‘The only thing we intercepted that was of any interest,’ Bulloch said, ‘was an email from a consultant oncologist, with a report attached. It didn’t make good reading. It confirmed that Friedman had a squamous cell lung carcinoma, in other words lung cancer, that it was inoperable, and that no form of therapy was going to do him any good. It gave him somewhere between nine months and two years to live.’
‘Ouch,’ Skinner whispered. ‘Did you report all of this back to Toni, to Chief Constable Field?’
‘Of course, sir. We gave her a file with everything in it. She kept it and she ordered us to destroy any copies.’
‘Which you did?’
Bulloch stared at him, as if outraged. ‘Absolutely,’ she insisted.
‘Did she ever tell you why she wanted this man targeted?’
‘No, and we didn’t ask. Sometimes the chief constable knows things that we don’t need to. For example, why you’re here now, asking questions about the same man.’
He laughed. ‘Nice one, Sandra. You’re right; I’m not going to tell you either.’
His mobile sounded as she was leaving the room. The caller was Lottie Mann, with not one result, but two. He listened carefully to her, said, ‘Thanks. I’ll be in touch,’ then ended the call.
‘Lowell,’ he asked, ‘has our tap on Sofia Deschamps produced anything?’
‘Nothing, Chief. Only a call from Mauritius, a bloke we think was Chief Constable Field’s dad, going by his distress if nothing else. Nothing from Marina, though. In fact, when she was talking to the man, she said, “Now I’ve lost both my daughters, and I won’t get either one back.” I suppose that doesn’t rule out her knowing where the other one is, but from the tone of her voice on the recording, I don’t believe she does.’
‘That’s all right, I do. Pretty soon, I expect that everything will become clear. I’m tired of this business, Lowell,’ Skinner sighed, ‘tired of the entire Deschamps family and their devious lives. Tomorrow, the two of us will go on a trip. I’d like to meet this guy Friedman. Can you put me up at your place tonight? Otherwise it’ll be an even earlier start for Davie.’
Sixty-Four
‘Sailing is not something I do very often,’ Bob remarked. ‘In fact, the last time I was on a boat on this side of the country was when Ali Higgins took Alex and me for a weekend on her rich brother’s schooner. It was a cathartic experience in an emotional sense.’
He was leaning on the rail of the Oban car ferry as it made a slow turn towards the jetty at Craignure, landing point for visitors to the island of Mull. Their driver, PC Davie Cole, was in the car, asleep.
‘Funnily enough,’ Lowell Payne said, ‘I remember that; on your way there, the three of you were at Jean’s dad’s funeral. It was the first time you and I met.’
‘You’re right, it was. I think about that trip often, whenever I’m feeling low. I loved it. By the end of the voyage, I was talking seriously about jacking it all in and buying a boat of my own, doing the odd charter, that sort of stuff. Then the fucking phone rang, didn’t it, and it all went up in smoke.’
‘What if you had?’ Lowell asked. ‘Maybe you and Alison would be off in the Caribbean or the Med right now. Jean had hopes for the pair of you.’
‘I know she had, but they were misplaced. We didn’t last, remember; Ali was more career driven than me.’ He sighed, and his eyes went somewhere else. ‘But if we had bought our tall ship and made it work, she would still be alive. If I’d taken her away from the fucking police force,’ he muttered, with sudden savagery, ‘she wouldn’t have been turned into crispy bits by a fucking car bomb.’
‘You both made the same choice,’ Lowell pointed out. ‘And it could as easily have been you that got killed. A couple of times, from what I hear.’
‘Yes I know that, but still. This fucking job, man, what it does to people, on the inside. Ali and I, we spent a couple of years banging each other’s brains out, yet by the time she died, it was all gone and she was calling me “sir” with the rest of them.’
He was silent for a while, until he had worked off his anger and his guilt, and his mood changed. ‘By the way,’ he said quietly, ‘I enjoyed last night. You and Jean, you’re such a normal down-to-earth couple.’ He gave a soft, sad laugh. ‘As a matter of fact, you’re just about the only normal down-to-earth couple that I know. And that lass of yours, young Myra, she’s blooming. What is she now, thirteen? She reminds me a lot of Alex when she was that age. Prepare to be wound round her little finger, my friend.’
‘There is a difference, though. You had to bring Alexis up on your own. Yes, I might be a soft touch, I’ll admit, but Jean’s there as a buffer; she takes no nonsense. . not that Myra gets up to much, mind. She’s a good kid. That is, she has been up to now. I suppose it all changes the further into their teens they get.’
‘It does, and the trick is to accept that. There comes a time in every young person’s growing up when they’re entitled to a private life, in every respect. When it’s a daughter, that can be difficult for dads, because we all inevitably remember the hormonal volcanoes we were at that age. I was no exception, and I’ll always be grateful to Jean for being a really good aunt to Alex during that couple of years.’
‘From what she said, and indeed from what I saw for myself, you were a great dad.’
‘Ach, we all are to our girls, or should be. I’m beginning to learn that boys take much more managing.’
‘Do you think that’s what went wrong with Toni and Marina? The absence of a father’s influence?’
He pursed his lips. ‘In Toni’s case, nah; I reckon she was just a bad bitch. As for Marina, maybe it was the opposite. The jury’s still out on that.’
‘What do you mean?’ Payne paused. ‘You realise I’m completely in the dark about this trip. You’ve hardly told me anything. Now it turns out we’re going to see some recluse in Tobermory, and I still don’t know why.’
‘You will.’ He pushed himself off the rail. ‘Come on, let’s go and see if Davie’s awake yet. We’ll be ready to offload soon.’
Twenty minutes later they were seated in the back of the chief constable’s car, as PC Cole eased it carefully down the ramp then on to the roadway.
‘I thought the terminal was in Tobermory itself,’ Payne observed as he read a road sign outside the Caledonian MacBrayne building. ‘Twenty-one miles away: I never realised Mull was so big.’
‘I’d forgotten myself,’ Skinner confessed, ‘until I looked it up on Google Earth. I didn’t think it would have street view for a place this size, but it does. Now I know exactly where we’re going.’
‘The post office?’
‘No, the café place next door that DI Bulloch mentioned. The Gallery, it’s called. We’ll have a cup of something there and wait for Mr Friedman to arrive. It’s a nice morning, and they’ve got tables outside.’
‘What if he’s already been for his mail?’
‘There’s no chance of that. This is the first ferry of the day, and the Royal Mail van was six behind us in the queue to get off. We’ll be there before it.’
The Gallery was exactly as DI Bulloch had described it. A classic old Scottish church building, with a paved area in front with half a dozen tables, four of them unoccupied. It offered a clear view across Tobermory Bay and, more important, of anyone arriving at the post office, next door.
Cole dropped them off outside, then, on Skinner’s instruction, reversed into a parking bay, thirty yards further along on the seaward side of the road, half hidden by a tree and a telephone box.
They took the table nearest the street, and the chief produced a ten-pound note. ‘I’m not pulling rank,’ he said, ‘but since I actually know who we’re waiting for, it’s better you get the teas in. I’ll have a scone too, if they look okay. They should be; you’d expect home baking in a place like this.’
As he took the banknote, Payne sensed the excitement of anticipation underlying Skinner’s good humour. There was no queue in the café. He bought two mugs of tea and two scones, which looked better than okay, and was carrying them outside on a tray when he saw the Royal Mail van drive past, slowing to park.