Fifty-six

Although Detective Inspector Becky Stallings was the senior police officer present in the elegant office, she felt at a disadvantage. She was the only person there who had not met Gregor Broughton, the area procurator fiscal. She looked at him, and saw a bulky man with a face that told of younger days spent in the front row of many a rugby scrum.

He seemed to sense her hesitancy, as she took her place at his conference table. ‘First time in the Crown Office?’ he asked her, with a reassuring smile.

She nodded.

‘First major case in Scotland?’

‘That too,’ she confessed, although she guessed that he had known already.

‘Don’t worry about it. The principles are exactly the same on this side of the border, but we’re better. The chain’s shorter, and you get to deal with me directly, round a table like this one, instead of sending your report up the line and waiting for some character in the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether or not you’ve got a ninety per cent chance of getting a conviction.’

‘I know that scenario,’ said Stallings. ‘I’ve had a few sent back marked “no pro”, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘Well, not here,’ said Broughton, cheerfully. ‘Here you’re dealing with real lawyers, experienced prosecutors, not some kid straight out of university who’s never been in a courtroom in his life. We’re braver, too. We’re not worried about percentages. A fiscal has one benchmark. Can I sell this to at least eight out of fifteen jurors?’ He glanced at McGurk. ‘What do you think, Jack? Can I convict Weekes of murder?’

The sergeant was impassive. ‘That’s the question we came to ask you, sir.’

‘Hah!’ the fiscal laughed. ‘It’s well seen you’ve spent some time in my friend Bob’s office. He’s shown you the ropes, all right.’ He looked to his left, where Weekes’s solicitor sat. ‘Well, Frankie,’ he asked, ‘how did you draw this one?’

‘He asked for me, Gregor,’ she replied. ‘I must have been doing something right these past few years.’

‘Your television advertising can’t do you any harm either. “Been arrested? Then call Frances Birtles.” Not too subtle, but effective, no doubt about that. Even a cop knew your number off by heart when he found himself in trouble.’ His smile vanished. ‘So?’ he asked abruptly.

Birtles had played the game many times before. ‘So what?’ she retorted.

‘I’ve read the papers in the case, and I’ve listened to the tapes. Your boy is teetering on the edge of the precipice. The jury at his trial will know he’s a police officer: that’s not going to win him sympathy, however clever you are at empanelling them. There’s enough there for me to ask them for a murder conviction. If I do that will you plead him guilty?’

‘It would be my client’s decision, Gregor. You know that. Plus, if I retain counsel, his or her view would have to be taken on board too.’

‘Frankie,’ said Broughton, ‘you’ve got rights of audience in the High Court. You can appear for Weekes yourself, and we both know you like the limelight that an acquittal brings. We both know also that you’ve got a bloody good record of “not guilty” and “not proven” verdicts, precisely because you have a talent for reading the evidence and then reading the jury’s collective mind. If you bring in an advocate to defend this guy on a murder charge, you’re as good as telling me you think he’s guilty. Come on. Are you going to plead him, and save us the cost of a trial?’

Birtles shook her head. ‘On a murder charge, no. . and I’ll defend him myself.’

‘Now we’re getting somewhere. And on the other charges?’

‘On those I’ll be offering mitigation.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Stallings.

‘It means,’ Broughton told her, ‘that Frankie knows when she’s on a loser.’

‘If I do that,’ the lawyer continued, ‘what’s the deal?’

‘I won’t ask the judge for more than five.’ The fiscal frowned again. ‘But we’re not there yet. I’m not afraid to face you in court on the murder charge.’

McGurk looked at Stallings, and nodded.

‘Before we go there,’ the inspector said, ‘we have some new information. I’m sorry you haven’t had advance sight of this, Mr Broughton, but we didn’t hear of it ourselves until this morning.’ She opened her case and took out a slim folder from which she extracted a print, an image of a woman, lying on a rock. ‘Her name’s Nadine Sebastian, she was an artist, and she was shot dead yesterday morning in Spain, within sight of DCC Skinner’s house there. He saw the body from his terrace and alerted the local police.’

As the fiscal studied the photograph, Stallings handed him another, showing the bullet wound. ‘It’s almost a perfect match for Dean, isn’t it?’ he murmured, then passed the sheets to Birtles. ‘Curious.’

‘That’s an understatement,’ the lawyer declared, after a few seconds. ‘You can’t nail my client for this one, and the similarity is striking. Has there been an arrest in Spain?’

‘No. But. . Remember Davis Colledge, Sugar Dean’s protégé slash boyfriend?’

‘Yes. The one you haven’t interviewed yet.’

‘We know he was in the area at the time of this incident, and we know that he caught a flight to Holland not long afterwards.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’ Broughton asked.

‘I’m afraid not. We’ve advised Customs to be on the lookout for him, obviously. We don’t think he caught a connecting flight out of Rotterdam, or Schiphol, but to be honest we can’t be sure.’

‘Have you checked with his parents? His father’s an MP, as I recall from your report.’

‘He was contacted yesterday,’ said McGurk, ‘and again this morning. Mr Colledge is still saying he hasn’t seen or heard from him since he left for France almost two weeks ago.’

‘But he will. Sooner or later he’ll show up at the family home, wide-eyed and innocent, and probably pleading ignorance of Miss Dean’s death.’ He turned back to Birtles. ‘Frankie, this changes things. The Spanish incident may have no connection to the Dean case, but until this young man is found and eliminated as a suspect, it would be unwise of me to proceed with a murder charge against your client. I’m still going to do him for attempting to pervert and the lesser charges, make no mistake about that, but anything more serious is on hold, without prejudice. We’ll stick him up before the sheriff as planned this morning, for the remand hearing.’

‘I’ll ask for bail,’ Birtles told him.

‘I imagine you will. I’m not of a mind to oppose it, unless the police have a strong view that I should. Inspector?’

Stallings shook her head. ‘No, sir,’ she said, ‘we won’t ask for a remand in custody. However. .’ she paused for emphasis ‘. . I do want, as a condition of bail, that Weekes be forbidden from contacting or approaching his former wife, Lisanne Weekes, and his by now, I reckon, ex-girlfriend, PC Mae Grey. It’s possible that both these women may be witnesses against him.’

‘Frankie?’

‘I’ve got no problem with that.’

‘In that case,’ Broughton announced, ‘I’ll see you in court in about an hour. Now, if you’ll excuse us, I’d like a further word with the officers.’

Birtles smiled, going from severe to attractive in an instant. ‘I’m sure you would,’ she said, sliding her papers into a black leather document holder, and heading for the door.

The fiscal watched her leave. ‘The lad,’ he began, as the door closed. ‘What do we know about his movements on the morning of the Sugar Dean murder? We know where PC Weekes was, but what about him?’

‘He was a boarder at the school,’ McGurk replied. ‘The problem is that by the time the body was found, it had broken up and the other pupils were scattered to the four winds. We’ve been as thorough as we could: we located his dormitory warden and interviewed her. She says that he came in for breakfast at nine sharp. They were given a lie-in that morning as it was the last day of the session. She hadn’t seen him before that, though. She gave us the names of some of his pals; since he left his digs in France we’ve been contacting as many as we can find, but they’ve all been pretty vague. What we have been told, though, more than once, is that Davis is a very fit lad, and that he often got up early and went for a run.’

‘So it’s possible that he ran up to the golf course, intercepted the victim and shot her, then got back in time for a late bowl of All Bran?’

‘All other things being equal; for example, him having access to a firearm, yes.’

‘So why wasn’t he taken seriously as a suspect from the start? Because of his dad?’

‘Because there was no reason to, Mr Broughton,’ said the sergeant. ‘The victim’s parents spoke well of him. The night before the murder he took her to meet his folks, and they all got on. The day after, they were supposed to be meeting up in France for what was shaping up as a pretty intimate holiday. Where does any of that put him in the frame?’

The fiscal nodded. ‘Well put, Jack. You’re right: I accept that. And then, of course, PC Weekes lumbered on to the scene and offered himself up as the perpetrator.’ He looked at Stallings. ‘Be in no doubt, Inspector, regardless of what’s happened elsewhere, I still fancy him. But before I lay it all on him, we must pursue the Colledge alternative. Do all you can to find him. When you do, I want him brought back up to Edinburgh for questioning. There will be no cosy chat in Mummy and Daddy’s drawing room, with them eyeballing the proceedings. I need you to interview him in the same room and under the same conditions as Weekes, and I want you to go just as hard at him as you did on the tapes I heard this morning. Squeeze him and see what pops out. Don’t worry about comeback from the Shadow Defence Secretary. I’ll deal with any flak from that quarter.’ He winked. ‘You never heard anything like that from the Crown Prosecution Service, did you?’

She returned his smile. ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I never even got to talk to them.’

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