Chapter 78 #2
This time the Scottish Daily Post had plastered its front page with: ‘PAEDO PETER THE SUPPLY TEACHER’ above a photo of a youngish bloke in an anorak and glasses – eyes wide, mouth pinched – caught by surprise outside what looked like school gates, with the subheading ‘SICKO WORMS HIS WAY INTO CITY SCHOOLS TO BE WITH GIRLS AS YOUNG AS 5’.
Yes, well . . . maybe the outrage wasn’t entirely fabricated.
He parked his bum against the table.
Sighed at the ceiling tiles.
Steel looked up from her paper. ‘Do us a favour and sod off somewhere else, eh? You’re putting me off my butty.’
He flipped back a copy: ‘AULD REEKIE RAPIST IS “FAMILY PRIEST”’. Frowned at the photograph: an avuncular bloke in a dog-collar and cassock, christening someone’s baby. ‘Wonder how many people she’s outed over the years? Agapova. All the sex offenders, politicians, and conmen . . .’
‘Then give her a medal, OK? Just do it somewhere else.’
‘Hard to feel sorry for them.’ Back to ‘Paedo Peter’ with his haunted look.
What was it that art teacher at Lizz’s new school said about having a painting in the Royal Academy? Something about not everyone enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame?
Hmmm . . .
Logan pulled out his phone and called Tufty.
The wee sod was doing his pretend old-man voice again, only muffled around a mouthful of something. ‘I say, Holmes, is the game afoot? Only, the darndest thing: I’ve been waylaid by a custard slice!’
‘Got a complicated IT one for you.’
‘Worry not: I have my trusty service revolver and a cup of tea with me. You know, this puts me in mind of the rather strange case of—’
‘Just shut up and listen. Is there any way to find out who’s been dragged through the mud during Natasha Agapova’s time editing the Scottish Daily Post and the Aberdeen Examiner?’
Silence.
Not even chewing.
He checked the screen, but the call was still connected.
‘Tufty?’
‘You’re making with the jokey-ha-ha, right?
’ Then a groan. ‘It’d take years, Sarge.
We’d have to go through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of issues, with dozens and dozens of stories in every one.
And most of it won’t be online, either. You’re talking about going to the newspapers’ archives and manually searching everything on microfiche! . . . Years!’
‘Fat lot of use you are.’ He gazed up at the tiles again. ‘How you getting on with the footage from Nicholas Wilson’s BMW?’
‘I is processing as we speak – looking-up every number plate of every car the cameras has recorded, then am running PNC checks on the registered keepers and named drivers, cos I does has a thorough and do specialise in being a thin lot of use!’
‘Keep at it.’ Logan hung up, then sagged. Then did a three-sixty. Then sagged again.
Steel ignored him – munching away at her butty, when she should’ve been asking what was wrong, offering support and helpful suggestions. Maybe a cup of tea . . .
He pointed. ‘It’s rude to wear your hat at the dinner table.’
Chomp, masticate, chew. She put on a robot voice: ‘I’m sorry, Roberta isn’t in at the moment, please bugger off after the bleep.’ Deep breath. ‘Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!’
At which point, Logan’s phone burst into ‘Space Oddity’.
Maybe the wee loon had found something?
He hit the green button. ‘That was quick.’
Tufty whispered out of the speaker. ‘Sarge! I does has an visitor of extreme angriness, who is demanding to speak to the manager! Exclamation mark!’
Great, more work.
Logan had his third and final sag. ‘I’ll be right there.’
Logan barged into the open-plan office, and there was Detective Inspector Beardy Beattie huffing-and-puffing I’ll-blow-your-cubicle-right-downing.
Tubby and bearded, his hair was vanishing from the back, as if it’d taken up holy orders and not informed the rest of his head yet.
His black Police Scotland T-shirt looked on the verge of splitting its seams, while his belt must’ve been cutting off circulation north of the border, because his face was turning puce.
‘Have you got any idea what sort of problem this causes? Well? Answer me, Constable!’
Tufty was squirreled back in his chair, looking storm-blown. ‘Eeeek . . .’ He looked up and waved. ‘Sarge! Sarge: Detective Inspector Beattie thinks—’
‘I don’t think, I know!’ He glowered over his shoulder at Logan. ‘This creature claims he’s following your orders.’
‘Is there a problem?’
The shade of puce darkened. ‘Is there a problem? Is there a problem?’ A trembling finger pointed at Tufty. ‘He’s been running non-stop PNC searches for hours!’
‘Well, not hours, hours, Sarge. Only since we got back from NorrelTech with the footage?’ The wee loon frowned.
‘Well, after that thing at the hospital. And got we Darryl Merickson squared away. And then I went and got a custard slice for my tenses, but I ate it at my desk being all industrious and multitasky. But since then.’
Logan checked his watch. ‘So, about fifty-minutes-ish. How many PNC searches can one little PC do in fifty minutes?’
‘Four hundred and thirty-seven.’
Beattie stared at him. ‘Four hundred and what?’
Wow.
Yeah, Beardy Beattie might be a dick, but maybe he had a point this time.
Tufty bounced in his seat. ‘See, I ran the footage through an ANPR system and wrote a script to fling the output through . . .’ His mouth clamped shut under Beattie’s withering glare.
‘Erm . . . Because of operational reasons.’ He turned his computer screen to face them, showing off a spreadsheet.
‘Everyone’s sorted by their line entry from the Police National Computer.
But I can re-order it by name, make, registration, or timestamp if you like? ’
‘It’s incomprehensible!’ Beattie thumped the cubicle wall. ‘Bringing the whole system to its knees!’
‘Did you at least find something?’
‘Mostly parking tickets and speeding offences.’ The wee loon clicked about with his mouse and the spreadsheet rearranged itself into a different order.
‘Two with outstanding warrants – one assault, and one not-showing-up-to-court-on-an-indecent-exposure charge. Nine domestic violence. And three sex offenders. Well, two really, cos one was found not guilty.’
‘OK: who were they?’
‘No, no, no.’ Beattie wagged a finger. ‘We’re losing sight of the actual issue here: you can’t bombard the Police National Computer with rubbish for fun. You have to have “reasonable grounds”! Tulliallan will do their nut; Gartcosh have already been on the phone!’
Logan pointed at the spreadsheet. ‘The other two?’
‘White Ford Transit: six years for raping his eighty-two-year-old neighbour. Green Honda Civic: interfered with young boys at a juniors’ football club. Eight years.’
Just when you thought your faith in humanity couldn’t get any lower. ‘Order it by timestamp. What’s clustered around midnight, when the taxi dropped Natasha Agapova off?’
Beattie stood there quivering, while Tufty poked and clicked. ‘Hello? I’m not yesterday’s skirlie here: I want to make a complaint!’
‘Closest is the taxi what did take her home. Next up is . . .’ the wee loon squinted at the screen, ‘a grey Vauxhall Astra, but that’s our “not guilty”.’ Click. Scroll. ‘One Mr Keith Braithwaite; has a croft round about Durris.’
‘Am I talking to myself, here?’
Logan leaned in. ‘Not guilty of what?’
‘I think it’s highly unprofessional to be so disrespectful when a fellow senior officer is making a complaint.
’ Beattie stuck his hairy chin out, setting his jowls wobbling.
‘Don’t think I won’t report this to Professional Standards, because I will!
’ An imperious sniff, and he stomped away.
No doubt off clyping to the rubber heelers, like the massive dick he was.
The wee loon opened a new window on his screen, skimming the details with a finger. ‘Allegedly, Mr Braithwaite impersonated a police officer to coerce women to have sex with him. Looks like he mostly preyed on prostitutes and drug users. Only he didn’t, because of “not guilty”. Allegedly.’
Interesting.
Wonder if he’d had his Andy-Warhol-allotted fifteen minutes?
‘Search for “Keith Braithwaite” and “the Scottish Daily Post”.’
Fingers flew across the keyboard. ‘Clickity, click, click, pong, aaaaaaannnnd enter.’ The screen filled.
‘Ooooh . . . We has a results.’ He opened the top link and a newspaper front page appeared, from four years ago: ‘FAKE COP PERVERT IS CHARITY SCUMBAG’ above the photo of an unremarkable guy in his early forties.
Brown hair, two eyes, two ears . . .
And that was about all you could say about him.
Pretty much the perfect face for undercover work: bland and forgettable.
Not for his victims though, going by the subheading: ‘CHARITY BOSS FORCES VULNERABLE WOMEN TO PERFORM DEPRAVED SEX ACTS’.
Logan thumped a hand down on Tufty’s shoulder. ‘Print it, then grab a car. We’re going to pay Mr Braithwaite a visit.’