Free Novel Read

Hook or Crook Page 4


  ‘It is not for me to say what Mr Fergusson is thinking,’ McIver said primly, ‘but Mr Bell himself pointed out that he had paid a lot of money for the fishing. And there are very few fish about. If he found some unauthorized person landing a fish on his beat, there might well have been a quarrel.’

  ‘There might,’ I said. ‘But I’m damn sure it didn’t happen.’

  ‘I have doubts of it myself,’ McIver admitted. ‘But my doubts are neither here nor there. By tomorrow, the matter may have resolved itself.’ He opened his envelope and withdrew what turned out to be a typed version of the statement that I had made beside the river. ‘Would you read this over and, if you agree with it, sign it?’

  To be a suspect — albeit in connection with a death which might still be proved an accident — was a new experience for me. I read over my putative statement with care. It was a fair version of most of what I had said. My urns and ers and occasional stutters had been edited out and I was surprised to note how grammatical had been my off-the-cuff ramblings. The document confined itself to my statements of fact and neither my asides to the Detective Chief Inspector nor the occasional inferences that he had managed to drag out of me were recorded. On the whole, I decided, it contained nothing which I might later wish to recant.

  I was in the process of initialling each page when Eric appeared, flushed with a surfeit of good food and wine and breathing heavily. ‘So here you are!’ he said. ‘The bar looked empty without you. Good evening, young officer.’ He made mysterious hand-signals at the waiter.

  McIver seeming stunned by the unconventional greeting. I asked, ‘What became of you after I turned in on Monday night?’

  Eric’s moon-face, usually expressive, remained blank. ‘That’s none of your damn business,’ he said. ‘But, if you want to know, I went up not long after you.’

  An early night was unusual for Eric but I was not going to tell that to the police. ‘There you are,’ I said lightly to McIver. ‘Not a trace of an alibi between us.’

  The waiter, correctly interpreting Eric’s gesticulations, brought three large whiskies. Eric signed the chit. I could see his mind working, beyond the fumes of alcohol. ‘They’ve pinned it down to Monday night, have they?’

  McIver hesitated, whether over the drink or the question I was unsure. He compromised by sipping the drink, putting it down on the table as far away as he could reach and saying, ‘Monday afternoon or during that night, give or take a wide margin. It is difficult for the pathologist to be sure, the body having been in water for an unknown period and nobody to tell us when he had his last meal.’

  Because he had said comparatively little, Eric’s statement was a short document and seemed to relate mainly to the finding of the body and the fishing rod. He skimmed through it and signed with a flourish.

  McIver got to his feet, leaving the second whisky. ‘I’m to tell you that you may resume fishing in the morning,’ he said formally. ‘So you need not be bothering to take Detective Chief Inspector Fergusson to court,’ he added.

  ‘Thank God for small mercies!’ Eric said.

  Eric, I recalled, had been up and about in good time on the Tuesday morning and in a cheerful mood, which did not suggest a night spent either carousing or down at the river. When McIver was safely out of earshot I said, ‘Who or what coaxed you to bed so early on Monday night? Your evening is usually only just beginning to warm up as midnight approaches.’ Eric said nothing and glared at me. ‘You weren’t alone, were you?’ I said. More sullen silence. ‘I noticed that you were making a play for one of the waitresses,’ I said. ‘The incompetent one.’

  Eric sighed and then shrugged. ‘She may get muddled with the vegetables,’ he said, ‘but she knows her onions.’

  My curiosity was piqued, if not my envy. ‘You must have hidden charms, to score so quickly.’

  ‘My charms went a lot of the way. Fifty quid went the rest.’

  It was my turn to sigh. Eric had an alibi. If suspicion remained focused in our direction I would have to bear the brunt of it alone.

  *

  The police had released only the news that a body had been found in the Spey, leaving it for the media to assume that the death was a fishing accident. The hotel staff, considering themselves to be far above cheap publicity-seeking, had refused to allow the guests to be pestered by the few reporters who had latched onto the story, but our names had got out and two reporters in succession followed us to the river next day. The second, having got wind of the inquiries the police were making, seemed to have added two and two together and arrived at a hitherto unprecedented total but one which was uncomfortably close to the truth. He was as persistent as a wasp after jam, shadowing us along the bank and shouting questions about the body, its condition, exactly where it had lain and any theories that we might have as to how it got there.

  Fishing was impossible in the circumstances. In late morning, we headed for the car with the reporter trotting alongside and still firing questions. We found Constable McIver, now back in uniform, emerging from his panda car.

  Eric took the reporter by the arm and walked towards the panda car. When Eric takes somebody by the arm and starts walking, they walk with him. The reporter found himself standing in front of McIver. ‘This officer is concerned with the case,’ Eric said. ‘Ask him your blasted questions. And if you claim to have had an interview from either of us, we’ll complain to the Press Council.’ He left him there and joined me in the front of his own car where I was opening up the lunch basket.

  McIver had his own way of dealing with the Press. ‘Show me your driver’s licence,’ he said, and after noting down the details he looked the reporter in the eye. ‘If you are still in sight in one minute’s time —’

  ‘You don’t want to make an enemy of the Press,’ the reporter blustered.

  McIver became a different person. ‘And you do not want to make an enemy of the police,’ he retorted. ‘You’re local. Try that on and you won’t be able to take your car ten yards up the road without collecting a dozen summonses.’

  ‘You said that in front of witnesses. You heard that,’ the reporter shouted at us.

  Eric cupped his ear. ‘What?’ he asked.

  Tony McIver smiled, but it was not a nice smile. ‘Which of us do you think can do the other most damage? In one minute, I shall charge you with loitering, causing an obstruction, interfering with witnesses —’

  The list ended at that point. The reporter was on his way.

  McIver waited until the reporter’s Vauxhall was moving before coming to my window.

  ‘Mr Fergusson says that you may leave Granton whenever you wish,’ McIver said. ‘Just see that we know where we can get in touch with you.’

  ‘I sense developments,’ Eric said with his mouth full. ‘Have the dead man’s movements been traced?’

  McIver glanced around. We were in the middle of empty countryside, the trees a hundred yards away, but there might have been ears beyond the hedge. He climbed into the back of Eric’s vehicle and wound up the nearest window, cutting off the breeze which had been cooling my neck. ‘You’ve shown that you know how to avoid talking to the Press,’ he said. ‘Mr Fergusson might not agree, but I feel that we owe you something. Promise that you won’t let on that I told you anything?’

  We promised.

  ‘Well, then. The motor-caravan was registered to a man by the name of Hollister with an address in Esher, Surrey. The interior of the caravan was not very informative at first. There was remarkably little personal gear. But there were fingerprints which matched the dead man’s, so we persevered. The driver was a cautious man. Under the carpet beneath the driver’s seat we found a wallet which contained credit cards and a chequebook, all in the name of Hollister. One of the counterfoils indicated that a cheque for a three-figure sum was paid to the Seamuir Estate about two months ago. On the phone, after some humming and hawing, the Seamuir Estate confirmed that a man by the name of Hollister had rented their Number Four Beat on the Dee and that
the beat had been fished regularly for the past fortnight.’

  ‘Bingo!’ Eric said. ‘You were right, Wal. The Aberdeenshire Dee it is.’

  ‘That is hardly conclusive,’ McIver said sternly. There was a pause while he accepted a sandwich and a spare mug of coffee. ‘I have driven over the Lecht and back this very morning with a photograph of the dead man and the Estate Office confirms that this was indeed the man who had been fishing Number Four Beat — but what does that prove? He could have caught his fish on the Dee on Monday and then driven over here, perhaps to keep an appointment with somebody.’

  ‘Somebody who killed him?’ Eric suggested.

  ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps not. If we accept that he might have driven over here of his own accord, we have no evidence of foul play. Maybe he fancied casting a fly on the Spey and, seeing a bit of water with nobody there and dusk coming on, decided to chance it. He dropped his knife while tying on the fly which had done well for him on the Dee and then entered the water upstream of the bridge. He fell, hitting his head on a rock, and drifted down with the current to where you found him.’

  ‘And his rod?’ Eric said.

  ‘That also drifted down with the current until the butt of it caught up in the weed.’

  ‘I’ll go along with that theory if it’ll keep you out of our hair,’ Eric said, ‘but I can’t say that I like it.’

  ‘I do not like it very much myself,’ McIver said. ‘But it is not for me to like or dislike. That is Detective Chief Inspector Fergusson’s business. What I am saying is that there is no hard evidence to the contrary. Tell me why you dislike it.’

  ‘All right,’ Eric said. He finished the sandwiches and poured himself the last of the wine while he thought about it. ‘He gave himself a long walk from his van when he could as easily have tucked it in near here. He wouldn’t go fishing with a fish he’d caught earlier in the day weighing down his bag —’

  ‘Unless he wanted to impress a local by pretending to have caught it here,’ I pointed out. ‘Or even cheat to win a bet. There’s a motive for murder, if you like.’

  ‘Just possible,’ Eric said, ‘but unlikely. You don’t cast a line in somebody else’s water around here without finding a water bailiff breathing down your neck. And I was the first to take a look at his rod. It hadn’t drifted into the weed, it was more as if it had plunged in from above.’

  ‘He could have slipped while wading under the bridge,’ I said. ‘That could have produced a similar result.’

  ‘Any rocks under the bridge were about three feet below the surface,’ said Eric. ‘I should know. He couldn’t fall through that depth of water with enough force to bash his head in, not unless he came down head first off the parapet of the bridge. And the dent in his skull looked too neat and even to have been made by a rock.’

  There was silence in the back. When I looked round McIver was nodding slowly. ‘That is much what the pathologist told DCI Fergusson,’ he said. ‘And he would have expected to find grit or water impacted into the wound. We have not been able to find a rock to fit the wound or anything like it. The pathologist would not commit himself when somebody suggested a fall against the corner of one of the bridge piers, but there was no sign of blood, skin or hair on any of the corners. It seemed also that the body had lain on its back some time after death, but that could be because it grounded in the shallows before moving on to where you found it.’

  ‘None of that seems conclusive either way,’ I said.

  ‘No. There is one more thing. There may be a hundred,’ McIver added sadly. ‘I’m too low on the ladder to be kept informed. But I hear that the nylon leader had been cut, not broken.

  ‘Ah well, we should know more in the fullness of time. I brought back a sample of Dee water. The pathologist drew off a whole lot of water from the mannie’s lungs and we shall have to wait a week at least to see whether the laboratory matches it up with the Dee or the Spey.’

  ‘Or even somewhere quite different,’ I suggested.

  ‘Do not say that, even in jest,’ said Tony McIver. ‘Liaison between different forces can be very difficult at times, so they tell me. Just imagine if it turned out that he was fishing the Dee, died in the Tay and was found in the River Spey. No, it just does not bear thinking about.’

  *

  Eric seemed restless. He was disenchanted with fishing, at least on our beat. Apart from dreading the possible mass arrival of the Press, he said, the churning up of the river by searching policemen would have moved any fish that might have been there and with no fish running they were unlikely to have been replaced.

  ‘I’m going back to the hotel,’ he said. ‘Are you coming?’

  ‘I’d like to give it another hour or two,’ I said. ‘Are you fit to drive?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back for you in a couple of hours.’

  It was his licence and if he followed his present way of life he was going to lose it anyway, sooner or later. To do him justice, his driving seemed to improve rather than deteriorate after the first glass or two of wine, although the law might not take such an enlightened view of it. I let him go and went back to the river.

  By the time Eric returned, I was ready to give up. What little breeze there had been to ruffle the surface had died away and in the barely moving water the almost complete absence of fish was clearly visible. The sun was bright. Salmon, having no eyelids, easily become dazzled and unable or unwilling to see a fly. I had hooked one fish which put up a poor fight and when I brought it close I saw that it had been in the river a long time — a mended kelt, spent and inedible. I detached the hook and wished him luck.

  Eric looked more cheerful as he came marching along the bank. He sat down on a tree stump. ‘Any luck?’ he called.

  I waded out of the water, took a seat on a boulder and told him of my lack of progress while I removed my fly, hooked it into my fly-box and wound my line and leader onto the reel.

  ‘Things could be about to look up,’ he said. ‘You’re sure that the Dee would be better?’

  ‘Not a doubt of it. Why?’

  ‘It could hardly be worse. I’ve been doing some telephoning. The Number One Beat at Strathdee Castle was vacant, thanks to the recession — it’s an ill wind and all that. I’ve booked it for the rest of our fortnight. They tell me that fresh-run fish are being taken above and below.’

  Such extravagance was beyond my ken. ‘But you’ve about ten days to go here.’

  ‘And we’ve already caught the only takeable salmon in the whole damn river. It’s only money.’

  ‘Sir, you are speaking of the money I love,’ I said. (Eric chuckled.) I had fished the Dee quite often as a guest, usually at the invitation of proprietors hoping for a favourable mention in one of the magazines. ‘I think Number One Beat’s on the right bank and the trees come down to the river. You’ll have to polish up your double Spey casting.’

  ‘You can teach me,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘Again? I suppose I can try.’ More of the geography was coming back to me. Because rivers form natural boundaries between estates, opposite banks are often in different ownership. ‘Strathdee Castle Number One is near Seamuir Four,’ I said. ‘In fact, I think they overlap.’

  ‘Well, there’s a coincidence!’ Eric said.

  ‘Coincidence be damned!’ I replied. ‘You’re bursting with curiosity about the late Mr Hollister.’

  ‘Two birds with one stone. It’s not every day I find a body. A certain amount of curiosity’s understandable. Isn’t it?’

  ‘You needn’t think I’m going to poke my nose in where the police certainly won’t want it while a beat on the Spey and another on the Dee go begging.’

  ‘This beat won’t go begging. Young McIver can have the use of it.’

  ‘I doubt if he’ll have any leisure until they’ve closed the file on Mr Hollister.’

  ‘Then McIver can pass it on to one of his relatives and be owed a favour. These Highlanders live by scratching each other’s backs.’<
br />
  I let the slander go by, partly because there was a grain of truth in it. We set off back towards the bridge. My fifteen-foot rod bounced uncomfortably so I stopped to take it down into its three sections. ‘Have you given any thought to where we’re to stay?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a village, Bantullich, with a small hotel.’

  ‘The Seamuir Arms,’ I said.

  ‘You know it? I could have saved myself a phone-call. A cousin of Amy’s lives somewhere around there so I phoned her. She says that it’s all right.’ Amy, I knew, was Eric’s late wife.

  ‘She was right,’ I told him.

  ‘You approve? That’s good. I couldn’t come driving down here to consult you between calls. I’ve booked us in from tomorrow. Beatrice — Amy’s cousin — says that it’s clean and dry and the food’s good. Probably what they call “good plain cooking” and supermarket plonk.’

  He glanced at me anxiously, but I just said, ‘We’ll get by.’ I can be quite content with good plain cooking and supermarket plonk.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Eric said. ‘Just as long as it isn’t bar snacks by microwave out of freezer. I’ll phone and let the police know where we’ll be and then we can settle down to enjoying what may be a last evening of the fleshpots.’

  We had arrived back at his vehicle. ‘You’re taking your fleshpot with you,’ I said.

  Eric heaved himself into the passenger seat. The big vehicle settled several inches under his weight. He patted his stomach comfortably. ‘That’s true,’ he said.

  Before driving off I took a last look at the river. Usually the Spey is alive with promise, but for once it was shrunken, lifeless and tainted with tragedy.

  Chapter Five

  Granton on Spey may be a handsome old town in lush countryside, astride a first-class salmon river, but for the first time in my life I was happy to leave it behind. Eric was in a similar mood. Squeezed behind the wheel, he had shaken off depression and he even sang tunelessly as he drove.

  We left behind the fertile valley of the Spey and climbed towards the heather of the Grampian Mountains. Eric tackled the climbs and swoops of the A939 by Bridge of Brown and Tomintoul and over the Lecht Pass with verve. Some of the gradients were posted one in six, or even one in five.