Private Investigations (7 page)

‘What happened?’

‘The usual,’ Sullivan sighed. ‘Another woman, Mary told me. And as can happen in these cases, she was victimised twice. She had to increase her mortgage to give him his share of the house, and it just broke her. She’d been pretty low anyway, and that was the last straw. Coming to live with me worked out well for her,’ he added. ‘There’s plenty of room in the house and she has a job at North Berwick High. Maxwell sat his Highers there.’

‘You haven’t had much luck in the marriage stakes, you and your sister,’ Pye observed.

‘You could say that.’

‘What happened to yours?’

‘Nothing dramatic. We just weren’t suited.’

‘Did you buy her half of the house?’ Haddock asked.

‘No, it wasn’t like that. I’d sold my main business . . . it made compressors for central heating units . . . so I gave Janine a generous settlement. It included our house in Polwarth. I moved out to North Berwick, and started to do what I’d fancied doing for a while, dealing in specialist cars.’ He smiled, for the first time. ‘Every man’s dream, pursuing his hobby full time.’

‘Mine would be golf,’ the DS confessed. ‘Some day, maybe I’ll play the senior tour.’

He straightened in his chair, then leaned a little closer, his hands on the table.

‘So,’ he murmured, ‘your sister’s move; you say it had nothing to do with Maxwell?’

‘No, why should it?’

‘It had nothing to do with his appearance before the panel?’

Sullivan’s eyes narrowed; he too leaned towards his interrogator. ‘What fucking panel?’

‘Three years ago, when he was fourteen, Maxwell appeared before a Children’s Hearing in North Lanarkshire. He was accused of exposing himself to a group of three-year-old girls in a park in Cumbernauld. The panel placed him under the supervision of a social worker for a year. Both his parents were at the hearing.’

‘I never knew about this! The dirty little bastard. Are you telling me he’s on the sex offenders’ register?’

‘No, he isn’t,’ Pye said, intervening. ‘There was no conviction recorded; the Children’s Hearing isn’t a court.’

‘Still, he’s a pervert!’

‘Mr Sullivan, we’re not rushing to judgement here, but the lad’s past does flag him up for attention. Does he have access to your garage?’

The uncle nodded. ‘Yes, he knows where the keys are.’

‘You’ve indicated that he has a driving licence. Does he have a car of his own?’

‘Not as such, but I’ve got a general insurance policy on all my vehicles and I let him use one when he wants.’

‘When was the last time you saw him?’

‘Last night, but . . . Fuck me, my house isn’t far from the primary school.’ He whistled. ‘No wonder Mary was having a hard time in Cumbernauld. There are no secrets in a place like that.’

‘You didn’t see him this morning?’

‘No, nor did I hear him, and I probably would have if he’d been in. He’s always got music going in his room.’

‘Does he often go out early?’ Haddock asked.

‘Not often, but it’s not unknown. As well as helping me, he works part-time down at the Seabird Centre. It opens at ten, but if there’s been an evening event, sometimes they ask him to go in early to clear up.’ Sullivan’s hands were shaking. ‘Christ, you’ve got me worried. He is a quiet lad, Maxwell, but I’ve never read anything into that. Now, I feel as if I don’t know the boy at all.’

‘Can you describe him for us?’

‘He’s tall, and he’s thin . . .’ He looked the sergeant in the eye. ‘Are you saying it might have been him that was driving the Beamer?’

‘No,’ Pye replied. ‘The description we have is of an older man, and our witness is . . . reliable, let’s say. But we do need to speak to Maxwell, if only to eliminate him. As a matter of interest, does he wear a hoodie?’

‘He’s got one.’ The reply was a whisper.

‘Thanks . . . but listen,’ the DCI added, ‘who doesn’t these days? It seems to be unofficial uniform for youngsters.’

Haddock nodded. ‘I have one myself,’ he volunteered. ‘So has my girlfriend.’

‘How do you want to handle this?’ Sullivan asked. ‘Do you want me to bring him here?’

‘No,’ Pye replied, at once. ‘If he is at the Seabird Centre, will he go home for lunch?’

‘Yes, Mary too. I usually make it for all of us. ’ He looked at his watch. ‘I should be getting back there. Can I go now?’

‘You’re not being detained,’ the DCI told him, ‘but we’d appreciate your cooperation. To be frank, we need to see the boy before you do, and we don’t want you to call him before then. Trust us, it’ll be in his best interests.’

‘Will it? Suppose he’s . . .’ He stopped. ‘No, suppose he can’t give a good account of himself?’

‘Either way, I promise you, we will be discreet. If the kid has nothing to do with this, we don’t want to mess up his life . . . or yours, for that matter.’

Eight

Mario McGuire slid his car into an empty space. It was marked ‘Reserved’, but there was nobody within half a day’s drive who would outrank him, and so he took it without a moment’s hesitation. He knew Hawick, from a brief stint in Borders CID a few years before. He had been based in Galashiels back then, much closer to Edinburgh, but the wool town had kept him busy enough.

He switched off his engine and stepped out. There was a dampness in the air, although the clouds were high and rain did not seem imminent. He looked across the car park at the building to which he was headed, a squat, three-storey structure that stood in stark contrast in its ugliness with the elegant houses on the other side of the street, but which redeemed itself by making the area a burglar-free zone.

They would be waiting for him, around the conference table, the area commander and senior staff, and the CID team that he had come to visit, as part of a tour that would take him all around Scotland, in line with Andy Martin’s decree that his senior officers should fend off accusations of centralisation by showing their faces in each local policing area as often as possible. The sandwiches would be curling up at the corners; he had been delayed by a lorry accident that had given him too much time to dwell on the awful gut-wrenching sight in the Fort Kinnaird mall.

He had wanted to stay there, to take command and drive the investigation to a swift successful conclusion. He understood the frustration that Bob Skinner must have felt, the impotence of being just another bystander. But the days of action were gone for them both. He was part desk jockey, part tourist and his one-time mentor was a civilian.

‘For how long, I wonder,’ he murmured, thinking of a night a few years earlier, when he and Skinner were celebrating the arrest of a fugitive killer in a hotel in Monaco.

‘You know, Mario,’ the chief had said, after a few drinks. ‘The traffic has to flow safely, people must be protected against yobbery and anti-social behaviour in general, and our towns and cities must be peaceful places. Ensuring all of that is part of my job; I do it as best I can. But there’s one part that drives me on and always has done. We dress it up in fancy terms but when it comes down to it, mate, we are in the retribution business. We are the fucking equalisers, make no mistake. When we nail someone like the bastard we’ve just locked up, so help me God, I love it.’

Could the man exist without that purpose in his life? McGuire was far from certain.

He was halfway to the police station entrance when his phone sounded. He took it out and smiled as he looked at the caller ID. ‘Hello, Bob,’ he said as he answered. ‘Has Sammy not been back to you with an update?’

‘No, but I wouldn’t expect him to, not yet, not unless he’s got lucky and wrapped it up within an hour or two. This is something else.’

‘Oh yes?’ The DCC was intrigued by the urgency in Skinner’s voice.

‘I’ve just had lunch with Alison Higgins’ brother, Eden. I don’t think you ever met him, but you know who he is and what he does.’

‘I know very well, he’s a very successful man, the furniture king, turned business angel and general entrepreneur; a couple of years ago, he made an offer for a controlling interest in our family business. My lovely Paula turned him down politely, but he kept at it, wouldn’t take no for an answer, until finally she stopped being polite and he got the message.’

‘That’s the man. He’s got a problem, and he’s asked for my help. Just over four months ago, his boat was stolen from the Gareloch: five million quid’s worth of boat. My old force handled the inquiry and got nowhere. It was run out of Dumbarton by a DI called McGarry. I knew nothing about it or I’d have given it a hell of a lot more clout than that.

‘Now, after all that wasted time, Eden’s been told that the inquiry’s been wound down. He’s not happy, nor are his insurers. Together they’ve asked me to review the investigation, and I’ve agreed. I’d like a copy of the police report, so that I can see what’s been done and what should have been done but hasn’t.’

McGuire had stopped, outside the Hawick station entrance. ‘You want to review a police investigation, as a civilian?’ he asked.

‘That’s what I’ve been hired to do. I could start from scratch, but that might be pointless. The chances are that all I’ll be able to tell Eden is that McGarry did a competent job and that his boat’s history. If I give the security of his mooring a clean bill of health as well, the insurers will probably pay full value and that’ll be the end of the matter.’

‘Fine,’ McGuire murmured, ‘but if you’re not satisfied that the thing was handled properly, what will you do?’

‘I’ll go proactive. I’ll make my own inquiries, fill in the blanks in the report and see where it takes me.’

The DCC made a decision. ‘I’ll need to clear it with Andy, but in principle, yes. If you do find any holes in what’s been done, we might want to take the investigation back, but we’ll cross that bridge if we reach it. One thing,’ he added. ‘McGarry’s not a DI any longer. He’s back in uniform, in Glasgow. His clear-up rates were crap, so he got culled. Okay, Bob, if the chief approves, I’ll give you the file. Hell, I might even have a look at it myself.’

McGuire heard him chuckle. ‘Do you want me to cut you in on my fee, Mario?’ Skinner joked.

‘They’re paying you?’ he exclaimed.

‘Two hundred and fifty an hour, plus expenses, plus success bonus.’

‘Bloody hell! Is the private sector that lucrative?’

‘It’s the going rate for the job these people want done. I make a lot more than that working for InterMedia. And you know what? I don’t give a shit. It’s only money. If I could choose between getting a result for my new client and coming face to face with whoever put that little girl in that car, she’d win every time.’

Nine

‘Maxwell?’ the Seabird Centre manager repeated. ‘Yes, he’s here. He’s downstairs in the exhibition area. I can ask him to come up, but it’s only ten minutes to his lunch break. If you can wait that long, it would be easier all round.’

‘Yes, I can do that,’ Haddock said.

‘You can wait in the cafe if you like,’ the woman suggested. ‘The coffee’s good.’

The detective smiled. ‘Is there anywhere in North Berwick that doesn’t sell coffee?’ he asked.

‘Not too many places, that’s true. It used to be that this town had more charity shops than anything else, but now the baristas have taken over.’ She looked across the counter. ‘Why do you want to see Maxwell?’ There was the faintest hint of suspicion in her voice.

The DS plucked his reply out of thin air. ‘I’ve been talking to his uncle about a car.’ He and Pye had agreed that they would intercept the boy as quietly as possible; the DCI was waiting in the car, parked on the adjacent harbour, out of sight of the centre.

‘Oh yes,’ the manager said. ‘Mr Sullivan’s a dealer, isn’t he?’

‘That’s right. I had a question, and he told me that Maxwell would know more about it than he does. He said I’d find him here.’

Haddock moved across to a display of souvenirs. Cheeky, his partner, was a sucker for soft toys; his eye fell on a fluffy white seal cub, and he picked it up.

He had just finished paying for it when a door opened behind the counter and a young man stepped out. He was tall, slim and wore a grey hooded top.

‘Maxwell,’ the manager called out. ‘This chap wants a word, about one of your uncle’s cars.’

The boy turned towards him, with a small frown born of curiosity. ‘What would I know about . . .’ he began, as the sergeant closed the gap between them, displaying his warrant card with as much discretion as he could achieve.

‘I’m a police officer,’ he murmured. ‘I do want to talk to you about one of Mr Sullivan’s cars, one that’s been stolen, but not here.’

‘What?’ Maxwell murmured. He seemed hesitant, not sure whether to believe what he was being told.

‘I’ll explain outside. It’s all right; your boss doesn’t know I’m a cop. Play along with it and she never will.’

The boy shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘This is a wee bit hush-hush, isn’t it?’

Haddock let him lead the way outside, then directed him to the waiting car.

‘This is my boss,’ he told Maxwell, as he ushered him into the back seat, behind Pye.

‘Nice tae meet you,’ the teenager said, turning to face Haddock as he slid in and closed the door. ‘This has got fuck all to do with one of my uncle’s cars, has it?’

‘Oh it has, really.’

‘Bollocks, you’re pulling in the usual suspects, aren’t you?’

‘Is that how you see yourself, son?’ Pye asked him.

‘No, but you guys do. You were always after me in Cumbernauld, after . . .’

‘After your wee bit of bother?’

‘Aye!’ He hunched up in the car as if he was trying to make himself as small as possible. ‘They never left me alone. But when I got beat up in the school, and I did often enough, they never wanted tae know.’

‘You should have kept your cock in your pants, son, shouldn’t you?’ the DCI retorted.

‘It was a stitch-up,’ Maxwell protested.

‘You weren’t flashing? It was somebody else’s? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No, but . . . Look, I was caught short in the park, and the toilets were locked. I was burstin’ so I had a slash against the wall of the bogs. It turned out there were three wee girls behind me, with their mothers. I never saw them, and they never saw me, until the two cops yelled at me. I turned around; I still had my thing in my hand. The two mothers started laughin’, but the polis didn’t. They arrested me, and they told the women they had to make a complaint. They said I’d done it before and that I needed to be stopped.’

‘Come on, lad,’ Haddock said, patiently. ‘You were fourteen and you did something stupid. That doesn’t make you a bad person for life, and we’re not here to dig it all up, unless you give us cause. Why would two cops fit you up, and for exposure of all things?’

‘Because my dad was their sergeant,’ the boy exclaimed, his voice rising, ‘and they fuckin’ hated him. With the women’s statements, there was nothing he could do. I went before the Children’s Panel, I got put on a social work report, and my dad got transferred to the other side of Glasgow, which was what those two shitebags wanted all along.’

He was on the verge of tears. ‘With him gone I got picked on big time at the school. Then my mum and dad fell out. She said he never stood up for me, and she chucked him out. She told Uncle Callum that he’d gone off wi’ a bird, but he never did. She never told my uncle the truth; she never told him what had happened, and she made me promise I never would either.’

‘Shit,’ Pye murmured. ‘I’m sorry, kid, but he knows now.’

The boy buried his face in his hands. ‘Thanks a fuckin’ million,’ he mumbled.

‘We’d no choice,’ the DCI said.

‘Help us with something,’ Haddock asked. ‘What time this morning did you get to the Seabird Centre?’

Maxwell sniffed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Quarter to nine,’ he replied. ‘There was a film show in the theatre last night, and it always needs sweepin’ out after one of them. That’s my job. Why? How does that help you?’

‘It tells us that you weren’t the guy in the hoodie who ran away from your uncle’s stolen BMW after it was involved in an accident in Edinburgh this morning.’

He stared, bleary eyed, at the DS. ‘You weren’t kiddin’ about the stolen car?’

‘No.’

‘Somebody stole Cosie?’

‘We’re afraid so,’ Haddock replied.

‘That’s a bugger; I like driving that car. Is it smashed up?’

‘Not too badly. Do you spend much time at Kingston, Maxwell?’

‘Uh-huh. Quite a lot. I like it there. I keep the place tidy, I clean it up after the upholstery man and when a car’s ready to go to the main showroom, I’ll give it a polish first.’

‘Do you ever take friends along to help?’

The boy’s face darkened. ‘I don’t have many friends. I was an incomer at North Berwick High, and I don’t play rugby, so nobody really wanted to know me. There’s Hazel and Dino, that’s all; they’ve been down at Kingston. Why are you asking anyway?’

‘We’re considering the possibility that the break-in might have been done by somebody who knew the place.’

‘No way!’ The protest was instant and loud. ‘They wouldn’t do that.’

‘How long have you known them?’ Pye asked.

‘I met Hazel at North Berwick High when I went there. She moved out here from Edinburgh last April. She was at a fee-payin’ school there but her dad’s business went bust and she had to leave.’

‘Is she your girlfriend?’

He shrugged. ‘I suppose.’ He looked sideways at Haddock, anxious. ‘Will she have tae find out about what happened in Cumbernauld?’

‘You haven’t told her?’

‘No chance. What would she think of me?’

‘If she really likes you, she’d believe the story you told us.’

‘Do you believe it?’

‘I’ll tell you how much I do,’ the sergeant replied. ‘We’re all one force in Scotland now, and you’re no longer a minor. If you want to file a complaint with us against the officers who arrested you, on the basis that they coerced the two women into making statements accusing you of . . . what you were charged with . . . we’ll see that it’s investigated.’ He looked at the DCI. ‘Agreed, boss?’

‘Absolutely,’ Pye said. ‘Now,’ he continued, ‘what about Dino?

‘He’s local; he’s twenty-three. I met him at the centre. He’s about the harbour a lot. His dad’s a lobster fisherman and Dino works with him. His name isn’t really Dino; it’s Dean.’

‘Surnames?’

‘Hazel’s is Mackail, Dino’s is Francey. You’re not goin’ to talk to them, are you?’

‘Have either of them ever been inside the stolen BMW, Cosie?’ the DCI asked.

Maxwell nodded. ‘Both of them. There was a gig in the Corn Exchange in Haddington a couple of weeks ago, and four of us went: me, Haze, Dino and his girlfriend, Singer. Uncle Callum let me take the car.’

‘Then I’m afraid we will need to speak to them. We’ll need their fingerprints, and yours.’

‘We never took it!’ the boy protested.

‘We’re not saying you did,’ Haddock reassured him, ‘but you’ll have left traces. Our crime scene people will need to be able to eliminate yours.’

‘Do you do this with every car theft?’

‘No, we don’t, but this one’s different. Your vehicle is connected to a crime, a serious crime.’

His eyes widened. ‘A bank robbery? Was it a getaway car?’

The DS shook his head. ‘No, not a robbery. You don’t need to know the details.’

‘He’ll find out as soon as he sees the news on telly, Sauce,’ Pye pointed out. ‘It’s a suspicious death, Maxwell. The body of a wee girl was found in the boot.’

The boy cringed; his hand went to his mouth. ‘You’re kidding,’ he gasped.

‘I wish I was.’

In a flash, a hard, accusatory look came into his eyes. ‘And you thought I might have . . . Usual fucking suspects right enough.’ He reached for the door handle. ‘Let me out of here!’

Haddock caught his arm. ‘Son, we’ve got a tough job. We’re accountable, to our bosses, to the public, but most of all to that dead kid. We have to follow up everything; we can’t make exceptions. Everybody who’s been in that car has to be traced and eliminated until we’re left with only one person, the man who took wee Zena.’

‘Was that her name?’ Maxwell asked; he was calm once more.

The DS nodded. ‘I won’t lie to you. Your history did come up and it did interest us. We’d have been negligent if we hadn’t followed it up, but as soon as we established your whereabouts this morning, you were in the clear. The same goes for your uncle.’

‘Okay, fair enough. Where do you want to take my prints?’

‘We’ll do it in the local police station. We’ll use the back door, so you’re not seen going in and out. Mr Sullivan’s been printed already.’

Pye started the car’s engine. ‘We’ll need addresses for Hazel and Dean, Maxwell. Can you help with that?’

‘Sure. Hazel’s is . . .’ He stopped in mid-sentence. ‘That’s Dino there,’ he said, pointing across the harbour at a tall, lean figure, wearing navy blue denims and a grey hoodie, who was walking past the Seabird Centre, shoulders hunched.

‘That’s handy,’ Haddock chuckled. ‘We’ve got room for one more in here.’

He stepped out of the car. ‘Mr Francey,’ he called out. ‘Dean Francey.’

The young man stopped in mid-stride and spun round. He stared at the DS for a second, and another, then broke into a run. His trainers pounding the tarmac, he slid round a corner, then leapt on to a bicycle that had been parked in a rack, and pedalled off, along the beachfront road, then into a side street.

Pye had begun a three-point turn even before the DS jumped into the front passenger seat. ‘Seat belt on, Maxwell,’ he called out. ‘I think we’re going to need more than your pal’s fingerprints.’