‘So he had access to my place all that time?’
‘Yup. First to return the keys, then to plant the cat. He really doesn’t like cats, by the way; that seems to be part of his ritual.’
She shuddered. ‘I’m going to look a real idiot in court, when all this comes out in evidence.’
‘It may not get to court,’ said McGuire. ‘The English murder charges will take priority; he’ll get three life terms, probably with a full life tariff. The Lord Advocate may well decide to let your case remain open. . unless you insist on prosecution, that is.’
‘I’ll have to think about that. My dad may insist on it, though. Does he know yet?’
‘He knows there’s been an arrest,’ McIlhenney replied. ‘I called him on his mobile. But I didn’t give him any of the detail, or any of the other stuff. That can wait till he gets back, by which time I hope to hell we’ll have turned Mr Gannett over to the people from Scotland Yard, and he’s well out of his reach.’
‘Forgive me, Neil, but the way I feel, I’d like my father to have some time with him.’ Her face twisted into an unattractive grin. ‘About thirty seconds would be enough: that’s all he’s good for.’
Eighty-seven
He had thought that there would be elation, but as the weekend had played itself out, he had found that the opposite was true. As in many of life’s facets, the thrill was in the chase, not in its sad, squalid conclusion. For all his colleagues’ congratulations, ultimately, he asked himself, what had he done? He had discovered three unknown, decades-old crimes, and in the process he had disturbed two graves. But that was alclass="underline" he was no closer to the perpetrator than he had been when he started on his silly, selfish quest.
‘Supercop my arse,’ he whispered, as he gazed out of his window on to the frost-covered sports field outside.
The ringing telephone broke into his thoughts with the insistent sharpness of a dentist’s drill. He picked it up. ‘ACC Allan, Strathclyde, sir,’ Crossley advised him. ‘And Detective Superintendent McIlhenney’s on his way up.’
‘Put Max through, then send Neil in when I’m finished.’ He waited for a few seconds.
‘Jimmy? How goes it? Anything new on your skeleton?’
‘I’m just waiting for word. I’ll let you know when I get it.’
‘Thanks, but in the meantime, I’ve got something to tell you. One of my very thorough detective officers may have found Ethel Ward, or Bothwell.’
‘Have you, indeed? Where?’
‘Bristol.’
‘Eh? How the hell did she get there?’
‘By train. Fifty years ago, about six weeks after the last sighting of Mrs Bothwell, the remains of a naked woman, cut into pieces and wrapped in sacking, were found in a pile of coal, which had just been unloaded at a depot down there. It was part of a consignment that started from Lanarkshire and picked up more trucks in South Yorkshire. They couldn’t be certain where the body originated; details were passed to the old county constabulary up here, and to Leeds. There were press appeals, but the head was too badly crushed for an artist’s impression, never mind photograph, so she was never identified. After a while, the police buried her in a local cemetery. She’s still there, waiting to be dug up. Your friend Bert Ward is going to give us a DNA sample for comparison. If it’s close, it’s her.’
‘Good for you, Max, and well done to your officer. Keep me informed.’
‘Will do. Cheers, Jimmy.’
He replaced the phone in its cradle, with the strange, flat feeling inside him intensified rather than dissipated. This has been pure self-indulgence for me, he thought, but for these poor women it was pure tragedy.
There was a quiet knock on his door. ‘Come,’ he called out, and McIlhenney stepped into the room. He was carrying a bound folder in his right hand.
‘Is that it, Neil?’ Proud asked urgently.
‘Yes, sir. The pathologist and his team finished an hour ago; the ink’s barely dry.’
‘What are the findings? Have they established a cause of death?’
‘They’re saying multiple stab wounds, Chief. They’re also saying that there is no doubt that the remains are around forty years old, and that the victim was aged over thirty.’
‘And Annabelle Gentle was only twenty-nine. So Bothwell killed Montserrat and ran off with her.’ Proud sighed. ‘Damn it, I was hoping that Trudi Friend would be spared that. I’d rather we’d dug up her mother’s body than find that she’s a murderer.’
A strange smile spread over McIlhenney’s face. ‘Well, sir, that’s the question. What the hell is she?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that the autopsy has established that the remains in the garden are those of a man. It looks as if we’ve found Claude Bothwell after all.’
Eighty-eight
‘You had always been close to your stepson, hadn’t you?’
Titus Armstead looked straight at the camera, unblinking. As he watched the monitor screen, listening to himself ask the question, Skinner was reminded of a television series called Northern Exposure, and an actor who played a retired astronaut. ‘From the time his father was killed. Josh Archer and I met in Germany when we were both involved in NATO intelligence, and we became friends.’
‘That would have been the early seventies?’
‘Yes. Towards the end of the Nixon era.’
‘You met Ormond Hassett there around the same time, didn’t you?’
‘We were in the same theatre of operations, yes.’
‘Close colleagues?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you say the three of you were ideologically compatible?’
‘Hell, yes: we were all soldiers in the front line against Communism, spies in uniform. There were no liberals in our outfit.’
‘After Germany, where did you go?’
‘Ormond and I headed in the same direction. I was hauled back to Langley, to CIA headquarters, and he was posted to the embassy in Washington.’
‘And Archer?’
‘He stayed on in Germany for a while, but we kept in pretty close touch.’
‘How close?’
‘Very. Josh was a good source of information.’
‘Are you saying that he was on your payroll?’
Armstead nodded at the camera. ‘Yes.’
‘Explain this to our viewers,’ Skinner continued, ‘and remember that I’ve got the gun. Why would a CIA operative want to recruit British intelligence officers as agents?’
‘Simple. Back then we couldn’t always rely on our allies to share and share alike. We were in the business of knowing everything, so we took steps to make sure that we did.’
‘That’ll go down well in London; scare the shit out of a few people too, I imagine. But let’s move on a few years, to 1982. Hassett’s an MP, an aide to the defence secretary, and he and Archer show up in Washington to make sure that your team are on-side over the Falklands operation.’
‘Yeah, and Josh told me he was going to fight. I told him he was crazy, that there would be a load of casualties down there. Ormond could have gotten him a desk to ride, but he was set on action; dead set, the way it turned out. He knew what he was getting into, though: last time I saw him, he asked me to keep an eye on his family, if things did go the other way.’
‘And you did?’
‘I kept my word, yes. Whenever I was in England I went to see them up in Bakewell, just to make sure they were all right. After a few years, once the kids were grown and on their way in life, I asked Joan to marry me and she agreed.’
‘You kept an eye on your stepson’s career too.’
‘I made sure he was all right, but I needn’t have worried. He was a better soldier than his pop ever was, a real little terror. When he moved into intelligence and assumed a new identity, I knew about it and I took him under my wing even more. A few times we took care of things for each other.’