by Chris Dolan
There were, however, deposits of soil on the handle. The report hypothesised that the killer was wearing gloves. Dirty ones. Yesterday’s fingertip search also found traces of soil in the underground car park, and on the road leading up to it. Analyses of all the examples were being done now.
Disappointingly, DS Dalgarno was off duty and in her place was DS John Russell. Coulter preferred Amy’s down-to-earth workaday approach to things. Russell was dogged, fixed in his attitudes and methods. Coulter wondered if the sergeant was too like himself and that’s what caused the unspoken strain between them. They were of similar backgrounds, joined the force around the same age, were both married men with kids. Beyond a doubt, Russell felt that Coulter had been unfairly promoted over him, a rankle that wouldn’t get any better now that Russell was of an age where he was unlikely to get promoted much further.
“Miller was flash, represented anyone who’d pay his extortionate fees. We looked into who might have a grudge against him?”
Not for the first time Coulter decided he should enrol in a course on management assertiveness – that was the kind of question he should have asked Russell, not the other way about.
“Good idea, John. Maybe you could dig around, see what you come up with? But indirectly. Talk to the staff at JCG Miller. Amy and I already have a relationship of sorts with Bill Crichton and Marion Miller. We’ll run with them for the moment.” Russell was unhappy with the arrangement. Typically no words, just a nod of the head while he pretended to write something more important on his laptop. Coulter recognised the behaviour – it was how he himself acted with the brass above him.
“Has anyone been to see the guy they had dinner with on Friday night?”
“Tom Hughes. MD of Fulton Construction. He’s at a wedding all weekend up north. We’ve had people round at his office and a couple of his sites. I’m getting word to him now, via the Inverlochy Castle hotel, that I want to see him the minute he gets back.”
“We know he’s definitely there?”
“Yes, John, we do. Our friends in the north visited him before the ceremony yesterday.” Coulter resisted saying, I know how to do my bloody job. “Apparently he was as shocked as anyone, and more upset than Mrs Miller. Before you ask, we have a record of his movements between leaving Nick’s restaurant and heading north the following morning. His driver collected him from the hotel, and his wife saw him come in and leave the following morning. We can wait till tomorrow before interviewing him.” Coulter picked up a newspaper. “Don’t suppose you have any idea who the leak is?”
“Could be anyone. How many were at the scene yesterday morning? Twenty or more officers, photographers, Forensics … and anyway, who says it came from us? Leak might be the fiscal’s.”
Coulter girded himself. Any mention of COPFS automatically led to one subject. “They couldn’t have had those kinds of details so soon.”
“Ms Shannon could,” Russell sneered. Here we go, thought Coulter. “Don’t let her anywhere near the investigation for Chrissakes. I couldn’t go through all that again.”
“Through what, John? Identifying Jamieson and MacDougall as the Kelvingrove killers before we did?”
Coulter couldn’t help himself: Russell said white, he said jet pitch black. He also knew that he was overly defensive when it came to Maddy.
“Yeah well, we might have got to them first if she hadn’t been muddying the water everywhere.”
“I’m not sure that’s true. And anyway, Miss Shannon doesn’t have the personal connections with this case.”
“No? She knew Miller. And Crichton. Way I heard it she was shagging the arse off one of their boys the night Miller was killed.”
“Aren’t we supposed to not jump to conclusions in this job, Sergeant?”
“What is it with you and Shannon?” Russell tried his best to sound light-hearted, but Coulter knew what he meant. No one had ever said anything directly to him, but he was perfectly aware there were two theories. Either the depute fiscal had a father figure fixation with him, which he encouraged, or he fancied her. Which of the two misrepresentations irked him most he couldn’t say.
As luck would have it Crawford Robertson was in the building. On a Sunday? The conversation he had with Chief Constable echoed almost exactly the one he’d just had with Russell. Including the warnings about Shannon. Perhaps Russell was right – Coulter’s junior was more management material than he would ever be.
Coulter spent the rest of the day setting up the operation, assigning personnel, writing out briefs for each of them, creating an initial timetable for interviews. He set up folders on the computer system and filed all the reports, from Dr Holloway, the forensics team, fingertip search, SOCO, the lot. Officers and researchers were already running searches on all the names so far connected to the murder – Julian and Marion Miller, Bill Crichton, Tom Hughes, all the staff at JCG including Douglas Mason. He noticed that one bright young spark had started a search on Maddalena Shannon.
Once he was sure that all the boxes were ticked, that the traffic boys had been properly notified, door-to-door enquiries under way in nearby Merchant City offices, he got on to the Sundays, giving them all the usual line… Continuing with investigations, nothing of import to report yet, going forward they’ll be kept up to date with any developments. No, at this point in time they did not think there was a danger to the public, but of course citizens should take reasonable care and precautions. He stopped himself from asking the Daily Mail in particular, the red top that had the most information they shouldn’t have had, who their source was. No point. Where the press could genuinely help was in asking readers who were around the area between 10 p.m. on Friday night and 10 a.m. Saturday morning to report anything that might be of assistance to the inquiry.
Once he was confident that everyone was doing their job – albeit grudgingly in Russell’s case – he went round and chatted to those cooped up in the busy HOLMES 2 room (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System – a name of a lousy police comedy show) seeing what progress was being made.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to go home to Martha. She had been much better of late. She’d suffered from her nerves and various complaints that had foxed the NHS more or less since the birth of their youngest, fifth, child. Eighteen years ago. But with all the kids away from home at the moment – who knew how long for? What do they call it, “the Ping-Pong Generation”? – he and Martha were living quietly and pleasantly enough. But once a big case like this was up and running he couldn’t relax. And if he got restless at home, that could set Martha off on a migraine, or worse.
Maddy had expected, after the Kelvingrove murders, that her mother might take a scunner to the Church. Especially as a favourite young priest of hers, Father Mike Jamieson, had turned out to have a very black soul indeed. But Rosa had a remarkable capacity to edit out anything that didn’t fit the world she wanted to live in.
If anything Rosa had flourished since then, and her faith, which Maddy had always thought just part of the Italian mamma act, had deepened. Now in her late sixties she was petite, poker-backed, tastefully dressed. She was a real picture, up in the top pews near the altar, head bowed, rosary braided delicately through her long fingers with their red varnished nails. Although she took churchgoing more seriously than before, Maddy suspected that Rosa made no connection between being devout and being good. If she could please the priest with her devotion while delighting the older males in the congregation and be the receptacle of God’s love all at the same time, then bravo!
She took Rosa to lunch in Epicures. Not in the dark part upstairs but by the window where she could be seen. Rosa always knew more diners and passers-by than Maddy did. Maddy was quarter of a century younger for heaven’s sake, in the prime of life, a career woman – how could Rosa possibly know more people than she did? Admittedly, Hyndland Sunday afternoons were pretty awash with retired ladies and gents who knew each other from Òran Mór lunchtime plays, Glasgow Uni night classes, and dog walking. Rosa didn’
t have a dog, but that didn’t stop her from being an active, and opinionated, member of the club. A couple of weeks ago, passing a woman pleading with her pedigree spaniel pup to stop eating an old piece of bread in a puddle her mum smiled consolingly at the woman and said, without a hint of irony, “At least it’s brown bread, dear.” There were times, too, when Maddy suspected that her mother spoke to people she had never met before in her life, but charmed them enough for them not to let on. It was a kind of reprimand to her daughter that she was the more socially active and polished.
“Oh. There’s something I need to talk to you about. You remember Dante?”
“Alighieri? Hell, yes.”
“I can tell by your smug little smile that’s some kind of clever-clogs lawyer’s joke. No, don’t explain it to me. Dante Marzullo. He’s your cousin, twice removed.”
“Mamma, you say that about every Italian in Scotland. Actually, you say it about every Italian.”
“Well it’s true in a way. But Dante really is, or maybe three times removed. But he’s your cousin. And he needs your help. He makes violins, you remember. He gave you one when you were little.”
“Oh. Yes. Faintly. He wasn’t at all happy when he heard my attempts to play it.”
“That’s him. He took some bad advice from some figlio di puttana and got himself into financial difficulties. Now they’re wanting to take his house away from him. Poor Dante!”
“Mum, I work for the fiscal. I can’t advise someone on repossessions, if that’s what we’re talking about.”
“You see? You even know the fancy word. That’s it. That’s what they said they’d do to him. Just have a little talk with him, will you cara? Put his mind at rest.”
“No, Mum. I can’t put his mind at rest. Apart from the fact that I know nothing about the situation, nor am I an expert in the field, putting his mind at rest probably isn’t an option. If it’s gone as far as repossessing, then I reckon he’s done for.”
Rosa gave her a look that suggested Maddy herself was throwing poor Dante to the dogs. But thankfully one of her old cronies passed by and she turned her attention to the lady’s lovely coat.
Later, Dante forgotten, she asked, again, about Louis and where that was all going. Louis’ Italianness – a genuine blessing – was undermined by his Americanness. And his absence. Mamma was always very sweet, any hint of criticism too submerged under wide-eyed concern, little compliments, breezy chit-chat, for Maddy to respond to. But there was always the suggestion that Maddalena hadn’t been wise in her choices of men. And this from the lady who had married Mad Packie Shannon.
She decided not to tell her that Dad had joined Facebook and was looking for new friends. That would only spark two obsessions – her ex-husband and the hellish life she had with him, and the dangers of the Internet. Rosa di Rio liked to keep abreast of things, quite prided herself in naming songs and films that were only a decade out of date, but the World Wide Web she was having nothing to do with. Maddy thought it a shame – her mother would make far better use of social media than her father. Or herself.
But the afternoon went well enough. Rosa didn’t ask to be taken shopping, or for a lift to see family in Girvan. She was keen to get home early to work on her crochet – her class was the following night and she was behind on her project. So Maddy got home early too, and prepared herself for Drummond versus Giffnock Golf Club’s captain and president in court first thing Monday. But she found herself going through emails from JCG Miller & Co. again. Something was nagging at the back of her memory. Nothing in her files or correspondence triggered the memory. Perhaps there wasn’t one; the nagging was one of mortality, of a violent death so close to home, but nothing that involved her directly.
She tried Sam Anderson’s number again. This time her husband Stuart answered.
“Sorry, Maddy, Sam’s sleeping.”
“This must be horrible for her.”
Maddy tried to summon up Stuart Anderson’s face, but it was blurry. She knew she’d met the man before Friday night. Little guy, round as a coconut snowball. Wasn’t he in the building trade – a civil engineer or project manager? Something mysterious to Maddy.
“It is, it is.”
“Give her my love, will you?”
“When she’s feeling better I’ll get her to call you. Thanks, by the way, for a lovely night.”
“I think I partook of the wine a bit too much.”
Stuart laughed. “We all had a few refreshments.”
“I was as refreshed as a newt.”
“Did Doug make it home all right?”
Maddy thought there was just a hint of lechery in his voice.
For the second night in a row she went to bed at a reasonable hour, perfectly sober, and all her affairs in order. Her life, despite what some folks might think, wasn’t so bad. Louis, Rosa, the odd admirer to keep at bay, good colleagues and a satisfying and worthwhile career. And she hadn’t had a smoke since Friday night, despite the pack lying on the coffee table, just within reach.
Alan Coulter arrived, as he liked to do, ten minutes early for his meeting with Tom Hughes. The MD of Fulton Construction had billeted himself full-time at his building site in Glasgow’s North East. The drive there was not an inspiring one. From Ruchill onwards through Springburn and Sighthill the social problems got worse and worse. Unemployment rose, houses deteriorated, the wreckage caused by alcohol, drugs and violence ever more evident. Coulter could understand Maddy’s anger – the Labour Party had been, until the post-referendum rebellion recently, in total control here and for generations. Yet life expectancy was still one of the lowest in the developed world. The sense of hopelessness, of having been forgotten, discarded, felt like an airborne plague. No wonder the police were seldom out of areas like this. He wouldn’t admit it to Maddy Shannon but, though he was a firm No voter, he welcomed the change brought about by the mass exodus of votes here and in places like it from Labour. He just felt deeply uneasy about any party that had the word “national” in it.
Driving over the mud of the construction site – there was a large sign, rechristening the area “Belvedere” – those crucial ten minutes early, he saw a burly figure remonstrating with two middle-aged women. Middle-aged might not only be unfair, Coulter reflected, but inaccurate. Here people grew old quickly. Stopping his car a second man in work clothes and hi-vis jacket called to them, “Catch you later, Cathy.”
On the dot of nine o’clock Coulter knocked on the door of Hughes’s Portakabin office.
“Inspector Coulter? Come in. Terrible business. I still can’t believe it.”
“I’m sure it was a shock for you sir.”
“I must’ve been the last person to have seen the poor beggar alive.”
“Apart from the killer.”
“Of course.”
“You think it was you who saw Julian Miller last, Mr Hughes, and not Mr Crichton? The three of you were out dining the night before.”
“Bill left a bit earlier than us.”
“Did he now. What time would that be?”
“About 2 a.m.?”
“And you stayed until when?”
“Probably the back of four before I was on the road.”
“Four in the morning? Nick’s remained open that long for you?”
“I know the management, and I treat the staff well. It was a lock-in. No laws broken. Take a seat, will you?”
Coulter sat down on a wobbly plastic chair, in a plastic office where there wasn’t enough room to swing a cat’s claw screwdriver in. They had already run a quick check on Fulton Construction – it turned over millions per annum. Hughes lived as comfortably as Miller, in a 1930s seven-bedroom detached villa in Giffnock that must be worth up to a million itself. Fulton Construction had smart offices in St Vincent Street in the city centre. But Tom Hughes looked perfectly at home in a shaky cabin smaller than your average caravan. No doubt old habits die hard. Hughes, it seemed, had come up the hard way, starting off as an unskilled labourer, eventuall
y forming his own company. Outside the cabin diggers and pneumatic drills growled into morning action.
“You both left Nick’s together. Then what?”
“Joe Harkins was waiting outside for me.”
“Joe Harkins?”
“Site security guard. Been with me for years. Doubles up as my driver from time to time.”
“Was it Mr Harkins who drove you to the Inverlochy hotel on Saturday morning?”
“Aye. He took me home from the restaurant, had a cup of tea while me and the missus got ready to go. We left Glasgow at 6.30ish.”
“Not much sleep then sir.”
“I don’t use it much.”
“So you drove off with Mr Harkins. And what did Mr Miller do?”
“We offered him a lift, but he said he fancied the walk.”
“Where to? Did he say?”
“To his office, no? He wouldn’t walk all the way to Killearn would he?”
“Bit early to go into work.”
“Not for Jules. As a matter of fact, by the time he left us and walked to the Merchant City he’d probably be in later than usual.”
“And you left him around around 4 a.m.? Julian Miller was murdered around six. Wouldn’t take two hours to walk to his office.”
“He was probably working. He was at his desk wasn’t he?”
“Do you mind if we step outside Mr Hughes? Could do with some fresh air.”
Hughes laughed. “My command centre a bit poky for you? Not much better outside – noise and stoor, Inspector,” Hughes rubbed his hands in relish, “noise and stoor.”