‘All the indications are that the girl was a bag of nerves after Mortimer’s death and after that threat. It probably wasn’t planned, just a spur of the moment suicide.’
‘Mm, sounds like it.’
The congregation rose slowly and solemnly to its feet as the coffin was borne to the altar on the shoulders of the undertaker’s assistants.
As they resumed their seats, Cowan whispered again to Skinner. ‘I was speaking to George Harcourt yesterday. He was the Advocate Depute in the McCann trial. He said that Rachel was very shaky before the jury came in with its verdict. Oh yes, and he told me a funny thing, too. He said that she was upset by a Japanese bloke who sat all the way through the trial.’
Skinner’s eyes widened. ‘You what... !’
‘Brothers and sisters in Christ...’ The Faculty chaplain cut the conversation short as he began the funeral service.
Fifteen minutes later as the family party filed out to a background of solemn organ music, Skinner was able to speak again. ‘You said a Japanese bloke?’
Cowan nodded.
‘Peter, have you got a car here?’
‘No, I came with David.’
‘Right, if you don’t mind, you’re coming back with me. I want to have another look at that so-called Chinese trial. I smell something here.’
20
Skinner rarely used a police driver. He believed that he thought better at the wheel. And so, on the way back to Edinburgh, cruising along the M8 at just under eighty miles per hour, he and Cowan exchanged few words.
Once the advocate broke a long silence. ‘Look, Bob, you don’t jump in front of a train just because you don’t like someone’s face in the public gallery.’
‘Granted, Peter. But one of the few visible links between any of the people in this whole series of deaths is the Japanese involvement. Now you’ve brought it up again, I’ve got an itch, and I want to get back to Edinburgh to scratch it.’
The Library was busy when Skinner and Cowan returned to the capital city. More than a dozen advocates, some in casual clothes, sat working at the rows of desks set beneath the magnificent gold-painted, panelled ceiling. They went into the Clerk’s office, alongside that of the Dean, and closed the door behind them.
Cowan dialled an internal number, and issued instructions to his secretary. Soon afterwards she appeared carrying two folders. Each contained a set of the papers in the Chinese trial.
They read through the notes and transcript in silence. Then Skinner went back to the beginning and listed the facts, point by point.
‘The victim. Shirai Yobatu. She’s twenty, and she’s at Strathclyde University. She’s found strangled in Kelvingrove Park. There are signs of sexual activity which could be rape. Forensic establishes that three men had intercourse with the girl immediately before her death.
‘She was seen earlier from across the street in Park Circus, by another girl student. She was in the company of three oriental men. The girl recognises two of them as waiters in the Kwei Linn Chinese Restaurant off Sauchiehall Street. A lot of the students have eaten there and know the two lads. The witness doesn’t know the other one. No one does. He’s never been found and the. other two wouldn’t name him. It didn’t occur to the witness that Shirai might not have been going willingly with them. She didn’t look under duress.
‘Christ, Peter, the Crown Office made a balls of this, and no mistake. If they’d left out the rape and just gone for a murder conviction they’d have got it no bother. As it was Mortimer and Jameson were able to take the rape charge apart, and to lull the jury into acquitting on both counts.’
Skinner went back to the notes. ‘The accused: John Ho, defended by Mortimer; and Shun Lee, defended by Jameson. They deny the rape charge and it falls apart. They say they didn’t know the third man. They claim that he had just started that day as a dishwasher at the Kwei Linn, and they didn’t know his name. The owner says he only gave the guy a few hours’ work, and he didn’t know it either. He says that the boy was a deaf mute.
‘The lads claim that they had a date for a threesome in the park with Shirai, who, they allege, is a student nymphomaniac likely to graduate with honours - there’s absolutely no evidence of that; her flatmate said she was a quiet girl - and the third guy came along as a spectator. They say that Shirai fancied mystery man too, and that they went off in a huff, leaving her to get on with it.
‘That evening they hear on Radio Clyde that a girl has been found strangled in the park. Mystery man doesn’t show up to wash dishes, and John Ho and Shun Lee decide to do a runner. They separate and go home, but each one is lifted by Strathclyde CID in the act of packing his bags.
‘Mike and Rachel plead panic. The guys are good witnesses; the jury believes them and they walk. So once again, we’ve got two very satis fied clients. Agree?’
Cowan nodded emphatically.
‘But not everybody’s going to be happy with that, are they? What more do we know about Shirai?’ Skinner flicked through the papers before him and found a two-page document, the A4 sheets stapled together. ‘This is the Strathclyde Police report on her background. Let’s see what it says.’
Cowan found the same document in his sheaf of papers; each read quickly.
Skinner summarised aloud as he went along. ‘Interesting. Comes from an above-average family background, even by Japanese standards. And interesting too, she’s not an overseas student, as such.’
The shadow of a smile crept across his face.
‘Her father and mother live in Balerno, of all places. He’s forty-four, managing director of a Japanese pharmaceuticals company in Livingston.’
Cowan looked at him. ‘So he could be a man with a grudge? Not a. dissatisfied client, but the father of a victim. Is that what you think?’
Skinner shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s the only lead I’ve got, so I’ll have to follow it up. Tell you one thing, I’ll be interested to learn what John Ho and Shun Lee are doing right now. And I can’t wait to show a photograph of Yobatu san to your Advocate Depute pal Harcourt.’
Cowan held up a hand. ‘Hold on Bob; you can link this man to Mike and Rachel through that trial, fair enough. But how can you connect him with the other three murders?’
‘I’ll worry about that later. This is the only bone I’ve got to gnaw on at the moment, and I’m going to give it a bloody good chew.’
Skinner closed his folder. ‘Come with me when I pay a call on Harcourt, once I lay hands on that photo.’
21
Detective Sergeant Mackie had just returned from hospital, where his injured elbow had been pronounced sound, when Skinner buzzed from his office.
Mackie went through to the inner sanctum. ‘Hello, sir. I didn’t know you were back. Did our man put in an appearance at the funeral?’
‘I won’t know for sure till I’ve seen the photographs. That’s the first thing I want you to chase up for me. These are the others.’ He issued a series of clear concise orders. ‘And I want them now!’
The funeral photographs arrived two hours later.
Skinner sifted carefully through the blown-up prints. Some of the people, he recognised, but most, he did not. However the most telling thing was that no one seemed to be out of place, or standing in isolation, other than, in one photograph, himself.
‘Christ,’ he muttered aloud. ‘No one would ever know I was a copper from that! Not bloody much!’
Skinner scanned the prints again, to confirm his first impression. There were no oddfellows there. And no one in the gathering looked in the slightest oriental.
The photograph of Toshio Yobatu, Managing Director of Fu-Joki Blood Products plc, arrived half an hour later. Mackie brought it, having been handed the print in a brown envelope, in a pub behind the Scotsman office, by a photographer with whom he maintained a mutually beneficial acquaintance. Mackie had agreed that his friend’s lack of curiosity about the reason for the request would earn an extra favour at some time in the future.
Skinner tore ope
n the envelope and withdrew the photograph. He looked at it and caught his breath. Alongside him, Mackie gave a soft whistle.
The picture had been ‘snatched’ as Yobatu left the High Court in Glasgow, following the acquittal of the two Chinese youths. It had been blown up until most of the features were fuzzy, but nothing could dim the ferocity of the eyes which blazed out at the two detectives.
Nothing could have been further from the image of the smiling Japanese businessman. Even in a bad photograph, Yobatu’s ferocious gaze had an almost hypnotic effect. Not a hint of humour or compassion lay there, only a burning anger, accentuated by a tight mouth, which seemed to have been slashed across the man’s face.
‘Jesus, boss,’ Mackie whispered, ‘if this character had sat staring at me for three-and-a-half days in a High Court trial, I think I’d have jumped under a bloody train as well!’
22
Like many advocates, George Harcourt lived in the network of streets which stretches downhill and northward from Heriot Row, in grey and ordered simplicity.
‘Mr Harcourt. Advocate,’ the brass name-plate announced. However its portent of aloofness was not borne out by the man who answered the door to Skinner and Cowan, and who invited them into a book-lined drawing-room.
George Harcourt was a slightly rumpled Glaswegian, with a round head, set on a stocky frame. He had a voice which seemed to echo from the depths of a well, and which in court had the effect from the outset of his trials, of convincing juries that they were there on serious business.
Skinner had encountered him twice professionally; on the first occasion Harcourt had been acting for the defence, and on the second he had been prosecuting. He had been impressed by the man, in each role. A judge in the making, he had decided.
Harcourt poured each a Macallan, and offered them seats in red leather Chesterfield chairs.
Skinner took a sip from his glass. ‘George, I’m going to ask you to look at a picture.’ He drew Yobatu’s photograph from its brown envelope and handed it to his host.
Harcourt looked at it and gave a start which in other circumstances would have seemed theatrical. Skinner did not doubt its sincerity for a moment. The stocky advocate looked towards Cowan.
‘That’s the guy, Peter. That’s the guy I was telling you about. I’d know that face anywhere. That’s the guy who sat through the McCann trial, staring at Rachel. If she’d asked me, I’d have had the judge throw him out. As it was, she never said a word, but I could tell that she was aware of him, and that she was rattled. And no wonder. Look at those eyes!’
23
When Skinner returned to his office, at just after 9.00 p.m., he found in his in-tray another telex from Strathclyde CID. It was marked, ‘Urgent. FAO DCS.’
He picked it up, switched on his desk lamp and read quickly.
The report told him that at that moment, John Ho, one of the two accused in the Yobatu trial, was safely locked away in Peterhead Prison. While Mike Mortimer’s excellent advocacy had seen him acquitted of the rape and murder charges, it had been unfortunate for Ho that when he was arrested following Shirai’s murder, the police had found, hidden in his apartment, heroin with an estimated street value of £100,000.
The case had been tried a week after his acquittal of the murder. Ho, represented by a different advocate, since Mortimer’s clerk had arranged, skilfully, for him to be elsewhere, had pleaded guilty. The judge had sentenced him to twelve years.
Shun Lee too was out of circulation: permanently.
In October, ten weeks after the murder acquittal, he had been found hacked to death outside his home in Garnethill. The killing was brutal, and fitted the pattern of a Triad assassination.
Shun Lee’s murder was still unsolved, but an informant in the Chinese community had suggested to Strathclyde CID that he and John Ho had stolen the drugs found at Ho’s flat, to sell for their own profit. According to the story, which Strathclyde believed to have the ring of truth, the Triad gangsters who had owned the heroin had been mightily put out. Shun Lee had been killed by a ritual execution squad recruited from London. It was said that a bounty of ten thousand pounds had been offered on the prison grapevine to anyone who would assassinate Ho in jail.
While there was no hard evidence to back up the informant’s Triad story, it had been taken sufficiently seriously for John Ho to have been removed from the main prison and placed in solitary for his own safety.
Skinner buzzed the outer office. To his surprise, Mackie answered.
‘Brian? I thought you’d gone home.’
‘Not me, boss. Just nipped out for a fish supper. We’re on stake-out tonight again, remember.’
‘Could I forget? Look, since you’re here, would you try to get hold of Willie Haggerty for me. He’s the investigating officer in the Shun Lee killing.’
‘What’s that, boss?’
‘Those two Chinese lads I asked you to check on - seems that one of them went to join his ancestors a wee while back; courtesy of the Triads, so they say. The other’s in solitary in Peterhead, in case he’s next on the list.
‘I’ve read the report; now I’d like to hear the story from Haggerty.’
Five minutes later he was back on the line. ‘I’ve got Detective Superintendent Haggerty now boss. He’s off duty, but I told them it was urgent.’
‘Thanks, Brian.’ The line clicked. ‘Willie? Bob Skinner. How are you? It’s been a year or two. Superintendent now, eh.’ Skinner and Haggerty had worked together in the past, on an inter-force investigation of a country-wide stolen car racket.
‘Aye, it’s going well for me, Mr Skinner. I see you’re having a busy time though. Is that what this call’s about?’
‘Could be, Willie, it just could be. But it all depends on the strength of your Triad information in the Shun Lee business. Is it cast-iron?’
There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘If you want the official answer, it’s yes; our information is believed to be accurate. If you want the Willie Haggerty view, it’s a wee bit on the iffy side. Ever since that film - what was it called - Year of the Dragon, Triad gangs have been flavour of the month. A Chinese cook gets drunk and chops off a finger, and the gossip machine has it worked up to a Triad punishment.
‘Okay. They do exist. There was an execution - if that’s the word for it - a couple of years back, but most of the talk’s just bullshit.
‘Now my informant on the Shun Lee job - no names no pack drill, but he’s a restaurant owner with a real Triad phobia - he hears about Ho gettin’ caught with all that smack, then he heard about Shun Lee gettin’ done not long after he was back on the street from his murder trial, and he comes to me with the word that the two of them were in the drugs thing together and that the hard men put them on a hit list.
‘Maybe he’s telling the truth, but there’s another possibility, and one that I fancy, that Ho wasn’t a wide-eyed innocent who took a chance and nicked some smack, but that he was part of a drugs operation all along, one that our Squad didn’t know anything about. As for Shun Lee, well he was just a horny wee waiter!
‘Those boys worked together, right. Well they didn’t live the same way. Shun Lee stayed in a pit in Garnethill. John Ho was nicked in a nice wee flat in the Merchant City. The tips must have been good for him to afford that.
‘Another thing. Shun Lee drove a clapped-out Mini van. John Ho drove one of those big Nissan shaggin’ wagons. If Shun Lee was into drug money he must have been sending all of the profits home to feed his starving brothers and sisters.’
‘Any chance of that?’ Skinner asked.
‘Not much. He was born in Drumchapel, and there’s no’ too many signs up there of a rich benefactor sending pound notes home to the poor folk!’
Skinner laughed. ‘So your informant’s tale, that Shun Lee was belted because he and Ho stole some candy from the big boys, is thrown into doubt because Ho could have been one of the big boys himself, and had the stuff on him as a matter of business.’
‘That’s
the idea.’
‘Has Ho said anything?’
‘Not a dicky bird, and he won’t. It’s quite a cushy life being banged up in solitary in Peterhead, compared with the rest of the place. Especially when you’re Chinese. There’s some nasty racist people up there, and one or two who might just take a fancy to a nice wee yellow boy.
‘What it comes down to is this. If the Haggerty notion is right, and Shun Lee wasn’t into Ho’s smack, then he was done for some other reason. But the Triads could still be the bookies’ favourites, because there were imilarities between Shun Lee’s murder and the few Triad hits that are on record. Several people involved, and several weapons used.’
‘You’ve no fingerprints, no footprints? No forensic leads?’
‘Next to nothing. We’ve got a machete that was left stuck in the guy’s collarbone. Other wounds include two different-shaped axe cuts, and knife punctures. Oh ay, and they cut his balls off.’
Skinner felt his scrotum tighten at the thought. ‘Were they left at the scene?’
‘No, they’ll be in someone’s trophy case somewhere. That happens in Triad hits, by the way. So what about it, Mr Skinner? Does that help?’
‘It’s possible. I’ve got to think this one through. Did you hear about that advocate going under the train in Queen Street?’
‘The suicide? Aye.’
‘She defended Shun Lee in his murder trial. Ho’s advocate, Mortimer he was the first one killed through here.’
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Look, Willie, not a word about this for now. I’ll pursue my lead through here, and obviously if I get anything that has any bearing on your enquiries, I’ll be in touch. Sit tight till you hear from me.’
24
‘No, Brian, we will not scale down the Royal Mile patrols, even though the Queen has gone. It’s what, only ten days since the last murders, it’s Friday night, and we don’t have an arrest yet.’ Mackie could see that his boss was adamant, and dropped the subject.
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