Authors: James Oswald
'God no, Bob. What would I do? And besides, if I left, who'd cover for you while you were reading the paper all day?'
They reached the front door to the tenement block and McLean noticed the same strategically placed stone defeating the lock.
'You all right for getting home, Bob, or d'you want the spare bed?'
'Nah, I'll have a bit of a walk, get some air. Who knows I might even be sober by the time I get home.'
'OK then. Sleep well.'
Grumpy Bob waved without turning as he walked away down the street. McLean wondered how far he'd get before he decided to flag down a taxi.
~~~~
18
Penstemmin Security Systems occupied a large area of reclaimed land down on the edge of the Forth between Leith and Trinity. The building itself was a featureless modern warehouse. It could have been a DIY store or a call centre, although those weren't usually surrounded by razor wire fences, motion sensors and more CCTV cameras than the average prison. The walls were painted in battleship grey, and a strip of darkened glass ran around the whole building, just under the eaves of the wide, shallow roof. In the near corner it extended down to the ground, and a small entrance foyer.
Constable MacBride parked the pool car in the only space marked 'visitor'. The white Vauxhall Vectra looked very much out of place alongside the shiny BMW and Mercedes four by fours. The director, McLean noticed, could afford to come to work in a brand new Ferrari.
'Looks like we're in the wrong business.' He followed the constable across the car park, enjoying the cool morning breeze coming in off the firth. MacBride's face was pale, his eyes hooded after the previous night's celebratory excess. No doubt the Tequila Slammers he'd been matching with PC Kydd had robbed him of a few million functioning brain cells. He looked bemused at first, then finally noticed the collection of expensive machinery.
'I never imagined you as a petrolhead, sir. They say you don't even own a car.'
McLean ignored the desire to investigate just who 'they' where. There were worse things to have said behind one's back. 'I don't, but that doesn't mean I don't know anything about them.'
Having already checked in at the gate to the whole fenced-off complex, they had to confirm their identities through an intercom and CCTV system before they could enter the building. They were met, finally, by a smartly-dressed young woman with aggressively short hair and a pair of heavy-framed rectangular spectacles so thin she must have seen the world as if peering through a letterbox.
'Detective Constable MacBride?' She held out her hand to McLean.
'Er, no. I'm Detective Inspector McLean. This is my colleague, DC MacBride.'
'Oh, I'm sorry. Courtney Rayne.' Hands were shaken and then the young woman lead them through a series of security doors and into the heart of the building. It was a vast cavern of a place, open up to a ceiling supported by a spider-web trellis-work of beams high overhead. Industrial strength air conditioning units pumped frigid air into the huge space, sending a shiver down McLean's spine.
The room was divided into small squares by office partitioning boards. In each one, a dozen or more people sat at individual computer screens, telephone headsets strapped to their heads, talking to small microphones that hovered like picnic wasps in front of their lips. The noise was a loud hubbub, punctuated by occasional bursts of action as a team leader bustled over to one workstation or another.
'Our centre monitors over twenty thousand alarm systems throughout the central belt,' Ms Rayne said. McLean decided that she was definitely a 'Ms', even if she was married.
'I'd no idea Penstemmin was such a large organisation.'
'Oh, they're not all Penstemmin systems. We run monitoring services for perhaps two dozen smaller companies. The pods on the far side of the hall are dedicated to Strathclyde police region, these two here are monitoring all alarm systems in Lothian and Borders.'
'Pods?'
'It's what we call our teams, inspector. Each group is a pod. Don't ask me why, I haven't a clue.'
Ms Rayne lead them through the middle of the great hall, along a wide aisle that separated the two great cities of Scotland like their enmity of old. McLean watched the pasty-faced tele-workers at their consoles. As the sleek-suited woman strode past, they ducked their heads, feigned busyness even if they had been doing nothing beforehand. It didn't feel like a happy place to be working; he wondered what the staff turnover was like; if any left bearing a grudge and classified information.
At the far side of the hall, a set of stairs led up to a long balcony. Glass fronted offices ranged the length of the building, their single occupants no doubt the owners of the flash motors in the car park outside. The poor sods on the floor would likely get the bus to work, or park in the street outside the complex.
Having walked the length of the building to reach the stairs, they now made their way back towards the front. McLean suspected that there was a quicker way which would have brought them swiftly from the front reception area up to this outer office, but for some reason Ms Rayne had wanted to show them the great hall. Perhaps it was just a way of impressing the police force with their professionalism; if so it had failed. McLean was tired of Penstemmin Security Systems already, and he hadn't even begun his questioning.
They reached a large frosted glass door, set in the middle of a frosted glass wall that angled across the corner of the building. Their guide paused only long enough to tap lightly, then pushed the door open and announced their arrival.
'Doug? I've Inspector McLean from Lothian and Borders CID here. You know? The constable who called?' By the time McLean had crossed the threshold, the man she addressed had risen from his seat behind an even bigger desk and begun his trek across the empty expanse of his office. Never mind pods, they could fill this with water and keep a half dozen whales in here.
'Doug Fairbairn. Pleased to meet you Inspector. Constable.' He was all smile; flashing white teeth in a sun-browned face. He wore a loose shirt with heavy gold chain links at the cuffs, a tie neatly tied around his neck. His jacket hung over the back of his chair, and his suit trousers were expensively tailored to hide a growing paunch.
'Mr Fairbairn.' McLean took the proffered hand and shook it, feeling a firm hold. Fairbairn oozed confidence. Or arrogance; too early to tell which. 'Is that your Ferrari outside?'
'F430 Spider. You like cars, do you inspector?'
'Used to go to Knockhill and watch the racing as a lad. Don't have the time for it now.'
'She's too powerful for Knockhill. I have to go down south for my track days. Took her to the ring last year. Here, have a seat.' Fairbairn gestured towards a low leather sofa and armchairs, grey in a minimalist style. 'What can I do for you inspector?'
No offers of tea and biscuits. Just self-absorbed banter.
'I'm investigating a series of burglaries. Professional jobs, you might say. Certainly not your average smash and grab. At the moment we've only got a tenuous link between them all. But in each of the last three cases Penstemmin alarms have been fitted. And in each of those cases the alarms have been circumvented without anyone being the wiser.'
'Courtney, the file please.' Fairbairn nodded to the stern businesswoman, who had remained standing, close to the door. She left, returning moments later with a single manila folder.
'I presume this is about the recent break-in at the home of Mrs Douglas. Most regrettable, of course, inspector. But I've had a full systems analysis run and there's nothing to suggest that the alarm was tampered with.'
'Does your system log when the alarm was set, sir?' DC MacBride had his notebook out, pencil poised.
'Yes, it does Constable. Mr Douglas had a top of the range installation. Our computer system has the alarm set at..' Fairchild opened the folder and pulled out a printed sheet. '... Ten thirty am on the date in question. It was switched off again at a quarter to three in the afternoon. Monitoring recorded a few electrical spikes during that time, but there's nothing unusual there. The city's supply is notoriously dirty.'
'Could someone have bypassed the alarm? I don't know, reset the monitor log?'
'Technically it's possible, I suppose. But you'd need access to our mainframe, which is behind a foot thick steel door in the basement. That means you'd have to get in here first, which I can assure you isn't easy. And you'd have to know our systems inside out, plus know the latest passwords. Even then you'd likely leave a trace. We've had the whole system tested by the best computer security experts in the business. It's virtually fool-proof.'
'So if the system was bypassed, then it would have to be an inside job?' McLean enjoyed the look of panic his words brought to Fairbairn's face.
'That's not possible. Our staff go through a rigorous vetting process. And no-one has access to all parts of the system. We take great pride in our integrity.'
'Of course you do, sir. Can you tell me who installed Mr Douglas's system?'
Fairbairn looked through the folder, flicking the pages nervously. He didn't seem so confident now.
'Carpenter,' he said after a while. Geoff Carpenter. He's one of our better fitters. Courtney, can you see if Geoff's out on call right now? If not, get him to pop in will you?'
Ms Rayne disappeared once more from the room. The sound of a muted telephone conversation came through the still-open door.
'I assume you want to talk to him,' Fairbairn said.
'It would help, certainly,' McLean replied, fixing the man with a stare. 'Tell me, Mr Fairbairn. Ms Rayne says you provide monitoring services for several other alarm companies from this centre. Could you give me a list of their names?'
'That's very confidential information, inspector.' Fairbairn hesitated for a moment, playing with his fingers much less skilfully than Grumpy Bob. Finally he wiped his palms on his expensive silk trousers. 'But I dare say I could let you know. After all, we work in close partnership with all the police forces in Scotland.'
'I'll make it easier for you. Do the names Secure Home, Lothian Alarm Systems and Subsisto Raptor mean anything to you?'
Fairbairn's look of alarm increased. 'I... Er, that is, yes, inspector. We monitor Edinburgh installations for all three of those companies.'
'How long have you had this arrangement with them, Mr Fairbairn?' Constable MacBride flipped over a page in his notebook and licked the tip of his pencil. The lad had been watching too many cop shows on the telly, McLean thought, but the effect was amusing to watch.
'Oh, umm. Let me see. We actually bought out Lothian just a couple of months ago, but we'd been running their back-operations for them for about five years. Secure Home would have started using us the year before last. Subsisto Raptor came on board about eighteen months ago. I can dig out the exact dates if you want. These are your similar incidents, I take it?'
'They are indeed, Mr Fairbairn.'
'I hope you're not trying to imply...'
'I'm not implying anything, Mr Fairbairn. Merely investigating a line of enquiry. I don't think your company is systematically trying to rip off its customers. That would be stupid. But there's a leak somewhere in your system and I aim to find it.'
'Of course, inspector. I'd expect nothing less. But please realise, our reputation is everything. If it got out that our system was failing, we'd be out of business within the year.'
'You know that's not really in my interests, Mr Fairbairn. Companies like yours make our job a lot easier, generally speaking. But I will catch whoever's doing this.'
*
'I'm missing something, constable.'
'Sir?'
'Something obvious. Something I should have seen from the start.'
'Well, Fairbairn's not telling us everything, that's for sure.'
'What? Oh, no. Sorry. I was thinking about the dead girl.'
They were driving up Leith Walk, headed back to the station. Away from the coast and blocked in by the tall buildings on either side, the growing heat of the day made the car oppressive. McLean had the window open, but their progress was too slow to create a meaningful breeze, the traffic brought to a standstill by something up ahead.
'Take the next left.' McLean pointed to a narrow side street.
'But the station's up ahead, sir.'
'I don't want to go back there just yet. I want to have another look at that basement.'
'In Sighthill?'
'We'll get there a lot quicker if you stop asking damn fool questions.'
'Yes sir. Sorry sir.' MacBride pulled the car into the bus lane, crept forward and took the turning. McLean regretted snapping at him, unsure why he was suddenly bad tempered.
'What do we know about this girl?'
'Umm, what do you mean sir?'
'Well, think about it. She's young, poor, dressed in her best. What was she doing when she was killed?'
'Going to a party?'
'Hold that thought. A party. Now let's assume the party was in the house where we found her. What does that suggest?'
Silence as they negotiated the warren of roads around Holyrood Palace.
'That whoever owned that house when she was killed knew about the murder?'
'And who owned the house?'
'It belonged to Farquhar's Bank. The title deeds showed that they acquired it in nineteen twenty, and kept it until they were bought out by Mid Eastern Finance eighteen months ago.'
'OK, let me rephrase that. Who lived in the house? For that matter, who ran Farquhar's Bank before it was sold?'
'I'm not sure, sir. Someone called Farquhar?'
McLean sighed. There was definitely something he was missing.
'We need to talk to Mid East Finance. They must have some staff from the old bank on their payroll. Or at least have records of who worked there. See if you can set something up when we get back to the station.'