17 - Death's Door

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘I’ll do it myself,’ said Steele, at once. ‘This is my shout. Can you give me a flak jacket and a weapon?’

  ‘Yes, if you know how to use it.’

  ‘I’m qualified.’

  ‘Qualified and foolhardy,’ Roberts suggested, ‘from the sound of things.’

  ‘Maybe, but do you want to wait him out for a day or two, only to find that he wasn’t there after all?’

  The chief inspector grimaced. ‘Okay, if that’s what you want to do, go ahead. I’ll have two of my shooters give you cover from the top of the bank.’

  ‘Sure,’ Steele chuckled, with dark humour, ‘and that way I’ll be between them and the target if he makes a break for it. Thanks, but I’d rather trust my luck; it’s been pretty good so far.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Roberts eased off his own flak jacket and held it up for Steele to slip on, then took a revolver from his belt and handed it to him. ‘Six shots,’ he said.

  ‘If I have to use it,’ the Scot told him, ‘I’ll only need one.’ He took the heavy weapon and flicked off the safety.

  The chief inspector unstrapped his military-style helmet, and began to take it off. ‘Here, you should wear this too.’

  ‘By the book, yes, but if I do, it would just make it easier for him to spot me.’

  ‘It’s Kevlar, man: bulletproof. Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Certain.’

  ‘Even if I ordered you to wear it?’

  ‘As DCC Cairns said, this is my shout.’

  ‘On your own head . . .’

  Stevie grinned. ‘. . . be it not.’

  Roberts laughed. ‘Touché. Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Make your way round the edge of the circle, otherwise you’ll make a noise on the gravel.’

  ‘Where’s your sniper on this side?’

  ‘She’s hidden over there in the trees, watching the door in the far gable. It’s the only way in and out of the place.’

  ‘Do you have a two-way?’

  The chief inspector nodded, unclipped a transceiver from his belt, fastened it to the flak jacket, then flicked a switch. ‘That’s it on transmit.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Steele. ‘I’m off.’

  He felt his pulse quicken as he stepped carefully around the edge of the car park, then across, in front of the garage. As he looked around he had his first full view of the long, narrow cottage. The gully in which it sat was so deep that the ridge of its roof was at his eye level. He looked along the building’s length and counted four windows. Below them ran a narrow walkway, no more than a yard wide.

  Satisfied that he was out of sight of all the windows, he began to ease his way slowly down the bank. It was so steep that it was almost sheer, and he had to lean backwards to avoid slipping, and sliding noisily down to the foot. His shoes had corrugated soles, or the task would have been impossible, but finally he reached the path. He crouched there, until his breathing and his gun hand were both steady.

  ‘Living room first,’ he whispered into the transceiver, even though he was really talking to himself.

  The window was around fifteen feet from the end wall of the house; it was set low, no more than three feet from the ground. He walked silently along, then crouched down, below the level of the ledge, until finally he held his breath and, literally, stuck his head above the parapet, as fast as he could.

  A face stared back at him. Instinctively he threw himself to the side, more than half expecting a bullet to shatter the glass.

  And then his brain finally registered what it was that he had seen. He stood to his full height, holding the gun in both hands, in a marksman’s grip, and stepped back in front of the window.

  The face that he had seen was black and distorted. Its owner was hanging from a hook set firmly in the ceiling to support a light fitting and, on that day, much more.

  ‘Fuck it!’ he yelled into the transceiver. ‘He’s topped himself. Marksmen, stand down, I’m going in!’

  He sprinted along to the end of the house, and through a black wooden gate, which led to the entrance porch. As Roberts had said, the cottage had only a single door. He grabbed its handle and turned it, expecting to have to shoulder his way inside, but it opened under a single firm push.

  In the second after he stepped inside, Stevie Steele knew that something was wrong. His heightened senses alerted him to one tiny shred of resistance as the half-glazed door swung inwards, and then to a metallic click from above his head.

  He looked up at the ceiling, and saw the black round object that was taped there.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he whispered.

  And then he saw the blinding flash.

  He never heard the noise of the explosion that followed it.

  Sixty

  Ray Wilding gazed up at the ceiling. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like that,’ he said, in a tone that was little short of awestruck.

  ‘I don’t imagine you have,’ Becky Stallings conceded. Her face was slick with the perspiration of strenuous physical activity, and strands of her dark hair were plastered to her forehead.

  From her bed, they were gazing up at a colour representation of the view across the treetops of the north embankment of the Thames, from Nelson’s Column on the right to the Palace of Westminster on the left, a shot taken from a gondola at the very top of the London Eye.

  ‘I’m very proud of that,’ she told him. ‘It was my own idea, from start to finish. A photographer mate of mine took the picture with one of those special lenses, then a girl I know who works in an advertising agency had it printed for me on about eight sheets, and finally I found a poster fixer-upper to paste it up there for me. It’s got to be one of the sights of the city.’

  ‘It beats a mirror, that’s for sure,’ the Scot admitted. ‘My ex used to go on about wanting a mirror on the ceiling. I always reckoned it was so she could do her nails at the same time.’

  ‘That’s the usual reason, they tell me. I did think about a flat-screen telly, until I had this idea.’

  ‘You’re not your run-of-the-mill detective inspector, are you, Becky?’ Wilding yawned contentedly.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose I am. But I’ll tell you a secret, Ray. Since the poster fixer-upper fixed it up, you’re the first bloke to have seen that.’

  ‘How long’s it been up there?’ he asked. ‘A week?’

  ‘Cheeky bastard,’ she exclaimed, the second word elongated by her slight Cockney accent. ‘Nearly a year, since you’re unchivalrous enough to force me to admit it. Shocked? Or surprised?’

  ‘Amazed, more like. You’re an attractive woman, working in a male environment, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, you don’t exactly hang about once you’ve made your mind up.’

  ‘I don’t mind at all. I’m pretty choosy about my blokes, but I’ve always believed in the unconventional approach. From fairly early on you and I both knew that this was going to happen. Much better that we got straight to it than that we edge around it all night and waste a nice meal by thinking about something else all the time we’re eating. Do you agree?’

  ‘With all my heart. What do we do now?’

  ‘We go out and have that meal, and a nice bottle of wine, then come back here and get back to the action, with the ice well and truly broken.’

  ‘Inspector, you are a bloody genius, if you don’t mind me saying so again.’>

  ‘I don’t mind that either,’ she told him cheerfully, then sat up in bed. ‘A quick shower before we go out would be in order, I reckon. It’ll save time if we have it together.’

  ‘In theory it will.’

  ‘Let’s chance it.’ She swung her feet on to the floor and jumped up, just as her phone rang. ‘Bugger,’ she said. ‘You know I can’t just let it ring, Ray, don’t you?’

  ‘Am I a copper or not?’

  She picked it up. ‘Stallings.’

  ‘Inspector,’ said a thick voice, with a Scottish accent, a voice under stress, she recognised, a voice with a lot bearing down in it. ‘My name’s Tarvil Singh. I’m
a DC and I need to contact my sergeant, Ray Wilding. Your office thought that he might have told you what hotel he’s booked into.’

  It did not occur to her for a moment that she might prevaricate, and tell him that she would contact Wilding and have him call back. ‘He isn’t,’ she replied. ‘He’s here. Hold on.’

  She offered him the instrument. ‘It’s DC Singh, Ray. Something’s wrong, I think.’

  She watched him as he took the call. She watched him as the colour drained from his face. She watched him as the phone fell from his grasp, and as tears began to course down his cheeks.

  She picked up the fallen receiver and replaced it, without thinking.

  He looked up at her, too stunned to speak at first, his mouth hanging open slightly. When he did find words, they came out in a moan. ‘Stevie’s dead.’

  She sat down hard beside him, sharing his incredulity. ‘The helicopter?’ she asked. ‘Did it . . .?’

  ‘No. He got there all right. And when he did, Stevie being Stevie, he led from the front and went down there to have a look. Ballester had hanged himself; Stevie saw him through a window and went charging into the house. Only the evil motherfucker had booby-trapped the front door. When he opened it, he pulled the pin of a grenade.’

  Sixty-one

  Bob Skinner stood in the living room of Hathaway House, staring at the dead, darkened face of Daniel Ballester. Then, with neither word nor warning, he swung upwards and punched it, as hard as he had ever hit anything or anyone in his life.

  ‘Hey!’ Les Cairns yelled, and lumbered forward as if to restrain him, only to stop short as Mario McGuire stepped into his path, his expression as ferocious as any he had ever seen.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Skinner, grimly, as the body swung round, and back again, then round once more, in semicircles. ‘Only I’m not. I wish I could have killed him myself, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Still,’ the Englishman protested, ‘this is my patch.’

  ‘Let’s not get territorial about this.’ The voice came from the living-room doorway. The three men turned towards it, and saw Chief Constable Sir James Proud, in full uniform.

  ‘I’m very much inclined to do the same as Bob,’ he said, ‘but I’ll defer to him, since he’s much better at that sort of action than I am. I’m sorry I’ve taken so long to get here; I was out when Jack McGurk called to tell me what had happened. Maggie: what about Maggie? Has she been told yet?’

  ‘She knows,’ Skinner replied. ‘By a miserable coincidence, I was with her when Mario rang to tell me what had happened.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘Jimmy,’ the DCC snapped, ‘how the hell do you think she took it? She wouldn’t even let me say the words; she knew anyway, from my face. Eventually she asked if it had been quick. I told her that it was instantaneous.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She’s still at home. I called Neil; he came over straight away and he’s with her now. So’s Paula. She arrived with Mario when he came by to join me. I sent for a doctor too, as a precaution.’

  ‘Of course. Let’s hope the shock doesn’t affect her pregnancy.’

  ‘God forbid.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to be in a very forbidding mood this week,’ McGuire growled.

  ‘Bob,’ the chief began hesitantly, ‘it really was instantaneous, wasn’t it? He’s under a sheet through there.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been. If he’d taken the Kevlar helmet he was offered he’d probably have survived. The flak jacket he wore deflected most of the shrapnel from the grenade, but two large pieces, at least . . . maybe there were others the doctor couldn’t see at a first examination . . . penetrated his skull. He’d no chance. He must have been dead before he hit the floor.’

  ‘This swine here,’ Sir James pointed at Ballester’s body, ‘did he leave anything behind him?’

  ‘Apart from a booby-trapped door, rigged to take out the first person through it?’

  ‘A note?’

  Skinner’s face twisted. ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘but not the usual sort. This guy’s high-tech. He left his on his laptop. Take a look: it’s still switched on. But don’t touch it: the local SOCOs are going to take it back to their lab to dust it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the coroner would have their balls if they didn’t, and so would I. They have to match the prints to the body for the inquest. Sorry, inquests: there will have to be one into Stevie’s death as well.’

  ‘I imagine so. Has anyone reported this to our procurator fiscal?’

  ‘Yes, Chief,’ said McGuire. ‘I called him before we left Edinburgh. He’s coming down to see for himself, but he lives in Fife, so it’ll be a while yet before he gets here. That’s why the bodies are still here.’

  ‘I’ll wait for him. You chaps should get back to Edinburgh to see how Maggie’s doing. She may even want to talk to you.’

  ‘We’ll do that,’ Skinner agreed. He turned to DCC Cairns. ‘Les, when do you plan to start the full-scale search of this place?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning, Bob. The light’s going fast and I’m not having my people stumbling around in the dark in case this so-and-so’s left us any more nasty surprises.’

  ‘Absolutely not. If you have no objection I’d like to send down my chief technical officer, DI Dorward, and a couple of his people, to work with them. The findings here will be part of our report to the fiscal. That will have to be very thorough, so that the Crown Office can decide on how to proceed.’

  ‘What options will they have under Scots law?’

  ‘It could be they don’t have too many: our system’s a lot different from yours. Down here, your coroner will have full inquest hearings into Ballester’s suicide and Stevie’s murder. That should close your book. As for how we proceed, I’ll need to consult with the fiscal on that one.’

  ‘What does the note say?’ said Proud, moving towards the sideboard on which the laptop lay. He peered at the screen, then took a pair of reading glasses from a pocket in his uniform.

  ‘I can tell you, off by heart,’ Skinner murmured. ‘I’ve read it often enough since I got here. You’ll find that it says, “I, Daniel Ballester, confess to the executions of the two bitches who dumped me, of the lad who replaced me in Zrinka’s bed, and of nosy little Amy who got too close. I die as I lived, unloved, and I leave you with a parting gift to those who have the misfortune to find my body. My last message is the soldier’s salute, ‘Farewell and fuck you all’. I’m on my way, Zrinka.” Pretty comprehensive, you’ll agree, Jimmy.’

  The chief was still staring at the screen. ‘Indeed,’ he replied.

  ‘I guess that was his motive after all,’ McGuire mused. ‘A murderous rage, flowing from rejection. Stevie was wrong.’

  ‘Was he?’

  The chief superintendent looked back at Skinner and nodded. ‘He thought it was much more complicated than that. Deep down, even as he was going down that bank, gun in hand, I don’t think he really believed that Ballester was guilty. When he found out that he was, he was reckless, for the first and only time in his police career, and it cost him his life.’

  ‘And maybe not just his,’ Skinner whispered.

  ‘Sorry?’ Proud enquired.

  ‘Ah, nothing. Mario, let’s get back to Edinburgh; I’ll brief Dorward on the way, call in to see Maggie, then head for Charlotte Square. I promised Aileen I’d do that, whatever the hour . . . after the dinner guests have gone, though. She was going to call it off, you know, that big dinner of hers, but I wouldn’t let her. The press office will have been busy, calling round everybody to tell them I wasn’t there after all, but I have a terrible feeling that my name will still be on tomorrow’s front pages.’

  McGuire frowned, grief still written across his face. ‘I’ll need to brief the press tonight myself.’

  ‘No, fuck ’em,’ said Skinner, firmly. He looked at Cairns. ‘Les, maybe your people could issue a holding statement tonight, no victim names, usual excuse, ne
xt of kin to be informed. We’ll tell the whole sad story in the morning.’

  ‘Sure,’ the Englishman agreed.

  ‘We?’ the head of CID interjected.

  ‘Yes, I’ll do it with you. My sabbatical’s on hold, for the moment. I’ll tell Royston to set up the media meeting for midday. By that time, hopefully Les’s people will have turned up the last piece of the jigsaw.’

  ‘What’s that?’ the chief constable asked.

  ‘The gun, Jimmy; we still need to find the murder weapon to tie it all up formally. But tomorrow we will; there’s nothing surer, we will.’

  Sixty-two

  ‘Ray, you’re upset: maybe you should stay with me tonight after all. You don’t have to go back.’

  ‘I do, Becky,’ Wilding replied quietly. ‘Thanks for breaking your neck to get me here, and thanks for pulling all those strings to get me on the last flight. I need to be back in Edinburgh tonight. I was Stevie’s neighbour . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’d say “oppo”; it means the same. And it means that I belong in Edinburgh. You’re a cop too: you know that. I was with him when he took the decision to go roaring off to Wooler, and I was involved in all the process that led up to it. I’m not just a police officer: I’m a witness to the events that led to his death.’

  He was aware of the orange-coated air steward fidgeting nearby, waiting to check him on board, but he ignored him and took Becky in his arms. ‘This has been a very different day,’ he told her. ‘I’d like to see you again, and to have another look at the view from the London Eye. Is that on, do you think?’

  ‘Absolutely, but I’ll probably see you in Edinburgh first. Whenever Stevie’s funeral is, I’m going to be there, and that’s a solemn promise.’

  ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I do. And I’ll make sure that Maggie knows who you are too.’

  ‘Maggie?’

  ‘His wife. Oh, fuck, his widow. And she’s pregnant too.’

  ‘Oh, she isn’t! Jesus, that’s awful.’ She paused. ‘You know, Ray, I’m thankful for just one thing. If you didn’t get sick on helicopters, you’d probably have gone through that door alongside him.’