‘Yes,’ he answered, pressing the instrument to his ear for at least the twenty-fifth time that day. He almost added, ‘Becky,’ assuming that it would be another report on the Dean murder inquiry, and on the preparation for Weekes’s court appearance the following morning.
‘Neil?’ The voice was male, and very familiar. It was also on edge. ‘It’s Bob. I’m glad I caught you; I need someone to talk to. You will never guess in one thousand years of trying where I am.’
‘You’re at a crime scene,’ McIlhenney replied, without a pause for thought.
‘How the hell did you know that?’
‘Call it intuition. Or call it knowing the difference between you calling me on something job-related and to tell me you’ve just broken par round the pitch and putt.’
‘Clever bastard. Now describe it to me.’
The superintendent frowned. ‘This has nothing to do with Aileen, has it?’
‘No. She doesn’t even know about it yet. She won’t be best pleased either, when she finds out that I’m involved in another murder investigation.’
McIlhenney gasped. ‘Only you,’ he said. ‘Only you could go on holiday and stumble across something like that. Can you tell me about it? Are you able to, where you are? I can hear all sorts of noise in the background.’
‘That’s the sea. I’m on a rocky outcrop, facing my house. The Mossos d’Esquadra CID officers are on their way here from Girona. I’ll have to wait and give them a statement. But that doesn’t stop me talking to you.’
‘Who’s the victim?’
‘We don’t know yet. None of the officers who’ve got here so far recognises her.’
‘Her?’
‘Yes. She’s maybe around thirty, Spanish, I’d guess, from her hair colouring, skin tone and general appearance, but there’s nothing here to back that up. There are no clothes, no personal belongings at the scene.’
‘So it looks like she was killed somewhere else and dumped there?’
‘That may very well be so; but either way she must have been put here when there was nobody else around. She’s been lying in the sun all day, and she could have been here overnight, unnoticed until I spotted her. There’s a medical examiner here, and if my limited Spanish lets me understand him right, he’s saying that he’s not even going to guess at time of death. The sun’s been blazing down all day, so the rocks are fucking hot. It’s like she’s been lying in a pizza oven all this time.’
‘You mean she’s covered in anchovies?’
‘Jesus, Neil, spare me the crime-scene humour. The one thing I do know is what killed her, because I’ve had a look for myself.’
Call it a premonition, call it a second flash of intuition, but a wave of certainty seemed to wash over McIlhenney as he sat there. He was a thousand miles away from Skinner, but it was as if he had been teleported to his side in an instant, and could see the victim. He knew how the body was lying, he could picture the peaceful expression on her face. ‘A single wound to the back of the head,’ he said. ‘Small-calibre weapon.’
‘I can’t vouch for the calibre,’ the deputy chief constable replied, ‘but there’s no exit wound. It’s even possible that this could be a knife wound, but you get the picture. It looks as if she never knew what hit her.’
‘So what are you saying to me?’ the detective superintendent asked.
‘You know what I’m saying. I’m not familiar with the Gavin and Boras crime scenes, or the third girl, Amy Noone. I wasn’t involved in those inquiries, only in the aftermath because of Stevie’s death, but from the way they’ve been described to me, this one’s identical.’
McIlhenney sat silent for a while, thinking about what he should do next. In normal circumstances, there would have been no doubt, but the shock of the news that Skinner had just imparted made him hold back. Finally, he decided. ‘Boss,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to talk to Mario. How long will you be there?’
‘As long as I have to. I’m sort of in charge here at the moment. None of the attending officers has encountered anything like this before, so I’ve been advising them. The team that’s on the way is being led by your equivalent. Once they get here and I’ve spoken to them, I’ll head back home. Let’s say I’ll be there in an hour. Meantime, I’d like you to email me the crime-scene photographs from the Ballester killings and from Sugar Dean.’
‘Okay, I’ll arrange that. Meantime, boss, if you can take a photo of your scene as it is, even if it’s only with your mobile, I’d like to see that too.’
Forty-seven
For most of the afternoon, Maggie pushed Drazen Boras to the back of her mind and caught up on the domestic tasks that had been sidelined by her pet project, and on spending quiet quality time with her daughter. As she did so, her sister worked on the desktop computer, using the software that was at the heart of the graphic-design business she had built up in Australia, and was attempting to sustain at very long distance.
As she folded the last ironed garment she thought about Bet’s decision. It was both brave and sensible, and might well prove to be a positive spin-off from her own illness. Having undergone the same procedure she knew that it would be no picnic for her, but at least she would not be going into surgery in the immediate aftermath of childbirth.
She stored her laundered clothes in the drawers where they were kept and returned to the computer room. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Almost done,’ her sister replied. ‘The client will find the finished product waiting for him when he comes in tomorrow morning, which will be about eleven p.m. our time.’
‘How much are you losing by being here?’ Maggie asked.
‘Less than you think. I have a core group of loyal customers who pay most of my bills without the need for constant face-to-face meetings. I told them I’d be out of Australia for at least six months, and they were all fine with it. Mind you,’ she continued, ‘while I’ve been here I’ve shown my work to a few Edinburgh design agencies, and to companies; the feedback’s been pretty positive.’
‘Are you telling me you’re thinking about staying?’
‘It’s crossed my mind. You and Stephanie are the only family I have, Sis. I dunno, though. I might find the winter a bit hard to take; that’s one reason why I left in the first place.’ She pushed the chair back from the desk and stood, stretching her long back. ‘You want your machine back?’
‘If you’re sure you’re done. I need to check my email.’
‘Yeah, that’s me finished; you go ahead. I’ll make supper tonight. What do you fancy?’ She clicked the mouse to send her document, then exited her program.
‘Whatever you fancy cooking. It’s been a few days since my last treatment, so my appetite’s back to normal.’
‘You’ve asked for it,’ said Bet, ominously, heading for the kitchen.
As she left, Maggie settled down at the computer, and clicked on the icon that led to her mailbox. As he had promised, there was a message from Maurice Goode: she went to it, downloaded the attachment to her ‘received files’ folder, then opened it.
She found a series of dated documents, each headed ‘A word from Fishheads.com’ with a series number. There were twenty in all, stretching back over a nine-month period. The most recent was the announcement she had already seen, of the board changes and the transfer of Dražen’s shareholding.
She returned to Goode’s covering message and read:
Hi, Maggie. These are the most recent releases from your friends. Let me know if you’d like to go further back. As you can see, their PR consultants are persistent bastards. They must be impressing the City though, for the shares are flying, despite the founder having bailed out of the business and buggered off to parts unknown to enjoy the serious millions he must have got for his stake. If you’re thinking of this as an investment, I wouldn’t put you off. Mind you, Davor Boras’s company, Continental IT, might be an even better bet, in view of never-ending speculation that he’s about to sell out to American interests. Knowing how devious Davor is, the market reckons that this talk might be a ploy to start a bidding war.