'Murder on the links' - or at least close by!

I've just been out for my final walk with the dog before bed. At this time of night I normally proceed along a level well-lit road which runs past my building and which runs alongside the cricket pitch; this is a photo I took from my apartment last May to illustrate the scene:


- this whole area (obviously completely dark now), and the road which runs along at the right (out of the photo) is tonight blocked off with 'Police do not cross' tape so I turned down the side road which runs between my side of the building and the cricket pitch toward the cricket pavilion at the bottom corner of the pitch, where I saw there was a police car parked. As I approached, the officer got out and came to talk to me and suggested I go around to the other side of the building, the putting pitch side, with my dog. I asked him what was going on, and he replied (just like you see on television) that it was 'a crime scene' and was being guarded until the crime squad could get to the site in daylight tomorrow morning.

I then asked him if it was serious - he replied 'yes, probably'. Now that I have had a chance to look at the BBC Scotland website, I realise that this was a classic British understatement, as the article I found about the incident was headed Bank manager killed in shooting - a pretty sensational development in a small place like Nairn, believe me. Crescent Road, referred to in the BBC article, is a small road running off Marine Road, which is the road I referred to at the beginning, just at the edge of the cricket pitch to the right of the bandstand (the domed structure in the photograph above) - I often cut up through Crescent Road when I walk up into the town, on the rare occasions when I don't just hop in the car. No doubt there'll be more about this in the news bulletins in the morning, although I've just watched a brief report on the incident on BBC News24.

(The heading for this article comes, by the way, from the title of one of Agatha Christie's 'whodunits')