Helen was convicted and fined £20,000 — which cleared us out. She has returned to her old bookshop job in London, and glad of the chance.
The judge gave me eighteen months. Thanks to good behaviour, I shall be released next week after serving only half the term.
Except for what Helen brings in, we’re penniless. This is why I hope your production company will consider making a film of our true story, which has yet to be told publicly in the detail I have set down in this letter.
I anxiously look forward to hearing from you.
The Bones
by Peter Turnbull
True police procedurals — stories that follow a cohort of police officers through the day-today duties of their department — are more common at novel than short story length. The reason is clear: It takes a lot of juggling to fit the stories of the several officers into the overriding crime plot. No one does it more skillfully in the short form than Peter Turnbull.
Again the man saw the bones. Again he thought nothing of them. Just bones, bones in the heather. He had got used to seeing bones up here. Bones picked clean by scavengers and microorganisms. Up here on Fenwick Moor there were many bones. The moor was Keith Stoddart’s favourite place. Up here, alone, him and his thoughts. He liked it. He lived alone. Didn’t even keep a dog. Keith Stoddart was the gamekeeper for the Apsleys at Cliff Grange House. Part of the land owned by the Apsleys included a generous section of Fenwick Moor. The moor was used for grouse shooting. Large companies purchased shooting rights for a few weeks to entertain clients and potential customers. It meant good money for the Apsleys but only if there were grouse to shoot. In May, the grouse nest and lay eggs. In the May time of the year the stoats attack the grouse nests and suck the eggs. In May, Keith Stoddart goes up to “the tops” and sets and baits grouse snares. It was as he was doing that that he saw the bones. Again.
A rib cage gleaming in the strong sunlight. It was not that he approached them, rather it was that the imaginary line along which he chose to place the snares ran close to the bones. As he drew closer, he saw with detached interest that the bones were human. A full skeleton, complete with grinning skull. He walked on, carefully placing the snares. He had a job to do.
At the close of the day, when all the snares he needed to set had been set, he walked off the tops to his isolated cottage and prepared himself a meaclass="underline" a simple stew. He ate it, savouring the food. He had, of late, come to enjoy cooking and eating what he had prepared. Then, as evening melted into night, he walked to the hotel. At the hotel he picked up the pay phone in the foyer and dialled the police.
“Found some bones,” he said.
“Bones? Human?”
“Aye. Thought they were sheep bones at first.”
“Where?”
“On the tops.”
“Where?”
“On the tops. Fenwick Moor.”
“That’s a big place.”
“Aye. Big enough.”
“We’ll need more information.”
“I’ll take you.”
“When?”
“Sunday.”
“It’s still only Monday.”
“Aye.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“Tell you on Sunday.”
“We’ll need to see those bones as soon as...”
“Why? They’re not going anywhere and no one’s going near them. They’re on private land. The only person up there this time of year is me.”
“Who are you?”
“You’ll find out.”
“You could be charged with wasting police time.”
“Sunday. No sooner. No later. That’s my day off. I’m not losing time for anybody and not for a skeleton that’s been there for years anyway.”
“I can only repeat the warning.”
“The white house.”
“The what?”
“On the Kilmarnock/Glasgow Road. As you’re coming south from Glasgow there’s a white house about halfway between Glasgow and Kilmarnock. Send some men. Turn left at the white house. It’s the road to Cliff Grange. I’ll be standing in the road from ten A.M., Sunday. I’ll wait until ten-thirty A.M., then I’ll be away and I won’t be coming back.” Stoddart replaced the phone just lightly enough not to be accused of slamming it down and walked into the bar with piped music and tartan-patterned carpet. He liked a beer at the close of the day.
Stoddart saw the police car the instant that Sergeant Piper and PC Hamilton saw him. From his point of view, the car was a small white vehicle which seemed to prowl along the lane. From the point of view of the occupants of the car, he was a solitary figure, massively built, standing in the centre of the road.
“Not the sort of guy I’d like to meet on a dark night.” Piper slowed the car and halted in front of the man.
“Imagine him with a sawn-off in his hands.” Hamilton got out of the car. As did Piper.
“You’ve come, then?” Stoddart’s eyes were hard, his jaw set firm.
“You’re the gentleman who phoned us?”
“Aye.”
“We do not appreciate being kept waiting. A corpse is a serious matter.”
“It’s not a corpse. It’s a skeleton. Anyway, that’s your lookout.”
“Who are you?”
“Stoddart. I’m the gamekeeper for Cliff Grange House.”
Piper paused. “So where is it?”
Without speaking, Stoddart turned and walked off the road and put himself at the slope of the moor as it rose up from the road to the tops. The cops were suddenly aware that they were expected to follow. They did so, but not without a struggle. Stoddart was a man in his middle years but was also a man of immense physical strength. Clearly so, given the short work he made of the slope.
“He makes it look like a Sunday morning stroll to the news agent’s.” Piper clutched at a strand of heather and hauled himself a few feet further up the slope. His shirt was saturated with sweat. Behind him, Hamilton murmured something about them going back and fetching one of the police Landrovers. Eventually they stood beside Stoddart, who showed no sign of his exertions.
“Yon tree.” Stoddart pointed across the blue-grey-black, flat, gently undulating landscape.
“What tree?” Piper panted, scanning the landscape.
“Yon tree.” Stoddart nodded to the area ahead of him, still pointing. Then Piper saw a small tree of limited growth in the middle distance. “I see it.”
“Walk towards it. You’ll come across the bones near the tree, about three hundred yards short of it.” He turned and walked down the slope.
Piper and Hamilton watched Stoddart go. “Day off.” Piper smiled. They then turned and looked at the moor. “It’s a fine day for it, anyway. Some folk do this for a pastime and you and me get to be paid for it. Come on.”
They found the bones just where Stoddart had said they would find them. The skeleton was on its back. The skull grinned at them.
“Well, he was right, in a sense,” Piper said, “six days wouldn’t have made a deal of difference in this case. Even if it is murder.”
It was, in the event, a very, very clear case of murder.
“A very clear case of murder.” Dr. Reynolds reclined in his chair. He consulted his notes as he spoke on the phone. “Either that or someone caved in the skull of an already deceased person, but I doubt it. It’s the sort of injury you get if you put a pickaxe handle over someone’s head.”