‘Would it have made any difference if you had?’
‘Of course. It would have meant that the person who did this would have been four hours closer to us.’
‘Us? You are not in Scotland now, señor. You are only a witness in this thing.’
Skinner snorted. ‘Only a witness? Rephrase that: I’m the only witness. This guy is good.’
‘You speak as if you have knowledge of him.’
‘I wish I did. This is a very surreal situation, Intendant.’
‘Surreal? I don’t see anything surreal about it. I see a dead woman with a bullet in her head, according to my medico. As soon as I find out who she is, I will look for a husband or a boyfriend, or maybe the wife of someone else’s husband or boyfriend.’
‘And maybe you’ll get lucky. I really hope you do. But if you’re wrong, we’ll have a really worrying situation. . and don’t correct me this time, for I’m saying “we” deliberately. In recent months, we’ve had four murders in Scotland that are practically identical to this one.’
‘Maybe,’ said Cortes, unconvinced, ‘but in Los Angeles in two years we had fifty homicides where the body looked like this, gunshot to the head.’
‘Edinburgh ain’t Los Angeles, señora. Our homicides were very specific. The first three cases have been closed, as the only suspect is dead, but two weeks ago there was a fourth killing, so similar to the others that my people in Scotland are concerned that somebody is imitating him.’
‘Yes, but that’s in Scotland.’
‘Indeed, but yesterday I was in France trying to help my colleagues by tracking down the boyfriend of the most recent victim. He’s supposed to be on holiday in Collioure, but he isn’t. He’s gone missing, last heard of at the train station in Perpignan. He could be anywhere. He could be here.’
‘What is his name?’
‘Davis Colledge. He’s eighteen years old.’
‘Why would he do this?’
Skinner looked at her. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘You know sometimes that’s the last question to be answered. There are people who say that there’s no such thing as a motiveless crime. I’m not one of them.’ He smiled, and flexed his shoulders: his FBI shirt was sweat-soaked, uncomfortable against his skin. ‘I agree with you on at least one thing, though. Our. .’ He paused. ‘Sorry, your first priority is to identify this woman. Whoever killed her did his best to make that difficult.’ He glanced across at the small forensic team that Cortes had brought with her. ‘Is that a Polaroid your guy has?’
Her eyes followed his. ‘Yes.’
‘Then ask him to take a snap of the woman: full face, close up.’
Cortes called across to the technician, who did as she ordered, then waited for the image to develop, shielding it from the sun with his hand. When it was ready, he brought it across.
‘Good,’ said Skinner. ‘Now, can I make a suggestion?’
‘Please.’
‘Let’s say this woman has been here before. Did she come for a swim off the rocks? Or just to take the sun in the morning before it got too high? She isn’t too heavily tanned; that suggests that she took some care of her skin. When she was finished, did she go home?’
‘Or maybe did she go for a coffee?’ the intendant murmured.
‘Exactly.’
‘Let’s check the hostal,’ she said, then glanced up at Skinner. ‘Would you like to come?’
‘I’d appreciate the professional courtesy,’ he replied.
A rough path led from the rocky outcrop towards the beach, and Hostal Empuries. At its end they had to climb a small fence, before reaching the walkway that Skinner and Aileen had taken that morning. He checked his stride, allowing Intendant Cortes to lead the way towards the building. Afternoon was edging into evening, but the small bay was still thronged with sunbathers and swimmers. Heads turned as they passed; eyes followed the uniform.
The same young waiter, half Catalan, half British, who had served them earlier was still on duty, near the top of the steps as they reached the terrace. He frowned, but approached them. ‘Hello again,’ he said, in English. ‘Is there a problem?’
Skinner realised that the crime scene was so far off the track that not even a rumour of the incident had spread to the beach. ‘Not for you,’ the Scot told him. ‘The officer has a photograph she’d like you to look at, to see if you can identify the person in it. I warn you, though: it’s not too pleasant.’
His frown deepened. He took the Polaroid from Cortes and looked at it. As he did so, his eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. ‘Fuck!’ he whispered. ‘Is she. .’ Skinner nodded. ‘Ah, madre!’ he cried, distressed.
‘You know her?’ Cortes demanded.
‘It’s Nada,’ he replied. ‘Nada Sebastian. She comes here a lot, most mornings, when the weather’s fine.’
‘Nada?’
‘Short for Nadine.’
‘Is she local?’ Skinner asked.
‘She lives in Bellcaire. Her studio’s there.’
‘Her studio?’
‘Yes. She’s an artist.’
Fifty
‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he said quietly, sipping the cold beer in his hand. ‘I’ve got to interview you guys formally tomorrow. I should steer clear of you till then.’
‘Andy,’ Mario McGuire replied, lounging behind his desk, ‘if it makes you uncomfortable, drink up and bugger off. But we’re not going to ask you anything about your investigation, I promise.’
‘I know, or I wouldn’t be here. What the hell? I’ve done a few thousand things in my life that I shouldn’t have, so what’s one more? Anyway, it was purely a social invitation, you said.’
‘That’s right,’ Neil McIlhenney confirmed. ‘How’s life in Tayside?’ He paused. ‘Here, that was a right shambles in the High Court in Dundee yesterday, was it not? Everybody there to begin the trial except the prisoner. Who is he anyway, this Grandpa McCullough? Sounds like the senior citizen from hell.’
‘He would be, if he was a senior citizen, but he’s still a few years short of that. He got the name because he became a grandfather when he was thirty-six. His daughter got pregnant when she was fifteen: she kept it a secret from him until it was too late for her to have a termination. The dad was one John McCreath, aged twenty-three, local playboy, but married with a kid. Not long after the news broke, he was found in a lock-up in Arbroath. I won’t tell you what Grandpa did to him: it would put you off your dinner. That was twenty-two years ago; silence prevailed, he got away with it, and nobody’s laid a glove on him since then, until now.’
‘How did you nail him?’
‘We didn’t, not really: McCreath’s son did. They moved to Aberdeen after it all happened, she remarried and the boy, James, took his stepfather’s name, Dickson. He grew up wide, and got involved in a drug deal with Grandpa. He set him up, then shopped him to us. We got him stone cold: as soon as he was in custody, McCreath’s widow and her sister came forward and gave evidence about the night John was taken away by Grandpa and his team. We picked up the two guys who were with him. One hasn’t said a word, but the other turned out to have terminal cancer; his priest persuaded him to make a dying declaration before a sheriff about the killing. Since then, the trick’s been to make sure the surviving witnesses, the women, stay that way.’ Martin smiled. ‘You guys, you laugh at Tayside. .’
‘We don’t!’ McGuire protested.
‘You bloody do; you think it’s a backwater, and that all the locals are either clods or sheep-shaggers. It’s not. It’s a more varied society than this one, and its subculture is more serious and better organised than yours.’
‘That’s because Bob Skinner, and guys like the three of us, got rid of most of ours.’
‘Maybe, but Grandpa McCullough is right up with the likes of Tony Manson and Jackie Charles in terms of violence and ruthlessness: maybe even ahead of them. If you looked at those guys closely, you might have found a redeeming feature. Grandpa doesn’t have one. He’s like a stick of rock with the word “evil” going all the way through.’