17 - Death's Door

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘In theory, but he didn’t have one of them either. There was hardly anything in the place: shirt, socks, shoes, underwear, a second pair of jeans and an outdoor jacket. That was all.’

  A thin smile creased Skinner’s face. ‘Let me get this right, DI Dorward. You’re suggesting, on the basis of no concrete evidence, indeed on the basis of a complete lack of such, that Daniel Ballester’s apparent suicide was staged, and that the person who killed him then rigged the grenade that Stevie walked into. Does that sum it up?’

  ‘Either that’s what happened or, rather less likely in my opinion, especially in view of what was said in the suicide message on the laptop, somebody went into the place after he had strung himself up and did it. Now maybe you see why I wanted to bounce it off you before trying it on the rest of them out there.’

  ‘You’re crackers, Arthur,’ Skinner declared. ‘You’re the conspiracy theorist to end them all . . .’ he laughed ‘. . . or you would be if I didn’t exist, because I’ll go along with what you’re saying. There’s just one drawback, though. How did this person wire up the grenade from the outside?’

  ‘He didn’t, not completely. He ran the wire through the keepers, then he closed the door, reached through the letterbox and hooked it round the handle.’

  ‘The letterbox is big enough?’

  ‘Just. I did it myself, and if I could . . .’ The inspector held out a ham-sized right hand. ‘In the process, I scratched myself on a rough bit on the brass frame. I took a wee piece of skin off. But you’ll never guess: when I looked for it, with a magnifying-glass, I found two pieces there.’ He took two small clear plastic cases from his pocket and held them up. ‘One of these is mine. The other isn’t. I don’t know which is which, but DNA comparison will tell us soon enough. If you can find this bloke, sir, he might just have signed his name for us.’

  For the first time in almost two full days, Skinner was beaming as he stepped back into the main office. He laid the report on Pye’s desk. ‘Read that, all of you,’ he said. ‘Read it and learn from the mad genius Dorward. Sammy, have we taken steps to acquire the autopsy report on Ballester?’

  ‘I’ve got it, sir,’ Wilding volunteered, ‘and the one on Stevie. I had them e-mailed to me an hour ago. There’s the Ballester printout.’ He handed over a folder. ‘It’s straightforward: death by strangulation.’

  ‘Sure, but . . .’ Holding the document in his left hand he flipped it open and scanned through it. ‘Obvious suicide,’ he murmured, ‘so how thorough was the pathologist?’ Suddenly his right index finger stabbed at a paragraph. ‘Very thorough,’ he exclaimed, then began to read aloud: ‘One other injury was apparent on the body, a depressed fracture of the left zygomatic and temporal bones. This was peculiar in that it was certainly sustained post mortem. I can only speculate that it was caused by the body being dropped by the officers who cut it down . . . Sorry, lads . . . Within this area there were two small marks on the surface of the skin, seven and a half centimetres apart, which appear to be burns. It is not possible to say whether these were inflicted before or after death.’

  He turned to another part of the report. ‘It says here,’ he continued, ‘that Ballester was one metre eighty-two centimetres tall, about six feet, weighed eighty-three kilos, thirteen stone, give or take, and that he was in good physical condition. Mario, how would you subdue a big guy like that?’

  McGuire held up a massive fist. ‘Same way as you would, probably. If you two were concluding in there that Ballester’s suicide was assisted, to put it gently, then somebody bigger, or harder, banjoed him, I guess. Maybe when you lost it in the cottage and walloped him you covered up something that was there already.’

  Skinner shook his head. ‘There were no signs of a fight, in the kitchen or anywhere else.’

  ‘Then what about a stun gun?’

  ‘That’s what I’m looking at. The picture in my head is showing me Ballester answering a knock at the door.’

  ‘Why would he do that? He was on the run.’

  ‘Then, whoever it was, he knew him; the door had glazed panels, remember, so he’d have been able to see who was on the other side. Either he knew the caller, or he reckoned it was one of us, knew he was trapped and was prepared to give himself up. He didn’t have the gun to hand, remember: it was stashed in the shed, so shooting his way out wasn’t an option. My thinking is that he let his guard down and the newcomer zapped him and, yes, probably with a stun gun. That would have been quick, effective, and afterwards virtually untraceable.’

  ‘Too right, sir,’ said Montell. ‘I’ve used one in South Africa. You shoot three-quarters of a million volts into somebody, it fucks up his nervous system big-time. He’s helpless, all yours.’

  ‘Why doesn’t it fry him?’ asked Singh. ‘That’s what I’ve never understood.’

  ‘That’s because you spell “physics” with an F, Tarvil. A stun gun delivers a huge voltage, but it has very low amperage, so it’s entirely non-lethal.’

  Skinner looked at him impatiently. ‘Thanks for the lesson,’ he said. ‘But that’s my scenario. Ballester was knocked down so efficiently that his assailant or assailants ... it might not have been the Aeron guys, but there may very well have been more than one attacker . . . were able to hang him, unresisting, from the hook in the ceiling.’

  ‘But how did they know the hook was there, sir?’ asked Montell.

  The DCC frowned. ‘You know, Griff, there’s a fine line between being a devil’s advocate and being a smartarse, and you want to be sure that you never step over it when you interrupt me.’ The detective constable gulped. ‘Happily, this time you’re just about all right,’ Skinner continued. ‘Have you ever seen a suicide by hanging?’ he asked.

  ‘No, boss,’ Montell confessed, ‘I haven’t. A couple of lynchings, in my early days on the job back home, but that’s all.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve come across a few, and quite recently I saw one that was supposed to be a suicide, but wasn’t. If you want to do yourself, you don’t need a hook, or a tree branch or anything other than a ligature. In the case I’m talking about, the guy was on his knees, but if circumstances hadn’t proved it otherwise, it would have been accepted that he’d topped himself.

  ‘So the hook’s irrelevant; it was handy, that’s all. He was strangled by the rope, as intended. Once he was, the message was typed on the laptop, by someone wearing gloves, so that nobody could ever prove that the dead man hadn’t done it, and the grenade was put in place.’

  ‘I don’t get that part, sir,’ said Pye. ‘Why do that?’

  ‘I don’t get it either, Sammy, not at the moment. But let’s not get sidetracked by it. Who are we looking at? Who are our potential suspects?’

  ‘Surely the two guys from Aeron,’ said Wilding, emphatically. ‘Spicer and his mate. They have to be first on the list.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m wrong, Ray, but didn’t the man you and Stevie spoke to say that they left for Wooler around midday?’

  ‘Maybe he lied.’

  ‘You were there. Is that what you thought at the time?’

  The sergeant shook his head. ‘So let’s assume that he didn’t. When does the pathologist reckon Ballester died?’

  ‘She says around eleven o’clock, but she can’t be precise about it, since there was a fire burning. The place doesn’t have central heating, and it had been a cold morning in Wooler. Ballester must have lit it when he got up, but as the sun got higher the room must have got a lot warmer.’

  ‘Yes,’ McGuire agreed. ‘It was still pretty warm when we were there, even though the fire had burned itself out a while before. But even at that, he must have been killed well before Stevie spoke to the man Spicer on his mobile.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Skinner continued, ‘and they were still there. According to your statement, Ray, they were even prepared to keep the place under observation until the police arrived; in fact, they did just that. If they’d just rigged a lethal trap they’d hardly have hung around to watch it s
prung, would they? Let’s agree they’re in the clear. So . . .’ He paused and looked at each officer one by one. ‘. . . that points us straight at one man, the man who gave them their orders, the man whose daughter is one of the murder victims, the only other person who knew where Ballester was, and the man who put a price on his head: Davor Boras. It’s time that he and I had a conversation.’

  ‘Boss,’ said Wilding, ‘we’re not allowed to go near him. Becky told Stevie and me that she’d been specifically ordered not to bring him into the Barker investigation, by one of her big bosses. And that woman from the Home Office was all over our interview. He’s got protection, from political contacts, Becky reckons.’

  ‘Ray,’ the DCC replied quietly, ‘we’re investigating the murder of one of our colleagues, one of our friends. If Boras knows something about that, there is no power in this land that will protect him from me. Have you spoken to DI Stallings yet?’

  ‘Yes, boss, while you were in there.’ He nodded towards the now empty room.

  ‘Well, call her back, and tell her that her secondment starts this afternoon. Mario, you and I are going to see Boras, and Inspector Stallings can come with us.’ He looked back at Wilding. ‘Tell her not to worry. By the time we get there, all the arrangements will have been made. I’ll send her flight details as soon as I have them.’

  ‘What if the Home Office try to get in the way, sir?’

  ‘Then somebody’s getting arrested for obstruction. Sergeant, I’ll lift the Home fucking Secretary if I have to.’

  Sixty-eight

  ‘You realise, boss,’ said McGuire as he and Skinner strode along the air bridge at Heathrow, ‘that we have no legal right to be here. We’re investigating two homicides; everybody but us thinks that one was a suicide, and that the other is a closed case. But neither of them took place within our area. By the book, we should be reporting what we believe to Les Cairns and letting his CID take it from here.’

  The DCC smiled. ‘It’s not too often I say this, Mario, but bugger the book. Les Cairns and his people have got access to the same information as us, and they yet don’t see anything in it to contradict their assumptions. We’ve found Ballester and you and I are happy to sign off on him as the guy who killed the three girls and Harry Paul, on the basis of motive, weapon and everything else.

  ‘They’ve got him dead as a suicide, killing Stevie Steele in a last, bitter, random act of violence, and they haven’t looked beyond that. They’ll have read Arthur’s report, and they’ve either missed or ignored the significance of the eyelets.

  ‘I’m not bloody prepared to trust this investigation to them. Now I’ll admit, privately, that Arthur was a wee bit naughty bringing those skin fragments back to Scotland and leaving that out of his findings, but what the hell? One of them was his own!’

  He looked at his colleague. ‘Are you nervous about this? Because if you are, we’ll collect DI Stallings and take the first plane back home.’

  McGuire snorted. ‘Did I say I was nervous? I’m sure Les Cairns will welcome our assistance at the end of the day.’

  ‘That’s the spirit. But if you want justification, what are we doing? Officially, we’re going to see a bereaved father, a man who has just announced the donation of a million sterling to the Police Dependants’ Trust, to advise him that the man who killed his daughter is dead himself. That’s common courtesy, man, and to prove it, when we get back to Scotland, we’ll pay similar visits to the parents of Stacey Gavin, Amy Noone and Harry Paul.’

  ‘You really do think that Boras killed Stevie, don’t you?’

  ‘Or had him killed. I’m absolutely certain of it, not that I believe he was trying to. The trap was set for someone else, but I’m a way off knowing why.’ As he finished, they reached the end of the arrivals corridor, to see a tall, attractive, dark-haired woman, walking purposefully towards them, against the flow of disembarked passengers.

  ‘Now I know why Ray stayed over,’ McGuire murmured. ‘But I’m wondering what the hell she saw in him.’

  ‘When you can answer that,’ said Skinner, ‘you can chuck the police and start the dating website to end them all. DI Stallings?’ he asked, as she came within hailing distance.

  ‘Yes, sir. Deputy Chief Constable Skinner?’

  ‘That’s right, and this is DCS McGuire, my head of CID. You’ll be reporting to him during your brief secondment to us. Do we have transport?’

  ‘Nearby: I’m in the short stay.’

  Stallings led the way out of Terminal One and into the car park. She showed her warrant card at the exit booth and the barrier was raised.

  ‘Where are we headed?’ said Skinner, in the front passenger seat.

  ‘We’re going to the Continental IT office, in central London. I checked with them to confirm that Mr Boras would be there all afternoon, and made an appointment for both of you to visit him.’

  ‘All three of us: you’re coming too. You’re playing on my team for the present.’

  ‘When are we going back north?’ she asked. ‘If it’s today, I’ll need to make time to go home and pack.’

  ‘That’ll be okay. If we go back tonight, you can fly north tomorrow morning. But we’re flexible; it depends on how we get on with Boras. As you saw when we met, we’ve both brought overnight bags, just in case.’

  ‘Ahh.’ Stallings fell silent as she drove out of the airport and picked up the M4.

  The DCC glanced at her. ‘Something on your mind, Inspector?’ he said quietly.

  ‘No, sir.’

  Skinner grinned. ‘Did nobody tell you I’m a mind-reader? Out with it.’

  Hesitantly, she risked a quick look at him. ‘Well, sir, it’s what you said about Mr Boras, that the length of your stay depends on how you get on with him. I thought that this was a courtesy call, to advise him of the conclusion of your investigation into his daughter’s murder.’

  ‘You forgot about us thanking him for giving a million to the PDT.’

  ‘Yes, and that.’

  ‘It’s all true, all of it. However, my big friend here and I have a couple of questions to ask him. The way that he answers them may determine how courteous we are.’

  ‘I see.’ Nervousness replaced hesitancy in Becky Stallings’s voice.

  ‘What did you think of our boy Stevie?’ the DCC asked her suddenly.

  ‘In our very brief acquaintance,’ she replied, ‘I thought he was a very nice guy. I also saw that he was a brilliant police officer. The way he handled Keith Barker was as good as anything I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘Yeah. Stevie was all that. He’d have gone all the way in the force; I’m in no doubt about that.’

  ‘How’s his wife bearing up?’

  ‘She’s also an exceptional police officer, and an exceptional person. She’s dealing with it.’

  ‘Would she mind me going to the funeral?’

  ‘Becky, I think she’ll insist on it. In fact, while you’re with us, I imagine she’d like to meet you.’

  ‘I’d be . . .’ She paused.

  ‘I know, it’ll be awkward, but it’ll be good for both of you.’

  ‘In that case, I’d be happy to visit her; maybe with Ray.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘DS Wilding is like the rest of us, bereaved but continuing to function professionally. Don’t worry about him. He’s a good lad; he’s one of mine, but don’t ever tell him I said that. It would go to his head.’

  ‘One of yours?’

  ‘Mario knows what I mean. Don’t you, mate?’ He glanced over his shoulder, then back at Stallings. ‘I cherish every police officer, every man and woman who carries a warrant card, plain-clothes or uniform. But some I cherish even more than others, because I see a bit of me in them.’

  He smiled grimly. ‘Be in no doubt, Becky, I wasn’t out of the room when they were handing out egos. I was at the front of the queue and I got first pick.’

  He paused. ‘Every so often, though, something happens that re
minds me that I’m not infallible. A few years back, one of mine went very bad. More recently, I put another in a situation that I thought he could handle. He couldn’t, and maybe he’ll never be the same again. I’m going to look after him, mind you. I’m going to keep him on the force and I’m going to help him get back his self-esteem.’ He glanced backwards again. ‘That’s a decision I’ve made since Saturday night, Mario.’

  ‘Bandit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How are you going to do it? That report didn’t make good reading.’

  ‘I’m going to keep him close. He’ll replace McGurk, but with a bigger job, as executive officer not just to me but to everybody in the Command Corridor. Sorry, Becky,’ he exclaimed. ‘Digression.’

  ‘And Stevie was one of yours as well?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. Top of the class.’ Skinner sat in silence for a while, staring ahead through the windscreen as the motorway bore into the city, and as world-famous landmarks came into view. They were heading through Holborn before he spoke again.

  ‘We think Boras killed Stevie, Becky.’

  ‘What?’ The shout escaped before she had a chance to choke it off, but she managed to keep the car under control.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry to startle you. I said that we believe that Boras may have been responsible for Stevie’s murder. We do not buy Ballester as a suicide. All the evidence points to him having shot Zrinka and the others, but we reckon that when Boras learned this, and discovered where he was hiding out, he either went up there and killed him or, more likely, he ordered it done.’

  ‘You mean that you’re going to interrogate him as a murder suspect?’

  ‘No. I’m telling you that we’re going to play it by ear, but advising you that the conversation might take an interesting turn.’

  Keeping her eyes on the road, she smiled. ‘That sounds like fun. Mind you, sir, the Home Office will not like it when they find out.’

  ‘Does that bother you?’

  ‘Not one small piece.’

  ‘That’s the lady.’