Blackstone's Pursuits by Quintin Jardine

Author:Quintin Jardine [Jardine, Quintin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Crime, General, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, Fiction
ISBN: 9780747254607
Google: KGfGHAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0747254605
Goodreads: 1703374
Publisher: Headline Book Publishing
Published: 2013-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

In which we play seventeen holes and the Jag stays on the road.

She does, of course. Pretty well too. We were lucky to get a threesome off at Elie on a Saturday afternoon, but my Dad’s been a member there since God was a boy.

Elie Golf House Club has to be the only course in the world with a submarine periscope built into its starter’s hut. No. I’m not joking. A submarine periscope.

We were waved off, and my Dad clumped an awkward drive halfway up the face of the hill, 100 yards in front of the first tee, which makes the contraption necessary. Prim and I, sharing my clubs - the Nissan’s boot serves as a locker for all my sports gear -- clipped our shots safely over the direction post, and we were off.

The quirky old course, spread out on its three fields, unfolded itself for us in the afternoon sun. Our golf was pure mince but we didn’t care. It was a nice afternoon, if a bit windy, and Prim and my Dad got on like a house on fire. Eventually, like many an Elie golfer, we decided to skip the eighteenth hole and go straight to the nineteenth. The old Golf Tavern has changed less, probably than any pub I know. My Dad still calls it ‘Elrick’s’, although that licensee has been gone from it since I was a child.

I got them in, and we sat at a table in the window, crunching crisps and playing dominoes.

‘So what’s this story,’ said my Dad, slamming down the double five, ‘that you were going to tell me? What brought you up here?’

I looked at Prim. She nodded.

‘Okay, but we better finish the dominoes, ’cause it’ll put you right off your game.’

‘Nonsense. You could poke me in both eyes with a sharp stick and you still couldn’t beat me at Doms. Come on, tell me your story.’

‘If you insist. After you’ve got them in.’

He shook his head. ‘My God! Does everything have a price?’ He stood up and took the single step across to the high bar counter. He was no sooner back with two pints of Deuchars and a small whisky for him than the door creaked open. The Golf Tavern is a great place for old bodgers. This one had a dog, a great, fat, slavering labrador. It was the sort of dog you find at one time or another in every country pub, its function being to see its master home in time for supper.

The old bodger turned out to be a patient. ‘Hello Mac,’ he hailed, the red capillaries standing out on his nose. ‘Don’t see you along here very often. Glad I bumped into you. Had this terrible bloody ache for a week now.’ He hauled his loose lips wide apart to reveal a yellow canine of which the lab would have been ashamed. Half an hour and two more dog walkers later, we made it back to Dad’s elderly Jag, parked outside the clubhouse. ‘Jesus!’ he spluttered, as he eased himself behind the big dish of the steering wheel.

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