Even dogs in the wild (2 page)

of back walls in the darkness to reach the small window of the

garden-level laundry room, adjacent to the locked and bolted

rear door. They had broken the window and climbed in. Minton

had been in his study on the ground floor. According to the

post-mortem examination, he had been beaten around the head,

then throttled, after which his lifeless body had been beaten

some more.

Clarke stood in the still, silent hall, getting her bearings.

Then she lifted a file from her shoulder bag and began to reread

its contents. Victim had been seventy-eight years old, never

married, resident at this address for thirty-five years. Educated

at George Heriot’s School and the universities of St Andrews

and Edinburgh. Rising through the city’s teeming ranks of

lawyers until he reached the position of Lord Advocate,

prosecuting some of Scotland’s most high-profile criminal

trials. Enemies? He would have had plenty in his heyday, but

for the past decade he had lived out of the limelight. Occasional

trips to London to sit in the House of Lords. Visited his club on

Princes Street most days to read the newspapers and do as many

crosswords as he could find.

‘Housebreaking gone wrong,’ Clarke’s boss, DCI James

Page, had stated. ‘Perpetrator doesn’t expect anyone home.

Panics. Game over.’

‘But why strangle him, then start beating him again once the

victim’s deceased?’

‘Like I say: panic. Explains why the attacker fled without

taking anything. Probably high on something and needing

money for more. Looking for the usual – phones and iPads,

easily sold on. But not the sort of thing someone like the noble

lord would have in his possession. Maybe that annoyed our man

and he took out his frustration then and there.’

‘Sounds reasonable.’

‘But you’d like to see for yourself?’ Page had nodded

slowly. ‘Off you go then.’

Living room, formal dining room and kitchen on the ground

floor, unused servants’ quarters and laundry room below. The

window frame of the laundry room had been boarded up, the

window panel itself removed, along with all the shards of glass,

to be taken away and examined by forensics. Clarke unlocked

the back door and studied the small, well-tended private garden.

Lord Minton employed a gardener, but he only visited one day

each month in winter. He had been interviewed and had

expressed his sadness, along with his concern that he hadn’t

been paid for the previous month.

Climbing the noiseless stone staircase to the ground floor,

Clarke realised that, apart from a toilet, there was only one

further room to check. The study was dark, its thick red velvet

curtains closed. From the photographs in her file, she could see

that Lord Minton’s body had been found in front of his desk, on

a Persian rug that had now also been taken away to be tested.

Hair, saliva, fibres – everyone left traces of some kind. The

thinking was: the victim was seated at his desk, writing out

cheques to pay his gas and electricity bills. Hears a noise and

gets up to investigate. Hasn’t got far when the attacker bursts in

and smacks him on the head with a tool of some kind – no

weapon recovered yet; the pathologist’s best guess a hammer.

The chequebook lay open on the antique desk next to an

expensive-looking pen. There were family photos – black and

white, the victim’s parents maybe – in silver frames. Small

enough to be slipped into a thief’s pocket, yet untouched. She

knew that Lord Minton’s wallet had been found in a jacket over

the back of the chair, cash and credit cards intact. The gold

watch on his wrist had been left too.

‘You weren’t that desperate, were you?’ Clarke muttered.

A woman called Jean Marischal came in twice a week to

clean. She had her own key and had found the body the

following morning. In her statement she said the place didn’t

really need that much attention; she just thought ‘his lordship’

liked a bit of company.

Upstairs there were too many rooms. A drawing room and

sitting room that looked as though they’d never seen a visitor;

four bedrooms, where only one was needed. Mrs Marischal

could not recall a single overnight guest, or a dinner party, or

any other kind of gathering come to that. The bathroom didn’t

detain Clarke, so she headed downstairs to the hall again and

stood there with arms folded. No fingerprints had been found

other than those belonging to the victim and his cleaner. No

reports of prowlers or out-of-place visitors.

Nothing.

Mrs Marischal had been persuaded to revisit the scene later

on today. If anything
had
been taken, she was their best hope.

Meanwhile, the team would have to look busy – it was expected

that they would
be
busy. The current Lord Advocate wanted

twice-daily updates, as did the First Minister. There would be

media briefings at midday and four, briefings at which DCI

James Page had to have something to share.

The problem was: what?

As she left, Clarke told the uniform outside to keep her wits

about her.

‘It’s not true that the guilty always come back, but we might

get lucky one time . . .’

On her way to Fettes, she stopped at a shop and bought a

couple of newspapers, checking at the counter that they

contained decent-sized obituaries of the deceased. She doubted

she would learn anything she hadn’t already read on a half-hour

trawl of the internet, but they would bulk out the file.

Because Lord Minton was who he was, it had been decided

to locate the major incident team at Fettes rather than Gayfield

Square. Fettes – aka
‘the Big House’ – had been the

headquarters of Lothian and Borders Police right up to April

Fool’s Day 2013, when Scotland’s eight police regions

vanished to be replaced by a single organisation called Police

Scotland. In place of a chief constable, Edinburgh now had a

chief superintendent called Jack Scoular, who was only a few

years older than Clarke. Fettes was Scoular’s domain, a place

where admin took precedence and meetings were held. No CID

officers were stationed there, but it did boast half a corridor of

vacated offices, which James Page had been offered. Two

detective constables, Christine Esson and Ronnie Ogilvie, were

busy pinning photos and maps to one bare wall.

‘We thought you’d like the desk by the window,’ Esson said.

‘It’s got the view if nothing else.’

Yes, a view of two very different schools: Fettes College

and Broughton High. Clarke took it in for all of three seconds

before draping her coat over the back of her chair and sitting

down. She placed the newspapers on the desk and concentrated

on the reporting of Lord Minton’s demise. There was

background stuff, and a few photographs dusted off from the

archives. Cases he had prosecuted; royal garden parties; his first

appearance in ermine.

‘Confirmed bachelor,’ Esson called out as she pushed

another drawing pin home.

‘From which we deduce nothing,’ Clarke warned her. ‘And

that photo’s squint.’

‘Not if you do this.’ Esson angled her head twenty degrees,

then adjusted the photo anyway. It showed the body
in situ
,

crumpled on the carpet as if drunkenly asleep.

‘Where’s the boss?’ Clarke asked.

‘Howden Hall,’ Ogilvie answered.

‘Oh?’ Howden Hall was home to the city’s forensic lab.

‘He said if he wasn’t back in time, the press briefing’s all

yours.’

Clarke checked the time: she had another hour. ‘Typically

generous of the man,’ she muttered, turning to the first of the

obituaries.

She had just finished them, and was offering them to Esson

to be added to the wall, when Page arrived. He was with a

detective sergeant called Charlie Sykes. Sykes was normally

based at Leith CID. He was a year shy of his pension and about

the same from a heart attack, the former rather than the latter

informing practically every conversation Clarke had ever had

with the man.

‘Quick update,’ Page began breathlessly, gathering his

squad. ‘House-to-house is continuing and we’ve got a couple of

officers checking any CCTV in the vicinity. Someone’s busy on

a computer somewhere to see if there are any other cases,

within the city and beyond, that match this one. We’ll need to

keep interviewing the deceased’s network of friends and

acquaintances, and someone is going to have to head to the

vaults to look at Lord Minton’s professional life in detail . . .’

Clarke glanced in Sykes’s direction. Sykes winked back,

which meant something had happened at Howden Hall.
Of

course
something had happened at Howden Hall.

‘We also need to put the house and its contents under a

microscope,’ Page was continuing. Clarke cleared her throat

loudly, bringing him to a stop.

‘Any time you want to share the news, sir,’ she nudged him.

‘Because I’m just about ready to assume you no longer think

this was a panicked housebreaker.’

He wagged a finger at her. ‘We can’t afford to rule that

possibility out. But on the other hand, we also now have this.’

He took a sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his suit. It

was a photocopy of something. Clarke, Esson and Ogilvie

converged on him the better to see it.

‘Folded up in the victim’s wallet, tucked behind a credit

card. Shame it wasn’t noticed earlier, but all the same . . .’

The photocopy showed a note written in capital letters on a

piece of plain paper measuring about five inches by three.

I’M GOING TO KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU DID.

There was an audible intake of breath, followed by a few

beats of complete silence, broken by a belch from Charlie

Sykes.

‘We’re keeping this to ourselves for now,’ Page warned the

room. ‘Any journalist gets hold of it, I’ll be sharpening my axe.

Is that understood?’

‘Game-changer, though,’ Ronnie Ogilvie offered.

‘Game-changer,’ Page acknowledged with a slow, steady

nod.

Two

‘Why Fettes?’ Fox asked that evening as he sat across from

Clarke at a restaurant on Broughton Street. ‘No, let me guess –

it’s to reflect Minton’s status?’

Clarke chewed and nodded. ‘If you’ve got brass or

politicians coming for a look-see, Fettes trumps Gayfield

Square. No grubby little neds for the suits to bump into.’

‘And a more congenial setting for press conferences. I

watched Page on the news channel. Didn’t manage to spot you,

though.’

‘He did okay, I thought.’

‘Except in a case like this, no news isn’t exactly good news.

First forty-eight hours being crucial, et cetera.’ Fox lifted his

glass of water to his lips. ‘Whoever did it has to be on our

books, right? Or is he a first-timer – might explain why he

bolloxed it up.’

Clarke nodded slowly, avoiding eye contact and saying

nothing. Fox put his glass down.

‘There’s something you’re not telling me, Siobhan.’

‘We’re keeping it under wraps.’

‘Keeping what under wraps?’

‘The thing I’m not telling you.’ Fox waited, his stare fixed

on her. Clarke put down her fork and looked left and right. The

restaurant was two thirds empty, no one close enough to

overhear. Nevertheless, she lowered her voice and leaned across

her plate until only inches separated their faces.

‘There was a note.’

‘Left by the killer?’

‘It was in Lord Minton’s wallet, hidden away. Might have

been there for days or weeks.’

‘So you can’t say for sure it was from the attacker?’ Fox

mulled this over. ‘All the same . . .’

Clarke nodded again. ‘If Page ever finds out I told you . . .’

‘Understood.’ Fox leaned back again and stabbed at a chunk

of carrot with his fork. ‘Does complicate things, though.’

‘Tell me about it. Actually, don’t – tell me about your day

instead.’

‘Crew from Gartcosh have arrived out of nowhere. Set up

shop this afternoon and Doug Maxtone’s incandescent.’

‘Anyone we know?’

‘I’ve not been introduced yet. Boss hasn’t been told why

they’re here, though apparently he’s going to be briefed in the

morning.’

‘Could it be a terrorist thing?’ Fox shrugged. ‘How big a

team?’

‘Six at the last count. They’re installed in the CID suite,

meaning we’ve had to relocate to a shoebox along the corridor.

How’s your hake?’

‘It’s fine.’ But she had barely touched it, concentrating

instead on the carafe of house white. Fox poured himself more

water from the jug. Clarke’s water glass, he noted, was still full.

‘What did the note say?’ he asked.

‘Whoever wrote it was promising to kill Lord Minton for

something he’d done.’

‘And it wasn’t in Minton’s handwriting?’

‘Letters were all capitalised, but I don’t think so. Cheap

black ballpoint rather than a fountain pen.’

‘All very mysterious. Just the one note, do you think?’

‘Search team will be in the house at first light. They’d