Sauce For the Pigeon

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘She may be a bit on the flabby side,’ Jake said gently, ‘with overtones of superannuated Gaiety Girl. When it comes to dealing with customers, she may remind you of Genghis Khan in bloomers. She does me. But she’s loyal and efficient, and she’s the only person I’d trust to keep the business going while I’m in here. So I’ll be even more grateful to you if you stop talking about her like that.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Keith said.

  ‘And she doesn’t have the keys and code to the private part of the workshops. Muir did, though.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Of course he did.’ Jake sounded surprised that anyone could have thought otherwise. ‘He was raising finance so that we could manufacture my radio-telephone and anything else which came along. He had to be able to demonstrate it to potential backers whether I was there or not. He had one of the units in the back of his Land Rover, but the main unit was in the workshop.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great,’ Keith said dismally. ‘That’s just the ticket! So among the wreckage of the Land Rover they’ve found a whole lot of bits of radio receiver that didn’t come out of a standard car radio. And in the workshop there’s a matching transmitter which for all they know could have been up in your flat at the time. Right?’

  ‘Almost,’ Jake said. ‘The main unit’s big and it’s bolted to the wall. Estelle – Mrs Muir – could hardly have missed seeing it if it had been up in the flat.’

  ‘That’s a relief. And, supposing the worst, if it wasn’t there she couldn’t describe it if she wanted to drop you in the clag.’

  ‘Don’t get too relieved,’ Jake said. ‘I ran a temporary cable from my flat to the workshop, so that I could turn a heater on about an hour before I went down to work there. It’s a bit of a lash-up, but it serves its purpose. I could easily have used it to trigger a signal over the transmitter. And while Mrs Muir was there I noticed that I’d left the heater on overnight. So I threw the switch.’

  ‘That’s all we needed,’ Keith said. ‘That’s just dandy!’

  ‘That’s dandy all right,’ Jake said.

  *

  Preoccupied after his talk with Jake, Keith was hardly aware of the figure which crossed the square behind him. He was already speaking to Wallace by the time the man entered the shop, so Keith moved aside to let Wal serve the newcomer.

  But the man produced a warrant-card and presented it to Keith. It identified him as Detective Chief Inspector James Russell. His manner was brusque, but there any resemblance to a Jack Russell terrier ended. (But, Keith remembered, the original Parson Russell’s name was John.) Chief Inspector Russell was burly and carried himself so badly that his head seemed to be attached to the front of his deep chest rather than set on his shoulders. His nose was flattened, but his ears and lips were prominent, giving him the look of a clownish gargoyle. He was wearing a grubby sheepskin coat and a pork pie hat which remained firmly on his head.

  ‘Mr Calder?’

  With some reluctance, Keith admitted his identity. He had intended to ask Mr Enterkin for guidance as to what to say to the Edinburgh policeman, and he was regretting that this had slipped his mind. But, after years of association with the solicitor, he could almost hear his voice saying, ‘Tell the truth but volunteer nothing.’

  Russell produced a piece of paper. ‘This is yours?’

  The paper was one of the shop’s receipts, made out to Jake in Keith’s writing, for one tin of Black Silver and two tins of Nobel 80. ‘This is ours,’ Keith said.

  ‘Under the Control of Explosives Act, you’re required to keep a record of all sales of gunpowder.’

  This was a statement and as such, Keith felt, required no comment.

  Russell’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have such a record?’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘Produce it.’

  The policeman’s manner had put Keith’s back as far up as it could go. He was still wondering how to be most obstructive without laying himself open to prosecution when Wallace, behind the counter, produced the book from a drawer. Russell inspected it as if it had been composed of used toilet-paper. Jake’s purchases were entered in Janet’s neat hand.

  ‘This is in a different writing,’ Russell said. ‘And it has been tampered with.’

  Keith caught Wallace’s eye. ‘I can tell—’ he began.

  ‘I can speak for myself,’ Wallace broke in. ‘I’m Mr James, Mr Calder’s partner. Mr Calder made the sale, but he was going out with Mr Paterson, so he asked me to enter the sale in the record.’ Wallace showed Russell his right hand. Three fingers were missing. ‘I don’t write very well. I t-type most things, but book records have to be in manuscript. So I do them in pencil and my wife goes over them in ink, the same day.’

  Russell drew himself up until his posture was almost normal. Keith could see him as he had been when he walked the beat, before desk work had affected his spine. ‘At any time until Mrs James inks in your records, they could be falsified?’

  ‘By whom?’ Wallace asked.

  ‘By you, for one.’

  ‘I could have filled it in falsely in the first place,’ Wallace pointed out.

  ‘But,’ Keith said, ‘my receipt, the book record and the entry on Jake Paterson’s Form F – which I filled out myself – all agree. Do you think we falsified the lot?’

  ‘I’m making damn sure you didn’t’, Russell said. ‘And ensuring that the law hasn’t been broken.’

  ‘Keeping a record in book form isn’t law,’ Keith said, ‘it’s only a piece of procedure demanded by the police, with powers you don’t really have.’

  Russell was studying the book. ‘I wouldn’t advise you to take that tone with me; I can turn nasty,’ he said into its pages. He looked up and caught Keith’s eye. ‘Even nastier. You seem to have eight regular customers for black powder, including yourself and the prisoner Paterson. How many of the other six use their black powder to load cartridges?’

  ‘How the hell would I know?’ Keith said.

  ‘You told Chief Inspector Munro that it was a common practice around here.’

  ‘I don’t think I said anything of the sort,’ Keith said. ‘You’re putting words into my mouth. And if Munro inferred something like that from what I did say, I still didn’t suggest that anybody doing so was necessarily my customer.’

  Russell laid his finger on the page. ‘These two lads, now. Isn’t it true that each of these is a small contractor, who uses gunpowder occasionally to blast rocks or tree stumps?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  ‘To your knowledge, did either of them ever own a gun?’

  ‘I don’t know that they didn’t,’ Keith said.

  ‘In other words, you don’t know that they did. I can tell you that neither of them has ever held a shotgun certificate. The other four, now. Do you know for a fact that any one of them loads cartridges with gunpowder?’

  Keith shook his head.

  ‘On the other hand,’ Russell said, ‘isn’t it true that you do know for a fact that each of them shoots a muzzle-loader? That you’ve sold each of them such a gun, or flints or percussion caps? And isn’t it true that all four are members of the Muzzle Loaders’ Association, as you are also, and that you compete against them from time to time?’

  Keith shrugged. Wallace decided to jump in. ‘For all we know, any or all of them could load cartridges,’ he said.

  Russell ignored Wallace and spoke to Keith. ‘What it amounts to is that, among your customers, the only users of black powder cartridges you know of are yourselves, Sir Peter Hay and the prisoner Paterson. True?’

  ‘As far as we know,’ Keith said, ‘yes. But there’s a lot more guns than that around here which have never been proved for smokeless powders.’

  ‘How do you know? Did you sell them?’

  ‘It’d be quite legal for me to do so,’ Keith said. ‘Proved is proved. But, in fact, whenever I get a gun traded in, or sold to me, which isn’t proved for modern powder, I submit it for proof if I think it will pass. If I don’t
expect it to pass, I make it unusable and sell it as a wall-hanger. But there are a lot of them in service. I even get them in for servicing. Their owners may scrounge gunpowder cartridges, or they may buy their powder elsewhere.’

  ‘Or they may just take a chance on their barrels standing up to the higher pressures generated by modern powders,’ Russell said. ‘Right?’

  ‘That would be against the advice I always give them.’

  ‘But people can be foolish?’

  ‘You know it,’ Keith said.

  Russell lowered himself with a grunt into the customer’s chair, leaving Keith standing over him. He smiled for the first time. His canine teeth were prominent and the smile suggested a snarl. ‘There’ll be somebody from the Procurator Fiscal’s office coming to take a precognition from you. You will tell him just what you’ve told me – that as far as you know Paterson is the only person who buys gunpowder from you for the purpose of loading cartridges – or I shall come after you for every tiniest infringement I can dream up.’

  ‘And if I qualify my statement?’

  Russell’s eyebrows went up. ‘You must qualify it. It is just as important for the Advocate Depute to know what you might say if asked the wrong question.’ (Keith nodded. He knew about precognitions and had already decided to reserve several points.) ‘But you’ll make these points clearly, and be prepared to speak to them if you’re called as a witness for the prosecution. You load for yourselves and for Sir Peter Hay, but as far as you know Paterson is your only customer who loads his own. Not that I think we’ll need you. I don’t mind telling you that Forensic have already matched the firing-pin on Paterson’s Westley Richards to the cartridges in Muir’s bag. You were a bright boy there. Don’t go and spoil it.’

  He heaved himself to his feet and barged out of the shop.

  ‘Phew!’ Keith said.

  ‘Not a n-nice man,’ Wallace suggested mildly.

  ‘Top of the Cops he is not. He heads my list of fuzz I would least like to be breathalysed by. I’ll tell you this for nothing, Wal. Before this thing is over I’m going to do something unspeakably awful to that man.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll think of something. If God is good to me, I’ll drop Detective Chief Inspector Russell so deep in the shit he’ll never surface again. I wonder what Jake told him he was. Me, I don’t know what he is. But whatever it is, he’s the only one of it.’

  *

  Holly Wood was a rough plantation, mostly of sycamores but with some holly to justify its name, draped over a small knoll immediately south of the town. Only one corner of it adjoined land which could possibly have attracted pigeon, and here Keith found traces of a hide and the imprint of a round, five-gallon drum, presumably used both as a seat and as a gear-carrier. Keith could think of several men who used this conveniently dual-purpose tool, and there were no other clues to the identity of the shooter.

  So Keith approached the farmer, who gave him the names of three men with permission to shoot pigeon on that land. One of these, as Keith well knew, used a shooting-stick and another a folding canvas fishing-stool. He was unsure about the third, but tracked him down to a council house within sight of the wood.

  He had found the right man. But the man had been shooting in a balaclava helmet with ear protectors over the top. These, together with the wind in the branches overhead, had prevented him from hearing anything.

  Keith gave up, but stayed to chat for a few minutes about the shooting. He pricked up his ears when the man said that he had been using a flapper.

  ‘How did you manage that?’ Keith asked. ‘Nobody else could get the peg into the ground because of the frost.’

  ‘I’ve made an iron peg for mine. I can hammer it in. It didn’t seem to draw the birds, though. For all the good I did pulling the string, I might just as well’ve been wanking myself.’

  ‘You could have tied the string to your wrist and done both,’ Keith pointed out.

  Chapter Six

  By arrangement, Keith met Mr Enterkin next morning in the latter’s dusty and cluttered office.

  ‘I’ve tried to get hold of Watty Dunbar,’ Keith said. ‘But he’s just gone out to do a job in the Persian Gulf. He’s a welder-diver. I think you should send this cable.’

  ‘Is it important?’ Mr Enterkin asked.

  ‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t need to send it.’

  Mr Enterkin took the paper from Keith. It read:

  WALTER DUNBAR, C/O SUBAQUATECH, BAHRAIN.

  WERE YOU ON BRIGHTSIDE FARM LAST TUESDAY MORNING QUERY PLEASE ADVISE URGENTEST ALSO PROBABLE RETURN DATE ENTERKIN NEWTON LAUDER 4728

  ‘Very well,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘Give it to Miss Wilkes when you go.’

  ‘I’ll give it to her now,’ Keith said. He left the room. In a few seconds he returned. ‘She’ll send it off straight away,’ he reported.

  ‘Why the hurry?’

  ‘Because I’m grinding to a halt until I get a new lead.’

  Mr Enterkin nodded. ‘Then we must seek to open up new lines of enquiry,’ he said. ‘Tell me, could the explosion have been caused by an accident of some kind?’

  ‘That depends.’ Keith thought for a minute. ‘Muir’s gun wasn’t found in the wreckage.’

  The solicitor showed his customary sign of irritation. He looked slightly less cherubic than usual. ‘Never mind the extraneous evidence,’ he said. ‘We can seek to explain any such discrepancies once we have a basic theory. In its own right, could the explosion have been an accident?’

  ‘Easily, given one or two assumptions. One of the snags to gunpowder throughout history has been that if it gets bounced around, as in a vehicle, it can produce a very fine and very explosive dust.’

  ‘Aha! So if Muir got into his Land Rover and lit a cigarette?’

  ‘Did he smoke?’

  ‘That is something we shall have to find out.’ Mr Enterkin made a note. ‘I never saw him smoking, to be sure. But even a man who does not smoke regularly might enjoy an occasional cigar. Or there are other possible reasons for striking a match. Admittedly, I can’t think of one just at this moment—’

  ‘Nor can I,’ Keith said.

  ‘—but the suggestion might be enough to set the jury thinking.’

  ‘Is that a good idea? They might think too much. How did the dust get out of a tin with a screw cap?’

  ‘If, as you suggest, it had been bouncing around in the back of the Land Rover, could the cap not have screwed itself off?’

  ‘Just possibly. But then, if the lid wasn’t on tight it wouldn’t make much of an explosion. Propellant powders need to be confined if they’re to make a real bang.’

  ‘Ah,’ Mr Enterkin said. He pouted in deep thought. ‘But suppose, just suppose that the screw cap had come off the tin of gunpowder and the fine dust was loose in the Land Rover. Mr Muir gets in and for some reason not yet known he creates a naked light. The uncapped tin of gunpowder goes off right beside the two tins of smokeless powder which, again for some reason not yet known, he had borrowed from Mr Paterson’s workroom. Would the tins of smokeless powder go off and, if so, would their explosion be sufficient to rupture the fuel tank of the Land Rover?’

  ‘Yes to the first,’ Keith said. ‘As to the second, I think so. It isn’t like the controlled explosion of a measured quantity of propellant at a calculated rate under known conditions, as in a cartridge in the chamber of a gun. Probably you wouldn’t get quite the same results twice. If you cared to supply me with half a dozen Land Rovers . . .’

  ‘A damned expensive way of finding out,’ Mr Enterkin said, ‘and fortunately beyond the means of the prosecution. But no!’ The solicitor snapped his fingers in annoyance. ‘What am I thinking about? The prosecution will prefer the assumption that the tins of explosive material in Mr Paterson’s possession would be sufficient. It would be to our advantage to show that it would have taken a dozen tins of powder to have done so much damage.’

  ‘Except that Jake co
uld have bought the extra somewhere else,’ Keith pointed out. ‘Nitro powders can be bought freely. What beats me is why Muir should be carrying powders anyway. He didn’t reload. He told me so.’

  ‘He could have started since then,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘Or intended to.’ He made another note. ‘He could have bought himself all the relevant materials elsewhere. Yours isn’t the only gunshop within reach, you know. He could have stocked up with the materials while on his tour. After all, he was just entering on his retirement, which suggests a period of increased leisure and reduced affluence. Wouldn’t that be a good time to start loading his own cartridges?’

  ‘And the gunpowder?’

  ‘Unless the prosecution has proof to the contrary, we can always suggest that he might have bought, on his travels, a gun which needed that kind of coddling. No doubt, with your customary ingenuity, you can oblige me with some theory which would allow for both guns being stolen from the vicinity of the Land Rover.’

  ‘The police would have a record if Muir had been granted a Form F.’ Keith pointed out.

  ‘But if they’ve failed to do their homework, we can cloud the issues in court. With evidence so circumstantial – so far as we know for the moment – we only have to show that that evidence can be explained in other ways. And you know well, Keith, how easily Muir could have obtained a supply through a friend. Illegally but easily. He had friends?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘There is too much that we don’t know,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘And the police are being very sluggish about revealing anything which could be of use to the defence. The normal courtesies have gone by the board. I think it’s time we paid a call on the weeping widow.’

  ‘She is weeping, is she? Not singing and dancing?’

  ‘She was weeping when I called on her that first morning, before the police sent me packing. Tears streaming down her face. I was not in much better shape myself. I trust that she will have recovered her composure by now. Nothing so much puts me off my food as a weeping woman. I have some experience – not in my marriage,’ Mr Enterkin added hastily, ‘but as a solicitor. Would you be free this evening? The lady seems to be spending her days in Edinburgh and only returning home overnight.’