Thin Air

by Gerald Hammond

  Miss Mather’s pale blue eyes were popping. ‘But surely you don’t think—?’

  ‘I can’t find out what did happen without making sure what didn’t.’ Ian looked at me. ‘One other thing before you go. Empty your pockets.’

  It took me a few seconds to catch up with him. ‘You think I found him alive and put a spike into his head?’

  ‘I hope not. I want to be able to establish later that I had eliminated the possibility. After all, you did have the occasional shouting match with Old Murdo.’

  ‘Who didn’t?’ I asked reasonably. Ian made no answer. I decided that he couldn’t think of anybody.

  I emptied my pockets onto one of Duggie’s planks. Ian patted me down and made me pull up my trouser-legs so that he could see that there was no weapon tucked into my sock. ‘Off you go,’ he said. ‘Bring back plenty. And a notebook if you have one. But don’t take too long.’

  I replaced a handkerchief, some coins and a couple of keys in my pockets, leaving behind several empty twelve-bore cartridge cases that I had picked up in the interests of Keeping Britain Tidy. Cattle have been known to swallow discarded cartridges, sometimes with fatal results – as Miss Mather could doubtless have confirmed. Boss came to heel without being called.

  The day was, if anything, hotter and more sticky than ever. The sheep were clustering together under the beech tree that shaded a corner of the field. My legs were tired but I was glad to be out and walking again in the almost fresh air, and without the weight of rabbits cutting into my shoulder. Despite the grimness of the occasion, it was also pleasant to be able to cross the grass without expecting Old Murdo’s bellow to follow me.

  Tansy House stood out sharply against its backcloth of dark trees. Heading towards it, I saw an ambulance turn in at the farm road and as we reached home a car went by, driven by one of the local doctors. Black clouds were massing to the south.

  The children rushed at me as soon as I was in at the door. I managed to convey to Alice that something untoward had happened, about which I would tell her when we had a moment’s privacy, and explained that I needed the makings of lunch for six to take with me.

  ‘I’ve something in the oven for you,’ she said.

  ‘No time. And this is an emergency.’

  I fussed with the children for a minute and then escaped into the study, the one room that they understood to be absolutely out of bounds. When I am writing fiction on the word processor I keep note of the details of each character, as he or she develops, in a series of school exercise books. I found one of these that had been little used, crossed through the written-on pages and jotted down a synopsis of the events so far while I waited.

  It took Alice only ten minutes to fill a large basket. I kissed her gratefully, because not every wife would have responded quickly and without questions to such an unusual demand, and tried the weight of it. I could lift it without great difficulty but I knew that it would weigh a ton before I could reach Easter Coullie.

  As I opened the front door a police car went by. ‘Bother it,’ I said. I had had to learn to moderate my language as soon as Peter began to listen and repeat words. ‘Half a minute earlier and I could have got a lift with them. I’d take the car, but the weather’s going to break and the farm will turn into a mudbath. You’d better drop me there and bring the car back.’

  Alice sighed. It would mean fetching the children away from their play and strapping them in, all for the sake of a drive of a mile or two. ‘Hold on a minute,’ she said. ‘I think you’re in luck.’ And she began to wave. ‘I don’t mind about the food but I want the basket and things back,’ she told me.

  An elderly but well-kept Land Rover slowed and stopped at the foot of the steps and an elderly but less well-kept figure emerged. Sir Peter Hay, I decided, was becoming as tatty as one of his older kilts. I liked the old boy, but he did little for one’s image of the well-heeled landowner.

  ‘What’s this I hear about Old Murdo being dead? Morning, my dear,’ he added. He was very fond of Alice and the fact that he had reversed the sequence required by good manners was a measure of his concern.

  It came back to me that Old Murdo had been Sir Peter’s tenant. There was no point asking how he had heard of the tragedy so quickly. News travels with amazing speed in rural communities and Sir Peter was a natural focus for it. Ian would have phoned his Divisional HQ, the doctor and the ambulance station, and any one of those might have been enough. ‘Give me a lift there and I’ll tell you what little we know,’ I said.

  ‘Done,’ he said. I carried the hamper carefully down the steps and we stowed it in the back of the vehicle. He looked up at Alice. ‘It seems to be hello and goodbye,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and pay my respects another time.’

  ‘Do,’ Alice said, smiling. ‘Until then, hello and goodbye.’

  Sir Peter kissed his hand to her. When the Land Rover was in motion, he said, ‘So it’s true. How is the family bearing up?’

  ‘Shocked out of their minds,’ I said.

  ‘I wonder why. It could be a blessing in disguise.’ I looked at him sharply. He caught the movement from the corner of his eye. ‘Unless . . . What happened?’

  ‘Nobody knows what happened yet,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t far off but I didn’t see anything. His wife got to him first and collapsed on top of him. This will be her now,’ I added as the ambulance emerged from the farm road. ‘Her sons have probably gone with her.’

  Sir Peter hauled the Land Rover round into the dust left hanging by the ambulance. ‘In that case I may have wasted my trip. I came to commiserate and to offer help. If he just plain went down suddenly, why all the hoo-ha and police cars rushing around? What killed him?’

  ‘That’s what we don’t know. He had a head-wound, but he may have got that when he fell. Ian Fellowes is treating it as a suspicious death for the moment.’

  Sir Peter was silent until he had brought the Land Rover to a halt by the corner of the barn. ‘I may pay you that visit in the very near future,’ he said, ‘and be brought up to date.’

  ‘You’re always welcome,’ I told him. ‘And thanks for the lift.’

  ‘No trouble, my boy.’ He looked longingly towards the farmyard and the sad hump at the far corner of it and he sighed, torn between his love of a real-life mystery, his ready concern for his tenants and the dislike of any change which was a part of that concern. But when I had lifted the basket out of the back of the Land Rover he turned the vehicle and drove off.

  Chapter Three

  At the barn, tragedy did not seem to have blunted appetites. Eyes were kept averted from the sad bundle in the yard while eager hands took the hamper from me and set it on a table that seemed to have been created by laying a door across two of Duggie’s trestles. The door looked suspiciously like the one that had been used to transport Mrs Heminson but I preferred not to enquire.

  During my absence, a more orderly pattern had emerged. Several cars were parked along the side of the yard furthest from the body, which still lay where we had left it. The metal stakes and binder twine had been used to fence off an area around the body and a narrow path leading to it, and a uniformed officer with a clipboard stood guard. Outside this fence, three more uniformed officers were conducting an intensive search of the conspicuously barren ground. The rabbits, which we had dropped at random, had been gathered up and hung to cool at the rear of the barn. The jeep was back near its former place and Wal was standing beside it with the sturdy figure of Ken McKee looming over him. The latter’s tanned face was looking both bored and peevish.

  Ian was in discussion with the doctor who, I supposed, was acting as police surgeon, but their talk finished and the doctor went back to his car. Ian came up behind the searching constables. ‘Has any of you ever used a small-bore rifle?’ he asked.

  One man straightened up. ‘Not often,’ he said. ‘But I have.’

  ‘Then come. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you can take shorthand?’ The constable shook his head. Ian looked round and
saw me standing in the doorway of the barn. ‘You come too. You have a notebook?’

  I showed him the exercise book. ‘I want some lunch,’ I said.

  ‘Soon.’ Ian, I could tell, was feeling the stress.

  Alice had even included a tablecloth in the hamper. The others had spread it over the improvised table and were laying out her bounty on it. ‘Leave some for me,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll leave some,’ Ronnie said. ‘No’ much, but some.’

  Ian led us to the jeep. I opened the exercise book on the bonnet of the jeep and prepared to write.

  Ken McKee must have gathered some of what was afoot, because he was noticeably defensive. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ he demanded. ‘Why have I been fetched over here and left to wait?’

  ‘As you can see, Mr Heminson is dead,’ Ian told him. ‘And as you probably know, I’m Detective Inspector Fellowes.’

  ‘You were shooting rabbits at the burn, not long back,’ McKee said, as if no policeman had ever shot a rabbit.

  ‘That doesn’t alter who I am. It seems probable that Mr Heminson was shot, perhaps with a small-bore rifle. We were using shotguns. You said that you had a rifle with you this morning. Does that answer your questions?’

  My eyes were down on the exercise book but in the silence that followed I could almost hear McKee wondering whether he could deny his earlier words and whether it would be politic to lose his temper. ‘Are you suggesting that I shot the man?’ he asked mildly at last.

  Ian sighed. As my shorthand came back to me I found that I had time to consider what was being said and I supposed that any policeman must become tired of every second question being treated as an accusation. ‘I don’t know enough at the moment to suggest anything,’ he said patiently. ‘You’ve sense enough to see that I have to find out about every weapon being used nearby. The quickest and surest way to exonerate yourself from any possible blame is to co-operate.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Did you fire any shots this morning?’

  ‘Aye. Seven or eight. At crows.’

  ‘On the wing?’

  McKee snorted. ‘You’d be a better shot than me to hit a crow on the wing with a two-two rifle,’ he said. ‘That wife of yours could maybe do it. I wouldn’t try. I put some bait out and hid myself and shot them when they landed.’

  ‘And hung them on the fence? Or left them lying?’

  ‘They’re still where they were hit.’

  ‘Then we shouldn’t have a problem. After your argy-bargy with Mr Heminson this morning, did you fire any more shots?’

  ‘No, I damn well didn’t. I went hame to eat my dinner.’

  ‘With your daughter?’

  ‘She went away ahead of me.’ From the tone of his voice, I was sure that McKee was hiding something.

  If Ian had his own suspicions, he saved them for later. ‘I want you to take this officer and show him the dead crows and where you fired each shot from. And, although it’s unusual, I think that there should be an independent expert along. Wallace—’

  ‘Now hold on a minute,’ Wal said. ‘I’m not an expert. I’m not even particularly good with a shotgun and I never use a rifle. Keith does all the firearms business. I deal with fishing and the business side.’

  For the first time, Ian Fellowes hesitated. Like many others who come over in private life as quiet and retiring, he had an inner strength. The old Ian had now given way to the decisive police officer, but I guessed that he was feeling the strain of trying to make order of a situation predisposed towards chaos. If his neatly arranged order of business was disarranged he might start making mistakes.

  ‘Ronnie Fiddler might be more suitable,’ I suggested.

  For an instant, out of the corner of my eye, I thought that Ken McKee looked concerned, but Ian was pleased. Ronnie, as he knew, was a professional stalker and also spent time on vermin control. ‘You’re right. Thank you.’ He darted over to the barn and came back with Ronnie. ‘I want you to go with Mr McKee and this officer,’ he said. ‘Mr McKee says that he fired seven or eight shots at crows on the ground before we met him this morning, and no more after that. Mr McKee will tell the officer about his crow shooting and show him the dead birds. When you come back, confirm that what you’ve heard makes sense when compared with what you’ve seen on the ground and give me an opinion as to whether a bullet could possibly have found its way here by accident.’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ McKee said angrily. ‘The shots were all fired before we saw Heminson alive and well and howking the vet’s wee car out of the shairn.’

  ‘If the pathologist finds a bullet in him,’ Ian said, ‘you may be glad that we investigated before the evidence was lost.’

  ‘But I’ve no’ had my dinner yet,’ Ronnie said plaintively.

  ‘Later,’ Ian said.

  I was childishly pleased. ‘We’ll save something for you,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

  Ronnie glared at me but he went off with McKee and the constable.

  ‘What now?’ I asked.

  ‘Lunch,’ Ian said.

  *

  Considering the inadequate warning and paucity of explanation Alice, using her considerable reserve of common sense, had done us proud. Crusty loaves, biscuits, butter, pâté, cheese, fruit and a box of mixed salad had been packed, together with all the necessary cutlery and crockery and accompanied by a variety of small cakes and pies. Assuming, correctly, that boiling water at least would be available from the farmhouse she had thrown in mugs, dried soup and teabags. The weight of the laden basket was accounted for by some cans of beer. When Miss Mather came panting back from the farmhouse with a large teapot and a kettle, a very satisfactory snack began to disappear.

  Ian, I thought, would have liked to start asking questions. But a morning spent exercising in fresh air builds an appetite. He was hungry and it was clear that he could not count on the undivided attention of his witnesses or even his suspects until hunger was satisfied. He laid the foundations for an enormous sandwich and soon he was eating with as much gusto as any of us, but with his usually placid forehead creased in thought or worry.

  A car eased into the yard, paused while the driver took stock and then backed up beside the two police cars. A neatly dressed man emerged. He seemed to be in no more than early middle age but he was as bald as an egg. As soon as he was clear of the car he clapped a hat onto his head.

  ‘Pathologist,’ Ian said to me. ‘Dr Dunnett. I’ve seen him before. Come on.’

  ‘Soon,’ I said. I was as capable of procrastination as he was.

  ‘Two minutes.’ Ian hesitated and then walked to meet the pathologist, his sandwich in his hand.

  In truth, I wanted to hear what he and the pathologist said to each other. I bolted my sandwich, caught them up as they followed the path to the body and prepared to write awkwardly in mid-air. The constable on duty faithfully recorded our names.

  ‘. . . caught me at home,’ the pathologist was saying, ‘and I live this side of Edinburgh. I worked late last night.’ He stretched and yawned.

  ‘You could have taken your time,’ Ian said. ‘The body’s been pushed and pulled around enough, but I don’t want it moved more than necessary until the SOCOs are here. There’s no urgency about determining the time of death – we know it to within a minute or two.’

  ‘Understood.’ Dunnett stooped over the body and moved the thin hair with the end of a spatula. ‘No powder marks,’ he said, straightening up. ‘The cause of death would seem to be obvious, but I’ve been wrong before. We’ll assume for the moment that we won’t find poison in his stomach or a knife-wound when we turn him over.’

  Ian, aware of the ears in the barn, lowered his voice. ‘A bullet? Or something else?’

  I had to strain my ears to hear the reply. ‘I’ll tell you when I open him up. From the wound, a bullet’s possible.’

  ‘Or a humane killer? Or a nail-gun?’

  ‘Either of those, or a dozen other things. It’d have to be a big nail.’

>   ‘I’ve just been looking at the vet’s captive bolt humane killer,’ Ian said. ‘It had a bolt that was thicker than a point two-two bullet.’

  ‘You can’t judge the size of a projectile from the size of the hole. The skin stretches on entry and contracts again. You’ll have to be patient.’

  We moved back from the body and Ian drew us away from the barn.

  ‘At that point, is a skull thick or thin?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Thick,’ Dunnett said. ‘If it’s a normal skull. Some are thicker than others. Again, I’ll be able to tell you later.’

  ‘But you’d expect it to be too thick to be penetrated by a spike held in the hand? Something like the icepick that keeps turning up in the movies?’

  Dunnett considered. ‘That would take some strength – unless the skull turns out to be thin.’

  ‘Would you say that the wound was horizontal? Or upward or downward?’

  The pathologist shrugged. ‘I’d have to go back to my car for the crystal ball. From a superficial examination, the wound seems to have been made at right-angles to the skull, give or take a considerable margin. If he was standing upright at the time, which you don’t know, and if he was holding his head straight, which you also don’t know, it may have been more or less horizontal, which I don’t know . . . yet.’

  Ian scratched his neck while he thought it over. ‘The track could be important,’ he said, ‘if we end up trying to match a weapon to the wound. Is there any way of taking a mould of it?’

  Dr Dunnett smiled. ‘Not that I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘A pity, really. Nice try.’

  ‘What I think we’ll do . . .’ Ian paused for another moment’s thought and took a large bite from his sandwich. Dr Dunnett watched him intently as Ian chewed and swallowed and he glanced at his watch. I thought that the pathologist might be making a mental note so that, if Ian were later to be found dead, he could fix the time of death by the process of digestion. ‘What we’ll do,’ Ian resumed when his mouth was almost empty, ‘is to get his head X-rayed as soon as we can move him.’ He spluttered some crumbs.