The Red Road (17 page)

‘That reg,’ she said. ‘Did you get anything on it?’

‘No record. Just a guy called Stepper.’

She looked to the corner but the van was gone. ‘Find out what you can about him for when I get back,’ she said and walked away.

White vans were so common, it was easy to get paranoid. Still, her mind reeled through a pencilled list: Brown’s people, gun-toting school-age nutters. Danny’s people, smiley, photograph-of-mum liar sharks. Suspicious loan givers. Angry roof repairers short of work. It wasn’t a list of suspects, she realised, it was a list of worries.

She passed the glass wall and glanced into the lobby. The two armed officers were there, as yet without their weapons but still intimidating in their full black kit and ten-mile stares. They wouldn’t bring their guns out until the lobby cleared when Brown would be whisked in around the corner.

McCarthy was there already, sitting on a bench, facing the door, the MobileID bag between his feet. He must have been watching for her for a while and gave a delighted smile and a cheery wee wave to her. He flushed, embarrassed, and dropped his hand.

Morrow went through the revolving doors and looked for him again, smiling at him and giving him the sort of wave she’d give the babies on a carousel. They grinned at each other.

She was behind a very old man in the security queue. He gave off the smell of coal tar soap. She could see the back of his neck, the slash tracks of a thousand skyward glances. He had a polythene bag with him. Dexie the security guard rooted through it with a pen, increasingly puzzled.

‘I’m sorry, sir, what are these?’ Dexie was an American ex-serviceman whose wife was from Hamilton. He had American teeth, looked jarringly healthy in the company of Glaswegians, a full head taller and broad on the chest. Because of his accent and confident demeanour Morrow always felt as if she was an unwitting player in an oddly boring TV show when he was there.

The old man was explaining the notion of novenas to Dexie.

‘Prayer cards?’ said Dexie, not much better off than before he asked.

‘Not exactly,’ said the soapy gentleman, about to launch into a further theological exploration of the issue.

‘Are you selling them?’ asked Dexie. Morrow knew Dexie. He was smart and he didn’t need to know this, it wasn’t a gun, it wasn’t a bomb, but he had the sort of distance a tourist has, knew he’d get the antsy queue in on time and was interested.

‘Certainly not
selling
them—’

Dexie interrupted, ‘Don’t give them out or leave them lying around, sir.’ He put the man’s bag of prayers through to the other side of the metal detection arch and waved him along.

‘How are you today, ma’am?’

‘Very well, Dexie, how are you?’

‘Busy.’

Morrow shrugged her coat off, laid it in the plastic tray, emptied her pockets into another tray with her phones and pocket change. Dexie pushed them along the rollers into the X-ray machine. She opened her handbag for him to look in and he took it from her, waved her through the arch and handed her bag back to her.

He told her she should have a nice day, and she ordered him to do the same.

‘Actually, Dexie,’ she hung back, keeping him from the next security risk, ‘is Anton Atholl in yet?’

‘Well, ma’am ...’ She should go to reception but Dexie looked over there and saw the size of the queue. ‘Um.’ He looked back at her. ‘Yeah. I don’t know where he is though. I believe he’s in court four today.’

‘I know he is. He’s cross-examining me. Thanks, Dexie, I’ll find him.’

McCarthy stood waiting for her on the other side. ‘Brought it.’ He held up the large square bag.

‘Great.’ She looked up and saw Anton Atholl coming down the stairs with another lawyer, both wigged and gowned, talking seriously.

She told McCarthy to wait and walked over to meet Atholl at the bottom of the stairs, remembering the beguiling lightness of yesterday’s interaction, wary of his charm. She needn’t have bothered. He was very hung-over, she could tell by the angle of his neck. He was trying not to move his head.

Morrow had had just two glasses of wine last night and she didn’t feel one hundred per cent. She’d even left most of the second glass in case the boys were up all night, which they weren’t. She’d had a hangover once. It was a long time ago, before she joined the police, a simple miscalculation of lagers over an evening. She’d felt sick and headachy for an entire day. But as Atholl looked up at her she knew her sore head many years ago bore no relation to what he was feeling now.

‘Good send-off?’

He tried to smile and then thought better of it. ‘Mr McMillan would have enjoyed it, I think.’

‘Hope they didn’t keep you up too late?’

‘No, no, no. Some of us went on to a private club.’ He smiled at the man next to him, as though it had been his idea, but the other lawyer looked back at him vacantly. ‘Stayed there until the wee small hours. Great night. Go down in history. “Good night, sweet prince” and all that.’

He was over-embellishing. Morrow thought maybe it was a bit of a grim night after all. He looked a bit sad. ‘And what can I aid you with today?’

His studied pomposity was a defence, she thought, a way of fending people off. ‘I need to ask you something.’

Atholl nodded goodbye to the other lawyer and led Morrow to a bench under the high window. He sat next to her, just a little too close, his thigh almost touching hers. He smelled a little stale. Morrow moved away.

‘We need to MobileID your client. We found his prints at a scene of a crime that happened a few days ago.’

Atholl frowned. ‘He was in prison.’

‘That’s why we need to MobileID him.’

Atholl sat up, looked away from her. He thought about it for a minute and then gave an odd little laugh. ‘What sort of scene?’

‘A murder.’

He harrumphed, thought again, and turned back to face her without moving his head on his neck. ‘Brown may not agree to it. You can only insist if he’s been charged with a fresh offence.’

She was sure Atholl’s reluctance was feigned.

‘I think he will agree. I think he knows this is coming.’ She stood up with the window to her back so that the cruel morning light was on Atholl’s face, making him flinch. ‘I think
you
knew this was coming.’

‘I didn’t.’ Atholl said it so simply she almost believed him. She was a little stumped.

‘OK, ask him if we can,’ she said. ‘See how surprised he is.’

She was walking away to the witness room but found Atholl at her back. ‘DI Morrow,’ he said, flinching because he’d moved too quickly. ‘Michael Brown’s really ill.’

She made a disbelieving face.

‘Crohn’s disease,’ he said quietly. ‘Pretty advanced. Do you know what Crohn’s is?’

‘It’s a gut thing?’

‘A terrible “gut thing”.’

‘Well, don’t ask me to be sympathetic to him just because he’s—’

‘I’m not asking for sympathy.’ Atholl’s accent had changed, he was whispering and sounded sincere. ‘Just saying: I don’t think he’s a scheming mastermind. He wasn’t getting any treatment when he was out. He’s got open sores all over his shins, he can hardly walk across the cell to use the toilet. D’you know what I’m saying?
That’s not it
, is what I’m saying ...’ Atholl shrugged. ‘Never mind. I’ll ask him.’

Morrow watched him walk away, carefully keeping his head level. She could have countered with the Cyprus villa, but then they’d know Interpol was feeding them information about the Dutch lawyer’s banking transactions.

The tannoy announced that the case was about to start.

‘You wait here until we get word,’ she told McCarthy. ‘Might be a while though.’

‘Sure,’ he said lightly, ‘I can wait.’

As Morrow walked down the back corridor it occurred to her suddenly that they might be planning to sell the Cyprus villa to pay for his defence. She could be looking at it from completely the wrong angle. She flicked her warrant card at the guard on the door and went into the witness waiting room. She organised herself, turning her phones to silent, getting her notes out of her bag and ready in case she need to refer to them, folding her coat nicely on the chair. She could leave that there, she thought, hearing the call of the macer and the scrape of chairs as the court rose for the judge.

She stood ready behind the door, an actor waiting for a cue. She thought about Atholl asking whether she knew what he was saying or not saying. She couldn’t even guess what that was about.

The door opened and the macer invited her into the court. Morrow took the stairs down. She had worn the right shoes this time, flats with a soft sole. She didn’t attract much attention: the jury were familiar with her now, Brown knew how she was going to be and Atholl was busy with his papers. She took the chance to look around.

Michael Brown was so white he looked almost silver. He had lost weight and was staring at the floor in front of him. Atholl was gathering his folder together.

The macer, she noticed, was looking at Atholl, smiling a little, fond and sceptical. Then the macer turned her attention to Morrow, reminded her that she was still under oath and placed a note on the witness-dock shelf in front of her. It was a creamy bit of paper, folded, with
FAO DI Morrow
written on it in black ink pen. The writing was fat and gorgeous and she knew immediately it was Atholl’s.

He gathered his folders, went to the stand, put them down and paled dramatically. He hesitated, opened the top file and suddenly the colour returned to his face as he rallied. ‘DI Morrow.’ He looked up and smiled, gorgeous. ‘How are we today?’

He meant to wrong-foot her.

‘Fine.’ She smiled back. ‘How are you?’

The jury tittered, the macer relaxed and the game began again.

It took no more than thirty minutes for her to finish giving evidence. She was dismissed, took the stairs down and then up to the witness room, taking her bag with her this time. Dr Peter Heder, the fingerprint expert, was waiting in the witness room. Pete was a big, bearded man, a worrier, whose benefit was his expertise rather than calm presentation style. He hurried to his feet, cheek twitching.

‘DI Morrow, hello.’

‘Hi, Pete.’

He looked past her, anxious. ‘All right, out there?’

‘Fine. Nothing to worry about.’

Pete watched the door. Morrow picked up her coat, walked out into the lobby and opened the note the macer had given her.

There, in a beautiful italic hand, Atholl had written

DI Morrow:

Mr Brown says ‘No’,

AA

The message made no sense.

‘Ma’am?’

It made no sense.

‘Are we going round to the holding cells, ma’am?’ McCarthy was standing in front of her, holding the MobileID bag.

‘No.’ She put the note in her pocket. ‘Office.’

She need a bit of quiet to think about it properly. They walked together to the car park just outside the front doors. McCarthy unlocked the car and got in. Morrow followed suit.

They drove in silence to the office. Morrow watched out of the window, at the city, towards the wasteland of the east, through the new Dalmarnock road.

She was having to roll right back: she had assumed that the murder was a set-up to get Brown off the new charges but the match they had on the guns was good. She knew they were good. Did she? The whole history of the case had to be reviewed. As she went back through the evidence and events she wondered how she had managed to end up at a dead end this solid, with no spurs, no dog legs, there seemed to have been no point at which she had made a faulty decision, or even made a decision.

‘There’s a van ...’ muttered McCarthy.

She wasn’t listening. She was drawing the events as a mind map: they arrested Brown on fingerprint evidence. Took his prints, got a match with his CRO number. A high-confidence match, the database said. Charged him. Straight to custody. While in prison the same prints appeared near a dead man at a recent site. It wasn’t her case. She didn’t need to bring it up now. He refused to give a fresh set of prints that would confirm the match.

As McCarthy drew up into the car park behind the police station it occurred to her that Atholl would be bringing the prints up during the fingerprint evidence. She should have stayed.

‘Shall I just put this back?’ asked McCarthy, reaching back into the well of the back seat for the MobileID bag.

‘Yeah,’ she said, unsettled and pulling out her phone. ‘Put it away, maybe.’

She got out and stood in the car park, scrolling through her numbers. She knew it was in there somewhere. She found it and called Pete Heder’s number.

He might still be giving evidence. She glanced at her watch. Ten minutes to lunch for the court. Pete could have his phone on him and when she heard it ring out she imagined him panicking on the witness stand, patting his pockets and apologising.

He answered, and she could hear that he was outside.

‘Pete Heder?’

‘Alex Morrow, is that you?’

‘Aye, just a quick question, Pete: did anything strange come up on the stand today?’

‘No. Straightforward ID, point by point comparison site and ten-prints. A palm print. Nothing unusual.’

‘OK. Thanks very much. Bye.’

‘No probl—’

But she’d hung up. She didn’t want to interrupt her train of thought.

McCarthy was gone when she looked around. He must have gone in.

She walked slowly up the ramp to the back bar where Mike, the desk sergeant, was sitting quietly behind a round glass window around the computer terminals.

‘DS Harkins.’

‘DI Morrow.’ He stood up, ready for a bit of banter. ‘How are we today?’

‘Mike, give us a look at the ten-prints logbook, would you?’

He straightened up. ‘For today?’

‘No, for Michael Brown’s date of arrest.’ She scribbled it down and handed it over.

Mike read it. ‘That’s in the storeroom, ma’am.’ He saw the blank look on her face. ‘I’ll go and get it.’

He went off, using his keys to get into the storeroom. Morrow looked over at the LiveScan fingerprint machine around the back of the desk. It looked like an arcade game: the screen was at eye level, bulky, not especially pleasant to look at. They had to replace the screen a while ago when a junkie head-butted it. Next to it sat a spray bottle of disinfectant, plastic gloves and wipes. She remembered Brown standing in front of it, she’d walked through the back bar when he was having his prints taken.