Head Shot bs-12

by Quintin Jardine

  'For the record, Ivy Brennan's on the fringe of something else I'm involved in, something personal. When she cal ed me last night, I didn't real y think she knew anything about Beppe or his murder. I'm still not sure she didn't make up that story about the argument in the sauna, but she volunteered it, so I passed it on to you, informal y.

  'She's a funny one, is Ivy, but she does know my cousin Paula. I've checked that out. If you're running your investigation properly, you'll send a couple of officers along to re-interview her, for the record. Or are you going to surprise me? Have you made an arrest already?'

  'If I had, you'd have been the first to know,' Jay replied, stiffly.

  'Have you got any new leads, then?'

  'We might have. We found a taxi-driver who said he dropped a couple off on the corner of the street that leads to your uncle's place, just before nine.'

  'Descriptions?'

  'She was late twenties, he was older; that was the best he could do.

  You know how many fares these guys have on a Friday night.'

  'Anything else?'

  'We've been looking at the property side with your other cousin's husband, Stan Coia; to see whether your family might have had any tenants with a grievance against the landlord.'

  'I doubt it. Stan's a good bloke; he keeps the portfolio in first-class shape. Maintenance can be a good investment, in terms of lower insurance premiums. I can't see anyone having grounds for complaint, not to the extent of wanting to put a bul et in Beppe.'

  'Maybe not.' Jay paused. 'Did you know that the Viareggio Trust owns a bonded warehouse?' he asked.

  'Yes, I do know that, as a matter of fact. We use it to bond wines from Italy for the deli chain, and we rent out space there to other importers.'

  'Yes, that's right. There was one funny thing that Mr Coia mentioned.

  A firm rented space, but never used it; they didn't pass a single case of wine through there. A few months back, your uncle wrote to them… well, Coia wrote the letter, but Mr Viareggio signed it… and said that he intended to terminate their lease so that it could be made available to someone who actual y needed it. There's a clause in the agreement that lets him do that.

  'The tenant's response was very angry and aggressive. It was so threatening, in fact, that Mr Coia was going to back off, but your uncle Beppe insisted that they go ahead. So legal papers were served a couple of weeks ago.'

  'What was the name of the firm?'

  'Essary and Frances Limited; it's registered at the office of its solicitor, and the directors are named as Mr Magnus Essary and Ms El a Frances.'

  'You fol owing it up?'

  'I've got people on it as we speak. Oh, and by the way, Mario; this time I'd be grateful if you left it to them.'

  McGuire slammed the phone back into its cradle. He was still scowling when Dan Pringle walked into his office.

  'You set it up right here in the heart of the city,' said Detective Chief Inspector Mary Chambers; as she gazed at the young man, her plain square face was lit with a mix of incredulity and amusement. 'Excuse my use of industrial language, but did you clever boys real y think we're as lucking stupid as that?'

  'Well yes, actually,' he replied.

  'They think that in Malaysia too; I was there last week at a conference.

  There's a queue of guys like you in prisons out in south east Asia, all waiting to be hanged.'

  She sighed. 'Not just in the heart of the city, mind you. Oh no, you two have to set up your Ecstasy lab less than half a mile from a divisional police office.' She paused as the midday train rattled by outside, and looked around the windowless space of the small industrial unit which had been turned into a chemical factory.

  'Where better to hide than the heart of a city?' the tal youth asked.

  'Just about anywhere,' Maggie Rose told him. 'We've got a concentration of manpower here that you won't find anywhere else.'

  He looked at her scornful y. 'You didn't catch us. We were grassed up.'

  'You know al the slang, too,' said Chambers, shaking her head. 'You poor lads. Al those brains and no common sense; you made the tabs local y, you sold them local y, and you used stupid bloody students like yourselves to peddle them for you. Of course you were grassed up! Did you real y think those two kids were going to do time for you, once they were offered the chance of being Crown witnesses?'

  'It's their word against ours.'

  The chief inspector looked at the second young man; there was raw fear in his voice and his chin was trembling. 'No, son,' she said, wearily.

  'It's your word against ours, mine and Detective Superintendent Rose and DS McConochie and DC Guthrie, who's taking photographs of your equipment in situ, just as he's been taking shots of you two and the others, coming in and out of this place for the last week.

  'There's that, and then there's the name on the lease for this place. I have got that right, haven't I? I'm not mixed up between the two of you, am I? You are Brian Litster and he's Raymond Weston.' The boy nodded.

  'Right, that's enough. Beano,' snapped the other. 'No more talk. Arrest us and caution us, if that's what you're going to do. Inspector.'

  'Too right that's what I'm going to do, Mr Weston.'

  'Good.' He took a phone from his pocket. 'Then I'l be entitled to cal my father.'

  Chambers shrugged her broad shoulders. 'You can cal him right now, if you want. Tell him you're being arrested and taken to the Torphichen Place police office.'

  Raymond Weston looked at her in surprise for a moment, then dialled a number. 'Dad,' he said, and as he spoke his voice took on an urgent, frightened tone that had not been there before. 'I've been picked up by the police. They've set me up. I told you that guy Martin would have it in for me, and I was right.' He paused for a few seconds. 'Torphichen Place, they said. No, I won't say anything til you and he get there.'

  46

  He put the phone back in his pocket. The head of the Drugs Squad shook her head and smiled. 'I see we're in for a busy day. George,' she called to Detective Sergeant McConochie. 'Go through the formalities with these two, and then get them round the corner. I don't imagine that this one's dad will be too long in getting there.' She turned to Rose. 'Will you come back to the office in my car?'

  'Fine,' the superintendent replied, a frown on her face, and followed her outside.

  'Who's his father, I wonder?' Chambers mused as she slid behind the wheel.

  'I can tel you that. He's Professor Nolan Weston, and he's a surgeon at the Western.'

  'And what was that stuff about? The bit about us having it in for him?'

  The superintendent took a deep breath, then blew it out. 'Potentially it's a mess, if Weston goes to trial. There was an investigation a while back into the death of his girlfriend's uncle. Dan Pringle was in my job then, and he thought Weston might have had something to do with it. He offered an alibi; he told Dan that he'd been in bed with someone at the time; not his girlfriend, someone else. It turned out that he was telling the truth.

  'The other woman was Andy Martin's fiancee.'

  'What? Karen?'

  'No, this was before Karen. At the time, Andy was engaged to Bob Skinner's daughter, Alex.'

  'Oh Jesus!' exclaimed Chambers. 'Weston's not still seeing her, is he?'

  'Not a chance. Alex is working in her firm's office down south; the last I heard she was going out with an actor guy she met at Neil Mcl henney's wedding.'

  'Still, if his defence alleges that we've got a down on him because of that, and we've fixed him up, you never know with juries. At the very least, it'll be all over the tabloids; I can see the headlines… and the pictures… even now.' She flashed a quick, engaging smile. 'By the way, did you know that Elvis Presley's song, "One Night with You" was original y cal ed "One Night of Sin"?'

  Rose chuckled. 'No, I did not. I was never into Elvis… or much into nights of sin, for that matter. But before you go offering Weston a deal to preserve the reputation of the force, there's something else you should t
ake into account.'

  'What's that?'

  'The Bob Skinner factor. There aren't too many people who'd fancy throwing mud at his daughter. If you'd like a wager on how this wil turn out, I'd say that Litster wil catch the lot, since his name was on the lease, and that Ray Weston will plead to a reduced charge; being involved in manufacture, but not supply.'

  'River?'

  'Done.'

  'I'd better get on with it then,' said Chambers. She drove round the twisting Haymarket junction and drew up outside divisional headquarters to let Rose out of the car, then pulled away again, heading for the park at the rear.

  The red-haired superintendent was frowning as she strol ed back into her office. On impulse she picked up the phone and cal ed the Special Branch number, the one that had been her husband's until the previous Friday. 'DI Mcllhenney,' a familiar voice answered.

  'Hi, Neil. How are you settling in?'

  'Rushed off my feet, Mags. Is this a wish-me-luck call?'

  'Not exactly. Something's come up that the Boss should be aware of, but it's far too delicate for Jack McGurk to handle on his first day in the job. And now that Andy's gone, you're the only man I can talk to about it.' Quickly, she explained what had happened at Weston and Litster's Ecstasy factory.

  'I see what you mean,' the big inspector muttered. 'You don't think the lad would real y be that stupid, do you?'

  'I'm betting he isn't, but I've been wrong before.'

  'Not very often, you haven't, but I agree, the Big Man needs to be told; Alex too, in case his lawyer gets cute and starts leaking stuff to the tabloids. Leave it with me; I'll take care of it.'

  'Thanks. You know I wouldn't have figured on Alex getting into a jam like this.'

  'Why not?' Neil drawled. 'Her father did… not that I'd be daft enough to remind him of the fact.'

  She laughed as she hung up. Final y, she turned back to the papers on her desk, able to give them her full attention for the first time since Mary Chambers' urgent cal two hours before. The photograph other father still lay on top of the pile. She thought of Dan Pringle's comment, and then another recollection came to her, the memory of another face she had seen, a week before.

  She picked up the phone once more, and dial ed the general office extension. 'Sauce,' she began, as Haddock answered, 'I want you to dig out a file for me, if it's still there. It relates to an incident reported on night shift up in Oxgangs.' She gave him the details, then waited. Her door opened in less than five minutes; the gawky Haddock appeared, slightly breathless, and laid a file on her desk. 'Thanks,' she said. 'You don't need to wait.'

  As the door closed behind him, she flipped up the folder and took out Charlie Johnston's Polaroid of the late Magnus Essary, then laid it on the desk before her alongside the amended likeness of George Rosewell.

  She stared at them for over a minute, looking from one to the other, then back again. There was no doubt about it; the likeness was remarkable.

  The night-shift, constable was a truly bad photographer; the snapshot of the body was fuzzy, but he had caught al Essary's essential features, save for the eyes, which were closed in death. The balding head, the sharp nose and the heavily bearded chin, they were al there.

  She snatched up the phone again and dial ed. 'Sauce, I've got another job for you. I want you to ring around al the undertakers and find out which of them has made funeral arrangements for a man cal ed Magnus Essary. Get a couple of people out there to help you if necessary. When you find the right one, then even if they're in the act of lowering the coffin into the ground, I want the thing stopped.

  'I want to take a look at the body.'

  The risen sun was stil low in the sky, bathing the 737 shuttle in a soft yellow light as he watched it taxi in from the runway. The jetties were fil ed by outgoing commuter flights and so the passengers disembarked using rol -up stairways, boarding a long bus for the transfer to the terminal.

  Bob felt his heart jump as his wife stepped out of the Boeing's door, into the bright morning. She was dressed entirely in black; boots, jeans and tee-shirt, with her big leather bag slung over her shoulder, and she carried herself tall and upright, her auburn hair shining as it fell about her shoulders.

  For a moment, he was overcome; his head buzzed, and he felt his knees weaken. He leaned against the glass wall of the terminal building, steadying himself, gripped again by an odd feeling that somewhere else, in another place, time, or even dimension, he had played this scene before. It passed in a moment, and when it did, he realised for the first time just how much he had missed her.

  Brad Dekker had pulled strings at Buffalo International; Sarah had cleared customs at Boston, and so, when the bus arrived she was met by a ground-crew member and brought straight to the reserved VIP room where he waited, alone.

  47

  'Hello love,' he said quietly. 'Welcome home.'

  She crossed the room in three strides and threw herself into his arms; the tears came then, sudden and uncontrol able, taking her by surprise.

  He held her to him until they were spent, feeling his collar dampen, stroking her soft shining hair, feeling for her in her explosion of pent-up grief, yet perversely and guiltily happy that it had brought them back together.

  'Oh, Bob,' she murmured, eventual y, 'I've needed you ; I wish now I had asked you to come home.'

  'Well, you've got me now,' he answered? smiling as she looked up at him, stroking the wetness of her face with his fingers. 'And for the avoidance of doubt, I've needed you too.'

  'Have you been bored, waiting here alone for me?'

  'I haven't had time, my darling,' he told her, honestly. 'I've been chumming Joe Doherty around America, talking to people who might have been able to tell us something about Leo and Susannah's murder. In the last few days, I've been upstate, I've been to Helena, Montana, and I've been to Washington, DC.'

  'And did you learn anything?' Sarah asked, urgently.

  'We learned that they still haven't found all of the Was that the Democrats swiped off the computer keyboards, and that the new people still don't see the funny side of it. But did we learn anything positive?

  No, love, I'm sorry, but we didn't.'

  'Bob, why's Joe involved? He's back with the Bureau now, isn't he?

  And homicide's State business. What have you been stirring up? Have you been upsetting Sheriff Dekker?'

  He looked at her, innocently. The? No… well, not much, anyway.

  Brad laid on this room for us, so he's okay. The State cops got a bit precious, at least their boss did, but Joe sorted her.'

  'Look,' she demanded, 'let's cut to the chase. Do you have any idea who did it?'

  Bob frowned. 'No, but… Sarah love, I have a lot to tel you, but not here, okay. Your luggage should have been picked off the carousel by now, so let's grab it and get going.'

  'Where are we going, exactly?'

  'Home, like you asked. But if you've changed your mind, and you feel it would be too much to go straight back into the house, we can check in to a hotel.'

  'No, let's not do that. It would be worse for me to be anywhere else in Buffalo, I promise you.'

  'That's fine, then. I should warn you, the place is stil in a bit of a mess, after the FBI technicians dusted every imaginable surface looking for a usable print, but I've booked a cleaning service to come in this morning. Come on, we'd better get going or they'll be there before us.'

  The airport staff member who had brought Sarah to the VIP room was waiting outside the door with the single large Samsonite suitcase that held the clothes she had brought with her. Bob thanked her, took it from her and wheeled it behind him as he led the way to the staff car park, in which he had been al ocated a space.

  'I brought Leo's Jag from the garage,' he told her. 'I wiped the powder off that though.'

  'They printed that?'

  'Honey, this is the Bureau we're talking about. They even printed al the toilet roll holders, in case the guy took a dump while he was searching the place.'
/>   'My God! But Bob, what were the Bureau doing at the house in the first place? Dad and Mum were kil ed up at the cabin.'

  'Later, love; I'll tell you all about it later.' He loaded the case into the boot of the dark blue Jaguar and walked round to the passenger door, to open it for his wife. He settled into the cream calfskin driver's seat, switched on, and pul ed smoothly out into the exit roadway. As they drove out on to the highway, heading south, Sarah stroked the smooth leather of the console between them. 'Dad always liked to have a good car,' she mused. 'I remember the smell of newness coming off them, from when I was a little girl. It was the only way he spoiled himself, really.' She flipped up the lid of the compartment and looked inside, then took out a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, in their case. 'Do you need these?' she asked.

  'Not right now.' She replaced them and closed the central console.

  'Do we have a date for the funeral?' It was as if she had been avoiding the question, but final y had plucked up the courage to raise it, to make herself part of the process.

  'Friday,' he told her. 'It's fixed for Friday morning; there's a memorial service in the Lutheran church, and a burial after that. I left all the arrangements with the undertaker, once release of the bodies was confirmed. He's fixed the time to suit the Secret Service.'

  'The what!'

  'You heard. The new senator wants to be there, and she's bringing her husband.'

  'You mean that?'

  'I'd hardly kid you about your parents' funeral now, would I?'

  She whistled. 'You know. Bob, al my life I sort of knew that my dad was an important man, beyond Buffalo. But I never real y understood how important.'

  'Did he ever talk about his interest in politics?'

  'No.'

  'Or about his time in Washington?'

  'He used to say that Teddy Kennedy was the best of the brothers, and that he'd have made the best president, but that was about it. There was a time, in my late teens, when I kept trying to get him to talk about it, but he always shut me down.'