Sometimes, Pye thought, as he looked through the Perspex wall, when he took off the ‘hail fellow, well met’ guise and turned serious, Ray Wilding was a pretty impressive bloke. He decided that it would be his practice to encourage him to do so more often.
His musing was interrupted when he saw Griff Montell rise from his chair, and head towards him. ‘Boss,’ said the South African, as he opened the door, ‘I’m into that disk that the fiscal’s office sent up, and there are some things on it you should see.’
‘Show me,’ Pye replied, rising to follow him back to his work station. A screen saver was active on the DC’s monitor; as soon as he touched the mouse it vanished and a folder headed ‘my documents’ appeared. ‘How does the calendar look?’ asked the inspector.
‘It has him in Edinburgh on the days of all three murders, but that’s not what I wanted to show you. Wait a minute.’ He clicked on a subfolder. It opened another series: Montell moved the cursor on to an icon marked ‘Les Girls’ and opened it. A strip of small images appeared. ‘Watch,’ he said, then hit the ‘view as a slideshow’ command. The screen went black for a second, and then was filled with a clear, sharp photograph of a woman, lying on her back on stony ground. ‘Stacey Gavin,’ the detective constable announced unnecessarily, as Pye had found himself gazing at her image on the wall, with the rest, for much of the morning since his arrival.
‘Jeez,’ he whispered.
The frame held for a few seconds until it was replaced by another, taken from a different angle, then by another, of Stacey’s pale face. The location moved, to a yellow beach, and another dead girl, the same sequence repeating until the naked form of Amy Noone was revealed. As they realised what was happening, Wilding and Singh stopped what they were doing and moved across the room to watch the display as it completed, then repeated, then ran again. There were no photographs of Harry Paul, only the three young women.
‘He loved them,’ said Pye, quietly. ‘Look at the way they’re photographed: it’s perfect, they’re beautiful. He killed them and yet he loved them. He loved them. . and yet he killed them.’
Seventy
Bob Skinner did not believe for a second that his confrontation with Boras might have endangered himself or either of his companions but he did read anxiety in Stallings as she sat down to dine with him and McGuire in an Italian restaurant near Covent Garden, after she had dropped off her car in the park behind her office.
‘It’s okay, Becky,’ he assured her, as they scanned the menu. ‘Relax, have a couple of drinks with your meal, then get a car to take you home.’
‘You know, I think I might,’ she said. ‘That was a very scary scene, especially when you said that the room was under surveillance.’
‘It had to be. Why else would he have taken us there, rather than to the security of his office?’
‘If what Barker told us was true, why does he have that screened every day?’
‘Because it suits him. He operates a very high-level business; plus, he’s a very dodgy guy. He has to have somewhere he can function in absolute secrecy. But if he’s involved with the intelligence community, as I reckon he is, he has to accept a degree of surveillance. Boras knew damn well that a deputy chief constable doesn’t travel four hundred miles just to have a drink with him and tell him something that he and the rest of the country heard on telly the day before. That room’s his security blanket.’
‘You’re certain it was bugged?’
‘One hundred per cent.’ He took the device from his pocket and handed it to her. ‘Did you see any cameras or mikes in Boras’s eyrie?’
‘No.’
He pointed to a corner of the restaurant, where a CCTV camera, mounted on a pivot on the ceiling, silently scanned the area. ‘Do you see that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then hold on to that box, and press the “activate” button.’
She did as he said, then yelped. ‘It’s vibrating.’
‘Just as it did in my pocket earlier on. Right now, it’s telling you about that camera up there.’
‘Couldn’t it be something else?’
He laughed. ‘I like healthy scepticism in a police officer. Yes, it could, if this place is bugged as well, but regardless of that, it’s picking up that camera.’
‘If you’re right, what’s going to happen?’
‘Maybe nothing; maybe they will just stand back and let me get on with it. If not, somebody will get in touch with me, very soon.’
‘Do you know who that will be?’
‘I suspect it may be someone I know, under orders to persuade me to be a good boy, but I’ll find that out in due course.’
Stallings frowned. A waiter approached, but Skinner waved him away. ‘Sir, what makes you so sure that Boras is involved in something covert?’
The big Scot grinned. ‘Do you think I’ve got a spook complex?’ he said quietly. ‘Becky, I am a bloody spook. Up in Edinburgh I have a Special Branch unit reporting directly to me. I have served time as security adviser to the government in Scotland, and I have done a few other things that I can’t tell you about.
‘If you want specifics, very well, let’s look at Aeron, Boras’s so-called security consultant. It was there on Saturday, as you know first-hand, and today it’s gone. That business had to be a front, with legitimate clients, I’m sure, but involved also in intelligence work and covert activity.
‘It was blown yesterday, in the aftermath of what happened in Wooler. If you look, you’ll probably find the man you and Stevie and Ray met in that office on Saturday sitting at home right now, and he’ll tell you that Spicer, his boss, came to see him on Sunday, gave him a big severance cheque and told him that he was out of a job, him and all the other operatives. But you try and find Spicer now. Not a chance.
‘Here’s some more evidence: when Boras first learned about Ballester, three years ago, he reported him to Aeron. They identified him and what happened next? The guy was hopelessly compromised by that story on the so-called assassination of the People’s Princess, fed names and everything, which he published; that was a classic security service sting.’
‘A lot of people still believe that happened,’ Stallings pointed out.
‘Then they’re daft. Princess Di and her friend had just flown into Paris on his father’s jet. If anyone had wanted to kill them it would have been far easier to arrange for that to crash. It would have been accepted as an accident too.’ He chuckled darkly. ‘Tell me: how many Buddy Holly conspiracy theories have you heard?’
The inspector held up her hands in a gesture of mock surrender. ‘I give in,’ she exclaimed.
But Skinner was no longer looking at her. Instead he was gazing over her shoulder, towards the circular entrance area. ‘That’s just as well,’ he said, ‘because once again Magic Bob has been proved right. That person I mentioned a minute ago, that someone who knew me, and who might contact me; I wasn’t expecting this one in particular, but she’s just come in, and she’s just given me a very meaningful look. I’m sorry, folks, but I’m not going to be able to eat with you. Mario, look after Becky; I’ll see you later.’
He rose from the table and walked away. McGuire and Stallings looked after him, and beyond, towards the entrance area. It was empty. He did not look back as he stepped out of the restaurant and into the street. Through the glass door, they saw him lay his hands on the shoulders of a middle-aged woman, and kiss her lightly on the cheek.
Seventy-one
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ said Skinner, quietly, as the woman linked her arm through his and they walked away down King Street, like old friends reunited, as indeed they were. ‘You’ve changed since the last time I saw you.’
‘Do you mean,’ she asked, ‘that I look better or worse? Do you mean that I look younger and refreshed, or that I’m ageing under the burden on my shoulders, the one you placed there when you turned down my job? Before you reply, the second answers to each question are correct.’