'Stand back,' said Mcl henney, 'I was always better at this than you, even when I was a fat bastard.' He jumped high, kicking out with the heel of his right foot, striking just below the lock, which gave at once under his violence. In a shower of splinters, the door swung open.
McGuire reached the living room first, but stopped at its entrance, fil ing it with his bulk. His col eague eased him out of the way and moved ahead.
Ivy was lying naked on the carpeted floor, in the middle of the room.
Her tiny body was covered in contusions, and her face seemed to be one single bruise; her left eye was closed, and her nose had been broken.
Great angry welts stood up round her throat.
'Strangled, the poor wee thing,' Mcllhenney sighed. 'Beaten half to death, then strangled.' He turned to look at his friend, and saw him stil in the doorway, tears streaming down his face.
'Too much, Neil,' he moaned. 'It's just too much. When I find this man, I'm going to kil him, nice and slow.'
'That's why we have to find him together, pal; so as you don't do that very thing.' The inspector reached for his phone. 'Better call it in; we can't deal with this one on our own.'
'Phone Haggerty,' said McGuire, pul ing himself together with an effort. 'Not Pringle or Jay; I don't trust either of them. Tell him where we are, and what we've found. Let him decide who deals with it.' He turned and moved towards the bedroom, where Rufus screamed on. 'But tel him to get the childcare people here, pronto.'
Bob Skinner had sensed the tension building in his wife from the moment she had wakened. In a sense he welcomed it; she had been entirely too cool for his liking when she had viewed her parents' bodies, too composed by far, but this was the day when the tough stuff would begin again. She had her meeting with her lawyer, and then the funeral run-through. lan and Babs Walker were good people, to think of easing things for her with their supper invitation, but he knew that she would not relax again… any more than he would… until she had laid Leo and Susannah to rest.
He had that burden on his shoulders too, and more besides. He had told her nothing of Doherty's discoveries, and of the awful place to which they led. He did not know if he ever would, for al of his experience as well as his instinct for self-preservation told him that the secrets buried there had to be left undisturbed. Too much time had passed for any good to be served by the truth, whatever it was, being uncovered.
He knew that, and he only hoped that he had been able to bring Joe Doherty to agree with him. Whoever was behind the deaths of Leo and the others was not kidding, not at al, and besides, similar things had happened in his own country. He dreaded to think what would happen if his own story, and that of his friend Adam Arrow, ever found their way into the public domain. Few things ever worried Bob Skinner, but that was one of them.
He was relieved when Sarah told him, over breakfast, that she planned to spend the morning indulging in retail therapy, and asked him to join her; in fact, he jumped at her suggestion.
Buffalo is not the most sophisticated shopping city in America, but it had enough to occupy them. He had already bought his funeral suit, and so while Sarah shopped for clothes for herself and Seonaid, he concentrated on the boys.
He had just bought a New York Mets cap for Mark, and the smal est basebal glove in the store for James Andrew, when his phone sounded in his pocket. When he took the call, Willie Haggerty's gravel voice sounded 278 over the satellite link. He checked the time; ten fifteen, mid-aftemoon in Edinburgh.
'McGuire was right, Bob,' the ACC said, without pleasantries.
'Mcl henney's enquiries confirmed what he suspected. But it's worse; it looks as if the man Rosewell is still around. He's getting ready to move, though.' He told Skinner about the discovery in Bonnington, and about the dead girl's link to the man they were after.
69
'Who knows that he's Maggie's father?' asked Skinner.
'Only McGuire, Mcl henney and me; I didn't see the need to tell Pringle.'
'Good, keep it that way. When was the girl kil ed?'
'Yesterday afternoon, the doctor reckoned.'
'Do we know for sure it was Rosewel?'
'He's the only runner in the field. Plus, we can check. The lass put up a fight; they found skin under her fingernails, so we have a DNA trace.
We're going to have to take a blood sample from Maggie Rose; if it matches, it's him.'
'Bloody hell. Who's going to ask her?'
'If it comes to that, it'l be down to me. Things are bad between Mario and her just now.'
Skinner sighed. 'I was afraid of that. Wil ie, I reckon we should take McGuire off this investigation as well.'
'Who else is there, Bob? He knows the case, he Joiows the people involved. If Rosewell's killed the girl, he's maybe gone already, but if not, he won't be here for long. My feeling is that we let Mario run, but have big Mcl henney at his side al the way, to keep him in check.'
'He's the only man I know who could do that,' the DCC admitted.
'Okay, do it, but keep tabs on it al the way.'
Sarah was frowning at him as he returned his phone to his pocket.
'Business at home,' he told her. 'Nasty, but you don't need to know right now.'
'BeppeViareggio?' she asked.
'Partly, but let's drop it.' She looked as if she had no inclination to do so, but he was saved by the bell, or the tone, of his cellphone as it sounded again.
'Yes,' he answered, expecting Haggerty again.
'Mr Skinner?' It was an American woman's voice, low and even.
'Yes.'
'This is Philippa Doherty. I have some bad news for you.' Bob's head swam and his stomach lurched. He leaned against the store counter feeling the blood rush from his face. 'I got back from my flight this morning. When I let myself into the apartment I found Dad dead in bed.'
'Oh no,' he hissed.
'The doctor reckons he had a massive heart attack in his sleep.' He heard the girl catch her breath, keeping hold of her control. 'We've been warning him for years about his smoking,' she said. 'I guess it's finally caught up with him. I know you were in touch with him recently, and I found your number on his pad, so I thought I'd better tell you, along with his other friends and col eagues.'
As she spoke a wholly unreal feeling swept over Skinner; it was as if he was in a room full of people, everyone on the move, steadily, not rushing, but heading somewhere. He started to slide down the counter, until Sarah caught his arm. 'Bob!' she exclaimed. 'What is it?'
Slowly he realised that he had passed out for a few seconds, but his wife's touch, her voice and that of Philippa Doherty, asking if he was stil there, seemed to have brought him back to the present. He nodded to Sarah, and spoke into the phone. 'Yes, yes. It's a terrible shock, that's all.
Poor old Joe. I wil miss him so much. My condolences to you and al the family.'
For a moment he was on the verge of asking if she had found a floppy disk in the house, but he realised that would have been pointless, and maybe even dangerous for her. There would be no floppy disk, and Jackson Wylie's recovered iBook would either vanish or yield nothing.
'Philippa,' he told her, instead, 'I'm stil in the US as it happens, so please, let me know the funeral arrangements. And thank you for thinking of me; thank you for letting me know.'
For the second time in five minutes, he ended a cal, but this time looking stunned, not just worried.
'Joe Doherty?' asked Sarah, incredulous.
He nodded. 'Coronary, they say.'
'You doubt it?'
'No; at least I'm sure that's what a post mortem will show. I've never yet heard of a cat that actual y died of curiosity.'
70
Mario McGuire hated plastic coffins, the containers the mortuary guys brought with them to murder scenes. Whatever little dignity they allowed was more than offset by their odour; a mix of polyurethane and disinfectant, and by the brutal truth that they had been used on uncounted occasions in the past, to carry victims of all shape
s and sizes.
He had seen people being crammed into these things. One corpse, that of a man stabbed to death in a pub fight early in the career of young PC McGuire, had been so gross that the crew of the meat wagon had simply left the arms hanging over the buckling sides as they had carried it away.
As they lifted her into her container, Ivy Brennan, who had been Baldwin, looked like nothing more than a broken dol. There was something especially tragic about her, the tiny, flawed innocent who had deserved so much more from life than to be the victim of George Rosewell, that even the black humour of the attendants was silenced.
Mario had banished his earlier weakness; grateful that only his friend had been there to see him overcome. It had been replaced by a huge, towering rage, which seemed to emanate from him in waves as he thought about everything that had gone wrong so suddenly in his life, and contemplated what he was going to do to the man who had brought it al about.
'Are you absolutely sure,' asked Mcllhenney, forcing his way into his musing, 'that Ivy couldn't have been El a Frances?'
McGuire turned away as a mortuary porter placed the lid on the coffin; he walked across to the window and peered through the slit between the drawn curtains. 'I'm as sure as she's dead,' he answered harshly. 'Ivy lived her odd life with her old sugar daddy next door, but she had no idea of what he was really up to.
'If she had, she wouldn't have pointed me at him with the tip about the beard, or made up that daft story about Uncle Beppe; no, she'd have done the opposite of those things. What she might have done, though, innocently, was set up the Viareggios.'
'Uh?'
'Maybe. I asked Paula some more about her last night. She started coming about the deli in Stockbridge when Rums was no more than an infant. Talked nineteen to the dozen, according to Paulie; she asked all sorts of questions about the shop. She told her that she didn't just come to buy stuff; she said that she liked being there, she liked the smell of it.
She said that she liked just to stand there and breathe in because it reminded her of where she used to live… although she never said where that was, and Paula never asked.
'She asked her about the special wines we stock as well, and whether you can buy them anywhere else. Paula remembered telling her no, that we imported our own, and that we owned a commercial warehouse where they were bonded.
'There was a man too,' said McGuire. 'She told me that once or twice, at weekends, a bloke came into the shop with Ivy; an older bloke, stocky, swarthy, hard-looking, with a grizzled beard. Paulie thought he might have been her father, but she never asked about that either. She said that she was happy to talk to the kid… she liked her well enough… but she didn't want to get involved in her life, so she always tried to keep her at arm's length. She never spoke to this man, and he never spoke to her.'
'But you think he was listening?' asked Mcl henney.
'Chances are that he was. Maybe he told Ivy what to ask, maybe not, but the likelihood is that's how he came to know about our warehouse and to know Paula Viareggio by name and sight.'
'I agree; that's probable. But you've stil got to convince me that Ivy wasn't involved. Everything you've told me about her makes it seem that she was quite an actress.'
'Okay, I'l convince you. There's some more checking I want you to do, then a man I want you to see.'
'Who's that?'
'Walter Jaap, funeral undertaker. He's the only man alive I know who's actually met El a Frances, as such.'
'Okay,' said Mcl henney, 'but I'm not doing it, we are. I've got orders from very high up not to let you out of my sight.'
'Is that right? In that case I might have to sleep with Paula tonight, if you're going to be on the sofa.'
71
It occurred to Sarah that Clyde Oakdale looked more like a lawyer than anyone she had ever known. He wore a three-piece, pin-striped suit, the jacket cut long, a blue shirt with a white collar, and he peered at her over half-moon spectacles as she laid the last will and testament of Leo and Susannah Grace on his desk.
'You're sure you understand al of this, now you've read it?' asked the interim senior partner of Grace, McLean, Wylie, Whyte and Oakdale.
'I think so, but perhaps you'd summarise it for me.'
'Of course,' he answered. 'Some time ago your father consolidated all his investments into a trust fund for his benefit and that of Susannah, during their lifetimes. With their deaths you inherit everything, other than his continuing interest in the law firm, which is distributed among the surviving partners; you and your husband are joint executors of the estate, and have absolute discretion over its disposal. You can dissolve the fund, or continue it in being for your own benefit. Alternatively you may appoint your children as beneficiaries.
'The wil places no constraints upon you of any sort. It does not require you to resume residence in the United States, nor does it require your children to become American citizens as a condition of benefit. In case you're surprised by that remark, I have seen such conditions imposed in situations such as these.'
'What's the total value of the estate?'
'The current valuation of the fund is just under eight mil ion dollars, and the two properties are worth in the region of one-and-a-half million.
There are no borrowings attached to either.'
Sarah whistled. 'I always knew I had a rich daddy, but that surprises me.
'I have to tell you that it would be to your advantage to continue the ftmd in being, for the immediate future at least,' said Oakdale. 'It is extremely tax-advantageous, and the firm would be happy to continue to manage it for you, through our associated brokerage, for the same fee arranged with your father.'
'I'll come back to you on that. Obviously, I'l have to discuss it with my husband. However in the meantime would you please proceed as soon as possible with the sale of the lakeside cabin. Neither Bob nor I have any wish to see that place, ever again.'
'I don't blame you; I'll instruct a real estate agent on your behalf, once the police give me the all clear to proceed.'
'Good,' she said. 'Now if that's al, I must be going. I have another engagement.'
Oakdale held up a hand. 'There is just one more thing.' He rose, ponderously, and walked towards the wal of his office. Behind a mirror, there was a wall safe, which he opened by dial ing in a combination. He reached in and took out a long legal envelope, with a red wax seal on the back.
'A few weeks ago,' he announced, 'Leo gave me this, with the instruction that should he fail to reclaim it before his death, I was to give it to your husband; to no one else but him. I have spoken with him by telephone, and he said it was okay for you to receive it on his behalf, as long as you don't open it.' He handed it to her. 'I must say that I was surprised that he gave it to me rather than to Jack, who was, after all, my senior partner at the time.'
'Do you have any idea what it is?' she asked.
'No. All I can tell you is that, from your father's demeanour when he entrusted it to me, it is very important.'
72
Skinner was still dazed by the enormity of Joe Doherty's death as he walked along the tree-lined street in which the Walkers lived. He had stopped believing in coincidences when he was around eighteen years old.
'Why couldn't you take a hint, old pal,' he muttered, sadly. 'As if Wylie's boat blowing up when we should have been on it wasn't enough to give you the message.'
The thing that surprised him to an extent was that he felt no real threat to his personal safety. He was sure beyond any doubt that the explosion had now been reclassified as an accident, and that the remains of Jack Wylie's computer were as useless as they had no doubt looked when they were recovered from the hulk.
The secret was buried once more; there would be no sense in disturbing the ground by killing a foreign national, and a policeman at that. Yet he could not be one hundred per cent certain; that was why Leo Grace's Glock, all fifteen rounds in its magazine, was tucked into the waistband of his slacks, nestling cold but comforting against
his back.
The day was still warm when he reached the clergyman's house, large by British standards but modest when set against Leo and Susannah's home. He crunched his way up the drive and rang the bell; after a few moments, the door was opened by a pert, blonde woman, around Sarah's age.
Until then, he had not been aware that he had met Babs Walker. He remembered only an encounter with one of his wife's friends, during the period of their separation, when he had been in Buffalo to visit his son, rather than with any hope of patching things up. The thing he recal ed most clearly about that meeting was how frosty the woman had been towards him.
There was still a faint chill about her as she greeted him at the door. 'Bob. Right on time; won't you come in.' She held the door open for him, then escorted him through to their main reception room, where her husband was waiting. From somewhere below, the den, he guessed, he heard a child's laugh.
'Welcome,' said the minister, 'it's good to see you again, but for the circumstances.'
'Yes,' Babs added. 'We never seem to meet in happy times, do we, Bob.' He had no doubt from her tone that she stil disapproved of him.
He guessed that there was little forgiveness in the preacher's wife.
He glanced around the room. The Walkers were keen collectors of family photographs; they stood in frames on every surface; parents, he supposed, children at various stages from birth, and the couple themselves, individual y in high school graduation robes, and together on their wedding day.
'Nice,' he said, absently. 'I hope Sarah isn't too much longer. She said she'd get done with Oakdale as quickly as she could.' A glance was exchanged between husband and wife; he caught it, and Ian realised as much.
'She will be a little later, actually, Bob,' he confessed. 'She has another meeting to fit in.'
Babs Walker was out of his vision as he looked at her husband, but he knew that she was smirking at his discomfiture. 'That guy?' he asked.
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