‘Don’t you have confidence in her?’ Rachel asked.
‘Oh yes,’ I laughed, ‘make no mistake about that. If you want to brief her to enter your guilty plea, that’ll be fine by me: because you are done, by two things.
‘One is that ring you’re wearing on your right hand, that nice emerald and diamond piece that I noticed last Monday. I’ve seen it since then, in a photograph attached to the list of property that Jock Hodgson reported stolen from his house, along with his laptop.
‘Two, and even more damning, on the day of that burglary, and three days later when the poor bugger was tortured and killed, Walter Hurrell was in the Spire private hospital having a hernia operation. I know this because it was on the medical records made available to my dear lady when she did his post-mortem.’
I watched her confidence evaporate, like a piece of ice in the California sun. It seemed to flow out of her.
‘You didn’t only leave hair samples on Hurrell,’ I continued. ‘You left some prime specimens on the floor around the chair where you tied Hodgson up. They’ve been matched already. Doing that wouldn’t have been a problem for you, by the way. You’re a strong woman, and he wasn’t the fittest bloke, plus you had a gun. Isn’t all of that right, Lottie?’
‘Yes indeed, sir,’ Mann called out. ‘We also found a butane blowlamp tossed away in the garage. There was a bar code on it that told us it was sold in B amp;Q Hermiston Gate, Edinburgh, just after nine on the day Hodgson died. And that in turn led us to the buyer. A classic mistake of the amateur criminal, sir.’
‘I know the one you mean,’ I said. ‘You should never pay by card, Rachel, always cash.’
I looked at Eden and then at Rory. ‘I’m sorry, guys, she did it, and more. At this moment DCC McGuire has people searching every CCTV tape from last Monday evening, trying to find Rachel’s car on the way to and from the Flotterstone Inn to the meeting I believe she had Hurrell set up for her. And they’ll find it. Your security tapes show her leaving Moray Place on that evening, and getting home just in time for her birthday party.
‘Sammy, Lottie,’ I said to the two senior detectives, ‘you should make the arrest together. That way you’ll both get brownie points with the chief constable.’
Sixty-Five
Eden’s insurers were as good as their word, almost. They met the full cost of my investigation, but they claimed that they had only ever offered two per cent of the insured value, not the ten he had mentioned. Still, a hundred grand wasn’t to be sneezed at. I thought about buying a smallish boat with the cash, but not for long. Instead I put two-thirds into a trust fund for Ignacio, Mark, James Andrew, Seonaid and Sarah’s bombshell, and donated the rest to children’s charities.
Mario’s search team did find video of Rachel’s car heading to and from the Flotterstone Inn, but there was no clear image of her at the wheel. She ran out of luck, however, in Wemyss Bay, when Jock Hodgson’s nosy neighbour, who never let anything pass her by, told Dan Provan that she had seen her heading towards his house on the day of his murder.
That was enough for the Crown Office to charge her with the torture killing. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life with a minimum tariff of eighteen years. The murders of Mackail, Dean Francey and Anna Harmony remain unsolved, officially, the files still open should evidence turn up in the future, but it won’t.
When the case was heard, the Lord Advocate, who appeared for the Crown, went out of his way to praise Sammy Pye and Lottie Mann, Sauce Haddock and Dan Provan.
By the time Rachel appeared in the High Court, Eden had been in Monaco for three months; he won’t be back. Rory is running Higgins Holdings, and has poached Marcella Mega from Destry as his executive assistant.
The First Minister did indeed offer me the chair of the Scottish Police Authority. Rather than tell him where to stick it, as I’d let Mario believe, I told him who to stick in it. He accepted that advice and appointed Sir James Proud, my predecessor as chief in Edinburgh and one of my two career mentors.
Jimmy will have a new chief constable to call to account. Sir Andrew Martin, my former best friend, was accused by a tabloid newspaper of nepotism in promoting his ex-wife so that he could be closer to his children. The source was never revealed, but if he was a wizened would-be wizard, I wouldn’t be astonished.
The charge against Andy was an insult to Karen, and her solicitor won a very quick apology, but the mud stuck to him, and he felt compelled to resign. Or did he realise that he was in over his head and take the easy way out?
I don’t know and I don’t care, but I am very happy that he was replaced by his senior deputy, Margaret Rose Steele, who should probably have had the job in the first place. I still hate the very notion of a single Scottish police service, but at least now it’s in safe hands, far safer than Andy’s or mine.
I’m still waiting for Amanda Dennis to call me and hold me to that promise I was forced to make. I know she will, at some point, but I’m in no hurry. I’m perfectly happy working part-time for InterMedia, and basking in the glow of impending fatherhood, yet again. Sarah’s bombshell will drop around the same time that Ignacio is released from prison. That will be interesting to say the least.
And Bob Skinner, consulting detective? What about him?
He’s open to offers, on condition that they’re interesting and challenging. Speaking of which, I’ve just had a message from my grown-up daughter, the fledgling solicitor advocate at the Scottish Criminal Bar, to say that she needs to speak to me urgently, ‘about a problem that’s come up’.
I wonder what that could be.