by Val McDermid
‘But that’s all legal hair-splitting, surely? Who’s going to stand up in court and oppose us?’
‘His adoptive parents, for a start. You said they’ve never told him he’s adopted. So they could argue you’re not just breaching Garvie’s Article 8 rights but theirs as well.’
Karen digested this for a long moment. ‘Would any court hearing be in private?’
‘Totally. It would be heard in camera.’
‘So I’m not breaching their human rights if I don’t tell Ross Garvie when he wakes up, am I?’
‘Now who’s hair-splitting? Surely it would all come out in open court if you finally nail someone and he goes to trial?’
Karen shrugged. ‘Maybe not. I don’t think we’d have to name Ross Garvie. We could ask the court to preserve the anonymity of the familial DNA source. Make the human rights legislation work for us, not against us.’
‘I don’t know anything about criminal court proceedings. I suspect that the family court would ultimately decide for giving up the info, but it might take a bit of strenuous argument. You’d need a good advocate. The court might also say, There’s no rush. Let’s wait and see whether Garvie recovers consciousness. Your case has waited twenty years already, a wee bit longer won’t hurt. And of course, if Garvie doesn’t recover and dies, the court will give you whatever you want because dead men have no human rights.’
Karen groaned. ‘See, that’s the kind of thing courts say because they’re run by lawyers who don’t know what it’s like to live with all the uncertainties that go along with not knowing who killed your daughter, your lover, your friend. The way I look at it is every day that killer walks the streets is a day that the justice system has failed Tina McDonald. And there’s a very potent argument for not waiting.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Police Scotland is a very leaky sieve. It’s only a matter of time before somebody hears we’ve reopened the case and sells us out to their favourite hack. And if our killer’s still around? He might decide that, rather than chance it, he’ll flee the jurisdiction.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Do we have an Ecuadorian embassy in Scotland?’
12
Assistant Chief Constable Simon Lees had fared pretty well in the reorganisation that had followed the creation of a single Police Scotland force. He’d maintained his rank with a small but well-deserved uptick in his salary. He’d been able to escape the Neanderthals of Fife and base himself in the infinitely more civilised Edinburgh. And his natural talent for administration and management made him well-placed to shine. Really, he had no complaints.
Strike that. He had one complaint. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie was still under his direct command. He’d thought he would be escaping her when he moved to Edinburgh. But her notable successes running cold cases in the former Fife force had brought her to the attention of the big bosses and they’d picked her to run the national Historic Case Unit. Even so, she should have been someone else’s problem. Then that someone else had a heart attack and Lees’ reward for his perpetual overweening careerism was to be given oversight of the HCU.
Karen infuriated him. She had a complete disregard for his rank, treating him with a bland condescension that bordered on insolence but never quite crossed over into insubordination. Or rather, by the time he’d discovered her sidestepping of his authority, she’d achieved another success that made her untouchable. And that was the worst of it. She was defiantly good at what she did. Sometimes unorthodox, sometimes out on a very shaky limb, but more often than not successful. And dramatically successful with the kind of cases the media loved. Karen bloody Pirie, whose every triumph reflected more glory on her boss, who had to smile and smile through gritted teeth.
Almost as irritating was his discovery that she’d been responsible for coining his nickname. He’d always craved the kind of handle he’d heard in the squad rooms when he was climbing the greasy pole – Hammer, Batman, Sherlock and the like. But she’d condemned him to the Macaroon, after Lees Macaroon Bars, a typically Scottish item of confectionery made traditionally with icing sugar and mashed potatoes. It wasn’t a nickname calculated to cast fear into the hearts of criminals or subordinates.
The international fallout from Pirie’s last major case was still troubling his inbox. And now here she was again, slumped in his visitor’s chair, hair tumbled as if she’d just got out of bed, suit rumpled and slightly too big for her. Either she’d lost some weight or she’d conceded the battle and started buying bigger clothes. There was nothing shambolic about her gaze, however. Her blue eyes were calm and untroubled, but he always felt pinned down by them, as if she could see beyond his well-groomed, scrubbed façade to the insecurities that lurked inside. She stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankle. ‘You’re not going to like what I’ve got to say,’ she said.
Nothing new there, Lees thought. ‘That’s very direct of you, Inspector.’
‘No point in beating about the bush,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a very good opportunity to clear a case from 1994 – a violent rape murder in Glasgow. We got a familial hit on the DNA register over the weekend. But it’s problematic.’
What else would it be with her involved? ‘How so?’
Karen outlined the key elements of the case to date. ‘If we’re going to make any progress, we need to get our hands on those adoption records.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’
‘We need to go to court for an order to access Ross Garvie’s original birth certificate.’
Lees sighed. ‘Can’t you deal with that yourself?’ A forlorn hope, at a guess.
‘Not if we want to win. It’s not straightforward. There are human rights arguments against it. And the court will want to hear from his adoptive parents.’
Lees huffed. ‘Can we not push it through quickly without involving them?’
Karen gave him a long, measured look. ‘Even if we could, the blowback would be catastrophic when they found out. We’ll need an advocate who knows about adoption law and human rights legislation.’
Lees pictured numbers clicking over like a cartoon cash register. ‘That sounds like a budget-buster.’
Karen shrugged herself into an upright position, leaning slightly forward. ‘If there was an alternative, I’d be proposing it.’
‘Why can’t we wait and see whether this joyrider recovers consciousness? Or dies? Surely that would put an end to any talk of human rights?’
Karen’s expression hardened. ‘Right enough. We could wait and see whether Ross Garvie wakes up or goes away the crow road. And in an ideal budgetary world, that would solve the problem. But I think there’s more urgency here because there’s a leak somewhere in our system. The media gets to hear about the cases we’re working way earlier in the process than I’d like. Sometimes that works in our favour, and we get witnesses coming forward who said nothing at the time, for whatever reason. But I worry about perpetrators who’ve got used to walking around feeling like they’ve got away with something. They hear we’ve got new evidence, they’re going to be away on their toes. Frankly, if it was me, I’d already have the false ID set up and the overnight bag packed. But thankfully most villains aren’t that smart.’
‘So because we’ve got a leak that you clearly know about but have done nothing to plug, this department’s going to be stuck with a massive legal bill?’ The burn of self-righteous anger was a feeling Lees had always enjoyed.
Karen rolled her eyes. ‘It’s pretty obvious there’s a leak. I know it’s not coming from me and I’d stake my pension that DC Murray isn’t sneaking round talking to journalists behind my back. So it must be coming from admin or the forensics division out at Gartcosh. Neither of which is my responsibility.’
‘Be that as it may, you should have reported your suspicions to me.’ Lees glared at her. It wasn’t often he got Karen Pirie on the back foot and he was happy to make the most of it.
Lees groaned. ‘How certain are you of getting a result if I do authorise this ridiculous level of expenditure?’
‘There’s no guarantees. Chances are the birth certificate won’t give us the father’s name. But it will tell us where to start looking. Without it, we’ve got nothing. With it, we could get the answer we all want.’
‘Or we could get nothing.’
‘That’s always the way with historic cases. If you did a cost–benefit analysis at the start of any of my investigations, the accountants would have a fit. But you know that when we do resolve cold cases, it doesn’t just give closure to the friends and families of the victim, it makes us look good. It raises people’s confidence, and I don’t think you can put a price on that.’ Karen glowered at him.
‘We don’t usually have this level of expenditure up front, though. Look, you said this case is unusual. Can you not get an advocate to do it pro bono? For the prestige?’
Karen sighed. ‘There is no prestige. It’ll be heard in camera. Look, the world is going to hear we’ve reopened this case. I’m going to have Tina McDonald’s family on my back as well as the media. Do you really want me to have to tell them that we’re not proceeding with the investigation because you won’t authorise the legal fees?’
Lees sighed. As usual, she’d backed him into a corner. ‘Fine,’ he growled. ‘But don’t go for a QC.’
Karen stood up, beaming. ‘I’ll get cracking, then.’
Before he could say more, she was out the door, showing a remarkable turn of speed. Lees squeezed his eyes shut. One day, he promised himself. One day he’d get rid of Karen Pirie for good.
13
Sometimes Karen’s need to walk herself to sleep was thwarted by the weather. This was one of those nights. A sharp east wind drove in from the Baltic, cutting through clothes like a skinner’s knife, carrying bitter gouts of rain that stung the skin like flying nettles. She could have quartered the city on the night buses, but she’d learned from experience that that didn’t satisfy her need for movement. Instead, she made a cup of tea and settled down at her laptop. It was a picture of warmth and cosiness. But if she got too comfortable, a turn of her head would bring the sea into sight, white horses topping the heavy swell that hit the sea wall with jagged towers of spray. You could build walls against the wild, but you could never ignore its presence.
Because DI Noble’s interruption to her day was still fresh in her mind, Karen decided to see what she could find out about the murder in 1994 that had apparently set Gabriel Abbott adrift from his moorings. Karen had still been at school then, so it hadn’t made the sort of impression it would have done if she’d already been a cop. But she did remember the plane crash in the Borders and the shock as it had quickly emerged that this was no ordinary aviation accident but the result of a terrorist bomb.
Six years before there had been the horror of the explosion that had ripped through Pan Am flight 103 in the skies above Lockerbie and it had still been fresh in people’s minds. Coupling the words ‘plane’ and ‘terrorism’ in 1994 was enough to provoke ripples of panic in the public consciousness. And when an RAF Chinook helicopter carrying twenty-five senior intelligence operatives was blown out of the skies en route from Northern Ireland a few weeks after the small plane came down, the national press flung themselves into a series of hysterical diatribes against the IRA and all their works. Nobody who took to the skies was safe, some commentators implied. But starved of detailed information, the story soon slipped from the headlines and joined the long tail of the Troubles that mostly happened somewhere else.
Karen typed in ‘Caroline Abbott plane’ to the search engine. The first hit was a Wikipedia page. It was as good a place to start as any. She was accustomed to bringing a healthy dose of scepticism to whatever information crossed her path. Much healthier for a police officer to assume every source was suspect rather than being seduced by appearances.
On 5 May 1994 a Cessna 182 Skylane exploded in mid-air above a hillside at Glendearg near Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. The aircraft was en route between Elstree Aerodrome and Fife Airport by Glenrothes.[1] There were no survivors among the four people on board, who included former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Richard Spencer MP, TV presenter Ellie MacKinnon and West End theatre promoter Caroline Abbott.
Aircraft[edit]
The aircraft involved was a UK-registered Cessna 182 Skylane, tail number G-JPST, construction built in 1975. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had completed 4,845 hours total time and 4,352 cycles.[2]
Accident flight[edit]
The Skylane took off at 10.17 local time from Elstree Aerodrome, with a destination of Fife Airport in Scotland. The flight had been uneventful until, without warning at 12.43, according to eyewitnesses the plane disintegrated in a ball of flame above a hillside at Glendearg near Galashiels Golf Course in the Scottish Borders. Burning wreckage was spread over a wide area.[3] There were no survivors from the explosion.
Casualties[edit]
All four occupants of the aircraft (pilot Richard Spencer and three passengers) perished in the accident. There were no physical injuries on the ground.
Crew
Pilot: Richard Spencer MP
Passengers
Mary Spencer, wife of the pilot
Caroline Abbott, theatre impresario
Ellie MacKinnon, television presenter and writer
Investigation[edit]
An investigation was conducted by the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB), Lothian and Borders Police, assisted by the National Transportation Safety Board, the aircraft manufacturer, Cessna and the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney Canada.
The AAIB published its formal report into the accident on 4 January 1995. It concluded that the mid-air disintegration of the plane had occurred as a result of an incendiary device which had detonated and caused the engine of the plane to explode. The device was of a type typical of terrorist activity.[4]
A Fatal Accident Inquiry into the death of the four victims opened on 31 January 1995 in Edinburgh. The inquest concluded on 10 February with verdicts of murder being returned in all four cases.
Karen cross-checked the facts with a couple of other news stories on the crash itself. On the face of it, there was nothing to argue with. Her next step was to follow the thread of reportage from the breaking news via the finger-pointing to the definitive version of events that had become set in stone. She worked her way through a series of archived newspaper reports as well as random posts by conspiracy theorists, aviation geeks and Ellie MacKinnon fans who were apparently still mourning her passing.
The picture that emerged wasn’t complicated. Richard Spencer, forty-nine, had been a commercial pilot before he became an MP and he’d kept his pilot’s licence current even after he took up his seat. His private plane, a four-seater single-engine Cessna, was kept at Elstree Aerodrome in North London, a couple of miles from the home he shared with his wife Mary, forty-four, and their two children – fourteen-year-old Chloe and ten-year-old Guy. Richard loved to fly and, whenever there was an opportunity, he would take to the skies. He regularly used the Cessna to commute between London and his constituency in Birmingham.
On this occasion, he and Mary were flying to Scotland to attend the wedding in Perth of an old university friend of Mary. Ellie MacKinnon and Mary had also been friends since university and when Mary discovered Ellie
and Caroline Abbott were also attending the wedding, she’d invited them to fly up with her and Richard, the way old friends do. Caroline also planned to visit her young son Gabriel who was at boarding school near Perth.
They’d set off in fair weather and passed all the waymarks on the route north without incident. Then, without warning, the plane had disintegrated in flames above a Scottish hillside. Shocked eyewitnesses spoke of a giant fireball falling from the sky.
Because Richard had been a Northern Ireland minister, outspoken against terrorists of every stripe, it didn’t take long for speculation about terrorism to run like wildfire through the media. Some kind of incendiary bomb, it appeared. Set on a timer, presumably.
There was outrage in the predictable corners of the press. How was it possible that a plane belonging to an obvious terrorist target had been left vulnerable to sabotage? Was this what our politicians deserved in return for their service? Must innocent bystanders pay the price for the failings of the security service and the police? And so on. Karen had wondered about that too, until she’d found a few paragraphs buried deep in the Telegraph’s coverage. The small hangar where the Cessna was customarily stored was locked and alarmed and checked twice daily by the local police. The aerodrome didn’t have the level of security of a commercial airport, but it was patrolled by security guards and there had been no signs of a break-in.
That didn’t mean there hadn’t been a breach, Karen thought. Just that it hadn’t been an obvious one. Money might have changed hands; the security guards might not have been vetted thoroughly enough. There were plenty of possibilities. Nowhere was impregnable if someone wanted to break in badly enough.
She squeezed the bridge of her nose to stop the tears that had sprung up from nowhere. This was the point in her research where she would customarily have turned to Phil and run through what she’d read and what she was thinking. It wasn’t that she couldn’t work things out for herself, but the process of talking always helped her clarify her thoughts. And because their minds worked in different ways, he had a knack for picking up on the odd thing that had slipped past her.