Skinner’s round

I could simply call off today's play, but with thousands of eople heading for the course, and some of them probably underway already, I don't want to do that if I can avoid it. My technical people will be there by now. They'll do what they have to do there as quickly as possible, and we'll move the body soon as the photographers are finished. I'd like to keep the immediate area sealed off until we've given it a thorough sweep. Once we've done that I'll feel able to reopen the course.

Can you postpone the start until ten-fifteen and keep the punters out till nine-thirty?'

Anything you ask, Mr Ski

`No, leave that for the moment. I want you to keep this to yourself for now. I'll be along at Bracklands by eight o'clock. That'll give you time to alert your people at the course.

Meantime, I'd rather no one else knew about this till I get there.'

Of course,' said Highfield. 'I shall stay in my room. I can hardly cope with this, you know.

Good God, you saw Masur last night, so full of himself. Why on earth would he want to do something like this?'

Ski

He ended the call, then dialled Andy Martin's mobile number, which he still knew by heart.

Andy, 's'me. Where are you?'

`Down by the loch with Sarah. She's just finished. She says that it's Masur all right. She thinks that he was cracked on the head, then dunked in the pond. He's been in there long enough for the fishes to have had a few nibbles.'

A shiver of sudden excitement ran through Ski

The crime scene people are here, plus Alison and Neil’

‘Good. I'll be down as soon as Sarah gets back. How many uniforms have you got with you?'

`Boyd and young Pye are here, and there are three more up at the clubhouse.

OK. Use as many people as you can to do a fast sweep of the area around the stool, looking for anything at all. Hankies, footprints, blunt instruments… oh yes, and fag-ends. You never can tell.'

He paused. 'Once that's under way, I want you to head up to Bracklands. See the Marquis and tell him — and him alone — what's happened. And take Mcllhe

`With a wee bit of luck, when the house guests come down to breakfast you and I'll be there to give them all a nasty surprise… except that for one of them, I don't think it'll be a surprise at all!'

Thirty-five

His wellies were less trendy than his wife's. They were the old-fashioned, wide-topped, black sort, and they had lain in the dark recesses of successive car boots for over ten years. The dried mud of countless crime scenes packed the ridges of their soles, and another layer was being added as Ski

The body still sat in the chair, crumpled and shapeless. The right eye was slightly open. There was no sparkle there, no light, no life. The weight of the head was pressing the jaw into the chest, and the fleshy bottom lip stuck out grotesquely.

Old Japanese proverb,' said Ski

He pushed himself to his feet. With a squelch, he backed away, then climbed up the slope to where Alison Higgins and Mario McGuire were standing on firmer ground.

'A right nasty bastard, was Mr Masur,' he said. 'I thought he might have had something coming to him. Didn't think it'd arrive so fast, though. Have the photographers finished?'

`Yes, sir,' said Higgins, 'and the technicians say they can't do any more here either. They've taken samples from the rope that ties this thing down. Now they're looking for footprints around the bollard to which it's attached. They think they've found the exact point where Masur was loaded into the chair.

‘D'you see how it was done?' She took several steps past the pillar of the stool, which rose from the ground beside the steepest point of the bank to an area where the flatter ground widened out. She grabbed the rope which hung from the end of the long wooden boom which carried the chair. It was at least ten feet above her head. 'When there's nothing in the stool this can be moved about, no bother, and can be swung over there.' She pointed to an area behind Ski

Ski

On the other end of the boom, the chair and Masur's dead Weight rose, dripping, into the air, with surprising ease. 'No problem. The length of the lever makes it relatively simple, if you've got the basic strength to get the bugger off the deck! Holding the body aloft, he stepped to his left, to the very edge of the bank, and lowered it, gently, on to flatter, drier ground, just beside the sectioned area. He unwound the rope from his wrists, and brushed the hemp strands from the sleeves of his jacket, then walked back, ducklike in his flapping wellingtons, to rejoin Higgins and McGuire.

`You can have the body removed now. PDQ in fact, just in case there are any long-range cameras on the scene already. Make sure the ambulance doesn't go out past the clubhouse, but along the buggy track and out through the Bracklands Estate road.

`Complete the sweep of the ground as fast as you can, then tape off the spot where the body was landed, and clear everyone out of here; by nine-thirty if you can manage it.'

McGuire looked at Ski

I don't see why it shouldn't, unless I have to arrest all the players! The body'll be out of the way, and the public can't contaminate the site. Deacon Weekes's team will be one short, but I'm sure he'll manage.

OK, you two attend to all that stuff. I'm off to join Andy for a working breakfast at Bracklands!'

Thirty-six

Bracklands was a truly great house, a palace of yellow stone. It stood in the centre of a vast oval paddock, enclosed by a surround of high trees, planted over the centuries to shield its masters' eyes from the privations of their tenants, and to hide from theirs, in turn, the splendour which their toil helped to sustain.

`So what's new?' Ski