by Ian Simpson
‘Are their deaths connected? Was Mr Parsley …?’
Baggo could not help smiling. ‘I think their deaths may be connected. That is why I am here. But no, Mr Parsley was definitely not Bruce’s lover.’
Longstone nodded, as if he were pleased. ‘There’s not much to say about Mr Parsley. He didn’t come very often and changed his shoes in the car rather than go into the clubhouse. He always seemed to play with his wife, who wasn’t a member, and they went round in a buggy. He just came into the shop, paid for his wife’s ticket and the buggy and went out. They often played just a few holes.’
‘So he didn’t have friends among the other members?’
‘No. They seemed very snobbish, the Parsleys. In the shop we called them Mr and Mrs Posh.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me about them?’
‘Well, they usually arrived in different cars, always top of the range. And they talked a lot while playing, as if they were both very busy and this was a chance to catch up with each other. They’ve been here more often in the last few months than during the rest of the year, though the course hasn’t been in great condition.’
Baggo thought for a minute then phoned Lance Wallace on his mobile. ‘Where are you right now?’ he asked.
‘In St Andrews.’ There was excitement in Lance’s voice. ‘We’ve made a breakthrough.’
‘I think I am on to something too. Please get someone to use a mobile to take photos of all the women on the whiteboard and send them to me on this phone ASAP.’ He turned to Longstone. ‘Thank you, Tony. You’ve been most helpful. I must ask you to stay here with me till a colleague phones back. While we wait, what were you saying about my pivot?’
19
A steady drizzle carried on a biting North Sea wind made Flick wish she was indoors. For what seemed an eternity Ally Hay, the hotel engineer, had been trying to catch Jack and Tiger using an angler’s net while she, Wallace, McKellar and two constables watched with a mixture of amusement and impatience. For all their usual dignified progress round the pond, the large, fat goldfish could put on a turn of speed when avoiding a net. Eventually both were deposited in a plastic crate with enough water to keep them alive. They briefly thrashed their tails in anger then calmed down.
‘Jack after Jack Nicklaus?’ Wallace asked.
‘Aye,’ Ally replied, ‘“the Golden Bear” as he was called. He’s the one with the gold on top of his head. Tiger’s the paler one, which is funny, I suppose. We used to have Bobby, after Bobby Jones, but the heron ate him.’
‘The thing we hope to find is quite small,’ Flick interrupted the idle chatter. ‘Can you filter the water as it escapes?’
‘Oh yes,’ Ally replied, ‘you’d be amazed at what we find in there. Lots of golf balls from the seventeenth, obviously, but also rings, bracelets, credit cards. A few things don’t get in there by accident, know what I mean?’
‘I think I do,’ Flick said.
Ally went to a tiny iron door set low in the hotel wall and used a key to open it. He pressed a button, turned a dial then pressed a second button. A dull thud came from the pond and the surface began to move.
‘I’ve put it on the narrowest filter, so it’ll take a bit of time, but nothing will escape,’ Ally said.
As the dark water seeped away down an underground pipe, Flick scanned the windows of the hotel. If No was watching, she could not see him. On the first floor she saw Sandi Saddlefell and Eileen Eglinton staring down from their rooms. Either of them, or Belinda Parsley, whose room was to the right of the Eglintons as she looked at them, could have tossed a money clip from their window into the pond. There was a small strip of roof above the ground floor but it would have been easy to throw a small missile over it.
‘What do you do with the golf balls?’ Wallace asked as numerous white blobs appeared at the bottom of the pond.
‘We keep a few, sell a few and give a few to charity,’ Ally said.
The water, which had been about four feet deep, was nearly all gone and on the bottom Flick guessed there must have been at least a hundred golf balls. ‘Is it alright for these two constables to climb in and sort through what’s left?’ Flick asked.
Ally nodded. ‘No problem. There’s thick plastic at the bottom. If we let water escape it would affect the water table and the links supervisor would be raging. The fairway’s lower than we are here.’ He pointed towards the golf course.
The two younger constables went into the pond and began to hand balls out to Wallace and McKellar, who put them into clear plastic bags. Another bag was for rubbish and Flick held a small evidence bag just in case.
‘Put that back!’ she shouted at one of the constables in the pond who had slipped two balls in good condition into his pocket.
Sheepishly he pulled them out and placed them on the bank. When Flick turned away he made a face at her, earning a scowl from Wallace.
It did not take long to clear the pond. There were three bags of balls and one of rubbish, mostly bottles and cans. There was a layer of silt on the bottom and Flick ordered the constables to search it by hand. There was no point in half measures.
‘Here’s more rubbish,’ the ball-taker said with disgust, chucking a round, dark object towards the appropriate bag.
‘Let’s have a look,’ Flick said as McKellar bent to pick it up.
It was a pair of woman’s tights wrapped and tied round something heavier. Flick replaced her leather gloves with plastic ones. Carefully and slowly, she untied the knot and unwrapped the sodden fabric. Inside was a golf ball, made by Nike and in good condition.
Wallace held out an evidence bag and she dropped it in. The tights bore no label, but were brown and thick. Flick held them up and saw they were large size. She bagged them and, suddenly impervious to the cold, she sat on the low wall between the hotel and the course and thought.
She thought of three women, one taller and generally bigger than the others; a tall, thin man practising his putting in his room without a ball; a golf club store with only one left-handed set, belonging to a man; a man signing autographs using a gloved hand.
‘You play golf, don’t you, Wallace?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘And right-handed players usually wear a glove on their left hand?’
‘Yes.’
‘So left-handed players will use a right hand glove?’
‘Yes.’
At this point his mobile rang. It was Baggo. Wallace moved away to take it. When it was over he made a quick call to Gilsland in Cupar then came back to Flick, who continued to sit on the wall deep in thought.
She asked, ‘Do you ever get right-handed people who play golf left-handed and vice-versa?’
‘Absolutely. Phil Mickelson’s the best example. He’s right-handed but golfs left-handed. They say Ben Hogan may have been left-handed.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘A terrific player from the past, but there are lots more examples.’
Flick nodded. Wallace sat beside her on the wall as the constables continued their fingertip search of the pond bottom.
It did not take them long. ‘There’s nothing there, ma’am,’ McKellar said. ‘Shall I get Ally to fill it up again?’
‘Yes,’ Flick said, then added half to herself, half to Wallace, ‘So no money clip. But why, and why Thornton?’
Wallace’s phone rang again. It was Baggo. Wallace listened for a while then turned to Flick.
‘It’s Baggo. He may have the answer to your questions. I’ll put my phone on speaker. The inspector’s listening,’ he added to Baggo.
‘Inspector, ma’am, the late Hugh Parsley came to play golf at Haleybourne with a woman who was not his wife but whom he passed off as his wife. They had long, intimate conversations as they went round in a buggy together. Neither of them were known here otherwise. I have with me Mr Tony Longstone, a colleague and friend of Bruce Thornton’s and he has positively identified the woman he had known as Mrs Parsley as …’
‘
Eileen Eglinton,’ Flick cut in.
‘Gracious, yes. We have reached the same conclusion by different routes.’
‘Please ask Mr Longstone one thing. Does Mrs Eglinton play right or left-handed?
After a pause Baggo said, ‘I see the point. Yes, she plays right-handed. She must have killed Thornton because he recognised her. He expressed condolence for the death of Mr Parsley and addressed the remark to her. The real Mrs Parsley was also there and thought nothing was strange apart from the fact that Thornton did not look at her when talking to her. Mrs Eglinton was so concerned about the truth coming out that she killed him at the earliest opportunity.’
‘What are you going to do now?’ Flick asked.
‘I am going to catch the first flight to Edinburgh. Now that we have solved your murders, I must catch my money launderers.’
Wallace ended the call. By now the pond had been refilled through small pipes in the sides. Ally tipped the crate over the water and Jack and Tiger were unceremoniously returned to their home.
‘Right,’ Flick said to Wallace, ‘get these tights and that ball to the lab ASAP. There may be fingerprints on the ball and I bet Parsley’s blood was spattered over the tights. I hope they’ll find some trace of it despite the water. Now, let’s get her.’
* * *
Flanked by Wallace and McKellar, Flick knocked for a second time on the Eglinton’s door.
‘Y’er wasting yer time. They’ve gone oot,’ Sharon told them as she tried to steer her cleaning trolley past them.
Flick rounded on her. ‘When?’ she demanded.
‘Ho, I dinnae take note. I’ve mair to dae than that.’ Seeing the anger on Flick’s face she added, ‘Weel, maybe ten minutes ago.’
Flick looked at Wallace. ‘Go downstairs and find out where they’ve gone.’ Turning back to Sharon she said, ‘Please open this door for us. This is an urgent police investigation.’
Unhurriedly, Sharon folded the towel she was holding and put it on the trolley. She took her pass key and opened the door. It was clear that the room had not yet been made up, but it was not untidy. On one side of the bed was an autobiography of Bobby Jones. On the other was a biography of Harold Macmillan and a slim, battered paperback, St Andrews Ghost Stories. Flick had read this collection of far-fetched tales spawned by the Royal Burgh’s often bloody history. It was not her sort of book but gave an intriguing perspective on her new home town. The Eglintons had made no attempt to pack and there was no evidence of a hurried departure.
‘Don’t touch this room, please,’ Flick told Sharon. ‘We may need to search it.’
They left Sharon muttering rebelliously and went downstairs. Wallace was with the porter, who was on the phone. ‘They took a taxi ma’am, and Joe here is talking to the taxi company. Joe says they were wearing coats. They said they were going into town.’
‘Thanks, mate.’ Joe put down the phone. ‘The cab dropped them off at the end of North Street about five minutes ago.’
After Wallace had thanked Joe, Flick told him to get as many officers as possible searching for the Eglintons. ‘No sirens or flashing lights, though,’ she added. ‘We don’t want to spook them. McKellar, you come with me. Your local knowledge may be useful.’
* * *
Shocked by the notion that the grand woman he knew as Mrs Parsley had murdered his friend, Tony Longstone gave Baggo his contact details then the number of a local taxi company. As they walked back to the pro’s shop Baggo told him what the next steps might be.
‘Will I have to give evidence?’ he asked.
‘If there’s a trial, almost certainly, and it’ll probably be in Scotland,’ Baggo told him. ‘I advise you not to talk about it too much,’ he added.
By the time they reached the shop the taxi had arrived. ‘Thank you for improving my pivot!’ he shouted as he climbed in.
As the taxi driver tried to avoid the potholes in the golf club drive, Baggo phoned Lance Wallace.
‘They’ve gone, the Eglintons have gone,’ Lance told him. ‘I’m trying to organise a search of the town.’
‘Have you listened to the bug in Forbes’s room today?’
‘There was nothing interesting overnight, apart from you-know-what. This morning we haven’t had time.’
‘But with the murderer identified this is the time to push forward on the money laundering. They may be rattled. I am heading for Heathrow now and I should reach St Andrews by early evening. Do you have anyone at the hotel who might listen to the bug now?’
‘DC Di Falco’s still at the hotel. He’s supposed to interview departing guests, but tell him I said he should help you.’ He gave Baggo di Falco’s number.
Baggo’s call interrupted di Falco and Jocelyn the under-manager in a conversation about their favourite films. Bored with quizzing guests, he was delighted to do something more exciting. He readily understood the instructions on operating the device and what he should listen for. He promised to phone back as soon as possible.
‘Come on,’ he whispered to Jocelyn. ‘Come and see some real police work.’
* * *
North Street runs west to east and is a continuation of the Cupar road. A cinema, some flats and fine old university buildings along its left side, it reaches the cathedral wall and does a right U-turn to go back on itself as South Street. Unlike the nearby castle, which was battered by French guns in the sixteenth century, the huge medieval cathedral, in its day the premier ecclesiastical building in Scotland, was ruined by poor architecture, storms, a fire, lack of money and looting. A number of houses in the vicinity were constructed using sandstone removed from the cathedral. Today the stark ruins of this formerly magnificent and important building are preserved by Historic Scotland. What remains of spires, arches and windows is surrounded by a well-kept graveyard in which the different tombstones indicate the length of tenure of their corpses. Many of these grey slabs lie flat on the ground, to be peered at by visitors. Others are more elaborate, such as the engraved stone set in the boundary wall marking the resting place of Young Tom Morris, the brilliant golfer at the end of the nineteenth century who died tragically young of a broken heart. The whole area is enclosed by a high, thick wall built as fortification in medieval times and built to last. Towers and turrets break up the wall and more modern sections close any gaps that have occurred over the years.
Also made to withstand the ravages of time, at the west end of the ruined cathedral, St Rule’s Tower stands tall, square and strong. Erected in the twelfth century, it is some thirty-three metres high and the top can now be reached by a spiral stair containing one hundred and fifty-one steps.
If the bloodstained history of St Andrews was not sufficient, the historic parts of the town have spawned a number of ghost stories. A beautiful girl, dressed in white and mummified in one of the towers along the wall, is said to haunt the cathedral. The ghost of Prior Robert of Montrose, a good man stabbed by an evil monk and cast off the north side of St Rule’s Tower, has been seen leaping onto the parapet and jumping from the top of the tower.
Flick had little time for such fantasies; they were simply local colour, but having seen the book of ghost stories beside the Eglintons’ bed, she had little doubt that, having been dropped at the end of North Street, they would head for the cathedral. Following her hunch, she threw the car into a space beside the narrow Monument Gate and rushed in. She looked round desperately. The drizzle had stopped, the wind had softened to a mere zephyr and there were even fleeting hints of pale sunlight. Few visitors were inspecting the cold, damp fragments of history that afternoon. A couple wearing raincoats walked beside the north boundary wall, perhaps seeking the haunted tower. Neither of them was tall. A tall man wearing a tweed cap and a raincoat came round a corner of St Rule’s Tower and stood at the entrance. He was joined by a big woman in a thick coat and trousers. She was bare-headed.
‘It’s them!’ Flick hissed to McKellar as the woman appeared to insert something before entering the tower. The man did the same.
‘After them!’ Flick said, breaking into a run.
‘We’ll need tokens to get in,’ McKellar said at her elbow.
‘Can we not …?’
‘No. I’ll go round to the shop and buy them. You could stand by the door in case they come out.’
‘Okay,’ she said, trying not to show her impatience. ‘I’ll tell Wallace where we are.’
McKellar was away for five minutes. By the time he joined Flick at the door of the tower, she was highly agitated.
‘What can they be doing here?’ she asked, not expecting a reply but seizing a token.
The tokens persuaded the revolving metal bars to let them through. They found themselves in a dank stone chamber, well-lit by electricity and with stone steps leading upwards. There was no sound from the stairs.
‘They must be up there,’ McKellar whispered, aware of a slight echo. ‘This is the only way up and down.’
‘Shush,’ Flick said unnecessarily and she set off up the spiral staircase. McKellar followed her but began to struggle. The stones were black and wet and worn. They carried on up and round, up and round, tiring thighs and making both officers breathe heavily. Flick was now several steps in front and increasing the gap between them. As her body began to hurt she thought of other things. She remembered it was about this time of year, just before Christmas, that Prior Robert had been murdered at the top of this tower, if you believed the story. Anyway, this space, these stones she brushed past as she ascended, had seen centuries of life back to when human existence was nasty, brutish and short.
At last she came to the top step, a wire mesh door ahead. She took a deep breath. Suddenly fearful, she pushed the door open and stepped onto the wooden decking at the top of the tower. The first thing she saw was Simon Eglinton sitting on the waist-high parapet on the north side. He was posing for a photograph, looking serious. The photographer was his wife. Angling a mobile phone, she stood some six feet from him. She looked up when she heard the mesh door. An expression of fury twisted her face. She dropped the phone and lunged towards her husband.