Death's Door bs-17 Page 8

  ‘A tent. And it was a nice warm night, nearly a full moon too. Shit.’ Steele glanced to his right at the uniformed officer, who sat at the table. ‘PC Reid,’ he said, ‘you’re a local guy. Is there a place in Gullane where you can camp if you want to, without being obvious?’ There was an awkward silence. ‘It is fucking obvious, though, isn’t it?’ the inspector added, as he answered his own question in his mind. ‘Right down to the sand traces in her vaginal swab.’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ said the constable, carefully, ‘there’s the beach. We don’t encourage it, but there’s no by-law against it so it happens. We get youngsters camping out there sometimes. If you go into that buckthorn in the high dunes at the east end, there are wee clearings where you can pitch a tent. I don’t mean local kids, like: their parents are too responsible to let them do that. If they get camping out, it’ll be in the garden. My own have done that in their time. Naw, I’m talking about students and the like, going down there for a bit of, well, peace and quiet, and maybe to smoke a wee bit grass where they’ll no’ be bothered by us.’

  ‘Or by anybody else?’

  Reid frowned. ‘No’ necessarily, sir. That area’s got a bit of a history.’

  ‘And somebody might just have written a new chapter.’ Steele pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I’m off to the Mallard. Sergeant McNee should still be there on his break. I want a search of that buckthorn.’ He paused. ‘Hold on a minute,’ he said. ‘There’s an easier way than that. Ray, get on to the traffic boys. I want a helicopter to over-fly the area, as soon as possible. We can bet that Zrinka’s boyfriend’s long gone, but maybe he left his identity behind.’

  Seventeen

  ‘Who?’ the belligerent telephone voice exclaimed.

  This was not someone, she thought, who would ever hold down a job in a call centre. ‘It’s Maggie,’ she repeated. ‘Your partner’s sister. Is Bet there?’

  ‘Of course she’s here.’ Sarcasm took over. ‘It’s twenty before three in the bloody morning. Hold on: give her a second to come round.’

  She waited; the man’s voice became indistinct and then she heard a rustling noise as the phone was passed over. ‘Margaret, it’s you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s me. Hello, Sis, how are you doing?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m even awake now.’

  ‘God, I’m sorry: I thought you were ten hours behind us, not ahead.’

  ‘No, it’s tomorrow where I am.’

  ‘I’ll call you again, tomorrow morning our time. How would that do?’

  ‘Margaret, I’m awake now, so talk to me. Who’s dead?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘You’re not calling to tell me that Dad’s surfaced again, are you?’ Suddenly Bet’s tone was fearful. ‘You’re not going to say he’s in Australia, are you?’

  ‘No,’ said Maggie, hurriedly, ‘you can relax on that score. Look, he is dead, for sure: he was shot . . .’ she hesitated ‘. . . that’s to say he shot himself, a couple of years ago.’

  There was a long silence, until ‘Our father died,’ her sister repeated, ‘and you didn’t call or write to tell me?’

  ‘I chose not to. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t think you’d want your life tainted by him again; not after what he did to us when we were children.’

  ‘No, when I think about it, you’re right about that,’ Bet conceded. ‘It would have been good to know that they’d finally screwed the lid down on the bastard, though. I haven’t forgotten, you know, any of it, even though I was younger than you when it all happened.’

  ‘How could we forget? It’s haunted me all my life; or at least it did, until recently.’

  ‘And me. I went halfway round the world to get away.’

  ‘You can’t run away from memories, or bad dreams.’

  ‘I know that. I ran as far as I could from the possibility that he might ever come back into my life.’

  ‘I guessed as much, even though you never spelled it out at the time.’ Maggie sighed. ‘He’s kept us apart, you know, as sisters.’

  ‘At least he didn’t prevent us making lives for ourselves. ’

  ‘No, he didn’t do that. Who’s the guy? Husband?’

  Bet laughed; the sound seemed to disperse the dark cloud that had linked two continents. ‘No, thank you very much. Boyfriend, that’s all; he doesn’t live here. In fact he’s just gone stumbling off to dress and hit the road. How’s the bloke you married? Do you still outrank him?’

  ‘Not any more, but I’m not married to him any more either. We divorced last year; I’m on my second husband now, and you, sister, haven’t even scored up one.’

  ‘Is that why I haven’t had a card from you, the last two Christmases? Or a birthday card?’

  ‘Mainly. I was a bit screwed up for a while, and I didn’t want to inflict it on you.’

  ‘So you’re giving me insomnia instead?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Just kidding. Tell me about the new man.’

  ‘His name’s Stevie, Stevie Steele; he’s almost three years younger than me, very bright, very calm, dark hair, good-looking, just a lovely guy.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He’s a detective inspector.’

  An explosion of breath covered ten thousand miles in an instant. ‘Bloody hell! Another copper? Don’t you have any imagination?’

  For the first time that afternoon, Maggie smiled. ‘I did fuck an actuary once,’ she said. ‘That was enough to make me stick to my own kind. No, that’s not strictly true. Actuaries don’t fuck; like everything else, they do it by numbers. Actually, I shouldn’t blame the poor sod. Until Stevie, nobody ever rang my bell, not even Mario . . . and he certainly has some clapper.’

  ‘Confession time for both of us,’ Bet murmured. ‘I may live a free and single lifestyle, but I’ve always been pretty repressed too, in that respect. The difference is, I’m still looking for my Stevie. The guy in the bathroom? Nowhere near it.’ She paused. ‘You know, Margaret, this is the first sister-to-sister talk we’ve ever had, and it’s taken us more than thirty years. Tell me something. Have you ever travelled in your life? I don’t mean a fortnight in Shagaluf, I mean really travelled.’

  ‘I haven’t even been to Shagaluf. I went to Italy with Mario a couple of times, and once to Paris for a long weekend, but that’s it.’

  ‘In that case, why not come to Sydney?’

  ‘I think I’d like that, Bet, but there’s something getting in the way right now. I’m pregnant.’

  ‘You?’ Maggie’s sister gasped. ‘Oh, Christ, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that, but I can only take so many shocks at one sitting.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it; a year ago I’d have said exactly the same thing. But now it’s happened, I don’t know what to say, other than that it’s magic.’

  ‘How long do you have to go?’

  ‘About ten weeks. According to the scan, it’s a girl.’

  ‘That’s wonderful: I’m going to be Auntie Bet.’ There was a sound in the background. ‘Okay, Bradley, close the door hard behind you. Call me in a couple of days.’ Pause. ‘That’s him gone, face tripping him.’

  ‘Sorry again.’

  ‘Cobblers, you’ve done me a favour. He’s a sour-faced bugger in the morning.’ Maggie stared at the closed door of her office. There was something about her sister’s voice, its vivacity, that sent an enormous pang of regret running through her for all the years she had kept her at a distance; her eyes blurred.

  ‘Now, come on,’ Bet exclaimed. ‘I’m going to take it for granted that you’d have called me once the baby was born to give me the good news. But it’s five years since we’ve spoken . . . my fault as much as yours, I admit . . . so what’s made you call me right now, in the middle of my night? My super-efficient sister doesn’t get mixed up with time zones, unless there’s something wrong.’

  ‘It’s nothing, Bet, just something I need to ask you.’

  ‘Everything’s nothing with you. Out
with it.’

  ‘There’s something on my last scan: my consultant says it’s probably an ovarian cyst, but he asked me about the family medical history. Have you ever had a problem like that?’

  ‘I had a polyp in my womb three years ago. Had it removed and that was that. Nothing else, though.’

  ‘Did Mum ever talk to you about Granny Kellock dying? I know we were only kids when she did; she never discussed it with me, but she never discussed anything with me. I think she blamed me for what happened with Dad.’

  ‘Come on, Margaret,’ Bet protested. ‘I remember her battering you when you told her about it, but blaming you, that’s daft. You were only a kid at the time: you hadn’t even started your periods.’

  ‘Nonetheless, that’s how she felt. We never spoke much after that.’

  ‘She only spoke to me about Granny once; I asked her when I was doing my nursing training before I turned to design. All she said was that it was a cancer “down there”.

  That was how she put it; to Mum, everything below the navel was just “down there”.’

  ‘What about Aunt Fay? Hers was in her stomach, as I remember.’

  ‘Yes, but it was a secondary. It was discovered very late, and she was riddled with it by then. They never did know where the primary was. Margaret, this consultant of yours, he’s not worried about you, is he?’

  ‘No, no, not at all; just routine, he says. That’s the exact word he used, routine.’

  ‘Have you told your husband?’

  ‘No, but I only just found out today. I don’t see why I should, though; Stevie’s like any other new father-to-be. He’d worry himself silly for no good reason.’

  ‘Isn’t he entitled to do that?’

  ‘He’s got enough on his plate. I’ve got a follow-up scan tomorrow; once I’ve had the result I’ll probably tell him then. There’ll be no reason not to.’

  ‘And will you tell me too?’

  ‘I will, Bet, I promise.’

  ‘You’d bloody well better. And not in the middle of the night either.’

  Eighteen

  Stevie Steele happened to be glancing out of the window when he saw the Vauxhall pull up in the village-hall car park. ‘Just what I need,’ he muttered, as a tall, bald man stepped out, placing a heavily braided cap on his dome-like head. He walked to the door to greet the new arrival. ‘Afternoon, sir,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Inspector,’ said ACC Brian Mackie. ‘I’m not here to crack the whip, but I thought that I should show my face. Moral support, nothing more: I even played it by the book and told DCS McGuire that I was coming.’

  ‘I appreciate it, sir. So will the uniformed troops: they’ve been on a thankless task all day. Come on inside.’ He ushered him into the headquarters of Operation Gabriel.

  PC Reid was alone in the office; he stood to attention as they entered. ‘Relax, Ian,’ Mackie told him. ‘You’ll pull something, going all stiff like that. I know this old lag,’ he explained to Steele, ‘from when I was CID commander out here. I thought you’d have retired by now, Constable.’

  ‘So did I, sir,’ the PC replied mournfully.

  ‘Hard slog, is it, Stevie?’ the ACC asked.

  ‘Yeah, but we’re moving. We’ve got an identification from a woman in North Berwick, confirmed by a bus driver who picked her up, and a male companion, on Monday night. I’ve sent Ray Wilding and Tarvil Singh back along there to re-interview the witness, in the light of what DC Montell got from the driver. We know who she is; now we have to find out where she’s from, and where the hell the boyfriend is.’

  ‘He’s your prime suspect, is he?’

  ‘Not necessarily. My concern is that he might have got in the way. We believe that the two of them may have camped on the beach on Monday. I’ve got a chopper up there now, I hope, doing a scan of the area, looking for signs they may have left behind.’

  ‘That’ll be the one I saw when I was into the village.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ As he spoke, the phone rang. ‘Will you excuse me, sir? I’d better take this.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Steele snatched the handset from its cradle. ‘Inquiry HQ, DI speaking.’

  ‘It’s me, sir,’ Griff Montell said. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long but the woman I spoke to at Barclays decided that she had to clear the release of this information at the top of the tree. It turned out that nobody was nesting there until after four. There was a management meeting under way.’

  ‘That’s okay. I half expected them to ask us for a sheriff’s warrant. You got it now, though?’

  ‘Yes. Zrinka Boras has been a Barclays client for three years: she’s twenty-four years old and the address they hold for her is High Laigh House, Wimbledon, London. According to their information she’s unmarried. She has an overdraft facility on the account, guaranteed by her father, Mr Davor Boras, also of High Laigh House.’

  ‘What else would they tell you?’

  ‘They have her listed as a student; they volunteered that. They won’t give me any account details, but they did confirm that the most recent withdrawals were made by debit card, in Scotland, specifically Edinburgh and North Berwick. There have also been several deposits made to the account, all through their Edinburgh branch.’

  ‘Cheques from Daddy, do you reckon?’

  ‘I asked that question myself. No, they weren’t: the bank lady was quite open about that, although she wasn’t authorised to release names or amounts. There have been regular pay-ins over the last couple of years, most by cheque but some in cash.’

  ‘So she’s been economically active in Edinburgh, yet the bank doesn’t have a local address for her.’

  ‘She’s an online customer, sir, like a lot of people are, these days, my sister and I included.’

  ‘Me too,’ Steele admitted, then stopped. ‘Okay, Griff, you seem to be on a roll today, so I want you to keep playing. We’ve got two witnesses putting her in North Berwick, and that ties her to the bank slip. There’s no doubt about her identity. It’s time to get in touch with the father.’

  ‘Mr Davor Boras,’ said Montell, ‘age fifty-five, born Sarajevo, Bosnia, then part of Yugoslavia. Built a successful engineering business in his twenties, before selling to a larger company and moving to London in 1989. Set up Bolec, a retail chain selling electronic and household goods, focusing on out-of-town locations, and grew it into one of the biggest in Europe. Sold out seven years ago for an estimated one point two billion. Two years later founded a computer business selling hardware, peripherals and supplies, exclusively online, throughout the European Union. Continental IT, the new company, thanks to spectacularly low overheads, is hugely profitable and is now bigger than the one he sold. Personal interests include the arts . . . he has galleries in London and in Sarajevo . . . and football; he’s a significant shareholder in clubs in England, Bosnia and the USA. He and his wife, they were married in 1976, run the Davor and Sanda Boras charitable foundation, which has funded relief operations in Africa as well as postwar rebuilding projects in the Balkan states. He has two children, both born in the former Yugoslavia: there’s Zrinka, and a son, Dražen, aged twenty-eight. Davor, his wife and the children became naturalised British citizens in 1992.’

  ‘Are you trying to impress me, or maybe even the big chiefs?’ asked Steele, slowly.

  ‘I’m sorry, boss. It’s an unusual name, so I ran it through Google and that’s what I came up with. I found it on an Internet encyclopedia.’

  ‘It’s okay, Griff.’ The DI chuckled. ‘I’m not getting at you; that’s good police work, no kidding. It lets us know who we’re dealing with.’

  ‘Kid gloves?’

  ‘I reckon all bereaved parents should be treated the same, but the commissioner of the Met might not share my view. Leave it with me. The ACC’s here just now. I’ll talk to him about it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Mackie asked, as Steele hung up. The inspector had made notes during Montell�
��s briefing: he referred to them as he relayed what the DC had learned from the bank, and what he had discovered on his own initiative about the dead girl’s father.

  ‘Montell,’ the ACC said, when he had been brought up to speed. ‘Is that Alex Skinner’s boyfriend?’

  The question took the inspector by surprise. ‘It’s news to me if he is.’

  ‘And maybe news to Bob as well. That’s just idle gossip, though: my wife’s niece works at Curle Anthony and Jarvis.’ He frowned. ‘I agree with you about the father, Stevie. We do not send a couple of uniforms in a panda to this man’s door.’ He took out his mobile and dialled a number. ‘Ruth,’ the DI heard him say, and knew that he had called his secretary. ‘ACC here. I want you to do something for me: find out which of the Metropolitan divisions Wimbledon’s in . . . That’s right, as in Roger Federer . . . then get in touch with its commander: from what I remember he or she is probably . . .’ He paused as the landline rang and Steele picked it up once more. ‘. . . a chief super. Whatever, I need to speak to them at once, like ten minutes ago, on this number. Thanks . . . Yes, I’m still at Gullane. I don’t see me being back this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes?’ Mackie heard the inspector exclaim, as he finished his call. ‘That’s excellent. I’ll take it from here.’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘The chopper: it’s got a result. They spotted a tent pitched in a clearing in the bushes, just where Reid said it might be. They’ve photographed it, and they have the technology to transfer an image straight into our system. I can pick it up here, from an e-mail, so that we know exactly where to go.’

  ‘Good man. I’ll come with you. You know,’ Mackie said, ‘I used to wonder about Bob Skinner and his insistence on being hands-on whenever he can. Now I think I understand him. I think maybe I should phone him, leave or not, and see if he wants to get in on the act.’

  Nineteen

  It was one of those embarrassing moments: Alex Skinner was in conference with the chairman of the firm when her mobile sounded. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Mitchell Laidlaw. ‘I forgot to switch it to silent.’