The two men ate in virtual silence, broken occasionally by questions from the Australian about the visitor’s first impressions of his country.
‘I’m told you have a saying,’ McGuire responded, ‘that Sydney’s like your tarty sister and Melbourne’s like your mum. I can see what they mean about Sydney. There’s something else we have to do before I go, so maybe if I’m here long enough tomorrow, I’ll get to see how this place feels.’
Giarratano waited until they were both finished before going on. ‘So what is it?’ he asked, as the Scot wiped the last traces of the puttanesca sauce from his mouth. ‘This thing we have to do.’
‘We need to have a look at the late Mr Mount’s hotel room. Do you know where he was staying?’
‘The Festival puts its guests up in the Sofitel, just along the road. Mount’s room’s been sealed, so hopefully no housekeepers will have been in there, touching anything. Are we looking for anything specific?’
‘Yes, and this is where I come back to my clever partner. Paula and I are both great readers of crime fiction. The guy who was murdered back home, Ainsley Glover, he was a big favourite of mine. Paulie, she’s read the entire Henry Mount catalogue, and she’s got it filed away in her big brain.’
‘And?’
‘I’ll get there, but let me stay with Glover for now. When he was found dead, the first thought was “heart attack”; and that’s what it seemed like until the pathologist took another look and found exactly what had happened to him. But the odd coincidence was that in one of his books, there was a storyline which might have described his death exactly, and it was a murder. He’d been drugged and injected with a fatal dose of glucose, not insulin. He was diabetic,’ McGuire explained. ‘Moreover, after his death, someone broke into his house and stole his computer, with all his work on it.’
Giarratano’s eyes narrowed; he leaned across the table. ‘Go on,’ he whispered.
‘Right. So early this evening I have a call from my mate, my deputy, telling me that Mount is dead in Melbourne and asking me to get down here and report. A scenario of two top Scottish crime writers being bumped off within three days of each other, with no connection between them, strikes us both as highly unlikely. Paula was with me at the time, and when she heard what had happened, she dug into her Mastermind-sized Henry Mount database and remembered something from a book called Havana Death. Before I tell you what it was, I should also tell you that the guy didn’t make it up. He borrowed the idea from things that actually happened, in Vietnam, and other places. In it, there’s this guy, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, who upsets the Mafia. But he’s powerful, and he’s well-protected so they can’t get to him. Then, one night, he’s at home, in his study, behind bullet-proof glass; his wife goes in and he’s dead, shot. Turns out the guy was a cigar smoker, and that he always bought his supply, the same brand, all the time, from the same store. When they examine him, and the forensic people go to work, they discover that one of his cigars was rigged. There was a cartridge inside it, bullet pointing inwards, and when the cigar burned down to a certain point. . bang!’ He slapped the table and Giarratano jumped.
‘Michael, when the pathologist does the post-mortem tomorrow, he’s not going to find a bullet inside the cranium, because what we saw tonight was an exit wound, not entry. On the other hand, he will find traces of burnt tobacco inside the man’s mouth, and in the wound itself. Trust me, these devices exist and they work. The Vietcong used them in cigarettes, thirty years ago, to take out American soldiers. So did the Khmer Rouge, in Cambodia. Simple, nasty, deadly. Your people didn’t find Mount’s cigar butt, because it disintegrated. But if they’d looked, as I did in the morgue, they’d have seen that the first two fingers of his right hand were scorched on the inside from the flash when the detonator was triggered.’
The inspector frowned. ‘I’m trying to recall whether there were any other cigars on the body.’
‘Maybe yes, maybe no. That’s why we need to look at his room. In the hotel, I made a call back home from my room, for an update. There are two new developments. Just like with Glover, Mount’s computer and his records have been stolen from his office. Also, I’m told he always smoked the same brand of expensive Cuban cigar. Now I don’t believe he’d come out here on a trip like this assuming that he could find them here. I reckon he brought his supply with him. If there’s any left, and we find it in his room, we can possibly trace the source, and we’ll be that much closer to his killer.’
‘So whose investigation is this?’
McGuire smiled. ‘That, my friend, is a hell of a good question. Mount died here, yes. But the crime was committed by the person who put the device in the cigar, and I’m as certain as I can be that happened in Scotland. So what do you want to do? Toss for it?’
Sixty
‘How are you doing, Becky?’ asked Sammy Pye.
‘I’m at the end of the road,’ his colleague confessed. ‘There is nothing I can say for sure, nothing I’ll be able to declare under oath. It’s possible that somebody tried to access the victim’s files on this computer, but nobody will ever prove it, far less who it was.’
‘The daughter could have done it, but she’s eliminated as a suspect.’
‘She is, but there’s one other. There was a second guest screen-name on her internet account: sllinco, with two “l”s. What’s the boyfriend’s name? Ray mentioned it, but it’s slipped my mind.’
‘Collins.’
‘There you are, then; it’s an anagram.’
‘You haven’t been in touch with Carol about this, have you?’
‘Of course not. This is your investigation, Sam; I’m only on the periphery. I wouldn’t go interviewing your witnesses without asking you.’
‘Sorry, Becky, course you wouldn’t. Do you think you can get into sllinco’s files?’
‘I can have a go, but ideally I’d need the same sort of information you gave me on Glover.’
‘That would be difficult.’
‘Then I’ll try with the basics. You never know. .’
‘Thanks.’
Pye was about to hang up when Stallings spoke again. ‘Before you go, when am I getting my DC back? I gather he’s been kidnapped and taken down to Leith.’
‘Hey, he came of his own free will. We no longer needed to be based in Charlotte Square, so I decided we might as well go back home. Look, I’m grateful for the loan of Haddock. He’s in the middle of a specific task right now; I’ll look at releasing him once that’s done, unless. .’ he said, heavily, ‘we get sucked into the Henry Mount investigation. That’s going to break in the media eventually, although the Aussies have helped us by keeping a lid on the name. From what I hear, they’re going to release it at a press conference in Melbourne at ten a.m. local time.’
‘What’s that with us?’
‘One a.m. Alan Royston’s going to have a busy night, with journalists looking for the connection between the two murders.’
‘Have we established one?’
‘The head of CID reckons we have.’
‘Neil McIlhenney?’
‘No, the real head of CID, DCS McGuire. He’s on holiday in Australia; he’s gone to Melbourne and he’s seen the body. He’s convinced; so much so that he’s told me to get up to Fred Noble’s place sharpish, and offer him protection.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘Ah, I forgot, you’re a newcomer. Three days ago, this part of Scotland could boast of three internationally famous crime writers. Now we’re down to one, and that’s Noble.’
‘He must be nervous.’
‘I hope he is. If he is next on some nutter’s list, being nervous will be no bad thing. Give me a call if you get any more out of the Glover daughter’s computer.’ He hung up and walked out of his office, into the CID suite, where Haddock had taken over the desk vacated by the holidaying Griff Montell. ‘Sauce,’ he said, ‘any feedback from those emails you sent?’
‘Three results, sir,’ the DC replied. ‘Two of them are negative; the Bosnian message and the one to Ratko7 were both returned as undeliverable, addresses closed down. But while you were on the phone, I had a call from a woman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dr Mary Warmly.’