Authors: Val McDermid
Lees caught himself rubbing his hands together in delight and laid his palms flat on his thighs. Oh, he was going to enjoy this. He rehearsed his opening as the black BMW swung into Gayfield Square and pulled up outside the police station. He was so eager that he didn’t wait for his driver to open the door but rather sprang out of the car, straightening his uniform cap and making for the door.
He loved the way that everyone snapped to life when he walked into a police station. It was as if his very presence was
a tiny electric shock to their synapses. The big man is in the building. He’d always dreamed of this, and now, apart from those self-styled mavericks like Pirie, everyone gave him his due.
‘The HCU?’ he barked at the civilian at the reception counter.
‘Through the door, turn right at the end of the hall, all the way back,’ she stammered, pressing the door release that allowed him access to the guts of the station. He marched down the hall, shoulders back, stomach sucked in, his cheeks pink with the anger that was driving him like a hydrogen fuel cell. Two women detectives flattened themselves against the wall as he neared them, so determined was his approach. With every step, he could feel the pressure building, the pressure he was going to release so eloquently so very, very soon.
He didn’t bother knocking on the HCU door, simply threw it open and stood framed in the doorway. The ginger idiot that Pirie remained bafflingly loyal towards was so shocked his bacon roll flew into the air, deconstructing itself into its component parts as it fell. DC Murray jerked to his feet, backing away from his desk, stumbling as the back of his knees caught his chair.
Lees scanned the room, bestowing a look of contempt on Murray as his eyes skimmed over him. ‘Where is she?’ he demanded.
‘Day off,’ Murray croaked. ‘Sir,’ as an afterthought.
‘I didn’t ask you that,’ Lees said, low and hard. ‘I asked you where DCI Pirie is.’
‘London? She went down for the weekend.’
‘And that’s all you know? You don’t know where she is or what she’s doing in London?’
The idiot looked close to tears. ‘She never said. Just, a weekend away.’
‘Did she tell you what she’s working on?’
His
eyes flicked to his screen. ‘We’re working on Tina McDonald. Waiting to hear if we’re gonnae get Ross Garvie’s birth certificate. I’m going through the statements.’ His words tumbled over each other in his eagerness to please.
‘The other thing. What about that?’
‘What other thing?’ The idiot was in a state of panic. But Lees thought it was the panic of ignorance rather than secrecy.
‘Never mind. When is she due back?’
‘Tomorrow. She said tomorrow morning.’ He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing and his eyes wide.
‘And you’re not working on anything else?’
Murray shook his head rapidly. ‘Well, routine stuff. Waiting for lab analysis of old evidence to see if there’s anywhere to go with it. But they’re still dormant cases. We’re not doing anything active with them, like.’ The tip of his tongue ran along his lips.
Lees turned on his heel and strode back down the hall, not bothering to close the door behind him. Back in the car, he called Karen Pirie’s mobile. When it went to voicemail, as he had confidently expected, he said, ‘This is Assistant Chief Constable Lees. I have just been to your office, where you are not. I require that you speak to me as soon as you get this message. And until we speak face-to-face, I am ordering you to back off from your so-called investigation into the suicide of Gabriel Abbott. Do not delay in responding to this message, DCI Pirie. And that’s an order too.’ He stabbed a finger at the phone to end the call and leaned back in his leather seat. He was, in the words of their national bard, nursing his wrath to keep it warm. Whenever she deigned to get back to him, he could guarantee full volcanic heat.
He was almost glad she hadn’t been in her office. Anticipation was such a sweet pleasure.
T
he
Boothroyd Room, according to the cop who had walked her up there, was the flagship committee venue in Portcullis House. When the parliamentarians had voted themselves a new office block, they’d clearly chosen ‘dress to impress’ as their motto. The building itself was stunning – a vast atrium of polished stone, glass and steel, as light as the sky allowed, saved from sterility by trees planted up the middle. It spoke of wealth and power. Karen thought it would be one of the most spectacular modern buildings most of its visitors had ever been in. Unless they’d also been to the insanely expensive Scottish Parliament. Politicians clearly understood the benefits of a workplace that had aesthetic values. A pity they didn’t extend the principle to most of the spaces where public servants spent their working lives. She wondered how long their leaders would last in the cupboard she shared with Jason and the perpetual fragrance of Greggs baked goods.
Her escort delivered her to one of the best seats in the room with a clear view of the dozen chairs set behind the horseshoe of blond wood that faced a long table where, presumably,
the witnesses sat. Behind that were rows of comfortable office-style chairs with leather upholstery in an indeterminate shade lurking between grey, turquoise and aquamarine. ‘There you go, ma’am,’ he said politely. ‘We let the rest of the public in about ten minutes before the committee starts. It’s first come, first served, but with you being one of us, well, it doesn’t hurt to give you a leg up.’
‘Thanks,’ Karen said. ‘If you’re ever in Edinburgh, I’ll return the favour.’ She hadn’t had to make up an excuse for wanting to sit in on the select committee. The security detail had been happy with her ID and her vague line about wanting to check out one of the committee members. And shortly she’d be a few metres away from Lord Sinclair, the alleged provider of the sperm Caroline Abbott had impregnated herself with. Not that she’d be asking about that.
The PC had directed her to a seat in the middle of the front row, but Karen decided she wanted to be a little more inconspicuous. She chose a seat at the end of the second row by the window where she could watch the river traffic when things grew too dull. She was fairly confident that would happen. But compared to some of the places where she’d had to stake out what Lees always referred to as ‘persons of interest’, this had much to recommend it. The chair and the temperature were comfortable, the tapestry on the far wall – a stylised scene of trees and either fields or a river – was stitched in restful blue tones and the bust of Baroness Boothroyd was a lot less forbidding than many of the portraits they’d passed on the way to the committee room.
Karen took out her notebook and pen in a bid to look as if she had some reason to be there. A few minutes later, the door opened again and an ill-assorted group of people filed in. A handful were obviously journalists, huddling together at one side of the room, chattering with the easy familiarity of comrades if not colleagues. Some looked like students of
the political wonk persuasion. A couple of hipsters; wannabe journalists, Karen guessed. A trio of jolly young Muslim women in hijabs who kept nudging each other and grinning. A scatter of the retired, keeping their minds active and their opinions under scrutiny. As the audience settled around her, the committee’s administrative support trickled in, sorting out bundles of paper and chattering to each other in the easy way of people for whom this was just another day.
Next to arrive was the Canadian media mogul and his entourage, who spread themselves along the witness table, his importance obvious by the sheer numbers necessary to bolster his presence.
And finally, the committee members themselves. A dozen working peers – seven men, five women – who didn’t look particularly grand. Smart, well-groomed and attentive, but none of them would have been out of place in a boardroom or on the committee of a charity. The great and the good, Karen thought. They don’t look so different from us. They could almost pass.
She recognised Frank Sinclair from the images she’d studied online. In his mid sixties, he looked fit and healthy. His hair, once sandy, was greying and coarse, his skin pale and heavily lined. But his jawline was still taut and his deep-set blue eyes were never still, always scanning the room and his fellow peers. He would look at his papers for a few moments, a frown line between his bushy eyebrows, make a note with a fat Mont Blanc pen, then check out the room again. Karen had no idea how closely he resembled Gabriel Abbott. She’d only seen a couple of photographs of the dead man and that provided no real comparison. She wished she’d been able to ask Noble for a set of post-mortem pics.
The business was quickly under way and Karen soon lost the will to live. Things seemed to move at a snail’s pace and she could only bear to listen when Frank Sinclair spoke and
then only because she felt she ought to. She gathered that he was greatly in favour of personal privacy except when those concerned were behaving in ways that he disapproved of. Anything immoral, illegal or unethical stripped out the guilty parties’ rights and rendered them fair game for the media, in his book. Given the tightness of his own moral straitjacket, Karen reckoned that meant most of the population was fair game. She was thankful to realise that his was not the prevailing view of the room.
Two hours dragged past interminably. It was hard for Karen to imagine Sinclair fitting into the sociable and louche world of theatre and TV that Caroline and Ellie had moved in. She knew that most people grew more conservative as they aged, but he must have shifted quite a distance. Perhaps his guilt at what he’d done for Caroline had kicked in afterwards and provoked an extreme reaction. Or maybe they’d just kept him around as a kind of curiosity, a dinosaur counterpoint to their lifestyle. And for him, their way of life would have been a sort of whetstone on which he could hone his sharp-edged morality.
Eventually, things drew to a close. The lords and ladies stood up, gathering their papers together. Karen hung back as the audience dawdled out and studied her phone as the support staff mingled with their bosses, chatting and handing over pieces of paper. There was a small huddle around the middle of the horseshoe, Frank Sinclair at the heart of it. He’d been sitting near the end of the table on the opposite side of the room and Karen ambled over to his place, deserted now. She looked around. Nobody was paying attention to her. Everyone was focused on leaving or on the conversation in the middle of the room or on making sure the tycoon had left nothing incriminating in his wake.
Casually, she took out the napkins from the coffee shop and, in a swift arc of movement, swept up Frank Sinclair’s
glass and tucked it in her pocket. Then she walked confidently out of the room and headed for the nearest toilet. Safe in the cubicle, Karen dropped the glass into the paper bag and deposited it carefully at the bottom of her handbag. She didn’t want to be stopped on her way out for nicking a Portcullis House tumbler.
And breathe, she told herself. She’d done something so ridiculous she’d never be able to admit it to any of her colleagues and she’d apparently got away with it. It was madness. But it was noble cause madness.
What she hadn’t realised was that she’d been spotted. Lord Sinclair had started his career as a sharply observant journalist. He hadn’t lost that gift of noticing. While most of his interest had been on the people who’d come up to him with questions and comments, there had been a sliver of his attention on whatever else was going on around him. He’d caught sight of Karen out of the corner of his eye and followed her movements while he dealt with everyone else on automatic pilot, struggling not to show his incredulity at what he was witnessing.
There was no doubt about it. Whoever the woman was, she’d pocketed his drinking glass and made off with it. There was only one possible reason why anyone would do such a thing.
A coldness bloomed in his chest. But he wasn’t going to panic. He hadn’t risen this far by freaking out when he was under threat. He politely excused himself and drew his assistant to one side. ‘That woman who’s just leaving? Follow her and find out who she is.’
The assistant, who was paid well for his unquestioning loyalty, left the room without a fuss. Sinclair watched him go, his brain ticking over a series of options. Everything from a watching brief to the nuclear option. Nobody stood in Frank Sinclair’s light.
T
he
train was pulling out of Kings Cross when Karen realised she’d forgotten to turn her phone back on after the Select Committee. She’d been so high after her larcenous adventure that everything else had slipped to the back burner. But as she let herself relax into her seat for the long haul back to Edinburgh, she thought to check for texts only to discover the phone was still off. She gave a small groan when it fired up and revealed she had five voicemails and half a dozen texts.
The first voicemail was from the Macaroon. Then two from the Mint. Then one from a number she didn’t recognise. And finally, one from Giorsal. The texts were all from the Mint. The first one asked her to call him. So did the other five, with increasing levels of urgency. The wheels had clearly come off something, but that didn’t narrow it down.
Sighing, Karen took herself down to the vestibule at the end of the carriage so she wouldn’t disturb her fellow passengers by swearing at the phone. Wrinkling her nose at the weird air freshener that smelled anything but fresh, she summoned the Macaroon’s message in the hope of
enlightenment. His tinny voice was a snappy snarl. ‘This is Assistant Chief Constable Lees. I have just been to your office, where you are not. I require that you speak to me as soon as you get this message. And until we speak face-to-face, I am ordering you to back off from your so-called investigation into the suicide of Gabriel Abbott. Do not delay in responding to this message, DCI Pirie. And that’s an order too.’
Ah. Well, that was enlightenment, of a sort. What she didn’t know yet was how the Macaroon knew what she was up to, and how serious the situation was. He was pompous enough to be this put out by the simple act of Karen asking Alan Noble what investigative steps he was taking. And she suspected Noble was enough of a teacher’s pet to have dropped her in it with the Macaroon. Everybody knew how much he hated Karen and how much he’d enjoy having something on her.