16 - Dead And Buried

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘What’s this?’ Shannon murmured.

  ‘The gun’s probably a back-up,’ Skinner replied. ‘These?’ He opened the envelope and let the snapshots it contained spill on to the counter: as they sorted through them they saw a man in uniform, alone, and with a woman, two children, another younger woman, alone in some, but in others with a stocky smiling young man. ‘This is a life, a life left behind.’

  He was about to replace them when something caught his eye: a slip of paper, folded and mixed up among them. He picked it up, opened it, and read. ‘ “This is your man,” ’ he murmured. ‘ “Peter Bassam, Turkish Delight, Elbe Street, Edinburgh. He’s mine from way back; you can trust him.” It’s signed “T”, that’s all. So who the hell are you, T; who the hell are you?’

  ‘Peter Bassam?’ Shannon exclaimed.

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Good question. It brings us back to this: if you think of agencies with the need and the capacity to run intelligence operatives in the Balkans, and you take out our SIS, the list’s a pretty short one.’

  He pocketed the gun, ammunition, photographs and note. ‘Come on, Dottie,’ he said. ‘We’re out of here.’

  Darkness had fallen as they stepped outside, and as Skinner secured the lock. He was about to switch off the power to the boat when he saw what was beside it, mounted on a pole. ‘Shit,’ he growled, ‘a mailbox. How did I miss that?’

  It took him less than ten seconds to open it with his lock-pick. There were two items of mail inside. He took them out and peered at them in the dim light of a nearby standard. One was junk addressed to ‘The Householder’; the other bore the name ‘Moses Archer’.

  Forty

  It took the chief constable very little time to learn two things that Ethel Margaret Bothwell, née Ward, and Primrose Jardine, never legally Bothwell, had in common, apart from their connection with the mysterious teacher. Records showed that they were both still alive and, like him, they had both opted out of the social-security system.

  Jack McGurk’s research had been thorough. He had produced background summaries on Bothwell and his ‘wives’, containing all the information he had gleaned from the records.

  Proud read through them carefully.

  Claude Bothwell, born Perth 1930, only son of Herbert John Bothwell, clerk, and Lorna Grimes or Bothwell, school teacher, both deceased. One uncle on mother’s side, married, no issue, deceased; therefore Bothwell has no surviving family in Perth. He married Ethel Margaret Ward, spinster, of Thorny Grove, Wishaw, born Wishaw 1921, daughter of William Ward, industrialist, and Margaret Meek Marshall. No siblings. Mr Ward was a significant shareholder in a steel mill nationalised by the Labour government in 1951; he and Mrs Ward drowned in a boating accident in France in 1952, leaving an estate valued at £98,000, net of estate duty, according to the will lodged in Hamilton Sheriff Court. Bothwell’s marriage to Ethel Ward took place a year later in Motherwell registry office. His address at the time of the marriage was given as 34B Caledonian Drive, Wishaw. A check of the Register of Sasines showed that he was not the owner of that property, so my guess is that he was a tenant and that he moved into Thorny Grove with his wife following the marriage. The property was sold in 1956 for £21,500, a considerable sum at that time.

  In 1957 Claude Bothwell married, apparently bigamously, Primrose Jardine, nurse, born 1932, of 223 Stevenson Street, Scotstoun, Glasgow, the only child of the late Hugh Jardine, welder, and the late Agnes Bell or Jardine. Mr Jardine was killed in an air raid on Clydebank in 1941; Mrs Jardine died of tuberculosis in 1954. Bothwell’s address on the second marriage certificate, 14 Dundyvan Drive, Broomhill, Glasgow, matches that shown on the SSTA records. A check of the Register shows that the property was owned by Albert Ernest Pickard, who was at that time Glasgow’s second biggest landlord, after the City Corporation. It was sold following Mr Pickard’s death in 1964 to Mr Arnold Solomons, who still lives there.

  Bothwell’s third marriage to Montserrat Rivera Jiminez, daughter of Jaime Rivera and Pilar Jiminez, of Torroella de Montgri, Gerona, Spain, took place in October 1961. Both parties listed their address as 3 Newgate Street, Kirkliston, again a rented property which passed into the ownership of the Lark Housing Association in 1962. It still belongs to them; their records show that Mr and Mrs Bothwell gave up their tenancy in 1964. Unfortunately, that is the address on the SSTA files, so we do not know where they were living at the time of their disappearance.

  ‘Quite a trail,’ Proud murmured. ‘Where did Bob say he would start? At the place they were last seen, as I recall.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Fine, but after forty years, who’s still going to be around to talk to me?’ As he gazed at the notes, he frowned, then picked up his phone and dialled McGurk. ‘Jack, a question: when the Ward parents’ will was lodged in the Sheriff Court, who did it? Did you ask that?’

  ‘I didn’t have to: they volunteered it. I didn’t include it in the summary because I didn’t think it was relevant any more. It was a firm called Hill and White.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  James Proud was a latecomer to the age of information technology; he had acknowledged it grudgingly but, with Gerry Crossley as his tutor, he was learning. He switched on his computer, pulled up the website of the Law Society of Scotland and opened its directory. He entered ‘Hill and White’, then pressed ‘search’, but there was no return. He was about to give up, when he saw a window headed ‘Any Location’. He opened it, selected ‘Wishaw’, and found himself looking at a list of sixteen firms. He went through them one by one: last on the alphabetical list he spotted ‘Woodburn Hill and White, 17 Church Road, Wishaw.’ He looked for a website, but found none, only the names of two solicitors, neither of which was, or bore any resemblance to, Woodburn, Hill or White.

  ‘Not promising,’ he murmured, ‘but it’s a place to start.’

  Forty-one

  Alex checked her time sheet at the end of the day: it did not look good. Curle Anthony and Jarvis billed by the quarter-hour and staff below partner level were expected to charge out virtually all of their working day. Her meeting with McIlhenney and Steele had overrun and she had been caught in a traffic jam on the way to her next client appointment, with Paula Viareggio, to finalise the transformation of the family trust into a limited company. Paula had been good about it, and had even taken her to lunch, but that had dragged on too. As a result she found herself looking at an hour and three-quarters of her day that had fallen into the sort of black hole that Mitchell Laidlaw, her boss, did not like to see.

  She was finalising the record when she realised that he was standing behind her looking over her shoulder. ‘Sorry,’ she said, lamely, glancing up at him. ‘Today was a succession of disasters.’

  ‘Alex,’ he replied, ‘I keep separate lists of all the days when the members of my department bill out, on one hand, less than their allocation, and on the other, more than one hundred per cent of their standard hours by working late. You’re at the foot of one list and the top of another, and I won’t insult you by asking you to guess which is which. You’re my best fee-earner, so I’m not going to worry about that.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ she exclaimed. ‘I enjoy my lifestyle.’ She began to clear her desk. ‘Did you want something in particular, Mitch?’ she asked.

  ‘No, no,’ he insisted. ‘I just called by to ask how you were doing.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told him. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘No reason, no reason.’ Suddenly, the firm’s chairman looked unusually flustered.

  ‘Has my dad been talking to you?’

  The portly lawyer’s face became slightly ruddier than usual. ‘Well, yes. To be honest, he did. He told me about the unpleasantness you’ve been having at home, with all these phone calls.’

  Alex felt her hackles rise. ‘And I’ll bet,’ she fumed, ‘that he asked you to do a workplace check.’

  ‘Well, er, yes, in fact he did.’

  ‘I will bloody kil
l him! Mitch, I’m really sorry, he had no business bringing any of that to you.’

  ‘Of course he had. Anyone in that position can come to me, and I’ll do what I can to assist. The soundings I took were as discreet as possible . . . obviously so, since this is the first you’ve heard of them. You’ll be glad to hear they came up with nothing, no potential candidates.’

  She laughed lightly. ‘That’s almost a disappointment. You’re saying that even in a firm this size there’s nobody secretly lusting after me.’

  Laidlaw beamed. ‘Actually,’ he chortled, ‘you’re quite wrong. There are several, but they don’t make any secret of it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. My self-confidence is restored. To put you in the picture, I think the thing’s blown over. I’ve told the police to stop listening in to my calls as of now.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s wise, if they haven’t caught the fellow?’

  ‘Mitch, I’m in no danger: trust me on this.’

  ‘If you say so.’ He smiled, awkwardly. ‘But you can’t blame me for worrying. After all . . .’

  ‘Don’t say it! I’m your best fee-earner.’

  Forty-two

  ‘ There’s no such person as Moses Archer: he doesn’t exist. I’ve run checks everywhere and that’s the official verdict.’ Amanda Dennis looked solemnly across her desk at Skinner, then raised an eyebrow. ‘Assumed name?’ she suggested.

  The Scot shook his head. ‘No, it’s a discarded name,’ he countered. ‘All references have been excised from the records, everywhere.’

  ‘What makes you so sure of that?’

  He took a letter from his pocket. ‘This does: it was posted last Friday, from one of the many places in the UK with an illegible postmark. The Royal Mail should have its cage rattled about that, by the way. Let me read it to you.

  ‘Dear Moses

  ‘I know you’re a busy man and everything, but it’s been a while since I heard from you. More importantly, it’s been a while since your nephews heard from you. It was young Joshua’s birthday yesterday. He was really disappointed not to get a card from you, or even a phone call. Mum called him, though, and sent money for me to buy him a present. She sounded well; she said she’s going to visit a friend in New Jersey soon, for a break before Christmas. I hope everything’s all right with you, and that you haven’t caught one of those winter bugs that laid you low when we were kids. I worry about you living on that boat. I know it’s lovely and it’s moored in a very posh area, but it must be bloody cold at this time of year.

  ‘Everything’s fine up here. The Dales are quiet, of course, but if we have a mild Christmas we may see more people around. I hope so, for every little helps in the bakery. Still, Elton’s had a reasonable year, so I shouldn’t grumble. He and I went to the Druid last weekend. The food was great as usual, and Elton said that the beer’s never been better. Will we see you at Christmas? Hope so. I’ve got your Santa Claus suit all ready for you.

  ‘Your loving sis

  ‘Esther.

  ‘The heading on the notepaper is Glebe Cottage, Stannington Drive, Bakewell. That’s in Derbyshire, if you didn’t know.’

  Dennis gave him a reproving glance. ‘Of course I knew. I see what you mean: Moses Archer doesn’t exist, but he has a sister. So who the hell is he?’

  ‘No: who the hell was he?’

  ‘You know?’

  Skinner nodded. ‘If you have to leave a name behind to protect your family from possible reprisals when you join a very secret organisation, Adam Arrow isn’t exactly a quantum leap from Moses Archer.’ He tossed a photograph on to the desk. ‘That’s Moses, in his teens by the look of him: it’s also Adam Arrow. I’m guessing that the girl is Esther.’

  ‘But who is Adam Arrow?’

  ‘He was the military intelligence officer involved in the plot, the man shot dead up at St Andrews.’

  ‘Are you certain of all this?’

  ‘Totally. I knew Adam as well as anyone did; that’s him as a kid. Half the time, when he spoke to you, he’d lapse into a very colourful Derbyshire accent; he only dropped it when he was talking serious business. The clothes on the houseboat were his size. There’s no doubt. Amanda,’ he sighed, ‘I don’t have to tell you that when you enter the world he inhabited, you have to leave everything else behind you. Major Adam Arrow lived in Dolphin Square, but I guess he was too attached to his family to allow Moses Archer to disappear completely. So he kept the Bulrush . . . Moses, bulrushes, there’s a connection when you think about it . . . as an accommodation address. No, more than that: as a gateway back into his real life.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that have been potentially dangerous for his family?’

  ‘Yes, it was reckless, but Adam was familiar with danger. He didn’t fear it, and he could manage it.’

  ‘And Arrow was the third plotter.’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve known that all along. The thing that concerns me now is that Moses Archer was in on it as well.’

  Forty-three

  She had just parked her car in her space in the underground garage beneath her apartment, when her mobile sounded. The screen identified the caller: for a moment she contemplated rejecting the call, but she knew that would be postponing the inevitable.

  ‘Yes, Pops,’ she said, into the hands-free microphone.

  ‘Alex, can you speak?’

  ‘Yes. I’m at home, more or less.’

  ‘What the hell is this about stopping the intercept?’

  ‘It’s what I want.’

  ‘We haven’t nailed the man yet. You can’t stop it. Even if you think you know who it is, you can’t stop it.’

  ‘I can, and I have.’

  ‘Gimme the name, then. Tell me who you think it is. I’ll have someone interview him.’

  ‘Pops, that’s precisely what I’m trying to avoid.’ For a few seconds the sound of her father’s breathing filled the car. ‘God,’ she said, ‘you sound just like him.’

  ‘That’s not funny!’ he snapped. ‘Look, give me the name and I’ll go easy on him: I’ll send Stevie Steele, rather than the heavy squad. He’ll just talk to him, establish whether it was him and, if it was, discuss his problem with him, gently, without any threat of prosecution.’

  ‘If I knew who it was, and I’m not saying that I do, I could do that myself. I could go to court and take out an interdict against him; if I did that, any further calls he made to me would be in contempt of court. He’d go to jail for that. If you slap a criminal charge on him the worst he’d get would be probation and a few sessions with a psychologist.’

  ‘You’ve got a point there, I suppose,’ Bob admitted grudgingly. ‘Okay, the intercept is lifted, but put your phone on auto answer mode as a means of filtering your calls. And make damn sure your alarm’s on night setting.’

  ‘Are you trying to reassure yourself or scare me?’

  ‘Sorry, love; the truth is I’m just scaring myself. Do it for me, though.’

  ‘I will. But what makes you assume that I won’t have a bodyguard tonight anyway?’

  ‘Indeed? And will you?’

  ‘Time will tell, Father, time will tell.’

  Forty-four

  Aileen reached across the table and took his hand. ‘You’re very tense,’ she told him. ‘And you’ve been glancing around the restaurant all through the meal, as if you’re afraid we’re being watched.’ She frowned. ‘We’re not, are we?’

  Bob shook his head. ‘No, you can relax on that score. Nobody followed me from my hotel, and there’s no closed-circuit camera in this restaurant.’

  ‘Are you saying that you thought you might be followed?’

  ‘I didn’t discount the possibility. I doubled back on myself a couple of times, and stopped in a pub on the way. If there was anyone, I’ve shaken them off.’

  ‘But why would anybody do that?’

  ‘For a variety of reasons; curiosity, for example. They don’t let too many outsiders into the building where I’m based. Some of the staff might have decided
to find out what I’m up to. On the other hand, someone on high might have decided to give me some discreet protection, whether I want it or not.’

  Anxiety crept into her eyes. ‘Bob, this thing that you’re doing, is it dangerous?’

  ‘I don’t think it is,’ he told her. ‘It’s taken a couple of unexpected turns, though.’

  ‘Can you tell me any more than you have already?’

  ‘Your security clearance may be top level in Scotland, but not down here. There is something I might ask you to do for me, though, a piece of special help that I’d only trust you to give.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’ll tell you if it’s necessary.’

  She smiled. ‘Darling, I don’t know if I want to sleep with someone who’s as paranoid as you. Go on, give me a clue.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Aileen,’ he sighed, ‘I’m being a pain. Okay, let me put it this way. I’m not absolutely certain that I can trust all the people I’m working with. If things take a certain turn, I might want to go over their heads. In that case, there’s a door which only you, of all the people I know, can open for me. But you’ll want to think about it: if I ask you to do this and I’m wrong, we’ll both be embarrassed.’

  ‘I can stand that. If you think it’s necessary, that’ll be good enough for me.’

  ‘That’s good.’ He grinned at her. ‘As for sleeping with paranoid men, let me tell you something. There may not be a camera in this room, but you can bet that there will be on all the accommodation floors. You’d be amazed at who can access them.’