Death's Door

Forty

If he had known that Gregor Broughton lived in Elie, Mario McGuire might have delegated the visit to a junior officer. The Fife coastal village held mixed memories for him; some years before, when he and Maggie Rose had both been junior CID officers, they had been on a stake-out there and had wound up sharing the last hotel room in town. Their lives had been conjoined from that time, as they drifted into an ill-judged and ultimately ill-fated marriage, which had ended in relatively harmonious divorce. Many times he had wondered what would have happened to them both if, that night, there had been one more room at the inn.

He had avoided the place since then, but by the time the late-duty man in the Crown Office had called him back with Broughton’s home address, there had been little or no option but to go himself. He had called Paula to tell her that he would be late; she had told him cheerfully that she was in the course of reorganising the kitchen, and that he could be as late as he liked.

The drive from the centre of Edinburgh took almost exactly an hour. As he drove down the broad avenue that led into Elie, his navigation system told him to turn right at the first junction. He followed its orders, noting, as he drove past it, that the big grey-stone hotel in which he and Maggie had got together had closed for business and had been converted into flats. ‘I wonder where the weary travellers lay their heads in Elie now,’ he mused aloud, ‘and randy young coppers get laid?’

Broughton’s house was a modern structure, half bungalow, half chalet, with a walled garden and a gate that led down to the beach. Forewarned of his visit, the fiscal greeted him warmly: he was pleased to have company, McGuire guessed, since Lady Broughton was on High Court business in Glasgow, and would be staying over.

‘Have you eaten, Mario?’ he asked.

‘No. I came as soon as I had everything put together, the picture, the latest witness statements and the press release.’

‘I thought not, so I’ve knocked us up some sandwiches. That okay?’

‘Sure, thanks. That’s much appreciated.’

Broughton led the way through to a garden conservatory: the sun was going down, but McGuire could still make out the grey sea, and the East Lothian coast beyond. Okay, he thought, but not a patch on Loch Tay.

The two men made small talk as they ate, of rugby, restaurants, wives and partners. They left the business until they had finished. Once they were ready, the detective gave the prosecutor a run-down of the investigation, and of the steps that had led them to Dominic Padstow.

‘Is Steele confident about the Noone girl’s memory?’ he asked, as the chief superintendent finished. ‘It’s one thing being sure of yourself in a police interview, but I don’t have to tell you that if she turns out to be a key witness she’ll have to be more than that. The last thing we want is for her to become hesitant and evasive under defence cross-examination. ’

‘Stevie’s my best officer,’ McGuire told him, ‘although I won’t appreciate it if you pass that opinion on to anyone else. He’ll have given her a quiet grilling himself, with that very thought in mind; if he’s satisfied, so am I.’

‘And you’re satisfied, beyond any doubt, that Dominic Padstow is an alias?’

‘We’ve searched every likely database in the UK and we’ve come up with nothing. He doesn’t have a national-insurance number or an NHS number. There is no passport issued under that name.’

‘Okay, I get the picture.’

‘Good. Now can everyone else get it? Can I phone Alan Royston and let him issue it, and the press release to the media?’

Broughton picked up the draft release from the table in front of him and read through it. ‘Should be considered dangerous?’ he exclaimed. ‘The public should not approach him? That’s prejudicial. We could get stuffed by the defence on that.’

‘They might try it. Now tell me honestly, if they did put up a defence that our warning, given in good faith in the interests of public safety, denied him a fair trial, and your wife was the judge, how far would she chuck it?’

‘As far as she could; right out of court for sure. But that doesn’t mean to say another judge would.’

‘Name one who’d be likely to. Lord Nelson?’

‘No, not even him, I’ll grant you. Okay, you can have it.’

‘And the picture?’

‘There’s hardly any point to the press release without the likeness, is there?’ He picked it up. ‘You’re calling it an artist’s impression?’

‘Absolutely. There couldn’t be a more apt description.’

‘I know nothing about painting,’ said Broughton, ‘but this has to be a unique work. It could become priceless. Imagine, an artist using her brush to identify the man who killed her.’