Private Investigations (36 page)

‘What more is there?’ he protested.

‘Walter Hurrell didn’t kill himself.’

‘What?’ He looked at Mario, then Mann. ‘But you said he did.’

‘Oh, he fired that gun all right,’ Lottie replied. ‘But he was well dead when he did. When we took another look at the flat, we found another bullet, on the right side of the bed, wedged between the floor and a skirting board. Whoever shot him wiped the pistol clean, put it in his hand, fired again, and then put another bullet in the magazine. Only Hurrell’s prints were on the weapon and it appeared that it had only been fired once.’

‘Whoever shot him,’ Eden repeated. ‘It could have been anyone.’

‘But it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘My other half is a pathologist. She did Hurrell’s autopsy, and she is meticulous. One of the things that she checks for as a matter of routine is sexual activity; when she did that with Hurrell she noticed something unusual. There were traces of soap in his pubic hair. She gave it a good comb through and she found something else; it wasn’t all his. There were a few hairs in there that had become detached from another person . . . female, in case anyone’s wondering.’

I looked around, steadying myself with a hand as the boat rocked on a sudden swell. ‘A further detailed search found matching hairs to those, attached to a large blue towel in the bathroom. The hypothesis is this. Hurrell’s partner washed his genitalia after he was dead, in an attempt to remove all traces of herself and then washed herself, possibly took a shower.’ I paused. ‘Now why would she do that?’ I asked.

‘Why?’ Rory repeated.

‘Possibly because she had to be somewhere in a hurry,’ I replied. ‘What time did you take off from Edinburgh last Thursday night? ‘

‘Nine o’clock. It was supposed to be eight, but we were held back because Mum was . . .’ He stopped, abruptly. ‘Hold on a minute. What are you suggesting?’

‘Yes,’ Eden exclaimed, ‘be very careful here , Bob.’

‘I’m being as careful as I can, but this is a fact. There’s a CCTV camera at the end of Moray Mews. It covers the front entrance of every property there. Walter Hurrell died around seven on Thursday evening. The street camera shows nobody entering or leaving his flat at all on that day, yet somebody left there.’

‘Then it must have been by the back entrance,’ he declared.

‘Agreed,’ Sammy Pye said. ‘Your house has a back door as well, doesn’t it, sir, through the garden flat where Rory lives? And you have a security system, professionally installed, professionally maintained, with central video monitoring of cameras throughout the house, and also at each entrance.’

Eden nodded. ‘That’s correct.’

‘Yesterday morning,’ Pye continued, ‘under the terms of a warrant granted to us in private by the Sheriff Court, we took possession of the full day’s recordings for last Thursday. They show Mrs Higgins leaving through her son’s flat at a quarter to six and returning by the same route at ten past seven. Ten minutes later they show her leaving by taxi. We have the cab number, and we’ve spoken to the driver. He confirmed that he took her to the airport. He said she seemed agitated, and told him to get a move on. Not a good idea,’ he added. ‘He made a point of catching every red light along the Queensferry Road.’

‘Do we need to prove it by DNA comparison?’ I asked. ‘It’ll be done easily and it’ll be conclusive.’

‘No,’ Rachel whispered, as everyone on board stared at her with the same intensity, even Dan Provan, whose last surprise had probably come fifty-something years earlier when a midwife picked him up by the feet and slapped him on the arse.

‘Silly man, he’d gone too far.’

‘Did he want more money?’ I asked. ‘Was the jewel money not enough?’

She looked at me, right eyebrow raised. ‘Did he ever want more!’ she snorted.

‘Rachel!’ Eden shouted, rushing across to stand between us as if he could protect her. ‘Shut the fuck up! Don’t say any more.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ she chuckled, ‘way too late. What he wanted, Bob, was for me to leave Eden and go off with him. He knew that half of all this is mine, and he was greedy.’ She patted her husband on the shoulder. ‘My husband may be a boring, neglectful little man, and I may have sought other options from time to time, but I’d never leave him.’

I nodded. ‘How long were you and Hurrell . . .’

‘A few months. It was my initiative. He was guilty and fearful for his job after the first time, but he was in my pocket by then.’

‘Was it also your initiative for him to kill Mackail?’ Mario asked.

‘Damn right it was,’ she retorted. ‘I was there when he assaulted Eden. I’d have called the police, but Eden wouldn’t hear of it. Pity about that; in hindsight I can see that if I had done, he’d have been arrested and none of the rest would have happened.’

She had a point; that hadn’t occurred to me.

‘When we found out from Hodgson that he’d stolen the boat, well, that was it.’ She looked at me again. ‘Walter went too far there,’ she said. ‘I was appalled when I heard what he’d done, but again, it was too late.’

‘So you told Hurrell to kill Mackail,’ I challenged.

‘I told him to scare him as badly as possible.’ I didn’t believe that, but I led her on. ‘Again, Walter went too far.’

‘And the child?’

‘You were right. She was to be held until her father told us where our boat was.’ She glanced at Eden, who had slumped on to a bench seat beside her. ‘His name is Gates, by the way,’ she told him, ‘but Bob’s right. He drives a missile submarine, and that, I imagine, makes him pretty much inviolable.’

‘And Francey?’

‘Walter did that, of course; he decided the man was a risk, and shut it off. There, I wasn’t too angry when I heard. The lout assaulted my son, after all.’

‘His girl didn’t, though.’

Rachel shrugged.

‘When did you decide that Walter was a risk himself?’ I asked.

‘Who says I did?’ she shot back. ‘You have no sight of me entering or leaving his place last Thursday, only my going and coming from Moray Place. As for my . . . my traces, as it were, I was a regular caller, so you can’t pin them to that night. The extra gunshot he could have fired himself any time, and if he washed his cock regularly, so what?’

Her self-confidence restored her husband. ‘You’re right, Rachel,’ he said as he stood. ‘Silence from now on and let’s fight this thing.’

I nodded. ‘You do that, Eden. But please don’t hire my Alex for the defence. I wouldn’t want her to go down in flames this early in her career at the bar.’

‘Don’t you have confidence in her?’ Rachel asked.

‘Oh yes,’ I laughed, ‘make no mistake about that. If you want to brief her to enter your guilty plea, that’ll be fine by me: because you are done, by two things.

‘One is that ring you’re wearing on your right hand, that nice emerald and diamond piece that I noticed last Monday. I’ve seen it since then, in a photograph attached to the list of property that Jock Hodgson reported stolen from his house, along with his laptop.

‘Two, and even more damning, on the day of that burglary, and three days later when the poor bugger was tortured and killed, Walter Hurrell was in the Spire private hospital having a hernia operation. I know this because it was on the medical records made available to my dear lady when she did his post-mortem.’

I watched her confidence evaporate, like a piece of ice in the California sun. It seemed to flow out of her.

‘You didn’t only leave hair samples on Hurrell,’ I continued. ‘You left some prime specimens on the floor around the chair where you tied Hodgson up. They’ve been matched already. Doing that wouldn’t have been a problem for you, by the way. You’re a strong woman, and he wasn’t the fittest bloke, plus you had a gun. Isn’t all of that right, Lottie?’

‘Yes indeed, sir,’ Mann called out. ‘We also found a butane blowlamp tossed away in the garage. There was a bar code on it that told us it was sold in B&Q Hermiston Gate, Edinburgh, just after nine on the day Hodgson died. And that in turn led us to the buyer. A classic mistake of the amateur criminal, sir.’

‘I know the one you mean,’ I said. ‘You should never pay by card, Rachel, always cash.’

I looked at Eden and then at Rory. ‘I’m sorry, guys, she did it, and more. At this moment DCC McGuire has people searching every CCTV tape from last Monday evening, trying to find Rachel’s car on the way to and from the Flotterstone Inn to the meeting I believe she had Hurrell set up for her. And they’ll find it. Your security tapes show her leaving Moray Place on that evening, and getting home just in time for her birthday party.

‘Sammy, Lottie,’ I said to the two senior detectives, ‘you should make the arrest together. That way you’ll both get brownie points with the chief constable.’

Sixty-Five

Eden’s insurers were as good as their word, almost. They met the full cost of my investigation, but they claimed that they had only ever offered two per cent of the insured value, not the ten he had mentioned. Still, a hundred grand wasn’t to be sneezed at. I thought about buying a smallish boat with the cash, but not for long. Instead I put two-thirds into a trust fund for Ignacio, Mark, James Andrew, Seonaid and Sarah’s bombshell, and donated the rest to children’s charities.

Mario’s search team did find video of Rachel’s car heading to and from the Flotterstone Inn, but there was no clear image of her at the wheel. She ran out of luck, however, in Wemyss Bay, when Jock Hodgson’s nosy neighbour, who never let anything pass her by, told Dan Provan that she had seen her heading towards his house on the day of his murder.

That was enough for the Crown Office to charge her with the torture killing. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life with a minimum tariff of eighteen years. The murders of Mackail, Dean Francey and Anna Harmony remain unsolved, officially, the files still open should evidence turn up in the future, but it won’t.

When the case was heard, the Lord Advocate, who appeared for the Crown, went out of his way to praise Sammy Pye and Lottie Mann, Sauce Haddock and Dan Provan.

By the time Rachel appeared in the High Court, Eden had been in Monaco for three months; he won’t be back. Rory is running Higgins Holdings, and has poached Marcella Mega from Destry as his executive assistant.

The First Minister did indeed offer me the chair of the Scottish Police Authority. Rather than tell him where to stick it, as I’d let Mario believe, I told him who to stick in it. He accepted that advice and appointed Sir James Proud, my predecessor as chief in Edinburgh and one of my two career mentors.

Jimmy will have a new chief constable to call to account. Sir Andrew Martin, my former best friend, was accused by a tabloid newspaper of nepotism in promoting his ex-wife so that he could be closer to his children. The source was never revealed, but if he was a wizened would-be wizard, I wouldn’t be astonished.

The charge against Andy was an insult to Karen, and her solicitor won a very quick apology, but the mud stuck to him, and he felt compelled to resign. Or did he realise that he was in over his head and take the easy way out?

I don’t know and I don’t care, but I am very happy that he was replaced by his senior deputy, Margaret Rose Steele, who should probably have had the job in the first place. I still hate the very notion of a single Scottish police service, but at least now it’s in safe hands, far safer than Andy’s or mine.

I’m still waiting for Amanda Dennis to call me and hold me to that promise I was forced to make. I know she will, at some point, but I’m in no hurry. I’m perfectly happy working part-time for InterMedia, and basking in the glow of impending fatherhood, yet again. Sarah’s bombshell will drop around the same time that Ignacio is released from prison. That will be interesting to say the least.

And Bob Skinner, consulting detective? What about him?

He’s open to offers, on condition that they’re interesting and challenging. Speaking of which, I’ve just had a message from my grown-up daughter, the fledgling solicitor advocate at the Scottish Criminal Bar, to say that she needs to speak to me urgently, ‘about a problem that’s come up’.

I wonder what that could be.