Pray for the Dying

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘I have it,’ Mr Bachoo announced, sounding pleased with himself. ‘The child Marina Shelby Deschamps, Mauritian citizen, was born in Port Louis on the day you mentioned and registered on the following day. The mother was Sofia Deschamps, Mauritian citizen, and the father, who registered the birth, is named as Hillary, with two ls, Shelby, Australian citizen. I could fax this document to you; my superior has given me permission.’

  ‘If ye would, Ah’d appreciate that.’ He scrambled through the papers on the desk, and found the Pitt Street fax number, which he read out, digit by digit. ‘Thanks, Mr Bachoo. Ah’m pretty sure that’ll be all.’

  ‘It was a pleasure, Detective Sergeant. As I believe you say, no worries.’

  Provan smiled as he hung up, then added the name he had been given to his notebook. ‘Hillary Shelby,’ he murmured. ‘Hillary Shelby.’ And then he frowned, as another potential Mastermind answer popped out of his mental treasure chest.

  ‘Hillary Shelby,’ he repeated as he booted up his computer. ‘Now that name definitely rings a bell.’

  Fifty-Nine

  ‘So what have we got here?’ Banjo Paterson asked himself, with his DI looking over his shoulder. ‘Standard MacBook screen layout. Let’s see where he keeps his email. Mmm, he’s got Google Chrome loaded up as well as Safari. Probably means he used that as his search engine. Let’s see.’

  He clicked on a multicoloured icon at the foot of the screen. ‘Yes,’ he murmured with satisfaction as a window opened. ‘Big surprise, I don’t think; the Rondar mail order site is his home page. Let’s see what else he’s bookmarked. Okay, he’s got a Google account for his email.’

  He clicked on a red envelope, with a two-word description alongside. ‘Byron mail.’

  ‘Auto sign-in,’ he murmured. ‘Lucky us, otherwise we’d have had to go back to the IT technicians to crack his password. His email address is Byron at Rondar dot co dot UK. Here we go.’

  He inspected the second window. ‘That’s his inbox. He’s got three unopened messages . . . What the hell?’ He opened one headed ‘National Lottery’. ‘Oh dear.’ It was half sigh, half laugh. ‘The poor bastard’s lottery ticket came up last Wednesday; he matched four balls and won ninety-nine quid.’

  He hovered the cursor over an arrow and the next message opened. It was from someone called Mike, confirming a squash court booking on the following Thursday for a semi-final tie in the club knock-out competition.

  ‘Lucky boy, Mike,’ Mann muttered. A wicked grin crossed her face. ‘Let me in,’ she told Paterson, leaned across him and keyed in a reply. ‘Can’t make it, have to scratch; good luck in the final.’ She hit the send button.

  ‘Should you have done that, boss?’ the DC asked, as she backed off.

  ‘Maybe not, but the guy deserved to know. Go on.’

  He moved on to the last unopened message. The sender was identified as ‘Jocelyn’ also using the Rondar mail system. ‘The mother-in-law, as I understand it,’ the DI told him.

  ‘Mother-in-law from hell, in that case,’ Paterson replied. ‘Look at this.’

  Mann peered at the screen, and read:

  I have just received the latest quarterly management accounts. These show an operating loss of just under seventy-seven thousand pounds and make this the seventh successive quarter in which this company has lost money. Our auditors estimate that at this rate we will be insolvent by the end of the next financial year.

  I have analysed the situation and have reached the inescapable conclusion that we have been on the slide since your father-in-law passed away. He and I always knew that the key to this business is not only what we sell but, as importantly, what we buy. We have to offer our customers attractive products at attractive prices while maintaining our profit margins. When Jesse was our buyer, we were able to do so very successfully. He was sure that when you took over from him, this would be maintained, but it is now clear to me that this confidence was misplaced.

  I cannot allow this situation to continue, simply to sit on my hands and watch my company go out of existence. Son-in-law or not, I am going to have to relieve you of your duties and to declare you redundant. You and I both know that you are not suited to this line of work and never have been. So does Golda but she is too loyal to admit it. I intend to handle the buying function myself, with the assistance of my niece Bathsheba. When we are back in profit, Golda can expect to receive dividend income, but until then you are on your own.

  ‘Lovely,’ the DI said. ‘Byron Millbank doesn’t seem to have had a hell of a lot of luck.’

  ‘Neither did Beram Cohen,’ Paterson pointed out, ‘culminating in them both being in a cool box in the mortuary.’

  ‘Aye, but we’re not so lucky ourselves. This doesn’t tell us anything about Cohen, and that’s what we’re after. How about old emails? Could there be anything there?’

  ‘I’m checking that, but I don’t see anything. There’s nothing filed or archived, not that I can see. I’ve checked the bin and even that’s empty. He must have done that manually, the sign of a careful man.’

  ‘What about the rest of it, other than his correspondence?’

  ‘Gimme a few minutes. Please, gaffer.’ He looked up at her. ‘I don’t really work best with somebody looking over my shoulder.’ He smiled. ‘A mug of tea wouldn’t go amiss, though.’

  ‘You cheeky bastard,’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m the DI, you’re the DC; you’re the bloody tea boy around here. However, in this situation . . . how many sugars do you take?’

  ‘Me? None, thanks. Just milk.’

  She left him in her room and crossed the main office. She glanced across at Provan, but he had his back to her and a phone to his ear. She shook the kettle to check that it was full, then switched it on. And watched. And waited.

  As she did, her mind wandered to her shattered family. Scott had been remanded on bail to a future court hearing, and to its inevitable conclusion. He had shown some contrition when he had come for his clothes, but she had smelled stale alcohol on his breath, and that had been enough to maintain her resolve. There would be no way back for him, no way, Jose.

  And for her? There would be nothing other than her career, and bringing up her son. I will not be making that mistake again, she told herself. There are no happy endings; sooner or later fate will always kick you in the teeth . . . and very much sooner if your husband is an alcoholic gambler who was shagging another woman within the first year of your marriage.

  The forgotten kettle broke into her thoughts by boiling. She made the tea, three mugs, one for Provan, stewed, as he liked it, distributed them and sat at her desk, waiting patiently for Banjo to finish his exploration of the dead man’s double life.

  Eventually he did, and turned towards her. ‘Byron Millbank,’ he announced, ‘liked Celine Dion, Dusty Springfield, Black Sabbath, Alan Jackson, and Counting Crows, at least that’s what his iTunes library indicates. He loved his wife and child, respected his late father-in-law but had no time for his mother-in-law. That’s obvious from a study of his iPhoto albums. There’s only one photograph of her on it, it’s as unflattering as you can get and it’s captioned “Parah”, which I’ve just discovered is Hebrew for “Cow”.

  ‘He was a fan of Arsenal Football Club, not unnaturally, given where he lived. He had an American Express Platinum card, personal, not through the company. He had an Amazon Kindle account and his library included the complete works of Dickens and Shakespeare, the biography of Ronald Reagan and a dozen crime novels by Mark Billingham, Michael Jecks and Val McDermid.

  ‘He had an Xbox and liked war games, big time. His most visited websites were Wikipedia, Sky News, the BBC and ITV players, the CIA World Factbook, and a charity called Problem Solvers.’

  ‘Wow!’ Mann exclaimed, with irony. ‘How much more typical could this man have been? You’re just described Mr Average Thirty-something.’

  The DC nodded. ‘Agreed. There is nothing out of the ordinary about him at all . . . apart from one thing. The charity: it d
oesn’t exist. And that’s where he does get interesting.’

  Sixty

  ‘It’s not a charity at all, sir,’ Paterson ventured. ‘If you ask me, it’s more of a doorway.’

  ‘Explain,’ Skinner said.

  ‘It’s the website, sir. It’s called www dot problemsolvers dot org. Dot org domains used to be just for charities, but these days that’s not necessarily so. To be sure I checked with the Charities Commission; they’ve never heard of it.

  ‘On top of that,’ the DC continued, ‘it’s weird in another way. It’s password protected. I only got in because Millbank was careless in one respect: he saved his passwords on his computer, thinking, I suppose, that nobody else would ever use it.’

  ‘When you did get in there, what did you find?’ the chief constable asked.

  ‘Nothing much; it’s very simple. I’m sure he set it up himself. There’s just the two pages. The home page has only six words: “Personnel problems? Discreet and permanent solutions.” Then there’s a message board. But there’s no history on the site at all. He’s wiped it all. However, there is one message still up on the board. It’s possible that he left it there because the reply will go automatically to the sender, without Millbank ever needing to know who he was.’

  ‘Not Millbank, Cohen,’ Skinner countered. ‘This is definitely Beram Cohen. You’ve found him. What did the message say?’

  ‘Confirm payment made as agreed, to sort code eighty-one forty twenty-two, account number zero six nine five two one five one.’

  ‘Have you followed it up?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘Then do so, tomorrow morning. Wherever the bank is it’ll have knocked off for the day by now. When you find it, trace the source of the payment and find out if any withdrawals have been made from it lately. Lottie, Banjo, that’s good work.’ He turned to Provan. ‘Now, Sergeant, you’re clearly bursting your braces to tell me something. It’s your turn, so out with it.’

  Sixty-One

  ‘Is this not a real bore for you, Davie?’ Skinner asked his driver, as they passed the clubhouse that welcomed golfing visitors to Gullane, and picked up speed. ‘Same round trip every day, sometimes twice a day.’

  ‘Absolutely not, Chief,’ Constable Cole replied. ‘I love driving, especially nice big motors like this one. I’ve done all the advanced courses there are, too. When I get moved out of this job, as I will, ’cos nothing’s for ever, I’m going to try to get a spot as an instructor.’

  ‘Good for you. But don’t you ever miss the company? Most cops work in pairs. Most cops meet people through their work . . . even if some of those are rank bad yins.’ He laughed at his own words. ‘Listen to me,’ he exclaimed. ‘Second week in post and I’m lapsing into Weegie-speak already. I’m spending too much time with that wee bugger Provan, that’s what it is. Maybe being a lone wolf isn’t such a bad thing.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Cole agreed.

  ‘No, but seriously, does this never get to you? Don’t you ever get the urge to see some action?’

  The constable tilted his head back slightly, to help his voice carry into the back seat. ‘The last action I saw, Chief, was over two years ago. We got a call to a cesspit of a housing scheme they’d used as accommodation for asylum seekers. Some of the neighbourhood Neds had given one of their kids a going-over and the dads went after them, mob-handed. It went into a full-blooded riot. My crew was sent in there with shields, batons and helmets, to re-establish order, we were told.’ He chuckled. ‘There hadn’t been any proper order in that place for about five years, so they were asking quite a lot of us.

  ‘Anyway, we waded in, and got the two sides separated. Just as well, because the local hooligans had turned out in force. They were winning the battle and there would have been fatalities if we hadn’t stopped it. What we done, in effect, was protect the immigrants, but they never seen it that way. We had tearaways coming at us with swords and machetes, and behind us the foreigners were chucking bottles, rocks, all sorts of shit at us.’

  Skinner glanced at the rear-view mirror as he paused, and saw him frown.

  ‘Those riot helmets, sir,’ he continued, ‘they’re pretty good, but if somebody drops a television set on you from the balcony of a third-floor flat, there’s only so much protection they can give. It probably saved my life, but I still had a skull fracture, three displaced vertebrae in my neck and a broken shoulder. I was off work for nearly a year. When I came back they sent me on an advanced driving course. I did well at it. When Chief Constable Field arrived she wanted a full-time driver, and I got picked.’

  ‘I see,’ Skinner said. ‘In that case, as long as I’m here, you’ll be in the driving seat. Besides,’ he continued, ‘this is good for me too. Having you lets me get through shedloads of paperwork that I couldn’t do if I drove myself, or if I took the train, for that would be too public. And the more of that I do while I’m travelling, the more time I have to put myself about, to see people, and, as important, to let them see me. So,’ he said, pulling his case across the seat towards him, ‘time to shift some of it.’

  He worked steadily for fifteen minutes until the car was half a mile from the slip road that joined the Edinburgh bypass.

  ‘Davie,’ he called, ‘I want to make a detour, if you would. Go straight on, then take the next exit and head left, until you come to the second roundabout. You’ll see a hot food and coffee stall. I’d like you to wait in the shopping centre car park, while I pick up a couple of bacon rolls. It’s a lot less fuss to buy my breakfast than to make it myself.’

  ‘I’m lucky, sir. I get mine made for me.’

  ‘I’m lucky too. Looking out for yourself can be a price worth paying.’ He grinned as he saw the driver’s expression in the mirror. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said. ‘I’m not always that cynical. The fact is, when we are together as a family, I enjoy making it for everybody.’

  His directions were clear and accurate. PC Cole spotted the stall as he passed the first exit from the second roundabout, did a complete circuit and parked in the road facing the way he had come.

  ‘Want anything?’ the chief asked him.

  ‘No thanks, sir, I’m fine.’

  He relaxed in his seat as his passenger stepped out. He watched him in the nearside wing mirror as he sprinted towards the pedestrian crossing to catch the green light. Davie had never seen a senior cop who would go to work in a light tan cotton jacket; even the CID people usually wore suits, or expensive leather jackets in the case of some of the young, newly blooded DCs.

  The stallholder must have known Skinner, he reckoned, for the boss smiled at him as he gave him his order. Or maybe he was only in a chatty mood, for he seemed to strike up a conversation with the scruffy wee man who was the only other punter there.

  Whatever they were talking about, it must have been serious, for the other guy never cracked a smile, not even when the chief, his back half turned towards the car, slipped him something.

  Christ, Cole thought, the wee sod’s on the scrounge. Not a bad guy, my boss. He likes getting the breakfast for everybody, even for a wee panhandler like that.

  Sixty-Two

  It took almost no time at all to track down the bank account of Problem Solvers, once Banjo Paterson had opened the resource site that would take him there. He keyed in the sort code and number and clicked ‘Validate’, then leaned back with a smile on his face that broke all previous office records for smugness.

  ‘There you are,’ he announced. ‘The account’s held in the Bank of Lincoln, in an office in Grantham. There’s no street address, only a PO box number, but there’s a phone number.’ He scribbled it in a pad and passed it to his DI.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘Son,’ Provan grunted, ‘you better get a safe deposit box for a’ these gold stars ye’ve been gettin’, otherwise you might find yersel’ bein’ mugged on the way home.’

  Mann took the note into her small office and dialled the number. ‘Bank of Lincoln,’ a cheery female v
oice answered. ‘How can I be of service?’

  ‘You can phone me back.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘This is Detective Inspector Charlotte Mann, Strathclyde CID, Glasgow. I need to speak to your manager, urgently. If you call me back through my main switchboard number which I’ll give you now,’ she read it out, ‘he’ll know I am who I say I am. When you ring back, ask for extension one forty-eight.’

  ‘Yes, madam. I won’t be a minute.’

  She was over-optimistic, by just under ten minutes, but did have the grace to apologise. ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting, madam, but Mr Harrison, the branch manager, has only just become available. I’ll put you through to him now.’

  Mann had time to growl a curt ‘Thank you’ before the line clicked and a man spoke.

  ‘Inspector, is it?’

  ‘Detective Inspector.’

  ‘I see. My name is Nigel Harrison, how can I help you?’ There was a wariness in his voice. She had heard its like often enough in her career to know that assistance was not at the top of his agenda.

  ‘I want to talk to you about an account that’s held at your branch.’ She recited the number. ‘We believe that it’s in the name of an entity calling itself Problem Solvers.’

  ‘Let me check that,’ the manager murmured. She waited, anticipating another long interlude, but he came back on the line after less than a minute. ‘Yes, I have it on screen now. Problem Solvers; it’s a charity.’

  ‘So it says,’ Mann retorted. ‘I’d like to know about money moving in and out recently, within the last few weeks.’

  ‘Ahh. I was afraid this conversation might take such a turn. I don’t think I can help you there. I took the precaution of consulting my general manager before I returned your call, and was reminded that it’s our head office policy to afford our clients confidentiality.’