by Val McDermid
Now Police Scotland’s Historic Case Unit, led by Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie, faces an uphill struggle to trace the birth parents of the driver, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
At a court hearing earlier this week, lawyers argued that the police should have access to the driver’s original birth certificate. But his adoptive parents, who have kept the truth about his birth a secret from him, complained that this was a breach of his right to privacy and a family life.
Now both sides must await the decision of the sheriff.
Tina McDonald was 24 when she was brutally raped and murdered after a girls’ night out to celebrate the birthday of her friend and boss Liz Dunleavy, owner of a salon in Glasgow’s trendy Byres Road.
Her body was left in an alley behind the former Bluebeard’s night club off George Square in the city centre, her brand-new sequined red dress torn and bloodstained.
Hundreds of witness statements were taken from clubbers and friends of the vivacious young stylist. But no arrest was ever made. Now, police are tantalisingly close to finally closing the case.
At the family home in Mount Florida, Tina’s grieving father Eric said, ‘I can’t believe the police don’t automatically have the right to this information. Surely justice for my wee lassie matters more than the rights of some joyrider who’s already killed three of his pals?
‘Tina’s murder sentenced us to a life of hell. The least the courts can do is give us an answer to who did this.’
DCI Pirie was unavailable for comment last night, but a spokesman for Police Scotland said, ‘We do not comment on ongoing inquiries.’
Karen gave a little snort. ‘Except when it suits us,’ she muttered. She skimmed the other accounts, learning nothing she didn’t know, then googled the story to make sure there was nothing she’d missed. As she shrugged into her jacket, she took a quick look at Twitter and groaned as she saw #TinaMcDonald was trending locally. The Twitterati were building up a head of righteous indignation. The majority were for justice and Tina, and against the joyrider who’d wiped out three of his pals. But there was a vocal minority who championed his right to a private life even though he’d deprived others of any life at all. It was, Karen thought, enough to make you want to tear up the Human Rights Act.
If only for a moment.
She checked herself in the mirror. It was only the second time she’d worn this suit, a recent concession to the fact that she’d lost weight and everything else was hanging on her. A dark blue herringbone linen mix, it actually made her look presentable. And the shirt she’d treated herself to in the White Stuff sale was a pretty blue-and-white pattern that made her eyes more intense. Not that she was dressing up for the Macaroon. She was meeting Giorsal after work and she had a feeling there might not be time to slip home and change. She wanted to look her best; she didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for her. Giorsal probably wouldn’t be like that, but Karen wanted to slip back into their old friendship, not have it undermined with pity before it even got out of the starting blocks. She rubbed a smirr of moulding paste through her ungovernable hair, made sure her bag held life’s necessities and set off to face the dissonance.
Assistant Chief Constable Simon Lees had been stoking his fury ever since he’d glanced at his iPad on waking. Now, an hour and a half later, he resembled a pressure cooker in the instant before the steam pushes the valve open and fills the kitchen with hissing steam. All it needed for him to blow was the arrival of that bloody woman.
This time, she’d crossed the line. She’d presided over an almighty cock-up. One he’d specifically warned her against. Underneath his simmering rage, there was a twinge of delight that he was in the delicious position of being fully entitled to give her a full metal jacket bollocking.
He sipped his green tea and looked at his watch. One minute to go. She’d be late. She was always late. She made a point of claiming to have so much on her plate she’d lost track of time. He had time to rein in his anger and maintain the pretence of calm. He flicked open his iPad and clicked on the RPG combat game he’d become mildly addicted to. Enough time had surely passed for him to improve the strength of the main gate to his compound.
But before he could click on the icon, there was a knock on the door. As usual, Pirie didn’t wait to be invited. She was in the door, across the room and in the chair while he was still desperately trying to shut down his game. He thought he’d managed it, but when he looked back at her, there was the faintest of smiles on her face.
‘What the bloody hell is going on here?’ No preamble, straight for the jugular. Lees took the tabloid from his top drawer and slammed it on the table in front of Karen, face up. ‘I warned you about leaks. I told you specifically to get your house in order. And what do I wake up to? All hell breaking loose.’
A moment’s silence while Karen cast an eye over the paper. ‘I don’t know where that came from, but it didn’t come from my office.’
‘Well, where the hell else could it have come from?’
Karen shrugged. ‘Colin Semple’s office. Sheriff Abercrombie’s clerk. Alexandra Cosgrove’s office. A court usher. The parents of Tina McDonald. You’ve got no grounds for assuming that it came from me or from DC Murray. We’re the ones with most to lose, for one thing.’
‘Really? You’re not interested in the glory, DCI Pirie? Leaking at this stage means you get the credit for not giving up on Tina McDonald, but if it all goes wrong, it’s the system and not you to blame.’
She looked at him as if she wanted to punch him. He had her on the run now, he could sense it. Why had it taken him so long to figure out that her professional vanity was her Achilles’ heel? He felt a smirk coming on but he forced his mouth to stay still. When she spoke, her voice was low and venomous. ‘The only thing I care about is putting criminals behind bars. Tina McDonald’s killer has been walking around for twenty years thinking he’s got away with it. Now he knows we’ve got a line on him. And he also knows that we can’t do a bloody thing about it till the sheriff gives us the green light. Do you really think he’s still going to be around when we come knocking? Believe me, nobody is more pissed off about this than I am.’
She had a point, he had to admit. But still he thought she was the one who came out of this with most kudos. And that was what drove her, he was sure of it now. ‘So you say,’ he snapped, enunciating each word with precision. ‘But I can’t just take your word for it. We need to find out who is leaking this stuff to the press. It’s not in the interests of that justice you’re so very self-righteous about. So, I’m instituting a leak inquiry.’
She sighed. He was winning. She was on the run now. Time for the killer blow. ‘I’ll be briefing Detective Superintendent Gordon Robson shortly.’ She couldn’t hide the look of dismay. Her former boss. A man who was almost as fond of her as he was. Gordon Robson would make Pirie’s life a misery, Lees would bet a year’s salary on it. ‘He’ll get to the bottom of this.’
‘If you say so.’
She never sirred him. No respect. Well, he’d enjoy watching Gordon Robson bringing her down. In spite of her protestations, he was convinced the leak began and ended in Karen Pirie’s office. ‘He’ll need access to all your phone records and emails. Both you and DC Murray.’
Karen snorted. ‘Well, that should induce a coma. I can’t speak for Jason, but my life is an open book. I’d have thought there were better ways for DS Robson to spend his time, but be my guest.’ She stood up. ‘If that’s all, I need to get back to work. I’ve got a murder to solve.’
And to his immense frustration, she walked out as if the bollocking had never happened.
22
Karen found Jason in their office, whey-faced and shaky, poring over the morning papers. ‘You look like you had a good night last night,’ Karen said, throwing her jacket over the back of her chair and slumping in front of the computer. ‘I’m glad one of us did.’
‘On the batter with my flatmates. It was Matt’s birthday.’ He managed a weak smile. ‘I wasn’t feeling brilliant to start with but this lot’s made me feel shan as hell.’
‘Tell me about it. I’ve just had what passes for the evils from the Macaroon. Kinda like being savaged by a seven-year-old that thinks it’s big to say “bum”. The downside is that he’s bringing in Jilted John to run a leak inquiry.’
Jason looked baffled. ‘Who’s Jilted John when he’s at home?’
‘You know. Jilted John, had a hit with that novelty record during the punk thing.’ Karen cleared her throat and sang tunelessly, ‘Gordon is a moron, Gordon is a moron.’
Jason seemed none the wiser. ‘I don’t even know if my mum was born when punk was happening, never mind me. So who’s Jilted John?’
‘Detective Superintendent Gordon Robson,’ she sighed. ‘He hates me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because back in the mists of time I arrested my boss and he ended up going down for life. And he was Jilted John’s best mate.’
‘Ah,’ Jason said, enlightened at last. ‘You made a lot of enemies back then. I remember Phil telling me . . . ’ His voice trailed off.
‘Aye, and I’ve got better at it with practice,’ Karen said, going for cheerful and almost hitting it. ‘So it might be good if we can figure out where the leak sprung from before Jilted John tries to pin the tail on one of us donkeys.’
Jason’s eyes widened. ‘Would he do that?’
‘In a heartbeat. He’s going to be looking at our phone records and our email trails. Hope you’ve not been trying to buy yourself a Russian mail-order bride.’
He gave a weak smile. ‘Not recently, boss.’
‘Have a look through your contacts and see if you can come up with anybody who works for one of these rags that owes you one. And in the meantime, I think we should—’
The phone rang, cutting across Karen’s words. She tutted and picked it up. ‘DCI Pirie, Historic Cases Unit.’
‘Colin Semple here, DCI Pirie. Bad news, I’m afraid.’
It felt like a punch to the gut. ‘The sheriff said no?’
‘Not yet. This is more personal bad news. Sheriff Abercrombie is demanding you appear before her without delay. She takes very seriously the “in camera” aspect of her court and she is more than a little unhappy at today’s media coverage. She’s considering a contempt of court finding against you.’
‘But I never—’
‘I said, “considering”.’
Outrage and grievance swelled in Karen’s heart. ‘Whoever spilled to the media, it wasn’t me. So there can’t be any evidence to charge me with contempt.’
‘This is more about demonstrating the power of the court rather than sending you to jail to cool your heels for a day or two. Or so I believe. Sheriff Abercrombie just wants to flex her judicial muscle and show who’s boss. Don’t worry, DCI Pirie. You’re going to get your knuckles rapped, that’s all. The worst-case scenario is that she’ll demand you apologise to the court.’
‘That makes me feel so much better. So, what? I have to drop everything and come scurrying up to Chambers Street?’
‘As soon as you like,’ he said. ‘The longer it takes you to get there, the more affronted she’ll let herself feel. Chances are, she’ll keep you waiting, but you need to be here or she’ll make that an excuse to accuse you of contempt in itself.’
‘Are you in court today?’ Karen asked.
‘I’m calling from the Advocates’ Room. I’ve got an ex parte hearing on the list, but that shouldn’t take too long. I can always ask for a short adjournment if the sheriff calls you before the bench while I’m still doing that. I’ve got my devil with me, I’ll text you her number. Let her know when you get up here and she’ll fetch me. Now get on your bike, Chief Inspector.’
Karen glared at the phone as she replaced it. ‘Like I’ve got nothing better to do,’ she grumbled, hoicking her jacket off the chair.
‘What’s up, boss?’
‘Bollocking number two. Only I suspect the sheriff’ll be a more scary prospect than the Macaroon. See if I get sent to the jail? You’re in charge of the cake with the file.’
Semple had been right about one thing. The sheriff seemed intent on having Karen kick her heels for much of the day. She got herself signed into the Solicitors’ Room café by Semple’s trainee, a demure twenty-something with the soft accent of the Western Isles who couldn’t have looked less like a devil if she’d tried. But a cup of coffee and a slab of shortbread did nothing to improve Karen’s temper. This was the kind of day that pushed her right back into the bite of her sweet tooth. She’d almost broken that habit in the wake of Phil’s death. Not deliberately, but because everything tasted of ash and cardboard in her mouth. She hated to admit it, because defiance was her default position, but she felt healthier for it and now she was beginning to find food palatable again, she didn’t want to fall back into bad ways. She’d have swapped being more healthy for having Phil back in a heartbeat, but since that was nothing more than a stupid fantasy, she might as well make the most of it. Karen stared longingly at a pyramid of Tunnock’s Teacakes, exhaled heavily and took out her laptop. She dealt with an hour’s worth of email and still there was no sign of the sheriff’s summons. Nothing else for it but the case that was causing them so much grief.
Jason had painstakingly scanned in the key statements in the Tina McDonald case. She could have reread them, but she felt as if she knew them by heart now. They’d farmed out some of the reinterviews to local officers who seemed to have done a decent job. But still the only oddity remained the underground ticket among the possessions of a woman who suffered from claustrophobia.
And so Karen found herself drawn again to the puzzling deaths of Gabriel Abbott and his mother. It was none of her business, but she couldn’t seem to shake it clear from her head. All the cases she worked involved people lacerated by grief. And sometimes they couldn’t take the pain and killed themselves. But not twenty-two years later. There was something about Gabriel Abbott’s life and death that had its hooks in her. As if focusing on him could put her own grief on the back burner, even for a short time. ‘If it was my case, where would I start?’ she muttered. Take nothing for granted. That was the first rule of cold case work. Examine everything in the case for its factual basis. Is this conclusion evidence-based, or merely an assumption?
Gabriel first.
But here she was stymied. She didn’t have access to the case files or the interviews. All she knew was that the needle had swung from suicide to homicide then back again. Cops were only human – when a straightforward explanation presented itself and nothing contradicted it, that was generally the path they’d follow – and they were mostly right. She’d once worked with a fast-track graduate who loved to make the rest of the team feel like numpties. He was always on about Occam’s razor, which as far as she was concerned was a fancy way of saying what all cops knew to be true. Maybe William of Occam had been a polis, but Karen somehow doubted it.
The thing was that sometimes the simple explanation wasn’t the right one. It was a fix. A scam, a set-up, an illusion created by smoke and mirrors. She didn’t know enough about Gabriel Abbott’s death to decide where the truth lay. So she’d have to put that to one side for now. Maybe Giorsal would be able to join up some of the dots and colour in some of the background when they met for dinner later.
So, Caroline Abbott. And, of course, Ellie MacKinnon, Mary Spencer and her husband Richard. But it was Caroline who interested Karen, because murder didn’t run in families. Except when it did. And in those cases, there were often unexpected connecting threads.
There. She’d said it. Only in her head, but she’d said it. And already she was googling Caroline Abbott, getting to know her more closely than she’d bothered with before. She’d already absorbed the bare facts – the drama degree, learning the b
usiness of commercial theatre, then her own production company surfing the wave of public taste with an impressive degree of success. But what about Caroline Abbott the woman?
Karen had read somewhere that 92 per cent of searchers never took the search past the first page. After that, she’d made a point of working her way down past the obvious to the more tangential results. And there, on the third page was buried an interview with Caroline Abbott, archived and made available by one of the classier women’s magazines.
23
STAGE BY STAGE
Meet the woman who’s beating the West End boys at their own game
By Fenella Drake
The chances are you won’t know Caroline Abbott‘s name, even if you’re a keen theatregoer. But you’ve probably thrilled to one of her shows. She’s the producer behind half a dozen West End hits that have gone on from rave reviews to tour around the British Isles.
Among the shows she’s brought to delighted audiences are Call Me!, Thick and Thin, Amazing Strangers and last year’s smash hit Starstricken. And if that wasn’t enough, she’s the single mum of two boisterous boys, Will and Gabriel.
We met in her office in a narrow Georgian building in Soho. It’s a welcoming room with squashy sofas as well as an imposing walnut desk and a fine view of Soho Square. Caroline, dressed in a silk Nicole Farhi ecru sweater and black jodhpurs, revealed that she loved the theatre from an early age. But she never wanted to be an actress. ‘My parents loved going out to the theatre and they always took me to pantos and musicals. Right from the beginning, I was completely smitten. But I didn’t want to be up there, singing and dancing. I’ve never craved the limelight. What fascinated me as much as the performances was how they made it happen. As soon as I was old enough, I joined the local amateur dramatic society. By the time I was twelve, I was the Assistant Stage Manager in charge of props and by fourteen I was the Stage Manager proper. I knew I’d found my vocation.’