Silver City Scandal

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Your first job’s to phone Spain,’ Keith said. ‘Molly says you speak good Spanish.’

  ‘I don’t know about good, just enough to get by on holiday. But I’ll try.’

  ‘That’s all we can ask.’ Keith bent over the desk and started scribbling. ‘The man you want is a Señor Tomelloso. I think the first name was Esteban. He was with Armas Alicante until they were taken over and I think he stayed with the new parent firm, Garcia Y Thomaso. If you can reach him, or anyone else who worked with Alicante, these are the questions.’

  Sheila looked them over. ‘Golly!’ she said. ‘Do we have a Spanish dictionary?’

  ‘Go out and buy one,’ Prather said.

  Chapter Four

  Jeremy Prather’s personal den turned out to be even less inspiring than his outer office. In addition to similarly dilapidated furniture and some untidy stacks of papers, files and books, it also housed what Keith guessed to be the overflow from his flat of a collection of ill-assorted curios ranging from stuffed animal heads to a samurai sword. But at least it contained the more comfortable chairs.

  ‘Mr Donald—’ Keith began.

  ‘Let’s keep it informal,’ Prather said. ‘Keith, Hugh and Jeremy, all right?’

  Keith cared very little who called who what, but Hugh Donald’s agreement was unenthusiastic. Solicitor and client might have respected each other’s professional abilities but there was no rapport at a personal level. Which, Keith thought, might explain a certain half-heartedness in the preparation of the defence.

  ‘Hugh, then,’ he said. ‘We’ve agreed that this crime was pre-planned. It may be a mistake to think about motives too early, but let’s risk wasting a little time. On the face of it, it looks as if the objective was to dispose of Miss Spalding, for one of perhaps a dozen reasons. But before we concentrate on her there’s the alternative that the intention was to get you out of the way.

  ‘I don’t like that idea, but—’

  ‘Why not?’ Jeremy asked.

  ‘Because there was no way that they could have been sure that Hugh wouldn’t meet friends on the foreshore or exchange waves with the Lord Provost or break down and have to phone for a tow. And if he’d had an alibi it would have negated the whole plan. But there may be some reason why I’m wrong. It’s even possible that somebody said to himself, “I need this woman out of the way, and I have access to a gun which is still registered in the name of a man who’s on bad terms with her. And, what’s more, I’d be happy if Hugh Donald were removed at the same stroke. So that’s the way we’ll do it.” You follow me?’

  His listeners nodded.

  ‘So,’ Keith said, ‘you must ask yourself whether you can think of anybody who would profit from your going, somebody who also had a connection with Miss Spalding. Your depute, for instance. Will he inherit your job?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Hugh said.

  ‘Has he been dipping his fingers in the till while you’ve been inside?’

  ‘That’s the next thing I was intending to find out,’ Hugh said grimly.

  ‘Think it over and make a list of people who might want you out of the way. Add any links that you know of with Miss Spalding. And we may be looking for a connection with somebody taller and thinner than you are, or possibly taller and left-handed.

  ‘And now,’ Keith went on, ‘let’s see what leads we can follow up. I may be covering ground you’ve already been over, Jeremy. If so, tell me how far you got. All right?’

  ‘We’ll be going up a hundred dead ends,’ Jeremy said. ‘But I suppose it’s necessary.’

  ‘It is.’ Keith was in no mood to waste time in saving the solicitor’s face. ‘Let’s start with the gun. Hugh, I know that it was five years ago, but the occasion of buying a new gun tends to stick in the memory. Tell me all you can remember about the purchase. Why did you come to my shop instead of to somebody local?’

  ‘I had to come to Newton Lauder on business,’ Hugh said. ‘One of our consultants was on a shooting holiday there and I needed his signature on a contract.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  Hugh pulled a bunch of small diaries out of his pocket, selected one and thumbed through it. ‘His name seems to have been Naulty. Initial M. He was with a firm which got swallowed up shortly afterwards so I haven’t seen him for years. I couldn’t even tell you what he looked like.’

  ‘Was he taller and thinner than yourself?’

  ‘Everybody’s taller and thinner than I am,’ Hugh pointed out. ‘I was new to my present job, and it had just been made clear to me that, as the only shooting man among the upper executives, I was to play host on the firm’s shoot. I’d been using a battered old pump-gun, which was hardly suitable for formal days at driven game. I seem to remember lunching with Naulty at a big hotel in the square, and by way of lunch-time chat I mentioned my need of a new gun. He said that he’d been dealing with you for years.’

  ‘There was a Naulty,’ Keith said, remembering. ‘I think he went abroad.’

  ‘Oh? Well, after lunch we walked over to your shop and a fair-haired young woman showed us your stock of guns. To be honest,’ Hugh added, ‘I remember her rather better than I do anything else.’

  Keith nodded. Janet, his partner’s wife, tended to have that effect on men. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Naulty recommended the Armas Alicante sidelock as the best value for money in the shop.’

  ‘He could have been right. Did he say that he had one of them himself?’

  ‘Not that I remember. But it felt good and it was smart enough not to disgrace me on a formal day. You came in about then, and you suggested that I might be better with the stock a quarter of an inch shorter. As it turned out, you were right and I had it done a few months later. So I bought it, and a new bag to go with it and some cartridges.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me about Naulty,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘I didn’t have my diaries with me.’

  ‘We’ll move on,’ Keith said firmly. He had no objection to being well paid to listen to a client and his solicitor bickering, but he had no intention of allowing them to prolong his stay in Aberdeen. ‘Accidentally or on purpose, a similar gun was swapped for your own. It must have happened very soon after you bought it. It’s very easy to pick up the wrong gun at a shoot, for instance, but if you’ve already been using it for a time the weight and balance feel wrong immediately even if the guns look similar. So tell us about the next few days. When you got home, did you take the new gun out and gloat over it?’

  ‘Nothing like that. I was too damn busy,’ Hugh said. ‘I found time to leave my old gun with a gunsmith to sell for me, but the new gun stayed in its bag in the boot of my car until my first time on the Shennilco shoot, a few days later.’

  Keith disapproved strongly of guns being left in bags or in car boots, but he could read a lecture another time. ‘Could a substitution have happened that day, at your first Shennilco shoot?’ he asked.

  ‘Very easily,’ Hugh said. ‘I was harassed to hell and back. The day was a disaster, that much I do remember. It was blowing a gale and the birds went everywhere except over the guns. There was an old keeper – he retired soon afterwards and he’s died since – who had always been left to do everything his own way, and he resented my very existence. So he insisted on being told what to do every inch of the way, and being young and ignorant I made every mistake in the book. I think the keeper was the only person who enjoyed himself.’

  ‘So if one of the guests had found that he’d come away with the wrong gun, and thought to himself, “It’s the same model as mine and in just as good condition, so why should I bother?”, you’d never have noticed?’

  ‘I don’t think I would. In fact, I have a dim recollection of cleaning the gun for the first time that evening and being surprised that the grain of the stock seemed not to be as I’d remembered it and that there were a couple of slight scratches which I couldn’t remember putting there.’

  ‘Who were the guests that day?’ Keith asked.<
br />
  Hugh sighed. ‘We just don’t know,’ he said. ‘The old keeper kept the shoot records and he took them with him. They can’t be found. Hundreds of business contacts have been invited since, but from among all the faces competing in my memory I can’t single out the ones who were there that day. The only person I remember for sure is Naulty. We were going to be one man short so I invited him and he jumped at it.’

  The appearance of Molly’s cousin in the doorway cut short a lengthy discussion of Mr Naulty. ‘I have Señor Tomelloso on the line,’ she said. ‘He says that only one series of numbers was allocated to guns in the style of their export sidelock, whatever that is, and the numbers started from nought-nought-nought-one. And he wants to know when his ol’ frien’ Keats is coming back to drink more brandy with him.’

  ‘Thank him very much for the help,’ Keith said, ‘and tell him never. The last time nearly killed me.’ For a moment, the hot sun and dusty smells seemed to pervade the chilly office. ‘Then come back. There are some more calls.’

  ‘Yes Mr Calder, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I take it that the four-figure start precludes the numbers having been tampered with?’ Jeremy said.

  ‘That’s why I had Sheila ask the question. It would have been comparatively easy to add a digit before or after a three-figure number.’ Keith looked up as Sheila appeared again. ‘Phone Newton Lauder,’ he said. ‘Start with my partner; he’ll tell you what other numbers to call. We want news of a Mr M Naulty. He used to be a client at the shop. He had at least one shooting holiday in the area about five years ago, so he was either a guest of one of the shoot owners or staying at the Inverburn Hotel. What did he look like? Was he left-handed? What gun did he use? Did he ever buy an Armas Alicante sidelock off us? And whatever happened to him? That and any other gossip you can dig up. Then get onto one of the bigger Scottish newspapers and find out whether any gunshops in Scotland have burned during the last few months, say from the beginning of August, other than the one we know about in Aberdeen.’

  ‘To hear is to obey,’ she said as she departed.

  Keith frowned at Hugh Donald. ‘You’re sure you want to have so much bright girlhood around Shennilco?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Hugh said, half smiling. ‘Even if secretaries weren’t at a premium, the place could do with brightening.’ He stopped smiling suddenly. ‘Why another gunshop?’

  ‘It’s a long shot. If – and it’s a big if – somebody burned one shop to destroy your chance of proving that you’ve been using a different gun for years, he might also have wanted to erase any record that he’d been the original purchaser of the gun which was in your hands all that time, or that he’d had your gun in his possession long enough to have had it altered to fit him.’

  ‘I thought that would be it,’ Hugh said.

  ‘If there’s no record of another gunshop fire,’ Keith said, ‘Sheila’s going to have to phone every gunshop in Britain and ask them to look back five years in their records. And half of them,’ he added sadly, ‘will say they’ve looked without bothering to do it and most of the others will avoid the labour by saying that the information’s confidential. There’s been a lot of pressure from the police to get shotguns registered like firearms, and there’d be a lot less resistance if they didn’t go out of their way to make life difficult and expensive for the firearm’s owner. That’s another matter. But if the police had a computerised register of shotgun ownership, this sort of quest would be easier and fewer gunshops would get burned. There was an attempt on my shop once, for much the same reason.’

  Jeremy Prather had been thinking. The act, so early and after a hard night, seemed to pain him. He lit another cigarette and coughed. ‘If two thousand five hundred and something guns were made, and presumably more after that one, and most of them were exported to this country, we’re going to get a hell of a list of purchasers. And, as you said, many of them will have changed hands without any record.’

  ‘True,’ Keith said. ‘But when I alter a gun’s dimensions I make a note of them. Then the customer can order similar work on another gun over the phone and be sure that it’ll fit him.’

  Sheila came to the door again. ‘I tried the newspapers first,’ she said. ‘According to The Scotsman, the only other fire since August happened last night. A big gunshop in Glasgow. It’s still burning. Arson seems to be suspected.’

  ‘So much for that lead,’ Keith said. ‘Somebody may be thinking one jump ahead of us. Thank you, Sheila. And hasta luego,’ he added when she seemed inclined to linger.

  ‘Are my dogs behaving?’ Hugh asked her.

  ‘Good as gold.’

  ‘Dogs?’ Jeremy said sharply. ‘I won’t have dogs in here, rampaging all over the place.’

  ‘If they were rampaging all over the place, you’d have known they were here before now,’ Hugh pointed out. Jeremy grunted and fell silent.

  Keith waited until Sheila had, with ostentatious gentleness, closed the connecting door. ‘I have friends in Glasgow, reporters and in the police, so I’ll stay in touch with that one. There may be no connection, but we may learn something.

  ‘Let’s move on. What do we know about Miss Spalding?’

  Jeremy Prather produced another slim file. ‘Little more than you’ll have seen in the transcript,’ he said. ‘Mostly such gossip as I could pick up.’

  Keith skimmed through the few pages and found a photograph. Mary Spalding had been handsome in a square, masculine way. Keith judged that she had had charm without sex-appeal. ‘According to these notes,’ he said, ‘her relationships with men were platonic. Golf, the occasional meal, not even a little footsie under the table.’

  ‘That was the word,’ Jeremy said.

  ‘Any suggestion of a lesbian relationship?’

  ‘It was mentioned. It could even be true – how on earth do you prove or disprove a thing like that? But I took it for the reaction of a man who’d made a pass and been turned down.’

  ‘You could be right. What do we know about the woman she shared the house with?’

  Jeremy handed over another file.

  Keith stayed with Miss Spalding for the moment. ‘There’s very little here about her work,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all I could get. Her firm refused to discuss her work at all. Grounds of confidentiality.’

  ‘I wonder. Accountants are the people most likely to know too much. Jeremy, that’s your next task.’

  ‘I’ve already done all I can,’ Jeremy protested. ‘I hit a brick wall.’

  Keith looked across the stacked desk. ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘If you want the dirt, don’t ask the firm. Ask their biggest rivals. You’re a lawyer, you must have contacts with accountants.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Use them.’

  The file on Miss Spalding’s friend contained only one typed sheet and a blurred, amateurish photograph. Jenny Carlogie was thin, with fair, curly hair and an anxious expression. She cycled regularly to her work as receptionist and assistant manageress in a country hotel and spent her leisure hours at home. No relationships with men, platonic or otherwise, were known. She was efficient at her work, but, although her colleagues liked her, none had claimed her as a friend.

  ‘Very sparse,’ Keith said.

  ‘It’s all there was,’ Jeremy said defensively. ‘I went to see her but she clammed up on me.’

  ‘I’ll have a go at her later,’ Keith said. ‘I noticed that her only evidence was that Miss Spalding had gone out early but as usual.’

  ‘There wasn’t much more for her to say except that her friend had gone out to harass the defendant. I mean Hugh. That would have been hearsay and not best evidence, and it was already implicit.’

  ‘You’re guessing again. I bet her statement to the police and the precognition which she originally gave the prosecution lawyers say a whole lot more. I’d like to see them. In fact, I want to see all the precognitions and all the material gathered by the police. Photographs especially. Then I’ll spend an
hour or two in your outer office digesting them and helping out on the telephone.’

  Jeremy pushed a stack of files to the front of the desk. ‘Precognitions,’ he said. ‘But only the ones prepared for the trial; they exclude any material not used in court.’

  ‘In other words,’ Keith said, ‘they leave out anything which might possibly be of use to the defence?’

  ‘You’re getting there. In the envelope, you’ll find the photographs which were in evidence. Use this room. I’ll see if I can get access to the rest of the police material. But I’m not hopeful.’

  ‘It’s like running in treacle,’ Keith complained.

  The solicitor nodded patiently. ‘Now you’re getting an idea what I’ve been up against. And I’ll talk to some accountants. Between times, I’ll try to solve some of the problems of my own clients.’

  ‘You do that,’ Keith said. He turned to Hugh Donald. ‘Could you come back for me after lunch?’ he asked. ‘I’d like to be taken out and shown the ground, and to pay a call on Miss Carlogie’.

  Chapter Five

  Suspecting – rightly, as he later learned – that the press release from Shennilco would have brought reporters to the hotel, Keith snatched a quick lunch in a small restaurant. Around him were the diverse accents of the oil world, Scots, English, Texan, Dutch, Norwegian and others which he could not identify. He ignored them, re-examining instead the notes which Sheila had typed up for him from Jeremy’s tape-recorder. A quick skim through the precognitions seemed to produce remarkably little information of forseeable usefulness. He took out the photographs, holding them where the other lunchers could not see them. Out of context, they meant very little.

  He was back in Jeremy’s office by two. Sheila was out for her own lunch but had left him a note. A guarded message relayed from the shop confirmed that Molly and Deborah had arrived safely. And if M Naulty had owned an Armas Alicante sidelock, he had neither bought it from nor had it serviced by the firm. He was remembered, but the general opinion was that his build had been average. Wallace, Keith’s partner, had added an anxious message about outstanding gun repairs. Keith scribbled a frivolous reply for Sheila to relay.