‘I don’t have a problem either way,’ Neville replied. ‘My kids are fine; they seem happy with that quaint wee sergeant of yours. The fact is I came here to have this discussion, as you put it, with Andy. If you and the DCC have to be witnesses, so be it. As for Ms DaCosta, I’d rather not have her here given her professional connection, but if you say it’s necessary, I’ll put up with that too.’
‘I think I still need her,’ Martin said. ‘Sorry, but I do.’
She nodded grudging approval.
‘We’ll need to record it,’ Mann warned her. ‘You okay with that?’
‘Of course. I’d be doing the same.’
Mann, McGuire, and DaCosta all put recording devices on a central table and switched them on. Neville thought for a moment, then took out her phone and activated Voice Memo. ‘Might as well,’ she murmured. ‘Not that I don’t trust everybody here.’
‘I don’t know if I do,’ Martin muttered. McGuire shot him a hard look but said nothing.
‘Karen,’ her fellow DCI began, ‘where have you been for the last few days?’
‘I’ve been away,’ she said. ‘In a cottage near Fort William.’ She looked at Martin. ‘I told you, Andy, I needed to do that, to get away to think about how I want the rest of my life to be.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what I’ve been telling them. Thanks for confirming it.’
‘Did you go on your own?’ Mann continued.
‘Of course not, I went with a friend, within the lockdown regulations as we read them. His name’s Clyde: I don’t really think you need to know any more than that about him. He’s part of the intelligence community; he and I have been having a relationship for a few weeks.’ She gazed at Martin once again. ‘Not in a relationship, having a relationship; there’s a difference.’
‘Friends with benefits?’ DaCosta suggested.
‘That’s the phrase; a throwback to my young, free and childless days. Anyway, Clyde and I went off to his old CO’s place, to which he has a key, and which not even his boss knows about, had bracing walks and decent sex, and I came to a decision.’ She turned to McGuire. ‘That’s between Andy and me,’ she added, shifting awkwardly in her chair, ‘but this furniture has to go.’
Mann allowed herself a small smile.
‘And now,’ Neville continued. ‘I’ve been very patient with you, but it’s time for someone to tell me what the fuck is going on here. Why are two senior police officers and a very expensive lawyer in my ex-husband’s house! And why is there an unmarked car at the entrance to the street and another round the corner?’
‘I’ll explain that,’ McGuire said, ‘but this is where Ms DaCosta goes and makes herself a coffee or joins Cotter and the kids. I promise you, Johanna,’ he added, ‘nothing’s going to happen that’ll be prejudicial to your client.’
‘It’s okay, Johanna,’ Martin told her, and she left.
As the door closed, the DCC switched off all of the recording devices and updated Neville on everything that had happened in her absence, looking at her throughout, watching the colour leave her face.
‘Calder’s dead?’ she whispered, as he finished. ‘He was a lovely guy, with a background nearly as tough as Clyde’s that he escaped from in the same way. Who would do that to him? And why?’
‘We believe that he was mistaken for Clyde,’ Mann told her. ‘All the evidence that we had points to Sir Andrew. Most of it still does,’ she added.
‘Have you all had your common-sense glands removed?’ she laughed, wide-eyed with astonishment.
‘Fortunately, we haven’t,’ McGuire replied, ‘or Sir Andrew would have been charged by now and in the remand wing in Edinburgh. If it had been anybody else . . .’ he let the rest of the sentence hang in the air.
‘What are you doing to find the real killer?’
‘Everything we can,’ Mann assured her. ‘Can you help us?’
‘Any way I can,’ Neville promised, ‘but shouldn’t Clyde be in on this too?’
‘We believe he is already, but in a freelance capacity. He hasn’t been contactable since he resurfaced in Glasgow, spotted officers watching his flat and called Bob Skinner. Why him, I’m wondering?’
‘Because Bob’s the man he respects more than any other. If he can’t call Clyde in, that means trouble.’
‘Then let’s try to head that off,’ McGuire declared. ‘Karen, we know that you had visited Clyde’s flat where the killing happened. Did you know that MI5 owned it and that his permanent presence in Scotland was never disclosed to the Scottish Government, formally or otherwise?’
‘No, I didn’t. Clyde’s always vague about what he does, even with me. Yes, I know he’s a spook of sorts, but I thought he was a security consultant. That’s how he describes himself. I thought that maybe he was an agent for mercenaries, possibly even one himself.’
‘Did you ever discuss your relationship with him with anyone? I know that you didn’t share with ACC Payne, but did you confide in anyone else?’
She chewed her lip and looked at the floor. ‘I mentioned it to my Uncle Matt at the start of the fling. I told him I was seeing a guy and that he had a love nest in Candleriggs. He had a laugh about that. He told me where the name came from; he said it was where candlemakers worked, a safe distance from the tenements, so they didn’t start any fires. He’s not my real uncle, by the way,’ she added. ‘He was my dad’s best mate, and we’ve been close since I was a child.’
‘What does he do, your Uncle Matt?’ Mann asked.
Neville blushed. ‘He writes mystery novels; he’s reasonably well known. He visits me a lot. When he does, he’s always asking me for ideas. I’ve given him some, but when we get talking about it, it’s obvious he doesn’t really need my help, or anyone else’s. He’s brilliant; his imagination is . . . it’s transcendent. I’d love him to be an influence on the kids, but that can’t be.’
‘Why not?’
‘Uncle Matt has a very big down on Andy. He never really liked him, but when he left us and went back to the Skinner woman he really was incandescent. As fond as I am of him, I can’t risk him passing that on to Andy’s children. It’s my fault, I’m afraid. He saw how angry I was over the witch, and I passed it on to him.’
‘It sounds as if your Uncle Matt isn’t a man to cross,’ Mann observed. ‘Do you happen to know how old he is?’
‘I couldn’t really tell you, but my dad would have been sixty-seven. He’ll be around that I imagine.’
McGuire leaned forward, catching her eye. ‘What’s his full name, Karen?’
It was Martin who replied. ‘His name is Matthew Reid, and he lives in Gullane. I was on the point of telling you that when Karen arrived.’
‘Sir,’ Mann said, quietly. ‘We need to bring Sauce Haddock into this. We may have identified our overlapping DNA.’
Sixty-Nine
‘Noele,’ Sauce Haddock said, looking at the DI. ‘You live in Gullane, so does Matthew Reid. Do you know him?’
‘We’ve met,’ she replied. ‘He spoke at my mum’s book group, and I was there. I’ve seen him a few times since then.’ Every word was true.
‘What did you think of him?’
‘I thought he was funny and far more comfortable in front of an audience than I would have been.’ Again, not a word of a lie.
‘What do you know about him, beyond the fact that he has about fifty crime novels in publication?’
She paused, considering the question. ‘I know he’s in his sixties but possibly older. I know he lives alone, with only a year-old Labrador for company. I know that every Friday he drank in the Mallard Hotel, before it closed, with Bob Skinner and a few others.’ I know that he made me come twice, as if it was second nature to him. The last sentence was spoken only in her mind. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘What do you know about him?’
‘Absolutely nothing,’ Haddock replied. ‘To all
intents and purposes, Matthew Reid doesn’t exist, not the version who lives in Gullane. Jackie’s checked him out and got nowhere. He doesn’t seem to have a National Insurance number, or an NHS number, or a passport. He isn’t a patient of the local medical practice, although he’s a paying customer of the dentist, and he isn’t drawing a state pension. His car’s registered to an offshore company and his publisher’s finance department says that all his royalties and advance payments go there too, paid to him directly because he doesn’t have an agent. We’ve even looked for him through his grandmother. Jackie looked at press interviews, and articles about him. He’s said on public platforms that his granny’s maiden name was Armour, the youngest of a family of seven, and that’s where he took his cop character’s name from. It turns out that was a fiction too; the Registrar General’s office couldn’t find anyone close to fitting that description. Noele, the Matthew Reid that you’ve met,’ Haddock sighed, ‘he could be described as a figment of his own imagination.’
McClair felt as if a lump of ice had formed in the pit of her stomach. ‘I believe he has a place in Spain,’ she volunteered. ‘Have you tried looking there?’
‘No, but thanks, we will.’
‘Have you spoken to Bob Skinner? He knows him better than most.’
‘I’ve tried, but for once the gaffer’s uncontactable.’ He paused, looking at her. ‘The one advantage that we have over Reid,’ he continued, ‘is that he doesn’t know we have an interest in him. It’ll be interesting to see how he reacts when we pick him up, as we will as soon as Lottie Mann and DS Cotter get here. Be ready to go, Noele. Both investigations need to be equally represented, Lottie’s and ours.’
She took a deep breath and gazed at him. ‘If Cotter’s coming you should probably take a DS rather than a DI to make it truly equal. To be honest, Sauce, I’d rather sit this one out.’
He stared back at her. ‘Why, FFS? This could be big. I thought you’d be keen for a piece of it.’
‘I know,’ McClair conceded. ‘It’s just that having met him, I wouldn’t feel comfortable with it. Take Jackie instead. She spends too much time in the office.’
Haddock frowned, then shrugged. ‘Okay, Noele,’ he said. ‘If that’s how you feel.’ He grinned. ‘If you want to miss out on a celebrity arrest, that’s up to you.’
Seventy
‘I meant it about the furniture,’ Karen said, firmly but with a smile.
‘It’s no big deal,’ Martin replied. ‘I walked into a furniture warehouse and bought it off the floor; I told them I wasn’t about to wait three months for delivery. They were remarkably compliant; even gave me a twenty-five per cent discount.’
‘You called yourself “Sir Andrew”, didn’t you?’
‘Of course.’ He winked. ‘One of the hidden benefits of a knighthood is the negotiating power it brings you.’
‘But does it earn you the money to take advantage?’
‘Oh yes. I was paid top dollar in the US and could have made more if I’d stayed. The cable news networks are always on the lookout for expert input to their rolling coverage, and I was starting to make an impact there . . . the Capitol riots, for example. I was on CBS then; the knighthood was worth a fair few extra bucks to them. It gets attention on the captions, the producer said. Egalitarian society my arse!’ he laughed. ‘I could go back to America, you know. We could, all four of us, as a family. I have a couple of offers on the table that’ll be there for another few months. For example, I could be Dean of the Criminology Faculty in a university in Philadelphia.’
‘I thought your heart was set on politics now?’
‘This might sound corny,’ he replied, ‘but my heart is set on you and the kids, and on putting us back together as a family unit.’
‘Even though I’ve just come back from a few days in the north with another man?’
‘Even though,’ he repeated. ‘It means nothing to me.’
‘And Alexis Skinner? Does she mean nothing to you?’
‘Alex will always be a friend, but that’s it. I should never have gone back to her. Not that I ever really did; even after you and I were divorced, she and I never lived together.’
‘You didn’t make it work with her second time around,’ Karen observed. ‘Are you confident that we can?’
‘I’m certain. I’ve had a lot of time to think about myself. I know what I am: an introspective, broody, grumpy, impatient son of a bitch, intolerant of other people’s views—’
‘You’ll make a great MSP, that’s for sure,’ she said.
He laughed, out loud, realising it was something he had not done in months, even years. ‘Self-improvement starts with self-awareness,’ he replied, ‘that’s the truth.’
‘Do you love me?’
‘I love the mother of my children, that’s all I can tell you. I’m a displaced middle-aged man who needs to base his life on a solid foundation and that is family. Do you love me?’
She smiled, and nodded. ‘I always did, you boring old fart.’
‘What about Clyde Houseman?’
‘He has no part in you and me; that was entirely physical, and we both knew it. I told him when we left to come home what I was planning to do and he’s fine with that.’
‘Even if he now thinks I killed his brother?’ Martin asked.
‘I don’t believe he does, but I will call him, to talk him into coming in if I can. I don’t see him as a threat, though. Clyde’s not a murderer, Andy; yes, he and his special forces unit left a trail of dead behind them, but he insists that they were all legitimate military targets.’
‘And your Uncle Matt, what about him? Is he a killer?’
‘The Uncle Matt I know, no he isn’t. But consider what he does, the stories he weaves. If he decided to bring one of them to life . . . He really does hate you, Andy, that I know for sure.’
‘Part of the case against me involves two hairs found in Calder Bryant’s dried blood. Could he have come by them?’
Karen frowned, considering the question. ‘The night you came to mine and we started to discuss getting back together: when you stayed over because you’d had a drink and we slept in the same bed without actually shagging or anything?’
He grinned. ‘Because you’d had even more than me and went to sleep as soon as your head hit the pillow? Yes, I remember that.’
‘Next morning, when you used my bathroom, did you use my hairbrush as well?’
Martin nodded. ‘Yes, I think I did.’ He tugged at his hair, which was lockdown length. ‘In fact, I’m sure of it, I remember it. Sorry.’
‘Forgiven. Well, Uncle Matt visited me a couple of days later. I told him all about me being involved with Clyde, but I said that I wouldn’t let it get in the way of you and me getting back together, and I told him what had happened with us. I didn’t say it had been platonic, though. He told me I was off my fucking head to be thinking that way, that I was laying myself open to being kicked in the guts again. But then he cooled down. He was fine again by the time he left, but he did go upstairs before then, to say goodnight to the kids, he said. If you left hairs on my brush, he could have got them then.’
‘Is he strong enough, do you think to have done what was done to Bryant? After all, he’s an old guy.’
‘He’s an old guy who works out in the gym, three days a week,’ Karen pointed out. ‘Look, face to face, against a young fit marine, he’d have no chance at all, but if he was able to overpower him in some way, he’d be strong enough to do the rest.’
‘The Sainsbury’s bag,’ Martin exclaimed, his eyes widening.
‘What?’
‘They told me that Bryant’s head was found in a Sainsbury’s bag along with a receipt for my credit card. A while back, I thought that someone had been going through my recycling boxes. At the time, I put it down to squirrels. Now . . .’
She stared at him. ‘Uncle Matt?
Is that what you’re suggesting?’
‘Could be, if it was him.’ He sighed. ‘Fuck it, I don’t know. Let’s leave it to the professionals, and you make that call to Clyde.’
Seventy-One
‘Where is the place?’ Lottie Mann wondered aloud, as Haddock cruised quietly along the narrow road. Bare trees overhung them on either side and, as they crested a rise, the sea came into view.
‘This is the address that Jackie Wright found on the electoral roll,’ her colleague replied, ‘the only public listing where we could find any trace of Matthew Reid. The houses have names, not numbers; Reid’s is called “L’Altre”. Jackie said it’s Catalan for “The Other”.’
‘That’s it!’ Mann exclaimed.
Haddock’s eyes followed her right-pointing finger, until they settled on a name board affixed to a tree, one of two on either side of a gap in a boundary wall. It was an entrance, but not obviously so; there was no property visible from the street. ‘Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘It’s as if the guy’s house doesn’t exist either.’ He eased the vehicle between the two trees onto a narrow, curving red ash drive, with a high beech hedge on the left. There was no dwelling to be seen until they reached its end and made a sharp right turn.
‘Are you sure we’re going in here with legal authority?’ Mann asked. ‘We don’t want to be screwing this up.’
‘You’ve got reason to believe a crime has been committed,’ Haddock replied, ‘and DCI Neville’s information points to Reid as a possible subject. That is right, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Then we have all the authority we need. If he refuses to cooperate, we can lift him. If he refuses to give us a DNA sample, Dorward’s team can take it by force, when they get here.’
He drew to a halt; Cotter and Wright, who had been following in another vehicle, parked alongside him. Reid’s home was modest, a single-storey dwelling with bay windows on either side of a covered vestibule, but the plot was extensive. To the right they saw a separate building, a glass-fronted unit with a flat, sloping roof. It faced west and would have caught the sun had the mid-afternoon sky not been leaden, with clouds bearing the promise of heavy rain. Inside, a computer sat on a fitted unit, and in the centre of the space there was a small table, with two chairs.
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