The Meating Room

by T F Muir

  ‘Magner’s an only child.’

  She shrugged. ‘I wouldnae know.’

  ‘Got a name for the other person?’

  ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘So, what happened later that night?’ Gilchrist asked.

  ‘This Saturday night, me and Sheilagh and Morag started out at the Caledonian as usual. We’d chip in to buy the first drink, then nurse it until someone chatted us up. Well, this particular night, Magner was over in a flash, so he was. I remember that. And there was something different about him—’

  ‘Different? As in wearing a suit?’

  ‘Naw. He was in a suit like, aye, but he looked like he was excited about something.’

  ‘On drugs?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Did you ever indulge?’ Jessie asked.

  ‘Fags and vodka’s my limit,’ she said, unfazed by the directness. ‘Talking of which, do you mind if I smoke?’

  Gilchrist shook his head, sipped his tea.

  Vicky placed her mug on the table, slipped a packet of Marlboro Lights from one cardigan pocket and a lighter from the other, and lit up with the expertise of a lifelong addict. She inhaled, her eyes closing with pleasure, then let out the smoke with a heavy gush. ‘I should gie this up,’ she said. ‘Save a fucking fortune, excuse the French.’

  Jessie shifted on the arm of the sofa, pushed herself to her feet, shoved her hands into her pockets. Gilchrist was always amazed how ex-smokers, himself included, became uneasy when someone lit up. Smoke curled in the air, giving him an odd flashback of the snooker club where his late brother, Jack, had first taken up smoking.

  ‘So . . . Magner looked different that night,’ he said, nudging his mind away from the nicotine itch. ‘Then what?’

  ‘We got chatting, had a few drinks, one thing led to another, and before you know it, I was on my own with him and heading out to some other hotel in a taxi.’

  ‘What one?’ Jessie asked.

  ‘Cannae remember.’

  Gilchrist almost spilled his tea. ‘Was that the hotel in which Magner allegedly forced himself upon you?’

  ‘None of that allegedly anything shite. He raped me, plain and fucking simple.’

  ‘In that hotel?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘But you can’t remember its name?’ It seemed such an extraordinary gap in her memory that Gilchrist found himself eyeing her with suspicion.

  ‘I went back to check it out,’ she explained. ‘But it’s been knocked down. There’s nothing left. Just flattened.’

  Well, he supposed that might explain it, so he pressed on. ‘Do you remember what happened when you arrived at the hotel?’

  ‘Remember?’ She looked aghast. ‘How could I ever forget?’

  Gilchrist could not fail to notice Jessie’s disapproving stare, so he decided to take a step back and let her take over. Jessie seemed to sense this, and led Vicky to the sofa.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Jessie said. ‘Take your time. And once you’re ready, tell us what happened.’

  ‘Aye. I’ll do that. Just gie me a minute ’til I finish this off.’

  She sucked the Marlboro for all it was worth, then dowsed the dout into her tea. And with that action, Gilchrist set his own half-empty mug on the window sill.

  ‘He had this bottle of vodka,’ Vicky said. ‘I remember that. The Russian one with a red label and the funny name . . . Stollie-something.’

  ‘Stolichnaya?’ Gilchrist offered.

  ‘That’s the one. We had a few of these, then one thing led to another and before you know it, he makes his move. He rolls on top of me, then starts groping. I was pinned to the bed. He was too strong for me. I told him to stop—’

  ‘Why?’

  Both Jessie and Vicky looked up in astonishment at Gilchrist.

  He tried to explain. ‘You were twenty-seven. You’d had a few at the Caledonian. You went back to his hotel room. Surely you must have known what was going to—’

  ‘I wisnae a hoor.’

  ‘But what was to stop Magner thinking you were? You let him take you to a hotel. Just the two of you. Did you think he wanted to talk about the weather?’

  ‘It wisnae like that.’

  ‘I’ll bet it wasn’t.’ He stepped away from the window, and moved to the centre of the room, until he was staring straight down at her. ‘Here’s what I think happened.’

  She looked up at him, eyes widening.

  ‘You went back to that hotel with the intention of having sex with Thomas Magner, and when—’

  ‘No, I didnae—’

  ‘. . . he came on to you, you said it would cost him—’

  ‘No. No.’ It sounded like a wail. Tears spilled from her eyes.

  ‘. . . and when Magner realised he’d been duped by a prostitute, he refused to stop.’

  Vicky shook her head and put her hands over her ears.

  Gilchrist waited for her to lower them. ‘What I don’t understand is, why?’

  She scowled at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why did it stay with you for so long?’

  ‘I was raped,’ she said. ‘That’s why it stayed with me. That bastard ruined my life.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that,’ he snapped.

  She looked up at him and shook her head again. ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘What is it, Vicky? What did he do to you?’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘In your statement, you said it ruined your marriage. You blame Magner for everything that’s gone wrong in your life. But after that night you got married, had kids. It wasn’t all bad. So what are you hiding?’

  ‘Please leave me alone,’ she pleaded.

  ‘We’re on your side here, Vicky. We’re trying to help. But you have to tell us—’

  ‘Please,’ she said, then looked to Jessie for support. ‘Will you please just go?’

  Silent, Gilchrist collected the three mugs and carried them through to the kitchen, leaving Jessie alone with Vicky. A few minutes later, seeing Jessie standing at the kitchen door, ready to leave, arms folded, he knew he had pushed too hard.

  He glanced at Vicky Kelvin as they walked into the hallway, hoping to catch some sign that she understood what he had tried to do, that he was on her side, that sometimes you have to be brutal to get to the truth.

  But she just sat there with her head in her hands, shoulders heaving with misery.

  CHAPTER 12

  Neither of them spoke until they were almost across the Tay Road Bridge.

  ‘Why did you have to be so hard on her?’ Jessie said.

  ‘She wasn’t telling us everything.’

  ‘She’d been raped, for crying out loud. She didn’t exactly take notes about the guy’s technique when he was sticking it to her. You’re missing the point.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘By a mile. Maybe a hundred miles.’

  He gritted his teeth and gripped the steering wheel. A reply seemed pointless. Maybe they were all missing the point. The entire day seemed to have been a waste of time. He had not heard from Cooper – no further PM updates. It was hardly surprising that she didn’t want to talk to him after his performance on the phone last night. Still, he was the SIO in a murder investigation and it was her responsibility to keep him up to speed.

  He made a note to call her once he was back in the Office.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked Jessie. ‘Wild goose chase?’

  ‘What are we talking about?’

  ‘Thomas Magner.’

  ‘He didn’t kill the McCullochs.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  She let out a tired sigh, as if she’d had enough of his convoluted theories. Part of him felt the same way. The facts were piling up, telling him it couldn’t possibly be Magner – he wasn’t even in the same county, let alone the same town, when the murders took place. But his gut just wouldn’t let it go.

  Jessie said, ‘Tell me one thing that points to Magner, Andy. Anything. No matter how sma
ll. Just one thing.’

  ‘It fits,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Is that it? It fits?’ She shook her head. ‘Seriously, Andy, we can’t continue with this line of enquiry. What are we achieving? Greaves’ll be all over us like a rash, and so will the press if we don’t come up with something soon. In the meantime, everything points away from Magner.’

  ‘But towards who?’

  ‘That’s the scary thing. It doesn’t point towards anyone,’ she said, her voice rising with despair. ‘We’ve got sweet eff all and the day’s almost over.’

  ‘Okay,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Maybe I was wrong to put so much stock in Magner. But sometimes you have to push to the limit before you know when to back off.’

  ‘Like you did with Vicky Kelvin?’

  ‘That’s different. She wasn’t telling us—’

  Jessie’s mobile rang, stopping their argument like an electronic referee.

  She looked at the screen, muttered a curse, then made the connection. ‘Whatever it is, Lachie, I can’t make it. Okay?’ But she held the mobile to her ear, strangely muted for once, listening in silence while the metallic echo of a man’s voice fired at her.

  She disconnected only when the echoes stopped.

  Gilchrist glanced across at her. She seemed stunned, even scared. He looked back to the road ahead and waited, but Jessie sat in silence, her face to the window, as if searching for tell-tale signs of spring – she could wait a long time for these, he thought.

  Just to break the silence, Gilchrist was about to call Stan when his mobile rang. He didn’t recognise the number but made the connection regardless. ‘DCI Gilchrist.’

  ‘DI Mac Smith here, sir. You asked me to call if anything turned up.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I thought you should hear about a turn in events. Two of the women who filed formal complaints against Magner – Eleanor McInnes and Laura Dewar – have both just retracted their statements.’

  Gilchrist recalled the names from their trawl through the paperwork, but his memory failed to pull up any specifics about either woman.

  ‘Did they offer any explanation?’ he asked.

  ‘Only that they were mistaken.’

  ‘Mistaken?’ He almost gasped. ‘Both of them?’

  ‘It’s strange, that’s for sure.’

  Gilchrist’s mind wrestled with what Smith had just said. Strange did not come close. Downright unbelievable was more like it. Someone must have persuaded both women to drop their allegations. Maybe Magner himself had got to them; or someone who knew him. But if that was so, and you took that logic one more step forward, with all that was happening, was it possible that whoever massacred the McCullochs also knew Magner? If so, it pulled him right back into the centre of the equation, no matter what the evidence – or lack of it – suggested.

  ‘Do you think they were threatened?’

  ‘Both are denying it, just saying they’re having second thoughts.’

  ‘Are they saying they made it up? They were not assaulted?’

  ‘No. Just that the assaults were not as severe as they originally claimed them to be.’

  ‘So the sex was consensual?’

  ‘They’re not saying that, sir.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Gilchrist said. ‘They were either raped or they weren’t. Do they know each other?’

  ‘The information we have on file gives no indication that they do. But if you believe that, you believe in tooth fairies.’

  ‘Have they spoken to each other?’ Gilchrist asked. ‘You need to check their phone records.’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, you’re not my SIO.’

  ‘Sorry. Force of habit.’

  ‘We’re already looking into it,’ Smith said. ‘And we’ll be interviewing them again. I’ll keep you posted.’

  As soon as DI Smith hung up, Gilchrist called Stan.

  ‘Have Jackie run a check on two women for me – Eleanor McInnes and Laura Dewar,’ he said, then told Stan about Smith’s call. ‘And see if Jackie can find something that links Magner, the McCullochs and/or Stratheden Enterprises to one or both of them. Then have her look into their bank accounts – find out if any money’s changed hands. Maybe we’re dealing with a greasing of palms rather than a physical threat. You know, here’s a couple of thou to drop the charges, that sort of thing.’

  As he ended the call, Jessie said, ‘You’re caught up with Magner.’

  ‘He’s the common denominator.’

  ‘Maybe we should stop spinning our wheels and talk to the one person who knows what he’s really like.’

  Gilchrist frowned for a moment. ‘His ex-wife?’

  ‘Right first time.’

  ‘Give Jackie a call,’ he said, ‘and get her to find out where she lives.’

  ‘A call? That’ll be a bit one-sided.’

  ‘Just text her then, for crying out loud.’

  Thirty minutes later, they arrived at the North Street Office.

  Jackie was in her office, seated behind her computer, crutches propped against the back wall, hair like a tangle of rusted steel wool. When she saw Gilchrist, she reached into her tray and handed him a printout of Magner’s marriage certificate.

  ‘Well done, Jackie,’ Gilchrist said. ‘What about McInnes and Dewar?’ Jackie wobbled her head, and he helped her out with, ‘Still working on them?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Once you’re done,’ he said, ‘just email Jessie, Stan and me with whatever you’ve got.’ He was about to leave the room when he heard her groan – Jackie’s signal to wait a moment. He turned back to see her lift another printout from the tray.

  Gilchrist took the sheet from her. ‘Looks like Magner’s a widower,’ he said to Jessie, tapping the death certificate. ‘Sheila Magner. Died September ’85. Cause of death: heart failure from drug overdose.’

  ‘When did they get married?’ Jessie asked.

  ‘August ’81.’

  ‘Only four years. And it’s within the same window as the rapes.’ Jessie turned to Jackie. ‘Did Magner ever remarry?’

  Jackie wobbled her head.

  ‘So that’s it? A big strapping lad in his twenties with muscles and gallons of testosterone and a sexual appetite that he feeds by raping women—’

  ‘Allegedly.’

  ‘. . . and he marries only once? Let’s see that other sheet.’

  Gilchrist handed over Magner’s marriage certificate.

  ‘Sheila Ramsay,’ she said. ‘Administrative assistant. A year older than Magner.’ She looked at Gilchrist. ‘I’d be interested to know if he got an insurance payout. Maybe that’s how he started his business.’

  ‘Magner and McCulloch started Stratheden in ’86,’ Gilchrist said. ‘His wife died in September ’85. So if Stratheden was registered at the start of ’86, the insurance money might have just come through—’

  ‘We need to check that out.’

  Gilchrist turned to Jackie. ‘Find out if there was any life insurance on Sheila Magner. If there was, how much, when was it paid, and to whom? If it went to Magner, find out what he did with it.’

  Jackie scribbled on a notepad.

  ‘Then pull Stratheden’s records from Companies House. Find out from council records when they were awarded their first local-government contract and how much it was for.’

  Jackie looked up at Gilchrist, as if to ask, Anything else?

  ‘Thanks, Jackie. That’ll do for now,’ he said.

  By the time he and Jessie reached the door, Jackie’s fingers were already tapping the keyboard with the speed of a woodpecker.

  Back out on North Street, the wind had pulled the temperature below freezing. The sky hung low, as grey as lead, and looked just as impenetrable. Spring could be months away. But at least the chill had cleared Gilchrist’s hangover.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘My stomach’s grumbling.’

  CHAPTER 13

  The Central reeked of alcohol and thrummed with the camaraderie of a busy town pub on
a late Saturday afternoon. They found a table in the corner and ordered their drinks: the usual for Gilchrist; a cup of coffee for Jessie. They faced each other in silence as the barman placed the glass and the mug on the table, then asked if they would like to see the menu.

  ‘No need,’ Gilchrist said. ‘Steak pie, chips and beans.’

  ‘And for you, ma’am?’

  ‘What the hell,’ Jessie said. ‘Make that two. But peas instead of beans.’

  Gilchrist sipped his Deuchars and watched Jessie stir her coffee. ‘Still trying to sober up?’ he asked.

  ‘Driving.’

  ‘Somewhere warm, I hope.’

  ‘Taking Robert to the pictures in Dundee tonight,’ she said. ‘I know, I know, Robert’s deaf, but he likes to study the facial expressions of the actors.’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t ask. It’s all to do with his comedy writing. And besides, if he gives the film the nod of approval, then I can buy it when it comes out on DVD and he can watch it with closed captions.’

  Gilchrist had met Robert four times over the three months Jessie had been with Fife Constabulary. She had fought hard to raise her only child as a single mother, and he knew she would do anything for him. But as she fiddled with her mug of coffee, he sensed she had other reasons for taking him to the cinema that night.

  ‘Jabba joining you?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he know that yet?’

  Jessie lifted the coffee to her lips and rolled her eyes.

  ‘If I could make a suggestion—’

  ‘No, Andy, you cannot make a suggestion. It’s my problem, and I’ll deal with it.’

  At that moment Gilchrist caught movement at the swing doors that opened on to Market Street. An oversized man as wide as he was tall forced himself inside. ‘Well, you’d better deal with it quick, because he’s just walked in.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘Has he seen me?’

  ‘He’s on his way.’

  ‘I tell you, I’m going to have him for this.’

  Gilchrist had met Chief Super Lachlan McKellar several times before, and on each occasion he had been struck by how well dressed the man was. Marriage to a biscuit-manufacturing heiress must have helped to cover the cost of bespoke tailoring, of course, but even so, for a fat man he wore his clothes with remarkable swagger and style.