Pray for the Dying

by Quintin Jardine

  There was a zipped pocket set in the lid of the case, which also sported a Marks and Spencer label on its lining. He unfastened it, felt inside and found a padded envelope. It was unsealed; the contents slid into his hand.

  ‘Wallet,’ he said. ‘Looks like at least three hundred quid. One Visa debit card in the name of Bryan Lightbody. A passport, New Zealand, in the same name, but with Gerry Botha’s photo inside. Flight tickets and itinerary, Singapore Air, Heathrow to Auckland through Singapore, business class, departure tomorrow evening.’

  He lifted the second case from the car and checked its contents. ‘An Australian passport,’ he announced when he was finished. ‘It and the bank card are in the name of Richie Mallett, and the flight ticket’s Quantas to Sydney, again Heathrow tomorrow night. So that was the game plan. Drive to London, fly away home and leave us scratching our arses as we try to find them on flights out of Scotland.’

  ‘Well planned,’ Lottie Mann observed.

  ‘Yes, but that’s not what these guys did. The man Cohen was the planner. He made all the arrangements, bought the air tickets, hired the car.’

  ‘The car,’ she repeated, then turned to Provan. ‘Get . . .’

  ‘Ah’m on it already,’ he retorted, waving the car key with his left hand while holding his mobile to his ear. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s right, Strathclyde CID. I’m standing over one o’ your cars just now, and Ah need to know whose name is on the rental contract.’ He paused, listening.

  ‘Because there’s something wrong wi’ it, that’s why.’ He waited again.

  ‘Maybe there wasn’t when it left you, Jimmy, but there is now. There’s a fuckin’ body in the boot. Or dae all your vehicles come with that accessory? No, Ah won’t hold on. The registration’s LX12 PMP; you get me the information Ah want and get back to me through the force main switchboard. They’ll transfer your call to my mobile. Pronto, please, this is very important.’

  As Provan finished, Skinner tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Have you ever done a course,’ he asked, ‘on communication with the public?’

  The sergeant pursed his lips, wrinkling his two-tone moustache in the process, and looked up at him. ‘No, sir, I can’t say that Ah have.’

  ‘Then I will make it my business, Detective Sergeant,’ the chief told him, without the suggestion of a smile, ‘to see that you never do.’

  ‘Thanks, gaffer,’ the little DS replied, ‘but even if you did send me on one, at my age I wake up sometimes wi’ this terrible hacking cough. Knocks me right off for the day, it does.’

  Skinner laughed out loud. ‘I could get to like it here,’ he exclaimed. Then he turned serious. ‘Now prove to me that you’re a detective, not some fucking hobbit who’s tolerated because he’s been around for ever. There’s a begged question in this scenario. I’m not wondering about the guy in the boot. You knew who he was, and I know what he was. No, it’s something else, unrelated. What is it?’

  As Dan Provan looked up at his new boss, two thoughts entered his mind. The first of them was financial. He had over thirty years in the job, and his pension was secure as long as he didn’t punch the chief constable in the mouth, and since that struck him as being a seriously stupid overreaction, it wasn’t going to happen. So the ‘daft laddie’ option was open to him, without risk.

  But the second was professional, and pride was involved. He had survived as long as he had because he was, in fact, a damn good detective, and as such he was expert in analysing every scenario and in identifying all the possible lines of inquiry that it offered.

  A third consideration followed. Skinner hadn’t asked him the question to embarrass him, but because he expected him to know the answer.

  He frowned and bent his mind to recalling as much as he could of what had been said in the previous half hour. He played the mental tape, piece by piece, then ran through it again.

  ‘It’s the flights,’ he said, when he was sure. ‘The two dead guys had plane tickets out of Heathrow. Yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Right. Now if everything had gone to plan, the two hit men, Smit and Botha, or Lightbody and Mallett, or Randall and fuckin’ Hopkirk deceased, whoever they were, if it had all gone to plan, they’d have driven straight out of this car park, almost before the alarm had been raised, headed straight down to London, dumping our friend Bazza in some lay-by along the way, and got on a fuckin’ plane. Right, boss?’

  Skinner nodded. ‘You’re on a roll, Sergeant, carry on.’

  ‘Thank you, gaffer. In that case, even as we’re stood here, they could have been sipping fuckin’ cocktails in business class. Except . . . their flights were booked for Monday, for tomorrow. So what were they supposed to be doin’ in those spare twenty-four hours?’

  The chief constable smiled. ‘Absolutely. Top question. You got an answer for that one?’

  Provan shrugged, ‘No idea, sir.’ He nodded towards the boot of the Peugeot. ‘But if we find out what they were doing with poor old Bazza Brown there, maybe that’ll give us a clue.’

  Seventeen

  ‘He’s a marginally insubordinate little joker, but I do like him,’ Bob chuckled. ‘He and that DI, Lottie, they’re some team.’

  Sarah smiled across the table, on which the last of their dinner plates lay, empty save for the skeletons of two lemon sole. She raised her coffee cup. ‘Could it be that Glasgow isn’t the cultural wasteland you thought it was?’

  ‘Hey, come on,’ he protested. ‘I never said that, or even thought it. I’m from Motherwell, remember; I’m not quite a Weegie myself, but close. I have a Glasgow degree; I spent a good chunk of my teens in that fair city. West of Scotland culture is in my blood. Why do you think I like country music and bad stand-up comedians?’

  ‘So part of you is glad to be back there,’ she suggested.

  ‘Sure, the nostalgic part.’

  ‘Then why did you ever leave?’ she asked in her light American drawl. ‘Myra was from Motherwell as well and yet the two of you upped sticks and moved through to Gullane in your early twenties.’

  ‘You know why; I’ve told you often enough. I liked Edinburgh, and I liked the seaside. I wanted to work in one and live by the other. I’ve never regretted that decision either, not once.’

  ‘But what made you choose it over Glasgow? I can see you, man, and your pleasure now at being back there. There must have been an underlying reason.’

  He leaned back in his chair and gazed at her. ‘Very well,’ he conceded. ‘There was. I didn’t like being asked what school I went to.’

  ‘Uh?’ she grunted. ‘Come again? What’s that got to do with anything?’

  His laugh was gentle, amused. ‘You’ve lived in Scotland for how long? Twelve years on and off, and you don’t know that one? It’s code, and what it actually means is, “Are you Protestant or are you Catholic?” Where I grew up that was a key question, just as much as in Belfast, and for all Aileen and her kind might try to deny it, I’m sure it still is in some places and to some people. The answer could determine many things, not least your employment prospects.

  ‘Why the school question? Because through there, education was organised along religious lines; there were Roman Catholic schools and non-denominational, the latter being in name only. They were where the Protestants went. So, your school defined you, and it could mean that some doors were just slammed in your face.’

  ‘Wow,’ Sarah murmured. ‘I know about Rangers and Celtic football clubs, of course, but I didn’t think it went that deep.’

  ‘It did, and for some it still does. Both those clubs condemn sectarianism but they still struggle to eradicate it among their supporters. I decided very early on that I didn’t want any kids of mine growing up in that environment, and Myra agreed. That’s what was behind our move.’

  ‘But now you’re back you like it?’

  ‘Hey, love, it’s been one day. My reservations about the size of the Strathclyde force are as strong as ever. What I’m saying is that I like the people I’v
e met so far. Mann and Provan, they’re good cops and pure Glaswegian, both of them.’

  ‘What school did they go to?’

  ‘As for Lottie, I have no idea.’ He winked. ‘But the Celtic supporter’s lapel badge that wee Provan was wearing still offers something of a clue. He may miss their next game,’ he added, ‘if they don’t get these killings wrapped up soon.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sarah said. ‘The body in the boot must have been a bit of a shaker.’

  ‘It was for Lowell, that’s for sure. He jumped out of his skin. Me too, to be honest, but I’ve gotten good at hiding it.’

  ‘Why was he there, the dead guy?’

  ‘I guess they didn’t want to leave him wherever he was killed. The provisional time of death was Friday evening some time; with the hit being planned for Saturday, they may not have wanted to muddy the waters by having him found.’

  ‘Meaning the police might have made a connection to them?’

  He nodded. ‘It would have been a long shot, but that would have been the thinking.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She frowned. ‘But I didn’t mean why was he in the boot; I mean why were they involved with him at all?’

  ‘We all asked ourselves that one. It seems that the late Mr Brown was a reasonably heavy-duty Glasgow criminal, but I doubt very much that Mr Smit and Mr Botha met him to do a drug deal on the side.’

  ‘Are you still sure those are their real names?’

  ‘Oh yes, we know that. We can trace them all the way back to the South African armed forces. Lightbody and Mallett were aliases. It remains to be seen whether they actually lived under those names, one in New Zealand, one in Australia. We’ll need to wait for the passport offices and the police in those countries to open before we can follow them up.’ He checked his watch; quarter to nine. ‘New Zealand should be wide awake now, Australia in an hour or two. Anyway, whatever their fucking names, what were they doing with a Weegie hood?’

  ‘Yes, any theories?’

  ‘Only one, the obvious. Mr Brown must have been involved in the supply of the police uniforms and equipment, and they must have decided not to leave him behind as a witness.’

  ‘So why did they leave the arms dealer alive?’ Sarah wondered.

  ‘Because he’s part of that world, I’d guess, and was in as deep as they were. A small-timer they’d have seen as a weakness.’

  Sarah refilled her cup from a cafetière. Bob, who had given up coffee at her suggestion, almost at her insistence, topped up his glass with mineral water.

  ‘But the tough questions are, why was he in the chain at all, and who introduced him? There we do not have a Scooby, as wee Provan would probably say.’

  ‘Good.’ She smiled. ‘Enough for tonight, Chief Constable. No more shop, just Bob and Sarah for a while. I’ve been thinking about what happened a couple of nights ago, you and me having a nice quiet dinner and ending up in bed together.’ She took his hand, studying it as she spoke. ‘I have to ask you this, Bob, because it’s been gnawing away at me, knowing from personal experience how unpredictable you are when it comes to women. Are you and the witch definitely a thing of the past? Is there any chance of a reconciliation?’

  He sipped some water. ‘Given our history,’ he began, ‘I suppose I deserved that “unpredictability” crack. But you can take this to the bank: Aileen and I are through. Sit her across from you and she would give you the same answer. She’d probably add also that we’re not going to walk away as friends either. Each of us married a person without knowing them at all. Before too long we found we didn’t even like each other all that much.’

  ‘Do you think you know me now?’ she asked.

  ‘None of us can live inside someone else’s head, but if I don’t know what makes you tick by now . . .’ He leaned forward and looked deep into her eyes. ‘I always did like you; now I know more. I never stopped loving you either.’

  ‘But let’s not put it to the test by getting married again. Agreed?’

  Bob nodded. ‘Agreed. But is that because you don’t trust me? If it is, I understand.’

  ‘Amazing as it may sound, I do trust you. No, it’s because right now, the way we are . . . I don’t think I’ve ever felt happier, and I don’t want to risk that.’

  ‘Fair enough. Now, with the kids upstairs in bed, can we do something old-fashioned, like watching television?’

  She laughed. ‘How very couple-ish! Yeah, let’s.’

  She was flicking through the channel choice when Bob’s work mobile sounded. ‘Bugger,’ he murmured. ‘I must give this Edinburgh phone back to Maggie and get a new one from Strathclyde. Chances are this is for her.’ He looked at the caller identification. ‘No, it’s not. Lowell,’ he said as he accepted the call, ‘what’s up? News from down under?’

  As Sarah watched him, she saw his eyes widen, a frown wrinkle his forehead for a second then disappear. ‘You’re fucking kidding,’ he exclaimed. ‘So that’s what the bloody woman was leading up to. Don’t apologise, man, I know you had to tell me, but worry not; it won’t ruin my night. I just wish I could be a fly on a certain wall, that’s all.’

  He ended the call as Sarah laid down the TV remote.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘What bloody woman? Aileen?’

  ‘As it happened, no,’ he told her, ‘another bloody woman, but not unconnected. What you asked me earlier on, whether there was a cat’s chance of the two of us staying together.’ He laughed. ‘If you doubted me at all, then, by Christ, you’re going to be a happy woman tomorrow morning.’

  Eighteen

  ‘Are we all set for tomorrow, Alf?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ve brought it forward to eleven thirty. The phone’s never stopped ringing all day, and the place is going to be packed out. If you want to do follow-up interviews and get them on the midday news we’ll need to start a bit earlier than noon.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Aileen said. ‘And the announcement: do they have that ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ the party CEO replied. ‘I’ve just sent you a draft by email. If you clear it, I can tell the policy staff to go home for the night.’

  ‘I’ll do that right now.’

  ‘Thanks. I must go now, Aileen. For some reason the switchboard’s just lit up like a Christmas tree.’

  She cradled the phone and turned to Joey Morocco, who was removing silver boxes from a brown paper bag. She smiled. ‘You must do this a lot,’ she remarked. ‘I heard you at the front door; you were on first-name terms with the delivery boy. “Thank you, Wen-Chong.” I take it that means we’re having Chinese.’

  ‘I see that being married to a detective’s rubbed off on you,’ he said. ‘Sure, first-name terms with him, with Jeev from the Asian up in Gibson Street, with Kemal from the kebab shop and with Jocky.’

  ‘Jocky? Who the hell’s he?’

  ‘Pizza. That’s the Italians for you; much more interbred with the indigenous population.’

  She looked over his shoulder. ‘What have we got?’

  ‘Chicken, brack bean sauce,’ he replied, mimicking a Chinese accent, ‘plawn sweet and sowah, clispy duck and pancakes, and lice; flied of course.’

  ‘Sounds great. I just need five minutes on my laptop and I’ll be ready.’

  She wakened her computer from the sleep state in which she had left it earlier in the evening, and searched her email inbox. It was full of messages from friends, anxious, she guessed, for news of her safety, but Old’s was near the top and she found it with ease.

  She opened the attachment, which was headed, ‘Draft Statement: Unified Police Force’, scanned it quickly, made a few changes to bring it into her delivery style, then sent it back with a covering note that read, ‘Final version clear for use.’

  She had just clicked the ‘send’ button when a tone advised her that another message had hit the inbox, once again from Alf Old. Almost simultaneously, her mobile rang, and the screen showed that he was calling. She made a choice; the phone won.

  ‘Aileen.’ Even although he had only said
her name, the chief executive, famed for his calmness, sounded rattled. ‘I’ve just sent you an email.’

  ‘I know, it just arrived. I haven’t opened it yet.’

  ‘Then you’d better do so.’

  Not only rattled, she realised; he was angry also.

  She opened the message. There was no text, only an attachment, headed ‘P1’, in PDF form. She clicked on it and an image appeared, as quickly as her ageing laptop would allow.

  It was a newspaper front page, with the masthead of the Daily News, and beneath it a headline. ‘Road to Morocco: married Labour leader goes to ground.’ Most of it was taken up by a photograph, taken from a distance with a long lens, but the face was all too clearly hers, looking out of Joey Morocco’s bedroom window, with a curtain held across her, but not far enough to cover her right breast, which the newspaper had chosen to cover with a black rectangle.

  ‘Fuck!’ she screamed.

  ‘Exactly!’ Old barked. ‘What the hell were you thinking about, Aileen?’

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ she protested.

  ‘Then what the hell else is it? Anyway it doesn’t matter what I think, it’s what the readers of the Daily News think, them and the readers of every other paper that the photographer sells it on to, once they’ve had their exclusive. They’ve already given it to BBC, Sky and ITN, for use after ten, to sell even more papers tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Is it on the streets yet? Can we stop them?’

  ‘It will be any minute now, and no we can’t. We could go to the Court of Session and ask for an interdict preventing further publication. We might get it, we might not, probably not. Anyway, the damage is done.’

  Her anger had risen up to match his. ‘But how did they get it?’ she asked. ‘How did they know I was here?’

  ‘They didn’t. I spoke to the editor of the Scottish version; he’s a mate and he was good enough to call me, and to send the page across. He said it was taken by a freelance photographer, a paparazzo, who stakes out Joey Morocco’s place periodically, just in case.