‘To Bella Watson?’
‘Yes. He told me he’d found out by accident from a guy in the jail that she was living somewhere in Edinburgh, and that he’d been able to track her down. He went to see her and offered her the deal; he told her it was compensation for what happened to her boy. Hastie always did think Dad went too far with that,’ she offered in explanation. ‘That’s why he was in Bella’s flat, to set up the drug route. The old cow went for it, but for security, Hastie didn’t tell her who the supplier was.’
‘Not ever?’
‘Not that I know of. I told him never to mention it to me again.’
‘Who approached him? Who was the supplier?’
‘He never told me that, and frankly I didn’t want to know.’
‘Is that the truth, Mrs Drysalter?’ Chambers asked.
‘Yes it is. There’s no point in holding anything back. What can you do to my brother now?’
Sixty-One
When Karen Neville walked back into the Leith CID room she was surprised to see that the DI’s cubicle was illuminated by the faint glow of a computer monitor. She opened the door to find Sammy Pye seated behind his desk.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘has it suddenly stopped being Saturday?’
‘It has for me. I called Jackie for another update; when she told me everything that had happened, I couldn’t sit on my arse at home any longer. Have you traced Marlon Hicks?’
‘Yes. He isn’t a threat any longer. . not that he ever was really. The way it is now with Hastie McGrew, the only threat to him will come from the angry souls waiting for him on the other side.’
She explained that the man had been comatose when they had arrived at his nursing home, and that no bets were being placed on him seeing out the weekend.
‘Bugger!’ Pye moaned. ‘I’d been hoping. .’
‘. . that he’d wrap up the murder investigation for you? Come on, Sammy, that was never going to happen. The visit wasn’t a total loss, though. We couldn’t talk to Hastie, but we did find his sister there. She’s still nervous about being implicated in her father’s death, so she was very frank with us.’
Neville related Alafair Drysalter’s account of how the methamphetamine had found its way into Edinburgh and how her brother had involved Bella Watson in its distribution.
‘Do you really think he gave her the deal because he had a guilty conscience?’ Pye asked sceptically.
‘Let’s say I’m not convinced,’ the DS replied. ‘I think it’s more likely that he didn’t want to be hands-on himself. . his father never was, from what we’re told. . and that he took it to Bella because having been away since the mid-nineties, she was the only person he knew from those days who was still around.’
‘I’ll buy into that. But Alafair wouldn’t tell you who it was approached Hastie?’
‘No, she said she didn’t know.’
‘Did you believe that.?’
‘Not for a second, but it doesn’t matter. We think we know anyway. Did Jackie tell you about the name of the owner of the Spanish van?’
‘Yes.’ Pye grinned. ‘Nice one. Maria Centelleos, equals Sparkles, Mia Watson’s old radio name.’
‘And more than that. Andy’s people have established, subject to chemical testing, that the methamphetamine was made in a place owned by her.’
‘Wow. That really does land it at her door. Has she been arrested?’ he asked, hopefully.
‘No.’ She explained that the bodega had been destroyed, and that the Centelleos mother and son had vanished.
‘There’s a son?’
‘Yes. So, unless there are other young Watsons scattered around Edinburgh, we now know whose DNA we’ve found in Bella’s flat.’
‘But I’m investigating a murder, not a family reunion,’ the DI pointed out.
‘Forget the murder for now,’ Karen told him, ‘focus on the drugs.’
‘Okay, I will. What you’re suggesting is that Maria Centelleos made them. But why would she, of all people, approach Hastie McGrew with a drug deal? That’s what I don’t understand.’
‘Neither did I but I do now. The DCS had to leave, but I stayed on and the pair of us went for a coffee, leaving Derek to watch over his brother-in-law in case he decided to croak.
‘I had something else to ask Alafair, something I only discovered today. After Mia Sparkles disappeared, Alafair filed a formal missing person report and in it she claimed to be her sister.’
‘Did she?’ Pye’s eyebrows rose. ‘Are you sure about that? I mean why the hell would she? We know who their parents were, both of them.’
‘She did, though, and my first thought was that it was a simple matter of the last of the Holmes family wanting to eliminate the last of the Watsons. I guess the same must have occurred to Bob Skinner, for he had the report flagged up for him to be notified as soon as Mia was traced. But we were wrong. Alafair told me that the two of them were brought up together for a few years.’
‘They were what? How the hell did that happen? In their day, those two families were the local equivalent of the Hatfields and the McCoys.’
Karen contradicted him. ‘Not always. If you go far enough back, Bella’s brother Gavin used to work for the Holmeses. He was their dealer in his housing scheme, one that’s long gone, thank God. Alafair told me that dear old Gavin, before he came to a sticky end, pimped his niece Mia, then well underage, to her Uncle Alasdair, who was notorious for liking them young. Bella knew about it and wasn’t bothered. But when Perry Holmes found out about it, he was; he was very bothered indeed.
‘He took Mia away from Alasdair, and from Edinburgh altogether, and installed her with his own kids, in Hamilton, where they lived with their mother, Miss McGrew. He looked after Mia all the way through university. So you see, to all intents and purposes, a Watson became a Holmes.’
‘Ele-fucking-mentary,’ Pye murmured. ‘But why should she vanish? Did Alafair tell you that?’
‘She doesn’t know, but back then she feared the worst, that Mia might have been murdered too. So she filed her formal missing person report, in the hope that her disappearance would be investigated.’ She frowned. ‘Now that I think about it, Bob Skinner couldn’t have thought she was dead, since he had that note put on it. Leaving that aside though,’ she continued, ‘that makes sense to me, Sammy. It explains why Hastie didn’t tell Bella who was the source of the crystal meth and how the route was set up so that the two of them never met. Remember, Patrick Booth always collected and dealt the stuff; Bella always handled the money.
‘I’ve spoken to our drugs squad leader,’ she added, ‘to pass on what Alafair told me. Booth’s given them the rest of it, how the money thing worked; he got his cut then she’d take hers, and send the rest to the supplier, to Mia.’
‘How? Did he tell the squad that? Did he even know?’
‘Yes, he did. He said she used a money broker to transfer it to a Euro account in Gibraltar.’
‘Could there be someone else involved? Could this Mia woman be a front for someone?’
‘There’s no trace of anyone else. Her van was seen approaching her mother’s flat, her son’s DNA was in the place.’
‘So why did it all blow up?’ the DI asked. ‘What brought them over here. . assuming it was her driving the van, and that she didn’t let the lad come on his own?’
‘There’s only one person can tell us, and that’s her,’ the DS pointed out. ‘When it comes to finding her, it looks as if we’re in the hands of the Spanish. Once they do, though, we’ve cracked it.’
‘Not quite,’ Pye pointed out. ‘Proving she was in the flat. . and we haven’t done that yet. . that’s one thing; linking her to the murder, that’s another. Before she can even become a viable suspect, we need to tie her, evidentially, to the body. If we can do that, we’ll be in business.’