Hour Of Darkness (22 page)

Forty-Two

I didn’t blame Lottie for getting less out of the priest than I did. I could have told her to go harder with him, but there was no certainty that would have worked. Tom Donnelly had felt a personal connection with me, through my father, and that may well have persuaded him to open up as much as he had.

He’d given me enough food for thought to send me into a mental meltdown, and some of it, I decided, I was keeping to myself. As for the rest, I was prepared to share that, and even to swap it.

I thought through my options; when I was ready I picked up the phone and called Maggie Rose . . . sorry, Maggie Steele; my old habits die harder than Bruce Willis. ‘Hi, Bob,’ she greeted me, sounding less than cheerful.

‘Who stole your scone?’ I asked.

‘And my birthday cake,’ she retorted. ‘I’ve got Mario with me; we’ve just had a visit from Mary Chambers, briefing us on the Bella Watson murder inquiry.’

‘How’s that one going?’ I don’t think I sounded too interested; Bella’s demise was poetic justice in my book, and so as an outside observer I couldn’t summon up too much enthusiasm.

‘She’s got more lines of inquiry than a spider’s web. The unfortunate thing is that they all lead in different directions. The DCS has called a case conference for tomorrow to try to pull them together. Just to add a fresh complication, she had a call from Sammy Pye in the middle of our visit. He’s just picked up a piece of information that might mean we have to reopen a very cold case: the death of Perry Holmes.’

That got my attention. ‘Indeed? I wouldn’t be spending too much money on it. Lennie Plenderleith reckons that Manson had him done. You’ll be struggling to convict him, since he’s as dead as Perry.’

‘No, not him.’

‘Still, think carefully,’ I advised. ‘It’s been a long time and there were no witnesses. It could even have been an accident . . . although I admit that I have never bought the fiscal’s dodgy wheelchair theory.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie said, ‘that’s not a top priority. Right now, the two of us are contemplating the prospect of holding a press briefing tomorrow, to go public on David Mackenzie’s disappearance, and to announce that he’s wanted on suspicion of murdering his wife. I’m going to get crucified.’

‘No,’ I heard McGuire say loudly in the background. ‘I am; you’re not taking the rap for this.’

‘It’s my rap to take,’ Maggie declared, for his benefit and mine; her voice echoed, telling me that she’d put me on speakerphone. ‘I’m the chief constable; I can’t get out from under. That forty-eight-hour silence isn’t going to look too clever under questioning.’

‘Just hold on,’ I told her, ‘before you get into a warm bath and open your veins. Have you set up this suicide mission yet?’

‘No, we’re leaving it until the morning. Why?’

‘Because you need a rethink; Mackenzie might have done a couple of things in his time that he didn’t want anyone to know about, but he has not murdered his wife.’

‘What?’ she shouted in my ear. ‘How do you know that?’

‘It comes from an unimpeachable source. When I was a boy in Motherwell,’ I added, in explanation, ‘there was a guy on the council who was the local bishop’s mouthpiece. That was what he used to say when he was quoting his master’s voice.’

‘Did you get that from the bishop, then?’ she asked, with a trace of sarcasm that I must have left in her office when I moved out.

‘Almost as good as; I got it from David’s priest.’

‘From his what?’ McGuire exclaimed. ‘I never knew Mackenzie was a Catholic.’

‘There are lots of things none of us knew about Mackenzie, chum. He wasn’t born into it, as far as I know; he signed up as a teenager.’

‘You trust this clerical informant, do you, Bob?’ he asked.

‘Yes I do.’

‘He told you Cheryl is still alive?’

‘Not directly, but that’s what he meant.’

‘Do you know this guy?’ I’d never been cross-examined by McGuire before. I wasn’t sure I cared for it.

‘My father knew him,’ I replied, well aware how lame that sounded.

‘That doesn’t fill me with confidence,’ he drawled. ‘I seem to remember you telling me once that you hardly knew your father yourself.’

‘Mario!’ I heard Maggie snap.

‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s a fair point. But Tom Donnelly told me categorically that Mackenzie is not a wife-murderer, and I will go with that. If you two don’t want to, then fine, let the media vultures pick your bones tomorrow. But be ready to look like a couple of Charlies when Cheryl shows up alive and well in the tabloid of her choice.’

‘If this goes pear-shaped, Bob . . .’

I acknowledged her hesitancy. ‘I know. You’ve both got careers to protect, especially with the new unified force well over the horizon, whereas I don’t give a shit about mine. It’s your call, and it has to be based on your judgement.’

‘But yours is that we should hold fire?’

‘Mine is that you have no evidence other than a few bloodstains on a towel, and they don’t prove violence. There are any number of possible explanations for that; a sudden nosebleed, as I said before. Sarah had one when we were in Spain last week, but nobody thought about locking me up.’

‘What about the duvet, Mags?’ McGuire asked. ‘Does Bob know about that?’

‘Sorry, Mario,’ she replied, after a short pause, ‘I’m still processing the news that he and Sarah were in Spain last week. Yes, the missing duvet from off their bed.’

‘Again, that proves nothing,’ I pointed out. ‘You’ve got a couple who’ve disappeared at the same time, leaving their kids behind, safe with her mother. That’s all that you know for sure. I take it you’ve checked their financial situation. Do they have money problems, debt collectors knocking on the door, that sort of thing?’

‘Yes we have, and no they don’t. They’re as comfortable as you’d expect a couple to be with two good salaries coming in.’

‘Is there anything in Mackenzie’s past career that rings any alarm bells, villains with a grudge, and so on?’

‘No, we’ve eliminated that as a possibility.’ She sighed. ‘Okay, this is about judgement, as you said earlier. We’ve both followed yours from the start, and I’m going to follow it again. We’ll do nothing about a media conference, and reconsider on Monday. If there’s flak when it does come out . . .’

‘If it comes out,’ I interrupted. ‘They could return tomorrow, penitent and unharmed.’

‘Okay then, if it leaks, and the media go on the attack, we can argue that there was no danger to the public, so we had no obligation to them. Agreed, Mario?’

‘Agreed.’

‘A deal, then; we come back from the brink. Thanks, Bob, for your input and your advice.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ I said. ‘I hope it works out for you; something’s happened between them, that’s for sure.’

I know what you’re thinking. Why isn’t he sharing everything he knows with them, two people he’s known and trusted for much of his career and most of theirs? I should have but I chose not to, for I had a scent in my nostrils. It wasn’t a very pleasant odour, and I wanted to get to its source on my own.

‘Mags,’ I said, ‘the way this is turning out it’s almost as much my investigation as yours. Could you do something for me?’

‘Name it, oh master,’ she chuckled. ‘Why is it all your requests still sound like orders?’

‘This is a request, honest. I’ve been looking for Mackenzie’s personnel file, but my people tell me that everything was sent to Edinburgh when he moved. Any chance I could see it?’

‘If you want to; but I warn you, Ray Wilding’s looked at it and found nothing.’

‘Nevertheless.’

‘Okay, I’ll have it sent to you tonight.’ She paused. ‘Where do I send it?’ she asked, provocatively. ‘Your place or Sarah’s?’

‘Mine, thanks,’ I replied, po-faced. ‘I’ll let you have it back when I’m done.’

‘What do you expect to find in it that Wilding didn’t?’

‘Nothing, Maggie, absolutely nothing,’ I told her, and I meant it.

Forty-Three

‘Well,’ Mary Chambers began, as she gazed around the conference table in the Edinburgh police headquarters building, ‘this is quite a team to be investigating one disreputable old woman’s murder. Is that why we’re not making any progress? Too many cooks, is that it?’

Five police officers gazed back at her: Detective Inspectors Sammy Pye and Jack McGurk, Detective Sergeants Harold Haddock and Karen Neville, and Detective Constable Jackie Wright, who had not been summoned but had been included by Pye in recognition of the sound work she had done. There was a seventh person in the room, a slight, earnest woman in her late twenties; she was a newcomer to them all and had introduced herself as Anna Jacobowski, a senior scientist with the Scottish Police Forensic Service.

Jack McGurk frowned. ‘I don’t see that, ma’am,’ he protested. ‘We’ve all had distinct roles in an investigation that was complex from the very beginning. Speaking personally, I don’t think my team have stepped on anybody’s toes. If Karen hadn’t been on the ball and thinking clearly, it would have taken us much longer to match the blood in the Caledonian Crescent flat to the Cramond Island remains.’

‘Maybe so,’ Chambers admitted.

‘I’ve even got a bonus to report,’ he added. ‘Karen and DC Singh were diverted there by Mr Mackenzie when they were on their way to investigate a hit and run in Gorgie Road. Tarvil went back to that investigation and spoke to the witnesses. They told him that the car that hit the girl was going like a bat out of hell, “Like a getaway car”, according to one of them who’d been sober enough to give them the make and model of the vehicle . . . it was a Nissan Qashquai . . . and a partial number that showed it was five years old, registered in the city.

‘He cross-checked all possibles with the DVLA, and Patrick Booth’s name jumped out. We’ve got the vehicle impounded, so it was plain sailing after that. We can do him for that as well.’

‘And we will,’ the head of CID said. ‘How’s the victim?’

‘She’ll live. Tarvil gave her the name of a lawyer, so she can sue Booth for compensation for her injuries. She won’t have any problem there; the one legal thing the guy did was keep his tax and insurance up to date.’

‘Does Booth know yet?’ Sauce Haddock asked.

‘Not yet,’ McGurk replied. ‘No rush.’

‘It’ll be a nasty surprise for him.’ Sauce laughed, vindictively. ‘Another few years down the road just when he thought he was getting off lightly for shooting wee Vicky.’

‘You have to play it by the book, Jack,’ Chambers declared. ‘I’m not messing with Frankie Bristles. If you have enough to charge him, do it, and disclose to her.’ She nodded, then continued.

‘Okay, you’ve made your point, Acting DI McGurk. This is a bugger of an investigation and I can justify the resources we’ve devoted to it, whoever asks me. My main concern was that most of it’s gone off in the absence of the CID coordinator. He should have been doing all along what I’m doing this morning but I’m happy that we are where we’d have been if he had been here.’

‘No comment.’ Haddock’s voice was barely more than a whisper, but she picked it up.

‘No,’ the DCS growled, ‘and there’d better not be, or you’ll be getting the coffee for the rest of your effing career.’

‘Sorry, boss,’ he muttered as Pye reached out and cuffed him lightly round the ear, while nodding towards Jacobowski, who was seated next to him, staring determinedly at the table.
Strangers present
, he mouthed.

As if she had picked up on it, Chambers turned to the scientist. ‘Anna,’ she said, ‘thanks for joining us. You’re a welcome change from Arthur Dorward.’
Pretty little thing
, she thought. ‘You’re also the lynchpin of this investigation. Without your work we’d have nothing, so it’s appreciated. What have you got for us?’

‘Thanks, Chief Superintendent,’ the civilian replied. ‘What I don’t have is a full picture, but we’re getting there. However, it is very difficult. The Caledonian Crescent flat is like a DNA stockpot. When we went in there we were told that the victim has lived alone, and had a small circle of friends, so we didn’t expect to find evidence of the presence of any more than a dozen individuals; the dead woman herself, the police officers who attended, four in all, the meter reader, the law office clerk, the niece, her child and her partner, and the lady downstairs, since DS Neville said she’d claimed to have been in there to borrow sugar.’

‘And have a general nose around,’ Karen volunteered.

‘No doubt,’ Jacobowski agreed, ‘and she did. We found her DNA and fingerprints in the kitchen, the living room, and in the main bedroom.’ She paused. ‘It’s amazing what personal traces can survive, you know. I say this because of the major problem that we encountered. When we started to analyse the samples we took, at least half of them didn’t match up with anyone . . . and we’re a long way from being finished with our analysis and comparison.’

‘Maybe she had a party we weren’t told about,’ Haddock suggested.

Karen Neville shook her head. ‘No way; Mrs McConnochie would have known, and she’d have mentioned it.’

‘She’s not infallible,’ the scientist said. ‘She didn’t tell you about the flood.’

Neville frowned. ‘What flood?’

‘The one the lawyers told us about when we asked. We noticed early on that the kitchen and the bathroom had been completely refurbished and that the living room had just been redecorated. Mr Dorward said we should ask the property administrators about it, rather than bother you. They told us that the flat directly above had a burst pipe, about three weeks before Miss Spreckley disappeared.

‘The damage was quite extensive; the ceiling came down, the kitchen units were warped and the bathroom carpet was ruined. Miss Spreckley kicked up a huge fuss, they said, and demanded that everything be put right.

‘Rather than wait for the neighbour’s insurers to get the finger out, the administrators acted straight away. They called in plasterers, plumbers, painters, carpenters and carpet fitters, and the job was expedited. It was completed the Friday before the estimated date of the woman’s death, apart from the new bathroom carpet, which hadn’t arrived.

‘We still don’t know for sure how many people were in there, far less who they were.’

‘What do you know?’ McGurk asked.

‘We can put Booth, Vicky and the child in the house. Specifically we have Booth’s prints on the surface of the victim’s dressing table and on every drawer and cupboard door in the place. He gave it a real going-over. Now we have his footwear we can prove he stood in the blood as well; he didn’t do so when it was fresh, though. Only after it had congealed.’

‘Why was Booth so thorough, Sammy?’ Chambers asked. ‘What’s your thinking on that?’

‘Drugs,’ Pye replied, instantly. ‘Booth told us that Bella never handled the merchandise herself, only the money, but I reckon that when he found the flat in the state it was, he decided to make sure there was nothing there that would excite our narcotics people.

‘Speaking of whom, boss,’ he added, ‘I’ve been thinking, it’s one thing me running an investigation within our own force, but from what we know, this is a new supply route into Scotland of a factory-made drug. Should we not be telling the Drug Enforcement Agency?’

‘Yes, we should,’ she replied. ‘Next question: have we done so? Answer, yes we have. The ACC’s briefed Mr Martin, informally, to find out whether they’ve been holding out on us, as much as anything else. His response was that it’s the first they’ve heard of it. He’s happy to let us carry on but he wants to be kept informed. What have you got to tell him?’

‘Nothing definite; but we do have Booth, singing his heart out in exchange for not being charged with Bella’s murder. Now we have the hit-and-run to hold over him as well, maybe he’ll sing a little louder . . . if he knows any more of the song, that is. Meantime, DC Wright’s been looking for Spanish credit cards in the area where he told us that he met the van driver. Jackie, tell the DCS how it’s been going.’

The young detective flushed, and clutched her notebook to her like a comforter. ‘I’ve been surprised by how many Spanish people there are in Britain, ma’am,’ she began, ‘even with a search centred on places like Durham, Cheltenham, Wigan, Stoke and Scunthorpe.

‘Given what Booth told us about the van having goods in it, our thinking is that the driver’s a person who does deliveries of furniture and other stuff to and from Spain for ex-pats and people with Spanish holiday homes, and that the locations for the meetings were dictated by wherever she happened to be picking up or dropping off. I checked with the British Consulate in Madrid; they told me there are hundreds of people doing that sort of thing, not just Brits but French, Belgians, et cetera, and that none of them register as businesses.

‘I’ve been looking at time periods two days on either side of each meeting; that’s thousands and thousands of transactions, but I’ve had eighty-two different hits of people using Spanish chip and pin cards in those vicinities. Seventeen of them have been British names, and I’ve been most interested in these.

‘The problems are that no individual’s shown up twice, and even more significant, not one of them has been a woman.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Chambers countered, ‘can you check those seventeen British names through the card issuer?’

‘In theory, yes,’ the DC replied, ‘if every card links to a bank account. Road tax in Spain’s paid to the local council, not the state, so the bank will have direct debit records that show the vehicle make and registration number. In practice, not in a hurry and maybe not at all: the Spanish are as keen on data protection as we are, and we’d need a court order, in Spain.’

‘Leave that with me,’ the head of CID told her. ‘Drug Enforcement may be able to help us. Keep looking for those names; if someone shows up twice, flag it up. The woman could be married; she could be flashing her husband’s plastic. That’s the trouble about chip and pin, too bloody easy to do that. Good work so far, Jackie.’ The girl beamed and turned an even deeper shade of red.

‘Sammy,’ Chambers continued, ‘has Booth been able to tell us any more about the driver than he did when I was there?’

‘Not a lot,’ Pye replied. ‘Their meetings usually lasted less than a minute. She’s middle-aged, he said, white but tanned. She wears a parka or a hoodie in the summer, and a woollen hat as well so he can’t help with hair colour. Also, he said she always wears big glasses.

‘As for her language, he says he wasn’t sure; she said very little. Sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish, which he understands a wee bit, thanks to a cellmate from Valencia last time he was inside. The one thing he did say was that she sounds husky; not like a smoker he said, but deep, throaty, sexy-like.’

‘He’s sure it is a woman?’

‘Certain, he says. But I don’t think he fancies her somehow. I asked him why he was so spooked. “You haven’t fuckin’ met her, pal,” was what he replied.’

‘Hopefully we will, before too much longer.’ She stopped, as she saw Jacobowski, hand raised like a child in school. ‘Yes, Anna.’

‘About the drug,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t been involved personally, because I’m up to my ears in Caledonian Crescent, but another part of the service has been working on the traces that were recovered from Booth’s flat. His poor girlfriend really didn’t make a very good job of getting rid of it.

‘They can confirm it’s methamphetamine and that it’s pretty good stuff. The principal ingredient is ephedrine, rather than pseudoephedrine, brewed up in combination with red phosphorous, iodine and water. If you know what you’re doing, crystal meth can be produced in your garden shed, or it can be made, and is made by criminal cartels, in industrial quantities. If you don’t know what you’re doing . . .’

She paused and her eyes went somewhere else for a second or two, then fixed on Haddock. ‘Do you like Bruce Springsteen?’ she asked, suddenly.

He smiled at the unexpected question. ‘The Boss? Absolutely: he’s a hero.’

‘Do you know a song called “Sinaloa Cowboys”?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

‘Then listen to the lyric. It’s about two Mexican brothers synthesising methamphetamine in a shack, and it doesn’t end well. The process is very dangerous, and some of the chemicals used are highly volatile. Explosions and fires are common. This stuff, though, it’s pretty refined; it’s been made by a proper chemist . . . or someone with similar skills.’

‘Where are you going with this?’ McGurk asked, his curiosity evident.

‘Spain,’ she replied. ‘In our analysis, we found something that just shouldn’t be there, traces of grape residue. This is how good we are, people.’ She ventured a small smile of pride. ‘We’ve identified it as a variety known as Pedro Ximenez, unique to Spain and used in one of its best known exports. If you want to trace this stuff to source, you should be looking in Andalusia, in a facility that’s been used, and maybe still is, in the production of sherry.’

‘Indeed?’ Chambers said. ‘If we’re meant to be impressed by that, Anna, then we are.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Have you told the SCDEA?’ she asked.

‘Mr Dorward’s doing so this morning. My colleagues only completed their analysis last night.’

‘Then I’d better speak to them, since we’re looking for the same people.’

‘Provided,’ Pye intervened, ‘that Bella Watson’s murder is related to her involvement with the supply of drugs. That was Booth’s immediate assumption when he saw her flat, and it’s been ours too, but the van driver is the only person in the chain that we know about.’

‘It’s still a reasonable assumption, boss,’ Sauce Haddock countered.

‘Granted, but it doesn’t preclude other options. Bella had a historic feud with the Holmes family; Perry Holmes’s son’s just been released from jail.’

‘And Bella Watson’s grandson’s working for one of the Holmes companies,’ Chambers observed. ‘What the hell’s that about?’

Pye laughed, shaking his head. ‘I do not know, boss, but it’s time we found out.’

‘I agree, Sammy. But it’s not necessarily part of the murder investigation, and I want you and Sauce focused on that. You concentrate on Hastie McGrew; find him and invite him to have a chat with us.’