18 - Aftershock

by Quintin Jardine

  Maggie smiled. ‘That doesn’t sound like a bad proposition,’ she conceded. ‘Okay, half an hour it is. Let me help you tidy up first, though.’

  She rose and started to clear the table, but Bet waved her away. ‘No! I’ll do it. Away you go and get it over with. Half an hour and the clock’s ticking now.’

  She left the kitchen and returned to the computer; she had left it switched on and the screensaver was running. Stevie’s face filled the monitor. She had taken the photograph on his digital camera the day after they were married, on their brief winter honeymoon in Morocco. She smiled at him, then whispered, ‘See you later, love,’ as she clicked the mouse and the image disappeared, replaced by the folder of Fishheads press releases.

  Bet had been right: she had spent too long at the task. She was tired, frustrated and had nowhere else to go. She was reduced to doing the same thing over and over again, looking for something that, in all probability, was not there.

  She went back into the folder and opened the penultimate press release; it was only a week old and told the story of Ifan Richards’s visit to the eastern United States, during which he had had meetings in Atlanta, Georgia, in Charlotte, North Carolina, and in Columbia, South Carolina. She opened the accompanying photograph and studied it for the fourth or fifth time: Richards, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, flanked by the president and vice-president of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce. She peered at his image, trying to read the logo on his shirt, guessing that it was the Fishheads corporate image, but frustrated by its size.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ she murmured. ‘Brainwave.’

  She went through each release in turn; where there was an attached illustration she copied it into her ‘My Pictures’ folder, in a new sub-folder, christened ‘fish’. When she was finished she ran all the photographs full-size as a slide show.

  The executives of Fishheads were not men for formal dress. Even Godric Hawker, the new CEO, eschewed a tie. Ifan Richards wore either polos or, as in the case of the Las Vegas shot with Dražen Boras, T-shirts. Maggie froze the image of the two men, in front of the Wynn Resort, and studied it. They wore identical garments, each with a logo. It was blurred, but to her eye it seemed similar to the one in the South Carolina photograph. She ended the slide show, then double-clicked on the thumbnail file to open it in the picture viewer, where she would be able to enlarge it.

  She hit the ‘zoom’ icon once, twice, again and again. Fourth time lucky: the lettering resolved itself into ‘Margaritaville, Las Vegas’.

  She closed the image, opened the Columbia picture in the viewer and repeated the process. The insignia on Richards’s shirt read ‘Margaritaville, Myrtle Beach’.

  Something clicked at the back of her mind. She picked up the file that Mario had sent her, the one that he and Bob Skinner had put together to establish Dražen Boras as Stevie’s killer. There was a photograph, taken from a CCTV camera, of the jacket he had been wearing when he had arrived in Edinburgh, at the Leith Police office. It had been enlarged already, for the print: across the back of the garment were emblazoned the words ‘Margaritaville, Jamaica’.

  She tore through the slide show again, checking for more instances, and struck gold. In the enlarged version of the Cape Town shot, Richards was seen to wear a pale blue polo, all the way from ‘Margaritaville, Key West’.

  ‘Whatever the hell Margaritaville is,’ Maggie murmured, ‘these boys are big fans.’

  Fifty-two

  It was Aileen who answered the call. ‘Hello, Andy,’ she said warmly. ‘I’m sorry about the poisoned chalice you’ve been handed. If my Lord Advocate had a bit more steel about him, it wouldn’t have been necessary.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told her. ‘It’s on the way to being sorted.’

  ‘Ooh! That sounds as if it could mean trouble for someone.’

  ‘Private embarrassment, maybe. Mind you, that assumes that the geezer in question is capable of feeling embarrassed for longer than it takes him to straighten his tie.’ He could hear mellow music in the background. ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Melissa Etheridge. I put it on to help Bob chill out.’

  ‘He’s moved on. It used to take half a dozen beers and a couple of Del Amitri albums.’

  ‘Don’t worry, he’s working on the beers. He even took one into the shower with him, as soon as the Cortes woman left. You’ve spoken to the boys, have you?’

  ‘Yes. They’ve brought me up to speed. This must have been a hell of a shock for you. You okay?’

  ‘Me? I’m fine. Shocked, yes, and sad about the poor woman, but I learned a long time ago that life isn’t for the squeamish.’ She paused. ‘Here’s Bob.’

  Martin waited as she handed the phone over. ‘You a fucking magnet?’ he said, as Skinner came on the line.

  ‘Hush now, boy. That’s exactly how I feel. It’s as if somebody’s taking the piss, Andy, right on my own doorstep. And when I told them what’s been happening in Scotland! The fucking thing’s following me around, man. Eventually I had to stop being diplomatic, and pull rank, hard, with the investigating officer, Intendant Cortes. I’m glad I’m Comisario Skinner, and not a civilian, or she’d still be putting the fucking thumbscrews on me.’

  ‘Have they made any headway so far?’

  ‘No danger. They’re going to have to put out an appeal for witnesses, but even that’s not going to be easy. It’s not just a matter of putting something in the press and on telly. I’ll guarantee you that, right now, at least half the people in this town don’t speak Spanish, far less read it. They’ll have to put up posters in English, French and German, maybe even Russian.’

  ‘What about the woman’s background? Is there anybody there?’

  ‘Hah!’ Skinner grunted. ‘Know what her day job was before she became a full-time painter? The lad who identified her was friendly with her; he told us. She was a nun. She studied art in the convent; when it became clear that she had a real talent, she decided that the way she could use it best was by devoting it to God. That meant leaving her convent, to be free to travel, but she gives most of the money she makes from her work to her order. So nobody’s looking for a jilted boyfriend.’

  ‘Who are they looking for?’

  ‘After what I told them they’re looking for Davis Colledge, as a first step. I called his father, and told him what had happened. He still hasn’t heard from the boy, or so he said.’

  ‘Do you fancy him for it?’ asked Martin.

  ‘He’s a possible for Sugar Dean, and Collioure’s a short hop from here, so he can’t be ignored. But then there’s the copycat thing. Sugar’s body was moved, but this one looks like a carbon copy of the Ballester jobs. How would Davis know how they were done? How would anybody know?’

  ‘I may have a lead on that.’ He told his friend about his interrogation of Dowley.

  ‘It was him?’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘All that fuss was to cover his own indiscretion?’

  ‘That’s not what he says, but it’s a fair conclusion.’

  ‘Are you going to copy your report to the Lord Advocate? We might be able to get rid of the bastard.’

  ‘No,’ said Martin, firmly. ‘I report to Jimmy, that’s all.’

  ‘In that case I may do something about it . . . once I’ve cleaned up my own mess.’

  ‘You’re finished in Spain, though, aren’t you?’

  ‘Cortes has promised to brief me regularly on her investigation but, yes, I hope we are. We’re due to fly home on Saturday. Unless the Colledge lad shows up, of course.’ He sighed. ‘But there’s something I’ve got to do in Scotland, pal.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I have to give a formal statement to Neil. I remembered something this morning, when I was down town getting the bread and the Daily Telegraph. Guess where I was on the morning of Sugar Dean’s murder? Murrayfield fucking Golf Club, that’s where, as a guest at a Criminal Justice golf outing, organised by the Law Society. The courts weren’t sitting that day, so they invit
ed people from all sides of the system; lawyers, judges, cops, the lot.

  ‘But know what, Andy?’ Skinner sighed wearily. ‘Maybe these murders aren’t following me around. Maybe I’m following them.’

  Fifty-three

  Mario McGuire looked at what had been a bottle of Budweiser. ‘If I have another one of these,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to get a taxi home.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ McIlhenney told him. ‘I’ll give you a lift.’

  The head of CID tugged his fridge door open and took out a replacement. ‘You want another Irn Bru?’

  ‘Hell, no. If I have another of those I’ll start to rust.’ The detective smiled. ‘Who’d have thought it a few years back? I never turned down a pint. Now here I am even saying no to the fizzy stuff.’

  ‘And looking a hell of a lot better for it,’ McGuire pointed out.

  ‘Maybe. Feeling better, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How’s my godson?’

  ‘Louis is absolutely ace, top notch; three months old and growing as fast as a briar rose.’

  ‘And his mum?’

  ‘She’s magic too. I don’t think anyone could look any happier than she does.’

  ‘What about her career? When’s she planning to revive it?’

  ‘I don’t think she is, not the way it was. When we got married, the idea was that she’d take a few years off to try for a family. Well, we’ve managed that, and she says she’s still not feeling any itches. Someone rang her last week and asked if she’d be interested in joining the board of the Scottish National Theatre. She’s thinking about that, and she’s also mentioned the possibility of directing, on the stage again, in Scotland, but that’s it. She says she doesn’t want to be Judi Dench, graduating into playing Queen Victoria in her dotage.’

  ‘Jesus, she’s nowhere near that.’

  ‘She’s over forty, the point at which most of the lead roles start to dry up for a woman. I think I’d like to see her direct. I have a feeling she’d be brilliant at it. Even watching a play on telly with her is an experience, the way she analyses the whole thing afterwards . . . sometimes before it’s finished, if she doesn’t fancy it.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ McGuire chuckled. ‘Paula talks her way through most of the stuff we watch.’

  ‘And you love it.’

  ‘I sure do. Living together’s something we should have done a long time ago.’

  ‘Come on, now, you can’t write off your marriage to Maggie just like that.’

  ‘I can, you know. At the end of the day neither of us got anything out of it. The sex wasn’t much good either.’

  ‘That’s too much information, mate.’

  ‘It’s true, though. You and I both know why that was: that bastard of a father of hers and everything. I wasn’t the right man to help her over it, and that’s all there is to it. I’m really happy she found Stevie, even if it wasn’t for long.’

  ‘Yeah.’ McIlhenney sighed. ‘Poor lad. He died by mistake, but the effect’s the same. The bloody affair won’t go away either.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dead artists. Copycats. I’ve got a bad feeling about this latest one, out in Spain.’

  ‘Why? If the big man hadn’t tripped over the corpse, we’d never have heard about it. The woman was robbed, remember; it was probably a mugging gone wrong. Have you any idea what the crime rate’s like in Spain? They have all those fucking police forces and none of them knows what the others are up to.’

  ‘A bit like us, eh?’

  ‘Not at all. We don’t overlap jurisdiction.’

  ‘Side issue. Like I said, I’m not happy; you can’t brush off the consistencies between the Spanish killing and ours.’

  ‘Neil, we’re getting excited about young Colledge, but is Weekes in the clear for the Sugar Dean job? No. Becky’s meeting Gregor in the morning. He may well decide to do him for that, and he may well get a result. That man Broughton could get Mary fucking Poppins convicted for flying without a pilot’s licence.’

  ‘And Frankie Bristles could get her off on appeal. No, I have a bad feeling, and it doesn’t involve either Colledge or Weekes.’ He glanced at the wall clock: it showed almost seven. ‘Now drink up; it’s time I took you home.’

  Fifty-four

  ‘This place is your retreat, isn’t it?’ said Aileen. Her elbows were on the table, wrists pressed together, her hands enclosing a large, elegant goblet. He watched the red wine swirl slowly with her gentle movement.

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘that’s a perfect description. I’ve been coming to La Clota for twenty years, since my Alex was a kid. The Pallares family know me, they treat me like one of them, and they look after me in all sorts of ways.’

  ‘They look after you?’

  ‘Sure. They know when I don’t want to be disturbed and they arrange it so that I won’t be. You’re part of it now; their protective parasol shields you too. They know the job you have back in Scotland, and that you and I value our privacy while we’re here. Look at the table John kept for us, at the back of the terrace, so that nobody walks past us on their way in or out. You’re facing the entrance: a lot of people have glanced our way in the time we’ve been here, but nobody’s come across. Tell me if I’m wrong.’

  ‘No, you’re spot on.’

  ‘There’s an army of Brits here now, and a lot of Scots among them. If we were closer to the door, our evening wouldn’t have been our own. John and his folks understand that, and they make sure it doesn’t happen.’

  As Bob spoke a figure appeared at his shoulder. He glanced up and smiled. ‘This is the patriarch,’ he said ‘Don Carles, John’s dad. How’re you doing, my friend? Pull a chair over and have a glass of fizzy water.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ the restaurateur replied, accepting both invitations. ‘Everything ticking over. I am so pleased to meet your lovely lady, and to see you both so happy. And your daughter? How is she? A big-shot lawyer in Edinburgh now, they tell me.’

  ‘Not quite big-shot, not yet at any rate, but she’s doing well.’

  ‘No boyfriend just now? That’s what she tell me last time she was here.’

  ‘She goes out with the guy next door sometimes. He’s one of mine, a cop, which sort of guarantees good behaviour. He’s a decent lad, but more a minder than a boyfriend, I’d say.’

  ‘And the kids? The little ones?’

  ‘With their mother in America. That’s good too: I couldn’t spend all the summer holiday with them, but she can.’

  ‘I pleased it work out for you.’ He looked at Aileen. ‘It’s funny, we both have kids called Alex, but mine is a son.’ Carles Pallares paused, and a small frown wrinkled his permatanned features. ‘Hey, Bob,’ he murmured. ‘What’s this story I hear, about the dead girl?’

  ‘It’s a true story, mate. I found her.’

  ‘So I hear, at the bar inside, from Gary and Dilwyn. She die of the sun?’

  ‘Is that what they’re saying?’

  ‘Sí.’

  ‘Then let them till they find out different. She was shot. She’s from Bellcaire; her name was Nada Sebastian.’

  The frown deepened. ‘Sister Nadine? Oh, my God. She had an exposicio in the town hall in March. Every picture she sell, she give one third of the money to the church in L’Escala. She’s been here too, you know.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, friend, but she won’t be here again.’

  ‘Carles!’ The call came from a tall blonde woman in the doorway.

  ‘Kathleen wants me,’ said her husband. ‘She call, I go. I’ll tell her later about Nadine. She’ll be upset. See you later.’

  ‘I see what you mean, about being part of the family,’ Aileen murmured, as he left.

  ‘We’re all like that,’ Bob told her, ‘all the long-term visitors. It’s not just me. La familia La Clota is big, and multi-national. Maybe I should stop sitting with my back to the rest of them, now we’re finished eating. Bunk over and I’ll come round.’

  He was sliding his seat alongside h
ers, when his Spanish mobile sounded. ‘Bugger,’ he murmured, as he picked it up from the table and flipped it open.

  ‘Comisario Skinner?’ a female voice asked.

  ‘Yes, Intendant. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Something has happened that you should know about. I just heard from my colleagues in the Guardia Civil. The young man Colledge bought a ticket on the Transavia flight from Girona to Rotterdam this afternoon.’

  ‘They intercepted him? Excellent.’

  Cortes drew a deep breath. ‘No,’ she said. ‘By the time they got round to alerting the airlines, it had departed. Worse than that, it had landed in Holland. He’s been there for hours.’

  ‘You’ve checked that he actually caught it?’

  ‘Yes. His name was confirmed on the passenger list. I apologise, Comisario, this is not good. I will have someone’s cojones for this.’

  ‘One for yourself and one for me,’ Skinner growled. ‘Thanks for alerting me. I’ll advise my people in Scotland.’

  ‘Balls-up?’ Aileen asked, as he closed the phone.

  ‘Ripped off, if Cortes is as good as her word. Inter-agency co-operation’s been less than perfect. The kid’s been in Spain all right, but now he’s left the country. I’ll have to call Neil.’

  She watched him as he punched in McIlhenney’s home number, then listened as the call was connected, and as he briefed the superintendent on the news from Cortes.

  ‘Where can he go from Rotterdam?’ he said to the phone. ‘Anywhere he bloody likes: Holland’s a major European travel hub. I’m not going to tell you what to do, because you know.’ Pause. ‘No, you advise the father. I’ve had it for now. We’ve got a holiday to finish. I don’t expect to hear from anybody until Sunday, earliest, by which time we’ll be back home. Cheers, Neil; best of luck.’

  ‘Do you think that’ll hold?’ Aileen asked, as he finished. Her smile drove the scowl from his face.