Festival of Murder, by Ross Macfarlane KC, Chapter 13: I Know My Rights

The only curiosity today was that the person being interviewed looked like a man from one side and a woman from the other.

Alex/Alexis Bryant sat drumming his left-hand, skinny manicured nails on the wood veneer table. *tak-tak-tak* *tak-tak-tak*. He had caused something of a stir when brought into the police station by Maddy Price. The officers on duty snuck furtive glances at the sartorial hermaphrodite there for questioning. He pointed at the wall: ‘So disappointing – where’s the mirror? The two-way mirror?’ With cameras on the other side. For your ‘private collection’, Mr Wood?’

The prosecutor couldn’t help it, but he began to tap the table with his own fingers. With a different intensity.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, Wood used to seek out Amusement Arcades. The attraction was the old pinball machines. Not the more glitzy ones with all the shiny flashing lights, but the older ones with the pop-up flags and tickets, where you felt that you could almost hear the interior gears clunking. He was pretty good, developing certain techniques to keep that little silver ball under control. Like driving an old car with actual machinery under the hood, Wood would nudge, lift and push the pinball frame to master that troublesome table.

But sometimes, when he had pushed just that little bit too much, that bit too far, the game would announce ‘*tilt*” and the un-cooperative machine would shut down, losing the ball (and the game) in the process.

To smart people, no experience is ever wasted.

An old girlfriend used to tease him: ‘You’re actually like one of those tables because they’re just like you - they’re fun up to a point, but too liable to ‘tilt’. Wood would give a perfunctory laugh - but the observation was (in the words of defamation lawyers) substantially true. The grandmother who raised him used to say that it was inherited from his long-gone father (a temperamental, chef de cuisine) and Wood spent a career as a lawyer formulating strategies to avoid losing the rag, but sometimes, sometimes, well…

*TILT*

Wood leaned into table, ‘Bryant - you’re a liar.’

A theatrical shrug: ‘How very dare you…’

‘You said you hadn’t seen your mother for months.’ Wood leaned back now: ‘We have you on camera going into her stair the day she died…’

A dismissive wave of the hand: ‘Semantics…’

‘…shortly before your mother came out of the window.’

Those skeletal, painted fingernails stopped rapping.

Wood pressed his luck: ‘And then you stole a picture.’

‘What picture? She had hundreds of pictures…’

‘The one that hung beside her bed. It left a mark, Bryant. A mark on the wall. Where you stole it from.’

Bryant gulped. Despite his apparel, the Adam’s apple moved up and down both sides of his throat.

A nervous pause, then: ‘The picture…well…I left before she…she…um…’

Wood sat back: ‘Before she was ‘helped’ out of the window?’

Patent panic now: ‘I know my rights!’

‘Oh, I doubt it…’

*****

The problem, as always, was Bobby McKee. He soon burst into the interview room and played the Superior Officer Card. Bobby McKee had no intention of seeing Alex/Alexis Bryant charged. The paperwork alone…but, in fairness, when they listened to McKee’s arguments later, there was some substance there: ‘Look at the boy Bryant! Too scrawny to lift up that dead weight that must have been the old mother. Did you see him? Thin? Thin?? I think I saw Bob Geldof collecting money for him. Chucked his mother out that window? That boy couldnae shove his granny aff a bus…’

Thus, Bryant was released into the wild, if somewhat shaken. Still, the day was not a total loss. He got seven people at his show that night. Five of them even stayed until the end.

*****

The sun was setting as Detective Pierce and Wood KC strolled down Princes Street.

Maddy sighed: ‘So where does that leave us?’

“With Bobby McKee it’s usually in either the jail or the deep doo doo…’

The young detective laughed despite herself. ‘Is that a legal term?’

Wood gave a shy smile: ‘Obviously from the Latin.’ He sighed. “Thing is, though - we can clean up McKee’s mess from time to time - but he does have pretty good instincts. I see his argument…’

‘That the son couldn’t lift up the old lady?’

‘In fairness - by the look of Bryant - he would have trouble tearing a square off a toilet roll. Bryant says that he left before ‘the event’. Where did he go?’

Maddy reached into her case and pulled out a paper: ‘I have his original statement here.’ She studied it, then: ‘He said that at the time in question he was in a coffee shop on the Mound.’

‘Which one?’

‘Italian on the Mound.’

Wood looked up towards the Castle. ‘That’s ten minutes’ walk away. I know it well. Up The Mound. Near the High Court. Superb coffee. Did they confirm his story?’

‘Doesn’t say. They haven’t been spoken to.’

‘Haven’t been spoken to??? In a possible murder investigation? ‘. Wood threw up his hands in an ‘unbelievable’ gesture.

Maddy continued: ‘They were on the list, but the person responsible, um, didn’t get round to taking a statement…’

‘And that person…’. Wood closed his eyes for a moment. ‘…don’t tell me…it was…’

Maddy nodded: ‘Bobby McKee.’

Wood shook his head: ‘Right – get your hiking boots on, Detective Price . Up we go. You and I are about to taste a very fine cappuccino…’

*****

Festival of Murder continues on Monday in: ‘Leave the Gun…’