‘I don’t know that name, sir.’ Sloan thought he knew all the petty thieves in Berebury. Only too well, most of them.
The Superintendent leant forward in the secretary’s chair and, elbows on the desk, steepled his fingers in front of him. ‘Tricky point in law, lost golf balls.’
‘Ah.’ Sloan did his best to avoid tricky points of law pour cause.
‘Tricky because the player has already had to abandon the ball in order to get on with the game,’ explained Leeyes. ‘So technically it’s not stolen.’
Sloan nodded. In his book, that just left “strayed”. ‘Findings, keepings?’ he said.
‘Courts aren’t with you,’ said Leeyes mournfully.
That was a feeling that Sloan could go along with any day.
‘So Bobby Curd comes in,’ said Leeyes, ‘and helps himself.’
‘After dark?’ The distinction between a crime committed in daylight or in the hours of darkness went back to medieval times. Even gas lighting hadn’t altered that, let alone electricty.
‘Whenever the greenkeeper can’t catch him, anyway,’ sniffed Leeyes.
‘Where does he come in?’ The greenkeeper hadn’t been there for a week to catch anyone. He mustn’t forget that. He made a quick note to arrange for the greenkeeper to be interviewed.
‘The water hazard short of the fifth green, usually.’
Sloan reached for his notebook again. This time to make an alteration. Bobby Curd must be interviewed urgently. ‘What would that be called, sir?’
‘That depends,’ said Leeyes.
‘Sir?’
‘It’s a dear little stream if you clear it with your second shot,’ said the Superintendent succinctly, ‘and it’s that bloody drain if you don’t.’
‘There’s something else, sir,’ said Sloan.
The Superintendent’s head came up like that of a terrier offered a good scent. ‘Yes?’
‘A member called Moffat bought a new club from the pro’s shop yesterday,’ Sloan informed him. ‘Told Jock Selkirk that he’d lost one.’
‘What sort of club?’ asked Leeyes.
‘A number-nine iron,’ said Sloan. The only number nine he knew had Army medical overtones.
‘That’s not a rescue club,’ said Leeyes thoughtfully.
The only rescue remedies that Sloan knew of were of quite a different order, although he knew there had been a fearsome medieval weapon that had done for all and sundry in battle and that had been called a “Good morning”. ‘Would a rescue club have done the trick?’ he asked.
‘Just the job,’ said Leeyes briskly. ‘Now, Sloan, I’ve had a word with the Captain and we both think that as soon as your people have finished examining the hole we can go out there and take a look round.’ He waved an arm. ‘You can use this room as your headquarters now.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ The words “your people” had not been lost on Sloan. And it was “his headquarters” now, too. With it came the unwritten implication that it would be his blame, too, if anything went wrong in the investigation.
‘I just want to show the Captain the lie of the land from the police point of view,’ said Superintendent Leeyes. ‘Got to keep him in the picture and all that.’
‘Sir …’ Detective Constable Crosby burst unceremoniously in upon Sloan who was talking to Alan Pursglove in the Secretary’s room. ‘Sir, they’ve gone and opened the course again.’
‘What!’ Sloan got to his feet. ‘I don’t believe it.’
Crosby pointed out of the window. ‘Look. They’re all over there. Queuing on the first tee.’
Alan Pursglove coughed. ‘Open except for the sixth hole, I may say, Inspector. That’s still closed, naturally.’
‘I should hope so,’ growled Sloan. ‘How come?’
Pursglove waved a hand in personal exculpation. ‘The Captain asked your Superintendent Leeyes if we might resume play and he said yes.’
Detective Inspector Sloan suppressed his immediate response to this in favour of securing his pension, long term.
‘There’s no stopping them, is there?’ said Crosby admiringly.
The Secretary said ‘We consulted the Rules of Golf, of course.
Sloan was unsurprised. The Superintendent was always ready to throw the Rule Book at anyone when it suited him. ‘I take it that that covers every eventuality?’ he said with heavy irony.
‘In theory,’ said the Secretary. He stroked his chain. ‘I’m afraid there’s a good deal of theory to the game these days, Inspector.’
That was something else for Sloan to tell his wife: that there was much written work to be learnt. It sounded nearly as bad to him as the examination for sergeant and that, he wouldn’t need to remind her, had been bad enough. For them both. A young married couple then, counting every penny.
‘So what did they decide?’ enquired Sloan with genuine interest. Murder case this might be but where the Superintendent was concerned there were always moments to savour for recounting afterwards among friends in the canteen, too.
‘Leeyes proposed we used Rule 13-4: “Accidentally moving loose impediment”,’ replied the Secretary.
‘He did, did he?’ said Sloan, straight-faced. The Superintendent had an infinite capacity to complicate any situation.
By the window, Detective Constable Crosby opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and closed it again.
‘But the Captain didn’t think it applied,’ said Pursglove.
‘That’s golfing for you,’ said Sloan.
English law wasn’t codified. Theoretically you could do what you liked unless there was a specific law against it. Obviously not so, golf. He must remember to stress the downside of the game to his wife. This included learning the rules.
‘We decided instead to deem the entire sixth hole out of bounds,’ said the Secretary. ‘There is provision for that in the Rules.’
Sloan nodded. The sixth hole had the makings of a hazard for a detective inspector, too, but in a different way: a stumbling block in a career path, unless the case was solved speedily.
‘And we have a Local Rule that the practice hole can be substituted when another hole is deemed temporarily unplayable for any reason,’ explained Alan Pursglove. ‘Only in competitions, mind you. Not in Medal play, you understand.’
Detective Inspector Sloan, rosarian par excellence, did not understand. All he really understood was that the Rule Book was the Code Napoleon of the game.
‘So that means that we can get players back out on the course without delay,’ said Pursglove.
‘Which of the Ten Commandments is that?’ enquired Detective Constable Crosby subversively.
‘A Golf Club Secretary shall not be a fool,’ came back Pursglove briskly. ‘Now, gentlemen, unless there’s anything else …’
‘You’ve got to hand it to these golfers,’ said Crosby as the Secretary went out. ‘Kick one of them and they all limp.’
‘A word, miss, if we may.’
Detective Inspector Sloan and Woman Sergeant Perkins had caught up with Hilary Trumper just after Sloan had dispatched Crosby to interview the greenkeeper. The girl was heading back towards the caddies’ hut but seemed in no hurry to get there.
‘What about?’ she said truculently, coming to a halt on the grass.
‘Matthew Steele,’ said Sloan. Close-up, he realised the girl was younger than he’d first thought.
‘What about him?’ she asked, catching her breath suddenly.
‘Can you tell us where he is?’
‘Oh, safely on his way to Lasserta,’ she said, quickly recovering her composure. ‘In a train, actually. He was going overland for the experience. It’s a long way,’ she added unnecessarily.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Tuesday.’
‘Where?’
‘At home.’ She faltered. ‘I don’t usually come up here.’
‘Whose home?’
‘Oh, mine, or rather, my parents’,’ she said lightly. ‘He hasn’ t
got one. At least, not what you’d call a home. He shares his college digs with a crowd.’
‘Not private,’ nodded Sloan.
Sergeant Polly Perkins came to life and said in a friendly way ‘Your mother and father like him then?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said tepidly. ‘Mother particularly.’
Polly Perkins did her wise-woman party piece. ‘Fathers seldom like the young men their daughters bring home the first time they come.’
Hilary Trumper flashed her a grateful look. ‘You’re right there.’
‘Fathers tend to see daughters as their little girls for a lot longer than they really are,’ said Sergeant Perkins with every appearance of sympathy, suppressing all mention of those fathers whom she had come across in her work who had assumed little girls to be much older than they really were.
And gone to prison for it.
‘They don’t believe that these days we’ve got minds of our own,’ said the girl fiercely.
Sergeant Perkins was a model of empathy. ‘They do find it difficult.’
‘And to make it worse,’ said Hilary Trumper, clearly aggrieved, ‘Daddy hasn’t a lot of time for economists.’
As far as Sloan was concerned, Trumper père was not the only one who didn’t have a lot of time for economists.
‘He’s a proper businessman, you see,’ said the girl, quite unconscious of the non sequitur.
Neither of the police present needed telling that. Trumper and Trumper’s vehicles were everywhere in the county.
‘Is he a golfer, too?’ asked Sloan.
‘Yes and no.’
‘Which?’ asked Sloan. Yes or no was the more usual mode in the police way of questioning.
‘Yes, he belongs,’ she said, sulkily, ‘but no he doesn’t play much. And he only belongs,’ she added, ‘so that he knows what’s going on and can pick up business in the Clubhouse.’
‘I don’t suppose he’s the only one,’ said Sloan.
‘It’s here that he met Matt,’ she volunteered. ‘He caddied for him once and then I met Matt one day when I came up to collect Dad.’ She fixed the policeman with a defiant look. ‘Because of not drinking and driving.’
‘Much safer,’ said Sloan. ‘Talking of which, why did you use the word “safely” just then when you were talking about your friend Matt?’
‘Did I?’ she flashed him a disarming smile. ‘I didn’t mean to. Matthew must be halfway there by now.’
‘So why are you here now, miss, when he isn’t?’
‘I’m finding out all I can about the game while he’s away,’ she said, ‘so that we can play together when he gets back.’ She set her jaw. ‘I’m going to surprise him with my grasp of it.’
‘How long is he going to be abroad?’ asked Sloan. He would have to look up Lasserta in his atlas.
‘Most of the academic year,’ sighed the girl. ‘It’s part of his course.
‘That’s a long time when you’re young,’ said Sergeant Perkins kindly.
‘Very,’ she said. ‘But these days it’s not so bad because we can keep in touch quite easily.’
‘By telephone?’ said Sloan.
‘By text message,’ she said in a way that was meant to make Sloan feel old.
And did.
‘Every day – that’s all the while he can charge up his mobile, of course. He said it might be difficult sometimes while he was travelling.’
‘These messages,’ said Sloan.
‘Yes?’ The breathlessness in her voice had come back.
‘Have you stored them?’
She flushed. ‘Well, yes …why shouldn’t I?’
‘Might we see them?’
Sloan watched the blood drain out of her face as she fumbled in her pocket for her mobile and automatically noted that the hand that offered it to him had a tremor that hadn’t been there before.
Chapter Twelve
Casual Water
‘Nasty attack of the squitters,’ said a whey-faced Joe Briggs, greenkeeper. He was still moving with the extreme caution common to those who have been recently ill. ‘Don’t know what brought it on.’
‘If you ask me,’ said his wife, ‘it was that pork pie.’
‘Can’t have been,’ said the man flatly. ‘We all ate that and no one else has been ill.’
‘We must be grateful for small mercies, then, mustn’t we?’ His wife turned to Detective Constable Crosby who, being unmarried, had been observing the enactment of this domestic exchange with detachment. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ she said.
Joe Briggs stirred uneasily.
‘Couldn’t stop going,’ said his wife graphically. ‘No sooner was he back in his chair than he was back on the …’
The greenkeeper waved a hand and essayed a weak smile. ‘I think they call it Montezuma’s Revenge …’
‘Or Delhi Belly,’ said Crosby, who has never been farther afield than Calais and that only for the day.
‘I don’t hold with foreign food,’ said Mrs Briggs.
The greenkeeper summoned up some reserve of strength from somewhere to protest. ‘We didn’t have any foreign food.’
‘That’s as may be,’ said his wife. She rounded on Crosby. ‘What I want to know is when he’ll be fit to go back to work. Can’t have him sitting here all day.’
‘What did the doctor say?’ countered Crosby.
She sniffed. ‘Gave him something to stop the runs but it didn’t, did it, Joe?’
‘No,’ he agreed wanly.
‘And told you to drink a lot,’ she said, ‘but you didn’t, did you?’
‘Didn’t feel much liking drinking anything,’ he admitted. ‘Afraid of being sick if I did.’
‘Nasty,’ said Crosby. ‘When did it come on?’
‘Middle of the week,’ said Mrs Briggs before the man could speak.
‘Wednesday,’ he said. ‘I know it was Wednesday because Thursdays and Fridays I always keep free to cut the greens for Saturdays and Sundays and I couldn’t possibly get myself there. Not nohow.’
‘He worried about that,’ said his wife, ‘but as I told Mr Pursglove, Joe couldn’t even stand for long let alone push those great big mowers about.’
‘I don’t push them,’ protested Joe Briggs. ‘They’re diesel driven.’
Both Detective Constable Crosby and Mrs Briggs dismissed this as irrelevant.
‘So was it Wednesday that you had the pork pie?’ asked Crosby.
‘Tuesday night,’ said his wife for him.
‘What did you have Tuesday while you were at work?’ asked the Detective Constable.
‘What I always have,’ replied the man pallidly. ‘Sandwiches.’
‘There was nothing wrong with his sandwiches,’ said Mrs Briggs, bridling.
‘I put them up myself. Sardine, they were.’
Joe winced visibly at the mention of food.
‘And where were they while you were out on the course on Tuesday?’ asked Crosby.
‘In my snap-tin, like always,’ replied the greenkeeper.
‘And where did you leave the snap-tin then?’ persisted a terrier-like Crosby.
‘In my bothy,’ said the greenkeeper. ‘On the side, there. By my flask.’
‘Like always,’ said Crosby for him.
‘That’s right. But what’s all this got to do with the police?’ asked Briggs.
‘Everything,’ said Detective Constable Crosby with empressement. ‘Or nothing,’ he added fairly.
‘Do you know something we don’t?’ demanded Mrs Briggs. ‘If so, I’d like to know what it is before Joe gets any worse.
‘We don’t tell people what we know,’ said Crosby with dignity, ‘or let them know what we don’t know.’
‘Great,’ said Mrs Briggs sarcastically.
‘It can be useful to let people worry about it a bit,’ said Crosby, taking his leave.
There had been no sign of the Superintendent since he had departed hot-foot in search of the Men’s Captain. Sloan himself was now establishe
d once more behind the desk in the Secretary’s room instead, his notebook open at a fresh page.
He was relishing a moment’s peace and quiet without Crosby when Molly from the bar knocked and put her head round the door. ‘Message for you from Mrs Sloan, Inspector. She wants to know when she should expect you home.’
Sloan looked up. ‘What did you tell her?’ he asked with interest.
Molly gave a slow smile. ‘Same as I always say when the gentlemen’s wives ring up to find out where they are.’
‘What’s that?’ he asked curiously.
‘That I haven’t seen them myself but that I’ll tell them their wife has rung when I do.’ She gave another of her slow smiles. ‘There’s no way round that, is there?’
‘None,’ said Sloan heartily. ‘Molly, you’re a great loss to the Diplomatic Corps.’
‘Thank you, Inspector.’
‘Now, have you seen Sergeant Perkins anywhere?’
‘I haven’t seen her myself, Inspector, but I’ll tell her you’re asking for her when I do.’
‘I could well have left my nine iron out on the course, Inspector,’ admitted Gerald Moffat. ‘I’m not sure.’ He looked older and more vulnerable than he had done out in the bar. He was less didactic, too. ‘I’m not getting any younger, you know.’
Sloan had persuaded the man out of the Clubroom and into the Secretary’s office.
‘But it wasn’t handed in,’ said Moffat, ‘and so I had to buy another.’
‘I see,’ said Sloan, who always allowed himself to buy another rose when one died – even though it had to go into new ground, ground that wasn’t rose-sick.
‘Things aren’t what they were. Nothing’s safe these days,’ complained Moffat.
The police view – which was a longer one – was that nothing had ever been safe, but all Sloan said was ‘Can you remember when you last used that particular club? It’s for bunkers, isn’t it?’
‘And for long grass,’ said Moffat. ‘Get off the fairway on some holes here and you’d need it then.’
‘So you’d have last used it when?’ asked Sloan patiently.
‘I’d have to think,’ scowled Moffat. After a moment his face cleared. ‘I remember. It was on the tenth about a week ago. I sliced my shot on the fairway and got in between the trees so I had to play a squeeze shot to get out. Did for my chances of the Kemberland Cup for this year, I’m afraid.’
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