‘So you found out that Weekes had caught a disease from your wife? But I suppose you assumed it was the other way round, that he’d given it to her.’
Varley gazed at a point in the corner of the room. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not how it was. It started with me. I had a . . . a . . . I don’t know what to call it, not a relationship or anything.’
‘Try sex,’ McIlhenney murmured. ‘You had sex with somebody, casual sex.’
‘That’ll do. I drink in a hotel, not far from the house. There was a woman there one night, a resident; she chatted me up in the bar and made me an offer. I took her up on it. Unfortunately, one of Ella’s pals was there, at the back of the bar. She saw me, I never saw her. About a week later, the bitch shopped me. Ella did a ballistic act, threatened to leave me. I got down on my knees, almost literally, and said I was sorry. It was just afterwards Weekes saw her in the Almondale Centre, laden down with bags, and offered her a lift home. He came on to her in the kitchen, after he’d carried the bags in, and, well, recent history and all, she took him on. At that point, we didn’t know about the disease. It can take a while for the symptoms to show.’
‘Ella didn’t tell you about Weekes at that time?’
‘No. I’d never have found out if the shite hadn’t mentioned her by name when you two interviewed him. That’s what made me angry, that he named her. God, I’m not mad with Ella. I’ve no right.’
‘He was being questioned in a murder inquiry, Jock,’ McGuire pointed out.
‘He didn’t have to name her. His medical record was there: it wouldn’t have hindered the investigation if he’d kept her out of it.’
‘True, but he volunteered her identity, under very little pressure.’
‘Who’s your contact in the force, Inspector?’ asked McIlhenney.
‘I’m not telling you. I’m not Theo Weekes. That can stay confidential.’
‘Unfortunately, Jock,’ said the head of CID, ‘it’s not that simple. Weekes’s allegations about your wife were checked out by Special Branch, under cover of a vetting operation. Your wife’s name doesn’t appear anywhere in the murder book; the investigating officers used discretion. So your contact has to be in SB, and I can’t allow that. I will find out; so save a lot of grief and tell us.’ He reached across and switched off the tape. ‘Just us, for now.’
Varley sighed. ‘Oh, bugger. It’s Alice Cowan, DI Shannon’s assistant. She’s my niece; she wanted to warn me that it might all come out in court.’
‘Damn it,’ McIlhenney growled. ‘Alice is a bloody good officer, but she can’t stay in SB now.’
‘No,’ said McGuire, ‘but after she’s had her arse kicked she’ll be an asset somewhere else. We’ll deal with it quietly.’ He switched the recorder on. ‘Back to business, Jock. So yesterday evening, blazing mad, you went to see Weekes. Tell us about it.’
‘What’s to tell? I rang his doorbell, and I got no answer. So I thumped the door, just about hard enough to knock it down, and eventually he opened it. He must have looked through the spyglass, for he knew who it was straight away.’
‘What happened next? Describe it in detail.’
‘I shoved him back into the hall. He knew what I was there for. He held up his hands and asked me, begged me almost, to hold on.’
‘But you didn’t.’
‘Like fuck I did. I ripped right into him and I didn’t stop until I’d got my message across. Then I just turned around and left him there. I know, I shouldn’t have, but you must know what it’s like when the red mist comes down.’
McGuire leaned back in his seat. ‘There’s red mist, Jock . . . and then there’s total complete loss of control. What did you do with the knife?’
Varley stared back at him. His mouth fell open as if a string had been cut. ‘Knife? What fucking knife?’
‘The knife you ripped him with.’
‘What? What the fuck is this?’
‘Jock, as soon as this interview is over, Neil’s going to front a press conference at which we’re going to confirm to the press that Theo Weekes was found dead in his home this afternoon, and that we’re treating his death as murder. He’s also going to say that a man is helping with our enquiries, that man being you.’
‘Sir,’ the inspector said earnestly, ‘I never touched him. When I said that I ripped into him, I meant verbally. I told him that I knew about him and Ella, and that the jail was the best place for him. But apart from shoving him back into the hall, I never laid a finger on him.’
‘Jock, you were there at the time Weekes was murdered. And by your own admission you were angry with him.’
‘I’m a serving police officer, man!’
‘So you will co-operate with our investigation. Yes?’
Varley nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘At any time yesterday did you go into Weekes’s kitchen?’
‘No, only the hall.’
‘Could you see into the kitchen?’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t looking there.’
‘How did you leave?’
‘The same way I went in. And I closed the door behind me.’
‘Could the back door have been open?’
‘It could, but I can’t say that it was.’
‘Okay. Jock, you’ll be held here while a search of your home is carried out, under warrant. We’re also taking your car for forensic examination. Once that’s complete, we’ll talk again. I hope to God that we don’t find any corroborating evidence, but if we turn up that knife, or bloodstains on your clothing and in your car, you know what we’ll have to do.’
The man sat there, stunned. ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I know. But I promise, you won’t have to.’
Seventy-two
Karen Martin looked at her husband, sitting in his armchair with his lap-top computer open on a low table in front of him. ‘Andy,’ she said, ‘your eyes aren’t getting any younger. Give those contact lenses a break, will you?’
‘I’m sorry, love,’ he replied, folding the monitor down. ‘You’ve been putting up with a lot from me these past few days. I know I’m pushing my luck.’
‘It’s not that. I’m one hundred per cent behind you on this thing that Bob’s asked you to undertake. But you’re beginning to show signs of DUOA syndrome. You’ve been home for two hours and, apart from saying goodnight to Danielle, you’ve been on that thing all that time. For the last half-hour all I’ve been hearing are tuts and sighs. You’re beat, man.’
‘I’m beginning to get cross-eyed,’ Andy admitted. ‘And, by the way, what’s DUOA syndrome?’
‘Disappearing Up Own Arse. You’re going round in ever-decreasing circles.’
‘That’s what happens when you try to find something that’s probably not there, but you want it to be.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Daniel Ballester, the man who’s been credited officially with the murders earlier this year of the artists Stacey Gavin and Zrinka Boras, and of two potential witnesses.’
‘The man who owned the house where Stevie Steele died?’
’Yes. He was murdered there himself by Dražen Boras, Zrinka’s brother, in revenge. Stevie was killed by a booby-trap meant to take out the only two guys who could link Boras and his father with the location.’
‘So what are you after?’
‘Anything that undermines the case against Ballester. I’m damned if I can see it, though.’
‘Maybe you’re losing your touch.’ She held out a hand. ‘Let me see it. I used to be a cop once upon a time, remember? Put your headphones on, listen to some music, and let me see if I can crack it.’
He reached out and gave her the computer. ‘Go on, then. If you get a result I might even let you rejoin the force.’
‘Not in my darkest moment would I do that,’ said Karen, sincerely.
Andy did as he was told. He selected a John Coltrane CD from his collection, fed it into the deck and slipped on his headphones. He leaned back in his chair, and allowed the music to envelop hi
m, watching Karen as she worked, letting his mind drift . . .
His eyes glazed as he drifted towards sleep: the figure at the dining-table became blurred, and seemed to take on a different form, taller, slimmer, darker, full-breasted rather than massive, a body he knew as well as his own, someone for whom he had once burned, someone he used to call ‘Lexy’, but only, as his mind heard her say, in her laughing voice, when they were naked.
‘Hey,’ Karen called, attracting his attention through the sound of Coltrane’s mellow sax, jerking him out of slumber. ‘Is it that good?’
‘Sorry?’
‘The music. You were grinning there as if it’s really hitting the spot.’
‘ “Central Park West”,’ he replied, the headphones making him unaware that he was shouting. ‘One of his finest.’
‘You bugger.’ She laughed. ‘I was expecting you to say you were thinking about me.’
She turned back to the lap-top and focused on it once more, with Andy watching her more closely, until gradually the pace of the day began to catch up with him again.
He had no idea how long he had been asleep when she called to him again, but the CD had played itself out, and his ears were clammy from the pressure of the headphones. ‘Andy, wake up,’ she said, as she took them from his head, leaning forward, her formidable bosom close to his face.
He blinked and straightened himself in the chair. ‘Sorry, love,’ he said. ‘You done? I reckon I might as well go to bed. Are you coming?’
‘Eventually, but I want you to look at this first.’ The lap-top was still open on the table.
‘You’ll need to read it to me,’ he told her. ‘I don’t think my eyes can focus on that screen any more.’
‘They will when you see this.’
Instantly, she had his attention. ‘What are you looking at?’ he asked.
‘The post-mortem report on Daniel Ballester.’
‘I’ve looked at it. Death by strangulation, due to hanging with a ligature: no sign of a struggle, but two small marks on the body are consistent with his being subdued by a powerful stun gun.’
‘That’s right, but remember this. The autopsy was performed in Northumbria, where he died. They were looking at him then as a suicide victim, not as a perpetrator.’
‘True.’
‘So they didn’t attach any significance to this, and because there was so much evidence found at the site to confirm Ballester’s guilt, the investigating officers overlooked it too. There’s a sub-section of the report that contains general information on the man’s medical condition. He was a big strong guy, with excellent cardio-vascular fitness, but . . . it says that tissue testing, backed up by an indicator in his cornea, showed that he was suffering from Wilson’s disease, and that it was almost certainly undetected.’
‘What the hell is Wilson’s disease?’
‘It’s an inherited disorder, in which the copper levels in the body get out of control. When I was in my teens, one of my neighbours developed it; they caught it in time, and she was okay, but it can be fatal. I remember it because my dad made a bad-taste joke about it. He said that back in the sixties and seventies the whole bloody country had Wilson’s disease. The thing is, I remember the poor woman’s symptoms, and I’ve just done some research on the Internet to confirm them. They included very shaky hands, really strong tremors; that was how they got on to it in the first place.’
‘Go on,’ said Andy, his green eyes shining.
‘You can see what I’m leading up to. Ballester’s supposed to have shot four people. Up close, maybe he could have done that. But there was a fifth victim: Stacey Gavin’s dog, Rusty. That was shot at a distance, while it was running away from the killer. By a man who’d have been struggling to hold the gun steady? I don’t see that. Bottom line, I think you should get somebody else to look at that PM report, but if I’m right, Ballester’s not your man.’
Seventy-three
Bob Skinner was up and running, in the truest sense. The day on which he had planned to be back at work had dawned, but he found himself still in exile, banished by a set of circumstances stranger than any he had ever experienced. He had never been one to lie and brood, and so, when Aileen’s alarm had sounded at seven fifteen, he had risen with her, donned shorts, a sweatshirt and trainers and had set out to work off his frustrations, as far as he could.
His route took him down the hill into Gullane, then westward out of the village, following the Edinburgh road for the best part of two miles until he reached the solid pedestrian bridge that led across the Peffer Burn into the nature reserve. Tranter’s Bridge, the locals called it, after the beloved author and historian who had crossed it every day until the end of his long life, plotting his latest work as he walked, and making notes that would be turned in time into chapters.
As he ran across the wooden structure it occurred to Skinner that in a way he was following in Tranter’s footsteps, literally and metaphorically, picking his way through a story as strange and even as fascinating as his had been, if more brutal than most of them. But that was where the similarity ended, for this was a mystery in which he was entangled, right at its very heart, and for the author it was no fantasy, but a deadly reality. Not far from the path that he trod, a woman had died, killed in a way that was almost ritualistic, as if she had been offered up as a sacrifice. There had been two others, and they had all been photographed in death, their images found on Daniel Ballester’s computer.
Had Ballester killed them, as he had believed, with all of his colleagues? If that was the case, had someone else out there happened upon the pattern and decided to carry it on, putting him in the frame in the process? Or was it all mere circumstance? Had Nada Sebastian been the victim of a particularly ruthless mugger, after all? There were enough of them around: the opening of eastern Europe’s borders had been marked in Spain by an increase in petty crime and roadside prostitution. Had Theo Weekes, obsessively possessive with his women, killed Sugar Dean after all, in his acknowledged rage over her relationship with Davis Colledge? The only certainty in all of that was that Theo Weekes would be admitting nothing more.
On the other hand, he reasoned, as he ran round the outer reaches of Gullane Golf Club’s three courses, if he, McGuire, McIlhenney, Stevie Steele and everyone else involved in the investigation had been wrong about Ballester, if he was not the murderer of Stacey, Zrinka and the others, then they had been cleverly deceived. The evidence against him, the murder weapon, pictures and other trophies taken from the victims, had been found at his cottage. The photographs of the victims had been found in files on his computer. If he had not been guilty, he had been not only murdered but framed as a murderer. And who could have done that? Who had known of Ballester’s hideaway?
Only one man: the man who, they knew beyond doubt, had killed Ballester in a fake suicide and had set the trap that had caught Steele. ’Dražen,’ Skinner said. ‘Dražen fucking Boras,’ he shouted, as he pounded towards the high sand dunes that guarded the beach beyond.
Ballester had been a campaigning journalist, out to make a name for himself. He had been digging ruthlessly into the Boras empire, even cultivating Zrinka as a route to its secrets. Dražen and his father, Davor, had every reason to eliminate him. But that would mean, kinner reasoned as he ran ... that Dražen had killed his own sister. ‘In that family,’ he said aloud, to the morning breeze, ‘who knows?’
He sprinted on, legs pumping hard as he climbed a grass-topped sand-hill, his stride lengthening as he plunged down the other side on to the curving beach, which stretched eastward for more than half a mile. It was isolated and deserted, as he had expected: the tide was less than full, and so he ran below the high-water mark for a better footing.
He was half-way along when his mobile rang in the pocket of his shorts and his hands-free headset buzzed in his ear. He reached up and pressed the receive button, slowing as he did so. ‘Yes,’ he said, breathing heavily.
‘Jesus, Bob, have I interrupted something?’ Amanda De
nnis exclaimed.
‘Nothing involving anyone else,’ he replied, ‘or otherwise embarrassing. I’m on the beach, trying to put myself in a decent mood for the rest of the day. Are you in Thames House already?’
‘The state never sleeps, my boy. But the truth is, I don’t like the London rush-hour. There’s been a development; one of Adrian’s feelers has had a response. Continental IT, Davor Boras’s company, has made a booking for two nights, Tuesday and Wednesday, in the Hôtel de Paris, Monaco.’
‘Very interesting.’
‘There’s an “and” that will make it even more so. They’ve booked not just one suite, but two, one of them with two bedrooms. No names provided, but you might surmise from it that Davor and his wife no longer sleep together and will be using the larger, and I’m sure you being you will make a wildly optimistic guess about the occupancy of the other.’
‘Amanda,’ said Skinner, ‘you’re a treasure beyond price.’
‘You’d better believe it.’
‘You know what? I’ve got some time on my hands this week, and my partner’s gone back to running the nation. I think I might just fly south for a couple of days.’
Seventy-four
Lisanne was ready for work, ready to face the day, and whatever it held, and so was Jack McGurk. She took hold of his lapels, pulled him downwards to her and kissed him. ‘Thanks,’ she whispered.
‘What for?’
‘For being there for me when my life got turned on its head,’ she replied. ‘And especially for letting me stay here last night. I know he turned out to be a scumbag, but I was married to him, and I cared for him. He didn’t deserve to die, and certainly not like that.’
‘Nobody does, love.’
‘Whoever killed him does,’ she said bitterly. ‘Well, thanks anyway.’
‘Don’t be daft. It’s a funny thing . . . ill wind, I suppose . . . but a part of me will always be grateful to Theo. If it wasn’t for him, I’d never have met you.’
Lisanne smiled. ‘It’s not such a big city, and you are a very large and visible guy. Maybe we’d have met anyway.’
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