18 - Aftershock

by Quintin Jardine

  Andy nodded and followed his friend’s instructions, returning with an opened bottle and a can of Red Bull. They toasted each other as Bob pressed the barbecue’s ignition button. ‘In case you’re wondering,’ he said, ‘I didn’t plan on Alex being here. She just turned up, and she didn’t know you were coming either.’

  ‘How is she?’ The question sounded casual.

  ‘My kid? She’s fine; loading up on experience in that firm of hers. Associate at twenty-six; that’s pretty good, puts her on the fast track for a partnership.’

  ‘No surprise, but how is she?’

  Bob stopped adjusting the barbecue and frowned. ‘Personally? She’s enjoying life. She had a crisis a few months back, which you know about, but she was over that in a couple of days, although it was a big help to have the boy Montell living next door with his sister. She’s playing the field; no serious attachments, or so I’m told. If you’re asking me whether she still has any regrets about you two breaking up, I’m not going to hazard a guess. You’ll need to ask her yourself. As far as I’m concerned, the most important thing is that you don’t. You’re married with one and a half kids, son. You can’t be thinking like that.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Andy exclaimed quickly. ‘I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted. A wife I love, a daughter I worship and another on the way. No, my life is set in stone. But, if I’m being honest, I’ll admit that I regret the way it ended between Alex and me. When she did what she did, I acted like a total prig. I got on my religious high horse, and yet I’ve never been a model Catholic, Bob. You know that better than anyone. I went to confession afterwards and my parish priest gave me a real tongue-lashing. He told me I should spend a few years in a seminary before rushing to moral judgement. I just didn’t want to face the truth: Alex didn’t want to marry me. I rushed her into an engagement that she wasn’t ready for.’

  ‘I can’t disagree with that,’ Bob said. ‘And now you’re going to ask me why I didn’t say anything at the time.’

  Andy grinned. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘It’s a simple answer. You were both adults with freedom of choice, and I didn’t have the right to interfere with that, or even try. Was I happy when you broke up? Yes, although I didn’t like to see you both getting hurt in the process. I wasn’t especially pleased that my grandchild had been aborted, but that was an emotional reaction. If I’d known she was pregnant, I wouldn’t have tried to talk her out of a termination. Maybe she should have told you about it, probably she should have. And yet I can see why she chose not to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So she couldn’t be pressured into a decision that would have changed her life.’ Bob sighed. ‘But enough of that. Have you finished your report for Jimmy?’

  ‘Yes. And a copy for you in your in-tray stamped “Secret”. There was a leak; its name was Joe Dowley. He talked too much at a Rotary meeting. And that’s all. There were no others.’

  ‘Does it lead anywhere?’

  ‘Right into Davis Colledge’s school.’

  ‘Oh dear. This young man’s turning into a serious possibility.’

  ‘Why would he kill his girlfriend?’

  ‘We’ll need to ask him that when he surfaces.’

  ‘And the other one?’

  ‘That’s a much trickier question. I know that the time-line fits, but there are other considerations. Did he just happen upon Nada Sebastian, or did he know about her and follow her from Bellcaire on her morning journey to the rocks at Empuries? And there’s the big coincidence, the one that would have any objective investigator shouting, “Wait a minute!” The fact that she died within sight of my house.’

  ‘And the fact that you were at Murrayfield Golf Club when Sugar Dean died.’

  ‘At which precise time I was away on the practice ground hitting golf balls, on my own, while all the other guys were laying into the bacon rolls.’

  ‘But it gets worse,’ said Martin. ‘Then there’s the pictures. One of Sugar Dean’s works is hanging at Fettes . . .’

  ‘In the conference room. I know about that.’

  ‘. . . and there’s a seascape hanging in your office, one of your own. An original by Sebastian, signed.’

  Skinner gasped. ‘You’re joking. That surreal thing? It’s one of hers?’

  ‘There’s no forename. I suppose it could be “Sebastian Somebody”, but the way things are going . . .’

  ‘It’s her, all right.’ He sighed. ‘I bought it in the Galeria Mestral in L’Escala three years ago. The lady there told me it was by a local artist who was beginning to do well. I brought it home, but I couldn’t find the right place for it in the house, so I took it into the office. It’s been there ever since. I’d forgotten the artist’s name until you mentioned it. At the time I assumed it was a bloke. Andy, this is getting well beyond a fucking joke.’

  ‘It is. There’s something I’ve got to say, and you probably don’t want to hear it. Maybe I should wait till after lunch.’

  ‘No. I can guess what it is. You’re going to come back to that objective investigator I mentioned a while back, and you’re going to say that the time may have come to bring him in, since officers under my command are engaged in an international investigation in which much of the fucking evidence points at me!’

  Martin nodded. ‘That’s more or less it. It’s a bizarre situation, I know. Why would you suddenly decide to copycat Ballester?’

  ‘Why indeed? But let’s focus on what you’re saying. I got you involved in this situation, Andy, because I knew that your leak investigation would spill over. I’ve been twitchy from the moment I heard about the Dean murder. That’s why I wanted you down here, and that’s why I asked you to think outside the box. Now you’re involved, and you know what you know, you have a duty as a serving officer to bring it to the attention of my chief constable. However, there is a need for discretion. Any public scandal involving me would wash all over Aileen, and I’m not having that. There will be an objective investigator from an outside force, and that will be you. I had this conversation with Jimmy Proud two hours ago, and he agrees. Your secondment from Tayside is extended as of now. Mario, Neil, the whole team, all report to you.’

  ‘Bob, we’ve been friends for ever.’

  ‘Andy, every senior officer in Scotland is either a friend of mine or an enemy. If Jimmy brings in somebody else, it will draw attention, and Aileen gets sucked into the whirlpool. The media would make it bloody near impossible for her to stay in office, at least until I’m exonerated. If it’s not you, then whoever it is will have a choice to make, whether to lock me up, or to have me conduct my own investigation on the outside. I leave you to imagine what sort of mayhem I’ll cause if that happens.’

  ‘Jimmy’s agreed?’

  ‘Yes, and he’s spoken to Graham Morton, told him he’d like you to look at another situation for him. Graham’s released you for another week, initially. Greatorix will stand in for you. You are it. Don’t worry: I won’t be in your hair. Technically, my sabbatical has another week to run.’

  ‘Ah, Jesus. In that case, let’s get something out of the way.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want to do it formally?’

  ‘Yes, we have to, but I’m saying, no, I didn’t do it. I didn’t know Sugar Dean or Nadine Sebastian, I had no reason to harm either of them, and I didn’t, any more than I committed any of the four murders attributed to Daniel Ballester.’

  ‘Thankfully that case is closed.’

  Skinner smiled. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? But let’s go back to thinking outside the box. What if you’re not looking for a copycat at all? What if Ballester was innocent?’

  Martin was staring at his friend, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as Aileen and Alex appeared from the garden room, carrying a tray of steaks and burgers, a salad bowl, and four baked potatoes in foil wrappers.

  ‘But of course,’ said Bob, ‘for the duration of this lunch at least, all that’s between you and me.’

  Sixty-five

 
; ‘Did you have to hit him, Jack?’ Stallings asked.

  ‘Either that or he hit me. Given the choice . . .’

  ‘Fair enough. There was a moment yesterday when I thought he was ready to have a go at me.’

  ‘Where?’ McGurk looked puzzled.

  ‘At his house. There was a disturbance. Sugar’s dad paid him a visit and they wound up having a fight. Two uniforms in a patrol car saw it and broke it up; they called it in and Sauce phoned me at home. Funny place for a traffic car to show up.’

  ‘That’s down to me. When I chased him from Lisanne’s on Friday night I warned him that we’d be keeping a regular eye on him. If young Haddock had given me the word, I’d probably have had him lifted.’

  ‘It wasn’t as easy as that. John Dean threw the first punch. Mind you, after he told me what the charmer said about his daughter, Ray had to stop me going back into the house to beat the crap out of him myself.’

  The sergeant threw her a small smile across his desk in the CID room. Torphichen Place was quiet, in Sunday mode. ‘He is a pig, isn’t he?’ he murmured. ‘Except . . . Lisanne says that his other side does appeal to the ladies. She fell for it for a few years. He has a way of making them believe that what he’s telling them really is what’s best for them.’

  ‘Did he see her with you on Friday?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I made her stay out of sight while I sorted him out.’

  ‘Still, he must have worked out what had brought you there.’

  ‘I doubt it. I reckon that, for all the stalking, his ego’s so big that it just wouldn’t occur to him . . . and Lisanne agrees with me.’

  Stallings chuckled. ‘And you’re so big he wouldn’t do anything about it even if it did. What’s his timetable with the court?’

  ‘There’ll be a Sheriff Court pleading diet . . . hearing, in other words . . . in a few weeks when the indictment will be read out. By that time Frankie will have done a deal with Gregor Broughton to drop the minor charges in exchange for a guilty plea. She might try to talk him into a charge of simply attempting to defeat the ends of justice, and he might go along with it, since we weren’t very far into our investigation.’

  ‘Will it make much difference?’

  ‘I don’t think so: the sheriff’s powers are limited, so he’ll send him to the High Court for sentencing. When the judge hears that the body lay undiscovered for ten days, and adds that Weekes was a cop, he’ll hammer him.’

  ‘That assumes that he hasn’t been charged with murder by then.’

  ‘Come on, Becky. We know there’s no chance of that.’

  ‘Doesn’t it also assume that we haven’t charged anyone else? Wouldn’t the Weekes hearing be delayed in case it was prejudicial?’

  ‘That shouldn’t make any difference. The judge would impose restrictions on what the press could report about the case, but he’d still put the hammer on Theo.’

  The inspector sighed. ‘It’s a bugger, Jack,’ she said. ‘When we got into him on Wednesday, and then when you came in with that necklet the next morning, I thought, “Great, my first big inquiry in Scotland and we’ve wrapped it up in three days.” Now it’s Sunday, we’re sitting having a case conference, the murder’s still unsolved, there are new complications, and we have no positive leads to go on.’

  ‘It’s depressing, I’ll grant you,’ McGurk agreed. ‘But don’t take it personally; nobody’s going to blame you. As for me, I’m not bothered about complications. I look at that image on the wall over there . . .’ He pointed at a large print of Davis Colledge’s defaced picture, which Skinner had emailed from Spain. Stallings had cut a square from an adhesive label and pasted it over the young artist’s erection. ‘. . . and I see an angry young man. Why was he angry? That’s what I want to know. He’s my top priority. I want to speak to him.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. There is that avenue. We won’t be talking to him today, though, so let’s rescue what’s left of our weekend.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. What have you and Ray got planned?’

  ‘We’re going to get our bikes out and cycle to the Northern Bar for a couple. You?’

  ‘Nothing in particular,’ he replied noncommittally.

  They walked through the moribund station and out through the back door. McGurk was lowering himself into his car when he heard the inspector’s mobile sound. He waved to her as he started his engine ... but stopped when he saw the look on her face as she stared at him. He lowered the window. ‘What?’ he called.

  ‘That was Mae Grey,’ she told him. ‘She’s at Weekes’s place, and she sounds in a right two and eight. We need to get there straight away.’

  Sixty-six

  ‘ They’re taking a while,’ said Andy to Alex, as they stood at the foot of the garden looking out across the Firth of Forth. ‘How long does it take to load a dishwasher?’

  ‘They may be doing them by hand,’ she replied. ‘Or Aileen may have opened one of her blue boxes and Dad’s helping her. Or they may be having sex . . . less likely during a lunch party, I’ll grant you, but us youngsters often underestimate the middle-aged libido. If you want my best guess, though, they’ve made themselves scarce so that I can ask you how you’re getting on.’

  He smiled. ‘In that case, I’m fine, thanks. You know Karen’s pregnant again?’

  ‘No, Pops never said. You’re good at that, eh?’

  ‘Nice one, Alex. I fed you that one, didn’t I?’

  She winced. ‘Sorry, that just slipped out. I wasn’t chucking harpoons, honest. I am very happy for you and Karen. Your wee girl’s lovely too. My dad sent me a picture in an email. I’m really pleased it’s all come together for you.’

  ‘So pleased you’ve never spoken to me since the day we split up?’

  ‘What was there to say? Each one of us would have been expecting the word “sorry” to come up, but you wouldn’t have heard it from me.’

  ‘I might have said it, though.’

  ‘But would you have meant it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘for expecting too much of you. I should have seen that we were rushing things.’

  ‘We weren’t rushing things, Andy. You were. I was happy to be just you and me, but you wanted the whole deal right away, wife and two point four kids.’

  ‘But you did get pregnant.’

  ‘Yes, silly me.’

  ‘Don’t be flip about it, Alex.’

  ‘I’m not. Do you know what hurt me the most back then? When I told you about it, that I’d had an abortion . . . a word I couldn’t even say for a while afterwards . . . you went berserk. For a split second I actually thought you were going to kill me. You didn’t say anything rational. You called me a murderer and said you could never forgive me.’

  ‘Yes,’ he began, ‘but . . .’

  ‘But nothing, Andy. That’s what happened. Now ask yourself this. You know how I feel about my kid brother. I love him in a way I’d never imagined I could since the day he was born. How easy do you think it was for me to decide to terminate my pregnancy when all the time I was thinking about him? I hated myself for it. It’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I saw it as essential, not just for me, for us. And the worst of it is that every single day since it happened, I’ve regretted it,’ she prodded herself hard with her index finger, between her breasts, ‘right in here.’

  She turned to face him, and he saw hot tears in her eyes. ‘You couldn’t forgive me?’ she said. ‘Well, fuck you, Andy. I had my own wee Jazz growing in me, and I was wicked enough to have him killed. The forgiveness I need, I’ll never have: and it’s not yours, sunshine, it’s my own, and most of all it’s his.’

  There was a gate in the garden wall, a few feet in front of them. Alex dashed towards it, opened it and ran off down the grassy hill towards the sea.

  Andy stood his ground, wanting to go after her, but fearing the consequences if he did. He watched her as she moved through the busy car park, and as she disappeared down the path that led to the sea.
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  ‘Hi,’ said a heavy voice behind him.

  ‘That, Bob,’ he replied, without turning, ‘was not one of your brightest ideas.’

  Sixty-seven

  Theo Weekes’s car was in the driveway of his house. A second vehicle, an elderly Nissan Micra, was parked behind, its tail imposing on the pavement by a few inches. PC Mae Grey was sitting in the passenger seat, her eyes wide in her pale face, unaware of the two detectives as they approached.

  McGurk crouched beside her open window, his right knee cracking as he did so. ‘Tell me,’ he murmured.

  ‘He’s in there,’ she replied slowly. ‘In the hall.’

  Stallings led the way up the path. The front door was very slightly ajar, but even before she pushed it she could smell what lay behind: a mix of urine and something else, something slightly sweet.

  A stairway ran from the hall to the upper floor of the house. Theo Weekes’s body lay in the space beside it, on its side, right arm extended, fingers pointing towards them in the doorway. The carpet beneath him, a dirty cream when the inspector had seen it twenty-four hours earlier, had turned deep, dark crimson. The walls on either side were streaked with blood. She stepped inside carefully, hearing a soft thump behind her as McGurk forgot to duck beneath the lintel. ‘Jack,’ she said, ‘go and ask her if she rang anybody else. If not, call the cavalry. And stay with her until they arrive.’

  ‘She didn’t do it. If she had she’d be covered in blood and there would be a trail out to her car. Besides, you can tell he’s been dead for a while.’

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, big boy. She could have been here twice.’

  The detective sergeant whistled. ‘With a mind like yours, Wilding’d better behave himself.’

  ‘He knows that.’

  As McGurk ducked back outside, Stallings stepped into the living room, on her left, then went to a second door that led to the rear of the hall and the kitchen area. It was closed. When she opened it, she saw that it, too, was splattered with Weekes’s blood. Not wanting to contaminate the scene any more than she could help, she grasped the door-frame on either side then leaned out as far as she could over the body. The man had died in the clothes he had worn when she had seen him last, but his vest was torn in many places, and his boxer shorts had been pulled down below his buttocks, perhaps, she thought, as he had tried to crawl away from his attacker.