‘Don’t worry about it; a year ago I’d have said exactly the same thing. But now it’s happened, I don’t know what to say, other than that it’s magic.’
‘How long do you have to go?’
‘About ten weeks. According to the scan, it’s a girl.’
‘That’s wonderfuclass="underline" I’m going to be Auntie Bet.’ There was a sound in the background. ‘Okay, Bradley, close the door hard behind you. Call me in a couple of days.’ Pause. ‘That’s him gone, face tripping him.’
‘Sorry again.’
‘Cobblers, you’ve done me a favour. He’s a sour-faced bugger in the morning.’ Maggie stared at the closed door of her office. There was something about her sister’s voice, its vivacity, that sent an enormous pang of regret running through her for all the years she had kept her at a distance; her eyes blurred.
‘Now, come on,’ Bet exclaimed. ‘I’m going to take it for granted that you’d have called me once the baby was born to give me the good news. But it’s five years since we’ve spoken. . my fault as much as yours, I admit. . so what’s made you call me right now, in the middle of my night? My super-efficient sister doesn’t get mixed up with time zones, unless there’s something wrong.’
‘It’s nothing, Bet, just something I need to ask you.’
‘Everything’s nothing with you. Out with it.’
‘There’s something on my last scan: my consultant says it’s probably an ovarian cyst, but he asked me about the family medical history. Have you ever had a problem like that?’
‘I had a polyp in my womb three years ago. Had it removed and that was that. Nothing else, though.’
‘Did Mum ever talk to you about Granny Kellock dying? I know we were only kids when she did; she never discussed it with me, but she never discussed anything with me. I think she blamed me for what happened with Dad.’
‘Come on, Margaret,’ Bet protested. ‘I remember her battering you when you told her about it, but blaming you, that’s daft. You were only a kid at the time: you hadn’t even started your periods.’
‘Nonetheless, that’s how she felt. We never spoke much after that.’
‘She only spoke to me about Granny once; I asked her when I was doing my nursing training before I turned to design. All she said was that it was a cancer “down there”.
That was how she put it; to Mum, everything below the navel was just “down there”.’
‘What about Aunt Fay? Hers was in her stomach, as I remember.’
‘Yes, but it was a secondary. It was discovered very late, and she was riddled with it by then. They never did know where the primary was. Margaret, this consultant of yours, he’s not worried about you, is he?’
‘No, no, not at all; just routine, he says. That’s the exact word he used, routine.’
‘Have you told your husband?’
‘No, but I only just found out today. I don’t see why I should, though; Stevie’s like any other new father-to-be. He’d worry himself silly for no good reason.’
‘Isn’t he entitled to do that?’
‘He’s got enough on his plate. I’ve got a follow-up scan tomorrow; once I’ve had the result I’ll probably tell him then. There’ll be no reason not to.’
‘And will you tell me too?’
‘I will, Bet, I promise.’
‘You’d bloody well better. And not in the middle of the night either.’
Eighteen
Stevie Steele happened to be glancing out of the window when he saw the Vauxhall pull up in the village-hall car park. ‘Just what I need,’ he muttered, as a tall, bald man stepped out, placing a heavily braided cap on his dome-like head. He walked to the door to greet the new arrival. ‘Afternoon, sir,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’
‘Don’t worry, Inspector,’ said ACC Brian Mackie. ‘I’m not here to crack the whip, but I thought that I should show my face. Moral support, nothing more: I even played it by the book and told DCS McGuire that I was coming.’
‘I appreciate it, sir. So will the uniformed troops: they’ve been on a thankless task all day. Come on inside.’ He ushered him into the headquarters of Operation Gabriel.
PC Reid was alone in the office; he stood to attention as they entered. ‘Relax, Ian,’ Mackie told him. ‘You’ll pull something, going all stiff like that. I know this old lag,’ he explained to Steele, ‘from when I was CID commander out here. I thought you’d have retired by now, Constable.’
‘So did I, sir,’ the PC replied mournfully.
‘Hard slog, is it, Stevie?’ the ACC asked.
‘Yeah, but we’re moving. We’ve got an identification from a woman in North Berwick, confirmed by a bus driver who picked her up, and a male companion, on Monday night. I’ve sent Ray Wilding and Tarvil Singh back along there to re-interview the witness, in the light of what DC Montell got from the driver. We know who she is; now we have to find out where she’s from, and where the hell the boyfriend is.’
‘He’s your prime suspect, is he?’
‘Not necessarily. My concern is that he might have got in the way. We believe that the two of them may have camped on the beach on Monday. I’ve got a chopper up there now, I hope, doing a scan of the area, looking for signs they may have left behind.’
‘That’ll be the one I saw when I was into the village.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ As he spoke, the phone rang. ‘Will you excuse me, sir? I’d better take this.’
‘Of course.’
Steele snatched the handset from its cradle. ‘Inquiry HQ, DI speaking.’
‘It’s me, sir,’ Griff Montell said. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long but the woman I spoke to at Barclays decided that she had to clear the release of this information at the top of the tree. It turned out that nobody was nesting there until after four. There was a management meeting under way.’
‘That’s okay. I half expected them to ask us for a sheriff’s warrant. You got it now, though?’
‘Yes. Zrinka Boras has been a Barclays client for three years: she’s twenty-four years old and the address they hold for her is High Laigh House, Wimbledon, London. According to their information she’s unmarried. She has an overdraft facility on the account, guaranteed by her father, Mr Davor Boras, also of High Laigh House.’
‘What else would they tell you?’
‘They have her listed as a student; they volunteered that. They won’t give me any account details, but they did confirm that the most recent withdrawals were made by debit card, in Scotland, specifically Edinburgh and North Berwick. There have also been several deposits made to the account, all through their Edinburgh branch.’
‘Cheques from Daddy, do you reckon?’
‘I asked that question myself. No, they weren’t: the bank lady was quite open about that, although she wasn’t authorised to release names or amounts. There have been regular pay-ins over the last couple of years, most by cheque but some in cash.’
‘So she’s been economically active in Edinburgh, yet the bank doesn’t have a local address for her.’
‘She’s an online customer, sir, like a lot of people are, these days, my sister and I included.’
‘Me too,’ Steele admitted, then stopped. ‘Okay, Griff, you seem to be on a roll today, so I want you to keep playing. We’ve got two witnesses putting her in North Berwick, and that ties her to the bank slip. There’s no doubt about her identity. It’s time to get in touch with the father.’
‘Mr Davor Boras,’ said Montell, ‘age fifty-five, born Sarajevo, Bosnia, then part of Yugoslavia. Built a successful engineering business in his twenties, before selling to a larger company and moving to London in 1989. Set up Bolec, a retail chain selling electronic and household goods, focusing on out-of-town locations, and grew it into one of the biggest in Europe. Sold out seven years ago for an estimated one point two billion. Two years later founded a computer business selling hardware, peripherals and supplies, exclusively online, throughout the European Union. Continental IT, the new company, thanks to spectacularly low overheads, is hugely profitable and is now bigger than the one he sold. Personal interests include the arts. . he has galleries in London and in Sarajevo. . and football; he’s a significant shareholder in clubs in England, Bosnia and the USA. He and his wife, they were married in 1976, run the Davor and Sanda Boras charitable foundation, which has funded relief operations in Africa as well as postwar rebuilding projects in the Balkan states. He has two children, both born in the former Yugoslavia: there’s Zrinka, and a son, Dražen, aged twenty-eight. Davor, his wife and the children became naturalised British citizens in 1992.’