A Brush With Death

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘But that wouldn’t have suited you at all, would it, Mr Butler?’ the DI challenged. ‘Faye might have been all right for a bit of horizontal jogging, but you didn’t want anything more than that, did you?’

  ‘Frankly, no. But look, Leo never did know about us, or I’d have heard about it.’

  ‘And Faye never did know about Leo and Sandra having a relationship?’

  ‘Christ, no, or the whole world would have heard.’

  ‘How did you find out?’ Mann asked.

  ‘The manager of the Blacksmith told me; he’s a bit of a gossip. I warned him that if he breathed a word to anyone else, he’d be out of a job and unemployable.’

  ‘When did you learn they were engaged?’

  ‘Same time as you lot did, I suppose. When the lawyer called and told me about Leo’s letter, me being an executor.’

  ‘You didn’t know earlier, and you didn’t let it slip?’

  He shook his head and looked at the DI. ‘No, absolutely not, I swear.’

  ‘Was there anything else you kept from Leo apart from you and Faye?’ Provan asked.

  ‘Nothing; just that one thing.’

  ‘What about Gene Alderney’s passport application?’

  ‘That? It was ten years ago. No, he never knew about that. How’s it relevant today?’

  ‘You’ll find out quite soon,’ the DS chuckled, ‘when the folk frae the Passport Office ring your doorbell.’

  Forty-Seven

  ‘You’re sure?’ Skinner asked the faces on screen.

  ‘Yes,’ Lottie Mann answered. ‘Butler knew they were together, but he didn’t know about the two of them being engaged. If Leo didn’t tell his oldest friend, we can’t see him having told anyone else. Could Sandra have let it slip?’

  ‘No way. She was dead set on keeping the secret until they were long gone.’

  ‘Are we fixating on Faye as the prime suspect here?’ she ventured. ‘Should we be looking at someone else?’

  ‘Don’t rule anybody out,’ he said, ‘but if she didn’t know, she had little or no motive. Have you spoken to the hotel manager?’

  ‘As soon as we were finished with Gino. He swears, on pain of prosecution, that he didn’t tell anyone else about Leo and Sandra.’

  ‘What about Gordon?’

  ‘We’ve seen him too; we caught up with him at the uni this morning, between classes. He’s still heartbroken over his father’s death, but he was genuinely astonished when we told him that the Alexandra he met was Faye’s sister, and that his dad was going to marry her.’

  ‘We can rule him out, Bob,’ Provan insisted, ‘as a suspect and as a leak. The kid was genuine. Other than him, I cannae see anyone else who’d have known about the relationship.’

  ‘I can,’ Skinner countered.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Let me follow that up. I have another suggestion for you two. Gino Butler styles himself as Leo’s best friend, but I’m not sure that he was.’

  ‘If not him, who?’ the DS challenged.

  ‘Rae Letts. Sandra said I shouldn’t underestimate the bond between Leo and Gordon. Likewise, her relationship with Leo was very strong. I had that impression when I spoke to her, and it was confirmed by Charlie Baxter, who stayed with them in Las Vegas.’

  ‘Do you know where we’ll find her?’

  ‘At the Blacksmith, I think. She told me she wanted to stay for Leo’s funeral, and that Gino had said she could. While you interview her, I’ll make a call to check out my suspicion.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Mann said.

  She was about to cut the video connection when Provan stopped her. ‘Where are you just now, Bob?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m in my office in Edinburgh,’ Skinner replied. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Just wondering. How do you find the life? After the polis, I mean.’

  ‘Honestly? I love it, I love the freedom, I love the variety of work I have, I love being able to apply skills to my media work that I never even knew I had, and I love being able to use the old ones when I’m asked, and at my discretion. Do I miss being a cop? Not for a single second. Is that enough for you, Dan?’

  ‘That’s fine. Thanks very much. Cheerio the now.’ He hit the disconnect button.

  ‘What was that about?’ Lottie asked, as the boring police-service wallpaper reappeared on her computer screen.

  ‘Life, kid,’ he murmured, ‘and about a growing realisation that there may be more to it than I’ve acknowledged for the last ten years or so.’

  ‘Going to Australia has opened your eyes, hasn’t it?’ she laughed.

  ‘More than Australia, my lovely lass, more than Australia.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘I’ll go and check that Rae Letts is still at the Blacksmith.’

  She looked after him as he left her office, gazing at the back of the neat, well-groomed, articulate, caring man that she had known for all her police career, and yet not known at all, not properly. Strange, unexpected thoughts were forming in her mind as her mobile sounded.

  ‘Tsha!’ Irked by the interruption, she snatched it from her desk. Her face darkened as she read the caller display.

  ‘Scott,’ she snapped. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want my son back,’ he retorted, ‘and next Thursday I’m getting him back. The hearing date’s set, and I am so looking forward to it. I’ll enjoy watching you hurt when the sheriff takes Jakey off you. You will rue the day that you crossed me and my dad.’

  She snapped. ‘You know what?’ Heads turned in the outer office as she shouted. ‘You and your vicious shite of a father can both go and fuck yourselves. I am going to fucking have you both, and boy, will I revel in your pain!’

  Forty-Eight

  As she walked into the Blacksmith, Lottie Mann was still thinking about her explosive exchange with her former husband – as was Dan Provan, by her side, although she did not know it. Their first sight of Rae Letts brought them back to the job in hand.

  She was waiting for them in the hotel’s small lobby, standing with her child held on her left hip, dressed in black from head to foot. It was her serenity, even more than her unquestionable beauty, that impressed them both. She had the bearing of a woman who treated life’s blessings and its curses with equal equanimity, being neither raised too high nor brought too low.

  She lowered Raeleen to the ground and extended her hand as they approached. Provan reached her first and took it, wondering for a moment whether he should shake it or kiss it.

  ‘You be the detectives?’ she began. ‘Detective Mann, Detective Provan?’

  ‘That’s us,’ the DI said. ‘Lottie Mann. Detective inspector, to be precise.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rae exclaimed. ‘I’m not used to British ways.’

  ‘Dinna you worry,’ Provan told her. ‘We get called that all the time these days. American TV’s changing everything; Ah’m a Blue Bloods fan myself.’

  She smiled, and the lobby seemed to grow a little lighter. ‘I don’t think I quite fit the typical viewer profile of that show. Do you want to go somewhere private?’ she asked. ‘We can go to my bungalow.’

  ‘Here will be fine,’ Mann assured her, heading towards a small waiting area, where four chairs were grouped around a low table. ‘I don’t think this is going to get busy any time soon.’

  ‘No, it’s not; we have a party in this evening, but nothing till then. I should explain: I’m going to be here for a while, and I didn’t want to sit on my hands, so I asked the manager if I could help out as a receptionist. He was happy I should, especially as I don’t need to be paid.’

  ‘How’s business?’ Provan asked, as they sat, the toddler Raeleen on the floor beside her mother, playing with an ageless Barbie doll.

  ‘Since Monday, it’s gone crazy. Fridays through Sundays, we don’t have a spare room or table for
the next four weeks. Ghouls, I guess, coming to see where Leo ate his last meal.’ She looked at Mann. ‘Can you guys give me any idea yet when the funeral might be?’

  ‘Sorry,’ the DI replied. ‘That’s not our call. We have a person called the procurator fiscal; in the US that would be the district attorney. Indirectly, he’s our boss and he makes that decision.’

  ‘Not the coroner?’

  ‘We don’t have one of them, not in Scotland. The fiscal fills that role. I can’t even make a guess about your question, as we don’t have a definitive cause of death yet.’

  ‘But you are treating it as a homicide, yes, like Aldorino?’

  ‘Yes, we are. Did you know Signor Moscardinetto?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. He came to visit in Vegas six weeks ago, then I saw him again last Friday. He and Leo went out on the lake in the boat when he was there. They had something cooking between them, but I didn’t ask and Leo didn’t volunteer. The newspapers are saying this morning you got a suspect in custody. They say it was a robbery gone wrong. Is that so?’

  ‘More or less,’ Provan admitted. ‘There’s no link to Leo’s death, though; we’re satisfied about that.’

  ‘Then who did kill him?’ She raised her chin and looked the DS in the eye. ‘Not me,’ she declared. ‘Don’t you ask me that, now. That man was golden, he was precious. If I could ever kill anyone, it would be the man did that to him.’

  ‘You’re not a suspect, Ms Letts,’ Mann promised her. ‘Staff and other witnesses place you here all night, so you had no opportunity. You could have had a motive, though. Did you know that Leo was intending to leave Scotland and the US, to base himself in the Bahamas full time, and also that he was planning to be married?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ She glanced down at Raeleen, who was twisting Barbie’s leg in an unnatural direction. ‘Don’t do that, honey,’ she whispered.

  ‘When did you learn? Who told you?’

  ‘Last Friday evening. Leo did. Once the dinner and all the speeching was over, he took me to one side and said he wanted to see Raeleen. So we went out to the bungalow. She was asleep; he just stood there looking at her for a while. Then he said to me, “Rae, I have something to tell you that I want you to keep to yourself for a day or two. Things are going to be different. I’ve found the woman I want to marry, and we’re going away together. Her name’s Sandra, she’s serious but she’s nice, and I love her. You and Raeleen will always be family, and you can come to visit us in the Bahamas any time you like, but that’s the way it’s going to be.” The way he looked at me, I’ve never seen anybody look so sorry.’

  ‘How did you react?’

  ‘Did I blow my stack, you mean? No, I didn’t, because I’d been expecting it. The last few times he stayed in Vegas, all through last year in fact, he slept in another room and we never had sex at all. He didn’t say anything, but there was something about him that had never been there before. When he told me, I was sad, but I was happy for him too. He never promised me a thing, but he always treated me like a princess, and our daughter like a little queen. I knew that would never change, so I was . . . content. I said that to him, kissed him on the forehead and we went back to the party. A little after that, he left on his Harley. When I heard he was dead, my first thought was that he’d crashed the thing in the dark, but he didn’t, did he?’

  ‘No, he was poisoned.’

  Her face contorted as if she was sharing his pain. ‘Shit, that’s awful.’

  ‘Rae,’ Provan said, ‘when you spoke to Mr Skinner, you never told him this.’

  ‘He never axed,’ she countered. ‘I was in shock; maybes I still am. I didn’t feel then that I should be sharing a secret Leo had entrusted to me.’

  ‘Understood,’ Mann murmured. ‘Do you know if he shared it with anyone else?’

  ‘I know he didn’t, because he told me he hadn’t and he never lied to me.’

  ‘The other women in his life, the mothers of his other children; did you speak to them during the dinner?’

  ‘No. Faye I wouldn’t ’cos that one always hated me. Trudi was sat on the other side of the auditorium. Mind you,’ she added, ‘I did hear them talking to each other. Yelling, more like. I went to the ladies’ room one time, as they were serving coffee, and I hadn’t even got the door open ’fore I heard them going at it. One of them said Leo’s name, not sure which, but next I hear Trudi shout, “That’s all you fuckin’ know.” Then I walked in, and Faye turned on me, called me something horrible. I ignored her, walked past her. I don’t know what it was about, but that Faye, the way she looked; I thought I might have saved Trudi’s life by opening that door.’

  Forty-Nine

  ‘The same Bob Skinner who was briefly our chief constable in the good old days?’ Joy Herbert asked.

  ‘The same, and I’m so glad you feel that way,’ he replied.

  ‘How can I help you, Mr Skinner? I’d like to think you’re after my professional services, but I suspect that a man of your age and status has decent advice already.’

  ‘I do,’ he acknowledged, ‘but I have friends, and my people have a full dance card at the moment. I know you’ve just sustained a loss from yours, and that’s why I’m calling.’

  In the silence that followed, he could sense caution and a change of attitude. ‘As I’m sure you’re aware,’ the solicitor said eventually, ‘I can’t discuss my clients’ affairs, not even those who are inconveniently dead. I assume that you’re referring to Leo, Leo Speight the boxer.’

  ‘Also Leo Speight the property developer and father of the decade. I wish I’d met him while he was alive. He seems to have been quite a guy.’

  ‘He was all that; he made his fortune in the most brutal business, but meet him and you’d think he was a writer, or an academic. There was nothing threatening about him at all, and nothing ostentatious. Your choice of words suggests that you only met him after he was dead. Am I right about that?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I won’t bore you with the story of how I came to be involved with the investigation of his death, but I am, for my sins . . . or should I say for someone else’s. I don’t need to discuss his business with you, Mrs Herbert. I’ve already spoken to people on both sides of it and to members of his extended family, so I know about it. I’m aware that his estate is far more valuable than any of the sports-page estimates. As for the contents of his will, I know what they are because the investigating officers gave me the main details. I also passed a copy of the late addition on to Sandra Bulloch, but I didn’t look at it. If I had, I wouldn’t need to ask you this question. Who witnessed his signature?’

  He heard an exclamation that might have been a sigh of relief. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can tell you that without bringing the wrath of the Law Society down on my head. The signature on the main document, the primary will, which was drafted by my office, was witnessed by a member of my staff; that’s the norm, as I’m sure you know from personal experience. However, the letter that I received on Tuesday, amending the original – the informal writing, as Scots law describes it – was signed by Leo in another location. That was witnessed, complete with an attestation as to his state of mind, by another individual. That person is a beneficiary in the original will, but is not mentioned in or affected by the alteration: it was Trudi Pollock.’

  Fifty

  ‘How can I help, DI Mann?’ she asked, facing them in the cramped little office. ‘I told you everything I know last time.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Ms Pollock,’ Mann countered. ‘You answered all our questions. We have a couple more that we need to put to you.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll help if I can.’

  ‘Thanks. I want to go back to last week, to the time when Leo came into the office here. You told us before that he did a bit of business. We’d like to know what that was.’

  She sighed and looked at her desk. ‘He went onto the computer and he
wrote a document, a letter, then he asked me to do an address label for an envelope. The address was his lawyer’s, Herbert Chesters, in George Square. While I was doing that, he printed out the thing, then he signed it and asked me to witness his signature; so I did. It was kind of formal, attesting that it was his signature and that he was of sound mind.’

  ‘Did he show you the letter?’

  ‘No, he didn’t; he put it straight in the envelope and sealed it. I was going to give him a stamp but he said it had to go recorded delivery and had to go to the post office.’ She looked away, and her cheeks went a tell-tale pink.

  ‘Go on, hen,’ Provan said quietly.

  ‘I shouldn’t have,’ Trudi Pollock continued, ‘but I couldn’t help myself. As he was leaving, Leo turned in the doorway and said, “Trudi, make sure you empty the trashcan on that computer. I forgot to do it.” I went to do that, but to access it, you have to open it up. When I did, there was only the one document there, the one he’d created. It was headed “Will amendment”. I really, really shouldn’t have but I was too curious; I opened it and I read it.’ She looked at the detectives. ‘Do you know what it was?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mann said. ‘It was what it said. It changed his will to include Sandra Bulloch, the woman he intended to marry. They were going off together.’

  She nodded. ‘That’s right, although I never knew they were going away.’

  ‘Did you know who Sandra was?’

  ‘I was pretty sure. I knew that Faye had a sister and I thought that was her name. Gino mentioned her once; he said she was a police officer. Is that right?’

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ Provan confirmed. ‘Detective chief inspector. In fact she was our boss. She was called to the scene when Leo’s body was found.’

  Trudi’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh the poor cow,’ she murmured. ‘Imagine that. I’m sorry, I never meant to call her a cow; I never meant anything bad . . .’

  ‘That’s okay,’ the DS assured her. ‘We know you didn’t. We want to move on now, to Friday night at the party. We’ve been told that you and Faye Bulloch had an argument there, in the ladies’ room.’