‘You flatter yourself,’ he retorted. ‘I wasn’t checking up on DI Mann, I was checking up on you. So, are you going to tell me what you would have told her, if I hadn’t forbidden her to have any more to do with you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll only speak to Lottie, for it’s none of your fucking business really. All you need to do is bask in the glory of the clear-up rate; it isn’t your job to create it.’
‘Effectively,’ he laughed, bitterly, ‘you’re telling me to apologise to her.’
‘Yes I bloody am,’ I snapped. ‘Don’t you think you owe her one?’
‘Probably,’ he retorted, ‘because I shouldn’t have created a situation where she felt she had two masters.’
‘Over to you, then,’ I told him. ‘Just one final piece of advice: do it yourself, don’t get your exec to make the call.’
Finally, I did hang up on him. I was feeling bad about Lottie Mann, but I was feeling worse about the future of the service to which I’d devoted too much of my life, putting it too often before the people I love.
One of my favourite sayings, one I will repeat at the drop of the smallest hat, is as follows, ‘The noblest of all dogs is the hot dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.’
I came upon it when studying the philosophy of a Canadian named Laurence Johnston Peter. The management theory that he defined is globally famous, yet he is not. Millions know of the ‘Peter Principle’, but most have forgotten the man after whom it was named.
Peter argued that anything that works will be used in progressively more challenging situations, until it fails. In human terms, he argued, the potential of a person for promotion is commonly based on their performance in their current position, leading to their rising to their highest level of competence and ultimately to the one beyond, the level of their own incompetence.
If I had spent more time studying management when it mattered, I would have realised much sooner that as a chief constable I was a classic example. I see it now, and with the benefit of that self-knowledge, I recognised that morning that so was Sir Andrew Martin.
That’s when I knew for sure that he’d never cut it as head of ScotServe.
I’d just been listening to a man who was out of his depth, and running out of the energy required to keep himself afloat. It was a matter of time before he drowned, or grabbed a lifebelt and was hauled out of there.
I hadn’t expected Lottie to call me, any more than I’d expected Andy to call her, so when she did ring, half an hour later, I reached a logical but erroneous conclusion.
‘He saw reason, did he?’ I asked.
‘Who?’ She sounded puzzled or a second. ‘You mean the chief?’ The pieces slotted together. ‘You know I’ve had a bollocking? He’s spoken to you?’
‘He’s spoken to me. We had a frank exchange of views. I told him he should apologise to you; I’m glad he’s taken my advice.’
‘He hasn’t,’ Lottie said. ‘My ears are still ringing from his one and only call.’
‘Then what the hell are you doing speaking to me?’ I exclaimed.
‘I’m not.’ She hesitated. ‘Well, I am, but I dialled a wrong number. These damn phones; it’s too easy to auto-redial by mistake. But if I was speaking to you, I might want to ask you . . .’
‘Lottie,’ I warned her, ‘this is career-threatening stuff. You’re working for a seriously insecure man.’
‘And I’ve got a seriously unstable murderer to catch. I’ve had a look at Hodgson’s phone, like you suggested.’
‘I know. Andy told me what was on it and what wasn’t.’
‘What do you take from it?’ she asked.
‘It satisfies me beyond any reasonable doubt that Jock Hodgson was involved in the theft of the Princess Alison. I don’t even need to see the images of the building that your chief mentioned to know that they show the interior of Eden Higgins’ private dock on the Gareloch where the boat was kept.’
‘I can send them to you,’ she offered.
‘No you can’t. This might be a misdialled call, but if you email me photos it’ll be sackable. I won’t put you at that risk. Let me think aloud for a while.’
‘Think away,’ she laughed.
‘Okay.’ I paused to get some things in a row, then continued. ‘If I was running the Hodgson investigation, I’d be assuming that the dead man sent those images, and maybe gave other assistance, to a third party. The boat was normally crewed by two people. The other is a man called Walter Hurrell. Like Hodgson, he’s ex-Navy. However I wouldn’t waste time exploring whether he was part of the theft. If it had been a joint operation between the two of them, there would have been no need for the pics.’
‘Couldn’t the third party still have been involved?’
’No need: three would have been a crowd in the theft. Hurrell wasn’t a party to it; trust me on that. But,’ I added, ‘if I was investigating I would like very much to know whether Mr Hurrell has been to a DIY store lately to purchase a blowlamp.’
‘You think . . .’
‘The man isn’t only ex-Navy, Inspector,’ I told her. ‘He was Special Forces. My investigation would focus very strongly on him; I’d be looking for his DNA and fingerprints. If they weren’t taken for elimination purposes at the time of the Princess Alison theft, then Bridie Gorman’s boyfriend really plumbed the depths of incompetence in his investigation. I’d be finding them and looking for them to show up in Hodgson’s cottage.’
‘Couldn’t he have been there anyway, if they were crew colleagues?’ Lottie suggested.
‘It’s possible,’ I conceded, ‘but if they were concentrated in the vicinity of the body, that would be significant.’
‘Would you be hauling him in for interview?’ she asked.
‘First I’d try to establish his whereabouts at the time of Hodgson’s killing, and at the time of the break-in to his house. In his day job Hurrell is Eden Higgins’ minder; if he was off with the boss and can prove it on either or both of those dates, it’s an abortive line of inquiry. If he wasn’t, I might be having a chat with him, and trying to persuade a sheriff to give me a search warrant for his house to look for the laptop and other stolen items.’
‘Hold on, sir,’ the DI said. ‘If he’s close to Higgins, could he be involved?’
‘No,’ I replied, firmly. ‘Eden didn’t get to be a billionaire by being stupid enough to invite me to investigate a theft knowing that it might, that it would, lead me to other crimes in which he was involved.’
‘So why would Hurrell . . .’
‘I don’t know, and I’m not saying he did. I’m offering him to you as a suspect, that’s all. You might get lucky and find Hodgson’s ring in his house, but I doubt it. No,’ I concluded, ‘whoever did it, this is what I think happened. Hodgson was a suspect, because Hurrell wasn’t; that could make Hurrell the killer, but not necessarily. The first step that was taken was the theft of Hodgson’s laptop. Knowing what we do about his phone being clean says to me that the laptop didn’t give up anything either, so the killer went back and tortured him.’
‘Until he talked?’ Lottie asked.
‘Who can say?’ I replied. ‘But we haven’t found the boat yet, have we?’
‘You are sure his death is connected to the Princess Alison?’
‘Have you and Provan come up with anything else in the man’s life,’ I challenged her ‘that could have led to someone torturing him and then shooting him?’
‘No, nothing,’ she admitted. ‘He was an ordinary man with no bad habits.’
‘Other than involvement in a multimillion-pound theft,’ I pointed out. ‘There’s just one thing,’ I added. ‘My hunch, and please do take my hunches seriously, is that he talked before he died. In my experience, and I’ve seen a couple, one last year in fact, torture murderers don’t stop until they’ve got what they want, but once they have, then it’s goodnight. Hodgson only had one burned foot; that tells me he didn’t hold out long.’
‘So what can we expect to find, Mr Skinner?’