18 - Aftershock

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Which can be withdrawn at any time.’

  ‘He can try, sir, but the sugar-cube necklet does him. He took it off the girl’s body and gave it to his ex-wife. I’ll grant you that I’d have been happier if the lab had found gunshot residue on his clothes, but even without that, and without the weapon, the evidence against him is so strong that I want to do him for murder. Think about it. We don’t even need to prove that he shot her: a jury might find that by moving the body he made himself an accessory.’

  ‘Maybe in England, Becky,’ the superintendent chuckled, ‘but on this side of the border we have a third possible verdict, “not proven”. In this case, your jury might well decide to hide behind that.’

  ‘What’s the difference between that and “not guilty”?’

  ‘For the accused, there is none in practical terms. He’s acquitted of the charge, once and for all. For the jury? I’ve never been on one, so I can’t say for sure, but most people reckon that it gives them the chance of saying to the guy in the dock, “We reckon you’re guilty, but we needed more proof.” I can’t give you any better explanation than that, but it’s been around for a long time, and it was a cop-out in capital cases when at least eight out of the fifteen couldn’t bring themselves to send someone to be hanged.’

  ‘Fifteen?’

  McIlhenney nodded. ‘We have a fifteen-person jury, and eight- seven is an acceptable verdict. If you want to press on with a murder charge, do that, but ultimately it’s a Crown Office decision and they’ll have all these things in mind. However, as you say, we have him by the short and curlies on a charge of perverting the course of justice. In theory, he could get life for that; he won’t but if I was in his shoes I’d plead guilty in the hope that my counsel would offer enough in mitigation to talk the judge out of an exemplary sentence.’

  ‘He’ll go to jail, though?’

  Seated beside her, Jack McGurk snorted. ‘Too bloody right he will. This is a murder inquiry, and he’s a police officer: if he gets less than five years, he’ll be lucky.’

  ‘And if he’s guilty of that murder, he’ll be even luckier. He and his solicitor had time to concoct that story between them.’

  ‘You’ve met too many bent lawyers in London, Becky,’ said the sergeant. ‘Frankie Bristles may be a police witness’s worst nightmare, but she’s an officer of the Court and one of the highest legal-aid earners in Scotland. I might not like her very much, but I don’t have any doubts about her integrity. If Weekes made up that story, then he did it himself.’

  ‘If?’ Stallings exclaimed. ‘Jack, are you saying you think he was telling the truth?’

  The superintendent intervened: ‘No, I think he’s saying we can’t disprove it categorically. If Weekes is charged with murder, that’s what he’ll come out with in the witness box. Unless we can find the gun and put it in his hand, through a witness or through forensics, then at least eight of those fifteen people I mentioned earlier will see that hole in our case, and he’ll get off through the bastard verdict, as “not proven” was described by none other than Sir Walter Scott.’

  ‘Who’s he? A famous Scots lawyer?’

  McIlhenney looked at her, shook his head sadly, and continued: ‘On Monday, our first reaction was that we were looking at a copycat. The defence will suggest that we still are, and who knows? They might be right.’ He frowned. ‘You can forget the accessory idea, by the way. You’d need to establish a link with someone else to make that stick. In this one, he either did it or he didn’t.’

  ‘So what do you want me to do, sir?’ Stallings asked.

  ‘I want you to make a choice,’ McIlhenney replied. ‘You can go downstairs and lay the murder on him right now, or you can go and see the procurator fiscal and ask for his opinion. As I said, at the end of the day it’s the Crown Office that does the prosecuting, not us.’

  ‘That would be the sensible thing to do, wouldn’t it?’ the inspector mused.

  ‘Pragmatic.’

  ‘Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go up to Chambers Street this afternoon.’

  ‘No,’ said the superintendent, quickly. ‘Leave it until tomorrow morning. Gregor Broughton’s due back then; he’s got the soundest hands in that place. I wouldn’t trust anything to that new assistant of his. Be in his office as soon as he’s hung up his jacket, and tell him where we’ve got to. Before Weekes goes into court for his first formal hearing, Gregor can decide whether to proceed with the murder charge, and whether to oppose the bail application that Ms Birtles will undoubtedly make.’

  Forty-four

  ‘What made you come to this place?’ the officer asked, in clear English. He wore three chevrons on his epaulettes, which told Skinner that he was dealing with a sub-inspector, a rank in the Mossos d’Esquadra that had no direct equivalent in Scotland.

  He pointed back towards the town. ‘I have a house over there. Earlier today, I happened to look at this area through my binoculars and noticed the woman. A few hours later, I looked again. I saw that she was still here, and that she didn’t appear to have moved.’

  ‘You were watching her, señor?’ The policeman’s left eyebrow rose; so did Skinner’s hackles.

  ‘I was observing the scene, sonny. It’s a habit of mine; it comes with my profession.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘I’m a police officer, in Edinburgh. In your ranking structure I’m a comisario. What’s your name, Sub-inspector? Como te llamas?’

  ‘Torres.’ Caution crept into his voice; Skinner guessed that he might be remembering hearing of a senior Scottish policeman who was in town.

  ‘Well, Señor Torres, I suggest that you stop playing the boy detective and get your arse into action. This lady is dead. That’s not in doubt; I’ve seen more dead people than you have officers in your local station, and I’m telling you she is. You need to find out how and why. You may have been the first available English-speaking officer to respond to my phone call, but now it’s time for you to follow proper procedures. You need to get a medic here, and you need to call in your specialist colleagues. Then you need to position your corporal colleague to prevent any curious people making their way down here to see what’s happening.’

  Sub-inspector Torres came approximately to attention and saluted. ‘Yes, Comisario.’ He reached for the radio on his belt, then hesitated. ‘What should I say? She died of the heat, yes? Too long in the sun?’

  Skinner sighed; clearly, Torres had spent much of his career in the administrative section of the Catalan force. ‘If she did,’ he said, ‘she committed suicide. And in twenty-five years’ police experience, I’ve never heard of anyone setting out to kill themselves by UV radiation. Look at her, man! She has no water. She has no sun-cream. She has no shade. She has no towel. Last, but not least, she has no clothes. That tells you what, Señor Torres?’

  The sub-inspector shrugged, in a way that very few people can, other than Catalans.

  ‘It should tell you,’ Skinner continued patiently, ‘either that the seagulls have stolen everything she had, that she threw her kit into the sea, that she walked here naked and unburdened, or that somebody walked with her or followed her here, and took everything away after she was dead, after he had killed her.’ He looked at the man intently. ‘You understand what I’m saying?’

  ‘Sí, Comisario,’ Torres murmured.

  ‘Then get on your radio, and tell your criminal division they’re needed here.’

  As the sub-inspector did as he had been ordered, Skinner stared down at the woman’s body. With his instructions being relayed, his thoughts returned to other images he had seen, photographs taken in other places, and the uncanny similarity to his own discovery.

  He knelt beside the body once more, but this time he rolled the dead woman on to her side. It was difficult, as rigor mortis was advanced, even in the heat, but he had the strength to turn her and then to hold her in position with one hand, as he lifted the hair from the back of her neck with the other . . . and looked at the impossi
ble.

  There, just above the hairline, in the centre of a patch of encrusted blood, was a single small entry wound.

  He laid the body of the murder victim back as he had found her, then sat on the rocks. ‘Oh, shit,’ he whispered softly to himself, allowing all the implications of his find to flood into his mind.

  Forty-five

  ‘I’d hoped for an earlier appointment,’ said Deputy Chief Constable Andy Martin, stone-faced. ‘It’s gone three thirty.’

  The Crown Agent peered at him over a pair of half-moon spectacles. ‘You’re damn lucky I’m seeing you at all,’ he snapped. ‘This business has grown legs: it’s a damn nonsense. I tell you, Martin, the Lord Advocate agreed to co-operate with this against my advice. It’s a reflection on this office, and it’s a waste of my valuable time.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you’d repeat that for the tape, Mr Dowley, once Chief Inspector Mackenzie sets it up.’

  ‘Tape? What bloody tape?’

  ‘This is a formal interview. It will be recorded.’

  ‘Oh, really! This is too much. I’m Her Majesty’s Agent, man. You wouldn’t treat the Lord Advocate like this, or the Lord President.’

  Martin remained impassive, as Mackenzie produced a portable mini-disk recorder from his briefcase and laid it on Dowley’s coffee-table. ‘The Lord Advocate has agreed to be interviewed,’ he said, ‘if it proves necessary. As for the Lord President, if Sir James Proud asked me to rake through his dustbin, I’d do it.’ Uninvited, he settled into a chair, and stared hard at his host until he followed suit. In his mind’s eye, he saw McGuire and McIlhenney, in similar circumstances, making barbed comments about the absence of coffee and biscuits.

  He had done his homework in advance of the encounter, and was familiar with the man’s background. He had been in the Crown Office for over twenty years, having joined as an assistant fiscal after a short, unremarkable career in private practice, and had worked his way quietly through the ranks. His appointment as Crown Agent had come in the new age of openness and public accountability ushered in by the Scottish Executive. It had been a surprise, as few senior figures in the legal establishment had ever heard of Joe Dowley, but he had wasted no time in making his mark.

  Looking at him, Martin saw a small man, with red cheeks that spoke of excitability and perhaps a touch of hypertension, and hair that seemed to fly backwards from a high forehead. In spite of the warmth of the summer day, he wore a three-piece suit with a watch-chain falling from one lapel of his jacket into its breast pocket, and a small circular gold badge on the other.

  ‘Shall we begin, Mr Dowley?’ he said. ‘For the record I am DCC Andrew Martin of Tayside Police, accompanied by Chief Inspector David Mackenzie, from Fettes, and we are with Mr Joseph Dowley, Crown Agent, in his office.’

  ‘An intrusion which I protest,’ the civil servant responded. ‘I maintain that this is an entirely unnecessary procedure. It’s a charade. I’m told that your colleagues already have a man in custody for this latest crime, and that the press are saying he’s a police officer. That makes this discussion irrelevant.’

  ‘Nobody’s told us to stop, Mr Dowley, and I’m pretty sure that Sir James would have if the issue had been resolved. As for your opinion, you’re entitled to express it, but don’t expect me to agree with you. I don’t play charades. I wouldn’t have agreed to undertake this task if I hadn’t believed it to be appropriate. I’d remind you also that it was set in motion by the chief constable, not a man given to flights of fancy, although you seem to be questioning that.’

  For the first time, Dowley’s face took on a look of something other than aggression. ‘No, no,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I don’t doubt Sir James’s integrity, only his judgement, in this one instance.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can,’ Martin replied. ‘If my information is correct, he didn’t set this ball rolling. You did.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By refusing to allow your staff to co-operate with a murder inquiry.’

  ‘This office instigates murder inquiries.’

  David Mackenzie’s laugh took Dowley by surprise. The Crown Agent glared at the chief inspector. ‘What’s so damn funny?’ he barked, taking the offensive once more.

  ‘I always thought that murder inquiries were instigated by murderers,’ Mackenzie replied. ‘And here I’ve been wrong all along. God knows how I got so far in the polis.’

  ‘Don’t be flippant, man! This is a serious matter.’

  ‘That’s funny. A minute ago you were calling it a charade.’

  ‘I mean, you fool, that it’s serious that you’re here wasting my time. Martin,’ he snapped, ‘I’m putting a stop to this right now. Switch off your machine and leave this office.’

  ‘If I do that,’ said the deputy chief constable, ‘I’m taking you with me, back to Fettes, where you’ll be interviewed under caution with a view to a possible charge. I remind you that I’m operating under the authority of the Lord Advocate, your boss, with the approval of his boss, and you know who she is. So unless you want to find your glittering career hitting the buffers at high speed, you will answer every question I put to you, here and now. If you like, before we go any further, you can make a couple of phone calls; ask people who know me, then tell me whether they think I’m kidding.’

  In the silence that followed, Dowley and Martin stared at each other across the coffee-table, until finally the Crown Agent broke the impasse. ‘Let’s get it over with,’ he murmured.

  ‘That’s better,’ said the police officer. ‘Now, will you please tell us who in this office was privy to the contents of the report into the Ballester murders?’

  ‘Joanna Lock, the assistant fiscal, Gregor Broughton, the area fiscal, and myself.’

  ‘Who prepared the report?’

  ‘Primarily Mr Broughton.’

  ‘It was based on what, exactly?’

  ‘On the papers passed to him by Chief Superintendent McGuire, at Fettes, following the death in England of Daniel Ballester, the principal suspect, indeed the only suspect, for all four killings.’

  ‘And its conclusion?’

  ‘That although Ballester’s death was the subject of an inquiry by the Northumbria police force, and by the coroner, there was no doubt that he was responsible for the deaths of Gavin, Boras, Paul and Noone, the four victims.’

  ‘On what basis?’

  ‘Motive and opportunity, backed up by the fact that the murder weapon, a Sig Sauer pistol, and several items belonging to the three female victims were found hidden on his property.’

  ‘What was the recommendation?’

  ‘That all four cases should be closed.’

  ‘Without any public process? You could have held fatal accident inquiries into each case.’

  ‘I could, at considerable expense, and not just to the Crown Office either. Ballester’s estate would have been entitled to representation, and we’d have had to allow counsel for each victim’s family. What would its purpose have been? An FAI can’t make findings of guilt against individuals, dead or alive, yet a media circus would have grown around it. So it was decided that it should all be put away in a box. I still stand by that.’

  ‘Did the final report contain details of each killing?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Dowley. ‘It was extremely thorough. It was, in effect, the case for the prosecution, had Ballester still been alive and in custody.’

  ‘Surely someone else saw it. A typist, for example.’

  ‘No. Gregor and Ms Lock drafted the document themselves, on their computers.’

  ‘What about the senior Advocate Depute, the Solicitor General, or the Lord Advocate himself? Who made the determination you’ve just described?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Four murders, and you signed them off personally?’

  ‘It’s within my authority.’

  ‘So we’re only looking at three people in this building who knew exactly how the three women were killed?’

  ‘Yes.’ />
  ‘Then Sugar Dean turns up, murdered in exactly the same way. Surely you can see the grounds for concern?’

  ‘Of course, but no fault lies here. Ten times that number of people within the police service must have been privy to the same facts.’

  ‘Not quite that many. No more than a dozen, actually. But we’ll be interviewing them all, don’t you worry.’

  ‘Including Sir James?’ Dowley sneered.

  ‘He was our first, while we were waiting for you to fit us in. ACC Mackie was second. I’m going to be thorough; if I think I need to put someone on oath, I will. You, for a start, if you don’t give me a convincing answer to my last questions.’ Martin’s green eyes locked on to the Crown Agent once more. ‘Have you ever discussed these matters with anyone outside the immediate circle of knowledge?’

  ‘No! Of course not.’

  As he replied, Martin thought he detected a very slight flicker in the man’s eyes. ‘Never?’ he asked again.

  ‘No.’ Dowley’s gaze moved to the window.

  ‘Would you like me to put that to your wife?’ Suddenly he focused on the badge on the Crown Agent’s lapel, and felt a flash of inspiration. ‘Or your fellow Rotarians?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ the man shouted. ‘Of course there’s pillow talk! And you don’t seriously think that Blackford Rotary Club is a hotbed of serial killers.’

  Martin allowed silence to fill the room, never taking his eyes from Dowley. When he was ready, he shifted in his chair slightly. ‘Did you tell the whole Rotary Club?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I made a few remarks one night,’ the Crown Agent blustered. ‘At a meeting, when it was my turn to discuss my still fairly new job. I quoted examples of things I did, and I may have mentioned the Ballester case.’

  ‘You may have, or you did?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Mr Dowley,’ said Martin, quietly but with menace, ‘if you prevaricate just one more time, I’ll take you out the front door of this building in handcuffs.’