‘I don’t know. And I also called our old boss at the Service, Scott Boston. Do you know him?’
She was quiet for a moment.
‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘He’s the one who fired Tim.’
‘Well, I don’t know what’s going on over there, but he sounded shocked that Tim was supposed to be on a flight heading for Washington. Hung up on me real fast.’
Melanie sighed.
‘What the hell is going on?’ She was angry now. ‘Why won’t anyone tell me what happened to my husband?’
Her voice broke into a choked sob. Cahill’s mouth went tight, his lips forming a narrow line.
‘We haven’t exhausted our lines of inquiry yet,’ he told her. ‘Logan’s a lawyer and he knows someone in Homeland Security.’
‘Are you going to call?’
‘Yes,’ Logan said. ‘As soon as the office in New York opens.’
‘I want to go to Denver,’ Melanie said.
‘Best if you don’t,’ Hardy said. ‘You’ll end up stuck in a room for hours and they still won’t tell you anything.’
‘Stay by the phone,’ Logan said. ‘We’ll let you know as soon as we’ve spoken to my contact.’
A doorbell sounded behind Melanie.
‘I think that’s my son. Call me as soon as you can.’
‘We will,’ Cahill said, ending the call.
He turned to Hardy and Logan, telling them to reconvene in the War Room this afternoon to call Homeland Security.
‘Someone better start talking,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll be going over there myself to raise hell.’
7
Rebecca Irvine’s phone sounded as she got in the car outside Ellie’s school, waving to Ellie as she disappeared into a crowd of her friends. Her son was in his car seat in the back.
‘DC Irvine,’ she said when she answered the call — recognising the number as the Strathclyde Police HQ.
‘Becky, it’s me.’
Detective Superintendent Liam Moore — her boss.
‘Morning, sir.’
‘Where are you?’
He sounded cranky. Not an encouraging start to the day.
‘I’m going to drop my son off at the childminder. Why, do you need me?’
‘Yes. What are you working on right now?’
‘The Johnson case. You know, the body in the Range Rover? Ewen Cameron’s the DS on it.’
‘It’s stalled, right?’
He was right. They had identified the victim as Andrew Johnson: soldier, turned private security mercenary, turned… something else. Shot twice in the head. ‘Execution style’ was how the newspapers described it. Beyond that, they had nothing to go on.
‘No need to be defensive about it,’ Moore said when she didn’t answer. ‘I know you guys are working it. Maybe you need something new. Freshen things up, you know.’
Irvine said maybe.
‘No one else is free right now anyway,’ he said. ‘We’re getting slammed.’
So what’s new?
‘What have you got?’ she asked.
‘It’s a floater. Fished out the Clyde this morning down on the Broomielaw.’
Irvine closed her eyes. Those were never good.
‘There’s a twist with this one,’ Moore said.
‘Okay. What is it?’
‘It’s a drug squad investigation. Those guys are at the locus already. They’ve asked for CID assistance.’
‘Am I volunteering?’
‘You already did.’
Irvine cradled the phone with her shoulder while Moore talked, reached inside her jacket and took out a notebook. She wrote the location of the body. Was about to write the name of the drug squad contact on site when she paused.
‘Did you say the Director General is there?’ she asked Moore.
‘Yes.’
‘Why is the head of the SCDEA at a crime scene?’
‘I didn’t ask. Must be big time, eh?’
‘I guess. Are we going to be in charge of the scene?’
‘Yes. I briefed Jim Murphy already.’
Murphy was a veteran detective sergeant who had turned the latter half of his time on the force into a career as a crime scene manager. It was a desk job that he was entirely happy with as he headed rapidly downhill towards retirement. That wasn’t to say that he was a bad detective. He just preferred a life behind a desk to a life stepping over bodies.
Who could blame him?
‘Leave it with me,’ Irvine told Moore. ‘I’ll head over there as soon as I can.’
‘Brief me when you get in.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Irvine had very little experience of dealing with the SCDEA — the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency. But she knew enough about police hierarchies to realise that if the head man — the DG — was at a crime scene, then it was a very big deal.
8
Irvine felt cold in spite of the sun overhead as she walked along the riverside towards the small crowd gathered behind the yellow crime scene tape. She saw uniformed officers standing around looking bored and Scenes of Crime staff in the full regalia: white overalls, hoods, masks and booties.
The sun was clear in the sky, only wisps of cloud spoiling the blue canvas. Irvine knew that it was her core temperature that had dropped, not the heat of the sun.
When she reached the crowd, Irvine eased her way through, showing her warrant card to a uniformed officer who stepped up to block her. She saw two thirty-something men in dark suits with SCDEA gold shields fixed to their jackets. She could almost feel the sense of entitlement radiating from them.
She approached the two men and introduced herself. They did the same: Detective Chief Superintendent Eric Thomson, head of operations at the SCDEA; and syndicate leader, Detective Inspector Bryan Fraser. Irvine didn’t know the jargon.
‘What’s a syndicate?’ she asked.
‘What we call our investigation teams,’ Thomson told her.
Irvine wasn’t really sure what was wrong with the word ‘team’, but said nothing. She was here to make friends.
Thomson was a short man with a neat beard and square-rimmed glasses. It looked to Irvine like he took some care over his appearance. Fraser was much taller — over six feet — with hair gone prematurely grey.
‘What’s the story here?’ Irvine asked.
She looked past the two men at a white-suited technician on hands and knees going over the ground inch by inch for evidence.
Fraser turned in the direction she was looking.
‘Young girl found this morning,’ he said. ‘Face down in the water.’
‘How old?’ she asked.
‘Eighteen or nineteen, we think.’
Irvine winced.
‘Where’s the body?’
‘The pathologist was here with the shell a half-hour ago.’
Irvine knew the jargon this time: ‘the shell’ was the name given to the unmarked van that ferried bodies to the mortuary.
‘What do you want me to do?’
Fraser didn’t answer this time, looked at Thomson instead.
‘You should speak to the DG,’ he said. ‘And Kenny Armstrong. They’re around somewhere.’
He swivelled his head, scanning the crowd.
Irvine had seen photographs of the Director General — Paul Warren. He liked being high profile and was often front and centre when a big arrest was made.
‘Here they are,’ Thomson said, waving at two men making their way through the crowd.
Warren was in his early fifties and wore a charcoal-coloured suit. He had short, greying hair and a narrow face. The man with him was about Irvine’s height with heavy stubble and close-cropped hair. His clothes looked like they had seen better days: stained jeans, a V-neck jumper and a black leather jacket.
Thomson made the introductions. The man in the leather jacket was Detective Sergeant Kenny Armstrong.
‘Sorry about this,’ Armstrong said, looking down at himself as he shook Irvine’s hand. ‘I’ve been out all night on this and didn’t get the chance to change.’
Irvine noticed that he had a bit of a Highland accent.
‘No worries,’ she said. ‘I know what that can be like.’
‘Kenny’s been working hard on this the last couple of weeks,’ Warren said. ‘Since it started.’
‘Not that it’s got us anywhere,’ Armstrong said, rubbing his hands over his face.