The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner) Page 10

  ‘Absolutely,’ Haddock confirmed. ‘It was empty; I know because I knelt on it when I looked in the safe. It’ll still be there, and maybe there’s a chance Arthur Dorward’s people will be able to tell us what was inside it.’

  Thirteen

  ‘I’m knackered,’ Sarah whispered, leaning against her husband on the garden room sofa. There was a sitting room in the house itself, but they never used it other than to watch television. ‘You knackered?’

  ‘I won’t know until I try to sleep,’ he confessed. ‘I’ve seen things today that will be with me for a long time.’

  ‘You’ve seen such things many times before. Too many, I know,’ she added.

  ‘Rarely involving people I know, though; when I see those, they never go away. You’ll autopsy them both tomorrow, but I suppose it’ll be different for you. If you brought things home in your head I’d be peeling you off the ceiling through the night.’

  ‘You want the truth?’ she murmured. ‘Sometimes I do just that. Children: I’m a mum so I associate with the people who’ve lost them. Burns victims, they’re bad, and there was an acid attack a few years ago that will always be fresh in my memory. We’re taught to be dispassionate, but they can’t train all of the human reactions out of us. Terry Coats, I’ll be okay with him, but honestly, I don’t think I’ll be able to banish all thoughts of the Griff Montell that I met with Alex.’

  ‘Maybe you should,’ Bob said. ‘Going by the things in his locker, and the stuff that I’m told Sauce and big Singh found in his house, there was a hell of a lot about the guy that we didn’t know.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Designer clothes, a wardrobe full of them. Cash, plenty of it. Gold coins worth six figures. A burner SIM card; I can’t think of a legitimate reason for a cop to have one of those. Most worrying of all, there was a gun; a pistol. There’s no record of him ever having a permit for it. Yet Sauce told me it was clean. The serial number was intact; most illicit weapons, they’ve been removed. It looked like a standard police firearm, but it isn’t. Not one of ours . . . theirs . . . at any rate.’

  ‘Could he have bought it in South Africa and brought it home with him?’

  ‘Packed in a suitcase that’s going to be X-rayed? Somehow I doubt that.’

  ‘Is it that big a deal?’ she asked. ‘I come from a nation of gun owners, so maybe I look at it from a different angle. There are gun nuts in every walk of life.’

  ‘I know there are, but unlicensed possession is illegal in this country; you can go to jail. A serving police officer found with one almost certainly would. That’s a heavy deterrent, yet Griff still had one. It was a hell of a risk; I’m afraid that when Sauce finds out why he had it, we’re not going to like it.’

  Sarah glanced up at him. ‘Don’t fly off the handle at this but . . . do you think there is the slightest chance . . .’ She hesitated.

  ‘That Alex knew about it? I admit that question crossed my mind; I feel guilty about harbouring it, but I’m certain she didn’t. I believe that if she’d found out about it she’d have told him to hand it in. She’d have forced him, in fact, given him an ultimatum. She’s an officer of the court and she takes that seriously.’

  ‘Did you ask her about the clothes and the other stuff when you saw her this morning?’

  ‘I only knew about the things in his locker then,’ Bob told her. ‘I decided that the time wasn’t right, so I didn’t mention them. Sauce is going to interview her properly tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll talk her through everything. One thing I do know. When they did have one of their occasional get-togethers, it was always at her place. As first that was because his sister lived with him. After she moved out, Alex made a point of keeping it that way. She insisted that she saw him only as a friend and an . . .’ He stopped short.

  ‘And an occasional shag?’ his wife suggested.

  ‘If you want to put it that way, yes. The way she put it to me was that she didn’t want to get her feet under his table even once.’

  ‘Noele had no such qualms, from what you said.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed, ‘and from what Sauce told me half an hour ago, there’s video evidence of that, and more.’

  ‘Jesus,’ she protested, ‘he didn’t! Did he?’

  ‘Constant video monitoring, according to Jackie Wright. Nobody’s saying he got his rocks off watching it, but it’s there, on his computer and apparently up in the Cloud.’

  ‘Oh my God, if someone hacks into it. Can’t Sauce delete it?’

  ‘In the circumstances, I suspect that he’d need the permission of the procurator fiscal to do that.’

  ‘Did she know? Was the camera obvious?’

  ‘Apparently not. It was built in to the alarm system’s motion sensor.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Bob, does ours have that?’

  ‘No, I was offered that option when it was fitted, but I declined. I even made the installer show me the inside of each sensor before he put them up.’ He grinned. ‘Maybe I’ve been hanging around the spooks for too long.’

  ‘You and Sauce were on the phone in the office for quite a long time,’ Sarah remarked. ‘What were you talking about?’

  ‘He quizzed me about the story that Terry Coats spun me, the day that Noele slung him out and he turned up here looking for trouble. The more I think about it the more significant it becomes and the more I regret not taking it seriously. I think I’ve recalled all the detail now and given him a proper line of enquiry. Coats claimed that the girl we caught him with was part of a scheme to import stolen Krugerrands into the country. She was cabin crew and, with others, would bring coins from South Africa into Edinburgh among her possessions. They’d then be spent in a shop. To me, it sounded crazy at the time, but in fact it’s so fucking simple, it’s dazzling. They’d be accepted as currency, at a ridiculously low value, and that would be it, they’d be in the country, seemingly legitimately, to be disposed of on the open market.’

  ‘But why do this? Why not simply sell them in South Africa?’

  ‘Because they were stolen. According to Coats, years ago there was a robbery there, in which a huge quantity of Krugerrands were taken. The haul was so big, possibly twenty, thirty million sterling, possibly even more, that the thieves may have sat on them for years before they started to move them on. The source of the information about the robbery was a South African chum of his . . . Griff Montell. His knowledge of the smuggling operation, he said, came from a contact in the shop.’

  ‘How many smuggled coins are we talking about?’ she asked.

  ‘No idea. It depends how many people were involved, as well as the woman Coats mentioned.’

  ‘The shop must have been in on it, surely.’

  ‘Very much so; that and the airline Coats’ girlfriend worked for; it was called Wister Air. I’d never heard of it, but I did a quick google this evening and it was there, although it doesn’t fly to Edinburgh anymore. He never mentioned the name of the shop but he did say that both were owned by a Russian.’

  ‘How many staff were involved in the smuggling?’

  ‘I have no idea, but if Sauce can find Terry’s girlfriend, she might know.’

  ‘And Griff, how did he tie into all of this?’

  ‘And how did he happen to have a stash of Krugerrands in his safe, along with nearly ninety grand in cash? My big worry is that Griff didn’t simply know about that gold robbery, but that he was part of it.’

  Fourteen

  Sauce Haddock rubbed his eyes with both hands; they felt as if half a beach had been washed into them overnight. He blinked hard to clear his vision, then shrugged his shoulders as if to shake off the weight that fate had dumped on them. He and Cheeky, his partner, Cameron Davis by her Sunday names, the latter coming from her stepfather, had been planning to grab a last-minute holiday break in the Canaries. In the wake of the double murder investigation, that had been postponed until Easter, and maybe later if Sammy Pye had not recovered from his mystery illness by then. He suspected that the D
CC knew what the problem was, and the fact that it had not been shared with him made him worry about the man who was both his boss and his friend.

  ‘You ready to go?’ Tarvil Singh asked him, breaking into his thoughts. ‘You’re miles away.’

  He blinked again. ‘Sorry, these early morning starts are worst in the winter. Are we sure they’ll be there?’

  ‘The DCC said so, but there’s only one way to find out.’ The DS opened Zoom on Haddock’s computer and placed the call. For around thirty seconds they stared at their own weary faces on the screen, until they shrank to a box on the top right corner and were replaced by two women. The older of the two was familiar to them both; Mary Chambers had been the first woman to make Chief Superintendent rank in the old Edinburgh force. She could have gone on to command rank in its replacement, but she was of the Bob Skinner school and had wanted no part of it. With thirty-seven years’ service, she had taken her pension and gone into a happy retirement with her younger partner, helping her run the online graphic design business that she had set up. Neither detective had seen her since then; each was surprised by the change in her. The severe box haircut had gone, replaced by a longer look from which the grey had been banished by a glossy auburn colouring. The stiff white shirt they remembered had been replaced by a sleeveless yellow blouse. A medallion hung around her neck and her interlocked fingers were adorned by several rings. Most surprising of all, she wore eye make-up and a pale pink lipstick.

  Spring Montell was her junior by almost twenty years but appeared to be catching her up. She and Griff had been identical twins, facially and, to an extent, in build. She wore a black T-shirt; unlike her partner, she was without make-up, her eyebrows were un-plucked, and her grey-flecked black hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Even in her bereavement her appearance came as a shock to the DI. Having known her only by name, he had read too much into that and had expected a slight, ethereal, womanly figure rather than the version he saw on the screen.

  ‘Good morning, lads.’ Chambers’ greeting sounded slightly tinny, but her voice came through clearly. ‘You look bloody terrible, if you don’t mind me saying so. In case you were wondering, I’m going to sit in on this,’ she announced; her tone did not invite discussion. ‘Spring’s still pretty fragile, and if I think at any time she’s not up to this, I’m going to pull the plug.’

  ‘That’s fair enough, Ms Chambers,’ Haddock said.

  ‘Sauce, it’s Mary, okay? You’ve grown up and I’ve grown older.’

  He smiled. ‘Fair enough, Mary. Spring,’ he continued, ‘we haven’t met. I’m Detective Inspector Harold . . .’

  ‘I know who you are, Sauce,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘Griff used to talk about you. He called you the Chosen One, and I don’t think he was being kind. And you’ll be DC Singh; from the way he described you, there can only be one of you. Or is it DS now?’

  He nodded. ‘It is. I managed to fool the promotion board.’

  Haddock leaned forward. ‘Have you told the family, Spring?’

  ‘I told my ex-sister-in-law. She was shocked, but not hysterical. They really did part badly. Apart from her, there’s nobody to tell.’

  ‘Hold on,’ Chambers exclaimed. ‘You told me you had a cousin in Cape Town. What was his name again? I can’t remember.’

  ‘Tom,’ Spring said, a little irritably. ‘Tom DuPlessis. I haven’t seen him for years, so I haven’t called him, but the story made the front pages this morning, so he’ll know. Did you see my brother’s body, Sauce?’ she asked, sharply.

  ‘Yes, I did, in the car when it was dumped outside the police station.’

  ‘Did he . . . ?’ She frowned. ‘Was it . . . ?’

  ‘He never knew what hit him, Spring,’ Haddock replied. ‘He was shot once in the back of the head; at close range, the pathologist said. It would have been instantaneous.’

  ‘Was he killed in the car?’

  ‘No, somewhere else; we don’t know where yet. We’re working on it.’

  ‘I’m sure you are. Why were they left outside the police station?’

  ‘Our guess is that whoever did it was making a statement, to us, the police, I suppose. They must have known that he was stationed there.’

  ‘And are you thinking it was related to something he was working on?’ she asked. ‘Because I don’t see how that could be. Griff felt that his police career had become a waste of time. When he applied for promotion he assumed it would be to detective inspector, but instead the last chief constable, Martin, stuck him in a uniform and gave him a box of pencils to push. My brother knew why he did that too; he told me so often enough.’

  Haddock leaned forward, making his on-screen image bigger. ‘What did he believe, Spring?’

  ‘He reckoned that he was being vindictive; he believed that it had to do with him sleeping with Alex Skinner, with her being Martin’s woman.’

  ‘Ex at the time, I think you’ll find,’ Haddock corrected her.

  ‘Not always, I think you’ll find yourself,’ she countered. ‘Griff and I shared everything towards the end. We learned that lesson from the fight we had when I teamed up with Mary. He’d talk to me about his love life all the time. He’d talk to me about everything. There were occasions, he told me, when Martin had really pissed Alex off, that she’d phone him, and he’d go along to her place. She’d fuck his brains out, he said, just to let off steam. His promotion happened after they split; he knew that Martin couldn’t block it, but he did him all the damage that he could. Griff was convinced that Martin had known everything that went on in Alex’s life, even after they broke up. He was even convinced that he’d had her watched.’

  ‘Did he ever mention this to Alex?’ Singh asked.

  ‘He may have done, I’m not sure. But he was sure of it; he believed the guy had it in for him, big time. Where is Martin now?’

  The sharpness of her question seemed to take Chambers by surprise. She laid a hand on her arm. ‘He’s in America, love, lecturing in one of the top universities. He left the country after he quit the job; he said he wanted some space.’

  ‘So what? He has children; he’s probably home for Christmas.’

  Haddock intervened. ‘Spring, I have to tell you that Sir Andrew Martin is not a suspect in your brother’s murder. Whatever grievance he might have had against Griff, I doubt that he’d ever heard of Terry Coats, the man who was killed with him. Have you? Did he ever mention him to you?’

  ‘That’s who the other man in the car was?’ she exclaimed. ‘Griff told me that he had a new girlfriend, another police officer. Her name was Noele; he said that she was a single mother, the ex-wife of a guy he knew slightly, and he said that his name was Terry Coats. He’d been a cop, he said, but that was all. What’s his history?’

  ‘He served in the Strathclyde force, but never in our lot; when he died he was employed in security at Edinburgh Airport. Noele, his ex, is my sergeant; naturally, she’s excluded from the investigation.’

  ‘And they wound up dead together? That’s weird.’

  ‘It is,’ Mary Chambers agreed. ‘Do you have a connection between them, other than the woman?’

  ‘Possibly,’ he replied. ‘Spring, did Griff ever talk to you about a robbery in South Africa around ten years ago in which a shedload of gold coins was stolen?’

  Her eyes widened as she stared at him. ‘Did he talk to me about it? He was involved in it. He was a victim. He and his partner were the police escort when it happened. It was on the outskirts of Pretoria; they had picked up a consignment from the Rand refinery in Jo’burg in an armoured van, and they were escorting it to a bullion warehouse when they were ambushed on a quiet stretch of road. Griff was shot in the shoulder and in the head; his partner was killed and so were the van drivers. The money’s never been recovered.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Chambers confirmed. ‘There’s a chap in my bridge club here who was on the force at the time. He told me all about it; I knew some of it, of course, from Spring.’

  ‘Did
they have any leads?’ Haddock asked. ‘We heard that Russians might have been involved.’

  ‘You know how it is, there were all sorts of conspiracy theories; Russians, the Mafia, there was even one nutter who insisted that the CIA had done it to raise cash to fund covert operations in Africa. I doubt that anyone will ever know for sure.’

  ‘Did your card-playing friend fill you in on the details?’

  ‘As much as they ever found out. Most of it was speculation; Griff was the only survivor and he was out of it for most of the time. He stepped out of the police vehicle; one of them shot him before he could even draw his firearm. Fannie, his partner, tried to pull his own gun as he was being hauled out of the car. The robber shot him in the side, then shot Griff again, in the head . . . or so he thought: the bullet knocked him out but it didn’t penetrate his skull. The doctor who treated him said he was the luckiest man he’d ever seen. After he recovered they gave him a medal and promoted him into CID.’

  ‘It left a mark on him, though,’ Spring added. ‘He was different after it. His behaviour changed at home; Annelise, his wife, got the rough end of his tongue . . . nothing else, mind . . . until finally she looked elsewhere. They got divorced, she got hefty child support . . . even though she married an accountant who earned five times what Griff did . . . and that was when he decided he had to look for an international transfer.’

  ‘And you went with him?’ Singh asked.

  ‘I decided it was best,’ she replied. ‘I never liked Annelise. Left to my own devices, I might have done her some damage for the way she treated my brother.’

  ‘What about your parents? Were they happy with both of you leaving?’

  ‘My father left us when we were children. My mother died when we were twenty.’

  Haddock leaned forward once more, looking directly into the camera rather than at the screen. ‘Did Griff find it easier to make ends meet in Scotland?’