‘There are safes in his office and house. There’ll be no comeback if we have to force them, will there?’
‘None: that note lets you go everywhere and do anything in pursuit of your investigation. Good luck, gentlemen. When you find the bastard who did this, I can promise you I won’t be defending him. I don’t have all that many straight clients, so I don’t like losing any of them.’
Twenty-six
‘That was quick, Jack,’ said Proud. ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear anything from you today.’
‘I’m afraid it’s nothing positive, sir,’ the towering McGurk replied, filling the door-frame as he looked into the chief’s office. ‘I thought I should tell you straight away, though. The DSS check shows no social-security payments by either Bothwell or Gentle since the time of their disappearance. It’s the same with the NHS: they were each registered to different Edinburgh practices, but nothing’s been added to their records since then.’
‘Mmm. It was too much to hope for, I suppose. In truth, I’m surprised that the health records are still accessible after all this time.’
‘There is one thing that might interest you, though. Gentle’s records show that on her last visit to her GP, she was prescribed the contraceptive pill.’
‘Was she, by God? It was only just becoming available back then. When did they put her on it?’
‘The February before she vanished.’
‘That was the first time she took it?’
‘Yes, sir; her only other visit to the surgery was for laryngitis, a year before that.’
‘That ties in, Jack. Annabelle told her sister at Easter that she’d met Bothwell and she was going to marry him. Going on the pill indicates that she became sexually active again, or at least she made plans to, just before that. I assume that having got herself pregnant once before, she’d learned her lesson.’
‘There’s something else, sir. I ran a check on Montserrat Bothwell too.’
‘Would she be an NHS patient, if she was a foreign national?’
‘She would as the wife of a UK subject, sir, and she was. She only used the service once, in the middle of June in that same year, when she had treatment for a broken nose. There was a note on the record that said she’d fallen at home.’
‘And you think?’
‘I wonder, sir, that’s all, whether she might have found out about Bothwell and Gentle, confronted him, and got a thumping for her trouble.’
‘You’re making me wonder the same thing, Jack. Well done, Sergeant. Off you go to the General Register Office and see what you can dig up there.’
Twenty-seven
At one point in her career, Dottie Shannon had been a Police Federation representative: in that role she had been a member of a delegation that had gathered in London to lobby Members of Parliament, canvassing their support for improvements in police working conditions.
She had been impressed, but not overawed: thus, when Skinner had told her at the airport where they were going, after the initial shock had worn off, she had been sure she would take it in her stride.
Dottie had seen government offices before. She was a police officer and so she was used to crowd screening, and to being a part of it. But when a uniformed officer held the door of Thames House open for her, and she could see inside, she felt her legs turn to jelly. There was nothing special about it, nothing of the television version: the foyer could have been any one of dozens along Whitehall, but it had an aura, something that said, ‘Be careful here.’
Skinner walked straight to the reception desk. ‘We’re from Scotland,’ he announced. ‘The DG’s expecting us. Let his office know that we’ve arrived, please.’
The clerk picked up a telephone: there was a brief, quiet conversation. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said. ‘If you go through the barrier you’ll be met on the other side.’
‘Show Security your warrant card,’ the DCC told Shannon. ‘It’s like a boarding pass.’
Indeed the screening was almost identical to that which they had gone through earlier that morning. Just as their jackets were returned and as they were putting them on, a lift door opened and a figure emerged. Shannon could see the surprise in Skinner’s eyes as the slightly built, sober-suited man approached.
‘Bob,’ the man exclaimed, extending his hand. ‘Welcome to Thames House. It’s good to see you again, and to meet you, Inspector Shannon.’ He looked as dry as his voice; the skin was drawn so tightly across his lean features that it seemed about to crack. ‘Come with me. There are a couple of people waiting to meet you, and in view of the hour I’ve laid on a working lunch.’ He led the way into the lift, then, rather than press a button, entered a code into a pad in the instrument panel.
‘This is something of an honour, Evelyn,’ said Skinner, as the doors closed. ‘I didn’t expect to be welcomed by the director general himself.’ He turned to Shannon. ‘Inspector, this is Sir Evelyn Grey. He runs this place.’
‘It wasn’t just my usual excessive courtesy, Bob,’ the DG replied. ‘I was making a point to everyone on my floor, and to everyone who happened to be downstairs when you arrived.’
‘Your point being?’
‘That you are to be treated as a very important person while you are with us, and that your authority here comes directly from me.’
Skinner grinned. ‘Shucks, you’re embarrassing me,’ he joked.
‘I’ve never seen you embarrassed, Bob. I don’t think it’s possible.’
The lift came to a halt; the doors opened out on to a marble reception area, with a desk staffed by a dark-skinned woman. ‘We’ll be in conference room one, Jamelia,’ Grey told her. ‘Advise the other parties that we’re ready.’ He led the way along a corridor to the left until he reached a heavy panelled door: he opened it and led the way inside.
The working lunch lay on the conference table; it comprised croissants, filled with ham and cheese, on a large salver, and fruit, in a crystal bowl. Beside them sat a Thermos jug, on a tray, and five cups and saucers.
They had been in the room for less than a minute before the door opened again, and a man and a woman entered. He was lean, in his mid-thirties, and looked very fit, while she might have been ten years older. She was dressed in black, her face was pale and there were puffy bags under her eyes. ‘Hello, Amanda,’ said Skinner. ‘How are you?’
‘I’ve been better,’ she answered sharply. ‘I’ve just been to a cremation.’
The DCC knew without asking whose funeral it had been. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘I wish it had turned out differently.’
‘Do you?’ she asked. ‘The information that was found on Sean’s body was crucial. If it hadn’t been, and the plot had succeeded, would you still be wishing that? There are casualties in our business, Bob. We all have to live with that.’
‘You two know each other, obviously,’ said Sir Evelyn, ‘but let me get the formalities over with. Inspector, you won’t have met Amanda Dennis, who is the head of our Serious Crime section, and neither of you will have met Piers Frame, the deputy DG of the Secret Intelligence Service.’
‘MI6?’ Shannon exclaimed. It was the first time she had spoken since she set foot in the building: Skinner’s sudden glare made her wish that she had kept her silence.
Frame gave her an urbane, indulgent smile. ‘That’s not our official title any longer, and this lot aren’t officially called MI5 either. But the media and the public ignore statute and continue to call us by our old names, so we go along with it. . now that we’re out of the closet, so to speak.’
‘Perhaps we should not pursue that analogy, Piers,’ Grey murmured. ‘It has more than one connotation.’ He looked at Shannon, as if he was taking pity on her and trying to welcome her into the fold. ‘The fact is, Inspector, the existence of the security and intelligence services is now publicly acknowledged, and even the locations of our headquarters are generally known, but much of the work we do remains covert for very obvious reasons.’