by Alison James
‘I told yous two to wait for me to come back!’ she screeched, emitting little puffs of smoke from the ever-present cigarette. ‘But oh no, you two little London heroes have to go off and round up the double murderer all by yourselves.’
Brickall opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off. ‘After a commendation were you? Because you’ll no be getting one now. Not now a man’s been stabbed to death.’
‘We didn’t know Will MacBain would be there,’ Rachel said. ‘We wrongly assumed it would be straightforward.’
‘You never assume it will be straightforward. That’s why we use backup units! Even if MacBain hadn’t been breaking his bail, she could still have gone for a knife.’
Rachel and Brickall exchanged glances. Sillars drew in a long hit of nicotine then blew it out, her anger deflating. ‘Aye well, we all know things don’t go to plan in police work. At least you had the nous to leave your airwave set open, so Control would know there was a problem.’
Rachel gave her a brief nod. She was not in the mood for an argument. Not after seeing Will MacBain bleed out at her feet, and being unable to do anything to help. And in truth, she did not have much of a leg to stand on. Sillars was right.
‘And yous did a brilliant job working out that it was MacBain’s wife in the first place.’ Sillars’ tone was conciliatory now. ‘DC Tulloch’s still lined up to deal with her, even though you got ahead of yourselves.’
Rachel nodded again, still unable to speak.
‘You’ll be in need of a brandy,’ observed Sillars. ‘Anyone want to come back to the Stag’s Head with me?’
Rachel shook her head. There was blood all over her shoes and the hems of her trousers. All she wanted was a long hot bath and her bed.
‘Sounds like a great idea, Morag,’ said Brickall. He placed his hand on the small of her back to propel her to her car, giving Rachel a discreet eye roll as he did so.
Sillars was unable to hide her gratification. ‘Good lad.’
* * *
Hazel MacBain’s demeanour in the interview room was catatonic. As she sat there the next morning she was completely still, her fair complexion so waxy that she might have been a statue.
‘I’m doing this interview,’ Sillars had growled at Rachel when they arrived at the station earlier. ‘And Ben Tulloch will take the second chair. We don’t want any more fuck-ups.’
Rachel and Brickall watched in silence from behind the one-way glass in the viewing room. Unlike her husband, who had lied and obfuscated, Hazel answered every question in a flat but open manner. But then, thought Rachel, she had lost everything she prized most, and so had nothing to gain by denying the truth.
Bruno Martinez had come to see her on the night before he left, and told her he thought he might have been assaulted. Having recently discovered the child pornography on her husband’s laptop, Hazel had been terrified that Will might have been involved or, at the very least, that his laptop would be examined. When this happened, Will had been out with the minibus and about half of the students, and the children were asleep. The boy had become very worked up, so she had told Bruno that she would get him a drink to calm him down. She ran up to the flat for the bottle of port that had been a gift from a Portuguese student, stopping first to knock out Esme with a double dose of Medised.
It was when she reached the ground floor again that she had had the idea to spike the drink. She went through the connecting door into the garage and tipped a bit of antifreeze into the port bottle. She wasn’t sure how much, but at least 100 millilitres. Then she had taken the port to Bruno’s room and made him drink a glass of it, using the fact that she was pregnant to avoid drinking it herself. Once Bruno had become disorientated and incoherent, she had put the boy’s arm around her shoulder and dragged him into the garage. She planned to say that Bruno was unwell and that she was taking him to the doctor’s if anyone saw them, but nobody did. Her toddler daughter was out cold, and the students who had not gone on the dry ski slope expedition were all playing pool and watching TV, with the volume turned up loud.
She had heaved Bruno onto the back seat of the car and driven to Leith, parking the car as near as she could to the entrance to Lighthouse Park. She had dragged Bruno – barely conscious at this point – into the park and pushed him off the edge of the wall into the water, hurrying away without looking back. Once back at the residence, she tipped the remains of the tainted port down the sink, washed the glass and replaced it, along with the empty bottle, in Bruno’s room. The students had still been playing pool in the TV room, Esme was still fast asleep: it was as if nothing at all had happened.
‘And did you tell your husband about it?’ Sillars demanded. ‘Did he know?’
Hazel shook her head with a robotic movement. ‘No. He doesn’t know any of what I’ve done.’ She spoke as if Will was unharmed, and not lying on a steel post-mortem table in the pathology lab.
‘And your conscience didn’t prick you to come forward when his body was found? Or later, when you’d thought about what you’d done?’
Hazel stared at Sillars as though she was speaking a foreign language. ‘I hadn’t planned to do it; the thing with the anti-freeze just came to me at the last minute. It was ruled an accident,’ she said dispassionately, as though this meant the death was no longer anything to do with her. ‘Life carried on. Things went on just as normal.’
‘Except you knew your old man was still looking at pictures of naked kiddies,’ Sillars snarled at her. She pulled out her e-cigarette and took a couple of forceful puffs. ‘That was hardly normal.’
‘Can we move on to the death of Emily van Meijer?’ DC Tulloch cut in.
‘That wasn’t so easy,’ Hazel said, her voice still flat. ‘For a start, she was very calm and rational about everything. She wasn’t keen on having a drink. And she was a strapping girl. Statuesque.’
‘So this time you did plan it?’ DC Tulloch asked.
Hazel nodded. Her body was inert, her eyes barely open. ‘She’d said she had something very serious that she wanted to talk to me and Will about. So I went out and bought a second bottle of the Southern Comfort because I knew someone might notice if the one upstairs went missing. And I baked some Dutch-style cinnamon cookies. I thought that would make it easier to get her to drink. I poured myself a glass of Southern Comfort from the original bottle, poured a second glass from the bottle with the anti-freeze in it and put both glasses on a tray with the cookies. I handed Emily her glass, so there was no chance she’d pick up the wrong one. I only had a sip from mine, because, you know…’ She indicated her pregnancy bump. ‘She said she wasn’t keen on spirits, but I convinced her it went well with the cookies, and she drank half a glass. Just to be polite, really. Before she became incoherent, she said something about having been drugged and assaulted, and making a complaint to her lawyer. So you see, I was right. I had to do it. Otherwise everything would have been over.’
‘What about the selfie stick?’ Tulloch asked.
‘That was left behind by one of a previous group of students. It was in a box in the garage, and I saw it when I was filling the bottle with anti-freeze, and thought it might make a hillside walk look more believable.’
‘And you got her in and out of the car all by yourself?’ Sillars demanded. ‘A young woman nearly six feet tall and weighing over seventy kilos?’
‘It was really hard. In fact, at one point I thought I was never going to get her to the edge of the Crags. I had to drag her some of the way, and she got cuts on her arms. But at least I wasn’t heavily pregnant this time.’
‘And when you got her there?’
‘I pushed her over the edge and threw her phone and the selfie stick with her.’ Hazel described the event as though it were a trip to the shops.
‘So you took this bright, beautiful young woman – with her whole life ahead of her – and you chucked her to her death as though she were just a heavy bag of rubbish? Is that what you did?’ Sillars snarled.
‘I had to,’
Hazel’s voice was monotone. ‘I had to—’
‘Yes, yes, yes! You had to protect your precious life as a surrendered Christian wife!’ Sillars held up the flat of her hand. ‘I don’t want tae hear it. Not any more. Interview concluded at 9.56 a.m.’
* * *
‘Are we going to pack up and head back to London now?’
There was a hopeful note in Brickall’s voice when he came outside and found Rachel sitting on the steps of the Gayfield Square station. He sat down beside her and offered her a plastic cup of machine tea.
‘That would be nice,’ Rachel said. ‘But not just yet. We’ve got a whole house full of party guests to round up and interview.’ She sighed heavily.
‘You all right, boss?’
‘I just need a bit of fresh air. That testimony was hard to hear. Especially the stuff about poor Emily. Such a waste… all that potential. Dries van Meijer messaged me yesterday asking for an update, and I told him I’d be providing one very soon. God knows how I’m going to tell him about all of this. Especially about the on-camera rape.’ Rachel rubbed her hand over her forehead, burying her fingers in her hair. ‘It’s strange, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt so gutted about the death of a victim.’
‘That makes perfect sense to me.’
She looked at Brickall. ‘It does?’
‘You’ve got a teenager of your own… must make it so much more real.’
Rachel managed a smile. ‘What are you now – a shrink?’ She stood up, stretching her limbs. ‘I’m going to go back to the hotel and head out for a run. Then I’ll meet you back here, and we can make a start on following up with Edinburgh’s child-abusing elite from the other night’s party.’
‘Was it really only a few days ago?’ Brickall stood up and mirrored her stretching movements. ‘Feels like half a lifetime.’
Rachel sighed wearily. ‘Doesn’t it just.’
Forty
It took four whole days to take statements from the two girls at the Hellebore Drive party, and then interview the entire cohort of guests.
For every minute of those days, Rachel fantasised about being back in London, back in the familiar and orderly space of her flat. They had arrived in Scotland in high summer, but now autumn had taken a firm hold. The weather was damp and drizzly, turning Edinburgh’s blackened sandstone buildings dour and unfriendly. She was homesick for red double-deckers, white stucco and sparkling shop windows.
Both girls claimed to be sixteen, but when their information was double-checked, one of them turned out to be three weeks shy of her sixteenth birthday. She was not the girl who had been drugged and molested, but she described being pawed and fondled against her will by at least two of the men there. Her age opened up the possibility of charges of causing or inciting provision by a child of sexual services. It also meant that Douglas Coulter’s freemason friend, Eric Gourlay, who was one of the attendees, faced a charge of failing to comply with the requirements of the Sex Offenders’ Register.
‘Good,’ said Brickall, who had interviewed him and declared him ‘odious’. ‘With luck he’ll be banged up.’
Rachel shook her head. ‘I doubt it. The maximum’s six months, but since he wasn’t one of the men who molested either girl, he’ll probably only end up with a community order.’
All of the guests were male, middle-aged and professional, and they included a judge, an orchestral conductor and a barrister. The man who had assaulted the drugged sixteen-year-old – a leading plastic surgeon – was charged with sexual assault. The remaining party guests were encouraged to opt for a caution in exchange for total candour, and by piecing together all of their statements, the complete picture emerged.
Douglas Coulter was in charge of the guest list, and had been the point of contact for most of them. Young girls were procured by a fixer – almost certainly Gjerji Dushku – who had contacts within several educational establishments in the city who also supplied selected ‘Young Friends’. The most renowned – and sought-after – parties were the ones that took place in August during the festival. An international crowd was in town during those weeks, among them various high-powered individuals who wanted their preferences catered for. The young Catholics supplied by White Crystal were the most prized on this dubious circuit; selected for their looks and their purity. They were promoted on the dark web as virgins, and as such attracted a premium. Kenneth Candlish liaised with Douglas Coulter about these highly specialised soirées.
This was also where Will MacBain came into play. It appeared that he had been hand-picking individual students and arranging for them to be invited to the parties by the likes of Maris and Iveta, so that they would never suspect that White Crystal Tours had any connection with the events. But with Will MacBain dead, the full story of his involvement would probably never be known.
As Sillars dispatched officers to arrest both Douglas Coulter and Kenneth Candlish, there was one last party guest to interview. The architect, Peter Fairlie.
‘This one’s mine,’ Rachel said firmly.
She and DC Tulloch went into the interview room, where Fairlie was waiting alone, having opted not to have a lawyer present. He was a heavyset man dressed in chinos and gingham shirt, his hair spiked with gel in an attempt to make him appear younger than he was.
He smiled at Rachel. She did not smile back, but kept her tone scrupulously neutral. ‘Mr Fairlie, I’d like you to start by telling me how you came to be at the party at 141 Hellebore Drive.’
‘A contact at my golf club mentioned it to me… someone he’d met through the freemasons had told him about it. You know, word of mouth stuff. But look,’ he leaned forward on the table, his manner authoritarian, ‘I didn’t… you know… do anything.’
Rachel played dumb. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know. What does that mean?’
‘I didn’t touch either of those girls. Or the wait staff.’
‘So why were you there?’
He shrugged.
‘Are you married, Mr Fairlie?’ DC Tulloch asked.
‘Yes, yes I am. But—’
‘So why did this contact think you would be interested in going to this event on your own? Why didn’t you take your wife?’ Rachel remained cool on the outside, but inwardly she was burning. This man took Giles Denton with him to the wretched party, and in doing so messed up what could have been something great.
‘Please bear in mind that if you cooperate fully, you will in all probability only receive a caution,’ DC Tulloch interjected.
Fairlie sighed, and spread his hands on the table. ‘I suppose it was because they knew I have a weakness for… younger women.’
‘How young?’
‘Very young. But not illegal. Nothing like that. Just what you might call age-inappropriate.’
Rachel fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘Did you go to the party alone?’
He shook his head. ‘I took a friend of mine. Giles Denton.’
DC Tulloch looked startled. Rachel shot him a warning look and went on, forcing her voice to remain level. ‘And was that because he shared your interest in age-inappropriate girls, as you call them?’
The head-shaking was more vigorous this time. ‘Good God no. Not Giles. It’s just because he was in town for a while and he’s good craic, and I thought he might enjoy getting out of his hotel for a bit.’
‘And is this the same Giles Denton who’s a Child Protection Officer?’ Rachel’s voice was cold with fury.
Fairlie nodded.
‘And you didn’t think it was poor judgement to take him along to that kind of gathering, given his job description?’
Rachel spat the words with such venom that Tulloch looked at her in alarm.
Fairlie pulled at his shirt collar, sweating now. ‘With hindsight, yes. Obviously. But bear in mind I’d never been to one of these… things… before. I had no idea what to expect. I certainly didn’t think I was getting into anything illegal. I have something of a profile in this town, a successful business.’
‘Indee
d. As did many of the other people there. Didn’t stop some of them from crossing the line though.’
‘I don’t know what happened to Giles: I’ve been trying to contact him, he’s avoiding my calls. But I do know he didn’t stay very long.’
‘Wait here please, Mr Fairlie…’ Rachel picked up her notebook and beckoned Tulloch out of the room. ‘Issue him with a caution please, Ben. And what he said about Chief Inspector Denton stays strictly on the record. As in no gossip about it around the station, okay?’
‘Absolutely, Ma’am. I won’t say a word.’
Forty-One
On Rachel’s last morning in Edinburgh, she set off alone towards Inverleith and went into a coffee shop near the Botanic Gardens. She ordered a double espresso and sat down to wait.
The door eventually opened and he came in, seating himself opposite her at the table. He smiled.
‘So?’ said Rachel.
‘So,’ said Stuart. ‘I met our son.’
She nodded. ‘He told me.’
‘We made a fantastic child together. As I always knew we would.’
‘I don’t think we can take all the credit for that,’ Rachel told him, with a slight smile. ‘But it would be nice to think we had a little bit to do with it.’
Stuart became serious. ‘Rae, you know this isn’t how I would have chosen things to be—’
‘We’ve been over that…’
He held up a hand. ‘I know. I know. I was just going to say that I’m glad to have had the chance to get to know him a bit. And I hope to do so more in future.’
