Hour Of Darkness

by Quintin Jardine

‘Fine,’ Alafair snapped. ‘And I was at home when it happened, miles away from Dad’s place. Derek wasn’t that long out of hospital after his hit-and-run, and we had friends for dinner to celebrate, one of Derek’s Scotland teammates and his wife.’

  ‘High-profile witnesses, no doubt about that. So, a machine malfunction was the only feasible solution, since your father was completely paralysed and couldn’t have driven himself into that pool even if he had been suicidal . . . which he wasn’t since on the day of his death he’d called his bookie and put ten grand on the favourite for a big race that was due to be run in three days’ time.’

  Pye paused. ‘I can see why the fiscal went with the possibility of an accident. And I can even see why the investigating officers were happy to accept that conclusion. But there were far more who weren’t, including a not long retired detective, Superintendent Tommy Partridge.

  ‘He spent much of his career trying to put your dad in jail, and he wrote a book about him after he was dead. I’m in the process of reading it. He claimed there was an anomaly. He claimed that your father’s house had security that included cameras all around the place and movement sensors. A month before he died, you reported that it was faulty and that you’d shut it down. The firm that monitored it tried to make an appointment to repair it, but they couldn’t come up with a date that suited you.’

  ‘So?’ she retorted. ‘Derek was in hospital at the time. He was my top priority.’

  ‘Tommy Partridge thought that a man called Tony Manson was your top priority at the time, although he never put that in his book.’

  ‘Then how would you know that?’ she snapped.

  ‘Mr Partridge told me,’ the DI replied. ‘I spoke to him this morning. He has a theory and I’m going to put it to you. He believes that when Hastie, your brother, went to prison, he was afraid that since he wasn’t around to manage the criminal side of your father’s business, and protect him in the way that your Uncle Alasdair had done, he was vulnerable, both to his rivals, and to the police.

  ‘With asset seizure looming on the horizon, he decided that the old man had become a liability, and that he had to go. The swimming pool accident, so the theory goes, was his idea and you set it up, probably through your gangster on the side, Tony Manson. Old Tommy spent years trying to prove that, but the fiscal didn’t want to know.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Alafair sneered.

  ‘Me neither,’ Pye admitted, ‘but if Tommy had discovered what I now know, that you paid your father’s previous carer, Vanburn Gayle, a serious sum of money as a so-called bonus and found him a place on a nursing degree course down in London, then the prosecutor might have taken a very different line.’

  He was staring hard at the woman as he finished. After a while she met his eyes.

  ‘Then,’ she whispered. She continued, more loudly. ‘That was then and this is now. Vanburn was paid a legitimate bonus from a legitimate source. Anyway, why would I pay him off?’

  ‘Because he would never have left your father alone?’ Haddock suggested.

  ‘Supposition,’ she protested. ‘Anyway, the fact is that Derek and I were here, having dinner, when my father died, and you could never come close to proving that I gave my keys to anyone else.’

  ‘Because Manson’s dead?’ the young DS murmured.

  For the merest fraction of a second Alafair might have been about to betray herself with a nod, but if she had she mastered the voluntary reflex, and contented herself with a cool stare back at him. ‘Really, sonny,’ she sighed, ‘you can do better than that.’

  ‘Until very recently we might have,’ Pye said. ‘You weren’t Tony’s only woman. He had another on the go; when your father went into the pool and the bubbles stopped coming up, the pair of them were on a Mediterranean holiday together.

  ‘Her name is Bella Watson, and if you know anything at all about your own family history . . . and I’m sure you know everything . . . you’ll be aware that the Holmeses pretty much wiped hers out, one way or another. You couldn’t get to her, though, not as long as Manson was alive. When he wasn’t she went back to her maiden name and moved into a place that was bought for her.’

  He paused, looking for another reaction, but he saw none. ‘She probably thought she was safe there,’ he went on, ‘but fate can be a real bastard. By a sheer accident, not long before he was released from prison, Hastie was given a clue to her whereabouts, and shortly after he was released, somebody stabbed her to death and put her body in the Firth of Forth.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Hastie,’ she exclaimed. ‘I can tell you that.’

  ‘We know that. Physically he couldn’t have inflicted the injuries that killed the woman; he doesn’t have the strength in his hands.’

  ‘He doesn’t have the strength anywhere,’ she retorted. ‘He’s in a nursing home. He went into our limo hire business a couple of weeks after he got out. He has to show the probation people that he’s working, and he decided to get involved with that as a starter. He’d only been there a few months when he had a funny turn; he was taken to hospital from there and he’s been diagnosed with a brain tumour. Go on; go and check if you doubt me.’ Her face twisted into something very unattractive. ‘And they said the Watson family was hard done by,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, they did,’ Pye agreed, ignoring the irony, ‘and they still do. Your brother might be out of commission, and your husband too, but you’re a big strong woman, and I’m sure Hastie could have found you a helper from his hospital bed. I’m going to require a DNA swab from you, Mrs Drysalter, and your fingerprints . . . for elimination of course,’ he added. ‘DS Haddock has all the kit. We can do them here, and if we hurry, we’ll be done before your daughter gets home. If not, and you have to explain, I’m sure the story will give her bragging rights at Mary Erskine for a long time. You know what kids are like. You used to be one, after all.’

  Forty-Seven

  Friday was the day I’d meant to do something about the decision I’d reached while Sarah and I were in Spain. I had faced a straight choice: embrace the future and shape it to my will, or look to maintain as much of the status quo as I could. Either way would have to be best for my family, among whom I included Sarah, for me, and for the police service, in that order.

  I knew how I’d jumped and I was sure it would please at least two of those, and maybe all three.

  It was the day I was going to tackle it, but it was sidetracked, because I found myself up to my oxters . . . that is, my armpits, to those who don’t speak Scottish . . . in events that ran pretty quickly beyond my control.

  I’d been at my desk for just over an hour when Sandra knocked on my door and stepped into my room without waiting for an answer. I was with my deputy, Bridie Gorman, at the time, talking about the practicalities of the handover to the new unified Police Scotland, or rather its impracticalities, as far as Bridie was concerned, so neither of us minded the interruption.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, ma’am,’ Bulloch said, ‘but you did say that when this came back you wanted to see it right away.’ She handed me a package, about the same size and shape as the one Maggie Steele had sent through from Edinburgh.

  I thanked her and told Bridie that it concerned a sensitive matter that I had to deal with on my own. I could tell that she was miffed that I didn’t trust her enough to share, but I decided to apologise later.

  I tore the package open and found the Mackenzie HR file, and an added bonus, a second envelope containing a handwritten note from Arthur Dorward . . . it couldn’t have been from anyone else; his style is unique.

  You asked me to dust the first entry document in this extensive file for fingerprints, and to run comparisons of all the results through the national fingerprint library. You did so, in your usual cryptic and enigmatic ******* [his asterisks, not mine] way without giving me any clue about who I was ******* looking for. As usual, you assume that I can work blindfolded at one hundred per cent efficiency. As usual I have proved you right.

  Fro
m seventy-three fingerprint traces in total, I’ve managed to find three matches in the library. All three relate to individuals whose prints are held for purposes of elimination, and not as convicted persons.

  Not unnaturally, one of those sets is your own. Jesus Christ, Chief Constable, will you ever learn to wear disposable gloves? Another belongs to one David Mackenzie, currently, as I am advised, a detective superintendent in Edinburgh. Since the document is his employment application, that’s hardly a surprise. The third and final set, left thumb, partial left palm print, right thumb and right index finger, belong to the recently retired Assistant Chief Constable Max Allan.

  I have no idea what any of this means. Maybe one day you’ll tell me, maybe you won’t, but whatever, you can go to court on it.

  Arthur D

  Was I surprised? Was I hell. Max had professed little knowledge of Mackenzie’s background to Dan Provan, and yet he had told Tom Donnelly that he was the investigating officer when the boy had chucked the chips at his uncle.

  I thought about sending the file back to Arthur and telling him to dust every entry looking for Max’s prints, but that really would have been pushing my luck. I reckoned that I had enough to go on, so I left it at that. Instead I called the head of Human Resources, direct.

  ‘Chief Constable here,’ I said; I was thinking too hard to exchange pleasantries. ‘I want to see the HR folder on ACC Max Allan. I know he’s retired, but if you tell me that you’ve destroyed it I won’t be happy.’

  ‘Then you can relax, Chief,’ she said. ‘We’ve just finished processing his pension, and because of his rank, it came to me to be signed off. His file’s still in my office, awaiting return to storage. You’ll have it in five minutes.’

  Forty-Eight

  ‘Boss, I’ve been thinking,’ Haddock said.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Sammy Pye retorted. ‘Sometimes I wonder. Did it produce a pearl of wisdom?’

  ‘Up yours . . . with respect, of course. I’d love us to be able to put Alafair Drysalter in Bella Watson’s kitchen and find a strand of her hair stuck in the blood, but I don’t believe it’s going to happen. She’s a spoiled selfish woman, and she has that dim sod of a husband on a string, but I don’t see her with a knife in her hand.’

  ‘Me neither,’ the DI admitted. ‘I only did the test out of thoroughness, not expectation . . . and to rile her a wee bit as well. I’m quite convinced we hit the nail on the head over her father’s death, and it’s possible she could have paid people to do the job on Bella Watson, but the timing’s wrong for me.

  ‘We know from the feedback from the ACC that Hastie McGrew picked up a clue to where she was living while he was still in prison. If they were that desperate to get rid of her, would they have waited until Hastie was released? I don’t see that.

  ‘To be honest, I got the impression that if Alafair ever knew of Bella’s existence, she’d forgotten about her, and the same may well have been true of Hastie. Which reminds me, did the hospital confirm his condition?’

  ‘I spoke to his probation officer,’ Sauce replied, ‘and she was able to fill me in. She’s entitled to know, since he’s a lifer on parole. She’s been advised by the hospital that he has not one, but two brain tumours, and that surgery isn’t an option. Nothing’s an option really; they could try radiation but he’d almost certainly wind up like his father, and even then not for long. As it is, the probation officer says he has motor difficulties and his speech is starting to go. They’re about to move him into a specialist nursing home.’

  ‘Poor bastard.’

  ‘Huh!’ Haddock snorted. ‘That poor bastard murdered two men in Edinburgh, and there were three more in Tyneside that the CPS knew he did but never charged him with because there was a one in four chance of an acquittal. If ever there’s a case of poetic justice, it’s him.’

  ‘Would you feel that way if it was Cheeky’s grandpa with the tumour?’ Pye asked, quietly.

  ‘Probably, but I’d keep it to myself.’ Sauce paused. ‘In a roundabout way that leads me back to Perry Holmes. What are we going to do about his death and Gayle’s evidence, that Alafair paid him to go away?’

  ‘Us? We’re going to report it to the fiscal’s office and that’s all. I spoke to the DCS and that’s what she says.’

  ‘What if they kick it back to us?’

  ‘She won’t let them. She’ll send it to the cold case unit. But it won’t come to that, Sauce; we’re pretty sure what happened, but pretty soon, when Hastie goes, Alafair will be the only one of them left alive. There’s nobody to incriminate her; even the fiscal will work that one out.’ He frowned. ‘Let’s not get sidetracked on that any longer. Mary Chambers is keen to know how we’re getting on with her bright idea, looking for Spanish plated vans near Caledonian Crescent around the time of the murder.’

  ‘I was afraid she would be,’ Haddock said. ‘I’ve got the City Council’s monitoring department on to it. You can guess how pleased they were when I asked them. So far, nothing; I’ll stir them if you like, but they know already that it comes from the boss.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll tell her. It was a shot in the dark and Mary knows it.’ He was in the act of reaching for his phone when it rang.

  ‘DI Pye,’ a bright female voice sang on the other end of the line, ‘this is Anna Jacobowski from the Forensic Service. I’ve got something rather intriguing for you on your murder inquiry.’

  ‘Just intriguing? Not case-breaking?’

  ‘That’s down to you guys, isn’t it?’ she chuckled. ‘We’ve just analysed one of the dozens of DNA samples from Caledonian Crescent. It’s different from all the rest; it demonstrates a second generation familial relationship with the dead woman.’

  ‘What does that mean, in plain Scottish?’

  ‘It means it’s her grandson.’

  ‘Her grandson?’ Pye repeated, switching the phone to speaker mode. ‘You’re on broadcast, Anna. DS Haddock is with me.’

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ Sauce remarked. ‘Jack McGurk and Karen Neville interviewed Marlon Junior yesterday and he denied even knowing that he had a Granny Watson. I think you and I need to talk to this lad ourselves, boss.’

  ‘Maybe you do,’ the scientist intervened, ‘but I haven’t got to the really interesting part yet. I’ve tested the Marlon Hicks swab that I received from your two colleagues, and from the very first analysis I can tell you that the other one isn’t his. Bella Watson had two grandsons, gentlemen . . . at least two.’

  ‘How?’ Pye gasped.

  ‘How many ways are there, Inspector?’ Jacobowski laughed. ‘I’ll send you a written report by email.’

  ‘There’s IVF,’ Haddock observed, as she hung up, ‘but somehow I can’t see Marlon Senior leaving any frozen sperm behind him.’

  Pye frowned, looking up from his chair at the ceiling. ‘Could Lulu and Marlon have had another son, one we never knew about?’

  ‘No. If they were brothers, Anna would have said.’

  ‘Of course, but Bella had another son, remember. He died when he was fifteen, but I suppose, in theory . . .’

  ‘I’ll get on to the General Registers Office; see if Ryan is named on any birth record . . . other than his own. Any son of his would be pushing thirty by now, so I’ll know where to look.’

  ‘Get Jackie to do that, Sauce, I’ve got another task for us. We know from Marlon Hicks that Lulu’s mother’s still around. Let’s find her, and ask her how much she knows about the Watson family.’

  Forty-Nine

  The HR person was as good as her word; Max Allan’s file made it from her office to mine within five minutes. It extended to three folders, Max having enjoyed a long career that had ended in the carnage of the assassination of my predecessor in the Strathclyde chief’s chair a few weeks earlier.

  ‘Why the hell couldn’t all this have been computerised?’ I grumbled as I contemplated forty years’ worth of documents. ‘Then I could have entered “David Mackenzie” in the search window and pushed
a button.’

  But it hadn’t so there was nothing for it but to start the process. I decided to discard some of the material, since Mackenzie hadn’t been born when Max had joined the force, and so I skimmed through his career until I found his posting to Uddingston, in Lanarkshire, as a detective sergeant. The name rang a bell with me, and not only because Myra and her family had lived close by. Tom Donnelly had told me that was where the chip-pan incident had happened.

  I went through the documents one by one, from that point on, and pretty soon I had a result. I hadn’t expected to find a report of the affair on Max’s file, as that would have been in CID records rather than personnel, but I did find a summary. It was attached to a note of an official commendation by the chief constable of the day, acknowledging Max’s exceptional performance in uncovering the abuse of the child and framing charges leading to a successful prosecution. The boy had been identified in the commendation document, but his name had been redacted.

  I wondered about that; indeed I was curious enough to pick up the phone and ask the head of HR about it. ‘Would your department have done that automatically, thirty-odd years ago?’

  ‘No,’ she replied at once, ‘not then. Nowadays yes, but back then, in a confidential file, no. The published notice of commendation wouldn’t have included the attachment, you see.’

  ‘Was there ever a time when you’d have gone back and done it retrospectively?’

  ‘If we had the manpower to do that . . .’ she began, leaving the rest unsaid.

  ‘Could ACC Allan have had access to his own file?’

  ‘In theory everyone has a right to see all information held about them but, Chief, when you’re an ACC, there isn’t a door in the building that’s closed to you . . . apart from your office, perhaps.’

  ‘Mine? No, it isn’t, in fact.’

  ‘It hasn’t always been that way, I assure you.’

  I laughed. ‘I’m sure. And who knows what the future will hold?’