Aftershock

Forty-five

‘I’d hoped for an earlier appointment,’ said Deputy Chief Constable Andy Martin, stone-faced. ‘It’s gone three thirty.’

The Crown Agent peered at him over a pair of half-moon spectacles. ‘You’re damn lucky I’m seeing you at all,’ he snapped. ‘This business has grown legs: it’s a damn nonsense. I tell you, Martin, the Lord Advocate agreed to co-operate with this against my advice. It’s a reflection on this office, and it’s a waste of my valuable time.’

‘I’d be grateful if you’d repeat that for the tape, Mr Dowley, once Chief Inspector Mackenzie sets it up.’

‘Tape? What bloody tape?’

‘This is a formal interview. It will be recorded.’

‘Oh, really! This is too much. I’m Her Majesty’s Agent, man. You wouldn’t treat the Lord Advocate like this, or the Lord President.’

Martin remained impassive, as Mackenzie produced a portable mini-disk recorder from his briefcase and laid it on Dowley’s coffee-table. ‘The Lord Advocate has agreed to be interviewed,’ he said, ‘if it proves necessary. As for the Lord President, if Sir James Proud asked me to rake through his dustbin, I’d do it.’ Uninvited, he settled into a chair, and stared hard at his host until he followed suit. In his mind’s eye, he saw McGuire and McIlhenney, in similar circumstances, making barbed comments about the absence of coffee and biscuits.

He had done his homework in advance of the encounter, and was familiar with the man’s background. He had been in the Crown Office for over twenty years, having joined as an assistant fiscal after a short, unremarkable career in private practice, and had worked his way quietly through the ranks. His appointment as Crown Agent had come in the new age of openness and public accountability ushered in by the Scottish Executive. It had been a surprise, as few senior figures in the legal establishment had ever heard of Joe Dowley, but he had wasted no time in making his mark.

Looking at him, Martin saw a small man, with red cheeks that spoke of excitability and perhaps a touch of hypertension, and hair that seemed to fly backwards from a high forehead. In spite of the warmth of the summer day, he wore a three-piece suit with a watch-chain falling from one lapel of his jacket into its breast pocket, and a small circular gold badge on the other.

‘Shall we begin, Mr Dowley?’ he said. ‘For the record I am DCC Andrew Martin of Tayside Police, accompanied by Chief Inspector David Mackenzie, from Fettes, and we are with Mr Joseph Dowley, Crown Agent, in his office.’

‘An intrusion which I protest,’ the civil servant responded. ‘I maintain that this is an entirely unnecessary procedure. It’s a charade. I’m told that your colleagues already have a man in custody for this latest crime, and that the press are saying he’s a police officer. That makes this discussion irrelevant.’

‘Nobody’s told us to stop, Mr Dowley, and I’m pretty sure that Sir James would have if the issue had been resolved. As for your opinion, you’re entitled to express it, but don’t expect me to agree with you. I don’t play charades. I wouldn’t have agreed to undertake this task if I hadn’t believed it to be appropriate. I’d remind you also that it was set in motion by the chief constable, not a man given to flights of fancy, although you seem to be questioning that.’

For the first time, Dowley’s face took on a look of something other than aggression. ‘No, no,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I don’t doubt Sir James’s integrity, only his judgement, in this one instance.’

‘I don’t see how you can,’ Martin replied. ‘If my information is correct, he didn’t set this ball rolling. You did.’

‘How?’

‘By refusing to allow your staff to co-operate with a murder inquiry.’

‘This office instigates murder inquiries.’

David Mackenzie’s laugh took Dowley by surprise. The Crown Agent glared at the chief inspector. ‘What’s so damn funny?’ he barked, taking the offensive once more.

‘I always thought that murder inquiries were instigated by murderers,’ Mackenzie replied. ‘And here I’ve been wrong all along. God knows how I got so far in the polis.’

‘Don’t be flippant, man! This is a serious matter.’

‘That’s funny. A minute ago you were calling it a charade.’

‘I mean, you fool, that it’s serious that you’re here wasting my time. Martin,’ he snapped, ‘I’m putting a stop to this right now. Switch off your machine and leave this office.’

‘If I do that,’ said the deputy chief constable, ‘I’m taking you with me, back to Fettes, where you’ll be interviewed under caution with a view to a possible charge. I remind you that I’m operating under the authority of the Lord Advocate, your boss, with the approval of his boss, and you know who she is. So unless you want to find your glittering career hitting the buffers at high speed, you will answer every question I put to you, here and now. If you like, before we go any further, you can make a couple of phone calls; ask people who know me, then tell me whether they think I’m kidding.’

In the silence that followed, Dowley and Martin stared at each other across the coffee-table, until finally the Crown Agent broke the impasse. ‘Let’s get it over with,’ he murmured.

‘That’s better,’ said the police officer. ‘Now, will you please tell us who in this office was privy to the contents of the report into the Ballester murders?’

‘Joanna Lock, the assistant fiscal, Gregor Broughton, the area fiscal, and myself.’

‘Who prepared the report?’

‘Primarily Mr Broughton.’

‘It was based on what, exactly?’

‘On the papers passed to him by Chief Superintendent McGuire, at Fettes, following the death in England of Daniel Ballester, the principal suspect, indeed the only suspect, for all four killings.’

‘And its conclusion?’

‘That although Ballester’s death was the subject of an inquiry by the Northumbria police force, and by the coroner, there was no doubt that he was responsible for the deaths of Gavin, Boras, Paul and Noone, the four victims.’

‘On what basis?’

‘Motive and opportunity, backed up by the fact that the murder weapon, a Sig Sauer pistol, and several items belonging to the three female victims were found hidden on his property.’

‘What was the recommendation?’

‘That all four cases should be closed.’

‘Without any public process? You could have held fatal accident inquiries into each case.’

‘I could, at considerable expense, and not just to the Crown Office either. Ballester’s estate would have been entitled to representation, and we’d have had to allow counsel for each victim’s family. What would its purpose have been? An FAI can’t make findings of guilt against individuals, dead or alive, yet a media circus would have grown around it. So it was decided that it should all be put away in a box. I still stand by that.’

‘Did the final report contain details of each killing?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Dowley. ‘It was extremely thorough. It was, in effect, the case for the prosecution, had Ballester still been alive and in custody.’

‘Surely someone else saw it. A typist, for example.’

‘No. Gregor and Ms Lock drafted the document themselves, on their computers.’

‘What about the senior Advocate Depute, the Solicitor General, or the Lord Advocate himself? Who made the determination you’ve just described?’

‘I did.’

‘Four murders, and you signed them off personally?’

‘It’s within my authority.’

‘So we’re only looking at three people in this building who knew exactly how the three women were killed?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then Sugar Dean turns up, murdered in exactly the same way. Surely you can see the grounds for concern?’

‘Of course, but no fault lies here. Ten times that number of people within the police service must have been privy to the same facts.’

‘Not quite that many. No more than a dozen, actually. But we’ll be interviewing them all, don’t you worry.’

‘Including Sir James?’ Dowley sneered.

‘He was our first, while we were waiting for you to fit us in. ACC Mackie was second. I’m going to be thorough; if I think I need to put someone on oath, I will. You, for a start, if you don’t give me a convincing answer to my last questions.’ Martin’s green eyes locked on to the Crown Agent once more. ‘Have you ever discussed these matters with anyone outside the immediate circle of knowledge?’

‘No! Of course not.’

As he replied, Martin thought he detected a very slight flicker in the man’s eyes. ‘Never?’ he asked again.

‘No.’ Dowley’s gaze moved to the window.

‘Would you like me to put that to your wife?’ Suddenly he focused on the badge on the Crown Agent’s lapel, and felt a flash of inspiration. ‘Or your fellow Rotarians?’

‘For God’s sake!’ the man shouted. ‘Of course there’s pillow talk! And you don’t seriously think that Blackford Rotary Club is a hotbed of serial killers.’

Martin allowed silence to fill the room, never taking his eyes from Dowley. When he was ready, he shifted in his chair slightly. ‘Did you tell the whole Rotary Club?’ he asked quietly.

‘I made a few remarks one night,’ the Crown Agent blustered. ‘At a meeting, when it was my turn to discuss my still fairly new job. I quoted examples of things I did, and I may have mentioned the Ballester case.’

‘You may have, or you did?’

‘I did.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Mr Dowley,’ said Martin, quietly but with menace, ‘if you prevaricate just one more time, I’ll take you out the front door of this building in handcuffs.’

‘Damn you, man: I told them how the three killings were tied together.’

‘You told them that the three women were shot in the back of the head at close range?’

‘I may have.’

‘I’ll take that to mean you did. Mr Dowley, who’s the secretary of your Rotary branch? I’ll need to report this to the investigating officers in the Sugar Dean case. They, in turn, may have to interview every member of your club.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Never more so, sir. Never more so.’