THE VISIT from Harold Sutherland had shaken the ground but they were still waiting for a phone call to say whether Simon had been charged or not. Waiting to hear what he had said under pressure.
Sholto was beginning to calm down to his usual mild discomfort when he said, “We shouldn’t expect much of a result out of that interview. A good lawyer can make a decent cop’s day very difficult but an entire team of very expensive and determined lawyers can run the rings of Saturn around the whole legal system.”
“DS MacNeith is a good detective, she won’t let this slip.”
“No, not on purpose, not out of ignorance or stupidity, but she’s spent her whole career learning how to dish out justice and she’ll encounter an entire squad of goons who’ve spent their working lives helping others sidestep it. I don’t like how long it’s taking either. That boy, he was already cracked, so if he was going to fall apart it would have happened by now. The legal eagles must be holding him together.”
“You really don’t like lawyers, do you?”
Sholto shook his head. “They do important work and everyone should have one, but you can say that about bowels as well and I wouldn’t want to shake hands with one of them without gloves on either.”
“Would be worse without them.”
“It would, yes, but when I was a cop I saw the difference between a good lawyer and a brilliant one. A good one could get you off the hook if the evidence said you deserved to go free, a brilliant one could set you free no matter what story the evidence told. I saw too many guilty people walk free from police stations because brilliant lawyers came up against mediocre police investigations.”
Sholto didn’t often hark back to his time as a detective at Cnocaid station, a period he hadn’t much enjoyed. Darian thought it was partly because Sholto didn’t like the job and partly because he didn’t want to have to talk about Darian’s father, his former colleague now in prison. Occasionally Darian was reminded that his boss just might have gone through a lot more in life than he cared to admit.
The problem with waiting for the phone to ring was that no one intended to call them. Instead they heard another set of feet making their way up the stairs and stopping outside the door, this time knocking and having the patience to wait to be let in. Sholto’s desk was next to the door so he got up and opened it nervously. The woman on the other side of the threshold had dark hair and eyes and was wearing a red coat and black trousers. Her eyes were bright with mischievous laughter as she sauntered past Sholto and into the office, taking a good look around, a smirk on her wide mouth.
She said, “So this is the famous office of Douglas Independent Research.”
Sholto closed the door before any other surprises could sneak past him and said, “We’ve met?”
“Oh, no, sorry. I’ve met your colleague before, though, not yourself. You must be the famous Mr. Douglas.”
The second-to-last thing Sholto wanted to be was famous. He said, “I didn’t think either me or my office were so well known. And your name is…?”
“DC Angela Vicario, it was me who interviewed Ash Lucas when Darian brought him in, and I did a little work on the Folan Corey case as well.”
Sholto’s face lit up with joy at his memory’s success as he said, “Oh, yes, that’s right, I remember, we have sort of met, or were in the same place at the same time anyway, Sgàil Drive, when…”
The mood in the room collapsed into misery as they remembered the last and only time the three of them had been together. Darian had called Vinny for help that desperate night and some of the aid he’d brought had been in the form of the playful but razor-sharp DC Vicario. There was nothing as happy as a smiling blade.
She said, “I have come with what I think is good news, but not all good. I was called to Cnocaid station with a colleague because when they ran a check on the bra they found it matched one we were looking for. Do you remember the Ruby-Mae Short murder?”
Darian shook his head but Sholto said, “Young woman found dead on the tracks behind Misgearan. They never got anyone for that, did they?”
“No, we never got close. One thing we didn’t make public was that when we found her body we didn’t find a bra on her. There was a possibility that she had been wearing it and her killer had kept it as a memento. We’re still waiting for DNA to confirm it but the bra is from the same store where she bought most of her underwear and I’m convinced it’s Ruby’s, plus Simon Sutherland says it turned up in his home last January, which is when she was killed.”
Darian said, “Why would he admit that?”
She shrugged and said, “Perhaps it’s a clever move; he knows we’re going to identify the owner of the bra and he wants to set up his excuse as early as possible. Or it might be that someone is trying to make him look guilty. It’s complicated, but I’m hoping to simplify it when we move him up to Whisper Hill and get him talking there.”
“Has he said anything about Freya Dempsey?”
“Nothing. There’s no sign of her, unfortunately, but if he was involved in what was done to Ruby then he’s very dangerous and we can’t expect to have a good outcome with Freya. Look, we all like Vinny at Dockside, he’s like a cool older brother to a lot of the young officers and we want to find out what happened to Freya for his son’s sake as well. Have either of you heard any mention of Ruby, or anything else about 12 January last year when she was killed? Any shred of info we can get on that might help us with Freya, too.”
Both men shook their heads and Sholto said, “No, but we’ve only been looking for Freya, only been asking questions about her. If her disappearance ties in with Ruby-Mae Short then we can start looking into that as well as part of the same investigation.”
“Obviously nothing that might interfere with what we’re doing, but if you could check what your contacts have to say that would help. I have to go; I need to sit next to my boss while he goes jousting with the sort of lawyers a rich man can buy, which should be fun. I’ll keep you updated.”
As he walked her the three steps to the door Sholto said, “We’ll hunt around our contacts and let you know if we come up with anything.”
DC Vicario stopped in the doorway and looked back into the office at Darian with a small smile before she said, “I like your famous little office, it’s unassuming.”
After closing the door behind her Sholto and Darian looked at each other with the shared expression of men who had just seen their case balloon out beyond their reach.