‘Be that as it may, can you access the tapes?’
‘There aren’t any. It records on to a computer hard disk, stores automatically for two weeks then deletes, a day at a time.’
‘In that case we’re within the window. Don’t get your hopes up, but I’d like you to look at the night we’re interested in for the following vehicle: a black VW Golf GTI, registration number L712FTG. See what you get.’
‘I’ll put people on it. Is this just a kite you’re flying, Bob?’
‘Some might call it that; I’d call it a fucking jumbo jet. Make sure they’re your best people.’
When I finished, Jim Glossop was beaming. ‘This sounds like proper police work,’ he said.
‘And we’re not done yet.’
‘In that case, I did this as well.’ He handed me a third photocopy. ‘It’s an extract of the father’s birth certificate. His parents were Peter Holmes, and Alafair Hastings. That shows you where the children’s names came from. Will that be useful too?’
‘It might be,’ I told him, ‘where we’re going with this. It could give me an edge. Thanks, mate; till the next time.’ I walked back out into the sunlight, my faithful followers close behind.
‘Where is next, boss?’ McGuire asked.
‘For you, lad, back to the office. I need you to try to pin down Peter Hastings McGrew, in case I can’t find him by other means. He’s ex-army, but they don’t know where he is. You’ve got his date of birth, so start with the DSS; they’ll have his national insurance number and a contributions record. It might take you straight to him, but if not, go to British Telecom, and look for subscribers with that name. His car’s taxed, so it should be insured. By which company? Find out. Then there’s the electoral registers . . .’ I stopped; he nodded. ‘I’ll drop you at the office,’ I told him, ‘then Andy and I will go to the Murrayfield. I need to pay another visit to young Mr Drysalter. There’s something I have to ask him, and he might even know where Peter is, save us some time. He should be back in the land of the half awake by now.’
He was, but not much more than that; his eyes were still heavy from sedation. The doctor on duty had been hesitant about letting us see him, indeed he’d refused at first, then relented when I’d threatened to call Mr Jacobs. ‘Don’t be too long,’ he said. ‘The man’s having a hard time. We have to move his knees every so often, and you can imagine, with the fractures, that’s a painful process.’
‘I hope the physios aren’t Hearts supporters,’ I muttered.
‘Oh no,’ Derek Drysalter sighed when we walked into his room. ‘Not again. Look, whatever you say, I’m not changing my statement.’ The nursing staff had him out of bed, but on a chair with his legs in huge hinged splints, propped on stools and supported by pillows. It was the best they could do, but it didn’t look close to comfortable.
I sat on the edge of his bed and looked down at him. ‘I don’t care about your fucking statement, Derek,’ I told him. ‘Anyway, you’d be wasting your time if you did change it, and ours, for we’d never get a conviction against the guy who worked you over. All I want is the answer to one simple question. When you found out that Alafair was planning an away trip while you were off on international duty, did you go crying to anyone? Specifically, did you go crying to your father-in-law?’ I leaned forward. ‘Don’t lie to me on this, Derek. Don’t even let that idea cross your befuddled mind. You’re not important. This is. What future you have left could ride on you telling me the truth right now.’
He turned his head away, looked out of the window and muttered something.
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘Yes!’ he cried out. ‘Yes I did. I phoned Perry.’
I moved round to face him ‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him Alafair was doin’ my head in, and I asked him, please, if he’d fucking talk to her.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He told me to leave it with him, that was all.’
‘How long have you and Alafair been married?’ I asked.
‘Just over a year.’
‘How long had you known her before that?’
‘Seven or eight months.’
‘Did she tell you right away who her father was?’
‘No. I didn’t even know she had a father. She told me she’d been brought up by her mother, and that she was dead. She never told me about him till after the wedding. He’d just moved into his new house.’ He snorted. ‘House? Private nursing home, more like. She took me up there one day, in the close season, and introduced me to him. Poor bastard; spoon-fed by the one guy, lifted and turned and all his tubes changed by the other. He’s game, though, Perry. He’s still got a smile about him.’
‘Do you see him often?’
He nodded. ‘I go there about once a month, just to say hello. I feel sorry for him. I take him videos of the Hibs games; the club films them all, for training. At first both of us went, but lately it’s just been me. I think he and Alafair fell out about something.’
‘Has he ever told you how he wound up in his wheelchair?’
‘No, but Alafair did. She said that a business rival tried to kill him.’
‘Mmm,’ I murmured. ‘And did she tell you what happened to that so-called rival?’
‘Yes, your lot shot him, didn’t they?’
‘Well now, that’s not exactly true, but never mind. Tell me, Derek,’ I continued, ‘when did things start to go wrong between you and her?’
‘Oh,’ he drawled, lazily, ‘it must have taken all of a couple of months. She started to complain about being left on her own when I had to train, then when I was away on Scotland trips. After that it was my gambling, although she never minded when I took her to the casino. I know why that was now. Her and Tony bloody Manson.’ He frowned. ‘When I get back on my feet . . .’
‘You’ll what? Derek, these people are in a different world from you. What you should do when you get back on your feet is go and take a coaching qualification, or get a nice job as a TV pundit. You got off with your life. Leave it at that.’
He made a derisive noise. ‘Hmmph! That’s easy for you to say.’
‘You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘It’s easy because I don’t want to be there when they fish you out of the sea. I don’t want to be walking past those new offices at the west end wondering which one you’re underneath.’ I felt a burst of real sympathy for the poor naive lad. ‘You’re in an alien world, mate. You’re mixed up with some very bad people. You’ve already seen what Manson can do to people who upset him. Well, let me explain this to you in football terms. Tony’s a first division player, sure, but Perry, your wife’s old man, he is premier league.’
He stared at me, wide-eyed, and then laughed in my face. ‘Perry? You’re kidding. He’s a property developer.’
‘Yes, and Mussolini was an MI5 agent: so what? Derek, you must have friends in newspapers.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, you get one of them . . . the Saltire would probably be the best source . . . to let you see its file on Perry, the stuff they’ve printed and the stuff they can’t.’ I stopped. ‘Do it if you can be bothered, but Perry isn’t the reason I’m here. You’ve answerd one of my questions. This is the other. Where can I find your brother-in-law?’
He blinked and shook his head, as if he was trying to clear it. ‘He’s in fucking Swindon, and so’s my sister, and so are their kids. But what’s Jamie got to do with any of this?’
‘I wasn’t talking about him, Derek. I meant your wife’s brother.’
‘What the hell are you talking about, man? Alafair doesn’t have a brother.’
‘Oh, but she does.’
‘Then I have never met him, and she’s never mentioned him. Neither has Perry. And that’s the God’s honest truth.’ It was, too. He was beginning to realise how far out of his depth he was, and he was scared. ‘Look, go away, please,’ he begged.
‘We will,’ I said. ‘But you don’t want to be on your own. Do you have
parents?’
He nodded. ‘My mum and dad. They live in Falkirk; that’s where I started out. They’re just ordinary people, though.’
‘So are you, Derek.’ He really was a sad figure. ‘Shame, but that’s how it is now. You want my advice? Stick close to your folks, and to your football club; they’re the only ones who’ll look after you. Forget you ever knew the crew you’ve been mixing with.’
Martin and I left him to it. The DC said nothing until we were out in the car park. There he ventured, ‘Sorry, sir, but where are we on this?’
‘Wait till we make our next call,’ I told him. ‘If I’m right, it’ll become clear then. Fettes first, though.’
We headed back to the office. When we got there, McGuire was looking more downhearted than I’d seen him. ‘I’m getting nowhere, boss.’ I hadn’t expected that we would need his research, but now that we did, I wasn’t too surprised by what he told me. ‘Peter McGrew’s not on the phone, his NI contributions are in arrears, and he’s not registered to vote anywhere that I’ve found. He’s vanished.’
There was no good news from Newcastle either, but there was a note on my desk from Fred Leggat passing on a message from, of all people, Tony Manson, letting me know that Marlon Watson’s funeral had been set for the following afternoon, a burial in Seafield Cemetery.
It was almost lunchtime, but I wasn’t hungry. I sent the boys off to eat, then called Alison. ‘Fate is on my side,’ I told her. ‘It doesn’t want me to get on that helicopter.’ When I told her what had come in the way, she understood; she knew it was my practice to attend the funerals of murder victims in cases I was working.
As it happened, it didn’t matter. ‘Fate’s working for you on two fronts,’ she said. ‘The Met Office have given the North Sea operators a bad weather warning for Wednesday, and possibly Thursday as well. All routine flights to platforms have been cancelled.’
‘I can smell another weekend on the water looming up for us.’
She laughed. ‘I thought that was on the cards anyway. I’ve been expecting you to take me looking at boats.’
‘We’ve got four years to wait, remember, but I suppose we could start with something small.’ What a difference a day made. Less than twenty-four hours before I hadn’t been joking.
She went all Robert Burns on me. ‘Nae man can tether time or tide,’ she quoted. ‘When I see you try, I’ll stop believing that, but not before.’
I couldn’t come up with a poetic counter. ‘Until then you could take up golf,’ I suggested.
‘You’ll roast me on a spit first,’ she replied, cheerfully. ‘How did Lowell’s tip play out?’ she asked.
‘Pure gold, my love, pure gold.’
‘Stop calling me that, it’s unsettling. I’m glad you’re still moving forward, for I’m bloody stuck. If you were being objective, you’d have removed me from the investigation by now.’
‘Alastair Grant would love me to do that,’ I chuckled. ‘He can wait, though. You just need a bit of good fortune. Tell you what, you can swap Hugh Grant’s kid brother for McGuire if you like. He’s my lucky charm just now. Cherchez la femme indeed.’
As I hung up, I felt the first pangs of hunger. There was still time to go up to the big boys’ dining room. That seemed like a good idea, but just as I rose from my chair, my mobile sounded.
No preliminaries. ‘I’ve got your car, sir,’ Ciaran McFaul announced. ‘It’s a shit camera, but there’s a clear shot of it arriving at eleven twenty-three, and leaving eleven minutes later. The driver’s a lean guy, and judging by his height against the vehicle, he’s around six feet. There is no chance of an identification, though. He’s wearing a black garment with a hood, SAS-style.’
‘That figures. Thanks, Ciaran.’
‘I should be thanking you,’ he said. ‘This is our investigation you’re working on. I want to be involved from now on, sir.’ He sounded serious. I sensed that I might be on the way to being sandwiched between two warring chief constables, but there was still the major problem of the earlier leak.
I stalled him. ‘Let me think about it.’
‘What’s to think about? You know who the man is, don’t you?’
‘I know who owns the car,’ I admitted, ‘but . . . Look, the same man is most probably responsible for ordering a murder here. I’m still staking a prior claim to him.’
‘I should be there, nonetheless,’ he insisted.
When I thought about it he was right, but not on procedural grounds. He had information and if he took it into his own inquiry, might word not get back to the other side, as quickly as it had before? But what if McFaul was the leak himself? Shit!
I made a decision; I had to trust somebody. ‘Okay,’ I agreed, ‘but this is how it’s going to work. Who’s viewed this recording with you?’
‘Nobody,’ he replied. ‘I’m at the hotel now, on my own.’
‘Then get in your car and drive straight up here. Come to my office in police headquarters. Come on your own, and don’t tell anyone. When you get here you can phone your boss and tell him that you’ve had a tip about something, anything, I don’t give a fuck what but not this investigation, and that you need to go undercover.’
‘Are you kidding?’ He laughed, incredulously. ‘He’ll skin me. Why the hell should I do that?’
‘Because I haven’t located this guy yet, and I don’t want him to be tipped off before I do, as he has been once before.’
‘Hey,’ he snapped, ‘are you saying—’
‘Shut up. I’m telling you what happened, but I’m not blaming anyone, not yet. That’s the deal. That’s what I want you to do. I’m trying to reach out here and grab the untouchable, and nobody is going to get in the way, or I’ll be grabbing them. If you’re coming, drive; if you’re not, keep your fucking mouth closed in your office. Which is it to be?’
I listened to the silence as he made up his mind. ‘Have you got a job for me in your CID,’ he asked, ‘if I get busted back to uniform?’
I chuckled softly. He was what I liked, detective first, cop second. ‘Ciaran, I’ll find a slot here for you regardless, if you want it.’
‘In that case, I’ll see you in three hours, maybe less if the tunnel’s flowing smoothly.’
It was the best solution I could devise. Cross-border wrangles are always a pain, but I knew that I’d have to involve my English colleagues sooner or later, leak or no leak. Inviting McFaul to join me was a step towards that, and the way I’d done it took him out of play for up to three hours, time enough, possibly, to run Peter McGrew to ground.
Holmes’s son might have proved elusive, but he existed and I had something to pin on him. There was no way he could know it either at that stage, and that worked to my advantage. But to arrest him, I had to find him. How to do that? Yes, I could have driven up to Perry Holmes’s place and demanded that he hand over his secret son. Sure, and that would have got me precisely nowhere. But maybe I wouldn’t need to.
My next stop was Blackford Hill, back to see Alafair. I suspected that it might be more confrontation than conversation, so I decided to take a female officer along. But which one? The closest was DC Shannon, Alf Stein’s gopher. I called him and asked if he could spare her.
‘Christ,’ he grumbled. ‘What is it with Serious Crimes just now? I’ve had your secondee Higgins on looking for her, not just once but twice, mind you . . . and Grant’s giving me grief about his DI being away from his team. Now you’re wanting Dottie as well?’
He was in ‘awkward old bastard’ mode, but I levered him out of it by telling him what had happened in my investigation and why I wanted her.
‘Holmes has kids?’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s a fucking dy-nasty?’ (He’d been a fan of the TV series and mangled the word as it had.) ‘Sure, you can have her. It sounds like a good cause.’
I had planned to go up to Blackford in the Discovery as usual, but I changed my mind, and commandeered a marked police vehicle instead, complete with blue light. That’s never been my favo
urite mode of transport but I felt that it suited the circumstances. I didn’t want to turn up quietly at Alafair Drysalter’s door, not for a second time. I let Martin drive, with DC Shannon in the back. I knew her well enough since I was a regular in her boss’s office, but she and Martin had never met before. Each seemed fairly impressed by the other.
Alafair had remembered to lock the gates. I had to press the entryphone button. ‘Yes?’ She sounded annoyed, impatient.
‘Police,’ I announced. ‘Detective Superintendent Skinner and colleagues.’
‘Oh, go away, will you!’ she shouted.
‘We’re coming in, one way or another,’ I told her evenly. ‘So choose the easy option.’
After a few seconds, she did. There was a buzz, Martin pushed the gate and it opened. The Afghans were in the garden. They came bounding up to us, barking, their long, high-maintenance coats flying. They’d lost whatever hunter instincts the breed was supposed to have. They were friendly, designer pooches that would have been as much use as guard dogs as the hamster I’d bought Alex when she was six. Shannon made a fuss of them and they fell in with us as we walked up to the door.
Bob Skiinner 21 Grievous Angel Page 36