Aftershock

Seventy-five

‘ If I hadn’t been a police officer, would you have released me last night?’ asked Inspector Varley.

‘No, Jock,’ said Detective Chief Superintendent Mario McGuire, solemnly. ‘It wouldn’t have made a blind bit of difference. The search of your house, your car and your office didn’t yield any results, but you don’t have to be a cop to know not to take a murder weapon home. Given twenty-four hours, you’d expect most people to do a pretty good job of destroying incriminating clothing too. I’d still have waited for the post-mortem report, and for the completion of testing of foreign DNA traces found on Weekes’s body. As a matter of fact, those tests are still under way.’

‘So I’m stuck here, a. . a …’ He stopped, lost for words.

‘A victim of your own lack of caution might be a good way to put it,’ Neil McIlhenney suggested. ‘But you’re not stuck here any longer, Inspector. We’re releasing you.’

‘What’s made you see the light?’

‘Professor Hutchinson, the pathologist who did the autopsy. He’s completed his report, and we’ve just finished reading it. Old Joe doesn’t prevaricate: when he gives you an opinion, it’s one that he’s prepared to defend in the witness box, under any level of hostile questioning. He says for sure that most of the wounds on the body could only have been inflicted by a left-handed man, including the one that ripped his neck open and put an end to him. I’ve just spoken to the doctor at the Western General who treated you when you broke your finger. He told me that it’ll be another week or so before you can as much as pick your nose with your left paw. So you’re no longer a suspect. You’re free to go: we’ll get a car to take you home.’

Varley leaned back and let out a huge sigh.

‘Jock,’ said McGuire, ‘I hope you understand that the two of us are as relieved by this outcome as you are. Also, I’ll admit that while we might have gone on about you being reckless when you went bombing after Weekes, neither one of us would have done any different in the same circumstances. Truth is, I wouldn’t have been as restrained as you, and I say that from experience. When I was married, a toe-rag cut my wife when she went to arrest him, slashed her arm. Nuff said. No hard feelings, I hope.’

The inspector shook his head. ‘None, sir. Now it’s sorted and I can look at it a wee bit less nervously, you did what you had to, both of you.’

‘Thanks for that. Jock, now that you’re no longer a suspect, you’ve become a witness. The PM report puts time of death more or less when you were there, so there’s a chance that you might actually have seen the killer, either hanging about or on his way there, as you were leaving. Think back; can you help us?’

‘To tell you the truth,’ said Varley, ‘when I left there, all I saw was red. The Auchendinny Ladies’ Flute Band could have been marching naked down the street and it wouldn’t have registered. One thing, though. Last night you asked me about the back door: I’ve been thinking about that, and I’m pretty sure now that it was open.’

‘So it’s possible that while you were giving Theo the heavy message, his attacker could have been waiting at the rear of the house?’

‘Entirely. Have you got any other suspects in the queue?’

‘None of the obvious ones,’ McIlhenney told him. ‘The next stage will be to interview his work colleagues and friends.’

‘You can cut that in half,’ the inspector replied. ‘From what I remember of PC Weekes when he was at Livingston, he didn’t have any friends. He was a real outsider. Maybe it had something to do with his colour, but I don’t really think so. I reckon it was just the way he was.’