Pray for the Dying

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means he wis a fuckin’ grass, Lottie; he was protected. And if it wasnae for us, and it wasn’t, it must have been for MI5. They’ve got a serious crime section.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘You’ll get brownie points wi’ the new chief when ye tell him that, eh?’

  ‘Maybe. But have you thought through the implications?’

  ‘Sure,’ Provan admitted, ‘but Ah’m no’ paid enough to spell them out. Ye’d better go and see the gaffer.’

  ‘I will do. While I’m up there, you concentrate on the only other line of inquiry we have with Bazza. Have we got the CCTV tapes from the Easthaven Retail Park yet?’

  ‘Aye, and I’ve cleared up something; nothin’ major, just a point for the record. We know that Smit and Botha were at Easthaven and that Bazza went there too, to meet them. We know from the gaffer that the South Africans were in Livingston on Friday, collecting their weapons. Ah’ve checked with the team in Edinburgh, spoke to a DC called Haddock, bright-soundin’ kid . . .’

  ‘Nothing fishy about him?’ Mann murmured.

  ‘Whit . . . ach, be serious, Lottie. He said that there was no mention of a third man bein’ with them. So, Bazza must have been in the boot o’ the motor by then.’

  ‘Fair enough, fills in the timeline. Take a look at that video and see if it shows them meeting, then we’ll join all the dots. What does the recording cover?’

  ‘Two cameras, all day Friday, midnight to midnight. But there’s a clock on it so Ah’ll speed run it back to just before seven and go from there.’

  ‘Fine, you do that. I’ll go and see the boss.’

  Thirty-Four

  ‘You do realise, Lottie,’ a frowning Skinner said, ‘that I should be water-boarding the wee man until he tells me who his contact in CTIS is. That section is supposed to be completely confidential. Information like that shouldn’t be passed on outside the reporting chain.’

  ‘That’s why I didn’t bring him up here with me,’ the DI replied. ‘But you’d be wasting your time, boss. He’d drown before he told you. Dan’s old school.’

  ‘Don’t I know it. That’s why the tap’s not running. I won’t press the point, for now, but I won’t forget it either. Make sure he knows that, so that his mate, whoever he is, will get to hear about it.’

  ‘Understood, boss. I’ll drop a word in his ear.’

  ‘Don’t be too friendly about it. I know he was your mentor, but you’re his line manager, not the other way around. Now, since he has given us this information . . . you know what it suggests?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said, ‘if it was the Security Service that flagged Bazza Brown as off limits . . . and who else would it be?’

  ‘Drugs enforcement,’ the chief suggested, ‘but that’s unlikely. I can and will check it, though. If that was the cause of the red notice, it would have come from Scotland. The head of the SCDEA and I are close. He’ll tell me if it was his mob that were running Brown. Indeed, I’ve got a feeling that if it was them, he’d have been in touch with me by now to let me know.

  ‘So, let’s say that Bazza was on the books of MI5’s serious crime section. If our speculation that they fixed Beram Cohen up with a new identity is well founded, then he would have as well, and that’s our link.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it, boss?’

  ‘Absolutely nothing,’ Skinner replied, almost before she had finished her question. ‘As far as you’re concerned, you never had the information you just brought me and neither did Dan. He shouldn’t have been given it in the first place, and if he made any written note of his conversation, it must be destroyed.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She rose from the chair that faced the chief constable’s desk. It was low set, so that whoever sat behind the desk was always looking down on his visitors, an intimidating tactic that Skinner disliked, and vowed that he would change. ‘Since I was never here,’ she said, ‘I’d better make myself scarce.’

  He laughed. ‘You do that, Lottie. Concentrate on the video you told me about. If you can show Bazza Brown meeting Smit and Botha, you can wrap up the inquiry into his murder, and pass that on to Reba Paisley’s office. Why he met them, if we’re right about that, she doesn’t need to know. How they came to know him, that’s completely off limits.’

  ‘Fine, I’ll report back on the first part as soon as we’ve nailed it down.’

  He watched her as she left then reached across his desk for the phone, only to be interrupted by his mobile signalling another incoming text. ‘Done here. Scrubbing up, then on my way. Sarahx.’

  No reply needed; he smiled as he put it back in his pocket, then picked up the other instrument, selected ‘direct dial’ and made the call he had been intending.

  ‘Mario? How are you settling into my old office? Do you like the view? You can see every bugger who comes in and goes out. Useful at times.’

  ‘Sure,’ the newly appointed ACC conceded, ‘but they can see me.’

  ‘Not if you angle the blinds right.’

  ‘I’ll try that. Have you got any other advice for me?’

  ‘Yeah, keep your eye on David Mackenzie; he’s after your job.’

  ‘I worked that one out for myself, Bob, quite some time ago. Anything else? Anything serious?’

  ‘No, but a question. How’s Paula?’

  ‘Blooming. No sign of delayed shock, post-traumatic stress or any of that crap, I’m relieved to say. Maybe because she’s got too much on her mind. She saw her consultant again this morning, at his request. When he checked her over yesterday, he thought he might have got her dates wrong. Now he’s sure, he’s given her to the end of the week to get the job done herself, or he’s going to induce labour.’

  ‘They did that with Myra, when she had Alex. As I recall, it started with castor oil. Tell her that; the threat alone might be a trigger.’

  ‘I will. Now let me ask you one. How’s Aileen? First off, I’m sorry about you two, and about all the other shit. She’s had a very tough forty-eight hours, man.’

  Skinner felt his forehead tighten. ‘Are you saying I made it worse?’ he asked.

  ‘No, absolutely not,’ McGuire insisted. ‘I wasn’t implying that. I understand how things are between you. It was a straight question.’

  ‘In that case, she’s fine. She and I spoke not that long ago and everything’s okay. We’ve put our situation on the record, so the press will have to be very careful with what they say about her. I know she had that bother at her press conference this morning, but given the trouble the Hatton woman’s been making, it’ll work for her rather than agin her.’

  ‘Good. Now would you like to come to the point?’

  ‘What makes you think there is one?’ Skinner asked.

  ‘How long have we known each other? About fifteen years? I’m not saying you never call me just to pass the time of day, but I don’t recall you ever doing it from the office, not once.’

  ‘Christ, is that true? You know, McIlhenney said much the same earlier. What does that say about me?’ He sighed. ‘The sad thing is, you’re right. I’ve got a situation here, I need it resolved, but I can’t be bothered going through channels. It would take too long. Instead, I’m looking for a simpler solution. Do you remember a wee guy called Johan Ramsey?’

  ‘Wee Jo? Of course. A master of his craft, if ever there was one.’

  ‘It didn’t stop him getting lifted a few times though. Do you know where he is now?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I do. He’s here in Edinburgh, on parole after his last sentence. We were advised when he was released.’

  ‘Good,’ Skinner declared. ‘That’s what I wanted to hear.’

  ‘How come?’ McGuire laughed. ‘What do you want with him?’

  ‘I want to employ him.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘I mean it. I’ve got a job for him. There’s a safe in my office here. Toni Field had it installed, and only she knew the combination. I don’t have
the time to wait for some bloody company in the south of England to free up one of their specialists, so I want to hire one of my own. I’d like you to pick him up, and invite him to join me here tomorrow morning, to see what he can do. Tell him there’s a hundred in it for him, regardless, cash, and that his probation officer will never know. Can you do that for me, ACC McGuire? Make it work and I’ll buy you lunch after your first ACPOS meeting.’

  ‘Hell, Bob, you don’t need to bribe me to get me to do that. That’s a first, and it’s going in my memoirs.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Skinner grunted, ‘but you’d better make it clear to wee Jo that if it winds up in his, then next time he gets sent down, I will make certain, personally, that parole is off the table.’

  Thirty-Five

  ‘In my office, please, Dan,’ Lottie Mann said as she returned to the investigation suite.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Provan muttered, but too quietly for her to hear, and he rose from his seat and followed her into a small room at the end of the open area.

  ‘See that friend of yours in CTIS?’ she began, without preamble. ‘Whoever he is, you’d better warn him that where he works careless talk costs lives, and in this case it’s his that’s on the line. On Toni Field’s watch there would probably have been a leak inquiry over what he told you. There won’t be this time, but probably only because Skinner likes you too much to use a nutcracker to get the name out of you.

  ‘We are not to follow up what you were told. Instead we’re to wrap up Bazza’s murder, pass the file to the fiscal and mark it case closed, then get on with the main investigation, which is still, unlike Field, very much alive. That’s the way it is, Dan. You are from Barcelona. You know nussing.’

  ‘Ye’ve got the accent wrong,’ the DS said. ‘Ah’m old enough to have seen Fawlty Towers when it wis new. Unfortunately, Lottie, Ah don’t know nothin’. In fact, Ah know too fuckin’ much.’

  ‘Oh, I know that,’ she laughed. ‘Too much for your own good.’

  ‘No, love,’ he sighed, ‘for yours.’

  She stared at him. ‘What are you on about, Detective Sergeant? Can we just keep up the pretence that I’m your senior officer?’

  ‘No, we can’t.’

  Her eyes narrowed. A spasm of something strange ran through her, and she realised that it was fear. ‘Dan,’ she murmured, ‘what is this?’

  ‘This, Lottie, is me doin’ something Ah shouldn’t. By rights Ah shouldn’t be talking to you alone. There should be a senior officer in this room right now, probably the chief constable himself. There isn’t, because Ah care about you, lassie, and I want you to know about this from me, first. This might have to be another of those conversations that never happened, like mine with Alec in CTIS, but this is a hell of a lot more serious.’

  He reached across her desk and switched on her computer; it was an old-fashioned tower type, probably on its last legs, and took an inordinate length of time to boot up.

  ‘Dan,’ she said once more, as they waited, but he hushed her, with a finger to his lips.

  ‘They store the CCTV recordings on DVDs,’ he told her, as he loaded a disk on to the computer’s player tray, and slid it into position, then settled into the DI’s chair so that he could control playback.

  ‘I started at the end, like Ah said,’ he began. She looked at the screen and saw a still image of an empty car park, and with numerals in the bottom right corner. ‘These things can hold eight hours at a time,’ he explained. ‘They have a bank of recorders tae cover the whole park. When one disk gets full, another starts, so it’s constant. Ah thought I’d have to go a’ the way back tae seven, but . . .’

  He clicked a rewind icon, three times; the image began to move, as did the time read-out, fast, backwards. Provan’s finger hovered above the mouse until the clock showed seven twenty-eight, when he clicked again, freezing the recording once more.

  ‘Ah nearly missed this first time. Watch.’ He clicked on the ‘Play’ arrow and the images started to move.

  Mann peered at the screen. The park was almost as empty as it had been before; only a few cars remained. Then she saw a silver saloon roll into view, moving jerkily, for the camera was set to shoot only a few frames per second. It came to a stop and as it did so, a figure walked towards it, his speed enhanced. He was carrying a large parcel. She could just make out a face in the front passenger seat, and a hand, beckoning.

  ‘Bazza,’ Provan murmured. ‘Now see what happens.’

  The man she took to be Brown opened the rear door, slid into the back seat, and closed it behind him. Everything was still for a few seconds. Then she saw what seemed to be three flashes, inside the Peugeot, as if someone was sending a Morse message with a torch. Immediately afterwards, the car zoomed off, at high speed.

  ‘That was the execution of Bazza Brown,’ the DS said.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ his DI agreed. ‘So?’

  ‘So, what was wrong with that picture?’

  ‘Enlighten me,’ she growled. ‘Stop playin’ games, Dan.’

  ‘This is no game, kid. The parcel.’ He emphasised the word. ‘Where did Brown get the fuckin’ parcel? Cec never mentioned that. As far as he was concerned he was takin’ his brother to meet a bit on the side. And what was in it? Did he take her chocolates? If he did, it’s the biggest box of Black Magic Ah’ve ever seen.’

  ‘True,’ she murmured. That cold feeling revisited the pit of her stomach. Her old crony was taking her somewhere, and she had a bad feeling about their destination.

  ‘Then there was the time,’ the DS continued. ‘Bazza wanted to be there for seven, yet the South Africans never turned up for another half hour. So Ah ran the recording back to the time Cec told us, like this.’ He rewound once more, stopping at six fifty-eight, with a large black car in shot, near to where the Peugeot had pulled up.

  Provan let the recording go forward, and Mann saw Bazza Brown step out of his brother’s Chrysler, and into the last half hour of his life. He went nowhere, but stood his ground, pacing up and down, waiting, as Cec drove away.

  And then a door opened; it was set in the side of a large warehouse building at the top of the frame. A figure stepped out. He was carrying a large parcel, and he walked towards Brown. There was no handshake between the two, barely a glance exchanged, it seemed, as the bundle was handed over. The second man seemed about to turn on his heel, when Provan froze the screen.

  ‘I need you to confirm, ma’am,’ he said, ‘that the man with Brown is who I think he is.’

  Standing behind him, Lottie leaned over and grasped his shoulder, and the corner of the desk, for support.

  ‘Oh no,’ she moaned. ‘Oh my God, no. You know it is, Danny. You know it’s my Scott.’

  The sergeant let out a sigh that seemed bigger than he was. ‘Ah’ve never wished in ma life before,’ he murmured, ‘that Ah wasnae a cop. But I do now, so that somebody else could be doin’ this.’

  He stood, and gave her back her own chair. Then he went to the door, opened it and beckoned to Banjo Paterson, who crossed the office and joined them.

  ‘Detective Inspector,’ Provan announced, his accent vanishing in the formality of his voice, ‘in view of what we’ve just seen, and what you’ve confirmed, in spite of my subordinate rank I have got no choice but to ask you to remain here with DC Paterson while I take this matter to senior officers.’

  Thirty-Six

  ‘So this is where it all happens,’ Sarah Grace said, with a smile in her tone as she looked round the room that had become his. ‘This is the nerve centre of Scottish policing.’

  ‘A week ago,’ Bob told her, ‘I would have denied that suggestion, with all the vehemence at my disposal. Today, I’m forced to agree with you.’

  ‘I prefer the command suite in Edinburgh,’ she confessed. ‘It has a more, I dunno, a more lived-in feel about it. This is all very antiseptic, very impersonal.’

  ‘Honey child,’ he laughed, ‘don’t you think that might be because I haven’t had time to stamp
my personality on it?’

  ‘Maybe. I’m sure you will . . . as long as that doesn’t involve importing that coffee machine you inherited from your old mentor Alf Stein.’

  ‘It won’t, I promise you. You told me I should give myself a caffeine holiday and that’s what I’m doing. I haven’t had a coffee this week. Are you pleased with me?’

  She grinned. ‘Yes and no. If you really are sticking to it, that might mean I have to give up too. When you’re around, at least. Speaking of which,’ she added, ‘do you want to stop off tonight? The Gullane house will be empty, since the kids are with me.’

  ‘I think I would like that very much, although I do have something to do there, before the place can be truly empty.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he mused. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t reckon either of us would feel right if you did.’

  ‘Ah,’ Sarah whispered. ‘I think I can guess what you mean. Clearing out all the evidence, yes?’

  ‘Yes, at the other party’s request.’

  ‘Then you’re right. That is something you should do on your own . . . unless it involves a bonfire, in which case I’ll be happy to help.’

  ‘Hey, hey!’

  ‘I’m joking,’ she said. ‘The strangest thing happened to me this morning. I saw the newspapers and all of a sudden I found that I don’t bear that woman any ill-will, not any more, however she might feel about me.’

  ‘To be honest with you, Sarah,’ Bob confessed, ‘I don’t believe she feels any way about you, and I doubt that she ever did. She thought I was somebody I’m not. Now she’s found out the truth, she’s happy to make me, and everything to do with me, part of her past.’