'What exactly have you heard or read?'
'Only that the explosion happened on the stage itself, in midperformance. Nobody would leave a bomb just lying about, so it must have been planked somewhere.'
'You guessed right. Tell me about the radiogram you hired out to the Australians.'
'That big bugger? Was that it? Christ, you could hide a depth charge in there. Look, it was nothing to do wi' us. I'U tell you that right now.'
Martin laughed lightly. 'Mr Adams, if 1 thought it was, we'd have come in here with guns and flak jackets. You'd have to be very stupid indeed to hide a bomb in your own gear and then sit here waiting for us to turn up. You're not that stupid, are you? Or you, Mr Dickson?'
Adams grinned; possibly in relief, Martin guessed. Dickson looked mortally offended.
'No, what we do need to know is whether anyone else had access to that radiogram while it was still here. When was it hired out last? Could it have been passed on directly from one renter to another?'
Adams rubbed his chin, thoughtfully. 'Hughie can check the stock sheet, but I'm certain it hadn't been out for two years. And we always have kit brought back here first, just so we can check it's OK. We make our customers pay for the insurance of all our stock, under our own policy. Delivery back here is one of the conditions. And we take a twenty per cent value deposit.'
'So who else had access to it here, other than you and Mr Dickson?'
'Nobody!'
Martin was surprised by his vehemence. 'You haven't seen any sign of a break-in?'
'No, nor heard any. All our storage buildings are alarmed like bank vaults. You try and get insurance without that, these days.'
'And you've had no visitors?'
'No, we haven't.'
'It's your busy season. You haven't taken on any casual labour?'
No.'
'Look, we're not the DSS. If you have, you can tell us. It goes no further.'
'No, I tell you!' Adams' tone was insistent.
'OK, OK.' He glanced at Mackie. 'That's as far as we can take it, Brian. Thanks, Mr Adams, Mr Dickson. We won't take up any more of your time now. I'll dictate a statement back at the office and have a uniformed officer drop it in for you to approve and sign.'
They had almost left of the building when they heard Hugh Dickson call out. 'Frankie!'
The detectives stopped and looked back. The little man had stood up. He was looking not at them but at Adams, a strange pleading expression on his face.
'Look, Frankie, this is nae use. Sister or no', I won't say a word taste Shona, I promise, but ye've got taste tell them about the lassie.'
If looks could kill, thought Martin, as Adams glared at his brother-in-law, we'd have a murder on our hands here. But then the big man's eyes dropped, and his shoulders sagged.
'Aye, Hughie. You're right enough. I've got to, haven't I. But mind, if you do say a bloody word to Shona…'
Martin broke in. 'Listen, Mr Adams. If you don't tell us whatever it is right now, I'll arrest you and do you for wasting our time. Then Shona'U find out for sure! Now, cough it up!'
Adams led them back into the office. This time he offered them seats. Mackie produced a notebook and pen.
'About three weeks ago,' Adams began, 'this girl showed up, looking for work. She was American. She said her name was Mary McCall. Said she was working her way round Britain, that she was skint, and needed a job. Most of all, she told me, she needed a roof over her head. I said I didn't need any help – that Hughie and I could manage fine. Hughie, by the way, he was down the village getting coffee and stuff when all this happened. Then she says if I give her a job and a place to kip, she'll make it worth my while. I ask her what the hell she
means, and you know what she does?'
Before Martin and Mackie could hazard a guess he went on.
'She comes straight over and unzips me. Then she gives me the most memorable…' Adams closed his eyes and shuddered.
'Christ, man, I thought she was gonnae…' He stopped, and glanced at Martin, in a strange, conspiratorial, man-to-man way.
'Anyway, that was how Mary persuaded me to give her a job. Not that she did much work… standing up, at any rate.
'There's a wee Hat above the garage across the yard. I let her stay there. I was giving her one every night. Once or twice I didn't go home, but Shona thought nothing of that.
Sometimes I kip over there, if Hughie and I have had a few bevvies after work. I didn't mean it to go on for more than a few days, but, man, she was something else. She fucked like a jackrabbit! Hughie here caught on quick enough… He wasn't best pleased at first, but he laughed about it eventually. He called it the old ram's last stand.' He glanced across at his brother-in-law with a sheepish grin. The smaller man looked at the floor.
'How did it end?' asked Martin. 'I take it that it did end.'
'Oh, yes,' said Adams, 'it ended. I came here last Saturday night, after golf. Shagged me stupid she did, just like always. I came back across on Sunday, about midday, and she was gone.
She didn't have much in the way of baggage, but what she had was away. She left not a trace behind her. No goodbye note, no "Thanks for a great time", no nothing.'
'Did she have access to your stores while she was here?'
'Sure. She helped Hughie check out some orders.'
'Including the Australian stuff?'
'Aye, I think so.'
'That's right,' Dickson confirmed.
When was that?'
'Last Thursday,' said Adams. 'They wanted it delivered by Friday for their rehearsals.'
'And she disappeared on Sunday morning?'
'Right.'
'Did she take anything?'
'Steal anything, you mean? No. Nothing. The petty cash tin was there, too, wi' two-hundred-odd quid in it, but it was untouched.'
'You didn't see her leave, Mr Dickson?' asked Martin.
The man shook his head. 'No. I had nothing taste do wi' her.
I'd rather have a good pint taste a blonde any day. Ah stayed out of her way as far as ah could.'
Martin looked back to Adams. 'How good a description can you give us?'
Try this. Five feet nine or ten. Shoulder-length hair, blonde but dyed. Tanned, all but her bum. Legs right up to her arse. Very narrow waist, explosive hips, firm bum, wide shoulders, goodsized firm tits with wee pink nipples. Two moles low on her back.
Appendix scar. Blue eyes, wide mouth, good teeth, long eyelashes.
Oh, yes, and very strong.'
'Eh?'
'Aye. She's got exceptional strength on her for a woman. She challenged me to arm-wrestle once. I had a hell of a job getting her arm over, and I'm no pussy.' He rolled up his shirt sleeve to display a massive forearm.
'Did she ever talk about herself?'
'Not much. She said she came from Iowa, that she'd run away from home when she was sixteen, seven years ago. Said she'd been abused by her stepfather, but that she didn't want to talk about it.'
'Did you ever see her passport?'
No.'
Right. We'll need to get a technical team down here, to go over the flat where she stayed. Will you show us now, please.'
Adams led them out of the office and across the yard, past Mackie's Mondeo and past a silver Audi which the detectives assumed belonged to Adams.
A flight of narrow steps led up to the little flat, which had only two rooms. One was the main living area and the other, which opened from it, contained a single bed and a small wardrobe. A shower room and toilet opened off the top of the stairs.
If this is our girl,' said Mackie, 'chances are she's wiped the place clean.'
Martin looked into the shower-room. The toilet seat was up. He turned to Adams. 'Do you always leave it like that?'
The man grinned. 'Aye. Bad habit of mine. The wife's always getting on to me.'
Not so bad this time. I'll bet you we get a print off that, if nowhere else.'
42
Six called just after four. Copies of
the Macdairmid tape had been rushed down on the 1:00 pm shuttle, carried by a Special Branch typist. She had handed them over to a motorcyclist waiting at Heathrow, and they had reached their destinations by 2:45 pm.
'Sorry to take so long to respond.'
Skinner thought for a moment that the Deputy DG was joking, but remembered that she had no sense of humour. The woman was rarely flippant, and most certainly never on a scrambled telephone.
'It took us a little while, because we believed we were listening to an Arab. But we were wrong. The reason he sounds that way is because he learned his English in Libya. Actually, the subject is a Peruvian. Our friend Macdairmid has got himself into some seriously bad company. The man on the telephone is Jesus Giminez.'
She paused.
Skinner knew the name at once. He had been shown the file on Giminez, a legendary figure among the world's security services.
The man was an international terror consultant, wanted in many countries around the globe, but most of all by the Israelis. He was known to be responsible, either as hitman or as planner, for a string of political assassinations over around thirty years. His name had run like a scarlet thread around the world's trouble spots until 1991, not long after the death of Robert Maxwell, when he had vanished abruptly from the distant surveillance which the international intelligence community had managed to maintain, tenuously, for a quarter of a century. Some believed that he was dead, but the most commonly held opinion was that at the age of fifty-five he had decided to retire, like any businessman might.
One of the most impressive things about Giminez had always been his anonymity. Other terrorists had become household names, but, to the international media and to the world at large, Giminez had remained unknown.
'Of course, we had no idea he was active again,' the Deputy DG continued. 'God knows what he's up to, but an operation like the one you've got on just now is right up his street. And if he was involved, he'd run it through someone just like Macdairmid, a radical front-man with an axe to grind. One thing about Giminez, his only principle is money. He works for cash only. Big cash. So if he's a player, someone's paying him: not less than seven figures sterling. Can you think of anyone in Scotland with access to that sort of cash?'
'It's possible, but what about contact? The man's a shadow. So how do you set about hiring him?'
'He has an agent, believe it or not – or rather a string of them.
They're contactable through officials of a certain Middle Eastern government with a very dark name for that sort of thing.'
'But if wasn't aware of that, how could someone like Macdairmid be in the know?'
'Well, he is an MP, after all. He does mooch around Whitehall.
You can get anything there if you really want it. Of course, maybe they approached Macdairmid.'
'Meaning?'
'Meaning if your thing up there wasn't hatched in Scotland at all. Not everybody loves us Brits. You should know that more than most. Suppose someone wanted to do us a really bad turn.
We've already got Ireland on our hands as an endemic problem.
Stir up Scotland, then the Welsh, then a bit of ethnic warfare – in Bradford or Manchester, say. Mix all together, and Britain would become ungovernable. Our economy, our whole society would collapse. You know. Bob, I really do think you should catch these people.'
43
Andy Martin's guess had fallen just short of the mark: his technicians found not one but two sources of fingerprints. From the toilet seat, the scene-of-crime team had lifted perfect prints of the thumb and first three fingers of what they suspected, by taking and eliminating the prints of Adams and Dickson, to have been Mary McCaIl's right hand. And they had excelled themselves by taking from the toilet-roll holder the thumb and first finger of her left hand.
Everything else in the tiny garage apartment had been wiped clean, meticulously – and, as was clear to the technicians, by someone who had known exactly what she was doing.
Martin and Mackie had arrived back at Fettes Avenue with the prints at 9:10 pm, and had found Skinner still in his office.
'You say she split on Sunday morning? You think she's our woman, then, Andy?'
'Yes, boss, I do indeed. I think that our Mary deliberately gets herself tucked in beside randy old Frank Adams, and has time to take her pick of the stuff he's got going out to Festival companies – she had a choice of seventeen customers. She picks the Aussies, and plants her bomb in the radiogram with a timer set for midshow – Adams told us that she had a Fringe programme in the flat – and stays under cover in Stow till last weekend. She gives old Frank one to remember her by, then nips up to Edinburgh on Sunday morning, either by bus or hitching, and teams up with the rest of her team to kill poor Hilary Guillaum. She's a big strong girl, says Frank. Well able to handle the knife work.'
'Yes,' said Skinner, his eyes bright with interest. 'It fits, all right. Brian, get out to the lab now, if not sooner and compare those prints with everything we lifted from Hilary Guillaum's suite at the Sheraton, and from that chambermaid's trolley. While you're at it, dig up a technician and get me blow-ups of those prints – top quality they can manage. Get back here as soon as you can. I'll be waiting. We'll see if the States can help us.'
44
Adam Arrow and 'Gammy' Legge arrived together. The two soldiers had met before in Ireland, and were resurrecting old stories as they walked into Skinner's office, just after 9:30 pm.
'So, put yourself in my place. Gammy. There you are, you search the fookin' house when the fella's out and you find, hidden in his fookin' bedroom, a bomb wi' the timer set to go off in thirty-six hours. I ask you, what would you do?'
'I suppose I'd send for me. What did you do?'
'Ah, but you weren't about. No, I just moved the timer forward thirty hours and fooked off. Six hours later, and so did 'e sound asleep in his bed. Smashin' dream, be must have 'ad.'
Skinner put his hands over his ears. 'For God's sake, Adam, keep those stories to yourself. I'll assume you made that one up.'
The little man laughed. 'Course I did.' His eyes twinkled.
Skinner decided not to pry further. Instead he gave each man a beer from the small fridge standing in a corner of his office, and briefed them, as they drank, about the day's discovery at Stow.
'Does our assumption about the bomb sound right to you, Gammy? Could the timer have been set as accurately as that?'
'Yes. That's how she'd have done it, all right. They've got some really pricey timers these days, although if she really knew what she was about, she could have done it with the programming chip from a video. So in theory we could have sleeper Semtex bombs lying around all over Edinburgh.'
'Christ, that's all we need!'
'Ah, but in practice it's a different matter.'
'How come?'
'Thanks to some technical spec the manufacturers sent me, I've been able to work out how much of this super-Semtex stuff was used in each of our two explosions. The good news is that the total matches exactly the quantity nicked from that French arsenal.
Add the fact that all of the rest of the world supply is accounted for, and in safe hands, and we reach the conclusion that as far as
this super-Semtex is concerned, the bastards are out of ammo.'
'That's a relief; but what if they have conventional explosive?
Maybe there are still sleeper bombs lying around.' •If there are,' said Legge, 'then our dogs'll be able to smell them, or we'll be able to pick them out with some other little tricks that we have. We've already given every Festival venue a really thorough sniffing, and we'll keep on doing so on a regular basis.'
Skinner looked across at Arrow. 'All that makes our friend's meeting on Saturday even more interesting.'
The little soldier nodded. But Major Legge looked puzzled, until Skinner described the surveillance of Macdairmid, without actually naming him.
Arrow cut in. 'Did you find out who the other fooker was on the line?'
Skinner nod
ded, but said nothing. Instead he slapped a thick folder which lay on his desk. It was labelled 'Most Secret', and had arrived by courier from MI6 only two hours earlier. It contained the career history of Jesus Giminez.
Arrow raised his eyebrows, but asked no more questions.
'Well,' said Legge. 'Good luck to you cloak-and-dagger Johnnies. Tell you one thing, though. If your geezer is expecting another consignment of those special fireworks, then he's likely to be disappointed, unless there's a second factory that no one knows about, because no one else is keen to be caught with their drawers down like the French were.'
'Hah,' Skinner snorted. 'Brave words. Gammy, but from what we've seen so far of this outfit, someone's arse is going to be exposed to the four winds!'
45
The two soldiers had been gone for only ten minutes when Brian Mackie returned with blow-ups of the six Mary McCall fingerprints. He brought too the opinion of the technicians that a fragment of a print taken from the chambermaid's trolley in the Sheraton Hotel could have come from her right hand.
'That's a start,' said Skinner. 'Now let's see how far our luck will run.' He led the way along the corridor to the Special Branch suite, past the duty officer in the outer area, and into Martin's empty office. A fax machine with a scrambled line sat on a table iii the corner. Skinner picked up its telephone handset and dialled in a London number.
'FBI.'
Skinner was always struck by the frankness of the Americans.
They knew and valued the respect in which the Bureau was held around the world, and were never shy of announcing its presence, even in foreign countries.
Joe Doherty was the FBI's senior man in Europe, based at the Embassy in Grosvenor Square. He had looked Skinner up on a tour of Special Branch heads when first posted to the UK in 1989, and they had been in touch ever since.
'You dragged yourself in, then,' said Skinner.
'Yup; I said I would. But this better be worth it.'
'Let's hope so. Joe, I'm going to fax you down six fingerprints.
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