‘I want his name,’ he snapped.
‘Whose?’
‘The name of the other man who stole my boat.’
‘No,’ I laughed. ‘You’re not having it. I told you, he borrowed it.’
‘He stole it!’
‘Look, just shut up!’ I shouted, forgetting for a moment that I wasn’t there to lose my temper. ‘Do you know what that man is doing now? He’s with his wife, in Edinburgh Royal, where she’s recovering from the fractured skull that Francey gave her. When she’s fit enough, their first priority will be to bury their dead child. You will forget about him.’
‘He should be prosecuted,’ Eden muttered.
‘Not going to happen,’ I told him, back in control of myself. ‘The Lord Advocate will never allow it, and your friend the First Minister won’t either. Leaving aside the fact that there’s precious little evidence against him, other than his own confession, which isn’t recorded anywhere, he’s protected. Don’t go after him, Eden. I’d a tough enough job stopping him from going after you.’ I raised my plastic flute to my lips and sipped some flat champagne. ‘Cheers, by the way.’
He scowled at me. ‘So that’s it? I get my boat back and nothing else. Walter’s death is suicide and the whole case is closed?
‘I wish it was,’ I said.
‘What more is there?’ he protested.
‘Walter Hurrell didn’t kill himself.’
‘What?’ He looked at Mario, then Mann. ‘But you said he did.’
‘Oh, he fired that gun all right,’ Lottie replied. ‘But he was well dead when he did. When we took another look at the flat, we found another bullet, on the right side of the bed, wedged between the floor and a skirting board. Whoever shot him wiped the pistol clean, put it in his hand, fired again, and then put another bullet in the magazine. Only Hurrell’s prints were on the weapon and it appeared that it had only been fired once.’
‘Whoever shot him,’ Eden repeated. ‘It could have been anyone.’
‘But it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘My other half is a pathologist. She did Hurrell’s autopsy, and she is meticulous. One of the things that she checks for as a matter of routine is sexual activity; when she did that with Hurrell she noticed something unusual. There were traces of soap in his pubic hair. She gave it a good comb through and she found something else; it wasn’t all his. There were a few hairs in there that had become detached from another person . . . female, in case anyone’s wondering.’
I looked around, steadying myself with a hand as the boat rocked on a sudden swell. ‘A further detailed search found matching hairs to those, attached to a large blue towel in the bathroom. The hypothesis is this. Hurrell’s partner washed his genitalia after he was dead, in an attempt to remove all traces of herself and then washed herself, possibly took a shower.’ I paused. ‘Now why would she do that?’ I asked.
‘Why?’ Rory repeated.
‘Possibly because she had to be somewhere in a hurry,’ I replied. ‘What time did you take off from Edinburgh last Thursday night? ‘
‘Nine o’clock. It was supposed to be eight, but we were held back because Mum was . . .’ He stopped, abruptly. ‘Hold on a minute. What are you suggesting?’
‘Yes,’ Eden exclaimed, ‘be very careful here , Bob.’
‘I’m being as careful as I can, but this is a fact. There’s a CCTV camera at the end of Moray Mews. It covers the front entrance of every property there. Walter Hurrell died around seven on Thursday evening. The street camera shows nobody entering or leaving his flat at all on that day, yet somebody left there.’
‘Then it must have been by the back entrance,’ he declared.
‘Agreed,’ Sammy Pye said. ‘Your house has a back door as well, doesn’t it, sir, through the garden flat where Rory lives? And you have a security system, professionally installed, professionally maintained, with central video monitoring of cameras throughout the house, and also at each entrance.’
Eden nodded. ‘That’s correct.’
‘Yesterday morning,’ Pye continued, ‘under the terms of a warrant granted to us in private by the Sheriff Court, we took possession of the full day’s recordings for last Thursday. They show Mrs Higgins leaving through her son’s flat at a quarter to six and returning by the same route at ten past seven. Ten minutes later they show her leaving by taxi. We have the cab number, and we’ve spoken to the driver. He confirmed that he took her to the airport. He said she seemed agitated, and told him to get a move on. Not a good idea,’ he added. ‘He made a point of catching every red light along the Queensferry Road.’
‘Do we need to prove it by DNA comparison?’ I asked. ‘It’ll be done easily and it’ll be conclusive.’
‘No,’ Rachel whispered, as everyone on board stared at her with the same intensity, even Dan Provan, whose last surprise had probably come fifty-something years earlier when a midwife picked him up by the feet and slapped him on the arse.
‘Silly man, he’d gone too far.’
‘Did he want more money?’ I asked. ‘Was the jewel money not enough?’
She looked at me, right eyebrow raised. ‘Did he ever want more!’ she snorted.
‘Rachel!’ Eden shouted, rushing across to stand between us as if he could protect her. ‘Shut the fuck up! Don’t say any more.’
‘It’s too late for that,’ she chuckled, ‘way too late. What he wanted, Bob, was for me to leave Eden and go off with him. He knew that half of all this is mine, and he was greedy.’ She patted her husband on the shoulder. ‘My husband may be a boring, neglectful little man, and I may have sought other options from time to time, but I’d never leave him.’
I nodded. ‘How long were you and Hurrell . . .’
‘A few months. It was my initiative. He was guilty and fearful for his job after the first time, but he was in my pocket by then.’
‘Was it also your initiative for him to kill Mackail?’ Mario asked.
‘Damn right it was,’ she retorted. ‘I was there when he assaulted Eden. I’d have called the police, but Eden wouldn’t hear of it. Pity about that; in hindsight I can see that if I had done, he’d have been arrested and none of the rest would have happened.’
She had a point; that hadn’t occurred to me.
‘When we found out from Hodgson that he’d stolen the boat, well, that was it.’ She looked at me again. ‘Walter went too far there,’ she said. ‘I was appalled when I heard what he’d done, but again, it was too late.’
‘So you told Hurrell to kill Mackail,’ I challenged.
‘I told him to scare him as badly as possible.’ I didn’t believe that, but I led her on. ‘Again, Walter went too far.’
‘And the child?’
‘You were right. She was to be held until her father told us where our boat was.’ She glanced at Eden, who had slumped on to a bench seat beside her. ‘His name is Gates, by the way,’ she told him, ‘but Bob’s right. He drives a missile submarine, and that, I imagine, makes him pretty much inviolable.’
‘And Francey?’
‘Walter did that, of course; he decided the man was a risk, and shut it off. There, I wasn’t too angry when I heard. The lout assaulted my son, after all.’
‘His girl didn’t, though.’
Rachel shrugged.
‘When did you decide that Walter was a risk himself?’ I asked.
‘Who says I did?’ she shot back. ‘You have no sight of me entering or leaving his place last Thursday, only my going and coming from Moray Place. As for my . . . my traces, as it were, I was a regular caller, so you can’t pin them to that night. The extra gunshot he could have fired himself any time, and if he washed his cock regularly, so what?’
Her self-confidence restored her husband. ‘You’re right, Rachel,’ he said as he stood. ‘Silence from now on and let’s fight this thing.’
I nodded. ‘You do that, Eden. But please don’t hire my Alex for the defence. I wouldn’t want her to go down in flames this early in her career at the bar.’