The King's Prerogative

by Iain Colvin

‘Sir, I think you should see this.’ He handed Cowie a slip of paper with handwritten notes on it.

  ‘Where’s Jarvis?’

  DS Campbell summoned the junior DC, who duly arrived.

  ‘Here I am, sir.’

  ‘This just came in this morning?’

  ‘Five minutes ago, sir.’

  ‘Come with me. You too, Derek.’

  The North West Castle Hotel in Stranraer was built in the 1820s and was originally home to a famous Arctic explorer. As a hotel it was in the fortunate position of being popular throughout the year. In the summer months it was full of holidaymakers who used it either as a base for touring in that part of Scotland, or as a stopping-off point for a trip to Ireland. Off season it was a Mecca for curlers who combined a relaxing mini-break with a few games on the hotel’s own indoor ice rink. Most weekends there was a function of some description taking place, usually a wedding. And then there was the constant stream of golfers who came to this corner of Scotland to enjoy good food and good whisky as well as to play a few rounds.

  On this particular Tuesday the hotel was about half full, with roughly thirty of the rooms occupied. The duty manager saw the policemen walk up the steps as they approached the main door. He had been expecting them and had already made his office ready in preparation for their visit.

  ‘Good morning officers,’ he said, extending a hand in greeting. ‘I’m Andrew Strachan, duty manager.’

  Bruce Cowie showed Strachan his warrant card and introduced the others.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, would you come this way?’ Strachan led them behind the reception desk into a small room where there was a desk with a chair behind it and four chairs set out in front of it. A tea trolley was stationed to one side with some refreshments that looked freshly made. A young woman sat on one of the four chairs in front of the desk. When the others arrived, she stood up and faced the policemen. She looked to be in her early twenties, with a round pink face that made her look embarrassed but was probably just the result of years spent in the fresh country air.

  ‘Gentlemen, let me introduce Lorna, one of our receptionists.’

  Bruce Cowie introduced himself and shook Lorna’s hand. The duty manager invited them all to be seated.

  ‘Can I offer you a tea or a coffee?’ asked Strachan.

  ‘No, thank you.’ DI Cowie turned his chair so it faced Lorna’s straight on. The other policemen followed suit.

  ‘Lorna, first of all I’d like to thank you for contacting us this morning, you’ve been a great help already. But I’d like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Well, it was Mr Strachan who contacted you, but I said to him about the car.’

  Andrew Strachan stepped in. ‘Yes, that’s right. One of your young officers was here yesterday afternoon and told us that you were keen to speak to two men who might have been guests in one of the local hotels. He provided a description of the men and a car they were using. When Lorna came in to start her shift this morning, she knew that one of our guests matched the description.’

  DI Cowie gave the man a smile that didn’t quite reach the eyes. Strachan stopped talking.

  Bruce Cowie turned back to the receptionist.

  ‘Lorna, we know one of the men was called Craig Dunlop.’ He opened a thin document folder and produced Craig’s passport photograph for Lorna to look at.

  ‘I know Craig,’ said Lorna. ‘He hasn’t been here.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘A friend of a friend. I sometimes see him at the same parties or in the pub.’

  ‘I see. So you’d definitely recognise him if you saw him.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And what about this other man?’

  ‘Well it was more the car I recognised. From the description Mr Strachan told me about. He said you were looking for a man in a black two door Fiat 131 saloon.’

  ‘Yes, it was seen leaving the Royal Bank on Bridge Street just after ten o’clock yesterday morning. And you’re sure the man who had that car stayed here?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Do you have his hotel registration details?’

  Strachan handed over a small card about six by eight inches in size. Bruce Cowie read the details:

  Name: Michael Green

  Address: c/o Vulcan Holdings, Limehouse, London E14.

  Car Registration: AYS 560Y

  Booked 7 Nights: Thurs 10th – Thurs 17th March 1983

  Checked out Monday 14th March. The previous day, noted Cowie.

  ‘Michael Green.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lorna.

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘Yes, I made up his bill for him when he checked out.’ Andrew Strachan handed over the hotel’s copy of the bill.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Just as the description said. A bit under six foot, medium build, fair hair, spoke with a London accent.’

  ‘No distinguishing marks?’

  ‘No.’

  Bruce Cowie read the bill. Four nights’ stay, and Green had checked out earlier than planned.

  ‘There’s an item here for phone calls made. Do you have a record of them?’

  ‘Just the dates and the cost, he dialled direct from his room and the system doesn’t record the numbers.’

  ‘Pity.’

  ‘When you spoke to him, Lorna, how did he seem? How did he come across to you?’

  ‘Well he was always polite to me. Didn’t say much usually. But on that last day when he asked for his bill to be made up, he was bordering on rude. He said he was in a hurry and he needed his bill straight away.’

  ‘I see. How did he pay?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘Mmmm hmmm. And you’re definitely certain that his car was a black Fiat two-door?’

  ‘Mr Cowie, I know my cars. It’s my hobby. My brother has an original Lancia Beta Montecarlo. I helped him restore it from the wheels up. And this guest’s car was a black Fiat 131 Supermirafiori Sport two door saloon. The four-door versions are quite popular, you see a few of them around the town. The two-door ones look the same apart from the sports headlights. But I’ve only ever seen two of those in Stranraer, this guest’s one and another one. And that other one is owned by my friend’s dad, and it’s red.’

  Bruce Cowie couldn’t conceal a smile from breaking over his face. ‘Thank you again Lorna, you’ve been a great help. DC Jarvis here will take a statement from you, just to make sure we’ve got a record of everything you’ve told us.’

  Andrew Strachan shifted in his seat. ‘Em, there’s something else, DI Cowie.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We keep our guests’ cards for eighteen months, we like to keep track of any special requirements they have for their next visit.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Michael Green was here before, recently in fact.’ He gave the policeman a second hotel card. No car registration number was noted, but the card told Cowie that Green had stayed at the hotel two weeks earlier. He’d stayed for a couple of nights and checked out on Wednesday 2nd March. The day Claire Marshall’s body was found.

  Five minutes later DI Cowie and DS Campbell were on their way back to the station. They both immediately recognised AYS as a Glasgow registration number, so it looked like the investigation was going to shift focus to Glasgow and London, assuming the address Green had given wasn’t bogus.

  ‘Right, Derek, get Records in Dumfries to do a cross-check on the name Michael Green, and ask Maureen to get on the blower to every constabulary in Scotland and the north of England with a description of the car. Contact the DVLA and find out who it’s registered to. As soon as the details come through, contact Strathclyde and get them to move on it urgently. I’m going to speak to Scotland Yard about this Vulcan Holdings of Limehouse.’

  Bruce Cowie strode back into the police station and called the rest of his team together.

  Chapter 21

  Craig and Fiona were finishing their lunch in a nice pub in
the West End, just along from the Caledonian Hotel. Craig was in no hurry to move, no doubt because his body had to divert resources to tackle the steak pie and veg he’d just consumed.

  ‘You made short work of that,’ said Fiona.

  ‘I was starving. Must be nervous energy.’

  He put his knife and fork together on his plate just as a waitress came to clear them away.

  ‘Thank you for arranging this morning and coming through with me,’ he said to Fiona. A thought came to him, and he looked at his watch. It was just before two o’clock. The pub was starting to empty as office workers drifted back to work. ‘What about your classes?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about those, I was glad of the excuse to miss today’s lectures if I’m honest. What did you make of Lynn?’

  ‘She’s a smart cookie,’ said Craig. ‘And I get the feeling I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t be the best idea in the world. But you handled yourself well in there. I mean, considering how you must be feeling and everything,’ said Fiona.

  Craig finished the last mouthful of his drink. ‘You’re being nice. But thank you.’

  ‘No, I mean it. She’s got a reputation for being a bit hard-nosed, and you managed to impress her. I could tell.’

  ‘Well I’m grateful that she decided to contact her author friend. I hope he can put me in touch with someone who can help unravel this mess.’ He looked at Fiona. ‘Can I tell you something? I need to do this, Fi. I need to find Brian Irving. I have to make sense of it all. I need to do it for Claire.’

  ‘You need to do this for yourself, Craig.’ She stared at him closely. ‘You aren’t responsible for Claire’s death.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’ She leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. ‘Stop putting it on your shoulders. Listen, it was just one of those awful, tragic things. You can’t take the blame. You won’t take the blame. I won’t let you. So snap out of it, now.’

  Craig visibly flinched. Fiona reached across the table and took his hand.

  ‘This thing isn’t your fault. Be honest with me. Be honest with yourself. This is about proving your own self-worth. You forget, I know you better than you know yourself. Everybody loves you. Your mum and dad, Helen, your friends, me.’ She paused for a split second, then carried on. ‘But you hate yourself, Craig. You do. That’s why we split up. You put me on a pedestal and you never ever thought you were good enough. But you were. You always were. You are. But you don’t see it.’ She squeezed his hand as tightly as she could. ‘So, buster, you’re going to find Brian Irving, you’re going to sort this out, you’re going to get yourself cleared by the police, and then you’ll grovel to your boss and do a Rudolf Hess.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘You’ll say to him that you had a temporary brainstorm and that’s why you panicked and fled, but you’re okay now and his star employee is back, fighting fit and ready to climb back on that career ladder.’

  Craig couldn’t help but grin at her, sitting there across the table, all feisty and just the way she was the first time he set eyes on her.

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  She smiled.

  ‘Can I tell you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I do still love you,’ she said. Just as quickly, the smile faded from her lips. The words had slipped out and she hadn’t meant them to. Fiona looked down at her hands as she struggled to suppress a painful emotion. She kicked herself for letting her guard down even if it was only for an instant. ‘You hurt me so badly,’ she said quietly, half to herself.

  Craig couldn’t find the right words to use in response. In the end he could only manage, ‘I know, I’m sorry.’ He was going to go on to say something about wishing he could turn the clock back but when he played the words over in his mind he realised they were painfully inadequate. So they sat in silence.

  Fiona exhaled and looked up at him. ‘I don’t know if I can go back to that place again, Craig. Where I could get hurt again.’

  ‘I know.’ It was all Craig could think of to say. He could taste salt in his mouth as he willed himself not to get emotional. He breathed out, and it felt like he’d been holding his breath for a long, long time. For over a year in fact.

  ‘Fi?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am for everything.’

  Fiona searched his face, her eyes deep and penetrating. ‘Yes,’ she decided. ‘I think you are.’

  Craig couldn’t hold his curiosity back any longer. He had to know the answer to the question that had been bothering him since the day before. ‘What about Chris?’

  Fiona blinked. ‘What about Chris?’

  ‘If you still have feelings for me, what about your feelings for him?’

  Fiona paused long enough to allow her composure to recover.

  ‘You’re an idiot, you do know that don’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Chris is my flatmate, not my boyfriend. I haven’t seen anyone since you.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Fiona took out a paper hankie and blew her nose.

  ‘There’s one thing though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I need to take you shopping. You look like a bag of shit. You’re paying.’

  After two hours at the shops Craig felt he was losing the will to live and was ready to turn himself in to the police. Needless to say it had been a while since he’d been shopping with Fiona and it seemed that she’d been saving up that particular brand of female torture for him. They avoided the chain stores on Princes Street and George Street and walked into the Old Town via Cockburn Street, stopping off at cut price denim shops, second hand retro stores and a shoe shop that seemed to sell every kind of work shoe known to man. He was now equipped from head to toe with new tee-shirts, a tartan lumberjack shirt, boxer shorts, socks, Wrangler jeans, a black zip-up Harrington jacket and a new pair of oxblood Dr Marten shoes. Craig was pretty sure he could have performed the same rigmarole in half the time, but it was done now and he had to admit he was pleased with his purchases. He used a changing room to put on his new outfit and he stuffed his work suit and shoes into the biggest of his carrier bags alongside his spare tee shirts and underwear. He went back out into the main shop, where Fiona was waiting for him.

  ‘What do you think?’

  Fiona adjusted the lapel of his jacket and stepped back to look him over from head to toe.

  ‘You’ll do.’ She stood on her tip toes and gave him a kiss on his cheek. ‘Come on, we’ll stop off and get you some shaving things on the way back to Lynn’s office. Hopefully she’ll have heard something.’

  Lynn hadn’t heard back from Edward Hart-Davis, and it was obvious when they saw her that she was too busy to stop and chat, so Fiona said they were going home to her parents’ and maybe Lynn could check in with them later. Lynn said she’d definitely do that, and apologised for being rushed off her feet.

  When they were back out on the street, Craig turned to Fiona.

  ‘So we’re going to your mum and dad’s?’

  ‘Well, yes, I had to think of somewhere Lynn could contact us.’

  ‘We could have gone back to Glasgow.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’ll be fine.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ said Craig, demonstrating once again that Scots is the only language where two positives can make a negative.

  They caught a number 11 bus from Princes Street and half an hour later they reached Fiona’s parents’ house. They lived in the south side of Edinburgh in the quietly well-to-do neighbourhood of Church Hill. Another strange World War Two coincidence, thought Craig, not that he was aware of any connection between the man and the place. He used to like visiting Fiona’s house because her mum and dad always made him feel part of the family and they used to sit round the dinner table and drink bottles of wine that Craig hadn’t heard of before, and talk for hours about anything and everything. He also liked visi
ting because their house was less than five minutes’ walk from the fabulous Dominion Cinema. They’d seen the premiere of Gregory’s Girl there a couple of years before on one of their first proper dates and they’d usually make a point of going to see a film whenever they were in that neck of the woods.

  But that was all before Craig had split up with Fiona and he wasn’t looking forward to the reception he was about to receive.

  The house itself was an early Victorian sandstone semi-detached villa that looked like it had roots as deep as the old sycamore tree in its front garden. Fiona tried the front door handle but the door wouldn’t budge. Lights were on behind the fanlight over the door so Fiona knew someone was in. She rang the bell and a few seconds later her brother Robert opened the door.

  ‘Hi. Mum and Dad aren’t in yet.’

  ‘Is that it?’ asked Fiona. ‘No “Hello sis, how are you, I haven’t seen you in ages”?’

  ‘Funny. Next time, use your key.’ Fiona’s lanky nineteen-year-old brother disappeared up a broad staircase.

  ‘I see he’s still as chatty, then,’ said Craig.

  Fiona laughed. ‘Yeah, he still hasn’t got over Ian Curtis’s suicide, but I suppose it’s only been three years.’

  ‘Someone should tell him that if New Order can get over it then there’s every chance he’ll make a full recovery too.’

  Fiona led the way into the large kitchen at the back of the house, and invited Craig to have a seat. In the middle of the room, dominating the space was a huge kitchen table that looked like it could have been fashioned from timber retrieved from HMS Victory. Craig selected a chair that faced the business end of the kitchen and sat down. Fiona filled a kettle and placed it on a massive range and turned on the gas under it.

  ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Tea, please,’ said Craig. He looked around. It seemed a long time since he’d sat at that table and yet at the same time it felt like just last week. Everything was so familiar to him. Only the wall calendar and the notes on the fridge had changed. ‘I’m not looking forward to this,’ he said.