‘Maybe you can show me how,’ she replied. ‘I’m going to have to find new ways to amuse my Jakey, with his dad out the picture.’
As soon as she had gone, he picked up the phone and made a direct call.
‘Sal-tire,’ a male telephonist announced, the confident public voice of a confident newspaper.
‘June Crampsey, please. Tell her it’s Bob. She’ll know which one.’
‘There may be other men called Bob in my life,’ the editor said as she came on line.
‘But you still knew which one this is.’
‘It’s my phone; it goes all moist when you call. Why didn’t you use my direct line, or my mobile?’
‘Because my head’s full of stuff and I couldn’t remember either number.’
‘I thought you had slaves to get those for you.’
‘That’s Edinburgh. In Glasgow they’re all lashed to the oars and rowing like shit to keep the great ship off the rocks.’
‘Do I detect a continuing ambivalence towards Strathclyde?’ she teased.
‘It’s a lousy job, kid, but somebody’s got to do it. For now that’s me. June, I need your help.’
‘Shoot. You still have a credit balance in the favour ledger.’
‘Six months or so back, you ran a story about some charity dinner in the RSM. It mentioned a man named Peter Friedman, a recluse, your story called him.’
‘I remember that one.’
‘How much do you know about him?’
‘No more than was in the paper. He’s a very rich bloke who keeps himself to himself. We ran that dinner to honour people who gave decent sized bucks to good causes last year. The guests were all nominated by the charities and we sent the formal invitations. His address was a PO box in Tobermory.’
‘Tobermory?’ he repeated.
‘That’s what I said. He lives on the Isle of Mull. That qualifies as reclusive, doesn’t it?’
‘Hey, I’m from Motherwell. Everything north and west of Perth’s reclusive in my book. Your story: was there a photo with it?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘That’s why I remember it so well. I had a photographer in the hall, snapping groups; real dull stuff, but I felt we had to do it since it was our gig. Your man Friedman was in one of them and he made a fuss about it. First he tried to bribe the photographer, then he threatened him. When neither of those worked he sought me out and asked me, more politely, not to use it. I said I’d see what I could do, then I made bloody sure that it went in.’
‘Did you hear from him afterwards?’
‘No. Fact is, I doubt if he even saw it. The next day was the Saturday edition; most people just read that for the sport and the weekend section.’
‘Do you still have the photo in your library?’
‘Of course, everything’s in the bloody library. I’ll have somebody dig it out, crop him out of the group and email it to you. What’s your Strathclyde address?’
‘Thanks, but use my private address. I don’t want it on this network.’
‘Okay, but what’s this about, Bob? Why are you interested in him?’
‘His name came up in connection with another charity donation,’ Skinner replied, content that he was telling the truth. ‘I like to know about people with deep pockets; maybe our dependants’ support group can put the bite on him in the future. Thanks, June, you’re a pal. You and that other Bob must come to dinner some night.’
‘I’ll take you up on that, only his name’s Adrian. Now I’m wondering who the hostess will be. Cheers.’
He hung up, leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of his face, gathering his thoughts and seeing images flow past his mind’s eye. He sat there until a trumpet sound on his phone told him that he had a personal email, and a glance confirmed that it was from June. He opened it, then viewed the attachment. As he did, possibilities became certainties.
The chief constable rose from his desk, left his office and his command floor, taking the stair down one level and walking round to a suite that overlooked Holland Street, and the group of buildings that once had housed one of Scotland’s oldest and most famous schools.
He keyed a number into a pad, then pushed open a door bearing a plaque that read ‘Counter-Terrorism Intelligence Section’. As he entered the long open room, a female officer looked up at him, first with a frown, then in surprise. She started to rise, but he waved her back down, and headed to the far end of the room.
A red light above Lowell Payne’s door said that he was in a meeting. Skinner knocked on it nonetheless, then waited, until it was opened by a glaring man with a moustache.
‘Aye?’ he snapped.
‘Intelligence section?’ he murmured, as Payne appeared behind the officer.
‘Chief.’
‘Sorry to interrupt, Detective Superintendent, but you know me. Everything I do has “urgent” stamped on it.’
‘Indeed. That’ll be all for now, DS Mavor,’ he said, almost pushing the other officer out of the room.
‘Sorry about that,’ he murmured once he and Skinner were alone. ‘He was somebody’s mistake, from the days when a guy might get dumped into Special Branch and forgotten about, because he was too rough-edged for the mainstream, or because he’d done somebody higher up a big favour in the witness box, and an SB job was his reward.’
‘Where do you want him sent?’
‘Anywhere that being rough-edged will be an advantage.’
‘I’ll ask Bridie. She’ll have an idea. Now, I have a question, best put to somebody who was here six months ago and who’d know pretty much everything that went on then.’
‘That would be DI Bulloch,’ Payne replied at once. ‘Sandra. You probably passed her on your way along here.’
‘I did. At least she knows who I am, which is a good start.’
‘I’ll get her in.’
‘Fine, but before you do, let me set the scene. When I got into Toni Field’s safe finally, and found those envelopes, there was another. It was marked “P. Friedman” and it was empty. It was stuck on to the back of another, and I reckon that was a mistake on Marina’s part.’
‘Marina’s?’
‘Oh yes. Marina knew that stuff would be there for me to find, in time, once I’d got past her stalling me by giving me the wrong code for the safe. But she didn’t intend me to find the Friedman envelope. She destroyed what was in it, but failed to notice that she’d left it in there. Now, let’s talk to the DI.’
Sandra Bulloch was a cool one, neither too pretty nor too plain to be memorable, but with legs that few men would fail to notice, and that she probably covered up, Skinner guessed, when she went operational.
‘Peter Friedman,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, sir, I remember him. It was Chief Constable Field’s second week here; she called Superintendent Johnson and me up to her office, and told us that there was a man she wanted put under full surveillance. His name, she said, was Peter Friedman and he lived on Mull.
‘I handled the job myself, with DS Mavor.’ A small flicker of distaste crossed her face, then vanished. ‘We found that he owned a big estate house up behind Tobermory, set in about forty acres of land. We photographed him from as close as we could get, we hacked his emails and we tapped his phones.
‘He lived alone, but he had a driver, a personal assistant type, who also flew the helicopter that appeared to be his means of getting off the island. He left the estate once a day, that was all, to go down to Tobermory, in his white Range Rover Evoque, to collect his mail from the post office, and to have a coffee and a scone in the old church building next door that somebody’s made into a shop and a café.
‘He had no visitors and he never took or made a phone call that wasn’t about his investments. Nor did he file any emails; they were all deleted after study. I assume that if he wanted to keep something he’d print it.
‘The only thing we intercepted that was of any interest,’ Bulloch said, ‘was an email from a consultant oncologist, with a report attached. It didn’t
make good reading. It confirmed that Friedman had a squamous cell lung carcinoma, in other words lung cancer, that it was inoperable, and that no form of therapy was going to do him any good. It gave him somewhere between nine months and two years to live.’
‘Ouch,’ Skinner whispered. ‘Did you report all of this back to Toni, to Chief Constable Field?’
‘Of course, sir. We gave her a file with everything in it. She kept it and she ordered us to destroy any copies.’
‘Which you did?’
Bulloch stared at him, as if outraged. ‘Absolutely,’ she insisted.
‘Did she ever tell you why she wanted this man targeted?’
‘No, and we didn’t ask. Sometimes the chief constable knows things that we don’t need to. For example, why you’re here now, asking questions about the same man.’
He laughed. ‘Nice one, Sandra. You’re right; I’m not going to tell you either.’
His mobile sounded as she was leaving the room. The caller was Lottie Mann, with not one result, but two. He listened carefully to her, said, ‘Thanks. I’ll be in touch,’ then ended the call.
‘Lowell,’ he asked, ‘has our tap on Sofia Deschamps produced anything?’
‘Nothing, Chief. Only a call from Mauritius, a bloke we think was Chief Constable Field’s dad, going by his distress if nothing else. Nothing from Marina, though. In fact, when she was talking to the man, she said, “Now I’ve lost both my daughters, and I won’t get either one back.” I suppose that doesn’t rule out her knowing where the other one is, but from the tone of her voice on the recording, I don’t believe she does.’
‘That’s all right, I do. Pretty soon, I expect that everything will become clear. I’m tired of this business, Lowell,’ Skinner sighed, ‘tired of the entire Deschamps family and their devious lives. Tomorrow, the two of us will go on a trip. I’d like to meet this guy Friedman. Can you put me up at your place tonight? Otherwise it’ll be an even earlier start for Davie.’
Sixty-Four
‘Sailing is not something I do very often,’ Bob remarked. ‘In fact, the last time I was on a boat on this side of the country was when Ali Higgins took Alex and me for a weekend on her rich brother’s schooner. It was a cathartic experience in an emotional sense.’
He was leaning on the rail of the Oban car ferry as it made a slow turn towards the jetty at Craignure, landing point for visitors to the island of Mull. Their driver, PC Davie Cole, was in the car, asleep.
‘Funnily enough,’ Lowell Payne said, ‘I remember that; on your way there, the three of you were at Jean’s dad’s funeral. It was the first time you and I met.’
‘You’re right, it was. I think about that trip often, whenever I’m feeling low. I loved it. By the end of the voyage, I was talking seriously about jacking it all in and buying a boat of my own, doing the odd charter, that sort of stuff. Then the fucking phone rang, didn’t it, and it all went up in smoke.’
‘What if you had?’ Lowell asked. ‘Maybe you and Alison would be off in the Caribbean or the Med right now. Jean had hopes for the pair of you.’
‘I know she had, but they were misplaced. We didn’t last, remember; Ali was more career driven than me.’ He sighed, and his eyes went somewhere else. ‘But if we had bought our tall ship and made it work, she would still be alive. If I’d taken her away from the fucking police force,’ he muttered, with sudden savagery, ‘she wouldn’t have been turned into crispy bits by a fucking car bomb.’
‘You both made the same choice,’ Lowell pointed out. ‘And it could as easily have been you that got killed. A couple of times, from what I hear.’
‘Yes I know that, but still. This fucking job, man, what it does to people, on the inside. Ali and I, we spent a couple of years banging each other’s brains out, yet by the time she died, it was all gone and she was calling me “sir” with the rest of them.’
He was silent for a while, until he had worked off his anger and his guilt, and his mood changed. ‘By the way,’ he said quietly, ‘I enjoyed last night. You and Jean, you’re such a normal down-to-earth couple.’ He gave a soft, sad laugh. ‘As a matter of fact, you’re just about the only normal down-to-earth couple that I know. And that lass of yours, young Myra, she’s blooming. What is she now, thirteen? She reminds me a lot of Alex when she was that age. Prepare to be wound round her little finger, my friend.’
‘There is a difference, though. You had to bring Alexis up on your own. Yes, I might be a soft touch, I’ll admit, but Jean’s there as a buffer; she takes no nonsense . . . not that Myra gets up to much, mind. She’s a good kid. That is, she has been up to now. I suppose it all changes the further into their teens they get.’
‘It does, and the trick is to accept that. There comes a time in every young person’s growing up when they’re entitled to a private life, in every respect. When it’s a daughter, that can be difficult for dads, because we all inevitably remember the hormonal volcanoes we were at that age. I was no exception, and I’ll always be grateful to Jean for being a really good aunt to Alex during that couple of years.’
‘From what she said, and indeed from what I saw for myself, you were a great dad.’
‘Ach, we all are to our girls, or should be. I’m beginning to learn that boys take much more managing.’
‘Do you think that’s what went wrong with Toni and Marina? The absence of a father’s influence?’
He pursed his lips. ‘In Toni’s case, nah; I reckon she was just a bad bitch. As for Marina, maybe it was the opposite. The jury’s still out on that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Payne paused. ‘You realise I’m completely in the dark about this trip. You’ve hardly told me anything. Now it turns out we’re going to see some recluse in Tobermory, and I still don’t know why.’
‘You will.’ He pushed himself off the rail. ‘Come on, let’s go and see if Davie’s awake yet. We’ll be ready to offload soon.’
Twenty minutes later they were seated in the back of the chief constable’s car, as PC Cole eased it carefully down the ramp then on to the roadway.
‘I thought the terminal was in Tobermory itself,’ Payne observed as he read a road sign outside the Caledonian MacBrayne building. ‘Twenty-one miles away: I never realised Mull was so big.’
‘I’d forgotten myself,’ Skinner confessed, ‘until I looked it up on Google Earth. I didn’t think it would have street view for a place this size, but it does. Now I know exactly where we’re going.’
‘The post office?’
‘No, the café place next door that DI Bulloch mentioned. The Gallery, it’s called. We’ll have a cup of something there and wait for Mr Friedman to arrive. It’s a nice morning, and they’ve got tables outside.’
‘What if he’s already been for his mail?’
‘There’s no chance of that. This is the first ferry of the day, and the Royal Mail van was six behind us in the queue to get off. We’ll be there before it.’
The Gallery was exactly as DI Bulloch had described it. A classic old Scottish church building, with a paved area in front with half a dozen tables, four of them unoccupied. It offered a clear view across Tobermory Bay and, more important, of anyone arriving at the post office, next door.
Cole dropped them off outside, then, on Skinner’s instruction, reversed into a parking bay, thirty yards further along on the seaward side of the road, half hidden by a tree and a telephone box.
They took the table nearest the street, and the chief produced a ten-pound note. ‘I’m not pulling rank,’ he said, ‘but since I actually know who we’re waiting for, it’s better you get the teas in. I’ll have a scone too, if they look okay. They should be; you’d expect home baking in a place like this.’
As he took the banknote, Payne sensed the excitement of anticipation underlying Skinner’s good humour. There was no queue in the café. He bought two mugs of tea and two scones, which looked better than okay, and was carrying them outside on a tray when he saw the Royal Mail van drive past, slowing to park.
There was no conversation as they sat, sipping and eating. The chief was relaxed in his chair, but his colleague noticed that it was drawn clear of the table, so that if necessary he had a clear route to the street.
And then, after ten minutes, a large white vehicle came into view, approaching from their left. It was halfway in shape between a coupé and an estate car. ‘How many white Range Rover Evoques would you expect in Mull?’ the chief murmured.
The car swung into an empty bay on the other side of the road. Its day lights dimmed as the driver switched off, then stepped out: not a man, Payne saw, but a woman, tall, in shorts and a light cotton top, with a blue and yellow motif.
Her hair was jet black, cut short and spiky. Although a third of her face was hidden behind wrap-round sunglasses, Oakley, he guessed, by the shape of them, the lovely honey-coloured tone of her skin was still apparent, and striking.
She was halfway across the road, heading for the post office, when Skinner put his right thumb and index finger in his mouth and gave a loud, shrill whistle. The woman, and everyone else in earshot, looked in his direction. But she alone froze in mid-stride.
She made a small move, as if to abort her errand and go back to the Range Rover, but the chief shook his head, then beckoned her towards them. She seemed to sag a little, then she obeyed, as if she was on an invisible lead and he was winding it in.
He stood as she drew near, reaching out with his right foot, gathering in a spare chair and pulling it to the table. ‘Have a seat,’ he said. He inclined his head towards Payne, never taking his eyes from hers. ‘Lowell, you didn’t get up to the command floor in the last chief’s time, so you probably don’t know her sister, Marina Deschamps, or Day Champs, as wee Dan Provan would say. Mind you,’ he added, ‘even if you did, you’d have had bother recognising her with the radical new hair and the designer shades. I probably wouldn’t have been sure myself if she hadn’t been driving her dad’s car.’
‘Her what?’ Payne exclaimed.
‘Her dad,’ he repeated. ‘Peter Friedman’s her father. There’s been a consistent feature in this investigation. Most of the players in it have had two names, making them hard to pin down. Byron Millbank was Beram Cohen, and vice versa when he had to be, Antonia Deschamps became Toni Field, in the cause of advancing her career like everything else she ever did, and even Basil Brown, gangster and MI5 grass, had to be called Bazza.’
Pray for the Dying Page 34