Skinner’s round

The golfer laughed. 'No, not me.'

They reached Ski

Atkinson's feathered eight-iron was perfect. It rose through the still air, biting into the lush green five feet from the hole, backspin stopping it dead. Ski

`Practice, partner. Practice for a lifetime, and the impossible will become merely the difficult.'

Atkinson's birdie putt never wavered, and they moved on to the second, a 385-yard dogleg hole which bent right around the hill even more severely than the first, with an area of rough on the left placed strategically to force players, in theory, to hit iron shots from the tee.

Ski

They set off down the fairway. 'I don't mind telling you, Darren,' said Ski

This whole thing started with a murder, of a man I knew, and it's ending with something just as bad.'

`What, you mean Morton?'

`Who said anything about Morton, man?'

Atkinson paused. 'Well, he ducked out of the di

`Good guess, that. We've found Andrews all right. He's been a pain in the arse all week, but we've tracked him down.' Ski

`Good shot,' said Darren. 'Play to match par, not beat it. Pros play for birdies, all but the very best amateurs for pars. Remember that, play enough and you could get your handicap down to something near scratch.' His perfect tee shot had left him an approach of no more than 115 yards to the green. `Wedge please, caddy.' He took the club from McGuire and hit an approach to the flag which finished even closer than the shot at the first. For a moment Ski

As they moved on to the third, a 220-yard par-three with a green almost surrounded by bunkers, Atkinson was already two under par. He smacked his two-iron to the back of the long green, its widest point, leaving himself with a long putt but with his par secure. Ski

They came to the fourth tee and surveyed the 465-yard hole, its fairway bisected 240 yards away by the stream which flowed from the murky Truth Loch. 'You know, Darren,' said Ski

He shook his head. Not this time, though. Every crime committed this week has had a purpose, and very strong motives behind it. The strongest of the lot, actually: power and money. The only time we've been off balance this week was when Hector Kinture's mother sent that bloody silly note to the Scotsman.'

He fell silent as Atkinson addressed his ball and hit a towering drive, carrying the stream by fifty yards and taking a high forward bounce. He stepped up in turn, concentrating with all his might. His drive cleared the water also, and ran on to finish 300 yards out, his longest of the week.

They strode off the tee together. 'By the way,' said Ski

Atkinson looked across at him, with raised eyebrows. Ski

`You know, Darren,' he said, 'it was the way you treated poor Sue Kinture that started me thinking that maybe your feet had a touch of clay in them.

I reckon you must have women throwing themselves at you all the time. But if you took those opportunities, they'd deflect your concentration from the main mission, to be Number One, and you wouldn't be quite the ruthless bastard that you are.' They reached the narrow stone bridge which crossed the stream. Ski

`Sue's a really nice lady you know. OK, she's married and she shouldn't have made eyes at you, but old Hector is no good to her between the sheets, and out of his frustration with his condition, he gives her a hard time now and again, so there's an excuse. But she didn't deserve what you did to her, screwing her brains out in her own house on the night of the PGA di

`No gentleman behaves like that, Darren — yet that's your image, the first gentleman of golf.

I was really disappointed in you, when Sue told Sarah, and Sarah told me.

And then I realised.' He stopped at his ball, and hit an adrenaline-charged six-iron into the heart of the green. He handed the club back to Mcllhe

They stopped at Atkinson's ball. The champion took an eight-iron and hit a solid shot ten feet from the flag. 'Hope I'm not putting you off talking like this,' said Ski

They strode steadily towards the green.

`We were discussing your behaviour towards Susan. It came to me that you changed towards her after I told you about the Keyman arrangement Hector had with Michael White, and that, because of it, he wouldn't need or want any new cash in Witches' Hill.

I remembered that and I thought, "What a pity, Darren's not such a nice guy after all, shagging the poor lady just to get her to support him as the replacement investor in the venture, then dumping her when he finds that's a non-ru

He lined up his putt and sent it a foot or two past the hole, marked his ball and watched as Atkinson's ten-footer lipped the hole, drawing a gasp from the crowd, then swung a few inches past. The champion tapped in, slapping his thigh in frustration. Ski

They walked across to the fifth hole, another par-three, but shorter at 170 yards than the third.

The air seemed heavier than ever. Ski

`That's when detecting really does become like golf, Darren. After all the practice, a good golfer imagines playing the shot he's faced with, and then he plays it to make his vision reality. After all the teamwork, the good detective pictures in his mind the commission of the crime. Then he goes out to see if the evidence is there to colour in his outline. And when the really good detective goes looking, a guy like me, with a really nasty, suspicious mind, it nearly always is.'