to keep your arm immobilised for a while. So do what they say, if you
want to be able to button up your shirts with your right hand.'
Her grin returned. 'Or unbutton yours,' she chuckled, woozily.
He could tell that she was ready for sleep. 'I'm going to go now,' he
said. 'They're going to move you to a ward in a minute. I'll look in
tomorrow morning. We're working up here just now.' He leaned across
the bed and kissed her. 'Sleep tight, - and watch that arm.'
'Mario,' she whispered as he made to stand. The heavy sedative
was kicking in, with a vengeance.
'What?' He smiled at her, amused. He had never seen her as
intoxicated.
'Wrong bloody Deacey,' she murmured. 'But he's the only one ...'
Her voice trailed off, as the drug drew her into sleep. He kissed her
once more, on the forehead, stood, and turned to leave. The surgeon
stood in the doorway. 'You sure she'll be all right, now?' McGuire
asked. Something in his voice made it clear that there had better be
only one answer to that question.
'Yes, if she does what she's told for the next few days.' He sighed.
'Rough job for a woman.' Suddenly Mario, felt a lump in his throat.
He looked back over his shoulder, towards the bed, so that the man
could not see his eyes.
'Some woman,' he said, lost in love and admiration.
He shook his head as if to clear it, zipped up his Barbour and
headed out of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, into the night. The clock in
his car, which was parked near the AE entrance, thanks to his
Special Branch clout, told him that it was just after eight thirty.
Instead of heading home, he swung right out of the hospital gate and
drove off in the direction of the St Leonard's divisional headquarters.
The officer on duty at the entrance nodded an acknowledgement as
he walked into the building. 'Mr Mackie still here?' he asked.
'Yes sir,' said the man. 'Up in his office. DS Steele's still here too.'
McGuire trotted upstairs, gave a brief knock on the divisional CID
commander's door and walked in. Mackie and Steele were seated at a
long conference table, shirt-sleeved. The superintendent held a mug
of coffee while the sergeant was sipping from a can of Sprite. They
stood anxiously as he closed the door behind him.
'How is she?' asked Mackie.
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'Drugged up to the eyeballs, and having blood pumped into her;
but she's going to be all right, thank Christ.'
'Mario, I'm sorry' Steele began.
'What for? Saving her life? We owe you one, son. Thanks from
both of us.'
'But I should have held her back,' the young sergeant protested.
'That place was a snake pit, I should have gone in first.'
'Stevie,' said McGuire steadily. 'If you had held her back, even
now you'd have been shaking the mothballs out of your uniform.' He
peeled off his Barbour and the jacket of his suit together, and threw
them across the table. 'What's the Deacey story then, Brian?'
'He isn't one,' the superintendent answered sourly. 'We printed
him, then ran a PNC check. The guy's real name is Winston Joseph;
he's a pimp, from Birmingham. He's been wanted for four years, since
one of his girls was murdered, cut to bits. He was the only suspect;
witnesses saw them together at the scene. The other tarts in his string
said that the dead girl had been doing freelance jobs and he'd found
out. He hasn't been seen since; the CID down there assumed he'd
gone back to the Caribbean, but now it turns out that he got himself
fixed up with a new identity. We were put on to him by the DSS
people. He was the only Deacey that their records showed up.
'It's obvious that when Maggie told him that she wanted to talk to
him about the death of a woman, he jumped to the wrong conclusion,
i.e. that he'd been rumbled, and that she and Stevie were there to lift
him for killing the girl.
'We've charged him with attempted murder. But as soon has he's
been up before the Sheriff tomorrow for a formal remand, we've got
to send him down south for questioning there. Our Brummie
colleagues are very grateful to us.'
'That's good. Mags'11 be pleased too.'
'Yes, but he was our only Deacey, and no way was he Gaynor's
boyfriend. We can be sure of that much. So the Weston investigation's
at a dead stop. She won't be so chuffed about that.'
'I suppose not,' McGuire grunted.
'Coffee?' asked Mackie.
'Please.' He paused. 'I'll just go for a piss first.'
Still in shirt-sleeves, his warrant card hanging on a chain round his
neck, he left the room. He walked straight past the male toilet, which
was not far from Mackie's office, then downstairs and along the
corridor to the station's holding cells.
'Hello Davie,' he said to the custody sergeant. The man looked at
him for a long time, unsmiling.
'Remember that night in Muirhouse, when those three guys had
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you trapped?' McGuire asked, meaningfully.
The sergeant reached a decision. With a grim nod, he rose, and led
him along the row of cells, until they came to the last door on the
right. 'It's Tuesday, the night,' he said at last. 'Quiet. Naebody else in
yet.' He turned his master key in the lock.
Winston Joseph was squatting on the bed against the far wall of the
cell when the black-haired, shirt-sleeved, thick-necked figure stepped
into his world. He jumped to his feet. 'I told y'all already. Ain't got
nothin' to say, mon.'
'That's fine,' McGuire growled. 'I don't want you to say anything.
I just want you to scream for a while.'
He stepped forward, reaching out with his left hand as if to clip the
man on the side of the head. Instinctively Joseph leaned back; as he
did so, the swarthy detective shifted his weight and smashed his right
fist into the fleshy triangle just below his rib cage. The smacking
sound seemed to bounce off the cell's tiled room.
For a moment, the bizarre orange dreadlocks stood out straight, as
if their owner had been struck by lightning. Indescribable bolts of
pain flooded through the bulky body of the former Malcolm Deacey,
as his legs buckled beneath him and he slumped to the floor. He did
his best to scream, but found that all the air seemed to have been
driven from his lungs; they burned, adding to his agony, as he gasped
for breath.
His smiling nightmare allowed him squirm on the floor for a few
seconds, then hauled him upright, held him by the throat with his left
hand, and hit him again, in the same spot, but even harder. This time,
Joseph lost control of his bladder, as well as his legs.
'Just in case you were wondering,' said Mario McGuire, conversationally,
as he dug his left thumb, agonisingly, into the bunched
nerve endings at the base of the man's neck, 'that was my wife you cut
this afternoon. I wish I had more time to get to know you, but still,
I've got enough. You, my man, are in for the worst few minutes of
your life.'
Somewhere in his befuddled brain, Winston Joseph knew that the
sm
art thing to do would be to pass out. Unfortunately, he never had
been very smart.
102
30
Every Special Branch commander for a decade had come to know
Henry Wills well. Student politics were no longer seen as a major
subject for surveillance, but even in relaxed times, those in charge of
the security of the state thought it prudent to be aware of the broad
spectrum of campus activity. Very few things happened in Edinburgh
University of which its Registrar was ignorant.
Wills was a polite, urbane man. As he sat at his meeting table
with Mario McGuire and Karen Neville, his reading glasses, perched
on the end of his nose, made him look even more owlish than
usual.
'Before we begin. Inspector, I must ask you. How is your wife? I
read all about her mishap in this morning's Scotsman.' As he spoke he
glanced through the window towards the sprawling buildings of the
Royal Infirmary, of which the nearest was less than three hundred
yards away.
McGuire smiled. 'She's doing fine thanks, Mr Wills. I looked in on
her before I came here. She had a good night. God help them today,
though, once the post-op sedation's all worn off. Maggie's a hellish
patient.'
'And how are you, Mario?' the Registrar added, quietly.
'To tell you the truth, I still shake every time I think what might
have happened. It'll be a while before I can put that thought out of my
mind.'
'And the man who did it?'
The inspector looked at his watch. 'He's due in the Sheriff Court
just about now; once he's been charged formally he'll be off to England
to be questioned about a murder.'
'Does that mean that he won't be punished for attacking your
wife?'
'No, not at all. When our courts want him, we'll get him back.
They'll take a plea in absentia, I should think, and he'll be sent to the
High Court for disposal. He'll get ten years at least. Hopefully the judge will make it consecutive, to be served after he's due for release
from his life sentence for the Brum murder.' He glowered at Wills. 'If
103
he makes it concurrent, then effectively the bastard will have got off
with it.'
He placed his hands palms-down on the table, his way of indicating
that the subject was closed. 'How many of your economists do we
still have to check, Henry?' he asked.
Wills looked at the bundle of landing cards which lay on the desk
before him, and at the registration sheets which lay beside them in
matching order. 'Today should see it done,' the Registrar replied, looking from one detective to the other. 'Those are the details of the
people in the last two discussion groups. Once you work through
these, that'll be everyone accounted for. A pity, in a way. I've enjoyed
your morning visits.'
Mario McGuire fought to suppress a chuckle. Most men enjoyed a
visit from Karen Neville, but he was surprised to hear the bookish,
middle-aged academic admit it. The sergeant was a rare combination
of attractive features and spectacular physique; in addition she had a
quick open smile, and a way of looking through her blue-grey eyes at
most things male which made them feel as if there was no one else in
the room. She was the second most desirable woman McGuire had
ever seen. In the past, her own desires had been quick to surface; this
had led her into trouble on more than one occasion.
Her smile widened a little as she ran a hand over her thick designer-
blonde hair. 'I envy you your office, Mr Wills,' she responded, looking
round the oak-panelled room. 'Ours is a steel-furnished box.'
'That's right,' said the inspector, intervening before their host could
reach melt-down point. 'Special Branch isn't that special when it
comes to accommodation.' He looked on as Wills divided the papers
into two sets. 'Anything exceptional in this lot?' he asked.
'Well,' the other man began, 'there is one chap whose sheet struck
me as slightly odd. The thing is, he doesn't appear to be an economist.
His name is Wayne Ventnor. He does list a degree, but it's in Chemical
Engineering, from the University of Western Australia. At first sight,
it's not clear what he's doing here.
'My supposition is that he's a civil servant nominated by an
Australian state government, although his registration sheet doesn't
say that.'
'That sounds plausible, all the same,' McGuire agreed. 'The sheets
still show the same information as the ones we've seen before, do
they?'
'Yes. Name, nation or university of origin, qualifications, any
special area of interest, conference number, discussion group allocation,
and hotel or other accommodation.'
'Only one thing missing, isn't there.'
104
'What's that?' asked Neville, as Wills nodded, sheepishly.
'A photograph of each delegate,' said the inspector. 'If we'd had
those, we could have done this check in a day.'
'Don't I know it,' the Registrar acknowledged. 'It's supposed to be
standard practice for University events, but the people who organised
this conference are a law unto themselves.'
You might tell them,' McGuire grumbled, 'that when it comes to
security, I'm the law around here, and that I don't appreciate having to
go round eyeballing two hundred plus people when we could have
handled most of it at a desk, if they'd done a professional job.
'Come on, Karen,' he said. 'Say goodbye to Mr Wills, and let's get
on down to the conference centre to get this lot looked over.'
105
31
'Maggie is going to make a full recovery, isn't she?' Bob Skinner
asked, anxiously. The wounded chief inspector had served for a time
as his executive assistant; she was one of the group of officers whom
he regarded privately as his inner circle.
Brian Mackie, another of the select group, did his best to reassure
him. The surgeon told Mario that he expects her to be fine. It was a
brutal cut, and her arm is full of internal sutures as well as the clips on
the outside, but if she behaves herself, everything will heal up fine.'
The DCC nodded. 'Good. But when she's ready to come back to
work, it's down to you to make sure she does toe the line. Office
duties only until the surgeon certifies that there's no further chance of
long-term damage.'
Mackie frowned. 'You tell her that, please, boss; I don't think I've
got the guts. You know what Maggie's like; she'll be desperate to get
back into the front line as quick as she can.'
'I'll tell her this very morning. I'm going up to the Royal when I
leave here.' He looked around Mackie's office. 'I came down here for
a purpose, Brian. Allocation ofCID resources is Andy's responsibility,
but I don't want you to feel shy about asking him for a replacement
for Mags while she's off. I know that overall, we're tight on manpower,
but if he asks me for another senior body, I'll accommodate him. We
have chief inspectors in uniform with CID experience; I can transfer
one of them on a temporary basis.'
Th
e superintendent nodded his appreciation. 'Thanks, sir. But let
me try it on my own for a bit. I'll try and fill the gap myself, by
getting out of the office more.'
Skinner laughed. 'Who does that remind me of, I wonder?'
'You,' Mackie replied, promptly. 'You've got a lot to answer for;
this force is littered with reluctant delegators, made in your image.
'I'm not just indulging myself though,' he continued. 'If I brought
someone else in I'd just have to bring him - or her - up to speed on the
Weston investigation. No, I've got a great regard for young Steele.
I'm going to team up with him myself.'
Skinner nodded. 'I share your view of the lad. He'll get a
106
commendation for bravery for what he did yesterday; that'll be his
second in a fairly short time.' The DCC paused. 'Is that bastard
Joseph still downstairs?'
'No, boss. He's off to court. He'll be charged, released without bail
so that we don't run into trouble with the hundred and ten day
prosecution rule, then rearrested immediately on suspicion of the
Birmingham murder. He won't be coming back to this nick, though.
He'll be held in Saughton until escorting officers arrive from down
south.'
'Just as well,' the DCC muttered. 'Every minute he spends here,
Mario must feel like going down there and battering the shit out of
him.' There was a sudden silence in the room; it lasted for one second
too long, before Mackie broke it. 'Yes indeed.' Skinner looked at him,
an eyebrow raised, opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it
again.
'Joseph's brief came up to see me before he went to court,' the
superintendent continued, hastily. 'He said that his client was after a
deal; he'd plead guilty to the Birmingham murder if we'd drop the
attempt to murder charge, and if the DSS drop their fraud complaint
over his false identity.'
'Eh? He'd plead to murder to avoid a serious assault charge, and a
DSS fiddle?'
'He doesn't want to do time in Scotland, apparently.'
'So what did you tell the solicitor?'
'What the book tells me to say; that he should take it up with
the Fiscal. But I added that personally I didn't give a shit about
Birmingham, with one of our own wounded.'
'Quite right too. I'll have a word with Davie Pettigrew myself, just
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