But if all that was the case, why had he brought me in, on the very day that the nasty, vicious Dean Francey had seized David Gates’ daughter and hospitalised his wife?
That halted my analysis for a while, until I forced myself to take a mental step back and look at the situation objectively. When I did, an unpalatable possibility was clear.
Could it be that Eden had never believed that I would find the Princess Alison, or uncover the secrets of her theft? Was my role quite simple? Was he buying my reputation as an investigator, as he bought everything else, to force the insurance company to settle his claim?
If so the son of a bitch had underestimated me . . . and I wasn’t having that.
As I finished my salad and looked around the table I realised that I’d been able to develop my thinking uninterrupted because everyone else had been ignoring me. Pye and Mann were deep in conversation, while Sauce Haddock was picking away at his namesake but absorbing everything the weathered sage that is Dan Provan had to say.
I sat back and allowed the gathering to bring itself back to order . . . or as close to that as is possible when Provan is involved. ‘I was just telling the boy here,’ he said, looking up at me, ‘that the police service is going to hell in a handcart. We used tae know who our bosses were, and where we worked. Now we don’t have a fuckin’ clue. We’re Glasgow, Lottie and me, and we get sent down tae Wemyss Bay.’
‘You weren’t sent,’ I replied, ‘you were called.’
He stared at me ‘Who called us then?’
‘Effectively, I did.’
‘But you’re history. How could you dae that?’
‘Effectively,’ I repeated. ‘I still know who to call.’
‘Hardly worth your while leavin’, then,’ Provan muttered.
I laughed. ‘On the contrary, Bilbo. It’s been very much worth my while.’
His eyes twinkled. ‘I’ve always seen maself more of a Gandalf type,’ he said, ‘but it’s true; you’re lovin’ this.’
‘I’m loving watching how you can talk and eat at the same time,’ I replied. ‘I’ll grant you there are things I miss. Times like these for an example. But I’ve been missing them since I became a deputy chief.’
‘That’s how you were crap at it.’
The ungrammatical grenade hung in the air for a few seconds, until I defused it by agreeing with him.
‘That’s exactly why,’ I conceded. ‘Just as your inability to master basic diplomacy while dancing on the edge of insubordination is how nobody’s ever been tempted to promote you to inspector, even though you’re probably the best detective in Glasgow. You’ve never aspired to being a wizard, Dan; you’ve always been happy to be a hobbit.’
‘You know me so well,’ he laughed. ‘And I know you. You’re a pure hunter. You cannae stop yourself.’
‘I can,’ I retorted, a little sharply, because he was getting to me, ‘and I do. It’s made easier because you are right about one thing. The police service is going to hell in a handcart, as I knew it would when I opposed unification, but even though I’m no longer part of it, that’s something I will not allow.’
‘How are you going tae stop it?’ he challenged.
‘Watch this space.’
I pushed my plate away, enjoying the silence as the waiter cleared the table. He asked for our dessert orders. I pointed at Provan. ‘He’ll have Black Forest gateau,’ I said. ‘I could not bear to watch him picking sticky toffee pudding out of those teeth.’
He did, too, just to spite me, I’m sure, for everyone else declined the sweet course and went straight to coffee.
‘Well,’ I said once everyone had been served. ‘What does everyone think of my analysis?’
Pye was the senior officer at the table; the others, even Provan, looked to him.
‘I don’t disagree with any of it, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m in no doubt that’s how it happened. Eden Higgins as prime suspect? It can’t be anyone else, can it?’
‘No, it can’t,’ I concurred. ‘But now the hard bit . . . proving it.’ I paused, looking at Sammy and Sauce. ‘You two, of course, you could walk away at this stage with brownie points. You’ve had three parts to your investigation and two of them are cleared up. You’re in the plus column, even more so when you consider that a victim of your unsolved strand was the perpetrator in the first two.’
‘Try telling that to the chief constable, boss,’ Haddock chipped in.
‘I will if I have to,’ I promised him, ‘but there are folk within the force who’ll do that before me.’
‘That’s nice to know, sir,’ Sammy murmured, ‘but there’s somebody you’ve forgotten: Anna Hojnowski, Anna Harmony, Singer, whatever you want to call her. I don’t know why but I feel as if I knew her. There’s no way I’m walking away from this without putting my hand on the collar of the person who shot her.’
I smiled at that; warrant card or not, I felt exactly the same way.
I turned to Lottie. ‘You two, on the other hand, have a big, smelly unsolved on your hands. Jock Hodgson did one of two things; either he betrayed his employer or he did a pal a favour to right a perceived wrong. However you see it, what was done to him was obscene, and can’t go unanswered.’
She nodded. ‘Agreed, sir. From everything we know, the Edinburgh team and the two of us are looking for the same man. But where do we begin? Do we just walk into Eden Higgins’ office and lift him?’
I sipped my coffee; it wasn’t bad. ‘You have cause to question him right now,’ I suggested, ‘but you cannot get this wrong, because he has too much influence. This whole story has an opening paragraph, and so far that is hearsay; it’s a tale told twice, to different people, by the same person, Sauce’s pal Macy Robinson. She’s a journalist, so she’d be the first to tell you that for a story to be reliable you need two sources. The government might think it’s okay to do without corroboration in criminal cases, but I don’t. Somebody needs to talk to the person who makes the decisions within Destry, and verify that Eden knew how Mackail’s business was shafted. Higgins Holdings benefited from it,’ I said. ‘But did he order it?’
‘We’ll do that,’ Sammy Pye volunteered.
I nodded. ‘Okay. Then there’s Hodgson. Lottie, the images on the phone prove to my satisfaction that he was involved in the theft. He was an idiot to think that nobody would suspect him, unless he underestimated his boss. Maybe he believed that a simple denial would be enough. He might have been fired as engineer, but that would have been it. Sadly, he got that wrong, but . . .’
Mann put my question for me. ‘Did Eden Higgins personally hold a naked flame to his foot?’
‘Not only that,’ I added. ‘Was he physically capable of subduing Hodgson? Remember, he’d had his ankle smashed not long before that. I would suggest that while Sammy’s looking at Destry, you divide the labour by arresting, isolating and questioning Walter Hurrell, Eden’s driver, personal assistant, minder, whatever title you choose to give him.’
‘If you say so, sir.’
‘I do, and I say this too. Don’t piss about with Hurrell; I know his background and he’s dangerous. Get a warrant for his arrest from a sheriff; I’ll help you draft the application. When you go for him, go mob handed. Maybe even use armed officers.’
‘Are you saying he might have been Higgins’ hit man?’ Provan asked, licking the last remnant of his gateau from a corner of his mouth.
‘I don’t care for the term,’ I said, ‘but his track record makes him top pick for the job.’ I paused. ‘Now, back to the task of proving all this. We need to establish the link between Higgins and Dean Francey; those two are unlikely bedfellows, to say the least. Where could they have met?’
‘Callum Sullivan.’ All four of us looked at Haddock. ‘Sullivan sold his company to Higgins Holdings for millions,’ he continued, ‘and stayed involved to complete the earn-out and maximise the price. We know that he had a great big party in his great big house in North Berwick, and we know that’s where Dean Francey met Anna Harmony. But we don’t know who else was at the party.’