Hole in One by Catherine Aird Read Free Book Online Page A

well get used to my face, anyway. You’re going to see a lot of it from now on.’ She stared round at the silent array of unresponsive male faces. ‘There’s no law about caddies not being female, you know. If you didn’t know, it’s called Equal Opportunities.’
    â€˜Hello, Hilary,’ said Edmund Pemberton weakly.

Chapter Five
    One-up
    â€˜Not exactly a lot to go on, is it, Inspector? Half-a-face.’ The Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital, Dr Hector Smithson Dabbe, had arrived on the scene with a flourish on the greenkeeper’s truck. ‘Although I must say I’ve had less in my time. Much less.’
    Detective Inspector Sloan decided this was no moment to say that small was beautiful and waited instead while the pathologist’s assistant, a perennially silent man called Burns, unloaded the pathologist’s bags.
    â€˜Wish we’d found that truck,’ said Crosby. ‘Riding beats walking any day.’
    â€˜At least,’ said the pathologist, taking his first look over the edge of the bunker, ‘whoever it is in there isn’t going to be troubled by the clangour of the butterflies on the green any more.’
    â€˜No, doctor.’ Sloan was non-committal. Butterflies – noisy or not – were not a problem on his roses.
    â€˜And the face isn’t frozen, nor even chilled,’ observed the pathologist, still looking down into the bunker, ‘but ambient.’
    â€˜Yes, doctor.’
    The golfers who had been standing sentinel were still keeping their distance on the fairway side of the green, as silent and attentive as mourners.
    â€˜And I daresay, Sloan,’ said the pathologist with mock solemnity, ‘you don’t want me putting my great big feet anywhere near the deceased until you’ve examined the surroundings.’
    â€˜No,’ agreed Sloan smoothly, ‘but I do want to know how long that head’s been buried in the bunker.’
    â€˜And if there’s a body attached to it,’ put in Crosby from the sidelines.

    â€˜That, too, and a good deal more, if I know the constabulary,’ murmured the pathologist. ‘Burns, my voice-recorder, please …’
    â€˜The approximate date of death would be a good start, doctor,’ said Sloan. So, too, he thought to himself, would be a name but the subject’s identity was not the pathologist’s province. This medical man dealt only with dead bodies; a surgical practice that constituted an altogether different ball game from treating live patients. Names were a police matter and someone back at the Police Station would even now, he hoped, be checking their list of persons reported missing. None immediately came to his mind.
    â€˜All in good time, Sloan, all in good time.’ The pathologist was staring down into the bunker. ‘What we could do with here are some archaeologists.’
    â€˜It’s not an old body,’ protested Sloan. He winced. ‘You can see that from here.’ It wasn’t a pretty sight either but that was not for him, a supposedly case-hardened police officer, to say.
    â€˜They’re the ones who know how to get bodies out of sand intact, though,’ said Dr Dabbe. ‘Otherwise it’s going to be something of a problem.’
    â€˜So must have been getting it in,’ said Crosby. ‘Unless there’s just the head there under the sand.’
    â€˜Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ said the pathologist casually. ‘Sand is easy enough to dig out. Beats soil any day for laboursaving. Remember that, Sloan.’
    â€˜And in due course,’ said Sloan, nodding, ‘we’re also going to want to know the cause of death.’ In his experience, that was one of the quicker ways to narrow a field of suspects: each murderer to his own method, so to speak.
    â€˜We won’t forget that, Burns, will we?’ responded the pathologist