08 - Murmuring the Judges

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘You’re sure none of them know who the body is?’

  ‘Quite sure, sir. I took the wallet from the body myself. I haven’t even told our people, other than Mags, who it is. Dead judges are getting to be a habit with me.’

  ‘Let’s hope they don’t come in threes.’ Even on the balmy summer night, something in Skinner’s voice made the truck feel suddenly chilly.

  As they drove on they could almost see the wide silver band of the sea retreating on the ebb of the tide. ‘The Aberlady sandflats stretch for more than a mile, from the road out of the village to the low-water mark,’ said the Ranger, breaking the silence once more. ‘It wasn’t always like this. Aberlady had a harbour once . . . you can still see traces of the jetty . . . but over the centuries the Bay became silted up, until it was unusable.’

  He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. ‘The tide should be far enough out in about fifteen minutes. After that, you’ll have about five hours to do what you have to do.’

  As he spoke, the rudimentary track came to an abrupt end, and scrubby flat-land stretched out before them. The Ranger drove on over the rough ground, jerking and bouncing in his seat as did his passengers, until at last the vehicle crested a small dune which opened out on to the beach. He drove on for a bit, until the rest of the convoy was in sight behind him on the hard, wet sand, then drew to a halt, three hundred yards short of the water.

  Skinner looked around. A distance away to the right, on the edge of the dunes, he saw the flickering light of a driftwood fire, with figures clustered around it, some sitting, others standing, looking across at the line of vehicles.

  He turned to DCI Rose. ‘Mags, would you dig Alan Royston out of the vehicle behind and go along to see the press people. Tell them that there will be no statements made here, but that Mr Martin will be aiming to have a briefing at Fettes at seven o’clock this morning.’

  ‘How close will we allow the photographers, sir?’ she asked, as she opened the door beside her.

  ‘Keep them a couple of hundred yards distant. Near enough to do their work without disturbing ours.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’ The red-haired detective jumped out on to the sand. At almost the same moment, Alan Royston, anticipating Skinner’s orders, stepped out of the Land Rover behind. She spoke to him, briefly, then together they headed towards the group around the fire.

  The others sat in silence, with the windows wound down and the vehicle lights switched off, listening to the distant lapping of the calm sea, and to the rustling sound of a township of sleeping birds, as gradually their eyes attuned to the conditions.

  ‘Can you see them yet?’ the Ranger asked Skinner, pointing into the shining night. ‘Do you know where to look.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been out there.’

  ‘What you’re looking for is in the one that’s closer to us.You can head off now, if you like.’ He opened the door and stepped out on to the sand. ‘You can handle one of these things, can’t you?’

  ‘Sure, but aren’t you coming with us?’

  The countryman shook his head. ‘No, thank you. I’ve seen what’s out there. It was bad enough last time. I’ve got no wish to see it again, after another high tide.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Skinner slid across into the driver’s seat, and switched on the headlights, then the engine. Waving his right hand, beckoning the other drivers to follow, he set the four by four in motion, leading the way towards the water’s edge.

  He drove very slowly, steering as smoothly as he could over the mounds and through the hollows carved by the rise and fall of the estuarial tide, but always heading towards his objective. At last, he reached it, drawing to a halt with the headlights on full beam, trained on a sculpture of wet, rusted metal.

  Although it was in miniature, it was still clearly in the form of a submarine. Within its ribs, there was something else; something grey-hued, with wispy hair, sodden clothes clinging to it.

  ‘How long has it been here?’ asked Martin, of no one in particular.

  ‘If you mean the sub,’ Skinner replied, ‘for over fifty years. There are a few local legends about it . . . one is that it, and the other one a bit further along, were part of an Italian raid during the war which came to grief. As far as I know though, they were prototypes built for a raid on the German battleship Tirpitz in the early years of the war.

  ‘The story is that when it became clear that they couldn’t do the job, they were beached here and used for naval target practice. The one along there is smashed to bits, but this one retained its shape through it all.’

  He paused. ‘If you mean, how long has the thing inside it been there, that’s for Sarah to tell us in due course.’ He winced in anticipation. ‘Come on, let’s take a look.’

  As the four remaining occupants of the Land Rover stepped out on to the sandflat in their rubber boots and yellow waterproof tunics, the driver of the tractor guided his vehicle into position and flooded the skeletal submarine with bright white light. They cast long shadows as they stepped up to the twisted superstructure, and as they did, a fifth joined them. Mackie looked at the man who stood by his left shoulder. ‘I’ll bet this is a first for you, Arthur,’ he muttered, grimly.

  ‘I suppose it is,’ Inspector Dorward acknowledged. ‘I’ve seen a few bodies on beaches, mind you, but never one at low-water mark.’

  ‘This’ll be a first for Sheila as well,’ said Skinner to the Superintendent, ‘having you called out in the middle of the night.’

  ‘She better get used to it,’ Sarah added, as Martin, unaware of Mackie’s new domestic arrangements, looked on, puzzled. ‘Even our kid gets called into the act in our household.’ Alex had been summoned from Edinburgh to look after her brothers, to allow her step-mother to go to the crime scene.

  ‘So how did the poor bugger get stuck in there?’ asked Dorward, oblivious to the exchange as he stared at the figure in the bowels of the submarine.

  ‘Not on his own, Arthur,’ Mackie told him, in a slow, even voice. ‘Not on his own. You and the doc had better go and take a look.’

  Sarah nodded and stepped closer to the wreck. ‘From the side, ma’am,’ Dorward suggested. ‘Let’s go through those spars as close to the body as we can. That way we won’t be getting in our own light.’

  She did as he suggested, with the inspector following behind, and a video-camera operator from his unit bringing up the rear, staying as close as she could to the action.

  The old man’s body was pressed on its right side, against the rib-like uprights on the far side of the hulk. The arms were bent behind it, and a wide strip of heavy black adhesive tape, partly detached by the water, hung from the right cheek. The face bulged, not only, she saw, through immersion, but also because of the white handkerchief which had been stuffed in the mouth, and, of which, a corner protruded.

  Experienced as she was, her stomach heaved involuntarily as she looked at the head. The eyes were gone, and great strips of flesh, including the right ear, had been torn away from the face and scalp. ‘Would fish do that?’ she asked herself, without realising that she was speaking out loud.

  ‘I doubt it, ma’am,’ Dorward answered her. ‘The water’s only a few feet deep here, even at high tide. It’s the birds that have been at him.’ He leaned over the body. ‘Look here though,’ he said.

  She did as she was told. Below the sleeves of the sodden tweed jacket, and the check shirt, a set of plastic handcuffs were cutting into grey swollen wrists, tethering the man to the upright behind him. His ankles, in green woollen socks beneath his plus-twos, were bound together with more of the black tape, which now hung loose. ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered.

  ‘Is he dead, then, doctor?’ Skinner had walked down the westward side of the wreck, and was standing outside the cage which it formed. He spoke with an irreverent irony, and she knew at once that it was not out of any lack of respect, but that it was his policeman’s way of breaking the grip in which the horror of the sight was holding her.

  ‘The poor old
man,’ she said, with an unexpected tear in the corner of an eye. ‘Someone forced him in here, tied him up and left him to drown. Although it’s possible he’d have died of fright before the tide covered him. Time will tell about that.

  ‘Who did you say he was?’

  ‘Lord Barnfather. A retired Court of Session judge.’

  ‘Was he reported missing?’

  ‘Not to us,’ Brian Mackie answered. ‘He was a bachelor, and lived alone in a flat in Ainslie Place. So there was no one to report him missing, other than his neighbours. A twitcher found the body late this afternoon. He trained his field glasses on the sub because there were birds flocking around it.’

  ‘What’s a twitcher?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘Slang for bird-watcher.’

  ‘Ah.’ Her professional composure recovered, she looked down at the savaged remains once more. ‘For what it’s worth without a full autopsy,’ she pronounced, ‘I’d say from the state of the body that he’s been here for two days. That would make it Sunday.’

  ‘Why wasn’t the body found sooner?’ asked Dorward.

  ‘It’s mid-week,’ the DCC replied, ‘and the schools are back. In term-time, the Reserve is fairly quiet during the week. Anyway, not too many people walk out to the subs. It’s a long way off the beach, and folk are afraid of the quicksand.’

  The inspector looked at him with sudden alarm. ‘What, sir, are there quicksands out here?’

  Amused by his reaction, Skinner smiled. ‘No, but they think there are.’

  He looked down at Sarah again. ‘There’s nothing more for you to do here?’ She shook her head. ‘All right. Arthur, call in your lads and take all the footage and still-shots you need, quick as you can, so we can get the poor old chap out of here and into the mortuary wagon, away from these awful fucking birds.

  ‘I never did like seagulls much.’

  Dorward nodded his agreement. ‘Me neither. Noisy, nasty creatures, they are.’ He stepped backwards out of the wreck, keeping his shadow out of the way of the camerawoman.

  ‘We should give the scene the once-over as well, sir. You never know, whoever brought the old chap out here might have left us a bit of cloth, snagged on some of this metalwork.’

  ‘See what you can find, then, Arthur: but unless it’s got his name on it, it won’t do much good. I reckon there have been five high tides since then.’

  34

  ‘A post-mortem examination will be carried out this morning. However, you may take it that a murder investigation is underway already.’ Andy Martin fell silent and looked around the room.

  ‘Any questions?’ Alan Royston invited, then pointed, as always, to John Hunter.

  ‘When did you first become aware of the cause of Lord Archergait’s death?’

  ‘Late on Saturday, John.’

  ‘And you’ve ruled out the possibility of suicide there too?’

  The DCS shook his head. ‘No, we haven’t, but we haven’t ruled out murder either. In fact we think that’s more likely. We found no trace of cyanide on Lord Archergait’s clothing or at his home. Nor is there any record of his having acquired the poison prior to his death.

  ‘Since the beginning of this week, a small team of officers have been making very discreet inquiries at Parliament House. That investigation is still proceeding.’

  ‘Whose idea was it to keep the facts from the media?’ interposed Julian Finney, sounding and looking weary.

  ‘It was a police decision, but it was taken in consultation with the Lord President and the Lord Advocate. We hoped that it might give us an advantage.’

  ‘When would you have told us, then?’ There was an aggressive edge to the Scottish Television reporter’s question.

  Martin was as tired as everyone else in the room, but his back straightened as he looked him in the eye. ‘In the absence of an arrest before then, we had planned to make a statement this afternoon.’

  ‘Some might say that if you had gone public immediately, Lord Barnfather’s life might have been saved.’

  ‘If they did they’d be wrong. I understand that the Lord President advised every judge, in confidence, on Sunday of the circumstances.’

  ‘I take it that you do believe that the two deaths are connected?’ asked Alastair Hutt, the Scottish correspondent of BBC News.

  ‘We have to. There’s no proof that they are, but common sense tells you that they must be.’

  ‘Will the other judges be given close police protection?’

  ‘It’s been offered already. At a minimum, those who decline will be kept under observation.’

  ‘More coverage from this morning’s press conference will be shown in our next bulletin,’ said the Breakfast News Glasgow presenter. ‘And now, today’s Scottish weather.’

  Skinner pressed the TV remote, switching off the kitchen set. ‘I reckon it’ll be top of the bill on the national news as well,’ he said to Sarah and Alex, seated with him around the breakfast table. ‘What a story. Two judges knocked off their perch.

  ‘It makes life twice as bad for us, though,’ he added, gloomily. ‘We’re in trouble as it is with these robberies. We’re working hard just to stand still on that investigation. The last thing we needed was some nutter trying to work his way through the Supreme Court Bench.

  ‘Never mind the old one about being as good as your last game. We’re as good as today’s arrest, and it’s been a while since we gave the press anything positive to write about.

  ‘If nothing breaks on the robberies, we’re going to have to come up with a lead on Archergait and Barnfather, and damn quick.’

  Alex finished her cereal, and stood up to put the plate and spoon in the dishwasher. ‘If hunting judges is our new national sport, it’s too bad your murderer didn’t start with Lord Coalville. The way our case is heading, he’d have done us a favour.’

  ‘Alex!’ Sarah gasped, as she came back to the table to finish her coffee.

  ‘I know. Bite my tongue, bite my tongue, that was an awful thing to say. But if you’d sat in that Court for days on end and seen him nodding towards the pursuer’s case and savaging ours at every opportunity! Do you know that Jack McAlpine even offered to withdraw! He thinks Coalville has a down on him.’

  Bob chuckled. ‘Coalville has a down on everyone, darlin’. Jack must know that. Very much between you and me, David Murray told me on Sunday that he’s trying to persuade him to retire in September next year, ahead of time. He wants to create a vacancy for Lord Archibald on the Bench.’

  ‘Can’t he appoint him in Archergait’s place?’

  ‘Bruce Anderson, the Secretary of State, won’t allow it. He wants Archie to do another year as Lord Advocate, to give the Solicitor General time to prepare for the job.’

  ‘The Lord President didn’t tell you who’s getting the old boy’s red jacket, did he? Only I thought that it might be McAlpine, and that that might have been the real reason he offered to pull out of our case.’

  Skinner smiled at his daughter’s shrewdness. ‘No comment,’ he muttered.

  ‘I rest my case.’ She stood up, and picked up her hold-all from the floor. ‘I must be going. I have to pick up my briefcase from the flat.’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Yeah. Thanks for coming out last night. Would you like to look in on Mark and tell him to wake up and get ready for school?’

  ‘Sure. ‘Bye.’

  She watched the door as it closed. ‘She’s loving her legal career, isn’t she.’

  Bob nodded. ‘Yup, and doing very well at it. Mitch Laidlaw keeps singing her praises. He told me he wants her to stay after she finishes her training period.’

  ‘D’you think she will?’

  ‘For a while maybe, but as far as I know she still has her heart set on the Bar. It’s a good set-up for women lawyers. Being self-employed they can take time out more easily if they want to have a family.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that,’ Sarah warned him. ‘The idea of being even a step-grandmother makes my blood run cold.’
r />   She picked up her coffee and looked at him. ‘Do you think you will get a break on the judge investigation?’

  He rolled his eyes, in a ‘Who Knows?’ gesture. ‘We’ll do our damnedest. The first thing to do is to establish a potential motive. We’ll start by cross-checking Archergait’s judgements with Barnfather’s, and see if we can find common ground. Something may jump out at us from that.’

  ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.’ She grinned. ‘So how did the delegating go yesterday?’

  ‘It went as far as I could take it. I’m trapped today, though. My afternoon’s full of stuff that I can’t get out of.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Sarah sighed, sympathetically. ‘You’ll just have to find something to brighten up your morning.’

  35

  Campbell Rarity could feel a line of cold sweat as it ran down the length of his backbone. He was all too aware that his deodorant was not up to the extra duty which his nervous state was imposing on it.

  Fortunately, the shop was empty, save for one male customer at a small table, who was examining a suite of amethyst jewellery set out before him by a sales assistant. Rarity glanced up at the clock. It showed three minutes to ten.

  He almost jumped out of his skin when the buzzer sounded to tell him that someone was pressing at the door. He was shaking as he leaned across to see who was there.

  A middle-aged lady, wearing a light summer dress, looked through the glass expectantly. Rarity shook his head. She stared back at him, puzzled, then pushed the door again. The manager shook his head again, more vigorously this time, and mouthed the words, ‘Sorry, we’re closed.’ Apparently undaunted, the woman rapped her knuckles against the glass, once, twice, three times, until with a furious, baffled expression, she turned and walked away.

  Oblivious to the exchange, the customer who had managed to gain admission put down the bracelet which he had been studying and picked up the matching ring.

  Rarity pressed himself against his counter trying to ignore the pounding in his chest. He watched the clock as it crept up to ten a.m., then on: one minute past, two, three. When the buzzer sounded again a chill of panic swept through him, so cold that for an instant his teeth chattered.