The thug looked at him. ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, shiftily.
Martin smiled, as he and the Sergeant eased themselves into seats facing the two men. ‘Of course you do, but it doesn’t matter. Heenan is no longer a suspect in the Medina case. You would be, only you don’t come anywhere near fitting our eye-witness description of the killer.’
McCartney sat in silence, staring down at the desk. Kirkbride continued to gaze shiftily around the room.
‘Well, Ricky?’ asked the Chief Superintendent. ‘Aren’t you going to ask us what it’s all about.’
McCartney’s vicious eyes looked up at him. ‘Aye, okay. What is it then?’
‘It’s about some work you two did for Dougie Terry.’ Across the table, both men flinched, taking Martin momentarily by surprise. ‘A few years back,’ he went on. ‘You and Barney Cogan, now deceased, Willie Easson, and Willie Macintosh, with Evan Mulgrew as lookout, beat up and crippled a young footballer named Jimmy Lee. You did so on the orders of Douglas Terry.’
McCartney’s eyes seemed to go completely blank. Beside him, Kirkbride slumped back in his chair, breathing heavily. Martin stared at them both, his confusion gathering. He had expected the usual denial and bluster, not this.
‘Dougie Terry’s a great singer,’ said Neil McIlhenney. ‘Now we want to hear what sort of a voice you’ve got. You’re going to sing for us, Ricky.’
McCartney nodded, without looking up. ‘Aye okay then,’ he muttered. ‘Get us up the road then, and we’ll tell you about it.’
Andy Martin leaned back in his chair and had a vision: through night-glasses, of a suddenly-appearing Jaguar, a Ford Scorpio and, behind it, a big, light-coloured, indistinct shape.
He sat bolt upright, a huge, triumphant, exultant smile spreading across his face. ‘You’re in a tearing hurry to get out of here, aren’t you?
‘Chief Inspector Berry,’ he asked, his eyes not leaving McCartney and Kirkbride for a second, ‘have you searched that Rover out there?’
‘Well, no sir, not yet. In fact, we were waiting for you.’
Martin cut him off. ‘Get the keys, then, and come with us. And bring these two.’ He jumped up from his seat, and led McIlhenney and the rest out of the room. He looked around until he spotted the exit to the yard, then marched outside, across to the Rover, and round its long nose, to the boot.
He stood there, staring at it, waiting, as Berry ran towards him waving two big car keys, and as McCartney and Kirkbride, ashen-faced, were dragged outside by the four Constables across the car park.
Martin was smiling still as he bent over the tailgate of the big hatchback car, unlocked it and swung it open.
‘Jesus Christ,’ gasped Chief Inspector Berry, as he looked inside. Involuntarily, he took two paces backwards.
The two bodies were crammed into the boot space, their knees forced up to their chest, and their hands tied behind them. Their eyes bulged like organ-stops and their tongues protruded from their mouths.
Andy Martin leaned over the cadavers. ‘Strangled,’ he said in a calm, even, almost friendly voice. ‘Garrotted with wire. Very effective, very colourful.’ He looked around.
‘On our way to Birmingham, were we, gentlemen? To make a special delivery?’
McCartney struggled briefly in the hands of his escorts, then gave up. Kirkbride slumped in a half-faint, staring transfixed into the boot.
‘I think we should have that discussion about Dougie Terry, don’t you?’ said Martin. ‘Only now we’ll widen the agenda. Come on, Neil, let’s take them back north.’
Chief Inspector Frank Berry gulped. He was faced with one of those rare decisions on which a career could hang.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘I can’t let you take these men anywhere. There have been two murders committed on my patch, and I have to hold McCartney and Kirkbride for questioning.’
Martin frowned at him. ‘But man, these two stiffs were abducted from a car in Edinburgh last night, in which a third man was shot dead. We know where they’re from and why they were killed, and I’ll bet the PNC will tell us who they were as soon as we feed their prints into it.
‘It’s our active investigation, not yours.’ But he was playing poker with no cards in his hands, and he knew it. So did Frank Berry.
‘No, sir, I’m sorry,’ said the Northumbrian, ‘but you can’t take the prisoners anywhere unless you can prove to me that those men were actually killed in Scotland, or unless my Chief Constable says otherwise. In fact, you can’t even speak to them. It’d be more than my job’s worth.’ It was the traditional and unmistakable sound of a pension being protected. Martin and McIlhenney knew they had lost.
Berry turned to the four Constables, his arms flapping and pointing all around. ‘Take McCartney and Kirkbride back to their cells. Get the duty CID people out here, pronto. Have this area roped off. Call the Medical Examiner.
‘And call the photographers. We must have photographs! ’
56
They were waiting in the Travellers’ Inn when Tom Whatling returned from Upper Largo Kirk, and from his christening engagement. Skinner had spent almost half an hour studying the same small section of the image in the viewer, until Pamela had persuaded him to take some time out from the agonising task.
‘Any luck?’ asked Whatling.
Skinner nodded. ‘I’ve found the negative I was after. Sergeant Haig and PC Orr did a good job. They took three identical shots from most angles just to be on the safe side. Let’s hope that at least one of them was in focus.
‘Tom, can you do me a print?’ The ex-policeman nodded. ‘Can you isolate a single section of an image, and blow it up?’
‘Yes. I can’t guarantee what the resolution will be like - the cameras were often too complicated for the police photographers in those days - but we can only try it and see. Come on.’
He led them out of the pub and back to his shop. In the studio he switched on several pieces of equipment before turning back to Skinner. ‘Let’s see what you’ve found, then,’ he said quietly, switching on the viewer, in which the negative strip still lay. He winced as he looked at the shot.
The DCC handed him the magnifying glass. Pointing at the screen he traced a line with his finger around the lower right quarter of the rectangular image. ‘There, Tom, that section is what I need. In the middle of it, you’ll see a thin pipe, part of the hydraulics that were forced into the car by the impact. See it?’
Whatling peered through the glass. ‘I see it,’ he said. ‘It’s been burst open in the crash.’
Skinner shook his head. ‘No, not burst open. Cut half through, before the crash. That’s a wire braided, hydraulic brake fluid hose; good for 100,000 miles and virtually unbreakable in any impact. It might be ripped loose from its connection in a crash, but it would never go in the middle like that.’
He waved a hand towards the next room. ‘You’ve got hundreds of accident shots through there. You look through them all and I guarantee you that you won’t find another pipe that’s fractured in that way.’
‘Tell you what, sir,’ said Whatling. ‘I’ll do that. I’ll look through a selection, and I’ll make prints. If your theory’s right, that might help you prove it to a jury one day. Meantime, though, let’s print up this section and see how sharp we can get it. I’ll start with an eight by six. Highest I can go is about fourteen by eleven, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep the resolution at that size, on my equipment.’
He withdrew the negative strip. ‘Look, before I can isolate your section, I’ll have to study the whole image in positive form. You don’t need to see that, so why don’t you and Miss Masters go back to the pub and finish your drinks, if my wife hasn’t cleared them up.’