Losing Ground

by Catherine Aird

  ‘I don’t care if it’s got a serious one,’ exploded the exasperated fire officer, ‘you aren’t going any further in until I say so.’

  ‘And if I could just get a proper look at the trochantic fossa at the proximal end of that bone…’ The pathologist started to inch his way forward again, binoculars at the ready, with all the enthusiasm of the specialist. ‘I haven’t had a case of excarnation for years.’

  ‘And what’s that when it’s at home?’ demanded the fireman in exasperation.

  ‘Leaving bones out to be picked over. By the way, for the record I should say that the bones are sitting on some sort of calcined material. I can’t quite see what.’

  Charlie Burton clambered over some wreckage to get back to the side of Detective Inspector Sloan, hissing in his ear ‘What part of “no” is it that he doesn’t understand?’

  Sloan regarded the prone figure of the pathologist advancing on his tummy with a certain dispassion. ‘I would say that what the good doctor is looking for is wriggle room.’

  ‘Very funny,’ snapped Burton. ‘Well, if you ask me I think he’s going to get his fingers burnt.’

  ‘His, though,’ pointed out Sloan. ‘Not ours.’ Self-preservation was something learnt early on the beat.

  ‘You stop him then, mate,’ said the fireman, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s no skin off my nose if he does himself an injury.’ Having thus metaphorically washed his hands of the matter, Charlie Burton started to move away. Then he stopped and said over his shoulder, ‘But by my reckoning, nobody’s supposed to enter a crime scene without your permission anyway.’

  ‘And yours,’ said Sloan politely.

  ‘Mine?’

  ‘Arson, I think you said.’ Sloan waved a hand. ‘The probable cause of the fire. It’s a crime.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes.’ The man halted in his tracks and gave him a tight little smile. ‘We leave all that to our investigative experts and they do like a clear field.’

  Taking the hint, Detective Inspector Sloan advanced towards the pathologist himself. ‘Doctor, I must remind you that this is an active crime scene…’

  ‘Not as far as I’m concerned, it isn’t, Sloan, arson apart.’

  ‘If those are human bones…’

  ‘Ah, that’s just it, Sloan,’ said Dr Dabbe. ‘I don’t think they are.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Not human bones?’ echoed Superintendent Leeyes indignantly. ‘Is he sure?’

  ‘That’s what he says,’ said Sloan. ‘He can’t really get close enough to them to be quite sure because of the heat so we haven’t got his official report yet.’

  ‘If they’re not human bones, then what are they?’ demanded Leeyes down the telephone line.

  ‘His unconfirmed opinion is that they’re animal but he can’t get near enough to confirm that either until the whole place has cooled down. All he will say is that they are big and not human.’

  ‘From our point of view I would have thought there were only two sorts of bones,’ observed Leeyes loftily. ‘Homo sapiens and the rest.’

  ‘Quite so.’ From a police perspective and animal cruelty apart, Sloan agreed with him. He said ‘I’m afraid there could be a joker in the pack.’

  Leeyes sniffed. ‘Literally.’

  Sloan forged on. ‘I think it would be as well, sir, also to allow for the possibility that they could be either animal bones or artificial ones.’

  ‘Like I said, someone having us on, do you think?’ growled the superintendent.

  Sloan coughed. ‘Don’t you remember, sir, that the Berebury Preservation Society has a bit of a reputation for the exotic? Their Jonathon Ayling’s a bit of a wild card. What you might call their stunt-man.’

  ‘Is it them who’s doing it?’ snorted Leeyes combatively. ‘If so, then just wait until I…’

  ‘We don’t know yet that it’s anyone,’ said Sloan, adding sedulously, ‘And, of course, sir, it may not be us that they’re having on.’

  ‘Who else then?’ growled Leeyes, who was inclined to take things personally.

  ‘There’s the planning people for starters and then there’s the developers.’

  The superintendent wasn’t listening. ‘Sloan, you don’t think that the bones could have come from an aurochs?’ He sounded almost wistful.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The extinct European bison.’

  ‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure,’ responded Sloan warily. The superintendent’s expertise in some fields was as reliable as his lack of knowledge in others. The trouble was that members of the Force couldn’t be certain of either.

  ‘Also known as the urus or wild ox.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ That must have come from “Archaeology and Anthropology for the Uninitiated”, an early evening class from which the superintendent had retired, hurt. This was after crossing swords with the lecturer on the thorny question of the descent of man – or, more specifically, the ancestry of criminal man.

  ‘They had a collection of bones from one of them in the museum. We went to see it.’ Leeyes added, hit by a sudden thought, ‘You don’t suppose somebody’s stolen them from the Paleolithic Room there, do you?’

  ‘I’ll check, sir,’ promised Detective Inspector Sloan, adding that to his growing to-do list. ‘The museum people didn’t mention it this morning but there is definitely something very odd about the break-in there.’

  ‘And don’t try to tell me, Sloan,’ said Leeyes, tacitly agreeing with this, ‘that the nicking of that painting of Tolmie Park hours before the place was set on fire is just a coincidence.’

  ‘I shan’t,’ promised Detective Inspector Sloan truthfully.

  ‘Looking for Lionel Perry, are you?’ said Jock Stirling, the professional at the Berebury golf club, to the ginger-haired young man standing in front of the counter in his shop.

  Ned Phillips nodded.

  Stirling jerked his shoulder towards the course. ‘That’s him and his pals just putting out at the seventeenth now.’

  Phillips looked enquiringly in the direction of the course.

  ‘Far right, middle distance,’ said Stirling. ‘As you can see, he’s playing in a four-ball and they’re always slow.’

  ‘Is he any good?’ asked Ned Phillips. ‘At the game, I mean,’ he added hastily.

  ‘Not bad for his age,’ responded Jock Stirling, reaching for a metal wood club and starting to polish the head with a soft duster. ‘Not bad at all.’

  Ned Phillips, who didn’t realise that this was the other man’s stock response to any enquiry about a member’s play, nodded and said ‘I’ve got a message for him from work.’

  Jock Stirling sucked his lips. ‘Me, I wouldn’t want to disturb anyone’s game. Not at the seventeenth. Not for anything less than an earthquake.’

  ‘It wasn’t an earthquake,’ murmured Ned Phillips.

  ‘Players only like it if they’re hitting the ball badly or already losing their match,’ said the professional from long experience. ‘That’s the only time when they don’t mind walking back in with the world watching.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Phillips easily. ‘They said at work that it wasn’t important enough to disturb his game. Just to wait and give it to him when he got in.’

  Jock Stirling looked curiously at Ned Phillips. ‘Lionel Perry’s the boss man over at your place, isn’t he?’

  ‘Too right, he is,’ said Ned, leaning over the counter of the professional’s shop and starting to toy absently with a handful of loose tees.

  ‘That’s if you’re from that big house-building outfit of his, Berebury Homes.’ Jock Stirling held the shining club-head out in front of him and studied it critically.

  ‘I am,’ said the young man, ‘but I’ve only just joined the firm so I don’t really know him – or it – yet.’

  ‘You from away then? I haven’t seen you up here before.’

  ‘Too right I am. The North.’ He grinned. ‘And tennis is my game, anyway.’

  ‘You’ll come to golf, t
hen,’ said the professional comfortably. ‘Later.’

  ‘All in good time,’ said Ned Phillips with unimpaired goodwill.

  The professional said, ‘Your boss’d be a better player if he spent more time up here.’

  ‘Really?’ Ned Phillips didn’t know that this, too, was one of Jock Stirling’s standard remarks.

  ‘But I daresay he’s a very busy man these days.’ The golf professional gave the club-head a final rub and restored it to a display on the wall. ‘Unfortunately by the time most men find out that time’s more important than money they’re too old to enjoy the game properly.’

  ‘I suppose they feel they’ve got to make their pile first,’ ventured Ned Phillips.

  ‘That’s what I mean,’ said Jock Stirling, selecting another metal wood from the rack. He grimaced. ‘I don’t think we need to worry too much about Lionel Perry’s pension. The word on the street is that Calleford Construction wants to buy him out and since they say he and his wife are big shareholders in Berebury Homes that shouldn’t leave him short of a penny or two.’

  ‘Keen on money, is he?’ enquired Ned Phillips negligently.

  ‘Aren’t all businessmen?’ responded the golf professional, applying the soft cloth to the shining head.

  ‘So they say, so they say.’

  ‘Those I see up here are,’ said the professional warmly. ‘And all with this fixed idea that time’s money. You can’t concentrate on your game if you’ve got one eye on the clock while you’re playing.’

  ‘True,’ agreed the young man amiably.

  The professional turned his glance towards the shop window. ‘Looks as if it’s a needle match out there. See, they’re still fighting it out on the eighteenth.’

  ‘I guess the game isn’t over until the fat lady sings,’ responded Ned lightly.

  ‘I always say myself that it’s not over until the last ball’s in the cup,’ said Jock Stirling.

  ‘How long does it take them to get round the course?’

  ‘All depends on who’s asking,’ said the other man.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘If it’s their wives that ask then whenever they ring, their hubby is still out on the course,’ said Stirling, winking. ‘Get it?’

  ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘Then,’ advised the older man, ‘when you do, whatever you do don’t ever tell the little woman when to expect you home. Causes more trouble than you might think, does that.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ promised Phillips. He went on casually, ‘So my boss-man hasn’t got the time to play better. That it?’

  ‘All your boss is ever after,’ remarked Jock Stirling, ‘is dry land.’

  ‘Dry land?’

  ‘Land he can buy that’s not in the flood plain. For houses. Made the committee here an offer for that patch over there behind the practice tee last year but they wouldn’t wear it.’

  ‘Land for building’s a bit scarce these days,’ offered Ned Phillips. ‘Even I know that, but at least they’ve got Tolmie Park now and there’s plenty of ground over there.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ said Jock Stirling tightly. ‘Some clever dick had ideas one time about turning the park into one of those pay-and-play golf courses and the old building there into apartments for a Dormyhouse to give the golfers somewhere to stay.’

  ‘Really?’ Ned Phillips looked interested. ‘How did you feel about that?’

  The professional held the club he had been polishing at arms’ length and regarded it for a moment before putting it back on the rack and selecting another. ‘No skin off my nose if they have an anti-elitist golf course over there. It wouldn’t ever have been a proper club like here. You know, with members and a committee and proper competitions and matches. That sort of thing.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, nothing came of it,’ said Stirling. ‘I expect they were held to ransom by the highwaymen.’

  ‘I don’t get it. What highwaymen?’

  ‘Highways authorities, then. The county surveyor and his underlings.’ Stirling sniffed. ‘The Highways Department always put their oar in on development. If it generates road traffic, then they don’t like it and it gets the thumbs down.’

  ‘Waiting for a sweetener?’ suggested the young man. ‘Or a back-hander?’

  The golf professional shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who can say? I can’t.’

  ‘So what happened at Tolmie Park?’

  ‘The golf project went belly-up and the operator disappeared.’

  ‘Leaving the field wide open for Berebury Homes, I suppose?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I never heard a dicky-bird afterwards about a golf course there.’ He resumed his polishing of the club-head. ‘I suppose doing anything with it is better than doing nothing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Ned Phillips.

  ‘Then you’re not one of those do-good types all against developing the countryside – oh, no, of course you’re not. Couldn’t work for that outfit if you were, could you?’

  ‘Not easily,’ said Ned Phillips.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next visitor to arrive at Tolmie Park was also female and also wearing a hard hat. There the resemblance to the chubby Melanie Smithers, the conservation officer, ended. This woman was tall and willowy and as far as Detective Inspector Sloan could see under the hard hat, ash blonde. She was wearing white overalls and walked with the panache usually associated with the fashion catwalk.

  She swept past Crosby with a winning smile, calmly lifted the tape clearly reading ‘POLICE – DO NOT CROSS THIS LINE’, and advanced towards Sloan.

  ‘Colleen Murphy,’ she murmured in a soft Irish accent. ‘Calleshire Fire Service.’

  ‘Ah, miss…that is, madam…’ he started to respond as she approached.

  ‘Doctor,’ she corrected him sweetly. ‘Fire Forensics Investigator.’ She gazed at the charred site. I’m told Sub-Officer Burton should be around.’

  Sloan pointed to Charlie Burton, just coming into sight round a corner of the wrecked part of the building.

  ‘Dear man,’ she murmured.

  Unclear whether she meant Charlie Burton or himself, Sloan nevertheless felt curiously uplifted.

  ‘Unaccidental fire,’ said Burton briefly. ‘Window forced on the far side. Slight smell of accelerant when we arrived but you never can tell exactly which one.’

  She flashed him a little smile. ‘Never. Were there any witnesses?’

  ‘One,’ said Burton, ‘who has so far chosen to remain anonymous.’

  ‘Dear, dear,’ said Dr Murphy. ‘That won’t do at all. And the building empty, you say?’

  ‘Everyone says so. Waiting for final planning approval, I understand,’ said Burton.

  Dr Murphy cast her gaze over the jumble of burnt wood and fire-blackened bricks. ‘Where would you say the seat of the fire was?’

  ‘Point of origin thought to be in the outer corner of the ballroom here,’ replied Burton, jerking a thumb in that direction. ‘It’s the most damaged part.’

  ‘Furthest away from the main part of the building,’ mused Dr Murphy, turning and looking the other way, ‘and the double doors leading to the old part, scorched but still closed.’

  ‘Still locked, too,’ said Charlie Burton.

  ‘So someone didn’t want it to spread too far,’ she concluded aloud.

  What Detective Inspector Sloan concluded was that brains and beauty could sometimes go together.

  ‘Whether they did or not, we contained it within the hour,’ said Burton.

  ‘Well done,’ she said absently. ‘How long would you say it had been alight before you got here?’

  Burton wrinkled his forehead in deep thought. ‘Best part of an hour at least.’

  ‘Presumably whoever had set it would want to be sure it had caught,’ put in Sloan diffidently, ‘before they rang you people.’

  He was rewarded with a kindly smile from Dr Murphy. ‘That’s what we usuall
y find, Inspector.’

  Charlie Burton swiftly reasserted himself. ‘Then it mushroomed to the ceiling. That’s when the roof went.’

  ‘Just for the record,’ said Dr Murphy, producing a notebook the size of a powder-compact, ‘can you tell me about any fire alarms in this part of the building?’

  ‘There weren’t any in use,’ said Burton, adding pithily, ‘No one to hear them out here if there were.’

  ‘And electricity?’

  ‘Switched off at the mains,’ replied Burton. ‘First thing we checked.’

  Dr Colleen Murphy then proved beyond any doubt that she was a child of her time by asking why the empty building hadn’t been vandalised long before now.

  Detective Inspector Sloan, a policeman of his time, too, answered that one. ‘Gates too securely fastened for a car to get through in the ordinary way.’ The fire brigade’s bolt cutters would have made short work of them but that was something different. ‘And we’re really out in the sticks here. Your average yobbo wouldn’t fancy walking up the drive here. Too much like hard work.’

  ‘So no car wheel tracks to tell us anything,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Now, were there any casualties?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Burton, fire officer.

  ‘No,’ said Sloan, detective inspector.

  She looked enquiringly from one to the other.

  ‘There were some remains…’ said Burton. ‘Bones.’

  ‘But thought not to be human,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Animal casualties, then?’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sloan. ‘And the pathologist says there were some broken shells – lobster, he thinks – under them.’

  She turned and fluttered at him the longest eyelashes Sloan had ever seen. ‘Thermidor, you might say.’

  ‘Very probably,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘If that means cooked.’

  ‘A tramp’s supper?’ She raised an elegantly arched eyebrow.

  ‘Possibly.’ Sloan hurried on, ‘Our local preservation society, though, has a distinctly maverick member. He’s given to stunts – anything to raise the profile of an endangered building.’

  The finely etched eyebrow went up further still. ‘By burning it down?’