Head Shot bs-12

by Quintin Jardine

  'Yes. He cal ed this afternoon, and said he was in town. I caught Sarah on her cellphone just as she was driving to meet the lawyer. She agreed to see him immediately afterwards.'

  Skinner shrugged, feeling the gun move against his back. 'Fair enough.

  She's thought it through; she reckons it's the thing to do.'

  'Will you have some lemonade while you're waiting. Bob?' Babs asked.

  'No, thank you very much. But coffee would be appreciated.'

  'Sure,' said lan. 'I'l make it.' He headed off towards the kitchen, leaving his visitor with his wife.

  She shot him a vixen smile as soon as they were alone. 'Please be seated,' she urged, indicating a deep blue couch. As he settled himself in she went over to a sideboard, took something from it that he could not see at first, then walked round to sit beside him.

  It was an album. 'While we're waiting,' she said, 'I thought you might like to see some more of our photographs.'

  'That would be nice,' he answered, insincerely.

  She opened the volume at the start; the first page showed two girls; they were in their very early teens at most, but he recognised them both.

  One of them was by his side; the other was his wife. 'Most of these have 286

  Sarah in them,' Babs told him, as she flicked through the pages. It was almost a montage of his wife's life; school student, prom queen, diploma winner, undergraduate. And then there were adult shots, the two of them together, Sarah and Babs, friends together at barbecues, on a ski trip, some with Ian and with other young men, boyfriends of the time, of whom he had heard, no doubt.

  His hostess stopped to point one out. 'That's Ron Neidholm, the footbal player. He and Sarah had this red hot thing going while she was in med. school; they couldn't keep their hands off each other. But he went off to Dallas and she got bored. She was quite a girl in her youth, was my friend.' Bob kept an icy smile fixed on his face.

  Finally, she came close to the end. 'This is the most recent one I have,' she exclaimed, as she turned the page, 'her last big fling… to which she was certainly entitled, since you were being a very naughty boy at the time.'

  The photo showed two couples in evening dress, at a formal dance.

  'Sarah's hospital ball,' Babs explained. 'She had one too,' she said, with a lascivious chuckle. He stared at the photograph, his smile gone, looking at the two Walters, at Sarah and at another man, young, confident, handsome, smiling, a big cigar held between the first two fingers of his right hand.

  'That's him,' she said. 'The guy she's gone to meet.'

  He was on his feet in a single lithe moment. 'Where?' he barked.

  'What?'

  'Where are they meeting?'

  'I can't tel you that,' she protested.

  He reached down and yanked her to her feet. 'You can,' he hissed, 'and you will.'

  She looked at his face and realised that he was right. 'At lan's church,' she croaked.

  'Where is it?'

  'Go left, to the end of the street, then right and it's about half a mile.

  But what…'

  He shoved her back on to the couch and left her, speechless, as he ran out of the house, racing for dear life towards the meeting place of his wife and the man he had known until that moment as Special Agent Isaac Brand.

  73

  The two detectives stood at the door of the secluded, detached house in the East Lothian vil age of Onniston. 'If we're wrong,' Mcl henney grunted, 'we're up to our armpits in shit… and when the tea-break's over we'l be back to standing on our heads.'

  'We're not wrong,' Mario McGuire whispered. He flexed his shoulders to ensure that his pistol was loose and accessible in its holster. 'Your checking revealed that she's resigned her job. It turns out that George Rosewell's absence from work has never been reported to the council.

  Walter Jaap more or less identified her from her staff mug-shot as the woman who paid for Magnus Essary's funeral.'

  'Aye, only more or less; I like my witnesses to be definite.'

  'She didn't tell me about the beard, Neil. She gave me Rosewell's photograph but she didn't tell me that he had a beard.' His smile gleamed in the moonlight. 'It was enough for the sheriff to give us a warrant; be content with that.'

  'My life in your hands, pal.'

  'It was ever thus.' McGuire glanced at his luminous watch, then at the light in the bedroom window upstairs. 'Just after eleven; if he's there, they'll be tucked up by now.'

  He reached out and rang the doorbell, keeping his finger on the button for at least ten seconds, hearing the strident cal from inside the house.

  Pat Dewberry came to the door, attractive in a long pink nightgown, even without make-up and with her hair ruffled from the pil ow. 'Don't tell me. You've forgotten your…' she exclaimed, stopping with a gasp as she saw the two figures on the doorstep. She gave McGuire a look of pure terror, and in that instant even Mcl henney was convinced that they had come to the right house. He drew his gun as McGuire pushed the woman into the house and closed the door behind them.

  'You take her,' he said. 'I'll get Rosewell.'

  'There's no one here,' Mrs Dewberry called out. 'There's no one here.'

  'Nevertheless,' said the big inspector. He headed upstairs.

  'How did you kil the priest?' McGuire asked, once he was gone.

  She was deathly pale, and shaking violently, like a tree in a gale.

  'What priest?' she wailed.

  'Father Francis Donovan Green. The man you had cremated as Magnus Essary was a Catholic priest. Didn't he tel you that when you picked him up?'

  The woman's eyes seemed to glaze over; she started to buckle at the knees, but the detective caught her by the arms and held her up. She seemed to crumple into herself as he looked at her.

  'I didn't kil him,' she whispered. 'George did; he used an electric stun gun and then he suffocated him. It was horrible; I had no idea he was going to do that. He told me he just wanted to talk to him, that was all.'

  'Don't make me laugh. Where did you pick up Father Green?'

  'But it's true,' Pat Dewberry pleaded. 'We saw him at a pub cal ed the Last Drop, in the Grassmarket.'

  'Appropriate. How long did you have to trawl there?'

  'We didn't trawl there; at least not that I was aware of. It was just one of the places we used to go for a drink. We chose pubs well away from the school, where there was little or no chance of bumping into parents.

  Then one night, George pointed out that man; he was on his own, and looking around. He told me that he was his brother, and that he hadn't seen him for years. He asked me to pick him up and bring him outside, so he could surprise him.'

  'And you believed that?'

  'Yes! They could have been brothers… twins, almost.'

  'So you did what he asked.'

  'Yes. It was easy, really; the man was only after one thing. In less than half an hour we were on our way. I took him across to the car, knowing that George would be hiding in the back. He got in and that was when George hit him with the stun-gun. That was when it al went crazy.'

  'So why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you go to the police? Why didn't you tell me everything when I visited the school?'

  'Because I was afraid by then,' she whispered.

  'You didn't seem too scared when you opened the door just there.'

  She looked at him, her eyes shifting around, as if she was searching for something in her mind. 'Listen,' she exclaimed in a voice that was suddenly stronger, as if she had glimpsed a ray of hope, 'I'l give evidence, I'l do anything you want.'

  McGuire smiled at her, mocking her. 'I'm sure you will; but only if we let you,' said Mcllhenney, appearing downstairs with a shake of his head.

  'How did you get into this?' he asked.

  'It was all George's idea,' she answered at once, 'you have to believe that. I fell in love with him. We had an affair; it began not long after he came to the school. He's an extraordinary man, mesmerising, charismatic; I've never met anyone like hi
m. But there's another side to him…'

  'We know,' the inspector growled. 'And it's pure evil. Yet you went along with him, just the same.'

  'I thought the wine company was real,' she protested. 'He told me that he knew a lot of good Portuguese wines that we could import into this company and sell to private customers.'

  'Some janitor!'

  'It was only a job to him; he told me it was just something to keep money coming in while he set up the business. Then he asked me to be his partner.'

  'Using false names?' Mcllhenney exclaimed.

  'He told me that he didn't want any hassle from the education authority; I thought that made sense, so I agreed. It's not il egal, after all.'

  'What about the insurance policies?'

  'George told me it was common business practice for partners to insure each other.'

  'Why weren't there any policies on you?'

  'He said we could do that later after the business was established.

  First, he said we had to set it up properly. I believed him, really, and then that awful thing happened, with that man.'

  'When George shot my uncle, were you there too?' McGuire demanded.

  'Your uncle?'

  'Beppe Viareggio.'

  She shook her head, violently. 'I drove him there. I thought he was just going to talk to him about the lease. I didn't know about the murder until I read about it in the papers next day. George told me that it had to be done, that with him out of the way we were free and clear and able to go and join our money without anyone ever being any the wiser.'

  'Okay,' McGuire snarled. 'So where is he now, this charismatic devil?

  You were expecting him back, so where's he gone?'

  'He said that he had one last thing to do, one last loose end to tie off.

  He muttered something about someone who had crossed him a long time ago, and before he could go anywhere, he had to get even with her.'

  Suddenly, it was the big superintendent who was trembling. 'Oh Christ,' he gasped. 'Oh Christ, Neil. He's gone after Maggie.'

  74

  The knock at the door was gentle, almost apologetic. She was in the kitchen when she heard it, in her towelling robe and almost dry from the shower, making herself a cup of hot chocolate to take upstairs to bed. For a moment she thought about ignoring it; she had heard nothing from Mario al day… not that she would have taken his cal if he had rung, but his failure even to try to contact her pained her, and made her wonder how much she had hurt him with her final withering remark.

  She could guess where he had spent the night. It had been too late for him to go to Neil and Lou, and he had never in his life been one to run home to mother. So Paula's it must have been, and in the mood he had been in there was no doubting either what had happened. Stil. ..

  She can't be as good a lay as everyone imagines, she found herself thinking, if he s knocking on my door tonight rather than going back for more.

  The gentle knock came again, a little louder but not much. 'Oh hel ,' she said aloud, and headed for the door.

  When she saw who was standing there, her mouth fel open, and she stopped herself only a fraction short of collapse. She had forgotten, or made herself forget, many things about him over the years. How blue were his eyes, how cold, how hard and how merciless. How deep was his tan, some of it complexion, the rest the result of years in the sun. How rough were his hands. How brutal he had been, as he invaded her. And most of all, she had forgotten, until that moment, just how much he terrified her.

  He stood there with a terrible smile on his face. Not only was his beard gone, but his head was shaven, and gleaming, like a brown egg in the moonlight. He looked ageless; unchanged from the day he had left.

  She was frozen as he stared at her, and as he brought the massive automatic, made bigger stil by its silencer, from behind his back.

  'Well then, Margaret,' he murmured in the strange accent that had brought her terror then, as it did now, 'how you've grown. I've been watching you for a while, watching and waiting for that man of yours to leave you alone. And now he has. Ditched you final y, has he, for Miss Viareggio?' He moved towards her and she staggered backwards, helpless before him. 'Come on now, lass. Invite your daddy in.

  'I've waited a long time to visit you again, you with your big mouth, you that couldn't keep a secret. I've waited a long time to pay you out.'

  He moved into the darkened hal and closed the door behind him. Still she backed off, into the light of the living room, where the curtains were drawn. 'Superintendent now, I believe; he murmured. 'It counts for nothing now, my girl, for nothing before me.'

  He jabbed the gun at her, then laughed as she flinched. 'Let's see how you've turned out then, woman.' He reached out, fast, with his left hand and tugged at the cord of her robe, ripping it from its loops, then staring at her as the garment fell open. 'Not bad, not bad; bigger than your mother, for sure. And now, we'll see what else. ..'

  She stepped away yet again as he moved towards her; her foot caught in the hem of the dressing gown. It slipped from her shoulders, and she fell backwards, full-length, on the floor. She lay there, paralysed, staring up at her monster of a father as he towered over her.

  75

  The vestry door was open when she arrived, as Ian had said it would be.

  There had been no other car in sight as she had parked the Jaguar, and so she assumed that she had made it there before him.

  She was mistaken; there he sat in a wooden chair under the high vestry window, caught in the rays of the westbound sun, smiling as she entered the room, leaving the door ajar behind her. 'Thank you for coming,' he said, 'it's very important to me, much more important than you can guess.'

  She looked at him, and that old feeling of lust swept over her. There had been so much she had not admitted to Bob, and never would. She could recall every one of the several lovers she had had in her life, since she and Ian Walker had deflowered each other in her freshman year at college, but none, not even Ron, her footballer, with such clarity as she remembered Terry Carter. The perfect, beautiful musculature of his body, the easy skill with which he had aroused her to frenzy, so often in their brief, energetic affair, his knack of entering her at exactly the right moment and his ability to stay there, all rock-hard velvet, holding himself back until she was absolutely ready for him to let go. Yes, she had been demanding of him. Yes, made bitter and revengeful by her husband's betrayal, for all the watered-down story she had told Bob eventual y, she had demanded plenty. Now, once more, in the vestry of a Lutheran church of all places, she could feel herself moisten at the very sight of him. She laid her capacious black leather bag on the carpeted floor, and knew that if he asked her, they would probably join it there.

  Yet lust was all it had been. For all of his beauty and grace as a lover, she had never felt herself falling in love with him. There was something about him that had precluded that from the start, a distance kept between her and the real man inside him. And so she had gratified herself with him, readily and frequently, in friendship and without shame. In fact she had felt no guilt over their parting, as she had pretended to Bob; she had simply wanted to see him again.

  He rose and she went to him. They kissed, briefly, then again, for longer. 'Hello Terry,' she murmured as they broke off their embrace.

  'This was probably a lousy idea, but I'm glad I agreed to it.'

  The too,' he said. 'How are you, Sarah? Are you happy back in Scotland with your policeman?'

  She nodded. 'Yes, I am. He's the foundation I've always needed in my life. Not that I didn't appreciate the time we had together. That's why I said I would meet you, I suppose… to thank you in a way I never did before.'

  'You thanked me every time we made love,' he told her. 'I'll never forget you. And much as I'd like to reprise those days, they're over, I'm afraid. You have something I need; the package Mr Oakdale gave you.'

  He glanced at her bag and saw the long envelope, with its seal, sticking out of the open top. 'That's i
t, I guess.'

  She frowned at him. 'Honey, what is this? How did you know about that?'

  'Oakdale's office is bugged. I heard every word you said in there.'

  Her look had become one of astonishment and confusion. 'Terry!' she exclaimed. 'What are you saying?'

  'My name isn't Terry,' he told her, 'but you don't need to know what it really is. I'm afraid you have been unfortunate in your choice of father.

  Your old man was one of a small group of people who have been watched for a long time, by a succession of people like me. In Senator Grace's case it wasn't so much because of what he had done, but because of who his friends were; in particular, his friend Jack Wylie, the leader of the group.

  'Those men were entrusted with one of the deepest secrets of our nation. Not I, nor any of the other men who have watched them over the years, know fully what it is. They were rewarded for what they did and for many years that kept them happy, but there was always the fear that, one day, one of them might have an attack of conscience. So they were kept under constant observation, in their places of work, in their homes, and in their recreation.'

  Sarah stared at him, her eyes narrowing. 'And you and me? That was part of it?'

  'Yes, I'm afraid it was. After your father retired it became difficult to keep him under complete surveil ance. Then you showed up, back in Buffalo, his beloved only daughter. One of my superiors had the bright idea that you could be used as a conduit to him, so to speak. And so I was ordered to get close to you… an order which,' he added with a grin,

  'if I may say so, I carried out to the best of my ability.

  'Like I say, your father was included because of his links to those men. It was al a precaution, you understand; but as it turned out a precaution that was very necessary.

  For eventual y, one of them did get flaky, and persuaded the rest to fol ow. Your father was enlisted to be their messenger, their most honest of brokers. In those circumstances, action had to be taken.'

  She stared at him, incredulous. 'You are saying that you kil ed my father and mother, you bastard?'