by Helen Fields
‘Two men. I suspect both live in the Glasgow area. The smaller one is known as Knuckles. The larger is called Perry, although I don’t know if that’s a first name or a surname. I’ve written out descriptions of them for you.’ She handed over a scrap of paper. ‘Rewrite the descriptions in your own handwriting then destroy my note. The car I saw them driving was a black Audi. I didn’t get the registration number. We need to know if there is any evidence of that car having been involved in the accident with Louis Jones. I’ve just emailed the crash investigator although obviously I can’t ask any specific questions.’
‘Was there was any damage to the Audi that you saw?’ Callanach asked.
‘I didn’t get a close enough look and it was under fairly stressful circumstances. I was hiding in a hedgerow at the time.’
‘If it was superficial they could have had it repaired by now anyway,’ Callanach said. ‘But we may also be able to place the vehicle near the scene of Jones’ killing later. I’ll get Tripp to check the CCTV in the area of the golf club at the time of the murder for similar vehicles.’ There was a knock at the door and Tripp appeared. ‘God almighty, Tripp, do you have special powers?’ Callanach asked.
‘I can touch the end of my nose with the tip of my tongue,’ Tripp said, sounding confused.
‘Not quite what I was thinking,’ Callanach said. ‘Was there anything specific you wanted me for?’
‘Just to say I’ve made a list of all the Crystal staff members. I’m off to visit each one this morning and take a statement regarding access to Cordelia’s office drawers, food and drink,’ Tripp said.
‘Good. There’s some CCTV I need looked at when you’re back so, I’ll leave a note on your desk about that,’ Callanach said.
‘Well done, Tripp. Make sure you get a feeling for any grudges Cordelia’s staff might have held. Work disputes, disciplinary notes, working conditions – the usual,’ Ava said. ‘But out of courtesy, and so I don’t have to grovel to the Superintendent again this week, perhaps don’t start knocking on doors until after 9am, Detective Constable.’ Tripp reddened and checked his watch. ‘I meant to ask about your notes on the Louis Jones case. You left me contact details for someone called Janet Monroe. Did you speak to her?’
‘I did, ma’am. She’s in Chief Inspector Dimitri’s squad although she’s off on early maternity leave now,’ Tripp said.
‘Yes, that was her. The kitten in the dog fight,’ Ava said. ‘She must hate me.’
‘Sir, gentleman at the desk to see you. Says he’s been trying your mobile but you’re not picking up,’ PC Biddlecombe mumbled down the phone line through a mouthful of food. Callanach held his desk phone further from his ear to dampen the sound of chewing.
‘I don’t suppose you managed to take a name, did you?’ he asked.
‘Half a mo,’ she spluttered. ‘He’s asking for your name.’
‘I thought he might want that. Lance Proudfoot. I’m a journalist. Tell him I’ve a gift for him,’ Lance said.
‘Right you are. Sir, it’s …’
‘Dieu, aide-moi,’ Callanach whispered. God help me. PC Biddlecombe was a kind soul but she was about as sharp as a marrow. ‘I heard, Constable. You were holding the phone as he was talking, remember?’
‘Super. I’ll sign him in then, shall I?’ Biddlecombe asked.
‘Well done. He can come up to my office unaccompanied. Lance knows where to find me.’ Callanach put the phone down, aware that Lance was laughing in the background. He made a few notes to get some preliminaries going on the Glasgow suspects until Lance arrived at his door.
‘Happy Christmas,’ Lance said, putting a brown paper bag down on Callanach’s desk.
‘It’s not Christmas. I’m pretty sure I remember what date that falls on,’ Callanach said, peering inside the bag at a white box.
‘It’s a present, anyway. There’s no gift receipt, so you’ll just have to trust my judgement.’ Callanach pulled a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape from the bag, noting the year and whistling appreciatively.
‘That’s very thoughtful, not to mention generous. Is there a story attached?’ Callanach said.
‘On my news blog you’ll find an article, fully researched and extremely well written if I say so myself. It explores the growing trend in anonymous donations to charity. Why donors don’t want recognition, the good the money does, and the psychological effect of making a difference without public reward. I’ve had rather a good response to it, been asked to produce some follow-up pieces for a couple of Nationals. Proper money on offer, too. Thought I’d repay the creative prompt.’
‘You didn’t need to,’ Callanach said. ‘Although I’m certainly not doing anything as foolish as handing back the wine.’
‘I thought we might get brunch. It’s a Saturday after all. Even detective inspectors are allowed to eat at the weekend.’ Lance smiled.
‘Another time?’ Callanach asked. ‘I’ve got a lot to do …’
‘And not enough time to do it,’ Lance finished for him.
‘More that I’m trying to figure out how to do it,’ Callanach said.
Lance sat down. ‘You could always try asking for help,’ he said. ‘You managed it a couple of times before, although I get the impression it might not be your strongest skill.’
‘I can’t, Lance. You’ve done enough already. Last time I dragged you into a case you ended up with a dislocated ankle, as you like to remind me. You have writing to be getting on with,’ Callanach replied.
‘Strangely my experiences with you have made writing a somewhat dull pleasure compared to running the gauntlet of criminal investigations. Will you not throw an old dog a bone? It’s obviously something you can’t figure out through normal channels or it wouldn’t be testing you so hard,’ Lance said. ‘God, will you make me beg, man? I can write article after article, but the days are trickling through my hands. I want to help, Luc. Not for you, but for myself.’
‘These are bad people,’ Callanach said.
‘If I thought I was helping fit up good people, I’d be worried.’ Lance smiled.
‘The dangerous kind of bad. You’re not to go near them. It’s just additional information I need. Do you have any contacts in Glasgow who’ll keep their mouths shut for you?’
‘As a young man I played in a Glaswegian rugby team. When you share showers with a man, you soon find out if he can keep secrets or not,’ Lance said.
‘Now we’re definitely not going out for brunch,’ Callanach said. He dashed some notes on a piece of paper and handed it across his desk. ‘Two names, local thugs I think, but you don’t want to be on their radar. Anything you can get. Addresses, vehicles, known associates.’
‘Can you tell me what it is they’ve done?’ Lance asked.
‘Safer to say the list of things they’re not prepared to do might be very short indeed. Call me the second you have anything, then stop. No following up, no day trips to Glasgow. If you want to keep all your limbs attached don’t mention Louis Jones’ name. I want your word.’
‘I thought the French were supposed to be charming,’ Lance said. Callanach stared at him. ‘All right, you have my word.’ He walked to the door.
‘Lance?’ Callanach said. ‘Stay safe.’ He watched as Lance disappeared out of view. He reminded Callanach of the father he’d spent his life imagining. He wondered about the sense of letting Lance getting involved, shaking off his disquiet. His friend was an old-school journalist. In the past, he’d chased stories more dangerous than this one all over the world. He’d know if he was getting out of his depth, Callanach told himself. Lance would be fine.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Detective Constable Tripp was knocking on the front door of Crystal’s second staff member by 9.15am. His first interview had been cut short by a coughing bout from a woman’s three-year-old son that had required him to exit quickly, hoping he hadn’t caught anything that would end with a sick day. It was December and he hadn’t missed a single hour of work all year.
Eventually, a window next to the front door opened and a man stuck his head out.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Sorry to disturb you, sir.’ He held up his police identification. ‘I’m Detective Constable Max Tripp with the Major Investigation Team. Would you be Mr Liam Hood?’
‘It’s not even ten o’clock,’ he said. ‘Could you not have phoned ahead?’
‘It’s an ongoing investigation. Sometimes things crop up. I apologise for the inconvenience. Could you spare a few minutes? It’s just routine,’ Tripp said. The window slammed shut and the front door opened seconds later.
‘Come on then. It’s bloody freezing air you’re letting in.’ Liam Hood was in his fifties, greying, with a map of blood vessels across his nose that depicted a journey through many bottles of alcohol. The carpet was threadbare and a dull lightbulb hung from a fitting devoid of such frills as a lampshade.
‘My wife left me. I haven’t decorated since. A light’s a light,’ Hood said. ‘I suppose you’ll want to sit down.’ He indicated a wooden chair that Tripp took without staring anywhere else in the room. Liam Hood was as perceptive as he was gruff, but he didn’t stand out as the ideal candidate to be working for a charity. ‘Hurry up and talk,’ Hood said as Tripp took out his notes.
‘You worked with Cordelia Muir’s charity for more than three years, I gather,’ Tripp began.
‘Are we going through it week by week because I had plans tomorrow,’ Hood said.
Tripp did his best to look amused. ‘What was your relationship like with Mrs Muir?’ he asked.
‘Cordelia was my boss. She told me what to do, controlled what I earned and gave me the grand total of twenty-four days off a year. How well do you get on with your boss?’ Hood growled.
‘Actually, my boss is a great bloke. Sometimes people don’t really get him, but to me he’s—’
‘I didn’t want you to actually answer that. Could you explain what you’re doing here? This isn’t routine. We were told Cordelia died from complications with medication. Why all the questions suddenly?’ Hood asked.
‘We’re following up all possible investigative routes at this point. What was it like working for Mrs Muir?’ Tripp responded.
‘She was too lenient. Bit of a soft touch if you ask me. Someone’s kid had a school sports day, no question about it, they were straight off to watch the egg and spoon race. Slight temperature? Couple of days in bed, get well soon cards all round. I kept telling her she needed to toughen up but she always spouted some quote about paying it forward or whatever.’
‘Was anyone taking advantage of her, in your opinion?’ Tripp asked, keeping his eyes on his notebook.
Hood took his time before answering. ‘You’re on a dirt- digging mission.’
‘It might be easier if you would just answer the questions. This is for completeness. We have no specific target in mind,’ Tripp said.
‘Everyone in that office was gutted when she died, that’s the truth. They might be a bit lazy sometimes, take the piss with the sick days once in a while, but no one wanted her gone. I told her to get herself to the doctor, but she was happy to wait for an appointment rather than making a fuss and insisting on being seen early. Bloody typical. All those hypochondriacs clogging up the system with their ingrowing toenails. If she’d been seen earlier … sod it. Can’t turn back the clock, can you?’
Tripp was writing furiously. ‘Sorry, you know she had a doctor’s appointment booked how?’
‘We talked about it at the office. Cordelia was really suffering, looked like a bad case of flu. She was sweaty, pale. We all knew she’d been sick a few times but it wasn’t in her to go home ill. Eventually she agreed to get an appointment. The next thing we knew, she was dead.’
‘And who in the office had access to her desk?’ Tripp asked.
‘Everyone. No one was precious about that stuff. If you needed to borrow a notebook or a calculator you went to someone else’s desk. Even Cordelia’s, except for her ink-pen. Her husband gave her that. It was the one thing we all knew not to touch.’
Tripp closed his notebook and stood up. ‘Thank you, Mr Hood. I appreciate your time. I’ll leave you to your weekend.’
From his car, Tripp called the station to get confirmation of Cordelia Muir’s doctor’s appointment. The tragedy was all the more poignant if it might have been avoided. Most of all, it confirmed what they had assumed to date: Mrs Muir had no idea why she was sick. Twenty minutes later he was standing on the next doorstep when a call came through from the station.
‘DC Tripp. We’ve had confirmation that Mrs Muir did have an appointment booked to see a Dr Marylewski. The receptionist recalls the booking.’
‘Thanks, confirms what I’ve been told this morning. I can’t believe the receptionist remembered it. Whenever I call the doctor’s surgery, the receptionist can’t remember my name from one minute to the next,’ Tripp said, knocking on the door.
‘To be fair, it only rang a bell because she’d offered an earlier appointment, which was turned down. She said that when she heard Mrs Muir had died, she was devastated to think it might have been different if she’d been available on the earlier date.’
The door opened. ‘Yes?’ A woman stood in a tracksuit, chewing a bacon sandwich.
‘I’m so sorry, one minute,’ Tripp said to her, holding up his badge and stepping off the doorstep to talk privately. ‘Did the receptionist say why Mrs Muir turned down the earlier appointment?’
‘It wasn’t Mrs Muir she spoke to. Apparently, it was a young man, although she didn’t catch his name. Said he worked with Mrs Muir and had been asked to phone on her behalf.’
Tripp frowned at the pavement. Cordelia Muir had been sick for a while by then. According to Liam Hood she’d finally given in and accepted the need to see a doctor. It must have been a fairly important matter to have taken priority in her diary over getting medical attention.
‘I’ll be back later,’ he muttered to the figure on the doorstep. ‘Apologies for having bothered you.’ The door was shut before he made it off the front step.
Fifteen minutes later he was back at the station accessing Cordelia Muir’s online diary, and cross-referencing it with the weekly planner she kept in her handbag. The doctor’s appointment was in there, but there was nothing else that appeared to be of major importance booked in for the preceding days. No cogent reason for turning down an earlier appointment. Tripp phoned Cordelia’s Muir’s daughter who confirmed her mother’s intention to get checked out with a doctor, then he called Cordelia’s assistant, Liam Hood.
‘Mr Hood, this is DC Tripp. We spoke earlier today,’ he began.
‘Did I strike you as suffering some form of dementia? Only I remember you being here perfectly well. What is it you want this time?’ Hood snarled.
‘The doctor’s appointment. I traced it, but the receptionist said it was made by a young man from the office. I can’t seem to identify who that would have been from the staff details I have here,’ Tripp said.
‘It must have been that little git, Jeremy,’ Hood said.
‘I don’t have anyone called Jeremy on the staff logs,’ Tripp said. ‘He’s not on the payroll or mentioned in your human resources file.’
‘That’s because he’s a volunteer. Comes in a couple of days a week and he’s not on payroll. Reckons he’s doing it to put something back, whatever the hell that means. As he’s not an employee he wouldn’t have had the sort of files we create for a new staff member. He filled in an application form though. Not sure where it’ll be.’
‘I don’t suppose you’d be prepared to meet me at the office and help locate that document, would you?’ Tripp asked quietly.
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake. I have no idea if my job still exists, it’s the weekend, and you want me to drive into the office and help you find a piece of paper?’ Hood asked.
‘I appreciate it’s a lot to—’
‘Half an hour,’ Hood muttered before hanging up.
Tripp said
a soft thank-you into the air and put his coat on again, sticking his head around Callanach’s door. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘There’s something I think you should know.’
Chapter Forty
Ava needed some way of ascertaining, beyond any doubt, Ramon Trescoe’s part in Louis Jones’ death. If he’d killed Jones, he was responsible for the Chief’s suicide too. Callanach had ruined her chance of getting close to him when he’d hauled her out of The Maz, so an alternative plan was required. Thankfully, a phone call to the Glasgow branch of Police Scotland opened up a possibility. Sandy Peterson, better known to Glasgow’s beat officers as Sugar who Ava had met at The Maz, had numerous previous convictions for public solicitation and had served time in HMP Cornton Vale for a string of thefts and a drug deal gone wrong. The photo Ava brought up on the computer screen matched Ava’s memory of Sugar from the club, even if there were more lines around the girl’s eyes these days. Sugar also had an active Facebook page. Not wise, Ava thought, given the sort of men she attracted during her working hours. The social media page, with the sort of non-existent security settings that would have the parents of a teenager in meltdown, led to a mobile number, and that was all Ava needed.
She couldn’t send an anonymous message, that would be too obvious, but Sugar wasn’t one for good organisation, that much was clear from what she posted. People who were poorly organised lost track of friends, phone numbers and contact details all the time. Ava put on her coat and went shopping. An hour later she was back at her desk taking a new pay-as-you-go mobile from her pocket. No contract. Untraceable. Just what she needed.
Typing in Sugar’s mobile number, she formulated a message. ‘Hey Sugar. Long time no see babes. I was up at Glenochil holiday camp yesterday visiting Jimmy. They’re all talking about The Maz. That’s where you work, dontcha? Haven’t seen you for ages so sending hugs. Loadsa love xxx.’ Ava added some suitable emoticons as an afterthought and put the mobile down, as her desk phone began to ring.