A Brush With Death

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Tu? Perché?’

  She laughed. ‘Stick your Italian up your arse, McGuire. I had enough of that when we were married. Yes, me. Why? Because I’ve got something in common with Sandra Bulloch, and so has Bob. All three of us have lost partners in violent circumstances. What did we need to know from that interview, first and foremost? Tell me.’

  He sighed. ‘Oh I get it, don’t worry. My concern is for our integrity as serving police offers. We needed to establish her good faith, I agree. Did she take Leo for a ride, literally, worm her way into his bed and into his will? Is she a potential poisoner, or an innocent victim?’

  ‘Just so. Bob said that after a few minutes with her he was in absolutely no doubt. That being the case, he did what he did out of regard for her grief, just as we would do as police officers with any other person in that situation.’

  ‘But telling her to get out of here,’ McGuire argued, ‘was that not a step too far?’

  ‘He did more than that. He told her to get out of the country. Look, she’s a DCI, she has resources, she knows the people around Speight. Suppose she worked out for herself who killed the man she was in love with? Can anyone predict how she’d react? Remember when we were married,’ she said, ‘and that dickhead cut my arm to the bone? What did you do? You went into the cells at St Leonards, on your own, and you battered seven colours of shite out of the guy without leaving a mark on him. Don’t try to deny it, because I know you did, and although I shouldn’t, I still love you for it. What’s Bob done for Sandra by railroading her out of the picture? Possibly he’s got her out of harm’s way.’

  Thirty-Six

  ‘Bugger,’ Acting Detective Inspector Dan Provan muttered, just as Acting DCI Mann trotted downstairs to rejoin him in the hall.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was our DC Gowans,’ he replied, ‘winning himself no bloody medals. He’s come up with hee-haw on Billy bloody Swords. He cannae even find a mobile account in his name with any of the providers.’

  ‘Maybe he’s a Luddite and doesn’t have one; or he has a pay-as-you-go that he tops up in Tesco.’

  ‘Mibbe, but this is a man on the move; we know he works for other folk than Stoddart. He’s no’ going to risk running out of credit in some foreign country.’ He smiled. ‘But that was the bad news. This is the good; Willie Gowans could find no record of him catching a flight out of any Scottish airport on Saturday. We should probably lift him now, but I’ve told Willie to get on to Trudi Pollock to find out what hotel he was booked in at. He must have had a car; if we can get the make and number from his hotel, get him on camera driving towards Ayr on Friday evening, and match up that hair on the fridge, then we’ve nailed him for both murders.’

  ‘What if he drove to his Saturday gig in London?’ Mann asked.

  Provan frowned at her. ‘I’m cookin’ by effin’ gas here, Lottie, don’t spoil it.’

  ‘I know,’ she laughed. ‘Let’s see what Gowans comes up with . . . Detective Inspector.’

  ‘Whit!’ He stared at her.

  She told him of her heavy discussion with the deputy chief and the full terms of its conclusion.

  ‘Can he do that?’ he exclaimed. ‘Make me an acting DI without asking me?’

  ‘Looks like he can. I’ll still call you Sergeant if it makes you happy. It’ll not be for long. They’ll parachute someone in as a permanent replacement. I hear there’s a guy in Shetland who’s hot stuff.’

  ‘Sandra’ll definitely no’ be coming back, then?’

  ‘I don’t see how she could,’ Mann said. ‘Not to CID. Uniform if she wants to, once the smoke’s clear, but not to her old job.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like her being off limits to us,’ her colleague observed.

  ‘Me neither, but that’s the way it is. Dan, we may be officers to our team, but to the people at command level, we’re other ranks. We’ve had our orders, set in stone. You know, the longer I have to think about it, the more I sense the heavy hand of Bob Skinner behind them. If I’m right and he’s given Sandra a clean bill of health, I’m okay with that.’

  ‘Aye, mibbe. Did you find that jacket upstairs? There’s no sign of it down here.’

  ‘No. I went through the wardrobes in every room. There’s some stuff there that looks like Sandra’s . . . unless the champ wore a size fourteen ladies’ suit, a thirty-six C-cup bra, and a thong that was more afterthought than underwear. His is all Jermyn Street and Savile Row; no Marks or Ralph Slater there . . . and definitely no biker jacket.’

  ‘It must be somewhere,’ Provan said. ‘If we’ve been through the whole house, and we have, that just leaves the gym. Graeme Bell did say he’d been sweating shortly before he died.’

  They left the house and walked round to the gymnasium. Its heating system was running, and so it was pleasantly warm. ‘Where do we start?’ Mann pondered.

  The DS looked around. ‘Nae coat-hangers in here,’ he replied, ‘but the changing room’s through there. That’s the likeliest.’

  He wandered towards the rear of the training area and the two doors they had encountered on their previous visit, opening the one on the right. A wave of heat washed over him. ‘My God,’ he called out to Mann, ‘the steam room’s still on. Do ye fancy a Turkish bath while we’re here, Lottie?’

  ‘I prefer a sauna,’ she replied tersely, ‘but only on ladies’ night.’ She walked on, into the changing space. ‘There’s a cabinet here, Dan,’ she exclaimed. ‘It looks as if it’s self-locking, though. Wait a minute.’ She took the key ring from her pocket and looked at it, comparing brand names with the one on the door. ‘Here it is,’ she said. The lock was waist high; the key slid in easily, and the door swung open. ‘And there we are.’ A motorcycle jacket, light brown with gold flashes, hung inside, above a pair of high biker boots with Velcro fastenings.

  As she took it out, her eyebrows rose in a look of surprise. ‘Heavy, is it?’ Provan asked.

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s surprisingly light, top-quality leather. I doubt if you’re expected to fall off wearing this.’ She held it up with her left hand and felt in the side pocket with her right. ‘Empty,’ she grunted. She explored the inside and found two pockets; one held a small black LED torch, the other a tube of pastilles. ‘Sod it. I doubt the Italian passed him either of these.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Provan intervened, holding out a hand. ‘Let me see it. I had something like this once.’

  He took it from her and closed the collar, securing it with two studs. As the lapels came together, an outer pocket was revealed, secured by a zip. He opened it, plunged in his hand, then drew it out again with a look of triumph on his face as he brandished a small black plastic object no more than three inches long.

  ‘What is it?’ Mann asked.

  ‘It’s a memory stick,’ he replied. ‘The next question is “What’s on it?” We’ll need a computer or a laptop to find that out. A laptop,’ he repeated, ‘like the one we think Billy Swords stole from Moscardinetto.’

  ‘There’s a computer in Leo’s office, isn’t here? We can use that, if it isn’t password-protected.’

  ‘We’ll find that out when we try,’ the DS said, closing the cabinet and slinging the jacket over his shoulder.’

  ‘What about the steam room?’

  He grinned at her wickedly. ‘We can come back once we’ve had a look at the memory stick.’

  Leaving and locking the gym, they returned to the house, and to Leo Speight’s office. When they booted up his computer, they found that, as Mann had suggested, it did ask for a log-in password. Provan shrugged, keyed in ‘champion’ and the desktop opened, displaying an image that they recognised as an Augusta Cambridge painting.

  ‘See?’ He grinned in self-satisfaction. ‘It’s always something easy.’

  ‘What’s yours?’ she asked.

  He mumbled a reply.

  ‘What?
’

  ‘It’s Lottie,’ he repeated, more clearly, ‘okay? What’s yours?’ He glanced up at her and saw that her face was slightly pink; a relic from the steam room.

  ‘It’s “cheekyweebastard”. All one word,’ she added.

  He swung round in the swivel chair. ‘Would that be a statement of fact, or a term of endearment?’

  The flush on her cheeks grew deeper. ‘Both.’

  He was about to insert the memory stick into a USB slot when Lottie’s phone sounded. ‘A minute,’ she said as she took the call. ‘Mr Skinner,’ he heard her say. He sighed without quite knowing why.

  ‘Actually, we’re about to look at a memory stick that we found in the jacket Leo Speight wore to go home last Friday night slash Saturday morning. The painter woman said she saw Moscardinetto hand him something just as he was leaving.’ She paused, and in the silence Provan’s own ringtone, ‘Down Under’, rang out.

  ‘Okay, if you’d like, we can do that,’ he heard her say as he turned his attention to his incoming call.

  ‘Willie, what have you got?’

  Young DC Gowans had an enthusiasm about him that Dan Provan had no wish to curb; indeed he hoped he would never lose it.

  ‘I checked on the man Swords, Sarge,’ he began. ‘Like you said, he’s registered at a wee hotel overlooking Loch Lomond. He’s driving a hire car, an Audi, registration Sierra Mike sixty-six Mike Whisky Golf. When I checked, the company told me that Ms Pollock booked it for him. I spoke to her and she told me that the boxing people are staying in Scotland for a while to be on hand if we need to speak to them again.’

  ‘Good lad. Now you get on to the CCTV folk and see if you can find him on the road to Ayr last Friday evening.’

  As he ended the call, Mann was finishing hers. ‘You first,’ he said. ‘Skinner?’

  ‘Yes. He says he wants to view the memory stick with us. He also says he has the answers to some questions. I’ve said we’ll meet him in Pitt Street, as soon as we can get back there.’

  ‘Will that be before or after the steam room?’

  ‘God,’ Lottie exclaimed. ‘My password was well chosen.’

  Thirty-Seven

  ‘The impossible we do at once,’ Amanda Dennis said. ‘Miracles tend to take a little longer.’

  Skinner’s phone interrupted his music as he cruised past the Gyle shopping centre, heading along the West Approach Road away from central Edinburgh and his office in Fountainbridge. It broke into his thoughts also; for most of the time since he had left Stirling he had been replaying the events of the morning, their outcome and the implications for professional and personal friendships stretching back for more than twenty years.

  When he had told the chief constable and her deputy that he had sent Sandra Bulloch on her way, McGuire had been barely able to contain his anger, and had made little or no attempt to conceal it.

  ‘You’re telling us, Bob, that you let a person of interest in a homicide investigation leave this office without consulting either the chief constable or me?’

  ‘No, Mario. I’m telling you that I was invited to conduct an interview that would determine whether she was a person of interest. I agreed on the basis that I would do it my way, and use my own judgement. That was, and still is, that Sandra Bulloch didn’t kill her fiancé, and had no information at all that could be helpful to the investigation, other than the matter I mentioned: the phone call to Speight that she and I presumed, in hindsight, was from Aldorino Moscardinetto – a presumption, that’s all, still to be proved. I saw her reaction to questioning, you didn’t. I decided that a further more formal interview was unnecessary, and more, that it would be both cruel, and discourteous to a senior police officer. So yes, I told her to go, and yes, I told her to go as far away as she could manage. A judgement call, yes, and frankly, it was one of the easiest I’ve ever had. What would you have done?’

  ‘Minimum? Ask for her passport. Confirm her whereabouts during the time Speight was being poisoned.’

  ‘By asking her neighbours whether her lights were on, and whether any of them saw her leave the house. Aye, sure. You know what, Mario? If you don’t understand why I made that decision, then I’m happy for you. If you never do, I’ll be even happier.’

  A phone call would be made in the near future to mend damaged fences; that he knew, but he was less certain whether it would be McGuire or himself who made it.

  When his ringtone cut in on Donald Fagen, he thought that question had been answered, but it was the head of the Security Service, her mood a welcome change from those he had left behind him.

  ‘Does that mean you have something on Swords?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes. For openers, his real name isn’t Billy Swords; that’s the name he adopted when he became a British citizen. He did that because there are parts of the world where a Russian might be made less than welcome. He admitted that to the Home Office person who interviewed him when he made his application twelve years ago.’

  ‘Billy Swords is a Russian?’ Skinner exclaimed.

  ‘He was, and he still is; he has dual nationality. That name’s a rough translation of the one he’s had since birth forty-seven years ago, Uilyam Mechikov.’

  ‘Do the Stoddarts know about this?’

  ‘The older one does, certainly,’ Dennis said. ‘He was one of Mechikov’s referees on his naturalisation form.’

  ‘As a matter of interest, who was the other?’

  ‘A man named Gino Butler. He’s described as an accountant; one referee must be a person of professional standing. Does that ring any bells . . . if I can use that boxing analogy?’

  ‘It does. Butler was Leo Speight’s best pal, his manager by name but his assistant in reality. I’ve met him; and Swords too, for that matter.’

  ‘You sounded surprised earlier, when I told you of his origins.’

  ‘I was,’ he admitted. ‘Still am. His English is impeccable.’

  ‘It should be. He worked for the Russian diplomatic service in the late nineties, well after the end of the Soviet era. He was posted to the London embassy. He was a second secretary in the commercial department.’

  ‘You know what I’m going to ask you,’ Skinner said.

  ‘I do, and the answer is yes. Quite early in his London posting, Uilyam Mechikov was identified as a member of the Federal Security Service, what we call the FSB. That’s why I was able to pin him down so easily. He owned up to that part of his past on his application form.’

  ‘I imagine that was because he guessed it would be run past your service and you’d probably pick him out.’

  ‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘However, finding out other things about him wasn’t so easy. As I said, he didn’t give up his Russian passport, and much of his business is still conducted under the name Uilyam Mechikov. But not all of it. He pays his UK income tax as Billy Swords but his local taxes as Mechikov. His telephone landline and his TV licence are held as Swords, but his Vodafone contract is Mechikov. That’s why we didn’t find him straight away.’

  ‘Have you got access to his mobile records?’

  ‘We’re getting them within the hour,’ Dennis replied.

  ‘When you do, they should be checked for calls to a Russian called Brezinski, and a company named Zirka. In particular your people should look for any calls made from four o’clock on Monday afternoon for the rest of the day. I think you might find one made around five to a Russian number.’

  ‘Calling about what?’

  ‘You’re aware of the murder in Glasgow of Aldorino Moscardinetto, the film director?’ Skinner asked her.

  ‘Of course. The London media don’t ignore everything that happens in Scotland. What’s the connection to Mechikov?’

  ‘Mechikov killed him.’

  ‘What? Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Pretty much. We can place him in the vicinity of the
murder, and by now I’m sure the Gartcosh SOCOs will have picked up evidence that will put him in the room. At my request the police have been letting him run for now, to see where he took them. Do something for me, please, Amanda – or rather do it for Detective Inspector Charlotte Mann. Put a stop-and-detain order on Swords, or Uilyam Mechikov, whichever passport he uses, at all ports and airports. Also, can you have someone check as soon as possible whether he was on any flight to London late Friday night or Saturday morning, and if so, when he flew back to Scotland.’

  ‘Will do. Does this relate to the murder of Speight, Bob?’

  ‘There is a connection between the two men,’ he replied, ‘and obviously it suggests a connection between their deaths.’

  ‘You don’t sound convinced.’

  ‘I still need to be. I don’t believe the Italian’s murder was planned; it looks to me like a burglary interrupted. In fact I’m slightly surprised that a chubby mid-forties guy like Swords was able to do it. Aldorino was ten years younger than him and didn’t look out of shape.’

  ‘Don’t discount him. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and Yeltsin climbed on board that tank and asked its crew whose side they were on, if our Uilyam wasn’t driving it, he was in one very like it in the same city. Those tank corps people were elite.’

  ‘Noted. You’d get a laugh for that in Scotland, by the way.’

  ‘What?’ she asked, puzzled.

  ‘Our Uilyam. Translates as Oor Wullie, our most famous wee boy.’

  ‘I’m always amazed by the breadth of your Scottish culture,’ she replied.

  Thirty-Eight

  ‘Swords has gone,’ Dan Provan announced as he strode into Mann’s office. ‘When DC Gowans checked back with Beedham’s, they told him that he’d left yesterday morning. He didnae check out or anythin’, just stuck a bag in his motor and drove away. I’ve sent the nearest available uniforms in there to seal off his room, and Gowans is on the way too, tae see what he’s left behind him, if anything. I’ve put an advisory out for his car, UK-wide.’