Private Investigations (21 page)

Thirty-Five

The door stayed in its frame, for Ilse Brogan was at home when they returned to the student flat. She was pale faced and shocked, with tear bags under her eyes. ‘I’ve just seen you on telly,’ she mumbled through a handkerchief as she let the detectives in. ‘I can’t believe it. There couldn’t be a mistake, could there? If there was a fire . . .’

‘No,’ Pye said, quietly. ‘There’s no mistake, Ilse. Anna had a locker at Lacey’s. There was a brush in it, and we found hair samples for a DNA comparison. It was her, beyond a doubt. Same with Francey; we got a familial match with a sample from his sister.’

‘So the bastard got her killed.’

‘She got herself killed,’ Haddock murmured. ‘She didn’t have to be there. That was her choice.’

‘And Dino took that kid? You’re sure of that too?’

‘Again, completely. He did more; he put her mother in a coma.’

‘Did Singer know?’ she asked.

‘We think she knew something,’ Pye replied. ‘What we want to find out is, how much. How far was she implicated and why? We need to look in her room. Once we’ve done that, we need you to be frank with us.’

The young woman blinked, then whispered, ‘Okay. It’s this way.’ She led them down the hall, past the bathroom to the last door on the left. She stood watching as they put on disposable gloves and began to search.

Pye moved to the built-in units. He opened the wardrobe; a few garments remained, three dresses and a couple of jackets, but most of the hangers were empty. Six pairs of shoes stood on the floor, neatly ordered. He checked the rack of drawers at the end; they had been cleaned out.

‘Here,’ Haddock called out. The room’s single bed was close to the window. He reached across it and picked up a carrier bag, branded with the Marks and Spencer logo, then emptied its contents on to the duvet. They were clothes, a young girl’s clothes. He peered at the label on a woollen jumper. ‘Five year old. And there’s a till receipt.’ He picked it up and read. ‘Dated yesterday morning, just after nine.’

‘Talk to us, Ilse,’ Pye said, quietly.

She leaned against the doorframe, still dabbing lightly at her eyes. ‘I don’t know much,’ she began. ‘And I’ve never seen that bag before. All I can tell you is that Singer left early yesterday morning, eight at the latest, and came back a few hours later, I think around two. She went straight to her room and shut the door, hard. I was studying in mine, so I never saw her, but I could hear noises, stuff being pulled about, drawers opening and closing and so on. That went on for about half an hour, then she left again. Celia was in the living room. I heard Singer tell her that she had to split, and that she’d be gone for a long time, maybe for good. Then she said, and she said it really loud, “Whoever comes looking for me, tell them you didn’t see me leave and you know nothing.” Then I heard Celia ask her what was the matter, and she said something like, “My crazy boyfriend, he screw everything up.” Then she swore in Polish, and I heard the door slam.’

‘What time did she leave?’ the DCI asked.

‘It must have been three o’clock.’

‘Did you speak to Celia about it after she was gone?’

‘Of course. She said Singer had taken her suitcase. She only had the one that she used when she went back to Poland to see her folks, that and her big shoulder bag. And she was still wearing those big “fuck me” shoes that she’d gone out in earlier on.’

‘You could have told us this last night,’ Haddock said.

Ilse winced and chewed her lip. ‘I know, but we thought we were helping her. You see, we thought she was running away from bloody Dino, and that she needed a head start. If we’d known she was going off with the idiot, of course we’d have told you.’ She sighed, heavily. ‘Are we in trouble?’ she whispered.

The detectives exchanged looks. ‘We’ve just locked Jagger up for something similar,’ Pye told her, severely. ‘But he helped them both, and he kept quiet about it. You thought you were helping Anna for the right reasons, so we won’t hold it against you. Besides,’ he added with a gentle smile, ‘we don’t have a spare cell down at Fettes.’

‘Thanks. I’m sorry, really.’

‘It’s okay.’

She frowned. ‘So,’ she ventured, tentatively, ‘the thing with the poor little girl. Are you saying definitely that Singer was involved?’

‘It looks that way,’ Haddock replied. ‘The child wasn’t murdered, if that’s any consolation to you. She died from natural causes, technically, if being stuck in the boot of a car can be called natural.’

‘The mother? Will she live?’

‘The last we heard from the hospital, she was still unconscious, but stable. She’s got a chance.’

‘Fingers crossed.’

‘That won’t help a fractured skull and swelling on the brain,’ Pye said. ‘Come on, Sauce. Repack that M and S bag and bring it. Let’s go and see if we can piece this thing together.’

Rather than return to Fettes, the two detectives took a break in compensation for a missed lunch, and walked a short distance to a café in Nicolson Street that Haddock knew. As they waited for their lattes and pastrami-filled baps to arrive, the chief inspector broke the silence.

‘Are you knackered?’ he asked.

‘Moderately,’ his sergeant admitted. ‘But I’d only admit it to you. After that run-in with the communications woman this morning, nothing will stand between me and a result.’

‘My view absolutely,’ Pye concurred, pausing as a young waiter delivered their order. ‘Of course,’ he continued as he picked up a bap, ‘it could be argued that we’ve got a result already. We’ve identified Dean Francey beyond any doubt as the man who put Grete Regal in the Western General, and abducted Zena. And now Dean Francey’s dead. Whether we caught him ourselves or not, it’s still a tick in the plus column.’

‘We’ll let Isabel Cant spin that one,’ Haddock snorted. ‘You know as well as I do, Sammy, the result that matters is finding the person who paid for the job and, we’re assuming, put Dino and Anna Harmony away. That’s the only one that’s going to earn us a pat on the head from Sir Andrew, or from the DCC for that matter.’

His boss nodded. ‘I know,’ he admitted as he finished chewing. ‘I was just trying to make lunch go down better, that’s all.’

‘Piece together, you said earlier,’ the DS continued. ‘How do you see Anna’s role in this? We know she was in on it.’

‘You tell me; I’m busy eating.’

‘Okay. This thing was pre-planned; I’m guessing that Dino was smart enough to have nosed around in Garvald, and to have established Grete’s school routine with the wee one. He’d have seen that they walked along a pretty much deserted road and that he couldn’t have imagined a better spot to snatch the child.’ He paused to take a swig of his latte.

‘Obviously, killing the kid was not the objective or he’d have done it there and then; he was ordered to take her. He chose Sullivan’s Beamer for the purpose, and kitted it out by cushioning the boot.

‘If the snatch had worked, but what would he have done then? He couldn’t have looked after a captive five year old. He’d have needed help to do that, and if it was female help, so much the better.

‘That’s where Anna fits in. We’ll never know what story he spun her; maybe he told her he was looking after a niece. Whatever, it worked. She was besotted with the scrote, and she fell for it. So he sent her to Marks to buy clothes for the child, and said that he’d meet her there.’

Pye nodded. ‘I buy all that. If he hadn’t run into big Bob’s motor it would have worked.’

‘It would have worked,’ Haddock pointed out, ‘but only until they got wherever they were headed and opened the boot.’

‘True. It’s worth remembering that when Dino and Anna ran away from the scene of the accident, in different directions, neither of them knew that the child was dead. Sure Dino must have recognised that what he did to Grete left him in big trouble, but he may have thought he could get away with that.’

He nodded, as if to confirm his thinking. ‘I imagine that he called Anna, as soon as he was clear. Probably they arranged to meet, then he headed for North Berwick, to pick up his cash, his passport and maybe his dad’s van. He nearly managed it, only we got in the way. At some point, he or Anna must have heard that Zena had died. Without that, maybe he hoped she could be kept out of it, but with it . . . even he must have been smart enough to know we’d crawl over everyone who ever knew him, and there was Anna, having bought kids’ clothes that very morning, on her credit card.’

Pye stopped for breath and more bap.

‘And at that point,’ Haddock said, ‘Anna headed for home and packed her suitcase.’

‘Yes, and Dino phoned his client, paymaster, call him what you like, said he wanted the rest of his cash, and a meeting was arranged. All that we know, pretty much for certain.’

‘So what don’t we know?’ the DS asked.

‘Where were they going yesterday morning?’ Pye paused. ‘How many sets of clothes are in that bag?’

‘Three of everything.’

‘Which suggests that wherever they were headed they were planning to stay there for a few days, long enough for Zena to be ransomed.’

‘If ransom was the motive.’

‘What else, Sauce?’

‘Pain. Mental torture. Revenge. Which brings me back to the man Mackail. When are we going to front him up, gaffer?’

‘When we’ve answered the question that’s still open,’ he replied. ‘Where were they going to take her?’

Haddock finished his bap, then nursed his coffee, staring at the table while Pye, a slower eater, polished off his. As he did so, his eyes began to narrow. ‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘what did Nancy Walker say, about Glencorse Reservoir?’

‘Remind me.’

‘She said there’s a lot of activity around it, that it’s a bit of a resort for fishermen, hill walkers and the like. And she said there are holiday cottages up there. You don’t suppose . . .’

‘I don’t know,’ Pye replied. ‘But the fact that they met their killer close by might point in that direction. If that’s where they were planning to hole up, might we be lucky enough for the accommodation to have been booked by the person who was paying Dino?’

‘Let’s find out,’ Haddock said, reaching for his phone.

Thirty-Six

‘There are seven holiday cottages dotted around Glencorse Reservoir and the Loganlea Reservoir beyond,’ Jackie Wright reported, before Sauce Haddock had closed the door of the CID room behind him. ‘I’ve located and spoken to all the owners,’ she continued. ‘There are four of them in total. Your guess . . .’

‘Guess?’ Haddock exclaimed, eyebrows raised.

The DC grinned. ‘Sorry. Your intuitive speculation was spot on. At this time of year they usually lie empty, but one of them was rented for three weeks, beginning last Saturday.’

‘By whom?’ Pye asked.

‘That’s as far as your luck goes, for the tenant was a young woman; she paid the full rent in advance plus deposit, in cash, to the owner’s agent, a property firm in Walker Street. The description their guy gave me was a dead ringer for Anna Harmony, so I emailed him her photo. He confirmed it.’

‘Bugger,’ the DCI grunted. ‘A door opens, then some bastard slams it in your face again.’

‘So now,’ the DS said, ‘can we, please, go and tackle this Mackail man?’

‘Hold your horses, Sauce. You keep going on about him, but I still want to follow up on Sullivan. He had a link with Dino through the nephew, that was established, but for him to have known Anna as well . . .’

‘Come on,’ Haddock countered, ‘if you’re suggesting that Sullivan set up the job, even though he had no apparent reason, would he let Dino use his own car to do it?’

‘If he planned to kill them afterwards, why not?’ Pye smiled, then turned to another detective constable, the quiet man of the team, who was seated at the next desk to Wright. ‘Have you had any joy with that check I asked for this morning, William?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the thin, lugubrious DC Dickson replied. ‘Three weeks ago, Callum Sullivan withdrew twelve thousand pounds from his personal account, in cash. The money was in used notes, at his request.’

‘What a surprise,’ the DCI laughed. ‘And where does he bank?’

‘He uses the Clydesdale in Lothian Road; he does all his personal banking there.’

Pye, smiling in triumph, looked at Haddock as if he were peering over imaginary spectacles. ‘Well?’ he asked.

The DS glowered back at his boss. ‘Nobody loves a smartarse,’ he muttered. ‘Back to North Berwick?’

‘No, we’ve been there enough in the last couple of days. Jackie, I’d like you to call Mr Callum Sullivan and tell him we’d like his help with a couple of aspects of the inquiry, and we’d be grateful if he’d join us here at Fettes tomorrow morning.

‘William, while we’re talking to Mr Sullivan, I want to know everything there is to know about the man that we didn’t find out in the check we ran a couple of days ago: business life, private life, secret life, everything. Start now and don’t stop till you’ve answered all the questions.’

Thirty-Seven

‘There’s no doubt?’ I asked, as I sat beside her on the edge of the bed, staring at the words on the stick that she had handed me.

‘None.’

‘This says it’s certain?’

‘It’s as certain as it gets.’ Sarah snorted. ‘We can do it again if you doubt it. You can even come in and watch me pee. But the result will be exactly the same. I’m pregnant, Bob.’

‘Jesus.’

‘We can call him that if you like,’ she said, ‘as long as he’s a boy.’

To my surprise, I started to giggle. ‘We might have to,’ I chuckled, a little manically. ‘We’ll be running out of boys’ names soon.’

My mild hysteria passed very quickly. ‘Have you thought any more about this?’ I asked.

‘Pretty much all day.’

‘And?’

She shrugged. ‘I’m forty but I’m fit. There’s no physical reason why I can’t deliver a normal healthy child. At my age any consultant will want to do an amniotic fluid test to check against the outside chance of Down’s Syndrome and other foetal abnormalities. As for my work, maternity leave is my statutory right, regardless of my job.’

‘And?’ I repeated.

‘No,’ she said, firmly. ‘You first. How do you feel about another child?’

I drew a deep breath, then exhaled slowly, and all the time I was thinking. I didn’t reply until I was truly certain of what I wanted to say.

‘I’m fifty-three,’ I began, when I was ready, ‘and I’m fit. I have my last police medical, eight months ago, as evidence. I have four children by three different women, plus one who’s adopted . . . Ray Charles had twelve by ten, so I’m nowhere near a record-breaker. My daughter is thirty, and my older son, the one I’ve only just learned about, is about to be twenty. The thought of all that should scramble my brain, but it doesn’t. I love all my children in different ways, but I love them all equally. Love isn’t something you can quantify. It isn’t something of which there is a finite supply in every person. It’s unlimited.’

I took Sarah’s hand and looked her in the eye. ‘If you go ahead and have this baby, I will love him or her as I love all the others, no more no less, in the same special, individual way.’

‘Is that a yes?’ she asked, quietly.

‘It’s a statement of unqualified support for whatever you decide,’ I promised her.

‘In that case, it’s a yes.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ve been certain since I saw the message on the tester. I’ve been doubting myself all day, trying to pin down how I feel, but when I saw that word in the window, it all went away.’

‘How pregnant are you?’

‘From the date of my last period, five weeks; I’ll be due some time in October.’

‘Around the time Ignacio’s due for release on parole. I’d better call the architect,’ I said. ‘We will definitely need to crack on with that extension.’

‘I’ll sell the Edinburgh house; that’ll pay for it.’

‘I can afford it,’ I protested.

‘We can afford it,’ she corrected me.

‘Can we afford a small wedding reception as well?’

She dug me in the ribs, and looked up at me, sideways. ‘You sure about that?’

‘I have been for a while,’ I confessed. ‘I’ve been meaning to broach the subject.’

She winked at me. ‘In that case, I accept.’

‘Champagne to celebrate?’ I suggested.

‘Not until the bombshell arrives,’ she said. ‘We should let Trish provide that,’ she laughed. ‘This keeps her in certain employment for the foreseeable future.’

In the event we decided to postpone the announcement until the weekend, when Alex had promised to visit. Instead we had a normal family supper, with me wondering whether we’d need a bigger table as well.