In the mayhem that had followed, Alex had torn himself away from his wife and daughter long enough to grab Karen Pirie. "You need to secure that caravan."
"What caravan?"
"Lawson's fishing caravan. Up at Loch Leven. That's where he killed Rosie Duff. The paint on his ceiling matches the paint on Rosie's cardigan. You never know, there might even be blood traces still."
She'd looked at him with distaste. "You expect me to take that shit seriously?"
"It's the truth." He pulled the envelope out of his pocket. "I've got the paint that will prove I'm right. If you let Lawson get back to the caravan, he'll destroy it. The evidence will go up in smoke. You've got to stop him doing that. I'm not making this up," he said, desperate to make her believe him. "Duncan heard Macfadyen too. He saw Lawson attacking Tom Mackie last night. Your boss will stop at nothing to cover his tracks. Take him into custody and secure that caravan."
Karen's face had remained expressionless. "You're suggesting I arrest my Assistant Chief Constable?"
"Strathclyde Police took He'd Kerr and Jackie Donaldson into custody on a lot less evidence than you've heard here this afternoon." Alex struggled to stay calm. He couldn't believe this was all slipping away from him now. "If Lawson wasn't who he is, you wouldn't be hesitating."
"But he is who he is. He's a highly respected senior police officer."
"Caesar's wife, officer. All the more reason why you should take this seriously. You think this isn't going to be all over the papers tomorrow morning? If you think Lawson's clean, then show him to be clean."
"Your wife's calling you, sir," Karen had said icily. She'd walked away, leaving him stranded.
But she'd taken his words on board. She hadn't arrested Lawson, but she had gathered a couple of uniformed officers and unobtrusively left the scene. Next morning, Alex had had a call from Jason, exultantly informing him that he'd heard on the forensic grapevine that his colleagues in Dundee had taken possession of a caravan late the previous night. Game on.
Alex lowered the glasses. "They know you spy on them?"
Weird grinned. "I tell them God sees everything, and I have a direct line to him."
"I bet you do." Alex lay back, letting the sun dry the sweat from his face. It had been a steep and breathless climb up here. No time for talking. This was the first chance he'd had alone with Weird since they'd arrived the previous day. "Karen Pirie came to see us last week," he said.
"How was she?"
It was, Alex had come to understand, a typical Weird question. Not, "What did she have to say for herself?" but rather, "How was she?" He'd underestimated his friend too often in the past. Now perhaps he'd have the chance to make up for that. "I think she's still pretty shaken up. Her and most of the cops in Fife. It's a bit of a stunner when you find out that your Assistant Chief Constable's a rapist and a multiple murderer. The reverberations are pretty serious. I think half the force still believes that Graham Macfadyen and I made the whole thing up between us."
"So Karen came to debrief you?"
"Sort of. It's not her case anymore, of course. She had to hand over the Rosie Duff investigation to officers from an outside force, but she's made pals with one of their team. Which means she's still got an inside track. Credit to her, she wanted to come and fill us in on the latest."
"Which is what?"
"All the forensics have been completed on the caravan. As well as the paint matches, they found some tiny spots of blood where the bench seat meets the floor. They took blood samples from Rosie's brothers and from Macfadyen's body, because of course there's nothing left of Rosie's DNA for comparison so they have to go with close relatives. And the overwhelming odds are that the blood in Lawson's caravan came from Rosie Duff."
"That's incredible," Weird said. "After all this time, he gets caught by a flake of paint and a drop of blood."
"One of his former colleagues has come forward with a statement that Lawson used to boast about passing the time on the night shift by taking lassies back to his caravan and having sex with them. And our evidence puts him very close to where the body was found. Karen says the fiscal's office were a bit wobbly at first, but they decided to go