by Alec Peche
“Hey guys, I think I might have something here,” Angela said holding out her camera.
“What did you and your camera discover?” Jill asked looking over at her friend.
She held the camera up to Jill and asked, “Is this man, the one you saw on the train that you thought was following us?”
Jill looked into the camera’s screen and after studying the man agreed that he was one of the four they’d seen the previous day. She nodded and asked, “When did you take his picture?”
"Right after the man disappeared over the edge. I don’t see him around now,” Angela said looking around the castle battlements where they were standing.
The Detective Inspector was frustrated with being a few steps behind everyone else in this investigation. He reached for Angela’s camera, and she was so surprised at his motion that she let go, letting the wrist strap slip off her arm.
“Ladies, my partner is calling the DIs from Cardiff to get your story. You apparently think that some man who has since disappeared had something to do with being a threat to you. If you’ll send me that picture," he said to Angela while handing her his card, "I’ll see if we can run the bloke down. Now I need to have my questions answered.”
They nodded and waited patiently for him to begin. Jill gave him points for sorting through their conversation quickly.
“Usually I like to start at the beginning with a full explanation of, in this case, an attempted murder, but let’s jump to the end. Why do you think some guy tried to murder you?”
Jill thought for a few seconds and then said, “We think he’s related to a stay-behind army formed at the end of WWII to prevent the spread of communism. This theory will be confirmed when you do the autopsy and find a tattoo in this shape,” she said finding the photo of Nick’s tattoo on her phone.
Then she added, “Somehow the members of Operation Gladio have learned of our investigation into the death of our friend Nick Brouwer De Jong, and this is his tattoo that we found during his autopsy.”
DI Campbell stood there a moment trying to decide if these Americans were nuts with such a far-out explanation. He’d never heard of stay behind armies or Operation Gladio which sounded Italian. He was jolted out of his mind sifting through a game plan, by a text from another member of the Major Investigative Team that verified the women’s stories from the Cardiff inspectors.
They appeared to have a complex situation on their hands. It was neither a simple crime nor a short explanation. Campbell made a quick decision to have an MIT teammate interview the relevant witnesses and let the others go. He requested the security guard provide them with a private room for a discussion. Soon they found themselves in a back hallway that contained a small windowless conference room. The women, Nathan, and the DI sat down as he took out his notebook.
“Ms. Quint, may I see your identification again? Do you have a business card?”
“It’s Dr. Quint as I’m a forensic pathologist, but you can call me Jill,” she said as she showed him her PI license and business card.
“Who did you work for as a Pathologist?”
“The State of California Crime Lab.”
“You’re about as an informed witness as I’ve ever interviewed.”
“I don’t doubt that as in my former life as a State Employee, I never saw a crime committed or had one committed against me. Since I’ve become a consultant and my friends here provide assistance, we’d experienced multiple murder attempts against our person in Europe and the United States. So yes we’re all informed witnesses based on our experiences over the last couple of years. That was why Angela was so quick to take a photo today; it’s helped in the past.”
“So at the Castle today, you were looking with your friends over the castle walls north and talking when you saw in your peripheral vision a man running at you. You ducked, and he went sailing over the castle wall? Did he hit any of your friends on the way over?”
“I felt something hit my head and by the time I looked up he wasn’t in my line of vision,” Angela said.
“How hard did he hit you? Do you have a bump? A headache?” Jill asked concerned and feeling guilty that she hadn’t asked this question of her friends before.
“I’m fine! I think whatever it was, a hand a foot, or some other part of the body touched my hair enough to muss it up but not hurt my head,” Angela replied.
“That’s good,” Campbell said. “The man dropped forty to fifty feet to the dirt below, not surviving the impact. He appears to be in his forties and has a French passport on him.”
“Did the Cardiff inspectors tell you about the case there?” Jill asked.
“Yes, I believe a friend of yours was pushed off the tower at Cardiff Castle, and they’ve made little progress in solving the case so far including the real identity of your friend.”
“Yes and I guess we better give them a call. We were able to identify him with the help of another friend in Germany. He’s the CEO of a global security firm, and he really does have the best facial recognition software in the world. Despite hanging out with Nick off and on over two years, we never had a good photograph of him, and his face was damaged in the castle fall so we couldn’t get one post-mortem.”
“So the Cardiff police couldn’t identify the murder victim?” Campbell asked in disbelief.
“All we could find up to the time of his murder was a history going back a few years; we could see the business he owned and operated but were unable to find his birth, country of origin, or even family members. Since our friend found the information last night, we have all of that information,” Marie replied.
“How about his fingerprints? Couldn’t they have used them to identify him.?”
“Yes, but again the prints belonged to a man who arrived in the Netherlands a couple of years ago,” Jill replied. “It was not the true identity of the victim.”
“So now you have his full name, what else do you know?” Campbell asked.
“We tracked his movements across Europe over the past month,” Jo said.
As this was the first time she spoke, Campbell paused assessing her comment and competence, and then he asked, “What did that tell you?”
“All of his movements made sense except a visit to Le Havre, France. We were debating what to do with that information when we decided to visit your castle. We think there could be up to one hundred different owners of property on that street and it’s a case of us not recognizing good information when we have it,” Marie said.
“What were you planning on doing next?” Campbell asked.
“Finish touring the castle, and then visit other sites around here like the portrait gallery,” Angela said innocently.
“Sorry, I mean what were you going to do next on the case?” Campbell asked knowing the woman purposely misunderstood his question.
“We were going to research Girard LeRoux,” Angela replied. She liked this DI, but she was also fed up with all of them lacking faith in their abilities to solve a crime.
“And who’s that?” he asked with a hint of exaggerated patience.
“Might be the guy that just flew over the wall,” Nathan offered, tiring of the conversation.
Chapter 17
“How do you know his name is Girard LeRoux,” asked the detective his suspicions raised as he had not shared the identity of the man with the women. How could he be a stranger to them and yet they know his identity?
“He was one of four men that we think may have followed us on the train from Manchester to here yesterday. We tried some tricks in Glasgow, but he managed to follow us to our hotel last night and Angela took his picture,” Jill replied.
DI Campbell wondered if he had fallen down the rabbit hole to the Mad-Hatters luncheon. He paused, contemplating which part of Jill’s statement to ask about first.
He led with, “What tricks did you employ?”
“Two of us got off the train and went to the bus station with the help of Uber. The other two changed their appearance in the re
stroom and then took Uber to our hotel, but we were working in the hotel bar last evening when we saw him enter our lobby,” Angela said and added, "I went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and snapped his picture, then apologized for thinking he was Andy Murray."
Campbell couldn’t help himself, and he let a laugh slip out at the ingenuity of this team, then a new thought came to him.
Looking at Nathan, he asked, “Where were you during all of these events?” He could think of a few sarcastic things to add but barely held on to his tongue.
“I was en route from California. I hadn’t planned on joining their girl vacation until they reached Edinburgh. I reached the hotel about the same time they did last night and given the time difference between home and here I gave it up earlier than they did. Jill and I are staying a few extra days to explore some of your distilleries.”
Dropping back to their question as to who was dead he said, “So you’re correct about Mr. LeRoux. He’s the one that went flying over the wall. He landed on his back, his face about the only thing undamaged. We identified him as we were walking into the conference room. How did you figure out who he was?” Campbell asked. Then he answered his own question, “Oh, you used that facial recognition software you mentioned that identified your friend.”
“Yes,” Marie replied.
“What else did you find on him?”
“I only had about twenty minutes last night before we went to bed, so I know he’s a plumber from Rennes, France and has no obvious connection to Nick.”
“Nick is your friend that was murdered in Cardiff,” Campbell asked.
“Yes, or to Operation Gladio,” Marie replied. "I’ll be curious to see if he has a tattoo on him somewhere; that will tell us a lot.”
“Tell me more about the tattoo,” Campbell said.
“During his autopsy, we discovered a tattoo under Nick’s hairline. It was small, and we had never seen it on him while he was alive,” Jill said while showing the Inspector a copy of the seal. Nick’s tattoo was too small to work out all of the detail when compared to the real seal that you could view in Wikipedia.
“I’ll ask our pathologist to look for it. I believe you said there were four men following you on the train," Campbell prompted as he hadn't heard the rest of their story.
Jo interrupted him with “There were two groups following us. One was a set of two men, one who later appeared at the lobby desk and a short time ago went flying over the wall. The other pair was a couple, or at least they were trying to act like a couple, and we haven’t seen them since Glasgow, or rather they haven’t seen them as I don’t notice people usually.”
Again Campbell didn’t know whether to laugh or sneer at her comment. These Americans were really keeping him unbalanced.
“Let me see the pictures you took of Mr. LeRoux, and of his friend,” he asked Angela as she seemed to be the photographer of the group.
He said “Pardon me,” and he tapped out a message to someone, then added, “I’m asking for help as there are a lot of moving parts in your stories.”
“We don’t have a photo of the couple, but Marie and Jill could probably describe them for a sketch artist if you have such a position in the Scottish police,” Angela suggested.
DI Campbell spent a few moments mulling things over in his head. They didn’t have such a position on their force, but he could use the resources of one out of Scotland Yard or MI6. He’d have one of the members of his team locate the service for him.
“I’ll set that up,” and he tapped out another text on his phone. “It likely won’t happen today. How long are you planning to stay in Edinburgh and where are you going from here?” He asked as another thought occurred to him.
“We’ll be here three days and then Marie, Jo and I are returning home. Jill and Nathan are staying a few additional days to visit distilleries,” Angela replied.
“We’re taking the train to St. Andrews tomorrow and might take in a round of golf. We might also visit the highlands the day after,” Marie added.
“Playing the Old Course are ya?” Campbell asked a bit of a brogue coming through in his question.
“No, we can’t meet the Handicap Maximum since none of us have one. We’ll play Strathtyrum. We just don’t take golf all that seriously,” Jo replied.
“Yeah we talk while we swing, so you could send an artist out with us on the golf course, and he could easily develop a picture in between us taking shots,” Angela replied.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” now he sounded like he was insulted at their lack of respect for the game.
“We’ve all won prizes for our golfing ability, and we like low scores as much as the next guy, but we see no reason to stress over it,” Jill said.
Campbell looked at Nathan who just shrugged since he was used to their attitude. Then he decided to ruffle the detective’s feathers and added, “Hey didn’t you ladies have a murder at a hole at one golf course, then Angela here was shot by the murderer at another golf course evading him?”
“It was just a superficial wound that Jill treated and in the end, we solved that case.”
“Does violence follow you ladies around?” Campbell asked.
“No, I would like to think it’s more that we can mix vacation with a murder investigation and do both at the same time. Like we’re doing on this trip. Think of all that we’ve contributed to the police investigation so far,” Marie said.
“Would you mind sending me a picture of the man that disappeared after his friend went over the wall this morning,” Campbell asked seeming all business after digressing for a short time over golf. “We’ll want to identify him. Tell me more about this Operation Gladio. I’ve never heard of such an organization.”
“We found it far-fetched ourselves when we stumbled across it. We’re too young to understand the threat of communism, how people viewed the world at the end of WWII. It was something we studied in school as a way countries are categorized, but as Americans, we see communism as a failure in every country that it’s been tried; Cuba, China, North Korea, and Laos and we’re not worried about it taking over the world, but Europe has a different mindset. You all went to war twice at a great price and so this idea of a secret army to prevent communism perhaps makes more sense,” Jill said.
“Did a stay-behind army do any good shortly after it was set up?” Campbell asked.
“They were rumored to have prevented left-wing takeovers in Greece and Spain. Our own CIA and your MI6 were rumored to be involved. I think this was before NATO was formed,” Jo replied.
“So…” Campbell paused thinking through his question, “Why would your friend have been killed and what’s their motive for hunting you down,” he asked the group at large.
“We don’t know,” Marie shrugged. “Does anyone care if a stay-behind army exists at the moment? As for Nick since he had the tattoo, we think he was probably a member of the secret group given the secrecy of his background. Why else would his identity be so hard to find and his existence lacking details older than perhaps four years ago?”
“You say MI6 was involved? You’re sure that the British version of your CIA had a role in Operation Gladio?”
“I think all the spy agencies of all western countries might have initially been involved with some sort of stay-behind army,” Jo said.
“Did the Cardiff police follow up with MI6?”
“We don’t know. I’m not sure they believed our research about Operation Gladio even with the presence of Nick’s tattoo. I think they were relieved when we left Cardiff,” Jill said.
Campbell sighed, but he’d pursued other very odd stories, and Edinburgh and its surrounding cities amounted to about one and a half million people which was sufficient to have created bizarre crime stories which is exactly where he would file this one. He thought he probably had the necessary information from the group and it was time to let them go.
Making sure each of them had his contact information and he theirs, he wrapped up the conversatio
n. Walking them back to the public area of the castle, he thought of one more question, “Dr. Quint, do you have a desire to be at the autopsy of the man that tried to kill you?”
“Only if your staff fails to find the tattoo that matches what our friend Nick had. I think it’ll be a fairly obvious cause of death finding.”
Watching the detective stride away, Angela asked, “So where to now?”
Chapter 18
“I’d say a pub where we can all toast Jill surviving another murder attempt, but I don’t have a desire for alcohol at the moment,” Jo said. “I suppose we could try some tea.”
They all looked to Jill for her decision as it had been her near-death experience. She stood loosely in Nathan’s embrace, his hands on her shoulders staring at the wall over which Girard had traveled.
“If I could find a cupcake shop, then a ridiculously sweet cupcake would do the trick of cleansing my palette of this morning’s events.”
Her grinning friends all quickly looked around for Jill’s heart desire of the moment. Two blocks off of Princes Street, they found a café that served cupcakes and tea. Her friends weren’t nearly as fond of the concoctions as she was, but fortunately, there were a few other items on the bakery’s menu.
“Nothing like a blast of sugar to lighten one’s mood,” Jill said. “I’m ready to resume being a tourist! Should we head to the Portrait Gallery now?”
“We’re close to our hotel,” Angela noted. “We could stop there and use the facilities, and do a quick search on our suspect, then leave for the Gallery.”
“I second that idea,” Marie said. “Jill, don’t you want to brush the sugar off of your teeth?”
“Despite my love of cupcakes, my teeth haven’t fallen out yet, but we can satisfy everyone’s curiosity since we’re close.”
Less than five minutes later, Jill had set the facial recognition program to search the picture of the accomplice. Then she headed to her bathroom to brush her teeth, use the toilet and wash her hands. She applied minor repairs to her make-up and re-entered the living space where everyone was gathered around her laptop watching the database think and search.
