Thursday legends

'I did not. I do know that big Jack better not have been talking to him, though. There are only three guys in this organisation allowed to speak to the press, and he's not one of them.' He considered his point for a moment. 'No, make that four; I suppose the Chief Constable can, too.'

McGuire drained his can, tore another open, then glanced at his wife once more. 'Did you get anything on the serial number of the pistol?'

'Drew a blank,' she said. 'Or should that be fired a blank? It isn't one of ours — it would have been posted missing if it was anyway — and it isn't registered to anyone in the UK. I suppose Alec must have acquired it on his travels and neglected to hand it in.'

'One more for us, then. We'll register it and keep it in our armoury.'

Maggie frowned at him. 'Not necessarily. We'll have to test fire a bullet from it; who knows, it might be a match for one in another open investigation somewhere, one with an untraced firearm.'

'We'll do no such bloody thing… Ma'am,' he retorted.

'But we have to! It's standard procedure.'

'It is not standard procedure to find an illegal hand-gun in the possession of a deceased former Special Branch commander. Suppose your test firing did come up with a match, in another force's area? What a can of fucking worms that would open!' He tapped the table. 'Tell you something, among the three of us. From what I've learned about Alec Smith, finding a match is not one hundred per cent impossible. No-one's testing that gun.'

Steele looked from one to the other, not wishing to be caught in the middle of a marital row between two senior officers.

'You can't take that decision,' Maggie protested.

'I just did. And if Brian Mackie was sitting in that chair, instead of sunning himself on the Costa de la bloody Luz, he'd agree with me all the way. So will Big Bob, when I tell him.'

She scowled at him. 'Secret bloody policemen,' she muttered; but she had been Bob Skinner's exec, and she knew at once that her husband was right.

'Talking about the Boss,' she said, changing the subject. 'I heard something on the grapevine today. You know there's been a small round of promotions?'

'Aye, Jack McGurk, for one.'

'Well, Neil's come through too. He's been made up to DI.' Mario's face lit up. 'Hey, that's great. Does that mean he's moving on?'

'No, the Boss wants to keep him in his office for as long as he can, so he's promoted him in post.'

'That's smashin'.' He frowned for a second. 'No consolation, but smashin' nonetheless. Olive would have been dead chuffed for him.'

'So will Lauren and Spence be.'

'Yeah.'

For a while they sat in silence, until Steele broke it. 'Those keys,' he said. 'Has the check on tenants of small office premises thrown up anything?'

'No,' answered Rose. 'There are one or two vacant around the county, but the rest are all accounted for. Whatever those keys are for, I'm sure that they are not for an office around here.

'The bank statements gave us nothing either; it was nearly all domestic stuff, the routine standing orders and bills, money going out to his daughter through a university branch of Lloyds TSB in Birmingham — she must still be a student. The only thing we couldn't nail down completely was an annual payment of twelve hundred pounds to a firm of solicitors in Dundee, but Alec told the bank manager when he set up the debit that it was money for his wife.'

She looked at Mario. 'I think we should talk to the wife, don't you?'

'Aye. All due deference to the Chief, but when he saw her he didn't know the questions to ask. We should see her again, right enough.'

'Okay. You two do that tomorrow then; go to Penicuik or wherever and see her.'

McGuire shook his head. 'Hold on a minute there, Chief Inspector. This is becoming a threat to national security. I'm only involved in this investigation because it's Alec. I'm Special Branch Commander, so I have to spend some time commanding the bloody thing; plus I've asked for Alice Cowan as from tomorrow morning. I've already got the Head of CID picking up two suspects for me; I cannot go tear-arsing out on what is probably just a follow-up interview.'

'I suppose not,' she conceded. 'You do it alone then, Stevie. Just confirm that standing order was a token maintenance payment for her, and see if she knows about those photographs — and if she has any idea what they're about.'

'Aye,' said her husband, 'and ask her if he knows where he walked his dog. At the moment it looks as if Alec just buried his stuff. Maybe he got it to do the digging!'

'If that's right,' said Maggie, flashing one of her rare on-duty smiles, 'that dog'll be the first bloody witness we've found in this case!'

28

'I wasn't kidding about lunch,' said Martin. He laid a tray on the table; two large filled rolls, a Mars bar and a mug of coffee with two sugar lumps and a spoon beside it. 'Corned beef and pickle all right?' he asked. 'I wasn't sure about the sugar.'

Gus Morrison glared up at him, then at the food, suspiciously. 'It's all right,' Sammy Pye assured him. 'I've just got the rolls myself from a place across the street.'

'Don't worry,' the Head of CID continued, cheerfully, 'they're not laced with a truth drug or anything like that. We're not that subtle: we'll just batter the truth out of you if we have to, won't we, Sammy?' He held his hands up, quickly. 'Only joking, only joking. Now go on, dig in.'

Morrison reached out and picked up a flour-dusted roll, squinted at it, then took a bite. 'Ah want a lawyer,' he mumbled through a mouthful of corned beef and pickle. They were the first words he had spoken, from the moment they had left the depot to their arrival at the St Leonard's divisional HQ, chosen because of its link to the Smith case.

'I'm sure you do, Gus, and if it comes to the bit you'll have one; but you don't need one yet, you see. We just want to ask you a few things.' He sat back and waited, watching in silence as the blue-chinned man munched his way through the rolls, added the sugar lumps to his coffee, stirred it, then tore off the Mars bar wrapping.

'Fuckn' bastards. Fuckn' bastards,' he muttered under his breath, shoulders hunched, staring down at the table top. 'Aye after us, fuckn' bastards.'

'What was that, Gus?' Pye asked. The man shot him a sideways glance. 'Nothin'.' He looked back at Martin. 'What's this about then?' he asked, his eyes clear suddenly, his voice lucid.

'Do you remember a man called Smith?' the Head of CID asked.

'Do I remember a man called Smith? I remember a hundred men called Smith, Officer. There was Tarn Smith, who had the corner shop when I was a boy. There was Dandy Smith, who was in my class at primary school and got run over by a bus. There was Mary Smith, in the jail

… his real name was Michael, but he was called that because he bent over in the showers. There was…'

'Did he bend over for you?' Martin asked suddenly, still smiling. 'Did you go queer in the nick?'

Morrison blinked. 'No,' he boomed. 'Certainly not. It was the wee hard men who did that. The mentality you see. They had to show who the top dogs were, in every way they could; so they buggered the likes of Mary to do it.'

'Did they bugger you?'

The laugh was so sudden, so sharp, so dismissive, that the detective almost reacted to it. 'Bugger me? Bugger big Gus? Did they buggery!' He laughed again, at his own sad humour.

'Ah. Sorry, it was just that I thought, with Wendy topping herself

…'

Something seemed to swim behind Morrison's eyes; another creature, in there.

'Wendy never thought… Wendy? Wendy! It was the other way around!' His voice rose. 'I know what happened! All those fucking bull dykes in that bloody place, never leaving her alone and the screws — aye, know why they call them screws? — and wee Wendy. She was soft and weak and a gentle lassie and very private. Kept herself to herself you know what I mean, women's things; and it all got too much for her, and they killed her up there, the fucking bastards…' He broke off, his chest heaving, gasping for breath.