The Reckoning by Rennie Airth Page A

Yard fellows are supposed to be the experts.’
    â€˜How did he come to lose it?’
    â€˜Now that’s a question I can answer.’ Morgan winked. ‘At least I think so. It hasn’t been tested yet, but I’ll bet you now it’s a dud. My guess is the killer hit on it with his first try and had to eject the cartridge and fire again. He’s a cool customer, all right, but not so cool that he remembered to pick up the bullet afterwards. It could be his first mistake.’
    He had shown Billy photographs of Singleton’s body lying on its side on the towpath, curled into a near-foetal position.
    â€˜Looks to me as though he might have tried to get up just as he was shot, and fell forward and to the side.’
    Other pictures taken at the morgue showed a blackened hole at the base of the victim’s skull.
    â€˜According to the pathologist, the gun was only inches away when the shot was fired. It struck the base of the skull, severing the spinal cord. We won’t have the full post-mortem results untilthis afternoon, but he said it must have been carefully aimed. Death would have been instantaneous.’
    When Billy offered to give the bullet back to Morgan, he shook his head.
    â€˜You keep it. This is going to be a Yard case: I feel it in my bones. But if I were you, I’d get my ballistics boys to have a look at that.’
    They had driven out to Port Meadow in Billy’s car. On the way Morgan had filled him in on the events of the previous afternoon.
    â€˜It was getting on for five o’clock when Singleton got out there. He walked the dog every day – his wife told us that – and they generally went to Port Meadow.’
    â€˜So it was a fixed routine?’
    â€˜Pretty much so. He was as regular as clockwork.’
    After they had parked, Morgan had led his colleague down a narrow lane and after they had crossed the railway line Billy had seen a wide expanse of grass ahead of them with a pond in the middle of it. Other than some cows that were grazing near the water, the meadow was largely deserted and the two men had walked across it to the towpath.
    Now, as they approached the murder site – and the small crowd gathered around it – three men carrying notebooks and pencils separated themselves from the group and hurried towards them.
    â€˜I forgot to mention it,’ Morgan murmured in Billy’s ear. ‘But the press are on to this. My phone started ringing first thing this morning. They know about the Sussex shooting, but they haven’t tied it to that business in Scotland yet, so far as I’m aware.’
    As the three men came nearer he spoke to them.
    â€˜Not now, lads. I’ll have a word with you later at the station.’
    Ignoring their protests, he shouldered his way past. Billy followed and they made their way through the ring of spectatorsand joined two plain-clothes men and a pair of uniformed officers who were standing watch over a cartoon figure in outline that had been marked out with white tape pegged to the ground. Beside it was a wooden bench, to which Morgan pointed.
    â€˜As far as we can gather, he was sitting there, and whoever shot him must have come out of those bushes.’
    He pointed again – this time to a clump of laurel bushes that were growing a few paces behind the bench.
    â€˜It seems Singleton had let the dog off the lead. We haven’t found anyone yet who saw him sitting on the bench – the towpath was more or less deserted; it was getting late – but there was a boat out on the river with a college crew, and their cox heard the shot as they went by.’
    Morgan turned to face the river and Billy turned with him.
    â€˜They were coming upstream and the cox was yelling out the stroke through a megaphone. Just as they passed he heard a sound that he later realized must have been a shot and he glanced round for a moment – only a moment, mind you, for he was guiding the