Out of Bounds (9 page)

The international fallout from Pirie’s last major case was still troubling his inbox. And now here she was again, slumped in his visitor’s chair, hair tumbled as if she’d just got out of bed, suit rumpled and slightly too big for her. Either she’d lost some weight or she’d conceded the battle and started buying bigger clothes. There was nothing shambolic about her gaze, however. Her blue eyes were calm and untroubled, but he always felt pinned down by them, as if she could see beyond his well-groomed, scrubbed façade to the insecurities that lurked inside. She stretched out her legs and crossed them at the ankle. ‘You’re not going to like what I’ve got to say,’ she said.

Nothing new there, Lees thought. ‘That’s very direct of you, Inspector.’

‘No point in beating about the bush,’ she said. ‘We’ve got
a very good opportunity to clear a case from 1994 – a violent rape murder in Glasgow. We got a familial hit on the DNA register over the weekend. But it’s problematic.’

What else would it be with her involved? ‘How so?’

Karen outlined the key elements of the case to date. ‘If we’re going to make any progress, we need to get our hands on those adoption records.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’

‘We need to go to court for an order to access Ross Garvie’s original birth certificate.’

Lees sighed. ‘Can’t you deal with that yourself?’ A forlorn hope, at a guess.

‘Not if we want to win. It’s not straightforward. There are human rights arguments against it. And the court will want to hear from his adoptive parents.’

Lees huffed. ‘Can we not push it through quickly without involving them?’

Karen gave him a long, measured look. ‘Even if we could, the blowback would be catastrophic when they found out. We’ll need an advocate who knows about adoption law and human rights legislation.’

Lees pictured numbers clicking over like a cartoon cash register. ‘That sounds like a budget-buster.’

Karen shrugged herself into an upright position, leaning slightly forward. ‘If there was an alternative, I’d be proposing it.’

‘Why can’t we wait and see whether this joyrider recovers consciousness? Or dies? Surely that would put an end to any talk of human rights?’

Karen’s expression hardened. ‘Right enough. We could wait and see whether Ross Garvie wakes up or goes away the crow road. And in an ideal budgetary world, that would solve the problem. But I think there’s more urgency here because there’s a leak somewhere in our system. The media gets to
hear about the cases we’re working way earlier in the process than I’d like. Sometimes that works in our favour, and we get witnesses coming forward who said nothing at the time, for whatever reason. But I worry about perpetrators who’ve got used to walking around feeling like they’ve got away with something. They hear we’ve got new evidence, they’re going to be away on their toes. Frankly, if it was me, I’d already have the false ID set up and the overnight bag packed. But thankfully most villains aren’t that smart.’

‘So because we’ve got a leak that you clearly know about but have done nothing to plug, this department’s going to be stuck with a massive legal bill?’ The burn of self-righteous anger was a feeling Lees had always enjoyed.

Karen rolled her eyes. ‘It’s pretty obvious there’s a leak. I know it’s not coming from me and I’d stake my pension that DC Murray isn’t sneaking round talking to journalists behind my back. So it must be coming from admin or the forensics division out at Gartcosh. Neither of which is my responsibility.’

‘Be that as it may, you should have reported your suspicions to me.’ Lees glared at her. It wasn’t often he got Karen Pirie on the back foot and he was happy to make the most of it.

Karen gave a tight smile. ‘Sorry, sir. I didn’t think I had to waste your time stating the obvious. I’ll leave it in your capable hands now. But the fact remains that we don’t know how long we can keep secret the fact that we’ve reopened the Tina McDonald case. Especially since I’m about to start interviewing the investigating officers and the witnesses. Not to mention talking to the family. So we need to get this moving. I need to get an advocate on the case and we need to get it in front of a judge as soon as possible.’

Lees groaned. ‘How certain are you of getting a result if I do authorise this ridiculous level of expenditure?’

‘There’s
no guarantees. Chances are the birth certificate won’t give us the father’s name. But it will tell us where to start looking. Without it, we’ve got nothing. With it, we could get the answer we all want.’

‘Or we could get nothing.’

‘That’s always the way with historic cases. If you did a cost–benefit analysis at the start of any of my investigations, the accountants would have a fit. But you know that when we do resolve cold cases, it doesn’t just give closure to the friends and families of the victim, it makes us look good. It raises people’s confidence, and I don’t think you can put a price on that.’ Karen glowered at him.

‘We don’t usually have this level of expenditure up front, though. Look, you said this case is unusual. Can you not get an advocate to do it pro bono? For the prestige?’

Karen sighed. ‘There is no prestige. It’ll be heard in camera. Look, the world is going to hear we’ve reopened this case. I’m going to have Tina McDonald’s family on my back as well as the media. Do you really want me to have to tell them that we’re not proceeding with the investigation because you won’t authorise the legal fees?’

Lees sighed. As usual, she’d backed him into a corner. ‘Fine,’ he growled. ‘But don’t go for a QC.’

Karen stood up, beaming. ‘I’ll get cracking, then.’

Before he could say more, she was out the door, showing a remarkable turn of speed. Lees squeezed his eyes shut. One day, he promised himself. One day he’d get rid of Karen Pirie for good.

13

S
ometimes
Karen’s need to walk herself to sleep was thwarted by the weather. This was one of those nights. A sharp east wind drove in from the Baltic, cutting through clothes like a skinner’s knife, carrying bitter gouts of rain that stung the skin like flying nettles. She could have quartered the city on the night buses, but she’d learned from experience that that didn’t satisfy her need for movement. Instead, she made a cup of tea and settled down at her laptop. It was a picture of warmth and cosiness. But if she got too comfortable, a turn of her head would bring the sea into sight, white horses topping the heavy swell that hit the sea wall with jagged towers of spray. You could build walls against the wild, but you could never ignore its presence.

Because DI Noble’s interruption to her day was still fresh in her mind, Karen decided to see what she could find out about the murder in 1994 that had apparently set Gabriel Abbott adrift from his moorings. Karen had still been at school then, so it hadn’t made the sort of impression it would have done
if she’d already been a cop. But she did remember the plane crash in the Borders and the shock as it had quickly emerged that this was no ordinary aviation accident but the result of a terrorist bomb.

Six years before there had been the horror of the explosion that had ripped through Pan Am flight 103 in the skies above Lockerbie and it had still been fresh in people’s minds. Coupling the words ‘plane’ and ‘terrorism’ in 1994 was enough to provoke ripples of panic in the public consciousness. And when an RAF Chinook helicopter carrying twenty-five senior intelligence operatives was blown out of the skies en route from Northern Ireland a few weeks after the small plane came down, the national press flung themselves into a series of hysterical diatribes against the IRA and all their works. Nobody who took to the skies was safe, some commentators implied. But starved of detailed information, the story soon slipped from the headlines and joined the long tail of the Troubles that mostly happened somewhere else.

Karen typed in ‘Caroline Abbott plane’ to the search engine. The first hit was a Wikipedia page. It was as good a place to start as any. She was accustomed to bringing a healthy dose of scepticism to whatever information crossed her path. Much healthier for a police officer to assume every source was suspect rather than being seduced by appearances.

1994 Cessna Skylane explosion

From
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cessna 182 Skylane, similar to the bombed plane

On 5 May 1994 a Cessna 182 Skylane exploded in mid-air above a hillside at Glendearg near Galashiels in the Scottish Borders. The aircraft was en route between Elstree Aerodrome and Fife Airport by Glenrothes.[1] There were no survivors among the four people on board, who included former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
Richard Spencer MP
, TV presenter
Ellie MacKinnon
and West End theatre promoter
Caroline Abbott
.

Aircraft[
edit
]

The aircraft involved was a
UK
-registered
Cessna 182 Skylane
,
tail number
G-JPST, construction built in 1975. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had completed 4,845 hours total time and 4,352 cycles.[2]

Accident flight[
edit
]

The Skylane took off at 10.17 local time from Elstree Aerodrome, with a destination of Fife Airport in Scotland. The flight had been uneventful until, without warning at 12.43, according to eyewitnesses the plane disintegrated in a ball of flame above a hillside at Glendearg near Galashiels Golf Course in the Scottish Borders. Burning wreckage was spread over a wide area.[3] There were no survivors from the explosion.

Casualties[
edit
]

All four occupants of the aircraft (pilot Richard Spencer and three passengers) perished in the accident. There were no physical injuries on the ground.

Crew

Pilot: Richard Spencer MP

Passengers

Mary Spencer, wife of the pilot

Caroline Abbott, theatre impresario

Ellie MacKinnon, television presenter and writer

Investigation[
edit
]

An investigation was conducted by the
Air Accident Investigation Branch
(AAIB), Lothian and Borders Police, assisted by the
National Transportation Safety Board
, the aircraft manufacturer,
Cessna
and the engine manufacturer,
Pratt & Whitney Canada
.

The AAIB published its formal report into the accident on 4 January 1995. It concluded that the mid-air disintegration of the plane had occurred as a result of an incendiary device which had detonated and caused the engine of the plane to explode. The device was of a type typical of terrorist activity.[4]

A
Fatal Accident Inquiry
into the death of the four victims opened on 31 January 1995 in Edinburgh. The inquest concluded on 10 February with verdicts of murder being returned in all four cases.

Karen cross-checked the facts with a couple of other news stories on the crash itself. On the face of it, there was nothing to argue with. Her next step was to follow the thread of reportage from the breaking news via the finger-pointing to the definitive version of events that had become set in stone. She worked her way through a series of archived newspaper
reports as well as random posts by conspiracy theorists, aviation geeks and Ellie MacKinnon fans who were apparently still mourning her passing.

The picture that emerged wasn’t complicated. Richard Spencer, forty-nine, had been a commercial pilot before he became an MP and he’d kept his pilot’s licence current even after he took up his seat. His private plane, a four-seater single-engine Cessna, was kept at Elstree Aerodrome in North London, a couple of miles from the home he shared with his wife Mary, forty-four, and their two children – fourteen-year-old Chloe and ten-year-old Guy. Richard loved to fly and, whenever there was an opportunity, he would take to the skies. He regularly used the Cessna to commute between London and his constituency in Birmingham.