Stray Shot, page 6
part #13 of Keith Calder Series
‘Donald lives alone in one of the cottages on this estate. Nobody paid any attention to whether or not he returned that night. Nor would we have worried, except that we had an agreement that he would let loose any of his dogs which were at a suitable stage of training, to roam in places like the machine shop overnight.
‘He seems to be in the early stages of an affair with some woman and he might very well have stopped off. But when I wanted my car back the next day I went down to his cottage. There was no sign of him and his remaining dogs were making a racket because they hadn’t been fed. I’ve been feeding them ever since, but I’m not letting those brutes out, not for anything. You see, I don’t know the command for “Don’t kill”, and even if I did they’d probably think that I was joking. So we’ve been having to manage our security without aid of man’s best friend.
‘I phoned Prestwick and the dogs had got away on schedule. We’ve reported Donald’s disappearance to the police, of course, but we daren’t say anything which would open up the question of industrial espionage so they aren’t yet as concerned as we are. Men do go off for a few days, that’s their attitude. They’ve done it themselves, they said. For the moment, they’ve listed my car as possibly stolen and that’s all.’
‘They haven’t seen any connection between his disappearance and the stolen gun?’ Keith asked.
‘If they have, they didn’t say so.’
‘And was he the kind to go overboard for a woman?’
Charlie scowled at Keith as though he had made an indecent suggestion, but the Earl was only frowning in thought. ‘Is there a type?’ he asked at last. ‘I doubt if there’s a heterosexual male alive who couldn’t lose his head over the right woman. Or the wrong one. Donald, being a romantic, would be more vulnerable than most. If the love of his life said “I’m sending you to Heaven to assassinate God,” he’d go. Smiling.’
Alice had finished her lunch and was sipping at a glass of tonic water. ‘Why do you suppose the gun was stolen?’ she asked.
‘At first, we thought just for its value,’ Charlie said. ‘Sir Philip was out of his skull to leave it on the back seat of an unlocked car – he’d paid the earth for a perfectly matched pair only a few weeks earlier and now one of them’s gone missing. But, if Simon’s right, Reece didn’t realise the value. We wondered whether Donald had heard Simon announcing that his dog would follow anybody who was carrying a gun. It seems likely. Which points yet another finger at Donald. The others within earshot were the guests on the shoot and would have been missed immediately if they’d gone wandering off. Just as likely is that, when they realised that they were going to have to try to recover one of the bones, they thought that they might need a weapon and took advantage of the opportunity.’
‘And then I went and revealed its value,’ I said.
‘Saving it from being sold cheaply and sawn off,’ Keith reminded me. ‘Even if he never gets it back, Sir Philip owes you a debt for that. If it had been sawn off and used to kill a bank guard, he’d never have forgiven himself. Charlie, would Donald Lucas know enough to be able to sell his knowledge?’
The two scientists exchanged a glance. ‘Frankly,’ Lord Jedburgh said, ‘we don’t know.’
‘Obviously,’ said Dr Prestatyn, ‘the patent lawyer had to have most of the details passed across his desk, but Donald isn’t a scientist and they wouldn’t mean much to him. A patent application has to say enough to protect the process, but it’s usually better to avoid superfluous extra details which might only enable some rival applicant to point out the discrepancies which make his product a separate invention. If we knew when he was got at – if he was indeed got at – we’d have a better idea as to when he might have started taking copies of any critical material.’ The doctor frowned and gave his terrier a fragment of leftover chicken while he thought about it. ‘Our best guess would be that without the samples he wouldn’t be worth his weight in dog-meat. But the samples plus the lab reports, which he could certainly have got his hands on, would blow the whole thing open.’
‘And we’re not protected by patents?’ Keith asked.
‘In Britain, yes,’ Charlie said sadly. ‘Elsewhere, not yet. And Britain could still be flooded with imported cartridges to your design. For instance, we were waiting for the American Department of the Interior to approve the shot before we applied for patents there. Fools that we were, we thought that there was greater danger of a leak from the Patent Office than from the Department. That’s why we so urgently need some action on your part.’
‘If I didn’t have more to lose than anybody else, I’d tell you to go and boil your head,’ Keith said. ‘Where would Reece make for next?’
‘Nowhere in Britain,’ Prestatyn said firmly. ‘We’re protected here. And we’ve already set up some deals in Britain, and he wouldn’t know with which companies. The last thing he could risk would be offering the information to a company which has already contracted to buy it. Where would his market be?’
‘Not here,’ Keith said. ‘We’re a comparatively small consumer and a lot of our cartridges come in from abroad. The biggest manufacturers are in the States and Italy.’
‘First,’ Charlie said, ‘he’ll have to find out whether he’s got the real samples or the decoy. He couldn’t risk approaching a possible customer and either being shown up for a fraud or conned out of the real thing by being told that it’s the decoy.’
‘All he’s got to do,’ Keith said, ‘is to open up a cartridge and compare the wad and shot with the samples he’s got. When he sees there’s not the least resemblance, he’ll know that he’s scored.’
‘Luckily for us, he doesn’t have your ingenuity, or your expertise in ammunition,’ Charlie said. ‘He hasn’t thought of that one yet or he wouldn’t have tried for the dog again this morning.’
An awful thought hit me. I must have made some sound, because I found that they were staring at me. ‘He’s done it by now,’ I said. ‘My big mouth again. When he was pointing the gun at me, I started babbling. I said something damned silly about him having an ounce of lead shot in the gun, and I wouldn’t be much help to him if he let the gun go off. I saw him digest the words and get some meaning out of them which was beyond me at the time.’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Keith said sadly, not for the first time. ‘All the same, I wish you’d give us as much inadvertent help as you’ve given the enemy. He’s probably on a plane out by now.’
‘From what Smith told me, all his connections are in the States,’ Charlie said, ‘so that’s where he’ll probably go. That’s where you tell us that a large part of the world’s ammunition is made. It’s where the legislation is likely to hurt the shooting man first. And it’s where we’re least protected by patents. That’s where he’ll go.’
‘Unless he already has a customer lined up in Italy or Japan,’ Keith said. ‘What do you think we should do about it?’
‘If I knew that,’ Charlie said, ‘I’d do it myself. But we desperately need action, you’re one of the few people we can trust and you do sometimes recover stolen goods.’
‘I sometimes recover stolen guns,’ Keith said. He sighed. ‘I’ve sunk half a year of my life and a mountain of borrowed money into this thing, and now it looks as if I’ll have to invest more time and money in the hope of preventing it all going down the plug-hole.’
‘We’ll split the expenses,’ Charlie said. ‘I was hoping that this business was going to be our big score. It would have got us off our present shoestring footing with enough to spare to finish restoring the house and make a start on the estate. Instead, it looks like destroying us altogether.’
His look was so haggard and his tone so desperate that Keith shrugged off his own worries. ‘The worst hasn’t happened yet,’ he said. ‘I’ll do my best. You didn’t give up when you read your old man’s will. Don’t give up now. But I wish you could give me a worthwhile starting-point.’
‘I think you’ll have to use the police,’ I said. ‘They can be discreet when the occasion calls for it. Don’t you have an in with somebody high enough up? The police have the only network which could watch all the airports.’
Charlie sighed. ‘That’s true,’ he said.
Keith jerked upright. ‘No it isn’t,’ he said. ‘Come along, you two. There’s somebody we’ve got to see.’
Charlie came with us to the Mini. ‘I enjoyed your biography of Alexander Ferguson,’ he said suddenly.
Alice drove off before I could find a suitably modest reply.
‘I didn’t know that I had the nobility among my readers,’ I said.
‘I didn’t know that he was a reading man,’ said Keith. ‘Apart from binary arithmetic, of course.’
Chapter Five
Keith, deep in thought, was uncommunicative. We gathered, from sundry grunts and monosyllables, that he wanted to return to Newton Lauder so Alice headed the Mini in that direction. We had already rejoined the main road when a Jaguar, several years old, came up behind us with lights flashing and horn playing a fanfare.
There was a lay-by ahead where the road had been straightened. Alice turned in and stopped. The Jaguar parked ahead of us and the driver walked back. I recognised him from the day of the shoot, an elderly man with a red face and a white moustache who had been one of the better shots. He was overweight and walked with the care of one whose joints have carried too much weight too far over the years.
‘Sir Philip Dunne,’ Keith said. ‘He’ll be wanting me. Better let me out. He’ll rupture himself if he tries to stoop to talk through the windows.’
Keith was stuck in the back of the Mini. I had to get out to let him up.
Sir Philip shook hands very formally with both of us and raised his checked cap to Alice. His manner was as stiff as his physique. ‘Been chasing you all over Scotland,’ he said to Keith. ‘Followed you to Aikhowe. Wanted you to see what you could do about my gun. And Charlie tells me you’ve seen it,’ he added to me.
‘I think so,’ I said.
‘Was it damaged?’
‘Not that I could see. Circumstances didn’t permit—’
He turned back to Keith. ‘I wanted to ask you to get after it before some bloody vandal saws it off for a bank robbery. Hell, if he brings it back to me I’ll give him something cheaper he can chop up instead.’
This seemed a very odd attitude for somebody who, I now seemed to remember, had been chairman of a large corporation. He must have seen my surprise.
‘You mustn’t take me too literally,’ he added. ‘But if he’s going to saw up a gun, he can saw up something less expensive than my Purdey.’
‘I can’t argue with that,’ Keith said.
Sir Philip unbent a little. It struck me that he had been on course for becoming one of those pleasant old gentlemen whom one meets in modest retirement, models of bonhomie and good works, until years of power had stamped on him an arrogance which only genuine emotion could penetrate. ‘I’m desperate about that gun. Waited most of my life to get what I really wanted. There was never the money to spare. Four sons to educate and all that. Then, when they’d all left home, I thought to myself, “What the hell? If I don’t do it now, I never will. The boys are doing all right and good guns are a sound investment. By God, I’ll treat myself.” So I ordered a matched pair of guns, engraved just the way I wanted them, and all in a fitted, leather case. And I had to wait two years for them.’
‘A matched pair was a bit of an extravagance, wasn’t it?’ Keith said. ‘You can’t get many chances to shoot with two guns and a loader. They must have cost you the best part of forty thousand.’
‘Don’t remind me,’ Sir Philip said sadly. ‘But if you want the very best of anything, you have to spend money. I know that the old ways are changing. In the average year, I get one invitation which justifies a pair of guns and sometimes I save up and treat myself to a day’s driven pheasants on one of the commercial estates. And you needn’t look disapproving,’ he added testily to Keith. ‘They say that pleasure isn’t gauged by the size of the bag. Well, I’d rather have one good day than a dozen poor ones. Between times, if I can get a good bit of pigeon decoying I like to use the pair of guns at that. My gardener comes along as my loader and we both take a pride in doing the thing properly. It’s a knack that we’ve practised together. And now some bastard’s gone off with the Number One of the pair and I can hardly bring myself to open the case and see it half empty. People keep pointing out that it was my own damn fault, and I know it, but that only makes it worse. I was on the point of locking the car when somebody distracted my attention and it went out of my mind.’
‘The gun was insured?’ Keith asked.
‘Certainly. I may have been careless but I am not a total idiot. But that’s not the point,’ Sir Philip said. ‘I’m sixty-six and fit enough, but even if my health holds up my three score and ten runs out in four years. I don’t want to wait two years for a matching gun and then not have the time or health to use it. I want to make the most of the time I’ve got.’
Keith drummed his fingers on the roof of the Mini. ‘I appreciate that,’ he said. ‘Are your insurers offering a reward?’ For some reason which I did not understand until later, he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye.
‘Bugger my insurers,’ Sir Philip said. ‘Begging your pardon, Mrs Parbitter. When they get around to offering a reward, I’ll top it up. And we’ll not argue over values. How does five thousand sound?’
‘Musical,’ Keith said.
‘That’s settled, then. I’ll look forward to hearing from you. Until then, all that I can say is Thank God I didn’t part with my old Dicksons.’
Sir Philip nodded, turned and stumped off back to his Jaguar.
We packed ourselves into the Mini again. ‘I could get him good money for those Dicksons,’ Keith said. He fell silent again.
*
Keith remained in his reverie until we were almost back to Newton Lauder, but when Alice pulled in to a roadside filling station he spotted a public telephone and made me let him out of the car again. The tank was filled and we were waiting impatiently before he returned.
‘Head back the way we came,’ he said as he crawled in beside Boss again.
‘Why?’ I asked. Part of my mind had been sifting and rearranging various ways of expressing what I wanted to write next and I was anxious to get the results onto paper before I forgot them. But Alice did as he said. Somehow, with Keith, one usually complied.
‘I’ve just phoned Jake Paterson.’
I had seen the name somewhere. ‘At the television shop?’ I suggested.
‘It’s a bit more than a television shop,’ Keith said. ‘More of a Mecca for all the electronics buffs for a hundred miles around. Go right here.’ We turned off into a minor road which climbed into the hills. ‘We needed a special sort of person and Jake would know where to find him. Mr Haddo sounds ideal for tracking down our man.’
‘Why?’ we both asked.
‘You’ll see. Take the left fork up ahead.’
Our road climbed suddenly to avoid a gulley filled with treetops and came out onto heather moorland. We arrived at a neat house perched on the crest of a hill. It had never been a farmhouse but gave the impression of being a town house which had got lost somewhere above the farmland where the moors began. The garden was plain grass, the only feature a large and complex aerial. We disembarked and followed Keith up a short path. He rang the doorbell.
A small loudspeaker beside the door came alive. ‘Who’s there?’ asked a voice, half drowned by some background noise.
‘Keith Calder,’ Keith said. ‘Jake Paterson was going to phone you.’
‘He phoned,’ said the voice. ‘Come away in.’ The latch clicked and Keith pushed the door open. It closed again of its own accord and we followed the thrum of a vacuum cleaner into a tidy living room.
My first thought was that if this was Mr Haddo he would not be chasing our quarry for very far. He was managing the cleaner nimbly but from a wheelchair.
He finished the last corner and switched the machine off. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said cheerfully. ‘But once I’ve started I like to finish. My wife works, so the household chores are up to me. I’m William Haddo. Most folk call me Bill.’
Keith introduced himself and us. Bill Haddo indicated chairs and wheeled himself into a position which completed the circle.
‘Jake told me that you wanted some help,’ he said.
‘I hope that he also told you that you can trust me,’ Keith said earnestly. ‘Because it’s a matter so confidential that I can’t tell you more than the barest bones of it. If you’re in any doubt, refer to Lord Jedburgh.’
Mr Haddo looked him in the eye for a few seconds. ‘Tell me what you can,’ he said suddenly. ‘Then we’ll see.’
Keith paused to gather his thoughts. ‘It’s a matter of industrial espionage,’ he said. ‘A man – an American – has got away with samples which could betray the results of months of research. If somebody else benefits, I lose my shirt, jobs go abroad and Lord Jedburgh’s establishment loses the reputation for confidentiality which is vital to it. If you can’t take my word for those facts, I’ll have to go and look for someone else.’
Haddo gave a thoughtful nod. ‘I know about the organisation at Aikhowe,’ he said. ‘I was in the oil industry until my accident. So I know what you mean. Go on. What do you think I can do to help?’
