Authors: Mark Douglas-Home
‘That’s not my point Inspector.’
‘Well, what is your point?’ Ryan was standing now.
‘Just that I didn’t commit a crime, any more than a political party canvasser breaks the criminal law by walking up to someone’s front door to drop off a campaign leaflet.’
‘A canvasser doesn’t damage fences Mr McGill.’
‘So I’ll pay the Environment Minister civil damages for the repair.’
Ryan turned to the tape machine. ‘Detective Inspector Ryan and Detective Constable Jamieson are suspending this interview with Mr Caladh McGill at 17.53 on Tuesday May 5.’
Gathering up his files he went to the door and knocked on it. A uniformed officer pushed it open. ‘Mr McGill will need a cell for the night,’ Ryan informed him brusquely and left the room.
With Ryan out of the way Jamieson blurted, ‘Hope the bed isn’t too uncomfortable’, collected up her scattered papers, including his drawing of the thermohaline circulation system, and left the room flustered and blushing.
Stop being such a girl, Helen, for heaven’s sake.
‘The minister will be able to take your call at 6pm.’
The minister’s assistant was firm about it. No, the minister couldn’t leave the members of his local bowls club in mid-tour of the Scottish Parliament. No, he couldn’t take a call on his mobile phone and catch up with the tour later. ‘It’s 6 o’clock or nothing Detective Inspector. He’s got a black tie dinner starting at 7.’
Ryan put his head round Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Reynolds’s door. ‘Can we hold the meeting for 20 minutes? The minister can’t speak to me until 6pm.’
Reynolds, a big man with a florid face and a shock of steel grey hair, replied, ‘That suits fine David. The assistant chief’s coming to sit in if you don’t mind.’
Ryan said, ‘No, of course not’ but there was sufficient inquiry in his tone for Reynolds to add, ‘The top floor’s worried. It’s the politics of it, now that the Justice Minister’s involved as well. You know the score, David.’
Ryan did. Recently the Justice Minister had announced an inquiry into the ‘structure and funding of the Scottish police’. It was being led by a judge and the usual collection of great-and-good. Should Scotland’s eight forces be merged to make a single national police force? Ryan would have phrased the inquiry’s remit differently: should the gravy train for Chief Constables and Assistant Chief Constables be brought crashing off the rails? Of course the ACC wanted to be at Ryan’s meeting with Reynolds. Any officer above the rank of Chief Superintendent jumped at the mention of the Justice Minister’s name nowadays. Every ACC in Scotland recited the same mantra, ‘It’s important to retain the proud local traditions of the separate forces.’ Blah, blah. It’s important to retain the proud local traditions of large salaries and pensions for pen pushing ACCs was more like it, Ryan sneered.
But the wind was blowing and Ryan was happy to be blown with it. It was why he’d applied to the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency. Its portfolio of responsibilities already included organised crime, people trafficking and drugs. Ryan was positioning himself for promotion at its next inevitable expansion.
As he walked back to his office Ryan’s mobile rang. ‘What is it?’ he said irritably. Jamieson answered, ‘Sorry to bother you sir.’
‘Well?’
‘Sir, we’ve identified the Dryas Octopetala in the minister’s garden.’
‘Which minister, Jamieson?’ McGill had visited at least eight.
‘The Environment Minister’s, sir.’
‘And?’
‘Well sir, the minister’s wife has asked if she can keep it.’
‘Did you tell her it was impossible; that it’s evidence in a criminal case?’
‘I tried sir. But she said nonsense.’
‘So where is the plant now?’
‘It’s still in the minister’s garden sir.’
‘Well dig it up, Jamieson.’
‘Yes sir …’ Jamieson let the ‘sir’ trail on as though she had something else to say.
‘Well?’
‘Well sir, the minister’s wife thought the Dryas Octopetala was very pretty and she wondered if she could purchase two more from Mr McGill. She’s got the perfect place for them in her rock garden.’
‘For God’s sake!’ Ryan ended the call.
Ryan’s conversation at 6pm with Alasdair Gordon, the Environment Minister, didn’t improve his mood. It started badly – Gordon’s assistant put Ryan on speaker phone – and deteriorated thereafter. Ryan spent most of the call trying to interrupt a private conversation between the minister and his assistant. He told the minister about Cal McGill’s arrest and overnight detention which failed to draw any comment from either of his listeners. He reassured the minister that McGill wasn’t a thief or a terrorist ‘more of a beach-combing eco-nut really’. It was at that stage Ryan heard the assistant say something indecipherable after which the minister asked, ‘And you say you’ve charged him with vandalism to my fence?’
Ryan heard the minister ‘shushing’ his assistant. ‘Yes, Mr Gordon. It’s a holding charge. We expect more serious charges to follow.’
Then the assistant addressed a question to Ryan. ‘What about the perception of this, charges, a court case? Ok he shouldn’t have been there, but he was making a political statement, one that the minister is in agreement with. Isn’t there some other way?’
Gordon’s grating voice added. ‘Couldn’t there be reparation for the fence – £10 or something – and that’s that?’
Ryan forced himself to hold his temper.
‘There are others Mr Gordon, the Justice Minister for example.’
‘I understand the problem Detective Inspector. It’s just a sensitive area of politics that’s all.’
Once more the assistant said something Ryan didn’t catch but Gordon said, ‘Good point, Richard. Detective Inspector my assistant was reminding me that I’ve been invited to go to the Arctic in mid-September to see the impact of climate change for myself.’
‘If we don’t prosecute McGill,’ Ryan said, ‘what about the next intruder in your garden? It’ll just encourage others – animal rights activists, anti-nuclear protesters.’
He realised he was wasting his breath. Law and order used to be at the top of the political agenda. Not any more. Protecting raptors, the reintroduction of beavers, carbon emissions, wind farms, biodiversity whatever that was: these were the new priorities in Parliament. God help Scotland.
Gordon sensed Ryan’s disapproval. ‘You must of course do what is right Detective Inspector. It’s not for politicians to direct the police.’
‘No sir,’ Ryan agreed.
Reporting later to Reynolds and Assistant Chief Constable Ian Carmichael, Ryan didn’t allude to the detail of his conversation with the minister. Nor did he mention the custody officer’s report of McGill’s story about the Justice Minister relieving himself into a shrub (a Viburnum Opulus, McGill said) while he’d been hiding in his garden. Instead he presented his ‘caveats’ about rushing to prosecute McGill as though it was his own politically-acute analysis.
‘We can’t get away from the politics of it, much as I know we’d like to. Imagine McGill’s counsel leading supporting evidence from the Environment Minister or his wife.’
Carmichael paced the room in rumination. ‘Damned if we do by the Environment Minister, damned if we don’t by the Justice Minister.’
‘
Possibly
damned if we don’t by the Justice Minister.’ Ryan doubted the Justice Minister would want to be anywhere near the witness box once he knew McGill’s lawyer might blab his night-time ablution habits.
‘Why do you say that, David?’ Reynolds asked.
Ryan played safe in case McGill’s story was bravado or embellishment. ‘Every politician wants green credentials nowadays. Can I make a suggestion?’
His senior officers mumbled assent.
‘Send the papers to the Crown Office in the usual way and have a quiet word with someone senior there about the political risks of prosecution, the possibility of MSPs, ministers even, speaking for the defence.’
Assistant Chief Constable Carmichael nodded with approval.
‘McGill will be in custody tonight, pending further inquiries,’ Ryan continued. ‘The Crown Office will book a sheriff for 10pm or so for an interdict hearing in chambers imposing a ban on him from going within 250 metres of any of the addresses he hasn’t yet visited, or the ones he has.’
Carmichael looked at Reynolds. Both men were nodding now.
‘And McGill?’ Carmichael asked
‘He’ll be released tomorrow. Once we’ve checked out the addresses on his list. The last I heard we’d been to 14 and recovered plants.’
Ryan omitted another detail: six of the MPs and MSPs had asked if the plants could be returned to them if they weren’t required as court exhibits.
‘Fucking politicians,’ Ryan said after Jamieson told him.
‘Absolutely, sir,’ she replied, turning away from him quickly, a smile stretching across her face.
Schaden and freude sir
She’d meant it as a warning, but a warning of what? ‘Be careful, won’t you?’ There was no undercurrent of threat; no ‘or else’ left unsaid. Her manner was kindly, her tone well-meaning, like a friend dispensing good advice. Be careful of what?
Detective Constable Jamieson had been in the front lobby at police headquarters sitting in one of the arm chairs. ‘So they’re letting you go are they?’
Cal had nodded, caught off-guard. Was she waiting for him? She’d seen the query in his expression and she’d said, with a nonchalant sweep of her hand, ‘Meeting a friend for lunch. She’s late.’
They’d smiled; her first, then him. He’d gone towards the door, awkwardly, not wanting to be rude, and she’d glanced at the sergeant manning the reception desk.
‘Be careful, won’t you?’ She’d lowered her voice. It was for him to hear and him only. He’d mumbled something insincere about ‘being good’.
Outside, on the tarmac, he’d looked back and she’d gone. Had she given up on her friend or had she been waiting for Cal? If the latter, ‘be careful’ now meant more than it had a few seconds ago.
He walked to Comely Bank, his stitches pinching at him with every step, where he caught the bus to Granton. Twenty minutes later, outside The Cask, it came to him. Had Jamieson been alerting him to the court order obtained by the police the night before? It prohibited him from going near any of the addresses on his list. Random blocs of Edinburgh were now a danger for him. Was she warning him not to stray accidentally? Was that it? Had Detective Inspector Ryan covertly changed his rules of engagement? Was this the way he planned to get him into court? If Cal infringed the banning order Ryan wouldn’t need any politicians to take the stand for the prosecution; and nor would they. There were no votes in speaking up for someone who had broken a court order. Cal took the lift to the top floor, his aching side relegating the importance of his carbon footprint.
Was he overcomplicating things?
He slid the key in his lock and the door pushed open. It hadn’t been locked and Cal noticed the bolt striker plate on the doorframe was hanging loose. The wood surround had splintered. His flat was in disarray. His books and papers were scattered everywhere. The shelves with all his beach-combing artefacts had been pushed over. If it hadn’t been for Jamieson’s warning he’d have assumed a burglar, one of the kids downstairs looking for drugs money. Now he thought of Ryan. Was this his doing, making it look like a break-in? Cal wondered if he’d led too sheltered a life. Did the police hand out extra-judicial warnings like this as a matter of routine?
Is this what Jamieson meant?
Be careful, because Ryan’s a mean bastard.
It gave her the creeps, this old warehouse with its echoes and pristine emptiness: one floor after another of new flats and little sign or sound of habitation; now this.
The door at the end of the top landing was half open and the key sticking out of the lock. There was a noise coming from inside; a rummaging sound. Rosie Provan stopped to listen, one foot ahead of the other, in mid-stride. Her heart thumped, surely loud enough for whoever was the other side of the door to hear it, and her breathing became faster. She reached for her mobile phone, flipped it open and tapped in the news-desk number. At the first sign of danger she would press connect. Why hadn’t she told anyone where she was going?
Her colleagues were accustomed to Rosie disappearing. The reporters called it ‘Rosie glory-seeking again’. It infuriated them, the way the news editor cast a lazy eye at Rosie missing the start of her shift when everyone else had to be in on time. They bitched about it among themselves. In their view Rosie only got away with it because of her looks. The inference was of something sexual but unconsummated between Rosie and Dick McGhee who ran the agency’s news operations.
‘Ach bollocks,’ Jimmy Armitage, the deputy news editor, said when he heard the others discussing it. ‘Dick’s soft on her because she gets bloody good stories for this agency. She pays your wages.’
Which was true, though would it be true today?
Rosie was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of this little solo expedition and not because it was 3.17pm and her shift started at 3. The tip off had come from Sam’s mate, Ewan, who worked in the Scottish Parliament.
Sam, her boyfriend, had teased her with it. ‘I know a story you’d kill for Rosie.’
She feigned boredom. ‘Not interested. It’s my morning off.’ She attended to unravelling the flex of her hair-straightening tongs and plugging them in. While she waited for them to heat, she painted her toe-nails and hummed along to Mercy by Duffy.
Sam kept up his teasing saying it was ‘a cracker’ and ‘the scoop of the year’ and Rosie said, ‘Sam, go away I’m busy. You’re scrambling my head.’
She’d played this game with him before. If she let him think she was curious he would say ‘Ah, so you
are
interested. Well I’m not sure I’m going to tell you.’
Sam wrapped his arms round her and she hummed louder. When he began to tell her she hummed louder still until she was certain he was committed.
Ewan’s boss had had an intruder in his garden, Sam said.
‘So? Big deal.’
‘His boss is the Environment Minister.’
Rosie shrugged.