‘Her maybe, but he fucking well shouldn’t be,’ McGuire growled. ‘Varley’s effectively under house arrest. We gave him police bail, but the condition was that he didn’t go out.’
‘Their car’s still here,’ I pointed out.
‘That heap of shit?’ he muttered. ‘They must have another. Maybe they’re in the back garden.’ He led the way again. I knew my role; independent witness more than anything else. ‘Inspector,’ he called out. ‘Mrs Varley.’ Considerate, in the circumstances, I thought; advance warning in case Mrs V was doing a spot of topless sunbathing; the garden looked secluded enough.
She wasn’t, though. There was nobody there, nothing, save some washing hanging on a line, a couple of shirts and a few tea towels. Actually the garden was smaller than I’d expected; much of it was taken up by the extension that had been described to McDermid.
Its size hadn’t been exaggerated; it must have made the ground floor fifty per cent bigger. The way the land sloped meant that it was large enough to boast a cellar. McGuire crunched his way up to the back door. It had a bell too, but the result was the same when he rang it. While he was doing that I peered through the kitchen window. There were unwashed plates and pans on the draining board by the sink; next to that there was a chopping board with vegetable scraps on the work surface.
‘They must have eaten before they went out,’ I said.
‘Well I hope Jock enjoyed it,’ the chief superintendent retorted, ‘for his next meal’s going to be fucking porridge. Come on,’ he said, and turned away from the door.
‘What do we do now?’ I asked him. ‘Go in?’
‘We don’t have a search warrant,’ he replied. ‘In other circumstances, I might be tempted to hear sounds of distress from inside and kick the door down, but in this case I don’t want Varley to have as much as one wee toe on the side of the angels. No, we wait. I’ll give him half an hour. If he’s not back by then, we bugger off and I’ll arrange for patrol cars to do regular drive-bys. The first one to find him in will have orders to arrest him and take him to Gayfield Square.’
‘Gayfield?’ I repeated.
‘Nowhere else. The guy’s fucked me about; he’s betrayed my trust in giving him bail, when a civilian would probably have been held in custody. He can reflect on the stupidity of that when I lock him up in his own station for breaching the conditions. He can stay there until Monday, when he goes before the sheriff. He won’t be getting bail then either; he’ll be on remand in Saughton, alongside his pal Kenny Bass.’
‘You don’t miss, do you?’ I observed.
‘Not when I take aim, Lowell, no.’
Griff Montell
I hadn’t been due for weekend duty, but all things considered I wasn’t about to complain about it. The DI had seen his team decimated and I was part of the reason, so when he asked me to work on Saturday, I figured that keeping my head down was best in all the circumstances.
I was glad to be getting out of there myself, truth be told. I’d been due to make DS and although no promises had been made, a nod and a wink from Luke Skywalker had made it pretty clear that I’d be Ray Wilding’s replacement after his promotion and move. There might have been a little jealousy from Alice, but I could have talked her through that. She’d have been a bridge between me and a new incoming DC, but she was gone, thanks to my misjudgement, followed by her own, then blown up to disaster proportions by her lizard of an uncle, a man the brass were determined to keep out of my sight, not just because I was likely to be a witness against him, but because I might have decided that taking the bastard apart was worth dismissal.
I saw my promotion as blown, possibly for good; if I’d stayed in Leith as a DC, that would have been tough to take. I’d have felt humiliated by a new guy taking my slot. . almost certainly Sauce Haddock, if I read things right. . I’d have been lonely, without both my old sidekicks, and maybe worst of all, I’d have been subjected to the usual Springbok grilling by Alice’s replacement. I don’t know why, but every Jock guy who meets a South African in my age bracket assumes that he knows Kevin Pietersen, the cricketer.
I’d called Alice that morning. I hadn’t slept much and it must have been obvious, for the first thing she asked me was whether I was hung over.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘How about you?’
‘Oh yes. I got well smashed last night; what did you expect? You don’t want me breathing on you right now, I promise.’
‘I’m sorry, Alice. About the job and everything.’
‘Don’t be,’ she told me. ‘I should have known better than to trust my swine of an uncle. He’s let me down before. I don’t know why the hell I did that.’
‘I can guess,’ I told her. ‘You heard Welsh’s name and you thought you should give the man the chance to distance himself from him if necessary, before things happened.’
‘More or less,’ she sighed, ‘I suppose. How about your job? What’s happened? Nobody would tell me.’
‘I’m keeping it. I was worried though; I don’t mind admitting it. That’s why I went crazy on you, then froze you yesterday. I apologise for all of that; it was the last thing you needed.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said, ‘I understood. Friends now, though, yes?’
I smiled. Friends. That’s what Alice and I were, more than anything else. There are a lot of things I like about her, not least her spikiness, and her ever-readiness to say what she thinks. ‘Yes. Friends.’
‘Want to come round tonight?’ she asked.
‘Yes. We’ll go for a meal, somewhere.’
‘Okay. But you’re paying. I’m unemployed, remember.’
I hung up, feeling glad that I’d taken the plunge, and headed for the office. I’d expected to be there on my own, but I’d underestimated Sammy Pye’s ambition. The guy’s around the same age as me, and he’s a DI already, even if he was accelerated when Stevie Steele was killed. He didn’t get there by leaving everything to junior officers; if there’s a slot to be filled he’s there and he’s sharp enough to make sure the bosses know it too.
‘Morning, Griff,’ he greeted me. ‘How are you doing?’
‘Fine, thanks. Backside kicked, moving on, then it’ll be business as usual.’
‘For what it’s worth,’ he volunteered, ‘I’m sorry to be losing you. I’d been looking forward to working with you as my DS, given your experience in the rank back home. You’ll enjoy your new job, though.’
‘I know,’ I admitted. ‘I had some of that in South Africa too, but like here it’s not something you can put on job applications. Pity about the DS, though: I can always use extra money. I fear I’ll be DC Montell for ever now.’
‘If you are,’ he said, ‘it’ll mean that nobody upstairs takes a blind bit of notice of anything I say. I sent DCS McGuire an intranet memo saying that I hope what’s happened won’t hold you back any further.’
I stared at him, taken aback. Ambitious yes, but I hope he makes it.
‘I tried to save Alice too,’ he added, ‘but there was no hope. She was too exposed. If Varley had gone to bat for her, then maybe, but he did the opposite. He claimed in interview that she was the one who called Welsh.’
‘He did what?’ That was news to me; I rose halfway out of my seat.
‘Sit down,’ the DI told me quietly. ‘Nobody’s buying it, but it could be his defence in court, given Alice’s history with Welsh. Oh shit,’ he murmured. ‘You did know about that, didn’t you? Short-term; a long time back.’
‘I’ve been told,’ I said, ‘but as far as I’m concerned, I still don’t know about it. It’s none of my business anyway, no more than me and that giraffe is hers.’
Pye blinked, and then laughed. ‘Catch it kneeling by the pond, did you?’
I was still searching for a comeback when the phone rang. I snatched it up, welcoming the distraction of work, if that’s what it was. ‘CID, DC Montell.’
‘Griff,’ a seasoned voice boomed in my ear, ‘Bert here, front desk. I’ve just had a call from a panda patrol. There’s a burned-out van on that empty site opposite the Royal Yacht. You’re needed there.’