In other circumstances Singh might have laughed, but his mind was focused. ‘Would you mind if I borrowed it, sir? If it’s that good I’d like to copy it. We may need to find this man.’
Gavin’s tone became serious once more. ‘Sure. Come on out; I’ll look it out and bubble-wrap it for you. Handle it carefully, though.’
‘Be sure of that, sir. It’ll be as precious to me as it is to you and Mrs Gavin.’
Thirty-four
‘You know, Andy,’ said Mario McGuire, ‘if I ever aspire to chief officer rank, which I won’t, by the way, I’d like it to be in a place like this.’
‘There’s worse,’ Deputy Chief Constable Andrew Martin conceded, as the two men stared along the length of Loch Tay. ‘But you have scenery as nice as this in the patch you’re in just now. There are some lovely spots in East Lothian and down in the borders.’
‘True, but the incidence of crime in those spots is remarkably low, and crime is what I do, remember.’
‘And out here. . In fact, the incidence of anything is bloody rare out here. Why do you think I grabbed the chance to chum you on this interview?’
‘Do I detect that you’ve had enough of the silvery Tay?’ McGuire quizzed.
‘Let’s just say that I don’t plan to spend the rest of my life here.’
‘And Proud Jimmy goes next year.’
‘And Bob’s in line to succeed him,’ said Martin, quickly. ‘There are other jobs; there’s Aberdeen, for example, then there’s Glasgow. They’ll be looking for a deputy in the Strathclyde force next year. But who says I’m stuck in Scotland? The chief in Northumbria has only two years to go, and there’s the Thames Valley area.’
‘You’re a jock copper, Andy; you wouldn’t go south. Plus, I seem to remember that you never sold Karen’s flat in Edinburgh after the two of you got married, so you’re still on the property ladder there.’
Martin laughed. ‘Stop being a bloody detective, man. Let’s get serious and go and see these people.’
They climbed back into the deputy chief’s car. They had met up at the tourist office at Aberfeldy, but the Paul family lived not in the town itself but a short distance away. The stop-off in the tiny village of Kenmore, where the River Tay flows into the loch that bears its name, had been made simply to allow them to catch up with each other’s news.
‘Do you know anything about the couple?’ McGuire asked, as they drove off.
‘Why should I?’ the DCC replied. ‘This is your interview; I’m just the legal necessity here.’
‘Because old detectives never die, and they never talk to people on a business basis without knowing as much as they can in advance.’
‘Okay, I admit it, I ran a check. Colonel Travers Paul is fifty-six, and he’s retired. He was educated at Strathallan School, went to Sandhurst and served in the army for twelve years, until he was invalided out post-Falklands. From there, he joined a big tobacco company, and was a senior executive, working in Africa and latterly in the US, until he chucked it four years ago. He still has a consultancy role with the firm, but he spends most of his time in voluntary work. He’s chair of the community council, and he and his wife have owned their present home for seventeen years. His interests include fishing. . he’s a supporter of the Atlantic Salmon Trust. . and he’s a regular at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. He and his wife Marietta have been married for twenty-eight years and Harry was their only son. I got all that from his official biog on the council website. They’re members of the Church of Scotland, and regular attenders at the parish church in Aberfeldy. She’s active in the care group, and in the guild. I got that from the minister. Harry, on the other hand, hasn’t been seen in the place since he chucked the local youth group when he was seventeen, after what was described as an “incident” at a dance where his band was playing. According to the long-serving local constable, it involved his being caught by one of the supervising adults, horizontal jogging behind the kirk during a break, with a girl from Pitlochry. There was a row, the bloke said something crude about the lass, young Harry chinned him, and his band never finished the gig.’
‘Pitlochry’s beyond the pale around here, is it?’ McGuire chuckled. Then he frowned. ‘Poor lad. Shagging never did him a lot of good, did it? First it got him kicked out of the church and then it got him shot in the head.’
‘Let’s not put that thought to the parents,’ Martin murmured. He drew to a halt as he saw a police vehicle parked by the roadside, then got out and walked towards the uniformed officers who were standing beside it. They saluted as he approached. ‘Any press turned up?’ he asked the older of the two, a sergeant.
‘Quite a few, sir,’ the heavily built man replied. ‘We’ve had a couple of television crews, some photographers, and a freelance scribbler who covers the area around here, all more or less at the same time. We told them that the Pauls aren’t seeing anybody, and most of them understood that. The local guy knows the colonel; he told me he’d spoken to him on the phone already, but he wasn’t letting on to the rest. One of the television reporters got a bit stroppy, but she realised it wasn’t getting her anywhere so she shut up. They all took some shots of the house and the loch, hung about for a while, then pissed off.’
‘Fine. That’s probably all you’ll have, but stay here for another two hours, just in case. We’ll go on up to the house.’
He returned to his car, drove past the patrol vehicle and turned off the loch-side road into a long drive that led up to an impressive stone villa. The roadway was covered by a heavy layer of red gravel chips, which crunched under the tyres, giving an audible warning of their approach.
As they drew up at the front-door steps, a tall man walked round from the side of the house. He wore a green sweater over a white shirt, and his dark trousers were tucked into an outsized pair of old-fashioned wellington boots. His complexion was ruddy, and crinkly grey hair was swept back from his forehead.
‘You’ll be the police,’ he exclaimed, in a crusty accent that sounded only faintly Scottish. He focused on the fair-haired ACC. ‘And you’ll be Mr Martin,’ he added. ‘I recognise you from your picture in the last community newsletter.’
‘That’s right, Colonel Paul, and this is DCS McGuire from Edinburgh.’
‘Colonel, eh?’ Travis Paul retorted. ‘You’ve been doing your homework. My military handle’s only used in official publications these days; my company’s annual report, that sort of stuff. You’ll be getting used to this, Mr McGuire,’ he said to the detective grimly. ‘I suppose you’ll have had a similar meeting with the Boras girl’s parents.’
‘There are some things that you never get used to, sir.’
‘I suppose not.’ He sighed; his face bore the lines of one who had missed a night’s sleep. ‘I had that duty myself, in the army, a long time ago. I lost a few men in Ireland, and more in the Falklands. I appreciate the guard you’ve given us,’ he said to Martin. ‘I’d have been rather abrupt if I’d had the press knocking on the door today, I’m afraid. Come into the house: my wife’s waiting for us there. I’ve been killing time, and weeds, in the garden.’
He led them up the steps, pausing to remove a little mud from his boots on a black iron scraper by the door. The entrance hall was wide and imposing, panelled from floor to ceiling in oak that the police officers guessed had been there since the house was built. Paul pointed to the right. ‘In there.’
As they entered, Marietta Paul rose from a big wicker-framed armchair that looked entirely out of place in a Scottish drawing room. As he introduced her to the visitors, her husband caught Martin’s quick glance. ‘I’m a collector,’ he explained. ‘I brought that chair back from Savannah, Georgia.’ He pointed to a massive display case against the back wall. ‘That thing came from Nairobi. If you look inside it you’ll see various bits of metal that came from the Falklands. They were dug out of me, after one of my guys stepped on a land-mine. He was killed, I was torn up by sharpnel.’ He looked directly at McGuire. ‘I suppose you’re going to ask me to look at Harry in much the same condition.’