‘A dying man’s cry for help,’ Pye replied.
‘It looks that way,’ Skinner agreed. ‘But . . .’
Eighty
Next morning, the chief constable was behind his desk at five minutes past eight. He knew that Amanda Dennis, a single, career-driven woman, was an early starter as well as a late finisher, and wanted to be there when she called. As he waited, he scanned the morning’s press, left in his outer office by the night staff before they departed.
Ed Collins’ death was as widely reported by the Scottish titles as he had expected, given the man’s profession. Some newspapers speculated upon possible reasons for the murder, ranging from gambling on football matches to his being silenced to prevent him breaking a story. ‘Closest to the truth,’ he murmured. But none made a connection to the death of the two authors, other than the Sun, which splashed a front page picture of ‘Tragic Carol Glover, the woman who lost dad and lover in the same week’. The wording seemed to imply carelessness but stopped just short of hinting at guilt. Only the Saltire hazarded no guesses, as only its editor had been told the truth by Skinner, and Aislado had no wish to share it with his rivals or anyone else.
But the main story of the morning was the astonishing disappearance of Dražen Boras from Brankholme Prison. The entire story had leaked. Ngaio Arnott’s husband had been held in custody for a while, then released on police bail. He was probably in the clear, but the Secretary of State for Justice was twisting in the wind. Skinner was fairly sure that Garfield Haywood had a very limited future in the prison service.
He had broken the news in person to Maggie Steele, barely five minutes before it was confirmed by a police spokesman. She had been less angry than he had feared, and eventually philosophical, after Skinner had told her about Boras’s volunteering information to the investigation.
‘Do you believe him, Bob, that he feels some sort of contrition?’
‘I reckon I do; so does Neil.’
‘Will they catch him?’
‘If they’re very lucky, they’ll get him in the next few hours. Longer term, they might find him through her . . . he’ll dump her eventually. I spoke to the investigating officers, and they told me that the husband’s saying he knew she was having an affair but had no idea that it was with a prisoner. Yes, they might get him.’
‘They won’t, and we both know it. When you and Mario found him, he was using an alias. A man like him, he’s bound to have another ready, for emergencies.’
She had been right, and he had been forced to agree. Boras was gone, and would leave no trail second time around.
His secure phone rang, interrupting his musing. He grabbed it. ‘Amanda.’
‘Good guess. Good news first?’
‘Whatever.’
‘OK. We’ve found Henry Mount’s informant; in fact we’ve found where his interest in Tadic began. Mount was never a spook, just run-of-the mill diplomatic service. He was never stationed in Yugoslavia, but he had a posting to Berlin as I think you know, and to Poland. Eventually he was repatriated, so to speak, and given a job in the FCO, in a section that monitors events in certain countries. His Iron Curtain experience led to him being assigned to the Yugoslav section. That’s where he saw the intelligence about Tadic’s murders, and that’s where he met his eventual source. She’s a woman called Dani Cornwell. She worked for Mount when he was an undersecretary, and they kept in touch after he quit. They were close.’
‘How close? Trudy Mount’s a friend too.’
‘They had a thing when they worked together. It stopped but their friendship didn’t. She was as affected by Tadic as he was; when she found out about the secret trial, she was outraged. Then when she learned they were going to have to do it all over again, she boiled over and poured out her soul to Mount. He agreed that the story had to be told, and thus . . .’
‘It began.’
‘Precisely. Ms Cornwell fed him everything she had and kept on digging. A couple of weeks ago she found out about Dražen Boras and his role in planting the man Ergec, and she told Henry.’
‘And a few days later he went to see Boras, and probably made himself, and Glover, dispensable in the process. Once Coben had all the information he was going to get from them, the information he needed, he shut them down, and cut their project off at source, stealing their computers and wiping out every trace of their work.’
‘He’s that thorough?’
‘For sure. We believe that his helper, Glover’s daughter’s fella, removed his hard disk and passed it on. Coben probably burgled Mount’s place himself.’
‘He killed the associate? The man Collins?’
‘Yes. The man was in it for money, but I don’t imagine he signed up to be an accessory to murder. My bet is Coben killed him before he could figure out the truth.’
‘But can you prove it?’
‘Yes, I can, for at least two of them . . . if I can find him. We’ve got a partial fingerprint on a pen, and we’ll find DNA traces for sure on a cigar box that’s on its way back from Australia. Plus we’ll get DNA from Collins’ flat. But I repeat, we need to find him.’
‘There, I’m afraid, I can’t help you. All I know is this: everything that relates to Coben, and there is very little of it, is in the papers for the Tadic trial. I can’t get anywhere near them, nor can anybody in this country, I reckon. They’re UN property, and they’re sealed. Sorry, Bob, I think you’re in a cul de sac.’
Skinner smiled. ‘I don’t agree, Amanda,’ he said. ‘There’s a man in Scotland who has automatic access to those papers, and I happen to know him.’ He paused. ‘Was that the bad news, incidentally?’
‘Not all of it. The worst concerns the witnesses Danica Andelić, and her brother. They’re dead.’
Skinner’s heart sank. ‘That’s what Glover was afraid of, and me too. When? How?’
‘Last year. After the trial, it was decided that Mirko and Danica had to be separated for a while, for their own safety, to make them as difficult to trace as possible. He was relocated with Playfair, she was established in Macedonia, and Aca went to Moldova. The Andelič children were taken in by Danica and Aca’s mother, their grandmother. They were all gypsies, so they simply joined travelling groups. I don’t know how their whereabouts leaked, but they did. Not through Mount’s contact, that’s for sure; she didn’t know. As for the how, they were both gutted . . . a favourite trick of Tadic’s, from what I’m told. Given what we know now, it seems your man Coben got to them, and then went looking for Mirko.’
Eighty-one
‘That’s it, Stevie,’ said George Regan, ‘all my stuff, like Neil told me to do.’
‘Does it bother you?’ Pye asked, looking at the folder that his colleague had laid on his desk.
‘Are you having a laugh? Of course it doesn’t bother me. I’ve made DI when I thought I might not. If the bosses say that my investigation has effectively become part of yours and that they’re to be rolled in together, I do not give a fish’s tit. It’s a bonus; it means that Lisa and I can get back to solving the usual in our rural beat, which tends to be along the lines of, Who Shot Roger fucking Rabbit?’ He glanced around the suite, and beamed. ‘It’s a real crappy office you’ve got here, by the way,’ he said, without a trace of sarcasm. ‘Nearly as bad as Torphichen Place. Ours is really nice; best I’ve ever had.’
‘I know,’ Pye agreed wistfully. ‘I used to be stationed out there, remember.’
‘Well, don’t plan on moving back. I mean to be there for a long time; until I get found out, in fact. Not that you would. You’re on the fast track, son; everybody knows that.’
‘Kind of you, George, but I’m the jammy bastard that got promoted early into dead men’s shoes, when Stevie got himself killed. That’s what everybody knows.’
‘Shite! You’re the lead investigator into one of the highest profile crimes we’ve ever had, and you’re going to get a result that’ll make you.’ He paused. ‘You are going to get a result, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean by that,’ Pye confessed. ‘If you mean that we can close the book on who killed Glover, Mount, Collins and your guy, Mustafic, or Andelić, yes. If you mean that we catch the guy, that’s another matter. I’m stymied there; it’s over to the big boss now.’
‘But when he cracks it, and lets you announce the arrest, like he always does, you will take the media credit, won’t you?’
‘Oh yes,’ Pye chuckled, ‘you can be sure of that.’
Eighty-two
It was raining, the weather that did least for the grey sandstone from which Ann Street was built. Lord Elmore stared out of his window, on a scene that matched his mood. The news that Mirko Andelič was dead had hit him hard.
He stared at his computer, at the notes for his memoirs, and wondered, very seriously, whether it was worth carrying on, or whether it should be abandoned. He was still considering the question when he saw the new chief constable walk up his drive, and heard his wife greet him at the door.
‘Bob,’ he said, gloomily, ‘what brings you back to see me? Are you going to tell me I’ve won the lottery? Don’t waste your time; not even that would do the job.’
‘Claus,’ Skinner asked, as he sat, ‘what’s second best?’
‘To what?’
‘To throwing away the key to Tadic’s cell?’
‘I don’t know. Hearing that he’s had a fatal heart attack?’
‘I don’t want anything to do with that, but how about catching Coben, how would that do?’
‘It would be consolation, I’ll grant you.’
‘Then help me. I need access to the Tadic trial papers. Can you fix that?’
‘I’m a trial judge, of course I can. What do you need?’
‘I’m told that the only things that identify Coben are in there. I need them, sent or faxed to me.’
‘Right,’ said Lord Elmore, his mood transformed. ‘Let me have a number and I’ll give the instruction. How soon do you need them?’
Skinner grinned. ‘For this evening, at the latest. I’m having a dinner party.’
The judge looked mystified, but made no comment. ‘You’ll have what you want,’ he promised.
‘Thanks.’ The chief constable handed him a card. ‘My secure fax number is on there.’
He was still smiling as he walked back to his car, and as he reached for his mobile. He dialled as he slid behind the wheel.
‘Leith CID,’ a voice answered.
‘Sauce? Chief Constable here. I need you to get hold of your Serbian translator. I have further need of her services.’
Eighty-three
He was waiting at the top of the stone staircase as his guests were shown up from the vestibule at street level. ‘Randy, Denzel,’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s good to see you. A bit of bad news, though,’ he continued as he shook hands with the Book Festival director and her partner. ‘Aileen’s been caught up in some unbreakable government business, last-minute stuff, some European crisis, and it happened too late to call you and postpone.’
‘Oh, what a disappointment,’ said Chandler.
‘I’ve found a substitute, though,’ said Skinner as he showed them into the drawing room, with its view of Charlotte Square Gardens, and the tents and pavilions that covered it. ‘My friend Neil was in the vicinity, so I’ve co-opted him to fill the empty chair. You’ve probably met him: Superintendent McIlhenney.’ The big detective stood at the window; he nodded as the newcomers entered. ‘You’re doubly honoured, you know,’ their host laughed. ‘Any other Thursday, this guy and I would be running around at North Berwick sports centre, kicking a football with a crowd of like-minded idiots.’
‘Really?’ Randall Mosley exclaimed. ‘When Aileen told me that, I thought she was joking.’
‘Hell, no! There is life after forty, I promise.’
‘Yes,’ the director agreed, ‘but you tire more easily.’
‘I thought you were still short of the milestone,’ McIlhenney remarked as he handed each guest a glass of cava.
‘I’ve got Denzel’s word for it,’ she replied lightly.
‘So,’ Skinner continued, ‘how’s the Bookfest going? Are you getting back to normal after Sunday morning’s unfortunate events?’
She frowned. ‘There is no normal at the Festival,’ she told him. ‘That’s the big discovery I’ve made in my first year in the job.’
‘First of many, everybody hopes; I hear things around town, you know, all of them good, in your case.’
‘We’ll see. It’s a hell of a job, that is for certain. Poor Ainsley; what happened to him was tragic, but it fits under the unwritten law, that whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. On the same morning that he was found, my Nobel candidate, my prize attraction, cancelled on me. I had to fill that hole, as well as the one left by Ainsley’s death. Now Fred Noble’s uncertain about participating because with Henry Mount being killed, he fears he may be next.’
‘You can relax on that score. He won’t be.’
She looked at him, curiosity in her eyes. ‘You can say that for certain?’
‘Sure.’ Skinner leaned against the fireplace set in the westward wall of the classic Georgian room. ‘He’s under round-the-clock protection, and everything that goes into his house is inspected by our people. Nobody’s going to get to him, directly as with Mr Glover, or indirectly as with Henry Mount.’ He glanced at Chandler. ‘You know their work, Denzel?’ he asked, then answered. ‘What am I thinking of? Of course you do. Your other half runs the Festival, and we’re talking about two of the city’s most distinguished writers . . . no, three, adding in Fred Noble.’ He paused. ‘But you’d know them anyway, without that; you’re a student of literature, aren’t you?’
The man nodded, his eyes a little disconcerted. ‘Actually no, it was post-war European history.’
Skinner winked at him. ‘Confession,’ he said. ‘Aileen makes me read up on our guests when we’re having dinner parties, but I was a bit busy before this one so I must have got mixed up. Mind you, I’m sure I’m right about your knowledge of contemporary crime fiction. It’s de rigeur these days to be up with that stuff.’
‘Yes,’ Chandler admitted. ‘I confess I am an aficionado.’ He glanced at his partner. ‘As you said, it comes with the territory.’
‘So you’ll appreciate the irony in the way those two men died. Killed in ways that were drawn from their own stories.’
‘No!’ the man exclaimed. ‘Was that what happened?’
‘Yup. It’s a secret from the media, of course, but I can share it with you and Randy. Glover was killed with glucose, and Henry Mount by a bullet, planted in one of his cigars.’
‘That’s right,’ McIlhenney chuckled. ‘Now, or so my people tell me, Fred Noble won’t set foot outside his front door, not even to the Oxford, just in case he’s been hypnotised and told to chuck himself under a lorry, or whatever.’
‘You get the irony, Denzel,’ said Skinner, ‘don’t you? Glover and Mount, each . . .’ he hesitated as if searching for words. ‘Oh, damn it, what’s the phrase? Shakespeare.’
‘Hoist by his own petard,’ said Chandler.
‘That’s it. Macbeth.’
‘Hamlet, actually.’
‘OK. Wrong play, wrong royal, wrong country, but you get the point. It takes a certain type of mind to conceive of something like that, and then to follow it through.’
‘Yes, I suppose it does,’ the man agreed. ‘In your career, you can’t have come across too many like this fellow.’
‘Too right,’ Skinner conceded. ‘Bastard nearly got away with it too.’ He let the words hang in the air for a second, then turned to Randall Mosley. ‘Before you came to Scotland, you two were in Europe, weren’t you?’ he asked, smiling.
She nodded, as if the exchange had passed her by. ‘Yes, that’s right, I worked for the European Commission, in the culture section, on the contemporary literature side. Denzel was living in Brussels at the time; we met at a reception.’
‘And found you had
a common interest?’
She laughed. ‘In sex, mainly. I fancied him from the first.’
‘You mean it wasn’t his pen that won you over,’ McIlhenney murmured, sipping his cava.
‘Not at first.’ She looked at him, wickedly. ‘I admit it; it was his sword.’
‘They say the pen is mightier,’ Chandler drawled in his lightly transatlantic accent, ‘but when you put it to the test . . .’
The two detectives exchanged the briefest of glances. ‘What was your field when you were in Brussels?’ Skinner asked him. ‘Randy told one of our colleagues that you’re a ghost writer. Is that what you did then?’
‘In a manner of speaking. I did a couple of biographies, one of Tito and one of Karadzic. Didn’t make any money, though. That’s why I took to ghosting; it pays very well.’
‘Will the Lord Elmore book be a money-spinner, do you think?’
Chandler seemed to lean away from him; taken aback, literally, by the question. ‘It won’t be huge, but even if it doesn’t earn out the advance I’ll be happy enough.’
‘How do you think it would have dovetailed with the one that Glover and Mount were working on?’
The writer looked at him, blankly. ‘Not at all. Why should it? They did fiction.’
‘But not exclusively, as it turns out. They were planning a factual work on the atrocities committed by a Serbian general, Bogdan Tadic, known as the Cleanser. You must have heard of him, surely. Lord Elmore was one of the judges at his trial.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of him; that episode won’t be in the book, though. Lord Elmore’s bound by confidentiality. Even if he wasn’t, he fears for the safety of the witnesses.’
‘With some justification. I don’t think Ainsley and Henry did though; they were driven by Henry’s outrage over what had happened, and the fact that it was being covered up. Tell me,’ he asked, ‘how did you hear about Claus’s book?’
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