‘The secret police? Magic. I’ve never had a call from you lot before. What are you after? Where Al Qaeda have their money stashed? I can’t tell you for sure, but I’ve got some ideas. For example, if I were you I’d be looking at businesses with a strong Jewish base and blue-chip American corporations for two reasons: one, they usually do bloody well, and two, it’s the last place you’d expect Islamic terrorists to hide money.’
‘I’ll pass that on,’ Maggie told her, ‘but that’s not why I’m calling. I want to ask you about a company called Fishheads.’
‘Ah!’ the analyst exclaimed. ‘You want to talk about Star Wars: young Dražen Boras’s strike against his dad’s evil empire.’
‘That’s right; or David Barnes as he became when he set the company up.’
’Yes, but it didn’t fool anybody. Dražen’s got a bloody big ego; he wanted everybody to know who he was, so his advisers leaked his real identity early on. It did no harm when it came to raising finance either. The family-at-war thing helped too. It all gave him an instant profile in the marketplace, where another new-start business would have had a growth period that would have lasted for years, and might have ended in failure.’ Harkness paused. ‘So, Mrs Steele, are you trying to solve the great mystery?’
‘Which one’s that?’
’Where’s Dražen gone?’
‘Yes, I am. What’s your view?’
‘I don’t have one; I don’t deal in guesses, hen. The market doesn’t have much of a clue either. It’s all gossip, but the most popular theory is that he’s got some terminal disease, and that he’s away to die somewhere. There is a much darker notion too, that his old man’s had him encased in concrete and dumped at sea.’
‘Do you mean there are people in the business community who’d believe that of Davor Boras, that he’d kill his own son?’
‘There are indeed. Their theory goes that Davor couldn’t stand his aughter being dead and Dražen being alive so he corrected the situation. He had some people down in London used to work for him; a so-called security firm. They disappeared off the face of the earth at the same time as Dražen did.’
‘And which of these theories do you favour, Jacqui?’
‘Neither of those. If you press me to give you my opinion, not a guess, but not offered as fact either, I’d say he’s on the run. I’d say that you lot are after him.’
‘But if he’d broken any company laws, that would be the subject of a very open investigation.’
‘I don’t mean company laws, Margaret.’
‘Everyone except my sister calls me Maggie. You mean another sort of criminality?’
‘Yes. Am I right?’
‘Will you take silence for an answer?’
‘I often do.’
‘Do you know who’s running Fishheads now? I know that his mother’s taken over the chair, but who’s in charge?’
’Ostensibly, it’s the CEO, Godric Hawker. He was Dražen’s finance director.’
‘Ostensibly?’
‘That’s the other open question. Is he really in charge or is he still taking orders from Drazen? Or even from Davor? Is the evil emperor pulling the strings now?’
‘Or might he have been pulling them all along?’
Harkness drew a breath. ‘Are you saying that the family-at-war thing was a hoax?’
‘Has Davor’s business suffered?’
‘A bit.’
‘Put the two of them together and how does it look in terms of total market share? Positive or negative?’
‘Heavily in the black. But you know what? The City doesn’t care; all it sees are two very successful companies. Ethical investment is a load of shite, Maggie; you’d better believe that.’
‘I wish I didn’t, but I’m one of nature’s cynics too. A couple more questions, Jacqui, then I’m done. When Dražen was around, how close were he and Hawker?’
‘They were always side by side at City presentations; that’s all I can tell you.’
’Apart from him, was Dražen close to anyone else in the company?’
‘Ifan Richards, the third executive director, had the authority to speak for the company when he wasn’t around. You might talk to him.’
‘I might very well,’ said Maggie. ‘Thanks, Jacqui; Maurice was right.’
She hung up, just as Stephanie began to stir in her cot.
Twenty-one
‘I hope Aileen’s not too pissed off,’ said Neil McIlhenney. ‘I wouldn’t fancy being in her bad books.’
‘Nah,’ said Skinner. ‘She’s okay. But I promised her we wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, so bear that in mind.’ He paused. ‘Can you guys see me all right at your end? You’re fine on my screen.’ Two figures nodded in reply.
He, McIlhenney and Mario McGuire were making their first stab at a video conference over the Internet. ‘I didn’t give Aileen any details,’ he went on, ‘beyond that there’s been a crime in Edinburgh and you need my input. How’s your investigation going?’
‘It’s complicated,’ McGuire told him.
‘How are the media playing it?’
‘As a straightforward murder so far. Nobody’s made the art connection yet; all Neil said at the press briefing was that the victim was a member of staff at Mary Erskine.’
‘They will, though. Three dead artists inside five months, the latest after the perpetrator of the first two topped himself. . or, rather, was topped, although they don’t know that yet either.’
McIlhenney leaned towards the web cam. ‘Sugar Dean was a teacher, though, not really an artist.’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ Skinner countered. ‘I’ve been doing some digging of my own, through a lecturer I know. She was a prize-winner at the art school, then she moved on to her teaching qualification. While she was doing that, she was commissioned by the Scottish Executive, on the back of her final-year work, to paint a series of pictures under the theme “justice”. There are four in all; one hangs in the High Court in Glasgow, one’s in the Crown Office, one’s in the Parliament building, and the fourth is about two hundred yards away from you two, in the conference room at Fettes. Fucking detectives, eh?’
McGuire and McIlhenney looked at each other, in the same moment. ‘You guys are on borrowed time,’ said Skinner. ‘If this connection doesn’t break before tomorrow, I’ll be surprised. What are your priorities?’
‘At the moment, Sugar’s background is,’ McIlhenney told him. ‘We’ve got a nasty ex-fiancé in her past, who just happens to be a serving police officer.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘PC Theodore Weekes, aged twenty-eight, been on the job for five years, currently stationed at South Queensferry, resident in west Edinburgh.’
‘How nasty?’
‘We don’t know yet,’ McGuire interposed. ‘I’ve spoken to his inspector, Chippy Grade, and to Jock Varley at Livingston, where he used to be stationed. Chippy doesn’t like him, but has nothing against him. Varley said that he had a reputation for being a bit heavy-handed.’
‘All police officers need to be able to handle themselves.’
‘Not when tackling a five-foot-four-inch law student whose only crime is throwing a fag packet at a bin and missing.’
‘No,’ Skinner conceded. ‘Has he volunteered information about his past relationship with the victim?’
‘No,’ McIlhenney replied, ‘but to be fair, he’s hardly had time. He’s got until midday tomorrow, then he’s being pulled in here for interview.’
‘If it comes to it, don’t go easy on him.’
‘Don’t worry about that, boss.’ The superintendent paused. ‘But before that, there’s something else to be done.’
‘In due course,’ said Skinner, ‘but let’s talk basics first. It appears that the Dean murder has many of the hallmarks of the Gavin and Boras killings. Right?’
‘Yes,’ McGuire agreed.
‘The full details of the murders carried out by Daniel Ballester, they’ve never been revealed, to my knowledge.’
‘No, they haven’t.’
‘So we might be looking at a leak, in our own organisation or in the Crown Office.’
‘Yes,’ said McIlhenney. ‘We’re addressing that, don’t worry. Mario’s putting together a list of all officers who were part of the overall Ballester inquiry, and who might know the whole story. I’ve been to the fiscal’s office to ask them to do the same.’