Past lying, p.21
Past Lying, page 21
‘It makes no sense. But then, the effects of death do not often obey the rules of logic.’
‘I thought I’d reached the point where I could have a relationship with someone else,’ Karen said. ‘It’s been fun. And interesting. He moves in very different worlds from me, personally and professionally. But lately, I’ve been feeling the distance between us is growing rather than getting smaller.’
‘Then it is time to leave, while there is still some goodness between you.’ His directness literally stopped Karen in her tracks. Rafiq knew nothing about her, and yet she felt instinctively there was sense in what he said. He’d carried on walking and now he turned to face her. He looked pained. ‘I have offended you. I am sorry. It is my habit as a surgeon not to give patients false hope. My friends say I should stop treating the rest of the world like a patient.’
‘I’m not offended. I’m afraid that you are right.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
‘Hurting someone who spends a lot of time and energy trying to please me.’ She gave a soft chuckle. ‘And often getting it very wrong.’
‘You will hurt him in the short term, but you will hurt yourself more in the long run. You say your man felt like the other half of you. Does it not feel shaming to settle for something less?’
Karen started walking again, giving Rafiq a wide berth as she passed. She walked briskly to the end of the path, staring across at the silent bulk of the Royal Yacht Britannia. He was right. He’d barely had a conversation with her, and yet he understood something about her she hadn’t been able to articulate.
Rafiq caught up with her. ‘I am sorry. My command of English is fine for communicating with other medical professionals. I have not learned British ways.’
Karen shook her head. ‘I appreciate your honesty.’
‘Perhaps we should talk about something less sensitive. Miran tells me the Scottish people are very agitated about the question of independence from England. Why is this?’
Karen burst out laughing. ‘You think that’s less sensitive? Rafiq, you’ve got a lot to learn about Scotland.’
‘Then you will have to teach me. If I am going to make a life here . . . ’
‘I’d enjoy that.’ As she spoke, Karen realised it wasn’t an empty platitude. ‘But first . . . ’ she pulled out her phone and headed for Uniqlo. ‘We need to sort you out with some clothes.’
24
Jason was wearing a path in the grass verge at the side of the pavement when Karen arrived outside the ugly brick and glass box that housed Police Scotland. There were rumours that property developers were circling the site and Karen reckoned there wasn’t a serving police officer who would stand in their way. It wasn’t only ugly, it was inconvenient, designed for an era when the digital age was barely a twinkle in anyone’s eye.
She was pleased to see that not only was Jason wearing his best suit, but he’d persuaded Eilidh to remove the corn rows and give the back of his head a very close trim. ‘Looking good,’ she said.
Karen had also dressed to impress. She’d taken one suit to Hamish’s on the off-chance she might have to do something that required more formality than black jeans and a Seasalt shirt, and she’d teamed it with a subdued navy layer. For all the good that would do either of them. ‘Masks,’ Karen said, putting on one of the blue disposables that she’d picked up from the pharmacy. She handed another to Jason, shaking her head at Eilidh’s garish fabric version. This wasn’t the time for individualism.
It took longer than usual to get across the threshold, but once they were inside it was straightforward. Some poor soul had been given the task of taping lines up the middle of corridors, and the walls had sprouted notices about masks, hand sanitisers and keeping the correct distance. At least the Dog Biscuit couldn’t sentence them to that.
There was no sign of life in the anteroom to ACC Markie’s office. Karen and Jason sat down on the visitors’ chairs, carefully placed well apart, and waited. ‘How did she tell me to report here yesterday when she knew she wouldn’t be back till morning?’ Jason asked.
‘At a guess, she wanted you to sit around getting more and more nervous till you were too scared to go home. And then you’d be sleepless and vulnerable.’
Before he could respond, ACC Ann Markie wheeled through the door with the precision of a parade ground manoeuvre. Her eyebrows rose as she took in Karen’s presence. ‘I wasn’t aware of asking for you, DCI Pirie.’
‘DC Murray is a valued member of my team, ma’am. I felt it was appropriate for me to be here.’
Markie strode past them and into her office. ‘Come in. And don’t bother sitting down, you’re not going to be here long.’
They exchanged a look – Karen irritated, Jason apprehensive – and followed her. Her office was brighter than the anteroom and although Markie was as perfectly turned out as ever, Karen thought she didn’t look exactly camera-ready. There were bags under her eyes, and her make-up, normally flawless, seemed to sit awkwardly on her skin.
‘This pandemic is a national crisis. People are dying every day. And I have to waste my time on officers who think the rules don’t apply to them.’ Karen was accustomed to Markie’s icy delivery, but this time she sounded genuinely angry. ‘Do you know why you’re here, DC Murray?’
Jason said nothing, suddenly beyond words.
‘Shall I enlighten you? You’re here because yesterday afternoon, you put on your Police Scotland uniform and forced your way into a COVID ward. In the process, you assaulted a doctor, a nurse and a member of the support staff. Does that stir any memories?’
He shook his head. ‘No, because it wasn’t me.’
Markie scoffed. ‘That’s it? “It wasn’t me.” That’s the best you can do?’
‘It’s the truth. I can prove it.’
‘Oh, do delight me with your alibi. No, let me guess. You were in your flat with your devoted fiancée.’
Karen was swiftly losing all patience. ‘No, he wasn’t. He was in the HCU office in Gayfield Square, working on a case we are investigating as a result of evidence that’s recently emerged.’
Markie gave her a basilisk stare. ‘Really? I know I instructed you to review old cases, but that doesn’t mean abandoning lockdown. You’re not supposed to be in the office.’
‘DC Murray was working alone. He needed access to office files and computer equipment.’
‘That’s your alibi, DC Murray? You were alone in a police office?’
‘I was making phone calls. I kept a log. You’ll be able to confirm it with the phone provider. And the data from the masts will prove I was in Edinburgh, not Kirkcaldy, when I made the calls.’ Jason had found his voice. Assertive, not aggressive. And not even slightly whiny. ‘Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to sit by my mother’s bedside. She’s fighting the COVID with everything she’s got and I’m not there to support her and I feel like I’m letting her down. But I never broke the rules. I never went to Kirkcaldy.’ Red-faced, hands balled into fists, frustration came off Jason in a wave.
‘He’s telling the truth,’ Karen said.
Markie showed no sign of belief or its opposite. ‘So if what DC Murray says is true, who walked into the Victoria Hospital and burst into his mother’s COVID ward wearing his uniform with his number on the epaulettes?’
Jason took a deep breath. ‘I couldn’t say, ma’am.’
Markie tossed her head in a dramatic gesture. ‘Well, that’s certainly not the truth. I need a name, DC Murray. Who did you give your uniform to?’
‘Nobody. I never gave anybody my kit.’
Markie made a noise of annoyance and stood up. ‘I take COVID very seriously. You both need to do the same. I want a name.’ Jason said nothing. ‘Very well. DC Murray, you are suspended from duty until this matter is cleared up. Go home and stay there. Now get out of my sight.’
They both turned to go, but Markie said sharply, ‘Not you, DCI Pirie. Not yet.’
Jason left the room, misery walking, and cast a glance back at Karen as she spoke. ‘Ma’am?’
‘Thank you for confirming what I’d already heard about your team. You’re working a case, not simply reviewing files? You seriously think a cold case is important enough to break the COVID rules?’
‘I’m doing everything I can to stay within the guidelines. But when it comes to giving families answers about the fate of their loved ones, I think delay is insulting. Ma’am.’
‘It’s more insulting in my book to risk spreading a potentially fatal virus.’
Karen breathed heavily through her nose. ‘I can’t point to a single thing I’ve done in pursuit of this case that breaches the guidelines.’
‘You’ve been working alongside DS Mortimer. In an enclosed space.’
Bloody Bethan Carmichael. ‘That’s quite true. But we’re a bubble. We’re sharing a flat. I thought it was better for both our mental health than being in lockdown alone. And there’s plenty of room for two.’
Markie’s mouth tightened. ‘I assigned Mortimer to you because I thought she might be a counterweight to your maverick tendencies. You have to learn there’s no I in team.’
‘There is in Gaelic.’ Karen couldn’t help herself.
‘What?’
‘In Gaelic, ma’am. There is an I in team. Sgioba.’
‘We’re not in the bloody Gaeltacht.’ Her exasperation was unmistakable. ‘You know, if you could actually manage to stick to rules that are there for a reason, you’d be amazed to discover how much better a detective you’d be.’ She sighed. ‘So what’s the case you’re looking at?’
‘The disappearance of Lara Hardie. You remember the case?’
‘Of course I do. What’s your new evidence?’
Karen looked up at the ceiling. ‘It’s a bit hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.’ As she outlined the position, Markie’s expression shifted from sardonic incredulity to interest.
‘And your theory is?’
‘Jake Stein was eaten up with rage and pain at his fall from grace. Discovering his wife was having an affair with Ross McEwen, his friend – probably his only remaining close friend and his chess partner – that gave him an easy target to displace his anger. So he decided to take his revenge by framing his wife’s lover for murder. But to make it stick, he’d actually have to commit the crime then lay the false trail for us to pick up.’
Markie almost twitched a smile. ‘I think you and DS Mortimer have been spending too much time on the sofa watching box sets. You know this sounds deranged, right?’
Karen did smile. ‘I do. But the further down the rabbit hole we get, the more it feels possible. And I never want to let any chance of solving a case go by me.’
Markie sighed. ‘To my cost, I know that. Do you even know whether Rosalind Harris and Ross McEwen are an item? If they even know each other, come to that?’
‘She admitted she’s met him. We’re working on it. I want to firm up Stein’s encounter with Lara Hardie before I talk to McEwen. I’m trying to work this along the same lines I’d travel if Stein was still alive.’ She spread her hands. ‘I don’t want to frighten the horses.’
Markie walked across her office and stared out the window at the uninspiring view of the Waitrose car park. ‘I’ll give you a week to get somewhere with this. But that’s not carte blanche for you to ride roughshod over the COVID regs. Keep your nose clean, DI Pirie. Or it’ll end up bloody.’ She flicked her wrist in dismissal.
‘That’s a chance I’m prepared to take, ma’am.’ Not for the first time.
But as Karen walked through the empty corridors, she realised the process of outlining events to Markie had shuffled the pack of cards in her head. A glimmer of a different outline had begun to take shape. She imagined Jake Stein out of his mind with rage and pain and deciding he needed to take revenge on the man – and the woman – he’d trusted. He’d frame Ross McEwen for murder. But to do that, he’d have to commit murder.
While he was still in a state of derangement, he’d carried out his heartless plan and killed Lara. He’d set everything up so all he had to do was make an anonymous call to the police and bingo, McEwen would be firmly in the frame.
It still begged the question – why the manuscript? Karen felt she was groping towards an answer. What if Stein had been hit by the runaway train of remorse? What if he felt the need to confess, if only on paper? Well, on screen, anyway? He could have found some penance in writing a sort of expiation that could only be published after his death. When, presumably, McEwen would have served his sentence and been a broken man. Maybe as a writer of fiction, he couldn’t help transforming it into the form of a novel? To give himself some emotional distance?
She still had no proof of this; but finally it made a kind of emotional and psychological sense of what they’d read. She needed time and the rhythm of her footsteps by the water to test this mad theory. For now, she’d have to park it. There was other work to be done.
Karen prowled the hushed headquarters, looking for a private space to phone Susie Donaldson. She didn’t want to go straight back to the flat. She wasn’t ready to rerun the conversation with the Dog Biscuit yet. Even though she told herself Markie was nothing more than a jumped-up bureaucrat, her words still smarted. She didn’t have the skills to last a week in the HCU, and yet she revelled in exercising her petty power.
Karen found a deserted office in a short dead-end corridor. It showed no sign of recent occupation, unless you counted a cardboard coffee cup that had things living in it that a biochemist looking for a new vaccine might profitably culture. She sat as far from it as possible and opened her phone. Jason had pinged everything over to her the night before – ‘In case they lock me up . . . ’ – so finding Susie Donaldson was easy.
The woman answered her phone almost instantaneously, which Karen thought was impressive this early on a lockdown morning. So many people working from home had come to relish an extra hour in bed, not to mention showing up at their desks in office attire from the waist up and pyjama bottoms from the waist down. And who could blame them? She’d have been doing the same thing herself if sleeping in had been one of her talents. ‘Hello?’ Susie Donaldson sounded wary, which was hardly surprising. Unfamiliar number early in the morning probably isn’t going to be revealing you’ve won the lottery.
‘I’m sorry to bother you so early, Ms Donaldson. My name is Karen Pirie. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie. I’m in charge of the Historic Cases Unit of Police Scotland.’
‘I’ve already spoken to one of your lot. A chap called Murray.’
‘DC Murray, that’s right. And we’re very grateful for the help you’ve already given us. However, since DC Murray spoke to you, the case has moved along. We now believe this to be a potential murder inquiry, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate how much more urgency there is to our investigation.’ Karen let that hang there.
‘If you say so. Though Historic Cases doesn’t sound very urgent.’
It was the opposite of a wholehearted response, and it pushed all Karen’s buttons about the importance of what her team did. ‘That means we do need to have access to the contact details as well as the names of all the attendees at Jake Stein’s workshop.’
‘I can’t do that. I told your colleague already. There are data protection issues, as I’m sure you’re well aware.’ The response was brisk.
What Karen was well aware of was the practice of trotting that out as an excuse whether there were any genuine data protection issues or not. It sounded good, it sounded official, but more often than not it was, as Jimmy Hutton said, a fuckton of bollocks. ‘No, there aren’t. As I’m sure a sheriff will tell me when I waste their time asking for a warrant. This is a murder inquiry. That means withholding evidence is a criminal offence. But I’m in a good mood this morning. I’ll give you an hour to run this past your line manager and absolve yourself of responsibility. If I’ve not heard back from you within the hour, I will be lodging papers with the sheriff court.’
‘Don’t speak to me like that. I’m not one of your lowlife criminals. How do I even know you are who you say you are?’
Karen rolled her eyes. What was it with people just now? Was there a second pandemic of grumpiness brought on by lockdown? This woman had some brass neck. Karen sighed audibly. ‘It’s very simple. You have my phone number. You can call the police office at Gayfield Square in Edinburgh – or any other police office, probably. Ask them whether this number corresponds to the mobile number for DCI Karen Pirie. They’ll be helpful, if you say you’re concerned about being scammed. An hour, Ms Donaldson.’ She ended the call annoyed with herself for letting a jobsworth wind her up. Still, if it got them further along the road, it would be worth it.
25
Karen was halfway up Leith Walk when her phone vibrated. It was Susie Donaldson, no cheerier. Likely as a result of a conversation with her line manager, whose job Karen did not envy. ‘I can send you the list of attendees and their contact details if you let me have your email address,’ she said, her voice tight.
‘Thanks, that’s very helpful,’ Karen said sweetly. She recited her email address and got the administrator to repeat it so she couldn’t use the excuse of having been given the wrong email. ‘If anyone complains about hearing from us, just blame me.’
‘Oh, I will,’ Donaldson said as she ended the call.
My day for winding people up. By the time she got back to the flat, Karen was longing for a cup of coffee. It was after nine, and she’d skipped one on the way out, not wanting to wake Daisy at half past six. Her sergeant had been in an odd mood when Karen had returned late the previous evening. Whatever was bugging her, Karen hoped a good night’s sleep had sorted it out.
