14 - Stay of Execution

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Yes. There were signs of bruising to the shoulder girdle and the neck. That can happen occasionally in drowning fatalities, but usually it’s caused by the victim struggling in the water prior to death. Muscles can even rupture in those circumstances and you can find haemorrhaging, but not in this case. Here, the bruising could have been caused by his being restrained and held under water.’

  ‘Christ on a bike,’ Skinner muttered. ‘You’re saying that someone snatched the guy off the street and drowned him in a bath or something similar.’

  ‘That is my hypothesis.’

  ‘Not your everyday mugging, is it?’

  ‘Not even close.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Mafia?’ she murmured. ‘Has he upset someone in New York?’

  ‘And been taken care of over here, you mean, in the hope that it would raise less heat?’

  ‘The trip was publicised.’

  ‘The Mafia don’t rely on the papers,’ he told her, ‘they bribe informants; but essentially you’re right. I tell you, love, the sooner the Pope gets here the better. I’m going to need divine assistance to sort out all the mess that’s landed in my lap in the last twenty-four hours.’

  59

  ‘Neither Aurelia Middlemass nor Señor Alsina showed up for work this morning,’ said Stevie Steele. ‘I’ve just confirmed that with the bank and with the professor of chemistry at Heriot-Watt. ’

  ‘Did you think either of them would?’ asked Mary Chambers.

  The inspector shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not really, but you never know; I had to check.’

  ‘Of course you did; now where does that leave us? What more do we have to go on than we had yesterday?’

  ‘First off, I’ve got a report from Arthur Dorward. He’s examined the papers in the Bonspiel Partnership folder.’

  ‘Does it take us forward?’

  ‘Sideways. He’s identified Easterson’s prints on the documents from the samples he gave us yesterday, and Whetstone’s, from matches taken from the body. There’s a third set, though, as yet unidentified. Mr Fraser told me he never handled the documents, so I expect they’ll prove to be Middlemass’s, but we need something for comparison. Arthur’s sending a couple of people to the bank this morning; they’re going to look for a diary, or something else that she handled exclusively, and take what they can get from that. Once that’s done, they’re going to the house. I’ve got a warrant from the Sheriff to enter and search.’

  ‘So all three handled the documents; what do we read into that?’

  ‘Surely the presence of Whetstone’s prints is important? If Aurelia, or even Easterson, had set him up they wouldn’t be there.’

  Chambers smiled. ‘Oh, no? Let’s say I’m one of those two, planning this thing. I’d have discovered that I was out of loan-application forms, then I’d have stuck my head in Whetstone’s office and asked him if he had a spare.’

  ‘The document runs to several pages. His prints were on every one.’

  ‘I’d have asked him to flick through it to make sure that all the pages were there.’

  ‘You’re too good at that, Mary. You’re not bent, are you?’ He gulped as the words left his mouth.

  ‘Hell of a question to ask me,’ the superintendent replied cheerfully. ‘Actually, I’ve made a point of studying the methodology in every fraud case I’ve ever worked on. That’s quite a common one; I’ve nicked a car salesman and a building-society clerk for setting up phoney deals, and both of them tried to set up their mates that way. So just having handled the document doesn’t prove he done it.’

  ‘There is something else about him,’ Steele said. ‘We know that Whetstone didn’t consult his Edinburgh GP about his illness, but I had a thought that I asked George Regan to follow up for me. It paid off yesterday. His doctor down in Kelso was a pal, and a member of the same golf club as him. Whetstone visited him just over three weeks ago, at his home, not his surgery. He listened to his chest and sent him for an X-ray on the spot. It came back with a big shadow on one lung and a smaller one on the other. He referred him straight away to an oncologist, a man called Nigel Goodyear, who has a private practice in Glasgow. George phoned the man, and when he heard that Whetstone was dead he was happy to talk to him. He saw him at Ross Hall Hospital within a couple of days. He put him through a CT scanner, then did needle biopsies that confirmed malignancy.’

  ‘And the prognosis?’

  ‘Goodyear said surgery was out of the question; it was way too late for that. He said he could only offer him chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and then purely as a delaying tactic. He had to tell Mr Whetstone that the best practical help he could give him was by arranging for him to go into a hospice when the time came.’

  ‘And when did he reckon that would be?’

  ‘Two or three months.’

  ‘Poor bugger. I guess he didn’t fancy the hospice idea, then.’

  ‘Apparently not; that dislocated shoulder still worries me a bit, though, just as it worried Sarah at the time. Her first thought was that he’d have needed help. What do you think, Mary? I’ve been involved in this from the start. You can stand a bit further back from it than me. How do you read it?’

  The superintendent swivelled in her chair, round and back again, round and back again, as she thought. ‘Show me the money, Stevie,’ she murmured. ‘That’s where we normally find the answer in a situation like this. But it’s gone, hasn’t it? And so have Aurelia Middlemass and her husband.’

  She gave a grim smile, a hunter’s smile. ‘Their disappearance changes everything; young Murphy must have been right. It wasn’t his dad who set up the Bonspiel Partnership, it was her, but to guard against discovery before she was ready she did it in a way that pointed at Ivor Whetstone. Maybe he found out about it, or just got suspicious . . . we know from the widow that he never liked her . . . and she and her husband killed him to shut him up. Or maybe he never knew about it, and just topped himself to save himself a lingering death. We’ll ask her about all of it when we catch her.’

  ‘That will be easier said than done,’ Steele said gloomily. ‘If we don’t know where the money is, we don’t even know where to start looking for them. We’ve no idea where they’re headed.’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Sure, I know,’ he exclaimed briskly, ‘we can try to pick up their trail. I’ll start with the airports and railway stations, and get into her credit-card records, and her husband’s, to see whether they’ve been used to buy travel tickets.’

  ‘Yes, and another thing. Her car’s still at their house, so check whether he had one, and if he did, get a description out.’

  Steele nodded. ‘I’ll get the boys on it right away. Then I think I’ll go and see Murphy and his mother. It won’t bring Ivor back, but it’ll be the nearest thing they’ve had to good news since he died.’

  60

  The national rugby stadium was a far different place than it had been forty-eight hours earlier. A team of scaffolders were finishing the superstructure of the platform on which the Pope’s official party would sit on the following Saturday, with carpenters beginning work beneath them on the steps and the flooring. They worked quickly and skilfully; they were used to erecting grandstands at golf events all over the country so the Murrayfield job was child’s play for them all.

  Skinner stood at the vehicle entrance to the great bowl-like stadium, watching them at work, although they were not the reason for his visit. Brian Mackie was by his side, in uniform and wearing a luminous yellow over-jacket with the word ‘Police’ spelled out on the back, superfluously, given his unmistakable cap. Beyond him stood Giovanni Rossi.

  ‘This place is wide open,’ said Skinner to the chief superintendent.

  ‘That can’t be avoided, not while they’re putting up the infrastructure for the event, but we’re running sniffer dogs through the place every day. The contractors will all be finished by tomorrow, and the performers will be allowed to rehearse on Thursday morning. After
that, the stadium will be closed and sealed off; my people and Maggie’s will be guarding it all night. There will be a further search on Friday morning, then we’ll let the people in.’

  ‘You happy with that, Gio?’ the DCC asked the Italian.

  ‘Entirely.’

  ‘Have you got everything you need, Brian?’

  It was said by colleagues that Mackie’s smiles were rationed to one a day; he used up Tuesday’s allocation. ‘If you can fix up some decent weather for the event, sir,’ he said, ‘that would be good.’

  ‘If anyone can do that it’s John the Twenty-fifth.’ Skinner looked at his colleague. ‘Where are these bloody Belgians, then?’

  ‘They’re rehearsing out on the back pitches. They wanted to do it in the stadium, but there are too many workers about for that. I’ve got uniformed officers watching them, though. I’ll show you where they are if you like.’

  ‘It’s okay, Brian,’ the DCC laughed, ‘I used to be a detective, remember. I’ll find them; the noise of their drums might just give me a clue.’

  He walked out of the stadium and round the west stand, past the Scottish Rugby Union offices and shop and out of the gate. A cold wind was blowing from the east, but even against it, he could still hear the martial sound of drumming and the blare of brass instruments. He looked across the big field and saw a group in military array, twenty-four blue-clad musicians in front and a dozen red-uniformed musketeers bringing up the rear. He strolled towards them, but kept his distance until he saw the leader, Malou, give the ‘fall out’ signal.

  The old colonel had seen him coming; as his men laid down their instruments, he walked to meet him. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said. ‘You come to watch us march?’

  ‘That and some,’ said Skinner. ‘Do you practise every day?’

  ‘No, but today we must. On Sunday I sent for two replacements from Belgium, from the First Guides band; they arrived last night and they have very little time to get to know our repertoire, and our march routines.’ He shivered. ‘I wish it wasn’t necessary. It’s a cold country you live in. It is as well our uniforms are thick and made for the outdoors.’

  ‘What do you do when it rains?’

  ‘We have capes; transparent so you can see the uniforms.’ Malou fumbled in his trouser pockets and produced a blue pack of cigarettes. He offered one to the DCC, who shook his head. ‘You don’t have the habit, then?’

  ‘No. My brother forced me to smoke when I was about ten years old: made me sick as a dog. That put me off for life.’

  ‘You might have wound up smoking Gauloises like me. You should have thanked your brother.’

  ‘I didn’t see it that way at the time,’ the Scot mused, ‘but you’re right.’ He watched as the old man lit up with a disposable Bic and inhaled deeply.

  ‘Filthy habit, but it’s one that’s been with me since I was a young man. When I joined the army nearly everyone smoked, especially the officers. There were nights when we couldn’t see across the mess, it was so thick.’

  ‘Sounds like the fog we had here last week. Why do you smoke those things?’ the DCC asked. ‘They seem pretty strong.’

  ‘I’ve smoked them for forty years and more. The main reason I got hooked on them was because they were good for keeping the mosquito at bay.’

  ‘Would they work on midges? That’s our big problem in Scotland.’

  ‘I’ve heard that. A good friend told me so many years ago. As I understand the two creatures are essentially the same. Mosquito means “little fly”, and so does your word “midge”, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Skinner grinned, ‘but ours have sharper teeth.’

  ‘So why are you here?’ Malou asked. ‘Do you have news of the deaths of Philippe and Barty, or did you simply want to see us march and hear us play?’

  ‘There are some things I want to ask you. Well, one thing, really. Why are you here?’

  The old colonel looked up at him sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why were you invited?’

  ‘Because we are very good; we are an institution in Belgium and in Luxembourg, and Holland . . . or at least we once were, before age started to catch up with us.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s the case, Monsieur Malou, but there has to be more to it than that. You’re here at the personal invitation of the Pope.’

  ‘When he was a young priest, newly ordained, His Holiness spent some time in Belgium. The Bastogne Drummers have been around for many years; I didn’t found them, I only gave them a lift when they needed it. I imagine that Father Gibb must have heard them then.’

  ‘What did you call him?’ Skinner asked quietly, as Malou dragged on his cigarette.

  The colonel looked away; his face seemed to redden slightly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled, ‘I forgot who I was talking about.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. That’s a name that very few people use; the only ones who do are his closest personal friends. How long have you known the Pope?’

  The old man finished his cigarette, inhaling the last of the smoke. ‘We met during that time I spoke of, when we were both young men. And yes, we became good friends in those days. But it was a long time ago and it is not something I like to boast of; that would not be proper. I don’t even like to talk about it.’

  ‘Come on, it’s more than a youthful meeting forty years ago for him to have invited you here. What brought you together?’

  ‘That is something between Father Gibb and me,’ Malou snapped, ‘and I will not speak of it, to you or anyone else. And neither, I can promise you, will he.’ He turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Skinner staring at his back.

  61

  Murphy Whetstone was home alone when Steele called. As he led the detective through to the kitchen, to make coffee for them both, he explained that his mother had taken Blue off in her car for a walk around Holyrood Park. ‘The poor dog’s had barely any exercise since Dad died, and from what Mum said, his walks had been getting shorter before that.’

  ‘Yet your father was in the habit of walking home from the off ice?’

  ‘I know, but that had tailed off too, so Mum said.’

  A night’s sleep seemed to have done him some good. The circles had gone from beneath his eyes, and he looked more like a man of his age than he had on the inspector’s first visit to him. He seemed also to have regained some spirit, as he handed Steele a mug. ‘Are you here to ask or tell?’ he said bluntly.

  ‘Tell, in this case. There’s been a development I thought you should know about.’ As he explained about the disappearance of Aurelia Middlemass and her husband, Murphy’s face seemed to light up. ‘It all fits now,’ he exclaimed, when the inspector had f inished.

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Come into my dad’s study and let me show you something,’ he said. Carrying his coffee, Steele followed him into a room next to the kitchen that looked out on to a long, immaculately maintained back garden. ‘My mother’s pride and joy,’ he said. ‘Dad had his golf; she’s got that.’

  In one corner of the study, there was a desk on which a computer sat, up and running, showing moving stars as a screensaver. ‘I’ve been looking though my father’s files,’ said the young man. ‘To be completely honest, I thought that if he had left a suicide note, this is where it would be. The Old Man came late to computers, but when he did, he embraced them. His Filofax is gathering dust somewhere; all his personal records and notes were kept here. He had a web-cam, and he and I used to have video chats every couple of weeks or so. He didn’t keep a daily diary . . . not the Samuel Pepys kind at least; he wasn’t that sort of man . . . but I did find reminders and stuff, and notes, in a personal folder.’ He looked at Steele. ‘Before I show you this, I promise you, I didn’t create it to try to prove anything. This is his own document.’

  He touched the mouse and the screensaver vanished, to be replaced on the screen by a photograph of Blue, the Siberian husky. Murphy smiled. ‘He used to create his own wallpaper,’ he said. ‘He had a video ca
mera and downloaded pictures from it. He was always changing the image.’ He moved the mouse and clicked on a series of folders, until a document opened. It was headed ‘Countdown’.

  It showed dates listed in sequence. Some were blank while others had entries against them. Steele scanned them and his eye was drawn to one in particular. It appeared on the day of his death, and it read ‘Check AM/BP’.

  ‘What do you think that is?’ the young man asked.

  ‘I think it’s interesting. AM could be Aurelia Middlemass, and BP could be . . .’

  ‘Bonspiel Partnership,’ he finished. ‘I reckon my dad was on to her, that she found out and that she killed him to shut him up, making it look like suicide so that when the fraud was discovered it would be blamed on him. What do you think?’

  ‘I think it’s a possibility, Murphy, that’s all I’ll say. I’ll put it to her when we catch her, you can be sure of that, but without a confession there isn’t enough to make a murder charge stick. Can I ask you, would the financial consequences for your mother be any different if the fiscal decides it wasn’t suicide, and we can convict Middlemass of fraud?’

  ‘No. After our solicitor showed them the pathologist’s report, which said my father would have died within months, the insurance company paid out on his policy. His pension’s ring-fenced as well, that passes to Mum and there’s nothing the bank can do about it. All I care about is my dad’s memory.’

  ‘In that case, pal,’ said Stevie Steele, ‘I’ll do all I can to help you protect it.’

  62

  ‘That’s definite, Chief Skinner?’ asked the chief of Department. ‘Your pathologist is totally certain?’

  ‘A couple of hundred per cent certain, Mr Lovencrantz. Her findings have been confirmed by tests. I waited for the results before I called you. Colin Mawhinney was drowned in clean, fresh water . . . analysis shows that it was from the public supply, not from a pond or river . . . then weighted down and dropped into the dock.’

  ‘That’s no ordinary mugging, I agree.’