‘If that was a test firing of the weapon,’ McHarg said, ‘he’s still in the Dundee area.’
‘As of last night,’ Munro said. ‘Yes. He could be anywhere by now. You now accept that there is a weapon and a planned assassination?’
‘I have to assume it.’
‘Very good of you. But even if you’re right and he’s still in the Dundee area, does that suggest that his target will be nearby?’
McHarg frowned. For lack of a better victim he directed his frown at Sergeant Fellowes. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said at last. ‘If he has a safe lodging there he may be biding his time. Dundee seems to be the only place not expecting a visit from some bigwig.’
‘It is within striking distance of Aberdeen,’ Munro said. ‘And Grampian police are expecting an influx of politicians and oil industry executives for the Offshore Conference.’
‘That’s more than two months off.’
Ian Fellowes caught Munro’s eye and raised his eyebrows.
‘Yes, Sergeant?’ Munro said.
‘I’ve been trying to put myself in his shoes,’ Ian said. ‘If Mr McHarg’s right, we can’t do much more than warn Tayside to sharpen their watch for him and hope that every other force is taking our warnings very seriously. But suppose he has a few days in hand and his target is elsewhere. I asked myself why he’d be hanging around Dundee where attention is already focused on him.’
‘Ask a silly question,’ McHarg said. ‘And what kind of a silly answer did you give yourself?’
There was a sneer in the Superintendent’s voice and Ian Fellowes flushed. ‘Let’s suppose that the target is really big,’ he said. ‘Big enough for a successful hit to provoke the kind of speculation that followed the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Every detail surrounding that killing has been reviewed, rehashed, chewed over and discussed in the media. Books have been written about it, after endless research. With that sort of stink to follow, he couldn’t afford to leave behind any loose ends at all.’
‘The girl’s studio is being watched,’ McHarg said.
‘He’d expect that. But he’ll be wondering whether there was a leak. He grabbed an unexpected witness who, he must realise, was only there by chance. Will he believe that the rescuer who suddenly materialised was a passing stranger who just happened to notice the snatch and acted immediately and ruthlessly?’
‘It seems unlikely,’ Munro said.
‘I’m wondering,’ Ian said, ‘if he isn’t trying to find out if there was a leak and, if so, where from. If he knew that much, he could assess the seriousness of the leak before he made up his mind whether or not to go ahead.’
‘And of course there was a leak,’ said Munro. ‘From Ailmer’s workshop. But surely Dora Braddle would have told him as much.’
‘Not necessarily, sir. She may have had the talkative Robert Hall killed and decided to say nothing about it rather than queer the deal. Is Bruce Ailmer, the gunsmith, under arrest?’
‘Not yet,’ said McHarg. He paused. When he spoke again, it was with an effort. ‘You’re right, Sergeant. Ailmer should be watched, just in case.’
*
Paul Cardinal, whose researches into his family tree seemed to have come to a dead end, was becoming a regular visitor. Keith was working at home on the routine servicing of a pair of Best English guns, listening with part of his mind while Paul, at ease in the visitor’s chair, kept him company.
‘I caught Superintendent Munro before he left for Edinburgh,’ Paul said. ‘That guy gives out information like a sparrow laying an ostrich egg, but Deborah’s beau was a mite more communicative. They’ve picked up a whole lot of small fry for being in on the hunt for him and the Blayne lady – is she still here by the way?’
‘Still here,’ Keith said. ‘She seems to get on well with Deborah, which is a relief. The two of them have their heads down together at the moment. But she avoids Ian Fellowes as if he had the plague although as far as I know he’s FFI.’
‘FFI?’
‘Free From Infection. Military jargon.’
‘Is that so? Anyway, apart from that, they don’t seem to be doing so good.’
As if in response to the mention of her name, Deborah put her head in at the door. ‘Dad, where’s the Dictionary of the Scots Language Ancient and Modern?’
‘My study, top shelf, left-hand end.’
‘Thanks.’ She vanished again.
‘I was saying,’ Paul resumed, ‘that they’ve picked up some tough characters, none of whom knows more than that a man named Cameron, known as Grotty and believed to be an associate of Dora Braddle, promised a reward for news of Lonely Lady. Not one of them admits that he was willing to kill, but from their records there’s little or no doubt of it. Grotty’s still on the loose.’
Keith, who was using a feather to brush oil onto a striker, grunted.
‘Dora Braddle was traced as far as London and pulled in,’ Paul said. ‘She’s dropped her old pal Mary Bruce right into the mire, and herself along with her. But there’s no trace at all of my old pal Raymond Munster. I suggested one or two possible lines of enquiry – that gunmaker in Dundee could do with watching – but I don’t know if he’ll follow them up.’
Keith grunted again.
Paul rose and prowled around the racks of antique guns. He paused at the over-decorated German wheel-lock. ‘Would it be something like this that my ancestor waylaid the Russian envoy for?’ he asked.
Keith raised his eyebrows in surprise that anybody could mistake the wheel-lock for a Doune pistol. ‘Nothing like that at all,’ he said. He put down the lockwork and wiped his hands on a paper towel. ‘That reminds me. I bumped into our local librarian. To be more accurate, he came looking for me – he wants a new handle for his spinning reel. He’s a fanatic about Borders genealogy. He says the Ailwand of Aikhowe, at the time your ancestor copped it, wasn’t known for scattering bastards around and all his sons are traceable. He thinks your Laird’s Tam Elliot may be descended from a well-known reiver, the Little Jock Elliot who nearly did for the Earl of Bothwell – the lover and later the husband of Mary, Queen of Scots.’
Paul came back to his chair. ‘When was this?’ he said.
‘Middle of the sixteenth century. As I remember the story,’ Keith said, ‘Bothwell was Lieutenant of the Marches in Scotland. He was making an expedition to clean up Liddesdale – one of the hotbeds of the reivers – and he’d locked up a few of the Elliots before meeting up with Little Jock Elliot of the Park. Bothwell shot Elliot off his horse but was daft enough to dismount and approach him. Elliot must have been hard hit – he’s believed to have died of his wounds. All the same, he jumped Bothwell and stabbed him three times so that Bothwell had to be carried back to his castle at Hermitage.’
‘They came tough in those days,’ Paul said.
‘None tougher.’ Keith had resumed work and spoke absently. ‘Those were rough times. I’ve sometimes thought that if the movie capital of the world had been here instead of in Hollywood, we’d have been getting Borders films instead of Westerns. After all, your Wild West only lasted for about twenty years until the railroads killed off the big cattle-drives, while the Borders had a three-hundred-year history of wars and rustling, conniving and treachery, murder, blackmail, corruption, feuds and some quite incredible feats of daring.’
Keith could have murmured on along the same lines indefinitely and Paul would have been content to listen to him. But Deborah returned, accompanied by Sheila Blayne. Their two faces spoke of barely suppressed triumph.
‘I think we’ve cracked it,’ Deborah said, waving a pad of writing paper. ‘The message is quite short and it’s spelled out backwards from the end – the rest seems to be mere camouflage. Sheila spotted it first. Allowing for missing letters, dialect words and spelling which would have earned him a D minus in Miss Simpson’s class, it reads something like this. “The arms lie buried beneath the hearth in Abbotsdale Castle. May they bring you better fortune than they have brought to me. Don’t let poor Kath
erine starve.” It’s sad, isn’t it?’ Deborah said, blinking.
Keith held out his hand. ‘Let me see,’ he said.
‘Where is this Abbotsdale Castle?’ Sheila asked.
‘Miles and miles from anywhere, up on the moors,’ Deborah said. ‘It’s a ruin. It was ruined long before Laird’s Tam went near it.’
Keith looked up from the notes. ‘After what’s been called the “Rebellion of the Bankrupt Earls”, another Earl – Sussex – headed a punitive expedition. He burned more than three hundred towns and villages and destroyed about fifty castles and peels. Abbotsdale was among them.’
‘I see what you mean about rough days,’ Paul said.
Keith looked at the note-pad again. ‘This could be right,’ he said. ‘I suppose “chimla-stane” means “hearth” in this context?’
‘If he was referring to the coping stone,’ Deborah said, ‘nothing could exactly be buried under it.’
‘We could always go and look,’ Sheila said.
‘And so we will,’ Paul Cardinal said. ‘Mr Munro asked me to be available for a few days, but I guess that time’s about up.’
‘The police haven’t been able to find a trace of Robert Hall,’ Keith said. ‘Either he’s dead or he’s done a bunk. For his sake, I hope that he’s hiding out somewhere sunny, but I doubt it. I’m interviewing a possible replacement tomorrow. But the next day’s Sunday. Would that suit?’
‘Surely,’ Paul said. ‘Shall we take my car?’
‘You wouldn’t get it within several miles of Abbotsdale,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll borrow a Land Rover. It won’t be comfortable but it’ll get there.’
‘It’s a date. And now,’ Paul said, ‘I guess I’ll go and see your librarian friend.’
‘Don’t hope for too much,’ Keith told him. ‘The same names cropped up over and over again, so pinning down individuals is next to impossible. To make it more difficult, a whole lot of Elliots were shipped off to Ireland when the Borders were pacified and many of them sneaked back under other names. And there was very often doubt as to who fathered any particular child.’
‘It’s getting that way again in the States,’ Paul said.
*
Sergeant Fellowes and his Chief Superintendent were about to leave for home when a telex arrived. The Inspector who was acting as collator brought it to McHarg and laid it solemnly before him.
The Superintendent scanned it quickly. ‘Christ!’ he said.
Munro, who had been reared with all the religious superstition of the West Highlander, drew in his breath but decided that the time was not ripe for a lecture on the relationship between the Ten Commandments and the law. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Not an assassination?’
‘Not quite.’ McHarg glanced over the page again. ‘Here, read it for yourself.’
Munro grabbed the paper, scanned it quickly and then raised his voice so that the other officers in the now hushed room could hear. ‘Tayside sent an officer to observe Ailmer’s workshop. The place seemed to be locked up and deserted, but Ailmer’s car was nearby. The man looked round the back, found an unlocked window and took it on himself to enter. He found Ailmer unconscious, badly beaten up. Ailmer has been hospitalised. Condition stable but he may not be fit to talk for hours or even days.’
‘That means—’ Ian Fellowes began.
‘There’s more,’ Munro said. ‘We’ve been lucky. One of the neighbours, a docker who’d had a packing case dropped on his foot, was sitting at his window with nothing to do but watch the street. He identified the last visitor to the workshop from a copy of Miss Blayne’s sketch. What’s more, the visitor drove off in a grey Escort with a Mitchell’s Car Hire sticker on it. We now have the registration number from Mitchell’s. The car was hired four days ago, cash, for a fortnight, in the name of Armstrong. They’re watching Mitchells, of course, but the chance that he’ll return it in person is microscopic.
‘We must circulate all forces,’ Munro finished. ‘But what do we tell them?’
‘Observe, identify, arrest,’ said McHarg.
‘You accept that there’s an intending assassin on the loose?’
Detective Superintendent McHarg had still not given up hope that events might prove him correct after all. ‘It seems probable,’ he said.
‘It seems certain. I wish I was as sure of our course of action,’ Munro said slowly. ‘If the man is arrested when he does not have the weapon with him, and if he keeps his mouth shut – as he surely would – we might get a conviction on the evidence of Miss Blayne and the Sergeant here, but we might not. Even so, it would only be a firearms offence and an attempted kidnapping and we would still not know who was the intended target. Whoever hired him might still have time to send someone else, somebody unknown to us.’
‘Observe, follow and report?’ McHarg suggested.
‘May I say something?’ the Sergeant asked.
‘Go ahead,’ said Munro. ‘But be brief.’
Ian Fellowes took a few seconds to order his thoughts. ‘We have to assume that Ailmer told him that Robert Hall walked out of his job suddenly. There may be more circumstances than we know of, to confirm that he was the source of the leak.’
‘But that leak has already been dealt with,’ McHarg said.
‘He may not know that. We don’t even know it for sure. The body still hasn’t been identified positively.’ Ian left it there, but there was a faint stir of amusement in the room. The identity of the dead man remained uncertain largely because Superintendent McHarg had refused to have the body shown to Keith Calder.
McHarg looked like thunder.
‘What are you leading up to?’ Munro asked.
‘Just this,’ the Sergeant said. ‘Munster would wonder where a gunsmith would go who had just walked out of his job. He only has to glance through the papers for last week to see that Keith Calder was advertising for a gunsmith. And Miss Blayne, the key witness, is staying with the Calders just now.’
McHarg’s scowl was not fading. ‘That’s a hell of a long shot,’ he said.
‘I disagree,’ said Munro. ‘If he went to the trouble of beating the information out of Ailmer, he’d surely take the next logical step.’
‘If he traced the leak to Ailmer’s workshop, he’d know that his mission was uncompromised,’ McHarg said. ‘Neither Ailmer nor any of his staff would have known who the target was.’
‘Munster may be on his way to Newton Lauder now,’ Ian Fellowes said. ‘I think that Keith – Mr Calder – should be warned.’
‘No,’ McHarg said, so loudly that the big room seemed to ring with it. He lowered his voice. ‘I still have the same objection to Calder knowing more than he must. His relationship with the newspapers has proved in the past to be altogether too cosy.’
‘He can hold his tongue when silence is called for,’ Munro said.
‘And his wife? And the girl?’ McHarg was watching Ian Fellowes, waiting for any sign of rebellion. ‘All we need is one hint of this to the media and then every possible occasion when an assassination might be attempted will be swamped with men carrying video cameras and their cases. The task of protection would become ten times more difficult.’
‘There are lives at stake,’ the Sergeant said softly.
‘Including the assassination target. Mr McHarg has a point,’ Munro told the Sergeant. ‘We’ll play a different game. Get on the phone to Newton Lauder—’
The Inspector loomed over them again. ‘Another message,’ he said. ‘Tayside put a man at the approach to the Tay Bridge. He saw the Escort heading south. It’s been tracked to a small hotel in north Fife. The driver has been identified as Raymond Munster. He’s being kept under observation.’
‘So at last we make progress,’ Munro said. ‘Send a reply. He’s not to be alarmed but he must be kept under observation and his every movement reported to this office. And I’m to be kept informed, or in my absence Sergeant Fellowes. Day or night. Yes?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the Inspector.
‘An
d you,’ McHarg said to Ian Fellowes, ‘are to stay well away from the Calders. Your sex-life can go on the back burner until this is over. Got that?’
The Sergeant looked a question at Chief Superintendent Munro, who nodded reluctantly.
Chapter Eight
Throughout the Saturday, Raymond Munster never moved far from his hotel in north Fife. Ian Fellowes was anxious enough to keep in touch, through the Edinburgh intelligence room, with the Fife officers who were on the American’s tail. When the word reached him that Munster had crossed the bridge to Dundee and spent an hour in the public library, he felt a hollowness in his guts. The American was unlikely to be in search of a little light reading.
He was technically off duty on the Sunday, but he had left word that he was to be called whenever the American left his hotel. The phone woke him when morning was emerging from night and the subdued dawn chorus of midsummer was singing in the garden next door. Control was calling.
‘Suspect paid his bill, cash, and left the hotel. Travelling south towards the motorway and the Forth Bridge.’
And, ultimately, towards Newton Lauder.
‘Is somebody waiting to pick him up when he crosses into Lothian? And have arms been issued?’
‘I’ll check.’
Control called again a few minutes later. ‘Edinburgh confirms.’
‘Did they say more than that?’
Control hesitated. ‘That was the sense of their message.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They said to teach your granny to suck eggs.’ There was laughter in the girl’s voice.
Ian was reassured but he was too keyed up to sleep again. Some day, he promised himself, he would dish out a little instruction in elementary egg-sucking to whoever had sent that message. He dressed, ate and filled in the time with housework. His small flat had never been so tidy nor seemed so claustrophobic.
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