‘Well, it should have pointed somewhere else.’
Maggie made a decision. ‘Bet,’ she said, ‘I hardly know you as an adult. Are you a strong person?’
‘I reckon,’ her sister replied.
‘Then let me tell you everything.’
Seventy-three
As soon as McGuire stepped through the door of the old pub, he saw two familiar faces, sitting at a tiny table near the bar, the only people in that small area. They recognised him at once, but that was no compliment for their special skills included instant recognition of almost everyone they had ever seen. Their names were Queenstown and Strivens, and they were fellow police officers, but he had no idea of their rank because that was irrelevant on the Prime Minister’s close-protection squad.
‘Bloody hell,’ said the fair-haired Queenstown, the taller and slimmer of the two, ‘are the Scots invading?’
‘We control this place already, man,’ the big Scot replied, ‘you know that. From the top down, starting with the guy you work for.’
‘Yours is in the back bar,’ Strivens told him. ‘He came in ten minutes ago, bought us a pint and then went off in search of food. Good luck to him: it’s just gone nine so the pies will be pretty solid by now. It must be heavy stuff.’
‘The pies?’
‘Nah!’ Strivens laughed. ‘Whatever brings you two down here together.’
‘Rollover from an investigation, that’s all. The gaffer had to go off and see a mate; he called me and told me to meet him in the Red Lion, Whitehall.’ He glanced around. ‘I’ve never been here before. You won’t find too many places like this left in Edinburgh.’
‘None at all. We’re half-way between Downing Street and the Palace of Westminster. Everyone in here’s a face of some sort or another; the place is an unofficial safehouse for coppers and politicians.’
‘Sorry about young Stevie,’ said Queenstown, quietly. ‘What the hell made the guy rig the place after he croaked himself?’
‘Nutter,’ McGuire growled. ‘Blaze of glory, they reckon. It didn’t happen on our patch, so it’s Northumbria’s job to figure it all out.’
‘God help them, then, with Mr Skinner looking over their shoulders.’
‘Through there, you said?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thanks. Maybe see you next time your man’s up north.’ He pushed his way through a swing door and found himself in a much bigger area, long and narrow, with a wooden-topped bar taking up most of its space, and with its own entrance. His way was blocked by four people, two of whom were high-profile television journalists. Their companions’ faces were familiar also; he knew that they were junior government ministers, but failed to put a name to either. They fell silent and stood aside quickly at his ‘Excuse me, please.’ He guessed that dark, muscular strangers always had that effect on conversations in the Red Lion.
Skinner was sitting at the far end of the room. There was a plate in front of him, clean but for a smear of tomato sauce, and an almost empty glass. McGuire pointed. Skinner nodded. ‘Adnams,’ he said.
‘Two of them, please,’ he told the barman.
When they were filled, settled, topped up and paid for, he carried both pints across to the DCC’s table and joined him. ‘Pies okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but not as good as that fucking restaurant I left you in. I was expecting to be taken to Lockett’s, but my friend had a date.’
‘Your friend?’
‘Amanda, Thames House, top floor.’
McGuire whistled. ‘Your message really got through. Who was looking in on us?’ He paused. ‘Can we talk here?’
‘Yes, it’s clean. I checked it with my wee box.’
He glanced at the journalists and their friends. ‘So it really is a safehouse,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘Nothing; just something the guys next door said.’
‘Cerberus?’
‘Eh?’
‘The three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades … or, rather, the exit, for who would want to get in? It’s what I call Queenstown and Strivens, because they’re such a unit. Okay, I know, they’re one head short, but it fits.’
‘Hell, boss! What sort of a mood are you in?’
‘The sort that comes over me when I’m trying to figure out how somebody could have been in two places at once. To answer your question, when we were with Boras, we were talking to people he’s been involved with for over fifteen years. On Saturday, he was acting on his own, but he’s still under their umbrella.’ Succinctly, keeping his voice low, he summarised Amanda Dennis’s message.
‘We’re being warned off by them? Does that mean we have to start checking under our cars every morning?’
‘No. It’s a bluff. But it might as well have been a warning. If Dražen didn’t kill Stevie, although I’m damn near certain he did, then we will never know who did.’
‘Boss, I met the man myself. He walked into our office in Queen Charlotte Street at around two fifteen, and the boys took him round to the Waterfront, where I saw him. You’ve read Montell’s report of their discussion in the investigation file. He got back from Los Angeles that morning, found out what had happened to his sister, went to see his folks, and caught a BA flight up to Edinburgh. He checked into the George, then took a taxi down to Leith. The pathologist has Ballester dying at half past twelve, in Wooler. He couldn’t have done it.’
Skinner frowned. ‘There’s flexibility in the time of death. Suppose he killed the guy an hour earlier? He could have got to Edinburgh from Wooler by road in that time.’
McGuire shook his head. ‘But not from London to Wooler by road, no way.’
‘Fly to Newcastle, hire a car?’
‘No time and eminently traceable.’
‘Fuck it!’ Skinner snapped. ‘Private plane? Davor has one.’
‘It’s a jet. Brian Mackie’s a plane anorak; he met it at Turnhouse. He told me the thing could cross the Atlantic. You won’t land that in the fucking Cheviots and take off again.’
‘No.’ The DCC looked down at his glass, and realised that his second pint was almost gone. ‘Mario, I need to shut my brain down for a while. I’m in danger of becoming obsessive. I’ve promised Maggie that I’ll find Stevie’s killer; if I can’t. .’
‘Then you can’t, big man, and that’ll be an end of it. Nobody will ever blame you for not trying.’
Skinner rose to his feet. ‘I will, son,’ he said. ‘Two more, please,’ he called to the barman.
Seventy-four
‘Thanks, Griff.’ Sammy Pye took the report from Montell. The new DI had arrived in the office at five minutes past eight to find the South African already there.
‘I finished that last night,’ the detective constable told him. ‘I’ve been through every file and every folder on that disk. I can tell you just about everything there is to know about the personal and business life of Daniel Ballester, and I’m glad the bastard’s dead.’
‘Me too. I’ll read through it.’ As the door of his office closed once more he began to read. Montell’s paper was well structured: it began with a printout of Ballester’s diary entries over a three-year period. There was no detail, only times and venues of appointments, with individuals identified by initials. His involvement with Zrinka Boras was identifiable on that basis, as was his liaison with Stacey Gavin. On the day of her death, there was a single entry: ‘SQ’. Then on the day before Zrinka’s murder, another, ‘NB’.
‘South Queensferry, North Berwick,’ Pye murmured. He moved on to the descriptions of each of the folders on the disk, beginning with ‘My Pictures’. Montell’s summary revealed that there were few. There were some from Ballester’s youth and childhood, but the main concentration was in the folders marked ‘Zrinka’ and ‘Stacey’. They included intimate shots of both women, and in Stacey’s folder was a nude shot of Ballester himself, taken by Stacey while he posed for her portrait, for the next image was one of the young artist, partly hidden by a canvas on an easel, brush in hand.
From ‘My Pictures’, Pye moved on to a group under a one-word heading, ‘Business’. He read through printouts of each one; each contained detail of a story on which the journalist had been involved, with notes, interview summaries and frank opinions, which, to Pye, revealed much more about the author than about his subjects. As he progressed, he understood why Montell had found the man repellent: the notes showed the man inside, and not, he was sure, the Ballester that Zrinka and Stacey had thought, at first, that they knew. As he read, he was certain that Zrinka must have come upon these files, and that they had brought their relationship to an end.