Death on the Eleventh Hole by J. M. Gregson Read Free Book Online

reserved for members of the public. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’
    ‘Well, it’s probably nothing.’ The opening any CID man had heard hundreds of times. ‘But I thought it was something you should know about.’
    ‘Who are you, please?’ said Rushton politely, his hands poised over his computer keyboard.
    ‘Sorry! My name is Jason Gillespie. I’m a Catholic priest. I run a care centre in Gloucester, St Anne’s House.’
    ‘I know it, Father. To be strictly accurate, I know of it, and something about the work you do, but I’ve never been there. Well, you think that you have something which relates to our investigation, or you wouldn’t have been put through here.’
    ‘Yes. It may be nothing, as I say, but I thought I’d better report it. You never know quite how much attention to pay to addicts.’
    Rushton took a swift decision. ‘I think I’d better come over and see you. This would be better done face to face.’
    ‘I must confess that I’d find it easier, if you could spare the time.’
    ‘I’ll just get someone else to take over here. I’ll be over early this afternoon.’
    There was always time, when the crime was murder. Always resources: even the bureaucratic straitjackets of overtime were not powerful enough to constrain murder investigations. And for an inspector fiercely conscious of his career prospects, the chance to unearth an addict who had strangled Kate Wharton was immensely attractive.
    ***
    DI Rushton left the murder room at Ross Golf Club and arranged for a detective sergeant to take over temporary responsibility for assembling the information coming in from house-to-house and other enquiries. At the same moment, the captain of another golf club, eight miles away at Oldford, was concluding his Wednesday morning four-ball game with his friends.
    They knew each other well, these four men. All of them were just over sixty and recently retired or semi-retired. Richard Ellacott had his own accountancy business and still went in two days a week to deal with a few of his old accounts. Since he was this year’s Captain of Oldford Golf Club, he was appearing in the office even less frequently, in order to give full and conscientious attention to his duties at the golf club.
    In truth, these were not onerous. Oldford was a small club, less prestigious and less demanding of its Captain’s time than a club like Ross. Ellacott could probably have joined Ross, but he was comfortable at Oldford, and his golf was mediocre enough for him to recognize that he might not have enjoyed the longer and trickier course at Ross. He had played there often in club matches, and had never been able to command the straight hitting which the course demanded.
    And if he was honest, he knew he would never have become Captain there, whereas his long membership at Oldford had more or less ensured that the honour would come his way in time. He was enjoying the captaincy of this smaller club, basking in the kudos it gave him as he moved around the clubhouse and spoke to members, displaying what he thought of as an easy panache among the ladies when he played with them in mixed competitions.
    Yet this morning, when they had showered and changed after the golf, he was not his normal ebullient self with his companions. He was first at the bar and bought his round of drinks, but the normal banter among the four who had played seemed to pass him by. When they twitted him about the two-foot putt he had missed to win the sixteenth, he grinned weakly and failed to come up with his normal unprintable riposte. It seemed to his partner, who had lost money by his Captain’s omission, that he scarcely remembered the moment. Which for any golfer anywhere would have been mighty unusual.
    Richard Ellacott must have had something on his mind, but no one was certain what it was.
    Even his greetings to members coming into the club were abnormally muted. He responded rather than taking the initiative, as he usually did. At his own