Gilchrist leaned closer.
The image was of a group of people on a dance floor. Balls of coloured lighting in the background suggested it was a disco.
‘Recognise anyone?’ Stan asked, leaning back.
Gilchrist took hold of the mouse, and concentrated on the screen.
‘You can zoom in,’ Stan suggested.
Gilchrist moved the cursor over the dance floor and rested it on a couple caught in a frozen jive. Then on to a woman with a scowl on her face as if she had found half a grub in her maraschino cherry. But he was having difficulty establishing what had Stan so worked up.
‘Try the next image,’ Stan said.
Gilchrist shifted the cursor to the right, clicked on the arrow, and an image slid on to the screen – same dance floor, different couple. This time he recognised Magner, slimmer by twenty years, hair longer, thicker and less blond. The press of their bodies and his hands on the woman’s backside left little doubt about what either partner had in mind.
‘Who’s he dancing with?’ Gilchrist asked.
Jessie chipped in with, ‘Looks like he’s giving her a dry hump.’
‘Not yet,’ Stan said. ‘Try the next one.’
A group of eight people seated at a table opened up on the screen, all seemingly oblivious to the photographer’s presence. An empty dance floor lay behind them, as if the DJ was taking a break. Gilchrist recognised Magner again – his photogenic good looks and white smile would have him standing out in any crowd. This time he was sitting beside an attractive brunette in danger of her breasts spilling from her low-cut dress.
‘Who’s she?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘Anne Mills.’
In the seat on the other side of Anne sat a man who appeared to have his hand on the left breast of the woman beside him. The remaining four had their backs to the camera.
‘Is he doing what I think he’s doing?’ Gilchrist asked.
Jessie leaned forward. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘They’re swingers.’
Gilchrist glanced at her, then at Stan, who raised his eyebrows.
‘Keep going, boss.’
Gilchrist was about to pull up the next image when he hesitated. He placed the cursor over the face of the man with his hand on his neighbour’s breast and zoomed in. As Stan had said, the images were of low quality, and he zoomed out, then in again, trying to strike the best balance.
‘Is that who I think it is?’ he asked.
‘Have a guess.’
‘Martin Craig?’
‘The Lib Dem MEP, boss.’
‘Are there more of him in here?’
‘Carry on, boss.’
‘Does he know about these photographs?’ Gilchrist asked.
‘Oh, he knows about them all right,’ Stan said. ‘He’s looking at the camera on a couple of them. And I bet he can’t wait to get his hands on them now.’
‘You think Magner’s blackmailing him?’ Jessie asked.
‘Don’t know for sure, but I’d be prepared to put a hefty bet on that he is.’
‘You’re not a gambling man,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Only when it’s odds on.’
‘If Magner’s blackmailing Martin Craig, that might explain Stratheden’s meteoric rise,’ Gilchrist said.
‘Precisely.’
Stan’s nervousness – or maybe excitement – told Gilchrist he was still missing something. But nothing he had seen so far would suggest that el shito was about to hit el fano.
So he pressed on.
He opened up the next image – the same group of eight, but shot from the opposite side. Magner and his wife now had their backs to the camera. The glowing gantry of a busy bar filled the background. A topless woman shook cocktails. Back to the group: the groping man was now fondling his partner’s exposed breasts with vigour. No one else at the table seemed to notice, especially not Magner, who was giving his full attention to the woman on his right. Anne, to his left, seemed intent on filling a champagne flute from a bottle of Bollinger.
Gilchrist placed the cursor on the faces of the opposite two couples and zoomed in a touch. One woman had a hand on her smiling partner’s lap beneath the table, leaving little for the imagination. Beside them, the other couple were deep into an intimate kiss.
But still Gilchrist did not see what he was missing. He opened the next image.
Same angle, same shot, but maybe five or ten seconds later than the previous image.
The kissing couple were now smiling for the camera, arms around each other, the gleam in their eyes hinting at what was yet to come. As Gilchrist studied the image, he finally thought he saw what was making Stan so anxious. He leaned closer, then said, ‘I don’t believe it. It can’t be. Can it?’
Jessie said, ‘What am I missing?’
Gilchrist zoomed in on the man’s face, then shifted the cursor to the woman. ‘Is that his wife?’ he asked.
‘Could be,’ Stan said. ‘But he’s widowed now, isn’t he?’
‘Would someone please tell what’s got everyone’s knickers in a twist?’ Jessie pleaded.
Gilchrist leaned back from the computer screen and ran a hand down his face. ‘You’re new to Fife,’ he said, ‘so you probably haven’t met him yet. But that man there’ – he nodded at the screen – ‘is our boss.’
‘The head potato,’ Stan confirmed.
Jessie mouthed a Wow, then said, ‘Chief Constable Ramsay?’
‘Chief Constable Michael MacNairn Ramsay, QPM, to be more exact.’
‘And rumoured to be in line for a knighthood at the end of this year.’
‘And he knows Magner?’
Gilchrist grimaced. ‘Intimately, by the looks of it.’
CHAPTER 27
They spent the next hour compiling a list of all the photographs, and the people who appeared in them. Seventy images in total, starting at the table, then moving to what appeared to be a private room where the business of free sex and wife-swapping began in earnest.
They were able to identify with certainty only four of the eight: Magner and his wife, Anne; Martin Craig MEP, and his partner, as yet unknown – Craig had married late in life, the rumour being that he had done so to counter persistent accusations of being gay. But nothing in these images suggested Craig was anything other than a testosterone-fuelled heterosexual; Chief Constable Ramsay with a woman presumed to be his late wife, Jean. The fourth couple, a slim blonde – obviously dyed, or a wig – with dark-nippled breasts and a black bush that trailed in a thin line to her navel, and whose partner appeared to be more inebriated than the others, remained anonymous.
Jessie suggested she might be a prostitute, as she was the only woman photographed in flagrante with all four men. Stan joked that he wouldn’t mind finding out if she was still available for hire, which earned him a fearsome scowl from Jessie.
Of all the couples, Chief Constable Ramsay and his partner appeared the most shy, with Ramsay’s effort of intercourse with the dyed blonde being performed with his hand to his face. Ramsay’s partner was snapped with Magner’s penis in her mouth, and as Gilchrist worked through the images, he came to understand that Magner had been one step ahead of the others, maybe several, the end result of that evening’s fun being a file of photographs for future reference – read blackmail.
The problem facing Gilchrist now was what to do with this information.
None of them had any doubts that they had to report this. The Chief Constable’s relationship with the accused in an ongoing rape case – a man who also happened to be a suspect in a multiple-murder investigation – could not be ignored. How it had flown under the radar for all these years was the most troubling question.
‘It makes you wonder if Ramsay knows about these,’ said Gilchrist.
‘Maybe it’s not him,’ Jessie said, and when Gilchrist and Stan rounded on her, added, ‘Maybe he’s got a twin brother.’