His wife nodded and stayed quiet. After the funeral, there would be a buffet lunch back at Junipers, not just for close family but for all her husband’s associates and acquaintances, nearly seventy of them. Jacqueline had wanted a much smaller affair, something that could be accommodated in the dining room. As it was, they’d had to order a marquee, which had been installed on the back lawn. An Edinburgh firm — run by another of her husband’s clients, no doubt — was doing the catering. The lady owner was busy out there now, supervising the unloading of tables, cloths, crockery and cutlery from what seemed a never-ending series of small vans. Jacqueline’s small victory so far had been to widen the circle of invitees to include Flip’s own friends, though this had not been without its awkward moments. David Costello, for example, would have to be invited, along with his parents, though she’d never liked David and felt he held the family in mild distaste. She was hoping they would either fail to turn up, or would not linger.
‘Silver lining, in a way,’ John was droning on, hardly aware of her presence in the room. ‘Something like this, it binds them all to Balfour’s, makes it harder for them to make a move elsewhere...’
Jacqueline rose shakily to her feet.
‘We’re burying our daughter, John! This isn’t about your bloody business! Flip’s not part of some... commercial transaction!’
Balfour glanced towards the door, making sure it was closed. ‘Keep your voice down, woman. It was only a... I didn’t mean...’ He slumped on to the sofa suddenly, face in his hands. ‘You’re right, I wasn’t thinking... God help me.’
His wife sat down next to him, took his hands and lowered them from his face. ‘God help both of us, John,’ she said.
Steve Holly had managed to persuade his boss at the paper’s Glasgow HQ that he needed to be on the scene as early as possible. He’d also, knowing the geographical illiteracy rampant in Scotland, managed to persuade him that Falls was a lot further away from Edinburgh than was actually the case, and that Greywalls Hotel would make an ideal overnight stop. He hadn’t bothered explaining that Greywalls was in Gullane, and consequently wasn’t much more than a half-hour’s drive from Edinburgh, or that Gullane, as the crow flew, wasn’t exactly between Falls and Edinburgh. But what did it matter? He’d had his overnighter, joined by his girlfriend Gina, who wasn’t really his girlfriend but just someone he’d dated a few times over the previous three months. Gina had been keen, but had worried about getting to work the next morning, so then Steve had fixed a taxi for her. He knew how he’d wing it, too: he’d say his car broke down and he’d used the taxi himself to get back to town...
After a fabulous dinner and a walk around the garden — designed by someone called Jekyll apparently — Steve and Gina had made ample use of their ample bed before sleeping like logs, so that the first they knew of it, Gina’s cab was waiting and Steve had to tuck into breakfast alone, which would have been his preference anyway. But then the first disappointment: the newspapers... all of them broadsheets. He’d stopped in Gullane and bought the competition on his way out to Falls, leaving them on the passenger seat and flicking through them as he drove, cars flashing and tooting at him as he took more than his share of road.
‘Bollocks!’ he’d yelled from his window, giving each sheep-shagger and country bumpkin the finger as he got on the mobile, wanting to make sure Tony the photographer was primed for the cemetery shoot. He knew Tony had been out to Falls a couple of times to see Bev, or ‘the Potty Potter’ as Steve had come to call her. He thought Tony reckoned he was in there. His advice had been simple: ‘She’s a nutter, mate — you might get a shag, but two-to-one you wake up with your old wotsit sliced off and lying beside you in the bed.’ To which Tony had laughed and said he just wanted to persuade Bev into some ‘art poses’ for his ‘portfolio’. So when Steve got through to Tony this morning, his first words, as usual, were:
‘Got her on your potter’s wheel yet, mate?’
Then, also as usual, he started laughing at his own joke, which was what he was doing when he happened to glance in the rearview and caught the cop car up his bahooky, lights flashing. No idea how long it had been there.
‘Have to call you back, Tony,’ he said, braking and pulling on to the verge. ‘Just make sure you get to the church on time.’
‘Morning, officers,’ he said, stepping out of the car.
‘And a good morning to you, Mr Holly,’ one of the uniforms said.
Which was when Steve Holly remembered he wasn’t exactly flavour of the month with the Lothian and Borders Police.
Ten minutes later, he was back on the road, the cops tailing him to prevent, as they’d put it themselves, ‘further infractions’. When his mobile went, he thought about not answering, but it was Glasgow, so he mirror-signal-manoeuvred back on to the verge and took the call, watching the cops stop ten yards back.
‘Yes?’ he said.
‘Think you’re a clever little bastard, don’t you, Stevie Boy?’
His boss.
‘Not right this second, no,’ Steve Holly said.
‘Friend of mine plays golf in Gullane. It’s practically in Edinburgh, you turd. And the same goes for Falls. So any notion you had of turning that little trip round as expenses can now be stuck well and truly up your arse.’
‘No problem.’
‘Where are you anyway?’
Holly looked around at fields and dry-stane dykes. There was the distant drone of a tractor.
‘I’m scoping out the cemetery, waiting for Tony to turn up. I’ll head to Junipers in a couple of mins, follow them to the church.’
‘Oh aye? Care to confirm that?’
‘Confirm what?’
‘That outright fucking lie that just tripped off your tongue!’
Holly licked his lips. ‘I don’t follow.’ What was it, did the paper have a tracking device fixed to his car?
‘Tony phoned the picture editor not five minutes ago. The picture editor who happened to be standing next to my bloody desk. Guess where your missing photographer was calling from?’
Holly said nothing.
‘Go on, take a wild stab, because that’s what I’m going to take at you next time I see you.’
‘The cemetery?’ Holly said.
‘That your final answer? Maybe you want to phone a friend.’
Holly felt his anger rise: best defence was attack, right? ‘Look,’ he hissed, ‘I’ve just given your paper the story of the year, scooped every competitor you’ve got, bar none. And this is how you go and treat me? Well, stuff your miserable paper and stuff you. Get someone else out here to cover the funeral, someone who knows the story the way I do. Meantime I think maybe I’ll be making a couple of calls to the competition — on my time, my phone bill. If that’s okay with you, you chiselling bastard. And if you want to know why I’m not at the cemetery, I’ll tell you. It’s because I’ve been stopped by a couple of Lothian’s finest. They won’t let me shake them off now I’ve gone and shat on them in print. You want the patrol car’s licence plate? Give me a second, maybe they’ll speak to you themselves!’
Holly shut up, but made sure he was breathing hard into the mouthpiece.
‘For once,’ the voice from Glasgow eventually said, ‘and maybe they should carve this on my tombstone, I think I may actually have heard Steve Holly tell the truth.’ There was another pause, and then a chuckle. ‘We’ve got them worried then?’
We... Steve Holly knew he was home and dry.
‘I’ve got what looks like a permanent escort, just in case I’m thinking of taking a hand off the wheel to pick my nose.’
‘So you’re not driving as we speak?’