Sauce For the Pigeon

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Certain,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘I follow cricket, I’d have remembered.’

  ‘See if you can find out what was on the end for a weight.’

  They joined Brutus in the hide, where he had been waiting with the patience of long experience. Keith took two small fishing-stools from his bag and they sat down. He uncovered and loaded his gun.

  ‘Can we talk?’ Mr Enterkin asked.

  ‘Keep it soft,’ Keith murmured. ‘And no sudden movements. Above all, don’t look up suddenly if a bird shows up.’

  ‘I’ll try to be good,’ Mr Enterkin said in a stage whisper. ‘Keith, we’ve got a problem. Our case comes on in three weeks.’

  ‘We’ve got more than a month,’ Keith said. ‘Surely?’

  ‘Circumstances are unusual. The High Court has been striving to overtake the backlog of cases resulting from the strike of court officials. Now the current flu epidemic is setting back case after case – if the judge is fit, one counsel or the other is hors de combat. And a big fraud case was scheduled to follow us, which is now expected to last for many months. My own view is that it will go on for ever.’

  ‘So they want to bring Jake’s trial forward?’

  ‘The Clerk of Session wanted to put it back. It’s most unusual to tamper with the dates of trials once set, but you can see the dilemma, the undesirability of cutting the fraud trial in half. But the delay to our trial would have been extensive. I consulted our client. I will not repeat his exact words, but their burden was that he had been in durance vile quite long enough. He said that he would only agree to bringing it forward. And when counsels’ diaries were consulted, that proved to be the only course open.’

  ‘No chance of our judge—who is it, by the way?’

  ‘Lord Bickenholme.’

  ‘I’ve given evidence in front of him before. He’s all right. No chance of him getting the flu?’

  ‘He’s just had it.’

  There was a pause while a pair of pigeon passed high overhead, ignoring the decoys. ‘Hell!’ Keith said. ‘And hell again. That doesn’t leave much time. When does Watty Dunbar fly back?’

  ‘You’ll have ten days in hand.’

  ‘Keep your voice down. After I’ve milked Watty of anything he knows, I may need all of ten days for more investigation. And thinking.’

  ‘We’ll have to hope not. Is pigeon-shooting always as boring as this?’

  Keith kept a straight face. ‘Not always,’ he said. ‘If I’m on my own I can sit and think, and that’s much less boring. I can solve all the world’s problems, sitting in a hide. And, of course, sometimes something happens.’

  ‘You could have fooled . . . YIKE!’ Mr Enterkin said as the gun went off over his head. A woodpigeon, fatally tempted away from the tree-line by the decoy pattern, paid the price, rolled over and fell, a ball of meat and feathers with trailing wings, out in the field.

  Brutus was watching Keith, quivering in expectation. Keith nodded. The labrador raced out into the field, ignoring the decoys. Keith took the last equipment out of his bag and led Mr Enterkin out. Brutus was waiting among the decoys, the bird limp in his mouth.

  Keith pushed a heavy wooden peg into the ground and fitted the wire frame to the top. Mr Enterkin winced as the bird’s wing joints were carefully broken. Keith fitted the bird to its cradle, checked the lead of the string to the levers and tried a couple of pulls. The dead bird’s wings flapped realistically. He backed, paying out string and passing it under the netting of the hide opposite Mr Enterkin’s stool. ‘Can you pull a string?’ he asked.

  Mr Enterkin lowered his plumpness carefully on to the low seat. ‘We lawyers seldom do anything but pull strings,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Try it,’ Keith said. ‘Then, whenever I tell you, give two or three quick, firm pulls, wait a few seconds, two or three more and then stop.’

  ‘That seems to be within my capabilities. Keith, are you going to come up with anything more by the time of the trial?’

  ‘Keep your voice down! I don’t know. Much depends on Watty. I’ve done almost all I can for the moment.’

  ‘I suppose it’s unfair to expect miracles of you. But even as it stands the prosecution’s case might convince a jury, and they may well have evidence of which we know nothing. And we’ve little to counter it with except skilled cross-examination and argument.’

  ‘And me,’ Keith said.

  ‘Just at the moment, that’s not—’

  ‘Pull!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Pull the damn string.’

  Mr Enterkin dutifully caused a couple of flaps. The pattern of decoys came to life. A group of pigeon, too small to be called a flock, swung towards the enticing signal. Two, less cautious than their companions, began to descend. Keith took a quick right-and-left. The birds were dead so he left them.

  Keith had delayed making mention of his gleanings from the Muir home. Once the facts were out he would be committed, and who could tell where it would end? But Jake’s defence might be prejudiced by the ignorance of his lawyers. Keith, himself prejudiced, believed that many defences suffered in that way. And, now that the photographer from the Edinburgh Herald had supplied the required photographs, Keith could point to a comparatively innocent source for his information.

  ‘There’s one important fact I’ve come up with since my last precognition,’ he said. ‘Could you find out the number of Muir’s gun? Pull!’

  Mr Enterkin pulled.

  ‘He’s gone on,’ Keith said. ‘Disbelieving bugger! Probably a policeman in some earlier incarnation. No, I wrong him. He’s coming back for another look. Pull!’

  The dead pigeon flapped. Keith scored with his second barrel.

  ‘You missed,’ Mr Enterkin pointed out.

  ‘I’ve got four with five shots,’ Keith said. ‘Keep that up and I’ll know that somebody up there appreciates my real value. Hang on a moment. I think I know what’s been spooking them. There’s a bird on its back. Also the wind’s come round a bit. Shan’t be a second.’

  He walked out and set up his fallen birds, moving or turning a few decoys to suit the new angle of the breeze.

  Mr Enterkin had followed him out. ‘I could probably find out the number of Muir’s gun,’ he said, ‘but I’d undoubtedly be asked why I wanted to know it.’

  ‘In that case don’t bother,’ Keith said. ‘We’ll see it in court anyway. Meantime, perhaps it’s better kept up our sleeves.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘There’s the fore-end of a gun in Muir’s study. You can see it from the window, and I’ve got a photograph in which you can read the number.’

  They reached the hide and resumed their seats – Mr Enterkin with a faint groan. ‘What is a fore-end?’ he asked. ‘I’m becoming uncomfortably aware what the other end is. These stools are excruciating.’

  Keith removed the fore-end from his gun, the tapered piece of steel and walnut which clipped beneath the chamber end of the barrels, and handed it to Mr Enterkin. ‘This is the fore-end,’ he said. ‘I know that they found Muir’s gun thrown away, barrels and stock separately. Nobody said anything about finding the fore-end. If it hasn’t turned up, the police may have assumed that something so comparatively small may have been missed.’

  Mr Enterkin had been looking at the gun and thinking. ‘A man could take out his gun and leave that behind, couldn’t he?’

  ‘Easily, if he were interrupted while assembling the gun after cleaning it, and then picked it up from the top and put it straight into its sleeve. I did it myself, once.’

  ‘Well then—’

  ‘I’ll show you something.’ Keith lifted the gun. ‘I haven’t reloaded yet. Now, I could have fired those last two shots with the gun as it is. But that’s all I could do.’ He opened the gun and closed it again. ‘That action would normally recock the gun, because the fore-end bears on these two little cocking levers. Without the fore-end, the gun isn’t recocked.’

  ‘And can’t be recocked without the fore-end?’
/>   ‘Only by pushing against some fixed, flat, hard surface.’

  ‘A fence-post, perhaps?’

  ‘I doubt if a fence post would be hard enough.’ Keith said. ‘And if Muir had to hop out of his hiding-place every time he had to reload his gun, he could never have got twenty-five pigeon in a maximum of an hour and a half. And I’ll swear to that any time you like.’

  Mr Enterkin was looking happier. ‘Now, that kind of evidence,’ he said, ‘is more likely to be within the comprehension of a jury.’

  Without any encouragement from the flapper, a small flock dropped in among the decoys, catching Keith unprepared and with his gun dismantled. They departed again, unharmed unless by a volley of imprecations.

  The solicitor paid no attention to this by-play. ‘Mrs Muir came to see me about her husband’s estate the other day,’ he said. ‘She refused to discuss the case. But, in speaking of the house, she mentioned that her burglar alarms had developed a fault. If it should turn out that you had entered the house . . .’

  ‘Shut up and pull the string,’ Keith said.

  When he had eight birds down for eleven shots, Keith felt that honour was satisfied. He offered Mr Enterkin the use of his gun, together with some terse but precise instructions. During the next hour, the solicitor wasted a dozen cartridges on the empty air but managed to collect three pigeon – two shot on the ground and one attributed by Keith to beginner’s luck – and a bruised shoulder.

  They were about to pack up the decoys when Keith spotted a long-tailed shape cruising along the treetops. ‘Get that beggar,’ he said.

  Mr Enterkin swung the gun, and for once he did it right. The bird dropped in the plough behind the hedge and was retrieved by Brutus.

  ‘I got a pheasant,’ Mr Enterkin said breathlessly. ‘A pheasant! Wait till I show Penny. Three pigeon and a pheasant, by God! Do you still call it beginner’s luck? I just don’t know what she’ll say.’

  Keith had a very good idea what Mrs Enterkin would say, but he held his peace.

  *

  Keith, who was usually the soundest of sleepers, lay awake that night. At first, he wrestled with a conviction that, at some time that day, he had said to Mr Enterkin some words which held the key to Jake’s defence. Within an hour he had convinced himself that almost every word he had spoken had been significant. But in what way eluded him.

  His last thought before sleep came was that, at some time in the past, he had encountered a large blonde who strongly resembled a younger Mrs Muir. They had met at some country fair, and she had won a prize. But for what? He tried to fit her into the contexts of dog trials, airgun marksmanship, pigeon-plucking and clay pigeon shooting, but each image was even less credible than the one before.

  When he fell at last into sleep, his subconscious mind, no doubt trying to be helpful, caused him to dream that Mrs Muir, larger and blonder than ever, was propelling clay pigeons at him, and with remarkable accuracy, by means of some elastic removed from her underwear and attached to a cleft stick. If, on waking, he had remembered the dream it might have given him the connection which he needed. But then, it might not.

  *

  Keith was hardly surprised when, on the very next day, the solicitor intercepted him between his car and the shop.

  ‘Can’t stop now,’ Keith said. ‘Wal’s waiting for me.’

  Mr Enterkin ignored the ploy and detained Keith by means of a firm grasp on his tie. ‘How could you?’ he spluttered. ‘How could you do such a thing to me? Telling me that that was a pheasant!’

  Keith, using all his strength, managed to remove his tie from the other’s clutch. ‘I never said it was a pheasant,’ he retorted. ‘You said it was a pheasant, I didn’t.’

  ‘You never told me it wasn’t. A magpie! Penny’ll never let me live it down.’

  ‘Never’s a long time,’ Keith said. ‘In five years, or ten at the most, she’ll have forgotten all about your old magpie. Anyway, you did a good deed. Magpies are damned awful nest robbers.’

  ‘Well, let’s see how long it takes to wipe that silly grin off your face,’ Mr Enterkin said. His usually pink complexion was tinged with purple. ‘I’ve just had a cable from your friend Dunbar. He was offered a share in some secret, and therefore probably illicit, salvage operation and is now incommunicado. He does not expect to reach Turnhouse until the Saturday evening preceding the opening of the trial.

  Keith’s amusement evaporated. ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘That gives me two days to see him and then to follow up whatever he can tell me. Two days!’

  ‘And three nights.’ Mr Enterkin was cheered by the thought. ‘Don’t forget the nights, my boy.’ He glanced around, but the square was quite deserted. ‘In fact, it’s not quite as bad as it seems. We can give you at least one more day, almost certainly two, while the prosecution puts on its case. I can relay any technical points to you.’

  ‘But can you get them right, I ask myself? And I was planning to be in court, to pass you notes about any technical errors in the prosecution’s case or to suggest questions which ought to be asked in cross-examination.’

  Mr Enterkin, now that he had vented his wrath and conscious that he might have been rash in agreeing to the advancing of the date for the trial, was inclined to be placatory. ‘I dare say that I can fulfil that function, thanks to the excellent briefing you’ve given me.’

  ‘You don’t begin to start to commence to know the tenth part of it.’

  ‘You have more than a fortnight to teach me the rest. Perhaps,’ Mr Enterkin suggested, ‘you could give me a little more instruction in the field?’ The solicitor, in addition to his wish to redeem himself after the debacle of the magpie, had been much taken by the art of decoying a quarry within range.

  ‘I’ve got to clear my desk and the workbench,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll lend you a few books.’

  *

  Two mornings later, Keith was working at home. Molly was out. He was polishing high spots out of a new rifle barrel with a lead lap and jeweller’s rouge – a knack which brought him a steady workload from competition marksmen – when the doorbell rang. He let it ring until his fingertips told him that the first stage was finished. Then he went down.

  On the doorstep he found the rotund figure of Sergeant Ritchie, an acquaintance of long standing and very close, on one side or the other, to the boundary between acquaintance and friendship. Keith looked for Chief Inspector Munro – he did not often see Ritchie except as a shadow dogging his chief inspector. But Ritchie was alone. Keith raised his eyebrows. In his experience, a lone policeman was as common as a single book-end.

  ‘Aye, Keith,’ Ritchie said. ‘Can I come in, just a wee minute?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Come into the study.’

  If any one factor in his life reassured Keith that he had dragged himself up in the world it was having, all to himself, a study in an elegant room of Briesland House, complete with mahogany desk, comfortable chairs and shelves for his growing collection of books. It was for this reassurance that he took Ritchie into the study rather than the more sociable living-room or the informal kitchen.

  Because Keith was nervous.

  Ritchie did not help. He fell silent.

  ‘Are you on duty?’ Keith asked. ‘Or can I offer you a drink? Or both?’

  ‘I could do fine wi’ a dram,’ Ritchie said.

  So far so good. Keith fetched him a dram of his second-best whisky. The best had never been subject to excise duty and so was never offered to policemen. He gave himself a stiff one, put water on the desk between then and sat down. ‘Does Munro know you’re here?’ he asked.

  The sergeant sniffed his glass, drank a mouthful and breathed out with a satisfied sigh. He made up the loss with water. ‘Munro didn’t tell me to come,’ he said, ‘and I didn’t tell him I was coming. But he knows all right. He meant me to come. You ken how he is.’

  Keith knew exactly how the devious Hebridean bastard was, and said so.

  ‘You’re no’ fair to the man,’ Ritchie said. �
�He’s come after you, yince or twice, when you’ve been a bad lad or given him reason to think it. But you ken damn fine, Keith, that he’s aye been fair, and he’s gone out on a limb before now if he thought justice was best served that way.’

  ‘M’hm. Sometimes he’s a good friend,’ Keith said, ‘and sometimes not. Trouble is, I can never be sure which he is at the time.’

  ‘Trouble is, he doesn’t always know which to be. It can depend which side of the law you’re on at the time, Keith. So, whiles, Munro has to play it canny until he can tell. Take the case of the mannie Muir, now.’

  ‘Yes, I thought we might come round to that.’

  ‘You might well. Mr Munro is . . .’

  ‘Worried?’

  ‘Let’s say . . . concerned. See it his way. The mannie Russell, yon chief inspector from Edinburgh, he’s made a good case against your friend Paterson – from what we hear, which isn’t muckle. Whether the man’s guilty, of course, we can’t tell, but there’s feelings are running too high for peace of mind. And then there’s you, asking questions for the defence.’

  ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t, is there?’

  ‘None in the world, if all’s right and proper. But is it, Keith?’

  ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘Aye. Of course—’ There was a pause while Ritchie thoughtfully examined his empty glass. Keith took the hint and refilled them both. He made his own weaker this time. A clear head might be essential. Ritchie looked at the window through the pale amber and sighed, and sighed again. ‘Mrs Muir’s been having trouble with her alarms,’ he said. ‘The same type as your own. I thought they were supposed to be reliable, those things.’

  ‘I haven’t had any trouble,’ Keith said. ‘Jake does a good job when he’s at liberty to do it.’

  ‘Likely he does. Mrs Muir thought that she had a fault. She had to fetch a man all the way from East Kilbride. It turned out that she’d been using the wrong code. There was just one digit wrong. The man thought she’d misremembered the code, and so did Mr Munro at first. But she knew better. She made a right stishie and she told Chief Inspector Russell about it when he came for a further statement. They both thought the system might’ve been tampered with. Mr Russell’s in a taking.’