Stray Shot, page 10
part #13 of Keith Calder Series
‘Can you win us some more time before you let the rank and file know about our problems?’ Keith asked.
Cathcart got to his feet. ‘As to that,’ he said, ‘we’ll see what we shall see. And now, I must go. Yours aren’t the only problems in the world.’
Charlie saw him out and came back frowning. ‘That doesn’t take us much further,’ he said. ‘But then, you didn’t tell him a damn thing you didn’t want him to know.’
Keith was looking blankly at the ceiling. ‘I didn’t tell any lies,’ he said. ‘Fair’s fair. What he told us didn’t take us a damn bit further. What he didn’t say was much more illuminating.’
‘I wonder whether he isn’t thinking just the same about you,’ said Charlie.
Keith had moved to the telephone. ‘How do I get an outside line on this thing?’ he asked. ‘I want to speak to Bill Haddo.’
Charlie got the number for him. Keith did the speaking. ‘Bill? We’ve got a strong pointer in the direction of Dallas. You had a possible sighting . . .’ There was a pause while the receiver muttered in his ear. ‘Another one? Give me the details.’
He listened for a full minute and then looked over at me. ‘This is going to take some time,’ he said. ‘You take the jeep and run along home. Charlie can give me a lift back later.’
The prospect of spending the next few hours listening to one side of a series of abortive phone calls I found depressing. I accepted the jeep’s keys and made my escape.
*
I drove away from Aikhowe with the puzzles of Reece’s disappearance and Lucas’s death at the front of my mind, but it only took a random idea for my novel, inspired by a glimpse of a smartly dressed hitch-hiker, to return me to that world of my mind which can, for hours at a time, become more real to me than the real world. I gave Alice a summary of the morning’s developments which must have been so condensed as to be indigestible and sat down at the keyboard. An hour later, when I was deeply submerged in my work and had quite forgotten Keith and his troubles, all hell broke loose.
‘Keith’s on the phone,’ said Alice’s voice.
Groping my way to the surface I first attached an identity to myself, then to Alice and finally to Keith. ‘Huh?’ I said, or words to that effect.
‘I told him I wasn’t going to disturb you for anybody less than the Queen herself,’ she said defensively, ‘but he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He wants to know whether you have a visa for America in your passport.’
‘I have,’ I said. I had been over to finish ghosting the autobiography of a pop star who was touring the States at the time. ‘And if the Queen calls while I’m writing, tell her to wait,’ I added. Alice is very good about defending my privacy while I’m at work, but it never does any harm to rub the message in.
‘I’ll let her in if she asks nicely,’ Alice said and went back to the phone.
My neatly stacked ideas were blown to the winds. And, anyway, I was hungry. I recorded my work on floppy disc and called it back again, just to be sure, before switching off and wandering through to the kitchen.
Alice looked at me in surprise. ‘I wasn’t going to disturb you again,’ she said.
‘I’m hungry. Once is more than enough. It’s all right,’ I added hastily – Alice takes these things to heart. ‘You’re a pearl among women, the best sentry I ever had and I still want you to marry me. What did Keith say?’
‘He’s coming here.’ Alice moved a snack from the freezer to the microwave and pushed the touch-pads. It beeped at her affectionately.
‘It sounds as if he wants me to go to the States for him,’ I said. I flopped into a chair and massaged the back of my neck. ‘This is getting out of hand. I’ve got used to dashing all over Scotland for him, but I draw the line this side of the Atlantic. He can do his own errands.’
‘I don’t think he can,’ Alice said. She came round behind me and took over the massage. ‘He’s terrified of flying. Molly told me he’s convinced that aeroplanes are made of the same material as paper hankies. She got him as far as Madeira once, and it looked as if they were going to have to settle down there.’ Through her fingers, I could feel Alice’s laughter deep inside her. ‘He came back on a cruise ship in the end. And you know you said you wanted to visit the Library of Congress. This could be your chance to get your fare paid and still claim the tax on it.’ She has a natural talent for business and had taken over the administrative side of my writing, and glad I was to be rid of it. But she spoke absently. Her mind was still on my twelfth proposal. A girl may decline or even ignore an offer of marriage, but she notices it. ‘You know what I said before. I’ll marry you when you’re more . . . one of us. I wouldn’t want folk to think that I’d married some kind of an alien.’
‘We’re all Brits together, for God’s sake,’ I said. ‘And, anyway, people already think we’re married. Three different men have called you “Mrs Parbitter” in the last few days.’
‘I wouldn’t want them to know that I’m living in sin either,’ Alice said placidly.
I had finished my snack and was drinking a mug of strong tea while trying to understand this latest example of feminine logic when Keith arrived at the door. I heard Charlie driving away in the Range Rover before I could get to the door and ask him in. I gave Keith tea and a seat in the living room. Alice stayed in the kitchen, but with the door casually open.
‘We seem to have smoked the clay,’ Keith said with satisfaction.
‘What kind of metaphor is that?’ I asked. ‘Agricultural or drugs?’ Turns of phrase are a writer’s stock-in-trade.
‘Clay-pigeon shooting, you ignoramus,’ he said. ‘Bill Haddo’s a wonder. Not having much else to do, he’s thrown himself into this business, broadcasting almost constantly. The problem was that you’d be amazed how many men with bruises and red hair are going around in battered, blue Peugeots and carrying gun-cases, perm any three from five. That one,’ he added considerately, ‘has to do with the football pools. We were waiting until the traffic died away before starting to eliminate, but what Cathcart said about Aberdeen pulled the rabbit out of the hat.’
Keith paused as if wondering whether he need explain about magicians and rabbits. ‘Haddo got a call during the night from somebody who didn’t want to identify himself. Probably a filial-minded customs official who had no business passing on that kind of information. Anyway, somebody bearing a striking resemblance to your description of our man, complete with swelling and a couple of teeth missing, landed in Texas on Wednesday evening. Dallas/Fort Worth, that was. Haddo says that the caller was boiling with indignation that a man should treat his mother that way.’
Regrettably, my attention was first caught by the reference to missing teeth. ‘I must have swatted him a good one,’ I said with satisfaction. ‘Do we know where he went from there?’
‘If you’d listen,’ Keith said severely, ‘instead of patting yourself on the back, you’d hear the rest. Before calling Haddo, he’d taken the trouble to speak to the redcaps, and one of them remembered putting the man into a cab driven by a local character, an elderly negro known as Uncle Mo. So I phoned a Texan friend. I found him a Churchill Twenty-five once. A beauty and it fitted him perfectly and when he came over to collect it I took him to shoot capercaillie. He came over again last year and I fixed him up with some stalking.’
‘But you digress,’ I said.
‘I do, rather. Sorry,’ he said, not the least abashed. ‘Anyway, I phoned Earl.’
‘More earls?’
‘Earl Bell. It was early morning over there, which is a good time to catch people on the phone. He phoned a friend who phoned another friend who knew where Uncle Mo lived. Earl spoke to Uncle Mo and called back.’
‘So we know which hotel he’s at?’ I suggested, hoping to cut a long story short and get to the subject of the many reasons why I was not going to America.
‘Unfortunately no. Reece was dropped at a Dallas restaurant where, I suppose, he could get a meal, phone around for a reservation and then call another cab. Or get on the Link, which is a sort of minibus which does the circuit of the hotels.’
His concluding sentence caught my attention. ‘How would you know about the Link?’ I asked curiously. ‘Not from the soap opera. That’s all Rolls-Royces and late model Mercedes. Don’t tell me you’ve been to Dallas?’
‘No, of course not,’ he said. ‘Earl mentioned it. He’s going to set things moving. He said that it’s still hot over there. Take a light suit for evening wear, but during the day most people who aren’t in offices slop around in trainers and casuals. But you’ll need a wind-cheater. It’s flat country and it can blow a gale.’
‘Now, hold on,’ I said. ‘Why on earth should I go whizzing off to the States?’ Keith’s bland assumption that I would go blithering off to the ends of the earth at his bidding was irritating me. I sensed that something in my subconscious was determining that I was going to be awkward. It was no deliberate decision on my part but a reaction which it was beyond me to prevent.
‘Well, I can’t go,’ Keith said reasonably.
‘You mean that Molly won’t let you go?’ I suggested.
He jumped as if I had stabbed him. ‘It’s not that at all,’ he said. ‘I’m much too busy. And, remember, we’ve got a murder mystery over here and a delicately balanced relationship with Cathcart.’
‘That wasn’t exactly what I meant,’ I said. ‘Look at it this way. I don’t like shooting. You’ve got me more or less sold about rabbit and pigeon shooting, and I accept all that you’ve said about pheasants even if you do make it sound as if you’re doing them a favour. But if this steel shot thing cuts down on the shooting of ducks and geese I’m all for it. I don’t think that they owe you anything. Why can’t you leave them alone?’ I sounded very pompous, even to myself.
He puffed out a big breath, which was his sign of exasperation barely contained. ‘In my time,’ he said, ‘I’ve reared and released far more duck than I’ll ever shoot. This isn’t the time to go into all the conservation done by the shooting interests. Let me just point out that thousands upon thousands of wildfowl die each late winter through cold and starvation, yet the populations remain relatively constant because they’re controlled not by shooting but by the available food supply. So, on average, a duck or goose harvested during the season represents a bird which won’t die a less easy death later.’
‘All the same . . .’
‘Let me finish. If you’re not satisfied, think about this. Steel shot isn’t as good ballistically as lead. It’s been proved both in theory and in practice that it results in a higher proportion of woundings instead of clean kills. Tests at Lacassine in south-western Louisiana showed a more than forty per cent increase in crippling. My new cartridge puts that right. But even that isn’t really the point. The new load will come in anyway. The question is whether I reap the reward for designing it. Does that help that tender conscience of yours?’
I needed more time to digest his arguments. What cut more ice just then was that a friend was in trouble. I could have forced him to admit that he was afraid of flying but I had a sudden attack of compunction. I made a vague sound which he could have taken for assent. ‘What about Alice?’ I asked. ‘And Boss? We still aren’t sure that Reece didn’t have an ally over here.’
‘They can stay with us. If you need a little extra motivation,’ Keith said, ‘the reason Bill Haddo’s caller remembered Reece so clearly is that he’s a gun buff and he took a damned good look at the Purdey. That’s why I think the caller was a customs officer. Reece already had a Form Four-five-five-seven listing the dutiable things he’d taken out with him. That’s the form you use so that you don’t have to pay duty when you bring your own things back home again. The gun was on it. He must have added it to the list, above the signature and stamp.
‘Uncle Mo confirms that Reece was carrying a light suitcase and a gunbag. If you can recover our samples, you’ll be well looked after.’ He stopped and seemed to be struggling with himself. ‘And the reward for Sir Philip Dunne’s Purdey is all yours if you can bring it back,’ he finished in a rush.
‘Fair enough,’ I said, and suddenly it was too late to call the words back.
‘That’s fine,’ Keith said briskly. It seemed that my hesitation had been no more than an irritating hiccup in what he had known would happen anyway. ‘Your tickets are in hand. Sir Philip’s putting together some papers about the Purdey, in case you have to prove that it was stolen. I’ll pop you on to the shuttle rather before the crack of dawn tomorrow and you fly from Gatwick. Charlie’s gone off to fix you a credit card and some dollars and a package of electronic gubbinses in case you have to listen in on somebody. If you can think of anything else you might need, let me know. And get to bed early. You’ve a long day tomorrow.’
He left soon after that. He had the grace to apologise for the interruption to my writing. But, he said, I would probably get a book out of it. He always says that. About once in five, it turns out to be true.
I did not feel like writing any more. I felt alone and vulnerable. No way was I going unarmed in pursuit of a crook – and, moreover, a crook whose teeth I had reduced in number – into his home territory where, I believed, a man felt undressed without a gun. I considered the walking stick gun which I had inherited from my uncle but doubted whether I could get it through Customs.
Instead, I remembered another piece of my uncle’s equipment which I had put away among his other shooting gear. I took it out into the garden and found that my hand had not lost its old cunning. Feeling silly, I smuggled it upstairs and hid it in my case.
Chapter Eight
Next morning, at about the time when I would usually be stirring in my bed and choosing between the competing attractions of Alice and breakfast, I found myself instead riding a DC10 and wondering, not for the first time, why I allowed Keith to disrupt my life. Annoyingly the aircraft, on its ‘great circle’ course, headed back north over Prestwick. It could, I thought, have stopped to pick me up there and saved me the early awakening.
Alice had been deeply asleep when the alarm clock woke me. I had tried to leave without rousing her, but she had come to sufficiently to bid me an affectionate farewell. That she made only a passing request that I be careful I put down not to her sleepiness but to the fact that she knew me to be cautious to the point of cowardice.
Not even the importance which Keith and Lord Jedburgh attached to my mission had induced them to stand me a flight by Concorde, so it was a long trip and a hungry one. Travelling with the sun, the clock moved slowly and the cabin crew only seemed to serve a meal when the local time zone decreed that it was due. Although I neglect mealtimes when I am working, I am a constant nibbler during my occasional periods of leisure. When at last we dipped out of cloud and saw the cities sprawled across a flat, green landscape, I was more interested in my dinner than in any problem of Keith’s.
Customs gave me no trouble. The lady on the immigration desk seemed ready to turn me back on the grounds that my passport described me as a writer and she had never read anything which I had written. Between hunger and general irritation I was in a mood to resent being looked on as a potential threat to the US Government or its economy and I snarled back at her. This probably did my case more harm than good, but in the end she wished me a pleasant trip and returned my passport with such violence that she nearly stove in my ribs.
Earl Bell was waiting for me at the luggage carousel. I recognised him from a photograph which Keith had shown me. Keith had probably described me as a thin man with brown hair and a ginger beard, but whatever his words they seemed to have conveyed an adequate picture because Earl recognised me at the same instant. Earl fitted my idea of a typical Texan, being large in every direction. He was in his early fifties with a head of silver hair. He had a round and amiable face which had become tanned without being noticeably lined. He moved and spoke slowly, but it took him only a few seconds to greet me, round me up and herd me, with my one case, into an enormous car. The afternoon was as warm as a British summer.
‘First we eat,’ he said. ‘I’ll take you for a Mexican meal like you’ve never known before, not a bit like the junk which passes for Mex most places, and I’ll wise you up. Then you can get some sleep. I’ve done that trip a thousand times and I can guess how you feel.’
It was only late afternoon in Texas but I had been up since 3 a.m. and it was already mid-evening at home. My internal clock was confused but insisted that bedtime was overdue. I was content to be swept along.
Earl saw me looking at the trees and scraps of countryside – very green by our autumnal standard. ‘You must come back and see it in the spring,’ he said. ‘By now, summer’s just plain tired out. It goes on too long . . .’
The soap opera had prepared me for a Dallas of silver skyscrapers, but those seemed to be almost confined to the mini-Manhattan of ‘Downtown’ and the occasional new hotel scattered among low-rise sprawl. All the same, I envied the man who had the concession for solar glass. He could get rich without slaving over a word processor, ruining his figure and his digestion.
Earl swung off the turnpike. Beyond a residential area, he parked at a large restaurant which, as best I could see behind all the neon, was built in Spanish style. Beyond it, one of those towering hotels loomed. The place was just beginning the evening’s bustle. We drank Margueritas while Earl ordered and then a mild, American beer with the meal. Remembering Montezuma’s Revenge I was chary of the Mexican food, but the mixed grill with tortillas seemed to me, in my famished state, delicious beyond belief.
While we ate, Earl chatted – mainly about Keith whom he seemed to regard as no more than one rung below the Almighty, but when we had finished our meal and were toying with another beer he came suddenly to the point. ‘I better tell you what we’ve done so far,’ he said.
‘We?’ I had supposed that he was alone in this.
