‘How’s that?’
‘Because the permitted limit is different for each of them, a lump sum plus so much per registered voter. A candidate for Westminster, for instance, may spend £7,150 plus seven pence per head if his constituency is rural, five pence if it’s urban. I’ve just looked it up on the Internet. The figures are different for Brussels and for Edinburgh. If we knew the number of registered voters, we could work out the constituency. But I guess I’m going to have to do it the hard way.’
‘I guess you’re right.’
‘Do me a favour,’ Honey said. ‘I’ll give you a choice of two. Either take Minka off me or fetch my laptop for me. I want to start composing emails while the subjects are still more or less clear in my mind.’
Sandy thought about it. ‘Hand her over,’ he said.
*
Honey was absent for longer than was needed to fetch a laptop computer. She returned to find her husband sound asleep in his chair and her daughter trying to roll off his knee on to the carpet. She woke Sandy by lifting Minka and depositing her gently back on his stomach. ‘I faxed a copy of the girl’s second epistle to Detective Superintendent Largs. She can’t have come from around the Forth or anywhere near serious water,’ she said. ‘Otherwise, she’d have known about geese.’
Sandy stretched and yawned. ‘All the same, you’d better not proceed on that assumption. People can be amazingly blind to things outside their experience and some of them never look upwards at all.’
‘True. I want to know the identity and whereabouts of a man originating in the Glasgow area, who has a port wine stain over much of the right half of his face and tries to cover it up with concealer make-up.’ She was typing rapidly as she spoke. ‘May be driving a Volvo.’
‘Copy it to your Mr Largs,’ Sandy said. ‘In fact, you’d better phone his office and make sure that he isn’t sending a similar message. There are few things more irritating than receiving the same enquiry from several sources.’
‘Good point.’ Honey made a note. ‘Would there be any objection to circulating other nearby forces to say that we would be interested in hearing about any MPs who are suspected of overspending on their election expenses?’
‘Not,’ Sandy said, ‘if you don’t mind bringing down on your own head the wrath of everybody from God upwards. Throwing extra money behind a candidate is the first step towards getting your own tame MP into Parliament. That’s why there are rules on the subject. So the elected members get a bit twitchy on the subject. Anyway, that subject falls within the province of the Fraud Squad. You could route an enquiry through them.’
‘I’ll think about it. I may get an email off before I go to bed.’ Honey knew only too well that one certain route to insomnia was to go to bed leaving a decision still to be made. ‘How’s your own case doing?’
Sandy glanced down at his infant daughter and put his hands over her ears. ‘Bloody awful,’ he said. ‘We know who we should be talking with, but the beggar seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.’
‘Literally?’
‘It seems possible. This monkey’s deeply asleep. Let June put her down and we may be able to get an early night.’
*
DCI Truss of the Fraud Squad was in his office and ready to meet with Honey. He was a tubby and cheerful man nearing retirement age but still with a reputation for skilled and unbiased prosecution of those who stepped outside the law.
He listened with care to Honey’s words and it was immediately evident that he had grasped every implication. ‘There was remarkably little mud-slinging on that topic, last time around,’ he said cheerfully. ‘That may only mean that traces were covered with more than usual skill. But you haven’t given me a very good pointer. An MP, we don’t know to which parliament, who may or may not be proprietor of a local paper and may or may not be a fervent royalist, depending on whether you choose to believe a deceased witness who has admitted to being a thief and who was quoting from equally doubtful sources.’
Honey prepared to get up. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’ve wasted your time,’ she began.
‘Not a bit of it,’ DCI Truss said jovially. ‘Many of our successful prosecutions began with less. We’ll certainly check as to whether the more likely local paper employs editorial staff with the names quoted. In view of your Miss Abernethy’s reluctance to reveal real names – I suppose Abernethy is genuine? – I’ll be surprised if we turn up anything there. There are some tenuous geographic clues that we’ll try to follow up. Stay in touch. Leave me photocopies of the girl’s two statements and let me know if you turn up anything else. I’ll keep you posted.’
Honey thanked him and returned to the room that she shared with three male colleagues. The room looked strange but she decided that this was because she had hardly been inside it for several months. She prepared a detailed report for the two detective superintendents, Largs and Blackhouse. Then she despatched her enquiry to Strathclyde Police, seeking the identity of a man of Glasgow extraction, a very tough former boxer whose face was both marked by scars and disfigured by a large port wine stain that he habitually tried to conceal with make-up.
She was in the Range Rover again and on the way to the office next morning when her mobile phone in the hands-free mounting played its tune. She answered and received an instruction originating from Mr Blackhouse to get out to Turnhouse airport and collect Detective Superintendent Largs who would be coming off the Inverness plane. She was to bring him to a room, the number of which she recognized as pertaining to Mr Blackhouse himself.
As she drove out towards Turnhouse, Honey wondered why the two detective superintendents thought it necessary to meet face to face when they had all the resources of the Internet, telephones, fax machines and other technological novelties for the purpose. Truly the ways of senior policemen were strange indeed.
Mr Largs’s plane was due, but Honey wasted a minute or two in finding a slot in the car park. Much more time could go down the drain, she knew, in trying to convince some jobsworth that she was a police officer on duty. The plane had picked up a tail wind and arrived slightly early, so the monitors in the hall informed her, but the big man was only just emerging from Arrivals.
He greeted her as an old friend and they walked out to the Range Rover together. ‘I’d hoped for a car to be sent for me,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t have dared hope for a detective inspector – and a very beautiful one, if I may say so – in her own luxury vehicle. This must be important.’
Honey looked at him out of the corner of her eye as she drove, but the compliment did not seem to be the precursor to a pass. ‘You don’t know what it’s about either?’
‘I was just invited, peremptorily, to attend a discussion that might be very much to my advantage. Believe it or not, I was also told that Strathclyde would pick up the travel bill. Otherwise I would have had a Traffic car take me to Perth and ask for one of yours to meet me there. But of course Strathclyde have a much bigger budget that either of our forces, though they don’t often splash it around.’
‘Stranger things have happened,’ Honey said. She braked sharply as a white van overtook her and cut in. She began to reach for her radio but then decided to let the other driver get away with it just this once. ‘Not very often,’ she said, ‘but I have heard of them.’
Detective Superintendent Largs was still chuckling as Honey pulled into the only spare slot outside the main door of the Fettes Avenue HQ of Lothian and Borders Police.
Chapter Sixteen
Space comes expensive in modern buildings, but the rooms given over to senior policemen may seem to be surprisingly generous in size. This is to allow smaller meetings and round-table discussions to take place without the need to transfer to a conference room.
When Mr Largs signalled her to precede him, Honey thought at first that she must have brought him to the wrong room. The considerable area of carpet was of the familiar colour but a complete stranger was seated in the place of honour behind the big desk. Too quic
kly for the thought to be verbalized, she wondered if Mr Blackhouse’s sins had found him out. Perhaps he had died in the night or come down with something painful and incurable. But fate had not smiled on her. She saw the man himself, sitting to one side of the desk and looking singularly out of place. To judge from the neat, unopened files and briefcases she could assume that the company was only just assembling.
The stranger was tall, lean and well dressed. He switched on the tape recorder that always stood ready on the desk and stood politely as they entered. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Halliday, Strathclyde,’ he said briefly, seating himself. He beckoned Honey and Mr Largs to seats at the table. ‘Inspector Laird now has the most complete all-round acquaintance. Perhaps she would perform introductions for the record.’
Honey had a definite sensation of having been tossed in at the deep end, but she collected her scattered wits. ‘I am Detective Inspector Laird, Lothian and Borders. On my left is Detective Superintendent Blackhouse, also of Lothian and Borders. Mr Halliday has just introduced himself. Opposite is Detective Superintendent Largs, Northern Constabulary. And next to me is Detective Chief Inspector Laird of Lothian and Borders.’
‘Another Laird?’ said Mr Largs. ‘Any relation?’
‘He is my husband,’ Honey said. ‘And I may add that I had no idea that he would be here. Or why.’
‘You are about to find out why,’ said Halliday. He had a bland and expressionless face. His accent was educated and was tinged with faint traces of Glasgow. ‘There seems to be a strong link between the case of the murder of Cheryl Abernethy, alias Harriet Benskin, and the case that Chief Inspector Laird and I have been working on. Inspector Laird – I’ll refer to her as Mrs Laird, to avoid any danger of confusion – Mrs Laird faxed a request to Strathclyde, asking the identity and present whereabouts of a man known as Jimmy. In view of his description and occupation, and more particularly the stain on his face and his sensitivity on the subject, he was easy to pin down as Dougal Walsh. His present whereabouts are not yet known. We’ll come back to him in a minute. For the moment, let’s just say that at the mention of him a whole carillon started ringing. I phoned Mr Blackhouse immediately and he wired me copies of Mrs Laird’s very thorough reports.’ He directed a fleeting smile in Honey’s direction.
The room seemed a little less claustrophobic. ‘Thank you,’ Honey said softly.
Halliday nodded. ‘Before we discuss the other case, could I be brought up to date, please, on what steps have been taken to identify the characters in the Abernethy case?’
Honey looked at Mr Blackhouse, who nodded to her. ‘The body turned up in the territory of Northern,’ she said, ‘so I’ve been trying to limit myself to suggesting possible actions to Mr Largs.’
‘Which my team is following up diligently,’ said Mr Largs. ‘My team is busily enquiring of fee-paying girls’ schools for a former pupil named Cheryl Abernethy or otherwise, with the facial blemish described. We have asked other forces to do the same. The school’s records may produce a town of origin. The cottage belongs to a lady in Inverness and is in the hands of the agents Scott and Haliburton. It was rented over the phone by a man giving a false name and address and the rent was paid in cash by an individual who visited their office, so there may never be any more information there. It smacks of a carefully contrived dead end.
‘We have traced the hotel where the couple stopped for lunch. The dead girl’s writing referred to a CCTV camera on a nearby post office, but it turns out that the camera was not operating that day.
‘The results of the full PM should be available tonight or tomorrow morning and you’ll have it as soon as I do. I don’t expect it to be very revealing. So far, Forensics has turned up fingerprints confirming the presence of Dougal Walsh at the cottage and DNA that we can presume to be his. The knife is a commonplace hunting knife of a design that can be bought almost anywhere, but it had been honed to razor sharpness. A cast and photographs of it have been sent to your pathologist for comparison with the wounds that killed Jem Tanar.
‘Our enquiries are ongoing. The lady with the spaniels has been identified and is being asked about her last encounter with the dead girl. I’ll circulate a fuller report in a few days, when I can draw it all together. For the moment, that’s about all that I can offer.’ Superintendent Largs sat back in his chair and waited for others to do their party pieces.
He looked at Mr Blackhouse, who said, ‘There can be little doubt which local newspaper the girl referred to. It has been visited. The staff denies having a McRitchie among them or anybody resembling the girl’s description of him. There is no single proprietor, according to the company’s register. It’s a limited company.’
He looked in turn at Honey. Honey said, ‘If everybody has seen copies of my reports, I can’t add anything. Except that the local officers in Haddington should be asked to keep an eye open for Dougal Walsh. The postlady told me that the memory card had been dropped into a post box in Haddington.’
‘You can take that on, inspector,’ said Mr Blackhouse.
Halliday was frowning. ‘One matter needs more work and the area, Blackhouse, is again yours. The newspaper. Unless the girl was hopelessly confused and confusing, part of the truth lies there and the personnel are covering up. Why? Who is the real proprietor? How did they manage to cover up so quickly?’
Honey could see it coming. She tried very hard to be invisible, a trick that she had always aspired to but never achieved. Mr Blackhouse’s eyes settled on her. ‘Mrs Laird will look into that aspect,’ he said.
She had always known when Sandy was amused without seeing, hearing or touching him. The means, she thought, could only be telepathic. He could see that she was being saddled with a task that would be onerous, drawn-out and, in the end, worse than thankless. He was also sympathetic. ‘I seem to have a foot in each camp,’ he said. ‘Until we have some more answers there won’t be much else for me to do. I can give Mrs Laird a hand.’
Mr Blackhouse nodded.
‘That’s agreed, then,’ said Mr Halliday. ‘Now we come to the other side of the story. Jimmy – Dougal Walsh – was correct. The Glasgow gangs are rising again and co-ordinating. We’re pulling out all the stops, but this time the mastermind is playing it carefully. If anything is ever written down, it is burned or shredded immediately afterwards. The organization works with ruthless military precision and discipline. Anybody who steps outside its boundaries is ruthlessly put down, but we have identified the person who is either the kingpin or possibly the kingpin’s right-hand man. This, of course, falls within my territory. We were looking into it when we had a piece of luck. A solicitor was arrested for dipping into his clients’ funds. We had had some dealings with him previously. He demanded an interview with me and he made me a proposition. He knew about a very much larger fraud that was being set up. He could put back the money from his own fraud – how, I was careful not to ask – and give us details of the bigger fraud if we could go easier on him, and in particular wait until he’d made restitution before prosecuting.’
For a moment the chief superintendent’s face showed a trace of annoyance. ‘When push came to shove, he knew a great deal less than he’d led us to believe. He’d picked up on some hints dropped by a fellow solicitor who didn’t really know much anyway. On enquiry, there seemed to be something in it. Rumours were rife. It centred on the site for a new oil refinery to take some of the pressure off Grangemouth. For some reason it has been assumed that it would be located on the West Coast, relieving the Forth of some of the traffic and taking care of imported transatlantic oil. This explains how it comes to have been dropped into my lap and stayed there. Also, there is some involvement of the Glasgow kingpin – who is of Polish extraction, by the way, and named Ravitski. He gets called on whenever muscle is required. He also provides a confidential messenger service.
‘The first break that we got came when a Glasgow tart fell out with Dougal Walsh.’ Mr Halliday’s lip curled. ‘I suppose his cheque bounced o
r some such thing. That bears out what the Abernethy girl wrote about him, by the way. The tart moaned to the first vice squad officer to speak to her. Walsh had been with the tart – actually engaged in congress, I believe – when his mobile phone rang. He answered it – without disengaging from the girl or even checking his motions, I gather,’ Mr Halliday said with a cautious glance at Honey. ‘She couldn’t hear the whole message but she was sure of the words “refinery” and “got an option on the site”. The call finished with Walsh saying, “I’ll tell him”. Clearly he was being used as a message-bearer.
‘There was no point asking for phone-tap authorization. Cellphones don’t lend themselves to it and in this day and age, when Nokia churns the phones out by the thousand and sells them for peanuts, comparatively speaking, somebody like Walsh can have a different phone and a different number as often as his employer cares to pay for it. I set up a whole team to keep tabs on Walsh, complete with listening devices and parabolic reflectors, but – wouldn’t you know it? – he disappeared before we could latch on to him.
‘We can see now that we should have spread the net wider; we were just too fixated on the west coast. But it’s easy to see now that the Forth area makes more sense, being close to Grangemouth, the services and transport and experienced manpower. So it seems that Walsh was sent to stay in or near Edinburgh, where he could easily make contact with the parties. I expect that telephone traffic has been changed to personal briefings.
‘There’s another task for your team, Blackhouse. If options to purchase land for the refinery are in hand, there must have been at least a promise of outline planning permission.’
In Loving Memory Page 12