Poisoned Cherries

Chapter 21

Alison was tearful when Morrow brought her to us; she wrapped herself around me straight away and set about soaking my shirt. Eventually I peeled her off, and once she had calmed herself down, introduced her to her new minder.

Ricky did his best to look like a friendly uncle, but he didn’t come close. Like he said; once a copper always a copper.

We went to her place first, so that she could pick up some clothes. As usual, the police had been less than tidy in their search, and as usual they hadn’t bothered to clear up once they’d finished. She wanted to start in on the mess right there and then, but we had more urgent things to do. She started to talk to us about her head-to-head with Morrow as she packed her overnight bag, but Ricky stopped her.

‘Don’t tell us anything,’ he warned her, ‘however innocuous it might be. We’ve got no privilege. Just get on with packing.’

The Ross residence turned out to be a grey stone semi-detached near King’s Buildings, which are part of Edinburgh University. He showed his unexpected house guest her bedroom then sat her down in the conservatively furnished living room.

‘Right,’ he began, ‘first off, who’s your lawyer?’

‘Alex Stein, of Stein and Rothman,’ she told him. ‘He does all my stuff.’

‘He’s no good; that firm doesn’t do criminal work. Leave this to me.’ He went out into the hall; within a minute we could hear him talking, earnestly, on the phone. The conversation didn’t last long but when he came back into the living room, he had a satisfied smile on his face.

‘Well?’ I asked him.

He picked up a remote and switched on the television. ‘Wait.’ He flicked through the channels until he found an Australian rugby league match on Sky, dropped into a chair and settled down to watch.

There were still seven minutes to go when the doorbell rang. Ricky went to answer and returned with a short, balding, middle-aged guy in a dark suit. ‘This is Charlie Badenoch,’ he said. ‘He’s the best criminal solicitor in Scotland.’

The lawyer looked at me in surprise. Charlie and I know each other from way back; his firm gave me quite a lot of work in the days when I was a private enquiry agent.

‘Alison’s a friend,’ I explained, before he had a chance to ask what the hell I was doing there.

He nodded, then shook hands with his new client as she stood to greet him.

‘Give us a pound, Charlie.’ It was my turn to be surprised, but Badenoch simply smiled at Ross, dug into his pocket and handed us each a pound coin.

‘You are now both investigators in my employ in connection with this incident,’ he announced.

‘Fine.’ Ross looked at Alison. ‘Now we’ve got privilege. You can say anything you like in front of us and we can’t be called as witnesses. Okay, did you kill him?’

‘What?’ she gasped. If she was acting, she was better at it than me.

‘Did you drive an awl into the back of David Capperauld’s head and kill him?’

‘No! I didn’t. And what’s an awl?’

Ricky didn’t say anything; he just turned on his heel and left the room. When he came back, a few minutes later, he was holding an implement identical to the one Morrow had shown us, only its handle was blue.

‘That’s an awl,’ he told her, pinching its shaft between his thumb and forefinger so that she could see it. ‘Also known as a gimlet. The police found one just like it at your flat. Your fingerprint’s on it, and his, and they’re going to prove that it has your fiance’s blood and hair on it as well.’

She went chalk white, even as I looked at her. ‘I helped him fix something up a few weeks ago, in his kitchen,’ she whispered. ‘I handled it then.’

‘Why did you lie to the police,’ I asked her, ‘about being at home on Wednesday night?’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Alison,’ Ricky said. ‘They’ve spoken to the taxi firm; they know you were picked up from home and dropped at your office. They’ll argue that you didn’t go in; that instead you went round to David’s place and killed him with that thing they’ve got.

‘They’ll then argue that you took it away with you, and four days later staged an elaborate charade with Oz, here, so that he could find the poor guy.’

‘But I didn’t!’ she wailed, then burst into tears again.

Ross threw Badenoch a grim glance. ‘Do you still want this, Charlie?’

‘Like her boyfriend needed a hole in the fucking head,’ the solicitor replied. ‘But I’m in it now. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I’m not pleading this one in the High Court myself, even though I could. I’m going to instruct a top silk.’

I did what I did best, and calmed Alison down again. When she could, she looked up at Ricky. ‘I was at home last Wednesday,’ she said. ‘But I got a phone call from someone telling me that there was a light left on in my office, so I called a taxi and went to switch it off.’

‘Who called you?’ Charlie asked.

‘I don’t know. He just asked if I was the Goodchild in Goodchild Capperauld. When I said I was, he said that he worked in an office across from mine and he told me what the problem was. He didn’t give me his name.’

‘When you got there, was there a light on?’

Alison shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered.

‘Why didn’t you tell Ronnie Morrow this story?’ Ross demanded. ‘Is it because you’ve just made it up?’

‘No, it’s the truth. As far as I was concerned I was at home on Wednesday night. That was just an interlude; I never thought to mention it.’

I felt myself getting into the swing of this. ‘Have you got call identification on your phone? Like a readout that gives you the number calling?’

‘Yes, I have.’

I looked at the other two guys, then back at Alison. ‘Have you had many incoming calls at home since then?’

‘No, not really.’

‘That’s good,’ said Badenoch, then glanced at Ricky and me. ‘You two should get back to Ms Goodchild’s place now and check that instrument, but be bloody careful not to erase anything.’

‘I can’t,’ Ross told him. ‘The girl’s virtually in my custody, at this address; I can’t leave her and I can’t traipse her all over the city.’

‘You and I’ll do it then, Oz,’ the solicitor declared.

I almost agreed, then I thought of the movie. ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got good professional reasons for not being involved any further.’

‘Fuck me,’ Charlie Badenoch moaned. ‘Is that all I get for a pound? Okay, I’ll do it myself; I’ll take my secretary with me as a witness.’

‘We could arrange for Morrow to go with you,’ I suggested. The lawyer and the ex-superintendent both looked at me as if I was daft.

‘Well?’ I demanded.

Charlie took my elbow and led me towards the window, so that our backs were to Alison. ‘What if there was no call?’ he whispered. It must have been a flash of the old Blackstone; a poor, sad, gullible, trusting idiot where women were concerned.

‘True,’ I muttered.

We turned back to face the others. ‘Let’s not get too excited about this. If Alison was set up, whoever did it was probably clever enough to use a call-box. The police may argue that Alison could have gone out and made the call to herself and had it picked up by her answering service.’

‘Yes, but if that was the case why didn’t she volunteer that story to Morrow?’

‘If I was going to kill David,’ Alison interrupted, ‘why did I take a taxi at all? And why did I book one that could be traced through the company contract?’

‘The Crown could argue that you were either stupid or very, very clever, that you set up the whole call-out thing to explain your presence in the area, just in case you were seen.’

‘What about the meeting with me?’ I asked. ‘If she set me up to find the body, then all that discussion would have been phoney; the James Torrent problem could all have been bullshit.’

‘Oz!’ Alison protested.

‘Shut up,’ I told her. ‘The police haven’t even started on you yet. It won’t be Ronnie Morrow who interviews you next time; it’ll be someone nasty, like Ricky here. If we’re going to keep your bum out of jail for any longer than a day or two we’re going to have to have all these questions answered before you meet whoever that is.’

I ignored her and looked back at the other two. ‘If the James Torrent story is true, it helps, yes?’ They both nodded. ‘In that case, I’ll follow that up.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ asked Charlie. ‘It’s involvement, Oz.’

‘Sure, but if the story is genuine. .’

‘It is!’ Alison shouted.

‘I told you before; shut up. If it is, I’m the guy who’s supposed to be delivering Ewan Capperauld to open this bloody office, so it would be natural for me to come to see him. If anyone else turns up and starts asking him questions he might react by firing Alison and her firm on the spot.’

‘You’ve got a point,’ Ricky conceded.

‘Besides,’ I added, ‘there’s something else. I want to meet the guy who was brave or stupid enough to try to rip off my girlfriend.’