‘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.’
‘So what about Peter Friedman?’ Marina asked, as she sat. ‘What was he?’
‘He used to be Harry Shelby.’
She removed the sunglasses, as if she was peeling them off her face, and stared at
him, with eyes that were colder than he had ever imagined they could be. ‘How did you find out?’
‘MI5 erased the records of wee Lucille’s birth,’ he replied, ‘but they had no reason to wipe out yours. It wouldn’t have been that easy anyway, you being born before the computer era. When you steered me towards your conspiracy scenario, and I was stupid enough to embarrass myself, even endanger myself, by falling for it, you may have thought that I wouldn’t survive professionally, maybe even personally. You certainly didn’t envisage me coming after you, nor Five either, not after I’d handed them all Toni’s blackmail leverage. For that’s what your sister was, wasn’t she? Inside Supercop, there was a nasty little blackmailer . . . as you well knew, for you were put alongside her to spy on her, and you found the evidence.’
‘I . . .’ she began, protesting, but he raised a hand, to stop her.
‘I know you were, because Amanda Dennis told me so, and I know you did, because you left it for me, after you’d doctored it a wee bit. So come on, just nod your head, and admit it.’
She did.
‘God knows what Toni got out of the civil servant,’ Skinner continued, ‘or the TV guy, or the other cop, but she got advancement from Storey, and I know now that she got a house out of the Home Secretary and her husband, the one your mother lives in in London. Her father didn’t buy it, they did; they paid her off, and if that was known, the scandal would be compounded. That house was bought and paid for by Repton Industries, Emily Repton’s family business. You knew that, Marina, and you didn’t care a toss about it.
‘But when she pulled the same stroke on your father, that was different. Lottie Mann traced both transactions right to the source of the money. She found out that the house in Bothwell was paid for by Pam Limited, Peter Friedman’s investment company. Thanks to one single, unfortunate newspaper photo, Toni found out who Friedman really was. She contacted him and she sold him her silence, for five hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds, the cost of a nice big villa.’ Skinner frowned. ‘Or her silence for a while: and that was something you couldn’t tolerate, the idea that she could unmask him any time she chose, so . . . you had your sister killed!’
‘Half-sister,’ she murmured. ‘So prove it.’
He shrugged. ‘I can’t, not to court standards. Anyway, not only did your fiction add up, that Repton had her removed, it still does, for you could claim that everything you did was on their orders.’
‘Do you really know it wasn’t?’ she challenged.
‘Oh yes, I do. And I can prove that.’
‘How?’
‘It was your old man that paid Cohen to do the job, not them.’
‘My God,’ she said, ‘you have been busy. You know that much?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘In that case, tell me, Mr Skinner . . . I can see you’re desperate to, you’re so pleased with yourself . . . how did you find out who my father was?’
‘I’m not pleased with myself,’ he contradicted her. ‘But I’m dead chuffed for Dan Provan, the guy I mentioned earlier. He’s a walking anachronism of a detective sergeant, who’s been hiding in Strathclyde CID for years. You probably never saw him when you were there, just as your path and Lowell’s never crossed, but even if you had you wouldn’t have noticed him. That’s one of his strengths. The other is that he never forgets a criminal, if the crime is big enough to get his attention.’
He picked up his ever-present attaché case and spun the combination wheels to open it.
‘I was never just going to forget about you, Marina,’ he told her as he flicked the catches. ‘I don’t like being made to feel like an idiot. I take it personally. The first thing I did when I got back to Glasgow was send Provan to dig out your birth records from Mauritius. I wanted to build a complete picture of you and obviously I couldn’t rely on the things you had told me, or the hints you had dropped, since you’re as consummate a deceiver as your sister was.’
A flicker of a smile suggested she took that as a compliment.
‘Provan discovered that your father was listed as Hillary Shelby,’ he continued, taking a document from the Zero Halliburton and handing it to her. ‘See? Hillary not Harry, and there’s an Australian passport number. However, that surname niggled him, and the itch wouldn’t go away. And that’s where his special skills came into play. “Shelby,” he told himself. “I know that name from somewhere.” Dan isn’t of the IT generation,’ Skinner said, ‘but he went to the computer and ran a Google search.’ He grinned. ‘He called it “that Bugle thing” when he told me about it. He did try the full name first off, but got zilch, so then he entered simply Shelby, on its own. He came up with a car designer, an actor, and three different towns in America, then at the foot of the page, he got Harry Shelby, and it all came back to him, and that pub quiz mind of his.
‘Harry Shelby was an Australian financier, a real tycoon . . . or typhoon, as Dan called him. He built a business empire of considerable size in Australia, South Africa and in Hong Kong from the early seventies on. He started in minerals, then moved into currency trading, and pretty soon he had become a national business icon, stand-out even in an era in Australian history when there were quite a few of those around.
‘In nineteen ninety-six, he was awarded a knighthood, in the Birthday Honours list. He was scheduled to be invested in Canberra, by the High Commissioner. Everything was set up, but the day before, Harry Shelby vanished, off the face of the earth. He was never seen again, and he never left a penny behind him, or rather a cent.’
‘I remember that,’ Payne exclaimed. ‘It was big news for a week or so, internationally.’
‘I confess that it passed me by,’ the chief said. ‘But nineteen ninety-six was a busy year for me; my mind was full of other stuff, on my own doorstep. Anyway,’ he carried on, ‘you can imagine that after Shelby disappeared, his whole life was dug up. It didn’t take the investigators long to find out that in fact he ran out of business steam in the mid-eighties, after a series of bad currency deals that he managed to cover up. Everything he’d done after that had been a huge Ponzi scheme, paying investors with their own money, as he drew more and more in with the promise of attractive profits that were evidently being delivered. If Harry Shelby hadn’t had such a big reputation, chances are he’d have been caught, but because he was such a hero he got away with it.’
He stopped to sip his tea, only to find that it had gone cold.
‘Why did he run?’ he asked, then answered. ‘It may have been because he knew that all Ponzi fraudsters are caught eventually, unless they shut up shop before it’s too late.’ He paused. ‘However, Provan happened upon another theory, one that the Australian authorities . . . Dan checked this with the Australian Embassy . . . believe to this day, possibly because it suits them so to do. They think, indeed they’re pretty well sure, that a couple of his biggest investors were Americans, Mafia figures, using his investment scheme to launder money. The scenario is, they caught on to the swindle, so they dealt with it the old-fashioned way. They made Shelby and his money disappear at the same time. On the day that he did, Australian air traffic control traced an unregistered flight out of Canberra heading for Tasmania. The investigators had a tip that Shelby was on it, until they dropped him out halfway there over the ocean.’ He gazed at Marina. ‘But we know that’s not true, don’t we?’
She stared back at him, silent. He took a photograph from the case, held it up for Payne to see, then passed it to her.
‘That’s Harry Shelby, aged about forty.’
He produced a second. ‘That’s Peter Friedman, photographed, to his annoyance, at a charity dinner last winter. He’s over thirty years older, but I’ve had the images run through a recognition program, and it confirms they’re one and the same man.’
He went back into the attaché and took out a third image. ‘And that’s you,’ he said, ‘from your HR file in Pitt Street. You can’t hide from it, Marina. You are your father’s double.’
She picke
d up his mug, and drank his cold tea in a single gulp. ‘And proud of it,’ she whispered.
‘It was the newspaper photograph that did it, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Antonia was in her first month in Glasgow when it appeared. She read every newspaper, every day, to familiarise herself with the place, and she saw that. She used CTIS to trace him, then one day, just as you have, she turned up here, alone. When he got over the shock, he assumed that she had come to arrest him, but no. I mean, why would she have done that? There would have been nothing in it for her.
‘Your assumption was correct; she did to him what she had done to Lawton and his wife. She showed him the brochure for the house and told him that she wanted it. She told him to forget about trying to vanish again, as she would know about it the moment his helicopter took off, or he boarded the ferry. But in truth she knew that there was no point in him running. He was dying, and even then the house was being turned into a hospice, a place for him to be as peaceful as he could be in his last days. So he bought the Bothwell place for her.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘He told me she should have chosen a bigger one.’
‘Why did he go to the damn dinner? That doesn’t sound like typical behaviour.’
‘He was in Edinburgh, seeing an oncologist for tests,’ she explained. ‘It was that day, and he had a feeling the news wasn’t going to be the best, so he went, in the hope it might cheer him up. As it turned out it did the opposite.’
‘Does your mother know any of this?’ Skinner asked.
‘None,’ Marina insisted. ‘Maman is not a stupid woman. She had a good job in the civil service, but she was looked after by men for much of her life, first Anil, and then Papa. She’s naive in some ways, so when Antonia told her that she had done well in property in Britain, she believed her.’
‘How did Sofia meet your father?’
‘He was part of an Australian business delegation to the island, in nineteen eighty, after her thing with Anil was over. Maman was in charge of official government hospitality. That’s when it began.
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