Lawless Read Online Free PDF

and unexpectedly put an arm round McBride’s shoulder. ‘Look, sorry about not picking up on any of your messages. I’d heard you were going to be making an appearance in Waterstone’s but I had to go out of town on a job. By the time I got back, I assumed you’d left. I was going to give you a bell in London in a day or two. Anyway, great to see you – we’ll grab a pint later. In the meantime, are you going to tell me what’s brought you to the great citadel of truth where pale-faced scribes toil for a pittance?’
    McBride shook his head at the line he’d heard Richardson use a dozen times. ‘Can’t beat the old ones. Actually, it’s the old ones I’ve come to see – not your collection of decrepit women but The Courier files.’ He tried to sound casual. ‘Any chance of half an hour in the file room?’
    There was practically a click when Richardson’s head jerked round. ‘Easily arranged, old son. Anything special I can help you with?’ It was his turn to appear laid-back.
    McBride shrugged. ‘No. Thanks all the same. I just want to have a look at some old stuff I did for the paper years ago for a bit of a feature I’m trying to work up. Nothing very exciting, I’m afraid.’ He knew Richardson hadn’t been convinced but it was as much as he was getting.
    Five minutes later, he was alone in an extremely cold basement room surrounded by the history of a city. Everything worth recording, and much which wasn’t, about what had happened in Dundee and the surrounding area was contained in the once-white but now ochre pages of the bound volumes that were stretching before him. He quickly located the one he required and feverishly flicked over the pages until he came to the murder trial report of Bryan Gilzean’s case.
    Although he hadn’t been sure what he’d expected to find, he was disappointed with what was there. As he had suspected, the largest extraction had been a photograph of Alison Brown, evidently taken when she had been a bridesmaid at a wedding. The other piece of the report, which had so meticulously been removed from the file in the Central Library, could not, on the face of it, have been more ordinary or unexceptional. Had they not been so precisely sliced out, the missing three and a half sentences could have been selected at random.
    McBride gazed at the words in bewilderment, even reading them out aloud to make sense of why someone had gone to such extremes to excise them. He gave up after several minutes, even more baffled than when he’d seen them for the first time. Taking the notebook he never left home without from his jacket pocket, he carefully copied every detail of the text into a new page.
    The expunged passage, which started midway through a sentence, read:

    … though this is not unique. These activities happen from time to time and can be confusing. Care has to be taken to ensure a dispassionate analysis and conclusion. It wouldn’t be the first time someone got it wrong and it won’t be the last.

    The words were those of Dr Christopher Rae, a forensic scientist, and had been spoken by him during his testimony for the prosecution. He had examined the corpse of Alison Brown and his evidence had been instrumental in the Crown achieving such a swift and unanimous guilty verdict. He could be said to have been Bryan Gilzean’s executioner.
    McBride studied the context in which the expert witness had used the words and noted that the doctor had been speaking generally, making broad references to the removal of DNA samples and the need to avoid contamination. The information didn’t help. McBride shook his head in frustration once more, closed the file and replaced it on its metal, utilitarian shelf. Then, before he found himself sharing the same fate as brass monkeys, he left the silent, bone-chilling file room.
    Back upstairs, the air-conditioned newsroom was a hubbub of chatter and ringing telephones. More than fifty reporters and sub-editors, all starting to write