Murmuring the Judges

46

‘What made you choose here?’

‘The food’s good, and I like the view,’ Sarah answered. ‘I like the atmosphere too. Lunch doesn’t always have to be an intimate occasion. It’s fun to eat café-style once in a while.’

Bob laughed. ‘If you’d said, you could have come to the senior officers’ dining room down at Fettes.’

‘No, thank you very much! I said café —, not canteen — style.’

‘It’s good wholesome food.’

‘Exactly, and if you and Andy didn’t eat so much of it, you wouldn’t have to spend so much time working out. No, in the middle of the day, I prefer this.’ She looked down at the brimming bowl of crab bisque and at the bread roll which lay on a plate beside it.

Bob investigated his tuna salad then paused, turning in the bench seat to look out of the window. ‘You’re right about the view, though, especially on a nice day like this.’ In common with most Edinburgh people, Skinner detested the visual impact on the city of the grey concrete St James Centre and its vast disused office block. But inside the building, in the top floor restaurant of the John Lewis store, it was a different matter. The window seat looked out across the north of the city, offering a panorama which stretched from the lower slopes of the New Town on the left to the Fife coast and widening river mouth on the right.

He admired the prospect for a few minutes, before turning back to eat, smiling, laughing, joking with his wife, making the small talk that loving couples do.

Finally, as they both pushed away their plates and turned their attention to their coffee, Sarah asked him, quietly, ‘So how was your morning, honey? What did the Lord A. have to say?’

‘ “Help, Mammy, Daddy”, just about covers it,’ Bob replied, dropping for a moment into his broadest Lanarkshire accent. ‘He’s deeply upset, as you’d imagine. He’s an honourable man is wee Archie. I feel heartily sorry for him.’

She glanced around, making sure that the table behind her was still empty. ‘Will he have to resign?’

‘No, he won’t have to, as such, but if we charge the man, I don’t think that anything or anyone will dissuade him from handing in his seal of office. I really hope that the bloke turns out to be innocent, but the way it’s going. .’

He stopped, abruptly. ‘Enough of Archie’s troubles, though. What have you and Professor Joe been up to?’

Sarah replaced her coffee cup in its saucer. ‘It was pretty routine stuff today,’ she said, ‘as murder autopsies go. You were right; the subject was a male from West Linton.’

‘Ryan Saunders.’

‘That was the fella. An otherwise healthy specimen, despatched from this life very neatly by a single gunshot to the back of the head.’ She reached her right hand behind her and touched the base of her skull with a finger. ‘There. It was fired at close range we believe. The hair was scorched around the entry wound.

‘You know,’ she mused, ‘I often ponder on the fact that a human life can be switched off in less than the blink of an eye by just a little piece of metal. Don’t you?’

He shook his head, firmly. ‘Nope. I do not. Nor should anyone, if their job is likely to put a gun in their hands. If you start brooding about things like that, one day you might delay in pulling a trigger, or you might not pull it at all. In that event, an innocent person could die. . maybe even you.

‘Ask Andy, ask Brian Mackie. . they’ve pulled that trigger. . and they’ll tell you the same.’

He frowned. ‘I would be interested, though, to know what was in the mind of the man who sent Ryan Saunders to wherever he’s gone.’

‘Can’t help you there,’ said Sarah, with a quick, wicked smile. ‘Saunders never said a word.’

‘Christ, this new job’s giving you a copper’s gallows humour.’

Suddenly she was serious. ‘Yes, it is, but you know why.’

‘Sure.’ A silence hung over the table for a second. ‘Do you ever dream,’ he asked, ‘of a day when we’ll be leading a life that isn’t wrapped around with the aftermath of brutality?’

‘Of course I do, and one day, darling, we will. Till then, someone’s got to do these things; better it’s people who are good at them, like we are.’

‘I suppose,’ he nodded. ‘So Saunders was a run-of-the-mill dissection then?’

She smiled again, and at once he was intrigued. ‘Almost, but not quite. There was one peculiarity.’ She reached back and touched herself once more, this time just below her right shoulder-blade.

‘Apart from the gunshot, there was a single knife wound, right there in the back. It was in a fleshy area just beside the spine, a surface wound, a bit less than an inch deep. Not life-threatening in any way.’

‘That’s odd. Were there any other marks?’

‘None, apart from severe bruising to the wrists. They were bound together, with considerable force.’

‘Wasn’t there an exit wound?’

‘No.The rifle was small calibre, and a soft-nosed bullet was used. Very efficient: it didn’t exit, just bounced around inside the skull and turned the brain to mush.’

‘Eh?’

‘Yup. Absolute soup, it was. When I removed the cranium it more or less ran out.’

Bob shuddered. ‘When will we have the report?’ he asked.

‘By close of play today. It won’t be complicated. Apart from having no brain left, Mr Saunders was in perfect health.’