Private Investigations Page 9

  ‘I know,’ she admitted, ‘and that has got to me too, in the past. That’s one reason why I gave it up and went back to America to practise real medicine.’ She tossed her head back, clearing her thick glossy hair from her eyeline, then she smiled. ‘How was I to know that there are more horrors in the living than the dead?’

  ‘I’ve known that all my career,’ I retorted, casually. ‘Bad people are a damn sight easier to manage when they’re dead.’ I tapped my forehead with my middle finger. ‘One round there and they go all floppy.’

  ‘Yes,’ she murmured, ‘and your predecessor as Chief of Strathclyde Police had three, right through the back of her head. I’ll bet that when you stood in that concert hall in Glasgow looking down at her, you weren’t flippant then.’

  She had me there. ‘So what do you want me to do about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Not just you: us. We should talk to each other, just us, at least once a week, about our work and the parts of it that have upset us. We should be our own counsellors. There’s nobody knows me better than you.’

  ‘Nor than you know me,’ I conceded. ‘Okay, if you’re really serious, let’s give it a try.’

  We did, and we still do. Since I chucked the job I’ve had less to contribute, but on the day of Fort Kinnaird I had plenty, and so, once I was back in my Saltire office, and after I’d rung Mario McGuire to blag a copy of the report on the theft of the Princess Alison, I called Sarah.

  ‘You got a couple of minutes?’ I asked. ‘Or are you up to your elbows in mid-rummage?’

  ‘I’m prepping for a lecture,’ she told me, ‘but I’ve got a few minutes. What’s up? Something is, I can tell.’

  ‘I want to tell you how your lemon drizzle cake got smashed.’ As I spoke, the scene rushed back into my mind, and all I could see was that wee girl. My eyes moistened once more, and I had to take a moment before I could continue. Since Sarah and I started our mutual support sessions, I find that I’m much more emotional. For example, Michael Clarke’s eulogy at the Phillip Hughes funeral just tore me apart.

  When I could, I talked her through the story.

  ‘She was just like our daughter, Sarah,’ I whispered as I finished. ‘Apart from the brown eyes, it could have been Seonaid.’

  ‘But it wasn’t,’ she countered. ‘It was somebody else’s baby, not ours, and although we can feel for them in their grief, if we’re honest, we have to admit to relief.’ I heard a small, stifled gasp. ‘Of course,’ she murmured.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  She replied with a question of her own. ‘Who attended the scene from CID?’

  ‘The Menu,’ I answered. ‘Pye and Haddock. That’s their nickname,’ I explained. ‘Someone told them they sounded like a fish and chip shop menu, and it stuck. They hate it.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ she chuckled. ‘I’ve been wondering why I wasn’t called out myself. The thing is, Joe Hutchinson and I had agreed that he would drop out of CID work. He’s close to retirement, and when he does quit he wants a gap, where he isn’t liable to be called in from his hideaway in Portugal as an expert witness in a High Court trial.’

  ‘Not by the Crown, that’s for sure,’ I remarked. ‘There’s much more money in consulting for the defence.’

  ‘Don’t be so cynical.’ she scolded. ‘As I said, we had that deal, but when the call came in this morning, he told me the police wanted him, specifically.’ She paused. ‘Were you behind that, Bob?’

  ‘No,’ I assured her. ‘That’s the truth, I wasn’t. It was Sammy Pye’s call, but I’m sure he was thinking of you when he made it, and I approve, too. I hear what you say about being able to separate professional and private, but sometimes that’s difficult, even for you. Has Joe done the autopsy yet?’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘He’s holding off for as long as he can in the hope the girl can be identified.’

  I was surprised. ‘They haven’t done that yet? A child that age, I’d expected her absence to be noted pretty quickly.’

  ‘You’re itching to be part of this, aren’t you?’ Sarah observed.

  ‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m trying not to scratch it. But I am standing here wishing I’d chased the guy; if I’d got lucky and caught him it might all have been wrapped up now.’

  ‘Maybe yes, maybe no,’ she said. ‘A couple of minutes ago you said he might have been an opportunistic car thief who didn’t know what was in the boot. And anyway, could you have caught him?’

  ‘Probably not,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m kicking myself for not trying.’

  ‘Suppose you had,’ she asked, ‘and run him down, then found the little girl. How would you have reacted?’

  That was a good question. ‘I can’t say for sure,’ I conceded, ‘but it might not have been pretty.’

  ‘Then it’s as well you didn’t,’ she declared. ‘The Menu . . . I like that; it’s funny . . . will get him, soon enough. Leave it to them, my love, and do your best to put it out of your mind. I’ll see you this evening.’

  Talking to Sarah made me feel better, no doubt about it; she always does. With time on my hands, I decided to build on my positivity, by calling on my other sounding board.

  A guy in my golf club told me a while back that you really start to feel old when your kids turn forty. I disagree: when Alex, my oldest, passed the thirty mark a wee while ago, it hit me harder than it did her.

  She marked the event by doing something completely unexpected, by walking away from a successful and lucrative career as a leading corporate partner in Curle Anthony and Jarvis, Scotland’s biggest legal firm, to set up in practice as a criminal defence lawyer and qualify as a solicitor advocate . . . in other words, ‘The Opposition’, as she put it when I was a cop.

  She’d picked up quite a bit of work in the second tier Sheriff Court, while studying for full rights of audience in the Supreme Court. A week before, she’d passed the Law Society exams, at the first time of asking.

  I didn’t have to go far to talk to her. There is office space for rent in the Saltire building, and I’d managed to fix her up with a suite, two floors above mine. The new sign on her door made me swell up with pride as I read it: ‘Alexis Skinner, LLB, Solicitor Advocate’.

  I was smiling as I stepped inside. ‘She in?’ I asked Constance, her secretary. The woman barely looked up from the papers she was studying, nodding and waving me on.

  ‘She’s busy,’ I remarked as I closed my daughter’s door behind me.

  ‘In the best possible way,’ Alex replied. ‘She’s doing fee notes.’

  ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘Plenty of them?’

  She responded with a smile. ‘Oh yes. Business is good. I’m glad I took that extra room. I may need to fill it soon. I’ve just been hired for the defence in a corporate fraud case, involving one of my old clients from CAJ. I’m being formally introduced in the Court of Session on Wednesday morning, so I’ll be able to appear at the first High Court hearing.’

  ‘Are you going to lead?’ I asked.

  ‘Hell no,’ she exclaimed. ‘This is a complicated, high-stakes trial; I don’t have anywhere near enough experience. I can do a lot of the preparation but I’ve instructed Easson Middleton to lead, with me as his junior.’

  My pride indicator went up by at least five points. Easson Middleton is the top QC on the criminal bar, and for Alex even to be sat beside him in court would be a strong marker. ‘How long will it last?’

  ‘Potentially weeks,’ she replied. ‘That’s why I may need to pass on some Sheriff Court work to an associate. But it’ll all depend on pre-trial negotiations.’

  I grinned. ‘Plea bargaining?’

  ‘Come on, Pops,’ she scolded, ‘you know we don’t call it that. There’s a whole raft of charges in the case; if we can persuade the Crown to drop some in exchange for guilty pleas in others, it will cut dow
n trial time.’

  ‘Will the trial judge agree?’ I wondered.

  ‘I expect so,’ she said. ‘There would be no jail time involved in any of the charges we’re looking at. If Lady Broughton gives us the nod that she’ll deal with them with modest fines, it’ll be sorted. And she will. She doesn’t want to be stuck there for three months when it could all be over in one.’

  ‘Good luck.’ I paused. ‘Hey,’ I chuckled, ‘will you need an investigator?’

  She angled her head back and looked at me. ‘Are you kidding? We couldn’t afford you.’

  ‘Well, somebody can,’ I countered. ‘I’ve just been engaged by a man with a problem. And you’ll never guess who it is.’

  ‘That’s probably true,’ she agreed, ‘but clearly you’re bursting to tell me, so go ahead.’

  ‘Eden Higgins,’ I announced, no doubt with a smirk on my face.

  ‘Alison’s brother?’ Alex exclaimed. ‘The man with the boat that you fell in love with . . . after you fell in love with his sister?’

  I nodded. ‘The same. You’re right about the boat,’ I added, ‘but wrong about her. I never did that.’

  ‘Hmph,’ she snorted. ‘You could have fooled me at the time. What problem could Eden possibly have?’ she asked. ‘He’s so rich he could make any trouble go away.’

  ‘Not this one,’ I told her; then I filled her in on my lunch date, and on the commission I’d accepted. ‘I’ve asked Mario to give me the police report,’ I added.

  She frowned. ‘Will Andy let him do that?’

  I shrugged. ‘I hope so. I’m not taking anything for granted, but . . .’

  ‘As well you don’t,’ she said. ‘From what I’ve been hearing, Chief Constable Sir Andrew Martin isn’t the man that you and I have known for all these years.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I murmured. ‘And who’s been telling you that?’

  ‘Various cops,’ Alex replied. ‘People I’ve encountered in my new line of work, who knew him before. They all say the same; he’s become distant, remote, aloof.’

  ‘Remember,’ I reminded her, ‘we’re talking about someone who broke up with you not once, but twice. It may be that he never was the man we thought we knew.’

  She turned away from me, looking out of her office’s smoked glass wall. ‘Second time around,’ she murmured, ‘I persuaded myself that we had found each other, just as you and Sarah have, at last. Then you pulled out of the running for the top job in the new force, Andy got it instead . . . and he changed, almost overnight. My police friends didn’t have to tell me that, because I knew already; I’d seen it for myself, close up.’

  She faced me once more, looking up at me as I leaned against the door. ‘Do you know what I think?’ she continued. ‘I believe he’s trying to distance himself from you as much as he can. He knows that people used to call him Bob Skinner’s gopher behind his back. He’s always known that, and he’s always hated it. Now he’s made it to the top, he’s determined to kill that image, and if he can do it by publicly opposing you, he will.’

  ‘I see.’ I thought for a few seconds about what she was saying to me. ‘Are you trying to say that’s why he split from you?’

  She shook her head, vigorously. ‘No!’ she insisted. ‘The truth is that I split from him. He was taking me for granted, Pops, in every way. He tried to treat me like a subservient little wife; he as good as told me that it was my role to follow wherever he led. When we were together, Andy talked non-stop about his work, but wasn’t interested in mine. He wasn’t even too interested in the stuff a girl doesn’t talk to her dad about. The plain truth is he’d become a fucking bore and a boring fuck, so I binned him.’

  I laughed. ‘As you suggested, too much information, daughter.’

  She grinned back. ‘Probably.’ Then she was serious again. ‘Pops, how do you stand legally with this thing you’re doing for Eden? Isn’t private investigation regulated these days?’

  ‘Not completely, although it’s on the way,’ I told her. ‘But I’m covered. I’ve got one of the new investigator’s licences, although,’ I added, ‘I don’t plan to use it much.’

  I left Alex to her new career and headed back down the stairs to my own office. I was passing June Crampsey’s room when she caught sight of me through the glass wall and waved to me to join her.

  ‘Have you heard any more about the child murder?’ she asked. I closed the door and stepped inside.

  ‘No,’ I said, warily. ‘But suppose I had, I might not be able to share it with you. If my ex-colleagues tell me something, it will be out of courtesy and nothing else. I’d have to respect their confidence, unless it was about to become general knowledge. I’ll help the Saltire whenever I can, but I’m not one of your reporters, June.’

  ‘I understand that,’ she replied, quickly. ‘I wasn’t looking for specifics, rather for general information: what lines of inquiry they might be following, stuff like that. DCI Pye isn’t saying anything at the moment.’

  ‘If that’s so,’ I assured her, ‘it’s because there isn’t anything he can say. Who’s covering the story for you? Lennox Webster, your crime specialist, I assume.’

  ‘Yes, she’s on it,’ June confirmed.

  I paused, thinking about practicalities and ethics. ‘Okay, pretend you’re her,’ I suggested, ‘and ask me some non-specific questions as an expert source.’

  She smiled. ‘Such as?’

  ‘What are the priorities of the investigation likely to be?’ I began. ‘Answer: there are likely to be three. Number one, identify the child, if that hasn’t been done already. Two, identify the driver of the car in which the body was found. Three, establish cause of death. Practically, of those the third is the most immediately important. Until you do that you don’t know what you’re dealing with. Suppose you get lucky and catch the driver straight away, you need to know what the offence is.’

  ‘Abduction and murder, surely,’ June exclaimed.

  ‘No,’ I contradicted her firmly. ‘Nothing is sure until you have all the facts. The only assumption I’d be making is that the child didn’t climb into the car on her own and pull the boot lid shut.’

  She looked up. ‘She was in the boot? You didn’t mention that earlier and Pye didn’t tell us either.’

  ‘In that case, you never heard me,’ I retorted.

  ‘You sound as if you actually saw the child, Bob.’ Her blue eyes were piercing. ‘It was you who found her, wasn’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘The guy drove into my car,’ I admitted. ‘But you must not print that.’

  ‘Bob,’ she protested. ‘That makes the story even bigger.’

  I like June, and I respect her as a journalist, but I glared at her. ‘Rubbish,’ I snapped. ‘The story can’t get any bigger. It’s a dead child; nothing tops that.’

  At once, I regretted my anger. ‘June, one day I’ll have to stand in the witness box in the High Court and tell a jury what I saw, but until then I do not want to be a public player in the story. Look, I’m not trying to order you here; I’m asking you as a friend. If my involvement does leak, from within the police force or anywhere else, you’ll have exclusive rights to anything I can say without breaking sub judice rules, but until then, sit on it, please.’

  She sighed, then smiled. ‘You know,’ she murmured, ‘I had this same conversation with my dad once.’ June’s father is Tommy Partridge, a retired detective superintendent. ‘The circumstances weren’t quite the same but the principle was. He said much the same as you did; I ignored him and ran the story. It drove a wedge between us for a couple of years. So this time,’ she paused for a couple of seconds, ‘I’ll do what you ask, as a way of making up to him.’

  I remembered the incident. I was head of CID when it happened and I was hard on Tommy. I made a mental note to call him, tell him what had happened, and apologise for my
lack of understanding.

  ‘Pye said there were no signs of physical assault,’ June continued.

  ‘There weren’t,’ I confirmed, ‘none that I could see. That’s another reason why I’m advising you to back off from labelling it murder. You might have to recant on it.’

  ‘Who’s doing the post-mortem?’ she asked.

  ‘Joe,’ I replied. ‘And I’m glad. It’s going to be tough enough across the dinner table in our house tonight without Sarah having been involved.’

  I left her to it and went back to my own office, quietly pleased that I hadn’t known any more about the investigation. I felt a loyalty to my new employer, and didn’t like the potential for conflicts of interest with my old one.

  That situation was not improved when my mobile rang. It was Sauce Haddock, and he was in a hurry.

  ‘Sir, we need your help,’ he began. ‘We’re in North Berwick. We’ve pretty much eliminated the owner of the BMW as a suspect, but we’ve come across someone else who might be a possibility. He has a record, and I’ve established that we have a recent image on file.’

  I didn’t need him to go any further. ‘Email it to me right away, and I’ll take a look. I’m in my Edinburgh office so I’ll be able to view it on a decent size screen. Make sure they send it maximum resolution. I only had a glimpse of the guy, so my eyes will need all the help they can get.’

  I switched on my computer, opened my email programme and waited, but not for long. Within five minutes a small window in a corner of the monitor told me that I had mail. I clicked to open the message and then again for the attachment.

  The man had been photographed against the usual dirty white background. I’d seen that sullen expression a few thousand times, and read the same bored resignation that showed in his eyes. There was a booking number on the image, and a name, ‘Dean Francey’. It meant nothing to me, but the face did.

  I had seen him before. I looked at the mugshot closely, then closed my eyes, and tried to imagine the face that I had seen, briefly, behind the wheel of the BMW before the reflected sun blinded me, and then again for a fraction of a second as he jumped out of the vehicle and took to his heels.