A Brace of Skeet

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to pay for a day-membership,’ I said. ‘Or will you wait while I look for the list of members?’

  He hesitated and then shrugged. ‘I’ll pay,’ he said. ‘The club can do with the extra cash.’

  This was patently nonsense but I let it go and took his money. They stocked up with cartridges.

  ‘Rambo and I have a bet,’ Oliver Gray said sadly. It came back to me that he always called his friend ‘Rambo’ as a form of inverted humour. Anybody less like a macho killer than the small and gnomelike James Torrance would have been hard to imagine. ‘Twenty Ball-trap. We’re taking our wives to France next month and the French don’t seem to go in for anything else. Then we met Charlie and he asked if he could come along. Do you want to take a corner of the bet, Charlie?’

  Mr Aiken hesitated and then said that he supposed so.

  ‘How about yourself?’ Mr Gray asked me. ‘Tenner a head.’

  Backing myself against the members and visitors, a girl would be on a hiding to nothing. If I lost I would be losing money I could not afford, while if I won they would never forgive me. ‘I have a pupil under instruction,’ I said. ‘He can shoot with you, if he wants to and if you don’t mind, but I’m not having him take any bets until I’ve brought him up to scratch.’ I glanced regretfully at the dismantled gun on the table. ‘I’ll come and score for you until he’s ready.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Rambo Torrance had followed my eyes. ‘I forgot you were Keith’s daughter. In the business, aren’t you? My game gun needs an overhaul and the trigger-pulls adjusted. Care to take it on?’

  ‘Any time,’ I said.

  There was a stack of blank score-cards under the bar. They kitted themselves out and collected their guns. Mr Torrance had an over-under Miroku trap-gun; Charles Aiken a Japanese over-under. Oliver Gray carried a side-by-side game gun of undoubted quality. I carried Sergeant Fellowes’s cartridges and the gun which he had been using and we set off down to the lower level.

  They took up positions on the row of marker slabs, each with a construction like a small bird-table in front of it for cartridges. They would move one place to the right after each had had one shot, so that after five shots apiece they would each have shot from every position and be back where they started. I switched on the ball-trap and in the low trap-house in front of them it began its rather human bowing and scraping movements.

  Sergeant Fellowes came down to join us a minute or two later. He caught my eye and combined a wink with a shrug.

  ‘Just stand and watch for a minute,’ I told him. We stepped back slightly, so that we could chat without ear-protectors and without disturbing the shooters’ concentration. James Torrance called. I released a standard clay and he hit it with his second barrel. ‘Loss, kill,’ I said. ‘Don’t rush your shot,’ I told the Sergeant, ‘but you can’t hang about too long or the target’s out of range. You score three for a first barrel kill, two for a second barrel. What did he say?’ I added in a whisper.

  ‘Very little.’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Tell you later.’

  I had missed Charles Aiken’s call. I apologised and concentrated on the serious business of competition.

  The Sergeant said that he was ready to try himself out. He went forward and took up a vacant position. His co-ordination and his quick reactions stood him in good stead and Ball-trap seemed to suit his style. He was averaging three for five shots by the time the other three had finished. Rambo Torrance collected his winnings. His score was not spectacular, but Oliver Gray was handicapped by an unsuitable gun and Charles Aiken seemed over-eager. They picked up their empty cartridges and dropped them into the bin without being asked.

  ‘Does anybody fancy making more contributions to my early retirement fund?’ Mr Torrance asked. ‘Or shall we try some Sporting?’

  ‘Sporting for me,’ Aiken said. ‘I never was any good at going-away birds and my gun’s too open-choked for them.’

  ‘I’ll knock off now and have a coffee or something,’ Oliver Gray said glumly. ‘My shoulder’s beginning to feel pulverised.’

  ‘The trap at the far end’s set for Springing Teal,’ I said. ‘Will that do for the moment? Trap for yourselves, I’ll have to go and open the clubhouse again.’

  The Sergeant glanced once at the bin, which now held sample cartridges from three guns plus two sets of fingerprints. (Mr Torrance, as was his habit, was shooting in thin gloves.) But the Sergeant’s eye was bright with the light of dawning enthusiasm. ‘I – er – I think I’ll just tag along and use up the rest of my cartridges,’ he said. ‘Is that all right?’

  ‘Just don’t go making any bets on yourself,’ I said. ‘You’re not yet up to matching yourself against these sharks.’ The Sergeant seemed disappointed, but the other two looked flattered.

  I climbed the steps again beside Oliver Gray and unlocked the clubhouse for him. I was half inclined to go down again and rejoin my pupil, in whom I was taking a professional interest. (At least, I hoped that it was mostly professional. I mostly hoped that his interest in me was not.) But even if he had learned something of interest from his visitor, he would be difficult to detach from the others while he could be pursuing his new interest.

  Mr Gray bought himself a low alcohol lager and I accepted a shandy. ‘If your gun hurts your shoulder,’ I said, ‘are you sure that it fits you?’

  He blinked at me. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Had it for years. It never bothers me at a game shoot.’

  I got him to stand and mount the unloaded gun so that I could check the fit. It seemed adequate. I weighed the gun in my hands. ‘It’s very light,’ I said. Privately, I thought that the club’s cut-price cartridges (loaded in Taiwan) contributed to the recoil problem, but Wal would never have forgiven me if I had said so. ‘You need a bit more weight to mop up the recoil when you’re shooting clays – you fire more shots in quick succession and you don’t have to carry it very far. And if you’re going to mix disciplines you’d be better with a choice of chokes. You’re giving your friends an unfair advantage. It’s up to yourself, of course, but we’ve a gun in the shop that might suit you very well.’

  His glum expression brightened very slightly. ‘Could I try it?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Bring it on Saturday and I’ll see if it does anything for me.’

  If Oliver Gray was prepared to spend anything from a few hundred to a thousand or more in the hope of winning occasional fivers, who was I to deter him when I would cheerfully have done the same? You can’t put a price on the thrill of victory. It only remained to see what we had in the shop. There ought to be something. I thought that I was getting to be as big a rogue as Dad.

  We had remained standing while we discussed guns, but Mr Gray gave a faint groan and subsided into a chair. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘My hips keep telling me that they’ve carried too much weight too far and too often over the years.’

  He had taken a seat beside the table with the dismantled gun on it. I sat down and resumed my cleaning operation. ‘You should use a shooting stick,’ I said impulsively. I thought that I might sell him one along with a new gun. A man who would jib at treating himself to a moderately expensive gift is often more willing to add that amount to a larger cheque.

  ‘I do, sometimes,’ he said, ‘at the Sporting stands, where you fire ten and then stand and wait. Not for Ball-trap or Down the Line, when you’re shooting every few seconds. Rambo’s hips are worse than mine, but he won’t give in and sit down. Thinks it’s a confession of old age, I suppose. Perhaps it is. On the other hand, it’s convenient being a sort of grandfather figure, when you’re as lazy as I am.’

  ‘What rubbish!’ I said. Although he still had a tired-bloodhound look, I thought that, inside, he was laughing at himself and poking fun at the world.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said with the faintest suggestion of a smile. ‘But every day it comes closer to being true.’ We were quiet for a minute. The shots outside were n
o more than a distant popping. I could not believe that the noise seriously bothered the would-be nobs in the timeshare units. As if reading my thoughts, he said, ‘Tell me, has that crook McGruer from next door been lobbying you yet about their offer to buy the club? You know about that?’

  ‘He was here this morning, wanting to know whether I’d have a seat on the committee.’

  ‘And you told him . . .?’

  ‘That I didn’t know and that any offer wouldn’t be a matter for the committee but for the whole membership.’

  Mr Gray looked gloomier than ever. ‘Quite right. He knew it, but you were right to remind him. The trouble is that most of the active members are on the committee. Others have moved away or gone abroad. They keep up their membership because that’s much cheaper than rejoining if and when they return. Others have given it up and taken to basket-making. There are a few life-members tucked away in homes for the elderly. So the active membership’s down to the hard-core few. The entrance fee’s too stiff for most pockets.’

  ‘Because of the value of the land and assets,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. Outright planning consent adds a few thou’ to the value,’ he said. ‘If the membership decide to sell up and share out the money instead of re-establishing the club, there’ll be a nice little windfall for each of us.’

  It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be serious danger of the offer being accepted. ‘They won’t, will they?’ I asked.

  ‘They might. Nobody’s immune to the lure of lucre if you catch him just when his business needs a fresh injection of cash or his wife’s demanding new furniture. And there are other clubs to join. The old order changeth. Herb Tullos was dead . . .’ He stopped with a wry look. ‘I’m sorry, I’ll rephrase that. He was set against it and now he’s gone. Two new members were elected only last week – cash on the barrel, as they say, without even having visited the place to find out whether they enjoyed it or not. I strongly suspect that they were put up to it by our friend McGruer. And Charlie Aiken, who tried to kid you that he was a member, has applied for membership. Peter Hay’s stalling, just in case he’s another quisling.’

  ‘I heard that Mr Tullos was about to change his tune,’ I said.

  ‘Was he, by God! That makes it interesting. So he could have been whacked on the head by anybody – like myself – who was against a takeover, or by somebody who was for it and didn’t know that he was about to turn his coat. Such things can happen over much less when tempers flare up.’

  ‘How did you know that he was whacked on the head?’ I asked him.

  For the only time in our acquaintanceship, he actually laughed. ‘Peter Hay told me. He asked me to keep it under my hat, but I seem to have slipped.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You’re forgiven. Don’t forget to ask Peter to confirm it.’

  Mr Gray watched for a minute as I oiled a leaf mainspring and coaxed it back into place. When the risk of it slipping out of the clamp and shooting into a corner of the room was over, he spoke again, more vehemently. ‘If it happens, I can’t bear the thought of starting off again in some club with fewer facilities – no clubhouse, and nothing but DTL and English Sporting – and a lot of keen young members who think they’re God’s gift to sport.’

  ‘Mr McGruer said that they’d be keeping the place open,’ I said.

  He snorted derisively. ‘They’ve got some timeshare units unsold. If they can turn the place into a whizzbang commercial enterprise – big-money sponsored competitions, Starshot, television deals and all that jazz – they’ll sell the rest of the units or be able to rent them out as accommodation for competitors. There’ll be no place for the likes of Rambo and me. The relaxed and friendly atmosphere will be gone.’

  ‘I didn’t see much relaxation or friendship at the Ball-trap this afternoon,’ I said.

  He patted my hand in a way that was not wholly fatherly. ‘You sell me the right gun and get me winning with it, and I’ll relax and be so friendly that you won’t recognise me,’ he said.

  Chapter Eight

  By the time the three men finished shooting and came to join us in the clubhouse, I had reassembled the gun and tested the trigger-pulls.

  ‘Finished?’ Mr Gray asked as I slipped it into its sleeve.

  ‘All but the strikers,’ I said. ‘I need a tool to take out the discs. These are the tools Mr Tullos used for his muzzle-loaders.’

  ‘No discs,’ he said, nodding.

  The men were hungry, but showed every intention of staying on for the evening session. The Sergeant seemed to have melted in among them, almost unnoticed.

  Catering at the Pentland Gun Club was of the simplest, calculated to be managed by one steward with occasional help from the club’s office-bearers in times of stress. Low alcohol drinks were on sale, with stronger liquor available at the steward’s discretion. A tea and coffee dispenser murmured to itself against one wall. For the rest, anything which could not be stored in a freezer and readied in a microwave oven or a toasting sandwich-maker was unavailable and that was that. Visitors could like it, lump it or bring their own.

  I palmed off the last of those wrapped sandwiches on them as a sort of outsize hors d’oeuvre while they waited and then dished up a meal of chicken portions and vegetables followed by ice cream. They paid the modest menu price without grumbling.

  Rambo Torrance, who seemed to have taken a fancy to me, was complimentary. ‘We’ll have to continue with lady stewards,’ he said. ‘Tullos’s chicken always came out like rubber.’

  ‘You’d prefer the female of the species because they can’t shoot better than you can,’ Oliver Gray said.

  My hackles rose; and Rambo, with his whiskers seeming to stand on end, looked much less puckish. ‘That’s fighting talk,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to see whether your money goes where your mouth is.’

  We were in the middle of eating when a new-looking small car rolled up to the door.

  ‘First of the evening gang,’ Mr Gray said.

  ‘And probably the last,’ Rambo Torrance said. ‘Thursdays are usually quiet. Most of them won’t know that the club’s back in business.’

  We all knew, at least by sight, the blonde woman who had driven the car. Gertrude Cowan was a likeable but rather vulgar widow in her thirties, with an accent which could have diced carrots and a figure which seemed to be attractive to men although I thought it overblown. She wore the universal Skeet vest and cap, but over a dress which would have got by at a garden party. She had originated in Glasgow but now lived on the outskirts of Newton Lauder. Her late husband, who had left her more than adequately provided for, had first brought her clay-busting some years before and she had taken to it with enthusiasm if not with real skill. After his death she had continued to make occasional visits – more, I thought, for the sake of the male company than for the sport.

  Her companion was a dark and rather skinny woman of about the same age, who was introduced as Mrs Hickson – Beatrice to friends. She was demure in dress and looks. I remembered seeing her shooting DTL, quite competently. She had been in the company of a husband who suffered the twin handicaps of a very loud voice and an inability to remember the first rules of safe gun-handling, so I was relieved that they had come . . . whatever may be the female equivalent of ‘stag’.

  The ladies had not eaten. I was obliged to abandon my own meal in order to cook for them. From behind the bar, I could pick up the threads of the conversation.

  ‘We knew that there’d been an accident, of course,’ Mrs Hickson was saying. ‘But I could hear shooting this afternoon. Derek’s away at some golf tournament so I phoned Gertrude.’

  I tried to catch the Sergeant’s eye but he was keeping his head down over his plate.

  ‘And I said all right, let’s shoot a round of Skeet and see what’s going on,’ Mrs Cowan said.

  ‘Is something going on?’ Mr Gray asked. He was seated facing me but he avoided my eye.

  ‘She means about the death of Mr Tullos,’ Mr
s Hickson explained. ‘The Scottish News almost said that it was an accident. But they didn’t quite say it and they didn’t say that the police were satisfied, as they usually do. And there were policemen all over the place for the first day or so.’

  ‘They’ve been going round the members and the more regular visitors,’ Mr Torrance said, ‘asking us when we were last here and what we were doing on Monday evening.’

  Mrs Cowan nodded her over-bright golden head. ‘They suspect a murder,’ she said. ‘How exciting! They haven’t got to me yet, and I’m a member – but I’ve only just got back from a visit to my brother in Inverness. I expect they’ll come and find me tomorrow.’ She sounded hopeful.

  ‘I haven’t heard from them either,’ Mr Aiken said. ‘But this is my first visit here in a month. I was working with my accountant on Monday evening and we’ve got a year’s accounts to show for it. We went for a drink afterwards.’

  ‘It’s your accountant’s job to back you up,’ Mrs Hickson said.

  ‘This one hates my guts. I think he’s on the side of the tax inspector.’

  ‘I was here on Sunday,’ Mrs Cowan said. ‘Beatrice couldn’t get away.’ I was putting two more meals onto plates. She turned her head to look at me. ‘So were you, dear, on Sunday, weren’t you? Monday evening, I was out with a gentleman friend.’

  Rambo Torrance chuckled. ‘From the questions the police were asking, they want to know what people were doing up to midnight. When did you part from your gentleman friend?’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ Mrs Cowan said coyly. ‘If the police ask me, I shan’t keep anything back and never mind what they think! What did you tell them? And what were you really doing?’

  Mr Gray snorted without mirth. ‘Rambo and I are partners,’ he said. ‘And we’re both fancy-free. We do most things together. We’ve satisfied the police as to what we were doing on Monday night and if we can satisfy them . . . we should be able to satisfy anybody else.’