Head Shot

'That he's stil around, even though the money's gone?'

'That's right, and that he's sitting there thinking he's a genius, having pul ed off the perfect crime, and that we don't know that he's even done it, far less that we know who he is.'

'The second part of that's true.'

'Maybe so, but if Big Bob and Haggerty are right, he's still around for you to catch.'

Mario paused to slice off a strip of his fillet steak. 'There was something else, though,' he continued, forking it up. 'I wasn't late home because I was with Haggerty.' She looked at him, curiously, as he chewed.

'I was just leaving Fettes when I had a cal from Paula, doing her nut. So I had to go back there again… another one for Greg Jay's book, no doubt.

'She was stil shaking with anger when I got there. Apparently while Dan was off having his arse chewed by Willie Haggerty, Jay went ahead and lifted her. He had her picked up from the deli and brought to his office, then questioned her about the restaurant incident, and about those birth certificates.'

'What did she tell him?'

'She accepted the story about the restaurant… although Stevie Steele's had his last Christmas card from her, I can tell you… and she told Jay that she's never been in Register House in her life, far less gone there to pick up other people's birth certificates.

'He hammered away at her for over an hour, then he let her go, with a warning that when they found the clerk who issued the certificates, he was going to stick her in a line-up.' He paused to eat the last of his steak.

'He's wasting his time, though,' he added, at last.

'Why?'

'Because… although she was too shaken up to remember it at the time… on the day in question, Paula was on holiday in Italy.'

'Can she prove that?'

'Oh yes. It was a girlies' trip; she went for a week with her mother and her favourite auntie. I'l tell you something; Greg might have been within his rights in questioning Paula, but if he has my mother hauled down to Leith in a patrol car, he and I are going to have hard words again.'

'Mmm,' said Maggie. 'So Paula's well off the hook, is she? Yet someone used her name to get those certificates. Why, I wonder; why hers?'

'Thinking ahead, probably. This whole thing was planned in minute detail; I reckon that if Stan had gone to sign those leases rather than Beppe, he'd be dead now.'

'Or your mother,' Maggie murmured, and regretted her words, as she saw the look which passed across his face. 'I'm sure you're right,' she went on, quickly. 'Yet I wonder… maybe Paula's met Magnus Essary or Ella Frances, and doesn't even know it.'

67

He looked at her, darkly. 'Never mind Paula, love. Maybe we have.

That's how clever these people have been.'

He was in the act of rising to clear the dinner plates from the table, when the doorbell rang. Grumbling at the interruption, he walked through to the hal to answer it. Neil Mcl henney stood on the doorstep. 'Glad it 268 was you,' he said. 'I don't have to persuade Maggie to let you come for a pint.'

'But I don't want a pint,' McGuire protested. 'And you don't drink any more, remember.'

'Nonetheless, we're going for one. I'll wait; you get your jacket.'

'That quick?'

'That quick.'

Mcllhenney's car was parked just along the road. 'What did you tell Maggie?' he asked, as they drove off.

'The plain truth; that you had turned up out of the blue with a pink ticket from Lou and were hauling me off into the night.'

'She'l be used to that, by now. Tell me some more truth. Are you screwing your cousin Paula?'

Dusk was gathering; so was the silence inside the car. At last, Mario broke it. 'Why are you asking me that?'

'Because I hear things; even more in this new job than I did before. A little bird… to be exact a woman DC in Special Branch whom you know well… told me this afternoon that she heard that you were, from a pal in Greg Jay's team.'

'So the word's got out, has it,' McGuire growled. 'I wonder who else Alice Cowan's pal's talked to.'

'Does that mean that you are?'

'What do you think?'

'I don't think you're that stupid; daft yes, but not stupid. Mind you, she's some piece of woman, your Paula. I can see how anyone who saw you go into her place at night and stay for three hours might jump to that conclusion.'

'Aye, well you tell Alice from me to let her pal know that if one more whisper of this reaches my ears, then I'll pull every string I've got to make sure that a few detective officers down in Leith wind up on uniformed night shift in Craigmillar, or worse, find themselves transferred down to the Borders under my command.'

'She needed no telling; that's exactly what she said to her pal. She's a fan of yours, even though she didn't fancy the Borders herself.'

'I'm touched,' said McGuire, sourly, as his friend drew up outside the Liberton Inn. 'Why here?' he asked.

'It's as good as anywhere else; plus, they know us here from the old days, and they'll give us a wide berth. It'l be as good as talking in a phone box.'

'You've got something for me, then?'

'Oh yes,' Mcllhenney grunted as they stepped into the lounge bar.

'Have I ever.' A few heads turned as they entered, then looked away quickly. Neil went to the bar, while Mario found a table in the furthest corner.

'Well?' the big superintendent asked quietly, as his friend returned with a pint of lager and another, of orange squash.

'Tennent's.'

'Bugger the beer. What is it?'

'Okay; to business. I've done those checks you asked. You wanted to know al about your dear old dad-in-law, and here it is.

'For a start he has no criminal convictions, either here or in Portugal, where he lived from the time when he made his sharp exit from Maggie's mum, until about three years ago. When he went back there, he settled in Setubal, just south of Lisbon, where he lived with his parents, during the war. I spoke to the chief of the local police, who was very helpful.

'When he arrived in town, Jorge bought a bar and restaurant that had been pretty well derelict and turned it into a decent business, good enough to keep him in a degree of comfort, but not one that was ever going to make him rich.

'Like I said, he has no record of any sort, but that doesn't mean that the Portuguese police never took an interest in him. Some of his customers were pretty tricky; you know the sort, wide boys who find al of a sudden that London's too noisy for them. But not just English; Jorge Xavier's bar… that was the name he used over there… was a hangout for ex-pats in general. There were suggestions that he was involved in more than alcohoclass="underline" the place was raided a few times over the years, but it was always clean.

'The closest he came to being in bother over there came around twelve years ago, when a kid disappeared. She was a Portuguese girl, aged twelve, the daughter of a woman who worked in Jorge's kitchen, and she just vanished. She was never seen again. A lot of people were questioned about her disappearance, including him. The kid used to hang about the place, apparently; he was friendly towards her and he used to let her wait on tables.

'The Portuguese police didn't go as far as to say that he was a suspect, but he was the nearest they had. They had him in three times, and they gave the mother a hard time too, but she told them nothing that would have incriminated him.'

'Shit,' Mario growled. 'If only they'd asked over here.'

'And if they had, what would they have got? The guy's clean here too, 270 remember. Anyway, it died down after a while, and Jorge's life got back to what passed as normal. Until, that is, three years ago, when he did another vanishing trick. He sold his bar to one of his German customers for a hundred and twenty grand's worth of D-marks, and he disappeared.