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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2004 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9â15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

This eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

The right of J.M. Gregson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Gregson, J.M.

Just desserts

1. Lambert, John (Fictitious character) - Fiction

2. Hook, Bert (Fictitious character) - Fiction

3. Murder - Investigation - Fiction

4.Detective and mystery stories

I. Title

823.9'14[F]

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-316-7 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6120-7

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

To
Fred
and
Paula
Soutter,
whose
splendid
restaurant
provided
the
setting
for
this
sinister
story

One

E
veryone seemed to like him.

That is normally a good thing, an admirable thing. In this case, it would eventually make things very difficult for the police. But no one was thinking about policemen at the time.

Patrick Nayland was a model employer. Both his workforce and his customers seemed to think that. And this was the kind of business where there was plenty of evidence.

Nayland owned a small golf course outside the old market town of Oldford, in that green and pleasant part of England between the rivers Severn and Wye, where Gloucestershire runs into Herefordshire. It is a quiet and beautiful area, with the mellow stone villages and rolling hills of the Cotswolds to the north and east and the high mountains of the Brecon Beacons to the west.

This was not a pretentious golf course: it had only nine holes, and a short and undistinguished history. In the early nineties, when the proliferation of golf courses was being encouraged by a government anxious to emphasize the new leisure which was to be a feature of life in the years ahead, Patrick Nayland had obtained planning consent for a new golfing development.

With this secured, he paid a grateful farmer what seemed an extravagant price for a piece of difficult agricultural land. It had been suitable only for sheep yet Nayland had paid well above the going price for pasture land. The Gloucestershire man who had farmed this hillside since he was a boy grinned gratefully as he took the money: here was another city-dweller who had made his money too easily and spent it too freely, he decided.

But Patrick Nayland knew what he was doing. The land was beside the main road from Gloucester to Oldford. As his modest development took shape, with the forthcoming golf course proclaimed on a large sign beside the road, there was considerable interest from passing motorists. Nayland kept the changes to the minimum, using the natural contours of the land wherever possible, using the earthmoving equipment he hired just to level some areas for greens and to gouge out the small number of bunkers he thought necessary.

He planted a hundred saplings, which in due course would become quite large trees, fringing the fairways, but not narrowing them too much and not near enough to the greens to cause serious golfing problems. He did not want a course that was too difficult. âChallenging', that word beloved of more ambitious golf-course architects, was not for him. This development would be mainly for beginners and novice golfers. The game itself was quite challenging enough for them. Patrick Nayland knew his market.

He had his nine holes ready for play within fifteen months, and the customers flooded in. At first, the grass on the fairways and the greens was rather coarse and patchy, but it steadily improved with mowing. Soon you could see the shape of the holes and the landmarks provided by the bunkers, which he filled with striking, near-white sand. The place began to look like a real golf course.

And everyone liked the man who owned it.

The people who played at the long-established courses like Ross-on-Wye and the Rolls of Monmouth turned their noses up a little at the modest new nine-hole venture, but even they had to acknowledge that the new course served a useful purpose. It enabled people who had never played golf to try out this intriguing but often infuriating sport to see if it suited them. They could even hire clubs, if they couldn't find a relative's discarded ones in the attic or the garage. They could introduce themselves to the game without the considerable expense of joining the waiting list at an existing high-profile club or of purchasing shining new golfing equipment.

The venture prospered over its first ten years. Nayland gave it an impressive entrance and called it Camellia Park Golf Club. As the trees grew and the greens improved, the land matured into quite a nice-looking little course, pretty enough to attract golfers of both sexes and all ages, but modest enough in length to flatter their often limited abilities. Patrick Nayland even played it occasionally himself, waving to his patrons with a lordly proprietorial air, though he retained his membership and played his more serious golf at the nearby Ross-on-Wye Golf Club.

He visited Camellia Park regularly, keeping a fond and sometimes critical eye upon its development, but he did not manage the place himself. He employed a manager who kept a daily check on the takings and the outgoings and supervised the staff. He had found exactly the man he needed in Chris Pearson, who at forty-seven years old was just two years younger than Nayland himself.

They shared other things as well as their generation. Patrick Nayland had been a captain on a short-service commission at the time of the Falklands. He had seen active service in that curious backwater of a war, and become a major as a result. The promotion hadn't prevented him leaving after five years of the military life to pursue a career where individual initiative was not restricted by Army rules.

Yet perhaps he retained a respect for the qualities instilled by military discipline, for when he was looking for someone trustworthy and reliable to run Camellia Park, he was swayed by the Army career and the impeccable references of Christopher Pearson, who had risen through the ranks to become a warrant officer class 2. That was the rank enjoyed by sergeant-majors, and perhaps Nayland unconsciously assumed that his relationship with his manager would be that of officer and senior NCO.

Whatever the psychology involved, the partnership worked well as the new business venture developed. Pearson was a tough, no-nonsense manager of the office, the modest clubhouse, and the labour taken on as the course developed. Tough but fair: the course and domestic staff learned that they would get away with very little, but that good work would be recognized and rewarded.

And the owner of the enterprise, who had distanced himself from the day-to-day problems of the course with Pearson's appointment, remained popular with staff and customers.

On one of the last days of November, Nayland and Pearson were walking round their golf course together, devising a programme of winter work for the green staff. When the need for cutting the grass was gone, there would be time to trim trees back, to lay one or two new stretches of path, to repair the edges of bunkers which had grown shabby and unkempt with summer use. The list grew, for both men wanted the busy little course to be as neat and as fair as was possible; Chris Pearson kept a note of everything they agreed as they walked the fairways purposefully among the golfers.

There were plenty of those, for this was an unseasonally benign, mild day at the end of November. The temperature was scarcely lower than that of August, and only the early twilight and the myriad shades of red and gold on the trees and hills reminded you that autumn was well advanced. The man who owned the course and the slightly taller figure at his side did not hurry their work, for it was a pleasant day to be out in the open, and both of them knew there might not be another day as benign as this until the spring.

They agreed and marked the precise point where a flowering cherry was to be planted behind the fourth green, decided that the tee behind the sixth should be extended and that the one on the eighth should be given extra drainage to enable it to stand up to the traffic it was now carrying with the success of the course.

Most of the golfers recognized the manager if not the owner of the enterprise, and the pair received many greetings and not a few compliments on the condition of the course as they proceeded. It was the kind of day which made people happy with life in general and philosophical about the deficiencies of their golf. Even the two men who were so familiar with this scene, who knew every rise and fall of the land, every patch of grass on the little course, took a moment when they had finished their work to gaze at the crimson of the sunset and the black profile of the maturing trees against the horizon.

There was an agreeable interval of silence before Chris Pearson said, âI thought we might consider taking young Barry on full-time. The takings warrant it, and with the number of regulars we now have, I'm sure the winter green fees will be up on last year.'

Barry Hooper was a young black man they had employed for the last six months, initially part-time, then full-time, but only on a temporary basis. Patrick Nayland said, âIt's not a good time to take on new outdoor staff, with the winter coming up. There isn't the same work on the course as when we're mowing every day.'

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