Sauce Haddock glanced to his right, following DC Jackie Wright’s pointing finger. ‘Queen Margaret University,’ he replied. ‘How long is “always” in your book? It’s only been there for a few years.’
‘Has it? Seems like forever.’
‘In two hundred yards turn right.’ The mellifluous female voice of the navigation system interrupted their conversation.
‘Can’t you have a male voice on those things?’ Wright grumbled.
‘I believe you can,’ the DS chuckled as he eased into the turn, ‘but everybody picks the bird. You don’t get as confrontational with her. Cuts down on the road rage.’
‘In one hundred yards you will have reached your destination,’ Satnav woman announced.
‘What number?’ the young DC asked.
Haddock drew to a halt. ‘Twenty-four. She’s as good as her word. That’s it, and from the car in the driveway it looks as if there’s somebody in.’
He climbed out of their unmarked police vehicle and walked round to join his colleague. The modern, brick-built semi-detached villa had a small garden in front, laid out mostly in yellow slabs interspersed with squares where shrubs were set in gravel. ‘That’s my style,’ he observed. ‘Minimum maintenance.’
The front door of the house was opened, just as they reached it, by a large black man who seemed to fill its frame.
‘Mr Rattray?’ the DS began. ‘Levon Rattray?’
The householder nodded, frowning as he looked at the warrant cards that both officers displayed.
‘DS Haddock, DC Wright. Is your wife at home?’
‘No, she’s at work.’ The accent was English, metropolitan, Liverpool or Birmingham; the two had always confused Haddock.
‘Then maybe we can have a few words with you. Inside?’
‘Sure.’ Rattray stepped back to allow them entrance to his home, then ushered them through the hallway and into a spacious dining kitchen at the rear of the house. ‘I’m making the dinner,’ he explained. ‘Donna’s due back at five and I’m on night shift at six, so that hour’s all we have together. Do you mind if I carry on while we talk?’ he asked.
‘Of course not,’ Wright replied ‘What do the pair of you do?’ she asked.
‘Donna works at QMU, just up the road. I’m in Fire and Rescue; my station’s five minutes away in the car. There’s no commute for either of us; we’re all right that way.’ He picked up a knife from the work surface and began to slice carrots. ‘Now: what do want to talk about? What’s the bastard done this time?’
Haddock smiled. ‘Which bastard would that be?’
‘Take your choice,’ the fireman replied. ‘Thank God Donna takes after her mother. Her father and her brother are a couple of useless wasters.’
‘You have father-in-law problems?’
‘I would have, but I keep him at arm’s length.’
‘What does he get up to?’
‘Stupid stuff mostly. The nonsense with the fish was the last straw.’
‘What nonsense?’ Wright asked, intrigued.
‘Ahh,’ Rattray exclaimed, then shook his head. ‘Chic’s a lobster fisherman, right?’
‘So we understand,’ Haddock agreed.
‘Well, that’s not all he does. He supplies restaurants in Edinburgh with fish that he says is fresh caught . . . only it isn’t. He buys it off trawlers that are over their quota and he freezes it. The trouble is he uses our freezer when his is full up, without a by-your-leave. That’s to say he used to use ours. About a year ago, I found some packs of frozen vegetables in the bin, dumped. When I looked in the freezer, a big chest thing in the garage, I found it was full of salmon, whole bleedin’ salmon. He bought it from a Norwegian crew who’d brought surplus frozen farmed salmon across to flog in Britain. The things had been dead for a year, but Chic’s plan was to thaw them out and sell them as fresh wild fish to his contacts.’
‘What did you do?’ the DS chuckled.
‘Donna and I put it all in boxes. She gave some to her friends in the university, and I spread the rest around fire stations in Edinburgh. The old fart went ape-shit when he found out, until I told him that if he ever tried something like that again he’d be in the freezer himself.’ His broad black face split into a grin. ‘We haven’t spoken much since then.’
‘That’s probably just as well,’ Haddock agreed. ‘But it’s not Chic that we came to ask you about; it’s his son, Dean Francey. We’re looking for him. Has he been in touch with you recently?’
‘How recently?’
‘Like today.’
‘No. I can’t speak for Donna, but I haven’t heard from him for a month or more.’
Wright looked him in the eye, as he took some washed green beans from a colander and picked up his knife once again. ‘You are sure of that?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ he retorted. ‘The little toerag’s Donna’s weak spot, not mine. Any contact I have with him, it’s through her. What’s he done?’
‘We can’t say,’ the DS told him, ‘but it’s a quantum step up from his previous. We need to question him about a very serious crime.’
Rattray’s eyes narrowed. ‘How serious?’ he murmured.
‘As serious as it gets. If he should get in contact with you, we need you to urge him to hand himself in at the nearest police office.’
‘I’ll do more than urge him,’ the man replied. ‘If he comes here, and Donna isn’t around, I’ll sit on him until you get here. If she is . . .’ he hesitated, ‘it won’t be so easy. She’s four months pregnant, and like I said, Dino’s her weak spot. Does she need to know about this at all?’
‘Keeping it from her won’t be possible, I’m afraid,’ Haddock replied. ‘We need to speak to her too, and she’ll have to know why.’
‘Little bastard,’ Rattray growled. ‘I always knew he was trouble. I hope he does come here; I’ll wipe the floor with him for bringing this to our door, whatever the hell it is.’
‘Please don’t do that,’ the DS urged. ‘I’ll go with a citizen’s arrest, Levon, but I don’t want a mark on him when he’s booked in.’ He paused. ‘All that said, I know you think Dino’s an idiot, but he must have enough brain cells to guess that this is the first place we’d go looking for him. Can you help us by suggesting other people he might go to for help?’
‘Friends, you mean?’
‘Yes. Has he ever mentioned any mates to you?’
‘Sure. He’s even brought some here. We’d a big party for Donna’s twenty-fifth and he turned up with a crew. Three of them, all with daft nicknames. There was a guy he called Jagger, on account of his big floppy lips, then there was another they called Drizzle; they said it was ’cos he was thick, wet and got on your tits after a while.’
‘Very good,’ Wright said, ‘but did these characters have real names?’
Rattray nodded. ‘The Jagger fella was called Michael, Mick, I guess, and I think his second name was Smith. Drizzle, his name was Ian Harbison. I asked Dino how he knew them; he said they had the same probation officer, but I don’t know if he was serious.’
‘What about the third one?’ Haddock asked. ‘What was his nickname?’
‘Her,’ he was corrected. ‘The third one was called Singer; she was his girlfriend, and still is as far as I know. Her name’s Anna Harmony, hence the nickname.’
‘Is she a probation pal too?’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me, although she did seem like a nice kid. If I was you, I’d be looking at these three to track down my useless, feckless brother-in-law. I’m sorry I can’t give you addresses for them, but Donna mentioned something about the girl living in a student flat somewhere.’
‘That makes her hard to trace,’ the DS said. ‘There’ll be no problem finding the other two, though, through the probation service. We’ll get on to them. Just one more question, and then we’re off. Do you believe that Dean Francey has violence in him?’
Rattray scratched his chin as he considered the question. ‘I’m not the guy to ask,’ he said, eventually. ‘I was a cage fighter when I was younger, so he’s always been careful around me. But he has a temper on him and I could imagine it boiling over if a fella crossed him.’
‘What about a female?’
‘I couldn’t rule that out,’ he admitted. ‘I reckon Dino would do most things if the price was right and there was no risk to himself.’