Sauce For the Pigeon

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘You can do it in about a second? If it yelps more than twice, I’m out and running.’

  ‘You’ll stay put or else,’ Keith said. ‘I need you. Once I’ve opened the front of the box, I’ve got problems. If it is unset, I’ll only have to push in the hidden latch which the lid usually holds in, but set it’s going to sound off until it’s given the code.’ Keith was thinking aloud, reminding himself of Jake’s instructions. ‘You’ve seen the thing. There’s four numbered buttons on the front, which have to be touched in the right sequence. When you open the thing, you can see four flexible wires connecting the terminals behind the buttons to four other terminals marked A to D and that’s the order they’ve got to be pressed in. If you had time you could look and see which button was connected to A and press it first, and so on.’

  ‘Aye,’ Ronnie said. ‘If.’

  ‘Jake thinks that earthing the terminals, from A to D, would do the same job.’

  ‘Thinks?’

  ‘I tried it on my set-up and it worked. So the drill’s this. We go in. I’ve got a wire in my pocket, and we earth the end of it. I drop the front of the box, pass the end of the wire across the terminals and hold the latch in. You pull the four wires off their terminals, but keep them so that we can put them back the way they were. Got it?’

  ‘’Course. What about the door. Going to slip it with your credit card?’

  ‘You’ve been reading too many thrillers,’ Keith said. ‘You can’t do that to a door that opens inwards. The stop’s in the way.’

  ‘Then how—?’

  ‘You’ll see. If it works.’ Keith turned the volume up again. The car grew colder. Ronnie sat and suffered until, just as he was about to suggest that they gave it up for the night, the front door light came on and Mrs Muir, cosily furred, hurried into her car and drove off.

  ‘Come out this side and try not to leave footprints,’ Keith said. He lifted a bundle off the back seat. They walked softly, breathing out steam. The frost was bitter.

  ‘The bitch has left her front door light on,’ Ronnie whispered.

  ‘I don’t think you can see the front door from the cottages. Not from downstairs anyway. This time of night, they’ll be in front of their tellies.’

  ‘I bloody well hope so.’

  They reached Mrs Muir’s door. ‘I see what you mean,’ Ronnie said.

  ‘Let’s not hang about.’ Keith opened his bundle. It contained three pieces of wood of assorted lengths and a car jack. He found the appropriate length. ‘Hold this here and that there,’ he said. Within a few seconds he had the jack and one piece of wood braced across the doorway between his two other timbers, and as he pumped the jack handle the doorposts were forced apart. They creaked. Keith stopped.

  Ronnie tapped the glass beside the door. ‘This’ll break if you go on.’

  Keith nodded. ‘The frame’s twisting. I can get a card in now.’ He worked a piece of flexible plastic into the gap. There was a click. He caught the door before it could move more than half an inch. ‘Get the jack out and wrap the bundle up again. Bring it in with you and shut the door behind us. We want the cloakroom just inside on the left. Follow me in fast and hold the torch for me. Ready?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Geronimo!’ Keith whispered. He pushed the door open and the buzzer sounded its low, warning note. He flashed the torch. The first door on his left led into a cloakroom-cum-lavatory. His heart almost stopped when he failed to see the control box. But there was a cupboard over the basin with a mirrored door. He snatched it open, and the box winked at him with its little coloured eyes, comfortably familiar.

  The buzzer droned on. His time was leaking away.

  The pipes under the basin were chromed. That should do. He twisted a bared end of his wire around a pipe. Ronnie was by his side, and he handed over the torch and got to work with his pocket screwdriver, holding the end of the wire between his teeth. He dropped the two screws into the basin after putting in the plug.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘Go!’

  He let the front of the box drop on its hinges. The alarm outside squealed like a terrified cuckoo. Keith stabbed at the latch with his left forefinger while with his right hand he swept the free end of his wire across the terminals. Ronnie’s big hand came over his shoulder and jerked at the four little wires. Silence returned, dropping like a huge, fleecy blanket.

  ‘No’ bad,’ Ronnie said. ‘Three yodels at the most. We’ll have to take this up.’

  ‘My left jacket pocket. A roll of sticky tape. Take me off about three inches.’

  With the latch – a pressure-switch – taped, Keith relaxed. ‘Now, gloves on,’ he said, ‘and we’ll take a look around. Just a moment.’ He looked into the box again. ‘Where are the four little wires?’

  ‘Here.’ Ronnie displayed them in his broad palm.

  ‘How am I supposed to put them back the right way?’

  ‘I don’t bloody know,’ Ronnie said plaintively. ‘You just said to keep them.’

  There was nothing to be gained by argument. Keith had a rough mental picture of how he thought the wires had been. He filed it away for future use. ‘Ten to one I can’t put it back the way it was,’ he said. ‘I’d rather she didn’t know she’d been visited.’

  ‘What happens if that bittie tape slips?’

  ‘We run like hell.’

  From the front door, no sign of neighbourly curiosity could be seen. Across the wide hall from the cloakroom, double doors stood open to a sitting-room. Even by torchlight it was seen to be furnished in good taste and at some expense. The red eye of an infra-red sensor winked on as they looked in. A log smouldered in the grate.

  ‘What’ll happen wi’ the alarms?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘If I don’t guess right, first time she tries to unset the alarm all hell will break loose. And there’s no way she can stop it without expert help. The best she’ll be able to do will be to get an electrician to pull the fuse and wait a couple of hours for the batteries in the outdoor unit to run down. Or send for the installer, who’s in pokey. If she wants it working again, she’ll have to send for somebody from Edinburgh or Newcastle. Come on.’

  The late Mr Muir’s study was at the back of the house. Another red eye came on as they entered. Keith drew the curtains. ‘We should be safe enough, this side of the house,’ he said, and switched on the lights.

  The room seemed to have been left undisturbed since its master’s death. The layout reflected his different activities. The side on their right, with the window, was given over to paperwork, with a desk and several filing cabinets, all very neat and orderly. To the left was a workbench, less tidy, with shelves above which were jumbled with odds and ends. On the far wall was a large wardrobe, battered relic of some Victorian household but now, Keith found, demoted to a repository for shooting clothes and the larger items of gear. A camouflage net was stuffed into the bottom over several pairs of boots, and on a shelf Keith saw the green-painted wire frame for a flapping decoy.

  ‘None of this means much,’ he said. ‘Without the widow’s co-operation, we don’t know what he had duplicates of.’ He transferred his attention to the workbench side of the room. ‘No reloading,’ he said. ‘And no sign of muzzle-loaders.’

  ‘A one-gun man,’ Ronnie added. ‘Kept it on they two pegs.’

  The bench itself was old, battered and scarred and showing the occasional burn. The few tools were not solely for gun maintenance, and the shelves were cluttered with the odds and ends which accumulate around a not very handy householder. Keith’s eye passed contemptuously over the few screwdrivers, a hammer, a hand drill and a hacksaw with broken blade. The equipment for basic gun-cleaning was there – tins and aerosols of gun oil, wax for a gunstock, cloths, a patent barrel-cleaner and a cleaning rod with a bronze wire jag. The boxes of cartridges were tidily arranged. Keith guessed that Mr Muir had favoured 7s and 8s for clay pigeons. The 6s would have been for woodpigeon and general game, 3s for duck and the
BB definitely for geese. Mr Muir had liked his shot on the heavy side.

  ‘Look at this,’ Ronnie said suddenly. His gloved hand lifted a shape of steel and walnut off the lower shelf. ‘The fore-end of a gun.’

  Keith studied the find carefully. ‘When I met Neill Muir, he was carrying a Sabel de Luxe. This could belong to it. Or,’ he added, ‘this could be off some gun that was lost or stolen or damaged and scrapped. Put it back carefully, on its side so that you can see the number from the window. And hand me down that box.’

  The box, which had once held half a gallon of ice-cream, now contained those small oddments which are kept ‘just in case’ – screws and hinges, tap washers, a padlock, a broken window-catch. Keith was about to return it to the shelf when he paused at a small ring which might have been cut from the leg of a racing pigeon. Just on the off-chance he copied the number into his notebook beneath the number of the fore-end and put the ring beside the fore-end on its shelf. The box he restored to the shelf above, and then he stood, brushing crumbs of wax off his gloved finger-tips and looking around.

  ‘There’s no sign or smell of him ever having smoked,’ he said. ‘Which makes it more difficult to put forward an accident theory. Come on. We’ll take a quick look at the rest of the house.’

  *

  Time can pass quickly when one is enjoying oneself, and Keith, if pressed, would have had to admit that he enjoyed his trip through a strange house, building up a picture of a couple whose ways were alien to him. Outside of the study, there was no doubt that what Mrs Muir had wanted she had obtained; or else every trace of her husband’s wishes had been expunged with remarkable speed.

  Keith had allowed himself an hour from entering the house. He guessed that, in the days when he was young and predatory, that would have been the shortest time ever to have elapsed between his setting out on the prowl and returning to his chosen love-nest with compliant company. But his watch, when he looked at it, announced that an hour and a half had gone by. They did one quick tour to ensure that all was apparently as they had found it and made for the cloakroom.

  Except that Keith had to reset the code by memory and guesswork, they reversed exactly the procedures which they had followed on entry. As Ronnie removed his hand, Keith slammed the lid and punched the new code. The alarm had time for no more than a single yip.

  The two men breathed more easily.

  And then, as Keith picked up the screws, one of them slipped from his fingers and tinkled across the tiled floor. He stood, leaning against the box. ‘Find it, for Christ’s sake,’ he said.

  ‘Can I put the light on?’

  ‘No way. This window must look right down the valley. Take the torch.’

  While he waited, Keith fumbled the other screw into place, very carefully, with his spare hand.

  ‘Got it!’ came Ronnie’s voice at last. As he pushed the screw between Keith’s fingers, a car door slammed outside.

  The torch went out.

  ‘Put it on.’ Keith grabbed the torch and screwed one-handed. The screw ran in. Was there a chance of getting to the back door?

  There was not.

  As Keith made time for a quick wipe over the face of the box with his sleeve, the latch of the front door clicked and the door let a cold draught find its way to the cloakroom window by way of the small of Keith’s back. He snapped off the torch, picked up his bundle and stepped to where the cloakroom door might screen him if it opened. Bright light fanned across from under the door.

  ‘That’s funny,’ said Mrs Muir’s voice. The lack of the warning tone had caught her attention. ‘I could have sworn I set the alarms.’ Her voice was richly unconcerned. Other things were on the widow’s mind. The cloakroom door opened and the light came on. There was no sign of Ronnie. Keith could smell her perfume, even see the edge of her skirt through the crack of the door. ‘There must be another damn fault,’ her voice said. ‘Well, if you’re supposed to be some sort of electrician, you can take a look at it for me before you go.’ The door closed. The light died.

  Hugging his bundle to his chest, Keith breathed deeply. He heard muffled voices, the clink of glasses. Erotic music throbbed softly and he wondered in passing where he could buy the tape. It seemed to have something. Otherwise all was silent. Where the hell were they?

  After an eternity without change Keith turned the handle and eased the cloakroom door open, as slowly as he possibly could, while peeping through the widening gap. The double doors to the sitting-room were still open. The only light came from a single standard lamp and from the made-up fire. Over the back of the settee, two heads were silhouetted. Keith eased through the door from the cloakroom. The hall was dim but Keith sensed a movement in the further shadows. Ronnie’s head was peering round the edge of the study door. Keith put his finger to his lips and then beckoned. Ronnie came tiptoeing down the hall, carrying his shoes.

  As Ronnie reached Keith there was other movement beyond the settee. Mrs Muir stood up. Three men were frozen in admiration. She refilled two glasses from a carafe, stooped to put another log on the fire and returned to the settee. The vision vanished, the spell was broken.

  Keith and Ronnie sidled towards the front door. One minute later, without having made more sound than the music would cover, they were outside and the front door locked behind them. They walked softly and in silence. Ronnie was lost in reverential wonderment, but Keith was pursuing an elusive memory.

  They were in the car and freewheeling before either spoke.

  ‘You got off your mark bloody quick,’ Keith said.

  ‘Aye, I’d’ve been out and running except that she’d locked the back door and taken the key. Hey, d’you reckon that electrician laddie can fix her alarms for her?’

  ‘If it goes off while he’s still there, I doubt if he’ll hang around. That was Denny Coutts, the boss of Coutts and Dougall. He’s a lay preacher with six kids. The neighbours are in for several hours of high-speed cuckoo song.’

  ‘Will she know she’s been entered, then?’

  ‘Depends whether she gets a local boy to shut it off or a specialist to come a long way to sort it. If she’s selling the place, she may not be too fussy, I hope. What would your guess be?’

  But Ronnie’s mind was away on quite another tack. ‘Yon was a right bonny quine,’ he said. ‘By God, aye! And they lace combinations she was hanging half-out-of!’

  ‘Camiknickers,’ Keith said.

  ‘Is that what you call them then? I wonder would Maisie have anything like that. You can drop me on the corner of Upper Kirk Street if you like.’

  Keith curled his lip. Maisie, who occupied a tenement flat in Upper Kirk Street, was a stout, middle-aged lady of great good nature and a ready source of comfort to several of the unattached men of the town. Her detractors said that she was ugly. Her intimates agreed, with the mental reservation that she was also free.

  It is to be feared that Keith, as the father of a young daughter, was becoming inclined to priggishness. But there had been times, in his wild and itinerant youth, when he would not have turned up his nose at such as Maisie.

  He drove in silence. That elusive memory was nagging at him.

  In the morning, he phoned the photographer on the Edinburgh Herald. He wanted, he said, some photographs which would require the best of equipment. They would have to be taken with a very long focus lens, through glass. In return, he could promise a scoop when the trial came on.

  Chapter Eight

  For the next few days Keith avoided Mr Enterkin. He would have liked to discuss his fresh information with the solicitor but he was reluctant to admit how it had been obtained. He was unhappily aware that, if the police should learn from Mrs Muir that her house had been entered, he would be unable to stand up to cross-examination. Worse, he might find himself in deep trouble. Mr Enterkin was unlikely to admit that he had hinted at such a course; indeed, in retrospect Keith was not sure that he had read Mr Enterkin’s words aright.

  Their only contact was one telephone call, w
hich Keith took at Briesland House between raising the dents which a careless owner had put in the stock of a Dickson Round Action.

  ‘I’ve had another cable from your friend Dunbar,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘Even after making reasonable assumptions in the hope of restoring the message to something resembling its original intent, it contributes little of use. This is understandable when you recall that he has no idea what you want to know; an ignorance, I may add, which he shares with myself. He suggests that direct discussion is the only suitable modus operandi, and mentions that he expects to finish his contract and to return home early in January. Can we leave him until then? It would give us a month in hand.’

  ‘That’s time enough,’ Keith said.

  ‘The only positive statement which I can extract from the literary garbage to which the original has been reduced is this. “Ask Calder how long he’d need between a brace of thrush.” Can you make head or tail of it, Keith?’

  ‘It’s only what I expected,’ Keith said. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘You can’t fob me off like that. Expound.’

  ‘Would it help if I explained that the farmer has a daughter by the name of Mavis?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mr Enterkin. ‘Tell me, was everybody in Newton Lauder, with the exception of myself, dividing his time between the pursuit of Columbapalumbus and the human female?’

  ‘It was a special day for pigeon,’ Keith said.

  ‘And, it would appear, for nooky. Was the weather especially appropriate for that also? Singularly unpropitious for outdoor fornication, I would have supposed.’

  ‘How many sex acts would you think were going on in the world at this very moment?’ Keith asked.

  ‘I take your point. If it were not a frequent event the human race would die out. So much for that, then.’

  ‘Irrelevant,’ Keith agreed. ‘How would you like to ask Mavis whether, between transports, she happened to notice anything which might interest us?’