Gallery Whispers

by Quintin Jardine

  'Even when they're dead?' The detective's thick moustache twitched

  slightly in a faint attempt at a smile.

  'Even then, I'm afraid. Now, which employee do you wish to

  discuss? My secretary should really have asked you when you made

  the appointment.' Pringle looked at the neat, dark-suited, humourless

  little man and tried to imagine asking him for an overdraft. He

  shuddered at the thought, and resisted the temptation to tell Mr

  William Drysdale, in his own special way, that detective superintendents

  did not necessarily need appointments.

  'A man named Murray: Anthony Murray.'

  'Ah yes. Mr Murray; Tony. Yes, I remember him. He was a manager

  in our Queen Street branch, until he ran out of steam around the middle

  of last year. It happens more and more these days, as banks transform

  themselves into properly run businesses instead of gentlemen's clubs.'

  Drysdale leaned back in his chair and puffed out his chest.

  'There was a time, not so long ago either, when a chap would join

  a bank straight from school in the confident expectation that he had a

  job for life, with status in the community and a comfortable pension

  at the end of it. Not any more; in the current banking environment, if

  you don't perform consistently well and hit your targets, you're out.

  People pay the ultimate price these days for poor lending decisions.'

  'What?' muttered Pringle, not quite under his breath. 'You mean

  you shoot them?'

  'Pardon?'

  'Nothing, sir, nothing; just thinking aloud. And Mr Murray, what

  about him? Was he drummed out of the Cubs?'

  'What? Ah yes, I see, Hah, very funny, yes. I wouldn't say that

  exactly. Tony had thirty-eight years' service, so when he asked to

  retire early, the area general manager was pleased to accommodate

  him.'

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  'And if he hadn't asked?'

  'Then yes, he probably would have been told to go.'

  'Why was that?'

  Drysdale shrugged. 'He just wasn't cutting the mustard any more;

  he knew it, too. The Chief Executive had asked a couple of questions

  about his performance review.'

  'And that's all it takes to end a career these days, is it?'

  Pringle's voice was loaded with irony, but the banker gave no sign

  of noticing. Instead he hooked his thumb into his waistcoat pocket

  and looked blandly across the desk. 'There is a time,' he pronounced, 'in every man's life, when he should just go and play golf.'

  'So Mr Murray was a golfer, was he?'

  Drysdale blinked and looked bemused. 'I've no idea. I was speaking

  figuratively.'

  'Ahh. I'm sorry. Thick of me.' The superintendent glanced out of

  the window of the opulent office. On the skyline, he could see the top

  of the Scott Monument, surrounded by scaffolding as usual.

  'When Mr Murray left,' he asked, 'did he strike you as being in a

  good state of mind? Did he seem depressed to have outlived his

  usefulness to you?'

  'He was never a very cheerful sort, to be truthful. Morose,

  sometimes; when he spoke to me, at least.' I'm not bloody surprised, thought Pringle.

  'Did he seem worse after his wife died?'

  'Did she? I didn't know that. It's my policy, you see, not to become

  involved in the family situation. I mean if I did that all the time, I'd be

  a damned counsellor, rather than a businessman.'

  'But isn't a happy employee an efficient employee?'

  Drysdale frowned at this radical thinking. 'My job is to make the

  shareholders happy, Mr Pringle. I'm afraid in this day and age you can

  spend very little time treating the wounded, before - to borrow your

  word - you have to shoot them.'

  'Oh aye,' said the detective, heavily. 'The ultimate price, eh.'

  'That's right,' said Drysdale, rising to his feet to signal the end of

  the interview. 'Tell me, superintendent,' he asked, as he walked his

  visitor to the door. 'Do you bank with us?'

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  60

  'Who do you bank with, Sarah?' Clan Pringle asked.

  'The Bank of Scotland. But before I was married I was with the

  Royal. Why d'you ask?'

  'I've decided to change mine. Are they okay?'

  'Yes, both of them, as far as I'm concerned.'

  'Thanks. I'll bear that in mind. Now, what have you got to tell me?'

  'First of all, let me ask you something. How closely did your ME at

  the scene look at the body?'

  'He just pronounced life extinct and gave me a probable cause.

  That was all I asked him to do. I saw no reason for anything more.'

  'Mmm,' said Sarah. 'No harm done, but if he had looked a little

  closer, he'd have seen that the deceased was wearing a colostomy

  bag.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'In this case, Clan, it means that he had cancer of the bowel. He had

  most of it removed at some point. The survival rate from colonic

  cancer is better than some forms, but not for this man. Mr Murray had

  secondaries in his liver and bladder, plus a developing spinal tumour

  which must have been approaching the unbearable stage. I'm slightly

  surprised that a man in this condition was still at home.'

  'I see,' murmured Pringle. 'Would he have been given drugs to

  control the pain?'

  'Almost certainly. The drugs in his system didn't kill him though.

  In this case the injection rendered him unconscious and he suffocated.

  Your ME's probable cause was absolutely right. That's what's going to

  give you all a headache, I'm afraid.'

  'Eh? How come, if it's as simple as that?'

  'Two reasons. First of all, I don't think this man would have had the

  strength to tape the bag so that it was airtight. Second, he didn't inject

  himself; someone else did. The syringe went into the right thigh; I've

  traced the angle and there's no way that dying man could have

  administered that shot himself.'

  Pringle whistled down the telephone. 'Is that right?' he paused for

  a moment or two. 'So how does that give us a headache? We've got a

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  murder investigation on our hands. That's a bugger, I know, but

  routine.'

  Sarah laughed, sharply, the unexpected sound making the divisional

  commander hold his phone away from his ear. 'Ah,' she exclaimed, 'but have you? I can't say for certain, not under oath, that Mr Murray

  didn't fix that bag on himself. And it was the bag that killed him,

  remember, not the injection. So was it a murder or was it a suicide? I

  don't see how you'll ever prove either way, until you find the person

  who gave him that shot, and persuade them to tell you what happened.'

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  Bob Skinner smiled at his wife as, lying sprawled on the sofa, he

  pressed the television remote. 'You're getting too sure of yourself,

  doctor.' BBC Scotland's trademark red balloon drifted across the big

  wide screen for a few seconds, before the portentous signature music

  of the Nine O'clock News boomed out into their living room.

  'What do you mean?'

  'I mean, my love, that postmortem evidence isn't the only sort.

  There is a way of proving whether the late Mr Murray topped himself

  with the poly bag, or had some
one do it for him.'

  'What's that, Mr Detective?'

  'The scissors. The roll of tape. The poor chap wasn't wearing

  gloves was he?' Sarah shook her head, quickly. 'Right then. If his

  fingerprints don't show up on those scissors - or even better, if they're

  clean - most juries will accept that as proof that he didn't cut off the

  tape roll.'

  'Wait a minute,' she argued. 'That doesn't prove that he didn't

  secure the bag himself, though. Conceivably, he could have wound

  the tape tight round his neck then the person who injected him could

  have cut it off. I can't rule that out.'

  Bob grinned hugely, ignoring the latest political drama from

  America which was being played out on the television screen. 'That's

  fine,' he exclaimed, with a touch of delight in his voice. 'In that case,

  we'll still charge the accomplice with murder; he took part in the act

  of securing the bag, an act which killed Mr Murray, as you will state

  under oath. That's enough for me and it'll be enough for the Crown

  Office.'

  'Will it be enough for a jury to convict on, though?'

  'As long as we have other evidence that places the person in the

  house at the time, then it probably will be. Of course if he's left us a

  print on the end of the tape roll as well, and there are none of Mr

  Murray's, that'll be game, set and match.

  'I doubt if we'll be that lucky though. Assuming that this is the

  same person who was with Gaynor Weston--'

  'You are sure?' Sarah interrupted.

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  'Ach, of course I am; and so's Andy, and so are you. Look at the

  similarities; clear poly bag - it would be undignified to end your life

  in something with "Tesco" printed on it would it not - secured by

  black tape, victim injected; there's no doubt about it. As I was saying,

  on that assumption, the way I see it is that the helper assumed that the

  Weston death would simply be seen off as a suicide. When we started

  to make ambivalent noises after the body was found, he realised just

  how sloppy he'd been.

  'That's why you've got a different pattern with Mr Murray's death.

  This time the tape, scissors and syringe have been left there. He's

  getting better, but there are still flaws in the setup.'

  Bob picked up the remote once more and snapped off the television

  picture, then swung himself into a sitting position. 'Actually,' he said, 'you and I can sit here having a detached, professional discussion

  about this thing, but I've got to remind myself at the same time just

  how serious this is.'

  'How come?'

  'How come?' he repeated. 'Listen, if someone walked into a bank,

  shot a teller and ran off with a pile of money, we, and every tabloid

  newspaper in the country would go bananas about it. But if the same

  person walked into another bank a few weeks later and did it again.. .

  Christ, love, just imagine the reaction!

  'Yet that's what we're dealing with here. Forget the semantics,

  forget our clever technical debate about the whys and wherefores of

  Murray's death. We have a double murderer loose in our city, we made

  a porridge of catching him first time up and now he's done it again.'

  Sarah frowned. 'Yes, I hear what you're saying. But what about the

  moral issues involved? In that respect, the two situations are completely

  different.'

  'You say that to Andy Martin, who tends to be our collective

  conscience in situations like these, and he'll tell you that there is only

  one black and white moral issue involved - the taking of a human life

  by another person. Maybe in personal ethical terms you can argue that

  there might be shades of grey, but in legal terms you can't.

  'It doesn't matter whether someone gets on their knees and begs

  you, "End my life, I can't stand it any more." If you do that you're

  breaking the law - and it's the oldest law that our society has. Now the

  fact is that when we didn't get a quick clear-up on the Weston case,

  some of us weren't too sorry. We saw it as a one-off, and maybe our

  private beliefs let us sympathise with Mrs Weston, and even with

  whoever helped her.

  'But it isn't a one-off any more, Sarah. I'm .. . we're faced with

  clear evidence that same person has done it again, and our duty is just

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  as clear. Catching him goes right to the top of our priority list. Consider

  this: Gaynor Weston and Anthony Murray were both terminally ill.

  They were going to die nasty, drawn-out deaths. But what if someone

  else asks for help; someone who does have a chance of survival?

  'No,' he said, emphatically. 'It has to be stopped here.'

  She looked at him, soberly. 'Yeah,' she murmured. 'Looked at like

  that, you have to be right.'

  He leaned back into the sofa and nodded. 'And there's more to be

  investigated.'

  'What do you mean?' she asked him, for the second time that

  evening.

  His eyes, narrowed, very slightly 'What if Gaynor Weston wasn't

  the first? What if there's been a death in the past that has been written

  off as a suicide at divisional level? Or more than one, even? Christ,

  there could be a network operating here.'

  'You're seeing the worst, aren't you,' said Sarah.

  He shrugged, with a sad, resigned grin. 'Honey, that's my job. The

  trouble has been that from inside the Chief Constable's office,

  sometimes you just don't see it early enough.'

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  'I know the DCC isn't the best delegator in the world,' said Andy

  Martin, 'but normally he waits to be asked these days before offering

  advice on investigations. So when he does call me to raise something,

  especially when it's half-nine on a Monday evening, it emphasises

  how serious it is.

  'I don't have to remind you two that he's back on the prowl,

  mornings at least.'

  He looked at Detective Superintendents Mackie and Pringle. 'As of

  now, the investigation into the Weston death is re-opened, full strength.

  I've spoken to the Fiscal and had the FAI postponed indefinitely. It

  will run in conjunction with the Murray investigation, with you two

  in joint day-to-day control, reporting everything to me.

  'I'd take full responsibility myself, but for my involvement with the

  preparations for the economic conference.'

  The Head of CID hunched over his coffee. 'We don't need a big

  team on this, since there isn't any door to door work involved, but we

  do need integration so that we pick up any overlap between the two

  investigations. Brian, I want you to review the Weston papers, yet

  again, and see if there's anything we might have done that we didn't. Clan , Murray's death happened on your patch, so you're the leader on

  that one. In Maggie Rose's continued absence, since DS Steele was

  heavily involved with Weston, he's going to work with you directly on

  Murray, as the principal link between both inquiries.'

  Pringle nodded. 'Fair enough,' he said. 'I like young Stevie. If we

  do come across any coincidences, he's not the boy to miss them.'

  'Where are you going to begin, then?'

  'I have already,' the superintendent replie
d. 'Remember? I saw the

  guy at the bank. He was worse than fuckin' useless, mind you. Today,

  we're looking for relatives. Mr Murray had no children apparently,

  but there's a younger sister. She's the next of kin; I've got a car taking

  her to the Royal this morning to make the formal identification. After

  that I'll go and have a chat with her, to see what she can tell me.'

  'Where does she live?'

  'Down in sunny Joppa by the sea.' He glanced at the window of the

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  Head of CID's office. Rain, driven on cold north-east wind, lashed

  against its panes. 'It'll be really nice down there today,' he added,

  mournfully.

  'I'll envy you every minute of it,' said Martin, grinning as he stood.

  'Okay, gentlemen, that's it. Remember, keep me informed all the

  way.'

  He walked with the two divisional commanders to the end of the

  corridor, waving them off at the top of the stairs. Then, instead of

  returning to his office, he walked along the length of the Command

  Corridor and down the flight of stairs which led almost directly to the

  makeshift conference control centre.

  Looking around he noted that all but two of the desks were manned.

  As usual, Mario McGuire was seated in the far corner, from where he

  could see everything that went on in the big room. He ambled across

  towards the Special Branch commander.

  'Hi, Mario, how's it going?'

  McGuire shot him a mock scowl. 'Exciting as ever,' he grumbled.

  'I've rejected a journalist from the Financial Times; that's been the

  highlight of my day so far. No, scratch that; the highlight of my

  week.'

  'Why did you bomb him out?'

  'Her,' the inspector corrected him. 'She wouldn't put her date of

  birth on the application form; refused point blank. So we couldn't run

  a full computer check.'

  'Couldn't you have done it through her National Insurance number?'

  'Not this one. She's South African.'

  'Her name wasn't Hawkins, was it?' Martin asked, with a faint

  smile.

  McGuire shook his head. 'Naw, and she isn't dead, either.'

  The Head of CID shrugged. 'Well, it's up to her, but if she doesn't

  have a ticket, she can't come to the party.' He paused. 'Listen Mario,

  can I ask you a favour?'

  The dark eyebrows rose in surprise. 'Of course you can.'

  'Right; it's like this. The Weston case, the one that Maggie was