‘Wow! As marksmanship goes . . .’
‘Yeah, we may have shot the arrow right through it.’
‘Do the test tomorrow. Otherwise you’ll fret for another week.’
‘Okay,’ she conceded. ‘I will.’
‘Good,’ I said, restarting the fryer. ‘Now let me get on with feeding the kids that we have already.’
She fell silent, watching me as I loaded the grill, set the beans to heat, then went to work on the onions in a big frying pan. They were turning a satisfactory golden colour when she spoke again.
‘Bob,’ she ventured, ‘if the test is positive, as I’m sure it will be, how will you feel?’
I glanced across at her. ‘Once I get over being gobsmacked, I’ll be delighted . . . as long as you are too. How do you feel about it?’
‘Honestly? I can’t get my head round it. Apart from anything else, the timing’s terrible; Joe’s about to retire, and I’m about to assume the chair of forensic pathology. I’ll have a department to run, undergraduates and postgrads to mentor, people’s careers in my hands. It’s a huge responsibility, but it’s something I’ve looked forward to as a challenge. And what do I do? As soon as that moment arrives, I go off on maternity leave? That doesn’t sit comfortably with me.’
I’d known from the outset she’d feel that way, but I needed her to articulate it.
‘Understood. But it’s not your fault, accidents happen. You of all people must know that; you’ve built a career out of examining their consequences.’
‘In this case,’ she countered, ‘there is clear contributory negligence. Mine, not yours,’ she added.
I worked the onions even harder, throwing in some Worcester sauce as they started to brown. ‘You could have a termination,’ I murmured, without looking at her.
‘How would you feel about that?’
‘I will support whatever decision you make.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘It’s the best you’re going to get,’ I told her. ‘I love you, and your happiness is paramount.’
‘Even if it means killing your child?’
She had me there. Instantly, I was back in Fort Kinnaird; but I steeled myself and answered as best I could. ‘It would be as if this discussion never happened, and we’d never mention it again.’
She stepped beside me and hugged me, awkwardly. ‘You’re a doll. But that’s not what we do, you and I, is it?’
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘it’s not.’ Then I laughed again. ‘Hell, we could have Ignacio back here around that time. What’s another kid? We’ll give Trish a pay rise for the extra workload. We’ll make the house bigger, if we have to. Now, you go on and fetch the bears; this masterpiece is just about ready for them.’
We ate round the kitchen table, all five of us. Twelve months before, I could not have imagined that ever happening again, but it has. As I reflected on my own good fortune it brought me back to the ill luck of others, and made me sombre once more. To hide my feelings from the kids I went back to work as soon as I had finished the last of my perfectly grilled tuna, chopping a pineapple and a honeydew melon into cubes, then sharing them out in bowls, each one topped with a scoop of butterscotch ice cream.
We had barely finished dessert when the doorbell rang. I have a discreet security camera that’s a holdover from my former career and that I’ve kept. It lets me see who’s calling, just in case whoever it is might have an axe to grind, or might be carrying one. I checked the monitor and saw a uniformed cop, a motorcycle officer, with his helmet in one hand and a package in the other.
‘Evening, sir,’ he said, as I opened the door. I recognised him from many encounters.
‘Craig,’ I greeted him. ‘This is a blast from the recent past.’
‘A welcome one nonetheless, sir. It’s good to see you looking so well.’
Fuck, I thought, did I look so bad before?
‘You have something for me?’
He held out the package. ‘This was sent through from Glasgow, sir, by DCC McGuire, with your name on it, marked “urgent”. Fettes reckoned that meant tonight.’
‘Tomorrow would have done,’ I told him, ‘but I appreciate it. Will you come in for a mug of something?’
Craig, PC Charlton, to give him his proper handle, shook his head. ‘Thanks, Mr Skinner, but I’d better get straight back. I heard some chatter in my ear about a major incident, so it might be all hands to the pumps.’
I wished him well, and took the bundle from him. I’d expected it to be much bulkier than it was. That simple fact told me why Mario had a down on the former Detective Inspector McGarry. I took the file into the garden room, tossed it on to the couch, then went back to the kitchen, but it was deserted. I guessed that Sarah had taken Seonaid off to supervise her night-time ablutions and that the boys had vanished to fight over what to watch in their last hour of permitted television.
I fetched myself another beer, and returned to the parcel. I opened it and removed its contents, and found myself looking at a familiar Strathclyde Police folder, just like the hundreds that had clogged my in tray during my few months as its last chief constable. I was about to open it when Sarah returned.
‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘I thought we’d seen the last of biker cops dropping off parcels.’
‘Yes, me too,’ I agreed.
‘So what is it? An old investigation you were involved in?’
‘Half right. Old investigation, yes; one of mine, not really. This came completely out of the blue. Remember I told you I was having lunch today with Eden Higgins?’
‘How could I forget?’ she said. ‘Your late ex-girlfriend’s tycoon brother; the man who wrote to you about his “situation”. What was it?’
I told her about the theft of the Princess Alison, and the abortive police investigation that I had been retained to review.
She frowned, as she sat beside me. ‘Should you be doing that?’
‘I asked myself that question before I accepted,’ I admitted, ‘and I couldn’t think of a single reason why not. Neither could Andy or Mario; that’s why I’ve got this folder.’
‘Won’t it be embarrassing for them if you find that the investigation was flawed?’
I laughed. ‘It’ll be far more embarrassing for me. When this thing kicked off I was chief constable. By any standards this was a major theft, and yet I never heard about it. I should be doing this for free.’
‘Then why aren’t you, my dear?’ she countered, reasonably. I’d been asking myself that question.
‘I will, if I find very quickly that the CID investigation was competent and covered all lines of inquiry. I will if I wind up making my own inquiries but don’t trace the Princess Alison. If she is recovered, and the insurance company cough up as promised, I might take a fee but tell them to give the bonus money to charities of Andy Martin’s choice.’
‘Won’t that rub Andy’s nose in it?’
‘Not completely. The investigation was closed on Andy’s watch, but like I said, it began on mine. Both our noses will be up for rubbing.’
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s say you do investigate actively. What powers will you have?’
‘Those of a private investigator, no more . . . and in effect they’re zero. I’ll have no powers of arrest beyond those of any citizen, and no powers to access documents, bank accounts, or anything like that.’
‘Won’t that constrain you?’
‘Of course it will,’ I agreed. ‘But I’ll have a very large organisation behind me; if I do need to go somewhere that’s closed to me, I’ll go to Mario McGuire. This whole thing is very flexible, love; there are all sorts of questions that I won’t be able to answer until I’ve read this file.’
She pointed at the folder. ‘So what are you waiting for? Go to it.’
‘I can’t be arsed,’ I admitted. ‘I’ve had enough for today.’
‘Of course you have,’ she sighed. ‘Your day had the worst possible start, didn’t it. Have you heard anything from Sammy Pye, or Sauce?’
‘They’re pretty sure they know who was driving the car,’ I replied. ‘They sent me a mugshot of the suspect, a lad from North Berwick, name of Francey. I couldn’t be a hundred per cent sure he’s the guy, but they seem to be. I’ve heard nothing more than that, but I don’t think he’ll be at liberty for too long.’
‘Good,’ she said, her tone harsh. ‘I saw Joe when he got back from the autopsy. He told me as much as he knew. The poor child died of an asthma attack. I just . . .’ Her face twisted, eyes screwed up in a mix of frustration and anger. ‘Here I stop being a pathologist and start being a parent; words fail me, Bob. What sort of an animal would do that to a child? To let her die, alone and terrified in the dark. It’s horrible. And she must have seen what happened to her mother.’
‘What did happen to her mother?’ I asked. ‘I know nothing of this.’
‘They’ve identified the child. She’s from Garvald. She was snatched on the way to school this morning. According to Joe, her mother was in surgery with severe head injuries.’
‘Eh?’ I gasped. ‘That’s weird. He attacks mum, kidnaps the child . . . What was her name? Do you know?’
‘Olivia Gates, known to her family as Zena. That delayed the identification by a couple of hours.’
‘Why the nickname?’
‘From what Sammy told Joe, Mum’s a fan of The Urban Dictionary.’
‘What about dad, Mr Gates?’
‘Naval officer is all I know.’
I winced. ‘Poor bastard to have to deal with this.’ I held up my beer. ‘You sure you wouldn’t like a drink, to help lighten the mood?’
She smiled and squeezed my hand. ‘On call, I told you. And then there’s the other thing,’ she added. She dug an elbow into my side, gently. ‘How has today made you feel?’ she asked.
It was a good question, one I had asked myself. ‘Alienated,’ I replied. ‘It’s the first time I’ve felt the faintest flash of regret over leaving the service. I wanted to take command this morning and to stay hands-on until the guy was caught. When Eden told me about his problem, I wanted to pick up the phone and yell at someone. But I couldn’t do either of those things, so yes, I felt excluded . . . maybe even a wee bit emasculated.’
‘In that case your balls were too big for the job,’ she countered. ‘Too much testosterone isn’t a good quality in any commander.’
That could have been the beginning of a long and interesting debate, if Sarah’s mobile hadn’t rung before I could respond to the challenge. She snatched it from the breast pocket of the casual shirt she’d put on while she was upstairs and took the call.
Her face darkened as I watched. ‘Yes,’ she murmured. ‘Yes, I know the location. It’s not far off the bypass so I’ll be there inside half an hour.’
She put the phone away, and pushed herself up from the couch. ‘That was Mary Chambers,’ she said. ‘It’s a double fatality; two people found in a burned-out car just off the Biggar Road.’
‘That must have been the major incident that Craig was talking about,’ I guessed, aloud. ‘Will you be okay? I’d come with you, if Trish was here.’
‘And I wouldn’t let you, suppose she was,’ Sarah retorted. ‘It isn’t your job any more, lover, and I don’t need a chauffeur. You stay here with our kids and your file.’
Twenty-Five
I did as I’d been told, not only because there wasn’t an option, but also because Sarah was right: it wasn’t my job any more. Instead I read Seonaid one last A. A. Milne poem before switching out her light (sleeping without a nightlight is a matter of honour with her) then checked that the boys were obeying standard bedtime operating procedures.
As I did so, all the time I found myself thinking about Sarah’s potential bombshell, and considering its practical consequences. Our family home had been built with five bedrooms and a self-contained flat for Trish above the garages. We had one spare en-suite room that Alex used whenever she decided to stay. Ignacio had taken no decision about where he would live when he was released, but I was determined that it would not be with his mother, who was, is and always will be bad news in my book. I’d made it clear that I hoped he’d move in with us and get to know the family he’d been denied for twenty years, and he hadn’t rejected the idea. With him and a new baby, space would be tight, even in our big villa.
In my younger days, in the job, when we were in the mire and things looked black, I was fond of telling my people, ‘There are no problems, only challenges and opportunities.’ My tongue was in my cheek then, but as I wished Mark goodnight and closed his bedroom door, I knew that my rapidly expanding family was giving me an accommodation challenge, big time.
In an attempt to drive it from my mind, I collected the Princess Alison file and took it into what I call my office these days, although Sarah still calls it ‘the panic room’, a sanctuary in those times when either of us really needs privacy.
Leaving the door ajar just in case of sounds from upstairs, I cued up some quiet music on the streaming system and settled down to read. The simple act of opening the file put me back mentally in my old office in Pitt Street, in Glasgow, a room that I’d never grown to love in the way that I’d cherished my accommodation in the command suite in the Edinburgh police HQ. I shoved that image to one side and concentrated on what was before me.
The first pages were a detailed description of the property that had been stolen and, in police-speak, of the way the crime had been committed. It was followed by a series of photographs; the first six were of the empty boathouse, with its massive door raised, then lowered.
A group of four followed; three showed the exterior and the channel of buoys that led into the Gareloch, while the fourth was a satellite image showing the location of Eden’s place, two-thirds along the road from Helensburgh and its suburb, Rhu, to the Faslane naval base.
Third and last was a series of images of the Princess Alison herself, external and internal. Eden had promised to email some to me, but I hadn’t opened my mailbox since then, and so the file gave me my first sight of the lost cruiser. She was a serious piece of kit; a billionaire’s toy and no mistake. I looked for anything in her lines that might remind me of the woman after whom she’d been named, but saw nothing. Alison Higgins was a robust, earthy, lusty woman; her image might have belonged on the bowsprit of a pirate ship, but never on a luxury cruiser.
One of the photographs showed a party in progress: men and women in light-coloured clothes, most of them brandishing champagne flutes. I extracted that from the file and studied it closely. As far as I was concerned at that stage, every person who had set foot on the missing Princess was a suspect, until they weren’t.
‘Innocent until proven guilty’ is a very fine principle, and it’s the foundation of our justice system, but any investigator worth his corn has to begin with the opposite viewpoint.
The rest of the folder was crap.
As I read on, I saw that the first thing DI McGarry had done was to report the theft to the Marine and Coastguard Agency, which doesn’t actually have a criminal investigation division. The second was to circulate a description of the missing vessel to all police forces with a coastline south of the Firth of Clyde, including the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and the Garda Siochana, the Irish force. The third was to secure the posting of a description and photograph on a website called stolenboats.org that appeared to be fed with information by the marine insurance industry and the police but to be independent of either.
There were a few notes in response, but all of them were negative, saying that there had been no reports of a boat matching the description of the Princess Alison. The conclusion of McGarry’s trawl wa
s that she had simply vanished.
The man had done the basics at the site of the theft, but no more: a crime scene team had gone over all the accessible points in the boathouse, and had found nothing out of place, no unidentified fingerprints. The padlock on the sliding double doors through which the thieves had entered had been cut through its arch, then put back in place, helping to delay the discovery of the raid.
Their report solved one riddle that had been niggling me since Eden and Rory had told me the story. If the phone line that serviced the alarm system had been cut, why hadn’t the gardeners noticed it? The answer was that the cable was underground, terminating in a box on the wall of the boathouse, beside the door. The cover had been removed and then replaced.
Nothing else that McGarry had done showed a scrap of real initiative. He had taken a statement from Eden, and had interviewed the part-time crew of the Princess, Hurrell and Hodgson. At least he’d shown the nous to ask those two for their whereabouts at the time of the theft, 3 a.m. on 4 October. Hurrell had been driving Eden and Rachel home to Edinburgh after a dinner at Gleneagles Hotel, and Hodgson had been visiting his niece, in Rochdale.
Beyond that the file was bare. There were notes of visits to marinas in the Firth of Clyde, and of telephone calls to those in its islands, and more remote mainland areas. There had been a discussion with Eden’s insurer, but that amounted to nothing more than a lack of progress report.
The investigation had been founded on a very basic assumption, that the vessel had been stolen by persons unknown with the motive being simple profit. My problem was that it had never occurred to McGarry to look anywhere else. I’d told Eden and Rory, without even having seen the boathouse, that there had to have been inside knowledge in the planning of the operation, and yet that hadn’t dawned on an officer who’d reached detective inspector rank.
Unless . . .
I picked up my phone and called Mario McGuire, mobile to mobile. He must have been home, for in the background I could hear wee Eamon yelling for sustenance.
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