18 - Aftershock

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Damn you, man: I told them how the three killings were tied together.’

  ‘You told them that the three women were shot in the back of the head at close range?’

  ‘I may have.’

  ‘I’ll take that to mean you did. Mr Dowley, who’s the secretary of your Rotary branch? I’ll need to report this to the investigating officers in the Sugar Dean case. They, in turn, may have to interview every member of your club.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘Never more so, sir. Never more so.’

  Forty-six

  Neil McIlhenney had been in the act of reaching for the phone when it had rung, beating him to the punch.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, pressing the instrument to his ear for at least the twenty-fifth time that day. He almost added, ‘Becky,’ assuming that it would be another report on the Dean murder inquiry, and on the preparation for Weekes’s court appearance the following morning.

  ‘Neil?’ The voice was male, and very familiar. It was also on edge. ‘It’s Bob. I’m glad I caught you; I need someone to talk to. You will never guess in one thousand years of trying where I am.’

  ‘You’re at a crime scene,’ McIlhenney replied, without a pause for thought.

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’

  ‘Call it intuition. Or call it knowing the difference between you calling me on something job-related and to tell me you’ve just broken par round the pitch and putt.’

  ‘Clever bastard. Now describe it to me.’

  The superintendent frowned. ‘This has nothing to do with Aileen, has it?’

  ‘No. She doesn’t even know about it yet. She won’t be best pleased either, when she finds out that I’m involved in another murder investigation.’

  McIlhenney gasped. ‘Only you,’ he said. ‘Only you could go on holiday and stumble across something like that. Can you tell me about it? Are you able to, where you are? I can hear all sorts of noise in the background.’

  ‘That’s the sea. I’m on a rocky outcrop, facing my house. The Mossos d’Esquadra CID officers are on their way here from Girona. I’ll have to wait and give them a statement. But that doesn’t stop me talking to you.’

  ‘Who’s the victim?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. None of the officers who’ve got here so far recognises her.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘Yes. She’s maybe around thirty, Spanish, I’d guess, from her hair colouring, skin tone and general appearance, but there’s nothing here to back that up. There are no clothes, no personal belongings at the scene.’

  ‘So it looks like she was killed somewhere else and dumped there?’

  ‘That may very well be so; but either way she must have been put here when there was nobody else around. She’s been lying in the sun all day, and she could have been here overnight, unnoticed until I spotted her. There’s a medical examiner here, and if my limited Spanish lets me understand him right, he’s saying that he’s not even going to guess at time of death. The sun’s been blazing down all day, so the rocks are fucking hot. It’s like she’s been lying in a pizza oven all this time.’

  ‘You mean she’s covered in anchovies?’

  ‘Jesus, Neil, spare me the crime-scene humour. The one thing I do know is what killed her, because I’ve had a look for myself.’

  Call it a premonition, call it a second flash of intuition, but a wave of certainty seemed to wash over McIlhenney as he sat there. He was a thousand miles away from Skinner, but it was as if he had been teleported to his side in an instant, and could see the victim. He knew how the body was lying, he could picture the peaceful expression on her face. ‘A single wound to the back of the head,’ he said. ‘Small-calibre weapon.’

  ‘I can’t vouch for the calibre,’ the deputy chief constable replied, ‘but there’s no exit wound. It’s even possible that this could be a knife wound, but you get the picture. It looks as if she never knew what hit her.’

  ‘So what are you saying to me?’ the detective superintendent asked.

  ‘You know what I’m saying. I’m not familiar with the Gavin and Boras crime scenes, or the third girl, Amy Noone. I wasn’t involved in those inquiries, only in the aftermath because of Stevie’s death, but from the way they’ve been described to me, this one’s identical.’

  McIlhenney sat silent for a while, thinking about what he should do next. In normal circumstances, there would have been no doubt, but the shock of the news that Skinner had just imparted made him hold back. Finally, he decided. ‘Boss,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to talk to Mario. How long will you be there?’

  ‘As long as I have to. I’m sort of in charge here at the moment. None of the attending officers has encountered anything like this before, so I’ve been advising them. The team that’s on the way is being led by your equivalent. Once they get here and I’ve spoken to them, I’ll head back home. Let’s say I’ll be there in an hour. Meantime, I’d like you to email me the crime-scene photographs from the Ballester killings and from Sugar Dean.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll arrange that. Meantime, boss, if you can take a photo of your scene as it is, even if it’s only with your mobile, I’d like to see that too.’

  Forty-seven

  For most of the afternoon, Maggie pushed Drazen Boras to the back of her mind and caught up on the domestic tasks that had been sidelined by her pet project, and on spending quiet quality time with her daughter. As she did so, her sister worked on the desktop computer, using the software that was at the heart of the graphic-design business she had built up in Australia, and was attempting to sustain at very long distance.

  As she folded the last ironed garment she thought about Bet’s decision. It was both brave and sensible, and might well prove to be a positive spin-off from her own illness. Having undergone the same procedure she knew that it would be no picnic for her, but at least she would not be going into surgery in the immediate aftermath of childbirth.

  She stored her laundered clothes in the drawers where they were kept and returned to the computer room. ‘How are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Almost done,’ her sister replied. ‘The client will find the finished product waiting for him when he comes in tomorrow morning, which will be about eleven p.m. our time.’

  ‘How much are you losing by being here?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Less than you think. I have a core group of loyal customers who pay most of my bills without the need for constant face-to-face meetings. I told them I’d be out of Australia for at least six months, and they were all fine with it. Mind you,’ she continued, ‘while I’ve been here I’ve shown my work to a few Edinburgh design agencies, and to companies; the feedback’s been pretty positive.’

  ‘Are you telling me you’re thinking about staying?’

  ‘It’s crossed my mind. You and Stephanie are the only family I have, Sis. I dunno, though. I might find the winter a bit hard to take; that’s one reason why I left in the first place.’ She pushed the chair back from the desk and stood, stretching her long back. ‘You want your machine back?’

  ‘If you’re sure you’re done. I need to check my email.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s me finished; you go ahead. I’ll make supper tonight. What do you fancy?’ She clicked the mouse to send her document, then exited her program.

  ‘Whatever you fancy cooking. It’s been a few days since my last treatment, so my appetite’s back to normal.’

  ‘You’ve asked for it,’ said Bet, ominously, heading for the kitchen.

  As she left, Maggie settled down at the computer, and clicked on the icon that led to her mailbox. As he had promised, there was a message from Maurice Goode: she went to it, downloaded the attachment to her ‘received files’ folder, then opened it.

  She found a series of dated documents, each headed ‘A word from Fishheads.com’ with a series number. There were twenty in all, stretching back over a nine-month period. The most recent was the announcement she had already seen, of the board changes and the transfe
r of Dražen’s shareholding.

  She returned to Goode’s covering message and read:

  Hi, Maggie. These are the most recent releases from your friends. Let me know if you’d like to go further back. As you can see, their PR consultants are persistent bastards. They must be impressing the City though, for the shares are flying, despite the founder having bailed out of the business and buggered off to parts unknown to enjoy the serious millions he must have got for his stake. If you’re thinking of this as an investment, I wouldn’t put you off. Mind you, Davor Boras’s company, Continental IT, might be an even better bet, in view of never-ending speculation that he’s about to sell out to American interests. Knowing how devious Davor is, the market reckons that this talk might be a ploy to start a bidding war.

  ‘Mo,’ Maggie whispered, ‘the only thing I would invest in the Boras family is the time it’s going to take me to find Drazen and see him put away.’

  She returned to the press releases and opened them one by one. Most of them were bland, announcements of quarterly, half-yearly and annual profit figures. The others dealt with business development across Europe and around the world, and invariably were accompanied by photographs.

  Two were expanded versions of stories she had read in the annual report, four others dealt with supply deals struck with major companies, one referred to an international congress in Las Vegas, ‘attended by David Barnes and Ifan Richards’, with a photograph of the pair in front of the black edifice of the Wynn resort, the newest and biggest on the Strip, and another spoke of a ‘successful trip’ to South Africa by Richards, shown in Cape Town, casually dressed, with Table Mountain in the background. Since David/Dražen’s disappearance, there had been only two: the board announcement and a release built around a sales drive on the US eastern seaboard, as part of what was referred to as ‘Fishheads’ American invasion’.

  ‘And what does all that tell you, Maggie?’ she asked herself aloud. ‘Damn all, so far,’ she replied, ‘but there’s something there, I know it.’

  Forty-eight

  ‘Andy, how did you know to go for Dowley?’ asked David Mackenzie, as they walked out of the Crown Office into Chambers Street.

  ‘It was something I learned from Bob Skinner,’ Martin told him. ‘The two you look at first are the one who shouts loudest and the one who says the least.’

  ‘So who’s the other one?’

  ‘Joanna Lock, I reckon. What did you think of her?’

  The chief inspector smiled. ‘It’s been a long time since I saw a person watch her back so carefully. She’s got her career all mapped out, and nothing’s going to sidetrack her.’

  ‘I agree. I don’t see her jeopardising it by talking out of turn.’

  ‘Is that us done here?’

  ‘There’s still Gregor Broughton.’

  ‘Of course. His secretary said she’d call to tell me when he can see us. Are we going to take that? Shouldn’t we be telling him?’

  ‘Hell, no. Gregor’s an old pal; he won’t mess us about. He’s also, David, one of the most discreet men I’ve ever met. Everybody expected that he’d be the new Crown Agent when the job fell vacant, but he didn’t apply; his wife’s a judge and he said that he wouldn’t have felt comfortable.’

  ‘So tomorrow we start interviewing our own guys?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Martin. ‘And that’s where it could get a wee bit sticky. Mario McGuire had a word with me this morning, off the record. Maybe I shouldn’t have allowed it, but I did, on the basis that he wouldn’t be saying anything he wasn’t prepared to put on tape. He told me that on the day of the second murder he and Neil discussed the details with Lou and Paula across the dinner-table. What Mario wanted to know was whether, when this was disclosed formally, we’d want to interview the girls too.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I’d think about it. I have done, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll accept written declarations from each of them that they haven’t spoken to anyone else about what they were told. The final report will mention it, but won’t comment critically unless . . . and God forbid . . . either of the pair confesses that they did blab about it to a mate. If police officers can’t let off steam to a spouse or partner when they really need to, the job’ll become intolerable, or their marriage will suffer. I’ve done it; truth is, I do it all the bloody time, and I know for a fact that Bob Skinner has.’

  ‘Yes, but your wife was a cop, wasn’t she? And his ex was a pathologist.’

  ‘So what? Most of the time you’re not looking for expert analysis. You want a shoulder to cry on, somebody there who understands why the anger is coming off you in waves, or why your hands won’t stop shaking while you’re having your dinner. Police wives are unpaid counsellors. Are you telling me that you don’t confide in yours?’

  Mackenzie frowned, as they slid into Martin’s car. ‘I won’t tell you that I haven’t,’ he said, ‘but the one time when I really should have talked to Cheryl, I wound up having serious discussions with Mr Miller Draft and Mr Vodka and Tonic instead, and nearly fucked my career. When I took on this new job, I did a hand-over with big McGurk, who did part of it before me. His marriage is tits up: I got the impression that often he wanted to talk to his wife, but that she didn’t want to listen.’

  ‘Or wasn’t able to,’ Martin suggested. ‘It can be rough, and some partners can’t handle it. I’m not just talking about the aftermath of armed situations, or child murders and so on. The people on the traffic cars see some fucking awful stuff, on a regular basis; they take all that home with them too. When Karen and I were married, and I was still down here, she set up a support group for officers’ wives who were having trouble dealing with their husband’s job. By God, it took off . . . Mary McGurk was a member . . . and before she knew it she had more clients than she could handle on her own, including quite a few husbands. She does the same thing up in Tayside.’

  ‘What happened to her group in Edinburgh when she left?’

  ‘It’s still there. She recruited helpers, and handed it on to them. Lady Proud’s the leader now, Sheila Mackie’s involved, and so is Jen Regan, George’s wife.’

  ‘Maybe Cheryl should volunteer.’

  ‘Maybe she should.’

  Mackenzie was thoughtful as the car headed into the traffic. ‘Andy,’ he asked, after they had made the turn on to the North Bridge, ‘where’s this going to lead?’

  ‘It may go nowhere if the fiscal decides that he has evidence enough to convict the current suspect on the Dean case, because the copycat theory will be stopped in its tracks. On the other hand if the inquiry stays open it may lead to new avenues for the investigators. Our brief from Proud Jimmy is to uncover possible leaks of information. We’ve just hit the bull’s eye with our first dart, and I suppose that raises a new question. If it comes to it, who investigates all the Rotarians who heard Dowley shoot his mouth off? Is it us, or is it Becky Stallings and her people?’

  ‘Logic says it’s them.’

  Martin smiled. ‘In this situation, I’m not sure that logic applies.’

  Forty-nine

  Bob Skinner’s Spanish was better than he was prepared to admit, but not up to a professional situation, so he was more than pleased that Intendant Josefina Cortes, the Mossos d’Esquadra’s chief regional criminal investigator, had spent, as she was quick to tell him, two years on an exchange programme with the Los Angeles Police Department, and did not require him to put it to the test.

  She was in uniform when she arrived at the crime scene, the insignia on her shoulders leaving no-one in any doubt as to who was the ranking officer. Her manner underlined the fact. She was in her mid-thirties, sharp and authoritative, and in no way subservient to Skinner, although she had been briefed on his background before her arrival.

  ‘You have an eye for detail,’ she asked, ‘or just a good memory? You look at this woman twice, hours apart, and know something is wrong. Did you not think that they might have been two different people?�
��

  ‘You reckon?’ he replied. ‘Two identically undressed women sunbathing on the same hidden spot on the same day? That would mean that someone killed the victim in broad daylight, in the middle of the day, in full view of anyone who happened to be watching from L’Escala, then bundled up her clothes and possessions and took them away.’

  Cortes smiled. ‘You have a point, Comisario.’

  ‘Yes, but now you have me kicking myself that I didn’t catch on first time to what had happened.’

  ‘Would it have made any difference if you had?’

  ‘Of course. It would have meant that the person who did this would have been four hours closer to us.’

  ‘Us? You are not in Scotland now, señor. You are only a witness in this thing.’

  Skinner snorted. ‘Only a witness? Rephrase that: I’m the only witness. This guy is good.’

  ‘You speak as if you have knowledge of him.’

  ‘I wish I did. This is a very surreal situation, Intendant.’

  ‘Surreal? I don’t see anything surreal about it. I see a dead woman with a bullet in her head, according to my medico. As soon as I find out who she is, I will look for a husband or a boyfriend, or maybe the wife of someone else’s husband or boyfriend.’

  ‘And maybe you’ll get lucky. I really hope you do. But if you’re wrong, we’ll have a really worrying situation . . . and don’t correct me this time, for I’m saying “we” deliberately. In recent months, we’ve had four murders in Scotland that are practically identical to this one.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Cortes, unconvinced, ‘but in Los Angeles in two years we had fifty homicides where the body looked like this, gunshot to the head.’

  ‘Edinburgh ain’t Los Angeles, señora. Our homicides were very specific. The first three cases have been closed, as the only suspect is dead, but two weeks ago there was a fourth killing, so similar to the others that my people in Scotland are concerned that somebody is imitating him.’