‘Dan Pringle here, Mary,’ said a gruff, familiar voice. ‘I thought I should call at least, to see how you’re doing. Normally I’d have been down to see you long before now, but I’ve been up to my oxters in dead Belgians. On top of that there’s the American. Think yourself lucky you’re not involved.’
‘I do, Dan, I do.’ She laughed. ‘How are those inquiries running?’
‘The Belgians are running nowhere; they’re just marching up and down, like always. So am I in terms of progress. The DCC’s out of town; he hasn’t told me where, but I think it’s connected. As for the Mawhinney thing, McIlhenney’s running that, and he wouldna’ tell me if my shirt-tail was on fire. What about you? Have you had a quiet start?’
‘If you call a million-pound bank fraud quiet, yes.’
‘A million! Bloody hell. Have you got a suspect?’
‘There is a suspect, but we don’t have her. It was an inside job and it looks like she’s got away with it. Stevie’s on her trail, but it’s pretty cold.’
‘Keep me in touch, through Ray Wilding if you have to. Cheers.’
As he said his farewell, the superintendent’s door opened. Stevie Steele wore the expression of a hunter; one who has just seen his quarry escape. ‘What do you do with a bank,’ he asked, ‘that gives people access to millions without running proper checks on them?’
‘Don’t give them your money, or move it out if it’s there. What’s the story?’
‘The contact number for Nasser Alali rang unobtainable. It was disconnected a year ago. Before that it wasn’t in an office but in a private apartment, rented to a Spanish gentleman named Alsina.’
‘And the Jazeer Independent Bank of Dubai? They’ve never heard of Aurelia Middlemass?’
‘Oh, yes, they’ve heard of her. They flew her body back to South Africa, about eighteen months ago. She was out in the desert, off-roading big-time with her boyfriend, when their jeep exploded. They were both killed. The investigators decided that an electrical fault had ignited the fuel load.’
‘Mammy!’ Mary Chambers exclaimed. ‘There’s devious for you. So this woman, whoever she was, decided that it would be a good idea to steal her identity and use it to set up a scam in a bank well away from the Middle East. This was really well planned. She’s out of here all right.’
‘I know. George found the airline. They caught the first easyJet flight to Gatwick on Monday morning. One-way tickets, bought on the Internet the day before. Checked in four suitcases and paid the excess charge in cash. There’s no record anywhere of any onward booking.’
‘But there will be under another name.’
‘Of course.’
‘Shit.’ She looked at Steele. ‘You know, every so often in my career, I’ve run up against someone who’s done something so clever and so audacious that part of me wants to take its hat off to them. This is one of those times.’
70
The same black Citroën picked up Skinner and Arrow from the Royal Windsor Hotel at ten thirty. Both men had wakened with slightly thick heads, but an hour in the gym had set them up for breakfast.
Their driver took them through the city and towards the outskirts. The sky was cloudy and Skinner had no idea whether he was heading north, south, east or west, but eventually they broke out into clear, flat countryside. Not much more than ten minutes later, they turned off the dual carriageway on which they were travelling and into a two-way road, which led eventually to a gateway, barred by a hinged red and white pole. An armed guard appeared, spoke briefly to the driver, and the way was cleared for them.
Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Winters’s office was on the ground floor of a grey concrete two-storey building. He came to greet them at the door, looking stiffer than ever in uniform, and even more solemn. He showed them to his sparsely furnished room, offering each of them a hard wooden chair.
‘Monsieur Skinner,’ he began, ‘I am afraid that I will not detain you long. I have examined the files of all three men in question, and I have made inquiries of the civilian authorities. I can tell you nothing that will help in your investigation. Your trip has been wasted.’
The Scot looked at him. ‘Nothing? You’ve looked at their entire thirty-year army career and it doesn’t offer a single potential line of inquiry?’
Winters sniffed. ‘These were very boring men, sir. Exemplary soldiers.’
‘Is that so?’ Skinner exclaimed. ‘If they were that bloody exemplary, how come they spent twenty-five bloody years as labourers to an orchestra?’
‘We all have to do our part, sir, in whatever way. If you were a military man, perhaps you would understand that.’
Condescension always lit Skinner’s fuse; his eyes caught Winters’s and locked on, as if they were boring into his head. ‘Listen, my friend.’ He ground the words out. ‘I am a member of a disciplined service, just as you are. To extend the point, I am a damned sight higher ranking in my force than you are in yours. I know how to handle the people under my command, and how to slot round pegs into round holes. When I see three men like Malou, Hanno and Lebeau doing the jobs that they did, I know that they’re not there because they’re exemplary. But if they were put there because they were no fucking good at anything else, they wouldn’t have been kept on in the service till they were fifty. There was another reason; I know it, and it’s written in your eyes. .’ Winters blinked, and his face reddened as if he had been slapped. ‘. . that you do too. Will you let me see their service files?’
‘Certainly not. They are private; available only to the Belgian military.’
‘What? A colonel, a sergeant and a corporal who were, according to you, clerks and scene-shifters for the bulk of their careers? They’re state secrets?’ His expression as he looked at the Belgian was pure derision. ‘I’ll tell you, chum, you’re another square peg in a round hole. For a spook you’re not very good at it. You’ve had orders to pat me on the head and send me away with a smile on my face. You’ve failed, big-time. I came here with suspicions, and you’ve turned them into certainties.’
He turned to Arrow. ‘Can we get out of here, or is he going to try to detain me until I promise to stop making waves?’
‘Come, come,’ said Winters, trying to recover some dignity and a degree of control. ‘Of course you can leave. Your car is still at your disposal. It will take you to the airport.’
‘For the first time in my life,’ said Skinner bitterly, ‘I find myself looking forward to seeing that place.’
71
Normally, visits by the chief constable to the outposts of his empire were announced in advance. Sir James Proud did not believe in dropping in casually to divisional headquarters, or to any of the outstations. To some that would imply that he was trying to catch them off guard, and might damage their trust in him. Trust, given and received, was the foundation of his office, and it had seen him through a successful career that was now approaching its conclusion.
Thus, when he swept through the entrance of the Queen Charlotte Street police office, it came as no surprise to the young constable behind the public counter, or to Chief Superintendent Stockton Day waiting in front of it in his pristine uniform, or to Detective Superintendent Mario McGuire, standing beside him, jacketless, a pen clipped into the pocket of his white shirt. They had been alerted in a phone call from his secretary, as he had left Fettes.
Two men followed him into the building; one was in NYPD uniform, while the other, slightly younger, wore a grey tailored suit and a grim expression.
‘Good morning, gentlemen,’ the chief exclaimed. ‘We didn’t need the welcoming committee but thank you anyway.’
As he spoke McGuire and Nolan Donegan nodded to each other, reached across and shook hands. ‘You know each other?’ Sir James asked.