Murmuring the Judges

75

‘Look, Mrs Collins,’ said Skinner, evenly. ‘Please don’t get aggressive with me. I appreciate that you’ve lost your husband in terrible circumstances, but that’s not my fault.’

He paused. ‘I think you should face the facts here. Last night, our search team found one hundred and seventy thousand pounds and a shotgun buried under your garden shed. Curly was a member of a particularly vicious gang, and he was almost certainly a murderer too.

‘Our laboratory has determined that the gun in his possession killed a man called Harry Riach during the bank robbery in Galashiels. The one we found hidden in his pal Rocky Saunders’ van was used to murder Police Constable Annie Brown outside the bank.’

His voice hardened. ‘If your old man hadn’t got himself shot, he’d have been locked away for the rest of his life, be in no doubt about that.’

‘But who shot him, though?’ Grace Collins shot back, running her fingers through her straggly, dyed-blonde hair, and drawing heavily on her cigarette. ‘I’ll bet it was your lot, with that policewoman being killed. That’s why you’re going on about this guy Hamburger, who probably doesn’t even exist.’

‘Oh, he does, lady, he does. And sooner or later we will find him, just as we’ll find Newton, Clark and McDonnell. Wherever they are, it isn’t far enough to be safe from us.’

He stood over her, his back to the fireplace in the compact living room of her semi-detached bungalow. ‘Anyway, that’s not what I want to talk to you about.’

‘Why are you here, then? Are you going to offer me a job as a traffic warden or something?’

The DCC grinned at her defiance. ‘I don’t think so, Mrs Collins. You’ve got too nice a nature. No, I want to ask you about Curly’s auntie. I’m taking a look at the case of Mrs Beatrice Gates, which has become relevant to another inquiry we’re involved in.’

For the first time since she had opened the front door, something other than hostility showed in the woman’s face. ‘Auntie Beattie? I thought that was all dead and buried, like her.’

Skinner nodded. ‘It was, but I’ve dug it up again. You speak as if you knew her. Did you?’

‘Yes, I did. Curly and I were going together before. . before that thing happened.’

‘Did you like her?’

‘Well enough. She was round at Curly’s mum’s quite a lot. She never had much to say for herself though. Quiet woman, a bit starchy, stiff-knickered. Know what I mean?’

The policeman smiled and sat down. ‘I can guess. Let me ask you something. Do you think she did it?’

Grace Collins threw him a shrewd look. ‘If Curly was here, I’d have to say “No way”. He wouldn’t hear of it but the truth is, I reckon she did. She was a bit odd, Beattie, in the way she looked at folk. It was as if her expression was painted on. As for Uncle George, her husband, he was a slippery bastard. According to Curly’s mum, he couldn’t have kids, and that was why he was so free and easy. Beattie just smiled her way through life while he was out with his birds.

‘I reckon that the police were right. When yon girl turned up at her house and told her she was the new love of George’s life, I think she just went quietly mental, waited until he was asleep and knifed the swine.’

‘There’s some doubt that she could have done it, physically, with her disease.’

‘Hah!’ she said. ‘That was patchy. She’d complain about being helluva tired, sure, but other times she was okay. Curly and I went round to see his granny the week before it happened, and we found Auntie Beattie there chopping up logs for the fire.’

She pursed her lips. ‘That’s just my humble opinion, mind. Curly, and his mum, and his granny; they all defended her to the last. “No’ our Beattie”, they were always saying.’

‘Did Curly talk about the case much?’ Skinner asked.

‘At the start of it, he could talk about nothing else. It was a real obsession with him.’

‘Did it ever go away?’

‘No’ really. Every so often he would bring it up. Even although he was in the forces, another uniformed service, he had a real down on the police because of it. And the Courts too.’

‘Look, did he ever threaten over it?’

She frowned. ‘What’s this leading up to?’

‘Let’s wait and see. Did he?’

‘Not threaten as such. But every so often he’d come out with something like, “See those bloody judges. I’d like to put them away and see how they get on.” Now you’re telling me he shot someone. D’you think he’d have done them in too?’

‘Someone has, Mrs Collins,’ said the DCC quietly. ‘That’s the problem.’ She looked up at him in disbelief.

‘Do you have children?’ he asked.

‘Two girls.’ Grace Collins pointed to a series of photographs in a glass-fronted display cabinet near the window. ‘Una and Amy. One’s starts Uni next month. The other’s at school.’

‘Ah. It’ll be hard for them, losing their dad. . whatever he was, or did. I don’t want to make it harder, but I want you to be straight with me, because another man’s liberty might just depend on it.

‘I’m going to write down three dates and times for you. I’d like you to search your memory, wall calendars, diary, anything you have, and see if you can tell me where Curly was on each of those occasions. When you’re ready, I want you to phone me at my office.

‘Will you do that?’

She gazed at him, her mouth drawn in a tight line, twin red spots on her pallid cheeks. ‘You’re saying someone else could be in bother?’

‘No. He is in bother, but he may very well be innocent. You can’t harm Curly now, Mrs Collins.’

‘Okay,’ she said at last, ‘write them down. I’ll do it.’