Dewar went downstairs in search of coffee. He found Hector Wright had beaten him to it. Wright was already examining the incoming case figures for the previous night, glasses on the end of his nose, calculator in hand. Dewar helped himself to a mug of strong black coffee from the flask and joined him. ‘How’s it looking?’
‘I didn’t expect to see you up and about this morning,’ said Wright. ‘You looked like death last night.’
‘I’m okay. What’s been happening?’
‘Mercifully, nothing that we wouldn’t have predicted. The numbers of admissions and the numbers of deaths are statistically about right. There’s no sign of any secondary source appearing. The police report a fairly quiet night by all accounts. A few fires in the no-go area but no big problems.’ Wright looked at his watch. ‘Vaccination’s due to start about now.’
Dewar nodded.. ‘Let’s just hope it all goes smoothly. Is there a meeting this morning?’
Wright shook his head. ‘The early start to the vaccination programme means that everyone’s going to be busy with that.
‘Jab jab is better than jaw jaw.’
‘If you like,’ smiled Wright.
Just after nine thirty Dewar’s laptop beeped to herald an incoming message. It was the one he had been waiting for. The building company, Holt, who had employed Michael Kelly, had traced a ganger who remembered having Kelly on his squad. It appeared that Kelly had worked on a development of executive housing at the top end of the market on the south west side of the city. The estate, named, The Pines, had been completed and was now fully occupied. It lay half a mile to the east of Redford Barracks between Firhill High School and the Morningside area of the city.
Dewar felt an adrenaline surge. He grabbed his jacket and ran down stairs, pausing only briefly to tell Hector Wright where he was going.
Dewar entered The Pines from the west and stopped the car to take a look from the slightly higher ground he was on. The estate looked pleasant enough in the way that many such estates did. Large, comfortable villas predominated but as yet, without the benefit of mature gardens to provide any semblance of privacy. They sat in bare earth, open to scrutiny from all angles, separated from their neighbours by stretches of minimal boundary fencing.
Dewar watched as one young mother come out from her back door and tip toed over a temporary path of flat stones to pin out her washing on a rotary drier. A toddler tried unsuccessfully to follow her on her tricycle but came to a halt at the start of the second stone. She tried an even more unsuccessful route across clods of earth before tumbling over on to her side. Her cries, more due to frustration than any injury, carried upwards in the morning air.
Dewar decided it was time to get out and look around. He opened his briefcase and took out the clip board he’d brought with him. It had no real function: he’d brought it as a prop. People carrying clip boards were usually presumed by the rest of society to be doing something legal and above board. They could mooch around in the strangest of places, making little notes, where people without clip boards might attract police attention. Dewar would readily admit that he wasn’t the first to realise the potential of the clipboard. He’d known people in universities and the civil service who’d made a career out of walking around with them, pencil at the ready, questions to be asked, lists to be made, results to be filed and forgotten.
Denise Banyon had not been able to give him any information about where on the building site Kelly had been asked to dig, only that it was quite near to the houses. But on which side? Dewar started walking. There were trees to the south, mainly pine trees which he presumed had suggested the name. To the north was a road with yet more new housing on the far side of it. He couldn’t see the east side properly as yet because The Pines stretched a good quarter of a mile east from where he was at the moment. He decided a good start would be to walk round the perimeter of the whole estate, starting with a sweep round the north side.
He left the pavement and crossed to an area of rough ground lying between The Pines and the road to the north, a strip about twenty-five metres wide but extending for most of the length of the estate with breaks for road entrances. There was just too much ground for one man to cover, was Dewar’s conclusion as he weaved his way to and fro across the strip making his way slowly eastwards. He kept referring to his clip board just in case anyone was watching but what he was really looking for was signs of a recently filled-in hole in the ground with scorch marks around it.
As time went on and he seemed to be making very little progress, he started to question why he was doing this anyway. Finding the hole would only confirm what Denise had told him and he didn’t think she’d had any reason to lie about it. It wasn’t going to bring him any nearer to finding the man who’d asked for Kelly’s assistance and who had the vials. He stopped and glanced at his clip board again as he admitted he was doing this because he didn’t know what else to do in the circumstances.
Dewar became aware that he had come under scrutiny. A man, wearing a Sherlock Holmes style hat and turning over the earth in the early stages of garden creation had stopped to watch him. Dewar carried on with his criss cross search hoping the man would lose interest but he didn’t. He put down his spade and crossed the road.
‘Trouble?’ he asked in a plummy voice.
‘Not really,’ smiled Dewar. ‘Cable television. I’m just looking for the best access routes.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to put these things in when the estate was being built?’ demanded the man with a frown.
‘Not up to me I’m afraid,’ replied Dewar, making his role in the great scheme of things a very minor one.
‘Well my wife and I won’t be wanting the damned thing. We hardly watch the box as it is.’
‘Apart from David Attenborough and documentaries,’ whispered Dewar under his breath.
‘Save for David Attenborough and the occasional documentary.’
Dewar made a little note on his clip board. ‘And the name is sir?’
‘Pennel-Brown’
‘With a hyphen?’
‘Yes.’
Dewar put a hyphen between ‘pompous’ and ‘twerp’ on his clip board. ’Right you are Mr Pennel-Brown, I’ll see our people don’t bother you.’
Pennel-Brown returned to his digging and Dewar continued his survey of the ground. His back was aching by the time he reached the end of the northern stretch and it was time to turn south along the eastern perimeter. He paused to take a look at what lay to the east of the estate although it was still hard to see because of shrubbery which had been allowed to grow wild there. Here and there he caught a glimpse of chain link fencing beyond the shrubbery. It had a strand of barbed wire running along the top.
He was about to start out along the eastern edge of the estate when he saw a chimney through a gap in the greenery. It was a round, red brick chimney, the sort you’d find on an old industrial boiler house. Could this have something to do with what he was looking for? A building behind barbed wire and close to The Pines estate?
Dewar was about to enter the shrubbery when he caught sight of a postman coming round the corner. He saw that the postman had seen him.
‘Good Morning,’ he said with a friendly smile and a half-raised hand.
The postman stopped in his tracks but didn’t smile back.
Dewar crossed over to him. ‘I wonder if you can tell me what’s over there?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of shrubbery and the chimney.
The postman gave him a suspicious look.
Dewar held up his clip board. ‘I’m a surveyor. My client is interested in buying the house that’s for sale just over there.’ Dewar nodded vaguely in the direction of The Pines. ‘I’m just checking there are no awful secret neighbours before I make my report.’