Aftershock

One Hundred and One

The Crown Agent was at his desk glowering at a pile of papers that had come to him in his deputy’s absence; bloody man wasn’t due back for another week, and with Broughton going off too, things could only get worse. That assistant of his couldn’t be relied upon either. If she had shown a little common sense, the shit-storm of the previous week would not have descended upon his head.

Top of the list, of course, was the prosecution of the Shadow Defence Secretary’s son for murder. The indictment would have to be absolutely flawless. He could not bear to imagine the consequences if a young man who was as guilty as sin managed to walk free as the result of a technicality. And that bloody woman Birtles was just the type to throw open the door, if it was left even the slightest bit ajar.

It had never occurred to Joe Dowley that he was a misogynist, but he was. He was of a school, greatly diminished in numbers, but still alive and whining, that regarded women as professionally inferior. He bowed his head, sometimes literally, to the Lord Advocate, and the Lord Justice General, but he held the First Minister in barely disguised contempt, seeing her as the result of a period of ridiculous tokenism in parliamentary selection. As he glanced at the photograph of the Queen, which had been placed on the wall by one of his predecessors, and which he had been afraid to remove, he felt the usual frisson of irritation that she was proving so sturdy and apparently ageless.

He scowled at the phone as it rang, but picked it up. The caller was a woman. ‘I have the Lord Advocate on the line for you,’ she said. . more than a little haughtily, he thought.

‘Of course,’ he replied, as if she had asked whether he was free to take the call.

‘Crown Agent,’ the principal law officer intoned as he came on the line. Dowley’s heart sank at the formality of the greeting.

‘Sir.’

‘I have a task for you,’ Gavin Johnson continued, ‘and for you alone. It has priority over everything else. I need you to go to the police headquarters building down at Fettes, and sit in on an interview that will be conducted there. When it’s over, you’ll be given a copy of the tape. I want you to bring it back to me.’

‘Who’s the interviewee?’

‘You’ll find that out when you get there.’

‘Are you sure this can’t be delegated? I really am. .’

‘You, Joe. Nobody else, and go right away.’