‘I might just do that. But what if I’m pressed on Padstow?’
‘Tell them that we hope to identify him very soon.’
‘Is that true, though? I’m telling them no porkies.’
‘Yes, but I’ll need to go back and see Dottie to chase it up.’
‘Then what are you waiting for? Get along there.’
‘I will, but there’s something else you should know, something I heard from Ray Wilding before I came in here. Somebody else has been trying to trace Padstow through the passport service, a guy from the Home Office.’
‘Why? Do we know?’
‘My best guess is that he’s in the pay of a newspaper, but hopefully Dottie will be able to shed some light on that too.’
McGuire pushed himself out of his chair. ‘Then find out, preferably before that newspaper asks me questions at four o’clock.’
Steele nodded. He walked out of the head of CID’s room, with a nod to Sammy Pye in the outer office, and headed for the Special Branch suite.
‘She’s on the phone, sir,’ said Alice Cowan, as he entered.
‘This time I’ll wait,’ he told her, with a smile, but as he did, the young officer glanced at an indicator on her desk.
‘It’s okay, that’s her finished: but I’ll let her know you’re here.’
He allowed Cowan to observe proper practice and waited until she nodded for him to go on.
This time, Dottie Shannon was ready for him. ‘Stevie, good; saves me looking for you. I’ve got some feedback from down south.’
‘On Padstow?’
‘No, not yet. They’re making progress on that front, they’ve got a few possibilities, and they’re looking into them before they give us the final verdict. But I have had a response to Wilding’s request. Has he told you about it yet?’
‘Yes. The Home Office guy: what’s his story? Is he on a bung from someone in the media?’
‘He’s on a bung, but not from that source. MI5 reported him to the Home Office security people, and they pulled him in for interview, there and then. He spat it out straight away, looking to save his job, no doubt.
‘When he was at the DTI, he was suborned by a man to provide what he described as “business intelligence”, on a regular basis. He began to get nervous about it, but he found that he was in over his head, and that the only way he could extricate himself was by moving out of the department altogether.
‘That’s why he applied for a transfer to the Home Office. He thought he was free and clear, so it came as a hell of a shock to him when he was contacted late yesterday afternoon by his old benefactor and asked to get information on Dominic Padstow.’
‘Yesterday afternoon?’ Steele exclaimed. ‘Before we went public with Padstow’s name?’
‘That struck me as peculiar too.’
‘Did he give them a name?’
‘Oh, yes, he gave them everything, all the detail, what he did, how much he was paid, and by whom. His paymaster was a man called Keith Barker.’
A broad grin spread across Steele’s face. ‘Mario McGuire will love that.’ He chuckled. ‘As far as he’s concerned nothing that happens to that man will be too bad. He’s Davor Boras’s fixer.’
‘Boras?’ Shannon repeated. ‘The dead girl’s father? The millionaire?’
‘The one and only. Not that he’ll get sucked into this. Unless I’m very wrong about him, Barker will be deniable; there will be no paper that links him to his boss. What’s going to happen about him?’
‘To him, you mean: when it comes to corrupting the civil service, there’s zero tolerance. The man Dailey has agreed to be a Crown witness, not to protect himself from prosecution, because they will do him, but to keep himself out of jail, and to hang on to his pension rights.’
‘Will that be enough to charge Barker?’
‘They think so: most of the payments are in cash, but they think they’ll be able to establish a link between the two men through phone calls. They also hope to recover photocopied documents from Barker’s office.’
‘Unless he has time to destroy them.’
‘He won’t. Very soon, if it hasn’t happened already, he’ll be arrested by Met detectives and held in custody while his office and home are searched under warrant.’
‘Is this likely to go public?’
‘Do we want it to?’
‘If charges are laid, we won’t have a say, but right now? To be selfish, the headlines about this investigation are about to get bigger than ever. If something that might or might not relate to the case happened to divert some of them, I wouldn’t mind a bit.’
Fifty-two
‘You’ve had three murders in four days,’ said a woman in the second row, ‘and you’re telling the public not to panic.’ She was new to Fettes briefings, a London journalist parachuted into Edinburgh in the wake of the sensation caused by Zrinka Boras’s murder and her father’s million-pound reward.
The chief superintendent looked at her as if he was trying to decide whether she deserved scorn or pity. ‘Would you like me to?’ he retorted, stone-faced. ‘Would your readers prefer me to declare a state of emergency and to advise people not to go out unless they have to?’
She shrugged, a gesture that annoyed the detective even more. ‘I’m only asking a question. That is what we’re here for, isn’t it?’
‘Actually, love,’ he replied (he knew that Paula would kill him for using the term, if she saw the exchange on television, but he could not have stopped himself, even if he had tried), ‘you didn’t ask a question, you made a statement, designed no doubt to fit somewhere into a knocking piece you’re planning to write. I’m not going to play your game.
‘For the benefit of the serious people here, I’ll repeat for the avoidance of doubt that, on the basis of what we know at this moment, we do not believe that any of these three killings, or the earlier, related, murder of Stacey Gavin, took place at random. All four victims knew each other; that’s fact. Obviously they each had a wider circle of friends and family. I don’t believe the threat extends to them, but they’ve all been given advice on personal security, and offered police surveillance if they want it.’
‘Is anybody under police protection?’ asked John Hunter, from his usual front-row seat.
The question did not surprise McGuire; he and Alan Royston had agreed that it might be asked, and had agreed that there was no point in deflecting it. ‘Yes,’ he told the old reporter, ‘but purely as a precaution. . and don’t bother asking me who it is.’
‘Chief Superintendent,’ came a voice from the back row. It belonged to Grace Pretty, a Scotsman reporter with whom Royston was on particularly good terms. ‘I’ve just been advised by my London office,’ McGuire glanced at the media manager, seated by his side, and saw him wince slightly at the lie, ‘that Keith Barker, who sat in on yesterday’s press briefing with Mr Davor Boras, has been arrested by the Metropolitan Police. Are you aware of that?’
The head of CID held on to his deadpan expression. ‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell us whether it has anything at all to do with this investigation?’
He looked at her over the heads of the people between them. ‘Grace, you know me, and you know that I like to give straight answers whenever I can.’
‘Yes.’
‘No comment.’
He waited until the buzz subsided.
‘You’re not saying that Keith Barker is a suspect, are you?’ the woman in the front row demanded.
‘Is there anything about “no comment” that you find hard to understand?’ he replied. ‘Any other questions?’ As he spoke, he saw that Alice Cowan was approaching his table; he paused as she slid a note in front of him, then scanned it quickly. ‘Thanks,’ he said, as she left, looking up once more at his audience. ‘Yes?’