In Loving Memory (Honey Laird Book 3)

by Gerald Hammond

  The fee-paying school attended by Cheryl Abernethy had been traced. Honey’s spirits rose, only to fall again. The school was on the outskirts of Glasgow, close to a busy commuter railway station, so that only the vaguest approximation of the family’s location could be deduced. The school records had been transferred to computer by an incompetent and only partially literate typist and recovering them was proving to be laborious and sometimes a matter of guesswork. No Abernethy family had so far been found on either side of the Firth of Forth.

  Seven MPs (European, Westminster or Scottish) had constituencies that could be considered to accord with the known facts. It was evident that enquiries had been made with less than the required tact, because two of the six gentlemen, but not the one presumed lady, had made firm but polite enquiries as to why their election expenses were being subjected to scrutiny. Each was expecting a written reply. Honey made a face at the wall. This could become nasty. It did indeed become nastier later in the morning when one of them, the supposedly Honourable Geoffrey Manquers MSP, came in personally to reinforce his objection to the matter of his election expenses being raised again. He was a distinguished-looking man in his fifties with hair that was silver rather than white or grey. He had an elevated opinion of himself. Honey passed him over to Mr Blackhouse and returned to Sandy’s room while wondering whether Mr Manquers was the parliamentarian that they were seeking. He had certainly looked at her figure with eyes that seemed to see through her clothes, which did rather suggest the libertine described by Cheryl Abernethy.

  A note from PC Knickers reported that he had listened to the chatting of the newspaper staff in the pub, but the only references to what must have been an unusual regime had been of puzzlement. It seemed that nobody below the levels of the managing editor and his deputy knew what was going on. Nobody answering the description of McRitchie had emerged from the building, nor had the name been mentioned in his hearing. In all likelihood, Honey thought, McRitchie had been sent on holiday, or on a course, and his colleagues had been told that he was ill. Alternatively, he might have been disposed of and his colleagues told that he had gone to another job. There was no way to find out without setting alarm bells ringing.

  Sandy returned, bearing two coffees. Honey suddenly felt thirsty and in need of sugar for her mental energy. While she satisfied both needs, she briefed Sandy on the weekend’s traffic. ‘That’s an awful lot of words for bugger all,’ Sandy said. He had brought a transcript. ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘They’re still trying to identify the accent and the voice-print, but the message is interesting.’

  Honey began reading.

  Don’t hang up. Remember your baby could have been inside. It’s your choice, both of you. A dead baby or twenty grand in the bank, plus your insurance of course. Wherever you go we can find you. All you have to do is to report that the black tart’s death was down to her pimp, Doug Briar, and nothing to do with anything else. If you need witnesses to back up any story, put a vase of flowers in the window over your front door and you’ll be phoned. But don’t try any tricks or we’ll know. You won’t be the first copper on the payroll. And you wouldn’t be the first to suffer bereavement for not playing ball.

  ‘I’m sending the original tape through to Mr Halliday by the next courier,’ Sandy said. ‘Strathclyde may be able to home in on that voice or get some clue from the background street noises. I don’t think we need let the threat bother us too much. With all your father’s staff warned to watch out for strangers, and most of them having dandled you on their hairy knees, I wouldn’t give much for a Glasgow thug’s chance of getting at Minka and none whatever for his chance of getting away again.’

  Honey was not sure that that was quite enough, but she was reassured when her father phoned her mobile early in the afternoon. ‘I’ve handed over the responsibility to the best security firm I know and the only one I’m prepared to trust my granddaughter’s safety to,’ Mr Potterton-Phipps said cheerfully. ‘My staff and the hired guards now know each other individually, so if anybody sneaks in he’s the Invisible Man.’

  ‘Thank you, Dad,’ Honey said. It occurred to her that this conversation was in breach of the agreement to avoid passing sensitive information over a line that could be tapped. On the other hand, when it came to her child’s safety, perhaps it was best that the opposition knew what it was up against. ‘I’m sorry if I’m putting you to a lot of expense.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. Nothing’s too good for my youngest grandchild and this is injecting a little excitement into a life that was, frankly, beginning to bore me.’

  Honey could not imagine how a bustling life that alternated between top-level business meetings and top-of-the-range shooting and fishing engagements could possibly be boring, but she said, ‘That’s all right then,’ in a weak voice.

  ‘About your other questions—’

  ‘Not on the phone, please, Dad. I’ll call you from a secure phone this evening.’

  ‘I was only going to report a lack of progress,’ her father said plaintively. ‘I’m having to go all round the houses to find what you want. Minka’s here. Would you like to speak to her?’

  Custom required that she make cooing noises down the phone but Sandy was out of the room and the desk phone was ringing. A motorcyclist was trying to hand her a package of papers and Mr Blackhouse’s bulky form was looming in the doorway. ‘Give her my love,’ Honey said, ‘and tell her that I’ll call her when I have time.’ She could feel her father’s disapproval filtering down the phone but there was a limit to the number of simultaneous conversations that she could sustain.

  Chapter Nineteen

  With Minka safely tucked away and guarded, it seemed unlikely that direct physical action would be attempted against her parents. The criminal fraternity learned many decades ago that knocking off the detectives in charge of a case only intensified the pursuit and increased the penalties – if the assailant managed to survive long enough to make a court appearance. By coincidence, killers of police officers have been known to suffer unfortunate accidents. The Lairds would, however, have preferred to change hotels regularly in order to avoid any sort of harassment. Honey stopped off on the way to the office next morning to make a booking for the following day and she watched her rear mirror with such care that she nearly ran into the back of a bus.

  As a result, she was slightly after her usual time when she arrived. Sandy was out of the room, engaged in his usual morning conference with Mr Blackhouse. Waiting patiently beside the vacant desk was a plainclothes constable – from Haddington, he announced. With a flutter of anticipation, Honey seated herself on her side of Sandy’s desk. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Madam. Chief Inspector Jowett’s compliments, and we’ve spotted your man.’

  Honey felt a big grin escaping. Then she sobered. ‘How?’

  The man relaxed. ‘I went for a snack in a caff last night and there he was. There was something rang a bell and when I looked against the light I could see the make-up covering the stain. And I heard him speak to the girl at the till. Pure Gorbals.’

  ‘You didn’t alert him, I hope?’

  The constable smiled. He was young and keen but Honey thought that she could trust him. ‘No risk of that, ma’am. I had my own car with me so I went out and waited. When he came out, all wrapped up in leathers, he got on a motorbike. An old Norton it was but it sounded healthy. I followed him from a long way back, out into the country. There was other traffic, so he’d no call to get nervous. In the end, from half a mile off, I saw his lamp stop where I know there’s an old cottage, not much more than a shack. Minutes later there was smoke and sparks at the chimney like somebody had made up the fire. I waited, just in case he came out again, but he never did. An old man used to live there, but he died last summer. I asked around, very careful, and this is his grandson. I’ve written the location by Sat Nav down for you.’ He handed over a slip of paper, then drew himself up again. ‘Mr Jowett said as how I’d been the one to spot him so I could have t
he pleasure of giving you the news.’

  It seemed that Chief Inspector Jowett had a trace of humanity after all. Honey spared some seconds for thought. ‘Thank you. You have made a young inspector very happy. And please thank Mr Jowett for me. Now, get back and go on being careful. We’d like observation kept but very carefully. We’d rather lose him than alarm him. Above all, if he gets suspicious he must not be allowed to pass the news. If any officer thinks he’s been sussed, Walsh is to be arrested immediately and kept incommunicado. Got it?’

  ‘Got it, ma’am.’

  ‘Keep it all very low-key and secret but stay in touch with your control room – we’ll need you to guide us in.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The tone was one of enthusiasm.

  Honey was immediately prey to a not unfamiliar sensation of needing to do half a dozen things, each of which took priority over all the others. She plucked the temporary cellphone out of her shoulder bag, treating it to a sneer as she did so, because she considered it very cheap and nasty compared to her own top-of-the-range model.

  After a short argument with a trusted underling, she got Chief Superintendent Halliday on the cellphone. Honey made a very brief report.

  ‘Does Mr Blackhouse know?’

  ‘I’m just about to report to him.’

  ‘Good. Do that. Then call me again and let me speak to him.’

  Honey hurried down to the detective superintendent’s office. Other officers were awaiting the big man’s attention, but she persuaded them to scatter by promising each of them priority on the morrow. When she was finally alone with Mr Blackhouse and Sandy she broke the good news. At the same time she keyed the digit for Strathclyde. ‘Mr Halliday wants to speak to you.’

  ‘How the hell did he get on to it so quickly?’

  Honey shrugged.

  Of the three senior officers, one belonged to Lothian and Borders and one to Northern; yet Mr Halliday, though lacking the authority afforded by a corpse, outranked the others. During the discussion that followed it was noticeable that Mr Blackhouse was showing unusual respect. It was also noticeable that he now faced an even quicker and more forceful organizer than himself. When he finally switched off the cellphone and returned it to her he looked, Honey thought, as if he’d drunk from somebody’s cough medicine in error instead of his own vodka and tonic.

  ‘I do not believe in undue haste,’ he said. ‘I would rather gather our forces, lay our plans and move in at dawn. Mr Halliday fears that the man may take fright and go. He’s coming through almost immediately. I said that I couldn’t be sure of rustling up enough armed and trained officers for a proper cordon so quickly – and, according to the book, we should have two cordons – so he said that he would bring some of his own men on loan.’

  ‘We’ve no reason to believe that the man has a firearm,’ Sandy said. ‘He seems to prefer a knife.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean that he won’t have one now. But we’re to make sure that everyone understands that we want this man alive.’ Mr Blackhouse seemed to become aware that Honey was still standing. ‘Do sit down, inspector. I’ll leave it to you to see how many personnel we have available who’re qualified to go armed. In two hours’ time, gather them together – incommunicado, to use your own word. Better lay on a coach and hold them in that. Feed them first.’ He turned to Sandy. ‘You and I can draft a plan of operations. See if you can get your hands on a copy of the ordnance survey plan.’

  As she rose to go, Honey noticed that a nudge on the end of the superintendent’s out-tray would push a large mug of hot coffee off the edge of his desk and into his lap, but, nobly, she denied herself the pleasure. She had become used to being treated as a female and therefore an inferior gofer.

  *

  Although Honey enjoyed testing her skills on game birds and clay pigeons, she was not bloodthirsty by nature. All the same, by mid-afternoon she was distinctly miffed. The firearms course that she had passed with flying colours during her time with the Met had also been the occasion when she first met Sandy. The qualification to wear a side arm thus had a sentimental significance for her. She had spent the middle of the day frantically gathering up every qualified officer that she could find, sometimes almost physically having to wrest them away from the leaders of their present teams. She had confiscated their personal mobile phones and impounded their radios pending their release from the coach and their collective weight rested on the rear seat of the Range Rover. She had somehow contrived to arrange for them to be fed without any word leaking beyond the catering staff.

  And now, here she was, sitting at the wheel of her own car, armed but left on the sidelines. The two superintendents and Sandy had ridden in the coach and briefed the officers there, but it seemed to have been decided – and Honey suspected that Sandy had had a hand in it – that she was much too valuable to risk in the firing line. She had always resented any attempt to leave her out of the action on grounds of gender, but in her mind this was undoubtedly what was afoot. Yet it had been clear from the final report on the firearms course that she was a better and safer pistol shot than Sandy. If she found that he had spread word to the contrary just to keep her safe it might be gratifying, but he would nevertheless be punished. A counter-rumour, to the effect that during his time in the States his American colleagues had refused to accompany him if he was armed, should do the trick. Americans, themselves the masters of Friendly Fire, can get touchy on the subject. She was wearing a 9mm Smith and Wesson semi-automatic in a holster on her hip and under the jacket of her cashmere suit, but she had been relegated to following the coach in her own car. This was on the insubstantial grounds that separate transport might be required and hers was the car least likely to be recognized by the opposition. She was to act as an emergency backstop, behind the cordon, possibly standing by to convey prisoner and guard back to Edinburgh. She sat and seethed.

  Now that the die was cast the personal radios were back in use. The motorcycle officer who had brought the tidings that morning had met them several miles short of Haddington and, bypassing that pleasant small town, had led them in the direction of the Lammermuirs. Almost immediately they had escaped from the hustle and bustle of Edinburgh traffic and its A-roads into the B-roads that wandered through fertile farmland. The coach had been abandoned behind a rural pub, by arrangement with a landlord who probably expected boom business when the operation was over.

  The long file of armed officers was led by the motorcycle policeman, on foot for once. It vanished over a fold in the ground and through some trees. Honey was summoned by radio to bring her car up a short stretch of farm access road and then take to a track between two hillocks of tumbledown boulders where farming, forestry and building were all quite impossible and only rabbits thrived.

  She settled down to wait in a flattened space used as a machinery dump, between a multi-gang plough and a rusty harrow, while the daylight turned pink and the sun sagged lower in the sky, painting the layers of cloud in discordant colours.

  She had no view of the cottage where Dougal Walsh was holed up, but by the occasional radio traffic she could follow the laying of the trap as the cordon was pulled around the cottage. From her earlier study of the map, she could tell that they had approached the cottage from the rear. She heard her husband’s voice directing two men to a position where they could close off any frontal arrival or departure.

  Early rain had died away leaving puddles to reflect the dying sun, but the day remained dank and cold. She had half-turned the Range Rover so that she could see the farmhouse and its attendant barns. The farmer parked his tractor in one of the barns and went indoors. A fox came through the boulders, sniffing for young rabbits. Crows were streaming and tumbling steadily to roost. It was a peaceful scene, with the land laid out in a patchwork of different greens and browns. Relegated to the position of a waiting chauffeur, Honey soon found her eyes heavy. She began to doze. She could picture Minka on her grandfather’s estate, being proudly exhibited by June. The sound of the crows became the voi
ces of the admiring throng.

  She snapped awake as the voices on the radio became more urgent. A sound reached her but not via the radio. It could have been a distant hammer blow or the popping of a paper bag. It sounded too insignificant to have been a shot but, Honey reminded herself, any but the largest handguns make no more than a feeble-sounding pop when fired out of doors. That it had been a gunshot was confirmed immediately by a roar over the radio, in what was undoubtedly the voice of Detective Superintendent Blackhouse, reminding all and sundry that they wanted the man alive. Whether the shot had been fired by Dougal Walsh or by one of the cordon remained unclear. What did seem clear was that any shot had failed to find a mark.

  Another sound was rising above the hiss and crackle of the radio and the cawing of crows on their way to roost. Surely Dougal Walsh did not have a microlight aircraft available? If so, they had probably lost him. Then she remembered the old Norton and the sound resolved itself into a powerful but old-fashioned, low-revving motorbike engine. It took her several seconds to judge from the growing volume that it was coming in her general direction. It could have been heading past her on another track, but she thought not. She hesitated before remembering that she had the only vehicle on the scene. She started the Range Rover’s engine and engaged gear, but before she could pull forward and block what there was of a pathway between the rocks, the motorbike reared up into the gap, bounced spectacularly, executed a majestic wobble, recovered balance and roared across the flattened ground to her front. It seemed that Dougal Walsh had leaped into the saddle without waiting to dress for motorcycling on a damp day. His helmet dangled from the handlebars and he was in shirtsleeves.

  Chapter Twenty

  It was instinctive to pursue. A wild animal is programmed to follow when another runs away. Honey threw the Range Rover forward and dragged it round. The permanent four-wheel drive gave the powerful vehicle a formidable acceleration. A spur of rock lunged at her and without the power steering she could never have swerved in time. Then the Norton was a dark blob fleeing down the farm road in front of her. She put her foot down and prayed that this Range Rover handled identically at speed to the one that had burned.