Hour Of Darkness

Thirty-Five

Mary Chambers frowned as her phone rang in the car, at the very moment that she was manoeuvring into a tight parking space. She hit the Bluetooth button and snapped, ‘Yes?’ as she completed the move.

‘Bad time?’ Mario McGuire asked.

‘Slightly, but it’s okay now. Sorry.’

‘Are you sure? You can always call me back.’

‘No, boss, it’s all right, honest. Let’s deal with it.’

‘It’s a chain of command job,’ the ACC said, ‘a message I could pass on myself but if I did, you’d be out of the loop. I’ve just been speaking to Bob Skinner, and this comes from that conversation. I hope that Luke Skywalker’s told you by now about a name that came up in the Bella Watson investigation: Duane Hicks, a St Lucian man who worked in Edinburgh long enough to marry Marlon Watson’s girlfriend, and become stepfather to Bella’s grandson.’

‘Yes, I’m aware. Sammy gave me an update half an hour ago, when he asked me to get him a search warrant so he could find something he’s already found.’

‘Do I want to know that?’

‘I think so. I had to weigh it up myself, but all he’s doing is closing off a possible line of attack in a trial.’

‘This is to do with the Bella investigation?’

‘Yes. They have a strong suspect, a guy called Booth, and the thing that they’re going to find again, on a firm legal basis this time, represents motive.

‘As for the young man Hicks, he’s part of a separate line of inquiry, but there’s no reason to think it’ll come to anything. It’s an anomaly, that’s all. Booth ticks all the boxes.

‘That said, Sauce Haddock has a bee in his bonnet about Hastie McGrew. He says that he has solid information that in the old days he was more active than was known at the time, and that we should be taking him seriously now.’

‘And I have solid information,’ the ACC countered, ‘that Hastie couldn’t have done it, but let’s not go there until we have to. Meantime, another name’s cropped up, courtesy of big Bob. This man looked after Perry Holmes, with Hastie, until he was jailed, in the period leading up to his death. His name’s Vanburn Gayle, he’s also a West Indian, and I want to know whether there’s any connection between him and Duane Hicks.’

‘Okay,’ Chambers said. ‘Sammy has a clever little girl on his team; she traced Hicks, so I’ll suggest that he puts her on it, while they’re concentrating on Mr Booth.’

‘How’s that situation developing?’

‘It isn’t, yet. It’s delicate, with Pye and Haddock as witnesses in one murder and investigators in another. I’ve decided that I’m going to sit in on both interviews, but not take part. That’s where I’m bound now. Booth’s back in Edinburgh and Jack McGurk’s having first crack at him.’

‘Go for it,’ McGuire told her. ‘If it helps, now that you’re in the know, I can brief Pye’s team myself.’

‘I’d be grateful if you would.’

‘Then it’s done. Let me know how the first Booth interview goes.’

‘Thanks.’ She ended the call, switched off her engine, and stepped out into the car park behind the Torphichen Place police office. She had been stationed in the old building for a time, but the back entrance keypad code had been changed, and so she had to buzz for admission.

She bypassed the reception area, and took the stairs that led to the CID suite, where Jack McGurk and Karen Neville were waiting for her arrival.

‘Sorry, folks,’ she said as she breezed into the room. ‘I’m a juggler at the moment with three major inquiries on the go. I just caught a call about one of them, hence I’m a couple of minutes late.’

‘Three?’ McGurk repeated, a question in the word.

The head of CID cursed herself for forgetting that Ray Wilding’s mission was still clouded in secrecy. ‘Slip of the tongue,’ she replied, ‘although the way this man Booth’s going, who knows how many we’ll wind up with. Are we ready to go?’

‘Not quite,’ the acting DI told her. ‘Booth’s with his solicitor. She asked for twenty minutes and she still has five to go.’

‘She?’

‘Birtles.’

‘Frankie Bristles, eh. That was to be expected, I suppose. She’s the go-to for nearly all of Edinburgh’s wee hoodlums these days. Do we know who sent her?’

‘Nobody sent her,’ McGurk replied. ‘Booth asked for her to be called, as soon as he was booked in here.’

‘That’s interesting. How are we handling the drugs aspect, Jack?’

‘I don’t want to know about that, ma’am. The drugs team were quite clear about that. Sammy and Sauce went there to interview Booth and his girlfriend as potential witnesses in the Cramond Island woman case. They had no reason to suspect that drugs were being dealt from that address. . not until they found the steel door, at any rate.

‘With that line of inquiry discounted, Karen and I see no complications and we’re not planning to go looking for any. He shot his girlfriend dead, we’ve got witnesses and we’ve got forensic evidence, his prints on the gun. That’s all we need.’

The DCS nodded. ‘Agreed. But I’m not dancing to Miss Birtles’ tune, so let’s get in there whether she’s ready or not. What room are they in?’

‘Interview two, ma’am,’ Neville replied.

‘Lead on then, Disco Queen.’

The DS grinned. In her younger days, before marrying Andy Martin, she had been a regular around the city’s club scene. Her active social life had spawned the nickname, and it had stuck.

The three detectives walked the short distance to the interview room. When they reached it, Chambers stood aside. ‘I’m just a fly on the wall here,’ she said.

McGurk nodded, then strode into the room without knocking. Two faces, one male, the other female, turned towards him in surprise.

‘Twenty minutes, I said,’ Frances Birtles protested.

He smiled. ‘You may have said, Frankie, but I never agreed. You’ve had time enough to persuade your client that he is as done as anyone you’ve ever seen and that he should be concentrating on keeping the judge happy.’

‘You do your job, Jack,’ she retorted, ‘and I’ll do mine.’

‘Agreed, so let’s get on with it. The quicker we’re finished, the quicker the two of you can move on to your next engagement, with my colleagues down in Leith.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ the grey-flecked lawyer snorted.

‘Aye, we will,’ Patrick Booth grunted.

‘Who’s doing this interview?’ Birtles asked.

‘Karen and me; DCS Chambers is just sitting in, that’s all.’

‘Fair enough. I understand why.’

They waited as Neville loaded the recorder and switched it on. When the red light was showing, McGurk identified the five people in the room, for the tape and the video camera, then cautioned the prisoner, formally.

‘We’re here to interview Mr Booth,’ he went on, ‘in connection with the murder of his partner, Victoria Riley, in their home at fifty-three Beeswaxbank Road, Edinburgh, and also with an assault on a police officer. Have you anything to say, Patrick?’

‘No comment.’

‘Oh dear,’ Neville sighed. ‘We have two witnesses to Vicky’s murder, we have the murder weapon, an illegal unregistered firearm, with your fingerprints all over it, including a very clear one on the trigger. We’re also confident of matching the lubricant used on the gun to traces found on your clothing, when the Transport Police removed it for examination.

‘All of that means that we don’t actually need any comment. You’re going to be charged with murder, Mr Booth, be in no doubt about that, and you’re going to be convicted. This is your opportunity to practise your plea in mitigation; in other words,’ her voice rose, ‘to tell us why you murdered that poor woman by putting a bullet through her head!’

‘There’s no need for that, Sergeant,’ Frankie Birtles protested.

‘Oh, but there is,’ she insisted. ‘I’ve still got the picture of Vicky Riley fresh in my mind, at the scene and during her post-mortem, when the pathologist opened her up and found among other things that she was carrying your client’s second child. I’ve got two kids of my own, so I do have a need, Miss Birtles. I need to hear him say why he did it.’

‘I never done it,’ Booth shouted, suddenly.

Jack McGurk stared at him. ‘No? Then who did.’

‘Yon fuckin’ polis!’ Booth brandished his right arm. His hand was encased in plaster.

The tall detective frowned. ‘Elaborate, please.’

‘The young lad, he did it. Ah never meant to shoot Vicky, but he hit me with his stick and the gun went off. He broke ma hand!’ Booth pouted, as if to emphasise that he was a victim also.

‘The statements that we have from the two police witnesses both say that the gun was discharged before DS Haddock’s baton made contact with you.’

‘It’s no’ true,’ Booth protested. ‘He hit me and that made me do it. I was never going to shoot her. That polis kilt her, no’ me.’

‘So who were you going to shoot? If not Vicky, it must have been one of the police officers. Right?’

‘Ah never meant tae shoot anyone. The safety catch was on.’

McGurk looked at the solicitor, a faint smile twitching the corners of his mouth. ‘Frankie,’ he said, ‘I assume that you’ve read the crime scene report. Are you going to tell your client he’s an idiot or am I?’

She winced slightly, shook her head, and leaned towards Booth. ‘Patrick,’ she murmured, ‘the firearm was an old Glock. It doesn’t have a manual safety catch.’

‘Do you have anything else?’ McGurk asked her.

‘Of course,’ she responded, while glancing sideways at Booth. ‘I have a client who has, let us say, an alternative lifestyle, which makes him feel the need for personal protection. Whether the weapon he carried was legal or not isn’t the issue here.

‘Patrick came into his home and found the door open; that alarmed him straight away. When he moved through to his living room, he found his partner and child being menaced by two unknown men. He assumed they were criminals and acted accordingly. Obviously, we’ll plead to a charge of illegal possession of a firearm, but as for the rest. .’

The acting DI smiled, with a degree of admiration. ‘You’re a fine advocate, Miss Birtles,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t help noticing that you weren’t able to look me in the eye while you were explaining all that. The police witnesses both say that Miss Riley called out “It’s the polis” while Mr Booth was still in the hall, then she was killed by his gun, in his hand.

‘You and I both know that to have even a slim chance of an accidental death plea being accepted, he should have surrendered himself there and then, as soon as the gun was discharged. But he didn’t. Instead he kicked DS Haddock four square in the privates and he legged it, as fast as he could. Why did you do that, Patrick?’

Booth frowned and fixed him with a deep, piercing stare. ‘Because I was scared, mate, that’s why,’ he replied.

‘Accepted, but assaulting a policeman and running away was never going to make you less scared. And, as I said to your solicitor, it’s made your position even worse. You were never going to get away, man.’

‘Aye, fine, but all Ah could think about at the time was gettin’ the fuck away.’

‘Even with your partner lying dead on the floor, and your child sitting beside her with her mother’s blood all over her?’

‘Even then. It wasnae you bastards I was scared of, or doin’ some time. Have you any idea how much gear there was in the place?’

‘We’re not interested in the drugs,’ McGurk said, quickly. ‘That’s a separate investigation, by other people.’

‘Maybe you’re not,’ Booth wailed, ‘but I fuckin’ was! You guys’ll only bang me up for a few years, but there’s others would cut my feet aff wi’ a fuckin’ chainsaw. Look what. .’

‘Patrick!’ Frankie Bristles exclaimed. ‘Enough. Don’t say another word. They have to prove you knew about the drugs.’ She turned in her chair and looked at the detectives. ‘If I advise my client to plead guilty to a reduced charge of culpable homicide, will you go for that?’

‘It’s not my decision,’ the detective replied, ‘but if the Crown Office agree to a plea deal we won’t oppose it. I’m not dropping the police assault, though; Sauce Haddock would be seriously annoyed if I did. As for the gun, your man will have to take his chances there. If he’s lucky, he might get off with no more than ten years, all in.’

‘Fair enough,’ the lawyer declared. ‘In that case this interview’s over. Charge him and let’s go on to the next.’