‘Number two.’
‘Okay, Briony, show him in there and I’ll be down. Did he give a name, by the way?’
‘Yes, sir. He said his name was Whetstone, Murphy Whetstone; he’s a great big lad.’
‘Shit,’ Steele exclaimed involuntarily. ‘That’s not who I was expecting. Scrub the interview room; bring him up here instead.’
A few heads turned, as the exceptionally tall young man was led through the CID room. ‘Hello, Murphy,’ the inspector greeted him, curiosity overcoming his earlier frustration. ‘What brings you here?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I guess it’s the way I was brought up.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I think I had a chance to get away with something that would have left me in blondes and Porsches till I got tired of them, but I just couldn’t do it.’ He reached into a pocket of his jacket and produced an envelope, a big one that had been folded over to make it fit. He laid it on the detective’s desk.
‘The company’s looking after me very well while I’m over here,’ he began. ‘Among other things, all my mail’s being couriered over to me, express delivery. I had a consignment first thing this morning. Take a look; you might think I’m crazy when you do.’
Steele picked up the envelope and shook out its contents: two smaller envelopes, one white, with UK stamps and an air-mail flash, the other brown, with US stamps. Each was addressed to Murphy, at what the inspector assumed was his home in Tennessee. He picked up the British envelope first, and shook out a letter. He unfolded it and saw that it was printed, on A4 paper.
Dear Murph [it began],
By the time you read this, you’ll know that I have gone to the great clubhouse in the sky. To cut a painful story short, a few days ago I was told by the sort of doctor who doesn’t make mistakes that there was a room in St Columba’s Hospice with my name on the door, and that it was ready for immediate occupancy.
I’ve never enjoyed sleeping in a strange bed, and although I’ve never had the experience, I’m sure I wouldn’t enjoy being ministered to by strange women either. So, since I’m a firm believer in one’s right to choose the time and manner of one’s passing, I’ve decided to exercise it. You may find my choice of method a bit melodramatic, but it seems the easiest way to do it, and a strange opportunity has arisen of doing the deed away from well-meaning interferers and most of all away from home. Your mother has always loved that house and I would not want to have her associate any gruesome memories with it.
This sudden turn of events has made a bit of a hash of my intentions for you, old son. Your mother is well provided for, worry not, but it was my plan to use the last years of my career, and the wholly unexpected earning power I have been given, to do something to help provide for your long-term future as well as my own. However, when the chips are down I have always been a resourceful type, as many of my golf companions will testify. I’m going to let you into a secret. I have always been an old-fashioned banker, always been the sort who likes looking ordinary people in the eye, giving them good news when I can, and helping them through crises when I can’t. It’s one of my proudest boasts that I’ve never foreclosed on any client in my life.
Even though I have proved to be remarkably good at the job I’m doing now, so good that in a few months I was able to rid myself of the strange ice-maiden whom they tried to make my boss and out-perform her in every way, I have to tell you that I hate, loathe and detest everything that the Scottish Farmers Bank has become under the people who are now shaping its policies, and generally making a balls of implementing them. So it is without any conscience whatsoever that I have made certain arrangements for your benefit. I have done this in a way that will even now be causing ructions in Lothian Road, and which will I hope result in a culling of the incompetents, whose names I need not list here. I have also done it through a route which is completely untraceable, based on a knowledge of international banking law and practice which my so-called superiors never suspected I possessed.
Today I confirmed to my complete satisfaction that all my arrangements are complete. Very soon, you’ll receive items in the US that will put all of this into context. You need have no fear about putting them to use in making what I hope and expect will be a bloody good life for yourself. The other letter I enclose with this is for your mother. I want you to give it to her yourself, when next you see her. I don’t want her getting it through the mail, and didn’t want to leave it for her in the office. It tells her why I’ve done this, how much I love her, what a privilege it has been to spend my adult life with her, and all that sort of stuff. I’ll say the same to you now, son. I wish we could have had a few more years to enjoy each other’s company, but none of us has the privilege, or rather the curse, of knowing the hour of our departure too long before the train is ready to leave the station.
Enjoy your legacy, and yourself. Drive straight and putt even straighter. Goodbye and God speed.
All my love,
Dad.
PS. I trust you’ll have the bloody sense to burn this letter.
To his considerable surprise, Stevie Steele felt a lump in his throat. He blinked, to keep his eyes clear. He folded the letter, replaced it in its envelope and picked up the other. He reached inside and withdrew its contents, an American Express card, holder M. Whetstone, and a green bank book. He opened it and saw that it was the key to an account in a Delaware bank. The amount on deposit was very slightly over one million eight hundred thousand US dollars.
‘You see the name?’ Murphy asked. ‘Bank of Piercetown; that’s “BP”, the initials on Dad’s note to himself. “AM” probably just meant morning.’
The detective looked across the desk at the young man. ‘He was right, you know,’ he told him as he held up the book. ‘We’d never have found this.’
He smiled back at him. ‘You mean I am crazy?’
‘That’s for you to work out. What did bring you here? You could have burned that letter as he says.’
‘I know. I’ve been trying to make sense of it since that lot arrived, Mr Steele. The best conclusion I can come to is that my father did this as one last gesture, just to show that he could, then he left the deciding to me. He wasn’t a flamboyant man, but he was a gamester inside. He taught me most of what I know, but one thing the course didn’t include was how to live my life on the basis of something like this.’ He shrugged the shoulders of his enormous jacket. ‘On top of that, it’s not my money.’
‘That’s the best answer.’
‘What should I do now?’
‘Nothing. Leave all this with me; I’ll give you a receipt.’ He looked through the glass wall of his cubicle, caught DC Singh’s eye and waved him inside. ‘Tarvil,’ he said, ‘I want you to find a typist . . . use the chief super’s if you have to; ask her nicely and it’ll be okay. Get me a formal receipt for one letter, an Amex card and a bank book . . .’ He read out the bank’s name and the account number. ‘. . . handed over by Mr Murphy Whetstone. It’s to be signed by Mr Whetstone and by me with you as a witness signatory.’
The young constable nodded; he returned a few minutes later, bearing two copies of the receipt. All three of them signed beside their printed names.
‘Have you given your mother her letter?’ Steele asked, as he walked Murphy to the top of the stairs.
‘Not yet. Will I have to tell her about the other one?’
‘I hope not. I’ll go and see the acting chief executive at the bank. If he has any sense he’ll just accept the return of the money. You may have to sign some form of legal document, but I hope that’ll be all there is to it. With that done, the fiscal’s file on your father’s death will be closed as a suicide, and your mother need never know the whole story.’
‘If you can do that, I’d appreciate it. Thanks.’
‘No, it’s for me to thank you. Thanks a million, in fact.’
Steele was smiling as he settled back into his chair . . . until the phone rang once more.
‘Who was Barry Macgregor?’ Aileen de Marco asked.
‘He was a young detective constable, one of my boys. He was killed on duty, a few years back.’
‘I knew it had to be something like that. Was Chief Superintendent Mackie there when it happened? He seemed a bit emotional for a second, when he mentioned him.’
‘We were both there,’ said Bob quietly. ‘I was holding him when he died; I had his blood all over me. Brian took down the man who did it; picked him right off the back of a motorbike. Best damn shot I’ve ever seen. He wasn’t emotional then.’
‘That quiet man in a uniform? He did that?’
‘Absolutely: didn’t bat an eyelid. Brian’s the finest shot on this force, with any weapon.’ He looked at her across the low coffee-table in his office. ‘That stuff we talked about last night, about killing and everything; no fantasy, it really does happen. The boys and girls that people like your man Godfrey Rennie regard as statistics, they really do put their lives on the line.’
‘I suppose I knew that,’ Aileen admitted. ‘But being there this morning, listening to Mr Mackie explain that although the Pope had asked for no show of weapons, there would be snipers hidden all over the place, and men with wee gold badges in their lapels to signify that they were armed . . .’ She shivered. ‘It brings it right on to my doorstep, the whole global-terrorism thing. As a deputy minister, I wasn’t involved with heavy stuff like that.’
He reached across the corner of his table and squeezed her hand. ‘Get used to it, love,’ he told her, ‘because it’s the reality of my job and, from now on, of yours too.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘I have this vision of you, one day, as First Minister of an independent Scotland, as a national head of government. You should start to prepare yourself for that, right now.’
She let out a quiet laugh. ‘God, you’re not a Nat as well, are you?’
‘Nah. I just think it’s inevitable, like night follows day; it has been since they passed the Scotland Act.’
‘That’s not what the people who wrote it intended.’
‘Since when could politicians see beyond the next election?’ he asked her.
‘Is that what you’re trying to do? Make me take the long view?’
‘Exactly. And it’s why I won’t do anything to compromise you. I haven’t known you long, but already I believe in you as much as I believe in myself. You’ve got a destiny, same as I have, only I can see yours more clearly. I won’t let anything or anyone get in the way of it . . . especially not me. That’s why the . . . encounter . . . we had last night has to remain just that.’
Aileen gave the smallest of nods. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m ambitious enough to realise that too. Plus, I wouldn’t want to hurt you.’
‘Or my wife?’ Words once spoken can never be recalled. ‘Sorry, that was a crass thing to come out with.’
‘No, it was honest. Bob, I know enough about married men to tell when they’re only after a leg over on the side . . . they’ve got no chance with me, by the way, no chance at all . . . and when things are bad at home and they need somewhere to go, even if it’s only to talk. You didn’t have to tell me your marriage was rocky; I’d worked that out for myself. I promise you this, though; I won’t make anything worse.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he told her. ‘You’re not the Fatal Attraction type. But you’re right. Sarah and I have been in trouble for a few months now, and nothing we try seems to make it any better.’
‘Are you going to keep trying, though?’
‘Right now, I really don’t know. If we don’t, can I tell you?’
Aileen smiled. ‘You’d better.’ She eased herself to her feet. ‘My car should be downstairs by now. I have to get to the office. Will you be around tomorrow at Murrayfield?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not a player in the operation, although I helped put it together. If I turn up, Willie and Brian might think I don’t trust them. If I’m there, I won’t be high profile, that’s for sure. It’ll be a private visit.’
‘Part of your search for God? Now I’ve told you He’s not up my skirt after all?’
He stood, quickly and supply. ‘Don’t sell yourself short.’ He chuckled, as he walked her to the door. ‘Should we shake hands?’ he asked.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she whispered. Rising up on her toes, she kissed him. He was still gazing at the dark door well after it had closed on her, still aware of her perfume lingering behind her, the ghost of her presence in the room. He gave himself a shake back to reality and returned to his desk, ready to start his morning’s work in earnest.
He buzzed McGurk. ‘Jack, the minister’s gone. Give me a couple of minutes then come along please, and bring the mail with you.’ He switched on his computer, let it boot up, and checked his e-mail. There was nothing in his official mailbox . . . there rarely was, since his executive assistant routinely printed out all the incoming messages, other than those from certain listed contacts . . . but when he signed on to his personal address, he found one from ‘dmacphail’ asking if he would make that evening’s gathering of his five-a-side football group, the Thursday Legends . . . ‘Not a chance tonight, mate,’ he muttered . . . two with headlines guaranteeing to increase his penis size, another offering him Viagra online . . . ‘So I can cope with the new cock, I suppose,’ he chuckled . . . and a fifth, from ‘dr_sarah’. He moved the cursor to open it then changed his mind and deleted all five.
There was a rap on the door; it swung open and McGurk came in with a bundle of documents. ‘Thanks,’ said the DCC. ‘Do you want to talk me through any of that stuff?’
‘Just two items, sir.’ He laid a brown envelope on the desk. ‘That’s from Signor Rossi.’ He placed a bulky package beside it. ‘And that’s from the head of CID; all the paperwork on the Belgian investigation.’ He dropped the rest into the DCC’s in-tray. ‘That’s just the usual stuff, I’d say.’
‘So much for the paperless office,’ Skinner grumbled. He reached out and tapped the pile of material that Pringle had set him. ‘When I get round to this,’ he said, ‘I might ask you to come and help me. I’ll be trying to find something that’s out of shape, something that doesn’t square with the facts as we know them. If you’re helping me, we’ll be twice as likely to spot it; four eyes are always better than two, especially when you don’t know what the hell you’re looking for.’
‘I’ll be there, boss,’ said McGurk. ‘Is that all for now?’
‘Yes, Jack, thanks; and thanks in general too. You’ve settled in very well, in spite of me sometimes. I feel that my back’s being well watched, and that’s what I value most of all in an exec.’ He slapped the fat folder again. ‘I’ll give you a shout when I need you.’
Alone, Skinner picked up the big brown envelope, slid out its contents and examined them. It was a three-page fax with a cover sheet, which showed that it had been sent to Giovanni Rossi from an Italian number. As he had been promised, it was a detailed biography of Gilbert White, Bishop of Rome, latest in a line of succession that stretched back to St Peter. As he read it, Skinner could see in his mind’s eye the last occasion on which he had met him, just over three years earlier at a reception hosted by the former first minister in Bute House, his official residence. In his red robes and cardinal’s hat, he had seemed to fill the room. If his election to the papacy had surprised the rest of the world, it had been seen in Scotland as no more than his due.
The DCC began to read. He found that the paper was written almost in reverse order; the first part dealt with the Pope’s life since his elevation, his pronouncements, his views on major issues facing the Church and the world, and the two formal visits he had made, the first to his old college in Spain, relocated since his time to Salamanca, and the second a dramatic mission to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a successful bid to snuff out the last traces of the long-running civil war. It was only when he reached the last page that he found the information he had been after. T
he young Gilbert White had been educated at St Patrick’s High, Coatbridge, and had studied for the priesthood at the Royal Scots College in Valladolid, Spain, established in the days when Catholicism had been an outlawed religion in Scotland. He had been ordained in Glasgow at the age of twenty-six. In the first year of his priesthood, he had chosen to broaden his education and experience and, through the influence of one of his former tutors, had been granted a two-year attachment as a curate to the great cathedral in Brussels. When that was complete he had returned to Scotland and, apart from a period on the staff of the Pontifical Scots College in Rome, had spent his entire pastoral career there.
Skinner finished the document, then read it through for a second time. He leaned back in his chair and scratched his head. He must have met Malou in Brussels, over forty years ago; there could be no more to it than that.
He laid the biography aside and turned to Pringle’s folder. He was about to open it when his phone rang. ‘I have Father Collins on the line, sir, from the Pope’s secretariat.’
‘Put him through.’
‘Good morning, Mr Skinner.’ The young priest’s accent betrayed his Western Isles origins. ‘I spoke to the Holy Father last night and asked him your question. He asked me to tell you that the name Auguste Malou does mean something to him. He met him during the period of his attachment to the Cathedral of St Michael in Brussels, and they’ve remained in touch ever since. Their friendship is the reason for his invitation to the Bastogne Drummers to play at Murrayfield.’
‘That’s all he said about him?’
‘That is all, sir.’
‘I see. Thank you for your trouble, Father.’
‘Don’t mention it, sir. His Holiness also asked me to tell you that he’s looking forward very much to seeing you and Sir James Proud again. After this evening’s mass, he’ll be having supper with the Archbishop, at his residence: he’s staying there, as you know. He wonders whether you and the chief constable would care to join them; around nine thirty. He promises that the conversation will be almost entirely about football.’
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