‘Did she mention a name?’
‘No, she didn’t. Although Marietta said that she was very frank about it. She told her that meeting us had confirmed her good feelings about Harry. She said that he was helping her get over her earlier experience.’
‘How did she and Harry meet?’
‘In a bar, where his band was playing. You’ll know that he was a full-time musician; I told the officer who called to ask me about him for your press conference. That’s happened now, I suppose, from the evidence of the reptiles turning up to gawp and film the house.’
‘You didn’t watch it on television?’ said Martin.
‘No, we couldn’t bring ourselves to. I gather that Zrinka’s father was there. At least, that’s what your colleague told me.’
‘Oh, yes,’ McGuire grunted. ‘He was there all right. He’s offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer.’
‘Good for him. I might just pitch in myself. How much has he put up?’
‘A million.’
‘A mi-! Good heavens! Out of my league, I’m afraid. I’ll contribute if he asks, of course, but. .’
‘He won’t. He was making a point to the murderer.’
‘The point being?’
‘The same one I made to him: that he has nowhere to hide that’ll keep us away from him for long. Davor Boras made it more dramatically, that’s all.’
‘Davor Boras? Ah, but I’ve heard of him. What Financial Times reader hasn’t? He’s Zrinka’s father, is he? Maybe I should have guessed, but I never made the connection. All she said about him was that he owned a couple of galleries. I assumed he was a shopkeeper. As, indeed, I suppose he is, on a very large scale.’
‘You could say that. But let’s go back to Harry, sir. He and Zrinka met in a bar, you said.’
‘It was more of a dancehall, from the way he described it. He was playing and she was there for a drink, with a friend.’
‘I don’t suppose you know the friend’s name?’
‘Zrinka called her Amy, but that’s all.’
‘That’s fine; we should be able to find her. Harry’s band: they’re full-time?’
‘More or less. They’re called Upload, a three-piece, but he was very much the leader. He was the lead guitarist, and singer, and composer, and arranger, and programmer of their various machines. He was beginning to get excited about them. They’ve made one album, so far, on their own initiative, but their manager told them she’d arranged a distribution deal with a major record company. They were going back into the studio next week, to re-record one of the tracks as a single, to break them into the national market.’
Paul looked at the police officers. ‘Are you surprised that I’m up with the technology?’ he asked sheepishly. ‘I suppose it’s a case of once a businessman always a businessman. It was the career my son wanted and so I took an interest in it, and had him explain to me what it was all about. Harry wasn’t just a dreamer, you know. He graduated from Heriot-Watt University last year with a first in computer science, and did some lecturing there, part-time, to supplement his band earnings. He was a very bright young man, and music was a legitimate way of putting his skills to work.’
‘Who managed them?’
‘An agency called High-end Talent, but from what Harry said that was just a trading name for a woman called Hope Dell.’
‘Where’s she based?’
‘Edinburgh. She has an office on King George IV Bridge. I’ve been there; went with Harry and his chums when they were thinking of signing on with her. He asked me to sit in on their meeting, to see if it felt right.’
‘Obviously it did.’
Paul nodded. ‘Yes. I was very impressed by her. She interviewed them rather than the other way around. She told them about all the pitfalls, and she left them in no doubt, to borrow a phrase she used on the day, that for every Oasis there are thousands of mirages with the metaphorical bones of the deluded scattered all around. When she was finished, Harry and the boys looked at me, I nodded and they shook hands on it.’
‘The other band members?’ McGuire asked. ‘What are their names and where can we find them?’
‘Buddy and A-Frame; that’s all I ever knew them as. You’ll be able to contact them through Hope. They won’t be suspects, I’m sure. All their dreams of riches have gone up in smoke.’
‘A-Frame?’ Martin exclaimed. ‘As in initial and surname?’
Colonel Travers Paul smiled, sadly. ‘No, as in a fat boy with sloping shoulders and a pointy head; that’s what Harry christened him. Among his other fine qualities, my son had quite a sense of humour.’
Thirty-five
‘This comes out of a throwaway remark made during our conversation with Harry Paul’s dad,’ said Mario McGuire, ‘but let’s check it out anyway. I seem to remember from the file that Stacey Gavin had a website. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Then let’s check out whether Zrinka had as well.’
‘Will do,’ Stevie Steele replied. ‘I take it your thinking is that maybe the killer sourced them as targets at random, through a search engine.’
‘Something along those lines, yes.’
‘If she had one, that would be a possibility. It might even throw up a few more potential targets in this area. We’ll be better able to get on to it when we get into Zrinka’s flat. At the moment the crime-scene technicians are giving it a thorough going-over.’
‘What progress have you made since the press briefing?’
‘We’ve established one thing that might be significant. Three of Zrinka’s pictures are missing; we know that she took twelve pieces out to North Berwick on Monday, to an art gallery called the Westgate. The owner bought one for his private collection and took eight for stock, as many as he thought he could handle at one time, especially since they were unframed. Zrinka told him that she rarely sold work framed. She believed that it was better that the buyer decided how a work should be displayed, and that most artists did themselves no favours by using cheap or inappropriate framing.’
‘Maybe she left the other three somewhere else.’
‘No. We’ve established that. She went straight from the shop to the restaurant and straight from there to the bus. Her art bag was empty when we found it yesterday. The killer’s taken them as trophies, just as he probably took Stacey’s sketch pad.’
‘I’ll go with that. Anything else?’
Steele chuckled. ‘Oh, yes, and with respect, sir, it’s of a lot more immediate use than websites: we can put a face to Dominic Padstow. Stacey knew him, all right, and intimately too. He must have moved on to her from Zrinka. Tarvil’s just back from South Queensferry with a near life-size nude portrait of him that she painted. Russ Gavin’s met him and he reckons it’s just about as good as a photograph, so I’m going to have the face scanned and printed out. If we haven’t turned up an address for him soon, I’m going to be looking for the okay to release it to the media. Meantime, I’m going to ask Gregor Broughton, the fiscal, to declare him a potential suspect, so that we can set aside the Data Protection Act and pull his details from public agency sources.’
‘You know this picture is Padstow? For sure?’
‘Yes. Mr Gavin had the presence of mind to show Tarvil his daughter’s catalogue. She listed every work she ever did, by subject name and number. That includes the portraits that she did occasionally for family and friends. He appears there, by name, in the entry for portrait number nine.’
McGuire whistled down the phone. ‘You’re sending a happy man back to Edinburgh, Stevie,’ he declared. ‘So Padstow didn’t just know both women, he was intimate with them both. Finally we’ve got ourselves a prime suspect.’