McGuire chuckled, softly. ‘You know his nickname too? Sammy’s the obvious choice, only. .’ He paused in mid-sentence. ‘He doesn’t know Lennie at all; he was just a plod out in East Lothian when he was put away. The truth is, Bob, I was wondering whether you could find some time to brief him on Plenderleith’s background, how best to approach him and so on. I know that you’ve kept in touch with him since he’s been inside, so I’m sure Sammy would appreciate any guidance you could give him.’
‘I’m sure he would,’ Skinner agreed, ‘given the level of young Pye’s ambition, but even if he walked in there with a necklace made out of my pearls of wisdom, in his mind he’d still be a cop interviewing a lifer looking for info on a victim’s background. He might also be less ready than us to dismiss him as a suspect.
‘Lennie’s a very clever guy. He’s been studying since he was put away and now he’s got degrees and a doctorate in criminal psychology. I’m sure he’d give Pye all the facts he knows, but he might give me more than that.
‘You’re right, Mario. I have visited him on the inside, more often than you’d suppose. I’ve always done it on the quiet, to ensure that no other cons ever knew of our meetings. Last thing I wanted was to get him a reputation as a grass.’
‘Yes,’ McGuire mused. ‘I can see how that might put him at risk.’
His former chief smiled. ‘I was more concerned about the safety of anyone daft enough to have a go at him. He’s been a model prisoner and I’d hate to see a blemish on his record, even if he didn’t go looking for it.’
‘Are you saying that you’ll talk to him yourself if we want?’
‘I’m probably insisting on it. It’s my call anyway. The service isn’t unified yet, Mario. Lennie’s in HMP Kilmarnock, and you’re required to inform me if you want to send a man into my patch. You’ve done that and I’m saying no, that I’ll take care of it.’
‘You’ll go and see him? Have you got time for that, Bob? I know how busy you are now.’
‘It won’t be a problem. I don’t need to go all the way to Kilmarnock. He can come and visit me.’
Seventeen
‘Thanks, mate,’ Sammy Pye said as he took the mug offered to him by his sergeant. ‘I need caffeine at the arse end of the day, especially a day like this one.’
‘Come on, boss,’ Sauce Haddock cajoled him. ‘We’ve made progress.’
‘Tell me how, please.’
‘For a start, we know who owns Bella Watson’s flat, and pays the bills and everything.’
‘Sure, but it turns out that he’s a lifer. Not only that, I’ve just been told by the ACC not even to think about interviewing him.’
‘Mmm,’ the young DS murmured. ‘I wonder why that was, and I wonder why it was him that gave us the message. Detective Superintendent Mackenzie’s our line manager.’
‘Two good questions, but all they do is add to my confusion about this whole fucking business. I’ve been trying to raise Mackenzie all afternoon, to update him, but he isn’t answering either of his phones, landline or mobile.’
‘How did Mr McGuire sound when he spoke to you? Was he in “or else” mode, or just his normal self.’
‘No, he was reasonably relaxed,’ the DI told him. ‘He didn’t bite me once! When I said we should go and see Plenderleith, he said that the guy isn’t detained within our force area, and that he doesn’t want to piss off Strathclyde, so he’s made separate arrangements for a statement to be taken from him.’
‘Would it really piss off Strathclyde if we went into a prison on their patch?’ Haddock wondered.
‘I wouldn’t have thought so, but I wasn’t about to argue the point. Also, when he told me that the guy shouldn’t be regarded as a suspect without direct evidence that he might be, I didn’t get the impression that was open for debate either.’
‘Who is he anyway, this man? Did he tell you that much?’
‘No, but I Googled him.’ Pye grinned. ‘It works a lot quicker than the national computer database. “Leonard Plenderleith, aged forty-five, former associate of the late Anthony Manson, allegedly a major figure in the Edinburgh criminal underworld …” I’m quoting here, mind. Tony Manson was more than an alleged villain, just never convicted.’ He winked at the DS. ‘Just like your bidey-in’s grandpa.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, heading off a riposte, ‘Plenderleith was Manson’s enforcer. He did time for serious assault and wasn’t out long before he was arrested for two murders. The victims were his wife, and a lawyer called Richard Cocozza. There was a third murder charge originally, but the Crown Office dropped that because of lack of evidence. Plus he was convicted of another, in Spain, in his absence. The Spanish agreed that he’d serve his sentence here, concurrently.’
‘He sounds like a real psycho,’ Haddock said.
‘You could say that.’
‘Then why is he off limits to our inquiry?’
‘His alibi’s pretty good, if a prison governor can vouch for his whereabouts,’ the DI observed.
‘I suppose. But even if he isn’t a suspect, if he knew the dead woman, he might be able to help us identify this so-called sister and her family.’
‘I made that point to the ACC,’ Pye said. ‘All he said was that he’d note it. I didn’t push that any further either. I know I said earlier that he was relaxed, but I sensed an edge to him.’
‘That leaves us sitting on our hands,’ the DS complained. ‘We have no leads to those people, and asking through the media for them to come forward would make us look daft. We don’t have a single line of inquiry.’
‘I know.’ He took a swig from his mug. ‘Now you understand why I need caffeine!’
Eighteen
‘Is there any chance he had leave booked in and you’ve forgotten about it?’ Mario McGuire asked the woman seated behind what had been his desk until a few weeks before.
Detective Chief Superintendent Mary Chambers, the formidable head of CID, frowned at him; it was all the reply she felt to be necessary.
He raised a placatory right hand. ‘No, of course not; sorry. Then where the fu. .’ he grimaced. ‘I can’t have a bloody superintendent going AWOL. I’m sorry about this, Mary, I really am.’
‘What are you sorry for, boss?’ she said. ‘It’s hardly your fault.’
‘I feel as if it is. I installed him as your Edinburgh coordinator.’
Chief Constable Margaret Steele pushed herself off the wall against which she had been leaning. ‘We installed him, Mario, not just you. In fact it was more me than you. I didn’t want the guy in the Command Corridor any longer, he had a CID background and a hankering to go back there. Yes, there were misgivings but the fact is they were yours and I talked you out of them. But let’s not over-dramatise this; we can’t raise the man, but for all we know he might be stuck in a traffic jam at Hermiston Gait with a dead battery in his mobile.’
‘That’s about a hundred to one against, but he could be,’ McGuire conceded. ‘On the other hand, Mary’s contacted all the divisional CID offices and he hasn’t visited any of them.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Of course there is another scenario.’ He glanced at the chief. ‘I think we all know what that is.’
‘I don’t,’ Chambers said.
‘No? Then Bob Skinner must have done a really good job of covering it up. A few years back, David Mackenzie was involved in an armed situation with him and our former colleague, Neil McIlhenney. It got pretty dicey; indeed, it was too much for Mackenzie, for he froze in the middle of it.
‘Bob being Bob, he never blamed him, or spoke of it. I only know about it because Neil told me in confidence. Afterwards the man had a breakdown of sorts, and a drink problem went with it. He was touch and go for retirement on health grounds, but the big guy refused to let that happen and pulled him back in.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he had recruited him,’ McGuire replied, patiently, ‘from through the West; he thought he had potential and that he would freshen up our CID operation. He did for a while, until the crisis happened.’