“It couldn’t be proved that it was other than a bungled house break-in. Sutter jumped from the window and broke his ankle. He only managed to cover a short distance before being picked up near Holyrood Park. Swore he had no idea one of the occupants of the house was a young girl. He said the knife in his possession was for forcing open windows and the rope was for scaling walls.” Pruitt drank some more water.
“What proof do you have that he was involved in April Showers’ abduction and murder?” Rex probed.
“The similarity between the two crimes and the timing,” Pruitt replied. “And the fact they occurred within the city centre. I have a map pinpointing the crime scenes.”
Rex remained less than convinced. For one thing, April Showers had been snatched off the street, as he recalled, and not from her home. Pruitt’s theory was based purely on supposition. “Be that as it may,” he told the patient, “Sutter tried to kill you and put you in hospital. That’s serious enough to get him locked up for a good long time.”
Rex looked about him at the sterile surroundings and bedridden bodies. “I’m sure you’ll be glad to leave this place.” Even visiting for short periods left him depressed.
“I’ll say. I hate the hospital smell. It pervades the food, especially the scrambled eggs. I think they’re made with powder,” Pruitt confided. “Still, I can’t help but worry about going home. The police have offered me some measure of protection, but they can’t watch over me forever.”
“It looks like Sutter is long gone,” Rex tried to calm Pruitt, who had become agitated in his movements and had spilt water on his top sheet. “Where did your investigator follow him?”
“To the dole office, to a support group for the jobless, thrift shops, cheap food chains. Sutter didn’t visit family, and there was no girlfriend in the picture. He frequented a couple of seedy pubs where he liked to play darts. All in all, he was keeping his nose clean, until he came after me. Glover, the PI, has cost me a bundle and look where it got me.”
Pruitt looked woebegone in his hospital bed. Now that he was on the road to recovery, his mind was clearly concerned with his uncertain future. And Rex could not blame him. Dan Sutter had amply demonstrated his violent nature. His own mind would not rest easy until the man had been apprehended.
Twenty-Three
Alistair swung by Rex’s office early on Tuesday afternoon with the German letter and its typed translation.
Rex read it with interest and nodded. “I’ll tell Phoebe.”
“So what’s new on your private case?” Alistair asked, seating himself in the chair across the desk from Rex and elegantly crossing his long legs, clad in immaculate pinstripe trousers.
“Not much at this point. I can’t go after Sutter in the wilds of nowhere, but I can look into his past.”
“What for? It’s got nothing to do with Judge M’s murder. Or, rather, Phoebe Wells screaming blue murder.”
“Richard Pruitt is convinced Sutter attacked April Showers and dumped her body in Skinner’s Close. I’m inclined to believe Pruitt didn’t do those things, which means no one has been brought to justice in the girl’s murder. Her parents no doubt assume Pruitt got away with it, just like everyone else does. So now there are two wrongs to right: an innocent man falsely accused and a guilty man who walks free, whether it be Sutter or somebody else.”
“But you can’t take that old case on, Rex,” Alistair argued, leaning forward with his arms draped over his lap. “See if you can get the police to look into it.”
“And have them admit they got the wrong man?” Rex shook his head. “I don’t have enough proof yet. Make that any proof, other than Pruitt’s suspicions.”
“A man with a vested interest in blaming someone else and exonerating himself,” Alistair pointed out.
“Well, I’d want to be exonerated if I’d been charged with something I didn’t do. You should have seen him in hospital, Alistair. He looked so pitiful and alone.”
“I know, you big softie. I went to visit him this morning. He sent me a note, saying he wanted to thank me in person for saving his life.”
Rex felt a wide grin spread over his face. “I’m so glad you went, Alistair. He’s not had many visitors.”
“I said it was on the express condition he didn’t talk about me to reporters. I don’t want them hounding me. It’s not as though I did anything heroic, just what any reasonable human being would do.”
“Did he talk aboot Sutter?”
“Naturally. He’s scared witless.”
“Perhaps we could visit him at home one day this week and make sure he’s all right.”
“Don’t you have enough going on here?”
Rex glanced at his tidy desk. “Not so far. I wrapped up my case on Friday, if you recall.”
“I do, and I owe you a drink.”
“I’ll gladly take you up on that, but it can’t be this evening. I’ve arranged to meet Stu Showers.”
Alistair gave a start. “Stu Showers? You mean, the murdered girl’s father?”
“I need details on his daughter’s murder that might shed light on the perpetrator.”
“And he’s willing to talk to you after the Crown failed him by not locking Pruitt up?” Alistair asked in surprise.
“He won’t talk to me in his wife’s presence. He’s coming alone. He said he sat through the trial and could not blame the jury for returning the verdict they did. He didn’t think the police had done a thorough enough job of pinning evidence on Pruitt. Anyway, he says he just wants to know the truth, either way. That’s another reason I want to go back to Ramsay Garden. I need to see what solid evidence Pruitt might have on Dan Sutter.”
Alistair raised an immaculate eyebrow. “I’d think, if there was something truly significant, he’d have told you. He was gabby enough with me, for someone who had his throat cut a week ago.”
“Well, I thought I’d give him time to settle in at home before I prod him further. In the meantime I need to discover what I can from Mr. Showers. He knows the case as well as anyone and he knew his daughter better than most. I just can’t let this go, Alistair.”
His friend sighed in resignation. “I can see that, and I know what an obstinate mule you are. But don’t go back to Ramsay Garden without me. Dan Sutter may be hiding in some remote croft on a godforsaken island, or he may not. Richard told me the police found a map of the Hebrides in Sutter’s rubbish bin, but don’t you think he would have taken it with him if he was going there?”
This gave Rex pause. DCI Lauper had not mentioned to him how he had managed to locate Sutter’s whereabouts. “You think he was intentionally misleading the police?”
“Why not? Let’s not assume the man’s a fool, especially if he managed to get away with April’s murder.”
“Well, she was stabbed, and he attacked you and Pruitt with a knife and threatened me with one. He had a knife on him when he was found escaping from the house he said he’d only been in to steal from. Young girl, knife … ” Rex clicked his pen open and shut with his thumb as he spoke, thinking it through. “And both incidents did take place in the heart of Edinburgh within six months of each other. Pruitt claims there’s a pattern. It’s a tenuous one, granted, but the more I dwell on it … ”
“If you wish to pursue it, that’s enough for me. You have my full support.”
“Thank you, Alistair.”
Rex had a feeling he would need it.
Twenty-Four
Stu Showers had requested they meet at a chip shop on Rose Street in New Town. Rex’s first impression upon seeing April’s father was that he looked older than a man of forty-five should. His face had the grey tinge and rigid lines of a hardened smoker and he sat hunched inside a nylon jacket, although it was not cold inside the cramped premises redolent of fish, curry, and grease.
The chip shop catered to students and the working poor. Showers app
arently belonged to the latter, as indicated by his accent and manner of speech and by his clean but worn clothes.
As he and Rex made small talk at a window booth, Rex could not help but notice his companion’s disfigured hand on the table, clearly the result of an accident rather than some birth defect. A surgeon had attempted to save what remained of a thumb and forefinger, that its owner might retain some functionality from the mangled extremity. The remaining three fingers had been shorn off at the first joint.
A pimply youth brought their tea in a metal pot accompanied by a smaller one of milk and two cups and saucers made of cheap green china. Showers used his right hand to push the cup and saucer to his left side. He poured proficiently enough, though it was apparent he was not born left-handed and had not had a lifetime to adjust to his disability.
“As I explained on the phone,” he told Rex, “Pauline would only be upset if she knew I was raking up the past. She turned to religion to help get her through our loss. I just want to know the truth. Are you looking at someone in particular?”
Rex swallowed a mouthful of strong tea. “I’m only at the beginning of my inquiry, but I am following a particular lead. What I was hoping for from you were details regarding your daughter and anything you heard at Richard Pruitt’s trial that might be helpful in identifying an alternate perpetrator. If it’s not too upsetting for you.”
Showers shrugged slightly and nodded. “I can try if you think it’ll help. We’ve got to get these predators off the street. There’s that girl gone missing in England. Lindsay Poulson. The police have nothing, or the news would have kept up with the story. She’s around the same age my April was. Preying on children,” he added, raising his maimed hand to his mouth and shaking his head. “It’s beyond my understanding.”
He went on to admit he had been tempted to go after Pruitt at first simply because he needed someone to take his rage out on, but had just returned to work at the bottling plant after a leave of compassion when his hand was caught in a machine. “I lost my concentration for a split second. My mind just wasna on the job. I was in hospital for a month and now I’m on permanent disability.”
“Can you walk me through the circumstances of your daughter’s disappearance, Stu?”
Showers took a sip from his precariously full cup of tea and carefully set it back down in the saucer. “April walked her friend home after school and was making her way to our place when she was taken. Kate and her mum said she had left well before dark. No one saw her after that. It’s a fifteen-minute walk from Kate’s flat on Lothian Road to ours in Lauriston Place.”
Rex nodded thoughtfully. He had studied the central city route the girl took to walk to and from school. Lothian Road ran from the west end of Princes Street south to Tollcross, where the Showers family lived. A bustling thoroughfare of shops, nail spas, pubs, clubs, and restaurants, it was home to the Caledonian, built at the turn of the last century as a Grand Railway Hotel and notable for its size and red sandstone façade. All in all, an unlikely setting for an abduction, Rex thought. And no one had seen anything suspicious in Lauriston Place, according to archived newspaper stories he had read.
“Any short-cuts she might have taken?” he asked Showers.
“None that would have made any sense.”
“No other friends she might have stopped by to visit?”
“She rang her ma from Kate’s to say she’d be home right after tea. It took a while for my wife to stop blaming herself. She says if only she’d gone to fetch April … We don’t own a car and April only took the bus when it was snowing or raining. Pauline had a cleaning job and arranged it so she’d always be home before April. She was our only bairn and Pauline was verra protective,” Showers ended in a sob.
“Things can happen whatever precautions you take,” Rex consoled the bereaved man. He gave him a minute to compose himself. “From what I’ve read, April was in school clothes. Black pleated skirt, and a dark fleece jacket. Is that correct?”
“Aye, and I brought photos as you asked.” Mr. Showers fumbled with a small zipped binder and opened it midway. He turned it on the table to face Rex and pointed.
Beneath a film of plastic, a dark-haired girl stood with a group of classmates on a day trip to Hadrian’s Wall. Another picture showed April made up with purple eyeshadow and blackish lipstick and wearing a clingy top over her undeveloped bust. Her long hair hung loose, worn parted to the side, and she was attempting a pout. No artifice could disguise her thirteen years. Her face had not completely lost its baby fat and her brown eyes were those of a child.
“Someone had to have transported her to Skinner’s Close,” Showers said.
“Would she have accepted a lift from someone?”
Showers vigorously shook his head. “Pauline went on and on to her aboot never getting into a stranger’s car, and it wasna a long walk from Kate’s. There’d be no reason to.”
“A family member?”
“Both our families, Pauline’s and mine, are in Glasgow. And April’s friends were not old enough to drive. I went through all this with the detectives.” Showers sagged over his cup of tea.
“I know. But I wanted to hear it from you, so I could form my own impressions.”
“They even thought I might have had something to do with it. My own daughter!”
“They have to consider everybody as a potential suspect,” Rex told him, “starting with those closest to the victim. Can I offer you something to eat?”
The frail man looked in dire need of sustenance. He shook his head, and then changed his mind. Rex ordered chips with curry sauce for two. When the food arrived in the shallow cartons, he realized just how hungry he was, having eaten only a sandwich for lunch at his desk.
“Very good curry,” he remarked to Showers, who seemed pleased by the QC’s approval.
“Wasna sure how you’d feel aboot meeting at a chippy. Pauline’s working late. She has her own cleaning company now. I said I’d fend for myself.”
They ate for a few moments in silence, and then Showers shook his head briefly. “I watched Richard Pruitt in court. I just couldna picture him pushing our April into a car on a busy street withoot drawing attention. She was lippy; at that age where she’d even started talking back to her mother. She was small, but she would have fought back and shouted, ‘Get off me, ye wee perv!’ or something like that. No, Pruitt didna strike me as an aggressive man. Odd, aye. No doubt aboot that. But timid.”
Rex tended to agree. However, he had prosecuted meek men in his career, and often they were the ones most prone to preying on weaker victims.
“And the defence made quite a bit aboot the fact April’s clothes reeked of Old Spice, which Pruitt claimed he never wore,” Showers continued. “And I couldna see him wearing that.”
It was remotely possible April’s body had lain in spilt aftershave, Rex conceded, or else an emergency worker at the crime scene handling her in an official capacity had gone overboard with it in preparation for a night out. Yet common sense dictated it probably belonged to the killer.
“There was a load of other rubbish that came up in court,” Showers went on to remark.
“That’s the other reason I wanted to talk to you. I haven’t read the court transcripts, but you were at the trial.”
“Every day, painful as it was.” Showers took in a deep breath. “And it never really goes away.”
Whoever April’s killer was, Rex vowed to himself to find out the truth. Her father had not become bitter in spite of all the misfortune that had befallen him, and at the very least he deserved answers.
On the subject of answers, he made a point to call Phoebe as soon as he got home and relayed the contents of the letter from Veronika in Germany.
“So Elvie is Dad’s goddaughter?” she recapped. “I wonder … I’ve been trying to think of any German people he knew. He was evacuated during the war with a boy who had
escaped Nazi Germany with his family. I believe they kept in touch until Herman died. I’ll see if I can find him in Dad’s address book. Veronika might be his wife. Elvie might not know her godfather passed away. I’m sure Dad would have left her something if he’d been of sounder mind when he revised his last will and testament three years ago. He became so very forgetful. I could write and send her some money on his behalf at the university where she works.”
“That would be a nice gesture,” Rex said, knowing that Phoebe, by her own admission, had plenty to spare.
However, the letter did not bring them closer to discovering who might have murdered the judge.
Twenty-Five
The next day, Rex went back to Ramsay Garden, where a patrol car was parked in front of the entrance leading to the flat. Two policemen sat inside and one got out as Rex approached.
“Richard Pruitt is expecting me.”
“Your name, sir.”
“Rex Graves QC.”
“I’ll need to see some identity, please.”
Rex showed him his driving licence. “Are you here around the clock?” he asked.
“When he’s home, yes, sir. You may go up.”
“Thank you.”
Rex pressed the buzzer and Pruitt’s voice answered, sounding more robust than in hospital. Rex announced himself and made his way up the narrow stone steps to the terrace. Pruitt greeted him at the door with a beaming smile.
“Glad you could make it,” he said. He was dressed in a pair of pressed slacks, a lime-green shirt, and a paisley-patterned bow tie. Rex noted a subtle scent of cologne on his person when he shook his hand. “I was just making a gin and tonic. Can I tempt you?”
“By all means.” Rex removed his coat in the hall and hung it up on a polished mahogany rack aligned with brass hooks. “Everything looks back in order here.”
Judgment of Murder Page 10
