The DCC was taken aback. ‘I think I can speak for Jimmy on that,’ he said. ‘We’d both be honoured. I’ll let him know. Mind you,’ he added, ‘being a Hibs fan, the Pope may have little to talk about.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ said Angelo Collins, laughing as he hung up.
Skinner did not have time even to reach for Pringle’s folder before his phone, barely in its cradle, sounded again. ‘Yes, Jack,’ he said.
‘Boss,’ began his assistant, ‘remember that thing I mentioned last night: the investigation that DI Steele might need to involve you in? Well, it’s come up. DCS Pringle’s just been on the phone; and he’d like to bring Stevie to see you. He said it was urgent, so I said okay. They should be with you in ten minutes, tops.’
‘Okay. I guess Dan’s folder will get done some time. There have been no more reports of incidents involving the Belgians, have there?’
‘No, sir. I’ve been keeping an eye on them like you asked. All’s quiet. I checked with the Humberside police too, to see whether they’ve made progress with their investigation.’
‘Let me guess at this morning’s headline in the Hull Daily Mail . . . “Police remain baffled”. Right?’
‘I don’t think it’s making headlines any more. They’ve hit the wall and they know it.’
‘They’re not the only ones.’ He sighed. ‘Jack, do you have any feelings just now, anything you can’t pin down?’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘Ach, it’s okay. Call me when Stevie arrives.’ He hung up, switched the light outside his door to green, then called McIlhenney. ‘Neil,’ he exclaimed when the DI picked up, ‘it’s me and I’m as frustrated as hell.’
‘You are, are you? Let me guess. You think there’s something up. You see all sorts of threads waving in the breeze, and you’re dead certain that they all weave together into a great big tapestry, only you don’t know how and you can’t work it out for the life of you. Right?’
‘Spot fucking on! How did you know?’
‘Because I feel exactly the same way.’
‘Fat lot of help you are, then,’ Skinner grunted. ‘Let me know when you work it out.’ He hung up again. ‘Fuck it!’ he shouted to the empty office. ‘Why the hell did I talk Andy Martin into going for the DCC’s job in Dundee?’
For a moment he was on the point of calling his friend and one-time protégé; instead, he called his own number.
Trish, the nanny, picked up the phone. ‘Sarah, please,’ he asked her.
‘You sound knackered,’ she told him. Trish’s gift for plain speaking was one of her best points. ‘Sarah isn’t here. She’s gone up town.’
‘Carving someone up?’
‘She didn’t say, but I doubt it. She told me she hoped to be back in time for the boys’ lunch. Can I give her a message?’
‘Tell her not to wait up for me. I’ve got a late engagement in town.’
‘That’ll come as a surprise to her.’
‘You push your luck; you know that?’
‘Sorry, Bob. I just can’t help myself sometimes . . . okay, any time. Say hello to your daughter.’
‘Hello, Seonaid.’
There was a squeal from the other end that contained most of the five letters of ‘Daddy’.
‘Hey,’ said Trish. ‘She remembers you.’
‘Bugger off, girl,’ he laughed. ‘If you weren’t too good to fire . . .’
He stared at the ceiling for a while, thinking about home, thinking about Sarah and, although he tried not to, thinking about Aileen de Marco, and how hard it would be to keep his promise to her and to himself. He did not see Stevie Steele’s car as it rolled up the drive, or the woman who emerged from the passenger seat.
When the knock sounded at his door, he recognised it as Dan Pringle’s thump rather than Jack McGurk’s more circumspect rap. ‘Come in,’ he shouted. ‘Don’t make me open the fucking thing for you.’
He was half-way round from behind his desk when the head of CID came into the room. He expected Stevie Steele to be behind him. He did not expect the short, crinkle-haired black woman who was flanked by the two detectives.
Skinner grinned, in surprise as much as anything else. ‘Special Agent Merle Gower,’ he exclaimed. ‘How long has it been?’
‘Since I was last in Edinburgh?’ she replied. ‘Since the former president’s visit, as I recall, although the Secret Service was so thick around him that day you probably never saw me.’
Merle Gower was the official resident presence in London of the FBI, although Skinner suspected that she had links in addition with the secretive National Security Agency. She had succeeded his late friend Joe Doherty, on his recall to Washington by the previous administration; at first she had been cocky and abrasive, but she had learned quickly and had won the trust of her British contacts.
‘Do you have decent coffee here, Bob?’ she asked him.
‘No.’ He walked across to the filter machine on his side table and poured her a mug. ‘But you can try this crap if you like.’
‘As long as it has caffeine, I suppose it’ll be okay.’
He poured another for himself, and brought them over to the coffee-table, leaving his colleagues to fend for themselves. ‘This is a big surprise,’ he said, as they sat on the low leather couches.
‘For me too.’ She took a sip from her mug. ‘Hey, this isn’t bad. What is it?’
‘Fair-trade coffee. My wife buys it from a Nicaraguan importer. It means that the growers get a fair price, as opposed to being screwed by the bulk buyers. I’ll give you the address if you like.’
‘You wanna get me fired? I thought you liked me.’ She turned as Pringle lowered his bulk on to the seat beside her.
As Steele joined Skinner on his couch, the DCC leaned towards him, his eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Congratulations,’ he murmured, as Special Agent Gower shuffled sideways to give herself more room.
‘You know?’
‘I always know. You be good for her, hear me.’
‘Do I hear “or else”, sir?’
‘You better.’
‘No worries.’
The exchange was quick and whispered. Neither of their companions heard them, as they completed their seating arrangements. ‘Okay,’ Skinner barked, ‘take me through the reason for this intrusion into the most important day of this force’s year.’
Pringle gulped and began. ‘It’s DI Steele’s story, boss. It has to do with a bank fraud.’
‘The guy that Sarah autopsied last week?’
‘That’s the one. I’ll let Stevie talk you through it.’
The young inspector nodded and leaned back, half turning so that he faced both Skinner and Gower. Quickly, he talked them through the investigation and the twists and turns it had taken, although he skipped over Sarah’s misplaced enthusiasm when she had found the shoulder dislocation. ‘Whetstone was solidly in the frame, no doubt about it, until Monday,’ he said.
‘What happened on Monday?’ asked the DCC.
‘Aurelia Middlemass disappeared; so did her supposed husband. They left his car at the airport and caught an easyJet flight to London, then on to God knows where. As far as we’re concerned they vanished into thin air. So I set to work, looking into her background. That led me to a bank in Dubai, where her CV said she worked before coming to Edinburgh. What her CV didn’t say was that she was dead. The real Aurelia was killed in an accident, just before our version came to join the Scottish Farmers Bank.’
‘So all of a sudden your locked-up investigation’s stood on its head. She did it, and maybe killed Whetstone as well.’
Steele nodded. ‘Just so, sir. That led me to get in touch with the police in Dubai, but instead of getting someone from their Traffic department, I wound up speaking to a brigadier general, no less, who’s your opposite number.’
‘I must ask for a promotion,’ Skinner grunted.
‘That’s where I come in,’ said Merle Gower. ‘We, the US, that is, as opposed to the FBI, had a str
ong interest in that so-called accident. This was not because of Ms Middlemass, however; she was a South African national. You see, she was not alone in the vehicle, and she was not the only fatality. Her companion was a US citizen, Mr Wayne Morrison; an attaché on station at our embassy in the United Arab Emirates. They were a couple, and had been for a year or so.’
‘I take it he was CIA?’
She looked Skinner in the eye, answering him with her silence. ‘The vehicle was rigged; there was a bomb, concealed above the exhaust. It was detonated remotely by someone with a radio transmitter, who probably watched them and picked the moment. Morrison and Ms Middlemass were in the habit of going driving in the desert every weekend, the sort of routine that someone in his position should have known better than to establish.’
‘Suspects?’
‘We have one. He was attached to a technical college in Dubai as a research chemist. He had an Egyptian passport under the name of Anwar Baradi, but that was, of course, false. Eventually the CIA came up with another name for him, and a photograph, found in a house in Kabul, after the liberation. They believe that he’s an Algerian, called Hasid Bourgiba, but relations with that country are not exactly brilliant, so that hasn’t been verified. What we do know for sure was that he was a member of a terrorist group that wasn’t part of, but had links with, al Qaeda.’
‘How about the woman?’
‘Bourgiba had no known female associates in Dubai. However, there was a woman who disappeared on the very same day that he did. She lived in a rented apartment in the city, had a part-time job in a library, and her passport showed her as a Zimbabwean author, Polly Pride.’
‘Photographs?’
Merle Gower nodded. ‘I brought them.’
‘It’s her, boss,’ said Steele. ‘I’ve seen them and I’m absolutely certain. The Bourgiba photograph could be anyone. It’s years old and in it the guy has a real Taliban beard, but Superintendent Chambers is on her way out to Heriot-Watt with it now, to show it to the people in the chemistry department.’
The DCC frowned. ‘So connect me into this, please. Would two terrorist operatives go to all that bother just to set up a bank sting, albeit for a million? Is the network running short of money?’
‘Maybe,’ Gower murmured, ‘but . . .’
‘They didn’t do it,’ Steele announced. He opened his briefcase, took out two clear plastic evidence envelopes. ‘These turned up this morning, out of the blue.’
Skinner read Ivor Whetstone’s letter to his son. When he was finished, he removed the bank book and flicked through it. ‘So it was him all along. The man was dying and he decided to look out for his lad . . . and maybe set him a test too. If that was in his mind, he’d be glad to know that he passed.’
‘So why did they run off?’ Dan Pringle asked. ‘If they’d sat tight . . .’
The big DCC’s blue eyes fixed him. ‘So why were they here in the first place, Dan? That’s the really big question.’
He looked up at the ceiling of his office once more, gazing at nothing as the seconds grew into minutes.
‘What is it, boss?’ Steele asked at last.
Skinner smiled. ‘It’s a tapestry, Stevie, starting to weave itself. I can’t make out all the pattern yet, but it’s forming.’
Suddenly he leaned forward, his shoulders hunching. ‘I’ve no idea why they did a runner, people,’ he exclaimed. ‘But I’ll bet you the million Whetstone nicked on this: they are coming back!’
He shot to his feet, pounding his big right fist into his left palm. ‘And you know what it means, don’t you?’ he continued, speaking to himself rather than to his companions. ‘The security briefing I’ve just attended is now out of date, hours before the ball starts rolling. We do now have a specific threat!’
78
Brian Mackie had never been more tense. The summons to the DCC’s office had come as a complete surprise to him, and the message that he had been given there, by Skinner, with a grim-faced Willie Haggerty looking on, had brought his worst dreams of the previous few weeks to the edge of reality.
New intelligence information. Not obtained from the security services, but as a by-product of a criminal investigation within Edinburgh itself. Two terrorist sleepers, moved to his city from an assassination in the Middle East, but hidden among the professional classes, not among the ethnic communities, where previous real or would-be terrorists had invariably been found.
Mackie shuddered as he thought of the implications of this new tactic, and as he watched the chartered Alitalia Airbus make its gentle approach to the runway at Edinburgh airport, escorted by two fighter jets, one on either side. As the Pope’s plane landed, they veered off and headed back to RAF Leuchars. The same procedure had been followed when the Prime Minister had arrived an hour earlier. Nobody had told the chief superintendent, but he had guessed that the two aircraft were there to intercept any ground-to-air missile that might have been launched.
He watched from his position on a viewing gallery on the roof that was off limits to the travelling public. He scanned to his left and right, checking that all the snipers were in position, then looked down at the airport’s concourse as the big jet taxied in. The reception committee was waiting, headed by the Lord Provost, both as the capital’s leading citizen and as its Lord Lieutenant, the personal representative of the Queen. After Lord Provost Maxwell there stood, in order, the Prime Minister, his familiar quiff blowing in the breeze, the much shorter figure of the red-haired Tommy Murtagh, MSP, Scotland’s First Minister and clear loser of the precedence argument between Holyrood and Whitehall, Sir James Proud, imperious as ever in his heavily adorned uniform, and last of the five, in richly embroidered vestments, Archbishop James Gainer.
Mackie had suggested moving the formal greeting indoors, but Skinner had decided against the idea since that would have meant explaining the last-minute change to the television crews and rota photographer who were being allowed to cover the first event of John the Twenty-fifth’s brief visit. Whatever story they had invented, media speculation would have been inevitable, and some of it might have been uncomfortably close to the truth. However, he had decreed that to minimise the period that the Pope spent in the open, there would be no wives in the line. This message had been conveyed to the protection officers, who had accepted it without argument, and possibly, in one case, with relish.
And so the chief superintendent held his breath as the plane came to a halt, the steps were put in place, and finally the door of the Airbus was opened. He felt his heart pound as the white-robed figure stepped out and made his way down the staircase and on to the red carpet, then knelt to kiss the ground, rising with great agility for a man of his age. Mackie looked around, almost frantically, as the Pope made his way along the receiving line, checking the snipers again, picking out the uniformed officers and those in plain clothes, with the tell-tale gold badges glinting on their lapels, his eyes searching all the time for anyone or anything that should not have been there.
It seemed to take an age, although only two minutes elapsed between the emergence of His Holiness from the aircraft and his entering the familiar vehicle with its canopy of bullet-proof glass and its ton and a half of armour plating, hidden and unsuspected under the gleaming white coachwork.
As the convoy, led and tailed by two police vehicles and flanked by eight motorcycle outriders, headed off for the City Chambers, Brian Mackie allowed himself a very small sigh of relief.
79
There were no smiles around the table in the room that normally seated dinner parties in Bute House, the First Minister’s residence. Bob Skinner knew it well enough, having been there on several occasions during his term of office as security adviser to the secretary of state for Scotland, the official occupant of the fine Georgian terrace before his eviction by the creation of the Scottish parliament, but for the other six it was a first-time visit.
Brian Mackie had come straight from the airport, with Giovanni Rossi, Jack Russell, the Prime Minister’s
senior protection officer, and Adam Arrow, who had flown north with him. Skinner himself, Neil McIlhenney, and Special Agent Merle Gower had headed there from Fettes. The DCC had chosen the venue for its discretion, since there were no watching eyes or wagging tongues in Charlotte Square.
‘Thanks for coming, Adam,’ he said, after he had explained the day’s developments, ‘and thanks for not asking why I wanted you here.’
‘No problem.’ The little major’s accent was the one he reserved for serious business, not his customary Derbyshire twang.
‘Now that you’re all up to speed on this new situation, let’s try to analyse the threat. Why are Alsina and Middlemass here? What’s their mission? I don’t think there’s any coincidence about it. I do not believe that two international terrorists would park themselves in Scotland, with almost foolproof and effective new identities, just to be out of the way. I believe they are here to pull something, and until I’m proved wrong, I’m going to assume that it’s connected with this visit.’
‘Why so sure?’ asked Russell. ‘Couldn’t one of the naval bases, Faslane or Rosyth, be a target?’
‘Rosyth’s a dockyard,’ said Adam Arrow. ‘I don’t see them attacking an empty vessel. As for Faslane, it’s a nuclear bunker. It’s the most secure facility in this country.’
‘What about one of the nuclear power stations? Hunterston or Torness?’
‘That would have to be another September Eleven,’ McIlhenney told him. ‘And even then, it wouldn’t work. They’re built to withstand aircraft impact.’
‘Something from within, then. He’s a chemist, isn’t he?’
‘That’s right; and not a nuclear physicist. Anyway, they’re also built to withstand earthquakes and they have all sorts of emergency shut-down mechanisms.’
‘What about a gas attack?’ asked Brian Mackie.
‘Gas is non-specific,’ Merle Gower pointed out, ‘a random weapon. These two people have been here for eighteen months. If that’s what they were here to do they’d have done it already.’
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