Fatal Last Words

Two

In common with most uniformed officers, if he had to work on Sundays, Sergeant Ian McCall preferred the early shift. OK, maybe it did curtail Saturday night, but he and his wife were no carousers, so that was a burden that could be borne. The upside was that the best part of the afternoon and all the evening was his; that meant he could catch the football on telly. . if there was a game that took his fancy.

He was in Lothian Road when the call came in, in the passenger seat with his rookie partner at the wheel. ‘Police attendance required at a sudden death at Charlotte Square Gardens.’

‘Got it,’ he radioed back to the communications centre. ‘Sergeant McCall and PC Knight are in the area, will respond. We should be there in two minutes.’ He paused. ‘Isn’t that the Book Festival site?’ he asked.

‘No idea,’ the operator replied.

‘Yes it is, Sarge,’ said Kylie Knight. (‘You know you’re getting old,’ McCall, who was forty-three, had declared to a colleague, ‘when we start to recruit coppers called Kylie.’) ‘I was at an event there last night. The speaker was Bruce Anderson; remember that politician who was Secretary of State for Scotland a few years back, the one whose wife was murdered?’

‘Big audience, was it?’ asked McCall, the question heavily layered with sarcasm. He was not a man with time in his life for politics and he had little understanding of those who had.

‘The tent was full,’ she told him. ‘I know,’ she added, seeing his reaction. ‘I was surprised myself. It was quite lively, though.’

‘Forgive me, Kylie, but you don’t seem the sort to give up a Saturday night to listen to a guy like that.’

‘I’m not, but my boyfriend’s a politics student, and he wanted to go. He says that Anderson’s interesting. Apparently he’s been threatening to switch to the Nationalists, and he’s written a book, attacking the government that he was a part of.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Not much, but Byron did; he was on his feet at the end, and afterwards he couldn’t stop talking about the way the man’s reinvented himself. . like Al Gore, he said, whoever he is.’

‘American footballer, I think,’ McCall ventured. ‘What did you think of him?’

‘I can’t honestly say I took to him. He struck me as an angry man. Byron says that he is; he says that he feels the Labour Party didn’t give him the support he should have had after he lost his wife, that they used it as an excuse to shove him on to the sidelines, and to keep him out there.’

‘Was the DCC there?’

Knight frowned. ‘Mr Skinner? Not that I saw. Why should he have been?’

‘Because if you go far enough back, you’ll find that he was Anderson’s security adviser, when he was Secretary of State.’

The young constable shrugged. ‘His name wasn’t mentioned. Aileen de Marco’s was, though. Anderson said that she was. . How did he put it? He was so pumped up when he said it that he made me laugh. . a Westminster poodle at the head of a government with no authority, and that she had sold her soul to her coalition partners to stay in power after the last election.’

‘The DCC will not like that,’ the sergeant grunted. ‘All the same. .’ He took out his mobile and called his base at Gayfield Square. ‘Put me through to Inspector Varley,’ he said as he was answered. ‘Jock,’ Knight heard him say. ‘It’s Ian here; we’ve just taken a shout for a sudden death at the Book Festival site. No idea who, but it’s a pretty high-profile venue, so I thought you’d best know about it.’ Pause. ‘Yes, OK, see you there.’

As he spoke, Knight swung the car from Princes Street into South Charlotte Street. ‘Where do I park?’ she asked. ‘At the entrance?’

‘No, because there are traffic lights there. Take a left turn into the square.’

‘Can I do that, Sarge? Isn’t it one-way?’

McCall sighed. ‘Kylie, this is a police car. You can do pretty much what you like, short of blocking the chief constable’s driveway. Go round the square and park on the far side. It’s no through road there, apart from taxis. . and us.’

The constable followed his direction; there were several empty bays on the far side of the square and she pulled into the one closest to the entrance, and in front of the side gate. It was being held open by a middle-aged man in a security uniform, with thinning red hair and a goatee beard. The older police officer recognised him from previous meetings. ‘Hello, Mr Richards,’ he called out as he climbed from the patrol vehicle.

As he did so, he was aware of a tall, tanned figure, with close-cropped, steel-grey hair, his muscles sharply defined in a red T-shirt and tight black shorts. He saw him run along the pavement to McCall’s left, then down the ramp that provided wheelchair passage between the roadway and the Festival site, heading towards North Charlotte Street. As the man’s eye took in the scene, his stride seemed to falter momentarily; but if he had considered stopping, he put the idea to one side and carried on, loping across the roadway, down the slope and out of sight.

‘He’s up early,’ Knight exclaimed. ‘Shouldn’t we have stopped him?’

The sergeant smiled as he shook his head. ‘We’ll hear from him soon enough, I’ll bet.’