Murder on the green

CHAPTER TWO-1

CHAPTER TWOSEVEN O’CLOCK.

The solar orb was rising over the estuary of the River Earn, rousing Scotland from its torpor. The sunbeams began gliding over the still rumpled sheets of the North Sea revealing its opalescent curves. The waves, naked and pacified, were of a rare beauty… Sweeney had never tired of the spectacle.

The Ford Escort headed south, its faded green paint unaffected by the light of the morning sun. The young inspector’s red beard was the only thing blazing under the warm rays of the dawning day. Sweeney was blinded by the brilliant light. He leaned over to his left and extracted a pair of battered Ray-Bans from the obscurity of the glove compartment. Then he glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard. It was seven o’clock. It’s perfect, he thought, I’ll be in St Andrews in less than fifteen minutes.

*

SWEENEY HAD SPENT the previous evening in Aberdeen at his Aunt Midge’s. He had brought her his pedigreed Dachshund, Berthie, in anticipation of his upcoming trip to the United States.

Before leaving his Edinburgh studio, he’d taken the precaution of calling his aunt to ask her if she would look after his eczema-ridden terrier while he worked on his first case. He told her, adding a bit of flattery, that she was the only person he trusted to take care of his dog. He also asked her if he could have dinner with her and spend the night before he left for Dundee the next morning.

They were purely rhetorical questions though. He well knew that his aunt Midge was incapable of refusing him anything and that his room upstairs was always ready for him. All this palaver was just a subtle game between Sweeney and his aunt, a secret code to increase their pleasure at seeing each other again.

Aunt Midge had raised Sweeney. She had taken the five-year-old orphan into her home in the waterfront district of Aberdeen. She gave her brother’s son the only bedroom, covered in yellow wallpaper, of the house. And she made do with a bed hurriedly installed in the storeroom behind the kitchen.

The small brick house had belonged to Grandpa Sweeney, a docker. His unmarried daughter inherited it on his death. Aunt Midge had never imagined that her solitude would end so abruptly, with the arrival of the young boy she learnt to love as her own.

Aunt Midge was proud of Archie’s success. She had prayed and thanked God profusely for Sweeney’s acceptance at Police College… But how she missed her nephew now!

*

THE CAR REACHED the end of the bridge over the estuary and entered the county of Fife. Sweeney had eaten a hearty breakfast an hour and a half earlier, served by his Aunt Midge. She had kissed him on the cheek and then, as usual, she had sent him on his way, telling him to drive carefully. She knew perfectly well why Archie needed to leave so early. She watched him disappear alone into the night.

No matter where he was going, every time Sweeney drove out of Aberdeen, he first headed west on the A93 following the narrow and lively river Dee on his left. He would drive for about twenty minutes and on reaching Crathes Castle, he would leave his old green Ford in an often muddy car park. He would continue on foot and walk on the moors, his sense of direction taking him unfailingly north better than any compass. Sweeney ignored the rare paths for he knew he would be able to find it even in the darkest of nights.

At the bottom of a glen, behind a nearly bare knoll, it would suddenly appear. Sweeney would get closer, extending his hand as though to better understand, then touch it. The granite cross had been standing there, dignified and doleful, for twenty years.

Sweeney would brush it with his hands, caressing it. He would close his eyes and with just the tip of his fingers make out the engraved inscription:

In Memory of Jack and Rosa Sweeney

Murdered on the moor November 21, 1984

The year he turned five… Bloody hell! And each time his fragile fingers would linger, wishing he could carve the ever-missing line into the stone, the name of the son of a b***h who had forever deprived him of his parents! What harm could the two lovebirds have been doing walking through the heather? Why would anyone have wanted to blow their brains out with two shots from a rifle at close range? His vocation was rooted in these unanswered questions.

Sweeney, to attenuate his suffering, liked to imagine his parents still walking hand in hand somewhere on the moor… And after touching the cold and silent stone one last time, Sweeney would return to his own life.

That morning, after leaving Crathes Castle, Sweeney drove south towards the sea in the direction of Stonehaven. A bit further, on the motorway to Dundee, he was briefly deprived of the calming influence of the waves. When he arrived in the still sleeping town, the young inspector felt it was too early for the appointment made three days earlier with his Dundee colleagues, Stirling and Moray.

Rather than wasting time at a café near the station or on the docks, he decided to use the interval before his appointment in a constructive manner. He chose to have a quick look at the St Andrews golf course where Amanda Nelson’s body had been found buried in the sand. He was only about ten minutes away.

Sweeney drove along the seashore in the gentle light of the rising sun. He came to a sign marked ‘St Andrews Links’ showing a monk in a cassock holding two golf clubs crossed against his chest. Sweeney followed the arrow pointing to the left and let the sea breeze guide him.

About a hundred yards down the road, the Ford Escort drove hesitantly into a gigantic car park.

Sweeney decided to park in the protective shadow of the clubhouse.

The young inspector slammed the heavy car door shut and felt the frosty morning air assaulting his back. The hair in his beard bristled as if surprised by the cold. So with a firm step, he hurried towards the comforting rays of the sun.

*

“HEY, MISTER! Get away from there.”

Sweeney was surprised and turned towards the buildings. He saw a man suddenly appear from an adjoining shed like a jack-in-the-box. He was thin-faced and very lean like a typical Highlander.

The golf club employee was gesticulating so wildly his grey velvet cap was at risk of falling from its perch atop his head.

“Hey! I said get away from there. Och, are you deaf?” he shouted again, waving his pruning shears threateningly across the newly mowed lawn.

Sweeney was petrified by the vociferations and gesticulations of the man he thought to be a gardener and stood still. Then the grey cap suddenly started advancing towards him.

The lanky man appeared to be in his fifties. His forehead bent low as though to cut through the wind more easily, he was muttering to himself:

“It’s too much. They’re going to drive me doolally. Do we need to hire security guards or what?”

The furious gardener reached the outer limits of the patch of light-coloured, perfectly even grass in the centre of which Sweeney was standing and stopped short.

“Where do you think you are?” he barked.

“This is private property. Haven’t you seen the signs?”

“Er… Of course I have. I just wanted to see what a golf hole looked like. I noticed that flag over there and I decided to have a look. I didn’t think it was forbidden,” explained the embarrassed inspector.

The man in the grey cap rolled his eyes.

“That’s a first! Look at a hole… Go, get off the green right now. In case you haven’t noticed it’s not visiting hours yet!”

Sweeney was reassured by the gardener’s touch of humour. He complied with the instructions and stepped away from the flag marked eighteen and finally removed his feet from the circle of green grass. And when he got closer to the ill-tempered guardian of St Andrews, he was struck by the odour of lawnmower fuel emanating from the man’s clothing.

Despite the good will shown by the interloper, the Highlander was still fuming:

“What the bloody ‘ell are you doing here? What are you looking for? If you’re just a snoop or a reporter, and they’re all the same to me, I’m warning you, I’m going to call the police.”

“But the police are already here,” retorted Sweeney.

It was the first time the young inspector needed to show his brand new police badge so he had to rummage awkwardly through his wallet before he was finally able to proudly produce his ID.

“Inspector Sweeney, CID. I’ve come about the young woman found murdered here two weeks ago.”

It was the turn of the man in the grey cap to look sheepish.

“Och, at this hour? You should have given us some warning. How was I supposed to know? I thought it was all over. I gave my statement to your colleagues when they were here.”

“The investigation is ongoing, sir. It’s not that simple, you know. Would you mind showing me where the victim was found?”

“Er… It wouldn’t be a problem since I’m the one that found her, except…”

“Oh, you must be the gardener who found her, is that right? I’ve…”

“Greenkeeper, sir, not gardener. It’s not at all the same thing.”

“Oh, excuse me! I don’t know a thing about golf. Do you have a few minutes to show me where she was found?”

“It’ll take more than a few minutes. It’s not nearby. And there’s lots of work to be done in the morning before we open. We don’t stand around doing nothing. Right, don’t move. I’ll check with my lads. They can start on the Jubilee course, by the time I get back… Stay here, okay?” And Sweeney watched the lanky chap disappear again into the shed.

Several minutes later, the greenkeeper re-emerged driving one of those comical electric carts that Sweeney had only seen on television until then.

“Do you want to get on, sir? Like I told you, it isn’t nearby.”

The inspector, feeling slightly intimidated, hopped onto the cart to the left of the greenkeeper. He noticed that the driver had difficulty fitting his overly long legs under the steering wheel. However, the cart started silently and leapt onto the road which seemed to disappear into the perfectly organised jungle of bi-coloured green lawns, little red flags and invisible holes.

“Sorry I shouted at you earlier, sir. When I saw you wandering around the green at the eighteenth hole of the Old Course, I thought I was going to go doolally.”

“The Old Course?”

“You’ve never heard of it? You must be joking. It’s the oldest golf links in the world! People have been playing there for six hundred years. This is the place where the rules were invented, so you can imagine…”

“No, not really.”

“This course is a monument to golf. It’s like the pyramids of Egypt or the Tower of London. Any self-respecting golfer has to play here at least once in his life. You have to have golfed here. There’s a weeks-long if not months-long waiting list. So the other day when I found her… Good God! I never would have thought something like that could happen to me. Been working here for thirty-five years and this had to happen just before I’m due to retire. This would never have happened twenty years ago. Nowadays people don’t give a damn about anything.”

“Tell me, Mr… er…?”

“Logan, Harry Logan. I’m the head greenkeeper.”

“Mr Logan, are those holes over there on our left the Old Course?”

“No, the Old Course is just the holes along the path. There are six courses in all: the Old Course, the New Course, the Jubilee, the Eden, the Strathtyrum, and the Balgove. It’s like a production line. Hundreds of players come here every day, good ones to boot. And two weeks ago it was even worse.”

“Because of the British Open?”

“No, not exactly. The Open was played Thursday to Sunday at the Royal Troon, near Glasgow on the west coast. But just before that, most of the pros were here, Will Tyron Jr., Robby Elster and all the others, the cream of the crop. They came to practise because the conditions here are similar to those of the Open. So that’s when the American was done in, huh? When they were still here? At any rate that’s what your colleagues said.”

“Yes, that’s right. Probably on the Tuesday afternoon before the start of the British Open.”