‘Thank the Lord for sensible old Les Cairns,’ said Skinner. ‘Sometimes these coroners think they’re more important than anybody else in the whole wide world.’
He looked at the detective sergeant. ‘Ray, how are you?’
‘I’m all right, sir,’ Wilding replied, ‘but thanks for asking. I appreciate it.’
‘That’s good. No guilt, do you hear me? There’s nothing you could have done, and there’s nothing you can do that’ll bring him back, so don’t dwell on what might have happened.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Who was she anyway?’
The sergeant blinked. ‘How did you. .?’ He glared at Singh. ‘Tarvil,’ he began.
‘DC Singh is innocent.’ Skinner laughed. ‘Maggie’s guess was right on the money, that’s all.’
‘DI Stallings, sir, Becky; she was our escort down there. She and I sort of made a date for afterwards, and Stevie let me keep it.’
‘When did you get back, Ray?’ Griff Montell asked.
‘I caught the last plane out of Stansted on Saturday night. Becky got me on it.’
The South African smiled, and pointed a finger at Singh, who glowered back at him.
‘She’s going to be in demand,’ said Pye, ignoring the exchange.
Wilding stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Like I said, there’s going to be a formal inquest into Stevie’s death,’ the acting DI replied. ‘It’s English law. DI Stallings is a witness to the events that led up to it. She’ll be called. Apart from that, though, there’ll be our standard internal investigation into an officer fatality. For that she’ll need to be interviewed, formally, and so will you.’
‘That’s absolutely right,’ McGuire confirmed. ‘And I’m not sending two officers down to London when I can bring one person up here.’
‘Call her,’ Skinner told Wilding, ‘and explain the situation, although she may have worked it out for herself. Tell her I’ll be requesting that she be seconded to us for a period to help us prepare for both inquiries.’
‘She wants to come to the funeral.’
‘I’ll make sure that her secondment covers it.’
‘Thanks, sir.’
‘Don’t thank me: it’s necessary. It isn’t about you: it’s about proper procedure.’
He looked up as the door opened, and Detective Inspector Arthur Dorward stepped into the office, holding a bag in one hand and a big brown envelope in the other. His red eyebrows rose when he saw the DCC and the head of CID. ‘Morning, gentlemen,’ he exclaimed, as he crossed the room.
‘Hello, Arthur,’ McGuire called out in reply. ‘Has the lab caught fire? I can’t remember the last time I saw you in a proper police office.’
‘They’re usually too messy for me. I do all my work in sterile conditions, remember.’
‘So what brings you to this smelly old rat-pit?’
‘Two things.’ He laid the bag down on Pye’s desk. ‘Those are Stevie’s effects; his watch, his wallet, some change, his keys, his warrant card, and a minidisk that I found in his pocket.’
‘That’s the interview of Keith Barker,’ said Wilding. He glanced at Montell and Singh. ‘You guys should listen to it: it’s a masterclass in how to sort out an awkward witness.’
‘I don’t know if I could,’ said the South African.
‘You’ll have to,’ Skinner told him sharply. ‘It’s relevant to your investigation.’ He looked back at Dorward. ‘What else?’
The inspector held up the envelope. ‘A copy of my report on Hathaway House. I’ve submitted another to Mr Cairns, down in Newcastle.’ He handed the document to Skinner.
‘You should really give it to Sammy,’ the DCC told him. ‘He’s the senior officer in this division, as of this morning.’
‘If you say so, sir, but can I have a word with you first, in private?’
From out of nowhere, Skinner felt a tingle run down his spine. ‘All right.’ He led the way into the room that had been Bandit Mackenzie’s. ‘What is it, Arthur?’ he said, when they were alone.
‘It’s something I want to talk through with you, before making an arse of myself in front of that lot. Can I have the report back for a minute?’ Skinner nodded and returned the envelope to him, then watched as he opened it.
‘I won’t go through it all,’ the technician said. ‘I’ll get straight to the point. Apart from Stevie’s, on the front-door handle, and those left by the officers who went to his aid, the only prints in that house belonged to Daniel Ballester. They were everywhere, including, as you’d expect, on the laptop where he typed his suicide note.
‘Now, take a look at this.’ He took out the document and riffled through the pages until he found the one he sought, then held it out for Skinner to see. ‘This is a photograph of the wire that pulled the pin on the grenade,’ he said. ‘You can see how it leads from the door handle, up through these wee steel eyelet things, and along the ceiling to where the grenade was taped.’
The DCC nodded. The area was blackened, and ripped by fragments, but despite the blast the tiny round conduits were still in place, two in the wood of the door and two in the ceiling. ‘Yes, very efficient. So what’s your point?’
‘There are no prints on them. They’re clean, all four of them, absolutely. The things are so small you wouldn’t expect to lift anything usable from them, but at the very least, there should be smudges on them. There aren’t, though. There’s nothing. They were put in place by somebody wearing gloves.’
‘And you’re wondering why Ballester would bother to wear gloves if he was about to top himself?’
‘You said it, sir. But he couldn’t have, even if he’d been so inclined. We went through that house like a dose of Andrews: there was no sign of a pair of gloves anywhere.’
‘Could he have used a handkerchief? To gain purchase on the things, maybe.’
‘In theory, but he didn’t have one of them either. There was hardly anything in the place: shirt, socks, shoes, underwear, a second pair of jeans and an outdoor jacket. That was all.’
A thin smile creased Skinner’s face. ‘Let me get this right, DI Dorward. You’re suggesting, on the basis of no concrete evidence, indeed on the basis of a complete lack of such, that Daniel Ballester’s apparent suicide was staged, and that the person who killed him then rigged the grenade that Stevie walked into. Does that sum it up?’
‘Either that’s what happened or, rather less likely in my opinion, especially in view of what was said in the suicide message on the laptop, somebody went into the place after he had strung himself up and did it. Now maybe you see why I wanted to bounce it off you before trying it on the rest of them out there.’
‘You’re crackers, Arthur,’ Skinner declared. ‘You’re the conspiracy theorist to end them all. .’ he laughed ‘. . or you would be if I didn’t exist, because I’ll go along with what you’re saying. There’s just one drawback, though. How did this person wire up the grenade from the outside?’
‘He didn’t, not completely. He ran the wire through the keepers, then he closed the door, reached through the letterbox and hooked it round the handle.’
‘The letterbox is big enough?’
‘Just. I did it myself, and if I could. .’ The inspector held out a ham-sized right hand. ‘In the process, I scratched myself on a rough bit on the brass frame. I took a wee piece of skin off. But you’ll never guess: when I looked for it, with a magnifying-glass, I found two pieces there.’ He took two small clear plastic cases from his pocket and held them up. ‘One of these is mine. The other isn’t. I don’t know which is which, but DNA comparison will tell us soon enough. If you can find this bloke, sir, he might just have signed his name for us.’
For the first time in almost two full days, Skinner was beaming as he stepped back into the main office. He laid the report on Pye’s desk. ‘Read that, all of you,’ he said. ‘Read it and learn from the mad genius Dorward. Sammy, have we taken steps to acquire the autopsy report on Ballester?’