‘My view absolutely,’ Pye concurred, pausing as a young waiter delivered their order. ‘Of course,’ he continued as he picked up a bap, ‘it could be argued that we’ve got a result already. We’ve identified Dean Francey beyond any doubt as the man who put Grete Regal in the Western General, and abducted Zena. And now Dean Francey’s dead. Whether we caught him ourselves or not, it’s still a tick in the plus column.’
‘We’ll let Isabel Cant spin that one,’ Haddock snorted. ‘You know as well as I do, Sammy, the result that matters is finding the person who paid for the job and, we’re assuming, put Dino and Anna Harmony away. That’s the only one that’s going to earn us a pat on the head from Sir Andrew, or from the DCC for that matter.’
His boss nodded. ‘I know,’ he admitted as he finished chewing. ‘I was just trying to make lunch go down better, that’s all.’
‘Piece together, you said earlier,’ the DS continued. ‘How do you see Anna’s role in this? We know she was in on it.’
‘You tell me; I’m busy eating.’
‘Okay. This thing was pre-planned; I’m guessing that Dino was smart enough to have nosed around in Garvald, and to have established Grete’s school routine with the wee one. He’d have seen that they walked along a pretty much deserted road and that he couldn’t have imagined a better spot to snatch the child.’ He paused to take a swig of his latte.
‘Obviously, killing the kid was not the objective or he’d have done it there and then; he was ordered to take her. He chose Sullivan’s Beamer for the purpose, and kitted it out by cushioning the boot.
‘If the snatch had worked, but what would he have done then? He couldn’t have looked after a captive five year old. He’d have needed help to do that, and if it was female help, so much the better.
‘That’s where Anna fits in. We’ll never know what story he spun her; maybe he told her he was looking after a niece. Whatever, it worked. She was besotted with the scrote, and she fell for it. So he sent her to Marks to buy clothes for the child, and said that he’d meet her there.’
Pye nodded. ‘I buy all that. If he hadn’t run into big Bob’s motor it would have worked.’
‘It would have worked,’ Haddock pointed out, ‘but only until they got wherever they were headed and opened the boot.’
‘True. It’s worth remembering that when Dino and Anna ran away from the scene of the accident, in different directions, neither of them knew that the child was dead. Sure Dino must have recognised that what he did to Grete left him in big trouble, but he may have thought he could get away with that.’
He nodded, as if to confirm his thinking. ‘I imagine that he called Anna, as soon as he was clear. Probably they arranged to meet, then he headed for North Berwick, to pick up his cash, his passport and maybe his dad’s van. He nearly managed it, only we got in the way. At some point, he or Anna must have heard that Zena had died. Without that, maybe he hoped she could be kept out of it, but with it . . . even he must have been smart enough to know we’d crawl over everyone who ever knew him, and there was Anna, having bought kids’ clothes that very morning, on her credit card.’
Pye stopped for breath and more bap.
‘And at that point,’ Haddock said, ‘Anna headed for home and packed her suitcase.’
‘Yes, and Dino phoned his client, paymaster, call him what you like, said he wanted the rest of his cash, and a meeting was arranged. All that we know, pretty much for certain.’
‘So what don’t we know?’ the DS asked.
‘Where were they going yesterday morning?’ Pye paused. ‘How many sets of clothes are in that bag?’
‘Three of everything.’
‘Which suggests that wherever they were headed they were planning to stay there for a few days, long enough for Zena to be ransomed.’
‘If ransom was the motive.’
‘What else, Sauce?’
‘Pain. Mental torture. Revenge. Which brings me back to the man Mackail. When are we going to front him up, gaffer?’
‘When we’ve answered the question that’s still open,’ he replied. ‘Where were they going to take her?’
Haddock finished his bap, then nursed his coffee, staring at the table while Pye, a slower eater, polished off his. As he did so, his eyes began to narrow. ‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘what did Nancy Walker say, about Glencorse Reservoir?’
‘Remind me.’
‘She said there’s a lot of activity around it, that it’s a bit of a resort for fishermen, hill walkers and the like. And she said there are holiday cottages up there. You don’t suppose . . .’
‘I don’t know,’ Pye replied. ‘But the fact that they met their killer close by might point in that direction. If that’s where they were planning to hole up, might we be lucky enough for the accommodation to have been booked by the person who was paying Dino?’
‘Let’s find out,’ Haddock said, reaching for his phone.
Thirty-Six
‘There are seven holiday cottages dotted around Glencorse Reservoir and the Loganlea Reservoir beyond,’ Jackie Wright reported, before Sauce Haddock had closed the door of the CID room behind him. ‘I’ve located and spoken to all the owners,’ she continued. ‘There are four of them in total. Your guess . . .’
‘Guess?’ Haddock exclaimed, eyebrows raised.
The DC grinned. ‘Sorry. Your intuitive speculation was spot on. At this time of year they usually lie empty, but one of them was rented for three weeks, beginning last Saturday.’
‘By whom?’ Pye asked.
‘That’s as far as your luck goes, for the tenant was a young woman; she paid the full rent in advance plus deposit, in cash, to the owner’s agent, a property firm in Walker Street. The description their guy gave me was a dead ringer for Anna Harmony, so I emailed him her photo. He confirmed it.’
‘Bugger,’ the DCI grunted. ‘A door opens, then some bastard slams it in your face again.’
‘So now,’ the DS said, ‘can we, please, go and tackle this Mackail man?’
‘Hold your horses, Sauce. You keep going on about him, but I still want to follow up on Sullivan. He had a link with Dino through the nephew, that was established, but for him to have known Anna as well . . .’
‘Come on,’ Haddock countered, ‘if you’re suggesting that Sullivan set up the job, even though he had no apparent reason, would he let Dino use his own car to do it?’
‘If he planned to kill them afterwards, why not?’ Pye smiled, then turned to another detective constable, the quiet man of the team, who was seated at the next desk to Wright. ‘Have you had any joy with that check I asked for this morning, William?’
‘Yes, sir,’ the thin, lugubrious DC Dickson replied. ‘Three weeks ago, Callum Sullivan withdrew twelve thousand pounds from his personal account, in cash. The money was in used notes, at his request.’
‘What a surprise,’ the DCI laughed. ‘And where does he bank?’
‘He uses the Clydesdale in Lothian Road; he does all his personal banking there.’
Pye, smiling in triumph, looked at Haddock as if he were peering over imaginary spectacles. ‘Well?’ he asked.
The DS glowered back at his boss. ‘Nobody loves a smartarse,’ he muttered. ‘Back to North Berwick?’
‘No, we’ve been there enough in the last couple of days. Jackie, I’d like you to call Mr Callum Sullivan and tell him we’d like his help with a couple of aspects of the inquiry, and we’d be grateful if he’d join us here at Fettes tomorrow morning.
‘William, while we’re talking to Mr Sullivan, I want to know everything there is to know about the man that we didn’t find out in the check we ran a couple of days ago: business life, private life, secret life, everything. Start now and don’t stop till you’ve answered all the questions.’
Thirty-Seven
‘There’s no doubt?’ I asked, as I sat beside her on the edge of the bed, staring at the words on the stick that she had handed me.
‘None.’
‘This says it’s certain?’
‘It’s as certain as it gets.’ Sarah snorted. ‘We can do it again if you doubt it. You can even come in and watch me pee. But the result will be exactly the same. I’m pregnant, Bob.’