Hole in One Page 6

  ‘I didn’t know she played,’ said someone else.

  ‘She doesn’t.’

  ‘I’ve never seen her up here before.’

  ‘Today of all days,’ shivered Anna, who hadn’t enjoyed being questioned by Sergeant Perkins about her own round in the Rabbits’ Competition.

  ‘She’s been seeing rather a lot of one of the students who’s caddying here in the vac,’ the Lady Captain informed them.

  ‘It’s a boy called Matt Steele.’ Ursula Millward had declined the offer of sedation herself but wouldn’t go home alone either. ‘Her people aren’t at all keen.’

  The Lady Captain shrugged her shoulders. ‘But what can you do when they’re that age?’

  ‘Very little,’ said a mother of another teenager realistically.

  ‘At any age,’ groaned another mother, even more experienced in the ways of the young. ‘Except keep talking. That’s all.’

  ‘Poor little rich girl,’ murmured the Lady Captain.

  ‘Poor?’ Anna’s eyebrows came up. ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘Hadn’t you heard?’ said Ursula Millward, glad to be talking of anything but the body in the bunker. ‘Her grandmother’s entered the fray.’

  ‘That’s all the Trumpers needed,’ sighed Anna, ‘just when they were trying so hard to play Happy Families for a change.’

  ‘Happy Families!’ snorted another lady golfer. ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘She’ll have stirred it up good and proper, if I know old Mrs Trumper,’ remarked someone else who clearly did know the woman in question all too well.

  ‘They can’t handle the old lady,’ snorted Ursula Millward. ‘Never could. It’s half their trouble.’

  ‘Go on,’ Christine urged. ‘Tell us what she’s gone and done now.’

  ‘Old Mrs Trumper,’ said Ursula impressively, conscious that she had everyone’s full attention, ‘has given Hilary half her holding in the firm now and promised to leave her the other half when she dies.’

  ‘Great Expectations, then,’ said Anna, a keen member of the Berebury Literary Circle.

  ‘More like Jarndyce and Jarndyce,’ said the Lady Captain, who knew her Charles Dickens – and her Trumpers – better than most.

  ‘So where does the poor little rich girl bit come in then?’ asked a newish member curiously.

  ‘There’s Tim Trumper.’

  ‘Who he?’ asked another member, younger than most, who liked to be thought of being with it, speech-wise.

  ‘Her cousin.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Childhood sweethearts until a little chick from Calleford with attitude came along and got her claws into him.’

  ‘Now that must have really upset the Trumper applecart,’ agreed Christine appreciatively.

  ‘Believe me, it did,’ said Ursula Millward.

  ‘And put Hilary’s nose out of joint, too, I daresay,’ observed the mother of the teenager, well-versed in youthful angst. ‘What a family …’

  ‘For family,’ said Ursula Millward, ‘you can read firm.’

  ‘Or dynasty,’ put in someone else.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Ursula, ‘this Matt Steele’s a bit of a go-getter and if Hilary’s got a major holding it’s going to be difficult for the family to keep the man out of Trumper and Trumper (Berebury) Ltd., whether they want to or not.’

  ‘Tim Trumper isn’t going to like having to share the firm with an outsider,’ observed someone else.

  ‘Nor are his father and uncle,’ forecast Ursula Millward. ‘They’re still very active, you know.’ She looked round to make sure she still had the attention of her audience before she went on ‘I gather they’re pretty interested in doing the proposed development here.’

  ‘You mean the new driving range?’ asked one of them. ‘That’s pretty small potatoes for a firm of their size, surely?’

  ‘It’s not that bit of work that matters,’ said Ursula. ‘It’s the development value of the land the Club would have to sell to finance it that matters. You see grass,’ she explained simply. ‘They see houses.’

  ‘So that’s why the men are so excited about their driving range,’ murmured the Club’s dim blonde. ‘I wondered.’

  ‘Only half of them,’ sighed the Lady Captain who had had to sit through the deliberations of the Men’s Committee. ‘The other half are excited about having the driving range at all.’

  ‘So why is Granny putting her oar in like that?’ persisted Anna. ‘Doesn’t she like their wives or something?’

  ‘Tim Trumper’s chick is an airhead into retail therapy,’ explained Ursula, ‘and the old lady’s afraid the girl’ll ruin him.’

  ‘And by extension the firm, I suppose,’ said Christine, nodding. ‘What do her parents say? Not,’ she added realistically, ‘that that seems to make much difference these days.’

  Ursula Millward said judiciously ‘If you ask me it’s more a case of “No, my darling daughter” than of “O, my beloved father”.’

  The ladies nodded as one. This they understood.

  ‘They do say,’ said Ursula cautiously, ‘that Matt Steele is quite clever.’

  The newish member, a little unsure still of the views prevailing at the Ladies Section, said timidly ‘It is possible for a man to be too clever, isn’t it?’

  Nobody in the Ladies Section of the Berebury Golf Club had anything to say to that.

  Chapter Eight

  Lost Ball

  Some facts, decided Sloan, were already beginning to emerge.

  Literally.

  ‘Careful now,’ he warned as one of their Scenes of Crime Officers stepped very near the upper edge of the bunker. ‘Fall over there and you’ll be destroying evidence.’

  Since there was no greater crime in their book than this, the SOCO leapt back from the brink with alacrity. Three other men, gloved and white-suited, were slowly and carefully brushing sand away from the buried head and stowing it away in numbered, labelled bags. Watching them like a hawk was Dr Dabbe, the Consultant Pathologist.

  ‘Decomposition beginning to get under way, Inspector,’ he called up to Sloan as more of the body appeared, ‘but not very advanced.’

  ‘Which means?’ Sloan stepped back involuntarily as a whiff of putrefaction struck his nostrils.

  ‘That we have a reasonably narrow spectrum within which to estimate the time of death,’ translated the pathologist.

  ‘A time-frame would be a great help to us at this stage,’ said Sloan.

  ‘Mind you, Sloan,’ said the pathologist, straight-faced, ‘my field doesn’t cover everything.’

  ‘Really, doctor?’ Since arrogance has always been the most common complaint against the medical profession, Sloan tried not to sound too surprised at this admission.

  ‘And I don’t know anything about the similium family either.’

  ‘Neither do I, doctor,’ said Sloan honestly, wondering if he should get out his notebook. There were always people unwilling to have their names and addresses taken by the police and this was one he hadn’t heard before.

  ‘Sandflies,’ said Dr Dabbe.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Sloan lightly, ‘we shall have to watch out for sandfly fever then.’ He allowed that a sense of humour was one way of not letting gruesome work get to you. Some men drank. Some men took it out on their wives instead: which reminded him to tell Crosby to ring his wife, Margaret, presently, to say that he was still detained at the Golf Club with Superintendent Leeyes. And if she asked why, to say that he was stuck in a bunker.

  Reminding himself, too, to ask Woman Police Sergeant Perkins what she did when she got too stressed – that is, if she ever did – Sloan waved a hand in the direction of the two photographers, still at work. ‘A few more pix, please, Williams, now that there’s more to see.’

  ‘Not that his own mother’ll know him from anything you take now,’ put in Detective Constable Crosby, regarding the remains of a human face from a safe distance.

  ‘You wait, young Crosby,’ said Williams, p
rofessionally challenged. ‘You haven’t seen a good touch-up job superimposed on bone yet.’

  Dyson, his assistant, jerked his shoulder in the direction of the emerging body. ‘If they could do it with Dr Buck Ruxton’s wife then, they’ll be able to do it with him in there now’

  Early identification was something else on Detective Inspector Sloan’s wish-list. He knew he wouldn’t be the only one hoping that there would be a quicker way than this: he was sure that Superintendent Leeyes would be positively counting on it.

  ‘And you, Crosby,’ said Sloan firmly, ‘can take some samples of the sand from other parts of the course. Try the shallow bunker in front of the green for starters.’

  Williams leaned forward. ‘Bunker sand, specification SS1, I’ll bet. We buy it by the ton over at Kinnisport.’

  ‘Who from?’

  ‘Search me,’ said the photographer. ‘I’m not on our greens committee, thank you.’

  Sloan made another mental note and then turned his attention back to the pathologist. More and more of the body was becoming visible now. ‘Anything else you can tell us, doctor?’

  ‘Well, he was too young to need to worry about Saturn,’ said Dr Dabbe gnomically.

  ‘The planet?’ enquired Crosby, puzzled.

  ‘The bringer of old age,’ said Dabbe briskly.

  ‘Over at our golf club at Kinnisport,’ said Williams, closing his camera shutter with a click, ‘we say it’s hard luck if you don’t make the back nine holes of life.’

  ‘Judging from his carpi,’ said Dr Dabbe, ‘this poor chappie here wasn’t even middle-aged.’

  ‘Carpi, doctor?’ There was a limit to being amused by unknown words.

  ‘Wrists to you,’ said Dabbe cheerfully.

  Detective Constable Crosby furtively pushed back his sleeves and started to examine his own wrists with a certain wonder for signs of youthfulness.

  ‘And if I was pushed, Sloan,’ went on the pathologist, ‘I’d say the deceased was in his late teens or early twenties.’

  ‘Too young to die, I’d say,’ pronounced Crosby moved by a certain fellow-feeling.

  ‘And I’d say,’ said the pathologist, older and more experienced, ‘whom the gods love die young.’ He crouched down suddenly as more of the dead man’s head was revealed by the activities of the men working in the bunker. ‘Ah …now we’re getting somewhere. I think we may be able to tell you the probable cause of death in a minute, Sloan. Give me a hand here, Burns, will you?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan leaned forward alertly. Detective Constable Crosby averted his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ called up Dr Dabbe after a minute or two, ‘I would say you could put his injuries down, Sloan, as being consistent with his having had a heavy blow to the left sinciput.’

  ‘Photograph that, too, will you?’ said Sloan to Williams.

  ‘There may be other injuries, too, but he was definitely hit from above and slightly in front,’ said the pathologist succinctly. ‘Hit hard, too. Can’t tell you much about what with yet. Not until I can get the skull on the table and take a really good look at it.’ He sat back on his heels and added a careful professional caveat: ‘And maybe not even then.’

  ‘But with the proverbial?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby, demonstrating that policemen, too, could speak in their own lingo.

  ‘Proverbial?’ said Dabbe.

  ‘Blunt instrument,’ said Crosby.

  ‘Too soon to say,’ said the doctor. ‘Could have been anything. Anything at all.’ He grinned. ‘Did you know, gentlemen, that being hit on the head with a soap-dish did for the Emperor Constans in AD 668?’

  Sloan admitted ignorance of this riveting fact.

  ‘You learn something every day,’ said Crosby laconically.

  Sloan, who wasn’t at all sure this was true in Crosby’s case, asked if there was any sign yet of what the victim had been wearing. Manners might maketh man but clothes mattered, too, in a murder case because they usually came from somewhere traceable.

  One of the white-suited figures sat back on his heels. ‘We’re just getting to the chest, Inspector. Looks like it could be an ordinary T-shirt. Bit dirty now.’

  ‘No logo?’ Proclaiming something was common on T-shirts. Rebellion, usually; immaturity often.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘And jeans,’ said one of the other men, brushing away even more sand.

  ‘There’s another thing that doesn’t help,’ called up the pathologist.

  ‘Yes, doctor?’

  ‘Sand and water are two burial mediums which don’t leave signs of disturbance behind them for you people to find and measure with your fancy equipment.’

  Sloan decided against saying that he didn’t need telling that. It was his habit anyway to let people tell him things he already knew: they often went on to tell him something he didn’t. He decided, too, against mentioning concrete overcoats: all they left behind in time was a body-shaped hole. Momentarily diverted, he wondered if a body-shaped hole could be offered in evidence …

  ‘And sand has the merit of finding its own level easily after it’s been disturbed, too,’ said Dabbe. ‘Water’s better naturally.’

  ‘There now,’ put in Crosby, ‘a new lady golfer goes out and does what the hi-tech brigade can’t – finds a body in the sand. Well, what do you know?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan sighed. Having the body found by an amateur golfer was fine by him: what he didn’t like to have to think about was the possibility of its having been placed there by a professional disposer of bodies. That would bring a whole new dimension into play. When it came to the perpetrators of non-accidental fatal injuries the police preferred the amateur to the professional any day.

  ‘No one was actually looking for a body here or anywhere else,’ he reminded them all mildly. The list of missing persons at the Police Station had been checked now and there was no young man on it. He didn’t know whether this was good or bad. But it was a fact, which was something.

  ‘Inspector …’ called out Williams.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are you going to be doing with that ball in the bunker?’ asked Williams, police photographer but a golfer, too. ‘It’s practically new.’

  The police photographer was not the only one taking an interest in a golf ball. At that moment the golf professional was looking at one, too. He tossed it in the air and caught it on the way down as a young woman came in to his shop.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, slipping the ball into his pocket.

  ‘I hope so,’ said the visitor. ‘The name’s Trumper, by the way. Hilary Trumper.’ She leaned across the shop counter and told him what she wanted.

  ‘But who exactly is it you want me to recommend you to, miss?’ said Jock Selkirk to the attractive young woman in front of him, taking in at a practised glance her bare midriff and tight jeans.

  ‘Anyone who wants a caddy,’ said Hilary Trumper, ‘for starters.’

  ‘Most of the members here already have their favourites,’ responded Selkirk. ‘That is, caddies who understand their play.’

  Hilary screwed up her eyes. ‘Is that important?’

  ‘Very,’ he said shortly. ‘They need men who can tell them whether the course is playing long or short, too.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘A great deal.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Might I ask you if you’ve ever caddied before, miss?’

  ‘No but I’ve walked round the course,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not the same thing, I’m afraid. Are you really experienced?’

  ‘Not exactly, but I’m a quick learner.’

  ‘That wouldn’t do at all for some of our members. They like the caddy to know the course, and some of them,’ went on Selkirk, warming to his theme, ‘expect a little advice, especially when it comes to club selection. Good advice.’

  She gave a sudden grin. ‘Horses for courses, you mean.’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ agreed S
elkirk seriously. ‘It’s a case of handing the player the club he’s going to need for the next shot. The right one. Before he asks.’

  ‘I didn’t realise caddies were supposed to do that as well,’ she admitted naively.

  ‘That and a good deal more,’ said Selkirk.

  The girl looked round the pro’s shop and pointed. ‘Mind you, if they only take out a little bag like that one over there then there won’t be all that many clubs to choose from.’

  ‘It’s not only knowing the right club for the shot,’ protested Selkirk, rolling his eyes at this mention of a special lightweight quiver bag much favoured by elderly lady members. ‘Caddies need to know about the rub of the green too, and the length of the holes.’

  She pouted. ‘There must be someone who would like me to go round with them.’

  ‘Plenty, I’m sure,’ smiled the golf professional, eyeing the girl’s trim figure appreciatively, ‘but that’s not the same thing at all.’ He looked at her and said in quite a different tone ‘Now then, tell me, miss, why exactly do you want to do some caddying?’

  ‘Money,’ she said simply.

  Part of Jock Selkirk’s stock-in-trade as a golf professional was the ability to assess the buying power of his customers and he knew to a penny the cost of clothes. Those that Hilary Trumper was wearing might have been casual but they were good, very good. Her hipster jeans were not any old denim but genuine “serge de Nimes”, her casual shirt a masterpiece of understated twin needling.

  Besides, he also knew the name Trumper. Trumper and Trumper (Berebury) Ltd were one of the largest family-owned firms still left in Berebury and Luke Trumper himself a regular Sunday morning player. Whatever it was that young Hilary Trumper was looking for on the golf course, it wasn’t money. He asked with apparent off-handedness who it was she had walked round the course with before.

  ‘Matt Steele took me out one day before he went away,’ she admitted. ‘My father took me round once or twice, too, but that was when I was little.’

  Jock Selkirk came to an instant decision. ‘I tell you what, miss,’ he said, ‘I think it would be just as well if I took you round myself first and showed you the ropes before you got started.’