Twenty-Six

The next day, Rex met Alistair for a pub lunch in belated celebration of his having won a guilty verdict in his last trial. They had both had a busy morning and this was their first opportunity to discuss the events of the previous evening.

“How is your new house guest?” Rex asked as they grabbed a newly vacated table.

“Richard is fine. He stayed in my basement last night.” Alistair occupied a Georgian house in Albany Street in the heart of New Town. “But he’s anxious to return to his flat as soon as he gets the all-clear from the police.”

“Poor man. He was so happy to be home yesterday. But your basement, Alistair?”

“What’s wrong with it? It’s luxury accommodation. And since I’m not letting it right now … What?” he asked when Rex did not answer. “You think he should have stayed upstairs with me? Don’t worry, I made him my special pasta with portobello mushrooms and scallops and opened a nice bottle of Chablis. I even regaled him with the operas of Verdi’s middle period. He’s a man of refined taste is our Richard, though a bit cuckoo. I asked him if he’d like to stay in my renovated basement, and he was delighted when I showed it to him. You haven’t seen it since it was kitted out with quartz countertops and the latest in chrome fixtures. It would be rated five stars if it was a hotel.”

“I just meant he might be frightened on his own.”

“He feels he’s safe for now, but Detective Inspector Rice told me this morning the sighting on Lewis was false. Dan Sutter could be anywhere. I haven’t told Richard yet. I thought I’d give him a reprieve before I deliver this latest bit of bad news. DCI Lauper is headed back to Edinburgh.”

A server arrived to clear the empty glasses from the previous customers and wipe down their table. They placed their orders.

“Richard will have to be told before he goes home,” Rex said, resuming their conversation after the young man had left. “Pete Lauper won’t be pleased to have missed oot on the action yesterday while pursuing a futile search of the Western Isles. What happened up there?”

“The man they tracked down was misidentified by the person who saw the police flyer of Sutter at a post office. The look-alike had the misfortune to be wearing a blue pullover similar to the one Sutter had on the day he attacked us at Ramsay Garden. He was a freelance photographer visiting Lewis and Harris on assignment.”

Rex sighed dispiritedly. “Aye, well, someone could easily be mistaken for Dan Sutter. I wonder if he’s taken pains to disguise himself. Dyed his hair, grown a beard, be wearing glasses, maybe?”

“Or heels,” Alistair said half-seriously.

Rex looked around for their drinks and spotted the young man approaching with them across the heavily populated floor. “So Dan Sutter is still at large. Not very reassuring. And there’s another unsavoury character in the picture.”

He told Alistair about the phone call from his associate Thaddeus concerning a name on the shortlist of suspects in Murgatroyd’s possible murder. “He discovered a Canterbury connection, and I immediately recognized the name Burke, first name Bruce. Phoebe Wells has a handyman by the name of Alan Burke. Prison records show Alan visiting Bruce at Shotts, thirty miles from here. He’s his brother and, apparently, a close one at that to have come all this way. Dan Sutter was an inmate at Shotts. The coincidences just keep mounting.”

“You don’t believe in coincidences, remember.” Alistair thanked the server and picked up his glass of ale. “Seems I misjudged Phoebe. I thought she was making it all up about her father being murdered and things mysteriously disappearing from her house.”

Rex took a swig of Guinness. “You accused her of screaming blue murder,” he jokingly reminded his friend.

“I eat my words.” Alistair reached into the pocket of his dark grey jacket and fished out a rectangle of paper. He then produced a pen from his waistcoat and, brushing aside a few crumbs on the paper, began to write. “There,” he said and proceeded to feed the paper into his mouth.

“Alistair, you don’t have to be so literal!”

His colleague continued to chew and made a big show of swallowing.

“For goodness sake, man, you’ll choke.”

“It’s only rice paper,” Alistair assured him at last with a grin. “Quite yummy, in fact. It contained a date bar.”

Rex shook his head and smiled indulgently at his friend. Alistair was partial to nutritional snacks along with adolescent pranks. “Well, it certainly is strange that a judge’s wig goes missing from one place and turns up in another. I shall tell Phoebe, but I’d like to speak to Richard first. I feel like I’m missing something.”

Their food arrived and they concentrated on eating since they had to get back to Chambers Street for a one o’clock meeting with the Solicitor General, deputy to the Lord Advocate who headed the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Piers Smiley was an affable man, well suited to his name, and Rex liked and respected him immensely.

In the middle of the afternoon he found time to ring Helen from his office and give her an update on his private case. “Looks like Phoebe’s intuition, or whatever it was regarding her father, was true,” he told her. “And I’m looking at Dan Sutter as being somehow involved.”

“In that case, I feel contrite. It was uncharitable of me to dismiss her suspicions so lightly.”

“I had my doubts too. As did Alistair. He went and ate his words. Wrote them down and chugged down the lot with some ale. It was only rice paper, but the silly sod had me going for a while.”

Helen laughed. “That is so like him. So, is it back to Canterbury this weekend?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

“That would be the logical step. But I want to see Richard Pruitt again and perhaps one or two other people. Thaddeus, my friendly investigator in London, has been doing background checks on some ex-cons Judge Murgatroyd put away, and he said there was one in particular I should look at.”

“A female?”

“Male. Originally from Kent. If I do go to Canterbury, how would you like to stay in a nice little hotel for the weekend and keep me company? That way I won’t have to impose on Phoebe.”

“I hardly think it would be imposing; I’m sure she’d just love to have you. No, I’d like to spend a weekend away with you, Rex, but only if I could have you all to myself. You’d only be distracted, and I don’t see how I could be much use to you on this case. But perhaps you could stop by again?”

He said he would certainly try. He missed her; and her semi-
detached home on Barley Close was a haven of peace and normality. Peaceful and normal could not in any way describe the day he was having as he attempted to pack in everything that needed to be done before he could make further plans for the weekend. This included tracking down the ex-felon Bruce Burke.

Through contacting his parole officer, Rex finally got hold of his suspect at the local auto shop where he worked. Thaddeus had sent a mugshot, which looked ominous to say the least, and Rex arranged to meet him in a very public place the next day.