Aftershock

Five

‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ Lord Archibald asked.

‘New to Edinburgh, sir, yes,’ DI Stallings replied. ‘Until recently I was with the Met.’

‘I thought so. I’d be surprised if there’s a senior officer in this city that I don’t know.’ He smiled, and his eyes twinkled. ‘You chose to come here? You weren’t banished to the north for some unspeakable offence?’

‘My choice, sir.’

‘Cherchez l’homme?’

‘Partly,’ she admitted, returning his smile, ‘but if I hadn’t liked the place when I got here, he’d have had to transfer south.’

‘Does that imply that he is also a serving police officer?’

‘Yes, it does. His name’s Ray Wilding, detective sergeant. I expect you know him too.’

‘Yes indeed,’ the silver-haired judge replied. ‘He’s not one to forget. Last time I saw him in the witness box he was a detective constable. A very confident chap; in fact you’ll forgive me if I call him a cocky beggar. He gave defence counsel such a ripping that I considered holding him in contempt.’

‘That sounds like Ray.’

Stallings had found Lord Archibald in the clubhouse, seated in an upstairs lounge with a view of the first and eighteenth fairways. From what she had heard of Scottish Supreme Court judges, she had expected an austere firebrand; instead she had been greeted by a friendly man of middle age, who might have been an early-retired banker or businessman.

‘I bet you’re wondering how a duffer like me could hit the ball so far off the tee, even if it wasn’t exactly straight. It’s this modern equipment,’ he continued, forestalling her reply that the question had not crossed her mind, as she had never been on a golf course in her life before that morning. ‘Metal drivers with great big bouncy heads. They’ve transformed the game with the extra distance they give you. Unfortunately, they also magnify your errors. We never used to bother about those damned trees, but that’s the third time I’ve been in them this year.’

He paused, as the club steward arrived at their table with a coffee for Stallings. ‘I almost carried on, you know, after I found my ball. I noticed the smell right away, of course; you couldn’t miss it.’

‘I know,’ said the inspector. ‘I’ve been up there.’

‘Of course you have. My first reaction was the normal one: that it was an animal, that a dog or a cat had died in there. I was going to play on, and report it to the first green-keeper I saw. . not that it’s the club’s responsibility: that land isn’t ours. . until it occurred to me that to smell that bad it had to be a pretty large creature, maybe something that had slipped out of the zoo over the hill. Then I remembered going to an exhumation once, when I was Lord Advocate, a body that had to be dug up for DNA testing. So I went in for a look.’ He shuddered at the memory. ‘Wish I hadn’t. When I saw that it was indeed human, I confess that I bolted. A photograph in an evidence book, that’s one thing; up close is another matter. What was it? Male or female?’

‘It’s the body of a woman.’

‘Dead for how long?’

‘More than a week; the autopsy will give us a more accurate time.’

‘Post-mortem examination, Inspector,’ he said, gently. ‘We’re traditionalists in Scotland. . at least I am. The influence of Patricia Cornwell has not yet reached my court.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind, sir. Do you often see people on the path at the edge of the woods, Lord Archibald?’

‘Not often. Used to be never, but since all this right-to-roam stuff came in, we get a few. I argued against it, you know, lobbied my successor in the Crown Office, but Aileen de Marco was handling the Bill and she won the day.’ The eyes twinkled again. ‘You won’t report me to Bob Skinner, will you? I imagine that criticism of the First Minister is off limits now.’

‘Politics are none of my business,’ Stallings replied tactfully.

‘Nor mine, constitutionally,’ the judge murmured. ‘But if I see a bad law being proposed, I’m going to try and stop it.’

The detective pressed on: ‘Have you ever seen anyone on the path that you knew or recognised?’

‘No.’ The reply was immediate and unequivocal. ‘I take that to mean that there’s no identification on the body.’

‘Correct.’

‘Do you know how she was killed?’

‘What makes you think she was, sir?’

Lord Archibald looked at her almost benevolently. ‘My dear inspector,’ he said, ‘I was head of this country’s criminal prosecution service for three and a half years. Before that I was in practice at the Bar for more than twenty years. I know a crime scene when I see one. People are not cats; they don’t crawl away to die somewhere they’re not going to be found. When they decide to end it all, they do it in bed or their favourite chair with a bottle of whisky and a handful of pills, or in the bath with a razor, or they go into the garage with the engine running. In my experience, suicides want their body to be found. . unless they chuck themselves in the sea, and that isn’t the case here. No, that poor woman was killed, and somebody put her there.’

Stallings’s silence signalled her agreement.

‘Good luck with your inquiry,’ Lord Archibald exclaimed. ‘But do one thing for me, if you can. When you apprehend the killer, persuade him, if you can, that a guilty plea would be in his interests, rather than going to trial. The last thing any judge wants is to find himself in the witness box; counsel on both sides would have an absolute field day.’

Stallings smiled. ‘I’ll do my utmost, my lord.’

‘Good. Now can you answer the question I’m going to be asked by everyone I meet in this place? When can we have our golf course back?’

‘That’s one I’ll need to pass up the line.’

‘Oh, God!’ Lord Archibald sighed, as she turned to leave. ‘That means McGuire and McIlhenney, and neither of them are golfers!’