‘Will there still be extractable DNA on them?’
‘I’ll find that out when I get them back to the lab, but in theory yes.’
‘If there is,’ the DCI said, ‘I want you to compare it against a body found on Monday night just outside Edinburgh, shot and left in a car that was burned out. Male, early twenties, went by the name Dean Francey.’
‘Will do. If I do get a match, it’ll be as well he’s dead, for it would be no use as evidence at any trial, any more than the paint scrapes would be.’
‘Don’t be so sure. If we can find the van . . .’
‘Maybe,’ Dorward conceded, ‘but who are you going to try if your prime suspect’s a cadaver?’
‘I’ll tell you that when we catch him. Before you leave North Berwick, I want you to call by the police station. The victim’s coat’s there, waiting to be collected.’
‘How do you know it’s my size?’
‘Fuck off, Arthur,’ Pye laughed. ‘I’ll be back in touch when we have a vehicle for you to examine.’
He ended the call, and turned back to face Haddock. ‘Think back to Dino’s flat,’ he said. ‘There was an empty cigarette packet on the coffee table. What brand?’
‘Camels,’ the sergeant replied. ‘Is that what . . .’
He nodded. ‘This is beginning to pay off. I want Chic Francey’s van impounded for examination, today, and I want Chic, in a room with you and me, tomorrow morning.’
‘North Berwick?’
‘Hell no, even I’ve had enough of the place.’
Fifty
The family dinner was a strange affair. Sarah and I had decided that we were going to say nothing to the kids about the potential extra place at the table until the end of the first trimester, but I found it difficult to look at any of the three of them without a smile spreading across my face.
It didn’t take Mark long to notice.
‘What’s up, Dad?’ he asked, in his newly broken voice. ‘You look like Phil Mickelson.’
Nothing my middle son says will ever surprise me completely, but that came close. ‘Come again?’ I chuckled.
‘You know, the golfer. He’s always smiling, like he sees a joke that nobody else gets.’
It wasn’t an original quote, but Mark has a brain like blotting paper. If he sees something and it registers above zero on his scale of interest, it’s there forever.
‘Or like he’s very happy,’ I suggested, ‘which I’m sure he is. He’s probably as proud of his family as I am.’
‘I like it when you smile,’ James Andrew, his younger brother, chipped in. ‘You didn’t always.’
That almost cut the feet from under me. He’d never said anything like that before.
‘Didn’t I?’ I exclaimed. ‘I thought I was always jolly.’
‘No. Sometimes you were sad. Before Mum came back from America.’
That wiped the smile off my face. Had my marriage to Aileen been so bad that even my younger kids had noticed?
‘I had lots of things to worry me then,’ I said, to myself as much as to Jazz. ‘Now I’m not a chief constable any more I don’t have to look at serious stuff,’ the man who had spent his morning at a post-mortem added. ‘Now I can concentrate on happy things, like you three.’
‘And Alex.’ There’s something ferocious about James Andrew’s love for his older sister. She’ll never be without a champion as long as he or I are around.
I nodded. ‘And Alex.’ I drew Sarah to me and kissed her. ‘And Mum.’
‘How are we going to keep our secret,’ she asked later, ‘with you grinning like a Cheshire cat over every meal?’
‘Hey,’ I pointed out, ‘could be it has nothing to do with the baby. I am happy, that’s all.’
‘A week like you’ve had and you’re happy?’
‘I know. Fucking weird, isn’t it?’
I was still smiling next morning in my office in the Saltire building, when Andy Martin called and changed my mood . . . or to be completely accurate, when his executive officer called and told me that the chief constable was on the line. That’s what he said. Not, ‘Are you available to speak to the chief constable?’ just ‘The chief constable is on the line.’ As if refusal was not an option.
‘Andy,’ I said, when we were connected, not attempting to hide my irritation. ‘What’s up?’
‘I didn’t like the way we left things yesterday,’ he began.
‘Neither did I, but it is what it is. Now, what can I do for you?’
‘I’ve just asked Mann for a personal update on Hodgson. She took me through it step by step, and then she said that she needed to speak to you before she could go any further. She actually said that. I just blew up at her, Bob.’
‘You’re taking your life in your hands,’ I told him. ‘Lottie once entered a CID boxing night. It was men only but she insisted on fighting. She knocked her opponent out inside a round. The poor guy never had a chance. Now, tell me exactly what she said.’
‘She said that you’d suggested she find a phone that you’d seen in Hodgson’s car, and take a look at it.’
‘Correct.’
‘She said she’d done that and I asked her where it took her. That was when she said she’d have to get back to you before she could go any further. And that was when I blew up at her. This can’t go on, Bob. I made a mistake when I let you involve yourself; from now on it’s handled in-house. ’
I came close to blowing up at him, but I managed to restrain myself. ‘If you want to be that petty, chum,’ I growled, ‘that’s your privilege. But before I hang up on you, tell me exactly what Lottie said.’
‘She told me that she’d found the phone among the effects recovered, and she’s looked at it. She said there wasn’t a hell of a lot on it. The browsing history was clean and there was no email account attached to it.’
‘That’s odd for a start,’ I remarked.
‘Is it? Maybe all that Hodgson did was make phone calls.’
‘Was it a pay-as-you go phone,’ I asked, ‘or did he have an inclusive package?’
‘A Vodafone account, Mann said; thirty pounds a month. So what?’
‘Oh fuck,’ I sighed. ‘When did you stop being a detective? For that amount of money he’s paying for internet access, and if so, he’ll be using it. What else?’
‘The only thing she found on it were photographs. They were of various engines and boats, motor yachts mostly. One of them, the most recent in the sequence, she said, was very large. Could that be the boat you’ve been hired to find?’
‘I’d guess that it is. It sounds as if Hodgson photographed the vessels he worked on.’
‘Sounds like it,’ Andy agreed, grudgingly. ‘The only other images that Mann found were of the inside of a building. When I asked her what that was about, she said that she couldn’t comment without speaking to you first. And that’s when I blew up at her. ’
‘Bloody hell,’ I gasped. ‘What she told you was the literal truth. She doesn’t know any more than she told you. I didn’t know what was on that phone but I’d a bloody good idea what might be. Rather than guess, though, I kept my thoughts to myself until Lottie had recovered it and checked.’
‘I see,’ he murmured.
‘Yes, so do I,’ I said. ‘I see that you’ve made an arse of yourself and alienated one of your best detective officers. But,’ I sighed, ‘it’s my fault.’
‘How do you work that out?’ he asked quietly.
‘Because you’re making exactly the same mistakes I made as a chief. Andy, in the history of modern warfare there’s a reason damn few generals were killed. They had to stand back from the action and see the broad picture, not just the hot spots. It’s the same with the police service. A chief constable’s a director, not an executive. That’s where I got it wrong; now you’re doing the same thing on an even bigger scale.’