‘Tell me about it,’ Lottie chuckled. ‘He’s never been off the bloody phone. He’ll be wanting to adopt me next.’
‘Everything’s all right at home, is it?’ Her eyes went somewhere else for a second. ‘Sorry,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s none of my business and if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine by me.’
‘Not at all, Chief, not at all,’ she replied. ‘I had a tough couple of days, but I’m okay now. Scott’s living with his brother out in Airdrie. . at least that was the address they gave when he made his court appearance this morning. He turned up at the house again on Saturday, but he was sober, and it was only to collect his clothes.’
‘Did you know that Sergeant. .’
Her nod stopped him in mid-sentence. ‘Yes, I was told. Her husband got himself arrested for thumping her. I’d have put in a word for him if he’d battered Scott, but he must have decided that hitting her was less risky. Maybe she’s with him now. I don’t know and I don’t want to. Jakey’s come to terms with the fact that his dad won’t be back, and that’s all I’m worried about.’
‘Of course,’ Skinner agreed. ‘He’s the most important person involved. Right,’ he exclaimed, ‘if we’re all ready, let me explain to you what this is about.’ He smiled. ‘They thought it was all over. .’ he chuckled. ‘But no, thanks to a large slice of luck, the game may still be on. .’ He rose, stepped over to his desk, and returned holding a laptop, which he laid on the table. ‘. . and those who don’t believe in miracles may like to have a rethink. That, lady and gentleman, is Byron Millbank’s missing MacBook, the place where his wife told Detective Superintendent Payne that he kept his whole life. Normally,’ he continued, ‘there would have been a team of experts huddled over it for a week, trying to work out the password. In this case Byron gave us an unwitting clue, when he said to Mrs Millbank that the chances of getting into it were the same as winning the Lottery.
‘So we had her rummage about among his personal things, and guess what she found? Yup, a payslip for a lottery season ticket.’ He opened the computer to reveal a slip of paper, with six twin-digit numbers noted on it. ‘There you are,’ he said, and slid the slim computer across to Mann.
‘Has anyone looked at it?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s all yours. I want you and that bright young lad Paterson to get into it, and see if you can find anything that doesn’t relate to the dull and fairly uneventful life of Mr Byron Millbank but to the rather more colourful world of Beram Cohen.’
‘What about me, Chief?’ Provan asked, with a hint of a rumble. ‘Am Ah too old for that shite?’
Skinner threw him a sharp look. ‘Almost certainly,’ he said. ‘But as it happens I’ve got something else in mind for you. I want you to get back on to your friends in Mauritius, and find the birth registration of Marina Deschamps. She’s thirty-two years old, so the probability is that it will be a paper record. Birth date, April the ninth, so you’ll know exactly where to look.’
‘Marina Day Champs? The last chief’s sister?’
‘Not quite,’ Skinner corrected him. ‘The last chief’s missing half-sister. There are things I don’t know about that lady, and I want to.’
‘Can Ah no’ just ask her mother?’
‘No chance. You do not go near her mother. Leave that to CTIS, Superintendent Payne’s new team. She says she doesn’t know where her daughter’s gone, but we’re tapping her phone, just in case. Like mother like daughters? You never know.’
Fifty-Eight
‘The chief seems in better form today,’ Dan Provan remarked, as they stepped back into the suite in Pitt Street that he had left the week before. ‘When Ah saw him on Thursday, when Ah wis closing this place up, he wis like a panda that discovered he’d slept in and missed his big date wi’ Mrs Panda.’
‘Why’s he interested in Marina Deschamps all of a sudden?’ Lottie Mann pondered.
‘How come you can say that and Ah cannae? Day Champs.’
‘Possibly because I have a wider outlook on life than you, and expose myself to other cultures,’ she suggested. ‘You’ve got no interest in anything that doesn’t involve crime, real or imaginary.’
‘Maybe no’, but Ah’m shit hot at that. Ah’ve thought about puttin’ ma name up for Mastermind.’
Beside him Banjo Paterson spluttered.
‘You can laugh, son, but tell me, how many murders was Peter Manuel convicted of?’
‘Eight.’
‘No, seven. One charge wis dropped for lack of evidence. What was Baby Face Nelson’s real name?’
‘Who was Baby Face Nelson?’
‘Eedjit. Lester Gillis. What was Taggart’s first sergeant called?’
‘Mike?’
‘Naw, he wis the second. It was Peter, Peter Livingstone.’
‘Enough!’ Lottie Mann laughed. ‘If they ever have a “Brain of Cambuslang” contest you might be in with a shout, but until then stop showboating for the lad. All these things happened before he was born.’
‘So did Christmas,’ Provan retorted, ‘but he knows all about that.’
He shuffled off to the desk he had adopted, and dug out the old-fashioned notebook that was still his chosen style of database. He opened it at the most recent entries and found the number of the Mauritian government. He keyed it in and waited.
‘Mr Bachoo, please, Registry Department,’ he asked. ‘Tell him it’s DS Provan again, Strathclyde Police in Glasgow, Scotland.’
Paterson grinned across at him. ‘You didn’t have any problem with that name,’ he said.
‘It sounds like a sneeze. Yes, Mr Bachoo,’ he carried on, without a pause, ‘it’s me again. Ah’ve got another request for ye, another registration Ah’m trying to trace. This one goes back thirty-two years, but Ah’ve got a birth date this time: April the ninth. The name of the wean. . Ah mean the child, is Marina Day Champs. Could ye do that for me?’
‘Without difficulty,’ the official replied. ‘That period has not been computerised yet, and the records are kept on this floor. This time, could you hold on, please. Last week I was reprimanded for making a foreign call without permission.’
‘Aye sure. Sorry about that; your bean counters must be worse than ours.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Nothin’, nothin’. Ah’ll hold on.’
He leaned back in his chair, the phone pressed loosely to his ear, expecting more Bollywood music but hearing instead only the background chatter of an open-plan office. He glanced across at Paterson’s desk but saw that it was empty, and guessed that the DC and DI were pressing on with their task.
He passed the time by listing, mentally and chronologically, the fictional officers who had been Jim Taggart’s colleagues and successors, and the names of the actors who had played them. He was wondering, not for the first time, about the real relationship between Mike and Jackie, when he heard the phone in Mauritius being picked up.
‘I have it,’ Mr Bachoo announced, sounding pleased with himself. ‘The child Marina Shelby Deschamps, Mauritian citizen, was born in Port Louis on the day you mentioned and registered on the following day. The mother was Sofia Deschamps, Mauritian citizen, and the father, who registered the birth, is named as Hillary, with two ls, Shelby, Australian citizen. I could fax this document to you; my superior has given me permission.’
‘If ye would, Ah’d appreciate that.’ He scrambled through the papers on the desk, and found the Pitt Street fax number, which he read out, digit by digit. ‘Thanks, Mr Bachoo. Ah’m pretty sure that’ll be all.’
‘It was a pleasure, Detective Sergeant. As I believe you say, no worries.’
Provan smiled as he hung up, then added the name he had been given to his notebook. ‘Hillary Shelby,’ he murmured. ‘Hillary Shelby.’ And then he frowned, as another potential Mastermind answer popped out of his mental treasure chest.
‘Hillary Shelby,’ he repeated as he booted up his computer. ‘Now that name definitely rings a bell.’
Fifty-Nine
‘So what have we got here?’ Banjo Paterson asked himself, with his DI looking over his shoulder. ‘Standard MacBook screen layout. Let’s see where he keeps his email. Mmm, he’s got Google Chrome loaded up as well as Safari. Probably means he used that as his search engine. Let’s see.’