‘We’re not in a combat zone, Dolina, for which we must be thankful.’
‘Legally we are,’ Macdonald pointed out. ‘Near enough.’
‘I’m familiar with the emergency provisions for the North Atlantic defence perimeter, thank you very much, Dolina. But even if that image on its own could convince a jury, and not some military kangaroo court, which I doubt, it’s no evidence at all about my client’s full knowledge and consent, which is what you have to establish.’
‘We can establish that, right enough,’ said Macdonald. ‘The Metropolitan Police were this morning issued a search warrant for the Morrisons’ flat, and a seizure order for the interior cameras. A police semantic AI is trawling the sounds and images as we speak. We have every reason to think that this will within an hour or two provide incontrovertible evidence on the point of your client’s knowledge and consent.’
‘Excuse me!’ cried McKinnon, almost jumping up. ‘Their flat in London was searched? On what possible basis? And what evidence – seeing you admit you don’t have any from the search – sent the Stornoway police supposedly chasing after this family in the first place?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Mr McKinnon.’
‘If you can’t even give me prima facie evidence to justify the arrest…’
‘I already have, Mr McKinnon. The image of the gun, and the recording of the altercation in the tunnel.’
‘If indeed there was an altercation between my client and Mr Morrison about this alleged weapon,’ said McKinnon, ‘that would tend to suggest that she did not know or approve of his carrying it. Would it not also suggest, that she was shocked and surprised to see it? Or perhaps to see something which – in the dark and confusion and panic she has described – she might have mistaken for a weapon?’
‘Such as what?’ asked Macdonald.
McKinnon spread his hands. ‘Any number of things. A torch, perhaps awkwardly held? A tool of his trade – you said he had walked off a job in a hurry. I saw from my first glance at the preliminary documents’ – he looked down and poked at his pad – ‘that Mr Morrison is a carpenter. A carpenter’s square, or a power tool with a pistol grip, could easily have been in his pocket, forgotten. What if he realised at the last moment what all the shouting was about, and removed that tool from his pocket?’
‘Some fine speculation, Hamish, but none of that alters the prima facie basis of the arrest, which is the drone image. And that was no power drill, or any such thing.’
‘That doesn’t explain what the investigation was all about in the first place.’
‘Och, Hamish,’ Macdonald said, ‘if you had done more than “glance” at the preliminary documents, you would know fine well—’
‘Don’t you “och, Hamish” me, Dolina!’ snapped McKinnon.
Macdonald’s face froze. ‘Let’s try and keep this professional.’
‘Indeed,’ said McKinnon. ‘Sorry.’ He cast Hope an embarrassed glance. ‘Stornoway is a small place, Mrs Morrison, and everybody knows everybody else, and as it happens Sergeant Macdonald and I have known each other, off and on, since we were at primary school.’
‘Hence the lapses into talking as if you still were?’ Hope asked, tartly.
The lawyer and the copper looked equally abashed.
‘Let’s take the apologies as mutual and move on,’ said Macdonald. ‘As I was saying, Mr McKinnon, the initial basis for the investigation is given in the preliminary documents.’
‘A moment ago you said you couldn’t tell me that. Now you say it’s in the documents.’
‘I can’t tell you everything,’ said Macdonald, ‘because it might jeopardise another line of inquiry, currently under active and urgent investigation. But it’s also true that there’s enough in the preliminary documents to justify this investigation, and the urgency of today’s search for the Morrison parents.’
McKinnon looked down at his pad and twiddled a theatrical finger on its surface.
‘Sergeant Macdonald, I assure you’ – he glanced at Hope – ‘and you, Mrs Morrison, that I have read every line of these documents, quickly but carefully. What I see here are some social-service background reports, on a quite irrelevant matter of private conscience, which is for the present a live issue only in England and Wales, and some records of phone calls between Mrs Morrison, Mr Morrison, and two people who have separately confessed to terrorism offences under circumstances of severe duress, which you know as well as I do is enough to have them thrown out by magistrates and sheriffs, let alone by the courts. Not even the Met have the brass neck to take such stuff to a magistrate, in most cases.’ He turned to Hope. ‘This is what you meant, was it not, when you said at the moment of arrest that this was all about the fix?’
‘Yes,’ said Hope. ‘The social services and the Health Centre back home have been putting me under a lot of pressure to take the fix, and I came here in the hope of getting away from all that for a bit. Some chance! They’ve obviously decided quite arbitrarily to make an example of me, and that’s why they’ve put this trumped-up nonsense about terrorism to the police. It’s all just a ploy to make me out to be an unfit mother.’
‘As I thought,’ said McKinnon. He held up his pad, between thumb and forefinger. ‘This is pish.’
He let the pad drop, to clatter on the table, and sat back, folding his arms. Hope looked over at him with gratitude and admiration. For the first time she saw the law as Maya had once explained it to her, not as an impersonal and ever more complicated system to crush you, but as a system whose very complexity and impersonality could shield you; and in that moment she saw McKinnon as a knight holding that shield in front of her.
‘You may well think so, Mr McKinnon,’ said Macdonald. ‘But the magistrate in Islington did not, and the sheriff in Stornoway did not, and you will soon find out why. In the meantime, you have no grounds for questioning the prima facie case for arrest in the circumstances of earlier today, regardless of how these circumstances came about.’
McKinnon scowled. ‘This is getting us nowhere. I suggest we wait until you can produce some evidence, rather than holding it over my client as a threat or inducement, and in the meantime that you provide her with some refreshment.’
‘I’m happy to take up that suggestion,’ said Macdonald. She consulted her own pad. ‘Interview adjourned. Expect to resume within two hours.’
‘In the meantime,’ said the lawyer, ‘I wish to talk to my client in private.’
‘Denied,’ said Macdonald. ‘You can’t do that until she’s charged, and we don’t have to charge her for sixty-four days.’ She smiled maliciously. ‘Minus three and a half hours.’
The interview resumed. Hope felt somewhat the better for having had two cups of tea, a beaker of orange juice and a pizza, especially as the policeman who came to her cell – the Leosach who’d arrested her – had allowed her to order from a takeaway menu, and had smiled understandingly and glanced at her bump when she’d specified anchovies and pineapple. And now there were cups of water on the table. But as she took her seat again, her heart sank at the expressions of Macdonald and McKinnon: the policewoman chipper, the lawyer glum.
‘Mrs Morrison,’ Macdonald said, after getting the formalities out of the way, ‘I would like now to bring to your attention some new developments and productions.’
‘Productions?’
‘Items of evidence,’ McKinnon explained.
‘With regard to productions,’ Macdonald went on. ‘The forensic semantic AI trawl of your home cameras has been completed, and in accordance with privacy legislation only those sections directly relevant to the case or cases have been made available by the AI to the investigation.’ She looked up at Hope, with a thin smile. ‘Just in case you were worried about coppers sniggering over your personal life. Isn’t allowed, doesn’t happen. All right?’