by Chris Dolan
The construction site was huge, Coulter reckoned it must be nigh on a mile square. Around it, in the distance, 1960s housing, falling to bits, some of it already boarded up, gaps like craters where high-rises had been demolished. The site itself was muddy but, so far as Coulter could tell, well organised and well staffed. Drivers were manoeuvring dumpers and excavators, gangers were digging and hammering, a surveyor setting up her theodolite.
“Four hundred one and two-bedroom flats, specially designed for the first-time buyer. A real need for decent housing in this country, Inspector. Shops, a park, all off-road and safe for the kiddies.”
Hughes was proud. He reminded Coulter of George Bailey: “Dozens of the prettiest little houses you ever saw.” Or perhaps someone else in the movie said that.
“What kind of meeting was it on Friday night, sir? Business or pleasure?”
“Is there a difference? Business, I suppose.”
“No wives.”
“That’s why we call it business,” Hughes beamed.
“Were there any … disagreements between you?”
“Not at all. We all got on like a house on fire.” It seemed a rather unfortunate simile, Coulter thought. “Always do. I liked Julian Miller a lot. Good at his job and fun to be around.”
“The man who drove you home – Harkins? – is he here?”
“Just sent him off half an hour ago. We’ve another site, smaller than this, Southside.”
“Thank you for your time, Mr Hughes. You’ll understand if we’re back from time to time.”
“Anything I can do. Anything at all. You’ve no idea yet who could have done this?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“I read in the papers it was point-blank.”
“We’ll release all the details as soon as it’s appropriate,” Coulter said walking away. “By the way. When I was arriving here this morning, you seemed to be having some public relations trouble.”
Hughes looked confused for a moment. “Ah. The misses Maguire and Boyd? I’ve been in this business for nearly half a century Inspector. You don’t get to build on this scale without all sorts giving you gyp.”
“What sort of gyp?”
“Noise. Inconvenience. Mud. Swearing. Eco-fascists. I could go on.”
“And what was these women’s particular complaint?”
“Ach they were fine,” Hughes shook his head sadly, “I told them to put their worries in writing. But it all sounded like a general mixed bag of greetin’ and girnin’.”
“Let us see that letter when it arrives.”
“If you want.”
Maddy made her case fervently at the hearing that same Monday morning. “An indictment has been served on Mr Richard Garner, wholly correctly, and it is he, not the unincorporated body of Giffnock Golf Club, who stands accused of a direct attack on Mr Ewan Drummond. As a representative of said club – Mr Garner, as we know, is the captain – in clear dereliction of duty towards the victim causing substantial injury, there may indeed be an argument for a civil suit, but that does not preclude the present solemn case.” She read from a written statement by the only impartial witness, Miss Brenda Foley the barmaid, declaring that “it looked like Ricky Garner clouted him on purpose.”
The debate was done and dusted in a couple of hours. She’d been worried by the fact that it was none other than Lord Nairne presiding. The criminal fraternity of Scotland must be having a quiet week. But he found in her favour and the debate was concluded.
Ewan Drummond was waiting outside the room when Maddy came out.
“You’re not supposed to be here, sir.”
“That right?” He was a lanky man with an enormous beard, perhaps the legacy of some Victorian forefather. “Sorry.”
“How did you even know to be here?” But Maddy knew the answer to that. Drummond had pestered her, Izzy, Manda, receptionists, maybe even relatives of staff at the PF’s office for all she knew. His determination was as unrelenting as his whiskers. If Maddy had access to a three-iron she’d probably have clobbered him too. “Find a solicitor, Mr Drummond. If we are eventually successful in our case in the High Court it would help you sue in the civil courts.”
“It’s not money I’m after, it’s justice.” He walked away, then turned round. “Can you recommend me a solicitor, missus?”
Leaving the building, the February sun faint like a well-poached egg in an albumen sky, she bumped into Forbes Nairne himself. “You conducted yourself very professionally in there, Miss Shannon.”
“Thank you My Lord. Although maybe I should’ve gone for an outright ban on the entire ridiculous game and all its stupid rules and uniforms.”
“You say this in the home of golf!” Nairne looked genuinely affronted. “The nation of the Royal and Ancient, manufacturer of highest-quality fairway knitwear? Shame on ye, Ms Shannon.” He clapped her lightly on the back, treated her to his best judicial smile and set off regally on his way. He turned after a few paces. “I trust you are pursuing this matter for reasons ither than getting yourself into the big boys’ court again, lass?” He laughed heartily and set off again. Nairne had an ego the size of Ben Nevis but Maddy had a soft spot for him. The few times she had been before him it had gone well – there was probably a degree of randy old man about that. Dan McKillop detested Nairne, and their boss Maxwell Binnie was always a bit sniffy. Both of them had fared less well in his courtroom.
And it was straight to Binnie’s office Maddy went now. A section case management meeting had started without her. Dan, Izzy Docherty, Manda Morton – the senior Solemn and Summary staff – her place beside them waiting for her. Plus one or two up-and-coming prosecutors Maddy couldn’t yet put a name to; a trainee sitting in; Molly Higginson through from the Serious and Organised Crime Division. And, inevitably, some management geezer with an incomprehensible title involving Supervisory and Corporate Bollocks. She could never remember his name either, never saw him outside meetings such as these. She only knew his car was the swankiest in the car park and he wore flash suits.
“Motiveless attack,” Izzy was saying. Her turquoise eyes lent the most brutal and tawdry cases a kind of mystical depth. Maddy never got tired of hearing this ethereal being recounting terrible deeds – she seemed to give both victim and perpetrator redemption merely by citing them. The world might often be ugly, but beauty still existed. “Alcohol fuelled party. Messrs Connolly and O’Hagan punch, kick and drag Miss Kennedy by the hair into the bathroom – all of it filmed on a third, as yet unidentified person’s phone camera.”
Sexual assault, with intent; Keira Kennedy was still in hospital three weeks after the attack. Izzy was in the early stages of building the case for the prosecution. As each in turn discussed their caseloads that numbing, the necessary numbing, set in like a communal anaesthetic. Without it none of them would get up in the morning. Dan McKillop brought the meeting up to date on his historic crime: “Shameless indecency, indecency with a child, possibly rape – we’ll see.” An expensive independent preparatory school in the Southside. To date six men, all of them now in their fifties, had come forward to accuse not just one member of staff but claim that there had been a regime of physical and sexual abuse in the early 1970s. “Two of the named assailants are now dead. Another two, including the headmaster, are in their mid seventies. They still deny everything,” Dan shook his head in sad disbelief. “We have to date twenty-two witness statements. We’re waiting for further defence reports, but I gather they’re going for pursuant collusion.”
When it came Maddy’s turn she briefed the meeting on her most pressing current cases. A fatal accident inquiry. Aggravated burglary. Production of controlled drugs – Molly Higginson asked to meet her separately afterwards to discuss this in more depth. Some of the evidence and precognitions suggested Maddy’s case was connected to a bigger, UK-wide, operation.
Maddy reported on only five of the twenty or so cases she was working on. She left Petrus out – they were all sick of hearing it. But between them all t
he two-hour meeting was a roll call of human misery and rage, deprivation and greed. And the anaesthetic was kept topped up by palliative legal language: Circumstantial. De jure. No basis of plea. Bad character evidence. Solemn proceedings indeed.
After a quick chat with Molly, Maddy went back to see Maxwell Binnie alone.
“It’s far too early to decide who takes the Miller case. It’ll be weeks before we have anything to work with, and it might not even come to us at all.”
“I’m just asking for first dibs, Max.” It was only in the last year or so that Maddy had been brave enough to call the fiscal by his first name. Dan had done it for years and the old man hadn’t minded. The first time she used it, at a dinner and therefore in a less than formal setting, she thought she’d seen his eyebrow rise a little. Even now the word “Max” felt odd on her tongue.
“Why are you so keen?”
“I’ve had long protracted commercial negligence cases, domestics, muggings, and now golf violence. I need something to get my teeth into.”
The unspoken word between them was “Kelvingrove”. The trials against Father Jamieson and John MacDougall had not gone to her. Couldn’t have, given her involvement in the prior police investigation. She had no qualms about that but felt she’d been punished ever since, major criminal cases going to Dan, or a hired-in advocate, or even Izzy.
“There is of course a problem in that we all knew Julian Miller.”
“I didn’t know him nearly as well as you or Dan.”
“It would mean you working with Inspector Coulter’s team again, and I’m not sure all of Alan’s colleagues are as … respectful as he is of you, or this office.”
“That will always be true Max, with respect.”
Binnie made a great play of pondering deeply, staring at the wall behind her, as if weighing up the benefits and pitfalls of the entire Scottish legal system before saying, “Very well. Let’s put your name down for the moment. We’ll see what transpires.”
Which, of course, meant nothing.
Detective Sergeant John Russell often felt, if not quite invisible to other people, then faint, or muffled, and that he had to work to make his presence felt. Contrary to popular belief there are no height restrictions in the police, but he was sure that, at five foot seven and a bit, the public thought him small for a sergeant. He pulled himself to his full height for Julian Miller’s PA Debbie Hart. Russell went four times minimum to the gym and worked on exercises that bulked him up, as well as bar-hangs and stretches – he knew he couldn’t actually get any taller but he might as well get the most out of the inches he had.
“He was very meticulous, Mr Miller,” Debbie was saying, looking through files. She was, Russell reckoned, in her mid forties, tall and slim like some of the women he saw down at the gym. He thought she was quite sexy.
“Bit of a slave-driver, was he?”
“A workaholic – and expected everyone else to be one too.” Debbie was damp-eyed and her voice was on the edge of breaking. Her distress, he gathered, had more to do with the shock of the killing rather than any affection for her old boss. “I liked working with him. You knew where you were with him. Very clear in his instructions.”
“Did Mr Crichton get on well with him?” Debbie continued to sift through files. Russell had asked her to do so but it still irked him that she didn’t turn to face him when he asked a question.
“Mr Crichton gets on with everyone.” And here there was genuine warmth in her voice.
“What about with the rest of the staff?”
“Perfectly well,” her slight frostiness returned.
“And with Douglas Mason?”
“Douglas?”
Russell hadn’t met Mason yet, knew next to nothing about him, but he was sure he wasn’t going to like him. Because he’d slept with Shannon? If nothing else it showed bad taste. Russell couldn’t stomach the woman. Quite apart from getting under police feet and mucking up investigations Shannon was loud, thought herself a big rebel, wore stupid clothes that she thought made her look daring and different but actually just made her look tarty.
“I think Mr Miller had high hopes for Douglas,” Debbie was saying. “Mr Crichton too. He’s very clever, Douglas.” She dropped her voice and eyed him directly for the first time. “There was talk about making him a partner.”
She handed over a bundle of about fifteen folders bursting at the seams. “Mr Miller’s files for the last month or so. I hope you’re not going to take them away?”
“We’ll see. If I could find a desk somewhere, I’ll have a look through just now.”
She took him out to the open-plan space where three younger people were keeping their heads down, working a little too studiously. He clocked that Bill Crichton’s door was ajar and suspected the lawyer had been watching and listening to him all the time.
A quick sift through the files told him that Miller had been working on a couple of repossessions, acting on behalf of the mortgage lender. Getting kicked out of your house – that could make a man angry. Enough to kill? A divorce case that looked messy. Miller hadn’t worked directly on all these cases; on several of them he had been supervising one of his staff. Douglas Mason seemed to be their family law man. The divorce case was his, also a juvenile delinquency, and a paternity test. Russell wrote down a few names and was pleased with his neat precis of the situations.
“Excuse me,” he called over to the woman. She had introduced herself as Debbie Hart and Russell couldn’t decide whether to address her formally, Ms Hart, or if just Debbie might give him the upper hand. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“There’s no file here for Fulton Construction.”
“We’ve not done any work for them for a while.”
“But there was a business meeting on Friday.”
“That doesn’t mean there was an active lawsuit.” It was Hart who was getting uppity with him. “Mr Crichton would have the Fulton files anyway. Do you want me to ask him for it?”
Russell waved her away. Coulter had said he’d deal with Crichton, so let him. He was just about to take a photo of a couple of documents with his phone when Douglas Mason came in. He knew it was Mason – self-possessed, trendy suit and hair. He could see why Shannon would salivate over him, but why would he bother with a tubby loudmouth ten years older than him?
After a quick word with Hart, Mason came over to him and put out his hand. “Sergeant Russell. This is shocking for all of us here.”
“I’m sure it is, Mr…?”
“Doug. Doug Mason.”
“Ah. You and one of your colleagues were in town the night of Mr Miller’s murder.”
“Sam and I. Samantha Anderson. I’ll go get her if you like.”
“Did you at any point meet up with Mr Miller’s party whilst you were out?”
“No. Other side of town. Vicky bar mostly.”
“Quite close to here.”
“It’s our after-work local.”
“But I’m given to believe that you ended up in the West End.”
“That’s right. We went round to a friend’s house for a drink.”
“This friend being…?”
“Does that matter?”
“Usual procedure, Mr Mason. As I’m sure you already know.”
“I live up west myself, and Sam’s in Bearsden, so we were going that way anyway.”
Mason was trying not to say Shannon’s name. Russell was damned if he was going to say it first.
“If there’s a reason you’d rather not give the name of your friend, sir, the address will do perfectly well for the moment.”
“If you insist. I don’t know the number, but Lorraine Gardens.”
“I’ll have that checked out.” Russell smirked.
Mason took a couple of steps away and called through an open door on the other side of the central room from Crichton’s office. “Sam? You got a moment?”
Samantha Anderson was around fifty years old, bit frumpy Russell thought,
and she’d been crying. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, I knew you were here, but I’m not sure I can talk about Jules without tearing up.”
“I understand. After you and Mr Mason here were at your friend’s, you went straight home?”
“My husband and I got a taxi, yes.”
“At what time?”
“It’d be around half past midnight.”
Russell saw his moment to strike: “And you, Mr Mason. What time did you leave?”
Mason didn’t blink, just smiled amiably. “I was a bit the worse for drink, officer. Bunked over for the night.”
While Coulter checked in with CCTV Control Room trying to spot Julian Miller between the hours of four and six on Saturday morning, DS Dalgarno was visiting Mrs Crichton. Clare was plainly more upset by Miller’s murder than his own wife had been. Dressed in jeans and T-shirt, pretty despite a dishwater complexion, her hand trembled as she poured water into a pot of rooibos tea.
“Sorry. I don’t have caffeine in the house.”
“That’s great. Try to keep off it myself.” Amy lied.
Clare Crichton’s hair was tied up loosely in a messy bunch, giving her a kind of kooky look.
“I know you made a statement already, Mrs Crichton—”
“Clare, please. ‘Mrs’ makes me feel like I’m in hospital or court or something.”
“Clare. I hope you won’t mind chatting to me about it a bit more?” Clare shook a non-existent fringe out of her eyes. Dalgarno soon realised that this was a personal tic. Something she’d have done as a nervous teen perhaps and now wasn’t even aware of it.
“Mr Crichton’s business dinners, are they a regular occurrence?”
“As regular as Julian Miller wanted them to be.” She spoke very clearly, Dalgarno noticed. Private school? Perhaps a trace of an Inverness accent.
“But they were partners?”
“If you mean, were they equals, absolutely not. Officially Bill is one of the two partners of JCG Miller, but Julian was the power. Shall we sit through next door?”