Hour Of Darkness (19 page)

‘Ah was supposed tae meet Bella in the Seabird Centre in North Berwick, but she never turned up. Afterwards Ah realised there was a big problem. I had the supply Ah’d picked up in Durham a couple of weeks before that but the source would be out a month’s money, and Ah don’t have to tell you how well that goes down wi’ these people.’

He stared at Pye and Haddock, looking for affirmation. The DS nodded. ‘Go on,’ he whispered.

‘That’s why Ah went tae see Bella,’ Booth said, ‘to find out where the fuck she’d been and gie her the money but when Ah got in, there was blood all over the kitchen.

‘I was shitting myself at that, I tell you. All Ah could think of was that Bella had been skimming off the take and that the folk up the chain had done her for it. So Ah took what I could, the jewel box and a few quid she had lying about, then got the hell out of there.

‘Ah thought it would be me next, no kiddin’. I started packin’ all the time. That’s why Ah had the gun when Ah walked intae the house. When Ah found your guys . . . aye, okay, Vicky shouted that they were polis, but tae me they could have been anybody. I thought my turn had come.

‘That’s what happened, honest. Ah never killed Bella, and Ah never meant tae kill Vicky either.’

He stopped, then sagged in his chair as if exhausted. Pye allowed the silence to linger for a while, and the tension abate.

‘What happened to the money?’ he asked, when he was ready.

‘Well, Ah didnae leave it there, did Ah?’ Booth exclaimed. ‘I took it away and put it back in ma hoose, in a bag behind the bath panel.’

The DI paused again, to absorb what he had been told.

‘For the sake of this discussion,’ he resumed, after a while, ‘let’s say I buy into that. Miss Birtles is bound to advise you to cooperate with the drugs squad. Frankly, so would I, but my job is still to find out who killed Miss Spreckley, whatever the motive.

‘So, leaving other issues aside, is there anything you can tell me about the flat that might help me do that? Take all the time you need to think about it. Remember, all you’ve done so far is spun me a story. Years of your life could still be hanging on what you say to me.’ He paused. ‘Would you like a coffee? I could probably use one.’

Booth nodded.

‘Me too, if you’re buying,’ Frankie Birtles said. ‘Can I have five minutes with my client?’

‘Yes, but not alone, unless he’s cuffed; I’m responsible for your safety and he is a dangerous man.’

‘I don’t believe he is, Inspector, but okay, you can have a uniform in the room.’

Chambers, Pye and Haddock withdrew, leaving a constable behind with instructions to watch over the pair, but forget any conversation he might hear. In the corridor, after the DS had been despatched to fetch four coffees and a diet Sprite, the head of CID . . . who was on a weight-loss campaign . . . leaned close to the DI.

‘That was okay in there,’ she said, ‘as it turned out. You can hand a copy of that tape to the drugs team, and they’ll thank you for it, but sunshine, you came close to ignoring an order. A nice conviction here will do your promotion prospects no harm, but crossing me could have the opposite effect.’

‘I know, boss,’ Pye conceded, ‘but I could see his eyes, and you couldn’t. I knew he was going to give up everything he had.’

The DCS nodded, then winked at him. ‘And you were right, you jammy bugger. What do you make of this supply chain he talked about? Ice, he said, methamphetamine, not heroin. That was news to me; our drugs team are going to hear about it too. They never bloody told me! They never mentioned any money either. If Booth’s telling the truth, they’ve either found it and not said, or it’s still bloody there! Either way,’ she growled, ‘somebody’s in trouble.’

Pye shrugged. ‘They’re on a separate investigation, boss, as everyone keeps hammering home. Obviously they didn’t see the need to share.’

‘They share everything with me, like you do. Them’s the rules. Well, fuck ’em,’ Chambers declared. ‘You keep that tape to yourself for a while, Sammy. If Bella’s death is linked to drugs, your investigations have crossed paths. You’ve made progress, they haven’t, so you carry the ball.’ She flexed her square shoulders, shaking out stiffness. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

‘About the chain? Methamphetamine’s not like Class A opiates. It’s synthesised, it’s highly addictive, and it’s fashionable. It’s quite plausible that someone with the know-how could set up a wee factory in a quiet place and operate under the radar. The next step in the investigation is to get as much as I can out of Booth, then see if we can find that van driver.’

‘How?’

‘We’ll have dates and locations of the pick-ups. That’ll be a start.’

‘True,’ she agreed, just as Haddock returned with a tray, looking miffed by his relegation to coffee boy. She read his expression and smiled. ‘Good for the soul, Sauce,’ she said, as she opened the interview room door for him.

‘My client wishes to cooperate as fully as he can,’ Frances Birtles declared, as the refreshments were distributed, and Haddock made a show of giving one specific mug to Booth. The prisoner looked at him suspiciously, as if he suspected him of spitting in it . . . exactly as the DS had intended.

‘However,’ she continued, ‘he has to know who he’s dealing with. You know what I mean, Sammy. He wants to be assured that if he offers you assistance you don’t then hand him over to the drugs squad, to face charges that will get him longer inside than the culpable homicide that he’s already up against.’

‘He’s dealing with me, Frankie. If his information results in an arrest for Bella Watson’s murder, and if it leads further up the drug supply chain, he’ll be a Crown witness in both cases. That’ll mean he can’t be charged with selling anything.’

‘Do you understand that, Patrick?’ she asked.

He nodded. ‘Will Ah have to go in the witness box?’

‘Probably,’ Pye said. ‘There’s a limit to what I can offer. As a minimum I want a list of all your meetings with the van driver, dates, times and places. The registration number would be a bonus. Did you note that, or can you remember it?’

‘Ah don’t even remember what make of van it was, only that it was white, and didnae have any names on the side. It was about Transit size, but I don’t think it was a Transit, ken.’

‘Okay, write down all you can and we’ll take it from there. It’s the best deal that’s going, make no mistake, and you’re in no position to haggle. Now let’s go back on the record.’

He restarted the interview, formally, repeating the introductions and reminding Booth that he was still under caution. ‘You’ve had time to think,’ he continued. ‘I want you to describe again what you saw in Miss Spreckley’s house after you broke in.’

‘Like Ah said, there was blood in the kitchen, on the walls, the floor, the worktops. It was like she’d been pulpin’ tomatoes and the lid had come off the blender. That’s what Ah thought it was at first, tomatoes, till Ah realised it wasnae.’

‘What made you realise?’

‘Ah stood in it. It was sticky and that’s when I kent what it was.’

‘What did you do next?’

‘Ah went into the bathroom and washed it off ma shoes. Somebody’d ripped up the carpet, by the way. Then Ah looked round for anything that might be worth having. Ah found a purse, and had a few quid out of that, and some other money in a drawer. The jewel box was in the bedroom, on the dressing table.’

‘How many rooms were you in?’

‘All of them.’

‘Was there anything in any of them that you remembered not having been there before?’

Booth frowned, and his eyes narrowed. ‘No,’ he said. And then his face seemed to brighten as if a light had gone on. ‘But there was something wasnae there, apart frae the carpet. When Ah was there before wee Susan was sleepin’ in her buggy when Ah went to collect her, and she was in Bella’s bedroom. The pram was right up against this long broon chest thing at the end of her bed. When Ah went back in there, after the jewels and stuff, it wasnae there any more.’

‘Was it strong, this chest?’ Pye asked slowly.

‘Fuckin’ solid. Ah banged my knee on it when Ah tried to move the buggy. It was wood, wi’ big handles at either end.

‘Did it extend the full width of the bed?’

‘Aye.’ He gave a small, nasty smile as if he had seen a mental image that had pleased him. ‘Deep too; big enough for a body if it was jammed in there . . . even wrapped in a rug.’

‘But too long for one person to handle?’

‘He’d need to be a gorilla.’

‘You’re sure about this?’ Pye asked. ‘If you’re trying to lay a false trail, we will know.’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘Okay, it’s a new line of inquiry and it answers a big question. You’ve got some points on the board. But you’d better not be kidding us about this van driver bloke either.’

Booth stared at him. ‘Ah never said it was a bloke,’ he exclaimed. ‘The van driver’s a woman.’

Thirty-Eight

‘Please tell me you’re going to have something positive for me, DI Mann.’ In all his life, Ray Wilding had never come as close to begging. ‘I’ve got my top floor watching me on this, and I’ve never felt so exposed.’

‘No positive leads yourself then?’ Lottie asked.

‘None. Mackenzie’s vanished off the face of the earth.’

‘Does anyone outside our circle have a sniff of it yet?’

‘I don’t believe so. The official line is that he’s having time off to deal with personal issues. That’s holding, not least because he’s just had a run-in with the ACC; most people within CID believe that he’s been benched till he cools off. They’ll be benching me if I don’t come up with something soon. What have you got?’

‘I don’t know. My nee’bur and I …’

‘Your what?’

Mann laughed. ‘Ah sorry; that’s a Glasgow term. I meant, my colleague and I have just spoken to his priest, out in the arse end of Argyllshire. We left him ten minutes ago and now we’re sitting in a hotel car park, getting ready for the long road home.’

‘I didn’t know Mackenzie was a religious man,’ Wilding said. ‘He’s never given me that impression.’

‘I don’t know how religious he is, but the man we’ve spoken to has been a major influence in his life. How much have they told you about him?’

‘I’ve seen his service record, and had a very quick look at his HR file, that’s all. I’ve also spoken as discreetly as I could to some of his neighbours . . . his real neighbours, that is, not the Weegie kind, and it seems he never mixed with them. The upshot is that still I know very little personal about him. I would have spoken to his friends within the force, the problem being that he doesn’t have any.’

‘The same was true when he was a Strathclyde officer,’ Mann told him. ‘I never worked with him, but Dan Provan, my sergeant, did. He says there was something about him that grated on everyone; he was arrogant, a glory-hunter, and he was anti-authority, when authority wasn’t listening, that is. Dan describes him as a Ned with a warrant card, a bandit with a sheriff’s badge. But he got results, very good results, and he got promotion.’

‘He sounds like the original mystery man,’ Wilding observed. ‘He’s certainly been an outsider here, a boss’s man when Bob Skinner was around, but without a patron since he’s been gone.’

‘We can unravel some of the mystery, thanks to the man we’ve just left.’

‘The priest?’

‘Yes.’ She explained who Father Thomas Donnelly was, and how he had come into the troubled life of the young David Mackenzie. ‘He took him under his wing, and to paraphrase his words, he put him on the right pathway.’

‘A pathway that led him into the police force.’

‘Yes. But something from his childhood wouldn’t necessarily have kept him out.’

‘Granted, but it happened, and I’m just gobsmacked that you and I are hearing about it for the first time from a priest up in Auchna-wherever-it-is. We’ve been fearing something bad, but not really wanting to believe it. Now, it looks as if we might have to.’

‘Not according to Father Donnelly,’ Lottie Mann said.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, when we talked to him we got round to asking him whether or not Mackenzie was capable of murder.’

‘Was that not a bit risky?’

‘No, we were on his boat. Clearly, he’s at his most comfortable there; he regards it as a sort of confessional. He didn’t laugh off our question, not quite, but he did say that for all they might have squabbled like any other couple, Mackenzie cares for Cheryl, and he dismissed any thought that he might have harmed her. He was emphatic about it.’

‘That’s why you’ll never find a priest on a jury,’ DI Wilding retorted.

Provan chuckled. ‘That’s gey cynical, chum. Sounds to me that you’ve been hanging around Bob Skinner for too long.’

Thirty-Nine

‘Is one pleased with oneself?’ Sauce Haddock asked as he closed the door of the small office.

‘Dunno what you mean,’ Pye murmured.

‘Not fucking much! We went in there handcuffed and you wind up getting to drive the whole bloody train.’

The DI permitted himself a small smile. ‘There is that,’ he conceded. ‘Mary’s a good boss. She’s constructive, and not obstructive, like fucking Mackenzie. By the way,’ he added, ‘you never heard me say that, or that I’m not looking forward to him sorting his personal issue.’

‘I don’t think anyone in Edinburgh CID is, Sammy. He’s a strange man, is our superintendent.’

‘Well, at least he’s not here to get in our way. Priorities, Sauce. We’ve got Booth’s list of meetings with the van driver. This is not going to be easy, but I want you to contact all the petrol companies, including the supermarkets, and ask them if they can identify all sales of fuel made on and around those dates and in those localities that were settled with a Spanish credit or debit card. They should be able to do that.’

‘But will they do it for me? I’m just a humble detective sergeant . . . and a very junior one, as the boss pointed out when she made me get the fucking coffee!’

‘Just drop your voice an octave or so,’ the DI suggested, ‘and they’ll think you’re a grown-up. Ask Jackie to help you. Going by the results she’s been getting with her phone research, nobody could say no to her.’ He looked up. ‘And speaking of DC Wright . . .’

The glass-panelled door opened and the young detective stuck her head into the room. ‘Excuse me, Inspector,’ she began, ‘but I was wondering, do you still want me to go with the DS to interview this man Gayle. It’s just that I’ve . . .’

‘Got a date tonight?’ Haddock ventured.

She flushed. ‘As it happens, yes . . . not that I can’t cancel it.’

‘No,’ Pye replied. ‘Your love life’s secure. The game’s changed; I’ve got another task for you and Sauce. I’ll talk to Gayle myself.’

‘Thanks, boss,’ she said, a smile lighting up her face. ‘In that case, I’ve established from the Western General that he’s working today, until ten o’clock, when the night staff come on. I thought I should check that, rather than go all the way to Tranent only to find out that he wasn’t in.’

‘Did you get me a parking space as well?’ the DI asked, deadpan.

‘Oh no, boss,’ she gasped. ‘I’m sorry; I forgot.’

He grinned. ‘Don’t let it ruin your day. You probably forgot also that the Western General is bang next door to our headquarters building. I don’t think my car’s going to be a problem.’