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Authors: Catherine Aird

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BOOK: Hole in One
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‘That you, Sloan?' barked Superintendent Leeyes down the phone. ‘Where on earth have you been?'
‘Berebury, at Rose Cottage …'
‘Look here, we've found Moffat's club.'
‘We've found Bobby Curd …' began Sloan.
‘In Brian Southon's bag in the locker room here.'
‘Dead,' said Sloan.
‘What?' exploded the Superintendent.
‘Very dead,' said Sloan firmly.
There was an uncharacteristic silence at the other end of the telephone line. It equated with the sound of cogitation on the Superintendent's part.
‘I don't think, Sloan,' said Leeyes eventually, ‘that we're going to find who killed Matthew Steele until we know exactly why he was murdered. Or Bobby Curd.'
‘Bobby Curd, though, must have seen something,' said Sloan. ‘Stands out a mile.'
‘Or seen someone,' said Leeyes.
‘Probably the night Steele was buried. But as to why Steele was killed, sir, I'm afraid we're no further forward.'
‘Though Luke Trumper wasn't happy about the fellow pursuing his daughter.'
‘Fathers seldom are – rich fathers, anyway,' said Sloan. He didn't have a daughter.
‘Girls can be very wilful,' said Leeyes, who did have a daughter.
‘I'm sure, sir.' It was widely supposed at the Police Station that Superintendent Leeyes was henpecked: mostly on the grounds that it explained his behaviour at work. Perhaps he was chicken-pecked as well. ‘We're going to interview Luke Trumper as soon as possible.' He coughed. ‘They do say, sir,
that he's been up here a lot lately. Much more than usual for him, anyway.'
‘Thought Steele was too young for a son-in-law, I expect,' said Leeyes sagely. ‘No prospects, either …'
That wasn't what Sergeant Perkins had reported to Sloan: the prospects might have been altogether too rosy for Trumper
père's
liking.
‘Some fathers, of course,' pronounced Leeyes weightily, ‘will go to any lengths to stop their daughters getting mixed up with unsuitable young men.'
‘Not murder, surely?' murmured Sloan, although he didn't envy the suitors, if any, of the Superintendent's daughter.
‘There was that old fellow who saw his daughter drown when he wouldn't let her marry her lover,' said Leeyes.
‘I don't remember …'
‘You know, Sloan. Everyone knows about him.'
‘Sir?'
‘Some Scotsman or other – I forget his name now.'
‘Really, sir?'
‘A Lord, if I remember rightly.'
‘I can't say that I …'
‘You remember, Sloan. The girl who didn't mind the weather but who couldn't cope with an angry father. So she and her lover set off across the loch and were drowned before his eyes.'
‘Loch Ullin's daughter,' faltered Sloan. He'd forgotten the winter that the Superintendent had attended classes on “Poetry and Prose”. Something his superior had heard there must have stuck.
‘That's the man. The other fellow was Lord of Ulva's Isle or something. Much good it did him, either.'
‘It would seem, though,' said Sloan, rising to the occasion, ‘that Matt Steele was no young Lochinvar. But he was sharp all the same. Very sharp from all accounts.' He hastened on. ‘All
we've been able to do so far, sir, is to list the golfers the deceased caddied for most recently.'
‘A golfer may consider a caddy inefficient,' declared Leeyes pontifically, ‘or even downright unhelpful, but not to the point of killing him out of hand.'
‘Not exactly out of hand, sir,' murmured Sloan. ‘These have all the hallmarks of carefully orchestrated killings.' He hesitated and then added ‘By someone who knew the course well enough to recreate the pattern in the sand that had been there before and also matched that in the other bunkers.' That had been one examination, at least, that Crosby had carried out properly. ‘And it wasn't the greenkeeper who did it because he was off sick.'
Somewhere at the back of his mind was the fact that he'd heard someone else at the Club had been ill, too, but the memory was elusive and he couldn't for the moment remember who it had been.
‘Good thinking,' said Leeyes. ‘So tell me, who was it that Steele caddied for last.'
‘Peter Gilchrist.' Sloan had the answer to that ready. ‘That was when Luke Trumper and Nigel Halesworth all played together in the semi-final of the Kemberland Cup.'
‘That's a Stableford Competition,' said Leeyes. ‘We all went out in threesomes for that.'
‘Trumper won,' said Sloan, ‘with thirty-three points.'
‘Doesn't sound as if he had too much on his mind then,' said Leeyes thoughtfully. ‘Not enough to take it off the game, anyway.'
The Superintendent might have considered that this constituted evidence. Sloan didn't and so went on ‘The deceased caddied for Gilchrist, too, when he played Brian Southon in the second round of the Pletchford Plate. Gilchrist lost then, too.'
‘Perhaps it was Gilchrist who had something on his mind –
oh, yes. Of course he has,' said Leeyes. ‘His business. Ah, well, perhaps he'll get the contract for the work at the Club. One of them's going to. And soon. They've only got until the end of the month to get their tenders in.'
‘Peter Gilchrist lost when Steele caddied for Doug Garwood, too,' said Sloan, turning over a page in his notebook. ‘That was quite a while ago now.'
‘Doug may be getting on but his short game's still pretty good,' opined Leeyes, golfer. ‘I suppose that's what saved him.'
‘Yes, sir.' Sloan flipped over another page of his notebook. ‘And Steele caddied for Nigel Halesworth when he played Luke Trumper in the Matheson Trophy.'
‘Trumper didn't win,' said Leeyes. ‘I know because I was playing after him and saw it up on the board.'
‘The curious thing about the Matheson Trophy,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, policeman, not golfer, ‘is that apparently Matthew Steele bet quite a lot of money on Doug Garwood beating Peter Gilchrist in his match.'
‘You mean even though Steele wasn't caddying for either of them?' enquired Superintendent Leeyes alertly.
‘Yes, sir.' He cleared his throat. ‘And Garwood did win and so, I suppose, in a way did Matthew Steele. His bet, anyway.' Not, he added silently to himself, that being murdered constituted winning in anyone's book.
‘Gilchrist should have won,' declared Leeyes. ‘He's the better player, by a long chalk although his handicap would have come into it.'
Sloan wasn't sure about golf handicaps. Down at the Police Station their handicaps comprised such things as villains and vandals, budgets and bureaucracy, traffic and traffickers …
‘That would have helped Doug Garwood, would it, sir? Gilchrist's handicap.'
He heard the Superintendent blow out his cheeks in an
audible puff. ‘A handicap is the imposition of special disadvantages to make a better contest …'
That wasn't how they saw their handicaps down at the Police Station but Sloan pressed on. ‘So Doug Garwood would have had to concede something to Peter Gilchrist instead.'
‘No, the other way round,' said Leeyes. ‘Gilchrist has a lower handicap than old Doug. In his day, Doug was very good but not now he's getting on. Gilchrist would have had to give him quite a few strokes.'
‘But he still lost to Garwood?'
‘That,' said Leeyes, ‘is what is interesting.'
‘And so is how Steele knew that he would,' murmured Sloan.
‘There's no question, I'm afraid,' said Leeyes, sounding unusually subdued, ‘that our villain, whoever he is, will have been using local knowledge all the time.'
‘It looks as if the victims were as well,' said Sloan. ‘Both of them.'
‘And that who ever did it was a member,' said Leeyes gloomily. ‘Not good for the Club, you know, Sloan. Something like this.'
‘That brings me, sir, to another thing …'
‘What's that?'
‘The lab people have started taking swabs for DNA identification to compare with the traces they've found on the greenkeeper's truck …and they say they'll get over to Bobby Curd's place, too, as soon as they can.'
‘Quite right, Sloan.'
‘From everyone at the Club, sir.'
‘Naturally. We can't afford to leave anyone out at this stage. Especially Luke Trumper.'
‘Exactly, sir,' said Sloan warmly. ‘I knew you'd agree.'
‘Well?'
‘This is a bit difficult.'
‘Why?'
Basely Sloan transferred the blame.
‘The men in white suits want to include you, sir.'
‘Me?' said Leeyes on a rising note.
‘Everyone,' said Sloan. He took a deep breath. ‘They've asked me to say, sir, that everyone includes you.'
Superintendent's voice hit crescendo. ‘Good God, Sloan, I'm not everyone.'
‘No, sir. Certainly not, sir. But, seeing you're up for the Committee they thought you'd want to set a good example.'
 
Helen Ewell had found her voice again. It had not reverted to normal, though, but remained high-pitched and child-like. She had found a new audience now, too, having made her way to the professional's shop. Still half in tears, she positively fell upon the man.
‘Oh, Jock, it was horrible,' she cried. ‘You can't imagine how horrible.'
‘No,' agreed Selkirk, disentangling himself from her clasp with difficulty. ‘I don't suppose I can.'
‘They say it's Matt Steele, one of the caddies.' She was still clinging to him. ‘That poor, poor boy. Who would do a thing like that?'
‘Only a madman,' said Jock Selkirk, firmly detaching Helen's arm from his.
‘And that poor girl!'
‘What girl?' asked Selkirk cautiously.
‘Hilary Trumper, of course. Luke's daughter.'
‘Ah, I guessed she was sweet on him,' said Selkirk, slipping adroitly behind his counter out of Helen Ewell's reach.
‘They say she was very attached indeed to Matt Steele.'
‘A mistake,' said Selkirk dourly. ‘Not her sort at all.'
Helen Ewell stood back at last and regarded the professional
as if seeing him as a human being for the first time. ‘What makes you say that?' she asked, her curiosity aroused.
‘I know a young man on the make when I see one.'
‘Oh, Jock, how can you say that about someone who's been murdered?'
‘It can't do him any harm,' said the professional reasonably. ‘And it's true.'
He had reckoned without Helen Ewell's womanly feelings. ‘Don't you understand?' she said slowly. ‘Someone's killed him here on your course.'
‘I know that,' said Jock Selkirk. There was no sign now of the celebrated ladies' man nor even of the accomplished exponent of the game. Just of a very worried golf professional. ‘I've had the police here today, too.'
‘Here?' She looked bewildered. ‘Whatever for?'
‘I don't know what they came for the first time …' he began carefully.
‘They've been twice, Jock? I don't understand.'
‘But when they came back again they turned the place upside down.'
‘But why?'
‘To begin with I didn't know what they were looking for,' he said, tight-lipped. ‘But what they found were a pair of shoes.'
‘Shoes?' she echoed.
‘Don't you understand, woman?' he said harshly. ‘They found Matthew Steele's shoes here in my shop.
‘In here?' She looked round the shop, totally baffled.
‘No, no, not in here.' He jerked a finger over his shoulder. ‘Out in my workshop at the back. In a pile of shoes waiting to have new studs fitted.'
‘But …'
Jock Selkirk leaned back on his heels, ignoring her patent distress. ‘Now, woman, tell me what you make of that …'
Par
Detective Inspector Sloan carefully replaced the telephone receiver in the Secretary's office and said ‘Sit down, Crosby. We need to think outside the box.'
The Constable looked at each chair in turn and chose one with the least papers on it. ‘These'll have to go down on the dog shelf,' he said, stacking them carefully on the floor before taking a seat. ‘Me, I thought golf was a game not a paperchase.'
‘Keeping track of winners and losers takes time,' said Sloan prosaically. Theoretically, down at the Police Station they only had to keep track of the losers – or, rather, those who didn't believe in law and order. The trouble was that they weren't always the losers. Putting this engaging thought to the back of his mind for further consideration at some mythical moment when he was less busy, he pulled out his notebook. ‘Let's see, where are we now?'
‘Getting nowhere fast,' said Crosby dispiritedly. ‘All we know for sure is who the two victims are.'
‘Hardly a great leap forward, Crosby, I agree, but something to be going on with.'
Crosby jerked his shoulder in the direction of the course. ‘And that the deceased's girlfriend has started to haunt the place.'
‘True. Anything else?' Socrates had come to grief for asking questions but Sloan didn't think he was at any risk here and now. Not with Detective Constable Crosby answering them.
‘That whoever buried Steele was a golfer?'
‘Knew the course and the game,' said Sloan more precisely.
There was a pause while Crosby considered the ceiling.
‘Furthermore, Crosby,' Sloan tapped his notebook with his pencil, ‘we must presume he was seen by old Bobby Curd the night he buried the body.'
‘Sure thing, sir.'
‘And knew it. Or, more sinisterly, came to know it. So he had to be killed, too.'
‘One thing leading to another, you might say,' agreed Crosby.
There was an expression for this that they used in hospitals that had stuck in Sloan's mind. He quoted it aloud without thinking. ‘A cascade of intervention.'
‘Pardon, sir?'
‘But as to why Steele was killed, Crosby, we're no further forward.'
‘Someone must have a lot at stake, that's for sure, sir.'
‘All right, then. Let's think about what this could be. There's the Club itself since this seems to be a golf club murder.' He looked down at his notebook. ‘There's this argument about the new development for starters.'
‘That's only business,' objected Crosby, leaving aside generations of slave-traders, marauding pirates and grinders down of the faces of the poor who had used much the same argument.
‘Business is money,' said Sloan implacably. When it wasn't, the firm was already halfway to Carey Street.
‘I've been on to the Planning people,' said Crosby with apparent irrelevance. ‘They confirm that permission has been given for outline and detailed plans for all the proposed developments. No problem there.'
‘That must be a first,' said Sloan sourly. ‘Anything else come in?'
‘Forensic say they've found lots of DNA in the greenkeeper's truck. His – that's Joe Briggs – Brian Southon's and Peter Gilchrist's – oh, and Dr Dabbe's.'
Sloan flipped back some pages in his notebook. ‘Southon and Gilchrist are two of the men who cut the greens when Briggs couldn't, aren't they?'
‘Yes, sir. And their fingerprints are all over the special mowers they keep for the greens, too.'
‘Which is only what you'd expect,' sighed Sloan. ‘You do realise, Crosby, don't you that one day soon the detective branch is going be taken over by something called deoxyribonucleic acid?'
‘Sir?'
‘A properly taken DNA swab can't be argued with in court.'
‘Don't worry, sir,' said Crosby kindly. ‘The lawyers will find a way.'
Detective Inspector Sloan acknowledged this with a quick grimace. ‘All the same somewhere in the next world a Frenchman called Dr Edmond Locard must be sitting on a cloud and rubbing his hands. He was right all along.'
‘What about?'
‘The exchange principle, Crosby. That two matters, be they animal, vegetable or mineral, cannot meet without leaving something of themselves on each other.'
‘That reminds me, sir. Mrs Sloan rang to ask if you had any idea when you would be home.'
‘None,' said Sloan rather shortly. ‘I'll ring her myself when I have a moment. Now, what do Forensic have to say about the golf club found in Brian Southon's bag?'
‘Used with a glove and attempts made to clean it but plenty of Moffat's and some of Southon's prints on it.'
‘Which is only what you would expect. And the deceased's shoes?'
‘Pulled off by someone wearing gloves,' said Crosby flatly.
‘Which is also only what you would expect,' sighed Sloan. ‘Tell me something I wouldn't.'
‘No sign of Luke Trumper's DNA or fingerprints in the greenkeeper's truck or on Moffat's club,' said the Detective Constable. ‘Funny, that, isn't it?'
 
‘Stymied, Sloan, that's what we are,' said Superintendent Leeyes.
‘Very probably, sir.'
‘Nothing adds up,' he complained peevishly. ‘It won't do, you know.'
Detective Inspector Sloan could only agree. He could see that the game of golf meant different things to different people - exercise, a day in the country, competitive play, a sales pitch, a pathway to promotion, sociability, a good walk spoilt …but in the case of the Superintendent, it was a milieu happily far removed from his normal workaday criminal scene and thus important.
‘I don't like it, Sloan,' said Leeyes. ‘I come up here for pleasure, not for more work. Besides,' he added ingenuously, ‘the members of the Club expect an early arrest.'
‘Unless we have the figures stacked up in the wrong columns,' said Sloan, ‘the only thing that makes sense so far is the murder of Bobby Curd.' He would have to get back to that crime scene as soon as he could.
‘Fine lot of help that is,' declared Leeyes richly.
‘And all we have to go on otherwise is a note of all the players who Steele caddied for most recently,' said Sloan. There was something else nagging at the back of his mind but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. Something that he must look into.
‘And his friendship with the Trumper girl,' Leeyes reminded him.
‘That, too,' conceded Sloan. ‘There are plenty of DNA traces and fingerprint evidence about but none from anyone where we shouldn't expect them.'
Leeyes grunted.
‘Someone's been very careful,' said Sloan. That much was true.
‘Everything should be grist to a detective's mill,' pronounced Leeyes at his most didactic. ‘Even that.'
Sloan resisted the temptation to say that it was when the
grist got to the mill that the difficulties of sorting out the wheat from the chaff showed up: especially when that grist included the facts that a suspect murder weapon had been recovered from a golf bag and a pair of the victim's shoes found in the one place where they were least likely to be noticed.
‘So our murderer has got brains as well as motive, that's all,' said Leeyes racingly. ‘We've got brains, too, Sloan. Remember that.' Leeyes sniffed. ‘Except for Crosby. I must say he's as much use as chocolate teapot.'
‘There's not even a pattern to the matches Steele caddied for,' said Sloan hastily. ‘The last one seems to have been for something called the Kemberland Cup.'
‘That's the three-ball Stableford I told you about,' responded Leeyes promptly. ‘Played for points, not a knockout competition. The men aren't playing against each other so they can make up their own threes just as they like.'
Detective Inspector Sloan looked down at a notebook whose pages were getting increasingly crumpled. ‘Like I said, sir, Gilchrist, Trumper and Halesworth all went out together. Steele caddied for Gilchrist and Beddoes for Trumper. Halesworth carried his own clubs.'
‘Too mean,' said Leeyes, adding ungraciously, ‘although I suppose he is a bit younger.'
‘What I would like to know,' said Sloan and not for the first time, ‘is how exactly did the deceased know that Doug Garwood would beat Peter Gilchrist in the Matheson Trophy and be sure enough to bet on it.'
‘I can't think,' said Leeyes irritably. ‘But you'd better find out.'
 
Luke Trumper was in the bar. He was sitting cradling his drink at one of the tables in front of the window. Gerald Moffat and Brian Southon were with him, arguing about how Moffat's club could have been found in Southon's bag.
‘I'm pretty sure it wasn't there when I was in the bunker on
Sunday morning, Gerald,' insisted Southon, frowning. ‘I think I'd have noticed the thing but the trouble is I can't swear to it.'
‘Was the body in the bunker then?' asked Moffat acidly. ‘That's more important than whether my club was in your bag.'
‘I don't know that either,' said Southon worriedly. He pushed a hand through a head of hair only just beginning to show signs of grey. ‘Do I?'
Like Trumper, older and more experienced, said ‘Not your problem, that, Brian. Never does to take on something that's not your problem.'
‘I suppose not,' said Southon, still looking worried, ‘but all the same I don't like to think that last Sunday morning I might have been taking a stance on a dead body.'
‘All bodies are dead,' said Gerald Moffat, grammarian, and even more a pedant than Edmund Pemberton.
‘You know what I mean,' said Southon, flushing all the same.
Luke Trumper took a sip of his drink. ‘I don't know about you two but I've just been gone over by those two detective fellows.' He pursed his lips. ‘I didn't like the look in the eye of the older one. Behaved as if he didn't believe a word I said and the other behaved as if he wasn't even listening. Wanted to know when I'd last seen Matt Steele.'
‘Is it true then that it's him who's dead?' asked Southon.
‘They don't answer your questions,' said Luke Trumper wearily. ‘They just ask theirs.'
‘Such as?' said Southon.
‘When Steele'd last caddied for me. I said he hadn't. Wouldn't have had him anyway even if he'd offered.' He waved an arm. ‘Didn't want him talking to me about Hilary out there when I couldn't get away from him.'
‘I didn't think fathers got asked for their daughter's hand in marriage any more,' murmured Moffat under his breath, ‘let
alone on the golf course.'
‘So then they asked when I'd last gone out with anyone else who had him as a caddy,' said Trumper, without giving any sign that he'd heard Moffat.
‘Which was?' asked Southon.
‘Must have been the Sunday – not last Sunday. The one before. I played Peter Gilchrist in the Kemberland Cup.'
‘Did you beat him?' enquired Southon.
Trumper looked up, pleased. ‘Matter of fact, I did. The Steele boy caddied for Peter. Seemed all right, then.'
‘He isn't all right now,' said Moffat. He jerked his shoulder in the direction of the bar. ‘Molly's heard it's him so it's pretty definite.'
Once started on the Kemberland Cup Luke Trumper needed to go on. ‘I had old Beddoes. Just as well we had a clear run. He'd never have heard anyone shout “fore”.' He smiled reminiscently. ‘It was a good match, though, in more ways than one.
Brian Southon said to him ‘Your daughter's going to be upset. I heard he was really sweet on her.'
Luke Trumper plunged his face into his glass but was heard to say ‘Shouldn't speak ill of the dead, I know, but more fool her.'
‘Girls will be girls,' said Gerald Moffat, bachelor and confirmed misogynist.
‘I don't know if you know it, Luke,' said Brian Southon, ‘but they say she's up here today.'
‘Hilary?' Trumper started. ‘Here? Why?'
‘I don't know why, but I saw her going into the caddies' shed,' said Brian Southon, also taking refuge in his glass.
‘That was after she'd left the pro's shop.'
Luke Trumper immediately pushed his glass away and quickly struggled to his feet. ‘I must go and find her. Now.'

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