‘They’ll all be on their way inside ten minutes,’ Mario promised. ‘And I won’t be far behind them. I’ve hung around you too long, chum: I can’t stay away from a juicy crime scene either.’
Thirty-Nine
As it happened Mario beat the crime scene team to Wemyss Bay by fifteen minutes, but he trailed behind his detectives by five.
Detective Inspector Charlotte Mann and I didn’t have the best of starts to our professional relationship, the first time that we met in Glasgow. A major public figure had just been murdered, she was the senior officer attending from the Strathclyde force, and she thought I was getting in the way. But once the new reality had been explained to her, and we had a chance to watch each other at work, we got along just fine.
If I could go back five years, and was still running CID in Edinburgh, I’d poach her like a shot. For all that she’s had a subtlety bypass, she’s as good a DI as I’ve ever met. Lottie is a big woman, all of six feet tall, and she has a presence about her that makes it easy for her to take a command role in what can still be a predominantly male environment.
As for her perennial sidekick, Dan Provan, he’s best described as an anachronism. He’s a year or so older than me, but he stuck at detective sergeant rank over twenty years ago, principally because he had no ambition to go any higher. I’ve heard people described as wizened, many times, but I never really understood the term until I met him.
He’s deliberately scruffy, with a chameleon-like quality that’s been invaluable to him throughout his career. He gave up smoking years ago, I’m told, and yet his badly trimmed moustache still looks as if it’s stained by nicotine. Walk into a busy pub and you probably wouldn’t notice him, but by God he would notice you. He knows Glasgow like he knows his own features. He carries two football club lapel badges, one Celtic, the other Rangers, and always wears the right one in the right place. For him, no-go areas in the city do not exist.
Not long after Mario McGuire took charge of criminal investigation in ScotServe, he asked me what he should do with him. My advice was, ‘Cherish him, but on no account let Andy Martin anywhere near him.’
When they emerged from their car and saw me standing at the start of the Ailsa View driveway, I found myself wishing I’d had my phone ready to snap a photo. It was obvious from the simultaneous widening of their eyes and dropping of their jaws that their DCC hadn’t told them the whole story.
‘What the . . .’ Provan gasped. ‘Has all this Polis Scotland stuff just been a bad fuckin’ dream?’
‘Some would wish that it was,’ I replied. ‘But no; this is reality and I am here, a private citizen who’s happened on a crime scene and done his duty. That said, it’s good to see you.’
Lottie Mann was frowning. ‘Did you ask for us, sir?’
‘That I did. I figured it would be better if the responding officers knew me, rather than having to explain my whole fucking back story to a couple of fast-trackers. Do you have a spare protective suit?’ I asked. ‘And a face mask. That’s important.’
‘One o’ them, is it?’ Provan grunted.
‘Ripe.’
I led Mann up the drive and round to the house, leaving the DS to fetch the paper tunics. ‘Would you like to tell me what this is about now, sir?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been looking into a theft for a friend,’ I replied. ‘I came here to interview a witness. It seems he isn’t in a position to talk to me.’
‘I take it we’re not talking about a missing garden gnome,’ she murmured.
‘Leave Provan out of this,’ I retorted, drawing a smile. ‘No, we’re talking about seventy-five feet of motor cruiser, value five million.’
‘We didn’t find it, then?’
‘Do you know a guy called Randolph McGarry? Ex-DI, now back in uniform.’
‘I’ve come across him,’ she said. ‘He couldn’t find his arse with a compass, but he and ACC Gorman had a thing going . . . or so they said.’
‘Bloody hell,’ I gasped. Bridie Gorman was my acting deputy during my brief spell as chief constable of Strathclyde. I’d never heard as much as a whispered rumour about her private life, far less the suggestion that she was protecting her fancy man’s work from proper scrutiny.
‘As soon as she left the force after the unification,’ Lottie continued, ‘Randolph was on borrowed time. Nobody was surprised when DCC McGuire moved him out of CID.’
‘What’s Bridie doing now?’
‘Gardening, from what I hear.’
‘And you, Inspector,’ I asked, ‘what job have you landed in the brave new world?’
‘Dan and I are in Serious Crimes. In theory we could be deployed anywhere; in practice, most of them are in the Glasgow area.’
‘Who decides what’s serious?’
She grinned. ‘That is the million-dollar question.’
Then she frowned, just as Provan arrived with the paper suits. ‘I suppose this is a crime, yes?’
‘From what I’ve heard and seen, Jock Hodgson was a skilled engineer, but I doubt that he tied himself up.’
We suited up, and I took them inside. We were still in the kitchen when Provan, for all his experience, started to retch. I paused until he had his heaving stomach under control, then led them to the doorway of the living room, through the fat, buzzing flies.
‘Are you sure this is Mr Hodgson?’ Lottie asked, a perfectly decent question.
‘I’m open to correction,’ I admitted, ‘but I don’t see that it can be anyone else.’
‘How long do you think he’s been dead?’
‘Weeks, I’m guessing.’ I went back into the hall and opened a glazed front door. A pile of mail lay beneath the flap in the storm doors. ‘The earliest date on those letters should give you a clue, but let’s leave it to the CSIs to sort them out.’
‘Did ye see any signs of forced entry?’ Provan asked.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘There are none.’
‘How did you get in?’ Mario McGuire’s muffled voice came from behind us, announcing his arrival. I turned; he too was wearing a sterile suit, hat and face mask.
‘I found a back door key in the garage.’
‘It wasn’t unlocked?’ He was surprised, and I knew why.
‘No, and neither was the front door. Which means that whoever killed the guy actually locked up when they left. They didn’t want him to be found in a hurry.’
‘Eh?’ Mann exclaimed. ‘If that’s right, wasn’t it a bit risky to leave him here?’
‘Probably less risky than moving him and chancing being seen,’ I suggested. ‘This house is a cul-de-sac at the end of a cul-de-sac. Hodgson’s neighbours called him the Hermit. The one I spoke to didn’t even know his name, and I’ll bet she doesn’t miss much.’
‘They’ll know his name from now on,’ Mario McGuire observed. ‘It’ll be all over the press tomorrow.’
‘If he’s a hermit, sir,’ Provan countered, ‘how are we going tae get a formal ID that fast?’
‘That won’t bother our communications department,’ the big DCC chuckled. ‘They make their own rules these days.’ He looked at me, giving me a wordless signal that we should leave.
I followed him into the garden happily, having seen enough of Jock Hodgson for a while. He went straight to the point as he ripped off his paper mask and cap, posing the question that I’d been turning over in my own mind.
‘Could this be related to the job you’re working on?’
‘I have no idea,’ I admitted. ‘No, let me rephrase that. I have no evidence of that. I didn’t come here expecting to find Hodgson dead, or even missing. I marked him down as a bloody nuisance of a man who was lazy about checking his voicemail, or who only returned calls from people he knew.’
Mann and Provan had followed us outside, and heard my reply. ‘What do you know about him, sir?’ the DI asked.
‘Not a hell of a lot. That’s what I came here to find out. He was an ex-naval engineer, and in retirement he worked part-time on my client’s stolen motor cruiser, and, I’m told, on a variety of other jobs. I know nothing about any of them. I know nothing about the man, period. Did he piss off one of his other clients? Was he in debt to the wrong people? Was he shagging somebody else’s wife? You’re going to have to do it the hard way, Lottie, and eliminate possibilities until you’ve only one solution left.’