Free Out of Bounds by Val McDermid Page B

that’s the right to a fair trial. I think your suspect might complain that he’s being accused of a twenty-year-old offence on the basis of a process over which he’d had no consent.’
    ‘Butthat’s all legal hair-splitting, surely? Who’s going to stand up in court and oppose us?’
    ‘His adoptive parents, for a start. You said they’ve never told him he’s adopted. So they could argue you’re not just breaching Garvie’s Article 8 rights but theirs as well.’
    Karen digested this for a long moment. ‘Would any court hearing be in private?’
    ‘Totally. It would be heard in camera.’
    ‘So I’m not breaching their human rights if I don’t tell Ross Garvie when he wakes up, am I?’
    ‘Now who’s hair-splitting? Surely it would all come out in open court if you finally nail someone and he goes to trial?’
    Karen shrugged. ‘Maybe not. I don’t think we’d have to name Ross Garvie. We could ask the court to preserve the anonymity of the familial DNA source. Make the human rights legislation work for us, not against us.’
    ‘I don’t know anything about criminal court proceedings. I suspect that the family court would ultimately decide for giving up the info, but it might take a bit of strenuous argument. You’d need a good advocate. The court might also say, There’s no rush. Let’s wait and see whether Garvie recovers consciousness. Your case has waited twenty years already, a wee bit longer won’t hurt. And of course, if Garvie doesn’t recover and dies, the court will give you whatever you want because dead men have no human rights.’
    Karen groaned. ‘See, that’s the kind of thing courts say because they’re run by lawyers who don’t know what it’s like to live with all the uncertainties that go along with not knowing who killed your daughter, your lover, your friend. The way I look at it is every day that killer walks the streets is a day that the justice system has failed Tina McDonald. And there’s a very potent argument for not waiting.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘PoliceScotland is a very leaky sieve. It’s only a matter of time before somebody hears we’ve reopened the case and sells us out to their favourite hack. And if our killer’s still around? He might decide that, rather than chance it, he’ll flee the jurisdiction.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Do we have an Ecuadorian embassy in Scotland?’

12
    A ssistantChief Constable Simon Lees had fared pretty well in the reorganisation that had followed the creation of a single Police Scotland force. He’d maintained his rank with a small but well-deserved uptick in his salary. He’d been able to escape the Neanderthals of Fife and base himself in the infinitely more civilised Edinburgh. And his natural talent for administration and management made him well-placed to shine. Really, he had no complaints.
    Strike that. He had one complaint. Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie was still under his direct command. He’d thought he would be escaping her when he moved to Edinburgh. But her notable successes running cold cases in the former Fife force had brought her to the attention of the big bosses and they’d picked her to run the national Historic Case Unit. Even so, she should have been someone else’s problem. Then that someone else had a heart attack and Lees’ reward for his perpetual overweening careerism was to be given oversight of the HCU.
    Karen infuriated him. She had a complete disregard for his rank, treating him with a bland condescension that borderedon insolence but never quite crossed over into insubordination. Or rather, by the time he’d discovered her sidestepping of his authority, she’d achieved another success that made her untouchable. And that was the worst of it. She was defiantly good at what she did. Sometimes unorthodox, sometimes out on a very shaky limb, but more often than not successful. And dramatically successful with the kind of cases the media loved. Karen bloody Pirie, whose