08 - Murmuring the Judges

by Quintin Jardine

  The big DCC slammed his left fist into his right palm. ‘Let’s have him, then and let’s stick both King and him up in a line-up before our gallery-owner friend.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Martin, ‘but first, we should find out where he works. Maybe Mitch Laidlaw will know that. As soon as we pick him up, we should find out whether there’s a discrepancy in the firm’s cyanide stock!’

  ‘You do that. Try to lift him tomorrow morning, Andy. Do it yourself, very quietly, early doors. Why don’t you take Kwame Ankrah for back-up; give him a taste of action. Then have Neville and Pye make that check at his firm as soon as you’ve got him in custody.

  ‘Meanwhile, I’m going to phone Lord Archibald, to let him know that he, and the Home Advocate Depute, may be off the hook.’

  83

  ‘Bob Skinner, you are like a cat on hot bricks tonight. Look, it was your idea to get a baby-sitter and go out for supper, so come on . . . talk to me.’

  Reproved, the big policeman looked sheepishly at his wife as they sat in the window seat of the Mallard Hotel bar. At the far end of the room, the inevitable golf party discussed the triumphs and disasters of their day on the links, as they settled in for a long night.

  ‘Sorry love. My mind was way ahead of me. I was thinking of Andy, going along to Humbie tomorrow to lift this man Bernard Grimley.’

  Sarah grinned. ‘You’re really pleased with yourself over that, aren’t you. Normally I have to coax stuff like that out of you. Not tonight though; you were hardly over the doorstep before it all came pouring out.’

  He picked up his beer, glancing at her wickedly over the top of the glass as he drank. ‘I think I have a right to be chuffed with myself,’ he agreed contentedly, wiping foam from his top lip with the back of his hand as he spoke. ‘That was a classic piece of detection. And who pulled it off? The Boss, the backroom boy, the desk jockey, while all the whiz kids were scratching their heads.’

  He gave a sudden, short, explosive laugh, causing the lady behind the bar to start and look across at their table. ‘My love, you should have seen the look on Andy’s face when I told him who Beattie Gates’ son is. Moments like that come but rarely in a career, and they are to be savoured.’

  ‘You are sure he’s the one?’ she ventured.

  ‘As sure as God made wee green apples. It’s Grimley; I know it. We’ve put the whole jigsaw together.’ His smile grew nostalgic. ‘I had a second autopsy done on Lord Orlach by the prof. from Glasgow, for corroboration at the trial. They’re re-burying him tonight; the old boy can rest easy now.’

  A young waiter arrived to clear away their dessert plates. As he left, Sarah moved round in her seat, closer to her husband. ‘What about the other jigsaw puzzle, though?’ she whispered. ‘Not so triumphal there, are we?’

  ‘One at a time, please,’ he answered. ‘Let me have a moment longer up on my cloud.

  ‘You’re right though. We’re still scratching around on the other one. I fear that our mystery man’s nickname, Hamburger, can only refer to his eating habits. The only alternative theory turned out to be a spoof by Mitch Laidlaw.’

  She dug him in the ribs with an elbow. ‘Go on, then, desk jockey. Do it again. Let’s see you stretch that big brain of yours.What’s before you that you’ve overlooked?’

  He took another swallow of William McEwan’s Seventy Shilling Ale. ‘Nothing that I can think of. Adam Arrow’s checking out the military end for me . . . He sends his best wishes, by the way . . . but so far, that hasn’t taken us any further.

  ‘Apart from Barry Herr, the TA Club manager, who doesn’t know his real name, the last people who could identify Hamburger were Tory Clark and Bakey Newton, and they did a runner as soon as they heard, courtesy of a certain detective . . . soon to be uniformed . . . chief inspector, that Curly Collins had been bumped off.’

  ‘What, they just upped and off?’

  ‘That’s how it was reported to me. According to Dan Pringle, Bakey Newton was listening to Radio Forth at his work when the news story was broadcast. He stopped what he was doing, made a couple of calls, and disappeared . . . never to return.’

  ‘A couple of calls?’

  In an instant, Bob’s brow became furrowed. ‘As far as I know, that’s what the witness said. If she meant it literally, one call was certainly to Tory Clark. I wonder if we know who else he phoned?’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘Thank you, love, for helping me pick that up. I’ll have Big Neil check it out tomorrow. He could have been calling his bookie, his mistress, the organiser of his lottery syndicate. On the other hand, he could have been calling . . .’ His voice tailed off for a few seconds.

  ‘But if that’s right,’ he whispered. ‘Why the hell would he . . .’

  84

  ‘I envy you this beautiful country, Andy,’ said the Ghanaian policeman. ‘I have never seen anything like this, not at this time of a summer day . . . so cool, so moist, so pleasant.’

  ‘Summer’s almost over, Kwame. Soon the wind will be lashing the rain across the fields; after that the snow could come.’

  ‘I’ve heard about snow. I’ve never seen it, though.’

  Martin laughed. ‘You might get the chance. If this man winds up going to trial, it’ll come up in late December, or early January. You’ll be a witness to the arrest, so the Crown Office may well fly you back to Scotland to give evidence.’

  Ankrah stopped, mock-horror on his face. ‘In that case, I think I’ll go now. I didn’t actually say I wanted to see snow. I think Scotland might be too cold for me at that time of year.’

  ‘Too late to back out now, friend,’ said the DCS. ‘You volunteered for this caper, remember.’ He locked the door of his Mondeo, which was parked on the verge by the side of the A 6137 as it ran through the hamlet of Humbie. To their right a side road led away from its few cottages.

  ‘I’ve checked this out. Grimley lives up there, in a farm cottage up a lane a couple of hundred yards back off the road.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘It’s six-fifty-five just now, and he works in Wallyford, so even if he starts at eight, he should still be in.

  ‘Let’s go and interrupt his breakfast.’

  He led the way down the curving side road. As he had predicted, they soon came to the opening of a rough, grassy lane, with thick scrubby woodland on either side. A silver Toyota was parked close by. A little further along, close to the first of a row of two-storey houses, stood a green Mercedes, the first in a line of half a dozen other vehicles. Martin looked down the lane. A hundred yards distant on the right he saw a single-storey, stone-built cottage. ‘That’s the place. Come on.’

  The Scot and the African walked together down the pathway. As they approached the little house, they saw that it stood on its own, isolated behind a low privet hedge. It was freshly painted, roses grew in its small front garden, and honeysuckle hung around and over the door.

  ‘I read The Railway Children when I was young,’ said Ankrah. ‘Afterwards I dreamed of living in a place like this.’ He laughed. ‘There are not too many stone cottages like this in Ghana, though.’

  They stopped for a moment at the little wooden gate, then Martin raised its latch, walked into the garden and up to the single low step at Bernard Grimley’s front door. He looked around for a bell push, but found none, only a heavy brass knocker. He seized it and rapped it hard, once, twice, three times, against its keeper.

  There was no answer, no sound from within the cottage. The Head of CID knocked again, three times. Still there was no sign of Grimley. ‘Fuck this,’ he said. He tried the handle, but the door was locked.

  ‘Kwame, you stay here. I’ll try round the back.’ As Ankrah nodded acknowledgement, Martin turned and walked around the cottage, following a path which led off to the left. The door at the rear of the house was painted green also. Like the other it had two glass panels set in its upper half; but one of them was broken. He turned the handle and the door swung open.

  He looked around the small kitchen. Dinner plates, a mug, and
a pint glass lay in the sink, unwashed. Two lager cans, their tops punctured, lay on the table. Across the room, another door lay open.

  Noiselessly Martin crept into the hall. There were four doors off; two to his left, one to his right and the front door. They were all closed save the farther on the right, which was slightly ajar. Through it he could see lace curtains, a dining chair and part of a gateleg table. At the far end of the corridor, he became aware of Kwame Ankrah’s dark shadow as he leaned forward, peering through one of the glass panels of the entrance door.

  He stepped across to it and turned the knob of the Yale, opening it and admitting his companion, who looked both puzzled and tense. The silence in the cottage was almost palpable. The DCS answered the question in the Ghanaian policeman’s eyes with a shrug of his shoulders, then pointed towards the single open door.

  Feeling suddenly very vulnerable, almost naked, he stepped through it and into the living room.

  Bernard Grimley was there: on the floor. He knew that it was Grimley, even though he had no face. He knew it by his build, and by the fact that it was someone else who stood, ten feet away, in the sunlight which flooded through the uncurtained side window, a single-barrelled, pump-action, sawn-off held securely in his hands.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you . . .’ exclaimed Andy Martin, as the man raised and levelled the gun. And that was as far as he got.

  85

  Skinner sat up in bed, a feeling of unease gripping him.

  ‘What’s wrong, Bob?’ asked Sarah, sensing his mood even through her drowsiness.

  He swung his legs out of bed and stood, naked, running his fingers through his tousled hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Just someone walking over my grave, I guess.’

  ‘Don’t say that, it scares me. It must be more than that.’

  He slipped on his bathrobe and stepped over to the big window, drawing the curtains aside to look out across the Bents, still in shadow, and at the great river, as it caught the first rays of the morning sun.

  ‘I suppose I’m still wondering who Bakey Newton might have phoned, before he did his runner, and why.’ He glanced at the bedside clock, which showed one minute before seven a.m. ‘I think I’ll take a quick shower, and get into the office.’

  He was no more than halfway to the bathroom when the phone rang. He reached it in two strides and picked it up. ‘Skinner,’ he barked.

  ‘Fookin’ ’ell, I knew I shouldn’t have called this early.’ The tension broken, Bob laughed.

  ‘You’re dead right,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice but phone you now, I’m afraid. I’m off to the Gulf wi’ the Defence Secretary in an hour, and I thought you’d want this before I got back, rather than after.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Well, after I sorted out those names for you, I did a bit more checking into their service records, and something interesting came up.Two of ’em, Clark, the infantryman, and Newton, the cook, had black marks on theirs. They were both court-martialled around the same time, and for a short spell they were in detention together.

  ‘Clark was done for insubordination, and Newton for beating the crap out of a junior NCO. They were both fined and reduced in rank. However, they both did deals. They pleaded guilty, and the prosecuting officer put forward mitigating circumstances on their behalf, so they stayed in the service.

  ‘Another connection between them was that they were both prosecuted by the same bloke in the Advocate General’s office.’ As Arrow paused for breath, Skinner’s right eyebrow rose, very slightly, as two thoughts converged in his brain.

  ‘I’d have made nothing of that,’ the major went on, ‘had something not made me run a check on the prosecutor. He’s long gone from the service . . . left seven years ago . . . but it were the Army that sent him to St Andrews University. They did that after he was wounded in the Falklands, as a very young officer.’

  He paused. ‘You keeping up with me?’

  ‘I think so. You’re going to tell me that Bennett and McDonnell worked for him in the Advocate General’s office . . . not together, a couple of years apart. Then you’re going to tell me . . .’

  ‘That when he was a baby one-pipper getting his knee permanently stiffened by the Argies, seven of whom ’e killed, personally, two of the men under his command in two-Para were Lance-Corporals Ryan Saunders and Charles Collins.

  ‘There you are, Bob, m’ friend. A nice neat ribbon, tying all six of your bank gang together. What do you think?’

  Skinner sat in silence. At last he said, ‘Adam, you are one clever little bastard. If you ever leave the Army, I’ll give you a job on the spot. All I need from you now is for you to tell me two things.

  ‘One, that this guy is still alive, and two . . . his name!’

  86

  Afterwards, Andy Martin never could work out in his mind the exact sequence of events.

  He never knew what had happened first; whether it was Kwame Ankrah’s left shoulder slamming into his side, taking him to the floor, whether it was the shotgun blast, or whether it was the sniper’s bullet shattering the window glass and tearing into Adrian Jones’ head.

  Whatever it was, in the immediate aftermath, he lay on the ground, his chest heaving and his heart hammering, peculiarly fascinated by Jones’ twitching right leg as it did its dance of death. It had all happened too fast for him to be frightened. That would come later.

  He was surprised that the sound of the motorcycle registered at all as he lay there, but it did. He scrambled to his feet, trying but failing to pull Ankrah with him, and ran out of the cottage. By the time he reached the lane, the engine noise was fading in the distance, and all he could see was a mixture of dust and exhaust.

  He went back inside the house, and into the living room. Ankrah had pulled himself into a sitting position, his back against one side of the fireplace. He was wearing a dark suit, but nonetheless Martin could see that his right shoulder, and the right side of his face were bleeding.

  ‘You’re hit,’ he burst out, anxiously, if unnecessarily.

  The Ghanaian nodded, the movement making him wince. ‘I’ve had worse than this at home. I caught a few pellets from the shotgun, that’s all.’

  He looked over at the body. ‘He was a bad loser, was our Mr Jones. If Grimley had known what he was dealing with, he’d have been a bit more careful about crowing over his victory in the Court.’

  Martin’s features twisted in an unfamiliar snarl. ‘He obviously didn’t fancy his chances at appeal.’ He turned and walked through to the kitchen, tearing open drawers until he found three clean dish-towels, which he used to pack against the wounded man’s shoulder and to wipe his face.

  ‘Thanks, Kwame,’ he said, quietly. ‘If you hadn’t decked me there, I’d probably have caught most of that blast, whether or not Jones was dead when he pulled the trigger. You hold on now, I’ll get help.’

  He used his mobile to call Fettes and summon police and medical assistance. Next, he phoned Skinner. The DCC was in the shower, but Sarah answered. ‘Morning, love,’ he said. ‘It’s Andy. Would you ask Bob to come to Grimley’s cottage up behind Humbie, asap. Tell him someone beat us to it . . . no, scratch that, tell him two people beat us to it.’

  Replacing the phone in his pocket, he went back to the kitchen and made two large mugs of hot sweet tea. Handing one to Ankrah, he took his own, and sat down on Bernard Grimley’s couch with his faceless body at his feet.

  ‘You never said you had a sniper in the woods, Andy,’ the African muttered, wincing again as he spoke.

  ‘I didn’t. I haven’t a fucking clue who he was.’ Gently, at first, he began to shake.

  The violence of his rigor had passed, but he was still on the sofa, trembling slightly, when Skinner arrived, a few minutes after the emergency medical assistance. He stepped into the room without a word, and looked down at each of the bodies on the floor. ‘So, Mr Jones,’ he whispered. ‘Yo
u couldn’t let it lie, could you.’

  He glanced back, over his shoulder. ‘I passed an ambulance on my way in here,’ said the DCC to Martin.

  ‘That was Kwame; but he’s okay. He took a few slugs from Jones in the shoulder and in the side of his face. Flesh wounds, that’s all.’

  ‘How about you?’

  ‘Nothing a change of jockey shorts won’t put right. That big Ghanaian in the ambulance saved my life though. Him and the bloke outside.’

  He looked up. ‘I’m confused, Bob. Confused! I’m fucking bewildered. Why should Jones kill Grimley? Okay, he was stuffed in Court, but the insurers picked up the tab.’

  Skinner smiled back at him. ‘He killed him because that’s the kind of man he was, son. Try calling him Hamburger. He was the seventh member of the armed robbery gang . . . the Boss, the planner.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Adam Arrow just drew the picture for me. Remember Mitchell Bloody Laidlaw’s joke? He didn’t know it, but he wasn’t kidding. Our Ham Burger was a District Attorney right enough . . . in the Army.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Jones was a captain in the Advocate General’s office. Bennett and McDonnell worked for him; he prosecuted Clark and Newton at courts martial. But before he went into that line of work, he fought in the Falklands with Collins and Saunders. Natural-born killers, the three of them were, apparently.’

  Martin gave a final shudder and pushed himself to his feet. ‘But why the robberies?’

  ‘Work it out with me. Jones may have been a shit-hot criminal lawyer in the Army, but in the gentle world of civvy street, and civil law, he wasn’t so good. He proved this once and for all by landing his firm with a compensation claim from this fellow.’ He nodded down at Grimley’s body.

  A cough came from behind him. ‘Can I begin in here, sir?’ asked Arthur Dorward, in his white tunic. The Inspector looked disapprovingly at his senior officer’s clothing.

  ‘Aye, sure Arthur. We’ll be in the garden.’ Skinner led the way outside through the front door. The morning sun shone on a green-painted wooden bench. The two friends sat down on it, side by side.