Lawless

by Alexander McGregor

  A red flush appeared on Kate’s neck. ‘Piss off, Richard. What is it you want?’

  ‘Payback. Remember our little arrangement? I would introduce you to the great Campbell McBride if you would pump him for information. I need a return on my investment. You don’t think I bought you all that liquor just because I like the way you smell, do you? I need to know what you found out from your new boyfriend. I need to know what story he gave you about why he is back staying in town. I need to know if he’s still raking over the Alison Brown murder case. And I need to know if he’s following up any new information. You must have had some time to speak before or after – perhaps even during – your shag-fest. I will refrain from the obvious crudities about your mouth being too full to speak. What did he tell you?’

  Kate shook her head in despair at Richardson’s vulgarity – as well as his interrogative techniques – but also to indicate a negative response. ‘No luck, I’m afraid.’ She didn’t sound sorry. ‘Whenever I touched on his professional activities, he just smiled and said precisely nothing. I think it’s called discretion – a word you may not be familiar with – but I can tell you from what he didn’t say that he believes there’s something big out there.’

  Richardson said nothing. He did not question her final remark. He nodded several times. Finally, he spoke softly, more to himself than to his female colleague. ‘I bet he does – I bet he does.’

  22

  McBride felt like a stalker – or a pervert. He sat in his car wearing running shorts and a T-shirt that was torn at the shoulder. At his right hand was a pair of binoculars which he raised to his eyes every time he detected a distant new arrival at the Monifieth end of the Esplanade.

  It was the second successive morning he had sat waiting for Petra Novak to appear. He did not know if she would show that day either but every athletic instinct in his body told him she would not be able to resist routing at least some of her training runs along the river’s edge where her only companions would be seagulls and dog walkers. She would be attracted to the solitude just as he was, especially on fresh mornings which were so clear that the only thing in the sapphire sky was the high vapour trail of a jet airliner bound for North America.

  His conviction that she would pass that way was not entirely intuitive. From the moment he had driven away from her father’s house, he had resolved to be reunited with her as quickly as he could. There was the attraction he felt for her, of course – half the men in Dundee probably felt that way – but he also needed her police mind and her access to the information available only to police officers.

  Once he learned where she lived, it had been easy to work out where she might run. His people-tracer website revealed that she lived in Monifieth, the upmarket suburb that ran along the coastline from the east end of Broughty Ferry. Her home was 200 yards from the high-tide mark and, when she ran, she had a choice of three directions: east, on the cycle path skirting the perimeter of the army camp, which was safe but uninteresting; north, which was more appealing but hilly; and west, which would take her over the soft sand of the beach where there were the kinds of views they put on picture postcards. He reckoned it was odds-on she’d be running over the scenic route. So he waited. And, whenever a running figure came out of the distance, he watched with raised glasses, like someone awaiting the arrival on the shore of a rare seabird.

  When she appeared as a distant speck, he could not distinguish her features but he knew instantly that it was her. Two slender legs stretched easily across the sand where it appeared from the river’s edge and she moved gracefully, making good progress over the firm surface. There was no hint of effort and her relaxed shoulders swung lightly whenever she turned her head to take in the vista of the waves breaking gently ahead of her on her left side. The occasional flash of crimson showed she was wearing the same ribbon that had held her hair back on the day she appeared at her father’s home.

  McBride watched longer than necessary to establish her identity. He refocused for a sharper image and, when her face filled the eyeglasses, he noted that, although she was moving at an impressive pace, her breathing appeared to be perfectly normal. It was more than might have been said about his own.

  After a last lingering look, he started up the Mondeo, turned it and drove away from her. Half a mile down the Esplanade, he drew to a halt in a car park. He left the vehicle, crossed over a bank of sand dunes on to the beach and started to run towards the advancing figure of Petra Novak. Their paths crossed less than a minute later.

  McBride had mentally rehearsed his performance. He would raise a friendly, fellow-jogger hand but show no recognition – at first. He would allow her to pass then belatedly and uncertainly call her name with a question in his voice. But his doubtful acting abilities were not required – when he was over fifty feet away, the lithe legs he had observed a short time earlier through a pair of binoculars suddenly changed direction and came straight at him. Their owner started to wave a delicate hand.

  ‘Campbell, hi, it’s me – Petra. What a small world.’ She seemed excited at the coincidence. She drew to a halt in front of him. ‘I’d heard you were a runner – a bit of a regular by the look of it.’

  McBride felt a surge of guilt at his deception. Her enthusiasm reminded him of her visit to his newspaper office in London. He cleared his throat and wondered why she always produced that reaction from him. ‘Hi, small world indeed.’ He tried to sound casual. ‘Been doing it for years but it never feels like it. You look pretty useful yourself. Going far? Been far?’

  She lifted a hand and pointed past McBride’s shoulder. ‘I’ll go to the castle and then retrace my steps back to Monifieth. That’s where I stay. What about you. Are you out for long?’

  ‘Just started. I’ll probably do about five miles.’ He appeared to have a sudden thought. ‘Actually, if I go to the castle then head out your way, that would give me my distance. Do you mind if I join you? A bit of company always helps when your fitness is as dodgy as mine.’

  She beamed. ‘Great. But I’ll be too slow for you. You’ll have to do all the speaking if I’m to have any hope of keeping up.’

  McBride protested modestly. ‘From what I’ve seen it will be the other way round. Anyway, you’ll be the one talking. I want to hear all about this police career of yours.’

  He turned and moved slowly off and, together, they strode out along the shoreline, McBride allowing her to set the pace.

  She may have been one of the most feminine women he had encountered since returning to Dundee but she was deceptively fast, better than most men he’d run with. She was also infuriatingly relaxed.

  ‘So, how’s life as a detective inspector?’ he asked, doing his best to appear to breathe easily. ‘Do the guys give you a tough time? What are you working on? Any good murders on the go?’

  She laughed quickly. ‘You’d never know you were a reporter. Which question would you like answered first?’ She laughed again.

  McBride felt foolish. ‘Sorry – old habits … OK, in your own time. Tell me about being a woman cop.’

  For the next five minutes, Detective Inspector Petra Novak spoke confidently and informatively about her current career. It was a Pavlovian response. McBride rapidly came to the conclusion she was delivering a practised spiel she’d used a dozen times at women’s groups and addressing equal opportunities seminars at the police college.

  When she finished, he broke in, ‘OK, now tell me what it’s really like.’

  Once again, gentle laughter rose from her throat. ‘Was it that obvious?’ Her mood abruptly changed. ‘If you really want to know, it can be hard. She hesitated, then swore to emphasise just how hard.’

  McBride was taken aback at her sudden descent into male-speak. ‘With the guys?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘Yeah – some of them. When I was a detective sergeant, I was one of the boys. Everything changed when I was made up and took over a shift. A few of them had to work very hard at coping.’ She gave a dismissive shake of her hea
d. ‘You know male cops – biggest bunch of chauvinist bastards in the country. But I’m getting there.’

  She glanced up, apparently realising that the castle was only 200 yards ahead. Without warning, she increased her pace and accelerated away. Caught unawares, McBride was slow to respond. She had ten yards on him before he reached her. He did not reduce speed after arriving at her side. Instead, he pressed harder until he was running as fast as he could. He did not look back but, over the next fifty yards, he was conscious of her footsteps thudding into the sand closely behind. Then their sound faded and he knew she had dropped away. He stopped sprinting only when he reached the castle wall.

  In the space of a minute, McBride had learned three things about Petra Novak. She had a healthy understanding of her male colleagues, she could run at speed and she was competitive.

  He liked all of that.

  23

  The return journey along the beach was more sedate. She had tested him. He had responded and had triumphed. They were both competitors but he had the edge – just. It was good to understand the position.

  They spoke almost continually – mainly small talk about the awkwardness of her shifts, his return to his home town, their shared need to exercise.

  It was Petra who raised the subject McBride had been struggling to introduce. ‘I meant to ask what was it you wanted from Dad?’ she said, as though she had been contemplating the question for some time. ‘He said it had something to do with the murder of Alison Brown, one of the chapters in your book. Congratulations, by the way, the book was excellent. Couldn’t pick any holes in it – well, not many.’

  McBride nodded his thanks but said nothing about his literary achievement. He did not want to move away from the subject that had prompted his furtive activities with the binoculars for the last two mornings. He slowed his pace, anxious that nothing like rapid breathing should inhibit their conversation. He gulped a mouthful of air.

  ‘OK, I’ll give it to you with both barrels. I think you lot screwed up. I think you banged up the wrong bloke and Alison Brown’s real killer is still out there. That’s all – nothing too serious.’

  McBride turned to look into the face of his running mate. She did not return his gaze but continued to fix her eyes ahead of her.

  Finally she spoke. ‘Proof?’ she replied simply. ‘Where’s your proof?’ Now she looked back at him. ‘Anybody can make these kind of remarks about any case. Show me the money. How do you know these things?’

  McBride had waited for her to say that. He wished he had been better prepared to provide the right kind of answer. ‘If I had proof, he wouldn’t still be banged up – just call it intuition.’ He braced himself for the expected response.

  She did not disappoint him. ‘Intuition?’ She practically spat the word. ‘Oh, that’s good. Intuition. Just pop through to the Court of Appeal and tell them that. They’ll set Bryan Gilzean free the same day.’ She stopped in her tracks, forcing him to do the same. She faced him, the warm brown eyes suddenly chilly. ‘You’re going to have to do better, Campbell – a lot better. You’re accusing several police officers of lying or being totally incompetent. Either way, you’re going to have to come up with something better than some kind of journalist’s hunch.’

  McBride dropped down on to the sand beside a low dune and leaned back. He patted a soft area beside him, inviting Petra to join him. She sat next to him but there was no kind of relaxation in her posture. She held her knees below her chin. The body language said defensive.

  McBride attempted to soothe her. ‘Every wrongly convicted man has had to battle to find good enough proof to walk free. It’s never easy but you have to start somewhere,’ he said, in an effort to be placatory. ‘What about this? If we accept the scenario that Bryan Gilzean visits his girlfriend, they have a drink and sex, in whatever order, then they argue and he strangles her.’

  Petra nodded, cautious in her agreement.

  ‘Three things,’ McBride continued. ‘They all seemed to have only consumed one glass of wine each. Fine, except Gilzean doesn’t like white wine. If he’d wanted something to drink, it would have been a beer. Since he practically lived there, there would probably be some in the house. Next – why was Alison Brown wearing one of her best dresses and still in high-heeled shoes when she was found dead? Why dress up for your long-term boyfriend unless you were going out somewhere, which they weren’t? And why was she in high heels in her own flat? She would have kicked them off the minute she sat on her sofa … if she’d ever worn them in the first place when all she was expecting was him. Would you still be trotting about in high heels for any regular boyfriend of yours? It’s just not what you do, is it? You get comfortable in your own home, unless you’re expecting somebody special, that is. At the very least, they would have been taken off or come off if they were having a bit of rumpy pumpy. Don’t tell me she would have put them back on afterwards.’

  He had DI Novak’s full, if grudging, attention. She said nothing for a few moments, then asked, ‘OK, my three things. How do you explain the presence of his semen? What about his fingerprints on the wine glass? And how did his hair get on the tie used to kill her? Basic stuff, really, and that’s before we even start on the fact there was absolutely no sign of any other man having been in the flat.’

  McBride had anticipated the questions but it did not make answering them any easier. He replied slowly, tentatively. ‘Don’t know. He says he hadn’t seen her for three days and that’s when they’d last had sex. Maybe some of the semen stayed in place?’

  She gave him a disbelieving look. ‘You can’t even convince yourself of that, can you?’

  Ignoring her truth, he moved on but he still felt sheepish doing so. ‘His fingerprints on the wine glass – that’s no big deal. He said he’d never seen the glass before but who remembers wine glasses? He was just about a lodger in the flat for spells. Of course he would have handled some of the glassware. Same with the hair on the tie – that could have been picked up off a sofa or something.’

  McBride did not need another derisive look from Petra to make him aware of the weakness of his case. ‘All right, maybe it isn’t the strongest defence you’ll ever hear. If it was, the jury wouldn’t have convicted him. You convince me he’s guilty.’

  ‘Don’t have to. The law says he is and everyone, except you and his father, thinks so too.’

  He changed the subject. ‘Did you work on the case at all?’

  Petra shook her head. ‘Not in any way,’ she said. ‘I was still a uniformed sergeant behind a desk at headquarters. Besides, it was all signed, sealed and delivered in no time. There was no need to rope in the uniforms to do any donkey work like knocking on doors and crawling about looking for witnesses.’

  McBride hesitated, wondering how he would phrase his next question. Put the wrong way, she would back off faster than a retreating Italian army. ‘Look, just to satisfy me, can you do me a small favour?’

  Her eyes, filled with reluctance, widened, but she said nothing.

  ‘Can you find out about the beer? If there was any. And can you get more information on the tie? Was it a young man’s style or what? And, if there’s any chance, whether the wine was cheap plonk or something better? Oh, and can you tell me what sort of music she might have been playing that night?’ He waited for her reaction, wondering if she would come over all official.

  She took so long to reply that McBride was on the point of rephrasing his request.

  ‘If you’re asking me to reopen the case, forget it,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’ve just made DI and that’s the kind of trick that would put me back on the beat in the housing estates. Nobody likes a smart-ass trying to prove how clever they are, especially when it’s an accelerated promotion female. There are at least half a dozen tossers just waiting for me to do something like that. But, because you were good to me when I was a daft schoolgirl in London – and because you have a nice bum when you run – I’ll make a couple of enquiries. Tell anyone what I’ve done and I’l
l hack your balls off with a blunt knife.’

  She rose from the sand and bent over in front of him, reaching down to touch her toes. As she slid her fingertips down the endless legs her sweatshirt rode up, revealing an expanse of soft, unblemished flesh. She stopped stretching as unexpectedly as she had begun and looked at him with the kind of smile that made him think she had read his mind. Then she started to run away from him. Her last words over her shoulder before she crossed the beach and on to the track back to Monifieth were, ’By the way, the bit about your bum – that’s why I let you stay in front of me on the race to the castle.’

  24

  The last remnants of the afternoon sunshine had disappeared and, in the gathering darkness, street lights splashed pools of yellow along the Esplanade. McBride watched as a Royal Navy frigate slid soundlessly across the window in front of him, commanding the centre of the river and being pursued on the outgoing tide by a dozen seagulls.

  He wondered where the warship was bound. Probably back to Portsmouth. Maybe round the coast to the Forth where the crew would be anticipating a run ashore in Edinburgh. Better if it was heading across the North Sea to Sweden where the women were sure to be more exotic, he mused.

  McBride had occupied the seat at the window for an hour. It had been a time of relaxed contemplation, a pastime he excelled at. Next to running, cycling and sex – their order of priority variable – he liked to do nothing, if you called thinking nothing.

  That afternoon he had considered many things, but mostly Alison Brown and Ginny Williams – and the supple, soft back of Petra Novak. Although he knew why he had not told his running partner of the morning about Ginny Williams and his unsupported belief that she had shared the same killer as Alison, he still felt strangely guilty. The flexible detective inspector had acquired the indefinable edge of all police officers but she had somehow retained the trusting purity of the schoolgirl who had come calling at his newspaper office in London. His conscience did not trouble him long. He knew he would tell her sometime, probably soon.