Maggie patted his chest. ‘Good thinking, Stevie boy,’ she said. ‘If there are any more waves to be made in that investigation, I wouldn’t want them to splash on my new uniform.’ She slid a hand under his shirt. ‘And talking about making waves,’ she murmured, ‘how long have we got till that curry’s ready?’
He grinned and slid an arm round her. ‘As long as we need, love. As long as we need.’
41
‘Sarah, this is excellent,’ Dan Pringle mumbled, as he finished the last of his steak pie in the Skinners’ dining room. ‘It’s good of you.’
‘It’s good of Alex,’ she replied. ‘She made it while her father and I were out creating mayhem.’
An hour earlier, the DCC and the head of CID had left DI Arthur Dorward’s meticulous crime-scene officers poring over Major Tubbs’s guest bathroom, and headed for Skinner’s home.
They had briefed Sarah as soon as they had arrived. A toothbrush and a tube of combined tartar control and whitening-formula toothpaste had already been bagged and were on their way by car to the Howdenhall lab. No trace of a receipt had been found among Bartholemy Lebeau’s effects, but the manufacturer had established from an examination of the tube’s bar-code that it was part of a batch dispatched a week earlier to a pharmacist outlet in Newcastle.
‘But that’s terrible,’ she had exclaimed. ‘There could be little time-bombs ticking all over that area, just waiting to explode.’
‘Seven of them to be exact. That consignment was opened and put on the shelves on Friday; they’ve made eight sales since then. But that’s just the tip of it. Potentially, your bombs could be all over Britain. The rest of the batch has been pulled, and the shop’s checking its till records to see if any of the customers used cards and can be traced. The manufacturer’s implemented recall procedures for all shipments made up to seven days before the Tyneside lot and since. When they get them back they’ll start to test for contamination, but if it’s been done at random that’ll be a massive job. As that begins, we’re making public announcements on all television and radio news bulletins nationally. It’ll scare people, but it can’t be avoided. By the way, when did we last buy toothpaste?’
‘Six weeks ago. I bought two big pump dispensers, one for us and one for the kids.’ She shuddered. ‘Brings it close to home, doesn’t it?’
‘No, love. It brings it right inside the house.’
Sarah was still grim-faced as they finished their meal. ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about, guys. Right now all over the country there could be people doing what we’ve just done, then going to brush their teeth and . . . Poof! It’s horrible.’
‘I know,’ Bob agreed. ‘But maybe if it was going to happen it would have happened already. If there had been a mass contamination, I’d have expected more than one incident by now.’
‘Maybe there have been,’ his wife pointed out. ‘Lebeau’s death was taken for a heart-attack at first, remember.’
‘True, but you spotted the real cause within twenty-four hours. The worst case is that this is part of a national emergency; the best . . . although not for Lebeau, I’ll grant you . . . is that it’s a one-off.’
‘So, while the manufacturer and the retailers are doing their things, where do you go?’
‘Tomorrow I go back to the office to bring the chief fully up to date, and to field calls from Tyneside and any other forces with information. Dan and his team go back to Haddington. We need to talk to more of those marching Belgians.’
42
It was solitary, in comparison to that of most of his fellow officers, and it was of necessity secretive; in addition to that Neil McIlhenney’s job was one of the most stressful in the modern force. Heads of Special Branch at regional level were not especially high-ranking; his soon-to-be-formalised step up to detective chief inspector was as high as he would go in the post. However, the responsibilities they carried were awesome.
The quirks of history had conspired to make it so. The first great SB target had been the insidious spread of Communism, even if it was more imaginary than real across Britain. As it faded, it was replaced as top priority by the Irish threat, much more significant and, in England at least, much more deadly. Even if the bombers had never targeted Scotland there were historic undercurrents that required continuous vigilance from the country’s secret policemen.
Ireland had not gone away . . . privately, McIlhenney and Skinner doubted that it ever would . . . but it had been overtaken by another danger. Outside the corridors of the CIA and MI6 headquarters, the threat posed by the fundamentalists of al Qaeda had been underrated, even after several incidents and a punitive strike against them by the Americans. But September Eleven had changed all that.
No single event, McIlhenney mused, as he drew his car to a halt outside the Malmaison Hotel, not even the assassinations of the Kennedys, or those of Sadat, King, three Gandhis, or Lennon had reached out and touched personally so many people. It was a particularly bitter truth for him that morning, as he was going to collect one of those on whom it had inflicted the greatest loss.
When he walked into the hotel’s small reception area, the duty manager recognised him at once: he was not a man easily forgotten. ‘Good morning, Mr McIlhenney,’ he greeted him. ‘Are you here for Mr Mawhinney?’
‘Got it in one, Saeed. Will you call him for me, please?’
‘I will, but I’m not sure that he’s in. He hasn’t been for breakfast yet, I know that; but the last couple of mornings he’s got up early and gone for a walk first. Could be he’s been and gone and I’ve just missed him. I’ll call him.’
He picked up a phone, dialled Mawhinney’s room and waited for a full minute before hanging up and shaking his head.
‘Is his key there?’ the detective asked.
‘No, but that doesn’t signify. It’s a card thing and guests never leave them behind.’
‘I’ll go up anyway and knock his door. Maybe he was in the shower when you called. What’s his number?’
‘One oh six.’
McIlhenney walked up a single flight of stairs and found the room quickly. He knocked on the door, loudly, and called out, ‘Morning call, Colin. You’ve got a nine-thirty appointment, remember.’ He waited, with growing impatience, until finally he gave up and went back downstairs.
He sat in Reception for ten more minutes, grumbling to himself and checking his watch. ‘This is a bit of a damn nuisance,’ he muttered to himself, then took a decision. ‘Saeed,’ he called out, ‘have you got a pass key?’
‘Of course. You want to look in the room?’
‘Just to be on the safe side, we’d better.’ The two men climbed the stairs once more, and the manager unlocked the door to room 106. It was beautifully furnished, and immaculately serviced; its double bed in the centre of the room was made and, apart from a suitcase in a stand behind the door, there was nothing to indicate that it was even occupied.
McIlhenney frowned and took out his cell phone; he found McGuire’s mobile number and called him. ‘Yes,’ his friend replied, unusually impatient, as if he had been disturbed.
‘Mario, if I’m interrupting anything I’m sorry, but did Colin Mawhinney stop at your place last night?’
‘No,’ McGuire grunted. ‘But neither did I. We were at Paula’s for a meal. I stayed there, Colin left about ten to walk back to the Malmaison. Why? Is he not there?’
‘No, the bugger’s out. You sure he knew I was supposed to pick him up to take him to meet the minister?’
‘Absolutely certain; I remember mentioning it to him.’
‘Any chance he misunderstood?’
‘None at all. I was speaking English at the time. I suppose he might have forgotten, though. Best thing you can do is phone the minister’s private secretary and ask her to call you if and when he turns up there. After that all you can do is wait there for a while and see if he comes back.’
‘Maybe you could get some of your boys to check the saunas,’ McIlhenney suggested. ‘He’s a single
guy, after all; maybe he’s gone for an early-morning massage.’
‘No, Neil,’ Mario replied. ‘Not this man. Early-morning mass, maybe; massage, certainly not.’
43
It made Stevie Steele feel strange to see someone else sitting behind Maggie’s desk, yet, given their life-changing weekend, it gave him less difficulty than might have been the case otherwise. They had wakened together for the second morning in succession, the difference being that this was a working day.
There had been no awkwardness, though. He had left the en suite bathroom to Maggie and had used the one downstairs to prepare himself for the day. He was not sure what Mary Chambers’s style would be so he had selected one of his better suits, a white shirt and a plain, sober tie.
‘Mmm, smart,’ Maggie had said, eyeing him up as he came into the kitchen.
‘You can talk, ma’am. Are you going to wear that uniform every day from now on?’
‘Why? Does it make me look like an old frump?’
‘Not in the slightest, honey. Does this make me look like a civil servant?’
She had grinned at that. ‘It makes you look like an ambitious young DI who’s out to make an impression on the new boss.’
‘Am I overdoing it?’
‘Not at all. She’ll take that as a compliment.’
She had too. In fact, Detective Superintendent Mary Chambers had dressed much as he had for her first morning in the new rank, in a dark, almost formal trouser suit. Her plain, square early-forties face was adorned by a minimum of makeup, and her dark grey-flecked hair was cut short, but not severely so.
He had made for her office as soon as he had arrived at the station; he had given Maggie a five-minute head start before leaving Gordon Terrace, yet the unpredictability of the traffic flow had resulted in them driving into the car park as if they had travelled in convoy. Twenty minutes short of nine, but his new boss had been there, and for some time too, as the papers piled around her indicated.
‘Let’s sort out the ground rules, Inspector,’ she said, as he settled into the chair opposite, the one from which he had looked at her predecessor so many times. ‘I’m an informal operator, like Maggie, so between us it’s Mary and Stevie, unless you’ve any problem with that.’
‘Fine by me, boss.’
‘Boss!’ she grunted. ‘I like that. It makes me sound like Fergie.’
‘Which one?’ he asked, and they both laughed, breaking any ice between them for good.
‘Maggie’s marked my card about the team. What’s your take on them?’
Steele went through the divisional CID staff one by one, appraising each. He began with Tarvil Singh, but left George Regan till last. It did not escape her. ‘Will I have any bother with him?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard that Dan Pringle’s his role model.’
‘George is all right; his views of women officers may sound non-PC, but in the main they’re bullshit, for show. He likes to think of himself as a dinosaur, but actually he’s reasonably warm-blooded. That makes him vulnerable to the image of him walking round the track at Tynecastle in a sergeant’s uniform, and aware of the need to do everything he can to avoid that ever happening.’
‘He can cope with having a female boss?’
‘Sure.’
‘One who lives with another woman?’
‘Regan is many things, but he’s not prejudiced. For example, he’s coping fine with having a Sikh for a partner. He’s also coping without having my size eleven up his arse, and he wants to keep it that way.’
‘You’ve got a way with words, young Stevie. Now tell me, how am I going to get on with Dan Pringle? I’ve heard it said that Maggie’s promotion wasn’t his idea.’
Steele frowned. ‘I doubt if Dan was even consulted. He’s only got a couple of years left, at most; moving Mags, and you for that matter, was a strategic decision, and its effects will be felt after he’s gone. Sometimes DCS Pringle feels as if he’s been parked on a siding . . . and maybe he has. From time to time that makes him throw his weight about. The only advice I can give you on that is, when he’s right listen to him, and when he’s wrong bloody well tell him.’
‘Thanks, Stevie, I’ll bear that in mind. I won’t have to worry about him for a day or two, though. He called me just before you came in to apologise for not being here to welcome me, but he’s hands-on with this toothpaste crisis.’
The DI looked puzzled. ‘What toothpaste crisis?’
‘Where have you been for the last twelve hours?’ Chambers exclaimed. ‘A guy out in East Lothian was poisoned by toothpaste laced with cyanide. He bought it in Newcastle on Friday. The whole thing’s gone national; there have been emergency announcements on the box and everything. The DCC’s put Dan in charge of the investigation.’
‘Mary, I haven’t seen a news report or read a paper since yesterday lunchtime. Are we involved?’
‘Not yet, and hopefully we won’t be. They’re hauling back all the toothpaste they can and testing it. As of this morning they haven’t found any more spiked tubes, and there haven’t been any other deaths. I imagine there are a lot of yellow teeth in Newcastle this morning, though.’
Steele grimaced. ‘I’d rather not think about that.’
‘Me neither. Let’s just hope it’s a one-off and they catch the nutter soon, well off our patch. And speaking of our patch, I’ve been reading the files on active and recent investigations. Anything you want to add to any of them?’
‘As a matter of fact . . . Have you read the Whetstone file?’ The new superintendent nodded. ‘What’s your take?’
‘Same as everyone else’s. The man topped himself in the light of potential exposure, and possibly also in the knowledge of fatal disease.’
‘Yes. So now his son’s arrived back from the States and his mother wants us to talk to him, to explain it to him, I suppose.’
‘Is it our job to do that?’
Steele found himself wondering if her question was a test. ‘Technically no, but I’ve always found that in this job I can make myself feel a bit better as a person by doing what’s right, not just what’s required. I’ll go alone if you’d rather, but I thought you’d like to come.’
Mary Chambers smiled and rose from her chair. ‘You thought right. I think you and I are going to get on, young Stevie; I can see now what the new chief super sees in you.’
He blinked, hard.
44
‘Having a guest go AWOL in the middle of a carefully prepared programme is something that I did not need,’ Bob Skinner growled to Sir James Proud, ‘and certainly not this morning, of all bloody mornings.’
‘There’s no accounting for it, is there?’ the silver-haired chief constable mused.
‘What?’
‘The unpredictability of the individual. I’d marked down Inspector Mawhinney as a remarkable young man; I got a feeling from him of absolute self-discipline, of someone who wasn’t given to indulgence of any form.’
‘McGuire says he isn’t. He reckons we should be checking the churches to see if he’s there. He says that there’s an undercurrent of grief in the guy that goes straight to the death of his wife. He saw it happen, you know, Jimmy. He was looking up at the towers when the second plane hit the very floor that she was on.’
‘Poor fellow; poor lass. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it, my friend? At least it would have been quick for her, though.’
‘But not for Mawhinney. After all this time, and the lad’s still suffering inside, so says McGuire. He’s spent over a week with him now, and he’s got to know him pretty well.’
‘What do you propose to do about his absence?’
‘I’ve put the word out already to all the Traffic cars to keep an eye out for him. That’s all for now; he could still turn up on foot for his meeting with Aileen de Marco. He’s not due there for another couple of minutes. If he hasn’t shown up anywhere by this midday, though, I’ll have to consider starting a wider search and informing NYPD that he’s missing.’
‘Could he simply have headed for home?’
‘His plane ticket was still in a drawer in his room, under the Gideon Bible. His passport wasn’t there, so in theory he might have, but without his clothes, his personal effects . . .’
‘Maybe he had some bad news.’
‘If he did, it was after he left Paula Viareggio’s place. But it didn’t reach him through the hotel, and he didn’t have a cell phone.’
Sir James sighed. ‘It’s a mystery, right enough; but like most mysteries, we’ll get to the bottom of it sooner or later, when he turns up. What about the real crisis, though? This toothpaste thing?’
Skinner looked at him, grim-faced. ‘I was up most of the bloody night, you know, Jimmy. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about what might be happening, or what might happen in the morning when the nation woke up and started brushing its teeth. But,’ he reached out and patted the top of the chief’s rosewood desk, ‘touch wood, there have been no reported incidents, and every minute that passes without one takes us nearer safety. The other piece of good news is that the manufacturer has been testing recalled stock all night at regional labs, and so far they haven’t come up with any more contaminated tubes.’
‘What about our own tests?’
‘Oh, they’re conclusive enough,’ the DCC muttered. ‘The toxicologist confirmed Sarah’s finding straight away, and as far as the toothpaste was concerned, testing showed that there was enough hydrogen cyanide in that tube to have killed the whole fucking band, never mind Monsieur Lebeau.’
‘How was it spiked? Do we know?’
‘It was probably injected with a hypodermic. That brand has a foil security tag under the cap that you have to remove before use. Put a fine needle through it and the victim would never notice . . . anything, ever again.’
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