Deadlock

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘The ball’s still intact, Lowell. I might be an SNP candidate, but I’m not going to share UK national security information that I gathered in a previous life with Clive Graham or anyone else. That’s why I could say very little to Lottie Mann in the interview last week. Do you know how the Twins found out about it? Did they tell you that?’

  ‘No. All they said was that it was an MI5 safe house and that the dead man was probably a spook. They didn’t say where their information came from but from what you said earlier, I can guess.’

  ‘That’s right. Bob Skinner has links to the Security Service that go way back, and he still has. The Director General called him and asked him to intervene.’

  Payne nodded. ‘Okay, Andy, that’s understood, but what about your position? Your DNA was found on the premises; Mann can’t ignore that, and neither can I. Fuck’s sake, neither can Alex, if you think about it. She’s one of the Lord Advocate’s deputies. We all report to her boss.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Martin conceded, ‘and I didn’t think about that. I should have.’

  ‘And so should she, so let’s leave that to one side. You told Mann you had no idea how your genetic material got there. Is that true?’

  ‘No. I know how it could have happened. I was in that flat, as chief constable, a few years ago, for a reason I’m not going to disclose to you or anyone else even now. Once, for an hour, and that was all. I told nobody at the time, not even McGuire, because nobody needed to know, and they still don’t. We don’t have all that many real state secrets, but that discussion was one of them. All I will tell you is that Amanda Dennis was present and with her, I now recognise, was Clyde Houseman, although she didn’t introduce him. It’s possible that I shed a couple of hairs at that meeting, and it’s possible they were still there after all that time. That said, what are the odds against them being found stuck in the victim’s blood? That also said, if I was going to kill Houseman, do you think I’d have been that careless?’

  ‘We don’t know that it is Houseman,’ the ACC volunteered. ‘You’ve probably guessed by now that his head was removed.’ Martin nodded. ‘And that he’s not on any database, fingerprint or genetic. That said, we believe it is him. What I do know, from information received through DCC McGuire, is that he’s missing. He doesn’t report into Millbank on a regular basis, but when the DG’s office tried to contact him, they got no response from his phone, and they couldn’t track it because it was switched off.’

  ‘It wasn’t in the flat?’

  ‘No. But that probably means that the killer took it with him.’ He paused. ‘And that’s as far as we can go, Andy. It has to be formal from now on and Mann has to take over.’ He took out his phone; Martin saw his right index finger move, awkwardly, as he composed and sent a text.

  Mann and Johanna DaCosta returned within a minute. ‘You may start the interview now, Chief Inspector,’ Payne said, once the recording devices were active. ‘Sir Andrew has updated his statement from last week. He now admits having been in the premises on police business some years ago, but not recently.’

  ‘And I deny killing anyone,’ Martin added.

  ‘When did you last see Detective Chief Inspector Neville, your former wife?’ Mann asked abruptly.

  DaCosta raised a hand. ‘What’s the relevance of that question?’

  ‘I’ll get there.’

  ‘The Sunday before last,’ Martin replied. ‘She turned up at my place, without warning, while the kids were at a party, and told me that I was having them for a fortnight. She told me to pick them up from school next day.’

  ‘Did she tell you why?’

  ‘Yes, she did. Karen and I have been talking around the idea of getting back together, for their sake. She said that she needed to get away for a while to think that through, before making a final decision.’

  ‘I see,’ Mann murmured. ‘Did you know that she was in a relationship with Clyde Houseman, the suspected murder victim?’

  ‘Why should—?’

  She cut him off before he could continue. ‘DCI Neville is on the database, and testing has shown her presence in the Candleriggs apartment, all over the place, including in the bed.’

  ‘I didn’t know for sure, but I suspected,’ Martin conceded. ‘Two or three weeks ago I dropped off the kids at her house; I was a minute or two early and I saw a man leaving. I didn’t have a clear view but now I believe it was him.’

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t know him, that you only heard of him recently and that your only actual meeting was when he was a teenager.’

  ‘We’ve been there, DCI Mann,’ Payne said, quietly. ‘Sir Andrew acknowledges a meeting more recently than that.’

  ‘Very good,’ DaCosta exclaimed, ‘but what’s the issue?’

  ‘The issue,’ the detective replied, quietly, ‘is that Karen Neville has disappeared. Her car’s still in its garage, but she isn’t at home, and her phone’s switched off, same as Houseman’s. There’s no trace of her anywhere. And that leads me in only one direction. Sir Andrew has just told us that he wanted to renew his relationship with his ex-wife only to discover that she was having an affair. Now she’s vanished off the face of the earth, and the headless body of a man we all believe to be her lover has been found in a secure apartment. We have Sir Andrew’s admitted presence on the premises, and his hair in the dead man’s blood. We only have his word for DCI Neville’s possible whereabouts, and nobody has a clue about Houseman’s. Our position is that Sir Andrew killed them both; that’s what the evidence suggests.’

  ‘And our answer,’ the solicitor snapped, ‘is that you are fantasising.’

  ‘We haven’t finished our enquiries,’ Mann told her. ‘I intend to seek permission to interview Sir Andrew’s children.’

  Martin leaned across the table facing her, his broad shoulders hunched. ‘You try that, and I will fight you, in court. While Danielle and Robert’s identities will be protected whatever happens, I promise you that I’ll make sure, with one phone call to a journalist I know, that this investigation comes out of the shadows and into the full blazing light of day. We’ll see how much your bosses like that, Lottie.’

  ‘Let’s all just take a breath,’ ACC Lowell Payne declared.

  Fifty-Three

  The newly minted detective constable looked up as a shadow was cast across her desk, created by the massive figure of Detective Sergeant Tarvil Singh. ‘You okay, DC Benjamin?’ he asked, amiably. ‘It looks as if Sauce has your nose to the grindstone already.’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she replied. Haddock had introduced her generally to her colleagues, but he was the first to come over. ‘I’m trying to trace a suspect.’

  ‘Suspect in what?’

  ‘A series of deaths in Gullane of old people living alone. On the face of it they’re all accidental and unconnected, but there’s a possible link between them that I’m trying to find.’

  ‘Noele lives out that way, doesn’t she?’ Singh murmured, lowering himself on to a chair beside her desk. ‘It was handy for the Haddington station, where Maggie Steele hid her away to get over the thing that happened. I’ve got to say it’s good she’s back, even if she did jump ahead of me on the ladder.’

  Benjamin looked up at him. ‘What was that thing? I know her ex was murdered, but nobody talked about it in Haddington.’

  ‘It wasn’t just her ex. There were two victims in the shooting, Terry Coats, Noele’s ex . . . he was a DI in the old Strathclyde force until he resigned rather than take a posting to the wilderness . . . and one of ours, a uniformed inspector called Griff Montell. He and Noele were connected, but that had nothing to do with the killings. Griff was an innocent bystander, almost, in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  ‘I didn’t know about him only about Coats. She’s never talked about it with me. But why should she?’

  ‘Indeed, which means I’ve probably said
too much, so don’t mention it.’

  ‘I won’t, Sarge, don’t worry.’ She paused, still looking up at him. ‘Can I ask you something?’ she ventured.

  He smiled. ‘Within limits, sure.’

  ‘Your name’s Singh, which means you’re a Sikh. Is that right?’

  ‘It’s a reasonable guess.’

  ‘Why don’t you wear a turban?’

  The DS scratched his shaggy grey-flecked hair. ‘I’m sort of lapsed,’ he replied. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘I’ve got a head the size of a Volkswagen as it is without adding to it. I’d struggle to find enough cloth. In return,’ he went on, ‘I’ll ask you something. What’s Tiggy short for?’

  Her face flushed slightly. ‘Nothing,’ she admitted. ‘That’s what’s on my birth certificate, and my driving licence, and my passport, and my warrant card. When my mum was expecting me, she and my dad were out for a walk one day in a park and heard a woman calling her dog Tiggy. They thought it was a nice name and so they stuck it on me. If you’re wondering, it was a spaniel. Yes, I’m named after a bloody spaniel.’

  ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ Singh promised, standing. ‘You’d better get on with your search. Usually you’ll be working with me, as Jackie Wright’s just got her stripes and prefers working alone anyway. Any problems, just ask.’ As he walked away, she was sure she heard a gentle ‘woof’.

  She was smiling as she turned back to her computer terminal and to the list of cycle shops in central Scotland that might have sold a VooDoo Canzo mountain bike. She had been naïve in her assumption that it would be an easy task. The cycle was American made, and its website indicated that Halfords appeared to be the sole UK concessionaire. The chain had been helpful but unable to find any sales in Scotland, and it had warned her that there was a strong resale market for the model, online and in specialist stores. She had found one offered, used for sale, on eBay, but the vendor was located in Lancashire. A search on Amazon produced no results, and none of the other three online sellers that she found had taken her any further. That had left her with the long and tedious task of calling local shops. She saw it as her last hope before going back to Halfords and asking for details of every sale of the model in Britain, then tracking them down one by one. Even if it was only a few dozen, that could take for ever. She had begun, fingers crossed, with the shop closest to Gullane, in North Berwick. Fingers uncrossed, she had begun to work her way through the list, radiating outward, as she worked. She had gone through a dozen ‘No, sorry’ replies when Singh had interrupted her, and had made a further fourteen calls after resuming, before her luck turned. It was a shop in Whitburn, in West Lothian, owned by an enthusiastic woman with a young person’s voice. Her name was Dale Rogers and she had a prodigious memory for detail.

  ‘Yes, I sold one of those last September,’ she replied at once. ‘I advertised it as new, and they arrived on morning one.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘A father and son, but the dad was only there to do the driving. The lad knew exactly what he wanted, and he asked all the right questions. I think he must have been a competition rider although I didn’t follow that up by looking for him. First thing he asked,’ she continued, ‘was whether the bike really was new. By which he really meant, if it was, what was it doing in a wee shop like mine. Not quite asking me if it was knock-off but that’s what he meant. I really should have been offended but I wasn’t. The story was that the bike had been bought from Halfords by a football manager for his son, as a surprise, but a day before it arrived the lad was out on his old bike and had an accident. He came off it and broke his leg, so badly that he wound up in Edinburgh Royal in a cast. When the new bike arrived and his mother saw it she went totally effing mental and said the kid would never have it. So the dad, the football manager, brought it along to me. He had all the proper receipts, shipping details and everything else, so I bought it off him for twenty percent less than he paid for it and put it on my shop’s Facebook page as brand new, which it was. I wasn’t cheating, really, was I?’

  ‘Frankly,’ Benjamin told her, ‘I don’t care. I’m CID, not trading standards, and I’m only interested in the name and address of the person who bought it, or his father’s name if that’s all you have.’

  ‘That’s not a problem,’ Rogers said, with evident relief in her voice. ‘I gave him a full receipt and registered him as the legal owner for warranty purposes. It was in the boy’s name not the dad’s, because it was the boy who paid for it. The VooDoo has an eighteen-inch frame; he was just about big enough to handle it with plenty of growth room left. He said he had just turned fourteen.’

  ‘Can you give me a description?’

  ‘He was just a boy; longish fair hair, and that was about it. Unexceptional. He wore a green puffer jacket.’

  The young detective’s eyebrows rose. ‘And he paid for the bike himself? Are you saying he had his own bank account?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right. Starling Bank, it was. He paid for it using his phone.’

  ‘Have you got a copy of the receipt and the registration with his name and address on it?’

  ‘Sure. I’m looking it up on my computer as we speak; here it is now. His name is Rory Graham . . . same as Rag’n’Bone Man, the singer . . . and the address is Seventeen Raglan Place, Edinburgh.’

  Edinburgh? Benjamin thought. In that case what’s he doing tooling around Gullane on his very expensive bike, looking for work?

  ‘That’s outstanding, Ms Rogers,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect to have to bother you again.’

  ‘No problem. What’s he done, this Rory, that you’re looking for him?’

  ‘Hopefully nothing,’ the DC replied. ‘Hopefully nothing at all.’

  Fifty-Four

  ‘This is not the most discreet thing you guys have ever done,’ Sir Robert Skinner observed, eyeing his surprise visitors across his conference table. ‘Yes, you were able to be driven straight into the car park. Yes, you were able to take the lift directly to this floor but, Jesus Christ and General Jackson, this is a newspaper office! It’s full of very good reporters, not least the managing editor in the office next door. Her dad’s a retired police officer, so she’d recognise both of you in a heartbeat.’

  Neil McIlhenney smiled, and shifted in his chair. ‘We thought it was best, under the circumstances.’

  ‘Both of you?’ Skinner peered at Mario McGuire, then back at his senior colleague. ‘I know you’re joined at the hip, but you can’t both be chief constable. Like it or not, things will arise that are for your eyes only, Neil. For example, the meeting that Andy Martin attended, where he left his genetic material in the Candleriggs flat.’

  ‘So far, we only have Andy’s word for that,’ McIlhenney pointed out.

  ‘No, you have mine too. Amanda Dennis told me at the time.’ He laughed, softly. ‘This is fucking ironic, is it not? A few days ago you were telling me to stay retired and keep my distance. Now here you are, turning up in my office at an hour’s notice, invisible caps in hand.’

  ‘Take it as a compliment,’ McGuire said. ‘We have a situation here, Bob, where we need your advice. Have you heard from Andy in the last week?’

  ‘Not directly, but he visited Alex on Sunday, and now she’s professionally compromised.’

  ‘So are we,’ McIlhenney muttered, morosely.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘We can place Andy Martin right in the middle of a crime scene,’ the chief constable replied, ‘in which the victim is believed to be his ex-wife’s lover. We have Karen’s presence all over the same premises, and she’s disappeared. Andy said she landed the kids on him with little or no warning and said she was going off for a while to sort herself out, but there’s no proof of that. She booked two weeks’ leave with Lowell Payne, but it was in a text message. Since then, her phone’s been off. Andy’s been interviewed by Lottie Mann twice, the second time with Payne present. When Lot
tie said she planned to get court permission to talk to the kids, he went ballistic and threatened to leak the story to the tabloids. Bob, potentially we have enough evidence to charge Andy with two murders, but we can’t even report the matter to the fiscal, because he works for the Lord Advocate and the Lord Advocate owes his job to the SNP First Minister, who may be aware that a Tory UK government is maintaining a Security Service presence in Scotland but can’t tell anyone. You’re the one who warned us of the political implications of that. I believe,’ he glanced at McGuire, ‘we believe, the only reason Andy hasn’t told the Lord Advocate, Lennon, himself is because it wouldn’t make the potential murder charge go away and that would scupper his political ambitions. So, help; what do we do?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Skinner replied, immediately and emphatically. ‘You have evidence that points to Andy as the perpetrator, but you don’t have enough. If that is Houseman’s body you found, I can tell you that he did stuff in his military career that would make his head a prime trophy for more than one Islamic group. Until you can knock down Andy’s account of Karen asking him to look after the children, you have nothing to link him with her disappearance.’

  ‘What do we do with Mann’s investigation?’ McGuire asked. ‘Are you saying we should shut it down?’

  ‘Of course not, but tell her to use her common sense,’ he insisted. ‘Use your own too. All three of us know perfectly well that Andy didn’t kill anyone. I’m not saying that Lottie should disregard the evidence she has against him, but she shouldn’t focus on it. She should concentrate on tracing the owner of every DNA sample found in that flat. When she does that, she’ll have found her killer.’

  Fifty-Five

  The tall young man who was ushered into Sauce Haddock’s office by Noele McClair was wearing a mask, but his red hair was a giveaway. Even if the DCI had not been told that Arthur Dorward’s son had joined the Gartcosh crime scene team, he would have guessed at a connection.