Grievous Angel

Eighteen

Beyond all the potential for career damage, I was worried about what Mia would say to Alison about me, if they did come face to face. For all that I was pretty sure I could talk my way out of it, even if she spilled the whole damn tin of beans, still I was unsettled, not by the potential embarrassment itself, but because I realised what a selfish bloody fool I’d been, and most of all because I cared about Ali more than I had realised, and about the comfort that I was finding in our relationship.

That concern was set firmly on one side by a call on my mobile as I waited in a queue of traffic near the office, with a recuperating Ciaran McFaul in the passenger seat of the tank. (And there was I, led to believe that Geordies could hold their drink. That was a joke, by the way; a near-death experience can do that to you.) It was from David Pettigrew, in the Edinburgh procurator fiscal’s office. They’re the prosecutors in Scotland, and technically we investigate crime on their behalf.

‘Bob,’ he said, ‘I need you to come and see me, in my office now. It’s about the Hastie McGrew arrest.’

‘Has his dad’s lawyer been leaning on you?’ I asked.

‘What do you expect? He’s been shouting about wrongful arrest, attempted murder even.’

‘Fuck him. If I’d wanted to kill the guy, he’d be dead.’

‘I know that and I’ve told him as much.’

‘Who is his lawyer anyway?’

‘Ken Green.’

‘Wanker.’

‘Agreed, but he’s not the problem.’

‘So what is?’ I snapped, losing my patience.

‘I’ll explain when you get here.’

‘Fuck it, Davie, I haven’t begun to question the guy yet.’ I was giving him a hard time, principally because invitations to the fiscal’s office were never to discuss the time of day; they always signalled a crisis of some sort or another.

‘Bob,’ he sighed, ‘would I ask if I didn’t have to?’

‘No,’ I conceded, ‘I suppose not. But I tell you now, if that fucker Green’s in the room when I get there, I’m walking straight out.’

‘He won’t be, I promise; but it’s not just you I need. I’d like your English colleague to join us. Can you pick him up and bring him?’

‘I don’t have to. He’s with me. I’ll see you in however long it takes.’

By the time I’d extricated myself from my traffic queue and found a parking space, it had taken twenty-five minutes. And I was annoyed. I strode into Pettigrew’s office, full of hell, with McFaul tagging along an my heels. ‘Okay, Davie,’ I began, when I was no more than halfway into the room, ‘what the fu-’ I stopped short. He wasn’t alone. He was sitting at his meeting table with a woman, around forty, slim, dark hair, dark suit, frowning and all business.

He rose, she didn’t. ‘Bob, Detective Inspector,’ he greeted us, ‘thanks for coming. This is…’

‘I know who she is,’ McFaul said. ‘Morning, Paula. Bob, this is Mrs Paula Cherry, from the Crown Prosecution Service, Newcastle office.’

She nodded, but still didn’t crack a smile.

‘Is this your back-up, Ciaran?’ I asked, not best pleased. ‘I thought we’d agreed that I’d question McGrew about the Watson murder then let you take him south.’

‘I didn’t send for her,’ he replied. ‘I’ve got no idea…’

‘Take a seat, gentlemen,’ the fiscal said, ‘and let me tell you why we’re here. We have a situation. Ken Green is demanding that we release Mr McGrew immediately. Apart from the usual bluster, he is also threatening a civil suit against the police. Bob, it would be helpful if you ran through the circumstances that led you to raid Perry Holmes’s house yesterday and to arrest his son.’

I did, in detail, step by step from the finding of Marlon Watson’s body in the disused public baths, through McGrew’s sister’s fling with Tony Manson, to our discovery of his existence and of his true identity, finally tying him to the murders in Newcastle.

‘Okay?’ I concluded, annoyed more than ever by the woman’s silent frowning presence. ‘Where’s the problem with any of that? Now, can Ciaran and I go and hit the guy with rolled-up Yellow Pages or whatever it is you imagine we do to suspects?’

‘The problem, Mr Skinner,’ she replied, ‘from a CPS standpoint, is that you haven’t given us enough evidence to proceed.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ I bellowed, slipping into Taggart mode in spite of myself. She’d set me off. ‘We’ve put him at the hotel for you, we’re going to give you Winston Church’s blood in his car and we’ve recovered what I’m certain will prove to be the murder weapon, in his possession. Are your English juries so demanding that they want more than that?’

‘The CPS is,’ she shot back. ‘You’ve put his car at the Seagull Hotel, but you haven’t put him in it, not on that night. You’ve given us a person of similar build, in a hooded black tunic wearing black gloves, but you haven’t proved that it was Peter Hastings McGrew.’

I stared at her. ‘Fuck me,’ I gasped. ‘Where is the reasonable doubt?’

‘To my mind it exists. I require an overwhelming chance of conviction before I will commit the Crown to the expense of a trial. I don’t have it here.’

‘Then you go back to Newcastle, lady,’ I told her, ‘and send us someone higher up the tree.’

‘The decision is mine, and I’m telling you what it is. Until my scientific people can put McGrew in that hotel room, and in Church’s house, I won’t proceed against him. They say there’s no prospect of them doing that.’

I smiled. ‘If that’s how you feel, you’re welcome to take the flak. Because I’m damn certain that Ciaran’s force won’t let you shift the blame for three unsolved murders on to them, just because you’re protecting your conviction ratio against all comers. And don’t look to me to keep quiet about it to the Scottish media either.’ I started to rise. ‘Davie, if that’s all, I’ve got a telephone directory to roll up.’

He waved me back down. ‘I wish it was, Bob, but it’s not.’

I sighed. ‘Oh shit. Not you and all, Brutus. What’s your effing problem?’

‘It’s tied in with Mrs Cherry’s.’

‘How?’

‘Well,’ he ventured, cautiously, ‘legally, what happened in Tyneside has nothing to do with us, and she isn’t giving me grounds to hold McGrew on her behalf. But as far as the Watson murder’s concerned, with those guys out of the road, there’s nothing linking him to that either, and I doubt if there ever will be. So as things stand, you’re not going to get a conviction in Scotland either.’

‘In that case, Davie,’ I growled, ‘I will do him for the attempted murder of a police officer.’

He sucked his teeth. ‘He’ll have a defence for that too.’

I laughed, in lieu of a roar of rage. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Ken Green’s already floated it. He’ll argue that his father, in an interesting and varied business life, has made a few enemies, proof of which being his paralysis and the bullet that’s still lodged in his head. He’ll say that when he heard someone battering at the front door, his first thought was that his dad’s life was in danger, and that when DI McFaul burst through the door, armed, he had no proof, nor even any idea, that he was a police officer. He was defending his father from attack, with a registered and legally held handgun.’ He looked at me. ‘That will be his story, and to tell you the truth, Bob, I can see a jury going for that.’

I felt my eyes narrow. ‘But you’ve got the balls to give them the chance, Davie, yes?’

‘If you dig your heels in, I’ll prosecute. But if we lose, then the civil suit will follow. Drop all charges and Green will go away, quietly.’

I stared at the wall, trying to burn a hole in it as I thought. Paula Cherry might be chicken, but Davie was a good guy, and I had learned to trust his instincts almost as well as my own. Holmes and son had me by the balls; I knew it, and I did not like the feeling.

‘I’m going back to the office,’ I announced. ‘I’m going to keep him for as long as I can, and then I’m going to charge him with attempt to murder. Once I’ve done that, I’ll have a night to think about it, and to decide whether we walk away from it.’

Pettigrew nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

‘Of course I reserve the right-’ Mrs Cherry began.

‘This is Scotland,’ I snapped. ‘You don’t have any rights here. I’ll call you later, Davie.’

‘Is she always like that?’ I asked McFaul, when I could trust myself to speak. By that time we were within sight of the office.

‘That was her being cooperative. She works on a ninety per cent chance of conviction; that’s her benchmark. I’ve never met anyone with a more extreme view of what’s a reasonable doubt. We’re screwed, Bob.’

‘Not necessarily. I’m going to ask our specialists if they can place anyone else in his car. If they can’t, that might add a couple of points to her calculation.’ I smiled, for what seemed like the first time in a while. ‘Mind you…’ I paused, to consider possibilities more rationally than I had in Pettigrew’s office. ‘Are you as angry as me?’

‘Too bloody right.’

‘Then charge him.’

‘Eh?’ he murmured. ‘How can I do that?’

‘On the basis of the evidence. McGrew’s in Scotland, you’re in Scotland in pursuit, with a right to be here. As I told her, she has none. She’s invisible to me. You charge him, and I’ll use all my media friends to make sure that the story goes national. Then if she wants to stick to her line, she’ll have to explain it publicly, instead of hanging failure round our necks.’

He glanced at me. ‘I’d love to do it, but there’s one major obstacle in the way: Paula Cherry’s husband. His name’s Norman, and he’s one of our assistant chief constables. She may be invisible to you, but he’s very real to me. If I charged McGrew, after the meeting we’ve just had, it would be a disciplinary offence. I’ve got a wife and three kids, a nice house in Hexham and a pension to protect. I’ve even got promotion prospects. I can’t, Bob.’

‘He’d hang you out to dry,’ I said, ‘even though the man pointed a gun at you?’

‘ACC Cherry,’ he sighed, ‘would hang Mother Teresa out to dry if Paula told him to.’

‘You realise that I’m probably going to have to release the bastard?’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘The fucking Holmeses!’ I spat. ‘Like father, like son.’

‘Having seen him, I wouldn’t say that the father’s got away scotfree.’

‘He’s still breathing.’

‘We’re not judges, Bob,’ he said. ‘If you judge people, you have no time to love them. Mother Teresa said that.’

‘And she’d probably have told us that Perry’s Jesus in disguise,’ I countered. In spite of myself, I smiled at the image, and at the memory of the scene when we had raided the house, the naked form in the water. ‘Would that make Vanburn John the Baptist?’

Back at headquarters, McFaul came upstairs to say goodbye to the team; that done, I walked him back down to his car. We shook hands. ‘If ever you get to the point where you can’t take any more of ACC Cherry and his wife,’ I told him, ‘let me know. I’m not a decisionmaker here, but I’ve got some influence with the people who are.’

‘Thanks, Bob,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll outlast him. The word is that he’s going in a couple of years, and when he does, a lot of people will be after her.’ He opened the driver’s door, then stopped. ‘Hell, I almost forgot.’ He leaned in and across, to the back seat, produced a plastic bag, and handed it to me. ‘My people went over Glenn Milburn’s house. They got no meaningful evidence to help you, but they did find half a dozen pay-and-go mobile phones. They’re spares as far as we can make out, unconnected to the investigation and of no use to us, but I seem to recall you saying that you were looking for one. Long shot, but you never know. Sometimes all we can do is keep scratching away; we are all pencils in the hand of God, as Mother Teresa also said.’

I laughed as I took the bag. ‘And as Bob Skinner says, right now, fuck off back to Tyneside, and mind how you go.’

I wandered back upstairs, full of the huge frustration that came from the knowledge that in all probability I was going to have to let a triple murderer go free. The more I stared into it, the muddier the water became. Pettigrew had been right: attempted murder would never stick, and even a reduced charge, assault by presenting a loaded firearm, would probably fail against Ken Green’s defence.

With Jeff Adam on the ground, McFaul had gone in alone, without anyone to witness that he had identified himself properly, other than Vanburn, the nurse, who had been too busy protecting his patient to remember any of the detail. Yet again, I was stuffed by lack of corroboration. I decided to keep McGrew locked up for the rest of the day without charging him. At least that way I could keep his lawyer out of my hair, for until a charge was made, I didn’t have to give him access to a brief.

I gave the bag to Andy Martin, and told him what it contained. ‘Go through the call logs on each one, incoming and outgoing numbers, and see if any of them mean anything at all. It’s a balls-aching job, I know, but it has to be done.’

I retreated into my small office, nursing a mug of coffee. My team had the good sense to leave me alone. As I brooded, I had the wild thought of calling my friend Xavi at the Saltire newspaper, and telling him… don’t quote me personally, mate, but… that I had a man in custody who couldn’t be charged with murder because an English lawyer thought there was a one in five chance of an acquittal. I was tempted, but I’d have been taking a chance with McFaul’s career, so I stayed my hand. Instead I called Alison.

‘How goes your morning?’ I asked her.

‘Better than yours, from the sound of you. Good and bad, really. As we expected, Martina Chivers identified Mia Watson as the victim. But,’ she paused, ‘before you start doing a lap of honour, I’ve spoken to both of our witnesses and they’re adamant that the attacker was a man. So any notion of Mia Sparkles turning into Catwoman by night is right out the window.’

I growled at her, but she ignored me.

‘That lets me focus on Don Telfer. I’m expecting him inside half an hour; the Grampian car’s just handed him over to us this side of the Forth Bridge.’

‘Can I sit in?’ I muttered. ‘I feel the need to eat somebody.’

She laughed. ‘That bad, is it? You’re the boss. I can have him taken to Fettes if you like.’

‘No, I’ll come to you. The accommodation here’s full of a guy I don’t want to see for now.’

I drove to Torphichen and arrived there one minute before Donald Telfer and his escorting officers. Alison had him taken straight to an interview room, while we sat at her desk, with Alastair Grant watching from his kennel in the corner of the CID suite. ‘I’m guessing McGrew hasn’t confessed,’ she began.

‘It’s worse than that, but let’s not go there; let’s stay focused on the job in hand. You take the lead in questioning, I’ll just sit there and stare him down. The first thing you need to find out is how much he knows about what’s happened to his pals, given where he’s been for the last couple of weeks. If he doesn’t… it’ll be interesting.’

It’s a popular misconception that in the circumstances in which Telfer found himself that morning, the innocent are apprehensive and the guilty are angry. In my experience, the opposite is true, and our prisoner bore that out. He was as nervous as a man in the condemned cell, listening to the trap being tested just along the corridor. He looked up when we walked into the room; his face was white, his forehead was covered in sweat and his hands were clenched together so tightly that the bones seemed to show. I gazed at him, sizing him up. He was a strong-looking guy with clear blue eyes, and a complexion that might have been described as ‘fresh’ were it not for the day-old stubble on his chin and for two lines on his left cheek, criss-crossing to form a rough letter ‘X’, standing out pale blue against the paleness of his skin. ‘Scar on his face,’ Redpath had told us.

‘Good morning, Mr Telfer,’ Alison began, after she’d switched on the twin deck recorder and identified everyone. ‘Do you know why you’re here?’

‘I’ve got no idea,’ he replied. His voice had a crack in it.

‘Then I’ll enlighten you. We believe that you were involved just under three weeks ago in the multiple rape of a woman. You were with two other men, Andrew Weir and Albert McCann. The victim hasn’t made a formal complaint, but that doesn’t actually matter, because we have medical testimony that says she was, and from her clothing and body we recovered forensic samples from the men involved. I’ll require you to give us samples of blood and saliva, and I have no doubt that analysis will confirm your guilt, as we’re in the process of doing with your old school pals… academic as that might be, since it’s only you who’ll be standing trial.’

He frowned, and I knew that he was about to be given the biggest fright of his life. ‘Why?’ he protested. ‘Have those idiots turned Crown witnesses?’

‘My,’ Alison said, evenly. ‘You have been out of touch. Mind you,’ she continued, ‘I suppose that you’ll only get the Press and Journal on your platform. Edinburgh stories might not get the same prominence as in our papers. Your friends will not be tried because they’re both currently in the morgue. They were both murdered, one week apart, by the same man. We don’t know who he is yet, but we’re fairly certain that he’s waiting for your offshore spell to finish, so that he can complete the job.’

His eyes stood out, his mouth hung open. She took two photographs from a folder she’d brought with her and laid them on the table. They’d been taken in the mortuary, just before the post-mortems had begun. Until then I’d never actually seen a grown man piss his pants before, but he did. We let him sit there in the wet, and the rising steam, and the shame, his face in his hands.

‘Hey,’ I called out, ‘look at me, Don.’ After a while he did. I tapped my left cheek, where his scar was. ‘Where did you get this?’ I asked. He stared back, mute. ‘It goes back to your school days, doesn’t it?’

For the first time he showed something other than fear: anger. He nodded, forcefully. ‘That wee cunt Ryan Watson,’ he hissed. ‘He did it with that fucking razor he carried up his sleeve, at the school, in the middle of the playground at a break. The fucking jannie, Ramsay, his name was, he took me to the Royal, and he told me that if I opened my mouth it would probably be my throat got cut next time, so when the hospital called the police I told them I didn’t know who did it, not that they gave a shit anyway!’

‘Why did he do it, Don?’

His eyes flared. ‘Because I tried it on with his sister. The fucking Ice Queen, Mia, who said she never shagged boys, only proper men. The wee bastard came up to me and cut me, and said she’d told him to.’

That threw me. ‘Did you believe that?’ I asked.

‘How the fuck would I know whether it was true or not? Ryan didn’t need telling. He was always heading for an early grave, that wee… Two weeks later his drugs racket was exposed in the papers and he and his uncle wound up dead because of it.’

‘What about Mia?’ I continued.

‘She left school the day the story about the drugs was in the paper. I never saw her again, until I opened a radio magazine that I read and there she was, Miss Fucking Perfect, back in Edinburgh and a big star. And me, marked for life. Women recoil from me, you know. They do, like I’m some sort of freak. Even the nice ones, I can see it in their eyes. The only way I can get a woman is to pay for it. And it’s all her fucking fault.’

Alison picked up the interview. ‘So you and your pals decided to teach her a lesson.’

He nodded. ‘It was my idea. Andy and Albie came along for the ride, so to speak. They hated that wee bastard too; when we were all at the school he actually made them buy drugs off him.’ He paused for breath. ‘So, we waited for her to finish her programme and then we picked her up outside her studio.’

‘Where did you take her?’

‘My place. We kept her there all night. No food, nothing to drink, just us. I wanted to kill her, and hide her somewhere she’d never be found, but the boys wouldn’t go for that. So we told her that if she said a word, we’d tell the Sunday Mail all about her and her evil fucking family, and then we dumped her in the street. Brutal, eh? Sure,’ he spat, ‘and you know what? I don’t give a toss.’

‘I doubt if your friends did either,’ Alison murmured. ‘Pity we can’t ask them.’