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‘Who wouldn’t worry about too many birdies?’ said Gerald Moffat, who had been made preternaturally suspicious by a lifetime in the teaching profession. ‘Especially with the greens as they are just now.’
‘What’s wrong with the greenkeeper then, that he can’t keep up with the grass cutting?’ asked someone else. ‘It’s not as if we’ve had that much rain.’
‘Tummy bug was what his wife said to the Secretary,’ he was informed.
‘That’s a gastrointestinal upset to you, Moffat, I suppose,’ joked Southon. ‘Got to keep the English standard up, haven’t we?’
Moffat muttered something inaudible into his drink.
‘At least the greens are all right now,’ said Southon, taking a sip of his beer. ‘Peter here and I gave Alan Pursglove a hand with cutting some of them a couple of evenings ago, didn’t we Peter.’
‘We did,’ agreed Peter Gilchrist, the plumpish man thus addressed. ‘Hard work it was, too, getting them just right.’
‘So that no one could say that you let the grass grow under your feet, I suppose,’ said Moffat uncharitably.
‘Brian certainly doesn’t do that,’ said the man called Luke Trumper. He put his hand on Southon’s shoulder. ‘Never let it be said that our Brian doesn’t do his bit for the Club.’
‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised,’ went on Moffat sarcastically, ‘if he hasn’t got a “to-do” list as well. Nobody’ll leave the English language alone these days.’
‘Hey, it isn’t all me, fellows,’ protested Southon. ‘Someone else on the Greens’ Committee was going to tackle the others yesterday evening.’
‘United Mellemetics won’t like you two doing a deal,’ said a man standing beside the Gilchrist and Southon at the bar. He pointed towards a player sitting on a seat in the window.
‘Nigel Halesworth never likes anyone doing a deal with anyone else,’ said Brian Southon, nevertheless turning and giving Halesworth a long, careful look.
‘He’s certainly not going to like so much of our business coming your way,’ said Gilchrist. ‘I hope you’ve thought that through, Brian.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Southon easily.
‘United Mellemetics has been one of your suppliers for a long time, Peter, hasn’t he?’ asked a player who was propping up the far end of the bar. He pushed his glass back over the counter. ‘The usual, Molly, please.’
‘Man and boy,’ said Gilchrist, ‘but you could say that Nigel Halesworth and his precious United Mellemetics aren’t being as accommodating as Douglas Garwood and Calleshire Consolidated.’
There was a little pause since everyone knew – but nobody mentioned – that Gilchrist’s firm was under pressure these days.
‘And Halesworth won’t like it either,’ continued the same man, ‘if anything comes between him and the new driving range that his technical people have done the feasibility study for.’
‘But they only did the feasibility study,’ someone else on the Committee reminded them.
‘And the mammal study,’ growled Moffat richly. ‘Mustn’t forget the mammals, must we?’
‘Or the archaeologists,’ said another voice. ‘They’ve done their geophysical survey, too.’
‘It’s a wonder they don’t want to know about ancient lights,’ said Moffat.
‘United Mellemetics hasn’t got the contract yet, though. Nobody has. It’s still out to tender and there’s plenty of members’ firms who’ll want to bid for the work.’
‘And for the land,’ said a retired banker. ‘It’s the land that matters, you know. Development value and all that.’
‘I still say it should have gone out to open tender,’ said someone else. ‘Not just restricted to members.’
‘I don’t see why it shouldn’t be kept in-house,’ said another man obstinately. ‘There’s no law against it.’
‘Yet,’ said the banker.
‘And I still say that it’s a waste of good ground,’ declared Moffat with unnecessary firmness. ‘All that a driving range will do is encourage the rabble.’
An uneasy silence descended on the group round the bar. Gerald Moffat was not a man to cross swords with lightly and the question of the driving range was a tricky one at the Club.
‘You must be getting a good deal from Doug’s outfit, all the same, Peter,’ observed the first man after a moment, tactfully reverting to the earlier conversation, ‘things being how they are,’ he added gnomically.
Brian Southon laughed aloud at this oblique reference to Peter Gilchrist’s troubles. ‘Believe me, he is. Peter is doing Calleshire Consolidated proud.’
‘Just make sure you don’t get drawn against Halesworth in the next knockout, that’s all,’ advised his neighbour. ‘Either of you. Or he’ll be taking his revenge.’
‘That’s a risk I’ll have to take,’ said Gilchrist sombrely.
‘Me, too/ said Southon cheerfully. ‘But I shan’t worry too much. Business is business, you know.’
‘True,’ said Gilchrist, pushing his glass back across the bar counter. ‘Same again, Molly, please. For both of us.’
There was a payphone in the lobby of the Golf Club. Sloan fished in his pocket for some loose change and punched in his own home number.
‘That you, Margaret?’ he said. ‘Chris here. Listen, love, I’m going to be a bit late home.’
He heard a deep sigh.
‘Something’s come up,’ he hurried on. This was absolutely true and what had come up would soon be on its way to the mortuary, which was where he would have to go soon, too.
There was no audible response to this at the other end of the line.
‘Work-wise,’ he stumbled on.
In the long pause that followed this last Sloan’s mind drifted back to when they’d done Shakespeare’s play Coriolanus at school. Now that was a play for boys if ever there was one: fighting, treachery and war, war, war.
All magnificent masculine stuff, making the schoolroom echo with the imagined sounds of battle, conjured up by heady words. Even so, their teacher had seen fit to draw their attention to the soldier Coriolanus’s description of his wife. Sloan had never forgotten it: that great general had called her “my gracious silence”.
The class of teenagers had nodded then with what they thought was world-weary sophistication in approval of quiet, undemanding wives. Now, years later, an adult Christopher Dennis Sloan wasn’t at all sure that wifely silence was always gracious.
Not this silence, anyway.
He hastened into further speech. ‘I’m ringing from the Golf Club,’ he said.
That did the trick.
‘Where did you say?’ asked Margaret Sloan upon the instant.
‘I’m at the Golf Club,’ he said, adding, with perfect – but not the whole – truth, ‘With the Superintendent. Can’t say anything more. Not now. Tell you later.’
The finding of the body would be common knowledge in the town by evening.
‘Your mother will be pleased,’ she said obliquely.
He doubted it. His mother’s life revolved round St Ninian’s Church in Berebury. She never missed her weekly Bible Study meeting – or failed to expand on it at Sunday lunchtime. At length.
‘You won’t beat the Super, Chris, will you?’ said Margaret Sloan anxiously. ‘Not the first time you play.’
‘I promise,’ he said – and meant it.
‘Except,’ she added astringently, ‘over the head with a club if he makes you late tonight.’
Parthian shots, he should have remembered, had come up in a later lesson.
The girl whom Edmund Pemberton had addressed as Hilary advanced further into the caddies’ hut. ‘Hullo, Edmund,’ she repeated. She looked round at the other men and said ‘And hullo everyone else.’
There was a general shuffling of feet but very few answering “hullo‘s” until Bert Hedges eventually said ‘Morning, miss. And what can we do for you?’
‘Let me do some caddying,’ replied the girl briskly. ‘I’m Hilary Trumper, by the
way.’
‘Can’t stop you,’ said Dickie Castle, adding meaningfully, ‘even if we wanted to.’
‘Would you happen to be Mr Trumper’s daughter, miss?’ asked Bert Hedges.
‘What if I am?’ she said truculently.
‘Nothing, miss. Sorry I spoke, I’m sure,’ said Bert Hedges without any noticeable sign of regret.
‘How does the system work?’ she asked. ‘First come, first served?’
‘Not quite,’ said Castle reluctantly.
‘How, then?’
‘A regular player books us for a match,’ said Castle.
‘Or sometimes just for a game,’ put in Shipley.
‘All right, I’ll buy it,’ said the girl. ‘What’s the difference?’
‘A match is played for serious …’ Dickie began to explain.
‘A game is presumably something played purely for pleasure,’ interrupted Edmund Pemberton. ‘Surely that’s the correct definition of a game?’
Everyone present ignored him.
‘So therefore a caddy can be booked for either?’ concluded Hilary swiftly.
‘Or both, surely,’ said Edmund Pemberton.
‘Oh, don’t be such a pedant, Edmund,’ said Hilary, turning back to Dickie Castle. ‘What happens if a particular caddy hasn’t been booked? Do you work on the cab rank principle? Like barristers have to take their dock briefs?’
‘She does mean “first come, first served”,’ explained Edmund unnecessarily.
Hilary shot him a withering glance. ‘They know what I mean.
‘Yes, miss,’ said Bert Castle hastily. ‘The player just knocks on the door and calls out “Caddy wanted”.’
‘When it’s warm we sit outside on the bench in the sun,’ said Fred Shipley, who must have caught something of Edmund Pemberton’s precision.
‘Ships’ pilots work on the same principle,’ Pemberton informed them gratuitously. ‘Taking what comes next.’
‘We don’t need to know that, Edmund,’ said Hilary dismissively. ‘What I need to know is how exactly do I get to start caddying here?’
Bert Hedges, visibly fascinated by the girl’s bare midriff, began to say something about in her case sitting on the bench and showing her ankles as well as her tummy would probably do the trick but thought better of it and subsided into silence.
‘You wait your turn like everyone else, miss,’ said someone else.
‘You could get a golfer to ask for you,’ said Fred Shipley. ‘Like your father.’
She scowled. ‘Not my father.’
‘Or, in your case, miss,’ said Dickie Castle, his expression absolutely deadpan and his voice solemn, ‘having a word with the professional might help.’
‘Do anything to help the ladies, will Jock Selkirk,’ chimed in Hedges, winking behind the young woman’s back. ‘I’m sure he’d put in a good word for you with the men.’
Hilary Trumper gave him a long considering look but said only ‘Right, I’ll ask him.’
‘But no one’s going out just now anyway,’ said Hedges ‘because of this body they’ve found.’
The girl’s head came up with a jerk. ‘Body?’
‘In the bunker behind the sixth. They’re getting it out now.’
Chapter Seven
Provisional Ball
‘Teaspoons?’ echoed Superintendent Leeyes in patent disbelief. He glared suspiciously at Sloan from under his bushy eyebrows. ‘Who says so?’
‘The Curator of the Greatorex Museum,’ said Sloan. He had returned to the Clubhouse to report their findings at the sixth green.
‘You’re not having me on by any chance, are you, Sloan?’ The Superintendent had commandeered the little office of the Secretary of the Golf Club as his battle station. He was sitting there now amidst a welter of paperwork that had no connection with any police enquiry. Instead the walls were festooned with lists and charts that had everything to do with all eighteen holes of the Berebury Golf Course and nothing whatsoever - as far as he knew, that is – to do with the contents of the deep bunker at the back of the sixth green.
Sloan shook his head. ‘Teaspoons, that’s what Mr Fixby-Smith at the Museum said were what you needed when you were working in sand.’
The Superintendent’s eyebrows came together in a frown. ‘Isn’t he that funny fellow with the hair?’
‘Rather on the long side,’ conceded Sloan.
‘Wears odd jeans and funny jumpers?’
‘That’s him.’ With an effort Sloan averted his eyes from the Superintendent’s clothes. His superior officer was presently attired in a bright green jersey hand-knitted in cable stitch, a pair of elderly plus-twos trousers, and stockings of a yellow and red diamond pattern worthy of a cross-gartered Malvolio. The jeans presumably went with the Curator’s territory these days: he wasn’t so sure about the Superintendent’s outfit.
‘Teaspoons!’ snorted Leeyes again.
‘Mr Fixby-Smith,’ persisted Sloan, ‘says they’re best for very delicate excavations in sand.’ Prompted by the sight of the Superintendent’s stockings, his mind wandered away from the matter in hand and back to his schooldays again. There had been trouble getting any boy to take the part of Malvolio in Twelfth Night let alone wear yellow stockings. In fact the play hadn’t gone down at all well with the English class … He came back to the present. ‘And Mr Fixby-Smith says he’s done a lot of excavations in the desert.’
The Superintendent rolled his eyes heavenwards. ‘Teaspoons …’
‘Not spades, he meant,’ amplified Sloan. ‘And he knows a lot about sand.’
Leeyes grunted.
‘It’s an adult male in there, the doctor says,’ offered Sloan without further explanation. Why males should have brows more ridged than females was something he didn’t want to have to go into with the Superintendent now or, come to that, at any other time. Ridged brows or not, the man was never going to see eye to eye with the Equal Opportunities Commission.
‘Ah …’
‘And dead a matter of days rather than weeks, he says,’ hurried on Sloan.
Leeyes pounced. ‘How many days?’
‘He won’t say, sir. Not until he’s seen a bit more of the body. But not many. Dr Dabbe insists that any fine-tuning on timing will have to wait until he’s done a full post-mortem.’
‘And I suppose,’ went on Leeyes sarcastically, ‘an opinion on the cause of death would be too much to ask?’
‘At this stage,’ said Sloan diplomatically, ‘yes. It’s early days yet.’
‘Identification?’
‘That’s going to be difficult from the face,’ said Sloan, suppressing any remarks about not even the victim’s mother being likely to know him now. ‘But Dr Dabbe has high hopes of the teeth.’
Leeyes grunted and changed tack. ‘Missing persons?’
‘All we can say for sure, sir, is that there’s been no one added to our list in the Berebury area for several weeks.’
‘A stranger, then …’ The Superintendent was strong on the territorial imperative.
‘Perhaps.’ That wouldn’t absolve the police from investigating the death, only make for more work, but Sloan did not say so.
To his surprise Leeyes gave a deep sigh and said solemnly ‘I’m very much afraid, Sloan, that whoever put the body there isn’t likely to be a stranger. To the neighbourhood, perhaps, but not to the game or the course.’
‘Sir?’ All information was grist to a detective’s mill. What was different was that grist didn’t usually come from the Superintendent.
‘You’d be out of sight of anyone on the course there,’ continued Leeyes reluctantly, ‘unless they over-ran the green and actually sent a ball down into the bunker.’
‘Which I gather the really good players don’t do if they can help it,’ said Sloan. The Superintendent was right. It wasn’t unreasonable to suppose that whoever had buried the body here had known that, too.
‘The hole’s a dog-leg, as well,’ said the Superintendent even more reluctantly.
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Sloan looked up. Whoever had interred the body must have known that, too.
‘You’ve got to play to the left of the big oak tree,’ explained Leeyes. ‘What you need is a good long drive and then a shorter, ticklish shot with a fairway wood. Too far and you’re out of bounds, too short and you can’t turn the corner with your next stroke.’
‘So you need it to be just right?’
‘Just right,’ countered the Superintendent, ‘and you probably hit the tree. Never up, never in, though.’
There was a lot, decided Sloan, to be said for roses.
‘And the green isn’t visible from the fairway,’ said Leeyes.
‘I’ll make a note,’ promised Sloan.
Leeyes grunted again. ‘I’m not dreaming, am I, Sloan? You did say teaspoons, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He coughed. ‘Small paintbrushes come in handy, too, the curator said.’
‘So, Sloan,’ Superintendent Leeyes came back smartly, ‘do facts and I’d like some more of them. And fast.’
Misery might make strange bedfellows but in the Ladies Section of the Golf Club it was keeping familiar faces together too. The women remained huddled in a group long after Helen Ewell had been borne away for sympathetic sedation. Held there in the Clubhouse by some common bond too deep for words, and grateful for the continued presence of Sergeant Perkins, none of them wanted to arrive home before their husbands got there.
Instead they clustered round the long windows at the end of the room that gave such good views out onto the course, exhibiting that aspect of flock behaviour associated with safety in numbers. They weren’t the only ones with a wish to keep together. Others must be doing so, too, because the putting green in front of the window, normally the place for golfers to pass the odd half hour with club in hand, was deserted.
Indeed, there was little to see from the picture windows until a solitary figure came into view going in the direction of the professional’s shop.
‘Isn’t that the young Trumper girl over there?’ said Anna, peering out of the window. ‘Luke’s daughter.’
‘What on earth is she doing here?’ asked Christine. ‘She’s only a child, surely.’