‘It won’t,’ he promised, sliding his hands down her back, cupping them around her firm buttocks and pressing her into him. ‘You’re different. You fill me up. You make me truly happy. You make me believe I could achieve anything. . even filling Proud Jimmy’s uniform.’
‘Then go get it.’ She lowered her lips to his. ‘Speaking of filling up,’ she murmured, as the kiss ended, ‘how about. .’
From the other side of the house, they heard the door chime. ‘How about we just ignore that?’ he suggested.
‘Second that.’
They heard the sound again, and again and a fourth time. ‘Bugger.’ He sighed. ‘It’s the police. Can’t be anyone else, not as persistent as that.’
‘Whoever it is,’ said Aileen, ‘you’d better cover the bulge in those trunks.’
‘And you’d better hide upstairs.’
‘Sounds like a deal to me.’
He picked up his towelling robe and put it on, knotting its cord firmly, then walked to the door, just as its warning chimed for a fifth time. He twisted the handle and jerked it open. Intendant Josefina Cortes stood there, cool in her uniform shirt, a yellow folder in her hand. ‘Bon dia, Comisario,’ she said, in Catalan.
‘And a good day to you too.’ He held the door wider for her to enter. ‘What do you have to tell me? Have you made an arrest?’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Have you?’
‘You may not have noticed,’ he said, ‘but I’m off duty. My people don’t report to me every step of the way. Last I heard we had a guy in court this morning on holding charges relating to the Edinburgh murder, but we’re still looking for young Colledge.’
Cortes’s expression frosted over. ‘You did not tell me yesterday about this other man.’
‘True, because he may not have done it. So? What brings you here?’
She waved the folder she was carrying. ‘I have the autopsy report. I thought you might like to see it.’
‘I appreciate that,’ said Skinner, ‘but to be honest, I don’t really fancy looking at photographs of brain tissue and extracted organs. Summarise it for me. Shot dead, yes?’
‘Yes, as we knew already. The pathologist believes she died at around seven thirty in the morning. We talked to her neighbours in Bellcaire. One of them told us that she liked to sketch very early, and to take photographs of the sea and the town with the sun low in the sky. She had a digital camera, a very good one, the man said. We found several images on her computer to bear out his story.’
‘No camera, no sketchbook, no clothes: the killer took the lot.’
‘We found her clothes,’ Cortes told him. ‘They were in one of the basuras, the public rubbish bins, in the street that goes behind the beach nearest the town. We’re looking for traces of the criminal on them, but. . it was a mess in there.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘No.’›
‘So he has the camera and the pad.’
‘It seems so.’
‘If there is no connection with the Edinburgh murder. . that is, if it wasn’t the Colledge lad who did it. . you’re back to it being an opportunist killing. In that case the killer might try to sell the camera.’
‘We are looking for that all across the region. We recovered the serial number from the studio in Bellcaire.’
‘What about the bullet? Did you recover that?’
‘Sí. As you suspected it was small calibre. We’re not sure, but our scientific people think it may have been fired from a modified starting pistol, or a replica firearm.’
‘Which might imply a degree of skill on the killer’s part?’
‘Exactly.’
‘That gives me something to go on. I’ll ask my team to check up on what the boy did at his school. We know already that he was in the CCF.’
‘What is that?’
‘Military cadets.’
‘You did not tell me that either.’
‘True. Forgive me, Intendant, but if you had caught up with Davis Colledge in Spain, I didn’t want your people shooting first, then checking to see if he was armed.’ He saw outrage rise in her eyes, and forestalled it. ‘And don’t tell me that only happens in London.’
‘Maybe not,’ she admitted.
He turned back towards the open door, a hint that her visit was over. ‘Thanks for that information. I’ll call my officers straight away, and tell them about the camera too. Who knows? When they find the kid, he might just have it.’
‘Merci,’ she said. ‘You’ll keep me informed when you return to Scotland?’
‘Yes. You’ll get me there as of tomorrow evening.’ He opened a drawer in a hall table, and took out a card. ‘These are my business numbers. Mobile’s usually best.’
He closed the door as she left, and went straight to the phone. McIlhenney was away from his office, but his number was on voicemail. He left brief instructions to check on Colledge’s metalworking capability, then hung up.
Aileen looked at him as he hung his robe behind the door of the en-suite bathroom. ‘I see you’re not in the mood any more.’ She chuckled.
‘I wouldn’t say that, but there’s no time to do you justice, First Minister. Get yourself ready; we’re out of here. One last surprise: I’ve booked us a room in the Hotel Arts in Barcelona, and arranged a lift down there. Our pick-up comes in an hour and a half. It’s the last night of our holiday and we will spend it where no bastard can find us.’
Sixty
‘I appreciate your finding the time to come to see me, Gregor,’ said Andy Martin, reclining in Bob Skinner’s comfortable chair.
‘No problem. I always like seeing what life is like at the sharp end of the criminal justice system.’ He stopped. ‘How’s the family?’ he asked.
‘My girls? They’re great, and they’ll be having company soon. Yours?’
‘Ranald and Fergus? Aged twelve and nine now, and they’re growing frighteningly large. As for Phil, she’s taken to her new job with a vengeance. . Nice phrase for a judge, don’t you think?’
‘I couldn’t top it.’
‘And how about you, my friend? I hear you’ve been up to Chambers Street.’
‘Yes,’ Martin chuckled, ‘and I’m not sure I’ll be welcome there again.’
The fiscal smiled across the desk. ‘He didn’t go into the detail of your conversation, but I don’t think you’re the Crown Agent’s favourite person right now.’ He winked. ‘That’s no bad thing, but watch out that he doesn’t try to bite back at some time in the future.’
‘He hasn’t got the fucking teeth for that. He may not have much of a future either, not in his present job, at any rate. I’ve had DCI Mackenzie go through the list of people at the Rotary meeting where he shot his mouth off about the Ballester killings. One of them is the principal maths teacher at Stewart’s-Melville school. Mackenzie had a quiet chat with him at home, about an hour ago. He admitted talking about it in the staff room, so the genie’s well out the bottle, and your boss is entirely to blame.’
‘What have you done about it?’
‘For now, I’ve passed the information to DI Stallings. It establishes the possibility that this missing youngster, Colledge, was familiar with Ballester’s methodology. For later, I’ll be reporting to the chief constable that I’m as satisfied as I can be that information did leak and that Dowley is the only source. You were my last interview: I’ll be writing everything up this afternoon.’
‘What do you reckon Sir James will do?’
‘Can’t say for certain, but I suspect he’ll pass my findings to the Lord Advocate. It’ll serve the guy right if he does. If he’d kept his head down and his mouth shut when your assistant went running to him, none of this would be happening.’
‘Maybe not,’ Broughton agreed, ‘but any potential case against Davis Colledge would be missing a vital element: possible knowledge of the previous murders.’
‘Cases,’ said Martin.
‘Of course, the Spanish incident: Ms Stallings briefed me about that. In the process she prevented me from going ahead and charging the man Weekes with the Dean murder. . for now at any rate. Very strange circumstances, Andy, if you’re not a believer in the power of coincidence: that the Spanish murder should happen on Bob Skinner’s doorstep.’ He paused. ‘Only it’s not so strange. If the young man Colledge did leave Collioure to explore the coast, as he seems to have told his landlady, that would take him quite naturally through L’Escala, as I understand the geography.’