‘We will,’ I said. ‘But you don’t want to be on your own. Do you have parents?’
He nodded. ‘My mum and dad. They live in Falkirk; that’s where I started out. They’re just ordinary people, though.’
‘So are you, Derek.’ He really was a sad figure. ‘Shame, but that’s how it is now. You want my advice? Stick close to your folks, and to your football club; they’re the only ones who’ll look after you. Forget you ever knew the crew you’ve been mixing with.’
Martin and I left him to it. The DC said nothing until we were out in the car park. There he ventured, ‘Sorry, sir, but where are we on this?’
‘Wait till we make our next call,’ I told him. ‘If I’m right, it’ll become clear then. Fettes first, though.’
We headed back to the office. When we got there, McGuire was looking more downhearted than I’d seen him. ‘I’m getting nowhere, boss.’ I hadn’t expected that we would need his research, but now that we did, I wasn’t too surprised by what he told me. ‘Peter McGrew’s not on the phone, his NI contributions are in arrears, and he’s not registered to vote anywhere that I’ve found. He’s vanished.’
There was no good news from Newcastle either, but there was a note on my desk from Fred Leggat passing on a message from, of all people, Tony Manson, letting me know that Marlon Watson’s funeral had been set for the following afternoon, a burial in Seafield Cemetery.
It was almost lunchtime, but I wasn’t hungry. I sent the boys off to eat, then called Alison. ‘Fate is on my side,’ I told her. ‘It doesn’t want me to get on that helicopter.’ When I told her what had come in the way, she understood; she knew it was my practice to attend the funerals of murder victims in cases I was working.
As it happened, it didn’t matter. ‘Fate’s working for you on two fronts,’ she said. ‘The Met Office have given the North Sea operators a bad weather warning for Wednesday, and possibly Thursday as well. All routine flights to platforms have been cancelled.’
‘I can smell another weekend on the water looming up for us.’
She laughed. ‘I thought that was on the cards anyway. I’ve been expecting you to take me looking at boats.’
‘We’ve got four years to wait, remember, but I suppose we could start with something small.’ What a difference a day made. Less than twenty-four hours before I hadn’t been joking.
She went all Robert Burns on me. ‘ Nae man can tether time or tide ,’ she quoted. ‘When I see you try, I’ll stop believing that, but not before.’
I couldn’t come up with a poetic counter. ‘Until then you could take up golf,’ I suggested.
‘You’ll roast me on a spit first,’ she replied, cheerfully. ‘How did Lowell’s tip play out?’ she asked.
‘Pure gold, my love, pure gold.’
‘Stop calling me that, it’s unsettling. I’m glad you’re still moving forward, for I’m bloody stuck. If you were being objective, you’d have removed me from the investigation by now.’
‘Alastair Grant would love me to do that,’ I chuckled. ‘He can wait, though. You just need a bit of good fortune. Tell you what, you can swap Hugh Grant’s kid brother for McGuire if you like. He’s my lucky charm just now. Cherchez la femme indeed.’
As I hung up, I felt the first pangs of hunger. There was still time to go up to the big boys’ dining room. That seemed like a good idea, but just as I rose from my chair, my mobile sounded.
No preliminaries. ‘I’ve got your car, sir,’ Ciaran McFaul announced. ‘It’s a shit camera, but there’s a clear shot of it arriving at eleven twenty-three, and leaving eleven minutes later. The driver’s a lean guy, and judging by his height against the vehicle, he’s around six feet. There is no chance of an identification, though. He’s wearing a black garment with a hood, SAS-style.’
‘That figures. Thanks, Ciaran.’
‘I should be thanking you,’ he said. ‘This is our investigation you’re working on. I want to be involved from now on, sir.’ He sounded serious. I sensed that I might be on the way to being sandwiched between two warring chief constables, but there was still the major problem of the earlier leak.
I stalled him. ‘Let me think about it.’
‘What’s to think about? You know who the man is, don’t you?’
‘I know who owns the car,’ I admitted, ‘but… Look, the same man is most probably responsible for ordering a murder here. I’m still staking a prior claim to him.’
‘I should be there, nonetheless,’ he insisted.
When I thought about it he was right, but not on procedural grounds. He had information and if he took it into his own inquiry, might word not get back to the other side, as quickly as it had before? But what if McFaul was the leak himself? Shit!
I made a decision; I had to trust somebody. ‘Okay,’ I agreed, ‘but this is how it’s going to work. Who’s viewed this recording with you?’
‘Nobody,’ he replied. ‘I’m at the hotel now, on my own.’
‘Then get in your car and drive straight up here. Come to my office in police headquarters. Come on your own, and don’t tell anyone. When you get here you can phone your boss and tell him that you’ve had a tip about something, anything, I don’t give a fuck what but not this investigation, and that you need to go undercover.’
‘Are you kidding?’ He laughed, incredulously. ‘He’ll skin me. Why the hell should I do that?’
‘Because I haven’t located this guy yet, and I don’t want him to be tipped off before I do, as he has been once before.’
‘Hey,’ he snapped, ‘are you saying-’
‘Shut up. I’m telling you what happened, but I’m not blaming anyone, not yet. That’s the deal. That’s what I want you to do. I’m trying to reach out here and grab the untouchable, and nobody is going to get in the way, or I’ll be grabbing them. If you’re coming, drive; if you’re not, keep your fucking mouth closed in your office. Which is it to be?’
I listened to the silence as he made up his mind. ‘Have you got a job for me in your CID,’ he asked, ‘if I get busted back to uniform?’
I chuckled softly. He was what I liked, detective first, cop second. ‘Ciaran, I’ll find a slot here for you regardless, if you want it.’
‘In that case, I’ll see you in three hours, maybe less if the tunnel’s flowing smoothly.’
It was the best solution I could devise. Cross-border wrangles are always a pain, but I knew that I’d have to involve my English colleagues sooner or later, leak or no leak. Inviting McFaul to join me was a step towards that, and the way I’d done it took him out of play for up to three hours, time enough, possibly, to run Peter McGrew to ground.
Holmes’s son might have proved elusive, but he existed and I had something to pin on him. There was no way he could know it either at that stage, and that worked to my advantage. But to arrest him, I had to find him. How to do that? Yes, I could have driven up to Perry Holmes’s place and demanded that he hand over his secret son. Sure, and that would have got me precisely nowhere. But maybe I wouldn’t need to.
My next stop was Blackford Hill, back to see Alafair. I suspected that it might be more confrontation than conversation, so I decided to take a female officer along. But which one? The closest was DC Shannon, Alf Stein’s gopher. I called him and asked if he could spare her.
‘Christ,’ he grumbled. ‘What is it with Serious Crimes just now? I’ve had your secondee Higgins on looking for her, not just once but twice, mind you… and Grant’s giving me grief about his DI being away from his team. Now you’re wanting Dottie as well?’
He was in ‘awkward old bastard’ mode, but I levered him out of it by telling him what had happened in my investigation and why I wanted her.
‘Holmes has kids?’ he exclaimed. ‘He’s a fucking dy-nasty?’ (He’d been a fan of the TV series and mangled the word as it had.) ‘Sure, you can have her. It sounds like a good cause.’
I had planned to go up to Blackford in the Discovery as usual, but I changed my mind, and commandeered a marked police vehicle instead, complete with blue light. That’s never been my favourite mode of transport but I felt that it suited the circumstances. I didn’t want to turn up quietly at Alafair Drysalter’s door, not for a second time. I let Martin drive, with DC Shannon in the back. I knew her well enough since I was a regular in her boss’s office, but she and Martin had never met before. Each seemed fairly impressed by the other.