King stared at him. ‘Mine? He was my father, man.’
‘Once upon a time, I arrested a man who disembowelled his father.’ The DCC glanced at the Lord Advocate. ‘As a matter of fact, Archie was an AD at the time. He led for the Crown at the trial. So I’ll ask you again. How close were you to Lord Archergait?’
‘I respected him very much.’
‘But you hated his guts nonetheless, isn’t that right, as he hated yours?’
Slowly, the man nodded. ‘Look,’ he asked, in a hesitant voice. ‘Where is this taking us?’
‘This is an informal conversation, sir. You must appreciate that in an investigation as complicated as this we have to examine every possibility.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘What were you doing in Aberlady Nature Reserve eight days ago, sir?’
King swung round to stare at Andy Martin. ‘What the . . .’ He broke off and looked at the Lord Advocate. ‘Archie, what is this?’
‘Let’s see what it is, Norman, shall we,’ said Lord Archibald. ‘Please answer.’
‘I was walking my girl-friend’s dog, if you must know.’
‘Your girl-friend, sir?’
‘Clarissa Maclean. She was staying at my place for the weekend. She had some work to do in the afternoon so I took her dog out to the Reserve for some exercise.’
‘The person who saw you didn’t mention a dog, sir.’
‘I’d probably put the bitch back in the car by then. She was in heat, and half the bloody hounds in the Reserve were straining at the leash to get at her.’
‘Did you put her back in the car before you met Lord Barnfather, or afterwards?’
King stared at Martin, then at Skinner, who looked back at him, impassively. ‘I never saw old Barnfather!’ he exclaimed.
‘We have a witness,’ said the DCC, quietly, ‘who has identified you as being with him. He says that the two of you were walking out across the sands, in the direction of the place where the old man was tied up and left to drown.’
The advocate sat speechless.
‘Then there’s the cyanide,’ Martin went on. ‘Your girl-friend keeps cyanide on her farm. The same poison that was used to kill your father.’
Norman King let out a long, gasping sigh. ‘You cannot mean all of this,’ he whispered.
‘Let me ask you something, sir,’ said Skinner. ‘If you were someone else . . . let’s say you were Archie . . . and I reported all these circumstances to you, what would you say?’
The man looked back at him, tight-lipped.
‘Let me tell you, then,’ the policeman went on. ‘You’d say “Charge him. I’ll prosecute the case myself.”
He straightened up in his seat. ‘Now before we get round to a formal caution and interview, I’m going to ask you something, informally. If the answer is “Yes”, then with the Lord Advocate’s permission, we’ll give you an opportunity to submit yourself for psychiatric examination before we do anything else.’ He paused, and stared across the table.
‘Did you kill your father, and Lord Barnfather?’
Norman King looked back at him, stunned. His mouth twitched and twisted, but eventually, he found his voice. ‘No, gentlemen,’ he muttered, ‘I did not.’
Across the room, the Lord Advocate coughed. ‘In the circumstances, Norman,’ he said, heavily, and in a formal tone, ‘that is something which a jury may be asked to decide.’
55
The Media Relations Manager gulped, almost theatrically, as Skinner told him what had happened.
‘This is the hottest potato we’ve had to handle for a while, Alan,’ he said. ‘It has all sorts of political overtones, not the least of which is the Lord Advocate’s own future.
‘King’s been cautioned and formally interviewed, but not charged; not yet. He denies both murders, but we can’t ignore the evidence against him. For now he’s at liberty, on the basis that he stays with Clarissa Maclean and makes himself available to us at all times. I expect that he’s consulting his solicitors.
‘I’ve dumped the final decision in Lord Archibald’s lap. He wants to involve the Solicitor General in the decision, and advise the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State; but it’s a matter of when they decide to charge King, not if.
‘When that does happen, he’ll be whipped in front of a Sheriff in Chambers. There’ll be no plea taken at that stage but he’ll be remanded in custody. I’ve suggested to Archie that he be kept in Shotts Prison rather than in Saughton.’
‘Why’s that, sir?’ asked Alan Royston.
‘Confidentiality.We don’t propose to tell the press who it is we’re holding until he appears at a pleading diet in a couple of weeks, or at the very least until Lord Archibald has resolved his own position.
‘He may choose to resign when King is charged.’
The press officer frowned. ‘Wouldn’t there be a chance that could be seen as prejudicial to the defence?’ he asked.
‘Exactly,’ Skinner agreed. ‘On the other hand, if he waits until he’s formally cited as a witness in the case, that would certainly be acceptable. There’s another option, though, which I’m pressing on him. If the Prime Minister agrees, he could simply stand down from office during the course of the trial.’
The DCC frowned, and glanced across at Andy Martin. ‘In any event, we want to let him reach his decision without being influenced by any hysteria in the media, hence my wish to keep King’s identity secret until his appearance in open Court.
‘D’you think we have a chance of getting away with it?’
Royston whistled. ‘Won’t King be missed from the High Court?’
‘Not necessarily. He wasn’t due to be prosecuting again until the week after next.’
‘Won’t there be a few people in the know when he appears before the Sheriff, for formal accusation and remand?’
Skinner shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. The Sheriff Court is right next door to the Crown Office, remember. King will present himself as ordered, he’ll be charged and he’ll be taken to Shotts by Mr Martin -’ he nodded to his left ‘- and Sammy Pye. Once he’s locked up we’ll announce that a man has been charged, but give no further details.
‘The only person in the know who might talk to the press is King himself, through his solicitors.’
‘Do you think he might?’
‘I can’t say for sure, but I can’t think why he’d be the first to break cover.’
The Media Manager picked up his coffee and took a sip. ‘I suppose we might be able to keep it under wraps, sir. But it’s a racing certainty that the press will have a source inside Shotts jail. If it leaks, that’s where it’ll come from. I have to tell you also that if it does, the shit will hit the fan in a very big way.’
The DCC laughed. ‘Oh, I know that, Alan. I surely do!’
‘Then why bother, sir? Why not just stick him in the dock in open Court, like any other prisoner?’
‘Because he isn’t any other prisoner. He’s Her Majesty’s Senior Prosecuting Counsel. Because I want to give Archie as much room to manoeuvre as I can. Because . . .’
He stopped and stared, for a few seconds, out of the long window of the Chief’s office. ‘Because there’s this wee kernel of doubt, gnawing at the back of my mind.
‘When I looked at all the evidence we’ve assembled against King, I was dead certain that we were right. The truth is, when Andy and I interviewed him in Archie’s room, I expected him to break down.
‘He didn’t though. He denied the whole thing, and he still does. Remember, this is a man whose job is to assess the weight of evidence against a suspect. He knows what we’ve got on him, and that he has no defence against any of it. Yet he still maintains his innocence.’
‘Come on, sir,’ Royston protested. ‘There’s nothing unusual about a criminal denying everything, even when
