Head Shot bs-12

by Quintin Jardine

  'Thinking ahead, probably. This whole thing was planned in minute detail; I reckon that if Stan had gone to sign those leases rather than Beppe, he'd be dead now.'

  'Or your mother,' Maggie murmured, and regretted her words, as she saw the look which passed across his face. 'I'm sure you're right,' she went on, quickly. 'Yet I wonder… maybe Paula's met Magnus Essary or Ella Frances, and doesn't even know it.'

  67

  He looked at her, darkly. 'Never mind Paula, love. Maybe we have.

  That's how clever these people have been.'

  He was in the act of rising to clear the dinner plates from the table, when the doorbell rang. Grumbling at the interruption, he walked through to the hal to answer it. Neil Mcl henney stood on the doorstep. 'Glad it 268 was you,' he said. 'I don't have to persuade Maggie to let you come for a pint.'

  'But I don't want a pint,' McGuire protested. 'And you don't drink any more, remember.'

  'Nonetheless, we're going for one. I'll wait; you get your jacket.'

  'That quick?'

  'That quick.'

  Mcllhenney's car was parked just along the road. 'What did you tell Maggie?' he asked, as they drove off.

  'The plain truth; that you had turned up out of the blue with a pink ticket from Lou and were hauling me off into the night.'

  'She'l be used to that, by now. Tell me some more truth. Are you screwing your cousin Paula?'

  Dusk was gathering; so was the silence inside the car. At last, Mario broke it. 'Why are you asking me that?'

  'Because I hear things; even more in this new job than I did before. A little bird… to be exact a woman DC in Special Branch whom you know well… told me this afternoon that she heard that you were, from a pal in Greg Jay's team.'

  'So the word's got out, has it,' McGuire growled. 'I wonder who else Alice Cowan's pal's talked to.'

  'Does that mean that you are?'

  'What do you think?'

  'I don't think you're that stupid; daft yes, but not stupid. Mind you, she's some piece of woman, your Paula. I can see how anyone who saw you go into her place at night and stay for three hours might jump to that conclusion.'

  'Aye, well you tell Alice from me to let her pal know that if one more whisper of this reaches my ears, then I'll pull every string I've got to make sure that a few detective officers down in Leith wind up on uniformed night shift in Craigmillar, or worse, find themselves transferred down to the Borders under my command.'

  'She needed no telling; that's exactly what she said to her pal. She's a fan of yours, even though she didn't fancy the Borders herself.'

  'I'm touched,' said McGuire, sourly, as his friend drew up outside the Liberton Inn. 'Why here?' he asked.

  'It's as good as anywhere else; plus, they know us here from the old days, and they'll give us a wide berth. It'l be as good as talking in a phone box.'

  'You've got something for me, then?'

  'Oh yes,' Mcllhenney grunted as they stepped into the lounge bar.

  'Have I ever.' A few heads turned as they entered, then looked away quickly. Neil went to the bar, while Mario found a table in the furthest corner.

  'Well?' the big superintendent asked quietly, as his friend returned with a pint of lager and another, of orange squash.

  'Tennent's.'

  'Bugger the beer. What is it?'

  'Okay; to business. I've done those checks you asked. You wanted to know al about your dear old dad-in-law, and here it is.

  'For a start he has no criminal convictions, either here or in Portugal, where he lived from the time when he made his sharp exit from Maggie's mum, until about three years ago. When he went back there, he settled in Setubal, just south of Lisbon, where he lived with his parents, during the war. I spoke to the chief of the local police, who was very helpful.

  'When he arrived in town, Jorge bought a bar and restaurant that had been pretty well derelict and turned it into a decent business, good enough to keep him in a degree of comfort, but not one that was ever going to make him rich.

  'Like I said, he has no record of any sort, but that doesn't mean that the Portuguese police never took an interest in him. Some of his customers were pretty tricky; you know the sort, wide boys who find al of a sudden that London's too noisy for them. But not just English; Jorge Xavier's bar… that was the name he used over there… was a hangout for ex-pats in general. There were suggestions that he was involved in more than alcohol: the place was raided a few times over the years, but it was always clean.

  'The closest he came to being in bother over there came around twelve years ago, when a kid disappeared. She was a Portuguese girl, aged twelve, the daughter of a woman who worked in Jorge's kitchen, and she just vanished. She was never seen again. A lot of people were questioned about her disappearance, including him. The kid used to hang about the place, apparently; he was friendly towards her and he used to let her wait on tables.

  'The Portuguese police didn't go as far as to say that he was a suspect, but he was the nearest they had. They had him in three times, and they gave the mother a hard time too, but she told them nothing that would have incriminated him.'

  'Shit,' Mario growled. 'If only they'd asked over here.'

  'And if they had, what would they have got? The guy's clean here too, 270 remember. Anyway, it died down after a while, and Jorge's life got back to what passed as normal. Until, that is, three years ago, when he did another vanishing trick. He sold his bar to one of his German customers for a hundred and twenty grand's worth of D-marks, and he disappeared.

  'But not alone, it seemed. For the daughter of one of the ex-pats, a widow named Baldwin, left home at the same time, without as much as a goodbye note to her old lady. The girl, whose name was Ivy, had worked in Jorge's place as well. She was a very striking kid, the locals said; very attractive. But the thing that made her stand out was the fact that she looked like a wee doll. When she left, she was eighteen, but she could make herself up to look mid-twenties, or dress down to look early teens. That was the way Jorge liked her to dress when she worked; he said it put the punters off groping her.'

  'How did Ivy's mother take the news?'

  'She raised the roof, apparently. She had a fancy man, one of the Londoners, and the word was that Jorge's card was marked if any of his old friends ever caught up with him. But like everything else out there, the excitement died down after a while.'

  Neil looked across at Mario; he was grinning, from ear to ear. 'It's about to get stirred up again. George Rosewell lives down in a tenement in Bonnington, next door to a doll-like waif cal ed Ivy Brennan, and her two-year-old son. George is the kid's father.'

  'But he's sixty-three!'

  'Ivy said he told her he was mid-fifties.' He snorted.'… Not that that makes a hell of a difference. But now to the kil er bit. Did you drop that other name?'

  It was Mcl henney's turn to grin. 'I did indeed. It's well seen why you're the superintendent, pal, and I'm only a scruffy DI. The police chief in Setubal recognised the name at once. He lives most of the time in Setubal; in fact he's official y resident there, although he still has his house in Edinburgh. And as far as anyone could see, Mr Lyal Butler was Jorge Xavier's best pal.'

  'Yes!' Mario exclaimed, loudly enough for heads to turn once more.

  'So what does that prove, then?'

  The two detectives looked at each other. 'I reckon,' said McGuire slowly, 'that it means that my father-in-law killed my uncle; or at least, he's a prime suspect.'

  'You mean that this Magnus Essary… the dead guy who wasn't. .. is really Maggie's father?'

  'You know about Essary? That was supposed to be under wraps.'

  Mcl henney looked at him. 'You're gone less than a week and you've forgotten what SB is like?'

  'Not even I worked that fast. Yes, George Rosewell the janitor and Magnus Essary the non-existent wine importer are one and the same; he used Lyal Butler's house in Edinburgh as an accommodation address for his phoney business, and rented our warehouse space as pr
emises just to have a lease to show anyone who asked questions about the setup.

  'I see it all now. He probably planned the scam out in Portugal; thought about it for years, maybe. Then he had a complication in his life; he was banging wee Ivy Baldwin in her schoolgirl gear, and he put her in the club. Rather than hang around in Setubal and wait for Ivy's mum's boyfriend to have him dumped off a trawler into the Atlantic, he sold up and came back to Edinburgh to put his plan into operation.

  'So as not to look conspicuous, he bought two flats side by side, one for him, and the other for Ivy and the baby, when it came along. Her cover story was that her father had bought it for her. George got himself an ordinary job, waited for a while, then put the plan into action.'

  'Why did he wait?'

  'This is a pure guess, but I'd say he was waiting for Dr Amritraj to get set up over here. He must have been in on it from the start. The medical report for the insurance companies, so good that it was just accepted, was written by him. Then he certified the late Father Green as Magnus

  Essary, dead of a sudden massive heart attack.

  'Raj Amritraj was from Goa, in India; not all that far back, Goa was a Portuguese colony, until the Indians booted them out. Check that out for me too, with the GMC, but I'm right, I know it; Jorge and Raj met in Portugal. The poor old doctor probably thought he was in it for half a mil ion, but all he got was a bul et in the back and maggots in his eyes.'

  McGuire stood, abruptly, and walked up to the small bar, returning with another pint of lager and another squash for Mcl henney. 'Don't let that go to your head,' he said, acidly.

  'So,' his friend asked, 'does that make Ivy this El a Frances, then?'

  'That's what logic tells you, except for two things. Ivy's age is pretty flexible, but all the descriptions we have of Frances put her around the thirty mark, and that would be pushing it for the wee lass. Plus, when I showed Ivy George Rosewell's photo, she told me that he had a beard; that's what started this bal rol ing in my head. Now why would she do that, if she was in on it?' He paused. '… Which begs another fucking big question.

  'But meantime, pal, you and I better go and see Ivy in the morning.

  68

  No way I'm going to be alone with that one, not again, but I need to know everything she knows about old Jorge.'

  Neil raised his eyebrows. 'Hey, hold your horses, McGuire. You're divisional commander Borders CID, remember. This is not your investigation; it's Maggie's first, and it's Greg Jay's second.'

  'That's where you're wrong. I saw Wil ie Haggerty this afternoon. .. this thing's gone above Dan Pringle… about matters not unrelated to the story Alice Cowan told you. I told him what I suspected, and that I had you checking it out for me on the quiet. He told me I was a rucking chancer, and then he said I was dead right.

  'As things stand now, Mags is in charge of an investigation which, if it succeeds, wil lead her to her own father as the culprit. That can't be al owed to happen. At the same time, Greg Jay's compromised himself as far as the ACC's concerned. After Haggerty heard my story, he cal ed the Big Man himself in the States. As of now, in the light of what you've confirmed, I'm ordered by him to take this thing forward myself, to trace Jorge Rose and Ella Frances, whoever she is, and to arrest them if they're still in our jurisdiction.

  'I've also got discretion to choose my own team… and you, DI Mcllhenney, are it.'

  'Thanks a million. So who gets to tell Detective Superintendent Rose about this?'

  'Haggerty's going to brief Jay, but that job is down to me, very definitely.'

  'Fine. And when you break it to her, I'm going to be somewhere else.'

  'You did what?' she screamed at him. 'Just run that past me again. You had Neil Mcl henney make enquiries that related directly to my investigation and you never told me. Then you told the ACC about it, not just over my head, but over Dan Pringle's head as wel. And now, as a result, I'm being fucking well stood down!

  'Is that it? Does that sum it up?'

  He stood there like a schoolboy; their living room had become the head teacher's office and he was well and truly on the carpet. She was in a rage the like of which he had never seen before, not from her, and rarely from anyone else. Sometimes he had wondered what it would be like if his wife ever lost the self-control which, alongside her talent, was one of her twin trademarks. Now he knew; he could see the result, and, big and tough as he was, it scared him.

  'Yes,' he replied. 'Baldly put, that sums it up. Now would you like to hear why?'

  'No, I would not,' she yelled. 'I'm not interested. Al I can see is the sneaking, conniving ambitious toadying bastard that you are. Three days it's taken you to trample my fingers on the ladder; that's all, three fucking days.'

  'Listen, damn it,' he protested, his own voice raised for the first time.

  'I didn't tell you because Neil's checks might have come to nothing. And if they had, all it would have meant was that your father had done yet another runner from his job and his life. I don't want that man to appear in your life one more time. If I had even floated the possibility that he might be involved in all this, far less behind it, I was afraid it would do your head in… as it has done.

  'When I told Haggerty this afternoon, it wasn't just because I had to, it was because I was concerned about you, and about the position you might be in. He agreed with me; Bob Skinner agreed with me.'

  'And where is my career now, alongside yours? Up shit creek, in their eyes, in mine, in yours and in the eyes of everyone who ever finds out 274 about this. You've rucked me, Mario, just like he did; you're just the same.'

  He recoiled from her words. 'I suppose you told Neil everything,' she hissed. 'Of course you did, you always do.'

  'No, I didn't; I told him that the bastard knocked your mother about and left, but I didn't tell him why.'

  'And he hasn't guessed by now? Don't make me laugh.'

  'Don't you compare me to your father either,' he retorted. 'The man is a beast; he's a pederast, a thief and a murderer. When he was in Portugal he probably raped and murdered a child, only they never found the body.

  When wee Ivy came along he must have thought all his Christmas Days had come; she looked fourteen, she was willing, and it was legal. No, do not compare me to Jorge Rose.'

  'Okay, I won't compare you to anyone. You are unique; I had complete trust in you and you betrayed it. You undermined my career as you were advancing your own. When I think of it, what have you ever given me?

  Jesus, you can't even give me a kid.'

  She exploded into tears. He put a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it off, violently. 'Get out of here!' she screamed. 'Get out before I call my office and tell them you've been thumping me. That would look real y good in the News, wouldn't it. Get out, God damn you!'

  He was in the doorway when she cal ed after him. 'You don't get it, do you? You don't get the worst part of it. Since I've been a police officer, I've wanted him. It's been my dream that one day I might arrest him; I wanted it so badly it hurt me. I wanted to see him in cuffs, humbled, being slippery and slimy, then scared, in the interview room. I wanted to leave the likes of Charlie Johnston alone with him for ten minutes or so.

  I wanted al of that, for my mother, for my sister, but most of al I wanted it for me.

  'I was seven when he started on me, Mario. Seven.'

  'Mags…'

  'Shut up! Just get out, or I pick up that phone and start screaming into it.'

  'Where did you spend the night, then?' asked Neil Mcl henney. 'Under the Dean Bridge, maybe? You look like death warmed up in the micro.'

  'I thought about going to my mother's, but that would have involved her, and that's the last thing I want. So I went to Paula's instead. So now Greg Jay's lot really have got something to talk about.'

  'Oh Christ, Mario, you didn't, did you?'

  'Did I sleep with her, do you mean? Keeping it in the family, like? No I didn't, but if I had it would have been…' He stopped himself short, the word 'approp
riate' frozen on his tongue. 'Not that Paula was offering, not last night, not with the mood I was in. She switched into mother-hen mode, instead. Even did me a cooked breakfast, whether I wanted it or not.'

  'Have you called Maggie this morning?'

  'Yup. The sound of the phone being slammed down is stil ringing in my ear.'

  'Aw shit. I knew she'd be mad, but not this mad. Do you want me to phone her?'

  'That's very brave of you, pal, but there's no sense in the both of us being disembowelled, is there. No,' he pushed himself up from his seat in Mcl henney's office, 'let's go and see Ivy instead. We might do some good there.'

  The two big detectives strode outside the headquarters building.

  'My car,' said McGuire. 'I know where she lives. It's not that far, actual y.' In fact it took less than ten minutes for them to drive up to Ferry Road, and along to the crossroads that led down towards Bonnington, on the right.

  'I've seen better, I've seen worse,' Mcllhenney murmured as he looked up at the shabby frontage of the tenement. 'You sure this girl will be in?'

  'There's more chance other being in than ofJorge. Mind you, we'l check his place just in case.' Mario led the way upstairs to the Rosewell apartment; without bothering to knock, he used his skeleton key to slip the lock once more. Nobody was in and nothing was different; the 276 apartment had not been touched, nor as far as he could see entered since his last visit.

  They stepped back on to the landing, closing the door once more, and across to Ivy's flat. McGuire rang the doorbell, then leaned down and shouted through the letterbox. 'Ivy! Miss Baldwin! Open up, it's the police.' He straightened up and waited for the sound of her coming to open the door, smiling as he imagined her face, in the knowledge that they knew her real name.

  But there was no sound of Ivy; only a thin wavering cry, the tired wail of a child, rising to a scream of panic or even pain. He thumped the door this time, but still she did not come. Rums' screams grew louder.