Murder in Court Three (20 page)

‘My son is entirely innocent of both these murders and he lacked the knowledge to be guilty of participation in the fraud. We met occasionally and in secret. Once his period of licence expired he intended to go abroad and I planned to resign early and follow him. The money from the fraud has been tucked away and I do not intend to reveal more.

‘My only son has not deserved the ill fortune that has dogged him thus far in life. I hope that no over-zealous prosecutor will attempt to make him pay for my misdeeds.'

Flick and Baggo sat in silence, thinking. Di Falco opened the door. ‘Can they take the body away?' he asked.

Flick answered, ‘Yes. To Dundee. Dr MacGregor will be performing the post mortem.'

His valedictory message ringing in their ears, they stood respectfully as the judge left his home for the last time. As the body was carried from the front door to the ambulance, a press camera flashed several times. Minutes later Baggo's mobile rang. It was Pete Bothwell.

‘Well, what happened?' The DCC scowled from Flick to Baggo and back again. It was another lovely morning, another cancelled golf game. On the desk in front of him sat the cassette tape and that day's
Good News.
The headline screamed, WE EXPOSED HIM. Underneath it read, TOP JUDGE ADMITS MURDER THEN HANGS HIMSELF.

Flick said, ‘Lord Hutton's name kept on coming up in the inquiry and a painting by one of the victims pointed to both him and another person, whom we believe to be his son.'

‘Gary Thomson?' the DCC asked.

‘Yes, sir. The trouble was the judge was very clever and there was really no hard evidence against him. We felt we had to flush him out, as you might say.'

‘In the police force we try to bring criminals to justice, not drive them to suicide, Detective Inspector.'

‘I know that, sir. It's just unfortunate the way things happened.'

The DCC snorted.

Baggo spoke. ‘The idea was mine, sir, and DI Fortune took some persuading to authorise what happened. The problem was that we had overwhelming suspicion but no worthwhile evidence. Had we simply taken Hutton and Thomson in for questioning they would both have clammed up and we would have got nowhere. The
Good News
reporter Bothwell and ex-Inspector Osborne owed me a favour so I persuaded them to challenge Hutton.'

‘You mean you told them about your suspicions and asked them to put the questions?' The DCC sounded aghast.

‘Yes, sir. As a result we admittedly have a dead body, but a dead body that was guilty and made a confession. But for what we did, he would still be sitting as a judge in the High Court.'

‘In the paper Bothwell claims to have found evidence to back up their questions.'

‘Yes, sir. I allowed them a scoop on the condition that they took the credit for the investigation, rather than saying that we set the whole thing up. They were happy to do that.'

The DCC looked at Baggo. Slowly a smile spread across his face. ‘But who did kill Knox, Detective Sergeant?'

‘I don't know, sir. Either it happened exactly as Lord Hutton described on the tape or his son did it on his instruction. It is interesting that as yet we do not have independent evidence that Lord Hutton spoke to his son just before the murder. He obviously assumed we had, or would get it, and he gave an innocent explanation for their exchange.'

‘So the murderer might go free?'

Baggo said, ‘If Gary Thomson did it he did so because his father told him to. Anyway, Hutton did not try to deal with the Dolan murder in Glasgow and I hope we might build a case against him for that.'

‘Why did you think getting the press involved would be more productive than questioning Hutton yourself?'

Baggo spoke slowly, choosing his words. ‘With the press asking the questions they did, he would have known the truth about Gary would be bound to come out and suspicion would settle on both of them. One evening during the investigation, I visited him in the evening and he was drunk. Sometimes drunks open up to whoever is around, and he told me a lot about himself. He had suffered from having an abusive father and he saw it as a father's duty to protect his children. He was clearly bored with his job and was dismissive about the intelligence of criminals. I believed that he would take the blame for the various crimes to exculpate his son. I did not expect him to do it quite in this way.'

The DCC raised his eyebrows. ‘Is there any chance of recovering the money from the fraud?' he asked.

‘Perhaps some of it,' Baggo said. ‘We're going through Lord Hutton's papers, mobile and computer, and if we find out who he dealt with in the Caymans, we might be able to put them under pressure. He would have needed someone local to split up the money and send it in different directions. It's called “layering”. We do a lot of this work in the SFO.'

The DCC leaned back in his chair and smiled. ‘It's a bloody mess, but overall, a not bad bloody mess. We have an identifiable perpetrator and Traynor's in the clear, but this must have been dreadfully embarrassing for him. If we can recover some money as well, it will be an excellent result.
Good News
will be horribly smug, but we can't have everything.'

At that moment, Flick felt a sudden, painful twinge. ‘Excuse me, sir,' she said, ‘I think I'm going to have a baby.'

‘This has been a wonderful day,' Baggo said as he sipped his wine and waited for Fergus to bring in the lasagne. ‘Ganesh was with me. I have broken ninety on the Old Course and I can die happy.' His good round of golf had completed a most satisfying period. He was making real progress in tracing the money that had gone initially to the Caymans, and his affair with Melanie continued to be magical for both of them.

On the sofa, three-week-old Verity Catriona Maxwell sucked hard at Flick's breast, causing her mother to wince. ‘So what news?' she asked. She had been surprised by how she had taken to motherhood but had found it frustrating to be out of the loop. Inviting Baggo to St Andrews for golf with Fergus and an evening meal had been an obvious step.

‘Burns sang like a canary. You know that after Hutton's confession became known, he pled guilty during Lord Tulloch's charge on the basis that he was not the ringleader. There was a great fuss and the lawyers got their knickers in a twist but his plea was accepted. He promised to tell the full story and I think he has. So he'll expect leniency. He got all his instructions from untraceable e-mail accounts and pay-as-you-go mobiles with voice distorters. He had no idea who was pulling the strings. All the time Hutton kept coming up with the goods, and kept paying his mother's care costs, so he just did as he was told. He was unable or unwilling to finger Gary Thomson. As you'll know, the other three were convicted by the jury and they all come up for sentence next week.'

‘Are you getting anywhere with the money in the Caymans?'

‘We should recover some serious amounts, but it will take a while.'

‘And has the fuss died down about that mercy killing case?'

‘I think so. As you know, the judges decided assisting suicide was criminal in Scotland, but when Nugent pled guilty, the judge taking the case admonished him, earning blood-curdling threats against him and Nugent. Nothing's happened so far and that has to be good.

‘Oh, by the way, we heard from the Glasgow police that a CCTV camera picked up Gary Thomson, quite identifiably, hanging around outside the High Court at lunch time on the day Dolan was killed. You see the right-to-lifers leave and Gary follows them. He appears to have something under his jacket. A couple of the
Vita Dei
people have identified him as loitering around the High Court that day, but that was just from a photograph. The theory is, that after his early shift in Tesco, he stole a car, drove to Glasgow, killed Dolan, returned to Dunfermline, dumped the car and went to bed, pretending to you and Billy di Falco that he'd been there all day. But that's just speculation, of course.'

‘Will we convict him?' Flick asked.

‘I think we should get him for Dolan's murder, even if he gets off the fraud. It was a good result, whatever, and like politics, policing is the art of the possible.'

All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is coincidental. With one exception. Brenda Lenaghan is a genuine artist, whose work we are proud to have on our walls. She is also great fun. Another supporter has been my devil-master, Bill Reid. I thank him for the idea of bringing a genuine legal issue, the criminality of assisting suicide in Scotland, into the plot.

I am very grateful to the people at Matador and above all to Annie, my wife, for her unfailing support, encouragement and correction of errors.

After a legal career that included sitting as a judge in High Court murder trials, Ian Simpson has been writing crime fiction. In 2008 he was shortlisted for the Debut Dagger by the Crime Writers' Association. He was brought up in St Andrews. This is his third published book.