She didn’t wait for him to say goodbye and called her editor. She told him the story and he liked it. ‘What do you need?’ he asked.
‘Get me a photographer and make it urgent. Get him to head towards the Grange and call me when he’s there.’
‘It’s done.’
51
Jonathon Barclay wasn’t home, but his wife was and she stayed remarkably calm when Macallan arrived with search-team officers and detectives. Macallan would have preferred to have Jonathon Barclay there, but they couldn’t delay the search. She decided to let the team get on with it while she sat with Diana Barclay.
‘Is there anything you want to ask me, Mrs Barclay?’
She stared at Macallan and considered the question. ‘I think I said all I needed to say at our previous meeting. I won’t give any statement; I don’t have to, as the person you are obviously interested in is my husband.’
Harkins came into the room, signalled to Macallan and she excused herself. There was not a flicker of a reaction from Diana Barclay.
‘Jacquie Bell and a photographer are outside the fucking house. How in the name of Christ did she get onto this so quickly? JJ and the executive are going to want someone’s guts for this.’
In any other place Macallan would have had a couple of gorillas chase them off, but her relationship with Bell complicated her options. ‘I’ll go and speak to her,’ she told Harkins. ‘Stay with it here.’
She crunched over the pebbled drive with no idea what she was going to say. When she saw Bell, they both smiled. Bell told the photographer to fuck off and have a quick fag, and he trudged away, muttering like a schoolboy who’d had his sweets stolen.
‘Jacquie, much as I like you, this is going to cause havoc back at HQ,’ Macallan told her. ‘I don’t know how you did it, but please help me on this and I’ll give you the story later.’
Bell lit a cigarette and coughed. ‘This is a good story and all we’re going to do is take a couple of photographs. I’ll do a few lines without poisoning the case for you.’
‘Please, Jacquie,’ she begged. ‘I’ll call you tonight and give you all that we have, but let us do our job. We don’t need any flak from the executive – if they look too hard, they might think it was me that set this up as I applied for the warrant.’
Bell relented and motioned to her photographer to head back to his van.
‘Okay, you’ve got it,’ she said quietly. ‘Give me a call tonight or come round. I’m not going to do anything to hurt you. When this is all finished I still want that story about your journey from the Troubles to the dark streets and deeds of Edinburgh.’
She started to walk away from Macallan, then turned and waved when she reached the car – playing to their audience. ‘Look – I’m fucking off.’
Macallan supressed a smile and headed back the way she’d come.
When she re-entered the house, she could have sworn that Diana Barclay had not moved a muscle. She sat down and tried again. ‘Mrs Barclay, I won’t use anything you say here but can I ask you what you think about this: that clearly, at least in our eyes, your husband is a suspect in this case?’
Macallan’s gut told her Diana Barclay was holding back, which wasn’t too surprising given that her husband’s affairs were about to be thrown under a very intense spotlight. Whatever followed wouldn’t be pleasant.
‘Don’t answer that.’
Jonathon Barclay had arrived and Macallan could have sworn he looked like he expected to be arrested. There was no fight in the man, no complaint, and he sat down on the other end of the settee occupied by his wife. The gulf between them was obvious and there was no exchange or reassurance, just the cold and wasted years that had turned them into strangers.
It surprised the search teams how fastidious Barclay was about buying clothes. They were the best in quality, but he tended to buy regularly and get rid of them once the new gloss had gone. No favourites – for him it was always about looking perfect. They took most of what was in the wardrobes and left what were clearly his court clothes. There was no sign of any trophies from victims.
Macallan cautioned Barclay but decided to leave him be until they had more evidence, if that was possible. She left with barely a word spoken, Barclay following her to the door, and she watched him stand frozen in the doorway until the last of the police team had left the grounds. She left in the last car and their eyes were locked until Macallan’s car made the turn onto the street.
‘What the fuck are we missing here?’ she wondered.
The driver looked at her but didn’t have an answer.
No one did except the killer.
Barclay walked back into the sitting room, decided he had to say something, and then regretted it as soon as he opened his mouth. ‘Look, we’ll get through this.’
His wife lifted her eyes from the floor and shook her head slowly, trying to form a response without anger. Jacquie Bell had already produced an article claiming that a lawyer was under investigation, so the seeds of disgrace were sown and germinating. She wanted the words to cut deep into the falsehood that was her husband’s life.
‘I’ve known you for a long time, Jonathon, even though I’ve spent a good part of that time hating you, and I know how you operate. You were like a rabbit in the headlights when those police officers raked through our life. The Jonathon Barclay I know would have fought them tooth and nail – they’d have been lucky to get in the door unless something was very wrong. Is something very wrong, Jonathon? And answer me this – did you know any of the girls?’
He looked at the back of his hands.
‘I just don’t understand your behaviour – and then there’s the car being stolen. You can see how that looks to them.’
Divorce or death would have at least secured the sympathy of friends but this would turn her into a social leper with nowhere to go and a future that held nothing but loneliness.
Barclay drew a breath, feeling trapped. There wasn’t enough respect between them to make an explanation possible. What had been left of their relationship was gone, the final humiliation delivered by Grace Macallan and the police team, but he decided to try nonetheless.
‘I know how these things develop a life of their own,’ he said. ‘I’m not loved by the police, and there’s an officer on the case who I’ve had to deal with a number of times. They’re already leaking to the press, and I’ve no doubt what I’m going to tell you will eventually find its way into the papers. I know at least two of the girls, but it has to be coincidence – there’s no other explanation.’
His wife felt cold and calm, and if nothing else she thought she could at least make his downfall as complete as possible.
‘The fact that you associate with whores isn’t new to me, but at least I was able to lead what passes for a life. This has brought me to the edge of the same cesspit you inhabit. You sit there and tell me that there’s no other explanation? Well, I’m afraid there is.’
He nodded, too tired to plead with her, but she wanted to open up the wounds just a bit more and continued. ‘There are lots of people who will enjoy picking over your bones. God will they love it – all those people you’ve trampled over the years because you thought you were bulletproof. How does it feel, Jonathon?’
She was desperate to shed tears but there was too much hatred brewing to allow her that luxury, and all he could do was sit there and listen as she continued tearing into him.
52
When Macallan got back to HQ she told Harkins she needed some food and left the building. She walked to the nearest public phone, called Bell and told her what had happened at the house. Another few lines of bad publicity would pile the pressure on Barclay, and as far as Macallan was concerned that was okay.
‘That’s all good, Grace, keep me in the loop. Drink tonight?’
‘Can’t. I’m up to my eyes and can hardly keep awake as it is. Wouldn’t want to seem bored if we meet up.’
That was an excuse, and they both knew it, but Bell just
smiled at the small lie. ‘Well, just enjoy whatever it is that you’re up to – or whoever it is that you’re up to.’
Macallan wanted to be with JJ; it was just a case of whether she could prise him away from the office.
53
The clothing taken from the Barclay’s home was sealed carefully, labelled and sent to the forensic laboratory for examination, but it would take days to complete the examination properly, and the tension in the office was difficult to deal with. If there was nothing on the clothes then they might be left with detaining Barclay and trying to get an admission – but that was unlikely from a QC who knew all the tricks of the trade and then some. The analysts and detectives would push on with all the lines of investigation they had, but for O’Connor, Macallan and Harkins it was almost impossible to concentrate on anything other than Barclay.
After her phone call to Bell, Macallan had gone back to visit Johansson to see if she might be able to recall the face of the man who had attacked her, but she had no memory, and Macallan didn’t want to show her a photograph of Barclay or mention him until they had more evidence.
Before she’d left, she’d told Johansson about the visit she’d made to her parents, but now she was home, she was overwhelmed by doubt about whether she’d done the right thing. What would they think of their daughter now – how she’d come to that hospital bed from a life of heroin dependency? Would they be able to give her the support she needed?
Macallan let herself wrestle with those thoughts for a few moments before she swallowed some coffee, called the office and asked if anything had come back from the lab yet. Harkins sounded as frustrated as she was when he told her there was no news, and she thought there might be something else up with him, but she didn’t have time to get him to open up about it right now. Maybe they were all just a bit punch-drunk from the investigation and it was simply the sixteen-hour days starting to take their toll. She pushed the thought away.
‘I’m beginning to think it’s back to the drawing board,’ Harkins said. ‘If it’s not Barclay then we’ve got nothing else, and as far as I know, our Glasgow colleagues have got fuck all but sore knuckles from dragging their paws along the ground.’
Macallan laughed and tried to sound upbeat even though she didn’t feel it herself. ‘Chin up, we’ll get there.’
But doubts were crawling through all their minds, gnawing away at them like ulcers in the pit of their stomachs, and after she hung up, Macallan let her head fall back, breathing deeply. She needed a break – some kind of distraction – and felt weary down to the soles of her feet. She wanted to soak in a bath with her eyes closed and nothing in her imagination, just music playing in the background.
She phoned O’Connor and invited him for a drink. ‘I know you don’t want to leave the office until we get an answer, but we all need a break. Come round and I’ll cook you something that goes with any kind of booze.’
He was too tired to argue and knew that his batteries were low and that he wasn’t thinking straight. A cooked meal with Grace Macallan was an offer he couldn’t refuse in the circumstances, and he thought it might help move the knot of worry that was strangling him from the inside.
When he walked through the door of Macallan’s flat an hour later, they stared at each other as if they hadn’t met in a long time.
‘God, we both look like shit!’ she said. ‘Is this what life is supposed to be about?’
The blunt truth made him smile for the first time in days. ‘Why don’t you say what you mean? I really don’t think that’s any way to speak to a senior officer.’
They both laughed and began to relax. O’Connor thought again how much this woman was getting to him and how little he actually knew about her. He promised himself he’d spend the rest of his life finding out.
‘Well, if that’s no way to speak to a senior officer then this next thing will really put my career down the toilet. That noise you hear in the background is the bath running, and you’re invited to join me. Now you can either report me for sexual harassment or get your kit off and jump in.’
He scratched his chin in feigned doubt and then nodded. ‘Okay, just this once . . . but the next time this happens I will file a complaint.’
She took him by the hand and led him towards the bathroom where the steam hung in the air like the edge of a dream.
54
O’Connor was chairing a meeting with the murder squad when the call came through from the lab. Everyone in the room stiffened, trying to gauge what was being said, but he gave nothing away, just nodded at the voice on the other end of the line. When he put the phone down though, his face turned dark and set.
Macallan sank back in her chair guessing bad news – that the clothing was clean and they were back to a blank drawing board. She wondered why she’d expected anything else, but they were all starting to live on hope rather than expectation.
O’Connor apologised to the squad for cutting the meeting short and asked Macallan and Harkins to follow him to his office.
When he sat down at his desk, they saw his face was pulled tight with strain. He looked up at them. ‘They’ve found blood on a jacket that’s been DNA’d then matched to Pauline Johansson and DNA on a pair of trousers matched to Anna.’
The temperature in the room seemed to drop, and they sat quietly for a moment, trying to absorb what no one had really believed was possible.
Harkins, however, always knew how to break the ice. ‘Well, I’ll be fucked,’ he said.
Macallan shook her head; she still didn’t believe it. ‘There’s no doubt?’
‘No doubt at all. We have him for at least two of the cases. He’s away for the rest of his life providing he doesn’t rustle up some legal magic. I know we’ve done it by the book so far but it has to be the same from here on in – we can’t afford any mistakes.’
O’Connor picked up the phone and asked Young to come in so he could brief her on the development. She rarely showed emotion in the office, but she was as excited as they all were by what this meant, and she had her own contribution to make.
‘I was going to brief you all at the meeting that we’ve dug up something. Maybe not a breakthrough on its own but it’ll help the chain of evidence, given what we’ve just learned.’ She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and flicked to the second page of the report she had on her lap. ‘Through researching open sources we’ve been able to establish that Barclay was dealing with a defence case in Glasgow High Court when Anna was killed. He was attending a legal conference in Manchester six months ago when a prostitute was left brain damaged from an attack, and he was in London nearly a year ago when another street girl was attacked and lucky to survive. The issue with that one was that she was fresh in from the Balkans, and after giving a poor initial statement she disappeared. The Met think her pimps got rid of her. Apparently they’re not too keen on police involvement.’
O’Connor nodded, his face still a reflection of his inner turmoil as he tried to work out the scenarios and traps that might be lying in wait for them. The rule of thumb was that something had to go wrong – it was the nature of the game, and you had to be prepared to handle the crisis when it tapped you on the shoulder.
‘That’s good work, Felicity – it adds to what we’ve got and the other forces will want to follow up, but as long as we can secure two of the cases then even if we lose some of the others, well we’ll take that. Get all this put together as soon as. And, Grace, I want you to put together an interview strategy so we can work on him once he’s been detained, then you and I will do the interview itself. You okay with that, Mick? I’m sure you’d love to be there, but it has to be done this way. If there’s a fuck-up, then it’s my fuck-up, and I’ll take responsibility.’
Harkins nodded, looking pale and tense. ‘No problem. I’m fine with that.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine, sir. It’s just been a hard haul this one, but don’t worry, I’ll be there for the celebration once we get him settle
d into a concrete room.’
O’Connor clapped his hands together and came to life. ‘Okay, let’s get cracking. I want him picked up tomorrow morning at six. Get the surveillance team to watch him round the clock, and make sure he’s somewhere we can knock on his door.’
A few minutes later, Macallan was walking away from the station and wondering why she was doing what she was about to do. She checked round and slipped into the phone booth, feeling guilt weighing down on her as she picked up the receiver.
‘Hi, Jacquie, are you free to speak?’ she asked when Bell picked up.
‘Anytime for you. What’s up?’
Macallan explained the situation and told her Barclay was right in the middle of the frame with nowhere to go. Bell whistled and promised to keep quiet until they’d taken him in. She would then publish fuller details the following day in an exclusive.
After she ended the call, Macallan decided to take a break from the office for half an hour because she knew it would be a long night getting the script ready for the morning shift. The bulk of the interview strategy would be decided by an experienced DS who was a trained interview advisor, but she wanted to be sure she was happy with it before facing Barclay across the table.
She walked into a coffee chain and ordered a simple white coffee, avoiding the lure of the elixirs that contained enough calories to keep the Scottish rugby team going for a day. She wanted Barclay’s humiliation to be complete, and Bell would make that happen, but as she sipped her coffee, she couldn’t escape the nagging feeling in her gut that despite the damning evidence they’d found, something about the whole situation felt very, very wrong.
55
Barclay lay fully dressed on his bed. It was still dark, and the fat spots of rain tapping his window added to the thick black depression that filled every corner of his imagination. Sleep had all but deserted him for days on end; he felt exhausted and at times he was delirious through the endless hours awake. All he could see was his future shattered like a mirror, and nothing was certain now, if it ever had been.
Cause of Death Page 20