Murmuring the Judges

51

Brian Mackie was a conscientious officer, and the police service had always been the most important thing in his life. Therefore it was a novelty for him to feel irritated, as he parked his car in the staff spaces beneath Police Headquarters.

Having spent the previous day in conference with Dan Pringle, comparing notes on the murders of Archergait and Barnfather, and beginning the preparation of a report to the Lord Advocate, he had been looking forward to spending Sunday with Sheila, much of it horizontally.

Instead, Maggie Rose’s telephone call had plucked him from their bed and sent him into Headquarters, to meet her star witness, and show him a range of photographs. He had thought of delegating the task, until he had realised that there was no one to whom he could pass it on.

So, grumbling for almost the first time in his adult life, he had answered the call of duty. Using the duty CID man he had combed the police library for a series of photographs of present and former customers, not the classic numbered full face and profile of dour, bewildered, and occasionally savage faces taken on arrest, but a collection of half a dozen other shots from the Serious Crimes section, some formal, some snatched by surveillance units.

He had taken his rogues’ album up to Andy Martin’s office suite, where he had added a glossy black and white photograph of Norman King, given secretly to Skinner by the Lord Advocate himself.

Happily, David Beaton prided himself on promptness. Mackie glanced up at the clock as the call came from reception to announce his arrival. It showed twelve noon, exactly.

‘Bring him up,’ he said.

‘There’s only me on the desk, sir,’ said the duty officer.

‘The bloody door’s locked. Bring him up,’ he ordered again, testily, grinding out the words.

‘Sir.’ The duty officer decided to stop chancing his arm.

‘Mr Beaton,’ said the Detective Superintendent, as the visitor was shown in, immaculate in cream trousers, a pink shirt and a lightly checked sports jacket, ‘I’m Brian Mackie. DCI Rose told me about your encounter in the Nature Reserve yesterday.

‘It was very helpful to us. Let’s hope this meeting will be even more so.’

He showed him through to Martin’s private office, where a folder containing the seven photographs lay on the briefing table.

‘Have a seat, please,’ said the detective, ‘and, when you’re ready, open the folder and look at the photographs inside, one by one.’

Beaton sat down, glanced at the slim green cardboard covering, then looked up at him. ‘I’d rather expected to be looking at some sort of book with hundreds of photographs in it. This suggests to me that you have a firm suspect, and that his face is in here.’

‘I can’t comment on that,’ said the Superintendent, impassively. ‘Just look, please, and tell me if the man you saw is there.’

The witness nodded, opened the folder, and looked down intently at the first photograph. He gazed at it for over a minute, then turned it over and concentrated on the second. The third likeness was that of Norman King. Watching him, Mackie imagined that he saw a slight tensing of the neck muscles as he turned over the second picture and looked at the shot. If there had been it was gone in an instant, for Beaton treated it in exactly the same way as the others, and as the four which followed, staring down at each one.

When he was finished, he looked up at Mackie once more. ‘Might I look at them all together,’ he asked, ‘spread out on the table?’

‘Of course.’ The policeman picked up the folders and spread the seven photographs on the surface, at random rather than in the order in which Beaton had looked at them first.

The man stood up and walked along the line of faces, left to right, back again, left to right once more. At last he stopped, and stood looking down once more, holding his chin loosely with the fingers of his right hand. He stared at the table for another full minute, until he looked round at Mackie and nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m as certain as I can be, in the circumstances, and considering the distance there was between us. That’s the man who was with Lord Barnfather.’

He reached down and touched the fifth photograph in the line, tapping his fingertips on the face of Norman King.