The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner) Page 11

‘Of course. He was paid in sterling and that buys a lot of rand. Annelise, the cow, actually went back to court to try and get more, but she was laughed right out of there.’ She smiled, savagely. ‘Tough shit on her now,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know if Griff left a will? We couldn’t find one in his flat.’

  ‘Try our lawyer, Edgar Matthew at Smith and Green. We made wills when we bought the apartment. We had a joint life policy to cover the mortgage, and they underlined that arrangement. I amended mine to leave everything else to Mary. He left his half of the flat to me and any balance to Lisa and Andre, his children, not that there’ll be much left, I guess. Griff had expensive tastes, in clothes . . . and women.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It always was; he was always after the extra buck when we were young.’

  ‘Mmm,’ the young detective murmured. ‘Mary,’ he said changing tack unexpectedly, ‘suppose you wanted to smuggle something out of South Africa, something bulky, but very valuable. How would you go about it?’

  ‘Bulky, but valuable,’ she repeated. ‘A bit like me? It’s not something I’ve ever considered, but off the top of my head, I’d find someone on a container ship, or an oil tanker, or maybe even a cruise liner and bribe him to help me shift it. It would probably have to be an officer; ordinary seamen would be subject to scrutiny. You think about here, you think about smuggling diamonds, but that’s not what you’ve got in mind is it, Sauce?’

  ‘No, it’s not. I’m thinking about gold, coins to be precise. Krugerrands to be even preciser. I’ll be frank with you both. Griff’s home has state-of-the-art security, installed after you moved out, Spring.’

  ‘Come on,’ she exclaimed, ‘he has an alarm system. He fitted it because he was living on his own.’

  ‘He fitted it because he had a safe, Spring. Were you never there after you moved out?’

  ‘Of course I was, but only to visit. He made my room into an office, so I didn’t go in there. If he had a safe, so what? We do, here and in Edinburgh.’

  ‘Do either of them contain a quarter of a million in gold and eighty-eight thousand in cash? Because that’s what we found in Griff’s. I’m going to ask you straight out . . . sorry, Mary, both of you . . . do either of you know anything about it?’

  Chambers screwed up her face in sheer astonishment. ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred and fifty Krugerrands. The cash was in your classic brown envelope. Plus one other item: a handgun. Spring,’ he asked again, ‘do you know anything about this, anything at all?’

  She drew a breath. ‘Nothing at all, I swear.’

  ‘How about the cousin you mentioned? Were he and Griff close?’

  ‘Fairly; closer than he is with me. I never hear from him.’

  ‘I’d like contact details for him, if you can let me have them. Also, Mary, can you ask your bridge pal if the police report on the robbery is still readily available or if it’s archived?’

  ‘I’ll call him as soon as we’re finished,’ she promised, ‘I have his mobile. He was pretty senior; he was a Brigadier, I think. The South African Police Service has military-style ranks,’ she explained. ‘If it helps, I can ask him for advice on how to go about getting it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He hesitated, then went on. ‘This is pure speculation, but can you ask him something for me? What types of weapon do South African police officers carry?’

  ‘Will do. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because I read too many detective novels,’ he replied. ‘Either that or I’ve been around Bob Skinner too long. If he was sitting here, he’d want to know too. One last thing,’ he added. ‘When Griff didn’t show up, did you try to contact him?’

  ‘Show up?’ Spring Montell exclaimed. ‘What do you mean by that? Where was he going to show up? When?’

  ‘He was booked on a flight to Johannesburg out of Heathrow, on Sunday. He was signed out for a couple of weeks’ holiday and told his station commander that was where he was headed. His suitcase made it, but he didn’t.’

  ‘If that’s the case, Sauce, he didn’t tell us.’ She dabbed at her left eye as a tear appeared. ‘But that’s not unusual. Griff always was a surprising guy.’

  Fifteen

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to come in, Detective Sergeant. We’ve met, but if you don’t remember I’m Detective Chief Inspector Charlotte Mann. This is DS John Cotter.’

  ‘You’re not easily forgotten, DCI Mann,’ Noele McClair said. ‘Good to meet you, John. Now, are you going to tell me why I’m here rather than you coming to me?’

  ‘With your child being at home, we thought it might be best,’ Mann replied.

  ‘With respect, ma’am, no you didn’t. I’m here because someone higher up the chain told you to do it that way. Sauce is the SIO but he would have spelled it out for me; that leaves only two, the DCC and the chief constable herself, but he’s the boss in all but name when it comes to criminal investigation. I’m here,’ she continued, ‘because I’m a person of interest. I had relationships with both victims, one past, one current. I’m your only link between them at the moment; if you weren’t interviewing me formally you’d be falling down on the job.’

  ‘Do you want to have a rep present?’ Mann asked. ‘If so, I can postpone this for a while.’

  ‘Christ, no,’ she declared. ‘You’re going to be asking me about things I’ll want to stay within this room. Fire away.’

  The DCI nodded. ‘Fair enough. I would like to record this, but only with your consent.’

  McClair replied by leaning across the desk and switching on the recorder. ‘Let’s do it.’

  It was Cotter who began the questioning. ‘DS McClair, for how long were you and Mr Coats married?’

  ‘Ten years. Out of those, a couple were okay; after Harry was born.’

  ‘What were the problems with the marriage?’

  She whistled. ‘Where do I begin? His ego for a start; he really did think he was the Special One. He was a good cop, no question, but he thought he was better than that. Terry thought that rules were for other people, and that corners were there to be cut. He also thought that a chain of command involved body piercing. That’s what did for him in the end. When Brass Rubbings came for him he was up shit creek, because he didn’t have the fallback of blaming it on somebody else. If you have an informant you know is an active criminal, you don’t let him run without getting the approval of someone higher up. Right, DCI Mann?’

  ‘Spot on.’

  ‘Okay,’ Cotter continued. ‘His ego, and what else?’

  She frowned. ‘His cock; now that was a problem, for the second half of our marriage and probably longer. I could never be sure where it had been, then latterly, when things were really bad, it wasn’t in me often enough. Sorry if that embarrasses you, John, but you want a full and frank disclosure.’ She paused. ‘Truth is, I put up with it for longer than I should have; but when Sauce and Bob Skinner caught him with that trolley dolly in a hotel, and it became public, well that really was one too many. I should have done it years earlier. I am so much better off without him. Personally, and financially too.’

  Her bitterness took the sergeant by surprise. ‘Even without his salary coming into the house?’

  Noele McClair laughed out loud. ‘I think you mean without his gambling debts taking the shoes off our son’s feet, and the food out of his mouth.’

  Lottie Mann intervened. ‘Terry was a gambler?’

  ‘An addict. It was always in him and it just got worse and worse. I had to hide my credit cards from him. I had to divert my salary into a personal account rather than our joint, and I had to ask the bank to remove the overdraft facility on that, because it was still bleeding me dry. The bank wasn’t fucking interested of course; they wouldn’t do it without his signature as well. When we got divorced they had to. Under the terms of the settlement we were each liable for half the overdrawn amount. I cleared mine by switching it to my personal account. I have no idea what he did. I’m sure you’ll find out,
once the banks reopen for business tomorrow.’

  ‘What was he like to live with?’ the DCI asked. ‘Sauce and Tarvil went through his place. They said it wasn’t fit for pigs.’

  ‘Good analogy. If Terry had seen two pigs, he’d have bet on which one was the faster. He was a slob. He’d throw stuff on the floor, leave empty beer cans lying around, and expect me to clear up after him . . . which of course I did, without complaining nearly often enough.’ Her mouth tightened. ‘One time I did go mental, though. Harry had left a toy on the floor, a wee Ninja warrior figure. Terry stamped on it, broke it, and told him that would happen any time he left something lying around. The wee man was crying, and I just ripped into him. I don’t think I’d ever been so angry with anybody in my life.’

  ‘Suppose Terry hadn’t been caught being unfaithful,’ DS Cotter asked, probing, ‘would you have split up, or would we be interviewing you as a widow?’

  She looked him in the eye. ‘There’s a fair chance you’d be interviewing me as a murder suspect . . .’ She broke off and grinned. ‘Oh silly me,’ she chuckled, ‘that’s what you’re doing just now.’

  ‘No,’ Mann said, firmly. ‘We are not doing that. Nor do I believe we would have been. My ex was as bad as yours, but I never actually thought about caving his head in with the pepper mill.’ A flicker of a smile showed in her mouth but did not make it to her eyes. ‘Okay, maybe I did once or twice, but I wouldn’t have done it, for Jakey’s sake, and nor would you for Harry’s. DS McClair, we just need to know everything you know about your ex and about Inspector Montell. Is there anything you can tell us about Mr Coats after your separation and divorce? Was he still involved with that woman, Aisha Karman, for example?’

  ‘I have no idea, although I doubt that he could have afforded her with the child-support payments. That’s one thing Griff and he had in common, but Griff was up to date with his, unlike Terry. I had little or no contact with him after the divorce, other than when he called to pick up Harry every other Saturday. When he did, we never spoke for any length of time. I really did loathe him.’

  ‘When did your relationship with Inspector Montell begin?’ Cotter asked, taking back control of the interview.

  ‘At the end of August, beginning of September,’ McClair replied. ‘I had to go to Torphichen Place to interview a suspect. Sauce had been called away, so he took the other chair. We’d never met before. He was out of CID by the time I transferred to Edinburgh and moved to Gullane. Once the business was done we went for a coffee in the canteen. He mentioned that he knew my ex, sort of; that their paths had crossed before police unification, and that he’d heard Terry had quit rather than be booted from CID and posted to a desk job in the back of beyond. He said that he sympathised with him, that he’d fallen foul of a chief constable too.’

  ‘Did he explain that?’

  ‘Not at the time. I asked him what he meant but he just smiled and said, “Conflict of interests”. Later on, he told me about him and Alex Skinner, and how he was injured in her flat, defending her. He said that she’d moved in with somebody, and that their thing was over . . . not that it had ever really been a thing in the first place.’

  ‘Apart from that first occasion,’ Cotter continued, ‘did he ever mention Terry? Did he give you any indication that he had met him recently?’

  ‘No, none at all. If you’re going to ask me how they came to be in the same car after they were killed, I can assure you that it’s a complete mystery to me.’

  ‘I was,’ the DS confirmed, ‘but before that, can we talk more about your relationship with Inspector Montell. How serious was it?’

  ‘I can only speak for me,’ she told him, ‘but on a scale from one to ten, I would say seven with a real possibility of upward movement. Immediately post-divorce, I had no intention of taking another marital risk, but the more time I spent with Griff the more that started to soften. He was the complete opposite of Terry in every way, kind, thoughtful and generous.’ She winked at Mann. ‘He was also spectacularly good in bed. I never knew what an orgasm was with Terry; he was one of those guys who didn’t realise that women are entitled to come too, or maybe he just didn’t know we can.’ She leaned back. ‘I have this theory . . . fuck no, this profound belief . . . that every young man should be given a copy of The Joy of Sex, or something similar, on his sixteenth birthday. I’m pretty sure that Griff was.’

  ‘Who knew about the two of you?’

  ‘I don’t think anybody did, until he had to tell Alex Skinner. We were very careful; we were both cops, and we knew that if one colleague found out, so would everyone else in a very short time.’

  ‘Officers found female garments in his home. Can we assume that they’re yours?’

  ‘Yes, I kept a couple of things there. I stayed over a few times; my mother would look after Harry, and I’d spin her a yarn. If we were going somewhere after work, dinner, theatre and the like, I needed things I could change into.’

  ‘Were you happy with him?’

  She looked at her hands, steepled on the table. ‘Happier than I’d ever been.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘Now it’s all been ripped away. Bastards!’ she hissed.

  Mann edged forward, and Cotter withdrew, slightly, as she took over. ‘Did you ever have any thoughts about Inspector Montell’s lifestyle?’ she began.

  ‘Not really; it was modest. We didn’t go to any flash places, no weekend at Gleneagles, or anything like that. If I read you right you’re talking about his dress sense, the designer clothes that he liked. I teased him about that; we had a laugh when he confessed that he shopped in an outlet place in Livingston, where they do seconds and the like much cheaper that the real thing.’

  ‘Did you ever go into his office? You must have noticed there was a lock on the door. In fact, you must have noticed the security in general.’

  ‘The alarm system? Of course; the monitor sensors were just about everywhere. I asked him about it; he said it was just part of being a cop, and I got that. As for the office, no, I never went in there. I had no reason to, and I had no reason to ask him about it.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ the DCI conceded. ‘In all your time together, did Griff, Inspector Montell, ever mention your ex-husband?’

  ‘No,’ McClair said, firmly, ‘and neither did I. I didn’t want Terry near my new relationship in any way.’

  ‘He didn’t give you any hint that they might have been in touch?’ Mann persisted.

  ‘No, never. Griff and Terry had absolutely nothing in common. One was a gentleman, the other was an arsehole.’ She paused, anticipating the next question. ‘I know, and yet they both wound up dead in the same car. I hope you do find out how, but it won’t be through me. I have no idea.’

  ‘We will, eventually.’

  ‘Do you have any lines of investigation?’

  ‘We do, but I’m not going to divulge that just yet. Instead . . . look, the two of you were intimate. Apart from the injury that he sustained during the incident in Alex Skinner’s flat, did Inspector Montell have any other scars?’

  ‘Yes, he had one big one, on his right shoulder, front and back. It was from a gunshot wound he sustained when he was a police officer in South Africa.’

  ‘Did he tell you how it happened? I’m assuming that you asked him.’

  ‘Sure, but he wasn’t wounded in action; it was a stupid accident and he was embarrassed by it. We did a scar comparison one night; my caesarean, my appendix, his shoulder. I said that mine were boring, but that his must have a story behind it. “Oh yes,” he said. He told me that he went out hunting one evening with his patrol partner. His name was Fannie, I think. He said they were after deer and separated to flank a herd. But the light wasn’t too good; he made a sudden move and Fannie mistook him for an antelope. I told him I didn’t believe him but he swore blind that it was true.’ She peered at Mann. ‘It was . . . wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not according to our information. Did he ever tell you about a robbery in South Africa, when a consignment of gol
d coins were stolen from a hijacked van?’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ she insisted, ‘he didn’t. That’s not something I would have forgotten.’ She paused and gasped, her mouth falling open slightly. ‘But Terry said something that comes right back to mind. When I found out about his affair with the airline woman, and told him he was gone for good, he tried to talk me round. He said it was all connected to stolen Krugerrands. I told him he could spend the rest of his life thinking up crazy excuses, I wasn’t buying any of them and he could fuck right off. He protested, swore it was true, but I yelled at him that he and the truth were total strangers and he should get out of my life. Could it actually have been true? And suppose it was, how would it connect to Griff?’

  ‘If his story was true,’ Mann replied, ‘it’s just possible that the coins he spoke about came from the robbery I just mentioned. How would it connect to Inspector Montell? I have no idea. But I do know that he was part of the escort of the consignment, that he was the only survivor, and that’s how the wound from the so-called hunting accident really happened.’

  Sixteen

  ‘And here I was thinking it had been a quiet Hogmanay,’ PC Andrea Newman sighed, as she drew the car to a halt. ‘Where did she say he was?’

  ‘Just before the thirty sign, the ops room,’ PC Ronnie Hamilton, her partner, replied.

  She looked along the narrow highway. ‘What did the informant say? That she saw a bloke sleeping it off in a field?’

  ‘Aye. She said she saw him from her kitchen window.’ He pointed across a field to a group of houses that backed on to it. ‘She had to have been over there, for there’s no other buildings with a view of this stretch of road. That’s at least three hundred yards away. She’s either got great eyesight or great binoculars. I don’t see anybody? Do you, Andrea?’

  ‘Not on this side of the fence, that’s for sure. If she did see someone, he’s probably woke up and gone home . . . although,’ she wondered, ‘how would he get here in the first place. If he was walking towards Howgate, he’s come from a fair way off. If he was walking away . . . he was a candidate for hypothermia.’