Waiting outside the chapel in the cold clear winter sunshine, he cast his eyes around for a familiar face. David Murray stood, almost hidden, in the midst of a group of middle-aged and elderly men in Crombie over coats, some wearing bowler hats. Among them Skinner recognised two judges, one of them Murray’s predecessor as Dean. Peter Cowan stood slightly apart, wearing the black jacket, waistcoat and pin-striped trousers that are the advocate’s trademark. Skinner caught his eye, and the two men ambled slowly towards each other.
‘Morning, Bob. Is this part of the investigation?’
Skinner nodded. ‘I’m afraid it is. Don’t look in his direction, but I’ve got a photographer in that out-building over there, just on the off-chance that we pick up someone in the crowd who shouldn’t be here.’
‘Will you go to the other funerals?’
‘Yes, we will. Even to poor old Joe the Wino’s. Doubt if we’ll see too many judges there!’
The Clerk of Faculty chuckled quietly. Still short of the years at the Bar necessary to take silk — to be appointed Queen’s Counsel — he retained an irreverence not found as a rule in seniors, many of whom were en route for the Bench, and comported themselves with that in mind.
Quite suddenly Cowan’s smile faded. ‘That was an awful business about poor Rachel.’
‘Yes, Peter. Just terrible. And preventable, if those buggers in Strathclyde had followed orders and seen her right on to the train, instead of allowing her to go under it.’
As the mourners from the previous funeral filed out of the chapel, and made their way towards the busy car-park, the Mortimer congregation moved forward to take their places. The cortege had arrived and was parked in the driveway, waiting for the moment to draw up to the door. A light-coloured wooden coffin, topped by a single wreath, lay in the hearse. Through the windows of the first limousine, Skinner saw a silver-haired man, and clutching his arm, a woman in black, her head on the man’s shoulder.
The gathering stood around while the family mourners were shown into the building, and led to the front two rows facing the pulpit. Then quietly, they followed, shuffling into rows of hard wooden benches on either side of the central aisle.
As they sat down, Cowan whispered to Skinner. ‘I gather that the verdict on Rachel will be suicide, not accidental.’
‘There’s no way that it was accidental, Peter. Since no one’s come forward to say that she was shoved, that’s the way it’ll go down. That McCann sighting... You heard about that?’ Cowan nodded. ‘That was a load of cobblers. McCann was sighted for real last night, robbing a filling station in Luton. He pinched a car, and the Met. found it abandoned three hours later at Brent Cross. So he’s in London. I believe they’re releasing the story about now.
‘All the indications are that the girl was a bag of nerves after Mortimer’s death and after that threat. It probably wasn’t planned, just a spur of the moment suicide.’
‘Mm, sounds like it.’
The congregation rose slowly and solemnly to its feet as the coffin was borne to the altar on the shoulders of the undertaker’s assistants.
As they resumed their seats, Cowan whispered again to Skinner. ‘I was speaking to George Harcourt yesterday. He was the Advocate Depute in the McCann trial. He said that Rachel was very shaky before the jury came in with its verdict. Oh yes, and he told me a funny thing, too. He said that she was upset by a Japanese bloke who sat all the way through the trial.’
Skinner’s eyes widened. ‘You what... !’
‘Brothers and sisters in Christ...’ The Faculty chaplain cut the conversation short as he began the funeral service.
Fifteen minutes later as the family party filed out to a background of solemn organ music, Skinner was able to speak again. ‘You said a Japanese bloke?’
Cowan nodded.
‘Peter, have you got a car here?’
‘No, I came with David.’
‘Right, if you don’t mind, you’re coming back with me. I want to have another look at that so-called Chinese trial. I smell something here.’
20
Skinner rarely used a police driver. He believed that he thought better at the wheel. And so, on the way back to Edinburgh, cruising along the M8 at just under eighty miles per hour, he and Cowan exchanged few words.
Once the advocate broke a long silence. ‘Look, Bob, you don’t jump in front of a train just because you don’t like someone’s face in the public gallery.’
‘Granted, Peter. But one of the few visible links between any of the people in this whole series of deaths is the Japanese involvement. Now you’ve brought it up again, I’ve got an itch, and I want to get back to Edinburgh to scratch it.’
The Library was busy when Skinner and Cowan returned to the capital city. More than a dozen advocates, some in casual clothes, sat working at the rows of desks set beneath the magnificent gold-painted, panelled ceiling. They went into the Clerk’s office, alongside that of the Dean, and closed the door behind them.
Cowan dialled an internal number, and issued instructions to his secretary. Soon afterwards she appeared carrying two folders. Each contained a set of the papers in the Chinese trial.
They read through the notes and transcript in silence. Then Skinner went back to the beginning and listed the facts, point by point.
‘The victim. Shirai Yobatu. She’s twenty, and she’s at Strathclyde University. She’s found strangled in Kelvingrove Park. There are signs of sexual activity which could be rape. Forensic establishes that three men had intercourse with the girl immediately before her death.
‘She was seen earlier from across the street in Park Circus, by another girl student. She was in the company of three oriental men. The girl recognises two of them as waiters in the Kwei Linn Chinese Restaurant off Sauchiehall Street. A lot of the students have eaten there and know the two lads. The witness doesn’t know the other one. No one does. He’s never been found and the. other two wouldn’t name him. It didn’t occur to the witness that Shirai might not have been going willingly with them. She didn’t look under duress.
‘Christ, Peter, the Crown Office made a balls of this, and no mistake. If they’d left out the rape and just gone for a murder conviction they’d have got it no bother. As it was Mortimer and Jameson were able to take the rape charge apart, and to lull the jury into acquitting on both counts.’
Skinner went back to the notes. ‘The accused: John Ho, defended by Mortimer; and Shun Lee, defended by Jameson. They deny the rape charge and it falls apart. They say they didn’t know the third man. They claim that he had just started that day as a dishwasher at the Kwei Linn, and they didn’t know his name. The owner says he only gave the guy a few hours’ work, and he didn’t know it either. He says that the boy was a deaf mute.
‘The lads claim that they had a date for a threesome in the park with Shirai, who, they allege, is a student nymphomaniac likely to graduate with honours - there’s absolutely no evidence of that; her flatmate said she was a quiet girl - and the third guy came along as a spectator. They say that Shirai fancied mystery man too, and that they went off in a huff, leaving her to get on with it.
‘That evening they hear on Radio Clyde that a girl has been found strangled in the park. Mystery man doesn’t show up to wash dishes, and John Ho and Shun Lee decide to do a runner. They separate and go home, but each one is lifted by Strathclyde CID in the act of packing his bags.