Replacement tyres… oil changes… brake fluid…10,000-mile service
… new windscreen wipers…
Fox stared at one of the sheets, trying to make sense of it. It was on the same headed paper – MJM Motors – but the handwriting was different. It looked like an invoice, but it wasn’t one.
‘You sneaky little bastard,’ Fox said quietly to himself. Gavin Willis’s work: had to be. A list of firearms supplied to someone called ‘Hawk’ – presumably short for Hawkeye. The sums added up to almost twelve hundred pounds. Looked to Fox as though there had been three or four different deliveries, totalling twelve weapons and numberless rounds of ammo. Two revolvers, two pistols, a shotgun and seven rifles. Fox ran a finger across the word ‘Hawk’.
Whether member or sympathiser, here was evidence that Gavin Willis had definitely been a supplier, dealing with the man called Hawkeye, who would then use the guns in his armed robberies.
Willis must have told Alan Carter – and Carter didn’t want his mentor’s reputation sullied. Nobody could ever know, even with Willis in his grave.
‘Couldn’t risk it, could you?’ Fox muttered aloud. ‘Couldn’t risk anyone buying the cottage and finding something.’
Had the revolver been there all along? Alan Carter holding on to it? In which case, someone had wrested it from him and made him sit at the table… Fox shook his head slowly. He couldn’t imagine it. Alan Carter would have stood toe-to-toe with any assailant. If told to sit, he would have refused.
Wouldn’t he?
Fox went through the other invoices, but there were no other clues. He wondered if Alan Carter had known. No, because wouldn’t he have destroyed it? Come to that, wouldn’t he also have rid himself of any gun he found? Yes, ripping up the cottage and destroying whatever he deemed incriminating. Willis’s reputation had to be upheld. Tony Kaye’s words rang in his head: I don’t think you’ve got anything…
‘Not strictly true, compadre,’ Fox said determinedly.
Ten
31
Nothing happened for a few days.
The Complaints were back in their office in Edinburgh. Kaye and Naysmith were writing up their report for Fife Constabulary. The message had come through: with the death of Paul Carter, no further action was to be taken.
‘Just give the bosses in Fife whatever you’ve got,’ Bob McEwan had explained.
Alan Carter’s body had been released, but not his nephew’s. Carter’s wish had been for cremation, ashes scattered on the rose beds outside the crematorium building. Fox attended the ceremony. Teddy Fraser led the tributes, and sure enough, when the minister failed to mention Alan’s football prowess, Teddy put him right with mention of the twenty-nine-goal season. Jimmy Nicholl was there too, Teddy carrying the compliant dog with him to the podium, refusing offers of help.
The chapel was packed. Fox wondered if there’d be half as many at Paul Carter’s funeral – somehow he doubted it. The Fife Constabulary brass might feel they had to show willing, but a lot of the townsfolk would stay away. They knew the rumours: Alan Carter’s body had been released only because his killer was also deceased.
As they waited for the coffin to arrive, retired cops shook hands with each other, patted backs, slapped shoulders and reminisced. Robinson was there in his sergeant’s uniform, its silver buttons gleaming. Half the town seemed to have known Alan Carter. There were scowls and mutterings concerning the presence of the Shafiq family, the ones Carter’s firm had butted heads with. Father and two sons, the sons with their hair slicked back, sharply suited, Ray-Bans a fixture throughout.
Fox had asked Teddy Fraser about the history.
‘Storm in a whisky glass,’ he explained. ‘Except that the dad’s teetotal.’
Scholes, Haldane and Michaelson were in attendance too, but kept clear of Fox – and the Shafiqs. Evelyn Mills went for a drink with Fox afterwards.
‘Case goes on,’ she told him. ‘Just because the major suspect’s also dead doesn’t mean we brush it under the carpet.’ She paused. ‘On the other hand…’
‘No one’s going to be busting a gut?’ Fox guessed.
He had suspected as much from the look of DI Cash and DS Young as they sat in their pew, faces relaxed, job done.
‘Thing is, Evelyn, if Paul didn’t do it, the killer’s still out there.’
‘Give me another name, then – give me something concrete.’
Charles Mangold had asked much the same of him, a night later.
‘Imogen is slipping away from us, Inspector. She may not be here much longer.’
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Fox had said.
‘Time is pressing.’
‘I’m doing what I can.’
Except that he had done almost nothing. Mostly he’d been preparing to give evidence in court – a case dating back almost a year and a half had finally come to trial. Reading back through the notes, he realised there were a couple of gaps – little holes in proper procedure – which a good counsel would spot and then jab away at, like a boxer spying a nick above their opponent’s eye. Fox had worked on his defence, honing two or three counter-arguments, only for the trial to be postponed at the last minute.
So now he sat in the office at Fettes, offering occasional help to Kaye and Naysmith as they prepared the report, and providing a sympathetic ear to McEwan as he muttered darkly about the latest meetings and proposals for cost-cutting.
‘Are we police or accountants? If I’d wanted to spend all my time on a calculator, I’d have paid more attention during Mr Gentry’s maths lessons…’
When the phone rang on Fox’s desk, it was reception, telling him he had a visitor.
Detective Chief Inspector Jackson.
Fox narrowed his eyes. ‘You sure it’s me he wants?’ Jackson: the tourist from Special Branch in London.
‘You’re the only Fox we’ve got,’ the officer on the front desk said. ‘Want me to fob him off?’
‘Point him in the direction of the canteen,’ Fox instructed, ending the call and shrugging his arms back into the sleeves of his suit jacket.
Jackson was queuing at the counter, nothing on his tray as yet. Fox caught up with him as he stood in front of the till.
‘What can I get you?’ Jackson asked.
‘Tea,’ Fox said.
‘Two teas,’ Jackson told the server.
‘Pot and two tea bags?’ she suggested.
‘Perfect,’ Jackson responded with a smile.
They went to a table by the window, sitting down so that they faced one another.
‘What brings you here?’ Fox asked.
‘Just passing.’ Jackson saw the look on Fox’s face and gave another smile. ‘No, not really.’
‘How are things going with Lockerbie and Peebles?’
‘Okay.’
‘Found your bombers yet?’
Jackson stared at him. ‘They are out there, you know. I’d have thought you would understand that.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘The case you’re working on.’
It was Fox’s turn to stare. ‘What about it?’
‘I was curious. So I did a bit of digging. You have to admit, the internet is a real old viper’s nest, isn’t it? Half-truths and guesswork and theories from the outer limits…’
‘Plenty of conspiracies,’ Fox made show of agreeing.
‘From what I hear, though, your researcher was killed by his nephew – some sort of long-held grudge.’ Jackson sipped his tea, peering at Fox above the rim of the cup.
‘That’s all right, then, isn’t it?’ Fox responded.
‘Why was Alan Carter so interested in Francis Vernal?’
‘More to the point, why are you?’
Jackson shrugged, as if to concede that the question was fair. ‘I spoke to a detective inspector. He tells me the lawyer’s car’s been found.’
Thanks, Cash…
‘Supposedly went for scrap,’ Jackson continued, ‘but someone decided to keep it.’
Fox made a non-committal noise.