‘Good for her.’
‘How are you for coffee?’ the detective asked. ‘Want another?’
Charnwood glanced at his mug. ‘No, I’m fine, thanks.’ He had suggested the meeting place, just off Bonnington Road, as it was close to his home at Powderhall and to the late Gary Starr’s shop.
‘Have you had any whispers recently, any runs on outsiders?’
‘No. There’s been a lot of publicity about race-fixing in the last couple of years and a lot of people have been done, so the rumour mill’s been quiet lately.’
‘Any big losers?’
‘Not as far as I know. Where we are we tend not to get big bets. To tell you the truth we don’t encourage them either. We’re a local bookie’s, Mr Mackenzie: our customers are people of modest means.’
‘So you have plenty of them?’
‘Enough.’
‘You must have. Gary Starr made a good living, enough for a nice house up in Trinity.’
‘I suppose. Gary did the totals at the end of the day: I can’t tell you for sure how much he was clearing.’
‘What happens now?’
‘What?’ The detective’s question seemed to take Charnwood by surprise.
‘Well, you’re out of a job as far as I can see. There’s nobody to carry on the shop, unless you and Smith can take it over yourselves.’
Charnwood laughed softly. ‘Big Ming may be a closet philosopher, but there’s no way I’d go into business with him. I won’t deny that since Saturday the thought’s gone through my mind of getting in touch with Mr Poole and asking him if he’d consider renting the shop to me for six months, to see how I managed on my own, but I don’t think I’m going to do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’d be a gamble, that’s why not. I’m like you, Mr Mackenzie: I see the other side of betting. Sure there are the bright eyes of the winners, but there are far more of the others, the ones with hurt and disappointment written all over their faces. That’s why I don’t bet myself, not any more at any rate. If I took on the shop, it would be the biggest punt I ever had, and if I was laying odds, they’d have to be against my succeeding. Five years ago, I might have thought differently, but today. . there’s competition that we never had before, with Internet bookies and now super-casinos on the horizon. Gary managed to hold on because the shop’s well sited, and because around here there are still people who like to come out for the afternoon and put their bets on over the counter. But they’re dying out. I don’t think he could have held on here for ever, and I don’t think I’d last either. I could be wrong, but I have a wife and a wee boy, and I can’t put them at risk by trying it. So I’ll get a job somewhere else, with one of the bigger bookies, probably.’
‘Are you fairly sure of that?’
‘Yes. I made a few phone calls this morning: I’ve got an interview already. Gary was known about town, and so am I.’
‘Good luck to you, then.’ Mackenzie stood. ‘Come on, let’s walk round to the shop and you can open that safe for me.’
Charnwood nodded. The two left the café and turned into Bonnington Road, then round the gentle curve until the Evesham Street junction came into sight. ‘I know that Starr’s marriage was behind him,’ said the detective, as they walked, ‘but did he have a girlfriend? There were no signs of a female presence in the house.’
‘Nor would there be; there was a girlfriend, somebody he met in the shop, but he kept her at arm’s length. Her name’s Mina Clarkson and she lives in Saughtonhall. Gary was pretty bitter about marriage. Truth be told, Gary was pretty bitter about most things. He wasn’t the sort to take much pleasure out of life.’
‘From what my colleagues tell me he took pleasure out of whacking that boy’s finger off last Friday.’
‘Yes, that was well out of character; he could be abrupt, but never aggressive. I can only think that he panicked.’
‘Panicked? He hacked him with a fucking bayonet!’
‘He must have felt really threatened, in that case.’
‘He saw the threat off, then. Did you know that he had the bayonet?’
‘Yes, but I thought nothing of it. That and the toy gun, they were just for show.’
Mackenzie stopped dead. ‘What toy gun?’
‘He had a replica Luger: looked real, but it was plastic. He used to keep it and the bayonet under the counter.’
‘You’re not kidding me, are you?’
Charnwood looked astonished. ‘Why would I do that? What’s the fuss about anyway?’
‘Starr told my colleagues, at the shop and in his interview, that the robber had brought the gun into the shop and threatened him with it. Eddie, I’m going to need a formal statement from you after all.’
‘No problem: I’m doing nothing else today.’
They walked on until they reached the shop. Padlocked steel shutters covered the windows and door, but Charnwood produced a bunch of keys from his pocket, and within a minute they were standing inside. It was gloomy, but the clerk found a switch, flooding the room with white neon light. ‘The safe’s in the back office,’ he said.
It faced them as they opened the door, built into the walclass="underline" there was no lock, only a dial mechanism. Charnwood moved round behind Starr’s desk and spun the wheel four times. After the fourth, it opened with a click and he eased it open.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he gasped.
The detective stepped alongside him, and took an involuntary breath himself. The strongbox was packed with money, wads of used notes held together with broad elastic bands, and with packs of white powder, wrapped in plastic. He took a pair of clear plastic gloves from his pocket, slipped them on and eased one of the packages out.
‘What is it?’ Charnwood asked.
‘It’s not fucking talcum,’ said Mackenzie, ‘that’s for sure. Eddie, I’m afraid we’re going to need to have a much longer talk than I’d reckoned with you and with Big Ming. You say that Starr didn’t have any associates other than you two and Poole. In that case, who put this lot there?’
Twenty-nine
For all that there was a December chill in the air, and Princes Street was damp and grey, Detective Sergeant Jack McGurk was appreciating his day out. He would never have said that he found his job boring. . being executive assistant to Bob Skinner could never be dull. . and after a difficult beginning he and his boss had developed a good working relationship, but it did tie him to the office. McGurk had always been an outdoors copper: he had enjoyed his days on the beat, and the brief spell he had spent with Dan Pringle in the Borders on CID duty had been among the highlights of his career, despite the crisis it had caused in his marriage. That had all been sorted out when he had been offered the post with the DCC: he was grateful to Skinner for that, and yet it was good to be seeing the heart of Edinburgh again, rather than just the view from his window at Fettes.
He turned off the great thoroughfare, glancing to his right at Wellington’s equestrian statue, as he always did when he passed it, and walked up the slight incline that led to New Register House.
He identified himself to a receptionist at the desk in the entrance hall. ‘Ah, yes, Sergeant, I was told you’d be arriving. If you’d just go up one floor,’ the man pointed to a staircase behind him, ‘turn left and take the second door, someone will be along to see you.’
McGurk followed the directions, and found himself in a small meeting room, with a window that looked down on to the Café Royal, and the Guildford Bar next door. His dad had worked in the post office, when it had been in the big building across the road, and the Guildford had been his favourite hang-out.
He had been thinking of the past for five minutes when the door opened and a woman entered. She wore a high-necked sweater and black slacks, and she held a yellow folder in her right hand. ‘Good afternoon, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘I’m Sylvia Thorpe; we spoke on the phone earlier. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting.’