by Chris Dolan
Maddy watched the two men size each other up. They’d met, somewhere along the line, never socially, always in a courtroom. Both, Maddy could see, were decided about their rank – Nairne had the title, was twenty years older and, on the occasions they had met, he was the guy in the high chair wearing a wig, poking questions at the middle-ranking policeman. He could afford to be magnanimous. Which he was, sitting back in his seat and ushering them in with a wide sweep of his arm.
“DI Coulter, good to see you, man.” Then, with an even broader smile, “Miz Shannon, come awa’ in!” Which, she knew – and the old man no doubt knew too – peeved Alan. “Shame it has to be over this ill-fared business.” Nairne was old-school. The type of judge who traces his ancestry back to Lord Braxfield. “He’ll be nane the waur for a guid hingin’” and all that malarkey.
“Miller, and now Crichton. Ach.”
“You knew them both well, sir?” Coulter poshed up his voice a little, sitting a bit too far back in his chair, not succeeding at looking comfortable.
“Crichton not so well. Julian’s been in front of me far more often.”
“Good lawyer was he?”
“Aye, knew what he was aboot.” Then a little smile. “Sometimes overplayed his hand.”
“Was he good in the other sense?” Maddy had meant to keep quiet but, as so often, her mouth took on a life of its own.
“What ither sense would that be, Mizz Shannon?” He flicked an indulgent smile towards Coulter. Alan, she noticed, flicked one back. The wimmin, just cannae keep it zipped.
“You know – good. Fair.”
He replied to the inspector. “The ladies like saints and sinners, eh? Guid men and bad boys.”
“Kind of comes with the territory, don’t you think sir?” She was relieved that Alan backed her up. “Isn’t that what the law is all about?”
Now Nairne turned to her. “I just see people muddling through, lass. Sometimes getting it right, sometimes badly wrong. The way o’ the world, Mizzz Shannon.” Each time that “miz” was more pronounced.
“A murder and either a possible second murder or suicide,” Alan said. “What would you call that, Lord Nairne – a bit unchancy?”
This meeting was turning out to be different from what Maddy had expected. The tables had turned: it was her and DI Coulter now against the grand old man of the law. She really did have a terrific talent for screwing up her career. Her only friend in the judiciary and now here she was riding shotgun to the local sheriff.
“The Petrus case…” Coulter began. Maddy helped him out. “Fiscal stopped work on the case five years ago. Petrochemical company. Costello Laboratories. Alleged illegal dumping.”
“I mind it well.”
“Fulton Construction Ltd,” Coulter took up the baton, “are now building on the old site in Glasgow North East.”
“Nought unusual aboot that. Land often gets built on, change of use.”
“You read files and reports at the time, Miss Shannon tells me. We were hoping you might be able to shed some light on the matter.”
“Ah I’m an aul’ man, Inspector Coulter. And I’ve read several thousand reports and pleas and debates since then. But if memory serves me richt, you” – he looked directly at Maddy – “and the fiscals didna have near enough to proceed with any meaningful charges.”
“I’m not so interested,” Coulter interrupted him, “in Petrus. But in Fulton. Part of the evidence gathered, and which you took a judgement on sir, related to whether or not that site had been properly decontaminated before building the new houses began.”
“Like I say, I cannae mind all the wee details, but we adjudicated at the time, if you remember Maddalena” – this was a new tack, using her Sunday name – “not to proceed to assize. It was thrown out at debate stage.”
“Where can I get hold of the file you read, sir?” Coulter asked.
“JCG Miller should have the original. Three years ago, wasn’t it? Just possibly it could have been destroyed – though I wouldna recommend that myself. Nae doot I’ll have a copy – belt and braces, eh? I’ll have it dispatched to you, Inspector.”
“Thank you.”
“Am I right in saying, Lord Nairne,” Maddy tried to look meek, asking a simple ladylike question, “the complainants were a group of local residents?”
“Headed up by a bit of a nippy sweetie. A Mrs… Mrs…”
“Boyd,” Coulter suggested.
“No. No memory of that name. No, a Mrs…”
“Maguire.” Maddy said. “Cathy Maguire.”
“That’s the wifie!”
The meeting was over more quickly than they had planned for. Lord Nairne lost interest in the conversation. He returned to his reading, and only gave them a peremptory wave goodbye. At least it meant they had time on their hands. Maddy persuaded Alan to swing past Belvedere.
“I think we’re wasting valuable time here.” Coulter kept his eyes on the road. He was a careful driver. The one time that she had driven him, she thought he might give her a ticket.
“It’s always bugged me how the Petrus case has been all but discarded.”
“Then you might make some headway. But it’s a waste of my time. Even if there’s unfinished business, maybe even at Belvedere, what’s it got to do with the killing of Julian Miller? We’re too many stages removed, Maddy.”
She didn’t answer. She had a feeling he might be right. That she was getting two cases mixed up in her head.
As they travelled north a rare hint of winter sun welcomed them – like the sky was yawning but had every intention of dozing off again. The site was going like a fair. Must be nearly a hundred workers going about their mysterious business in cranes, tractors, on foot. You could begin to see the layout of the new scheme. Embryonic houses, budding streets and walls. Coulter parked but didn’t get out the car. “They keep going at this rate, you’ll have a hell of time getting back under the foundations.”
The idea worried Maddy. “Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe they can tell what’s under there without actually knocking the whole place down again. Geiger counters or something.”
“Isn’t that for radiation?”
“Oh, yeah. But who knows – they might even pick some of that up.”
“Unless of course the place has been properly sealed.”
“So I’m wasting my time too?”
“Have to say, Maddy. Sounds like it’s all been looked into. Courts and environment people were satisfied.”
“So it would seem.”
They both jumped a little when there was a knock on Coulter’s window. Tom Hughes, in full construction site regalia, was staring in at them.
“Just enjoying the view?” he shouted in. “Seriously, do you people not have any work to do?”
Coulter waited a moment before opening the power window.
“I hear you took some time off yourself this morning, Mr Hughes.”
“Did you, aye?”
“Nice of you to visit a sick friend in hospital.”
“Actually,” Hughes put on a sad face, “My wee granny. She’s no’ weel.”
“Mr Hughes, we know you went to see Bill Crichton.”
“Oh right enough. I did pass by. After. Waste of time – man’s a vegetable. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll get on.” He walked away, then called back, “Want me to bring you out a picnic blanket?”
Coulter rolled the window up again. “Shit.”
Maddy knew what bothered him was being seen with her. Why is the investigation leader hanging about with the fiscal? She reckoned, but didn’t say it, that Hughes, even if he’d recognised her, was unlikely to know enough about the law to make that a problem.
They drove along the side of the site – nearly a mile, flat as a pancake, the natural shape and contours of the area lowered, elevated, reworked. That’s what humans do, Maddy thought, pummel and restructure the lie of land. The lies of the land, she thought, once builders get their hands on it. Covering over the truth, burying the past. As th
ey curled round the wide bend, new houses to their left, old houses to their right, they saw Hughes’s watchman.
“Joe Harkins,” Coulter nodded towards him.
Harkins was deep in conversation with another man, roughly the same age, dressed in civvies but otherwise he could be Harkins’s brother. Mid height, wiry, unshaven, sallow skinned.
“And that,” Maddy informed Alan Coulter, “is Kenny Boyd.”
“Morag’s husband?”
“Definitely him.”
“Well, well,” said Coulter, and drove off, happier now that the jaunt had perhaps been of some small value after all.
Maddy thought it was time she made someone’s day. For her own reasons – but Doug Mason didn’t need to know that. They met in Cafe Hula. A little bit of the West End that had got wedged somehow in Cowcaddens. It was her favourite morning and lunchtime meeting spot. Even better, on the odd occasion she managed it, to just sit and read, looking across at the Theatre Royal, and dream of a time when she might actually have a social and cultural life.
“Funny how things just carry on,” Doug said getting stuck into a massive sandwich. “No Jules, no Bill, no idea who’ll take their place. No one even certain who has the power to make those kinds of changes. We’re all programmed, aren’t we? We get on with our allotted duties until someone tells us to stop, here’s your P45.”
“Marion Miller? Wouldn’t she be effectively in charge of the company now?”
“You’re talking like poor Bill’s kicked it. If he does… Possibly. There is an executive board. I believe Marion has a notional place on that, though I’ve never heard of her attending any meetings. The others are just hired-in people, to sign off the books, advise on staff development, that kind of thing.”
Maddy deconstructed her sandwich – you’d need a mouth the size of the Clyde tunnel to bite it. “We’re all hoping that dear Bill will make a full and hearty recovery. Doug, listen, I’m pretty sure this was before your time, but JCG Miller were hired, about three years ago, to answer a case made against Costello Laboratories, and possibly Fulton Construction, by local residents around Belvedere.”
“You’re right. Before my time. I don’t get it,” he stopped eating, “why all the interest in these builders? The only connection I can see is that their boss happened to be dining with Bill and Jules the night before.”
“Turning sleuth are we, Doug? And before you say it, I know, I know.”
“What? That you like to dig about – pardon the pun, in this instance – in cases yourself? I’ll have you know, I’ve always defended you, even before I met you, on that issue. That’s what lawyers do! We have to, don’t we, to understand? To know where we go next. In my case, how to defend an accused, in yours how to prosecute him. I don’t see the problem.”
“People actually talk about that?” Maddy was horrified. “Shit.” Not so horrified she couldn’t finish her lunch.
“Don’t get me wrong. You’re not the first topic of conversation every morning in every solicitors’ in the city. But I have heard it mentioned, yes.”
They chatted on about the murder, about Bill, work in general, and it took her a moment to realise that Doug had – impressively, she thought – brought the topic of conversation subtly round to relationships, and him and her.
“Let me speak plainly. I fancy the absolute arse off you.”
“Why, sir, your words are like silk.”
“But, alas, I know I must suffer alone for all time. You are spoken for.”
“I’ve never understood that phrase. Let me reply in kind… You’ve got a nice tight butt, a promising career, and a stylish line in shoes, Mr Mason. You’re a lying bastard – whatever it is you might ‘fancy’ it certainly ain’t my arse – but let that lie for the moment. The truth is, even were I free, my jo, to court you, you’d find me a total fucking nightmare. The man I do have keeps a safe three thousand miles away.”
She left, smiling at his offers of consolation should she and her beau ever go their own ways. He was a bit of a prick, Doug, but as bits of pricks go he had his good points. Mainly that butt and those shoes.
Back at the office she got through as much work as she could. Sheriff and Summary stuff that she’d neglected badly. A few minor infringements of trading standards (two Southside pubs), several benefit frauds (she hated those – they made her think she was on the wrong side after all) and a complaint against the police (desperate stuff by a poor soul of a man).
There was a lot she could be doing but when Coulter emailed her Nairne’s copy of the protestors’ file she turned all her attention to that. For a couple of hours she read as carefully as she could, comparing times, dates, background data, precognitions, to her own files on Petrus and Costello. It was all disappointing. She’d been hoping for something new, something no one had spotted, not her or the Environment Protection Agency, or Nairne. But there was nothing. She could see why the case had been thrown out. She was spending far too much time chasing ghosts.
She talked, in passing, to Manda and Izzy, and once to Maxwell Binnie himself, about the Miller and Crichton case, but it was as plain as day that nobody was interested. Until it was time for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to leap into action it wasn’t their concern. And neither should it be hers.
“The soil’s from a garden, a well-tended one.” Bruce Adams, crime scene manager, read wearily from his notes. “Composites suffused with weedkiller.”
“The sort of stuff you get at a garden centre?”
“I wouldn’t know, DI Coulter. I’m more of a bowling man at weekends.”
He bloody would be. “That’s the stuff found around the murder scene? What about from the Millers’ and Crichtons’ gardens?”
“Still waiting for that report.”
“For Christ’s sake. How long does it take to poke about in a wee bit of garden crud?”
Russell pointed out that if it was indeed normal garden soil, then it would probably match. “But so would anyone’s, no?” Then he laughed, “If it is just common or garden soil.” This time the joke was his own, and that doubly delighted him.
“No, Sergeant,” Adams looked as if boredom might grind him to a complete halt any minute, “the science is a bit more discriminating than that.”
“You think?” Coulter said. “After all this time, I do hope so.”
Adams shuffled off. Russell did the wanking gesture behind his back. Coulter just smiled. “Kenny Boyd. Anything on him?”
“Fifteen years of age,” Russell read from his screen, “done for attempted break-in. Children’s Panel and the house-owner dropped it. Social Work and the school took over from there. Seems to have kept his nose clean since. Or, more likely, he’s got better at not being caught.” He scrolled down. “Twice fined for driving with no insurance, but he seems to have wangled his way out of those too.”
“What does he do? I mean, do we know where he works?”
“House painter and decorator, I’m told.”
“Who by?”
“Gave his wee pal, Joe Harkins, a ring.”
“You told him I saw them together?”
“I did.”
“How did he react?
“Never realised you could shrug over the phone. Kenny, he says, finds his own work. Sounds like odd jobs to me. Including, wouldn’t you know, gardening work. Fulton Construction have hired him in the past. Contract stuff. No doubt he’s hoping for a bit of painting and decorating once the Belvedere houses are up.”
Coulter held up an empty coffee carton. “I’m going for another shot of caffeine. Want one?”
Russell shook his head. “HOLMES boys have got some interesting info on Mrs Crichton. Clare – née Ross – was sectioned in New Craigs Psychiatric Hospital in Inverness. When she was a teenager, and only for a short while.” He read from his screen: “The lack of any further medical records would suggest she had made a full recovery. Her case notes from 1987 diagnosed her as having social anxiety disorder.”
�
�Who sectioned her?”
“GP, and parents, apparently with Clare’s consent.”
“See if we can speak to anyone who treated her back then.”
“I’m on to it. I’ve said all along, the woman’s a pure dafty.”
Coulter pretended not to hear, opening the door. But Russell wasn’t finished yet.
“Oh and Mrs Goldie came to see me. She’s worried about Zack.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Usual spiel. Not making any accusations, line of inquiry, blah blah. She says, hasn’t the boy gone through enough, finding a dead body like that, without the police threatening him and making a meal out of nothing? Tell you one thing but – Mrs Goldie? Tits out of Baywatch, face out of Crimewatch.”
Coulter closed the door behind him.
Was it possible that Stuart Anderson didn’t just walk to Byres Road that morning, but further, all the way into town? To Merchant’s Tower. Maddy microwaved a shop-bought vegetable moussaka, kept the cork firmly on the bottle of wine sitting tantalisingly on the worktop, and let her thoughts roll, not trying to organise them in any way.
The times fitted. Samantha had no idea what time he got home. He could easily have gone into town, done the deed, and maybe got a taxi or a train home. But why would Stuart Anderson want to kill Julian Miller? It was his own work that agitated him, not his wife’s. A tryst between Sam and Jules was ridiculous. Sam was a nice enough looking lady, but shagging on the boss’s table? No way. She didn’t seem Miller’s type. Then again, maybe everything in a skirt was Miller’s type.
Was Stuart Anderson capable of such a cold-blooded crime? Who knows? He was a total mystery, not only to Maddy, it seemed, but to his own wife. Presumably he was a semi-decent organiser, so planning and executing the job might be a skoosh for him. Acquiring the guns? He wouldn’t know where to start looking. No. She dismissed the idea.
She settled down in front of her laptop and Skyped Captain Louis Casci of NYPD. His email said he was working from home that afternoon. It was five past seven here, so five past two stateside. Louis was already smiling when the webcam came on, sitting at his kitchen table, a mug of coffee in his hand. Maddy remembered that table, even that mug. The whole layout of the little flat in Queens.