Dark of Night

by Oliver Davies

  Joe had been studying me while I looked around and got comfortable. He tsked through his teeth and shook his head. “Still the same bonny young heartbreaker, like one of the Fair Folk, sprung ageless from the Hollow Hills.” Very poetic, but what was wrong with a more conventional ‘I see you’re looking well’? He leaned back, his hands resting comfortably on his stomach, feet sprawled as far apart as he could manage in the tight space. Well, I could play that game too.

  “And you still look like a grumpy old curmudgeon every time you stop smiling, as if that’s the default setting for your face,” I retorted. “And I see you’ve added a few pounds to that belly of yours.” He grinned, enjoying my quick flash of touchy testiness.

  “Aye,” he agreed, “that’s my winter cladding. It’ll melt away again over the summer. You haven’t changed much, have you?” Not referring to the way I looked this time. “How’s your Conall doing?”

  “He’s good. They’ve got him up in Inverness now. He made DCI a couple of years ago.”

  Joe looked pleased to hear it. “Good for him! And Inverness is it? So, you’re lending a hand on one of his again? Well, I’ve made copies of everything for you to take.” He patted an A4 plastic wallet on the side of his desk. “There’s a thumb drive in there too, with everything on it. Shall I give you a quick run through the nub of it?”

  “Please. If you don’t mind, Joe.” We both moved our chairs to the left slightly, so I could see the two monitor screens clearly as he woke them up with a mouse click. He pulled up a plan. “That’s the original Ogilvie Property as was, back in 1782. And this,” another plan appeared on the right-hand monitor, “is all the properties that are on that land now.”

  I compared them. The Kerr Estate took up about 70% of the old Ogilvie Estate. Several farms lay partially or completely within the old Ogilvie Boundary.

  “Looks like quite a few pieces were sold off over the years..”

  “Aye, and a few bits bought back in too. Do you want me to go through all of them?” I didn’t think that was necessary.

  “Just the Kerr/Ramsay bits please.” Joe nodded, unsurprised, and clicked his mouse a few more times, minimising the files that were on display and bringing up two new ones from the crowded taskbar to replace them with. I figured he’d spent a busy hour preparing everything ready for me since I’d called him.

  “That left-hand one is a properly drawn up plan of what the current Kerr title says they own. On the right is what they actually do own, and I’ve added the outline of the Ramsay farm there in red, so you can see how everything lies.”

  “These few acres here,” I leaned in to point, “that are coloured in green inside the Ramsay border? That’s the bit of land the confusion was over?”

  He nodded. “Aye. There were thirty pieces of the Old Ogilvie Estate sold off altogether. Douglas Kerr’s Solicitor, being a lazy, useless tosser and not looking back further than the Descriptive Writ for the current title deed, only accounted for twenty-nine of them.” He chuckled. “And you don’t want to see what a muddle he got his notes into, trying to sort out the ones he did find.”

  He dismissed the right-hand plan and pulled up a deed. “This is the Previous title of the Kerr Estate, the one before the current one. I’ve highlighted some lines for you.” I flicked through them. There was a lot of unnecessarily wordy legal verbiage that basically said that the current title consisted of everything described in the previous title plus one more piece bought in since then, that was detailed in another deed. It gave the type of the new deed, the parties involved for the purchase, which register it had been recorded in and the date that had happened.”

  “Okay, that seems to be pretty straightforward once you get used to the way they worded it all.”

  “Aye. Now,” he scrolled down to another highlighted section at the end of the deed, “the Inventory of Writs.” He told me, “A lot of deeds don’t have one, they’re not obligatory, but with a big estate like this, and lots of transactions occurring, it’s quite usual to find one. The Exceptions Writs are the ones we’re interested in, and there should be one of those for every sale of a bit of land that’s happened since the 1782 Ogilvie title was established. There should be thirty of them, one for each sale.”

  I checked through it and sat back again.

  “And there aren’t. One is missing.” There were only twenty-nine. Joe closed the file and brought up the current title deed and showed me an identical list of Exceptions Writs in the Inventory there. The mistake had simply been carried over, not discovered and corrected.

  “And here’s the title deed that preceded the Descriptive Writ, the one you saw before.” And this time, all thirty Exceptions Writs were properly listed when I checked through them.

  “Can you pull that plan showing the farm and estate together back up on the left please?” I asked, and he moved to do so. “And let me have a look at the 1902 Disposition by Ogilvie in favour of Oliphant?” I added. Joe twisted round, staring open-mouthed at me for a second, before he snapped his jaw shut and loudly cleared his throat.

  “That’s a canny, rare gift you have there, Shay. You’re bang on! I’ve never met anyone else who could memorise lists like that on a quick read through, or play spot the difference between them as fast as a computer.” I just shrugged, sort of apologetically, and he shook his head in bemusement before turning to pull up the two files I’d asked for. I scanned down the deed looking for the keywords ‘... comprising of all and whole___’ that I’d already seen was a marker for a following description of exactly what was being sold off. I read it through, finding out how far the piece of land extended in different directions relative to different corners of what was then the Oliphant farmhouse. Just over five acres of land and yes, when I looked, the description matched the part of the plan shaded green.

  “That circled cross,” Joe had pencilled one in on the west border of the green bit, “is that where the old Ogilvie boundary stone that the description refers to would have been?”

  “Aye, give or take a foot or two. It’s hard to be really precise with such a small plan. Here, look.” He minimised everything and clicked through a few file folders until he reached the one that he was looking for. It was a plan of the actual Kerr Estate without any of the neighbouring properties on it. It had eight little crosses on it, and the one near the middle of the west boundary was also circled. “Those crosses mark where, as far as I can pinpoint, some of the original stones might have been moved to. The one I circled is the one that could, possibly, have been taken from the Oliphant farm to its new rightful spot in 1902. I worked the others out from bits in different deeds that said things like ‘marked by a boundary stone at its most northerly point’ or ‘and running east from the southwesterly boundary stone for a distance of one hundred and forty-four feet’ and then cross-checking the locations given. It seemed to me that they might have just been moving the original stones into new positions as the estate shrank, instead of commissioning new ones, but I could only cross-reference the few that gave both the old and the new positions of whichever stones they did use.”

  I grinned at him. He hadn’t had this one prepped to show me. This was a little bit of time-killing occupation he’d done for his own amusement.

  “What happened, Joe? Did you get bored on a quiet day and decide to play around with an interesting little puzzle?” It was the kind of thing I’d do. “That is a very neat bit of detective work. Maybe you chose the wrong profession?”

  “Not a chance in hell, thank you very much! Seems to me that a career in crime investigation isn’t good for most people, twists them up like, given time.” Some people, maybe, but I couldn’t see myself leading a life worth living doing anything else. It had the opposite effect on me. I didn’t believe in karmic justice as a metaphysical actuality, but it was a nice concept, and I really liked getting to hand over the practicable part of a delivery order on that.

  Three different solicitors, decades apart, not doing their jobs properly. That’s all the
re was to the confusion? I felt a bit disappointed. No motive for murder there. And the Allen fellow had told Conall it had been nothing more than a friendly misunderstanding. I smiled gratefully at Joe.

  “It doesn’t look like this is anything that will help us move the case along at the moment, but I can’t thank you enough for preparing all this for me.”

  “Least I could do, and I know how you boys have to tick off all the boxes. You just call me anytime you want something looking at. I still reckon I owe you a debt that I’ve no chance of ever repaying. My Davie was looking to be sent down for a stretch, and we were all getting pretty terrified at the thought of that, before you boys stepped into the picture and got it all sorted out so quickly. Saved me a heart attack, I reckon.” He handed me the folder of copies he’d made for me. “I mean it, Shay. Any time you think I can help. Call me.”

  “Just try to stop me!” I reassured him. “You’re firmly on my list as a valuable potential asset with stuff like this.” We stood, and I got another handshake and a couple more slaps on the back. Then I gathered my things and went off to catch a tram.

  Nine

  There were five assorted camper vans and a couple of cars parked up in the field on the north end of the estate. I reckoned that we’d ended up less than ten minutes of brisk walking from the main house, cutting across the grounds, but we’d had to go the long way round, retracing the lane we’d gone in by back to the public road and then turning off onto a muddy track to the left. Thankfully, the track was in decent condition, without any wheel-swallowing deep ruts or holes in it. Jessica told us to turn right at a fork, and we’d bumped along west for another couple of hundred yards to get here.

  “We could just use the access track to that cottage and walk over from there, if we need to hop between here and the house again,” Caitlin had suggested as we pulled to a stop.

  She was right. The roof of one of the estate cottages was visible just over a wall to our left, snugged down in a little hollow near the south-east corner of the woods. I had a good look around, orienting myself, after I climbed out of the car. If I wasn’t mistaken, our murder scene was roughly a mile to the south by south-west of this spot. My view that way was blocked by some intervening trees that would have completely hidden the farm behind and below them. And it was all empty countryside in between the two locations, just fields and a few, scattered copses, no houses, no roads.

  While I’d been getting my bearings, Jessica had walked over to one of the vans and knocked at the door on its side, Caitlin on her heels. At the sound of the knock, I turned and strode quickly over to join them. “Katie and Debbie will be about,” I heard her tell Caitlin as I approached. “They only left the library a bit before you arrived.”

  An almost anorexically thin stick of a girl answered the knock, early twenties, with a shaggy hair cut, dyed blue, straggling down to her shoulders. Skinny jeans and jumpers seemed to be in vogue around here.

  “Hi, Jess!” she said. “What brings you up here?” She shot a darting, disfavouring glance at Caitlin and me, standing there in our business clothes. The open door blocked her view of our car, but she didn’t certainly approve of the look of us, whoever we were.

  “Hi, Debbie. These police officers need to talk to everyone,” Jessica told her. “Do you know where they all are? I saw both cars are here.”

  “Oh, dear!” an unconcerned, lightly cheerful voice exclaimed from somewhere within. “Has someone been causing bother with the locals again? Making the sheep mildly anxious by walking through the wrong field?”

  “They’re not Uniforms, Katie,” Debbie told her. “They’re Suits.”

  “Oh!” A second, reassuringly fuller face came to look out at us with a curious but friendly expression. This one was on the pretty side of plain, with a bit of extra fat on her waist and hips, which I was rather cheered up by, after seeing how unhealthy her companion looked. She seemed that type of girl that people sometimes hardly noticed, until they started to get to know them, only gradually realising that they were just lovely. She noted the rain, a steady, light drizzle now, and wrinkled her nose at it. “We’d better just grab our jackets before we join you then. Martin and Stephen are holed up in their camper I think, but the others were still down at the plots when we got back.”

  We left Katie and Debbie to sort themselves out and followed Jessica Kerr along the line to the shabbiest looking of the vans. Two lads in their mid-twenties were indeed holed up in it, and I caught the faint but unmistakable scent of weed on them as they scrambled out to join us. Not recent, just infused into their clothes.

  The two girls appeared, hoods up, and Jessica turned to me. “Would you like me to run down and bring the other five back here, Inspector? Or should we all go down to the plots?”

  “Let’s all just go to find them, shall we?” I wanted a look at this ‘permaculture project’ of theirs anyway, especially now that I knew we had smokers in the bunch. Besides, I didn’t want to squash all twelve of us into any of the vans, even though they all looked roomier than Shay’s lovely little pride and joy. They’d all be able to hear each other’s answers to our questions if I did that.

  Caitlin handed me a little telescopic brolly she’d brought from the car for me, because I was wearing my cotton/wool blend long winter coat that day, no hood, and I reluctantly put the thing up. I don’t generally like using umbrellas, but the steady drizzle was definitely thickening, and I didn’t fancy ending up looking like a drowned rat. We all trooped off across the field, heading in the direction of the cottage Caitlin had pointed out as a good spot to park. Jessica stayed with us, at the back of the group, whilst the other two girls led the way.

  We reached the west wall of the field and followed it down to a wooden gate at the bottom end. My trouser cuffs, over my boots, were wet through by then, from swishing through the short grass whilst crossing the field. We followed a firm, turfed-over track on the other side of the gate, straight across to the edge of the trees, then down and around a corner to where I could see the ‘project’ laid out from left to right ahead of us.

  I was impressed. They’d laid everything out in a long rectangular grid pattern and made little, well seated wooden pathways to walk along between each of the individual plots. There were labelled poles sticking up everywhere and protective cloches over the more fragile early plantings. On the far side, there was a large, green canvas shelter, a good thirty feet wide, with the walls rolled up and people working and moving around the tables under the high roof; filling up pots, potting seeds and performing other little tasks, and there was one, deeply tanned little guy wandering around writing notes on a clipboard. I saw more stacked seed trays, pots, bulbs and bags of manure handily stored on temporary brick and plank shelving at the back and spare bags of manure stacked by them.

  I interestedly checked out some of the plot labels as we passed along the centre path, some with seedlings already peeking up under their protective cloches. The few that I managed to read identified plantings of winter onions, perpetual spinach, pak choi, parsnips and three different potato strains.

  Five interested faces gathered together as we approached and watched us all troop into the shelter. Four lads and another girl. Our four, collected up at the camp, instinctively moving to stand with them.

  “Hi, everyone,” Jessica said. “This is Inspector Keane and Detective Sergeant Murray. They’re investigating the death of Gareth Ramsay, the neighbouring farmer I talked to you all about a couple of weeks ago.”

  I watched their attentive faces as she spoke, looking for any sign of falsity in their surprised reactions, but I didn’t spot any. They all looked like most young people usually do, when they hear that an older stranger who lived nearby has died. Suitably solemn, of course, but not personally affected in any way. No, the only hint of anything other than that was the usual amount of anxiety and tension for this age group that was inevitably brought on by the appearance of unexpected representatives of police authority. I put my little open brolly d
own in a corner to rest on its edge and maybe dry off a bit before I cleared my throat.

  “Thank you, Miss Kerr.” I faced the group. “Sergeant Murray and I are just going around collecting information from people in the area and would like to ask each of you a few questions, in case you are unknowingly aware of something that may be of help to us.” I’d hit the right, bland tone, they all looked a bit more relaxed already. “And, just in case it has not yet been made clear, I should tell you that Mr Ramsay’s death is currently being investigated as a murder inquiry.” A collective, low murmur at that. No, they hadn’t cottoned on from the way Jessica had put it. I gave them a friendly, confident look. “Given the circumstances, I’m sure that you will all do your very best to assist us.” A little wave of nodding heads there. “Is one of you nominally in charge of the horticultural study being conducted here?”

  They didn’t seem quite sure that anyone was, but I saw who they all uncertainly glanced at, the little tanned guy. “Not really,” a horsey type looking girl with a long honey blonde ponytail offered. “It’s an unsupervised class project, but Miguel is the expert we invited in to help us organise.” She gave his arm a squeeze, “He’s been amazing! He’s from Coimbra, in Portugal, but he’s been all over the world working on different projects, and he’s got loads of videos and information on his site for people to learn from.” Miguel gave her an abashed smile and then turned it hopefully on me.

  “It is what I always love, the work,” he told me enthusiastically in a musical, accented voice. “And now many more people become with more interest, because of the climate and pollution.” And I got a flash of his perfect white teeth. He was a very handsome young man, in a pretty way, with great brown deerlike eyes and pleasing soft features set in a complexion positively glowing with good health. His lustrous black hair fell in loose ringlets, not quite long enough to reach his shoulders. A heavy dark stubble mantled his lower face, as if to accent his maleness. And his English grammar might be a bit off, but he clearly had an extensive vocabulary, no hesitant pauses to search for the words he wanted. He was slightly shorter than Caitlin, maybe 5” 6’.