‘Eh?’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course not. Why should you be? No, I’m just wondering about something. Other than her name, do you know anything about this missing woman?’
‘No. That’s why I want to talk to Mrs McConnachie again. I don’t want to start searching through the flat until Mr Dorward says it’s clear, and his people have only just got here.’
‘That’s understood, but based on what you’ve seen so far, were there any hints about her?’
Phone to ear, Karen thought through the scene upstairs. ‘Not really. I could see only one personal item, that was alclass="underline" a framed photograph of a woman and two boys, kids, primary school age. It wasn’t taken recently. The colour was quite faded.’
‘Two boys,’ McGuire repeated. ‘Do something for me, please. Go back up to the flat, take the photo out of the frame and photograph it with your phone, best resolution possible, then email it to me. Use my force address, “accmmcguire at”. Can you do that?’
‘Right away, sir. Give me two minutes.’
He ended the call then reached behind him for the bag that Paula had filled with Eamon’s daily needs, and found his iPad. He switched it on and waited for it to acquire a signal, then checked his email inbox. There were two new messages, one from his opposite number in Aberdeen, the second a forwarded message from the chief constable. While he waited he read both of them, and was in the act of replying to the first, when a musical tone told him that a new message had arrived. As he expected, it was from Karen Neville.
There was an image attachment and a note: ‘Sir, I’ve checked with the nosy neighbour and she says she’s certain this is Isabella Spreckley, the missing woman. Younger but definitely her. KN.’
He opened it and found himself looking at the photograph she had described, a woman with two boys. His eyes narrowed; he peered even closer, then swiped the screen to make the copied photograph larger, isolating the female face.
‘Well I never,’ he whispered.
‘Do you know her?’ Paula asked, from the back.
‘I rather think I do. I can’t swear to it, but if I’m right. .’ He pulled the image back to its normal size and held the tablet up. ‘See those boys? If I’m right, Bob Skinner and I helped her bury one of them, going on for twenty years ago.’
He turned his attention back to the iPad, and keyed in a line, and a command. When it had been executed his went back to his phone and found another mobile number, from the personal section of his directory. The connection took longer than usual, but eventually he heard it ring, a single beeping sound rather than the British two-tone signal.
When it was answered, the first thing he heard was the sound of a seabird. The second was a familiar voice. ‘Mario, forgive me, but what the fuck is it?’
‘I’m sorry to break into your weekend, Bob,’ he said, ‘but I thought you’d want in on this.’
‘Time will tell,’ Skinner replied. ‘You’re breaking into my holiday, not just my weekend. I’ve got to talk on the move, though. Sarah and I are heading for Barcelona soon. Here, love,’ McGuire heard him say, ‘you drive.’
A car door slammed, then another; an engine barked into life.
‘So tell me.’
‘Just before you left,’ McGuire began, ‘Sarah did an autopsy for us.’
‘The messy one? Woman with stab wounds and important bits missing? She only gave me the headlines, mind. I asked her not to share the details. What’s up? Have you put a name to her yet?’
‘Not yet, but. .’ He ran through the story of the morning’s events, from the meter reader’s discovery to Karen Neville’s summoning of the CSI team. ‘Everything fits; all my experience, and Karen’s, is telling us that Cramond Island woman lived in that flat and died in it too, and that it’s her blood that’s all over the kitchen.’
‘That’s my instinct too, from what you’ve just told me,’ Skinner agreed. ‘Have you put a name to her?’
‘I want you to do that for me,’ the ACC said. ‘I’ve just forwarded you a photo from the flat, by email. I want you to tell me who it is.’
‘Okay, but I’ll need to end this call. I’ll open it, if I can, and get back to you.’
The ACC’s phone went dead. He pocketed it and restarted the car, letting the Bluetooth take over. In the back seat, Paula was putting everything back in place while propping Eamon against her shoulder. The baby burped, gently, and regurgitated a quantity of sweet-smelling milk. ‘Clever lad,’ his father exclaimed, just as the sound of Jimmy Buffett and ‘Margaritaville’ sounded from the speakers.
Mario accepted the call. ‘Well?’ he asked quietly. ‘Am I right?’
‘You surely are,’ Skinner told him. ‘Assuming that you get a DNA match to the body, it seems that some bugger has done for Bella Watson.’
Eleven
Bella Watson!
That was a name from the past, and one that I’d hoped would stay there. On the other hand, I reasoned, if Mario and I were right in our shared hunch, then she wasn’t going to be part of my future, so no real worries.
Bella’s path hadn’t crossed mine this century, nor had I even heard word of her. The last time I’d seen her had been in the lair of one of her men friends, a serious Edinburgh gangster by the name of Tony Manson. He had gone to hell a few years later, whereas Bella, as seemed likely, had gone to Caledonian Crescent, a better neighbourhood altogether.
If I was given to florid comparisons, I might say that Bella Watson had been to homicide in Edinburgh as Mary Mallon was to typhoid in New York. She had two brothers and two sons, and every one of them was a murder victim.
Brother Gavin and son Ryan, who was then aged no more than fifteen and a drug pusher like his uncle, had ripped off a major crime lord, bigger even than Manson, and both had paid the price of their stupidity, age being no mitigating factor with those people.
Brother Billy had set out to avenge them but had found out that not all gunfights end like High Noon.
Son Marlon, a few years later, he had somehow got himself jammed between the proverbial rock and hard place, and wound up squashed.
After my second conversation with Mario, I had been so preoccupied with my thoughts about the Watsons and Spreckleys that I’d said nothing about it to Sarah, and she had left me to it, until we were on the train and halfway to Barcelona.
‘Are you going to tell me about those calls?’ she asked, eventually. ‘All I know is that it was Mario McGuire who rang you, but I couldn’t really hear what it was about once the engine started.’
‘Yeah, of course,’ I said. ‘Sorry, love. I should have said before now; not least because you’ve got a professional interest. It took me completely by surprise, that’s all. Mario thinks his people have put a name to that last autopsy you did before we came away, the woman in the water. It looks as if she’s someone I used to know.’
I gave her a rundown on the violent life and likely death of Bella Watson.
‘What a family!’ she exclaimed when I was finished. ‘The poor woman. How tragic can you get?’
I nodded. ‘Agreed, but don’t get the tissues out for Bella. She was the hardest of them all. We were never able to prove that she sent Billy out to get the crew who killed Gavin and Ryan, but I’m quite sure that she did.’
‘A real Ma Barker, from what you’re saying. What about Mr Watson?’
‘He left them to get on with it.’ I paused. ‘No, that’s not being quite fair to him. He was a straight guy, and didn’t like what was going on. Eventually Gavin put a gun to his head and told him to get out of town. Most people, me among them, thought he was dead, but he showed up at Marlon’s funeral. On the day, that affected Bella more than anything else.
‘It was a bizarre event, that funeral,’ I recalled. ‘There weren’t enough men there to take all the cords of the coffin; Jeez, there were no men left in the fucking family by that time. Mario and I, we’d gone along out of duty, no more, and we wound up helping bury the poor lad. It was surreal, with Tony Manson, the gangster Bella was involved with, and me at either end of the grave, lowering him down. I’ll never forget the look on Manson’s face. He was a real swine, but that day he showed me that he had a human side. He went the same way in the end.’