‘No, then what?’
‘Mr Gavin,’ the South African asked,’ ‘what was your relationship with Zrinka Boras?’
Another flash of consternation showed in the man’s eyes, and he seemed to pale just a little, before recovering his composure. ‘I never knew Zrinka Boras,’ he replied. ‘My daughter might have, but I didn’t.’
‘Oh, Stacey knew her all right; that’s been established by Amy Noone, by other friends of hers, and by a barman at the Pear Tree pub, where they used to go. Have you ever been to the Pear Tree, Mr Gavin?’
‘God knows. I’ve been to a few pubs in my time.’
‘It’s near Bristo Square, beside the mosque.’
‘That still doesn’t mean anything. There are so many bloody monuments in Edinburgh you ignore them after a while.’
‘The barman I spoke about has a very good memory for faces. He told one of my colleagues that, as well as seeing Zrinka with Stacey and Amy Noone, he saw her there on a few occasions, last summer, with a man; an older man.’
‘So?’
‘So let’s stop fucking about,’ Steele hissed. ‘We’re doing you a favour here, Mr Gavin. We could be having this conversation with your wife in the room, and we will if you don’t stop lying to us.
‘For a period last year, beginning in July and stretching through to October, Zrinka’s engagement diary, the one she kept on her computer, shows regular meetings with a man referred to as RG. Interestingly, these nearly all took place on Fridays and Saturdays. Most of them have venues attached, like the Pear Tree, on several occasions, the Bar Roma, the Edinburgh Rendezvous, and often just “here”. Since her computer wasn’t a laptop, I take that to mean that they met at her place.’
‘The telephone directory’s full of men with those initials.’
‘Yes, but only one of them has a certain mobile number, one we found listed on Zrinka’s palmtop. We’ve traced it, Mr Gavin. It’s yours. It’s the mobile your wife doesn’t know you have, the one you use to call your girlfriends, to set up your Friday “business trips”. If I really wanted, I could go to the mobile network and get a list of every call made from that phone, and then go and interview the recipients. At the moment my thinking is to do just that, unless you give me a bloody good reason not to.’
Gavin glared at him. ‘You would too, wouldn’t you? Okay, you win. I did know Zrinka. I met her last year, one Saturday when Stacey was selling work from her market stall down in Leith, and I went along to see how she was doing. We got talking; I liked her. She was one of those people who brighten up your day. Know what I mean?’
‘Sure,’ said Steele, ‘I’m married to one of them. And if you took a really close look, instead of putting her down and treating her like a skivvy, you might find that you are too.’
‘Are you a fucking marriage-guidance counsellor as well as a cop, Stevie?’
‘No, and if that’s your attitude, let’s stick to “Detective Inspector Steele”. Go on.’
‘If you insist. I took one of her business cards; it had her website, her e-mail address, and her mobile number on it. I had a look at the website, and I sent her an e-mail congratulating her on it, and suggesting that she might help Stacey set one up. I got a reply saying, “Thanks. If she wants I’ll do that.” A couple of days later I called her and said that I’d like to thank her by taking her for dinner.’
‘Did you call her on your mobile?’
‘No, that time I called her from work.’
‘What age are you, Mr Gavin?’ asked Montell.
‘Forty-nine. Why?’
‘No comment; carry on. Where did you go?’
‘The first time, to the Rendezvous; her choice, she liked Chinese.’
‘Then back to her place?’ asked Steele. ‘It isn’t far.’
‘Not that time; it was just a friendly dinner. A week later we met for a pint after the stall closed. . yes, at the Pear Tree. . then went to a movie. I took her home and she kissed me. She kissed me, mind. We made a date for the next Friday, and that time I stayed over.’
‘You spun her a story, yes? You told her your marriage was cold and loveless.’
‘Which it is.’
‘Whose fault is that?’
‘Listen, I’m not going to discuss personal stuff between me and my wife.’
‘Fair enough: we don’t have time anyway. Go on. You were telling us how you wound up sleeping with your daughter’s friend.’
‘I know, it sounds callous. But we didn’t have sex, not at first; it was just touching, know what I mean? Zrinka said she wasn’t in love with me or anything, she just liked me. But eventually we did. The first time, when it was over, she just lay there, stroking my hair and looking sad. Looking back, I think she probably felt sorry for me; she was that sort of girl.’
‘Who ended it?’
‘She did. It went on for a couple of months more, until one night she told me that it was over. She said that she felt guilty, about Doreen, and about keeping what she called her dark secret from Stacey and Amy. To be brutally honest, as she always was, it was more than that; she said that I couldn’t make her come, and she saw that as a sign that it was wrong. She said what she thought, did Zrinka; she told me that she had this feeling that I was just masturbating inside her. That was a new one on me, I’ll tell you.’
‘How did you feel about it?’
‘I was sorry, and my ego was bruised by what she said, but she was being frank rather than unkind. If you really want to know, I’ve learned from her. Can you imagine that, a middle-aged man learning about love-making from a girl? When it came to the end, I respected her choice. I knew that I wasn’t going to leave Doreen for her, even if she’d suggested that.’
‘No?’ Steele murmured.
‘No! And I never will. She might be pretty much sexless, and a scatterbrain, but she’s my scatterbrain. I might cheat on her, but I’ll never leave her.’
‘You’re a noble guy at heart, aren’t you?’
‘Fuck off. . Detective Inspector.’
Steele laughed bitterly. ‘No, no. We’re not done yet. When you were with Zrinka, did she ever mention Dominic Padstow?’
Gavin started to reply, then stopped short, as if he was searching his memory. ‘Not by name,’ he said at last. ‘Early on, the first time we went out together, in fact, she told me that her last boyfriend had let her down, and that she was still badly affected by the experience. On the rare occasion she mentioned him after that, she called him “that so-and-so”, bad language by her standards, but she never used his name. When we finished, she thanked me for giving her back some of her self-confidence. I was pleased by that. It’s funny, I almost wound up thanking her for chucking me.’
‘Almost, but not quite. Stacey never knew about you and Zrinka, you said?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you quite sure about that?’
‘Yes!’
Steele gazed at him. ‘The two of them had some sort of fall-out, you know. Amy Noone was there when it happened. They were discussing Padstow initially, but it broadened out into men who couldn’t be trusted. You know what I’m wondering, Mr Gavin? Whether Zrinka asked her how she could trust Padstow when she couldn’t even trust her own dad. She told Stacey, eventually, didn’t she? That’s why they stopped seeing each other, isn’t it?’
‘Prove it!’ Gavin snapped.
‘That’s a hell of an odd reaction to a straight question, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Fine, but it is nonetheless. It’s got me looking at another scenario.’ He glanced at Montell. ‘Are you thinking the same as me, Griff? What if Stacey did know, and it chewed away at her, until eventually she faced him with it, and threatened to tell Doreen?’
‘That’s how my mind’s working, boss.’
‘How about it, Russ? Just among us, did she, and did you stop her?’
Gavin’s face twisted. ‘She was my daughter, for Christ’s sake,’ he protested.
‘Most murders are domestic. The way the body was laid out, it was almost reverential; it would fit. Then, having silenced Stacey, did you start to worry about Zrinka, more and more, until finally you decided she had to go too? Did you stalk her, and kill her, then leave her body neat and calm like Stacey’s? And did you kill Harry too, not because you were jealous of him but just because he was there?’