The path seemed to level out, then led on to a small beach, with the wood close by. As she stepped on to it, she thought she heard a crunch behind her, but she resisted the temptation to turn round. A little further and Dunbar golf course would come into sight.
And then one of the voices in her ear spoke again. It was the South African and this time its tone was different, no longer laughing, no longer soothing: instead it was urgent.
‘We have a man in sight, behind you. He mustn’t close on you! Go now!’
Several things happened at once.
The woman known as Caitlin Summers threw herself to her right. As she landed on the sand she rolled over and came up to one knee, her right hand clear of her jacket pocket and clutching a pistol.
From somewhere behind the tree-line an amplified voice boomed, ‘Armed police officers! Stand still immediately. Put both your hands on your head. Do not move, repeat, do not move or we will shoot.’
The figure at the centre of it all paused. He looked at the woman on the beach, his eyes hidden from her sight by the enveloping hood of a light grey cotton garment. He saw the gun in her steady shooter’s grip, pointing at his chest. Then, slowly and carefully, he spread his arms out wide, then brought his hands together, interlacing his fingers as they met.
He stood like a statue as the woman rose from the sand and as Ray Wilding and Griff Montell emerged from the wood. The two detectives held their weapons on him as Wilding approached him and patted him down until he reached the right pocket of his jacket from which he removed a silenced pistol.
As the sergeant pulled the man’s arms behind his back and cuffed him, a fifth person stepped out of the trees. He walked slowly towards the prisoner; as he reached him, he took hold of the hood, and pulled it backwards, revealing his face.
‘Old friend, old friend,’ said Bob Skinner, sadly. ‘What the hell has all this been about?’
One Hundred and One
The Crown Agent was at his desk glowering at a pile of papers that had come to him in his deputy’s absence; bloody man wasn’t due back for another week, and with Broughton going off too, things could only get worse. That assistant of his couldn’t be relied upon either. If she had shown a little common sense, the shit-storm of the previous week would not have descended upon his head.
Top of the list, of course, was the prosecution of the Shadow Defence Secretary’s son for murder. The indictment would have to be absolutely flawless. He could not bear to imagine the consequences if a young man who was as guilty as sin managed to walk free as the result of a technicality. And that bloody woman Birtles was just the type to throw open the door, if it was left even the slightest bit ajar.
It had never occurred to Joe Dowley that he was a misogynist, but he was. He was of a school, greatly diminished in numbers, but still alive and whining, that regarded women as professionally inferior. He bowed his head, sometimes literally, to the Lord Advocate, and the Lord Justice General, but he held the First Minister in barely disguised contempt, seeing her as the result of a period of ridiculous tokenism in parliamentary selection. As he glanced at the photograph of the Queen, which had been placed on the wall by one of his predecessors, and which he had been afraid to remove, he felt the usual frisson of irritation that she was proving so sturdy and apparently ageless.
He scowled at the phone as it rang, but picked it up. The caller was a woman. ‘I have the Lord Advocate on the line for you,’ she said. . more than a little haughtily, he thought.
‘Of course,’ he replied, as if she had asked whether he was free to take the call.
‘Crown Agent,’ the principal law officer intoned as he came on the line. Dowley’s heart sank at the formality of the greeting.
‘Sir.’
‘I have a task for you,’ Gavin Johnson continued, ‘and for you alone. It has priority over everything else. I need you to go to the police headquarters building down at Fettes, and sit in on an interview that will be conducted there. When it’s over, you’ll be given a copy of the tape. I want you to bring it back to me.’
‘Who’s the interviewee?’
‘You’ll find that out when you get there.’
‘Are you sure this can’t be delegated? I really am. .’
‘You, Joe. Nobody else, and go right away.’
One Hundred and Two
‘You have to be kidding me,’ said Martin.
‘No, I’m not, but I am ringing to apologise for keeping you in the dark about certain things, even after you were given oversight of the inquiry. If I’d been able to tell you face to face, Andy, I would have. I wasn’t keeping you out of the loop.’
‘So what was it that I missed out on?’
‘On Monday,’ Skinner told him, ‘I set up a black operation.’
‘Under cover?’
‘Anything but: it was so far out there I’m still amazed that we got away with it, but we did, all the way. Have you seen anything in the papers lately about an artist called Caitlin Summers, big name in the US, come home in triumph to Scotland?’
‘Yes, I have. Isn’t Aileen opening her exhibition next week?’
‘That’s what they said, but she won’t be. Caitlin’s a figment of my imagination, brought to life by Alice Cowan.’
‘Alice? Special Branch Alice?’
‘Yes. We gave her a butch punk haircut, dyed it peroxide, and stuck a pair of John Lennon glasses on her nose. Her own mother wouldn’t have recognised her. In about half a day she became an internationally known painter, with a body of work that we borrowed from a graduate student in the art college, and presented as Caitlin’s on a website our IT department put together for her. Then we set her up as living in a decommissioned lighthouse in East Lothian, and had her out walking the coast every morning. Our friends in BBC Scotland even ran an interview with her on the evening bulletin on Wednesday.’
‘You set her up as bait?’
Skinner laughed. ‘She used that term herself in the BBC interview. Neil nearly burst a blood vessel when he saw it, but it worked. She volunteered for the job. There was no question of coercion or of her being punished for her leak to her uncle. There was also very little risk. She had a weapon, and she had two bodyguards every hour of the day and every step of the way, Ray Wilding and Griff Montell, both armed too. They camped out in the lighthouse, and they kept her under observation from the dunes when she did her walks. We hoped that if he turned up, he would try to take her where he did. It offered the best cover for him, but happily, it did for us as well.’
‘And he surrendered when you had him trapped?’
‘Thank God. Alice was under orders to take no chances, and the other two wouldn’t have either. I had to take him alive, Andy, otherwise there might have been people afterwards who still thought it was me.’
One Hundred and Three
‘I want you to understand, Mr Dowley,’ said Chief Constable Sir James Proud, ‘that you’re here as an observer. You will take no part in the interview. You will not speak to the prisoner or to the officers who will be conducting it, whatever the circumstances. Understood?’ The chief’s customary bonhomie was missing: so were the chocolate digestive biscuits and tea with which he had greeted almost every visitor during his term of office. ‘No McVities for him,’ he had growled at Gerry Crossley.
‘I’d understand better if I knew what was going on, Sir James.’
‘Don’t worry, you will as soon as you walk into that room. Once again, are my instructions clear to you?’
‘Yes,’ the Crown Agent replied curtly. ‘Who will be conducting the interview?’
‘Detective Inspector Rebecca Stallings and Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner.’ Proud could have sworn that he heard a sudden intake of breath as the second name was mentioned. ‘They’re ready to begin, so let me take you there.’
The chief led the way out of his office, but not out of the command corridor. Instead he turned to his left, and walked a few steps to a small meeting room, where, unusually, a uniformed constable stood guard. Proud opened the door and held it. ‘Your guest is here,’ he said, as the Crown Agent stepped inside. .