Read Hole in One for Free Online

you.’
    â€˜I can well believe it,’ said Sloan, thankful that his own hobby was growing roses. What spoiled those were more manageable black spot and greenfly.
    The camera shutter clicked again and again. ‘Now, what?’ asked Williams.
    â€˜Some close-ups of the grass beyond, next,’ said Sloan. ‘And anywhere where there might be extra sand. It must have been put somewhere while a hole was dug for the body.’
    â€˜And the body parked somewhere else,’ contributed Crosby.
    â€˜Will do,’ said Williams obligingly.
    â€˜If there is a body, that is,’ added Crosby.
    â€˜And there may still be footprints in the grass.’ Detective Inspector Sloan persisted with his requirements in spite of Crosby’s unhelpful coda. There had been stranger things than bent and broken blades of vegetation that had come to the aid of an investigation: there had been forensic entomologists and their decay-hungry little beetles whose evidence had clinched a case.
    â€˜Consider it done,’ said Williams largely. ‘And then?’
    â€˜The general layout of the green and bunker,’ said Sloan.
    â€˜Oh, and the pattern of the raked sand in the other bunkers round about here as well as in this one.’
    â€˜Good thinking for a non-player,’ nodded Williams approvingly. ‘Someone must have smoothed this one over afterwards. Mind you,’ he added righteously, ‘in theory a player is supposed to leave the bunker in as good a condition as he found it.’
    â€˜â€œPlease remember, don’t forget”,’ chanted Crosby, ‘“Never leave the bathroom wet”. My landlady’s got that
hanging up on a card behind the door …’
    â€˜What we don’t know yet,’ said Sloan, leaving aside the educational works of the late Mabel Lucie Attwell, ‘is whether whoever disturbed the bunker in the first place is a golfer or not.’
    â€˜Or who it was who’s in there,’ volunteered Crosby helpfully.
    â€˜Pix of an unidentified head, then,’ said Williams, unpacking something like an archaeologist’s measuring stick. ‘Make a note of that, Dyson.’
    Dyson, who was busy changing a camera lens, nodded.
    â€˜And first views of crime scene.’ Williams jerked his shoulder. ‘How much of the course do you want, Inspector?’
    â€˜The approach, for starters.’
    â€˜As any good golfer will tell you,’ the photographer said neatly, ‘it’s the approach shot that counts. Never up, never in, of course, too.’
    Detective Inspector Sloan didn’t need telling. A lot of good policing came down to the right approach. Especially at domestics.
    Williams pointed his camera down into the bunker. ‘No use asking this one to watch the birdie, though, is it?’
    â€˜None,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan repressively.
    â€˜Nothing to watch it with,’ added his detective Constable unnecessarily. ‘Not now.’
    Â 
    Woman Police Sergeant Perkins, familiarly known at the Police Station as Pretty Polly, pushed open the door in the Golf Clubhouse marked “Lady Members Only” without ceremony. She was dressed in mufti and looked as if she could have swung a golf club with the best of them. She didn’t need to ask for Helen Ewell. An incoherent, tear-stained young woman was very much at the centre of a circle of would-be comforters.

    The only woman who looked up as the policewoman came through the door was older and had been standing attentively to one side of the group. She advanced, hand outstretched. ‘I don’t think I know you. Are you a new member?’ she said to Polly Perkins. ‘If so, welcome, although I’m afraid you’ve arrived at a rather awkward moment.’
    â€˜Sergeant Perkins,’ said Polly. ‘Police.’ As job descriptions went, she found that was usually enough.
    It was quite enough for the Lady Captain.