Private Investigations

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘There are two bodies inside,’ she added.

  Twenty-Three

  They saw the blue light from a mile away, absorbed and amplified by the low cloud ceiling. The patrol car was waiting at the entrance road to the Flotterstone Inn, a place that Pye knew well. It was one of his wife’s favourite haunts, although their visits had been less frequent since the birth of their child two years earlier.

  A sergeant in a Day-Glo jacket stood beside his vehicle.

  ‘Where is it?’ the DCI asked.

  ‘Go straight on up the Glen road, sir. You’ll see the signs. Carry on for the best part of a mile. There’s a fire appliance at the scene, although the blaze was out by the time we got there.’

  ‘Who reported it?’

  ‘There’s a house a wee bit beyond, beside the reservoir. The householder went out to get some logs and saw the light in the sky. He ran down there and called Fire and Rescue.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Must be two hours ago now. The fire guys didn’t call us in till they had the blaze under control, and could see what’s inside the car. By the way, sir, the team leader’s going frantic; I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with him.’

  ‘What does he look like?’ Haddock asked.

  ‘Big bloke,’ the officer replied. ‘You canna miss him. He’s got a couple of stripes on his jacket. I’m not certain but I think he’s black.’

  The two detectives exchanged glances. ‘Thanks,’ the DCI said. ‘We’ll get on up there.’

  ‘Mind the road, sir,’ the constable volunteered. ‘It’s no the best.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Pye murmured as he drove on. ‘This is not good.’

  As they had been warned, the road was rough and narrow, limiting their speed; it took them a couple of minutes to reach the clearing where the fire appliance stood, with its spotlights trained on what was left of the white Toyota.

  They saw Levon Rattray at once; two of his crew were beside him as if they were holding him back, but when he saw Pye’s car he shook them off, and ran towards it.

  ‘Have they told you?’ he yelled, grabbing Haddock by the arm as he stepped out. ‘He’s in there, Dino and somebody else.’

  The DS took hold of his wrist and squeezed it, hard enough to make the man release him, saying as he did, ‘Calm down, Levon. We’ve been told that there may be bodies in the vehicle, but we’re making no assumptions. We know that the car is your wife’s, and we know that she isn’t in it, but those are the only two absolute facts we have.’

  ‘It’s Dino, I know it.’

  ‘Then let us take a look,’ Pye told him. ‘But you, please stay back. You’ve done your job; now let us do ours. Go and sit in your cab. We’ll talk to you when we’re ready.’

  ‘I want to come with you,’ the fireman insisted.

  ‘If we need you we’ll call you,’ the DCI said, firmly. ‘Now, do as I ask, please.’ He turned to Haddock. ‘Sauce, get us a couple of . . .’

  The sergeant had anticipated the instruction and was in the act of taking two paper crime scene suits from a box in the boot of the car. They slipped them on and walked towards the wreck, Haddock carrying a large halogen torch.

  The Aygo was sodden, water was coursing from the roof, and dripping from the empty window frames. They guessed that the glass had blown out from the heat of the fire.

  The occupants were soaked also, two black twisted figures that could have been carved from any carbonous material, obscene impressionist sculptures that once might have been part of the woodland that surrounded the site . . . had it not been for the teeth that gleamed in the beam of the detective sergeant’s flashlight when he fixed it on the occupant of the driver’s seat.

  ‘Dental records or a DNA match, I think.’ A soft female voice came from behind them. They turned, as one.

  ‘Professor,’ Pye exclaimed. ‘Don’t you have a junior you could send to a job like this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sarah Grace replied, ‘but two dead bodies in a burned-out car is very rarely a job for a postgraduate assistant. How much do we know, Sammy?’

  ‘The car was taken from the park at Queen Margaret University this afternoon. The suspected thief is the owner’s brother, who’s wanted in connection with the abduction and death of the child the gaffer found at Fort Kinnaird this morning.’

  ‘How sure are you?’

  ‘Percentage scale? About ninety-five.’

  ‘And the other occupant? I’m not even prepared to take a guess at the gender at this stage.’

  ‘Look at the feet, boss,’ Sauce Haddock said to Pye, training the beam on to the passenger. ‘Those things, those shoes, or what’s left of them. We’ve seen something like those tonight, somewhere else. Long heels, platform soles.’

  Pye nodded. ‘The standard footwear in Lacey’s, it looks like . . .’ He looked back towards the pathologist. ‘We think she’s Anna Hojnowski, also known as Anna Harmony, or by her nickname, Singer. She was the driver’s girlfriend. Everybody told her he was no use, but she wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘It’s not a mistake she’s going to get over,’ Sarah murmured.

  ‘No, but she’s left us a few questions. First and foremost, what were she and Dino doing here?’

  ‘Maybe they were having one for the road,’ Haddock suggested, bluntly.

  The DCI snorted. ‘That would have been an odd sense of priorities for someone on the run from a potential double murder charge. And second question, why were they at this spot? It’s pretty far off the road. We need to clear the whole area, Sauce, to let the CSI team look for evidence of a second vehicle here around the same time.’

  ‘Which leads us to the most obvious question,’ Sarah said. ‘Why didn’t they get out of the car after it caught fire? Sauce, can I borrow your light?’

  She leaned into the car, focusing the beam of the lamp on the blackened head of the thing in the passenger seat. She studied it for almost a minute, then dug into a pocket of her tunic and produced a magnifying glass, which she used to examine a small area above what had been an eye socket. After a few minutes she straightened up and faced her companions.

  ‘She . . . assuming you guys are right . . . appears to have been shot through the head. If so, it’s a safe bet that he was as well. They were executed, both of them.’

  ‘Will they be able to recover the bullets?’ Pye asked.

  ‘A small calibre soft-nosed bullet might still be in there. But if I can’t find it at the autopsy, you should be able to. It’ll be embedded in something, either in the fabric of the vehicle or the ground around it.’

  ‘How soon can you do the post-mortems?’

  ‘How soon can you let me have the bodies?’ she countered.

  ‘The crime scene team are on their way here. As soon as they’ve been photographed and filmed in situ, we’ll get them to you.’

  ‘For identification I’m going to need DNA samples,’ she said.

  ‘That shouldn’t be a problem, as far as the driver’s concerned. We think that overwrought fireman by the appliance is his brother-in-law, so we can arrange to take a sample from his wife. As for Anna, we know where she lives; with a bit of luck there will be something in her room that’ll give us what we need, hairbrush, leg shaver, whatever.’

  She nodded. ‘All good. In that case I’ll head for the city mortuary and wait for the bodies to arrive. I’ll call in my assistant, we’ll do both autopsies tonight and get the DNA matching under way.’ She handed the flashlight back to Haddock and headed for her car. She had gone only a few steps before stopping and looking back at them.

  ‘Given that Bob has a loose interest in this,’ she called out, ‘can I discuss it with him?’

  ‘Of course,’ Pye replied. ‘If he wants to know anything else, tell him to call me.’

  The detectives watched her leave
. ‘A change from Joe Hutchinson,’ Haddock observed.

  ‘She’s just as good,’ his boss said. ‘She’s always been better tuned into our wavelength than Master Yoda, given her police connection through big Bob. She’s right about this being an execution. It was a bloody efficient one too. Neither of them even made it out of the car.’

  ‘Do we assume the shooter was the person who planned the abduction?’

  ‘That’s the only logical conclusion we can come to. There’s no obvious indication that Dean Francey had a personal motive for attacking Grete and abducting wee Zena. He must have been hired to do the job. And when he bungled it, he became a danger to whoever is behind it. Let’s go on the assumption that he was lured to a meeting here, for example by the promise of cash for a getaway, and was eliminated.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ the DS agreed, ‘but why was Anna Harmony here as well? That’s assuming it is her.’

  ‘She must have been going away with him. Ilse did say she was “smitten by him”, to use her phrase. Maybe she was part of it, maybe she knew nothing of what he had done; either way we’ve no way of knowing, or of finding out. For now, Sauce, we’re left with only one line of inquiry, and that’s Grete Regal’s business problem.’

  ‘Agreed. Let’s pull Mackail in now, tonight.’

  ‘No, we can’t do that,’ Pye exclaimed. ‘He’s a person of interest, but no more than that, so far. Plus we’ll be tied up here for a while. I don’t know about you, but I’m shagged out, and I’d rather tackle the man when I’m fresh. Tomorrow morning, we can draw up a workable strategy for him.’

  ‘If you say so, Sammy. I must admit, I’ve had enough for today too. Wee Zena was bad, and now this. I need some domestic therapy from Cheeky.’

  ‘Then let’s get ready to brief the CSIs,’ Pye declared, ‘if the buggers ever get here. Meanwhile, I’d better follow bloody protocol, and advise the city commander of a major incident.’

  ‘And phone the DCC?’

  ‘Too right; this is something else he won’t want to find out about via the TV news.’

  Twenty-Four

  I have to confess that I was at something of a loss when I arrived home from Edinburgh. I had passed a couple of gainful hours in my office, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I signed myself out. All I could think about was the wee girl in the car; she just wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Seonaid and the boys were home from school when I got back to Gullane. I granted them some Playstation time, then took my daughter’s hand. ‘What would you like to do till Mum gets home?’ I asked her.

  ‘Story,’ she replied, without hesitation.

  Trish, the children’s live-in carer, had a date to meet a friend at Ocean Terminal; I persuaded her to leave early so that it was just the two of us. I was very glad of that; I needed very badly to spend time with my youngest child.

  We settled on How the Grinch Stole Christmas and went into the garden room, where she squeezed herself into an armchair beside me, her little face serious as I eased her into the classic yarn. She listened without a murmur, from start to finish, then looked up at me.

  ‘Have you ever seen a Grinch, Daddy?’ she asked me.

  ‘I’ve seen a few grumps,’ I told her, ‘and a few groaners, and even some people who looked pretty green, but no, I’ve never actually seen a Grinch.’

  ‘That’s because he’s not real, silly,’ she laughed.

  For a moment my mind was overwhelmed by an image of another child, not too many miles from where Seonaid and I were sitting, probably playing out the same scene with her mother less than twenty-four hours earlier.

  To fight it off, I picked up another book, A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six. My daughter isn’t, but as soon as she turned five, she declared herself too old for the companion volume, When We Were Very Young.

  ‘Let me read you a story about someone who was real,’ I said, and launched into King John’s Christmas. It took me a little while, for I had to stop to explain what ‘supercilious’ means, and to explain why he might have signed his name ‘Johannes R’, but settled for ‘Jack’, and what India rubber was, and why Seonaid couldn’t have a pocketknife that really cuts.

  ‘Was King John really a bad man, Daddy?’ she asked when the poem was over.

  ‘That depends on who’s telling his story,’ I replied. ‘I doubt if any king was completely good in those days. But I suspect,’ I added, conspiratorially, ‘that he was a reasonably good man with bad PR.’

  To deflect further discussion on the nature of public relations, I fast-forwarded to the tale of The Knight Whose Armour Didn’t Squeak, forgetting that it was about a medieval mugging. She laughed out loud at the tale. I’d only just finished convincing her that the cowardly knight Sir Thomas Tom really wasn’t a good man when Sarah arrived home and gave me the hug that I needed and the one that Seonaid took as her absolute right, which, of course, it is.

  ‘Bad day, uh?’ she murmured, as she held me close.

  ‘Bad start,’ I agreed, as we broke the clinch. ‘I thought I was done with things like that. I think I’m magnetic, love. Of all the cars that fu . . .’ Realising that our daughter was still within earshot I stopped myself short. ‘He chose mine; he had to choose mine. I think I must be a magnet for grief.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ she insisted. ‘To our daughter and me you’re a love machine. You were just unlucky, that’s all.’

  ‘Not as unlucky as that wee lass.’

  Sarah glanced at Seonaid and put a finger to her lips, ending the discussion just as James Andrew exploded into the room with all the energy of a small tsunami. I guessed from his exuberance that he had beaten his brother yet again at whatever game they had played.

  ‘Where’s Mark?’ I asked.

  ‘Doing his homework,’ Jazz replied.

  I gave him a look that was meant to be somewhere between curious and severe, but probably didn’t make it past amused. ‘Don’t you have any?’

  ‘Some,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then wouldn’t it be a good idea to do it before you’re too tired to do it than when you are but I still make you?’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘I suppose.’

  If we were negotiating, it didn’t last long. Sarah pointed at the door. ‘Go do it while dinner’s being cooked,’ she ordered. ‘Now. And take your sister with you,’ she added. ‘I want to talk to Dad.’

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ my son, in the act of leaving, asked me. Since his mother and I got back together, more or less full-time, we take turns in the kitchen. It’s another part of my new life that I enjoy.

  ‘Tuna steaks on the Foreman grill, potato wedges in the dry fryer, beans and fried onions,’ I told him. ‘A special request by Mark,’ I explained to Sarah. ‘He’s trying to bulk himself up, and reckons that fish is the way to go.’

  She grinned. ‘Poor kid. For girls or boys, puberty’s a bastard, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘For lads, it brings a whole new set of personal targets. I still haven’t hit all of mine yet.’

  We headed for the kitchen. For some reason Sarah likes to watch me cook; when I’m in my apron she calls me ‘Masterchef’. The wedges were waiting in the dry fryer. I set it for forty minutes and began to slice the onions.

  ‘What about Seonaid?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got a smaller steak for her. Not that much smaller, though; I think she’s in a growing phase.’

  She smiled, and fetched me a Corona from the fridge. I looked at her as she handed it to me. ‘You not having one?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m on call, and anyway, I don’t fancy beer just now,’ she replied.

  ‘Wine?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. I’ve . . .’ she paused. ‘What’s that Scots saying? I’ve taken a schooner to alcohol.’

  I laughed out loud. ‘That would be “sc
unner”, my darling. And most unlike you.’ A thought came to me. ‘Hey, what is this? This morning you had an uncontrollable desire for lemon drizzle cake. Tonight you have a booze intolerance. Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ she replied, but I wasn’t letting it go. I snapped into interrogation mode, looking her in the eye.

  ‘Okay, there’s nothing you want,’ I stressed the word, ‘to tell me. But is there something that you should?’

  ‘Fucking cops,’ she murmured, then took the kitchen knife from my hand and laid it on the work surface. She slid an arm round my waist. ‘I’m late,’ she said.

  It didn’t exactly hit me like a ton of bricks. Sarah’s mum made a prize-winning lemon drizzle cake, and since her death she’d never mentioned the damn confection, not once, until that morning.

  ‘How late?’ I asked, not even trying to suppress my grin.

  ‘Only a week. Too early to be taking it as fact, but you know I’m pretty regular; always have been.’

  ‘Have you done a test?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Aw Jesus,’ I chuckled. ‘Even I know it isn’t too early for that. Buy a kit, pee on the stick and that’s it.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to know.’

  I paused the fryer. ‘Let’s say you are pregnant. How did we get to this?’

  ‘When we got back together,’ she said, ‘I was off the pill. I went back on it sharpish, and that was okay, but my body didn’t take to it like before. So I switched to what they call the mini-pill; it has only one hormone, progesterone. The problem may be that I didn’t read the advice, that for the first couple of days, you should use a back-up method.’

  ‘Johnnies?’

  She nodded. ‘We could also have abstained, of course.’

  I threw her a mock frown. ‘Sure we could.’

  She allowed me a hint of a smile. ‘But we didn’t, and so there may have been a very small window of opportunity.’