Hole in One Read online

  ‘I suppose he doesn’t play all that badly,’ conceded Leeyes.

  ‘For an old man,’ rejoined Garwood neatly. ‘And there’s Luke Trumper over there with Nigel Halesworth waiting to play.’

  ‘I do believe that they’re going to go out now, too,’ said Leeyes, irritated. ‘We’ll have to look sharp to get in ahead of them.’ He scowled. ‘What’s Trumper doing up here today anyway? He’s not usually around midweek.’

  ‘Ready when you are,’ said Garwood, leaving Leeyes’ question unanswered and suppressing any thought he might have had about it being possible to take the policeman out of the police station but not the police station out of the policeman.

  ‘Come along then,’ urged Leeyes. ‘We don’t want to have to play behind a pair of old dodderers let alone Trumper and Halesworth.’

  ‘Patience is good for the soul,’ said Garwood philosophically. ‘And the blood pressure.’

  Leeyes shot the man a questioning look, decided he wasn’t trying to be funny, and so stayed silent. This was because the Superintendent, ever afraid of being seen in the wrong company, was always careful with whom he played. He never had any qualms in arranging a game with Douglas Garwood. Circumspection was not necessary with the man. Calleshire Consolidated, Plc., of which Company Doug Garwood was the chairman, had an impeccable reputation throughout the county for honest dealing.

  And for making money.

  A lot of money.

  ‘Unless, that is,’ continued Garwood politely, ‘you’re in a hurry to get back on duty.’

  ‘No, no,’ protested Leeyes at once. ‘Not at all. My time’s my own today.’ The Superintendent was up for the Men’s Committee – an important and necessary step on the way to the Captaincy – and was belatedly realising that election candidates had to mind their manners. He gave a deprecating little laugh. ‘One of the few advantages of being in the Force, you know, is the occasional daytime off-duty. Not that we don’t work when other men play, of course,’ he finished piously.

  The two golfers left the Clubhouse, collected their clubs and strolled towards the first tee, passing as they did so the old Nissen hut that did duty as the caddies’ shed. Leeyes jerked his head in its direction. ‘Do you need one of those?’

  ‘Not today, thank you,’ said Garwood. He paused and said: ‘I do like to have a caddy in a competition, though. It’s all very well for you, Leeyes, but I’m not as young as I was, and a caddy does help on the hills.’

  ‘Golf isn’t like boxing,’ said Leeyes profoundly. ‘In boxing a good young one usually beats a good old one.’

  ‘I’m sure …’

  ‘In golf,’ expounded the Police Superintendent, ‘a good old one beats a good young ‘un. Not the other way round.’ He sniffed. ‘No use getting old if you don’t get cunning.’

  Douglas Garwood was still following his own train of thought. ‘But I don’t like it when I’ve got a caddy and my opponent hasn’t, like I did the other day. I think if Peter Gilchrist had had a caddy when we played the third round of the Clarembald Cup last week, I wouldn’t have beaten him and got through into the next round. After all, fair’s fair.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Leeyes insincerely. A working life spent in the police force had left him uncommitted to the concept of fairness. ‘It’s just as bad,’ he added even more mendaciously, ‘when it’s the opposite way round and the other fellow has a caddy when you haven’t.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Garwood. ‘By the way, Leeyes, where do you stand on the Great Divide?’

  The Committee of the Berebury Golf Club was presently trying to decide whether to build a driving range on site to attract more players, selling some land for development in the process to fund it. This had split the membership as nothing else had done since the furore over the admission of the Ladies before the war.

  ‘I’m afraid I have to be neutral,’ said Leeyes virtuously, neatly ducking the issue, ‘being a member of the Force and all that. We have to police demonstrations all the time, you know, and nobody’s supposed to know what we think. And what about you?’

  ‘It never does to mix business with pleasure,’ said Garwood obscurely.

  The two golfers continued on their way to the first tee while within the caddies’ shed talk turned to the pair coming along behind the two men.

  ‘Who are you going out with today, Dickie?’ asked Bert Hedges. He was sitting down on a wooden bench changing into his golf shoes.

  ‘Major Bligh,’ answered Dickie Castle, bending down to do up his own laces. ‘Second round of the Pletchford Plate.’

  Bert Hedges stamped his feet well down in his shoes and nodded. ‘He’s always in with a fighting chance is the Major – unless he’s up against a real tiger, of course.’

  ‘What about you, mate?’ Dickie Castle asked him in return.

  ‘Today? A singles,’ answered Hedges. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘But only a friendly.’

  ‘It’s my belief,’ declared Dickie solemnly, ‘that there’s no such animal as a friendly match.’

  Edmund Pemberton, a copper-nobbed new arrival as a caddy, said ‘A friendly match being a contradiction in terms, you mean?’ He was on vacation from the University of Calleshire and had both an enquiring mind and an interest in the meaning of words.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, laddie,’ said Bert Hedges heavily, ‘but what our Dickie here meant was that friendly matches aren’t so interesting.’

  Dickie Castle grinned, ‘And what Bert means, young Ginger, is that there’s usually nothing much riding on a friendly.’

  Pemberton, who hated being called either young or Ginger, had the sense not to take his interest in semantics any further, and changed the subject ‘Is this Major Bligh going to win the Pletchford Plate then?’

  Dickie Castle sucked his lips and said judiciously ‘Whether he wins the Pletchford or not really hangs on who he meets in the round after this one with James Hopland.’

  ‘For his sins,’ said Bert Hedges, who hadn’t been inside a church since he got married, ‘it’ll be either Peter Gilchrist or Brian Southon on account of Brian Southon having had a walkover from Eric Simmonds.’

  ‘Eric Simmonds still ill, is he?’ asked Hedges.

  ‘I can tell you that it’s Gilchrist who won,’ another man informed them. ‘I saw it on the board this morning, although how he’s got time to play I don’t know. They say he’s laying people off at his works as fast as he can.’

  ‘Those two played their match the other day,’ said a man called Shipley. ‘Matt went out with them just before he took off and so did old Bellows over there.’ He jerked his thumb in the direction of an elderly caddy sitting slightly apart from the others, head well down, and patently deaf to their chat.

  Castle nodded. ‘I’m not surprised that it’s Gilchrist who won. He’s the better man, really. Plays a very steady game when he’s got his back to the wall.’

  ‘It was close, though,’ said the other man. ‘I heard they went to the twentieth.’

  ‘The twentieth?’ piped up Edmund Pemberton again. ‘I thought there were only eighteen holes on the course.’

  ‘When the match is all square at the eighteenth,’ Bert Hedges informed him in a lordly way, ‘you start again at the first hole though then you call it the nineteenth …’

  ‘But I thought the nineteenth was the bar in the Clubhouse,’ said Pemberton naively. ‘That’s what Matt told me …’

  ‘It’s that, too, boy,’ grinned Dickie. ‘Especially on Sunday mornings.’

  ‘And if you don’t happen to win the nineteenth,’ persisted Bert Hedges, ‘you go to the twentieth and go on playing until one of the players wins …’

  ‘And for your information,’ added Dickie Castle chillingly, ‘it’s called “sudden death”.’

  ‘Can you see where the pin is from where you are?’ Ursula Millward had called out after Helen Ewell had descended into the steepest bunker on the course. ‘I’m holding it up high to give you a bearing …’

  ‘T
hat’s not the problem,’ Helen called back. ‘I’ve got a really horrible lie, though. I’ll have to take my eight iron at least …’ This was followed by the thudding sound of club hitting sand, succeeded by a muffled imprecation from the bunker. ‘No, this needs a lob wedge.’

  Ursula Millward waited.

  The thudding sound came again.

  And again.

  And again.

  ‘The trouble,’ shouted up Helen, ‘is that the sand in here is so very soft. The ball keeps on rolling back down again after I’ve hit it and the place it comes back to gets deeper each time.’

  ‘I think the rules say you’ve got to keep counting,’ called back Ursula uneasily. She thought about saying something, too, about rabbits being good at burrowing but suppressed the words just in case the remark upset Helen even more.

  There was another thud.

  ‘I am going to get this ball out of this bunker,’ said a very determined voice from below, ‘if I have to stay here all night to do it.’ This was followed by three more thuds in quick succession.

  ‘Take your time,’ called out Ursula, even though she could see that two men on the course who had been a long way behind them were rapidly gaining on them – and her own arm was getting quite tired from holding up the flag.

  The next thud was followed by a long silence – but not by the expected arrival on the green of Helen’s ball.

  Curious, Ursula walked across to the edge of the green and peered down. Helen was down on her knees in the bunker, bending over her ball. Then she picked the ball up, tossed it to one side, and started to scrape away at the sand with uncharacteristic urgency.

  ‘Helen,’ began Ursula, ‘I don’t think that’s allowed …’

  She was stopped by a high-pitched shriek.

  ‘What is it?’ she called down.

  ‘Come down here, Ursula,’ sobbed Helen in a strangely strangled voice. ‘Quickly … there’s something horrible.’

  Ursula laid down the flag-pin and scrambled down to her side, the game forgotten. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A body,’ Helen said in a choked voice. ‘A head anyway,’ she quavered.

  Before breaking down completely and lapsing into total incoherence, she managed to stutter ‘And I think I’ve just knocked its eye out.’

  Chapter Three

  Unplayable

  ‘Switchboard here, Inspector Sloan,’ said the voice at the other end of his telephone. ‘Message for you from the Superintendent.’

  ‘But he’s not in today, surely, Melanie?’ said Detective Inspector CD Sloan, puzzled. He was certain of that. It was one of things that all those at Berebury Police Station always knew instinctively without being told.

  ‘No, sir,’ agreed the voice on the switchboard. ‘He isn’t in.’

  ‘So?’ When Superintendent Leeyes was in the building it had the same effect on his underlings as did the arrival of a sparrowhawk on a garden full of little birds. Everyone there then lay very low and quite still, heads well down. When the Superintendent wasn’t there everyone went about their usual avocations no less dutifully but in a more relaxed manner.

  ‘He says he wants you urgently.’

  ‘So how come he wants me urgently, then, if he’s off-duty today?’ Detective Inspector Sloan was Head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of “F” Division of the Calleshire County Constabulary at Berebury. Known as Christopher Dennis to his friends and family, the Inspector was for obvious reasons called “Seedy” by his colleagues at the Berebury Police Station.

  ‘He was ringing from the Golf Club,’ explained the telephonist.

  He should have guessed. Superintendent Leeyes might possess a perfectly good house in a pleasant part of the old market town and work at the Police Station in the not-so-nice High Street, but to all intents and purposes he lived and had his being on the golf course. ‘But why?’

  ‘All I know is that he wants you and your team over there at the Club quicker than soonest,’ said Melanie, lapsing into the vernacular. ‘Like pretty smartish.’

  ‘All right, then.’ Detective Inspector Sloan grinned to himself. There was only one other person who would be glad to know that Sloan was on his way to the Golf Club and that was his own wife, Margaret. ‘You can tell him I’m on my way’

  In spite of his protests to the contrary, Margaret Sloan was quite convinced that therein – membership of the Golf Club - lay the only way to promotion. He’d lost count of the number of times that he’d told her that he didn’t see how hitting a small white ball for the number of times it took to walk three and a half miles up hill and down dale in pursuit of that same small white ball led to an instant rise in rank. And that he preferred growing roses anyway.

  ‘As for my team, Melanie,’ he went on, quickly suppressing the spectre of having to play against the Superintendent as part of his wife’s game-plan, ‘you can say that Constable Crosby’s the only one around just now …’ he stopped and changed this. ‘No, on second thoughts don’t tell him that.’ Detective Constable Crosby was not the brightest penny in the purse: usually he only had to open his mouth to put his foot in it.

  ‘Better to let the bad news wait,’ Sloan murmured to himself as he put the telephone down.

  ‘Perhaps, sir,’ suggested that very same Detective Constable Crosby, at the wheel as the police car slipped out of the station yard at Berebury and into the traffic stream, ‘the Super’s lost his ball and needs the detective branch to find it for him …’

  ‘You just concentrate on getting us to the Golf Club in one piece, Crosby.’ Sloan put his thumbs firmly inside his seat belt to stop his hands rising protectively in front of his face as the police car cornered at speed. ‘And keep the jokes for later.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Besides, speculation ahead of the facts will get us nowhere.’ In police work, it could be very dangerous, too; especially – an ever-present worry – when it led to preconceived ideas shutting out other – better – lines of enquiry. But this was something Crosby would have to learn for himself. There was only so much about detection that could be taught. The rest had to be caught. ‘Apart from anything else, Crosby, it’s a waste of time.’

  Superintendent Leeyes was waiting for them on the steps of the Clubhouse. Crosby steered the car as near to him as he could and came to a stop with a noisy flourish of brakes.

  ‘Not there, man,’ spluttered Leeyes at the Constable, as Sloan clambered out from the passenger seat beside him. ‘Can’t you read? That notice says that the parking here is reserved for the Men’s Captain. Get that car out of the way before anyone sees you.’

  Crosby reversed at an equally fast speed and disappeared in the direction of the professional’s shop in a cloud of dust.

  ‘You, Sloan,’ commanded Leeyes, ‘come with me.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ It occurred to the detective inspector that he hadn’ t often seen the Superintendent out of uniform, although the police chief wasn’t now so much dressed in mufti as appropriately clad for the game of golf, which wasn’t the same thing at all.

  ‘This way, man,’ Leeyes turned on his heel, and set off at a dog-trot round the side of the Clubhouse. ‘We’ll make for that practice tee over by those trees. Can’t go in the Clubhouse in these shoes. Not allowed.’

  Sloan’s gaze travelled downwards and took in the fact that his superior officer was wearing brogues worthy of a Highland Chieftain of yesteryear.

  ‘It’s the spikes,’ explained Leeyes. ‘They damage the carpet. Besides, we need to get away from all the Rabbits in there.’

  ‘Rabbits, sir?’ echoed Sloan cautiously. If quite ordinary people could lose their marbles, then presumably so could senior policemen.

  ‘Beginners, Sloan, absolute beginners,’ he said with a grimace, ‘and in this case, which is worse, women beginners. And those in there are making the very devil of a noise.’ He snorted. ‘No one can get near enough to the ladies to quieten them down, let alone get a decent story out of anyone, more’
s the pity. Fortunately I was almost first on the scene myself – after the woman who found the body, that is.’

  ‘That’ll be a great help, sir,’ said Sloan, unconvinced of any such thing. ‘So if I might just make a note …’

  ‘You won’t get any sense out Helen Ewell and Ursula Millward – that’s the pair who were playing,’ snorted Leeyes. ‘Nobody can. For a start they’re all holed up with the other women in the Ladies Section.’

  ‘Ah.’ As always, Sloan was glad to get hold of names. Any names. At this stage, at least, it would be something to go on.

  ‘Helen Ewell won’t stop crying,’ Leeyes blew out his cheeks, ‘and none of the women in there with her will leave her to come out and talk to us.’

  ‘What about?’ ventured Sloan, resolving to send at once for Police Sergeant I Perkins. She had a way, born of long practice, with wailing women.

  ‘The bunker at the sixth, of course.’ said Leeyes, unabashed. ‘Didn’t I say? Now, come along this way, Sloan. We can talk over there on the practice tee without anyone overhearing us.’

  The Superintendent had started off leading the way at a good pace but he came to a sudden halt in front of the Clubhouse when he caught sight of a man standing at the foot of the flagpole there. The man was gesturing uncertainly in the direction of the two policemen.

  ‘Don’t do anything until I say, Arthur,’ the Superintendent called out to him. ‘We don’t know yet whether the deceased was a member or not. You’ll just have to wait and see.’

  The golfer thus addressed acknowledged this with a wave of his hand and walked back over the lawn to the Clubhouse.

  ‘We always fly the flag at half mast, Sloan,’ explained the Superintendent, ‘when we lose a member.’

  ‘Quite so, sir,’ murmured Sloan, adding tentatively, ‘and you think you’ve – so to say – lost one, do you?’

  ‘Someone, somewhere has lost someone,’ pronounced Leeyes. ‘Whose body it is, we don’t know yet.’

  ‘But one has been found,’ persisted Sloan.

  ‘A dead body has been partially unearthed in the bunker at the back of the sixth green,’ said Leeyes impressively.