08 - Murmuring the Judges

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘How are we doing, then, Andy?’ he asked as he stepped into the room.

  ‘No result, if that’s what you mean,’ the younger man answered tersely. ‘These people are efficient as well as ruthless.

  ‘We traced the grey Escort to a car park on the outskirts of Gala. The owner’s a Mrs Mason. She works in a shop round the corner, and she says she leaves it there every day. As far as I can gather, they drove another vehicle into the park, stole the Escort to do the job, then just came back and swapped back to their own car.’

  ‘Or cars,’ said the DCC, ‘unless you know for sure that they all travelled together. It would have been more secure to disperse separately.’

  ‘That’s true. I’ve no way of telling though. The car park is surfaced, and John McGrigor tells me there were no tyre marks.’

  ‘How’s big John holding up?’

  ‘He’s okay. He was very cut up yesterday, but he’s a good professional. He’s being very efficient, just as you’d expect.’

  ‘How did we trace the car?’

  ‘Mrs Mason was stopped on her way home. She didn’t have a clue that her car had been used, and nor would we have, but one of the traffic lads who pulled her up noticed blood on one of the back seats. Harry Riach’s blood as it turned out. He was the civilian victim.’

  ‘I know, I had a look at the Scotsman before I came in.’ Skinner paused. I didn’t take to the headline much. ‘Gang terrorises Scottish banks. No leads, police confess.’ Why the hell did you let Jimmy take the press conference?’

  ‘He insisted. See that silver braid on his uniform? It means he’s Chief Constable. He said it was down to him and him alone. Afterwards, I think he’d like to have torn Julian Finney’s heart out.’

  ‘I’ve felt like that, too. Maybe I will some day.’

  The tall, tanned DCC poured himself a mug of coffee from Martin’s filter, adding a touch of milk. ‘Have Arthur Dorward’s team finished with the car?’

  ‘Yes,’ Martin replied. ‘They found nothing, except Mrs Mason’s fag-ends and Riach’s blood. The witnesses said that the guy who shot him was drenched in it: as you’d expect after a contact wound with a sawn-off.’

  Skinner shuddered.

  ‘What do we have then?’ he asked. ‘Anything at all?’

  ‘One very fine straw to clutch. I went to see Nathan Bennett today, the guy we’ve got banged up for the first robbery. I put the fear of God in him, to try to get him to turn Crown evidence. Somebody’s beaten me to it though. As Brian Mackie thought, he’s been told to plead guilty, or else.

  ‘But something he said made me think that the threat might not be against him alone. He has an unmarried sister, name of Hannah, out in Bonnyrigg. I’ve checked with Saughton, and she’s the only visitor he’s had all the time he’s been in custody. I reckon someone’s been to see her, to give Nathan his orders, and I suspect that she’s in the firing line should Bennett break ranks.’

  ‘You going to see her?’

  ‘First thing tomorrow, I thought. Maybe around eight o’clock. Catch her early, shake her up a bit.’

  ‘Good idea. I think I’ll come too.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty.’

  Skinner nodded. ‘I’ll be ready.’ He hesitated. ‘No, why don’t you and Alex come to Gullane for supper tonight? We’re having a Thai takeaway. You can stay over, and we’ll leave from there.’

  15

  ‘Why have we never eaten at the Thai place before, Andy,’ Alex burst out enthusiastically. ‘If the takeaway’s this good, it must be even better on the premises.’

  ‘Probably because I’ve been too embarrassed about the ordering part of it. There isn’t a single name on that menu . . . other than Pard and Prik . . . that I can get near pronouncing.’

  ‘You are not alone, my friend,’ said Bob. ‘Every time we go there, we order by numbers.’

  It was almost nine p.m., but the evening was warm and they were able to eat outside in comfort, on the terrace of Bob and Sarah’s new bungalow in Gullane, into which they had moved two days before leaving for their Spanish holiday.

  They had bought the house as part of their ‘fresh start’ agreement, and sold their Edinburgh home and Bob’s old cottage on Goose Green, a quarter of a mile away, the latter for a price which had astonished them both. The bungalow was spacious, newly built on a plot which had once been part of the garden of a stone mansion on Gullane Hill. It had four bedrooms, a massive living and dining area and a conservatory. There was also a study for Sarah who had decided to fulfil a long-held ambition by becoming a consultant forensic pathologist, alongside freelance scene-of-incident work for the police.

  The terrace and garden looked out across the Firth of Forth, to the Lomond Hills of Fife, and to the rosy sunset in the west which bathed the four as they finished their meal.

  ‘This is really beautiful,’ said Alex. ‘When I was a kid, I had this private dream that one day my dad would buy a house looking on to the sea, so that I could just run on to the beach. You’re going to have a great life out here, both of you. Especially now you’ll be working from home, Sarah.’

  Her step-mother grinned, running long fingers through her auburn hair. ‘Yeah, that’s a bonus. I have to take an examination here to top up my US qualifications, but I can start practice as an assistant now. I’ve had my first commission, in fact.’

  Bob’s eyebrows rose in surprise. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I haven’t had an opportunity,’ his wife said. ‘I checked my e-mail after you left. There was a message from Professor Hutchison, asking if I can assist tomorrow morning at an autopsy he’s performing in Edinburgh.’

  ‘It’s as well you told me now. Andy and I are off on a visit tomorrow morning.’

  Alex raised a hand. ‘No problem,’ she said. ‘I’ll baby-sit. It’ll give Mark and me a chance to get acquainted.’

  ‘How’s Mark settling in?’ asked Andy, as he forked up the last of his fish in red curry sauce.

  ‘Very well,’ Sarah replied. ‘He’s a remarkable little boy, and he thinks Jazz is just great. He loves having a baby brother.’

  ‘It must be a very difficult job for you two, nonetheless, integrating him into a new family.’

  ‘No, Andy, I’d describe it as a very responsible job. We have to make him feel as loved and secure as he’s always been, and I like to believe that we’re succeeding in that. At the same time we have to remember what he’s been through. He still has times when he withdraws into his grief. The temptation is to throw treats at him to jolly him out of them, yet that’s just what we mustn’t do. He has to work all that out for himself, if he’s to grow into a well-adjusted, happy young man.’

  ‘But won’t it be difficult,’ Alex cut in, ‘when he’s old enough really to understand what happened to his father and mother? Couldn’t he have big psychological problems when that happens?’

  Sarah nodded. ‘Yes, he could. So, as part of his upbringing, we’ll make sure that he remembers them, that he’s under no illusions about their death, but that he comes to see himself as their embodiment. We aim to encourage him to live his life positively, in their memory.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Bob, with a grin. ‘No more negative thinking in this house. Don’t you give up on that case you were moaning about earlier, daughter. You’re not beaten till all the evidence has been weighed.’

  ‘Hah! You haven’t seen the judge, Pops. Grimley’s evidence ended this afternoon, two days late. Yet Lord Coalville told us that he isn’t going to extend the time he’s allocated to the hearing. We have to complete by close of play on Wednesday. The dice are loaded, I tell you. Positive thinking for us is that the award might be under three million.’

  ‘Come on, girl, that’s no attitude to take into battle.’

  ‘Oh no? Well, you ask your Head of CID just how confident he is about tracing this bank gang. His face has been tripping him all week.’

  ‘In the circumstances,’ Alex’s father said gently,
‘I think that’s understandable. When did you ever see me smile about armed robbery and murder? It doesn’t mean that we don’t go after the bastards with complete determination, and the certainty that we’re going to get them.’

  ‘It took you long enough to get Jackie Charles,’ she retorted, unsmiling.

  ‘Aye, but we got him. What you should remember about Jackie, though, is that no one was ever killed on any of the jobs he was suspected of bank-rolling. I’m not condoning him . . . God, you know how much I detest the little shit . . . but he wasn’t a killer.

  ‘The people we’re up against now, they are. Ruthless, cold-blooded killers, as they showed yesterday. Whoever’s running the operation . . . and I agree with your thinking, Andy, that there’s someone behind all this who hasn’t been seen on any of the raids . . . he’s the most ruthless of them all.

  ‘But we know we’ll get them, my friend, don’t we?’

  Martin looked at him, solemnly. ‘Sure we do, Bob. No ifs or buts. I just wish to Christ I knew when. Every day they’re at liberty, the public, and our people, are at risk.’

  ‘Yeah, mate, I know. Still, we’ve got one lead at least. Let’s hope that Miss Hannah Bennett has the guts to point us in the direction of whoever it is has her brother so scared that he’s prepared to spend the next twenty years inside.’

  16

  ‘You know, Chief Superintendent,’ said Skinner lazily, looking along the ordered street, ‘the folk who believe that biggest is always best should be taken round places like Craigmillar and Pilton then brought here.

  ‘For it seems to me that in housing terms, the opposite is always true. When I was a wee boy, I remember big council housing estates going up in my home town, that were half demolished before I was forty.

  ‘Even back in the sixties, any copper could have told the planners about the link between monolithic housing, crime and social deprivation, yet they still went on building huge, unmanageable urban concentration camps.

  ‘Not like this though.’

  Behind the wheel of his Mondeo, Martin grunted agreement. ‘Not a bit. These houses must be sixty years old, yet look at them.’ Before them, the rows of semi-detached Snowcem-clad villas of Garston Avenue stretched in a gentle curve, each set in a garden, the size of which would have made a contemporary speculative builder salivate as he pictured the number of houses it could accommodate. They were uniform in design, yet no longer in finish, as the varied designs of replacement doors and windows showed which of the former municipal houses were now in occupier-ownership.

  Cars stood in most of the driveways, and more were parked down one side of the narrow street.

  ‘What’s Hannah Bennett’s number?’ Skinner asked.

  ‘Seventeen.’

  ‘Let’s walk up, then.’

  They left the Mondeo parked at the entrance to the avenue and strolled casually along the pavement, counting off the numbers as they walked. The morning sun was risen and they felt its warmth on their faces, yet it was still only four minutes past eight a.m., and on a Saturday morning there was no one else to be seen.

  ‘This is it,’ said Martin, pointing to the next house on their right. ‘Seventeen.’

  There were two cars in the driveway, one a Ford Sierra Cosworth, the other a Vauxhall Corsa which, from its registration number, was less than two years old. ‘Decent motors,’ the DCC commented. ‘What do they do, Bennett and his sister?’

  ‘She works for the council, on the admin. side of the social work department. Before he was nicked, Nathan was a civil servant.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘No kidding. He was an EO or something, in the new Scottish Office building down in Leith Docks. He was taken on after he left the army.’ He was amused by Skinner’s surprise. ‘I agree; not the usual background for a bank robber. His job drives yet another nail in the coffin of his defence. He was on flexi-time; the silly bugger clocked out two hours before the robbery.’

  The detectives stopped at the foot of the sloping driveway of number seventeen. The lawn in front of the house was immaculately groomed, and the flower-beds around it were neatly weeded, with a mixture of bedding plants in flower.

  Skinner looked up at the house. ‘No curtains pulled. She must be up, unless her bedroom’s at the back. Let’s go.’

  They walked up the path, dressed in casual clothing, Skinner in slacks and open-necked shirt, Martin in his trademark jeans and leather bomber jacket. A single wide concrete step was set before the white, glass-panelled front door. The DCS stepped up and rang the brass-studded bell, hearing it sound clearly inside the house.

  They waited on the step, looking for signs of movement behind the glass, listening for sounds. Eventually, impatiently, Skinner reached out and pressed the bell once more; but still they stood, with only birdsong to break the silence.

  ‘Don’t tell me she’s gone out already,’ the DCC growled.

  ‘The two cars are still here,’ Martin pointed out. ‘Maybe she’s got a bidey-in we didn’t know about, and they’re upstairs ignoring the bell.’

  ‘Could be. It’s only daft bastards like us that are up at this time on a Saturday. Come on, let’s go round and give the back door a thump.’

  He led the way past the black Sierra, past the garage, and through a tall latched gate, both of them wooden and brown-stained. The gate was warped and the policeman had to push hard to force it open. The garden to the rear was as neat as that to the front. Four green-painted clothes poles stood on the rear lawn, linked by a rope which formed a perfect square. Beyond, a cultivated area was planted with a mixture of vegetables, while behind the garage stood tall rows of raspberry bushes. On all three sides, the boundaries were marked by high fir trees, planted close together, thicker than any hedge, giving the area almost total seclusion.

  ‘Must be the sister who’s the gardener,’ said the Head of CID, ‘Nathan having been in the slammer for three months.’

  ‘Looks like she’s asleep on the job, then.’ Skinner’s voice was flat and cold. His companion felt a chill grip his stomach. ‘There.’

  Martin followed his pointing finger. In the dark shadows between two of the lines of raspberry canes, he could see something white. For once his contact lenses failed him, and he had to step closer, on to the lawn, before he could see that it was a left foot, encased in a lady’s white slip-on shoe. The right foot beside it was bare, and muddy.

  ‘Oh no,’ he whispered, as Skinner stepped alongside him.

  ‘No wonder she didn’t hear the bell, Andy.’

  Together they approached, until they were looking down the alley between the rows of bushes.

  The woman lay face-down in the earth. She was wearing black slacks, and a white sleeveless cotton top. It was difficult to be sure, but they guessed by her long legs that Hannah Bennett must have been tall, like her brother. Her hair was as vividly red as his, but it was red also with blood.

  Martin stepped past the body, forcing the bushes aside as he did, and knelt down by her head. ‘She’s been stabbed,’ he said, in an even voice. ‘With great force; it looks like a broad-bladed kitchen knife. It’s buried in the side of her head, almost up to the hilt.’

  In spite of himself, the DCC felt his stomach heave. He fought it as always, by concentrating on what had to be done, and took his hand-phone from the pocket of his shirt. ‘Better get Brian Mackie up here,’ he muttered.

  ‘Brian’s away for the weekend, with his girl-friend,’ his colleague told him. ‘Try calling Rose instead.’

  Skinner nodded and punched in the home number of his former personal assistant; it was filed in his memory.

  ‘Hello.’ The call was answered after four rings, by a gruff male voice.

  ‘Morning, Mario, it’s the DCC here. It’s Maggie I need.’

  ‘Ah, morning, Boss. Just when we were looking forward to a lie-in. Hold on.’There was a pause as Inspector Mario McGuire passed the handset to his wife.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ It occurred to Skinner that he could remembe
r only one occasion on which he had known DCI Margaret Rose to look or sound remotely flustered.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mags, but DCS Martin and I have come across a problem in your area. I need a team up here on the double, and everything needed to set up a murder inquiry. You call out your duty people, and I’ll alert an ME and the scene-of-crime team.The address is Number Seventeen, Garston Avenue, Bonnyrigg. There’s one victim, female, believed to be Miss Hannah Bennett.’

  ‘Bennett?’ Rose’s voice was suddenly sharp.

  ‘Yes. Nathan’s sister. Let’s not jump to conclusions, though. It may be completely unconnected with her brother, but then again . . . Just get up here as fast as you can. There’s a street full of sleeping neighbours waiting to be knocked up and interviewed.’

  He ended the call, then keyed in his own number. Sarah picked up the phone almost at once. ‘You still in bed?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’m just out of the shower. I’m standing here stark naked, if you want to know.’

  ‘That’s very nice, but tell me; what time are you due at your autopsy?’

  ‘Eleven-thirty.’

  ‘That’s good. In that case, I want you to chuck on some clothes and get here on the double. I’ve got a job for you before you see Prof. Hutchison.’ He gave her the address, then called headquarters, and left orders to be passed on to Detective Inspector Arthur Dorward, head of the scene-of-crime team. By the time he replaced the phone in his pocket, Martin was standing beside him once more.

  ‘That’s Hannah Bennett all right,’ he said. ‘Facially, she looks very like her brother.’

  ‘What?’ growled Skinner. ‘Does he have a big fucking knife sticking out of his head too?’

  17

  The interior of Hannah Bennett’s home was as neatly ordered as her garden. Skinner, Martin, Sarah and Inspector Arthur Dorward sat in her tidy living room while a stream of uniformed police officers and detectives came and went from the mobile headquarters caravan which had been set up in the avenue, on the grass verge which ran between pavement and road.