Thursday legends

'The man Heard must have had a drink before he got there, or he must have been going at the champagne flat out, for the party hadn't been going for very long before he started niggling away at the Diddler. In company too, it was; completely out of order.' The banker looked down and shook his head. 'Very unpleasant.'

'What happened exactly? We were told that the man took a punch at Mr Shearer.'

'Eventually, but there were a lot of verbals before that. Heard went on and on, just chipping away. The wee man tried to ignore him; I even took him away to another group, but the guy followed us. Finally, the Diddler said something back to him, something mild by comparison

… I think he joked that Paris Simons couldn't invest in a book of stamps without losing on the deal.

'That was all the excuse that Luke Heard needed; he dropped his glass and took a swing at the Diddler with his good arm.'

'Did he hit him?'

'No, no, he was well gone by then; he missed by a mile. The wee man saw it coming and ducked out of the way. I stepped in at that point, got hold of Heard and huckled him out the door. I told him that he wouldn't be welcome at another bank function until he apologised for his behaviour, both to the Diddler and to the Governor of the bank.

'All the top brass were all there, you know. They all saw it.'

'What did Heard say to Mr Shearer?'

John looked the policeman in the eye. 'He said, "I'll fucking kill you, you little bastard." His very words.'

Pringle remained deadpan. 'But before that?' he asked.

'Before it got to that stage. What sort of things did he say?'

'Ach, it was just unpleasant stuff. Bitterness, jealousy, nothing really; it wasn't just the Diddler he was niggling at. His partner, Johnston-White, he was there too.'

'Okay, but can you be more specific about what was actually said?'

'The gist of it was that Daybelge would do anything to get business. You could have taken the inference that they would lay on sexual favours of any sort for clients. At one point, he said that they were a bunch of faggots.'

'Do you know what was behind it? Where this hatred of Heard's came from?'

'It goes back to time immemorial, so the Diddler told me afterwards. He and Luke Heard were at university together; they were the two brightest people in their year, but the Diddler was brighter. Heard hates to lose at anything, so the problems started back then. There was quite a bit of animosity and, according to the Diddler, it got worse when he met Edith, because Heard had gone out with her first.

'It calmed down after they graduated, for they went their separate ways for a while. The Diddler went off to work with an investment house in London and Heard went straight into Paris Simons.

'Seven or eight years after that, Paris Simons decided to appoint a strategist, someone at partnership level responsible for long-term investment decisions. Heard assumed that he would get the job, but instead, the senior partner of the day went out and head-hunted the Diddler. Animosity turned to hatred then. The Diddler told me that he could have had Heard blown out the door, but he didn't. It turned out to be a big mistake, for the guy formed a sort of rival cabal within the partnership; there were disputes and arguments over every major decision, even although the senior partner always came down on the Diddler's side.

'Then one day, said senior partner — his name was Rawlinson — dropped dead in the car park. The Diddler had enough votes on the board to get the job, but he knew that if he did, Heard and his clique would leave and set up their own firm. So he beat them to the punch. He left Paris Simons to them and founded Daybelge, taking a couple of partners and a few big clients with him.

'Six months later, the Stock Market crashed. Today, just about every fund manager under the sun will claim to have seen it coming and to have gone liquid in anticipation, but the Diddler was one of very, very few who actually did. When it happened, the investment trusts which he had set up were holding nothing but gilts and cash.

'With the market on the floor, he reinvested in blue-chip companies and sunrise industries. When the smoke cleared, Daybelge was far and away the biggest independent fund manager in Scotland, and probably the most respected in Britain.

'The Diddler may have been a rotten footballer, a real wee gossip and a fornicating little bugger, but as a fund manager he was a bloody genius. That was why he would have landed the Golden Crescent deal, no question.'

Pringle tugged at an end of his moustache. 'Aye,' he said, 'the Golden Crescent deal. I've heard about that.'

'I think that was what prompted the hostilities at the Christmas party,' Andrew John suggested. 'It was only a rumour back then, but already the talk was that Daybelge was the top target.'

'Did Heard make any reference to it?'

The banker frowned. 'Come to think of it,' he began. 'I do remember him saying, at one point, "You look like the cat that's got all the fucking cream: but just you wait. It'll go sour on you before long." '

62

Karen laughed. 'I don't know why I'm leaving the force,' she said. 'I might as well still be drawing the money, if you're going to bring the whole bloody office home with you every night.' She settled herself down beside Andy on the big living-room sofa, her legs tucked up under her. Before them, the coffee table was strewn with files, photographs and statements.

'Don't worry,' he promised her, with a grin. 'This is a one-off. The Big Man heard me say something pompous on radio yesterday and he's called my bluff.'

'I didn't think you were pompous!' she protested. 'I thought you sounded very sensible and completely committed. But what exactly have you been doing for the last hour or so, while I've been busying myself in the kitchen?'

'I've been reading the papers in the Alec Smith investigation, going back to the very start. Bob can't shake off the notion that there's a link between it and the Shearer murder, and the hit-and-run on him as well. He's asked me to confirm it or kill it off.'

'But I thought that Smith was a closed book, more or less.'

'As far as I'm concerned, it is. I'm just rereading it.'

'And what have you learned?'

'I've learned that Alec Smith liked his nuts…'

'Before they were burned off.' Karen murmured.

'Cashews, actually. I've learned that of all the people interviewed in North Berwick, not one had ever been inside Smith's house. I've learned that he was seen around walking his dog, but that at other times he let the animal run loose. I've learned that on the night he was killed, North Berwick was a ghost town; hardly anyone seems to have been out on the street. The pubs were full, though.'

'No suspicious sightings? No furtive bloke spotted carrying a Safeway bag with a wrench, a knife and a blowtorch in it?'

'No. One guy saw a figure in an anorak carrying a big parcel, but that was all.'

'An anorak? It was a warm night.'

Andy grinned. 'Makes no difference in North Berwick. Even on a mild night it can turn windy all of a sudden, and the haar can come in off the sea without warning.'

'So, to sum up, you've been wasting your time for the last hour?'

'Yeah,' he sighed. 'There's only one thing that struck me as slightly peculiar.' 'What was that?'

'Something from the post-mortem report, actually.' He leaned forward and picked it up from the coffee table. 'Sarah remarks that Smith was very fit and that judging by the musculature of his legs he must have taken a lot of physical exercise; walking, running or cycling, she suggests. Yet…' He paused.

'Yes?' Karen asked, eagerly.

'Yet Bob told me that Alec Smith gave up playing football with his Thursday night crowd because his right knee had packed up on him. Either he made a miracle recovery afterwards, or he was lying.