‘You can talk, woman,’ I grunted. ‘Do you actually have a home, or do you have a room in that building?’
‘I have a very nice flat,’ she replied, but I’d known that all along.
‘Sure, in Dolphin Square. You could throw a tennis ball from your office window and it would hit it without a bounce.’
She sighed. ‘Maybe, but you know how it is. The bastards who are trying to get us don’t work office hours; for example, there’s live intelligence about a plot to assassinate a leading British political figure. Whitehall’s on a virtual lockdown because of it. Even without that, the threat level’s constantly high these days. From both sides,’ she added, ‘theirs and our own. Ever since we became a more open book, as it were, we’ve been under more political scrutiny. You know what those chaps are like; Commons committees are stacked with ambitious people looking for a cause that’s going to generate headlines for them, and bashing the security service has become very popular.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I murmured.
‘Oh, do you have problems too?’
‘Do I ever.’ I paused. ‘Amanda, between you and me, what do you know of Toni Field?’
‘Enough to know that I never want to work for her,’ she said, firmly.
‘You’re career Five, chum, going nowhere else; there’s no chance of that.’
‘To the first, yes, I agree. To the second, don’t be so confident. That woman’s ambitions know no boundaries. She cultivates the powerful everywhere she goes. Doesn’t matter who or what they are. She’s the poster girl in the Met at the moment. . the Mayor of London thinks she’s wonderful. . plus she has contacts deep into the Home Office and Justice Ministry, at political and civil servant level. She sees herself running this place one day; the way she operates makes me certain of that. The present Home Secretary hates her, thank God, but nobody stays in that office for long. When I heard she’d got the Strathclyde job, I knew there would be trouble between you two, I just knew it.’
She was so insistent that I had to chuckle. ‘Fact is,’ I said, ‘I have bigger problems than her, but to hell with it, I’ve had enough of them for today. Amanda, I’ve got some fingerprints, and an image of the dead man. We’re running them through conventional databases, naturally, but I wondered if you’d be prepared to do some wider checks for me, within your community. The fact that these guys seem to be foreign. .’
‘I agree. They could just be a trio of tourists, but. . To dispose of a body like that? Worth a check.’
‘And it might be worth checking with your Glasgow office, too,’ I suggested, ‘to see if there have been any undercurrents there. The three men ate in Glasgow; the guy died very soon afterwards, and yet his friends buried his body in Edinburgh and then pointed us at it. Why would they do that? They must have known we’d be chasing our tails in the aftermath, so was that deliberate? Create a mystery in Edinburgh, focus attention there. Smokescreen?’
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I’m not aware of anything specific in Scotland but I’ll ask. Send me the image and the prints and I’ll have people work on them, straight away.’
Lowell Payne
I hadn’t really fancied a trip to Andorra. I went there on a skiing holiday with Jean in the first year of our marriage, before our daughter was born: I didn’t like it. The country looks as if God landscaped the Pyrenees with an axe when he was making the world. It’s a drab, claustrophobic canyon of a place. Our travel agent fed us a line about how cheap the shops were. Crap! When we got there we found that for most things they were cheaper than Harrods, but nowhere else. An ex-pat resident told me there were bargains to be had in diving equipment. . in a ski resort: work that one out. . and in firearms, but we were in the market for neither.
As it turned out, one phone call was all Mackenzie and I needed to make progress with our investigation. A quick online check told us that while there’s an honorary consul in the mountain state, he operates under the supervision of the British consulate in Barcelona. I called there, and was put through to the Andorran expert, a lady called Betty Ireland.
‘How can I help the police?’ she asked, sounding as if she was genuinely pleased to have a chance to do so.
‘I want to find out all there is to know about a company called Holyhead SA,’ I told her. ‘It’s come up in an investigation. Can you give me some pointers?’
‘A criminal investigation?’
‘Potentially,’ I conceded. ‘We’re interested in some payments that have been made and Holyhead’s the source.’
‘I can make enquiries. Do you know anything about it at all?’
‘We believe it may be owned by a man called Welsh.’
‘Is he a resident of Andorra?’
‘No, he’s Scottish. Lives in Edinburgh. Does that make a difference?’
‘Not necessarily, but you may find that the gentleman isn’t the owner of record. In the past that would have had to be a citizen, but the law is changing, to encourage foreign investment and to encourage the setting up of holding companies there.’ She paused, then switched into full lecture mode. ‘Andorra isn’t your classic offshore tax haven, you understand. It doesn’t have the sort of regime that attracts financial institutions, nor is it the sort of place where you’d set up an offshore trust.’
‘So what’s the attraction?’
‘Income tax: there isn’t any. The taxation is all indirect.’
‘I see.’ Wouldn’t be enough for me, I thought. They’d have to pay me to live there. ‘Can you give me any pointers,’ I asked, ‘on how to investigate this company?’
‘How urgent is it?’
I grinned. ‘We’re the police, Ms Ireland. Everything’s urgent.’
‘In that case I’ll speak to my contacts and get back to you as soon as I can. I’m sure you won’t mind giving me your main switchboard number, so that I know you really are the police.’
‘Sounds reasonable to me,’ I said. ‘Time frame?’
‘With luck, tomorrow morning; I’m assuming that you’re on weekend duty.’
‘We are on this one. Thanks.’
‘Sauce’ Haddock
Cheeky and I don’t live together, you understand. We each have our own place, and don’t plan on moving in together until we’re sure that the time is right. . and yes, I’ll admit it, when I feel one hundred per cent sure of her. At the moment we tend to get together at weekends rather than during the working week. We’re pretty conservative in what we do, given that we’re both still only twenty-something: we’ll go out for a meal at least once, do a movie at one of the multiplexes. If the weather’s nice we might go for a drive on a Saturday or Sunday, usually as far away from Edinburgh as we can get, and if we’re feeling flush, stay over in a hotel.
We’d been talking about going to Loch Lomond on the Saturday in question, and maybe beyond, up towards Oban. There are all sorts of wee bed and breakfast places up that way, and we thought we might try one of them. The chief had buggered that plan up, well and truly.
He’d put me in something of an awkward position as well. As I’ve said, I’ve built Chinese walls into our relationship, to keep Cheeky and my work well apart. Her having given me her grandpa’s tip was one thing; it didn’t break any of my self-drafted rules. But me, involving her in my work, that did.
But what was I going to do when the boss asked me? Refuse? Tell him politely to go and fuck himself? Bob Skinner? Are you kidding? I might be self-confident, but I’m not suicidal. No, I’d said, ‘Yes, sir, how many bags would you like me to fill, sir?’ and a few hours later I was sitting in Petit Paris in the Grassmarket. . we’d decided to stay at my flat that night. . feeling decidedly shifty, and I am certain looking it as well.
Some nights, I’ll look at Cheeky and I’ll say to myself, ‘You know, Sauce, you’re crazy.’ My favourite band is Del Amitri, and of all their songs, my all-time number one is called ‘Be my downfall’. Every time I hear it I think it could have been written about me, and often I find myself singing it in my head, sounding remarkably like Justin Currie in the process.