Free Hole in One by Catherine Aird Page A

either.’
    â€˜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.

    â€˜Sandflies,’ said Dr Dabbe.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜You wait, young Crosby,’ said Williams, professionally 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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Who from?’

    â€˜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?’
    â€˜Well, he was too young to need to worry about Saturn,’ said Dr Dabbe gnomically.
    â€˜The planet?’ enquired Crosby, puzzled.
    â€˜The bringer of old age,’ said Dabbe briskly.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜Judging from his carpi,’ said Dr Dabbe, ‘this poor chappie here wasn’t even middle-aged.’
    â€˜Carpi, doctor?’ There was a limit to being amused by unknown words.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜And if I was pushed, Sloan,’ went on the pathologist, ‘I’d say the deceased was in his late teens or early twenties.’
    â€˜Too young to die, I’d say,’ pronounced Crosby moved by a certain fellow-feeling.
    â€˜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.