‘Mmm…’ She didn’t sound too convinced. After all, this was supposed to be about her needs, not those of the man who was stalking her.
‘Any further thoughts on that, or any other developments, let me know.’ He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up, wiping some crumbs from his trousers as he did so. ‘But don’t approach him directly. Keep your distance and don’t take any risks.’
‘Yes, sir!’ She gave him a mock salute and he was pleased to see a little of the old sparkle return to her eyes. Standing up, she hoisted the bag over her shoulder and dropped the sunglasses back on to her nose. Then she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Thank you for this. I am very grateful. Just knowing that you are on the case is a big help.’
On the case? Carlyle felt himself redden slightly. ‘It will b-be fine,’ he stammered as she turned for the door. ‘Let’s speak soon.’
TWELVE
A night in the cells had failed to encourage Henry Mills to change his story. He remained adamant that he had been soundly asleep while his wife was being brained in the kitchen of their flat. Neither disappointed nor particularly surprised by this answer, Carlyle formally charged him with murder and went back upstairs to sort out the paperwork. In a couple of hours, the Mills case would be off his desk and it would become someone else’s problem.
He was waiting for his computer to start up when Joe Szyszkowski came by with a blue A4-sized folder under his arm.
‘What have you got?’ Carlyle asked, without preamble.
Joe perched on the edge of the desk, opened the file and flipped through some sheets of paper. ‘It looks like he was telling the truth about the Chilean thing.’
‘Yeah?’ said Carlyle, looking at the somersaulting hourglass on his computer screen, not really caring any more.
‘Agatha Mills had a brother,’ Joe continued, ignoring his boss’s off-hand mood, ‘called William Pettigrew. They had a Chilean father and an English mother.’
‘Pettigrew? Doesn’t sound very Chilean to me.’
‘There’s a Scottish great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather in there somewhere,’ Joe explained. ‘There’s a strong Celtic influence, apparently. A whole bunch of Scottish farmers went over in the 1840s and 1850s. And the Chilean navy was formed by a Scot, Lord Cochrane, when they were fighting for independence from the Spaniards.’
‘Interesting,’ said Carlyle, impressed.
‘Wikipedia is a great thing.’ Joe shrugged. ‘We’ve always been tight with the Chileans, apparently. They’ve even had people fighting in Iraq.’
‘Jesus!’ Carlyle shook his head. ‘What’s it to them?’
‘Dunno. Anyway, William became a Catholic priest in Valparaiso, a coastal town north of Santiago. He disappeared during the 1973 military coup, when the army overthrew the government.’
‘That’s what usually happens in a military coup,’ Carlyle deadpanned.
Joe did not rise to the bait. ‘The family,’ he continued, ‘were eventually told that William Pettigrew was dead, but no body has ever been found.’
‘Again, not that uncommon.’
‘Agatha Mills, however, spent the last thirty-five years going back and forth between London and Chile, trying to find out what precisely happened to her brother and who killed him. She never lost hope of bringing her brother’s killers to justice.’
Carlyle sighed. ‘Good luck on that one.’
‘Well,’ said Joe, ‘you have to give the old girl some credit. She kept at it for decades, despite a history of threats from military types.’
‘Death threats?’ Carlyle perked up slightly.
‘Yeah… at least, according to some of the press reports. Mainly low-level stuff, like having her laptop nicked or her car tyres slashed. But I read one story about her getting an envelope in the post with a couple of bullets in it.’
‘The press are hardly reliable,’ Carlyle snorted. ‘I’m not going to start chasing my tail on the basis of a few clippings.’
‘No,’ Joe said, ‘but still.’
The inspector grunted.
‘You were the one who told me to check it out.’
‘Okay,’ Carlyle sniffed, ‘so she pissed off some Chileans pining for the good old days under that general.’ He groped for the name. ‘Maggie Thatcher’s mate.’
‘Pinochet.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Carlyle nodded, ‘General Pinochet.’
‘I think he was arrested in London a few years ago,’ Joe said, ‘while enjoying our Great British hospitality.’
Carlyle raised an eyebrow. ‘And?’
‘And nothing. Storm in a teacup and then he went home.’
‘Got away with it all,’ Carlyle mused.
‘I suppose so.’
‘They always do.’
‘To the victors the spoils.’
‘Yes, indeed, Joseph.’ Carlyle spent a moment contemplating life’s endless unfairness. ‘Isn’t he dead now?’
‘Pinochet?’ Joe made a face. ‘No idea.’
‘Either way,’ Carlyle mused, maybe just a little more interested now, ‘it’s all a long, long time ago. Why would anyone — apart from Agatha Mills, the loyal sister — still care about all this stuff now?’
‘Because Chile has got a new President,’ said Joe. ‘A socialist — and a woman.’
‘Interesting combination,’ said Carlyle, still not seeing the relevance.
‘She was a torture victim herself,’ Joe explained. ‘She ordered a fresh investigation into cases like William Pettigrew’s.’
‘Okay…’
‘The Pettigrew case review was completed last year. It concluded that he was almost certainly tortured and then shot dead aboard a navy ship called,’ he flicked through the papers again, ‘the White Lady.’
‘What did they do to him?’
‘The usual stuff, I suppose,’ said Joe. ‘Electric shocks to the gonads, that sort of thing.’
‘We could do with some of that downstairs,’ Carlyle grinned.
‘Different world back then.’
‘Which you would know all about, I suppose,’ Carlyle teased, ‘having been what, about one year old at the time.’
‘I bet you remember it well, though,’ Joe said cheekily.
‘Fuck off!’ Carlyle laughed. ‘I’m not that old.’
‘You just look it.’
‘That’s a consequence of working with you, sunshine.’ He thought back to 1973 — what did he remember? Not a lot. Certainly not what had been going on in a small country on the other side of the world.
‘Anyway,’ Joe continued, ‘the investigating judge ordered the arrest of a couple of navy officers last year.’
‘Names?’
‘Dunno. But they are due to face trial for the murder of William Pettigrew in the autumn.’
‘After all this time?’
‘There are a couple of witnesses who say that they’re now prepared to testify.’
‘Okay, the family is finally going to have its day in court, so why bother bumping off Agatha Mills? It’s not like she was there as a witness,’ he looked at Joe, ‘was she?’
‘No, not as far as I know.’
‘So she can’t really testify. At least not to anything important.’
‘She has been one of the driving forces behind this case getting to court, though.’ Joe shrugged. ‘Maybe the people who did it are still out there. Maybe they want to stop her; maybe they want to intimidate the other witnesses. Could be various things.’
They. Whenever you were dealing with them, you knew you were in trouble.
‘Maybe.’ Carlyle leaned back in his chair, placing his hands on his head. ‘Maybe, maybe, maybe. An octogenarian fascist plot? It’s all very thin.’
‘I know.’
‘So ultimately where does this little history lesson get us? Mrs Mills nee Pettigrew had an interesting backstory.’
Joe nodded.
‘A person or persons unknown, of a right-wing Chilean persuasion have a — what? Let’s say a possible — ’
‘Theoretical,’ the sergeant interjected.
‘A theoretical motive for bumping her off. But do we have any evidence that anyone other than her old man was inside that flat of theirs the night she died?’
‘No,’ Joe replied.