Private Investigations

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘We feed you and we have to play guessing games?’ Haddock exclaimed.

  ‘Fair enough. The liquidator put the bite on Destry Glazing. It paid up without a murmur, and then it bought the assets of the failed company for a song, those assets being all its plant and equipment. By the time the bank was paid, and the liquidator himself, of course, the other creditors were left with something like fifteen pence in the pound. Effectively, Destry Glazing Solutions bought itself an in-house extrusion facility for little more than zero, right at the moment when the construction industry’s coming out of hibernation.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a story, Macy,’ Pye remarked. ‘I read the business press, so how come I’ve never seen it anywhere?’

  ‘You don’t watch Bloomberg, since you’d never heard of it before tonight.’

  ‘You ran it?’

  ‘I ran a piece about the role of the bank. When I put it together I called Destry Glazing’s PR people and asked for a comment. They promised to get back to me, but they never did. Instead I had a call from Eden Higgins’ lawyers, threatening me with an action for defamation if his name was even hinted at in my report.’

  She renewed her attack on the pie. ‘Nobody else in Edinburgh touched it,’ she mumbled. ‘So I guess that my colleagues in the printed media were all warned off.’ She leaned forward. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘how does all that relate to the dead child?’

  ‘It doesn’t, not really,’ Haddock confessed. ‘The designer that Mackail ran up the bill with, she was the mother. She was attacked as well, but that never made the press. We’ve been looking for a connection, but I don’t see one.’

  ‘Oh no?’ Macy murmured. ‘There’s a PS to the story. I heard it a month or two back, from a bloke I know on the Daily Record business staff. Yes, it’s a red-top but it does have a business reporter. His girlfriend had just chucked him, and, well, I consoled him.’ She beamed at Haddock. ‘I always was good at consoling, Harry, wasn’t I?’

  ‘No comment,’ ‘Harry’ muttered.

  ‘Anyway,’ her second drink had disappeared without either detective noticing its demise, ‘in the aftermath, when we were wondering what the hell to say to each other, he came out with a story that the ex had told him in confidence.’

  ‘Under similar circumstances no doubt.’

  ‘Probably. Her name’s Luisa, and she’s Eden Higgins’s PA. The tale was that after the liquidator had done his worst, Hector Mackail turned up unannounced at Eden’s office up on the Mound. He accused him of being in cahoots with the See You Next Tuesday at the bank . . . in which Higgins has a substantial stake, did I forget to mention that? . . . and of masterminding the whole thing.

  ‘Eden told him to go away, or words to that effect, and Mackail lost it. He banjoed him and knocked him down a flight of stairs, buggering his ankle in the process. Luisa was going to call your lot, but Eden told her to do no more than chuck Mackail out. He wanted no police involvement, no exposure of the story. He walked about with a cast on his ankle for five weeks and never told anyone why.’

  ‘I can see why he’d want to keep that quiet,’ Pye said. ‘Did you think about running it?’

  ‘No, and neither did my one-night stand. The fight would have been denied, Luisa would have been fired and nobody would ever have proved any collusion between Eden and See You Next Tuesday.’

  Macy finished the pie and stood up, abruptly. ‘I hope that was all worthwhile, guys. I’ve got to go now; Goldman Sachs is having a champagne reception in the Balmoral Hotel. There will be food.’

  She leaned over and kissed Haddock on the cheek, leaving a lipstick impression. ‘Bye, Sauce, your secret is totally unsafe with me.’

  ‘Fuck me!’ Sammy Pye gasped as she left. ‘Now I understand why you wanted a minder.’

  Forty-Seven

  ‘It’s a hell of a story, boys,’ Mario McGuire said, ‘but how does it relate to your inquiry? Your target is the person who killed Francey and the Polish girl, because it’s almost certain that he paid them to kidnap Zena. The other thing, this corporate skulduggery, there’s no way that it relates.’ The DCC scratched his chin. ‘Mind you,’ he mused, ‘I’m interested, for other reasons, that Eden Higgins is caught up in it.’

  Sammy Pye had called him the previous evening, almost as soon as the doors in Bert’s Bar had stopped swinging after Macy Robertson’s departure, to ask for a review meeting on the investigation. McGuire had been on his way south from Inverness at the time, and had been only too eager to grab an excuse for avoiding the chief constable’s routine morning meetings with his deputies and assistants. He would admit it to nobody but his wife, but he was becoming irked by the micromanagement of the new force at the very top level and the spread of that culture downwards.

  ‘Surely Bob Skinner was a classic micromanager?’ Paula had argued, when he had voiced his concerns, over dinner.

  ‘Bob was an interfering so-and-so at times,’ he had replied, ‘on the criminal investigation side, but when he did stick his nose in, it was always to support the people on the ground, never to second-guess them. Andy Martin is trying to keep a grip on everything that’s going on, rather than trusting people to do the job he’s given them. Today he came down on me like a ton of bricks because Sammy Pye took a decision that he saw as questioning his judgement. I never told Sammy, but he ordered me to take him off the case and replace him with Lowell Payne.’

  ‘Who’s Lowell Payne?’

  ‘He was a Strathclyde man, the head of organised crime and counter-terrorism; what we used to call Special Branch. Bob appointed him, and I’d have kept him in post, but Andy told me to move him out and replace him with Renée Simpson from the old Grampian force. So now Payne’s a detective superintendent without portfolio.’

  ‘Did you replace Sammy?’

  ‘Like hell I did! I told Andy that I wasn’t going to undermine one of my best detectives and that he could replace me if he had a problem with that. He backed down, but the boy Pye’s future in CID is hanging by a very thin thread if he doesn’t get a result.’

  ‘And you? How are you placed with him?’

  ‘Honestly? I have no idea. I don’t know the man any more.’

  He was still brooding as he sat with the two Edinburgh detectives in the Fettes canteen, a mug of tea enveloped in his very large right hand. He was focused on one single objective, preserving his own authority as deputy in charge of all criminal policing, and protecting Pye’s position was inextricably linked to that.

  If the Zena investigation collapsed, and Martin carried out his threat to transfer Pye out of CID, it would be a resignation issue for him . . . and he would not go quietly.

  ‘The man Mackail’s death,’ he murmured. ‘What’s your thinking on that?’

  ‘We reckoned . . .’ Haddock began, but went no further as he felt the weight of McGuire’s heavy black eyebrows.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he growled, ‘when I put a question, unless I’m actually looking at you, it’s for the senior officer at the table to answer me.’

  The DS gazed at the tabletop. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he murmured, icily.

  ‘Sauce and I reckoned,’ Pye began, then paused.

  McGuire glowered at him; then he grinned, breaking the tension. ‘Nice one, Sammy; I appreciate you standing up for your sidekick. So go on, give me the benefit of your combined wisdom.’

  ‘We don’t have any,’ the DCI confessed. ‘We are stuck; we have no positive lines of inquiry left open. Callum Sullivan’s bank withdrawal was a red herring, as DCs Wright and Dickson have confirmed, and the banknotes found in Francey’s flat are untraceable. The Mackail connection to Grete Regal was all we had, and now that’s blown.’

  He paused as the DCC drank some of his tea. ‘You’re right,’ he continued when he had his full attention once more, ‘that the corporate skulduggery, as you call it, doesn’t relate t
o the main investigation in any way we can see, but the aftermath . . . what about that? Hector Mackail was involved in a physical confrontation with Eden Higgins and a few days later he died in a hit-and-run, on his way home from the pub in North Berwick.’

  ‘Shit happens,’ McGuire grunted.

  Pye laughed. ‘Sir, that’s just about the worst piece of devil’s advocacy I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Maybe, but are you saying that one of Scotland’s richest men ran over a guy just because he’d stuck one on him?’

  ‘No, because his foot was in plaster; but he could have paid someone to do it, someone who knew the lie of the land and might even have known that Hector Mackail drank in the Nether Abbey bar with his pals every Friday and then walked home.’

  The DCC swirled the dregs of his tea around the bottom of the mug. ‘North Berwick’s not awash with hit men, is it?’ he said.

  ‘No, sir, it’s not,’ Pye agreed. ‘But there is one, or rather there was, that we know of, someone who actually knew Mackail, or knew of him, through his daughter. What if . . .’

  McGuire beamed. ‘Some of the greatest results in the history of criminal investigation began with those two words,’ he observed. ‘Go on.’

  ‘What if the money we found in Francey’s flat wasn’t a down payment for the Zena abduction, but payment in full for knocking over Hector Mackail?’

  ‘What if . . .’ The deputy chief paused. ‘Okay, you’ve established that Francey took the child and injured her mother, but nothing in your investigation of the bloke has suggested that he had a reputation for that sort of work.’

  ‘No,’ Pye accepted. ‘Maybe Mackail was killed by a drunk who panicked and drove off. But if he wasn’t, then at the very least, Francey should be investigated as a suspect. And if he was involved, is it likely that two different people, entirely unconnected, would approach him and hire him to commit violent crimes?’

  The DCC leaned back and looked at the ceiling. ‘But what possible connection is there between one of Scotland’s richest men and an obscure graphic designer from Garvald?’

  ‘That’s the question, sir,’ Sauce Haddock ventured.

  ‘Then don’t just sit there,’ McGuire boomed. ‘Go and fucking answer it!’

  Forty-Eight

  ‘Did it not occur to you to advise CID of Mr Mackail’s death?’ Sammy Pye asked.

  Inspector Carmel Laird gazed at him. ‘Why should it have?’ she replied. ‘It was a traffic fatality.’

  ‘It was a hit-and-run,’ Sauce Haddock pointed out. ‘A man was killed, and the driver left the scene; that’s a crime. FYI, the “C” in CID stands for Criminal.’

  She kept her eyes on Pye. ‘Is your gopher always insubordinate?’ she murmured.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Haddock is a law unto himself,’ Pye replied quietly. ‘I kick his arse occasionally, but never when he’s right.’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Laird protested. ‘This is Haddington; we’re East Lothian, you’re Edinburgh. Suppose I had asked for CID assistance, it wouldn’t have been you I’d have gone to.’

  ‘We share information in the department.’

  ‘We share information too. We posted a report of the fatality on the ScotServe website . . . and we appealed for witnesses. Naturally, we also reported the fatality to the procurator fiscal. Those are the laid-down operating procedures, so don’t question me, question the senior command if you’ve got a problem.’

  ‘I question them all the time,’ Pye replied. ‘In fact I’ve just come from a meeting with my big boss where I asked him how a man’s violent death isn’t automatically the subject of a major criminal investigation. He’s just gone off to ask your immediate boss the same question, and I don’t think he was planning to ask politely. Time to circle your wagons, Inspector, and cooperate.’

  ‘So how can I help?’ she asked, stiffly.

  ‘You can begin by taking me through the story. So far the only information I have came from the victim’s wife.’

  ‘You could have looked at the website . . .’

  ‘But we didn’t,’ Haddock said, ‘because we’re technically inept, and old fashioned enough to believe that there’s still room for common sense in the service.’

  ‘See when you’re back in uniform,’ she hissed, ‘and posted out here . . .’

  ‘If that ever happens,’ the DCI snapped, ‘he’ll be an inspector at the very least. You, on the other hand, will be lucky to be a sergeant, if you annoy me any more. Let’s forget what you did, and focus on what you should have done. Take us through what happened.’

  Laird picked up a folder from her desk and found a document; she began to read through it, commenting as she went.

  ‘Deceased was found in Station Road, just past the fire station.’

  ‘Who found him?’ Haddock asked.

  ‘A passing motorist saw him and called 999. Deceased was lying on the pavement, against a stone wall and a traffic sign. Paramedics arrived, followed by a medical examiner. Deceased was removed by ambulance but he was DOA at the hospital.’

  ‘What about the attending officers?’

  ‘Sergeant Chocolate . . . that’s Sergeant Brown, and PC Raymond.’

  Pye frowned. ‘When did they get there?’

  ‘A couple of minutes after the paramedics, and just before the ME.’ Inspector Laird seemed to wince, slightly. ‘They’d been attending a reported disturbance at a rugby club dinner in Aberlady, and there was no other patrol car available.’

  ‘So they got there more or less as Mackail was being removed.’

  ‘That’s right. They followed the ambulance.’

  ‘And he was found lying on the pavement, you said.’

  ‘That’s right too. He was still in the position he was found in when my officers arrived.’

  The two detectives looked at each other; Pye raised an eyebrow, Haddock nodded.

  ‘So when did they realise it was a hit-and-run?’ the DS asked.

  The inspector’s face flushed. ‘Not until he was examined at the hospital,’ she replied. ‘The admitting doctor suspected crushing injuries, and that was confirmed by a post-mortem.’

  ‘What about the medical examiner who attended?’

  ‘From what the lads told me, the paramedics had everything in hand by that time. The ME took a quick look but he didn’t do anything. He waved the ambulance off, more or less, and went back to being on call.’

  ‘At what point did . . . the lads . . . identify the victim?’

  ‘He wasn’t identified until the ambulance reached the hospital. By that time he was dead. His driving licence was in his wallet.’

  ‘Did they return to the scene once they realised what had happened?’

  ‘No. I ordered other officers to do a house-to-house first thing next morning.’

  ‘Next morning?’ Pye exclaimed, his voice rising. ‘Why didn’t Brown and Raymond go straight back there?’

  ‘They were called out to another road traffic accident on the A1, from the infirmary,’ Laird protested. ‘They were tied up with that for hours. That’s the resources we’ve got; that’s the real world.’

  ‘Okay, leave that to one side. You canvassed householders at the scene the next morning. Any response?’

  ‘A woman in a house in Old Abbey Road said she thought she heard a squeal of tyres, around eleven forty-five, but that was all.’

  ‘Did you order a forensic examination of the scene?’

  ‘No, I decided that too much time had passed.’

  ‘No you didn’t; you decided to keep the whole thing under the carpet. Your guys arrived, saw a man on the ground and assumed he was a heart attack victim or a drunk.’ The DCI paused for a second, then flew a kite. ‘On Monday morning, when Grete Regal was found in Garvald, who attended that scene?’


  Laird reddened. ‘Brown and Raymond.’

  ‘No bloody wonder they were so quick to decide that one was a hit-and-run.’ Pye sighed. ‘So, now we have no way of knowing whether Mackail staggered off the pavement after a few pints and into the path of a vehicle, or whether it mounted the pavement and hit him.’

  Inspector Laird sat, silently staring ahead.

  ‘Who told Mrs Mackail?’ the DCI murmured.

  ‘I did. Brown called me; although I was off duty, I went to the address he gave me, and informed the widow.’

  ‘What was her reaction?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Laird retorted. ‘Shock.’

  ‘Did she say anything?’

  ‘Yes, she did. She said, “Finally they’ve taken everything.” Then she went into hysterics; her daughter appeared from upstairs, and the whole thing went into meltdown. I sent for a doctor, and waited till he arrived. He sedated both women; I left a WPC from the North Berwick office to stay with them overnight.’

  ‘Who took Mrs Mackail’s statement?’

  ‘Nobody. I’d established from her that her husband had been for his usual Friday session in the Nether Abbey. I didn’t deem it necessary to trouble her further.’

  ‘Okay,’ the DCI said. ‘I get the picture. I see why you kept this in-house. This whole thing reeks of sloppiness and even negligence. You were protecting your officers, and as their manager, protecting yourself.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’ she retorted.

  ‘Possibly. But I wouldn’t have sat on my hands. I’m taking this situation over, and I’m going to see what I can rescue.’

  ‘Feel free, but please, keep Brown and Raymond out of it.’

  ‘They were hardly ever in it from what I can see.’ He turned to Haddock. ‘Sauce, get a forensic team out to Station Road. You never know, even at this very late stage we might scrape something up.’

  ‘But suppose you do,’ Laird said, ‘you won’t be able to tie it conclusively to this incident.’

  ‘That depends what we find. And by the way,’ he added, ‘until we know for sure to the contrary, we’re treating this “incident” as a homicide.’