I glanced at Payne. He didn’t look hungry any more, and I confess that I’d lost my appetite for pakora, let alone the lamb bhuna. ‘I’ll be down, Sammy,’ I told him. ‘Won’t be long.’
I left our parking place for the next lucky punter and headed for Leith. I didn’t need specific directions; the area Pye had described is my home patch. But I hadn’t a clue what he had meant about Paula. I thought about calling her, but decided against it, not on hands free with a passenger by my side.
When we got to the scene a perimeter had been set up, bounded by tape. A couple of dozen, maybe thirty spectators stood along it, ogling. A few of them held pint glasses, overspill from the pub along the road, no doubt. ‘Excellent,’ I grumbled. ‘For the benefit of those who didn’t know that something had gone off here we have to advertise the fact with a fucking Day-Glo border.’
The entrance was guarded by a couple of plods. The younger one stepped in front of my car. ‘Sorry, you can’t come in here,’ he said.
‘Oh dear,’ Payne whispered and put a hand over his eyes as if he didn’t want to witness something awful, but I’d been that young rookie myself once.
I showed him my warrant card. ‘I can, Constable,’ I told him before he had time to say ‘sorry’ again. I patted him on the shoulder. ‘But I like to see the job being done right.’ I nodded towards the watchers.
‘One suggestion: you might like to ask those people with the pint tumblers if they know there’s a by-law against public drinking.’
‘Yes, sir,’ he responded, and headed towards them.
‘Is there?’ my passenger asked, when he was out of earshot.
‘To tell you the truth, Lowell,’ I admitted, ‘I’m not sure if it covers this area, but all I said was to ask them if they know.’ As I parked, I looked across, and saw about one-third of the audience heading back towards the pubs in Pier Place.
Luke Skywalker was headed for us, but I waved him off, for I’d forgotten about a call I’d intended to make. I found the Torphichen Place CID number and hit the button; when Becky Stallings answered I was surprised. ‘What are you doing there?’ I asked. ‘You’re not on today.’
‘No, sir,’ she agreed, ‘but my newly promoted partner, the shiny new DI Wilding, is being conscientious. He decided that he needed to go into Gayfield to do some more reading up on the open investigations.’ I understood that. Ray’s new division had rather a lot of unsolved files; that was one of the reasons why he’d been put there. ‘So,’ she continued, ‘faced with a choice between redecorating our bedroom or coming in here to chum McGurk. .’
‘No contest,’ I agreed, ‘but come on, Becky. Get the professionals in. You’ve got two inspectors’ salaries coming into the house now; put some of it back into the economy, even if it is the black part. Anyway I’m glad you’re there; this is probably a senior officer job. I want you and Jack to find Mr Freddy Welsh, and invite him to join us for a chat.’
‘I thought we were holding off on him, boss,’ she said, ‘till we had something firm on him.’
‘We have,’ I told her. ‘He’s got an offshore company that we didn’t know about, and weren’t meant to, I’m sure, and he’s been using it to bung the Varleys regular slabs of cash, also out of the reach of the tax man.’
‘Nice one. That will be an interesting chat. Will Inspector Varley be sitting in on it?’
‘That’s what I’d hoped, but the so-and-so’s disappeared. He seems to have jumped bail and done an effing runner. I’m waiting for Gayfield to get me his registration number so I can put out an alert.’
‘That’ll be a waste of time,’ Stallings chuckled. ‘I had my old man in my earhole last night about Varley’s bloody car. It’s still in the station park, in Ray’s space, so he can’t get his in. He had to put it up in Greenside yesterday. It cost him eighteen quid, so maybe this isn’t the time to be telling him to get the decorators in.’
‘Oh Christ,’ I moaned, ‘that’s all I need. Becky, run with this, will you? Varley was bailed yesterday lunchtime; he was lifted from Gayfield first thing Thursday morning, and told not to go back there when we let him go, so he couldn’t have picked up his car. I should have worked that out. I doubt if he’d have time to get on a flight to anywhere last night, but he would have this morning. Alternatively, he could have caught a train.’
‘He or they, boss?’
‘Yes, yes, both of them of course; she’s gone too. Get people on to checking all the Livingston taxi firms. See if any of them picked up Jock and Ella. If so, where were they taken? That’s not exhaustive though; they may have had a lift from a neighbour. Get some uniforms into their street knocking doors, asking of anyone did help them out but also when they were seen last. Then check with the airlines; find out if anyone flew them out, not just from Edinburgh either, Glasgow and Prestwick as well. They could be in Spain by now. They could be any fucking where.’
‘What about the train?’ she asked.
‘Yeah I know,’ I conceded, ‘that’s just as likely, maybe more so. Not all train tickets are booked on the internet. Simple souls like me can still roll up at Waverley, buy a ticket and get on.’
‘Not so easy on a Friday,’ she pointed out. ‘They’re packed that afternoon and evening, with English people who work here going home for the weekend.’
‘Do what you can, Becky,’ I sighed. ‘They could be on bloody Eurostar by now. They could be in Paris. They could be in Bruges. . that’s in fucking Belgium,’ I added, lifting a line from one of my favourite movies of all time.
‘Get it under way, then you and Jack go and lift Welsh. He’ll probably scream “lawyer” at you. Let him have one, without question, but don’t talk to him until I get there. The chief’s steaming about this; he may even want to sit in on it himself. Go to it; you’re a star. Princess Leia, no question.’
‘Who?’
‘Sammy Pye’s sister,’ I chuckled. ‘Never mind; it’s my day for movie metaphors, that’s all. It’s a habit I picked up from Bob Skinner.’
The van was fifty yards away from where I’d parked. Sammy hadn’t mentioned it when he’d called but I knew that was where the action was, as there were lots of people in paper suits gathered around it. Payne was among them by that time; the look on his face made me glad that we’d been summoned before we’d eaten and not after. Arthur Dorward met me halfway there, with a suit for me. The Edinburgh force’s forensic genius works for a national resource centre now, but he’s still the peppery, irreverent wee bastard that we’ve all come to know and tolerate over the last twenty odd years.
‘Wear it please,’ he said. ‘We’re not anywhere near finished yet and I don’t want you contaminating my crime scene; especially not you. With your lineage your DNA must be like a kaleidoscope.’
I did as I was told; there’s never an option with Arthur. I approached the burned-out vehicle carefully stepping round several wheel tracks that the SOCOs had marked off for impressions to be taken. I doubted that it could do any good, since some of them must have been made by the van itself and its tyres no longer existed to be ruled out, but thorough is thorough, and it is spelled D. O. R. W. A. R. D.
I knew what was inside the van. I’d been at another fire scene a few months before and I was still having flashbacks to that, but I couldn’t bottle it. Word would have spread faster than the flames that had consumed what had once been a Vauxhall Movano, according to the half-melted markings on its grille. I put on a face mask then took a look inside; a long look. The trick is to imagine a bonfire, one made with tree trunks rather than logs and twigs, and pretend that’s what you’re examining. As I did that, in the same moment I realised what Sammy had meant about Paula.
I had a vague recollection of her getting up in the middle of the night and muttering something when she came back to bed about ‘kids having a party over there’, and about Guy Fawkes night not being in July.
Mario, Mario, the things we come to dwell on; the destinies, the lives, that hinge on a single action, or on the lack of it. If only you’d got up to see for yourself, and raised the bloody alarm, a lot of things might have been different and maybe, just maybe. . somebody might still be alive.