McIlhenney shook his head. ‘No, I was watching the car, not the driver. Who was it, then?’
‘Clarissa Maclean, that’s who. Norman King’s lady-friend. ’
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.
52
‘So what’s the set-up with King’s girl-friend?’ Skinner asked.
‘Maclean Farms Limited turned out to be her family business, Boss,’ said Mario McGuire, looking at the DCC across the conference table in Martin’s office. ‘She and her mother own it jointly. The father’s dead, and the place is run by a manager.
‘When we saw her there, we decided not to go in, in case she told King and he worked out what we were up to.
‘So instead, we pulled off the road and went round the side to have a look. There was another car there, a wee MGF sports car. We checked the number and it turned out to be his.’
‘That’s good,’ said Skinner. ‘I’d have been narked if you’d tipped our hand.’
Martin, in the chair at the head of the table, leaned forward. ‘How are we going to confirm that she is holding cyanide?’ he asked.
‘I’ve arranged for an Environmental Health Officer from the Council to pay a routine visit to the farm first thing this morning, sir.’ McGuire glanced at his watch. ‘He’s probably done it by now.’
The DCC nodded his approval, then turned to Rose and Neville. Both women sported healthy sun-tans. ‘So, ladies. How was the weekend on the beach?’
‘Productive, sir,’ the DCI answered, ‘as you’ve probably heard.’
‘Yes. . you’re both looking well on it, too,’ he added, with a grin. ‘Brian said that your man Beaton was meticulous in his identification, although he qualified it to an extent. How do you think he’ll be in the witness box?’
‘I don’t think that David will be flustered at all, Boss. As Brian said, he’s a careful sort of person. Now if it had been his partner, Donovan the skinny-dipper. .’
‘Eh?’ Neil McIlhenney burst out.
‘Ah,’ said Rose, ‘Mario didn’t mention him?’
‘He was the highlight of my weekend,’ Karen Neville volunteered, then added, ‘. . almost.’
‘Stick to the subject please, folks,’ Martin called from the head of the table.
‘Yes; sorry, sir,’ the DCI acknowledged. ‘Fortunately Donovan isn’t involved in our case, or I think we could have trouble with him in the box. David, on the other hand, will be fine. I think he’d even stand up to old Christabel, if it came to that.’
Skinner broke in. ‘All he has to say on oath is what he said to Brian. When we add that to my party friend Philip’s positive identification of King in the Reserve on the afternoon in question, we’ve got enough for the jury.’
He looked round the table. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, what do we have on Mr Norman King, QC?’ He raised his left hand and began to check-list items on his fingers as he spoke. ‘One; a threat to his inheritance: a strong motive to kill both of these old men. Two; a known and undisguised hatred of his father. Three; proximity to the scene of the first murder. Four; a positive identification at the scene of the second. Five; subject to confirmation, access to the poison used in the Archergait murder.’
The DCC gazed at Martin. ‘So, Chief Superintendent, what do you think?’
‘I think, sir, that as soon as we receive confirmation from Mario’s Environmental Health Officer that cyanide is kept on premises to which Norman King is a known visitor, we have sufficient reason to ask Lord Archibald’s permission to interview the Home Advocate Depute as the principal suspect in these murder investigations.’
‘My thoughts exactly, Andy.’ He glanced at his watch, which was showing 10:50 a.m.
‘I think you and I had better make ourselves available at around four o’clock. King’s prosecuting in a trial in Edinburgh today. I think Archie might prefer us to wait until the Court rises, rather than arrest him in the middle of proceedings.’