Blood in the Water (Alice Rice 1) Read online

  Laura Pearson sighed. ‘Whenever he arrived, really. It’s the nature of the job. I knew his proof was due to start, and that if it couldn’t be settled he’d have to work late. That’s the normal pattern. If he manages to settle his case in the morning then he almost always comes home and returns to the Faculty later for any consultations, if any have been arranged. You see, they can’t start until after four pm, when the proof’s over for the day, so there’s a reasonable gap before he has to return. Anyway, as he didn’t come back before lunch I knew that the proof must be running and that he’d be staying on late at the Faculty. He’d talked quite a bit about it, and I knew that there were lots of papers and some difficult medical stuff. This time he was quite worked up about it all. He’s always a bit tense when there’s a lot of material to take in, and he said that he thought his opponent would be unhelpful to boot. So I didn’t know when he’d be back exactly. Just sometime in the evening and probably, if he could make it, before a particular programme on TV that he liked. We have a sort of system. I always have some cold things in the fridge so that we’re not caught out, and I eat alone if he’s not back by about seven pm.’

  ‘And you were in that evening, by yourself?’

  ‘Yes. I was finishing off the Christmas cards.’ She stopped, and then continued, musing to herself, ‘I don’t know why he was walking across the Meadows.’

  ‘How did you expect him to come home?’

  ‘By bike, as he usually did.’

  ‘What sort of practice did your husband have?’ Alice continued.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ She looked anxious, unsure of the relevance of the question, as if it might have been almost impertinent.

  ‘Well, was he a civil lawyer or did he do crime or what?’

  ‘He’d been purely civil for years. His speciality was medical negligence, usually for the defenders, the hospital doctors. Sometimes he did pursuers’ work too, but that tended to be Legal Aid, so he only did it when he absolutely had to, as it’s so poorly paid.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone that might have had enough of a grievance against your husband to kill him?’

  The directness of her own question appalled Alice.

  ‘No, I can’t think of anyone,’ came back the reply. The widow, at least, appeared to have taken the question in her stride. Alice saw, out of the corner of her eye, Alastair mouth the word ‘oaf’, and while she was thinking how to formulate her next question Mrs Winter broke in.

  ‘David’s killer was, probably, some kind of madman. I expect that my son-in-law just happened to cross the wrong path at the wrong time or some such thing. I doubt very much that his murderer knew him or anything about him. Consequently, the question of a motive very probably won’t arise.’ The statement was accompanied by a hostile stare directed at Alice.

  Alastair, seeing that his partner had stalled, took up the questioning.

  ‘Mrs Pearson, do you know anyone called Samuel McBryde?’

  ‘No.’ The answer was immediate, unhesitating.

  ‘What about your husband, did he know the man?’

  ‘I don’t think that he knew anyone of that name. If he did I certainly never heard him mention it. He could have known… Mr McBryde… in a work context, I suppose. All I can say is that I’m not aware of him knowing any such person.’

  ‘What about Dr Elizabeth Clarke, did your husband know her?’

  ‘No! No, no. I don’t…’

  As she spoke, Laura Pearson shook her head repeatedly. She continued to meet her interrogator’s gaze, but tears had begun to flow uncontrollably from her large brown eyes. She appeared to have no hanky, and made no attempt to dab her eyes or staunch the now unstoppable stream.

  ‘Just carry on,’ she said, ‘ignore these… I cry far too easily. It doesn’t mean I can’t answer your questions quite sensibly. Please take no notice.’

  But before either of the sergeants could continue, Mrs Winter whisked a hanky from her sleeve, handed it to her daughter and took over.

  ‘Constables, I think this discussion must come to a close now. My daughter has done her best to answer your questions at what is, evidently, a very difficult time for her. She needs to rest. She didn’t sleep last night, and the doctor’s due to come here shortly. I’m afraid we really must ask you to go.’ In reality there was no ‘we’ about it, and it was not a request.

  ‘There are just a few additional things we need to know,’ Alice persisted. ‘In particular, a bit about Mr Pearson’s background, friends, or…’

  ‘No.’ Mrs Winter’s voice, interrupting the unfinished question, brooked no resistance. To clinch the matter she stood up, standing protectively in front of her still-seated daughter, and gestured with her hand towards the living room door. The two sergeants moved obediently towards it, but as they were doing so Laura Pearson said, ‘You could speak to Alan…’

  ‘Alan who?’

  ‘Alan Duncan, QC. He was David’s best friend, both before and after they were called to the Bar. He lives in Ann Street.’

  Blood in the water. The sharks were circling the Pearsons’ exit, waiting for a titbit of flesh, alert and active but not yet frenzied. Alice caught sight of the red-lipped giantess at the back, jostling with the rest of them, elbows raised, craning for a view of any of the members of the ‘grieving family’ as they emerged. The buzz of excitement died down as soon as the press realised that none of the dead man’s relatives were leaving the house, and on being met with the Detective Sergeants’ ‘No comment’ to their every shouted enquiry.

  Ann Street is, as is well known within the New Town, the apotheosis of social arrival: no-one lives there who has not made it or inherited it. If a bomb were to explode in the centre of the narrow precinct, the corridors of power would become unaturally silent and the New Club’s income would be halved at a blow. Not a single satellite dish disfigures its elegant architecture, and the presence of one would be as unlikely, and unwelcome, as a catamite in a convent.

  Alan Duncan QC was expecting his visitors. In his stockinged feet he led his two guests through his house and into a warm study at the back of the building. Hardly an inch of carpet was visible in it; the entire floor surface was covered in mounds of paper, all radiating outwards from the centre of the room where there was a table and three chairs. With ease the large man navigated through the tottering piles to reach his own seat and indicated for the two sergeants to follow him. Like a couple of Wenceslas’s pages they tiptoed nervously, stepping onto his exact footsteps, aware that a wrong move, a careless step, could result in an avalanche of papers. Duncan picked up a pen and twiddled it between his fat, pink fingers, and Alice, watching, was struck that he bore more resemblance to a stout Stirlingshire farmer, with his ruddy complexion, soup plates for hands and brawny forearms, than any kind of pen-pusher. No boneless white fingers or flaccid, wasted muscles on him, so characteristic of a life spent in libraries or courtrooms, breathing re-circulated air and drinking too much coffee.

  ‘Can you tell us a bit about David Pearson? When did you first meet?’ Alastair enquired.

  ‘We met at university, at Edinburgh. In our second year we shared a flat together in Morningside, that’s how he got to know, and love, that side of the city. After graduating, he thought he’d make lots of money, so he joined the Commercial Department of Dundas & Stirling WS and I got a Bar apprenticeship with Rattrays. Eventually, he decided that corporate work wasn’t for him and he joined me up at the Faculty. We’ve been friends since we were about eighteen and I shall miss him dearly.’ The lawyer’s intonation was clipped, the vowels old-fashioned, like a cruel parody of a broadcast to the Empire by a pre-war monarch.

  ‘What sort of work did he do at the Bar, any crime?’

  ‘None at all.’ He corrected himself before continuing, ‘Well, virtually none. He was forced for a bit to be an ad hoc advocate depute, you know, a temporary prosecutor, but he hated it and avoided as many circuits as he could. He probably only prosecuted about eight cases, if that, durin
g the entire stint. All fairly small beer anyway. They only give the lesser stuff to the ad hocs. I doubt if his demise is associated with any prosecution work carried out by him, and he never did any criminal defence work. His speciality, as Laura probably told you, was medical negligence defence work. He could make a good living out of it and it genuinely interested him. He used to marvel, after some consultation with, say, a colorectal surgeon or whatever, that he’d get paid, effectively, for a lesson in a subject which he so enjoyed. Sometimes agents used to try and get him involved in commercial work, but any interest he’d ever had in such stuff had long since palled, so he’d sidestep it if he could.’

  ‘He was doing well?’

  ‘He was doing very well. Financially, at least. He had more work than he needed and he could pick and choose his cases as a result. He wasn’t really a Faculty man, none of your Bench and Bar golf or that kind of thing, and he wasn’t remotely interested in any of the Faculty offices, Dean, Treasurer or whatever.’

  ‘Would he have made it onto the Bench, been appointed a judge?’

  ‘I doubt that. Too human, untidy, undisciplined and uninterested.’

  ‘What do you mean, “too human”?’

  ‘David was rather over-fond of women for a married man. Too fond for his own good or Laura’s. He strayed numerous times both before and after Laura. Strayed with that Clarke woman for a start.’

  Neither sergeant batted an eyelid.

  ‘That Clarke woman?’ Alastair enquired.

  ‘You know, Dr Elizabeth Clarke, the woman who was murdered last week. They got to know each other through work and the knowledge became biblical. She was used as an expert in some case or other of his and, as usual, he toppled off his pedestal and onto her attractive lap. It wasn’t just a fling, this time. It must have lasted at least six months. A full-blooded affair.’

  ‘Did his wife know about it?’

  ‘She could hardly have failed to do so in the circumstances. David and Elizabeth were returning together in a car from some jolly or other, probably at Greywalls or some other smart hotel, when they had a road traffic accident. I can’t remember which of them was driving. As they were going through Macmerry, or maybe Pencaitland, they ran over a little boy. The police were called and it was all over the East Lothian Courier, the Scotsman, the usual papers. Thankfully, nothing came of it, as whoever was driving wasn’t considered to be at fault. But it was, in a small way, a cause célèbre amongst the chattering medico-legal classes, in fact a first-class scandal, well worth repeating in the New Town. Needless to say, Laura was completely humiliated, and no wonder, it was so public, but she accepted David back, yet again. More than he deserved, although he was, for all his faults, an extraordinarily likeable man, and her life with him was never dull. I think that’s what he gave to Laura, excitement, sparkle. Fizz, if you will, but all at a high price.’

  ‘When did all of this happen?’

  ‘Oh, quite a long time ago. I should think… five, six years… certainly, before he was made a Silk.’

  ‘Did he continue his relationship with Dr Clarke after the accident?’

  ‘No. I’m pretty certain that he ended it then. As I say, Laura had become aware of it and I think he was faced with a stark choice between keeping his marriage alive or continuing with Elizabeth Clarke.’

  ‘And, evidently, he chose his wife?’

  ‘Yes, but for once it was finely balanced. I think he really loved Elizabeth Clarke and I suspect that if things hadn’t ended in the way that they did, his marriage might well have died of natural causes and then he’d have married Elizabeth. No doubt he’d have led her a merry dance too. I’m not sure he was capable of being faithful.’

  ‘Did he remain in contact with Dr Clarke at all?’

  ‘Only on a professional basis, as far as I know. He told me that he’d have to see her as she’d been chosen as the expert witness in some of the court actions in which he was involved. Counsel often don’t get to choose their experts, otherwise she wouldn’t have been. I do remember him talking, earlier this year, about some worrying case in which they were caught up. More recently, they were both speakers in some conference that David had organised about human rights and assisted reproduction.’

  A lithe Siamese kitten peered round the door and slunk over to its master’s chair, purring and twining its sinuous brown tail around his legs before being scooped up onto his lap. A massive forefinger stroked its fragile head and it closed its eyes in ecstasy, flexing its claws in and out with pleasure.

  ‘Did his marriage recover, as far as you’re aware?’ Alistair’s questioning continued.

  ‘Yes. To its pre-Clarke state at least.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘As I said, David was over-fond of women for a married man. So, if an opportunity arose he took it and if an opportunity could be made, he made it. His last Euro-devil…’ Alastair intervened.

  ‘His last what?’

  ‘Euro-devil. It’s a Law Society scheme. In essence, young high-flying lawyers from the European Union, and beyond, come to Scotland for some legal experience and for part of their time they are allocated to “shadow”, if you will, a member or members of the Bar. “Devil” means “apprentice”, really. David’s last one was a rather attractive girl from Vilnius. I have little doubt that they spent as much time in the advocate’s bedroom as they did in the Advocates’ Library. He was incorrigible…’ Duncan laughed. ‘I heard a rumour in the gown room only the other day that he had made another conquest, a lady member, but I never had a chance to talk to him about it. I’ve been away for the last three weeks in the Black Isle, doing an agricultural arbitration at Munlochy. Too late now.’

  ‘So judgeship, the Bench, wasn’t likely due to his womanising?’

  ‘No. The Bench wasn’t likely due to his untidy womanising. It was the untidiness that was the problem.’

  ‘Was Mrs Pearson aware what he was up to?’

  ‘After Elizabeth, you mean?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Probably not. Well, maybe at some deep level. I think for years she’s wilfully blinded herself to what’s going on. She couldn’t change him or her affection for him. She was forced to face the Clarke affair, but after that, just as before that, she put the blinkers on herself. You see they did actually have a lot together, even if all passion had been spent. And then there were the children. Laura was a law student with David and me, she’s probably more intelligent than either of us. My wife can’t understand how she put up with David, but then Hilary never liked him and has always been unmoved by his charms. Fortunately for me.’

  ‘The traffic accident you mentioned, in which a child died. You don’t know who was at the wheel?’

  ‘No. I suspect it was probably Elizabeth, as David actively disliked driving. He was strangely uncoordinated. He used a bike whenever he could although, God knows, he’s had enough near misses to ground any sensible cyclist. He never drove a car unless he absolutely had to.’

  ‘And the accident took place in Macmerry?’

  ‘Macmerry or Pencaitland. Yes.’

  ‘About five or six years ago?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Alan Duncan’s wife appeared at the study door. In her arms was a huge cardboard box which was obviously heavy. She dropped it theatrically, making a tremendous thud and causing a little shiver of documents to fall from the surrounding piles.

  ‘Message from the agents, darling. The arbitration at Munlochy’s back on. It starts on Monday,’ she said, looking at her husband as the kitten, startled by the noise, jumped from his lap.

  ‘Blast!’ He shook his head as if in disbelief, before turning his attention back to his visitors.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to be busy with that stuff for the rest of the day. Three huge files of correspondence that I’ve never seen before and my time to do so is pretty limited. I’m sorry… I hope I’ve been able to help a bit. Let me know if there’s anything else you need and I’ll do my best to assist i
n any way that I can, but not any more today.’

  The pool Astra was trapped. Cars had been parked at either end of it, leaving no more than a few inches between bonnet and bumper.

  ‘Bugger!’ Alastair shouted. Alice glanced at her friend, noticing for the first time how flushed he appeared, and that sweat had gathered beneath his eyes. The slight yellowing of facial skin that sometimes accompanies flu showed around his temples and cheeks, and she remembered, suddenly thinking it significant, that he had been coughing on and off throughout the interview with Alan Duncan. I’m doomed to flu now too, she thought, but said only: ‘You okay?’

  ‘No. I’ve caught something and I feel terrible. I’ll have to go home. I never managed to see Cohen on Wednesday and I’m supposed to be seeing him today. Could you do it for me?’

  ‘No trouble. I’ll drop you off and then go on to him. We need to follow up Duncan’s information about the Clarke-Pearson connection. It’s gold dust, I reckon. The parents of the dead child could well want the pair of them dead.’

  ‘Yeh,’ her companion replied, without enthusiasm.

  Alice inched forward, reversed, inched forward, reversed, until, at long last, the car was angled for an exit into the cobbled street. But as the pavements were lined with fat vehicles, SUVs, BMWs and Volvos, there was insufficient room for traffic to pass in both directions, and the cars in the centre were stationary due to a stand-off between two obstinate residents. Finally, one gave way and began to reverse, and Alice was allowed, with much smiling and waving, into the slow stream of northbound traffic.

  Roderick Cohen was delighted by the unexpected female company, and the fact that the visit was official as opposed to social did not appear to register or, if it did, it did not diminish his ill-concealed joy. Alice examined the armchair that it appeared she was supposed to share with a moulting white rabbit, shooed the creature away and sat down carefully, as if an inch of the surface might not have been covered in its hair or, worse still, malodourous droppings. Cohen busied himself preparing unrequested coffee which he poured, she noticed, into three mugs. Seeing her glance, he explained, ‘One for you, one for me, and one for mother,’ and then disappeared out of the kitchen to deliver a mug to another room. Alice made out only a quick, whispered conversation before the sound of a door slamming could be heard. Cohen reappeared, handed a mug to her and sat, in the armchair opposite her, gazing expectantly into her eyes. She sipped from the mug, noticing as she did so its crudity. The lip was so thick that any liquid drunk inevitably dribbled down the outer surface.