The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner) Read online

  ‘You’re a big Irish-Italian bastard, McGuire,’ Darke hissed after him as he left.

  He stopped, turned, and looked back. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘And don’t you forget it.’

  Jane Balfour followed him through the door behind the desk. ‘That was nicely done, sir,’ she said when they were out of earshot of the journalists. ‘That was the Saltire man, wasn’t it? I haven’t had much to do with him, but when I have he’s always aggressive.’

  ‘If he gets too bad, let me know. His boss is a friend.’

  ‘June Crampsey, the editor?’

  ‘No, her boss. I agree with you about Darke, but there are guys like him in every walk of life. June Crampsey knows him well enough, but she also knows that he’s a good reporter with contacts everywhere. He gets more exclusives than anyone else in that room we’ve just left.’

  ‘Contacts within the force?’

  ‘Of course; the force, the courts, the prison service, the legal profession. I know of a few of them.’

  ‘Couldn’t you shut them down?’ the press officer asked.

  ‘I could, but I don’t want to. It suits me to have a back channel to Jack. If there’s information I want to get to him and I do it through you, he’ll be suspicious. If I feed it through a trusted source, it’s accepted.’

  ‘Does he pay his informants?’

  ‘Not cops. I don’t know about the rest but not our people. That I would shut down if I heard about it . . . and I would hear about it.’

  Jane Balfour smiled. ‘I think I can learn from you, sir.’

  ‘Feel free,’ he said. ‘But don’t call me “sir”. You’re not a cop. Mr McGuire will do for now; when you get to know me better you can call me Mario, but not in front of the troops.’

  ‘And you can call me Jane, in front of anyone you like.’

  ‘Fine. Is there anything you need to know or want to ask me? I need to brief a couple of people.’

  ‘I didn’t know that Mr Haddock was an acting DCI. Do you want me to issue a press release?’

  ‘No need. I’ve just told the media. Sauce doesn’t know himself yet. I did that on the hoof, so to speak. I’m bringing someone of that rank on to the team, and it occurred to me that I should make clear his authority as SIO. He’ll be acting in the rank for as long as Sammy Pye is off, but realistically until he’s retired on medical grounds. Once that happens, we’ll see about permanency. This hasn’t been shared with your department, but Sammy’s diagnosis precludes recovery. It’s a matter of how quickly the disease progresses and that’s uncertain.’

  ‘I don’t know Mr Pye, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s a pity. A lot of us go back all the way with Sammy. He’s a big loss.’

  ‘Pardon me for asking,’ Balfour ventured, ‘but does DCI Haddock’s temporary promotion need to be approved by the chief constable?’

  ‘Yes, but I’ll tell her. I’m the Head of CID, as well as her designated deputy. You haven’t met her yet, have you?’

  ‘No.’ She smiled. ‘Mr Allsop doesn’t encourage other ranks to mix with the higher-ups. I’m only here because he’s away.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure of that. My view, which I think you’ll find carries more weight than Mr Allsop’s, is that you’re the person on the ground in this part of Scotland. When you speak, it’s not on Perry Allsop’s behalf, but on the chief constable’s, so the two of you should meet. I’ll try to make that happen, Jane, as soon as I can. Meanwhile, my door’s always open to you.’ He frowned. ‘Thanks for your help in there. Now I really must go.’

  He made his way back into the main building, and through to the Serious Crimes office suite. The room was crowded. He looked around for newcomers. One of them was easy to find. Detective Chief Inspector Charlotte Mann was a large and formidable woman who had made her reputation in the hard school of Glasgow CID. In her early days as an officer she had been entered into a boxing tournament at a police smoker against a male opponent and had despatched him in less than a minute. In contrast her colleague, DS John Cotter, was at least four inches shorter and more lightly built. Tyneside born, he had chosen to serve in Scotland and had been picked out as someone with prospects, placed with Mann after her mentor, the legendary Detective Sergeant Dan Provan had retired to a life of happy domesticity . . . with her.

  ‘Lottie,’ McGuire exclaimed. ‘Thanks for answering the call. You too, John.’

  She gazed back at him, her right eyebrow slightly raised. ‘I wasn’t aware it was optional, sir. But I’d have been here regardless,’ she added. ‘I knew Terry Coats in the Strathclyde days. Conceited arsehole, but a good detective. He didn’t deserve what happened to him, then or now. Once a cop always a cop as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Montell?’

  ‘No. He transferred into your old force from overseas, didn’t he? That made him very much Edinburgh. I did hear about him, though, getting cut defending Sir Bob’s daughter. How’s she taking it?’

  ‘How would you expect? They were close; never a couple, but close.’

  ‘And Coats’s wife? How’s she? I met her, after Terry had jumped ship from Strathclyde, not long after she made CID. I thought she might have brought him under control, but apparently not.’

  ‘Controlled him in what way?’ Cotter asked.

  ‘Women,’ Mann replied. ‘Terry would have shagged anything with a pulse; and maybe without, if there was nothing else available. He knocked Noele up when she was a plonk. He did the decent thing, marrying her . . . at least that’s what we all thought at first. Well, maybe not all of us,’ she reflected. ‘Dan reckoned that he only did it because her father, Bert McClair, was a South Lanarkshire councillor, and served on the Strathclyde police committee. Right or not, nothing changed with Terry; it didn’t surprise me at all when Sauce and Sir Bob caught him in the act. Speaking of Sauce,’ she exclaimed, looking past McGuire towards the door.

  Haddock swept into the room, his coat over his shoulder and a laptop computer tucked under his arm. Singh followed, closing the door behind them. ‘Sorry I’m late, sir,’ the DI said. ‘Coats’ place took longer than I thought it would.’ He waved the laptop. ‘There was nothing there of any significance, only this. We’ll see what it has on it, but I’ll tell you one thing, he and Griff weren’t riding the same gravy train.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Mann asked.

  ‘It means that we found signs of unexplained wealth in Griff Montell’s office and at his home,’ the DCC explained.

  ‘And signs of unexplained poverty in Coats’s,’ Haddock added. ‘Jackie,’ he called out, ‘have we got into Griff’s computer yet?’

  ‘Sorry, Sauce,’ DC Jackie Wright replied. Griff Montell’s computer was on her desk, taking up much of the available space. ‘It’s beyond me; I’ve tried all sorts of passwords based on date of birth, his service number, kids’ names, everything obvious. I’m going to have to call in the IT people.’

  ‘Have you tried “Alexis”?’

  ‘No, why should that work?’

  ‘It probably won’t; it’s Alex Skinner’s given name, that’s all.’

  ‘Okay.’ She turned back to the keyboard and punched in the letters, carefully. ‘No luck,’ she reported.

  ‘Try it backwards,’ McGuire suggested.

  She did; as soon as she pressed the ‘Enter’ key the wallpaper disappeared and a photo of Alex herself filled the outsize screen.

  ‘And here were we all thinking they were just good friends,’ McGuire exclaimed. ‘Not as far as Griff was concerned, it seems. Sauce, when you speak to Alex, I don’t think that’s something she needs to know.’

  ‘Are you sure about that, boss?’ Haddock asked. ‘We don’t know how Alex really felt about Griff, but we’ve had an insight into how he saw her. Isn’t she entitled to know, and have we got the right to keep it from her?’

  The DCC sighed, long and loudly. ‘You know, you are right,’ he said. ‘I’ve known Alex since I was a plod, and she was maybe thirteen. The first t
ime I met her was at a crime scene in Infirmary Street Baths. The big fella had brought her along because he’d had no option; he asked me to look after her while he was inside. She didn’t really need looking after, even then, but I did, and in a way I’ve been looking after her ever since. We all have, and that’s what I was doing there. You handle it any way you like; the purpose is to extract from her as much information about Montell as she has, that we might not. Have you arranged to see her yet? If not, do so now, and make it first thing tomorrow. We’ve all been up long enough today.’

  ‘What about John and me, sir?’

  He turned to Mann. ‘I need you two to interview Detective Sergeant McClair. There’s no sentiment in this situation; she and one of the victims had an adversarial relationship, so she needs to be approached on that basis, regardless of who she is. Noele will understand that, I’m sure.’

  ‘What do I do if she asks for a lawyer?’

  ‘You refuse,’ he told her. ‘She isn’t entitled, because she won’t have been cautioned; she’ll be interviewed as a witness. That said, if she wants a Police Federation rep, I have no problem with that. The objective is simple; find out how much she knew about Terry’s life. His associates, his love life, his financial position.’

  ‘For example, why he was living in a dump,’ Haddock added.

  ‘That bad?’

  ‘Ask Tarvil. He’s pretty fastidious; he was for having the place fumigated.’ The big Sikh grunted confirmation.

  ‘Okay, deal with that too, Lottie. Was Coats under pressure, and if so what might he have done to relieve it?’

  ‘What about exploring his relationship with Montell when we talk to her, sir?’ Cotter asked.

  ‘Yes,’ McGuire agreed, ‘but very carefully. It’s emerged that Noele was in a relationship with Griff herself. Ultimately you’re trying to find out how much she knew about both of them. Did each of them share information with her that was common to them both? Did they both drop the same names, people, places, events?’

  ‘Or did she drop their names to someone else?’ Mann said.

  The DCC and the Haddock stared at her.

  ‘What?’ she exclaimed. ‘No stone left unturned. No possibility left unexplored. We want to know everything about the victims; those rules apply to her too.’

  ‘Okay,’ McGuire conceded. ‘Now, acting DCI Haddock . . .’ The young detective stared at him. ‘Look, Sauce, you are in practice, so it should be made official . . . can we talk about priorities? You’re the SIO, what are they?’

  ‘Interviews with Alex and Noele,’ he replied. ‘There’s an argument that we treat them both the same, i.e., interview both on police premises, but I’m not going to go there, one, because there’s no connection at all between Alex and Terry Coats and, two, because I don’t fancy the heat it would draw from a certain quarter. Once we have everything we’re going to get from them, we look at all the video we can find, from the traffic cameras, street cameras around the homes of both men, and security footage from the airport. We’ve established that Montell checked a suitcase on to his Saturday flight, routed through to Johannesburg, but that he never boarded the aircraft. Various possibilities occur to me, but do any of you have thoughts? DCI Mann?’

  ‘When did he drop the case off?’

  ‘Don’t know yet, that’s one of the things we’ll look at on the airport CCTV. Why?’

  ‘It could have been several hours in advance of flight time. If so, he could have been meeting someone before he caught the plane, and heard something that made him miss it. There are three hotels close to that airport; Dan, my Jakey and I stayed in the Moxy when we flew out of Edinburgh in October. There would have been plenty of time for him to go there before he went airside.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Haddock agreed. ‘If you and John could check them all that would be good. If you get something, excellent. If not, I would like you to visit airport security. Check if Coats was working on Saturday; if so, ask them whether he put any sort of an alert out for Montell.’

  ‘What about our own people? We have patrol officers there.’

  ‘That’s right, Lottie, round the clock . . . which makes it unlikely that he was abducted from there, but chances are some of them might have known Inspector Montell by sight and recognised him on Saturday afternoon.’ He nodded. ‘While you’re doing all that I’m going to be speaking to Sir Robert. He told me about a yarn that Coats spun him about bullion robbery in South Africa and gold coins being smuggled into the country and changed in an airport shop. He thought it was nonsense at the time, but he’s changed his mind now. Just as we’re doing with Alex and Noele, I need to press him to remember as much of the detail as he can. Once I’ve done that, I’ll have the difficult task of speaking to Griff’s twin sister, Spring. The DCC contacted her in South Africa through her partner . . . you two may not know, but she’s a retired chief superintendent who used to be Griff’s boss. She was serving when the relationship began, and he created a hell of a row when he found out, but he got used to it once he calmed down. Whether that translated into regular social contact, that’s something I need to find out. I’m doing it by video link at eight tomorrow before I see Alex; that’s been arranged by the DCC. We’re an hour behind them, so she’ll be awake and as ready for it as she’s going to be.’

  ‘Speaking of which,’ the deputy chief constable declared, ‘let’s all go home and get some sleep. This is the most eventful New Year’s Day I’ve ever had, and I can’t wait for it to be over.’

  ‘Me too,’ Haddock conceded. He reached for the coat that he had thrown over a chair, only to be interrupted by a shout from DC Wright.

  ‘Sauce! I think you should see this on Inspector Montell’s iMac.’

  ‘Can it wait?’ he asked, then corrected himself, knowing his curiosity meant that it could not. ‘Of course not. What is it?’ He stepped across to her workstation, with McGuire and the two Glasgow detectives close behind.

  ‘There’s a folder on here of recordings from his security system. This one’s from last Saturday evening, timed at twenty-two forty-nine. It’s from a camera mounted on the outside of the building, and . . . look.’

  A hazy image was frozen on the screen; it showed the street outside Montell’s apartment, deserted, with no one in sight. Wright’s hand was cupped over a computer mouse; she clicked it and the recording began to play, rain lashing down, ripples showing in the puddles by the side of the roadway. As they looked on, a figure appeared, walking into view, its back to the wall-mounted camera. The new arrival was wearing a long, dark, hooded raincoat. ‘Male or female?’ John Cotter murmured.

  ‘You tell me, Sarge,’ Wright replied, freezing the picture once more. ‘You can’t tell from this. Look there, whoever it is, they’re wearing calf-length wellies, and those are pretty much unisex.’

  Haddock leaned forward. ‘What’s that he or she’s carrying? I can’t make it out.’

  ‘It’s a plastic bag, Co-op.’

  ‘So somebody’s been shopping?’

  ‘Maybe,’ the DC agreed, ‘but . . .’ She hit the ‘Play’ icon once more; they watched the subject step up to the door, punch a code into the panel and slip inside.

  ‘Okay, so somebody arrived in the pissing rain. What do the inside cameras show? There are four of them; entrance hallway, kitchen, living room, and bedroom.’

  ‘That’s the thing, Sauce. They don’t show anything. They were all disabled at the time. They didn’t have motion activation, so they had to have been turned off. I can see from this that the system allowed him to do that remotely; but by and large they were never switched off, nor even when Noele was there. I found some footage of her that I will only show you privately, if you think it’s necessary, and even then only with an order from the chief constable. They were switched off half an hour before whoever it was arrived, then back on an hour later.’

  ‘If that’s so, I wonder why he didn’t disable the street camera,’ Haddock observed.

  ‘It’s possible tha
t he tried, only the weather got in the way of the signal.’

  ‘Maybe so, but evidentially there is nothing to show us that whoever that person was had anything to do with Griff. Is it possible that the weather could have interfered with the storage system of the internal camera footage? Mr Francis said it was stored on the Cloud.’

  ‘As backup, that’s right, but it’s also stored on the computer; that’s where I’ve got this from, so the weather isn’t a factor. Griff seems to have been in the habit of erasing it after three months, and relying on the Cloud for longer term. And you’re right, we don’t have anything visual that links him with the person we saw. However,’ she paused, ‘we have this.’ She went back to the computer and fast forwarded the street camera recording. The detectives watched as its clock raced, until she slowed it with a move of the mouse. ‘About now,’ she said. ‘Watch.’

  They did; the rain was as heavy as before, with no one braving it until the door was opened from the inside and the same figure stepped out, wrapped up against the weather, with the hood pulled down. ‘There’s no way of telling whether the face is being hidden deliberately,’ Wright said, ‘but from this angle, and the body shape, I would say that the person is a male. I have two begged questions. The first, could that be Inspector Montell himself? The second, where’s the Co-op bag?’

  McGuire looked down on her; he shook his head. ‘No to the first. I’d say that’s too short to be him and not wide enough in the shoulders. As for the bag, who knows?’

  ‘I do,’ Tarvil Singh replied, loudly. ‘In Montell’s office,’ he said, ‘I remember seeing a placky bag, blue and white. I remember because it was out of place. Everything else in his office was as neat and tidy as the rest of the house, a monument to OCD, yet that thing was just lying there, discarded and never picked up. That’s right, Sauce, isn’t it?’