Murder on the Second Tee (10 page)

He went back to the unoccupied room and dialed room 215. ‘Done,’ he said and hung up, the gold money clip still safely in his pocket. Then he worked out what he should say to Inspector Fortune.

‘So could Saddlefell be our murderer?’ Wallace asked.

Flick looked round the conference room the hotel had made available to them and nodded. ‘If he’s not, why should he lie about the time he went to bed? He had motive. With Parsley out of the way, he’ll probably get his way on lowering the wealth threshold and become chairman, and it’s because of Monmouth’s death he’s acting chairman in the first place.’

Wallace nodded. It had been a productive morning. Joe Marshall, the porter who had been on duty on Thursday night, remembered Lady Saddlefell coming in without her husband at about eleven-fifteen. Bizarrely, she had left her room key-card with him rather than at reception, sweetening this minor inconvenience with a five pound note on her return. He could not remember seeing Lord Saddlefell return, but with people coming and going all the time this was hardly surprising. He remembered Mrs Eglinton going out shortly after eleven-thirty. She had held up her cigarette packet and told Joe not to dare to report her to the Health Police. A smoker himself, they had similar views on the smoking ban. When he had pretended to write laboriously in a notebook, she had given one of her horsey laughs. He did not remember her coming back in.

To Gilsland’s disappointment, the CCTV camera covering the first-floor corridor where all the directors’ rooms were situated had been misaligned. Twisted towards the rooms facing the back of the hotel, it showed only part of that side of the corridor and traffic in and out of the lift. It did not show any doors of rooms facing the Old Course, and it would have been possible for someone to use the stairs in the spa wing, approach from behind the camera and enter any of these rooms unseen. Sheila Anderson was the only banker with a rear-facing room. The camera captured her going there at 22.18 and remaining inside until long after the murder.

Belinda Parsley, Forbes, Walkinshaw, Davidson and Thornton all used the lift then went out of camera-shot, presumably into a room, at about the times they had given. Sandi Saddlefell came up alone in the lift at 23.21 and was followed at 23.33 by Simon Eglinton, who carried something that looked like a golf club. Eileen Eglinton entered the lift at 23.41 and returned, again using the lift, at 00.04. None of the pictures showed facial expressions. There was no footage of Lord Saddlefell returning to his room. The one camera in the spa wing which would have picked up Knarston-Smith’s movements had not been working.

A potentially important witness had been found. Olive Brodie, a housekeeper, had been going home just after quarter past eleven when she heard raised voices, one ‘posh’, the other ‘ordinary English’. She had been on the rough road beside the seventeenth hole leading to town and the voices had come from the course. She had not seen the speakers. The posh voice had said, ‘I’ve got everything from the start …’ then something about a stick. The other man had a lower voice and he sounded angry. He’d said, ‘As long as you’ve done it’. Uneasy about overhearing something she shouldn’t, Ms Brodie had coughed and the men had fallen silent. She had smelled a cigar, but not distinctly.

‘Did she say any more about the “ordinary English” accent?’ Flick asked.

Wallace screwed up his face. ‘I think she said he pronounced “done” as “doon”.’

‘Well that’s North of England, not South. So it’s almost certainly Saddlefell. I’d love to search his room,’ she added. ‘Is there any point in going back to the sheriff?’

When she had been told that local judges in Scotland are called sheriffs, Flick had thought of Wyatt Earp in a kilt. This image had vanished when she had met Sheriff Humphrey Logan, the sheriff for her part of Fife. A cheery little man with a twinkle in his eye, he persisted in seeing the best in people, giving criminals chance after chance to the despair of the police. He was also acutely conscious of human rights and regarded the liberal pronouncements from the Court of Human Rights as modern Holy Writ.

‘Hopeless Humphrey would still block us, I think,’ Wallace said. ‘Any other sheriff would have been happy for us to search for bloodstained clothes yesterday. If only the hotel manager had let us search without a warrant.’

Flick shook her head. ‘You can’t blame him for looking after his guests’ interests. He has to watch his back, just like the rest of us.’

Wallace said, ‘As today’s Saturday, I think we can by-pass the sheriff.’

‘How …’

Without waiting for his knock to be answered, Baggo burst into the room. ‘Inspector, ma’am, I have got to the bottom of what has been going on in this bank,’ he said. ‘We must get a search warrant to recover papers that will be destroyed. Computers too.’ Without asking, he took a seat and explained. ‘My undercover work has proved fruitful. The deceased Mr Parsley was the head of the investment arm of the bank, and Mr Knarston-Smith does the sums. He is a geek. Around 2008 the bank struggled and had to resort to illegal means to survive. Since then Parsley and Knarston-Smith have been money laundering, using bearer bonds to camouflage what has been going on. Sir Paul Monmouth was concerned about illegal activity before he died. Now Parsley is dead. The money laundering and the murders must be linked and to find out more we need to search all the bankers’ rooms. At the moment the directors are meeting and they have papers showing the crooked transactions. I’ve seen them, but they are sure to destroy them after the meeting. Could we go in and seize them now or do we need a warrant?’

Flick said, ‘We definitely need a warrant. We couldn’t risk the evidence being inadmissible.’

Baggo said, ‘I have electronic surveillance equipment with me, and I’d like to use it. “Bug the buggers,” as Inspector No would say.’

‘We’ve made some progress too,’ Flick said. ‘Saddlefell may be our man.’

Wallace checked his watch. ‘I think we should ring the duty fiscal now. She’ll be able to draft an application we can present in half an hour. If we wait till quarter to one, the sheriff will have left for the golf club and we can go to Mr Murray, one of the JPs. He’s usually obliging, and he lives in St Andrews.’

‘Will the warrant be effective if we deliberately avoid the sheriff?’ Flick asked.

‘It’s never been a problem before,’ Wallace said as Baggo looked heavenwards.

‘Right,’ Flick said. ‘Do it.’

‘Is a JP a jolly person?’ Baggo asked flippantly.

Wallace smiled. ‘No, especially if you get one out of their bed to sign a warrant. Mr Murray’s a justice of the peace, roughly equivalent to a magistrate in England.’

As Wallace talked to the fiscal, there was a tentative knock on the door. After Flick shouted ‘Come in,’ PC Robertson stuck his head in. ‘I have some urgent information,’ he said.

Standing awkwardly and shifting from foot to foot, he explained that he was having a cigarette outside the hotel when a man came up to him and started to talk about the murder. He was an ex-detective and so Robertson had said more than he would otherwise have done. The man had spoken to a chambermaid who had seen a gold money clip with the dead man’s initials on it in Lord Saddlefell’s room, and he thought that the person leading the inquiry should know this immediately.

Robertson had not thought to ask any questions, and the man had left without giving his name. He was English, not exactly old, a bit fat and had a red face.

Baggo looked at Flick. She doesn’t realise No’s here, he thought.

‘You should have taken his name, at least,’ she snapped at Robertson. ‘This strengthens our case for a warrant,’ she said to Wallace, who was still on the phone. She turned to Baggo. ‘Is there any chance of some coffee and sandwiches, or is waiting beneath you now?’

* * *

The bagpipe music audible from the front path of Hamish Murray’s house made Flick imagine strangled haggises. It reminded Baggo of home in Mumbai, where Indian pipe bands continued to play Scottish tunes long after the British Empire had retreated.

‘I’ll tell him you’re here,’ the homely woman in a tartan skirt shouted as she opened the front door. ‘He’s practising his pibrochs,’ she added by way of explanation.

The mournful strains continued for another two or three minutes as the detectives stood uneasily in the hall with Joy Hollis, the duty fiscal. Suddenly the noise stopped, and Mrs Murray ushered them into the front room where a short, bald man in a kilt was wrapping his pipes in a cloth and fitting them into a wooden box.

Flick looked round the room, astonished. Everything screamed Scotland, from the clan map, Highland landscapes and portrait of Bruce on the walls to the red tartan carpet which was worn and stained.

‘You can keep your heather flowering till Christmas by sticking the ends in a raw tattie,’ Hamish Murray said. Flick had been staring at a huge china bowl overflowing with stalks of purple heather, still blooming unseasonally. ‘There’s not been a drop of water in that bowl. We got these beauties in August. Glen Muick, the Queen’s estate, but she willnae mind, or is that whit you’re here for?’ Chuckling at his own joke, the justice of the peace sat at the table and inspected his visitors.

‘Are you a polisman or a waiter?’ he asked Baggo, having noted the hotel livery.

‘I am both today, but mainly a policeman, sir. I am working undercover.’ Murray raised an eyebrow. ‘I enjoyed your piping,’ Baggo continued. ‘It is one of the things about Mumbai I miss now I am based in London.’ He hoped he had not over-done it.

The little man’s smile told him he had said the right thing. ‘Some fine pipers have come out of India. But you’re not here to listen to me blawing my pipes.’

Joy Hollis took her cue and, producing three applications, one for money laundering, one for murder and one for electronic surveillance, explained why the police should be allowed to search the bankers’ rooms and possessions and eavesdrop on their communications. Pressed by Baggo, she had also sought power to seize all their laptops. Murray listened intently then put Flick on oath. He asked a few pertinent questions and seemed satisfied with what she told him. Next, he put Baggo on oath and his eyes widened as the suspected financial wrongdoings were described. Before Baggo had finished Murray had signed all three warrants.

‘Where will they be tried, here or in England?’ he asked.

‘I can’t say, sir, but I expect the murder trial will be here,’ Joy said.

‘Hm,’ the little man snorted. ‘Anyway, always happy to help out the English.’

Not sure how to take this last remark but grateful for his common-sense approach, they thanked Murray and left, Flick happy to be planning the search operation.

* * *

‘So that’s all we’ve got to show for it?’ Flick pointed at the black plastic bin bag in the corner of the conference room. ‘We wouldn’t have needed a warrant for stuff they’ve shredded. I hope Gilsland finds something on these laptops or we’ll be in trouble.’ Beside the bin bag seven laptops had been piled one on top of the other.

Wallace shook his head. ‘No bloodstains, no money clip. Do you think we’ll be able to put these papers back together? The bankers wouldn’t have destroyed them as soon as their meeting was over if they hadn’t been up to something.’

The directors’ meeting had broken up shortly before Flick and Baggo had returned with the warrants. A shredder had been ordered for the conference room where the meeting had been held and the police found it full. Against a background of indignant protest, mostly from Saddlefell, the eight bankers’ rooms had been thoroughly searched with no result. As Baggo had joined in, his cover was blown and he had gone to change out of his waiter’s uniform and pack his things.

‘Do you think we should formally question Saddlefell, ma’am?’ Wallace asked. ‘He’s our main suspect.’

‘He’ll make a fuss, call a lawyer then say nothing,’ Flick replied, her head in her hands. She had not told anyone what the divisional commander had said to her. Might she become Fife’s shortest-serving inspector? Suddenly life as a housewife and mother seemed very appealing. ‘Where is Chandavarkar?’ she asked petulantly. ‘How long does it take to change out of a waiter’s uniform?’

* * *

As Flick divided up the rooms to be searched among the officers available, Baggo had attached himself to McKellar and a bovine youth with huge red hands and a uniform straining against well-fed flesh. They had been assigned to the dead man’s room. As McKellar explained to a passive Belinda Parsley what the search would involve, Baggo busied himself looking in places he thought Hugh Parsley might have concealed incriminating documents.

‘I am an undercover policeman and will soon get rid of these waiter’s clothes,’ he told the widow when she looked at him with mild curiosity.

As McKellar checked the bathroom and the bovine officer examined the shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe, Baggo saw at the back of the wardrobe the black case for the computer already in the hands of the police. He leaned past his new colleague and pulled it out. In one of the many pockets he found an envelope folded in half. He felt the envelope but could not tell if there was anything inside. It was a plain, white envelope, slightly scuffed. Seeing he was unobserved, he put it in his trouser pocket.

There was nothing else of interest in the room. Baggo returned to the unoccupied room and broke the envelope’s seal. Inside was a photograph, probably taken by a mobile phone. Two people were having sex on an office desk. One of them was Walkinshaw. The other was Gerald Knarston-Smith. While she held her head back, her mouth open, he stared wide-eyed at the camera, his trousers round his knees and alarm all over his face.

This photograph might explain a great deal, Baggo thought. He slid it back into the envelope and put it beside the clip in his pocket.

* * *

‘Mr Knarston-Smith, I need a word.’ Still dressed as a waiter, Baggo used his pass key to open the door. He had not knocked.

‘Excuse me!’ Cynthia Knarston-Smith sounded indignant. She stood, facing her husband, who sat slumped on the edge of the bed.

‘I apologise for disturbing you, ma’am, but I am a policeman, not a waiter, and if you want to save your husband many years in jail, you will leave us for ten minutes or so.’ He put on his most authoritative voice and produced his warrant card.