‘Of course I will. You’ve met them both?’
‘Yes, sir. I saw Marina pretty much every day, with her working so close to the chief, and I met Miss Deschamps when she stayed with them a couple of months ago. I think she came up to see the new house,’ he added.
‘What are they like?’ Skinner asked. ‘Mark my card, Davie.’
‘They’re both very nice ladies. Marina’s younger than the chief by a few years and not all that like her physically, or in personality, come to that. Miss Deschamps . . . she’s very particular about that, by the way, sir. Marina’s a Ms but her mother is definitely Miss . . . Miss Deschamps is quiet, doesn’t say much, but she was always very polite to me. She tried to tip me when we got here.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘The chief did her nut, but she just smiled and shook my hand instead.’
‘Thanks.’ The chief constable stood straight, walked through the villa’s open gateway and up to the vestibule. He rang the bell and waited.
He was about to press the button again when the front door opened. A tall, slim woman stood there; her hair was honey-coloured, and her skin tone almost matched it. The overall effect, Skinner mused, had the potential to cause traffic accidents.
She looked up at him, but not by much. ‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Bob Skinner,’ he told her. ‘I believe you’re expecting me. My aide called yesterday, yes?’
Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Of course,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m so sorry. It’s just . . .’ She broke off, looking at his suit.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘I should have thought this through. It’s my habit to leave my uniform in the office and travel in civvies. Please don’t feel slighted.’
‘I don’t, honestly,’ the woman assured him. ‘I always thought my sister overdid the uniform bit.’ She extended her hand. ‘I’m Marina Deschamps,’ she said, as they shook. ‘Come in, my mother is through in the garden room.’
She led the way and he followed, through a hallway, then along a corridor. He guessed at her age as they walked. A few years younger than her sister, Davie had said. Toni had been thirty-eight, so Skinner placed Marina early thirties, somewhere in age between her sister and his own daughter.
The corridor led them into a small sitting room that might have been a study at some time in the life of the old house, before what most people would have called a conservatory was added. As far as the chief could see it was unoccupied.
‘Mother,’ Marina called out, ‘our visitor is here.’
Sofia Deschamps had been seated in a high-backed wicker armchair, one of a pair, looking out into a garden that was entirely paved and filled with potted plants of various sizes, from flowers to small trees. She rose and stepped into view. She was almost as tall as her younger daughter; indeed they were very much alike, twins with a thirty-year age difference.
‘Mr Skinner,’ she said, as she approached him. ‘Thank you for calling on us.’ Her accent had strong French overtones, and she held her hand out in front of her, as if she expected him to kiss it, in the Gallic manner. Instead, he took it in his.
‘I wish I didn’t have to,’ he replied. ‘I wish that Saturday had never happened, that Toni was still in Pitt Street and I was still in Fettes, in my office in Edinburgh. My condolences to you both.’
‘Thank you.’
It occurred to him, for the first time, that both women were wearing black; inwardly he cursed himself for his pale blue tie. Sofia’s face was drawn, and her eyes were a little red, but there was an impressive dignity about her, about both of them, for that matter. ‘It’s still fairly early,’ she murmured, ‘but please, allow me to fetch us some coffee.’
‘No, no, ma’am,’ he protested, ‘that isn’t necessary.’
‘I insist.’ She stood her ground; refusal would have been impolite.
‘In that case, thank you very much, but if I may I’ll have water, sparkling if you have it, rather than coffee. My . . .’ He paused; he had been about to describe Sarah as ‘My wife’. ‘. . . medical adviser says I drink far too much of the stuff, and she’s made me promise to give it up.’
‘A pity,’ Miss Deschamps murmured, with a hint of a smile. ‘We should allow ourselves the occasional vice.’
‘My medical adviser is my vice.’ He said it without a pause for thought. ‘That’s to say,’ he added, searching for an escape route, ‘she’s my former wife, and I’ve learned that it’s too much trouble to disobey her.’
‘In that case I will not press you further. Excuse me, I will not be long.’
His eyes followed her as she headed for the door. She might have left sixty behind her, but she had lost no style or elegance; even at that early hour she was dressed in an ankle-length skirt and high heels.
Marina was less formal, in black trousers and a satin blouse. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘sit down.’
Skinner listened for French in her accent; there was some but less than in her mother.
‘Maman is being discreet,’ she continued. ‘She knows I want to ask you about my employment situation, and she doesn’t want it to appear as if we’re ganging up on you.’
‘That’s very decent of her,’ the chief said, as he sat, facing her, on a couch that matched the armchairs, ‘but there’s no rush to consider that. I know that you acted as Toni’s personal assistant. My assumption has been that you wouldn’t want to continue in that role with her successor, but that’s a decision you can take in your own time.
‘I’ve already given instructions that you can have all the time you feel you need. My temporary appointment is for three months; if you want to take all that time to decide what you want to do, or at least until a permanent successor to your sister is selected, that’ll be fine by me.’
Marina shook her head. ‘There’s no need, sir,’ she replied. ‘I have a job, and I’d like to carry on doing it.’
Skinner stared at her, unable to keep his surprise from showing. ‘You want to work for me?’ he exclaimed.
She nodded.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I have to be frank about this. You know your sister and I were not exactly the best of friends.’
Marina smiled, then nodded. ‘Oh yes. She was very clear about that. But that was more political than anything else. You had different views on certain things, but that didn’t affect what she thought of you as a police officer. We both know she was a big supporter of a unified Scottish force.’
‘Sure, she made that clear enough in ACPOS, and I made my opposition equally plain. We had some robust discussions, to say the least.’
‘Oh she told me. But what you probably do not know is, her big fear was that she would talk you round to her view. She rated you very highly as a police officer; in fact she said you were the best she’d ever met. She wanted the top job, no mistake about that, but she didn’t think she’d have a chance if you went for it.’
‘Indeed?’ Skinner murmured.
‘Indeed.’
‘So where does that take us, Ms Deschamps?’
‘I have no personal issues with you, sir,’ she replied. ‘Fate has put you in what was my sister’s office. I’m a top-class secretary with personnel management qualifications, and I like to work with the best. Therefore . . .’ She held his eyes with hers.
‘Let me think about it,’ he said. ‘I like to have a serving officer as my assistant, and I’ve already appointed someone to that position, pro tem. To be frank, I’ll need to get to know the job before I can judge whether there will be enough work left for you. But first things first; you and your mother have a funeral to organise, albeit with all the help that the force can give you. Once that’s over, we can talk. Fair enough?’
‘Fair enough,’ she agreed.
Out of nowhere, Skinner remembered a problem. ‘There is one thing, though. Do you have the combination of the safe in the chief’s office?’
Marina sighed. ‘I did,’ she replied. ‘It was seven three eight two seven six. But Antonia always changed it at the end of the week. It was u
sually the last thing she did on a Friday; sometimes she’d tell me the new number there and then, but if she didn’t have a chance it would wait until Monday. Last Friday she didn’t tell me. You can try the old number, just in case she forgot to make the change, but if it doesn’t work, I fear I can’t help you.’
She looked up as her mother returned carrying a tray, loaded with two tiny espresso cups, and a bottle of Perrier with a glass.
‘No ice,’ Sofia Deschamps declared as she placed them on a small table at the side of the couch. ‘I refuse to dilute the mineral with melted tap water, as so many do.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Skinner told her. ‘When my late wife and I were very young, we went on a camping holiday to the South of France. Everybody told us not to drink the water there, so we didn’t. But we had ice in everything, so everything tasted of chlorine.’
‘If that was the only side effect,’ she countered, ‘you were lucky.’
He winced. ‘It wasn’t; I was being delicate, that’s all.’
‘Your late wife,’ she repeated. ‘And earlier you mentioned your former wife.’
‘Three,’ he said, anticipating the question. ‘Three and still counting.’
‘Maman!’ Marina exclaimed, her tone sharp.
‘Ah yes.’ Her mother held up a hand. ‘I am sorry. That was indiscreet; we have seen this morning’s papers.’
‘No apology necessary,’ he assured her. ‘All it means is that our separation is public knowledge. It wasn’t the way I’d have chosen for it to be revealed, but these things happen. Have you ever been married, Miss Deschamps? Or am I making a false assumption? Have you reverted to your birth surname?’
‘No, you are correct. I have always chosen to avoid marriage. Antonia’s father, Anil, was a member of the Mauritian government of the day . . . you see, we have politicians in common. Marriage with him was never possible, since he had a wealthy wife, to whom he owed his position.
‘Marina’s father was an Australian, with business interests in Port St Louis. He spent part of the year there, the winter, usually, and the rest in Australia, or travelling in connection with his business. He was something of an entrepreneur.’ She pronounced the word with care, balancing each syllable.
‘We had a very nice apartment there, and a very pleasant life. Not that I was a kept woman,’ she was quick to add. ‘I had a very good job, in the Mauritian civil service, and I maintained my own household. He did not contribute, because I would not allow it, even though we were together for seventeen years. I had a good income. We are a wealthy country, you know; close to Africa and yet a little distant from it too.’
‘I know,’ Skinner replied. ‘Mauritius is one of the many places on my “To do” list.’
‘You will like it.’
‘Why did you leave?’ he asked her.
‘To be with my daughters. Marina’s father was very good to both my girls; he more or less adopted Antonia, and when she came to university age, he got her a place in Birmingham, where she did a degree in criminology.’
‘She first joined the police in Birmingham as well,’ Marina added. ‘She had a specialised degree and that got her fast-tracked. Well, you’ll have seen her career record, I’m sure. She never looked back.’
‘How about you?’ he put to her. ‘Were you ever tempted to join the force?’
‘That never really arose, not in the same way. My father died when I was sixteen. I was very upset, and any thought of university went out of my mind . . . not that I had Antonia’s IQ anyway. I stayed in Mauritius and went to college; I did a secretarial course and a personnel management qualification. I came to Britain eight years ago, when Antonia was senior enough to point me at a job with the Met support staff.’
She smiled. ‘That’s not as bad as it sounds; I had a very stringent interview, and I must have been vetted, for I was attached to SO15, the Counter-Terrorism Command, for a little while. But when Antonia became a chief constable . . . back to Birmingham again . . . things changed. She insisted that I go with her, to run what she always called her Private Office. The rest you must know.’
Skinner nodded. ‘I’ve been told. Ladies,’ he continued, ‘you’ll be aware that since Saturday evening, a full-scale murder investigation has been under way. I’m keeping in close touch with it, and I know that DI Mann, the senior investigating officer, will want to visit you fairly soon to interview you for the record. Meantime, is there anything you would like to ask me?’
‘Of course,’ Sofia exclaimed, ‘but why would he need to interview us?’
‘Detective Inspector Mann is a lady, Maman,’ her daughter murmured.
‘Then she, if you must. Why would she? What do we know? In any event, can this not be an interview? You’re her boss now, after all, as my dear Antonia was.’
‘Yes but she is in day-to-day charge.’ He paused. ‘If it makes you happy, I can go over some of the ground she’ll want to and report what you say to her. If she’s comfortable with that, fine. If not, she can come and visit you again. Okay?’
‘Yes,’ Marina Deschamps replied, at once. ‘But Maman is right. Why do you need witness statements from us?’
‘Because we’re now certain, beyond any doubt, that Chief Constable Field was the target. These men weren’t after my wife, or the First Minister. They were pros, hit men; they knew exactly who they were there to kill, and they did.’
‘Oui,’ Miss Deschamps whispered. ‘We saw my daughter’s body yesterday. They covered half her face with a sheet, but I made them take it off. We know what was done to her. So yes, I understand you now. What do you need to know?’
‘Her private life,’ Skinner said. ‘I can tell you that we’ll be going back through her entire career, looking at what she’s done, people she’s put away, enemies she may have made along the way who have the power and the contacts to put together an operation like this.’
‘Such an impersonal word: “operation”. You make it sound like a military thing.’
‘It was,’ he told her. ‘Smit and Botha were former soldiers, and Beram Cohen, the planner, had an intelligence background. They didn’t work cheap, and they weren’t the sort of men you can contract in a pub. The very fact that the principal, as we’ll call the person who ordered your daughter’s death, was able to contact Cohen, tells me that he is wealthy and well-connected.
‘I know about some of the successes that Toni had as a police officer and I’m aware that she may have upset some very nasty people in her time. Trust me, we will look at these, using outside agencies wherever we need to.’
‘Outside agencies?’
‘He means the British Security Service, Maman,’ Marina volunteered.
‘Not only them. The FBI, the American DEA; we’ll go anywhere we need to. But alongside that I need to know about any personal relationships your sister may have had. Unlikely as it may seem, did she ever have a romance that ended badly?’ He hesitated. ‘Did she have any personal weaknesses?’
‘Of course not!’ Sofia exclaimed.
‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ Skinner said, deflecting her sudden anger, although privately he counted naked ambition and ruthlessness towards colleagues as ranking fairly high on the weakness scale. ‘But the questions must be asked if we are to do our best for you in finding the person who had that done to her, what you saw yesterday. Marina, you understand that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. I knew my sister well enough. Personal weaknesses? Was she a gambler, closet drinker? No, she was tight with her money and she didn’t touch a drop. She didn’t mortgage beyond her means either; she was shrewd with the property she bought. For example, she picked up this pile at the bottom of the market, after making a big profit from her house in Edgbaston.’
She stopped and looked at her mother. ‘Personal relationships?’ she repeated. ‘Maman, cover your ears if you like, but this is the truth. I don’t think Toni ever had a romance in her life, certainly not in the years that I’ve lived with her in Britain.
&
nbsp; ‘Relationships, yes; she’s had six of them. Make no mistake, she was robustly heterosexual. But none of them were about love; all of them were about her career. I’m not saying that she bedded her way to the top, but every lover that she had was a man of power or influence, one way or another.’
‘Might any of them have been the sort of man to take it badly when she pulled the plug on him?’ the chief asked.
‘No, I would not put any of them in that category. Everyone she brought home . . . and she told me she never played away . . . was as cynical as she was.’
‘Were they cops?’
‘A couple were. There was a DAC . . . deputy assistant commissioner . . . in the Met, about five years ago, and an assistant chief from Birmingham before him. I’m sure that neither of those two were in a position to advance her career directly, but they knew people who were.
‘More recently, from what she told me, the men she’s been involved with have been . . . how do I put it? . . . opinion formers, movers and shakers outside the police force. There was a broadcast journalist, a civil service mandarin in the Justice Ministry, and another man she said was a very successful criminal lawyer.’
‘You’re telling me what they were but not who,’ Skinner pointed out. ‘Can you put names to any of them?’
Marina smiled. ‘No, because Antonia never did, and since we didn’t live together until she became the chief in Birmingham, I never saw any of them. “No names, no blames”, was what she always said, whenever I asked her. It used to annoy me, until I realised that given her background and mine . . .’ She broke off and looked at her mother. ‘I’m sorry, Maman,’ she said, ‘but this is the truth. She never had a proper father as such, far less than I did. We were secret daughters in a way, both of us, but her most of all.
‘Given that history, that upbringing, it was perfectly natural that Antonia should have woven a cloak of secrecy around her own personal life. And me? I am exactly the same. Most observers, looking at me, would say that my life is a mystery.’
Sofia nodded. Her eyes were sad. ‘I wish I could deny that,’ she sighed, ‘but it is true. That is my legacy to both of my daughters.’
Pray for the Dying Page 14