Chapter 26
When the door opens, I jolt awake so suddenly that I bang my elbow bone—right where it hums—and feel tears in my eyes.
“There you go,” says a woman in a plastic apron, shoving a tray down on the desk shelf. “A bit of toast and a kind word for you.”
“Don’t eat the toast?” I say, remembering the old joke.
“Don’t, whatever you do, eat the toast,” she says, chuckling. “The tea’s no bad if you’re quick.” She’s gone again before I can ask her for any clue about what’s going to happen, but she wasn’t in uniform anyway, so I doubt she’d know.
The tea is so terrible that I take a bite of toast out of fascination and curiosity.
It tastes as if it’s been rubbed with lard.
It won’t even flush down the stainless steel toilet.
It just sits there in the water, swelling and making me feel sick.
Only the thought of having to retch onto it keeps my stomach from turning completely.
Then the sergeant I punched comes along the corridor. I know it’s him before I see him. I recognise the arrogant ring of his feet as he strolls towards me.
“Right then, Lindsay Hale,” he says when he’s opened my door and is lounging against the jamb. “What have you got to say for yourself this morning?”
“I need to speak to my lawyer,” I say. “When can I phone him?”
“I’ll hand you over to the desk for all that,” says the sergeant, smirking again as he steps to one side and makes a flourishing gesture to invite me out into the corridor.
He takes me back to where I answered their questions and signed God knows what forms last night.
I was so tired by then that I didn’t read a word of it.
I’m hoping he’s too grand to hang around; certainly he left me to the desk guy when he brought me in and, right enough, after he’s said, “This one wants ‘to phone her lawyer’” to the older man who’s there today, he strolls away.
The scare quotes unnerve me but I shake it off.
“So you want me to get you a lawyer,” the desk guy says, not unkindly. I think he’s a sergeant too. He’s got the same stripes on his jumper.
“I want to speak to my lawyer,” I tell him.
He heaves a huge sigh and shakes his head. “You should have watched more Shetland and less Vera.”
“What?”
“You’re in Scotland, hen. You’ve no right to a nice wee phone chat here. You should have broken into a house in Carlisle.”
“Shit, really?” I say. I’m thinking furiously. Will it work if this guy calls? On the one hand, he’s got his rank to help him but on the other, he won’t say the things I think might make the difference.
“Do you know the number, hen?” He’s still being quite kind. He’s taken no pleasure in setting me straight.
“It was on a business card I had in my pocket,” I say. “But they took it off me. Can I get it back?” I don’t know what I’ll do if he says yes.
“Ehhhhh,” the man says, thank God. “Awkward, but I’ll look it up for you instead.” He jiggles a mouse and waits with an expectant expression on his face.
“David Minto,” I say. “He’s from Edinburgh.”
“Minto,” the sergeant repeats. Then he frowns.
“Ehhhhhh,” he says again. “Mr. Minto’s no a solicitor, hen.”
“I know,” I say. “He’s a Crown counsel, but he’s my lawyer. I had his business card until they took it off me.”
“He’s a writer—”
“To the signet, yes,” I say, trying to sound clipped and confident, the way someone would who actually knew the real David Minto and knew what a writer to the signet was, and a Crown counsel, and an advocate depute.
I want to be back in Hawaii where lawyers are called lawyers.
But I mustn’t start crying. If I’m going to get this plan to work, I need to act as if I’m anyone but me.
“Look, hen,” the sergeant says. His endearments are beginning to grate on me. “Will I just call the duty solicitor, eh?”
“I am asking you to contact my lawyer. David Minto, LLM, CC. His number is on the business card I had taken away from me last night. I can’t really see the problem, and I don’t suppose David will be able to see what the problem was either, when this is sorted out and I tell him what happened to me. ”
The sergeant sucks his teeth for a moment.
He’s caught between resenting the way I’m talking to him and realising that he doesn’t want to get into bother with a big boss Edinburgh lawyer if he can help it.
He clicks to another screen. “Watch, earrings, earring posts, wallet, thirty-seven pounds, driving licence, debit card, credit card, Tesco Clubcard, Nectar card, ah! Business card. Doesn’t say here whose name was on it. ”
“You can check,” I say. This is taking far too long and I’m beginning to sweat.
If the other sergeant comes back, he’ll shut me down in a heartbeat, and if this sergeant actually gets that business card out of my bag of belongings, it’ll have David March’s phone number on it, which won’t be any use at all.
I feel tears threaten. Getting this close after everything I’ve been through and then not being able to take that one last step . . . “Please help me,” I say.
“Don’t upset yourself,” he says. “I’m just not keen to make a tit of myself with Chambers Street.”
“Well, let me then,” I say. “I know you told me it’s not a protected right, but it’s not banned, is it? Believe me, I’d have stolen a car and driven over the border to punch a Carlisle policeman, if I’d known.”
He opens his eyes very wide and looks down at my paperwork. When he lifts his head again, he’s beaming at me. “You punched that puffed-up twat?”
“In the neck, yes.”
“I’ll just get Mr. Minto’s number, madam,” he says. “Then pass the phone to you.”
But he’s still not speedy as he keys in a name and waits for results to load.
“David Minto,” he mutters under his breath at last, then he picks up the external landline that sits on the desk between us, painstakingly copies the number from his search result into the keypad and hands the phone to me.
I have no expectation that the real David Minto himself will answer and, right enough, it’s an assistant of some kind that I get through to. I try to speak very clearly and plainly, knowing I might only have one chance to make this stick.
“My name is Lindsay Hale,” I say. “I’m trying to report a string of serious crimes that have taken place across Stirlingshire, Perthshire, Fife, and Clackmannanshire over the last few months or perhaps longer.
I’ve uncovered the fact that someone by the name of David March has been impersonating Mr. Minto, to the extent of handing out fake business cards bearing his name and I would like to make sure that Mr. Minto is aware of the fact. ”
“Eh?” says the desk sergeant.
“Em,” says the assistant, over the line, “you need to report to the police, Miss . . . Hale.” At least she’s written my name down. “They will contact Mr.—”
“I’m actually calling from Stirling Police Station right now,” I say, “but I’m not getting anywhere with them. I’ve told them about a series of six murders in great detail, including where the bodies are buried, but for some reason that completely escapes me—”
“Now look,” says the desk sergeant. “I’m no fan of Sergeant—”
“—they’re hell bent on making sure nothing is done.”
“But this is—”
“I’m not entirely clear whether the police are aware of the identity fraud concerning Mr. Minto—”
“What the fuck—?” The desk sergeant is grabbing for me and I have to dance backwards.
“I also know the current whereabouts of the victim of a seventh attempted murder who needs urgent medical attention—”
Then the phone is wrenched out of my hand and the call is killed. The desk sergeant is looking at me as if he’s just stepped in something, wearing new white shoes. “It’s aye the ones that look normal,” he says. “Fucking nutter. Brian!”
The sergeant who arrested me appears as if he’s been waiting behind a door. “All done?” he says.
“Not even close,” says his colleague. “This one’s just called the CCs in Edinburgh and told them some daft fairy tale. Duty solicitor it is and I’ll tell them there’s no need to hurry, okay? Absolute mental case.”
“Back you go,” says the one I punched. “Your shout. You’ll learn that it’s on you whether this goes rough or smooth, Lindsay. It’s up to you.”
I am halfway to the door when the phone rings. I stop moving.
“Wait,” I say.
The guy on the desk is listening to whoever’s on the other end and, as he does so, he straightens up until he’s standing to attention. “Yes, that’s right,” he says in the end. Then he looks over. “Bri,” he says, flashing his eyes. “Minto, Chambers Street, asking for this one.”
As I walk back to the desk, I try to copy the swagger of the man I’m leaving behind, gawping at me. I don’t have the metalled heels but I make a pretty decent job of it anyway.