Dead And Buried bs-16

by Quintin Jardine

  It was the third man who opened one of the rear doors. As he bent to slide inside, his hood seemed to slip further forward, obscuring his vision. With an irritable gesture he threw it back, giving the camera a brief, but clear view of his face. Without being asked, Dennis reversed the recording and froze on his image. He looked much older than his MI6 companions, from another generation, but from the evidence of his furtive expression, of the same world.

  ‘Now who the hell is that?’ Skinner murmured. ‘He doesn’t look like SIS muscle, that’s for sure.’

  ‘He isn’t, Bob,’ Amanda Dennis told him. ‘Very far from it indeed. That’s Ormond Hassett MP, Miles’s daddy.’

  ‘Jeez! What the hell is all that about?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself. The best I can come up with is that the DG of Six has decided that the best thing to do with Miles is to release him into his father’s care, with instructions that he disappears into the family business, to live out a long and boring life.’

  ‘But why would Ormond be taken to pick him up? He thinks his son’s a civil servant, remember.’

  ‘Clearly, he knows different now. Could it be that Frame decided that Miles wouldn’t go with him unless there was someone there that he could trust?’

  ‘How big a surprise did he get when he saw who it was? Take another look at the playback and you’ll see: about a second’s worth, that was all.’ He focused on Dennis. ‘Who knows about this, Amanda, apart from Winston and his team and the three of us?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Good. Keep it that way, while I’m thinking about what all this means. Don’t tell anybody, anybody at all. Can you live with that?’

  She gazed back at him. ‘Remember what happened to Sean, Bob? He’s dead because of all this; I can live with it, no problem.’

  ‘Of course you can,’ he said quietly. He paused, then went on: ‘I’m going to need everything there is on Ormond Hassett. We’d better take a look at him. While you’re finding that, I need something else from you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A car. DI Shannon and I are going up to Derbyshire.’

  Forty-nine

  They were passing the Commonwealth Pool when Mackenzie’s mobile sounded. The chief inspector shifted in the passenger seat and reached inside his jacket. ‘Yes,’ he snapped testily. There had been little conversation, only a silent tension, between him and Wilding on the drive up from Leith. ‘Ah, it’s you, Dorward; about bloody time, too.’

  As he drove, the sergeant glanced occasionally to his left, trying to read anything he could from his boss’s expression. ‘And that’s it?’ said Mackenzie at last. ‘Okay, leave it with me.’

  ‘The car, sir?’

  ‘Yes. It took all bloody night, but they reduced the thing to its component parts.’

  ‘Did they find drug traces?’

  ‘Not a fucking scrap.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘They did find something, though: the Mercedes A Class has what they call a sandwich floor construction. The mechanic got them right in there and they were able to identify very small strips of waxed paper, thick, virtually waterproof stuff, like you’d use to wrap drugs for carriage.’

  ‘Did they match it to the packages we found in Starr’s safe?’

  ‘More or less; Dorward says it’s similar.’

  ‘Shit,’ Wilding grunted. ‘That’s not very helpful: “similar” is no bloody use in court.’

  ‘It’s a start.’ Mackenzie took a notebook from his pocket and flicked through it, then dialled a number. ‘English, please,’ he said, when he was answered. ‘Mr Marquez, Drugs Unit.’ Beside him, the sergeant frowned. ‘Antonio? It’s DCI Mackenzie here in Edinburgh, about the Pamplona thing. We’ve completed our examination of the man Starr’s car; we have found suspicious material. Do you understand? Suspicious material . . . Yes. You are clear to raid the garage and question the people there. Thanks. Please advise me when the operation is complete. You’ve got my number. Good luck.’

  Wilding was still frowning as he cleared the complicated roundabout at the foot of Dalkeith Road and headed for Gilmerton. ‘They tell me that guy Steele lives around here,’ the Bandit said suddenly.

  At once, the sergeant knew the reason for his strange mood. ‘Gordon Terrace,’ he replied, ‘on the other side of the Cameron Toll shopping precinct.’

  ‘Mmm. He’s going to be our new playmate, Ray.’ He tried to sound casual but failed. ‘McIlhenney called me this morning; I was barely in my seat when he rang. He’s moving him down from Torphichen Place. They’re putting a DI in over your head, son: don’t take it personally, though.’

  ‘I won’t: I’ve known Stevie Steele for years. He’s a sound guy.’

  ‘He must be. He lives with a chief superintendent, from what I hear.’

  ‘That’s right. I expect they’ve been looking for an opportunity to shift him into a different office from her.’

  He drove past the Royal Infirmary, and took a right turn into Humphrey Street. He drew up outside number sixteen, switched off the engine and turned to Mackenzie. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘about this Pamplona thing: did you brief Mr McIlhenney when you spoke to him?’

  ‘What’s that to do with you? Are you covering your arse again?’

  ‘Actually, boss, I’m trying to cover yours. This isn’t Dan Pringle’s era any more: it’s a new regime.’

  Mackenzie laughed. ‘My arse is made of asbestos, DS Wilding. Thanks for your concern, but I’ll do it my way. Now come on, let’s go and talk to Starr’s ex.’

  Kitty Philips was a small woman, but her confident stance as she opened the door sent out the message that she punched above her weight; her hair was a shade of blonde that could not possibly have been natural, she displayed more makeup than was usual for that time of the day and she wore a pale-blue catsuit, the uniform of the gym generation. Wilding wondered how she would have looked had he not called to check that she would be in.

  ‘Yes?’ she challenged.

  ‘DCI Mackenzie and DS Wilding,’ the chief inspector began.

  She looked at the sergeant. ‘You’re the boy that phoned.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Can we come in?’

  ‘I’d rather that than have you stand at my door for the neighbours to admire.’

  The house was a semi-detached villa, built in the second half of the twentieth century. The living room was comfortably, rather than lavishly, furnished. Looking around, Mackenzie guessed that the enormous plasma television set, mounted like a mirror on a wall, was easily the most expensive item on view.

  ‘You’re late,’ the former Mrs Starr said abruptly.

  Mackenzie smiled at her, amused by her petulance. ‘Come again?’

  ‘It’s taken you three days to get here. I’d have thought I’d have been first on your list for a visit.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you: we had other priorities. But now we are here, I might as well ask you straight out, did you kill your former husband, Mrs Philips?’

  ‘That’s better,’ she exclaimed sarcastically. ‘No, I did not.’

  ‘Where were you on Friday night?’

  ‘At the bingo, down in Meadowbank.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘No. I was with my friends Morven and Izzy.’

  ‘Till when?’

  ‘Till it finished; after that we got a taxi back here and had a drink. They left after midnight. Ask them; you can have their addresses if you like.’

  ‘What about Mr Philips?’

  The woman gave a snorting laugh. ‘Do you mean, did he kill Gary? He’s never even met him. It’d have been some trick if he did, too. Les is a lorry driver: he was in Lisbon on Friday.’

  ‘You were fairly quick off your mark phoning the lawyer, though, to see if you were still in the will.’

  ‘Ollie told you that, did he? Why the hell shouldn’t I? Gary was casual about these things . . . not that he’ll have left much behind him. He had to remortgage to give me my
share when we split up, and he only had that one poky wee betting shop.’

  ‘How did you feel about your ex, Mrs Philips?’ asked Wilding.

  ‘I didn’t feel anything about him. He was never bad to me, just never particularly good to me either.’

  ‘How long were you married?’

  ‘Twelve years: we were together for a year or two before that, and we just sort of drifted into it. We got divorced four years ago.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he was as tight as a fish’s ring, if you want to know the truth. What’s the point in living in a big expensive house and dressing like a tramp? I stood it for long enough; I told him how I felt but he never listened, so eventually I walked out.’

  ‘Did you know Mr Philips at that point?’

  ‘No. I met him a year after the divorce; like I said, he doesn’t know Gary at all.’

  ‘How much did you get out of it?’

  ‘Two hundred and eighty thousand. My lawyer did a good job: he got me half the value of the house, the furniture and the shop, plus maintenance. The deal was so good that I worried for a while that he’d go out of business and the alimony would dry up. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how he did it.’

  ‘We do,’ said Mackenzie, noting her instant curiosity.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Mr Starr had other business interests beside the shop.’

  Kitty Philips looked incredulous. ‘Who? Gary? Pull the other one, pal. Gary was a gambler, pure and simple; that’s all he knew. I used to tell him that when he had a good run he should put the money into something different, like a pub, or more shops, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘So all the time you were married, he never had any other source of income?’

  ‘No, and I’m pretty sure I’d have known. He’d bring home cash occasionally and put it in the home safe. I never knew the combination, but I could see what he was putting in and it wasn’t that much, a few hundred at a time, and not so often that it would ever amount to a fortune. I used to reckon that he was skimming the tax man, and I’m pretty sure I was right.’

  ‘How about his associates? Did you know many of them?’

  ‘You’ve probably met them all yourself by now, unless there are folk he’s got to know since I left. Gary didn’t make friends easily. In fact, Gary didn’t make friends, period.’

  ‘Who was closest to him?’ asked Wilding. ‘Oliver Poole?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. He saw Ollie only when he needed to; they might have had the odd pint, but that was all. He never came to the house, and we only ever went to his once, to a party about ten years ago. If you ask me to guess, from the people I met in and around the shop, I’d say that Eddie Charnwood was the closest thing he had to a pal.’

  ‘Not Smith?’

  Mrs Philips laughed. ‘Big Ming? Gary described him as a lackey once, and that’s as good a description as any. He paid him next to bugger all, I know that; minimum wage. I don’t know how he survived. No, Eddie Charnwood was as close as anybody got. In fact we even got a Christmas card from him and his wife the year before I left. Her name was Sorry. I remember laughing at it; there was I feeling sorry for myself, and she was called that.’

  ‘Takes all sorts,’ Mackenzie murmured. ‘You don’t seem sorry for yourself now, Mrs Philips,’ he went on, his voice hardening with every word. ‘You were married to the guy for twelve years, and now he’s dead, tied up and butchered like a veal calf.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Yet I don’t see any signs of mourning around here. Did nobody care about the poor bastard?’

  For a moment Wilding thought that Kitty Philips would live up to her name and lash out at the chief inspector like a cat, raking her claws across his face. He moved, ready to step between them, but she controlled herself, although her face was twisted with sudden anger.

  ‘What do you know?’ she shouted. ‘You flash supercilious bastard, what do you know? Do you think I should be dressed in black from head to foot? No fucking chance, and do you know why not? Because if I did, Gary would be up there,’ she pointed at the floor, her finger stabbing, ‘or down there, more like, laughing at me. The man didn’t have any love in him; he never showed it and he rejected it whenever it was shown to him. Once, just once, I said to him that I’d like to have kids. He looked at me as if I was crazy, then he said, “And what exactly would be in that for me?”

  ‘He wasn’t inhuman, I’m not saying that, but he wasn’t able to have normal relationships. There was nobody in his life that wasn’t of use to him. He never gave anything willingly, he only took it. He might have left everything to his mother, but he had no time for her when he was alive. He never visited her, and when she got old he let the social-services people look after her.

  ‘Do you know the main reason I left him? It wasn’t just about money; look, if I really needed it I used to take it and that was that. No, it was because I took a look at myself one day, at the number of people I had in my life, and at the way I treated them, and I realised that he was making me like him. And I left him, before it was too late.’

  She paused in her tirade to reach out and poke Mackenzie in the chest, hard enough for him to flinch. ‘So, mister, don’t you look down your nose at me, just because I’m not sitting in that chair crying into my hankie. It’s awful that Gary died the way he did, but the fact is the world won’t be a sadder place without him.’ She glared at the chief inspector. ‘And you know what? I look at you, and I see a bit of him in there. Now go on, the pair of you. I’ve got nothing more to tell you and I’ve got to get ready for work.’

  Mackenzie might have stood his ground, but Wilding took the lead. ‘Thanks, Mrs Philips,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything else we need I’ll call you.’ He nodded to the chief inspector and headed for the door. ‘What the hell was all that about?’ he asked, as they reached the car.

  ‘Search me. She really blew off steam, didn’t she?’

  ‘I don’t mean her, sir, I mean you. Why did you rattle her cage like that?’

  ‘Because I chose to, Sergeant. She annoyed me, so I had a pop at her, just to shake her up, just to get under her skin. And you know what, Ray? You’re annoying me too. I’ve had just about as much of this constant questioning of my methods as I’m going to take.’

  Wilding looked at him coolly. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said, as he opened the driver’s door.

  Mackenzie was fastening his seat-belt when his mobile sounded. He scowled and reached for it. ‘DCI,’ he snapped, then waited. ‘Do you want Wilding as well?’ he asked, his tone altered. ‘Okay, I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ Pause. ‘Half an hour. See you.’ He glanced to his right as he replaced the phone. ‘That was McIlhenney: he wants a briefing on the investigation. Get us back to Leith, and I’ll take the car on up to Fettes.’

  Fifty

  Much of the west of Scotland was uncharted territory to Sir James Proud, and Wishaw was included in the extensive list of places of which he was almost totally ignorant. He knew no more than that it was conjoined to Motherwell, Bob Skinner’s home town, which he had visited once for an ACPOS meeting in the offices of North Lanarkshire council.

  He came off the M8 at Newhouse, and headed into the former steel town, past the site that had once been home to the Ravenscraig strip mill, allowing his global positioning system to guide him to Wishaw. There was no obvious boundary between the two towns, so he was slightly taken aback when he was instructed to make a right turn, then a left and found himself stopping outside number seventeen Church Road, where a sign beside the door confirmed that he had arrived at the offices of Woodburn Hill and White.

  Having checked that he was parked legally, he stepped into a dull reception area, pulling off his driving gloves and stuffing them into the pockets of his Barbour jacket. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ a young voice asked him. Its owner was seated behind a desk that was bound in a leather-like cream fabric, designer furniture which told him at once that this law firm was determined to present a modern imag
e to its clients. The same could have been said of the receptionist: her hair was three different colours and she wore a top with ‘FCUK’ emblazoned across it. Earlier in his career, Sir James would have regarded it as grounds for arrest. A sign beside her computer keyboard told him that her name was Kylie McGrane.

  ‘I’d like to see one of your partners,’ he replied, ‘but I’m not sure which one.’

  ‘Well,’ said the girl, ‘there’s Mr Leckie, there’s Mrs Gillingham and there’s Miss Ward.’

  Proud’s eyebrows rose slightly at the third name. ‘Miss Ward, I think, if she’s available. Her name doesn’t appear on the internet. Why is that?’

  ‘She’s only just been made a partner, sir. Who shall I tell her is calling?’

  The chief constable produced a card from the breast pocket of his sports jacket and handed it to the receptionist. As she read it, her eyes widened and her mouth opened a little. ‘If you’ll just excuse me for a moment, sir,’ she stammered. She rushed from the reception area, returning around a minute later with another woman, stocky, dark-haired, square-faced, in her early thirties, with the sort of sharp, perceptive eyes that Proud used to fear in the early days of his career, when he was required on occasion to go into the witness box.

  ‘Sir James,’ she said, extending a hand, ‘I’m Ethel Ward. Is this an official visit?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ he replied, carefully, ‘but a very discreet one.’

  ‘Come through and tell me about it, then.’ She led him, past a staircase, to a small room at the rear of the building; there were bars outside the window. ‘I’m the junior partner,’ she said, with a sudden smile that made her seem not grim at all. ‘In this firm you climb the stairs through seniority.’

  ‘How long have you been in existence?’