Last Resort (6 page)

‘Maybe the same insurance company should hire me,’ I suggested, ‘to find out who put heavy doses of Zolpidem and hydrogen peroxide in the pakoras, the first to knock him out, the second to make him vomit. I take it you’re having the stomach contents and blood analysed.’

‘The client isn’t paying for that. See, I was right,’ she said. ‘You should write crime novels.’ Then she paused. ‘Do you really think I should?’

‘I would,’ I told her. ‘In a thirty-year police career I’ve never heard of anyone dying like that, just from having a few beers and eating his dinner, least of all a young fit man.’

‘Jimi Hendrix?’ Sarah suggested.

‘Go and read his PM report. He was drugged up to the eyeballs when he choked to death.’

‘Hey, you’ve got me worried,’ she murmured.

‘No reason to be,’ I said. ‘Call the insurers; tell them you’ve consulted an independent source and been advised that tests are necessary.’

‘Okay, I will; first thing in the morning. Got to go now; I’m almost home.’

‘Give the kids a hug for me. Love you.’ And I really do.

Mia had come back to me while I was speaking to Sarah. I was about to return both calls when she beat me to it.

‘Sorry,’ she began. ‘When you called I was on air, just coming out of a commercial break.’ She sounded nervous.

‘Understood. How’s the job going?’

‘Very well, thanks. I’m building an audience already. Drive-time’s a good slot to have, because a lot of people tune in for the local traffic info. The trick is to keep them listening once they’re home, and I seem to be doing that. Healthy audience equals happy advertisers and sponsors . . . so happy that the boss has asked me if I’ll do a Sunday morning show as well.’

‘I’m very pleased for you,’ I lied; I didn’t begrudge her success, but I’d have preferred it to be happening in another country, ‘but I doubt that you called me to give me a career update. What’s up?’

‘I had a creepy caller this afternoon,’ she replied, ‘around ten past four. I get all sorts of people phoning in, all ages, not just kids like I had on the Airburst station in Edinburgh, when you and I met. They’re supposed to be vetted before they’re put through, but this one got past.’

‘How old was this caller? Was it a man or woman?’

‘It was a man; I can only guess at his age, but the voice was mature, husky, like a smoker.’

‘Did he give his name?’

‘Of course. He wouldn’t have got on air otherwise; he was called Linton, or so he said.’

I felt my eyes widen, but I did my best not to react in any way Mia could pick up on.

‘First name or surname?’

She paused. ‘I don’t know; my producer didn’t say before she put him through.’

‘What did he say that spooked you?’ I asked, trying to sound impatient.

‘He said that he was calling on behalf of a female friend who was too nervous to phone in herself. He said that she had a son who’s in prison, the product of a brief relationship back in the nineties. He said that the boy had been convicted of a serious crime, and that his father knew about it but was refusing to acknowledge him.’

‘Fuck!’ I whispered.

‘I had trouble stopping myself from saying exactly the same on air,’ Mia admitted. ‘But I managed. Instead I asked him if he had a question. He said yes, how would I advise his friend. Should she out the father, who’s a prominent figure, even though he’s threatened her, physically, if she ever does.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told him that if his friend feared for her safety she should report the father to the police and ask for protection. He was going to come in with a follow-up, but I cut him off and cued up a song, three minutes ahead of schedule. As soon as it started I told my producer never to put the guy through to me again.’

Her voice rose as she spoke, and I could hear fear in it. ‘Bob, what was that about?’ she exclaimed.

‘Maybe it was genuine,’ I replied. I was trying to talk down her alarm.

‘Are you kidding?’ she snapped back at me. ‘It was some sort of a weird message, to me, to you, I don’t know, but he was telling me something, not asking. He knows whose son Ignacio is, Bob, and if he goes public with it, God knows what might happen to him in jail!’

‘Calm down, Mia.’ I wasn’t feeling too calm myself; the mention of that name had wound me up tight. ‘Did he try to get through again?’

‘No.’

‘Do you have a record of the call?’

‘Of course; we have to record all our output.’

‘Sure, but do you have the originating number?’

‘Yes. I asked about it as soon as I came off air. It was an Edinburgh number. Do you want it?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘text it to me as soon as we’re done here. Mia, has there been any follow-up? Have you had any calls from the media? I know the press sometimes monitor live radio looking for controversy.’

‘No, there’s been nothing.’

‘Then don’t panic. Does your employer know about Ignacio?’

‘The MD does; I told him my whole life story as soon as we began talking seriously about the job. But nobody else knows, and nobody here has ever linked me to the case or to my mother’s death. I’m on the payroll here as Mia Spreckley; all the coverage referred to her as Bella Watson. Her maiden name was never used.’

She had a point: almost. When Ignacio Centelleos, a Spanish national according to his birth certificate and passport, appeared in court charged with the culpable homicide of Bella Watson and with disposing of her body, the trial judge, Lord Nelson, and the prosecutor, Moira Cleverley, knew the full story, but it was never told in open court.

It had been presented as a family dispute in which Bella had gone berserk with a cleaver and had been stabbed by the boy in his mother’s defence. Mia’s name had never been mentioned; neither had mine, but I had come clean to Archie Nelson and to the Lord Advocate, both of whom were due me a couple of favours. The affair had been kept as discreet as possible, for Ignacio’s sake, not ours, but it wasn’t watertight.

‘But it was known,’ I sighed. ‘That’s what her neighbours called her; all her household bills had that name too. If anyone wanted to find out who you were, it wouldn’t take long. Even the world’s slowest search engine would turn you up inside a minute.’

‘Who would want to?’ she wailed. ‘This Linton character: does that name mean anything to you, Bob?’

‘It does now,’ I growled. ‘If it’s any consolation, I think that call was a message, but to me, not to you.’

‘What sort of a message?’

I took a few seconds to think about that, and about the events of the afternoon, not least the timing of my encounter with Carrie McDaniels. That had happened a couple of hours before the call to Mia.

‘A threat; the clear implication is that Linton – it’s a forename, by the way; the other one’s Baillie – thinks he knows who Ignacio’s dad is, namely, yours truly. The guy’s interested in me, for some reason; I believe that he got to know that I’d found out, and decided to send me a warning. It might even have been his way of introducing himself to me.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’ Mia asked. ‘Find Mr Baillie and put the fear of God in him?’

‘That would be difficult for me right now, since I’m in Spain. When I’m back, I’ll deal with him, but as things stand, I don’t believe it’s in his interests to go public with the story that I’m Ignacio’s dad. There wouldn’t be enough money in it for him.’

‘This is about money?’ she gasped.

‘Most things are,’ I growled. ‘Baillie will have to show his hand eventually. Until he does, he’s not my biggest concern.’

‘Then what is, for God’s sake?’

‘For one, a missing man here that I’m trying to find. For another, unless he’s taken a wildly inspired guess and it’s come off, I want to know how the hell he found out the truth about you, me and our boy.’

Six

L
inton Baillie hadn’t used his own phone to call Mia’s programme. As soon as her text arrived with the number the station had logged, I couldn’t resist dialling it, but something told me that if he was playing games, he wasn’t going to deal me a good hand.

I let it ring for half a minute; just as I was about to give up it was answered. A male voice said, ‘Hullo,’ tentatively.

‘Is Mr Baillie available?’ I asked.

‘How the fuck would Ah ken, mate?’ the man replied, laughing. ‘This is a phone box in John Lewis.’ I killed the call, leaving him with a story to relate to his pals in the pub.

Did I consider withdrawing my offer to Xavi to help find Hector, and heading straight back to Scotland to pursue Mr Linton Baillie?

Well, yes I did, but only briefly. As I told Mia, I didn’t believe there was an imminent threat to Ignacio’s security in Jail. However, I’m far from omniscient; if all the mistakes I’ve made in my life could be turned into mileage, they’d circumscribe the planet.

As a failsafe, I phoned my daughter Alex, and asked her to call on the Governor of Polmont Young Offenders’ Institution and let him in on the secret, so that the lad could be protected immediately, should the truth be leaked.

I tried to get away without telling her why I wanted it done, but she knows I’m not an impulse buyer, and that there’s a specific reason for everything I do. When I told her about Baillie, and Carrie McDaniels, and the call to Mia’s programme from a public phone, she went volcanic.

‘Who is this man?’ she shouted. ‘I’ll find him, I’ll go to court and I’ll tie him up in an interdict so tight his bloody eyes will pop out! He won’t be able to come within a mile of you or any member of our family.’

‘Thanks, love,’ I said, ‘but that won’t help. The interdict itself wouldn’t be secret; it would draw attention to the problem. When I’m ready, I’ll make his eyes pop myself. But there’s one thing you can do. D’you remember me telling you that I had a second DNA test done on Ignacio and me?’

‘Of course I do. You used a lab in Glasgow, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. I went there in person, and dealt with the director of the clinic personally; I gave him the samples, but I didn’t say whose they were. He assumed that it was police business, and I didn’t correct him: but I did pay with my own debit card.

‘I’d like you to have a chat with him; not a threatening chat, mind, just a conversation. Without saying why, ask him to check whether there’s been any unauthorised access to the records of the tests.’

She was still fizzing with anger. ‘Oh, I will, don’t you worry,’ she murmured. ‘I won’t threaten him with anything; I’ll let him make another assumption, that’s all.’ She paused for a couple of seconds. ‘Dad, can’t I do anything about this man Baillie? Knowing he’s out there, using Ignacio as a weapon against you . . .’

I understood her frustration. At that moment, I’d have liked to be standing on the guy’s doorstep, with no witnesses.

‘There is one thing,’ I suggested. ‘Sauce says that he writes true crime books. See if you can find any, and read them. They might give you some insight into the man.’

‘I will do,’ she promised. I heard her draw a breath. ‘Pops,’ she continued, although she sounded hesitant, ‘is there any chance this could have leaked from within the police force?’

‘That’s a fair question, love,’ I conceded, ‘but I don’t believe so. Yes, a DNA link between me and Ignacio was established during the investigation into Bella Watson’s murder, when they ran his sample through the national database, but the only people who knew about it were Sammy Pye and Sauce Haddock, who investigated the murder, Arthur Dorward, the forensic team leader, and his technicians . . . and two others. When Arthur saw the findings he reported them directly to Maggie Steele and Mario McGuire, as chief constable and assistant chief. The knowledge went no further than that group and none of those would talk, none of them.’

‘Not even the technicians?’

‘No chance.’

Her silence told me that she wasn’t one hundred per cent convinced.

‘Trust me on that,’ I insisted.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Certain. Now go on, do as I asked.’

‘Okay, I will, but you do one thing for me. Put this distraction right out of your head and focus on what you’re in Spain to do; leave Baillie to me, and get on with considering your future. By the way,’ she added, ‘Andy said he wants to talk to you about that when you get back.’

I smiled as I pocketed my phone. Andy Martin, my daughter’s partner, and first chief constable of the new unified Scottish police service, had talked to me about nothing else in the weeks since he’d taken up his post.

I hadn’t ruled out all of the suggestions he’d made, but I was clear that whatever I did would be on my terms, and I wouldn’t be calling anyone ‘Sir’ . . . the truth is, I was never very good at that . . . especially not him, the guy I’d given a leg up to as a raw young detective constable, twenty years before.

I had made my calls from Xavi’s garden; there was a chill in the evening air, but nothing in comparison to December Scotland. I took a deep breath and then exhaled, gazing up at the stars. I’ve always liked dark skies; maybe, when finally I do retire, I’ll take up astronomy . . . that’s if I don’t buy that boat I’m forever promising myself.

I heard the squeak of an unoiled hinge from behind me, and turned to see Xavi, standing in the open patio doors, his head touching the top of the frame. I strolled back towards him.

‘All well at home?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ I replied, then moved on quickly. ‘Did you call your Mossos friend?’

‘Yes, and I caught him in his office, as I thought. I’m sorry it took so long, but here you don’t simply ask for a favour. You make a bargain, and Comissari Canals is a bloody tough negotiator.’

‘Even when you’re reporting a potentially stolen car?’

‘Particularly so, when it’s me calling him: the managing director calling the police chief.’

‘Did he ask the wrong questions?’

‘No, he’s a good guy; he’s having a major raid on drug importers next week, and I’ve promised him a splash in all our outlets when he’s ready to go public with the results.’

I smiled. ‘I know how the game works,’ I said. ‘You and I played it ourselves a few times, in Edinburgh when you ran the
Saltire
.’

He nodded. ‘I suppose we did,’ he chuckled, ‘but you always got a hell of a lot more out of it than I did. Come on, let’s have dinner and talk over old times. I feel a lot better than I did before you got here, knowing that I’m actually doing something about Hector.’

He led the way indoors and through to a long dining room; there was a big pine table in the centre, and it was set for six, although it could have seated three times as many, easily. Sheila was waiting for us, and with her were Paloma, Joe and a woman I hadn’t met.

‘This is Carmen,’ Xavi said, leading me towards her, ‘Joe’s partner.’

She smiled as she extended a hand; she was of medium height and slim, with dark hair and beautiful brown eyes. I knew that she had to be in her mid-fifties, but she’d have passed for ten years younger. In her presence Joe had a twinkle in his eye that hadn’t been apparent earlier.

‘The artist,’ I murmured, as we shook hands.

She nodded. ‘The policeman.’

‘Señora,’ I replied, ‘your work is much more distinguished than mine.’

‘Wow!’ Xavi laughed. ‘Dad, you’d better watch this guy.’ He caught my surprise at the paternal reference. ‘I thought he was my father until I was in my twenties,’ he reminded me. ‘I’ve never broken the habit completely.’

Dinner was a quiet family meal, a blend of local and British, with a salad of chorizo and other
embotits
(thinly sliced cold sausages; there are seventeen varieties in Catalunya) as the starter, followed by roast chicken and chips with fried onion rings on the side. Dessert was Crema Catalana, the local version of crème brûlée, but with more cinnamon; it was home-made, not shop bought . . . as most are, in most restaurants . . . and finished off by Sheila with a blowtorch, to melt and brown the sugar on top. I suspected that she had prepared it in my honour, for it’s quite fiddly to make.

As we ate, I stuck to sparkling water; I don’t like mixing cava with anything else, and besides, I keep an eye on my intake these days, particularly when I’m away from home.

As Xavi had promised, the dinner table chat was personal rather than business. Paloma was keen to hear about my family; I told her it was extended, and that my children with Sarah had a much older half-sister, just as she had Ben.

‘Does she treat them like brothers and sisters?’ she asked. The question surprised me and that must have registered on my face, for she added, ‘Sometimes Ben treats me as if I was his niece, or even his daughter. Yes, he’s eighteen years older than me, but still he shouldn’t talk to me as if I was just a kid.’

‘I suppose Alex does the same, sometimes,’ I admitted. ‘She doesn’t have children of her own, not yet, so she does spoil them, especially Seonaid, the youngest; and she’s very protective of them . . . all of them.’ I had a flash recollection of her fury when I’d told her of the possible threat to Ignacio. ‘It doesn’t bother me; it’s natural. The counter-question, Paloma, is how do they treat her? How do you think of Ben?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, he’s my brother, that’s all, and I remind him of that every time he gets stroppy with me.’

‘When does he do that?’ Sheila asked, with a trace of annoyance.

‘Usually after I’ve beaten him on the Playstation. He’s a bad loser.’

‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘I must have a word with him about that; his father had the same unfortunate trait. I’ve never noticed it in Ben before . . .’

‘Why should you have?’ Xavi asked, with a grin. ‘Dads and sons, it’s different, but you don’t have a pissing contest with your mum.’

‘Good point,’ she conceded. ‘Nor should a grown man with his twelve-year-old sister.’

‘You said “he had”,’ I observed. ‘You spoke of your first husband in the past tense. Does that mean . . .’

She shook her head, firmly and quickly. ‘No, it doesn’t, not necessarily. I’ve thought of him in that way from the moment he walked out the door, seventeen years ago. He never left a forwarding address or got in touch. A year later, when I wanted to divorce him, I tried to find him through his employers, but they told me he’d changed jobs. I had to wait for another year before I could get rid of him legally. I have no idea where he is now, but I’ve never had any reason to think that he’s dead.’

‘Does Ben have any contact with him?’

‘I’d be amazed if he has. Xavi, you talk about competition between fathers and sons, but Gavin McNeish was downright jealous of Ben right from the start, and it got worse the older he became. I don’t know why I tolerated it for so long.’

Her frown deepened and then she added, ‘No, I suppose I do. It was his job. He was a long-distance lorry driver, and he had routes that took him right across Europe. He could be away for as long as three weeks at a time, and when he came home he expected to be waited on hand and foot. “Me first”, that was his philosophy. If anybody ever crossed him, or told him he was wrong about something, he’d go into a terrible huff.’

She sipped some wine. ‘The bugger never spent a penny on Ben either, or on me for that matter. He paid the mortgage and that was it. When he was home, it was my salary that fed him and clothed our son. We never went on holiday as a family; I took Ben to Center Parcs once, when he was ten, but he wouldn’t even go there.’

‘You put up with it for too long, my dear,’ old Joe said. ‘I treated my wife with perfect respect, yet she walked out on me and on Xavi.’

‘You treated her with total indifference,’ Xavi countered, ‘but I know you had your reasons; we won’t go there.’

‘I suppose I did, Joe,’ Sheila agreed, ‘but he was away far more often than he was at home, and when it was just the two of us, Ben and me, it was fine.’

‘Why did he leave, in the end?’ I asked.

She sighed. ‘To this day,’ she replied ‘I don’t know. Another woman? Possibly. The only thing he said was, “Look, Sheila, this isn’t working for me any longer.” Then he packed all his clothes in the cases I’d bought to take Ben on holiday, put all his other things in a box, and went off in the cab of his lorry.’

She smiled, suddenly. ‘And did me a bigger favour than he could ever have imagined. Not that long afterwards, Xavi came into A&E having fallen off his bike, and we reconnected, twenty years or so after we’d met as teenagers.’

‘Wherever the guy is now,’ her husband said, ‘I hope he knows how it worked out. I’ve often thought I’d like to meet him, just so I could shake his hand.’

‘I could find him,’ I murmured.

‘I’ll bet you could,’ he said, ‘but on balance I think it’s best left as it is.’

‘I’ll still be having a word with my son, though,’ Sheila declared, ‘as soon as he comes in. Getting stroppy with his little sister, indeed!’

Xavi winked; he was more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. ‘If he comes in,’ he murmured.

‘Why shouldn’t he?’ she asked.

He beamed at her. ‘You haven’t met our fashion editor, have you?’