Home to Roost

by Gerald Hammond

  Dawn was close. The moon was still up but its light was paling in the new day. Beyond the jeep, a police Range Rover was waiting. A figure leaned out and beckoned. It was Mr Munro. I swallowed my sandwich and took one of the back seats. Deborah leaned into the jeep and started its engine.

  ‘Mr McHarg wants me to set up an incident room,’ Munro said. ‘You know the geography. Would the big house be the place? Or is there an empty cottage?’

  I answered the second question first. ‘Not as far as I know. And if there is, it wouldn’t have electricity and a telephone. The big house would be the place. Huge rooms, half of them not in use. But there’s a snag. You’d need the laird’s agreement.’

  ‘I am aware that Superintendent McHarg has his suspicions about Mr Youngson. But Mr Youngson is not yet aware of that.’

  ‘How—?’ I bit off the question.

  Chief Superintendent Munro could produce a very complacent smile on occasions and this was one of his best. ‘Others can receive Channel Eight,’ he said. ‘What have you done with the man Wright?’

  ‘He’s inside in the care of the keeper.’

  ‘We’ll take him over until Mr McHarg arrives.’ Mr Munro’s proper function in the investigation would be solely to supply administrative and manpower support, but I could see that he intended to take more than a peripheral interest. ‘I have been asked to provide every man who can be spared, for a search of the woods.’

  It was not for me to comment. I held my peace.

  Mr Munro nodded as though I had expressed my doubts. ‘You agree then? A complete waste of time. All that he’ll do is to obliterate the more recent tracks,’ Mr Munro said cheerfully. ‘And he called me an old fool!’

  ‘He hasn’t seen the ground yet,’ I said, out of a dwindling sense of loyalty.

  ‘And when he has, his pride will not allow him to admit that he was wrong. Off you go, then. See Mrs Kerr. Then report to me. I want to be sure that you’re fit for duty. Your injury,’ he added in explanation.

  A few scratches down the side of the face could hardly be called an injury; but if a senior officer is being devious it does not pay to contradict.

  When I got to the jeep, Deborah had vanished. She came out of Brindle’s house again and hopped into the driving seat. ‘I phoned Mum,’ she said. ‘When I didn’t come in all night, she’d think . . . things.’

  ‘And I know exactly what she’d think,’ I said.

  We were quiet, remembering what might have been and so nearly had been. Deborah drove carefully to the main road. ‘What was that maneater whispering into your ear?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Not that you seemed to be enjoying the free peepshow,’ she added in fairness.

  ‘She and her husband went out for a drink after the pigeon-shoot. My favourite suspect was getting boozed up in the bar with a few friends.’

  ‘Ron Campbell?’

  ‘That’s the one. It’ll have to be checked with his friends, but it sounds as though he was too busy spending his holiday money to go back, put the injectors into the digger and bury Ian Kerr.’

  ‘That leaves you back with Hempie Wright and Mr Youngson? I don’t believe it. I can have hunches too.’

  ‘It’s too early for hunches,’ I said. ‘Mr McHarg was right about that.’

  It was no more than two or three miles by road. Daylight was struggling to return. The fields were fresh and clean but already the road was furrowed by early travellers. We slowed to inch past a milk lorry. At Miscally Farm, lights were bright in the gloom of the day. Mrs Kerr seemed to fill the doorway as we got out of the jeep.

  ‘You’d best come in,’ she shouted.

  We followed her into what had once been a traditional farmhouse kitchen but had now been modernised, equipped with the latest gadgetry and brightly decorated. At the plastic-topped table, a teenager was doing a jigsaw puzzle. He did not look up.

  Mrs Kerr did not invite us to sit down. She faced me squarely, a stern, unbowed figure. ‘Well?’ she said. She opened her mouth again, ready to resume her demands for instant and miraculous results, but something in my face made her close it again.

  ‘I’m sorry—’ I began.

  ‘Dear God!’ Mrs Kerr said. She looked much older than her age. ‘I can guess. But you’d better tell me.’

  ‘A body has been found at McKimber. You’ll have to go and make a formal identification.’

  She looked a question at Deborah, who said, ‘I’ve seen. I’m afraid there’s no doubt.’

  Mrs Kerr nodded, without asking how or when, and began to remove her apron. I found that I had an admiration for her. The woman who had railed at me in my office was in command of herself, now that doubt was removed and her fears confirmed. ‘I’ll go right away,’ she said. ‘Can you bide and look after the laddie until I get back?’

  ‘Of course,’ Deborah said. ‘But would you like me to come with you? It’s not pretty.’

  ‘Or would you like one of us to drive you?’ I asked. ‘The roads are tricky.’

  ‘I could manage,’ she said. ‘But it’s not worth starting a car. It’s no distance over the fields. I’ll take Ian’s Land-Rover as far as the march and then walk. And I’m not one to take the vapours. I’ve seen some sights in my time.’ She turned away to do something at the range. I thought that she surreptitiously wiped her eyes. ‘If the laddie wants something to eat, let him have it. And help yourselves. I dare say you’ll have been without breakfast?’

  The rasp of a diesel engine and a rattle of loose metalwork sounded from the yard. I looked out. The ancient Land-Rover belonging to Keith’s brother-in-law had arrived. Keith and Ronnie entered the house together.

  ‘We just heard,’ Keith said, avoiding my eye. ‘We came to see if there was anything we could do.’

  ‘It’s all done for now,’ Mrs Kerr said. ‘We farming folk can’t lie abed in the morning.’

  ‘But later,’ Deborah said. ‘Will you be able to manage?’

  Mrs Kerr’s grim face softened. ‘Bless you, we’ll get by,’ she said. ‘My brother just has a smallholding but he’s aye believed he’d make a grand farmer. Now’s his chance to find out. And Ian – if it’s him, which I’ll no’ be sure of until I’ve seen for myself – left us provided for. When he and Brian took on the lease of a’ that machinery, they took out insurances to pay off the bank loan if either of them . . . died.’ Her voice nearly cracked on the word but she controlled it, indomitable. She took a tweed coat from behind the door and shrugged her bulk into it. ‘Well, I’ll just away and make it official,’ she said briskly. ‘Look after the laddie. I’ll be quick as I can.’

  ‘I think I should come with you,’ Deborah said. ‘It’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’ll not be easy. I was hard on Ian. I’ll be wishing . . . but it’s too late for that now. Can’t you see that I want to be alone?’

  She stroked the boy’s hair, roughly. He never looked up. Then she went out, closing the door gently behind her.

  *

  From the direction of the barn came the sound of a Land-Rover. It faded down through the fields. We waited until the noise had died away.

  ‘Really, Dad!’ Deborah said disgustedly. ‘Pretending that you came over to help when it was nothing but sheer nosiness.’

  ‘It was a bit of both,’ Keith admitted cheerfully. ‘We wanted to be sure that the widow-woman could manage on her own, though it seems that that one could manage very well even if her brother didn’t come. But I also want to know what happened. I’ve had some thoughts.’

  ‘I bet you have.’

  ‘What thoughts?’ I asked.

  ‘Just thoughts,’ Keith said. ‘I won’t know whether they could be the right ones unless you tell us what’s been happening.’

  ‘Nosiness!’ Deborah said. ‘Mrs Kerr told us to help ourselves. Did you have breakfast?’

  ‘Hours ago,’ Ronnie said. ‘I could go another.’

  ‘And I suppose I’m elected cook?’ Deborah said.

  ‘Best
one for the job,’ her father said.

  ‘All right. How about you, young man? Hungry?’

  The boy nodded without looking up from his jigsaw. He was not making good progress.

  Farmhouse kitchens are never short of food. While Deborah fried eggs and bacon and some leftover sausages and Ronnie hacked away at a loaf, I recounted the events of the night. The meal was ready before I had finished.

  ‘You’ve missed out one important detail,’ Keith said when I had finished. ‘How was he dressed?’

  ‘I never saw him,’ I said, ‘except as a vague shape through the ice.’

  Deborah was transferring food on to plates. ‘I saw him,’ she said. ‘He’d lost his hat, if he’d had one. He was wearing a green Goretex coat, corduroys and Meindel boots. The coat was done up to his neck but it was open below and I saw a cartridge belt.’

  ‘So he was still dressed for shooting,’ Keith said. He filled his mouth and raised his eyebrows at me.

  ‘That sounds like what he was wearing, the last time I saw him,’ I said.

  Keith nodded, chewed hastily and swallowed. ‘He wouldn’t have dressed like that to go off on a binge. On what he thought of as a social occasion, he was always smartly dressed. So it confirms that whatever happened to him happened on Saturday afternoon or evening.’

  ‘But what?’ I said. ‘Everything I can think of has some serious flaw.’

  ‘Shall we run over the possibilities?’ Keith’s words were disjointed as he alternated between eating and speech. ‘Up to the time that it got dark and everybody swanned off, he certainly didn’t head directly for here or he’d have passed us. If he walked off to the south or towards Nuttleigh’s, you’d probably have seen him.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said. ‘I was facing south-west and watching the McKimber treetops, because that’s where the birds were mostly coming from. If anything had moved lower down, the movement would have caught my peripheral vision.’

  Keith emptied his mouth again. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘That leaves McKimber, which is where he was found. Did he go there of his own accord? In pursuit of a shot bird, perhaps?’

  ‘He knew there were shooters with dogs there,’ Deborah said. ‘If his bird flew on and dropped in the woods, somebody else would have picked it up before he got there. He’d have missed a dozen chances while they argued about it.’

  ‘I’d’ve seen him,’ Ronnie said. ‘I was looking that way, between the wee wood and the McKimber March, and watching a tod – a fox, you ken? – as was skirting the edge of the woods. The wee dog gied me warning enough if birds was coming, and I was wondering would one of the Guns see the fox and give him both barrels before he got up his nerve and snatched yin of the shot birds.’

  ‘What happened?’ Deborah asked.

  ‘That’s not relevant,’ Keith said. ‘What did happen?’ he asked Ronnie.

  ‘A cushie dropped close to him and he made off wi’t. I saw the Gun – that wee beggar Wright – hunting for his bird. I had to laugh. He was so sure the bird was there that he and his dog went round and around.’

  ‘So much for that,’ Keith said. ‘Then we have the period between dusk and the time when you went back with Brian Dunbar.’

  ‘Wright was definite,’ I said. ‘He stayed on. According to him, nobody moved in the direction of McKimber woods, nor parallel to them. If he didn’t see them, he’d have heard them.’

  ‘Which could be true,’ Keith admitted. ‘With only the faint glow of the clouds to shoot against, he’d have been listening as much as watching for the birds. On the other hand, if there’s anything in McHarg’s theory, Wright would lie his head off.’

  ‘Nah,’ Ronnie said.

  Keith looked at him. ‘You have a point to make?’

  ‘Don’t know about that,’ Ronnie said bashfully. ‘But I can’t see Hempie Wright, nor Mr Youngson either, setting out to poison Ian Kerr to shut his mou’. They’re not the criminal type. Just a pair of old gowks having a giggle at the keeper’s expense. A clour wi’ a rock if they’d lost the heid . . . well maybe.’

  Keith had opened his mouth to say something when the boy spoke for the first time. He had a high, cracked voice but his words were clear. ‘Dad’s dead,’ he said. He looked up. His expression was vacuous, but otherwise he looked like any other sturdy son of farming stock.

  I can’t speak for the other men but I know that I sat still, wondering what on earth to say. But Deborah got up quickly and put an arm round the boy’s shoulders. ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said.

  The boy moved suddenly and swept his jigsaw off the table. ‘He never took me to the shooting,’ he said. ‘He was going to but he never did.’

  ‘I’ll come back some day and let you have a shot or two,’ Keith said gently. (I tried to catch his eye. There had to be something in the Act which forbade the holder of a shotgun from lending it to somebody with a mental handicap, but for the moment I could not think of it.)

  The boy smiled and then shook his head. ‘What you were saying,’ he said. There was a long pause while he thought about it. ‘Dad never went to McKimber. After what Mr . . .’ There was another long pause. ‘After what Mister said to him, he said he’d never set foot on that land again.’

  ‘Mr Brindle?’ I suggested.

  ‘Aye. He called Dad a word, but I can’t tell you what it was because when I said it Mum said I was never to say it any more. After Mister said it to Dad, Dad said he’d never go on McKimber again.’ He looked round anxiously to see whether he had made himself understood.

  Deborah was down on her knees, collecting the pieces of the puzzle. ‘But that’s what people say when they’re angry,’ she said. ‘They don’t mean it.’

  The boy sat silent again until I thought that his mind had wandered off again into some limbo of its own, but he was puzzling out the meaning of her words. ‘Not Dad,’ he said suddenly. ‘He meant it. There was a lamb once,’ he added as if that proved it.

  ‘Lamb?’ I said.

  ‘Aye. Got through the fence. Dad wouldn’t go after it. Sent me instead. Came all the way back to the house to fetch me. Dad never said anything he didn’t mean. But he’s dead now.’ Deborah put the box with the pieces of puzzle back on the table and he went to work on it as though he had never seen it before.

  After the long night without sleep, my mind was clogged with tiredness. ‘But Mr Kerr was gone,’ I said dully, ‘before we went back down with Mr Dunbar.’

  ‘You’re absolutely sure?’ Keith asked.

  ‘We had Sam with us,’ Deborah said. ‘He was hunting for shot birds. Sam would soon have told us if a body had been hidden there.’

  ‘You said that Brian Dunbar climbed up to the high seat. Nobody else?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But, Dad, the high seat’s only a plank between two limbs of a big fir tree and a rail to lean back against. And I was shining a torch up into the branches in case there was a dead bird hung up. I’d have seen anything the size of a body.’

  I glanced at the boy but he was intent on his puzzle. ‘Dunbar couldn’t have killed him,’ I said. ‘Mr Kerr was still shooting after Dunbar left. Or are you thinking that Brian Dunbar left a poisoned drink for him to take later on?’

  ‘No,’ Keith told me, ‘I wasn’t thinking any such thing. If that had happened, he couldn’t have moved the body. You’d have found it in the hide when you went back. Let me put a couple of questions to you. I asked you, the following morning, how you’d dispatched any wounded birds and you said that you’d knocked their heads. You’re sure that you didn’t give one of them another shot on the ground, point blank?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ I said. Keith looked at me doubtfully.

  ‘Of course he didn’t,’ Deborah said indignantly. ‘I’d shown him how to do it properly and I’d have noticed if there’d been a bird or two in the bag which had been blown almost to bits.’

  ‘I’ll accept that,’ Keith said. He looked at me again. ‘There was a trailer beside where you were shooting the first time. Remember?
’

  ‘Of course I do,’ I said. ‘It was placed so that I was looking right into it.’

  ‘When you went down there again with Brian Dunbar, did you notice anything different about it?’

  I was about to deny it when my sluggish mind threw up the trace of a faint memory. ‘There was something,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t tell you what. And when I looked again in the morning, when you and I went back, it seemed to be the way I remembered it in daylight. It was only by moonlight and the glow of a torch that there was something different. I put it down to the different lighting.’

  ‘There wasn’t a body in it, if that’s what you mean,’ Deborah told Keith.

  ‘It isn’t.’ He was still looking at me. ‘Cast your mind back. What do you remember about the contents of the trailer?’

  In the hypnotic stage of tiredness it was not difficult to conjure up the trailer. ‘A large coil of fencing wire,’ I said. ‘Some sharpened fence-posts. A large hammer for driving them. A wooden box of small tools. Some rope. A large white polythene sack which seemed to be filled with similar sacks – from seed or fertiliser I suppose.’

  ‘So far so good,’ Keith said. ‘Brian Dunbar uses his trailer the way a woman uses her handbag – it just fills up with all the things that might come in handy some day. Those things were there all three times you saw the trailer?’

  I studied my mental picture again. ‘I think so,’ I said.

  Keith was looking expectant. ‘Wasn’t there something else?’ he said. ‘Something that was missing when you saw it in darkness?’

  ‘You saw it too,’ I said. ‘What have I forgotten?’

  ‘I never looked inside it,’ Keith said. ‘I saw you look for fallen birds, so I didn’t bother. But even if I had, it could be important that you remember without any prompting. Try again.’

  I tried. I was about to give up when another little bit of the mental picture made a fuzzy appearance and then snapped into focus. ‘A length of pipe,’ I said. ‘And something round. I didn’t notice what. That’s all I can remember and it’s no good going on at me about it.’

  ‘It’s enough,’ he said, leaning back in his chair. ‘I’ll be damned. The crazy idea that’s been nagging at me turns out to be the truth after all. And Mrs Kerr handed us the motive on a plate.’