Illegal Tender (Three Oaks Book 12)

by Gerald Hammond

  It seemed very unlikely that the builder would have known that Keith was ferreting in the neighbourhood and he evidently knew that most of the male population was watching the match, but it was not for me to offer arguments to the police. I had disliked the builder but I was far from convinced of his guilt. I held my peace and Ian left soon afterwards.

  Chapter Nine

  Miles Cowieson came on the phone before I had finished breakfast next morning, to suggest an appointment that afternoon. I had hoped to conclude any business that could not be conducted by post or telephone and to get back for a spell to my own bed and board, my own chairs and a television mostly under my own control. I was being made extremely comfortable but I hankered for home, more familiar company and my old routine; and I was sure that I was putting on weight which would soon take its toll of my shopworn hips and knees. The leaner diet at home and Three Oaks, with the accompanying regime and all the walking entailed, was overdue.

  That thought brought another in its wake. A good walk might give the vague ideas which were making shifting patterns in my mind a chance to take shape.

  I sought Elizabeth out to explain my forthcoming absence. At my age, one should always tell someone exactly where one is going, in case one fails to return. I was unhappy with the police theory that the murderer had been collected by an accomplice. I had not heard the car go down the embankment, but there would surely have been some delay before the killer made his departure. He would no doubt have preferred to set fire to the wreck and only abandoned that plan when he heard me calling the dog. There was no sign that he had struggled up the embankment above the crashed car; he would have had to come towards me to find a place where the bank could be climbed quickly and silently. I was fairly sure that by then I would have been close enough to hear a car driving off. I clung to my original belief that the murderer would have walked back to the Cowieson house by way of the Den Burn.

  If I followed what I assumed to have been the path taken by the killer of Maurice Cowieson, I would see what he had seen and I might somehow obtain an insight into his mind and methods. ‘I’ll walk down the Den Burn,’ I said.

  Elizabeth had been studying the plans for a new access road to Potter’s Farm. She looked up, frowning absently. ‘Have you got your mobile?’ she asked. ‘You can always phone Duncan for a lift back at lunchtime.’

  I patted my pocket in confirmation. ‘I think I’ll take Spin with me.’

  ‘Good idea. Do you want a gun?’

  The question was a natural one. Almost all of the route was on land owned by the estate and there was always pressure to keep up the control of rabbits and woodpigeon, but I had no wish to arrive in Newton Lauder armed, even if the gun was bagged. I declined the offer.

  Spin, the spaniel, was in the kitchen but he jumped up as soon as I called him. The old Labrador began to struggle to his feet but was easily persuaded to settle again. He had come to recognize his own limitations and to accept that some walks were beyond him. Out of fellow feeling, I decided that I would take him for a stroll on my return. I collected my cap and a stick from the hall and we set off along the drive.

  At the old stone archway, which was almost the only remnant of the earlier buildings, I paused. I had already explored the upstream part of the gully as far as the crash site. The murderer, knowing that I was down in the valley bottom, would have walked along the road verge — unless, that is, the police were correct in assuming that he had been picked up by an accomplice.

  The burn passed under the drive through a culvert too small for a walker to pass, but on the downstream side a ragged path worn by generations of gamekeepers and dog-walkers descended the steep bank and followed the side of the burn towards Newton Lauder.

  I climbed down with care between the dead bracken and gorse bushes and set off along the rough path. The dank weather had relented at last and the sun had come out. The silver birches were already bare but the other hardwoods were in full autumn colour. There were still berries on every bush and overwintering birds were busy building up their reserves for the cold weather to come. The migrants had already departed but the geese had arrived and I watched and listened as a skein passed high overhead until the sound was lost in the chuckle of the burn. Spin had given me a reproachful glance when he saw that I was not carrying a gun but he fell anyway into the to-and-fro search pattern of a working spaniel, quartering the narrow valley and its banks.

  My legs, for once, were moving freely and the feel of the day was good. I was busily enjoying myself rather than thinking while half my mind still watched for anything which might have seemed significant to the killer. Spin pushed a woodcock out of the cover. It flitted and was gone in a moment on silent wings. I saw him nose one or two scraps of rubbish and then ignore them. He was usually a game-or-nothing dog.

  The valley widened for a hundred yards. At one time, a house had stood there and there was still the remains of a track down from the road and a strip remaining of an old kitchen garden wall, higher than my head. There were still a few apples on an old tree which overhung the wall.

  It was cold in the shade. But for that, while the mysteries would still have been solved in the end, I might not have played my part.

  From the films and novels, you might think that nobody ever had to go to the toilet. The truth, however, is far different, especially when the years have played havoc with your prostate gland. I became aware that I was desperate for a pee. I glanced about me. There were trees around and the little valley’s sides were topped with hedges. I could hardly have been more private, so I squared up to the old remnant of garden wall.

  Suddenly a voice said ‘Hello,’ jerking me out of my reverie. A girl’s voice, I thought. The sound came out of nowhere. There was no chance of arresting the flow and to turn around would have made all worse. I looked around and back over my shoulder and then up. Only when I raised my eyes did I see a figure perched on the limb of a beechtree overhead. A boy, I was relieved to realize.

  ‘Hello.’ I replied. I waited until I was finished and decently zipped before I turned. ‘School closed? Or are you playing truant?’ Man to man talk, to cover my embarrassment.

  ‘I’ve been ill,’ he said. ‘But I’m going back on Monday. We were just starting Latin, too, so I’ve missed a bit. We’d just done Amo, amas. My Latin teacher, Mr Ghent, was teaching us about declensions or conjugations or something. He told us a poem about Amo, amas, I love a lass, but I didn’t understand much of it. Do you know any more?’ He was a well spoken lad with only the faintest trace of the local accent.

  ‘Try Flymo, flymas, I cut the grass,’ I suggested.

  He laughed loudly, which was gratifying. ‘That’s very funny,’ he said. He slithered suddenly down the tree, lithe as a squirrel, and came to rest on another branch closer to my level. He had been neatly and cleanly dressed but his clothes were suffering from contact with the tree. His mother was going to have something to say. ‘I’d have let you go by, but when you stopped there I thought I’d make you jump. I did make you jump. Didn’t I?’

  ‘You certainly did.’ My mind clicked suddenly into gear. ‘Were you here on Sunday?’ I asked him.

  ‘No,’ he said. I gave a mental shrug. It had been a long shot. ‘The police asked me that,’ he added.

  My interest stirred again. ‘Why?’

  ‘They were asking lots of people. I told them I was at home. I live in the white house at the top of the road. They asked if I’d seen anything unusual and I said I hadn’t but I told them about the car. It was a little bit unusual.’

  ‘How was it unusual?’

  ‘I see a lot of cars up there but they don’t do what this one did. It came as if it had come up the other way from the town. When it was still about as far from the junction as from here to that rock in the middle of the burn —’ he pointed to a conspicuous rock a good sixty yards away ‘— it suddenly made a great noise of tyres as if something had run out in front of it. But there wasn’t anything,’ he said earnestly. ‘I
could see there wasn’t. Then it speeded up again and slowed down normally to go round the corner.’

  ‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that it stood on its nose as if somebody had stamped on the brakes?’

  ‘That’s what the policeman asked and I said that I thought that’s what it was. You can still see the black marks on the road. I showed them to him.’

  When we turned towards the town, the white house was on our left. ‘If you were at home,’ I said, ‘you’d have been on the driver’s side of the car.’

  ‘I couldn’t see him, if that’s what you were going to ask. The car had darkened windows.’

  Spin sent up a cock pheasant, rocketing into the sunshine. We watched it out of sight in respectful silence. ‘And the driver’s window was up?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What kind of car was it?’

  ‘I didn’t see the make,’ he said. ‘But it was big and that sort of dark red I think they call maroon.’

  ‘Did any other cars go by at about the same time?’

  ‘That was the only one all morning. Would your dog like an apple? Because there’s one on top of the wall. Why would anybody put an apple on top of a wall?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I reached up, following his directions, and took it down — an ordinary looking, green apple. Toothmarks in it were turning brown. I put it in my pocket.

  I thanked the boy. I would have slipped him a pound, but the days have gone by when you could give somebody else’s child money without being suspected of all sorts of evil intentions. I left him in his tree, declining aloud the Latin verb Flymo.

  My mind might have wandered again but a few hundred yards further on, where we were emerging onto more level ground and the valley was growing shallower, Spin broke his own habit and brought me a scrap of rubbish. I thanked him and put it away carefully. I usually have one or two polythene bags in my pocket, for lifting the occasional dog-plonk which gets deposited on a pavement.

  Suddenly I saw the significance of Ian’s questions about cars. The pattern in my mind snapped into shape.

  I could see the road ahead and the industrial estate. It would soon be the fifth of November and the foundation of a large bonfire was already established in the field beyond the road. This would be the site for the municipal fireworks display, designed to keep bonfires and explosives safely outside the town. Thinking of Guy Fawkes, I was reminded that there is no point having a good idea if you can’t carry it through.

  I took out my mobile phone and called Ian’s number. Several different voices tried to tell me that Ian was busy and offered to take messages but eventually Ian came on the line. ‘We’ve got a little further with your fraud case,’ he said at once. ‘In the previous cases, the money went from Canada to the Orient and vanished from there, but your ward’s money was transferred to a Dutch bank. Does that surprise you?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ I said. ‘The Dutch banks are more secretive even than the Swiss. It’s just where somebody would go to break a trail. And it completes a pattern. If you and WDC McLure care to meet me at Cowieson Farm Supplies right away, I may be able to point you in the direction of some useful evidence.’

  There was a momentary silence. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll trust you. Your pointers have been valuable in the past. Ten minutes.’

  My path dipped and I lost sight of the buildings. They must have done the trip in less than ten minutes because, when my path emerged again from the gully, the Cowieson buildings were beside me and Ian was just emerging from his police Range Rover in front of the offices. I waved and he acknowledged the signal. I had to skirt the back of the house, cross the still open trench for the new water-pipe and follow the chain link fence round to the entrance to Cowieson Farm Supplies Ltd. Ian stood beside the driver’s door of the Range Rover and Miss McLure got out from the front passenger seat as I arrived. They were both in plain clothes. It would have been customary for the more junior officer to do the driving. Another small connection linked up for me. Spin nosed Ian’s leg but ignored the WDC.

  ‘Now,’ Ian said, ‘what’s this about?’

  When I phoned Ian, I knew exactly what I was going to do and why. As we had disconnected I had begun to worry whether I was going the right way about it. The proper course of action, at least in the view of the police, would have been to visit Ian in his lair, tell him of my suspicions and leave him to accept or discard my theories and investigate what little evidence I had. The problem was that I had very little to go on; just a hunch based on the fit of the parts. In a sense it was like being confronted by an unfamiliar machine in a dismantled state and being required to assemble the parts correctly simply because they wouldn’t go together any other way. To complicate the issue further, his objective and mine were similar but not identical.

  I had to make up my mind. I wanted to get it all over and go home, so I decided to stick to my original plan and rush in — like any other fool. ‘I have one or two questions for the management,’ I said. ‘My questions may produce evidence of use to you. At any rate, your presence should lend an element of formality to the proceedings.’

  Ian looked unhappy. ‘If this is just a trick to bolster your leverage . . .’ he began.

  ‘We can make it plain that you’re impartial,’ I said.

  Ian hesitated and then gave a nod. They followed me up the single step and into the building. Behind the counter, Bea Payne was standing in the doorway to what had once been Maurice Cowieson’s office, speaking to the secretary/receptionist. They both looked at us enquiringly. Spin gave a soft bark, dived round the counter and jumped up against Bea — a greeting which was generally forbidden and which he reserved for her alone. She gave him a quick pat and he returned to my heel.

  My mind went blank and then recovered. I decided on an oblique approach. ‘When do you expect Miles Cowieson back in the office?’ I asked.

  ‘He came back a few minutes ago,’ Bea said. ‘Rather pleased with himself. He took a very good order from the Penthillan estate.’

  With that, the other office door opened and Miles looked out. ‘I thought I heard voices,’ he told me. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until this afternoon but we can talk now.’ He glanced at the two officers and his bright cheeriness dimmed a little. ‘I was hoping for a private talk.’

  ‘They’re only here to observe,’ I said. ‘They want background on your father’s business life.’

  ‘I suppose it’s all right. You’d better come in. Come with us, Bea.’ Ian backed into the office where I had spoken with Bea Payne. We followed. The second desk had been removed and replaced by cheap but comfortable chairs. The drift of papers around the computer was the scattered disorder of a man’s desk rather than the orderly clutter of a woman. Miles settled behind the desk and we took chairs. ‘The plan is that Miss Payne will be responsible for business management from here on in,’ he said. ‘I’ll do the selling.’

  ‘That’s about what I would have expected,’ I told him.

  Miles leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, rubbing his hands, the light of the fanatic in his eyes. ‘I’m going to pull out all the stops to clear the backlog of stock and get the whole business on a proper footing. We’ve moved quite a lot already simply by treating all enquiries seriously and following them through, which is more than my father ever did. He expected his customers to keep chasing him, begging him to sell them the machinery as a favour, but life isn’t like that any more. We’re just getting out a mailshot to all the farmers, promising discounts, special terms and a much improved after-sales service. After that, we’re hoping that Agrotechnics will join us in some serious promotional ideas along the lines of the action plan which I left with you.’

  There was only one way to check his bubbling enthusiasm. ‘We may consider it,’ I said, ‘when Agrotechnics has called up the floating charge and taken over.’

  He looked at me with hurt amazement, as though I had farted during the National Anthem. ‘But there’s no longer any case for
that,’ he said patiently, as though talking to an infant. ‘I wanted this meeting so that I could tell you that I’m in a position to settle the outstanding Agrotechnics accounts at last. The money came through this morning.’ His voice was meant to be confident but I thought that it held a note of defiance. I guessed that he would rather have deferred breaking the good news until the coincidence of timing was less obvious.

  It was the right moment to put the boot in — a process which I had never enjoyed during my banking days. ‘I would expect you to be in a sound financial position,’ I said. ‘I hope you still will be after you’ve returned Mrs Ilwand’s money to her.’

  That stopped him in his tracks. I heard Bea Payne give a small gasp. Ian stiffened but remained silent. I thought that he was giving me rope and I was in some danger of hanging myself. Miles gaped at me but without real conviction. Like his late father, he was a poor actor. Bea was giving a much better portrayal of puzzlement and injured innocence. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Miles said.

  ‘Yes you do. The police have already tracked the money as far as Holland — where you’ve spent several days this week.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything. I have friends in the Netherlands.’

  Ian, although he was still waiting in silence for me to produce some useful evidence, looked disapproving. I was breaking all the rules, warning the suspects before the time was ripe for charges to be brought. Miss McLure, however, was less inhibited by police protocol. ‘We’ve got a bit further on since we last spoke to you,’ she told me in her atrocious Glasgow accent. ‘We know which bank the money was transferred to from Mrs Ilwand’s account. By an arrangement arrived at over the phone, the money was withdrawn in cash. The transaction was so unusual that the staff remember it. When they were shown evidence of fraud, they furnished a description of the client.’

  ‘The security video captured the customer,’ Ian said reluctantly. ‘It could well be yourself under the hat and the whiskers. No doubts the lawyers and their experts will argue interminably over just how good is the identification. The bank staff remember his British accent and would expect to identify him by his voice.’