Hour Of Darkness

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘I’ve never known that, I promise you. Mrs Allan was godmother to their older child, but at no point was I told that she was family.’

  ‘What about their wedding? Weren’t the Allans there?’

  ‘No one was there, other than Mr and Mrs Austin and myself. They wanted it private because David didn’t have any family, none that he’d acknowledge anyway.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Bob, what’s this about?’ the priest asked.

  ‘This is one where I really can’t tell you,’ I assured him. ‘We all have our ethics and our duty.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘I need to ask you about the application form, Father,’ I continued. ‘You told me that you helped David compile it. I’d like you to think back, and tell me if you can recall whether the box relating to declaration of court appearances and police involvement was left blank.’

  ‘No it wasn’t,’ he declared. ‘I do recall that very well. I insisted that he put “See separate document” in there, because I didn’t want it rejected on a technicality.’

  ‘Right, now finally, I ask again: Max Allan was not involved in its completion and there was no way he could have seen or handled the form before you posted it. Can you confirm that?’

  Part of me was hoping that he’d say ‘No’, so that the old guy would at least have some wiggle room, but he didn’t.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he replied.

  ‘Okay, Father,’ I sighed. ‘Thanks. Go back in there and have one on me.’

  ‘But don’t call Max, that’s what you’re saying, Bob, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  I let the priest return to his Friday pals, and then made the call I’d postponed earlier. Maggie Steele listened to what I had to tell her without interrupting. But got to the point as soon as I’d finished.

  ‘What you’re telling me,’ she said, ‘is that I’ve got a detective superintendent who’s a police officer because of a dishonest application.’

  ‘Exactly. And I have evidence that a recently retired ACC played an active part in that fraud.’

  ‘Nightmare,’ she sighed. ‘What are we going to do about it?’

  ‘Not we, Maggie, me. A criminal act was committed in Strathclyde. It’s my jurisdiction and it’s for me to pursue it.’

  ‘Not personally, surely.’

  ‘Absolutely. I kicked this game off, so I’ll play it to the whistle. Who knows? I might even find Mackenzie in the process.’

  Fifty-Five

  Karen Neville had only just begun to ponder the anomaly of Bella Watson’s daughter as she walked into the Leith police office. She had set that consideration aside not long after Andy had left, to concentrate on her first serious date since their divorce.

  She had met a widowed single father, a self-employed architect, a few weeks before, on the nursery school run. They had started to talk while waiting for their children, and had met for coffee the next day, then lunch the following week, and the week after that, and . . .

  When Nigel had invited her to dinner at his house, at first she had been a little uncertain, but he seemed like a nice guy, so she had accepted. She had even put an overnight bag in her car, just in case.

  The evening had been a disaster.

  He’d turned out to be a lousy cook, but she had made allowances for that, since he had over-reached himself, clearly, with the menu. It was Karen’s firm opinion that no man, other than possibly Albert Roux, could make a proper soufflé, but she gave Nigel credit for trying.

  The small talk that had come easily in public places had been stilted over his dinner table, but she had made allowances for that, given their unspoken agenda. There had been some kissing, and brief, schoolboyish fumbling on the sofa afterwards, until she had taken him gently by the hand and said, ‘Nigel, show me where your bedroom is.’

  The only saving grace, she told herself later, was that she had not been completely naked when he had started to cry.

  He had, though. When she had stepped out of his en-suite shower room, in the Anne Summers bra and thong she had chosen for the evening, he had been sitting on the edge of his bed, his clothes neatly folded and laid on a chair. He had been gazing up at her, and it had occurred to her that the last person who had looked at her in such a desolate way had been Danielle, when her kitten had been run over in Perth.

  ‘Karen, I can’t do this,’ he had moaned. ‘It still hurts too much.’

  And then the tears had come, a few at first and then the flood. The sobs had followed, not quiet, full-blown, heart-rending.

  She might still have made it through, and helped the poor guy through his crisis, and then recover his sexual confidence, if the bedroom door had not opened, and his three-year-old daughter had not come stumbling in, awake enough to stare at her in fright and shout, ‘What are you doing to my daddy?’ before starting to scream, loudly enough to trigger a fresh paroxysm from the hapless, no, make that hopeless, she decided, Nigel.

  She had grabbed her discarded clothes, dressed in the hall downstairs, then vacated the premises before the damn kid’s yelling woke the neighbourhood.

  She had been half expecting a call in the morning but none had come, and so Nigel had been written off to experience. There might be an awkward encounter on the next school run but she could live with that.

  The business of the weekend was finally back on her mind as she stepped into the unfamiliar CID office. There was one other person in the room, female, mid-twenties, dark hair, plain clothes.

  ‘Good morning, DC Wright,’ Karen said. ‘DI Pye told me you’d pulled the overtime this weekend.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, so bright-eyed and brisk that the DS almost winced. ‘He said our priority is that number plate the monitoring people found for us. I’ve been looking at how we go about tracking down the registered owner of a Spanish vehicle. It’s not going to be easy.’

  ‘The older I get,’ the DS murmured, ‘the more I realise that nothing in life is as easy as you think it’s going to be.’

  Her colleague grinned. ‘Ouch! That’s pretty cynical for a Saturday morning. Man trouble?’

  ‘You would not believe it, so let’s not go there. What’s the problem?’

  ‘It’s that Spanish numbers don’t work the way ours do,’ Wright told her. ‘You’d think that in this day and age there would be a standardised European system, but there isn’t. They tell us in Brussels we can’t buy food in pounds and ounces, but they let us do our own thing in areas that really need centralising. You know how with our number plates the first two letters tell you the area where a car or a van was registered?’

  Neville nodded.

  ‘Well, it’s not like that in Spain.’ She pushed an image across her desk for the sergeant to inspect. ‘That’s the van,’ she said. ‘Look, you’ve got four numbers, and then you’ve got these three control letters, H, N and J. In the real world, that would tell us roughly where this van was bought and first registered, but not in Spain, it doesn’t.

  ‘Their system is national. The initial control letter, H in this case, is used until all the possible letter and number combinations are exhausted, then they move on to the next. But when it comes to registration, that’s done with the local authority and you pay your vehicle tax to them.’

  ‘Where did you find all this out?’

  ‘From the consular section of the Spanish Embassy. They say that the number can be traced, but it’ll take a while. And they won’t be able even to begin before Monday.’

  ‘Bloody hell! Is there no way we can short-circuit it?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Wright sighed.

  Neville swore softly, in frustration, picking up the image from the DC’s desk. As she did so, her mobile vibrated in her pocket. She took it out, and checked the caller’s name on screen. ‘Nigel’.

  ‘I think not,’ she murmured, and rejected the call. As she did so, her eye was caught by something in the picture. ‘Jackie,’ she said, ‘do you only have a hard copy of t
his?’

  ‘No. It came as an email attachment.’

  ‘Can you blow it up?’

  ‘I should be able to.’

  ‘Then do it, as big as you can. There’s a sticker on the back of the van, on the lower right quarter, and I’d like to be able to read it.’

  ‘Give me a minute.’ The young DC pulled her computer screen closer to her and reached for her mouse. She called up the image and opened an edit programme, frowning with concentration as she went though a series of on-screen adjustments.

  When she was ready she nodded . . . and then laughed out loud. ‘I don’t know if this will do us much good. It has to be a joke: look.’

  Neville leaned forward, over her shoulder, and read, ‘www.moronrenault.es. What the hell is that?’ she wondered. ‘I think you’re right,’ she decided, ‘it’s a Spanish boy joke, but let’s make sure. Google it.’

  She straightened up as Wright went to work, and returned to her phone, finding ‘Nigel’ in her contact list and deleting the entry. As she finished, she felt the young DC tugging at her sleeve.

  ‘Look at this, Sarge,’ she urged. ‘It isn’t a joke after all. There is actually a place called Moron de la Frontera; it’s in Andalusia, between Seville and Marbella, and it has a Renault dealer. It’s all there on its website, along with a phone number. If they supplied that van, they can tell us who bought it.’

  ‘Well done, Jackie, well done us. There’s only one small problem: language. Where are we going to find a Spanish speaker on a Saturday morning?’

  Her younger colleague smiled, diffidently. ‘You’re looking at one. I did Spanish in my degree. I was hoping it would help me in my police career . . . I’d like to join Interpol eventually.’

  ‘Then put it to work,’ Karen told her. ‘Give them a call.’

  She left her to her task and installed herself behind Sauce Haddock’s desk, where the Bella Watson murder book was waiting for her. She opened it and started to speed-read through entries that she thought might be relevant, focused on the word ‘Daughter’, doing her best to ignore the flow of Spanish from a few yards away.

  Fifteen minutes went by, and yet she was no more than a third of the way through when Jackie Wright hung up her phone and turned to her with a look of triumph on her face.

  ‘Gotcha!’ she exclaimed, giving a small fist-pump. ‘The dealer came up trumps. The van was bought two years ago, by a woman called Maria Centelleos. She lives in a town called Utrera, closer to Seville, in a street called Calle Mar del Coral, number one hundred and seventeen.

  ‘Hey,’ she exclaimed, suddenly, ‘that surname’s familiar. Can I have a look at the file, Sarge?’

  She came across to Neville’s desk and flicked though the murder book, until she found the page she had sought.

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured, pressing her index finger to an entry. ‘The trawl we did of the areas near Patrick Booth’s drug drops, looking for fuel bought with Spanish cards: it threw up one payment, made in a filling station just south of Durham, on a card in the name of Ignacio Centelleos, issued by Cajamar, a rural savings bank. We haven’t sourced the details of the holder, but it can be done.’

  ‘Then do so. Ignacio; that’s a man’s name, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, and quite common. The surname isn’t, though; it’s very unusual. If I remember right, it means “Sparkles” in English.’

  Karen stared at her. ‘Repeat that, please, Jackie. You’re telling me that Maria Centelleos in Spanish is Maria Sparkles in English?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, you beauty!’ She snatched her mobile from the desk and called the first name on her list of ‘favourite’ numbers.

  ‘Karen,’ Andy responded. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing, my dear. You don’t know what you got till it’s gone,’ she laughed.

  ‘What the hell are you on about? Did you get laid last night and want to crow about it?’

  ‘Close but no cigar. That’s not to say that I did get laid, but . . . och, to hell with him. My ingenious Spanish-speaking DC and I have traced the owner of that van.’

  ‘Yes, her name’s Maria Centelleos.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry to spoil your triumph but I just had a call from the Guardia Civil national drugs team. We’ve been working with them trying to trace the source of manufacture, and thanks to our forensics people they’ve found it.

  ‘It’s a small sherry-producing bodega near a town called El Cuervo, and she’s listed as the owner. However, the only thing it seems to have been producing lately are methamphetamines.

  ‘The feedback I’m getting is that the place was only ever marginally profitable, and that it went tits up at the start of the recession. They seem to have fought back by changing their product line. There’s one small problem, though. The place was burned to the ground, a couple of weeks ago. They found the meth traces in a vat, but it’ll be difficult to prove physically who made the stuff.’

  ‘Have they arrested her?’

  ‘No. The Centelleos woman and her son have been away from home for quite some time, according to their neighbours. Unfortunately, tracing them doesn’t figure very high on the Guardia Civil’s list of priorities. They’re looking, but not very hard. It was small-time and the place is destroyed. They have much bigger targets and limited manpower, so if anyone’s going to catch her it’ll have to be us.’

  ‘The son’s name is Ignacio, yes?’

  ‘So I’m told. The kid’s some sort of genius chemist, the Guardia people say. He must be if he can synthesise crystal meth at the age of eighteen without blowing his fucking head off.’

  ‘And that’s all you’ve got, is it?’ she asked.

  ‘So far, yes. Your tone tells me you think you have more.’

  ‘Indeed I have. A pound to a pinch of pig shit, leave out a couple of letters and translate her surname into English and you’ve got Bella Watson’s missing daughter, and with her, from the sound of it, the mystery grandson that we can place in her flat.’

  ‘Hey,’ he said warmly, ‘good for you guys. It’s amazing what you can do on a weekend. Are you going to break it to Sammy Pye?’

  ‘No, I’ll let the head of CID do that. She’s my very next call.’

  Fifty-Six

  ‘Is there any slight chance that one day, your phone won’t ring on a Saturday?’ Paula Viareggio asked her husband.

  ‘That could happen,’ he told her, ‘if I’m made redundant after the start of Police Scotland.’

  He was frowning when he said it: she took him seriously.

  ‘They wouldn’t do that, would they?’ she exclaimed. ‘Not with Bob Skinner in charge, surely not.’

  ‘Work it out, love,’ he suggested. ‘There are going to be four deputies and six ACCs. Andy Martin’s a cert to be one of the deputies, Maggie’s odds on to be another, and probably Brian Mackie. That’ll leave a lot more people at that rank than there are vacancies. Some will retire, sure, but I’m no cert to get a slot.’

  ‘You will, though.’

  ‘Let’s wait and see.’

  ‘It’ll be a disgrace if you don’t.’

  He laughed and hugged her. ‘No, it’ll be fate. That’s what happens when you let politicians run the country.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about them,’ Paula muttered. ‘Who was that on the phone?’ she asked.

  ‘Mary Chambers, dropping a bombshell. One I must ask Andy about.’

  He left her to attend to baby Eamon’s latest demand and called his one-time colleague.

  ‘I know what you’re on about,’ Martin exclaimed, before McGuire had a chance to ask him. ‘Bella Watson’s daughter, right?’

  ‘Dead right. Mary’s just told me about her. She says they’re absolutely sure. Are you guys?’

  ‘It looks nailed on. It was her van, in her mother’s street and she’s using her old radio name, or nearly all of it.’

  ‘Andy,’ McGuire said, ‘I was on the Marlon Watson investigation, rememb
er, and I had no idea that a daughter existed.’

  ‘Oh, she did, I promise you; short dark hair, drop-dead gorgeous, eyes you could drown in; she looked a bit like Audrey Hepburn. If you doubt me, ask Alex; she says she met her too, although she was vague on how. Understandable, since she was only a kid at the time.

  ‘But Mario,’ he added, ‘she was never a suspect, not for a moment, so after that first meeting, that I was in on, there was no need to talk to her again. It’s no surprise you never heard of her. After all, you were only the CID gopher at the time.’ He laughed. ‘I remember you turning up for your first day in plain clothes in an Armani suit and Bob having to tell you, not too quietly, to dress like a cop.’

  ‘Yes, I remember too. At least I can wear what I like now, unless uniform’s called for. I might wear it when I visit my CID team on Monday, to read the fucking riot act! I’m going to want to know,’ he said, ‘why we’re only finding out about Mia Watson now, and why it takes somebody’s granny and the head of an outside agency to tell us. I’ve already torn a strip off Mary . . . unfairly maybe, with Mackenzie being missing. When that man turns up he’s fucking toast, I tell you.’

  ‘Hey, calm down, big fella,’ Martin urged him. ‘Don’t get too steamed up. As I understand it, your team might have done a more thorough family check on Bella at the start, but they did trace the daughter, the hard way, and they did find out that her son, the anomalous grandson, existed. That said, when I see Karen tomorrow night to deliver the kids I’ll tell her to wear her iron knickers on Monday morning.’

  ‘She’s exempt,’ McGuire said, quickly. ‘It’s Sammy and Sauce I’ll be after . . . although again that’s probably unfair, since Mackenzie appointed himself SIO at the start of the investigation till I told him otherwise. That’ll be another can he’s carrying.’

  ‘He’ll be weighed down. What’s this about him being missing anyway?’

  ‘Slip of the tongue. I never said that; he’s on personal leave, okay?’

  ‘Noted. Now,’ Andy asked, ‘what’s the story?’