08 - Murmuring the Judges Page 4

  Six men and one woman faced him. On his instructions, Sammy Pye had invited heads of security from the four established clearing banks, from two recently converted former building societies, and from the two largest remaining mutuals. Five had accepted at once, two others, with no regional head of security in post, were represented by area managers, while the eighth, a building society, had declined the invitation.

  The Head of CID looked seriously at each visitor as they settled into the low leather seats. Four of them, each well into his fifties and running to fat, fidgeted so uncomfortably that he wondered about the wisdom of McIlhenney’s strategy.

  But then Ronnie Manuel, the bulkiest of the quartet, and a former ACC in Tayside, smiled back at him. ‘I guess we should be honoured that you’ve invited us in here, Mr Martin. Bob Skinner has become something of a legend, so to be in his office . . .’

  The younger man grinned. ‘The name’s Andy. We thought you’d like it,’ he said. ‘On top of that, Bob’s room has the most comfortable seats!

  ‘If you’re all settled into them,’ he went on, ‘let me tell you why you’ve been invited here.

  ‘I believe that you’ve got a big problem.’ As Martin blurted out his blunt message, he looked at Manuel, who was head of security of the Bank of Scotland, at David Sullivan, a trim ex-soldier from the TSB Bank, and at Moyra Lamb, regional manager of the Nationwide Building Society.

  ‘You three have experience of it, having all been robbed recently. This rest of you are in the firing line.’

  ‘You mean the hold-ups?’ said Ms Lamb. ‘The Bank’s, the Clydesdale’s, and ours?’

  ‘That’s just what I mean,’ the Head of CID acknowledged. ‘We’re satisfied that they were all the work of the same people. We believe that we are faced with a highly organised, well-trained team which is targeting bank branches, in and around Edinburgh.

  ‘I’ve invited you here to alert you to the continuing danger, and to advise you as strongly as I can to put all your branches on maximum alert.’ He paused, and looked around the table once more. ‘May I ask whether any of you have increased security lately?’

  Harry Durkin, who had been Head of Special Branch in Strathclyde until taking early retirement five years before to join the Clydesdale, shrugged his shoulders. ‘I can’t speak for the rest, Andy, but I’m always reviewing our security operation. And from what David was telling me on the way in, the branch that he had turned over the other day was kitted out with all of the standard stuff . . . video surveillance, bullet-proof glass screens for staff, a silent alarm system linked to the nearest police office.’

  He shook his head, making his heavy jowls wobble. ‘But when three guys walk in with shotguns and tell all the staff to get out front or they’ll shoot one of the punters, they can’t do anything but comply. Once the bank staff are under their control, the bank is busted; simple as that.’

  ‘I know that,’ agreed Martin. ‘Like you said, though, Harry, you never stop trying to make them harder to bust. Look, in the last two robberies, the team has taken the tapes from the video surveillance equipment. That’s easier and surer than disabling the camera.’

  Eyebrows rose around the table. ‘Have they, by God?’ muttered George Hudson, a former Grampian ACC, now employed by the Royal Bank.

  ‘Indeed they have,’ his host emphasised. ‘So let me suggest this to you. Either move the video units out of the branches into other buildings . . . your nearest police offices, for example . . . or install duplicate recording equipment. It wouldn’t even need to be functional, just realistic enough for the robbers to be shown it and given a tape.’

  ‘Would that fool them more than once, Andy?’ asked Manuel.

  ‘I reckon it would. These guys won’t actually be bothering to run the tapes. They’d have trouble anyway, on a domestic player.’

  The Bank of Scotland official looked at his colleagues. ‘Okay, I’ll look at the feasibility of those options.’ Around the table the others nodded agreement. ‘Got any other ideas, Andy?’

  ‘How about security people outside the doors of the branches?’ Moyra Lamb interrupted.

  Martin shook his head. ‘They’d need to be armed to have any deterrent value, and in this country that’s not on. Unarmed, they wouldn’t hold up an attack for a second. In fact, the team would have ready-made hostages before they were even inside the bank.’

  He hesitated for a second. ‘Look, this is just a thought. I’ve seen banks in Europe where customers are only admitted when a teller unlocks the door remotely. I can even think of a couple of jewellers in Edinburgh who use that system. Have any of you ever looked at that possibility?’

  Hudson glanced at Manuel and Durkin, then looked at the Chief Superintendent. ‘Ronnie, Harry and I sometimes get together informally to swap ideas. We looked at that one a while back. We decided that it might be practical in country branches, or in smaller operations in the cities and towns. We ruled it out, though, on the basis that the annoyance to customers, on rainy days for example, would more than offset any security gains.

  ‘In the big branches, it isn’t a runner. They’re just too busy, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Martin responded. ‘You might like to have a rethink about the smaller ones though. Neither Dalkeith or Colinton seem like massive branches to me. I think if you polled your customers, you might find that they preferred a few seconds more in the rain to the possibility of looking down the barrel of a sawn-off. ’

  ‘All that’s very fine,’ broke in Paul Oxford, regional manager of one of the new banks, ‘but what are the police going to do to protect us?’ There was a hint of petulance in his voice, a sign, thought the policeman, that he was slightly out of his depth.

  ‘The best way to protect you, Mr Oxford, is to catch these guys and bang them away for a long time. That’s exactly what we will do. However in the meantime, we’ll use our resources as best we can to make you feel more secure.

  ‘I’ve asked ACC Elder, who’s in charge of uniformed operations, if he can arrange panda and traffic-car patrols so that they pass by your branches frequently, and so that we can respond to an emergency in the shortest time possible. I’ll also make the services of our crime prevention team available to all of you, to visit, if you wish, every branch in my area and to advise you on security improvements that might be made.

  ‘But I can’t emphasise enough that we need your co-operation too. For example, where you have a safe with a time-lock, make proper use of it, don’t leave the bloody thing lying open all day.’

  He paused once more and looked at the visitors. ‘There’s one thing more I have to say to you.

  ‘Each of the three robberies has taken place at a time when the branch involved was full of cash. Please bear that in mind. Brief all your managers to vary their routines as much as they can. Tell them to try to ensure that cash is delivered as close as possible to the time when it’s actually needed. And tell them also to be discreet.

  ‘We’d be foolish to rule out the possibility that these criminals have had inside information. Therefore, please . . .’ He leaned heavily on the word ‘. . . emphasise that staff should be told of big cash movements into branches only on a need-to-know basis.

  ‘Careless talk costs money . . . yes, and possibly lives, too.’

  7

  With the rest of the legal teams on both sides of the Court, Alex Skinner stood and returned the bow of the judge, as he adjourned the Court for lunch.

  As always, the corridor outside was crowded as she emerged with Mitchell Laidlaw, her boss. After a few minutes they were joined by their counsel, Jack McAlpine, QC, and Elizabeth Day, his junior, who had shed their black robes and grey wigs. Together, the quartet headed for the exit, only to find their way blocked as Andy Martin stepped through the double doors from the courtyard outside.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Alex, surprised. ‘You never said . . .’

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I didn’t know this morning that I’d
have free time. I’ve arranged to see a guy at Saughton, but that’s not till two-thirty, so I thought I’d come up here to see if I could steal you for lunch.’ He looked at Laidlaw. ‘Is that okay, Mitch?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the rotund senior partner of Curle Anthony and Jarvis. ‘But why don’t you join us? We’ve got a table booked at Gordon’s.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ agreed Martin. He nodded to the counsel, both of whom were known to him. ‘Hello, Liz, Jack,’ he said as the five stepped into the open air. ‘How’s it going in there?’

  ‘Hard to tell,’ McAlpine answered. The camp Queen’s Counsel was one of the more colourful figures at the Scottish Bar. ‘We lawyers always think we’re right. The trouble is, invariably, fifty per cent of us are wrong.’

  They crossed the High Street, ludicrously thronged as always with tourist buses, and reached Gordon’s Trattoria after only a short walk down the hill towards Cockburn Street. Inside, they were greeted, immediately and effusively, by the head waiter, who was well used to dealing with lawyers in a hurry. ‘Lady and gentlemen, welcome. You are now five, I see. Is no problem, it’s a big table.’

  ‘My God,’ Laidlaw hissed to Martin as they moved through the narrow restaurant. ‘There’s the cause of it all.’ Abruptly he advanced on a small table at the far end of the room. ‘Hello, Adrian,’ he boomed, hand outstretched. ‘Been across the road, looking in on your former client?’

  A tall man in his mid thirties, dark-haired and dark-suited, rose to accept his handshake. It struck Martin that he seemed to have trouble bending his right leg at the knee. ‘No way,’ he replied, with a half-smile. ‘Having given my evidence the other day before that damned pernickety judge, if I never see Bernard bloody Grimley again, it’ll be well too soon.

  ‘No, I had a meeting down in George Street and my wife’s been to Jenners.’ He smiled down at a serious-faced young woman, with expensively groomed ash-blonde hair.

  ‘You don’t know Juliette, do you. Jules, this is Mitch Laidlaw, something of a legend around these parts. And . . . ’ He hesitated, looking at Martin, whose path to his own table was blocked by Laidlaw’s bulk.

  ‘Oh, sorry. This is Chief Superintendent Andy Martin. He’s Head of CID down at Fettes, but he’s also engaged to my assistant.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Jones, extending his hand. ‘I’ve heard of you, of course. Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Likewise.’

  Suddenly, the man paused. His face froze and he stared over Martin’s shoulder, towards the door. ‘Oh Christ,’ he whispered. ‘Not here. It’s bloody Grimley.’

  The detective and Juliette Jones turned to look at the entrance, in which a tallish, dark-haired, middle-aged man stood, staring back at Jones. Sparks seemed to fly between them, until finally, Bernard Grimley turned on his heel and stalked out of the restaurant.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said the solicitor, his expression softening. He looked down at his wife. ‘After everything that man’s put us through, I couldn’t have stood eating lunch beside him.’

  ‘Obviously he felt the same way,’ she said, with a smile.

  ‘Look, Adrian,’ said Laidlaw. ‘We must sit down. Tight schedule and all that. Give me a call if you’d like to be briefed on developments.’ As Jones nodded and took his seat once more, Laidlaw and Martin joined Alex and the two advocates.

  ‘Just think,’ muttered Laidlaw, ‘all this is happening because that bugger over there couldn’t draft a letter properly. If he’d only done a bit more research and added a few caveats to cover his arse, none of us need be here.’

  ‘True,’ McAlpine countered. ‘But if he had, then some of us would be slightly less wealthy. We make a good living out of people like Jones; let’s not grudge them their imperfections.’

  The Queen’s Counsel turned to Martin. ‘Who are you seeing at Saughton, Andy? Anything in it for me?’

  The detective shook his head as he looked at the business lunch menu. ‘I’m afraid not, Jim,’ he answered with a smile. ‘This guy’s already represented. By the Honourable Richard Kilmarnock, QC, no less.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the advocate, archly. ‘Still, put a word in for me anyway, there’s a good chap. Kilmarnock’s clients always want someone else for the appeal.’

  ‘If he listens to what I’ve got to say, there won’t be an appeal. I’m going out there to try a bit of private plea-bargaining. ’

  ‘Mmm. Thought you chaps didn’t believe in that sort of thing. Supping with the Devil, no?’

  Martin smiled. ‘It’s the devil I’m after, Jack. Nathan Bennett’s just a minor demon. I don’t care about him.’

  ‘Bennett?’ said Mitch Laidlaw, suddenly interested in the conversation, rather than in the menu. ‘Wasn’t he in the dock when poor old Billy fell off his perch?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m not going to hold that against him, though.’

  ‘Ha. No, I guess not. That was bound to happen some time. He was a hard old bastard, was Archergait. When he got worked up, the veins used to stand out on his forehead. I remember once . . .’

  The solicitor’s musing was interrupted by the trilling of Martin’s mobile phone. He took it from his pocket and pressed a green button. ‘Yes?’ he said, tersely.

  Watching her partner, Alex saw his expression grow thunderous. ‘Okay, Sammy,’ he said at last, a new, hard edge to his voice. ‘I’ve got all that. Call Saughton for me and put Bennett off till tomorrow morning.’ He pushed an orange button to end the call.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Alex, anxiously.

  ‘Another bank robbery,’ he answered. ‘At the Royal Bank in Galashiels. And this time there are casualties. Sorry about lunch, but I have to get down there.’

  8

  John McGrigor’s normally ruddy face was chalk-white as he greeted his Chief Superintendent in the doorway of the Galashiels branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. In the street outside, around which traffic had been diverted, stood several police cars and an ambulance, its loading doors wide open.

  On the pavement, about ten yards away from the doorway, there was a long trail of blood. It was being gradually washed away by the steady summer rain which had begun to fall half an hour before.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Martin ordered. As they stepped into the banking hall, the Head of CID was faced by a wall, heavily streaked with still more blood. On the floor, in a a crimson pool, lay a huge man. His abdomen had been ripped open by the blast from a firearm, and entrails, unwound, mingled with his shredded clothing.

  ‘This is just awful, Andy,’ said the big Superintendent. ‘Big Harry Riach, on the floor there, he and I were at the school together. I’ve locked him up a few times since then, too, when he’s been out of order. I was the only fella that could ever arrest him wi’out a struggle.’ McGrigor shook his head, and Martin saw a tear in the corner of his eye.

  ‘He had a go, then?’ he asked.

  His colleague nodded. ‘Most of the witnesses are still in hysterics,’ he said, ‘but we’ve interviewed those that can speak. It was the same as before. Three men, wearing Hallowe’en masks this time, and armed with sawn-offs, just walked in off the street.

  ‘It was like clockwork. They had the customers up against the wall and all the staff out from behind the counter, lying on the floor. One held a’ the folk at gunpoint, and the other two collected the money, and took the security video tape.’ He paused.

  ‘They were just about ready to go when the man who’d been keepin’ everyone covered stepped a bit too close to Riach. “Fuck this for a game!” Big Harry says, and makes a grab for him. According to the witnesses, the guy just stuck the sawn-off in his belly and pulled the trigger. The doctor . . . he left just a minute before you arrived . . . said he’d have been dead before he hit the floor.

  ‘None of the three said a word, or seemed to panic in any way. They just took the money in two big hold-alls and backed out. They took the bank keys as well, and locked everyone in as they left.’

  ‘That’s a new twist,
’ the Head of CID muttered. ‘To make for an easier getaway, I suppose.

  ‘What happened outside?’ he went on.

  ‘Sheer bad luck,’ said McGrigor bitterly. ‘A young police constable, Annie Brown . . . lovely wee girl . . . just happened to be there. I don’t know why. She certainly hadn’t been ordered to the scene. One of the boys found a birthday card in the street, though, addressed and sealed. She could have been on her way to post it.’

  ‘No other officer was with her, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘According to one of the witnesses who was looking out the bank window, the robber who wasn’t carrying a hold-all just took one look at her when he stepped into the street, and shot her.’

  ‘Had she done anything, or called out?’

  ‘Not according to the witness.’

  ‘What’s her condition?’

  ‘Critical, according to the doctor. He came from the surgery round the corner; within two minutes, they say. They took her in an ambulance to Borders General. I’ve heard nothing since.’

  Martin nodded, and silently held up crossed fingers.

  ‘How did they make their escape?’ he asked.

  ‘In a grey Ford Escort,’ McGrigor replied. ‘It was parked right outside the bank. There were half a dozen people in the street, all on the other side. By the time any of them realised what was happening, the girl was down and the car was moving. No one got the number, but I’ve ordered all cars to report every grey Escort seen in our area.’

  ‘Careful, John. We don’t want any more victims.’

  ‘I know. I said report but don’t approach, unless the vehicle is empty.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Martin nodded. ‘They’ll have changed anyway. That’s the usual pattern.’ He looked at his colleague. ‘Come on, and let’s you and I go to the hospital. I want to be there when she comes round, and I should speak to her relatives.’

  He turned to the green-uniformed paramedics, a man and a woman, who stood waiting in a corner. ‘You can take the body to the mortuary now. Hold for post-mortem. ’