Capital Offence

Chapter 31

Tuesday 18th June

8 days left

 

Macferry made impressive progress with his research. In other circumstances he would have got a buzz out of peeling back layer after layer of information. But knowing the danger he faced he just felt increasingly desperate. You don’t congratulate yourself on setting a freestyle record when you’re swimming away from a shark. You’ve no idea where it is, swirling beneath you in the hidden undercurrents, but you know it’s faster than you, it has bigger teeth, and it can take you out with languid ease whenever it feels the urge.

Macferry knew that the only way he would see his next birthday was to find the right connections. He was convinced that vital information was there, in the public domain. General knowledge, if only you knew the right questions. If you could spot the strands of relationships and coincidence which bound individuals like the drifting airborne threads of tiny spiders, then you could start to unravel hidden motivation, secret identities, deeds in the shadows.

He’d started some weeks back with the Prime Minister’s old school - one of the Edinburgh fee-paying establishments which had moulded generations of confident middle-class bourgeoisie. He had quickly confirmed details of the PM’s brother, but Jamie Maclean’s rise to public prominence seemed to have eclipsed David Maclean’s very existence. None of the older teachers he had spoken to had any knowledge of what had become of the lad, and there was no record of his having gone on to University or college.

Macferry had a compelling suspicion that the man was more familiar to the public than anybody realised. It was possible that his fame now matched that of his illustrious brother, perhaps even outshone it.

Stuart Pearson, the man on death row.

He had addressed Jamie Maclean with familiarity. He had put his hand on the PM’s arm, without any evidence of Maclean flinching or backing away. Surely the Prime Minister wouldn’t meet a convicted sadistic murderer and allow the animal to paw him, without some kind of reaction? And the question which Duncan Simpson thought he had seen his lips form - ‘How’s Mum and Dad?’

It had to be.

Insane though it seemed, the only possible explanation was that Stuart Pearson and David Maclean were one and the same.

So how could that be true? Surely there must be a thousand people who knew the brother, who would have recognised him. It didn’t make sense.

Macferry started to note the key points down on a spiral bound notepad.

1)            Tip-off that Dave Maclean went to jail, aged about 20.

2)            Vanished after that.

So...

3)            People who knew the connection might not have seen him for twenty five years.

Macferry pulled out the file of cuttings he’d collected over the past few months. The only photograph of Stuart Pearson on file was the police mug shot taken on the night of his arrest - the one they weren’t allowed to print. His eyes were discoloured and swollen, one of them closed completely. His jaw seemed misshapen, as if he’d been kicked about the face. Macferry wrote again.

4)            Nobody who knew Dave Maclean would have recognised him from those photographs.

What about the name? Stuart Pearson.

The man’s testimony indicated that, at best, he was up to something illegal. He never denied breaking into the Cassidy house, and used a connection with a drug cartel to try to explain his motive for being there. There had never been any doubt as to his identity. If it was an assumed one, then it must have been a charade which had been maintained over a considerable period of time. So why had the police not matched Pearson’s fingerprints to those held on file for David Maclean? Perhaps there had never been any pressing need to. They would have tried to find a match with dabs from unsolved offences, particularly from sexual attacks, but this had clearly drawn a blank. If you think you know who you’ve arrested, then perhaps you don’t waste time trying to see if he’s somebody different. And despite the advances in computer fingerprint recognition, important work still had to be done manually. It was just impractical to try to check everything.