Hole in One

by Catherine Aird

  Well up.

  ‘How kind,’ she murmured, metaphorically donning the current youthful equivalent of twin-set and pearls, ‘a cup of coffee would be most acceptable. Tell me,’ she said, ‘this Matthew Steele you are all talking about – is he a player here as well?’

  The Lady Captain shook her head. ‘Just a caddy. Although,’ she added quickly, more aware of the importance of political correctness than most, ‘a lot of the caddies play, too. Very well, some of them. Especially Dickie Castle. He beat me hollow in our last Ladies versus Caddies match. He’s deadly round the green.’ She shivered suddenly, her mouth drooping, ‘I shouldn’t have said that, should I? Not now.’

  The comforting phrase ‘I know what you mean, though,’ fell automatically from Sergeant Perkins’ lips. The things that people felt that they should not have said but did say were meat and drink to the police. And very nearly as useful as those things which they should have said and didn’t.

  The Lady Captain did not so much change the subject as deflect it. Her skill in this respect was one of the reasons why she was Lady Captain. ‘I expect,’ she said, ‘that Matthew will take the game up in a big way when he gets back. Most of the younger caddies do. It’s a very good start to learning the game, caddying.’

  ‘Gets back?’ queried the detective sergeant, a woman with an eye for essentials.

  ‘I’m told he’s gone off to Lasserta as part of his degree course.

  ‘When?’ asked Polly Perkins rather more sharply than she had meant to.

  The Lady Captain said vaguely ‘Some time last week, I think I heard someone say. Is it important?’

  In different surroundings Sergeant Perkins might have said sternly, ‘The police ask the questions around here’ but in the Ladies Clubroom she said ‘Oh, no sugar, thank you. Has he gone for long?’

  ‘That’s something I don’t know,’ said the Lady Captain. ‘You’ll have to ask Ursula Millward over there. She knows the Trumpers better than I do and she might have heard.’ She cocked her head to one side and said ‘You could try asking Hilary herself, of course. She’s sure to know.’ The Lady Captain gave an indulgent smile. ‘I’m sure they’ll be in touch on their mobile phones. Every one seems to be these days.’

  ‘Aren’t they just?’ agreed Polly Perkins politely, suppressing all mention of the trouble that stealing them had become to the police, let alone of how their use had facilitated the assembling of unlawful protest marches.

  ‘Mobile phones are the second great divide in the Club,’ said the Lady Captain wryly. ‘After the new development and the driving range, that is.’

  ‘Whether they should be allowed on the course, you mean?’ The policewoman, a veteran of many, many hours spent at the Accident and Emergency Department of the Berebury Hospital, where they had to be switched off, nodded understandingly. ‘Of course, these days you’ll have members with pace-makers still playing.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ the Lady Captain shook her head. ‘It’s if your opponent’s phone rings while you’re driving or putting that so upsets the members.’

  Detective Sergeant Perkins said that she could see that it very well might and asked about the proposed driving range.

  ‘Oh, the Ladies are keeping well clear of that one,’ said the Lady Captain immediately. ‘You know what men are like about that sort of thing. They get very worked up when there’s money involved.’

  ‘Don’t they just,’ agreed Detective Sergeant Polly Perkins, who in her time had witnessed wives who had been beaten up for spending a man’s money on food for the man’s children.

  ‘I think male pride comes into it, you know,’ murmured the Lady Captain, a woman clearly in no need of the odd penny. Detective Sergeant Polly Perkins, a woman still paying off her own mortgage, agreed warmly with her. Policewoman to the core, though, she made a few mental notes before setting down her cup and saucer, and taking her departure.

  And seeking out Detective Inspector Sloan.

  The Men’s Committee of the Berebury Golf Club could have posed for a painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. The players looked as if they were assembled as set of purpose as did the bevy of men in the artist’s famous depiction of The Night Watch of Amsterdam. A collection of solemn-faced golfers with their game in mind, they took up their positions in the Committee room in silence, taking in the presence of Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby without comment.

  ‘I think we’re all present and correct except for Eric Simmonds,’ said the Captain, a former naval officer who’d served his time at sea. ‘How is he by the way? Does anyone know?’

  ‘Still as weak as a kitten,’ said Brian Southon. ‘I dropped in there last night. But getting better slowly.’

  ‘Right.’ The Captain clasped a sheet of paper firmly between two large hands.

  ‘Now, you all know about the body at the sixth …’

  There were nods all round.

  ‘And that it was not an accident …’

  More nods.

  ‘Deplorable, quite deplorable,’ said Gerald Moffat automatically. ‘We’ve never had anything like this before in all the history of the Club.’

  ‘Not good,’ agreed the Captain gruffly. He shot a glance in Sloan’s direction before going on. ‘And which is worse, it would seem highly likely that the – er – perpetrator would seem to have been someone who knew the course well.’

  ‘We do have Visitors remember,’ pointed out Luke Trumper. ‘Lots of them.’

  ‘The police,’ said the Captain, ‘have details of all the Visitors, guests and Societies.’

  ‘What about Open Meetings?’ asked Nigel Halesworth. ‘We get dozens of outsiders playing every time.’

  ‘The Secretary has the names and addresses of everyone who has played in our Open Meetings,’ rejoined the Captain.

  ‘Players are not the only ones who know the course,’ pointed out Brian Southon. ‘Don’t forget that.’

  ‘I understand the police have taken that factor on board, too,’ said the Captain.

  ‘When I was out East,’ began Major Bligh, ‘we had a feller who went berserk with a kukri …

  The Captain overrode this with practised ease. ‘Now, Detective Inspector Sloan here will tell you what he wants to know from us all …’

  ‘Ah, there you are, Sloan. Come along in. We’ve been waiting for you.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan suppressed an automatic instinct to wipe his shoes on a mat before he entered the mortuary at the Berebury and District General Hospital. The place was convent-clean, the body of a sand-covered young man the only object not shining and polished.

  ‘Not a lot to tell you yet, of course.’ The pathologist waved a hand that already held some arcane instrument whose precise use the detective inspector didn’t care to think about.

  ‘Anything would be a help at this stage, doctor,’ said Sloan. ‘Anything at all but especially a name.’

  ‘Much always wants more,’ said the pathologist gnomically.

  Sloan stifled an inclination to say that he only wanted information – no, that was wrong – what he really wanted was data. Data was information leading to a conclusion, which wasn’t the same thing at all.

  ‘Burns here has everything ready and there’s not a lot of clothing to hold us up.’

  Pathologist and policeman watched as Detective Constable Crosby and the pathologist’s assistant dealt with the young man’s clothing, sealing it into separate bags for Forensics, marking each with a number as it began its long journey that would only come to an end in a court of law. That is, thought Sloan to himself, if ever it got to court. Full many a police case was born to bloom unseen and waste its sourness on the desert air.

  ’T-shirt, underpants, jeans and socks,‘enumerated Crosby. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘Not a lot to be going on with,’ said Sloan. ‘And from the look of them, all run-of-the-mill clothes.’

  ‘Mass market name tags, anyway,’ said Crosby. ‘But no shoes.’

  ‘Pity, th
at,’ said Sloan. That arch-observer, Lord Baden-Powell, had set out for all time how much you could tell about a man from his shoes. How, though, you could be sure that wearing out soles and heels equally denoted business capacity and honesty he didn’t know. What he did know was that business capacity and honesty didn’t always go together …

  ‘No distinguishing marks, either,’ contributed the pathologist, ‘unless you count a small strawberry-coloured naevus on the nape of the neck. It’s very common there.’

  ‘I’ve got one of those,’ announced Detective Constable Crosby unexpectedly. ‘A stork beak birthmark.’

  ‘Really?’ said Sloan coolly.

  ‘Although all the pictures I’ve ever seen,’ said Crosby, ‘have the stork carrying the baby by its nappy. It’s pink,’ he added.

  It wasn’t something that Detective Inspector Sloan needed to know at this moment.

  ‘And, judging by the marked lack of sunburn on a strip of his left wrist,’ continued Dr Dabbe, ‘the deceased had recently been wearing a watch and been in the open air here or abroad quite a lot.’

  ‘You can tell quite a bit from a man’s watch,’ mused Sloan.

  ‘And a woman’s,’ chimed in Crosby.

  ‘Such as?’ Sloan challenged him.

  ‘That they should be wearing glasses, sir.’

  ‘Right,’ said Dr Dabbe, pulling an overhead microphone towards him, ‘let’s get started.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan turned over a new page in his notebook while Detective Constable Crosby drifted away from the body towards the window. He didn’t like postmortems.

  ‘The subject,’ began the pathologist, ‘is a normally nourished male of approximately twenty years of age. Of quite an athletic build with well-developed muscles.’

  ‘Not a couch potato, then,’ put in Crosby from the sidelines. When it came to tackling young criminals he much preferred the couch potato to the well-built. They couldn’t run so fast and far.

  Or hit back so hard.

  ‘Definitely not,’ said Dr Dabbe, continuing with his visual examination. ‘Think athletic.’

  ‘I have been,’ said Sloan. It was one of the things that being on the golf course did for you. Thinking sunburn was another.

  ‘And, Sloan,’ the pathologist waved his instrument like a baton in the policeman’s direction, ‘you can note that there are no external distinguishing marks other than a surgical scar in the right iliac fossa, probably an old appendectomy. I’ll confirm that later if the appendix isn’t there.’

  ‘Yes, we have no bananas,’ sang Crosby, sotto voce.

  ‘No marks? Not even a tattoo?’ asked Sloan, a little surprised. Tattoos, no longer confined to sailors ashore, were now an important indicator of social significance in the police canon. There was a simple rule of thumb that applied: the more a man had, the lower down the totem pole he was. The same went for studs. Whether the same went for young women he wasn’t prepared to say.

  ‘None,’ said Dabbe. ‘And no evidence of body piercing of either variety.’

  ‘I don’t quite …’

  ‘For drugs or studs,’ said the pathologist, straightening up. ‘No puncture marks from needles and no holes from which gold ornaments might have been suspended.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Sloan scribbled a note. This was something that it was a help to know: defaulting drug takers, too, had lives that were nasty, brutish and short.

  ‘Just your usual clean-living outdoor boy, then,’ observed Crosby mordantly, ‘except that he got murdered.’

  ‘Victims come in all shapes and sizes,’ said the pathologist.

  Victims, in Detective Inspector Sloan’s experience, were more often very young girls or harmless old ladies rather than healthy young men, especially the unpierced.

  ‘Nothing of immediate note under the fingernails,’ went on the pathologist, ‘although Burns has taken samples. And the nails weren’t broken – in fact there are no superficial wounds or scratches.’

  Sloan put this into police shorthand. ‘No signs of a struggle, then.’

  ‘No. At this stage,’ continued the pathologist, ‘I am prepared to state that the cause of death was consistent with the deceased having sustained a comminuted fracture of the parietal area of the left sinciput, and that this is also consistent with his having sustained a glancing blow from a heavy instrument.’

  ‘Hit on the head,’ concluded Sloan succinctly.

  ‘But he’s tall,’ interrupted Crosby from the other side of the mortuary.

  ‘Which suggests,’ said the pathologist, quite unperturbed, ‘that the deceased had his head down at the time.’

  ‘I think I get the picture,’ said Sloan, thinking golf balls on tees.

  ‘I expect he never knew what hit him,’ said Crosby.

  ‘But we want to know what did,’ said Sloan. He immediately corrected this. ‘We need to know.’

  ‘All in good time,’ said the pathologist, reaching for a bone saw.

  Detective Constable Crosby took a sudden interest in the view through the frosted glass of the mortuary window whilst the expression “Head first” began to take on a whole new meaning.

  Chapter Eleven

  Wrong Ball

  ‘Don’t just stand there, Sloan,’ said Superintendent Leeyes testily. He was still ensconced in the Secretary’s office. ‘Come in and give me your report.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Detective Inspector Sloan stood in front of the secretary’s desk and began formally ‘The body of an unidentified male, age unknown, was removed from a location at the back of …’

  ‘I know where it was,’ interrupted Leeyes. ‘I saw it, remember?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Of course. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Well, go on …’

  ‘The victim was almost certainly killed elsewhere and then buried in the bunker at the back of … sorry, sir. You know that.’ He hurried on. ‘I’ve got a team doing a fingertip search of the immediate surroundings …

  ‘Ah, Sloan, I was going to talk to you about that …’

  ‘And some other officers are taking a good look at the course generally, especially the wooded bits, to see if we can establish where the deceased met his death. And all the local dentists are being visited with the deceased’s dental chart.’

  ‘Good, good.’ The Superintendent pushed some of the Secretary’s papers out of the way, clearing a space for himself on the man’s desk. ‘That’s what I wanted to know.’

  ‘I would also like to get on with having the locker rooms examined,’ persisted Sloan. ‘As you yourself said,’ he added sedulously, ‘the injury could well have been inflicted with a golf club. The doctor says so, too.’

  ‘You do realise, don’t you, Sloan, that you’re talking about a lot of clubs in there?’

  Sloan nodded.

  ‘Valuable, some of them,’ said Leeyes. ‘And you must understand some men get very attached to their putters.’

  ‘I’m sure, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan untruthfully. It was beyond him to understand how any man could feel affectionate towards a crooked piece of iron at the end of a long handle. One day, perhaps he would. He was sure, though, his wife would like it if he got attached to anything at the Golf Club – but especially the game.

  ‘A man’s relationship with his putter is very important,’ stated Leeyes profoundly.

  ‘Yes, sir, I’m sure.’ All Sloan wanted to know at this moment was whether that relationship had extended to using it to kill the body in the bunker.

  ‘Putting, you know,’ Leeyes said, leaning back expansively in the chair, ‘is more than just hitting the ball into the hole.’ He gave a little smile. ‘You might say, Sloan, that is at one and the same time a neurological and a psychological and a mechanical action.’

  ‘I’m sure, sir …’

  ‘Mind you, Sloan, it is also subject to paralysis by analysis.’

  ‘Sir?’

  The Superintendent gave a lordly wave. ‘You could liken it to writer’s block. A four-foot putt can u
ndo a man.’

  ‘That’s the most difficult shot, is it, sir?’

  Leeyes sat up with a jerk. ‘Certainly not, Sloan. They’re all difficult.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Coming back to putters …’

  ‘I still play with my father’s old hickory-shafted one,’ said Leeyes unexpectedly.

  ‘Really, sir?’ Suggestions at the Police Station about the Superintendent’s parentage had never included anything so mundane as a father with hickory-shafted golf clubs.

  ‘Lovely little head.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, sir.’ Now that Sloan came to think about it there was a particular pair of secateurs he wouldn’t want to be without himself: the parrot-headed ones, honed to the sharpness needed for a clean cut on an old rose. To be fair, he always kept them locked safely in his potting shed.

  ‘Can’t be doing with all these fancy things they play about with these days and call putters,’ said Leeyes.

  Sloan hadn’t imagined for one moment that the Superintendent would like anything new – let alone fancy.

  ‘Belly putters, some of ’em are called,’ muttered Leeyes. ‘Did you ever hear the like of it?’

  ‘Would a putter,’ ventured Sloan, ‘make a likely weapon?’

  ‘Good Lord, no,’ said Leeyes. ‘Don’t you know anything about the game at all, Sloan?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Sloan truthfully.

  ‘My choice of weapon would be a seven iron,’ Leeyes came back immediately.

  ‘I’ll remember that, sir.’ Not any old iron then, noted Sloan to himself.

  ‘That is,’ said the Superintendent unwillingly, ‘if the killer is a golfer.’

  ‘He’s someone who knows the course,’ said Sloan, ‘for sure.

  ‘Not the same thing at all,’ said Leeyes robustly. ‘Bobby Curd and his pals know the course quite as well as the members and they never play the game.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan put another name in his notebook.

  ‘Ball stealer-in-chief,’ said Leeyes.