Quintin Jardine - Murmuring the Judges

‘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.’

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.