‘How do you come to know this?’
’Because Dražen told me. I met him once after he struck out on his own, and I asked him why he had done it. He came right out with it, chapter and verse.’
‘Did it surprise you, what he told you?’
’Not when I thought about it. Dražen and Zrinka were very much alike, from what I knew of them. Neither was prepared to stand in anyone’s shadow for ever. He had plans for Zrinka too: he wanted her to run both of his art galleries; her brother told me that as well. She managed to deflect him, though. She persuaded him that nobody in the art world would respect her until she had established herself. She was supposed to settle in Edinburgh not just to paint but to find work in a national gallery, and gain experience there. Once she got up there, she forgot about that side of it, conveniently.’
‘So back to Padstow: you’re saying that Boras wanted to get to him himself, to get information out of him. How would he have done that?’
‘I do not know, and I do not care to speculate.’
‘Would he have used physical persuasion?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you believe him capable of it?’
Barker glanced at the recorder, then back at Steele. ‘I believe that if he has succeeded in finding Padstow before you, and if he is convinced, as you seem to be, that he murdered Zrinka, then you have a better chance of finding Lord Lucan than of catching up with the bastard. Boras won’t leave a single trace of him.’
‘Just as well that the Home Office woman didn’t hear that,’ Stallings murmured.
‘Maybe she should have,’ Steele replied quietly, his head turned away from the recorder. ‘Maybe she knows things about him that could point us in the right direction.’
‘Want me to go and get her back?’ Wilding whispered.
‘Except,’ said Barker, startling them all, ‘that there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that.’ They turned back towards him. ‘Now I’ve seen Padstow’s image, I know why Boras wanted me to find him. I should have worked it out for myself straight away, but I didn’t.’
‘Go on,’ said Steele.
‘Almost three years ago now,’ said the prisoner, ‘not all that long after I went to work for Boras, I became aware that someone was asking questions about us, about the business, about Boras himself, about me and what I had been recruited to do for him. Word filtered back to me, from employees, from suppliers and from former associates of mine.
‘I had no idea who the man was, but I knew that he was hostile, as such people almost invariably are. I made that assumption because no approaches were ever made to me, to any of my subordinates in the press office or in the consultancies that we use. At that point in time, I didn’t want to go to Boras, as I knew him well enough by that time to understand that you didn’t bring him suspicions, you brought him facts. So I began to seek the man actively, and to build up a dossier on what he was up to. I intended to trace him myself, but I never did. He was too good, too thorough. Finally, I decided that he was probably an industrial spy, hired by one of our smaller European rivals or, more likely, by an American outfit. That I had to take to the boss.’
‘How did he react, when you didn’t bring him hard facts?’
‘To my surprise, he was fine. He thanked me and he told me to leave it with him. A week later, he called me into his office. I should tell you that he never discusses anything sensitive outside his room at Continental; he has the place swept every day for listening devices. He showed me a folder and said, “That’s our man.” It contained photographs and a complete biography of a man called Daniel Ballester. He was a journalist, that sort of spy.’
‘Where did the information come from?’
‘He told me he’d hired a private security firm: its name was Aeron, according to the heading on the report I saw.’
‘Did he say whether he had acted on it?’
‘I asked him if he wanted me to do that, but he told me that the Aeron people had been instructed to talk to him, tell him that we knew who he was and to stop being bloody silly. That alarmed me a little; I asked if they would do anything physical, but Boras just laughed, a rarity for him, and said that he wasn’t worth it.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘Yes, I did. As it happened, Ballester was all over the press himself just a little later, after coming spectacularly unstuck by doing a piece on Diana, on the basis of bogus evidence that he fell for.’
‘Then three years on, you find out he had moved on from that setback to get onside with Zrinka.’
Barker nodded. ‘As soon as I saw the image you released, I knew who he was.’
‘When did you see it?’
‘In The Times, yesterday morning.’
‘What did you do?’
‘The obvious. I took the newspaper straight into Boras’s office, but he’d already seen it. I said to him, “You know who this is, don’t you?” and he nodded. I said that Aeron obviously hadn’t been persuasive enough. He replied, “Maybe they’ll be more efficient this time.” I warned him not to cross the police, but he told me not to worry. Then he took out the folder he’d shown me three years ago and shredded it before my eyes.’
‘Did he say any more than that?’
‘Yes, he did. Frankly, I was shitting myself by this time. I asked him point-blank what orders he had given the people at Aeron. He promised me that they had instructions to trace Ballester and report back to him, no more than that. When they did, he would hand everything over to you.’
‘Did you believe him?’
‘I honestly can’t say. But if Aeron are the sort of people who are prepared to go all the way, my guess is that either the man will disappear and they’ll report failure or that he’ll have some sort of an accident.’
‘How did your discussion end?’
‘Effectively, Davor fired me. He said that he felt I was becoming too anxious about events to continue to perform on his behalf in the City, and that he needed to make a change. He told me what my severance terms would be and promised me another half-million in an offshore account in two years if I stuck to the confidentiality agreement that he would ask me to sign. I accepted dismissal, since that was in my financial interest, and we agreed that I would leave that afternoon.’ He smiled weakly at the three detectives. ‘I had my fucking jacket on when Inspector Stallings arrived to arrest me.’
Steele leaned back in his chair. ‘That’s the whole story?’
‘The part that concerns me.’
‘Okay, Keith.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Interview terminated at twelve fifty-seven.’ He switched off the recorder, removed the disks, pocketed one and handed the other to Hamilton. ‘You can negotiate the terms of your client’s bail now,’ he told the lawyer.
‘I’m not sure I want to be bailed,’ Barker murmured.
‘Don’t worry,’ Stallings told him. ‘We’ll look after you. If Boras does something silly, Scotland may need you as a witness.’
‘Shit!’
‘Hopefully, we’ll put a lid on it before then,’ said Steele. ‘Our next port of call has to be Aeron Security. It’s time they were told that they ain’t a private police force.’
Fifty-six
‘There’s them and us, you know, Griff,’ said Tarvil Singh. ‘There’s the DI and Ray off swanning in London, and you and me holding the fort here, sifting bloody interviews and chasing up sightings of Padstow all over bloody Scotland.’
‘Yes, but on overtime, remember, unlimited on this job.’