Sauce For the Pigeon

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘If he was going to decoy here,’ Mr Enterkin said, ‘why didn’t he park here?’

  ‘Any number of reasons,’ Keith said. ‘So as not to block the farmer in, which is why I parked out on the road.’

  ‘Where is the farm?’

  ‘Over the crest ahead. They won’t have seen anything, but it might be interesting to ask whether they heard shots. What did you ask me?’

  ‘Why he didn’t park here.’

  ‘Yes. He may have been on bad terms with this farmer and have decided to keep a low profile. Or he may have parked where he did, taken a look round, seen pigeon up this way and decided to hoof it rather than to bother starting up the Land Rover again. Also, there’s no doubt that pigeon are warier around a parked vehicle.’

  ‘You don’t sound very convinced,’ Mr Enterkin observed.

  ‘I’m not. How many pigeon do you see around here?’

  Mr Enterkin looked vaguely in the direction of a few birds in the field to their right.

  Keith sighed. ‘Crows,’ he said. ‘Black, with square wingtips, slow beat, crows. Smaller, blue-grey, short, pointed wings with a quicker beat, pigeon. You needn’t bother looking just now. They’ll come back to roost in the trees down by that Land Rover this afternoon. For the moment, they’re feeding. And there’s bugger-all for a pigeon to feed on around here.’

  ‘Those crows are feeding.’

  ‘Probably worms. Crows eat almost anything. Pigeon are vegetarian. They’ll be looking for kale or clover, likely.’ As he spoke, something stirred in the remotest corner of Keith’s mind. But they reached the end of the trees and the moment passed.

  ‘This is about where Munro stopped the car,’ he said. ‘The decoys were out in the field there. Except for the lofter which was up in that Scots pine, for some reason unknown. It’s meant to be as conspicuous as possible. That oak would have been better.’

  Mr Enterkin looked up at a rowan. ‘You spotted it from a mile away,’ he pointed out.

  ‘True. But I was looking for it, and I saw it against the background of a snow-covered hillside. I wasn’t looking from the same angle as a pigeon. There should have been a hide of sorts, but I couldn’t see it. Let’s take a look at the ditch.’

  ‘Is there a gate?’

  ‘Miles away.’ Keith unslung his game-bag and hung the heavy canvas flap over the top strand of barbed wire. ‘Be my guest.’

  The shortness of Mr Enterkin’s legs was no help, but, with the protection of the game-bag, he crossed the fence undamaged.

  ‘You’re a gentleman,’ he said, puffing.

  ‘It wasn’t for your benefit but the dog’s.’ Keith flicked a finger and Brutus hurdled the fence. ‘Sometimes they have to take their chance, but there’s no point risking it if you don’t have to. They can do themselves damage.’

  ‘So could I.’

  ‘That’s why Mr Muir carried his split plastic pipe.’

  The ditch was shallow and none too wide. They walked it for fifty yards in each direction. ‘This is stupid,’ Keith said. ‘You could sit with your feet in the ditch all right, but at this time of year no pigeon would come within a mile of you. There’s only one possible place within gunshot of those decoys.’ He led the way to the last tree, a pine, which was split at ground level and sent up two slowly diverging trunks. ‘You could wedge yourself in here and be inconspicuous,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t be good, but it’d do. But then, look here.’ He bent and picked up two empty Remington shells. ‘The police search was cursory all right.’

  ‘Those are significant?’

  ‘Only because Muir was a compulsive picker-up of empty cases. You could ask the police whether they found a camouflage net?’

  ‘I’ll do that.’ Mr Enterkin pulled off his sheepskin gloves and dug deep into layers of clothing for a notebook. ‘Might it not have burned in the Land Rover?’

  ‘Possible but not likely. Well, we’re not doing much good here. What with a black frost at the time, then a thaw and a new frost, there’s not a sign to be seen. Nothing, anyway, that I can distinguish from the spoor of about a hundred coppers mooning around until told to stop. Come on.’

  From the ditch, Keith retrieved an old fertilizer bag of white plastic. It was his habit to carry a sharp knife in a sheath taped across the back of his belt. He cut the bag into small squares before advancing into the field. ‘There’s no sign of whoever put the decoys out,’ he said. ‘The ground was frozen at the time. But the copper who picked up the decoys during the short thaw left his hoofprints behind. What do you see?’

  ‘Just a ploughed field,’ Mr Enterkin said dismally. He was not enjoying himself.

  ‘Use your eyes and your sense. For a start, what would pigeon be looking for on plough? And the frost was too hard to get sticks in, so he wouldn’t even be able to make them look convincing. But look where the bobby stopped and turned. There was one here . . . and here . . .’ Keith placed his squares of white plastic in place, following the footsteps which the policeman had left the day before. ‘Eighteen,’ he said at last. ‘I think that’s the lot. And that looks like the pattern I saw from Munro’s car. Too neat and round and tight. I never saw pigeon flock that way, and I can’t believe they’d come in to decoys set out here like that. They might come over for a look, I suppose.’

  ‘He did shoot some,’ Mr Enterkin pointed out.

  ‘But did he shoot them here? He could have been moved.’

  ‘Moved?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It was never likely that he was killed here.’

  ‘Why on earth should anybody move him?’

  ‘It’s a bit early for guesswork, but I’ll try one out for size. There was a racing pigeon in the bag. I thought it was feral because there wasn’t a ring on its leg. But let’s suppose that he’s set up near somebody’s loft. He kills somebody’s racer, perhaps a very valuable bird. The owner sees it happen. There’s a quarrel and a fight, and, next thing, Mr Muir’s lying dead. “Oh dearie me,” thinks the pigeon fancier, or words to that effect, “I can’t have him found around here.” So he loads the body and all the gear into the Land Rover and drives down this way. To save time he may fire up the Land Rover where it is and be setting up the decoys at this end while the police are already at the scene of the fire.’

  ‘You think that’s what happened?’

  ‘I think there’s about one chance in fifty. But if, for the racing pigeon, you substitute a bad debt, a pregnant daughter, an insult or any one of a dozen reasons why men quarrel, then I think there’s a good chance I’m not far off.’

  ‘Why set fire to the Land Rover?’ Mr Enterkin asked keenly.

  ‘Perhaps in the hope of passing it off as an accident. But just as likely because there was some clue on the body which had to be destroyed. Your guess is as good as mine. Well, not quite as good. You notice that there aren’t any feathers lying around.’

  ‘Should there be?’

  ‘Pigeon feathers are very loose.’ Keith took a last look around. ‘Come on. We’ve seen all there is to see here.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Standing around in a freezing field was palling on Mr Enterkin. He headed back towards the farm road.

  ‘Hold your horses,’ Keith said. (Mr Enterkin halted with one foot in the air.) ‘We’ll walk from here to where the Land Rover was and see what we can pick up.’

  ‘The police will have picked up anything of significance,’ Mr Enterkin said with a sniff.

  ‘If they knew it was significant. I’ve seen them find what they thought they were looking for and leave the rest. If you’re too cold or too clapped-out, you can wait in the car until I come back.’

  ‘I’d never hear the last of it if I did.’ Mr Enterkin blew his nose violently into a large handkerchief. ‘You always led me to believe that fresh air was beneficial, but it’s giving be a cold.’

  ‘You won’t find any germs out here,’ Keith said. ‘The trouble is that you wrap yourself up like an eskimo and get your blood all heated while your sinuses are exposed to th
e frosty air. They aren’t acclimatized yet. It’ll pass.’

  ‘It’d better or I’ll sue you,’ Mr Enterkin said.

  *

  They set off within the trees, each taking half the width and zigzagging to cover the ground. Keith, who had some experience of investigation, had provided himself with a section of Ordnance Survey map and two large polythene bags, and was insistent that every non-natural find be collected and that the position of any find which was either recent or even marginally interesting be marked on his map.

  Progress was necessarily slow, but at least they were usually close enough for conversation.

  ‘Would there be people in these woods at night?’ Mr Enterkin asked suddenly.

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Courting couples?’

  ‘At this time of year, they’d have to be desperate.’

  ‘Poachers, then?’

  Keith laughed. ‘You have eyes but see not,’ he said. His childhood had been devoid of religion, but Biblical knowledge had figured largely. ‘On a shooting estate the woods might be fenced off, though maybe not beside the road. You don’t want pheasants at the roadside. Pheasants love crushed acorns or beach nuts, so you get crushed pheasants.’ There was a pause while Keith collected an empty cigar packet and marked the map. ‘On a farm like this, where shooting takes a poor tenth place, cattle are allowed into the wood for shelter and because the fencing’s shorter like that. So there’s no undergrowth. So there’s nothing to poach.’

  ‘So the Land Rover could sit there all night without being seen?’

  ‘I should think so. You think it might have been there since the day before?’

  Mr Enterkin stooped for a crisp bag and waited to regain his breath. ‘I leave the thinking to you,’ he said.

  After more than an hour they came to the fence at which the police believed murder to have been committed. There was little to be seen except for the signs which the police themselves had left, just a spot of blood on a fence post.

  They moved on. The field beyond the edge of the trees was now grass instead of plough. Keith pointed out where pigeon-droppings began. ‘It’d’ve made more sense if the decoys had been put down in the nearest bit of field to the Land Rover,’ he said. ‘Why hump all the gear a mile away, and near to where they might be seen by the farmer?’

  Mr Enterkin shrugged and snorted into his handkerchief.

  ‘Well, think about it,’ Keith said. ‘If things look bad for Jake, we may need a complete alternative story which holds water. I must take a look down that way.’ He pointed towards Newton Lauder. ‘If Muir parked his Land Rover here, and was shooting further south, and somebody killed him in a place he didn’t want the body found, it might make sense to leave the Land Rover where it was but to move the decoy site to the north. You follow me?’

  ‘With igreasig difficulty,’ Mr Enterkin said.

  The Land Rover had been removed. Even the fragments which had been thrown among the trees were gone. While Mr Enterkin, with occasional ostentatious trumpetings into his handkerchief, sat on the same boulder where Keith had sat the day before, Keith scouted around. Here, at least, the police had been very thorough.

  ‘I hope we’ve foud subthig worth all the effort,’ Mr Enterkin said when Keith rejoined him.

  ‘So do I. But at least when we know more we can see whether we’ve found anything to back it up.’

  They were interrupted by the sound of a car followed by the arrival, on foot, of two men. Keith’s first impulse was to put them down as a pair of nosey parkers, but he recognized the professionalism of the photographic gear slung from the stooping shoulders of the older man and guessed that they were a reporter with photographer in tow.

  The reporter might have been thirty, but he had the sort of face which could have passed for sixteen. He was trying to give himself a mature image by cultivating a straggly beard, without any great success. He nodded in greeting. ‘This is the third place we’ve tried to find where the man died in the burning Land Rover,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Is third time really lucky?’

  Mr Enterkin tried again to clear his nose. ‘This is the place where the burdig Lad Rover was foud, with a dead bad iddside.’

  ‘We’re from the Edinburgh Herald. And you are . . .?’

  ‘Dud of your dab busidess!’

  ‘Hold on a moment,’ Keith said quietly to Mr Enterkin. He faced the reporter. ‘How much do you know?’ he asked.

  The young man hesitated and then shrugged. ‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘An amateur brought us in a photograph yesterday afternoon, but the locals already had it so we didn’t follow it up. This morning we got a tip that there’d been an arrest. Even then, our editor was going to wait for the agencies. But our science correspondent recognized the name, Jacob Paterson, arid said that he was a big-time inventor. So God sent us out to see what’s going on. The police aren’t saying anything yet, and when they do it’ll be the barest bones. So what’s the story?’

  ‘We’re looking around on behalf of Mr Paterson,’ Keith said. ‘You’ll understand that we can’t make any statements. But if your photographic colleague will give us a little help, we can give you a run-down on the physical facts as far as they’re known and promise you first crack at anything we’re prepared to give out later.’

  The reporter had been eyeing Keith. ‘I know you,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve seen you give evidence. You do the expert witness bit quite often, don’t you? Can’t either of you say anything useful?’

  ‘Odely that our cliedt is cobpletely . . .’ Mr Enterkin balked at the word innocent ‘. . . guiltless,’ he finished.

  ‘Solicitor for the defence,’ Keith explained.

  ‘Give me a quote, any kind of a quote, and Charlie’ll help you out.’

  ‘You couldn’t use it,’ Keith said. ‘The case is . . .’

  ‘Sub judice,’ Mr Enterkin said.

  ‘So you’d do better going to see the weeping widow. Anyway, the case may fizzle out into a non-event. On the other hand, it may turn into a cause célèbre—’ (Keith was happier in French than in Latin) ‘—and if you help us out it’s almost certain that your photographs will be introduced as evidence, and you’ll already have them on file.’

  ‘We could photograph this place for ourselves.’

  ‘And my wife’s a competent photographer,’ Keith said. ‘I can fetch her along to photograph the other place I have in mind.’

  The reporter made a gesture of capitulation.

  ‘Thirty-five mil do?’ Charlie asked. In contrast to his colleague, he was an elderly man striving to look young, complete with Mexican moustache and contemporary clothes.

  ‘Just so long as they’re sharp,’ Keith said.

  ‘They’ll be sharp.’

  ‘I do’t doe what you wad photographs for,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘The police have picked the place dead.’

  ‘At least we can show that they removed every scrap of evidence,’ Keith said, ‘so making it impossible for us to get anywhere with our own enquiries.’

  Mr Enterkin nodded, reluctantly.

  Keith directed operations as Charlie recorded what was left of the scene, including detailed shots of charred bushes and blast damage.

  ‘Fidished?’ Mr Enterkin asked.

  ‘There’s another site,’ Keith told the reporter, ‘where it will probably be suggested that the dead man had been shooting pigeon that morning. Our car’s still along there. Give us a lift?’

  ‘Surely.’

  ‘Thag God!’ Mr Enterkin said. He rose to his feet with an audible creak.

  *

  They squeezed into a rusting Beetle and puttered back towards the farm. Mr Enterkin reluctantly prepared to emerge again into the cold air.

  ‘You could walk up to the farm while I see to the photographs,’ Keith suggested.

  Mr Enterkin shook his head violently. ‘I’ll cub back adudder tibe,’ he said. ‘I should be hobe id by bed.’

  ‘I want to be back in Newton Lauder,’ the reporter said,
‘just in case the police make history by saying something interesting. I’ll lift you there if Mr . . . Calder, isn’t it? . . . if Mr Calder brings Charlie along when they’ve finished.’

  Mr Enterkin subsided gratefully back into his seat.

  Chapter Five

  Keith and Mr Enterkin were both very busy for the next few days. In addition, the solicitor was aiding his own recovery by total avoidance of fresh air. Although they had spoken together on the phone, they did not meet again until they were due to visit Jake Paterson together in the headquarters building of the police in Newton Lauder. During the intervening days, Jake had made a brief appearance before the sheriff, at which no evidence was given and no application made for legal aid. He was remanded in custody for trial on a date to be set later.

  The two men entered the old building which fronted onto the square, but were passed through into the bowels of the extension which towered over the original building and into a bare interview room. Within a few minutes Jake Paterson was brought to join them, but almost immediately Mr Enterkin was at the door and demanding to be directed towards a lavatory.

  Jake and Keith seated themselves at a table which could have come from some works canteen, and met each other’s eyes. Jake was slightly taller than Keith, and sturdier. He had inherited from his father a head of flaming red hair, and through his Jewish mother a nose which put into Keith’s mind the thought that Jake would be regrettably easy for witnesses to describe.

  Jake spoke first. ‘This is a pretty kettle of fish,’ he said with a crooked attempt at a smile.

  ‘We can chat later,’ Keith said. ‘The reason Ralph Enterkin went for a pee is that he wants me to sound you out on things which he wouldn’t want to hear from you direct.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’ll try to explain. I’ve worked with Ralph before and I know how his mind works, so when he started hinting I got the message. If you were to say to him, “I strangled Fred Snooks with my bare hands,” then, unless he could convince himself that you were lying, he’d feel debarred from briefing counsel to try and prove your innocence. But if you said the same to me, and then I told Ralph that I thought you might be guilty, he could still feel entitled to discount my opinion if there seemed to be a reasonable chance of getting you off. Fine shades of ethics, I know, but it’s how the twisted legal mind works.’