageously inappropriate for a rock singer but it was the perfect setting for her faded prettiness.
‘Andy had breakfast not long ago,’ she said. ‘He’s a marvellous sleeper when he’s on holiday. But I knew he’d be ready for coffee. And sensible people are having lunch about now. I was just making a sandwich for myself so I’ve added one for you. What a day you’ve chosen for a visit!’
She nodded and smiled and left the room without waiting for an introduction.
‘My mum,’ said the singer unnecessarily.
I re-seated myself. My day had started early and I was hungry. I could not identify all the components of the sandwich, but I recognised pâté, tomato and hardboiled egg between two rounds of toast. The coffee smelled superb.
‘When you marry and leave home,’ I said, ‘can I adopt her?’
‘Not a chance,’ he said, grinning again. ‘But I’ll tell her you asked.’
My one desire was to get to grips with the sandwich without having to speak. ‘Tell me about the pigeon-shoot,’ I said.
‘Right.’ He settled down into the cushions of the chair while he thought about it. ‘Landig Plant Hire were doing some work for me here – digging tracks for new drains, the old ones were clapped out and full of tree-roots. Steve McAlistair mentioned the pigeon-shoot to me.’
‘He’s a friend of yours?’ I asked.
‘A business acquaintance,’ he said. I gathered that he had no more liking for Mr McAlistair than I had. ‘I’d missed most of last season, although I managed to get a little quail-hunting in the States, so I said that I’d like to go along for both days. We were on Nuttleigh’s for the first day but I was pleased when Steven told me that we were moving on to McKimber – I’m away so much that I can’t shoot on a regular basis, but I’ve been grabbing the occasional day there whenever Jeffries had room for an extra Gun at driven birds or for the ducks. I’ve come to like those woods.
‘I turned up early and the keeper put me where the ride leaves the estate road – you know the one I mean?’
I nodded. My mouth was full.
‘I was getting some sport but not a lot. I could hear a lot of shooting around me and I guessed that the Guns at the fringes of the woods were turning the birds back. But the laird was at the other end of the ride and he packed it in early, came past me muttering something about brass monkeys. So I moved up to the edge of the wood where he’d been. I was in time to catch the best of it late on, when the birds had made up their minds that they were going to roost somewhere, come hell or high water.’
Hastily, I swallowed the last of the sandwich and washed it down with coffee. ‘What time did you move up?’ I asked.
‘No idea. Going on for dusk.’ He got up to put another log on the fire. ‘If it’s any help,’ he said, ‘a Land-Rover was leaving the wood where I’d been placed the week before and going back over the fields towards the farm.’
‘Go on,’ I said. ‘You’re coming to the vital period. You were overlooking the little wood?’
‘That’s right. That’s where the farmer vanished from, isn’t it? There was one more shot from there after I arrived. I could see the flash illuminating the treetops but I couldn’t see a bird fall.
‘I stayed quite late. My night vision’s good and there was enough light in the sky to silhouette the birds. Somebody else was banging away to the north of me. I stayed for about an hour and then decided to jack it in. We’d picked up more than forty pigeon—’
‘We?’ I said quickly.
‘Bess, my old Lab, and me,’ he said. The Labrador bitch had woken again and she thumped her tail. ‘We walked home after that. If it helps to fix the time, I could see what I took to be the same Land-Rover coming back down the fields.’
I tried not to frown. He had covered most of what I took to be the salient period, but without telling me what I wanted to hear. ‘You didn’t see or hear anybody moving around?’
‘Not a damn thing – and, as I told you, my night vision’s pretty good. And Bess always warns me if somebody’s moving nearby.’ He stopped and thought, nursing his coffee. ‘What’s more,’ he said suddenly, ‘if anybody had come in my direction I’d have heard them. When you’re shooting in near darkness you listen as much as you watch. I was near enough to the fence to hear it twang if somebody had climbed it; and frozen beech leaves make a hell of a noise as you walk through them.’
I led him through his story again without learning any more.
While we were speaking, the snowfall had almost stopped, although from the look of the sky there was more to come. My car was little more than a hump in the featureless white, but Andrew Nairn lent me a spade and a scraper and in about a quarter of an hour, wet and chilled through, I had the engine running and the windscreen clear and was back on the drive. Andrew Nairn had wanted to lend me a change of clothing, but in every direction he was several inches smaller than I was and I was damned if I was going to be a laughing-stock at Headquarters. The roads were treacherous but, taking it easy and refusing to come to a halt for anybody or anything
, I made it back to Newton Lauder.
There was not much left of the working day. Rather than go home to change, I settled down in my small office, removed my wet shoes and sat on the radiator with my feet tucked up against its heat while I dictated a fresh report into a tape recorder. My report would later be typed up by a blind pool typist who usually managed to produce pages of beautiful typescript from my sometimes garbled ramblings, although now and again she would start off one key to the left or right of where she intended and produce a paragraph of gobbledegook.
I was replaying the tape and wondering whether I would be more likely to bring down the wrath of the unpredictable Superintendent McHarg on my head if I did or did not add a few lines of speculation to the factual report when Mr Munro wandered in on one of his occasional aimless prowls through the building. I got up off the radiator.
‘Sit down, sit down,’ he said kindly, folding his skinny body, which always seemed to me to be a lashup of sticks and string, into the visitor’s chair. It seemed to be one of his days for being a father-figure. He looked disapprovingly at the partially draped lady on my wall calendar and then averted his eyes. ‘I suppose the man Kerr has not yet come back from whatever excesses he’s been committing?’
My position on the radiator would have seemed an uneasy compromise between informality and remaining standing before a superior. Reluctantly, I went back to my cold chair. My feet immediately froze again.
‘There’s no sign of him,’ I said. ‘And no explanation for how he managed to disappear.’
Mr Munro was not interested in the absence of Ian Kerr, who he could picture in his disapproving, Calvinistic mind making whoopee with loose women and booze in whatever vision of a low dive such minds conjure up. ‘This has been longer than his usual run of absences but I still think that he’ll turn up,’ he said. ‘Have you made any more progress with this poaching affair?’
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