by Denise Mina
‘Young boy, fourteen years old. You picked him up at the care home he was living in, Cleveden House.’
‘No, I don’t think I remember ...’
‘That’s odd. Everyone else remembers.’
He looked at her, read her face and smiled. ‘Oh, yes. A young boy.’
She realised then that he was expecting her to help him. It hadn’t occurred to him that she wanted to arrest him. He thought she had left a door open for him and he was trusting her to guide him to it.
‘Young, yes,’ she said. ‘You took his prints. On paper.’
‘I did.’
‘You remember doing that?’
‘We did them on cards then.’
‘The old ten-print sheets.’
‘That’s right, with ink.’
‘Do you remember taking Brown’s prints?’
‘I think ...’
‘Did you switch them with Rose Wilson’s?’
Seven seconds passed without Monkton moving or breathing. Morrow imagined him flipping through a Rolodex of lies until he settled on:
‘Rose who?’ The headshake began slowly, gathering speed and fervour. ‘I don’t—’
‘OK.’ She stood up. ‘I’m not going to try and jog your memory—’
‘I remember Michael Brown.’ He was panicked. She could see it in his eyes. He thought he had chosen the wrong lie. ‘But my DS that night ...’
She sat back down. ‘George Gamerro.’
‘Yes.’ He searched her face for clues. ‘George Gamerro ...’
‘It was murder. A care-home boy found dead in an alleyway, stabbed in the neck. His younger brother was picked up at the home by you and DC McMahon—’
‘Harry.’ He was quick to get that in, wanted her to know he knew him.
‘Harry McMahon. He works for you now.’
‘Does he?’
‘Don’t you know he works for you?’
‘We have a massive staff. I don’t know everyone.’
‘So, you picked the kid up and booked him. McMahon was not there when the prints were taken, you were. What happened?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re not Michael Brown’s prints.’
‘Sounds like an administrative error. Possibly?’ He was shooting in the dark now. Morrow looked him meaningfully in the eye.
‘There are a series, as you’re no doubt aware, of procedures to ensure that doesn’t happen.’
‘Is it how they were entered into the system? Maybe?’ He read her face and saw that it wasn’t that either. ‘Changed subsequently? It’s all been computerised, there could have been a mix-up since. Maybe?’
Morrow had no other questions and nothing else to put to him. She sat, expressionless, and watched him flail. His eyes raced over her face, looking for the open door he was sure she had left him. Monkton could not believe she wasn’t helping him.
‘McMahon could have switched them? Gamerro? Is that what you’re thinking? Or the desk sergeant?’
She sat and looked at him, savoured his discomfort as she thought about Brown as a child, a bereaved child made a further casualty because it suited someone somewhere for some reason. Whim, perhaps.
‘Who was the desk sergeant that night?’ asked Monkton, fishing.
‘DS Riddell,’ she said. Riddell wasn’t the desk sergeant but she would show him the tape afterwards, get him onside.
Monkton looked disappointed but resigned to blaming Riddell if that was the door she was leading him through. ‘Well, if Riddell ... I mean this seems to me to be a police matter. I don’t see how I can—’
‘You switched the prints, Monkton.’
Monkton stopped flailing. It would not be picked up on the camera but she could see he was furious with her.
‘You did it.’
‘Why on earth would I do that?’
‘For Anton Atholl.’ His face didn’t register an answer. ‘Julius McMillan.’ Again nothing. ‘For Dawood McMann.’
There it was. The answer. He’d done it for Dawood. Service industry. Corruption to order.
‘Why would I do something like that for Dawood McMann?’
‘Money? A favour? That’s not my problem but I think you did.’
‘That’s quite an allegation, DI Morrow. Quite an allegation to make about a respected businessman and two of Scotland’s leading lawyers.’
‘Both of whom are dead.’
‘Both of whom are dead,’ he conceded.
‘They’ll probably get the blame then.’
Monkton rallied. ‘Do you honestly think you can just do what you like, say what you like to people because your brother is a gangster? A well-known gangster? A fact that you deliberately kept hidden for years from this force?’
‘No, I think I can say it because I’m a cop.’
‘A cop with a fraudulently acquired crisis loan? How’s the roof, Alex?’
She couldn’t think straight. A massive staff, he had said, hundreds, maybe. And then there were subcontractors: Stepper and the van was one of them. How on earth could they find that out? They must have access to her medical records, her son’s death certificate, results of her smear tests and her mind flicked through every document she ever signed in her life. He was omnipresent and powerful.
At a loss, she said again, ‘I think you switched them ...’ But she found her voice diminished.
He didn’t need to say anything to her then. He sat back looking offended and crossed his arms.
Her voice stayed small as she said, ‘Are you trying to intimidate me, Mr Monkton?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘Again, I’m not concerned with motives, just whether or not you are trying to intimidate me. I understand that your firm tipped off the Daily News about my half-brother being Daniel McGrath.’
‘Did they?’
‘No, I’m asking you if they did.’
‘I don’t know if that happened. We’re a big firm, we operate all over Scotland. We have, as I said, a massive staff. I don’t keep tabs on the individual operations of our operatives, it would be inappropriate to do that—’
She saw a hand knocking on her front door and Brian opening it. She saw a smiling face and a cardboard wine carrier with three bottles of wine. A cheap trick, smoke and mirrors. Brian would have told them about the loan, he was honest. He told them about the loan.
Monkton looked up and found her smiling. Three bottles of wine. She could still taste them. For the price of three bottles of wine. He wasn’t omniscient. He was a cheap con. She nearly congratulated him.
‘Professionally, do you ever approach people seeking information under false pretences, Mr Monkton?’
He shook his head, as if baffled by the notion.
‘Someone came to my house and said they were doing market research—’
‘Well, that’s a very broad term. That doesn’t mean they’re using it themselves to engage with an actual market.’
‘Hm.’
He changed his stance quite suddenly. ‘Do you ever think about what you’ll do for a job after being on the force?’ He smiled. ‘I found that time quite hard.’
‘Hm.’
Now she had him, and he had her. They could both put their guns down and back off, no harm done and all would continue as normal. He was offering her a job and she could see again how useful she would be to him, and how much he would pay her to be useful.
Her career was dead in the water. She wouldn’t get credit for Dawood or Danny or Pokey Mulligan, she wouldn’t get credit for shutting down the hundi operation, that would all go to Wainwright. She had cost the Fiscal’s office a fortune over the Michael Brown prosecution and now they’d have to revoke his licence, retry Rose Wilson for the Pinkie Brown case and they could hardly afford current cases. When the new nationwide force came in they’d stick her in an office doing paperwork. But she could get Monkton. They hated her anyway, she might as well arrest their future employer.
Alex leaned across the table to him. �
�Mr Monkton, I think you wilfully switched the fingerprints and that led to the wrongful conviction of Michael Brown for his brother’s murder.’
He was sweating now, panicked as a horse in a burning stall. ‘Who is Michael Brown to you? Is he your cousin or something? Is he your nephew?’
‘And in pursuance of that, Mr Monkton, I am charging you with perverting the course of justice. I am now going to read you your rights and I’d like you to listen carefully, because they might have changed since your day.’
And then she did.
Also by Denise Mina
Still Midnight
The Last Breath
The Dead Hour
The Field of Blood
Sanctum
Resolution
Exile
Garnethill
The End of the Wasp Season
Gods and Beasts
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Orion Books.
This ebook first published in 2013 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Denise Mina 2013
The right of Denise Mina to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 4073 3
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
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17
18
19
20
21
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29
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32
Also By Denise Mina
Copyright