‘So do I, but that was never on. Amanda helped us as far as she could, and probably further, by having her people snatch Barnes for us. But when it comes to making a proper arrest, we’ve got no locus down here. We had to bring the Met in on it.’ He broke off as a tall figure came towards them, down the corridor in which they stood.
‘Gentlemen, we’re ready upstairs,’ said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Davies, head of Specialist Crime operations in the Met. He wore the air of a man who was doing something that had been forced upon him and did not like it.
‘I hope to God you’re right about this. Right or wrong, I’m going to catch Foreign Office flak for this. That damn woman Weiss has been bending my ear since last Saturday when your man threw her out of an interview.’
‘I thought she was Home Office,’ Skinner remarked.
‘That’s what I allowed Becky Stallings to believe.’
‘Christ,’ the Scot gasped, ‘you lie to your own officers.’
‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’
’I would. Now don’t lie to me. I want Dražen alive, to stand trial; if you’re under orders from anybody to put a bullet in him to keep him quiet you’d better tell me now.’
‘I’m not, I assure you.’
‘Then make fucking sure that nobody does.’
‘My men will meet force with force.’
McGuire took a twenty-pound note from his breast pocket and held it up. ‘This says they won’t face any. Dražen Boras is anything but stupid: he’s not going to keep firearms in a luxury penthouse that’s pissing distance away from Chelsea Bridge. You could ring the fucking doorbell and he’d answer it and invite you in, yet you’ve got a squad of commandos up there. God bless Harry Stanley, may he rest in peace.’
The taunt, about the man shot dead by armed officers while carrying nothing more lethal than a table leg, struck home hard. Davies turned on his heel and stalked off.
‘You shouldn’t have said that, you know,’ Skinner murmured. ‘That’s the sort of guy that might apply for Jimmy’s job.’
‘The day he gets it, I’m going into the family business with Paula.’
‘He’ll have to get past me first.’
McGuire stared at him, but said nothing, as the sound of indistinct shouts drifted down from the floor above. They waited for ten minutes until, finally, Davies reappeared. ‘You can come up now,’ he said coldly.
They followed him, up one floor and through the open door that led into Dražen Boras’s penthouse. As with his father’s office, the living-room wall was made almost entirely of glass, framing Chelsea Bridge like an enormous picture postcard.
The furniture was 1960s retro, the kind that had once made Paula Viareggio stick two fingers down her throat when Mario had suggested buying a piece. Slowly, a vast white egg-shaped chair began to turn towards them on its base. Settled deep into it, and smiling like a demon, was Davor Boras.
‘I regret,’ he said, ‘that my son is not here to receive you. Nor will he be for quite some time, not until these silly allegations against him are shown to be unprovable and the Attorney General has exonerated him. In the process, you will, of course, be excoriated.’ He leaned on the last word as if he was proud of it.
McGuire took the chauffeur’s statement from his pocket, and waved it in the air. ‘The other David Barnes doesn’t agree with you.’
‘Come, come, Chief Superintendent,’ the millionaire laughed, ‘would you care to explain how that was obtained? Even now, Mr Barnes is recovering his courage.’
Skinner ignored him and turned to Davies. ‘I want this place searched under your warrant; look for passports. I bet you’ll find two: a guy like this, he’ll have had a third identity ready, in case of emergencies. Or. . What’s the range of an Embraer jet? Transatlantic, you said, Mario? He’s gone west, hasn’t he, Davor? And when he lands he’ll be welcomed in Virginia.’
From the depths of the chair, Boras winked at him.
Skinner turned on his heel and walked out of the room, through the apartment until he found the master bedroom. He went into Dražen’s en-suite bathroom and started to open drawers. In the third, he found a Philishave electric razor. He flicked it open, and saw that the chamber below the blades was full of beard residue. Very carefully, he closed it again, and returned to the huge, curved living room.
Boras was still in the chair, watching the proceedings with evident amusement. He turned as the DCC re-entered and held up the shaver.
‘Is this your son’s?’
‘Of course. A gift from me, in fact; top of the range, best in the world. He has another in his travel kit.’
‘I’ll borrow it for a while. Mr Davies, have it bagged it for me, please. That’s okay with you, Davor, isn’t it?’
Boras’s smile, and his eyes, narrowed just a little, but he nodded, and replied, ‘Of course.’
Skinner and McGuire stayed silent until they were clear of the building, and half-way across Chelsea Bridge. Finally, the chief superintendent exploded: ‘The shaver: Dražen’s DNA?’ he exclaimed.
‘Chock full of it, and his father’s witness to the fact.’
‘Yes! We’ve got the sod.’
‘If the lab does the business.’
‘Too bad about that confession, though.’
‘Yeah,’ Skinner grunted. ‘I suspect that Boras noticed that Barnes was absent and, in the circumstances, put the screw on him when he got back. “Courage,” he said; money can buy that too. Anyway, that statement was useless in court: the eedjit was too scared to notice that he’d never been formally cautioned.’
The head of CID stopped in his tracks. ‘Earlier on,’ he asked, ‘did I see you log Barnes’s phone number into your mobile, before you shredded Adrian’s note?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Skinner, cheerfully, ‘and his address too. Wicked, eh?’
‘Can I borrow it?’
‘Sure.’ He took the cell phone from his pocket and handed it over.
McGuire opened it, found the number, and pressed the green button. ‘Is that Mrs Barnes?’ Skinner heard him say, as they resumed their walk across the bridge. ‘This is a friend, one of yours, not your husband’s: there’s some stuff about him that you should know.’
Eighty
‘Nice place you have here, Les,’ said Skinner, as he looked round his opposite number’s office. ‘There are times when I don’t like being stuck in the city centre. I hope you don’t lose this under the force amalgamation.’
‘It’ll see me out,’ Cairns assured him. ‘Is that why you’re here, sizing up this office in case they make you head of the new regional force?’
‘Nothing could be further from my mind,’ the Scot assured him sincerely. ‘No, I’m here to apologise for the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever done in my life.’
The Geordie’s heavy eyebrows came together. ‘Thumping Ballester, you mean? On reflection, I should have done that myself. It isn’t against any law I know of to belt a dead man.’
‘Thanks, but that’s not what I meant.’ He opened his briefcase, took out a thick folder and pushed it across Cairns’s desk. ‘I want to give you this, and to say sorry for having kept you in the dark all the way through its compilation.’
‘What is it?’
‘It’s the documentation of a very private investigation into the murder of Daniel Ballester and Stevie Steele.’
‘Ballester? Murder?’ Cairns exclaimed.
‘I’m afraid so. And it was on your patch, which made it your business. But it started in Scotland, which made it mine. That’s my excuse, anyway. Read that, and you’ll find that you have overwhelming grounds for seeking a warrant for the arrest of a man called Dražen Boras, and his extradition from America, where he’s believed to be hiding.
‘Play it right, Les, and your knighthood could be in there. I want you to give it to the Crown Prosecution Service. They may come under pressure from upstairs not to take it further. If they do, I’d like you to let them know that I have another copy that I will not hesitate to leak to the newspaper for which Ballester used to work, and to a few others as well.’