The Ardmore Inheritance by Rob Wyllie (reading the story of the .txt) 📕

'Forgive me for bringing this up,' Maggie said, 'and this might be nothing, but an agency journalist up in Glasgow mentioned to me a story she's working on at the moment. It concerns some naval officer who killed himself in prison a few weeks ago. Lieutenant James McKay I think his name was. The whole thing sounds like an awful tragedy, because apparently this guy was convicted of murdering his wife and daughter, and now there's a suggestion that it was a terrible miscarriage of justice. The reason I'm raising it is that the journalist knew I was meeting you and she says you were the senior investigating officer at the time.'

He continued with the forced smile but she could tell from his eyes that he wasn't smiling inside.

'I think your journalist friend is going to be sadly disappointed,' he said coldly. 'If any story should emerge, then I fear that the late Professor Whiteside will be the colleague who does not come out of it too well. As for the police, I believe we followed all due procedure at the time.'

Maggie nodded. 'I'm sure that's the case Sir Brian. It's just that she told me she's got some sort of mole on the inside, and apparently the file's pretty damning, and she also says there's an internal investigation going on at the moment, although it's all a bit hush-hush. Look, would it be ok if I just included a couple of sentences in my article that mentions it? A sort of cloud-on-the-horizon angle? My editor would love that you see. He calls it cross-pollination, you know, letting our readers know about another article that's coming soon. It helps to boost sales apparently.'

But she could see that Chief Constable Sir Brian Pollock wasn't listening to anything she was saying. All he would be thinking about was the little white lie she had dropped into the conversation. The journalist's got a mole on the inside. As soon as he got back to Scotland he was going to pull that file and go through it with a fine-toothed comb and then anything that showed the investigation in anything but a good light was going to magically disappear. But what he didn't know was that super-keen WPC Lexy McDonald had gone through that file with her own fine-toothed comb and now knew it like the back of her hand. If anything evaporated, she would know and then so would Frank. But Maggie didn't see any advantage in making an enemy of Pollock, not now at least.

'But you know, the more I think about it,' she said, furrowing her brow, 'I don't think this story, if it is a story at all, really fits in with my piece. I think what I'm going to do is just write a paragraph that says your rise hasn't all been plain sailing and there's been challenges on the way but your hard work and dedication has overcome them. Something like that, what do you think? Nothing specific.'

He lounged back in his seat once again, visibly relaxing. 'Yes, that would be fair, because of course there have been challenges on the way. But look, it's been excellent but I think we need to wind it up here if you don't mind.'

As they got up to leave, he shot a smile at Jimmy. 'Do you need any more pictures before we finish? Maybe with my dress hat on this time?'

◆◆◆

Less than an hour after they'd finished with Brian Pollock, Frank had relayed the news that WPC Lexy McDonald had been requested to hand the Ardmore files over to her sergeant, the order coming down directly from Police Scotland headquarters at Tulliallan. Maggie had frowned and asked if that meant they would never see the light of day again, but Frank had reassured her that that wasn't going to happen.

'No no,' he had said, 'you see they can't do that. Not when my wee investigation's in full swing. Because if that file doesn't re-appear, Jill Smart will be straight on the phone to Pollock and then what's he going to say? No, we'll get them back again, mark my words. Suitably detoxified of course, or at least that's what they'll think. But we know better, don't we?'

So that was it then. Game on.

Chapter 20

Lexy McDonald had been surprised to find the tower of document boxes on her desk when she had come in that morning. No more than three days after she'd been instructed to check them back in, and against all expectations, here they were in front of her again. At first glance, they looked exactly as they did when she had passed them to Jim Muir. Fourteen boxes in all, stacked two-abreast and seven boxes high, each bearing a hand-scribbled label that approximated to what they contained. At least, what they had contained before they made the forty-mile trip to Tulliallan in Fife, where all the Police Scotland brass, including Chief Constable Sir Brian Pollock, hid themselves away.

Of course she'd asked her sarge why they wanted them, and he'd just shrugged and said it was a routine audit that they did from time to time with all the big cases, checking the contents against the index to make sure everything was present and accounted for, dull stuff like that. Which, as she learnt from DI Stewart, was the exact opposite of the reason why they had been rushed along the motorway by express courier.

She was just contemplating where to start when her phone rang. Not her desk phone or her work mobile, but her personal one, the one she was supposed to keep switched off during working hours. Without looking, she knew who it would be.

'Good morning sir, how are you?' she whispered, not that there was anyone in yet who might overhear her conversation.

'Aye, not bad Lexy,' Frank said. 'So if everything's gone to plan, you should at present be hiding behind a humongous pile of boxes. Am I right or am I right?'

'You're