The social worker who had picked the short straw and found himself allocated to assist Clerk as an ‘appropriate adult’, passed them in the corridor, making his way to the interview room in the company of a WPC. Recognising him, the DCI knew that their luck was holding, because the man was an unashamed time-server, his ideals lost long ago along with most of his hair. He was one of those raw-boned, denim-clad, northern Irishmen who had seen it all, tried to mend the world, failed, and finally discovered that their well of compassion was not quite bottomless after all. So, Pat could be relied upon. Usually he sat quietly in interviews, filling in the forms, no longer even attempting to hide his impatience, his desire to get back to the office to ‘process’ his remaining cases. His attitude was commendably simple: if they were fit to interview, they were fit to interview, and therefore his presence was a mere formality. This time, all he would be thinking about would be getting back to his bed.
After an hour had passed and Dr Tynan still remained closeted with their suspect, Elaine Bell listened at the door, then knocked loudly on it. She peered round it and said, breezily, but with a slight edge in her voice, ‘Nearly finished in here?’
‘It’s up to you,’ Clerk replied, brushing dust and fluff off the elbows of his pink pullover. ‘I know I am.’
‘Well,’ the young man began, ‘I’m finding it diff…’ Then he thought better of speaking in front of his interviewee, smiled at him and left the room. Sounding slightly agitated, he said to the Chief Inspector, ‘To do this properly, I really ought to see his records – from Carstairs, I mean.’
‘Nonsense,’ Elaine Bell replied, a fixed smile on her face. ‘It’s his fitness now that we have to be satisfied about. The records will provide his history, granted, but really it’s his present state that concerns us. And it could delay everything significantly…’
‘Yes,‘Dr Tynan began, ‘but I really ought to see them if…’
Elaine Bell interrupted him, speaking sternly. ‘I had the advantage of exchanging a few words with Mr Clerk a little earlier. Then he seemed entirely lucid, rational, orientated in time and space; he did not appear to be remotely delusional, or confused. It’s unlikely that anything’s changed between now and then, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘Well, yes, I would, but it would still be better if…’
‘Dr Tynan, I did explain to you when you first arrived that there is a degree of urgency in this case, didn’t I? This man may have cut somebody’s throat, so time is of the essence. So far you’ve had…’ she looked at her watch, ‘over one hour to satisfy yourself. Your colleague, Dr Lowell, who we know well, usually manages to wrap things up in forty minutes, sometimes less. Would another five minutes be sufficient?’
‘Erm… yes,’ Dr Tynan said, cowed and overawed by the woman’s certainty, and sufficiently undermined by her manner to wonder if it had been reasonable, after all, to consider checking the records. Perhaps that was never normally done in these kinds of cases?
When Norman Clerk was introduced to the social worker and told that Pat would help him with the interview, make sure he understood what was going on, ensure that his interests were protected, he looked at his ‘helper’, held out his hand towards him and said, delightedly, ‘All for me? You shouldn’t have bothered.’
‘My pleasure,’ Pat said under his breath, shaking his head and returning his attention to his newspaper.
Once seated at the table in the interview room, Clerk busied himself straightening a stray paper clip, then used the jagged bit of wire to clean the dirt from beneath his fingernails. Eric Manson entered the room, his entry logged on the tape by Elaine Bell, sniffed the air and immediately opened a window.
‘Too warm, officer?’ Clerk asked, adding, ‘me, too, thanks, I’m roasting… toasted.’
‘Can you tell us what you were doing in Ron Anderson’s flat in Saxe Coburg Street, earlier tonight?’ Elaine Bell asked, gesturing for her Inspector to take the seat beside her.
‘Looking around… I was just looking around it,’ he replied airily, extending his fingers in front of his face as if he had just had a manicure, examining them, his tongue poking out as if in concentration.
‘How did you get access to his premises?’
‘With a key – with a key.’
‘And how did you get the key?’
‘From under the mat, dear Lilah, dear Lilah,’ he sang, putting down the paper-clip and looking the Chief Inspector in the face for the first time.
‘What were you doing with the knife in the man’s bedroom?’
For a split-second Clerk was unable to disguise his surprise at the question, then he pursed his lips and said, ‘Making a casserole. No, really… what was I doing with the knife? Nothing. I just picked it up. Indeed, I picked up quite a few things – a silver ashtray, a Chinese vase, a packet of chocolate buttons. No harm in picking things up and putting them down again, now is there?’ He nodded several times, as if convinced by his own answer.
‘And what were you doing concealed under your brother’s bed when Sergeant Rice found you?’ Eric Manson asked, leaning menacingly towards the man, annoyed by his flippant manner.
‘Hiding,’ he replied playfully, twiddling with his hair, then shuddering and removing a dead fly from it.
‘Hiding from what?’
‘From the intruder, of course! I heard noises, the sound of someone else in the flat, so I ducked for cover. Who wouldn’t?’
‘And you attacked her because?’ Elaine Bell said, knowing already what his answer would be.
‘Because… because… well, wouldn’t you have done the same? An intruder comes into your flat – well, your brother’s flat… he’s an invalid, he can do nothing. Would you wait to be attacked? Indeed, I think not.’
‘OK,’ Elaine Bell said, leaning against the closed door of the now empty interview room. ‘A good night’s work. Bed now. But I’ll want you back here first thing. Both of you. Is your eye alright, Alice?’
‘Actually, it’s bloody painful, but I can still see out of it. It’s just bruising, I think. In a couple of hours I’ll look as if I’ve taken on Mike Tyson – and lost.’
‘Fine. Clerk will be in court in the morning for battering you, Alice, and for entering Anderson’s home. We’ll oppose bail. With the search warrant we’ll pull his flat to pieces. We’ll take the cannabis plants and hopefully find something of Brodie’s, a memento perhaps. That would give us enough to charge him with the man’s murder. Eric, you go with Ally Livingstone to the Dean Bridge, everything’s already tee’d up there for 11 am. See what you can find, eh?’
‘Aye, aye, Ma’am.’
Returning to her room, the DCI moved a sheaf of papers towards the back of her desk, clearing a space for the cushion she intended to place there for her head. A single sheet fell off the pile and she picked it up. It was a note in Alistair Watt’s cramped hand that she had not noticed before;
‘Dave from the Lab phoned at 4 pm. We’re to get the report on India Street tomorrow. Also Prof McConnachie’s coming to see you, he thinks he’ll be at St Leonard’s at about 3 pm. Don’t know what about. He wouldn’t tell me over the phone.’
6
Tuesday
‘It wis there, under they things… o’er there,’ Ally Livingstone said, his voice echoing through the massive semi-circular arches of the Dean Bridge, as he pointed at a couple of leafless elderberry bushes.
Far below the path on which he stood, the Water of Leith flowed onwards on its journey towards the sea, its turbid waters tumbling over rocks, occasionally lapping lazily in the sandy shallows and depositing on the shore a froth of creamy foam like that left in an empty beer glass. The moisture-filled air seemed almost intoxicating, laden with the aroma of brewing, of hops and barley, a timeless scent and one characteristic of Auld Reekie.