Skinner gasped. ‘You’re joking. That surreal thing? It’s one of hers?’
‘There’s no forename. I suppose it could be “Sebastian Somebody”, but the way things are going. .’
‘It’s her, all right.’ He sighed. ‘I bought it in the Galeria Mestral in L’Escala three years ago. The lady there told me it was by a local artist who was beginning to do well. I brought it home, but I couldn’t find the right place for it in the house, so I took it into the office. It’s been there ever since. I’d forgotten the artist’s name until you mentioned it. At the time I assumed it was a bloke. Andy, this is getting well beyond a fucking joke.’
‘It is. There’s something I’ve got to say, and you probably don’t want to hear it. Maybe I should wait till after lunch.’
‘No. I can guess what it is. You’re going to come back to that objective investigator I mentioned a while back, and you’re going to say that the time may have come to bring him in, since officers under my command are engaged in an international investigation in which much of the fucking evidence points at me!’
Martin nodded. ‘That’s more or less it. It’s a bizarre situation, I know. Why would you suddenly decide to copycat Ballester?’
‘Why indeed? But let’s focus on what you’re saying. I got you involved in this situation, Andy, because I knew that your leak investigation would spill over. I’ve been twitchy from the moment I heard about the Dean murder. That’s why I wanted you down here, and that’s why I asked you to think outside the box. Now you’re involved, and you know what you know, you have a duty as a serving officer to bring it to the attention of my chief constable. However, there is a need for discretion. Any public scandal involving me would wash all over Aileen, and I’m not having that. There will be an objective investigator from an outside force, and that will be you. I had this conversation with Jimmy Proud two hours ago, and he agrees. Your secondment from Tayside is extended as of now. Mario, Neil, the whole team, all report to you.’
‘Bob, we’ve been friends for ever.’
‘Andy, every senior officer in Scotland is either a friend of mine or an enemy. If Jimmy brings in somebody else, it will draw attention, and Aileen gets sucked into the whirlpool. The media would make it bloody near impossible for her to stay in office, at least until I’m exonerated. If it’s not you, then whoever it is will have a choice to make, whether to lock me up, or to have me conduct my own investigation on the outside. I leave you to imagine what sort of mayhem I’ll cause if that happens.’
‘Jimmy’s agreed?’
‘Yes, and he’s spoken to Graham Morton, told him he’d like you to look at another situation for him. Graham’s released you for another week, initially. Greatorix will stand in for you. You are it. Don’t worry: I won’t be in your hair. Technically, my sabbatical has another week to run.’
‘Ah, Jesus. In that case, let’s get something out of the way.’
‘No.’
‘You want to do it formally?’
‘Yes, we have to, but I’m saying, no, I didn’t do it. I didn’t know Sugar Dean or Nadine Sebastian, I had no reason to harm either of them, and I didn’t, any more than I committed any of the four murders attributed to Daniel Ballester.’
‘Thankfully that case is closed.’
Skinner smiled. ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? But let’s go back to thinking outside the box. What if you’re not looking for a copycat at all? What if Ballester was innocent?’
Martin was staring at his friend, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as Aileen and Alex appeared from the garden room, carrying a tray of steaks and burgers, a salad bowl, and four baked potatoes in foil wrappers.
‘But of course,’ said Bob, ‘for the duration of this lunch at least, all that’s between you and me.’
Sixty-five
‘Did you have to hit him, Jack?’ Stallings asked.
‘Either that or he hit me. Given the choice. .’
‘Fair enough. There was a moment yesterday when I thought he was ready to have a go at me.’
‘Where?’ McGurk looked puzzled.
‘At his house. There was a disturbance. Sugar’s dad paid him a visit and they wound up having a fight. Two uniforms in a patrol car saw it and broke it up; they called it in and Sauce phoned me at home. Funny place for a traffic car to show up.’
‘That’s down to me. When I chased him from Lisanne’s on Friday night I warned him that we’d be keeping a regular eye on him. If young Haddock had given me the word, I’d probably have had him lifted.’
‘It wasn’t as easy as that. John Dean threw the first punch. Mind you, after he told me what the charmer said about his daughter, Ray had to stop me going back into the house to beat the crap out of him myself.’
The sergeant threw her a small smile across his desk in the CID room. Torphichen Place was quiet, in Sunday mode. ‘He is a pig, isn’t he?’ he murmured. ‘Except. . Lisanne says that his other side does appeal to the ladies. She fell for it for a few years. He has a way of making them believe that what he’s telling them really is what’s best for them.’
‘Did he see her with you on Friday?’
‘I don’t think so. I made her stay out of sight while I sorted him out.’
‘Still, he must have worked out what had brought you there.’
‘I doubt it. I reckon that, for all the stalking, his ego’s so big that it just wouldn’t occur to him. . and Lisanne agrees with me.’
Stallings chuckled. ‘And you’re so big he wouldn’t do anything about it even if it did. What’s his timetable with the court?’
‘There’ll be a Sheriff Court pleading diet. . hearing, in other words. . in a few weeks when the indictment will be read out. By that time Frankie will have done a deal with Gregor Broughton to drop the minor charges in exchange for a guilty plea. She might try to talk him into a charge of simply attempting to defeat the ends of justice, and he might go along with it, since we weren’t very far into our investigation.’
‘Will it make much difference?’
‘I don’t think so: the sheriff’s powers are limited, so he’ll send him to the High Court for sentencing. When the judge hears that the body lay undiscovered for ten days, and adds that Weekes was a cop, he’ll hammer him.’
‘That assumes that he hasn’t been charged with murder by then.’
‘Come on, Becky. We know there’s no chance of that.’
‘Doesn’t it also assume that we haven’t charged anyone else? Wouldn’t the Weekes hearing be delayed in case it was prejudicial?’
‘That shouldn’t make any difference. The judge would impose restrictions on what the press could report about the case, but he’d still put the hammer on Theo.’
The inspector sighed. ‘It’s a bugger, Jack,’ she said. ‘When we got into him on Wednesday, and then when you came in with that necklet the next morning, I thought, “Great, my first big inquiry in Scotland and we’ve wrapped it up in three days.” Now it’s Sunday, we’re sitting having a case conference, the murder’s still unsolved, there are new complications, and we have no positive leads to go on.’
‘It’s depressing, I’ll grant you,’ McGurk agreed. ‘But don’t take it personally; nobody’s going to blame you. As for me, I’m not bothered about complications. I look at that image on the wall over there. .’ He pointed at a large print of Davis Colledge’s defaced picture, which Skinner had emailed from Spain. Stallings had cut a square from an adhesive label and pasted it over the young artist’s erection. ‘. . and I see an angry young man. Why was he angry? That’s what I want to know. He’s my top priority. I want to speak to him.’
‘Yeah, you’re right. There is that avenue. We won’t be talking to him today, though, so let’s rescue what’s left of our weekend.’
‘Sounds good to me. What have you and Ray got planned?’
‘We’re going to get our bikes out and cycle to the Northern Bar for a couple. You?’
‘Nothing in particular,’ he replied noncommittally.
They walked through the moribund station and out through the back door. McGurk was lowering himself into his car when he heard the inspector’s mobile sound. He waved to her as he started his engine … but stopped when he saw the look on her face as she stared at him. He lowered the window. ‘What?’ he called.