Private Investigations (19 page)

Thirty-Two

I have never been the best sleeper; all through my life there’s been plenty to keep me awake, whenever I close my eyes and try not to think of it. Scenes from my childhood, scenes from my early adult past, and scenes from more recent times; they’re all there waiting to be replayed. The most recent, and because of that the most vivid, is set in a mountainside lodge in the Pyrenees, but we won’t go there.

It’s worst when I’m on my own. Mostly my nights are uninterrupted when Sarah’s beside me. It marks her out as special to me; none of the others, not even Myra, and certainly not Aileen, ever came close to banishing my nocturnal horrors.

I tried that night, after I’d left my Seonaid to the peace that I hope will last her a lifetime, but as I’d known, it was a no-hoper. What kept me awake? What else but the newest clip in my library, the vision of sad-eyed little asthmatic Zena Gates, revealed, reproachful, after spending her last moments in terrifying darkness, struggling for one last breath that didn’t come.

I left her to it, because I didn’t have the courage to face her. Instead, at around four thirty, I rose, showered, had what would be, given the time, my first shave of the day and went downstairs. I made myself coffee, a good strong filter brew of which Sarah would have disapproved. It was a minor act of cheating on her, I suppose, and I did feel guilty, but I needed it.

In the office, I picked up the McGarry file again, and had another look at it. I was no more impressed than I’d been the first time. I’d covered up for the guy when I’d spoken to Eden, but I was still enough cop not to have criticised him to a civilian. I made a mental note to call stolenboats.org, on the crazy off chance that it might have some intelligence on the fate of the
Princess
, then put it aside, turned on the computer and read my online morning newspapers. The dead child case was covered wall-to-wall as I’d expected, with many more questions than answers, but nothing about Dean Francey and his girlfriend had been picked up at that stage. I guessed that even the virtual media must sleep sometimes.

Sounds from the kitchen at seven thirty told me that Trish had come in from her apartment to start getting the kids up and ready for school. She’s a godsend, that girl. She’s been with the family for years, since not long after she arrived from Barbados, and shows no sign of wanting to leave us. It occurred to me as I listened to her rattling dishes that if Sarah did turn out to be pregnant again it would be good news for her.

I went through to tell her that Sarah was in Edinburgh and that she was in full charge of the brood. Then I went upstairs and dug out my running gear. At least twice a week, all year round, I run in the morning. In the summer I can go where I want, but when the nights are long, and the sun comes up with the eight o’clock news, I have to keep to the village, where there’s enough light.

A complete lap of my route is just over four kilometres. I did that easily in under half an hour, concentrating on nothing but the music from my iPod. My choice varies; it’s dependent on how fast I want to run. I had stuff to get out of my system, so that morning I chose Status Quo.

When I was done, rather than tackle another lap, I went into the village gym and spent some time on the weights. I’ve never been one for bulking myself up, but I do have levels that I like to maintain, although it’s harder now that I’m past fifty. Fifteen minutes in the sauna and I jogged home for my second shower of the day, feeling more like a human being and much less alone.

I called Sarah from the bedroom. I was taking something of a chance; the two autopsies might have gone on into the early hours and she might have been trying to grab some sleep. But no, she wasn’t. In fact, she was in her office.

Pathology is a big subject in university terms; she works entirely on the forensic side, and with Joe Hutchinson’s retirement looming, she was about to become head of a five-person unit that is part academic, part NHS, providing services under contract to the Crown Office, not only in and around Edinburgh, but in Fife and across much of the Scottish Central belt .

She could have based herself pretty much anywhere, but she had chosen the Royal Infirmary, the department’s administration centre. That’s where she was when I reached her.

‘Have you been home?’ I asked. She still has her own house, a relic from when we were still apart. It had been useful until then, but it was something we had to address.

‘Not for long,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t get cleared up in the mortuary until much before three, but I needed to be around early to take the first lab results.’

‘Everything as expected?’

‘Pretty much. There’s something in the tests that might help the guys, but then again, it might not.’

‘The guys?’

‘Sammy and Sauce. Mario’s decreed that the links between these murders and the child are so close that they’re a single inquiry.’

‘I’d have done the same,’ I admitted.

‘Yes,’ she laughed, ‘and when you were chief, if your head of CID had taken a different view you’d have overruled him.’

‘That’s how bad I was?’ I asked.

‘From everything I’ve heard . . . although I wasn’t around for much of that time. How were the kids? Good night?’

‘Better than I had. That package I got from Mario wasn’t exactly full of information. In fact it was bloody annoying; a real shoddy job done by a real shoddy operator. I know I wasn’t in Strathclyde long, but honest to God, love,’ I grumbled, ‘I should have had a better grip on it than that.’

‘So think of this as your second chance,’ she suggested. ‘Got to go now. Have a good day and I’ll see you later.’

‘With that testing kit?’

‘Yes, I promise. I’ll call by Boots on the way home.’

Downstairs there was peace and quiet in the kitchen, with all three youngsters having gone off to school in my absence. I made myself a slightly late breakfast, melon, muesli, rye toast and mineral water, then carried it to the office, on a tray, to enjoy it at my leisure.

I had finished, and was taking a second look at the online
Saltire
, paying particular attention to the coverage of Sammy Pye’s investigation . . . by that time the Flotterstone deaths were being reported but not labelled as homicide, or linked to the other . . . when my email alert pinged.

I checked my box and saw a message from Luisa McCracken. I opened it and read:

Mr Skinner,

Please find attached a list of all guests and other attendees at events and receptions on board MV
Princess Alison
over the period requested by Mr Higgins. Should you need any more information, please give me a call.

She was either a fast worker or the list wasn’t very comprehensive, I surmised. As soon as I opened it I saw that the former was the case. Her boss had been more socially active than he’d led me to believe, for it ran to several pages. I scanned through it, quickly but carefully, looking at every name that had been recorded.

Some of them were known to me, people about town, a few stars of sports and entertainment, other men and women who were there, as the list indicated, for no other reason than friendship with Eden Higgins, and one or two that he might have had reasons for being seen with himself, politicians for example, and a couple of mid-ranking members of the royal family.

The rest were all business contacts: clients of his companies, suppliers to those businesses, and executives and directors of the enterprises themselves. I studied them, looking for anything that might point me in a positive direction, but nothing jumped out at me.

‘Why didn’t you just sell the
Princess Alison
, Eden,’ I found myself wondering aloud, ‘and buy the Royal Yacht
Britannia
? That would do the hospitality job and you’d never have to leave Edinburgh.’

I sat down and went to work. I made a copy of the document, then used it to strip out all of those labelled ‘Casuals’, the footballers, the friends and the freeloaders. When I was finished, everyone who was left had a business reason for being on the
Princess
. That was where I would begin . . . or rather, where somebody else would.

Thirty-Three

I picked up the phone and made two appointments then went back upstairs and changed my clothes, swapping my casual gear for a dark suit and a light blue tie, my new uniform. When I’m on business, I want people to know I’m serious.

Both of my visits were in Edinburgh; I took the train from Drem, since I can’t abide driving through the chaos that generations of bad traffic management has brought to the city centre.

The first was to a small office, just off the Royal Mile, not far from the station. The name on the door was ‘CMcD Investigations’. Its occupant had been surprised by my call, and I’d made a point of letting her stay curious.

‘I need to see you,’ I’d told her. ‘I have some work for you; it’s confidential and nobody should get to know that it’s being done. It’ll be boring and tedious but it’ll need to be done thoroughly. I’ll give you the details when I get there.’

Although her office suite had only one room and a toilet, Carrie McDaniels’ door had a secure entry system. It was opened with a buzzer, once I’d identified myself through a microphone. This was in obedience to a sign that said, ‘Say your name, then state your business.’ I glanced up as I spoke and saw a tiny camera focused on me; a sensible precaution, given that she was a female lone trader in a business that isn’t without its risks.

‘How are you doing, Carrie?’ I said as I stepped inside. ‘How’s the boyfriend?’

‘I’m okay, but I can’t vouch for him,’ she replied. ‘We’re spending some time apart, so I can work out how I feel about a man who took me for a fool and proved himself right.’

Carrie and I had met a few months before, when she was on a surveillance assignment in which, unfortunately for her, I was the subject. Her route to professional private investigation had been through an insurance company and a few years in the Territorial Army Military Police. It hadn’t taught her everything she needed to know, but she had impressed me once I’d sorted out a few things between us.

‘I must admit I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again,’ she confessed.

A reunion hadn’t been uppermost in my mind either, but I don’t hold grudges. I had a job that needed doing. Time being money, the task was well below my pay grade, and it made sense to contract it out. The only question was, to whom?

I know a couple of people who did brief stints in the police service, then left to set up as private investigators. If they’d impressed me they might still be in the force, but they hadn’t so they weren’t on my very short list of candidates. On the other hand, Carrie had been a Territorial military cop for several years, and she hadn’t backed off when she’d been posted to Afghanistan. That moved her right to the head of the queue.

‘I can walk away if you’d rather,’ I replied.

‘No, no,’ she laughed, ‘don’t do that. I need all the business I can get.’

‘Times are tough?’

‘They’re okay, but you know how it is in this trade. It takes a while to build up a solid customer base; at my stage you grab all the work that comes your way.’

‘Hopefully you’ve learned not to take on work without knowing exactly who your client is?’ Her basic naivety had been at the heart of the initial difficulty between us, and later it had come back to bite her.

‘Oh yes,’ Carrie replied. ‘I’m very careful who I work for now.’

‘Do you want to work for me?’

‘Is it legal?’ she asked, with a smile.

I grinned back at her. ‘Anything that isn’t I’ll be handling myself.’ I opened my briefcase and took out a folder. ‘I need you to run background checks for me on a list of people. I want to know if any of them have a grudge, overt or hidden, against this man.’ I took a photo, one that I’d printed myself, from the file. ‘Do you know who he is?’

She took it from me and studied it, carefully. ‘That’s Eden Higgins, isn’t it, the businessman?’

‘Got him in one. How much do you know about him?’

‘Personally, nothing. Although . . .’ she hesitated. ‘A few months ago, his wife made a claim against the insurance company I worked for, and I checked it out.’

‘Much involved?’

‘Quite a bit. A suite of her jewellery was nicked, a necklace, matching bracelet and a pair of earrings, Christ knows how many carats of diamonds in the lot. She and her husband were staying in a country house hotel in Argyllshire, attending some sort of international business summit. When she arrived she deposited the jewels in the hotel safe. The following evening, when she wanted them for the main event dinner, they were gone.’

‘Did the insurers pay out?’

‘They had to,’ she said. ‘There was some talk of arguing that the swag had been left at the owner’s personal risk, but that fell very quickly and they settled for the full insured amount.’

‘How much was that?’

‘Two hundred and fifty thou. The irony was that we insured both parties, but it’ll be the hotel’s policy renewal that’ll be hammered next time round, for its owners were held at fault.’

‘Have the jewels been recovered?’ I asked.

‘Not a chance. The local Inspector Clouseau was baffled, and the Pink Panther got away with it.’

‘Was anything else taken?’

‘Nothing. That was remarked on at the time. One of the other guests had a large quantity of bearer bonds on his possession, and they’d been signed into the safe too. They were left untouched, yet they were worth ten times what the jewellery was. The thief couldn’t have been as smart as he thought.’

‘Or a lot smarter than the police reckoned,’ I countered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Let’s say you’re the Pink Panther. You’re after jewellery. You find it, and alongside it there’s a few million quid in out-dated old-fashioned, but still entirely legal tender, and,’ I added, ‘entirely untraceable, bearer bonds. What are you going to do?’

‘Fill my pockets,’ Carrie chuckled.

‘Are you really?’ I asked.

‘Why not?’

‘Possibly self-preservation,’ I said. ‘Look, you’re a jewel thief, it’s what you do. Mainly, almost invariably, you’re actually stealing from insurance companies, not individuals. If you’re good enough to evade Clouseau, and you have a safe market for the gear, you’re free and clear.

‘But,’ I continued, ‘yield to greed or temptation . . . a hell of a lot of temptation, I’ll grant you . . . and trouser the bearer bonds, you are stepping into the unknown. Those things are a risky form of security and, historically, they’ve been used by some very risky people. Yes, they are untraceable and you could be set up for life, but the chances are you’d spend the rest of that potentially short life looking over your shoulder.’

‘I see what you mean,’ Carrie admitted. She looked up at me and winked. ‘I wouldn’t like to steal your bearer bonds.’

I smiled. ‘Best not to, I agree.’ I paused and then went back on subject. ‘I take it you didn’t meet Eden Higgins in the course of your work for your company.’

‘No. Only his wife and his son, who’s quite tasty as I recall.’

‘So you have no preconceptions of him?’

‘No. He’s just another very successful bloke. Why do you ask?’

‘Because ultimately,’ I told her, ‘he’s your client. You’re working for me, and I’ll pay you, but my assignment is from him. By the way, you never told me; which insurance company did you work for?’

‘Edinburgh Co-operative.’

That was okay; the
Princess Alison
was insured with another firm, marine specialists.

I handed her the folder. ‘Get to work. Remember; confidential and none of the subjects find out that it’s being done. I could have gone to the business staff at the
Saltire
with this, but they’d have asked why I needed to know, so don’t you take that route either. Don’t go asking journalists.’

‘Why do you need to know?’ she ventured.

I shook my head. ‘Just you concentrate on the task, and leave it at that.’

‘I’m thirty-five quid an hour,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Plus exes.’

‘That’s fine, but don’t take the piss. Any extra costs above a hundred, you clear with me first.’

I gave her my card with all my contact numbers on it and left her to get on with the job. I didn’t ask what else she had on her plate, but the lack of paper on her desk had made me think that it might not be much.

My second appointment didn’t require a taxi trip or even a long walk, only a stroll up a quarter of the Royal Mile to the Higgins Holdings headquarters on the Mound. But it wasn’t Eden that I’d arranged to see.

Luisa McCracken greeted me nonetheless; in the absence of her boss and his son, she seemed to be in charge of the small staff of analysts and accountants.

‘Was the list satisfactory?’ she asked, as soon as she met me in the foyer.

‘Entirely,’ I replied. ‘You’re a fast worker. I didn’t expect it until the afternoon.’

‘When Mr Higgins asks for something,’ she explained, ‘he never says “As soon as possible”, but that’s what he means. Have you known him long?’

Her question took me by surprise; I’ve always assumed that the term ‘confidential secretary’ is all-embracing, but apparently it wasn’t in her case.

‘Twenty years,’ I said. ‘I met him through Alison.’

‘Ah, of course,’ she murmured. ‘His sister was a police officer in Edinburgh, so you and she must have worked together. I should have realised.’

I could have enlightened her further, but I didn’t see the need. ‘I’d never met Mrs Higgins until yesterday, though,’ I volunteered. ‘Not properly at any rate.’

‘Rachel takes nothing to do with the management of Eden’s companies,’ the secretary retorted, with a little sharpness in her tone that started me wondering whether she had ever harboured ambitions beyond the workplace.

‘Wasn’t she involved at the time of the jewel theft?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t that take place at a business event?’

She frowned at me, over her long eyelashes. ‘How did you know about that? It was never reported in the press.’

‘You said it yourself. I used to be a police officer.’

‘But it happened in Argyllshire,’ she said. ‘You were based in Glasgow, were you not?’

I pinched Carrie’s analogy. ‘You don’t think Inspector Clouseau circulated details of the stolen items to every police force in the country?’

‘I suppose he would have,’ she conceded. ‘As for your question, yes, that was a business event, but sometimes it’s necessary, or at least desirable for him to be accompanied. That’s as much as Rachel ever has to do with the business . . . apart from owning half of it,’ she added.

‘She does?’

‘Of course. Higgins Holdings has no outside shareholders; Eden and Rachel own the company, fifty fifty.’ She looked at me as if she was considering how much she could tell me, then made a judgement. ‘It goes back a long way, to the start of Dene Furnishings, the original business. Rachel’s father loaned Eden the start-up cash; the deal was that everything that flowed from it would be jointly owned between husband and wife, on the record.’

Funny, I thought, that Eden would tell Luisa all that and yet say nothing about Alison and me. ‘You really do have his confidence,’ I remarked.

‘Oh I do,’ she replied, ‘but I didn’t get all of it from him. The share split’s on the record at Companies House; it’s public information. Rory told me the background.’

Did he, by God?
From speculating about her having a thing with the boss, I moved on to wondering whether she might have moved down a generation.

Either she read my mind or she knew that she’d been too frank, for she gave a quick laugh. ‘That sounds awful,’ she exclaimed, ‘as if I pump him for information. That’s not how it was; he and I were going over the company annual report when it arrived from the auditors. The shareholder information’s set out there, and he just came out with it. “You know why that is?” he said, and then he volunteered the answer.’

‘That must have pleased you, in a way,’ I suggested. ‘After all, it shows that you have the complete trust of the son as well as the father.’

It occurred to me that it showed also that Rachel had Eden by the balls, suppose Luisa did harbour ambitions there. But I didn’t say that; I said nothing, and allowed her to carry on being frank.

‘I suppose,’ she admitted, ‘although Rory really is only learning the business. His father’s bringing him in gradually, with a view to retiring in five years or so. As it is, Rachel already lives in Monaco for quite a few months out of every year. It’s an easy commute,’ she added. ‘The company has its own plane. ’

All of that set me wondering once again about her and Eden, with the cat being away so much, but I let it lie. I hadn’t come to interrogate Luisa; that had been a bonus. She’d started talking; all my experience has taught me that when people do that, if it’s news to you, shut up and listen.

‘Mr Hurrell,’ I said abruptly.

‘Yes.’ She too snapped back to the reason for my visit. ‘He’s in his room, waiting for you. He has nothing to do until Eden’s return flight gets in from London this evening.’

She led me towards a door, next to her own and two away from Eden’s office, rapped quickly on it and opened it. ‘Walter,’ she called out, ‘Mr Skinner’s here to see you,’ then stood aside to let me past.

If I’d been expecting a little man in a chauffeur’s uniform, I couldn’t have been further from the reality of Walter Hurrell as he stood up to greet me. He was around the six foot mark, in the same age bracket as Luisa McCracken, late thirties, and was dressed in a grey suit so sharp that if you’d seen Eden and him side by side you’d have assumed that he was the billionaire.

He was lean, and I suspected that the expensive tailoring covered a powerful build; he was clean shaven with a perma-tan, and his thick dark hair was brushed back from his forehead. His only irregular feature was a conspicuously broken nose that reminded me of Inspector Drake in
Ripper Street
. There wasn’t a hint of a smile as he looked at me, and his eyes were cool and appraising. We shook hands; I was prepared for a crusher grip but it didn’t come. Instead those grey eyes stayed fixed on me. ‘Ex-Navy,’ Eden had told me, but this was no everyday sailor. The guy’s body language was yelling ‘Special Forces’.

‘SBS?’ I asked.

Hurrell relaxed a little and finally I saw a flicker of a smile. ‘That obvious?’ he answered.