08 - Murmuring the Judges

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘That’s good,’ said the acting Chief Constable. ‘The way the balls have been running for us lately, we need all the help we can get. Ask him to look in on us next time he’s in Edinburgh. I’d be interested to hear his thoughts on the way we work. When you’re too proud to learn from the experience of fellow professionals, you’re in real trouble.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Martin, rising from his seat. ‘You going across the corridor for lunch later on?’ he asked.

  ‘Not today. I have a lunch date already; with my wife. We don’t have too many opportunities to meet in town these days, so it’s a bit of a treat for us both.’

  46

  ‘What made you choose here?’

  ‘The food’s good, and I like the view,’ Sarah answered. ‘I like the atmosphere too. Lunch doesn’t always have to be an intimate occasion. It’s fun to eat café-style once in a while.’

  Bob laughed. ‘If you’d said, you could have come to the senior officers’ dining room down at Fettes.’

  ‘No, thank you very much! I said café - , not canteen - style.’

  ‘It’s good wholesome food.’

  ‘Exactly, and if you and Andy didn’t eat so much of it, you wouldn’t have to spend so much time working out. No, in the middle of the day, I prefer this.’ She looked down at the brimming bowl of crab bisque and at the bread roll which lay on a plate beside it.

  Bob investigated his tuna salad then paused, turning in the bench seat to look out of the window. ‘You’re right about the view, though, especially on a nice day like this.’ In common with most Edinburgh people, Skinner detested the visual impact on the city of the grey concrete St James Centre and its vast disused office block. But inside the building, in the top floor restaurant of the John Lewis store, it was a different matter. The window seat looked out across the north of the city, offering a panorama which stretched from the lower slopes of the New Town on the left to the Fife coast and widening river mouth on the right.

  He admired the prospect for a few minutes, before turning back to eat, smiling, laughing, joking with his wife, making the small talk that loving couples do.

  Finally, as they both pushed away their plates and turned their attention to their coffee, Sarah asked him, quietly, ‘So how was your morning, honey? What did the Lord A. have to say?’

  ‘ “Help, Mammy, Daddy”, just about covers it,’ Bob replied, dropping for a moment into his broadest Lanarkshire accent. ‘He’s deeply upset, as you’d imagine. He’s an honourable man is wee Archie. I feel heartily sorry for him.’

  She glanced around, making sure that the table behind her was still empty. ‘Will he have to resign?’

  ‘No, he won’t have to, as such, but if we charge the man, I don’t think that anything or anyone will dissuade him from handing in his seal of office. I really hope that the bloke turns out to be innocent, but the way it’s going . . .’

  He stopped, abruptly. ‘Enough of Archie’s troubles, though. What have you and Professor Joe been up to?’

  Sarah replaced her coffee cup in its saucer. ‘It was pretty routine stuff today,’ she said, ‘as murder autopsies go. You were right; the subject was a male from West Linton.’

  ‘Ryan Saunders.’

  ‘That was the fella. An otherwise healthy specimen, despatched from this life very neatly by a single gunshot to the back of the head.’ She reached her right hand behind her and touched the base of her skull with a finger. ‘There. It was fired at close range we believe. The hair was scorched around the entry wound.

  ‘You know,’ she mused, ‘I often ponder on the fact that a human life can be switched off in less than the blink of an eye by just a little piece of metal. Don’t you?’

  He shook his head, firmly. ‘Nope. I do not. Nor should anyone, if their job is likely to put a gun in their hands. If you start brooding about things like that, one day you might delay in pulling a trigger, or you might not pull it at all. In that event, an innocent person could die . . . maybe even you.

  ‘Ask Andy, ask Brian Mackie . . . they’ve pulled that trigger . . . and they’ll tell you the same.’

  He frowned. ‘I would be interested, though, to know what was in the mind of the man who sent Ryan Saunders to wherever he’s gone.’

  ‘Can’t help you there,’ said Sarah, with a quick, wicked smile. ‘Saunders never said a word.’

  ‘Christ, this new job’s giving you a copper’s gallows humour.’

  Suddenly she was serious. ‘Yes, it is, but you know why.’

  ‘Sure.’ A silence hung over the table for a second. ‘Do you ever dream,’ he asked, ‘of a day when we’ll be leading a life that isn’t wrapped around with the aftermath of brutality?’

  ‘Of course I do, and one day, darling, we will. Till then, someone’s got to do these things; better it’s people who are good at them, like we are.’

  ‘I suppose,’ he nodded. ‘So Saunders was a run-of-the-mill dissection then?’

  She smiled again, and at once he was intrigued. ‘Almost, but not quite. There was one peculiarity.’ She reached back and touched herself once more, this time just below her right shoulder-blade.

  ‘Apart from the gunshot, there was a single knife wound, right there in the back. It was in a fleshy area just beside the spine, a surface wound, a bit less than an inch deep. Not life-threatening in any way.’

  ‘That’s odd. Were there any other marks?’

  ‘None, apart from severe bruising to the wrists. They were bound together, with considerable force.’

  ‘Wasn’t there an exit wound?’

  ‘No.The rifle was small calibre, and a soft-nosed bullet was used. Very efficient: it didn’t exit, just bounced around inside the skull and turned the brain to mush.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yup. Absolute soup, it was. When I removed the cranium it more or less ran out.’

  Bob shuddered. ‘When will we have the report?’ he asked.

  ‘By close of play today. It won’t be complicated. Apart from having no brain left, Mr Saunders was in perfect health.’

  47

  ‘I’m very pleased to hear that you’re staying with us for a few more weeks, Mr Ankrah,’ said Skinner. They were in the main communications room at Fettes, as the DCC finally completed the tour of the headquarters building which he had scheduled for the day of the visitor’s arrival.

  ‘It’s a privilege for me,’ said the African. ‘Already I am learning a great deal about how methodical your detective work is.’

  ‘Boring, some would call it,’ the DCC retorted with a grin, as they left the radio room and began the walk back up to his office. ‘It has to be, though. We lay heavy emphasis on the rights of the accused person, as well as the victim. Our prosecution service demands meticulous attention to detail in preparing a case for court, so we have to make sure that every witness is interviewed exhaustively, and that answers exist to every possible question which the defence might ask in Court.’

  Ankrah nodded. ‘We aspire to such standards too in my country. But I envy you all these facilities and your many trained officers. We have to rely much more on our instincts.’

  ‘Good for you, mate,’ said Skinner, sincerely. ‘A nose for the job is just as important to us as all the stuff you see here. When detectives stop following their instincts, by and large they’re no good to me.’

  As they reached the top of the stairs which led to the command corridor, Andy Martin was waiting for them. ‘This is the pathologist’s report on the West Linton murder,’ he said, holding up a document.

  ‘I know what’s in it,’ said Skinner, leading the way into his temporary office. ‘Sarah told me. The man was tied up and shot once in the back of the head.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the Head of CID confirmed, looking at Ankrah.

  ‘If it was Sturrock he was very efficient. One shot and the man was gone. The only oddity was a small stab wound in the middle of the back. I can’t figure out why he did that.’

  ‘I think I can te
ll you,’ said Kwame Ankrah, quietly, and for once unsmiling. The two Scots looked at him, surprised.

  ‘Before I came here,’ the Ghanaian began, ‘I paid an official visit to the People’s Republic of China. While I was there, my hosts were kind enough to take me to see an execution. Ten executions, to be more accurate.’ He grimaced, and shuddered slightly.

  ‘There was no ceremony about it. The condemned people . . . two of them were women . . . were forced to kneel, and shot in the back of the head with a single bullet, just like this man Saunders. But in that position, the natural reaction is to pull the head down and to cringe away from the bullet.

  ‘So, when the marksman was ready, another person would put a knife into the back of the criminal, very quickly and without warning. That made him straighten and pull his head up. As he did so, the executioner would fire.

  ‘They used big, heavy, soft bullets,’ he said. ‘Very messy, but they did not waste a shot.’

  The Ghanaian shivered again. ‘I think perhaps, that Superintendent McGrigor should be looking for Mr Sturrock’s knife, as well as his gun.’

  Skinner smiled at Martin. ‘I told you we could learn from this man. Kwame, welcome to the team, even if it’s only for a month. It’s good to have you around.’

  48

  ‘You never know what’s going to happen in this job, do you?’ said Detective Sergeant Karen Neville. ‘One minute I was up before the Boss, thinking I might be put in charge of female traffic wardens in Newtongrange, or shoved into some other backwater, the next I’m in headquarters, working for the Head of CID.

  ‘Is Mr Skinner always as unpredictable as that?’

  Maggie Rose, not given to spontaneous laughter, chuckled nonetheless. ‘The day the Big Man becomes easy to read, he’ll chuck it.You’ve only seen unpredictable so far: wait till you come across volatile.’

  ‘What, you mean he chucks telephones, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Hah, that’s small-time. If Big Bob was a chucker, he’d throw the switchboard, operator and all. No, but he does have a temper. Usually he blows up and that’s it. But you really know there’s trouble brewing when he goes quiet. There’s a look comes into his eyes then, and you don’t want to be on the end of it.

  ‘I’ve seen him interview a really hard case, and beat the guy to a pulp just with that stare of his.’

  ‘What about Mr Martin?’ asked Neville. ‘I met him when he was in uniform out in Haddington, but none of us really got to know him then.’

  ‘The DCS is the opposite of Mr Skinner in some ways. He’s very controlled, most of the time. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen him lose his temper. He’s the perfect foil for the Boss; they used to call them Batman and Robin, when they were both younger. He’s a really nice bloke, and you’ll enjoy working for him.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what Sammy Pye said . . .’

  ‘You’ve told Sammy you’re joining the team?’

  The sergeant shook her head. ‘No, not yet. He told me how good a boss he is a few months ago, one night when we were out for a meal.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Rose, expressionless, but with her reaction in her voice.

  It was Karen Neville’s turn to grin. ‘I am capable of discretion from time to time. Sammy’s a good friend. We see each other quite a lot but so far, apart from one brief fling, that’s it.’

  ‘So the story about you and the lad was true.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the story about you propositioning big Neil?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the sergeant, ‘but I was drunk at the time. I seem to have been risking life and limb there. From what the Boss said, his wife must be formidable.’

  This time Maggie Rose did laugh. ‘Neil’s my husband’s best pal, so I know Olive. She keeps him in line, all right, but he builds up her legend. For all that he says, he loves her madly, and their kids.’

  The sergeant fell silent for a time, as the two women, wearing light shirts, shorts and sandals in the pleasant August morning sun, trudged along the path. ‘Listen, ma’am,’ she said at last, ‘you won’t say anything to Sammy about young Keenan and his complaint, will you? It’s all been kept in-house up to now, but I’m afraid that if he found out . . .’

  ‘He might think that there was fire, after all?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant. I’d be afraid that he might go out to Haddington and beat several colours of shit out of Keenan.’

  ‘What, quiet young Sammy?’

  Sergeant Neville glanced at her senior colleague. ‘You don’t know him as well as you think.’

  Rose chuckled. ‘I hope he keeps his temper, then, when he’s interviewing the twitcher families with our guest from Ghana.’

  ‘Sammy’s here?’

  ‘Yes. He volunteered, with Mr Ankrah. He said that after a week of staring at videos he was desperate for a day out. Bloody typical; they get to wait by the bridge, talking to the anoraks and the family outings, and we get to trudge out here, in search of the gays.’ She paused, with a quick, flashing grin. ‘Not that I’ve got anything against gays, you understand.’

  ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ asked Karen, looking ahead to a high sandy dune, overgrown with coarse marram grass.

  ‘I think we must be. I can hear the sound of the waves.’

  Laboriously they climbed to the top of the great sand bank, although the path through the grass led round the foot of it. When they reached its summit, it levelled out, offering a panoramic view of a wide golden strand, gloriously inviting, yet almost deserted. Maggie looked around and spotted an open area, a clearing within the grass, and led the way towards it. She sat down gratefully, and slipped her arms out of the straps of the knapsack which she had been carrying on her back.

  ‘Let’s have a break, and work out how we’re going to tackle this,’ she said, producing a flask and two plastic cups, as Karen flopped on to the sand beside her, kicking off her sandals.

  ‘Good idea, ma’am,’ she said. ‘Senior officers should show initiative.’ She reached into her shoulder bag. ‘I took the easy option. I brought the KitKats.’

  They sat on their lofty perch, sipping hot coffee and nibbling chocolate biscuits, and looked along the expanse of the golden beach below them. The tide was on the ebb, but still high, and a few people were walking along the water’s edge. Neville pointed at two of them, a man and a woman, who were walking dogs. They were thirty yards apart, but approaching the two officers’ vantage point. ‘We should talk to them,’ she said. ‘Maybe they come here every week.’

  ‘Okay,’ Rose agreed. ‘We’ll go down once they get closer.’

  She finished her coffee, wiped the inside of the cup with a tissue then replaced it, with Karen’s, in the knapsack. She was fastening the plastic catches when the voice sounded from behind them.

  ‘Good day, ladies.’

  The policewomen turned simultaneously, looking over their shoulders and upwards. It was a friendly voice, a plummy voice, with a kindly ring to it. Karen was reminded at once of a bachelor uncle who had died when she was a child.

  He looked to be in his early forties, slightly younger than Uncle Alfred must have been at the end, she realised. He was of medium height, as he stood amid the grass just above them, dressed in fawn cotton slacks and a rather garish checked shirt, predominantly yellow in colour. His greying hair was swept back from his forehead, and his tanned skin shone with health.

  ‘Enjoying the morning, are we?’ the man went on. ‘It’s shaping up to be another lovely day, is it not.’

  ‘Looks like it,’ said Maggie Rose. As she spoke a second man appeared on the crest of the dune. Unlike his companion he was out of breath, despite the fact that he was around fifteen years younger. He was very attractive, with chestnut hair which caught and reflected the sun, and wearing a T-shirt and shorts which seemed to cling tightly to the curves and muscles of his body. He was also carrying a large blue nylon bag.

  The older man looked over his shoulder and grinned. ‘You’re out of conditio
n, Donovan,’ he pronounced, with mock-severity in his rolling tones.

  ‘I am carrying the bloody gear, David!’

  He glanced down once more at the two women. ‘They don’t look after themselves, these young people, do they.’

  ‘Oh yes we do,’ said Karen, grinning.

  ‘Oh, but I didn’t mean to offend,’ the man responded, with a show of mock-contrition. ‘What brings you here?’ he went on quickly. ‘Let me guess; you’re sun-worshippers like us. You must be, since you’ve found our private place. D’you think we might join you? There should be room for us all.’

  Rose nodded, smiling up at him. ‘We didn’t see any towels on sun-beds, so we didn’t know it was private. But sure, be our guests.’

  David turned to Donovan, who dropped the bag in the clearing, unzipped it and produced two rush mats and two towels. ‘I have two spare mats,’ he said, in a voice much less cultured than that of his companion. ‘Would you like them?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Karen, looking into his eyes and flashing him a smile. The young man produced two more rolled, red-trimmed strips and handed them across, but his gaze avoided hers.

  ‘I think I’ll swim now, David.’

  ‘Of course, my boy. I shall talk to the ladies.’

  Donovan peeled off his cherry-red T-shirt, picked up one of the towels and plunged off down the dune. The three sat on their mats, watching him as he ran across the beach towards the water’s edge. He stopped just short of the hard, wet sand, dropped the towel, stepped out of his shorts, turned back towards them with a smile and a wave, then ran, naked, into the sea.

  David made a tutting noise. ‘Frightful exhibitionist, the boy. I tell him time and time again not to do that, especially at weekends when it’s busy. That’s the sort of behaviour that brings the police out here.’

  ‘Only if someone complains to them,’ said Karen.

  David eyed her thoughtfully for a moment. ‘That’s right,’ he agreed. ‘And you ladies wouldn’t, would you.’

  ‘No,’ said Rose, quietly. ‘But then we are the police.’