‘He’s not here.’
‘I’d like to take a look inside to confirm that, sir,’ McNab said.
Jeff Barclay appeared about to refuse, then caught McNab’s eye and decided to back off. As a lawyer, he must have been aware how things would go if he obstructed a police officer in a murder hunt.
McNab was permitted to enter and the door shut behind him. No doubt Jeff didn’t fancy his neighbours knowing his business. He waved his arms in a dismissive manner. ‘Go right ahead, Sergeant. Search the place. He’s not here, as you’ll see.’
McNab soon did see. The place, though not as expensive a pad as Mark’s, was definitely upmarket. Situated in the Merchant City area of the city centre, McNab suspected this had been the place Mark had made his last call from. At the top of a renovated building, it had a view of Glasgow Concert Hall. With a similar layout to the penthouse, minus the floor-to-ceiling windows, it didn’t have many places to hide.
McNab checked them all and found nothing.
Returning to the kitchen, he spied a bottle of Russian vodka and two shot glasses standing next to the sink, one of which had traces of vodka in it. McNab pointed and asked who Jeff had been entertaining.
The response was swift. ‘My girlfriend, Carla.’
‘And where is Carla now?’
‘She left before you arrived.’
‘How soon before I arrived?’
‘Ten minutes.’
‘She didn’t finish her shot.’
‘She’s not a big drinker.’
It seemed to McNab that Jeff was growing more confident with every passing second, which suggested he felt safer now than when McNab had entered. McNab wondered why.
Then he saw the swift glance he wasn’t supposed to see, and knew.
McNab lifted the bottle and checked it out as though he recognized good Russian vodka when he saw it. Meanwhile he calculated how he planned to play this out.
The long window on the street side sported what appeared to be a narrow ironwork balcony only big enough to house a couple of pot plants. Then again, maybe not.
McNab set the bottle down, strode swiftly across the room and opened the window. Behind him, he could swear he heard an intake of breath, but no warning shout. So maybe he was wrong.
The glass door now open, the noise of the Merchant City swept in. McNab stepped out and took a look round. The railing was four feet high. Beside it was a drainpipe that ran up to a flat roof which was surrounded by a low stone facade. A fit guy could make his way up there, no problem.
McNab re-entered to find Jeff looking even happier.
‘I told you he wasn’t here.’ He could hardly keep the delight from his voice.
‘We have witnesses who saw you and Mark Howitt at The Pot Still the night Leila Hardy died. I don’t need to remind you that it appears you have been withholding information in a murder enquiry.’
Jeff’s smirk dissolved and he produced a concerned and earnest expression to replace it.
‘I was with Mark that night in the pub, but he left with a girl. I don’t watch TV and had no idea what happened to her until now. If I had, I would of course have gone to the police.’
McNab listened as the man before him slithered like a snake round the truth. Lawyers in his opinion could be very good at bare-faced lies, or telling the truth as their clients perceived it. McNab chose to nurse his anger. He would fan the flames when he was ready.
‘I want you down at the station to give a statement and a DNA sample. If Mark Howitt gets in touch, I want to know.’
Jeff gave a small smile of success. ‘Of course, Detective Sergeant. Now that I’m aware of the circumstances, I’d be delighted to help.’
McNab could have cheerfully spat in his eye, but he’d already decided to save Mr Smoothie for later. An hour in an interview room with Jeff Barclay was a prospect he would relish.
On exiting the flat, McNab fired his next shot.
‘I’d like to take a look on the roof.’
The satisfied smile slid from Jeff’s face.
‘That’s not possible,’ he said swiftly. ‘There’s no access.’
McNab pointed at the trapdoor in the ceiling above the top landing. ‘If we pull that down, there will be steps. You should have a pole with a hook on the end to do that.’
Jeff quickly shook his head.
‘I don’t have anything like that,’ he insisted.
‘Then bring a chair.’
Jeff took so long to comply with the request, McNab suspected the bastard was texting his mate, so he went for a look. It turned out Jeff had taken refuge in the toilet, obviously stalling for time.
McNab took a chair from the dining table.
As he suspected, the freed trapdoor revealed a set of pull-down steps.
In minutes he was on the roof. From this vantage point it was obvious that anyone emerging here could make their way along the building and choose to exit via one of the other stairways in the L-shaped block of flats. If Mark Howitt had come up here, he was long gone. McNab chose to walk the roof anyway, checking behind the redundant chimney stacks, just in case.
Ten minutes later he was back in the flat. Jeff had emerged from his sojourn in the toilet and awaited him, the self-satisfied look he’d worn earlier back in place.
McNab stood for a moment in ominous silence, then said, ‘Did you know that if someone drinks from a glass of water, by the time they’ve drunk two thirds of it, the remainder is pretty well all DNA from their saliva?’
Jeff blanched, having an inkling of where this might be going.
‘You made a statement to a police officer, captured on my mobile, that you had been entertaining your girlfriend Carla. Let’s see if that was true.’
McNab produced a pair of forensic gloves, two plastic evidence bags and a mouth swab. He donned the gloves, sampled the vodka with a mouth swab and, lifting each glass, placed them in a separate bag.
Jeff suddenly remembered he was a lawyer and began protesting.
‘Also,’ McNab interrupted him, ‘if you made a call to the suspect while in the toilet, our Tech team will have logged it.’
This wasn’t strictly true, but it was worth it to see the effect his announcement had.
McNab made that his parting shot, before he headed down the stairs.