18 - Aftershock

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Yes, was that a result or not! Maggie will be so pleased to see that man put away for the rest of his life.’ She paused. ‘You said he’s going home, not coming here?’

  ‘Yes. He told me he’s got one more thing to sort out, and that it might mean an early start. Once it’s done, and here I quote him, he’ll be free to concentrate on the next stage of his career, and of his life.’

  Ninety-eight

  Caitlin Summers smiled as the interview began. It was the third time she had watched it, having recorded the original transmission on the Sky + box that she had discovered as an added bonus when she had moved into her new home.

  ‘Why this location?’ the BBC arts correspondent asked. ‘Isn’t it a bit of a contrast from your last home in the United States . . . New York, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, and the choice is quite deliberate. I’m a creature of extremes, a risk-taker, and I like to think it shows in my work.’

  ‘Being an artist in Scotland has been a risky business lately. I suppose you’re aware that three young painters have been murdered this year.’

  Caitlin watched herself smile mischievously at her female inquisitor. ‘Are you saying I’m live bait?’

  ‘Hardly, but doesn’t it worry you?’

  She saw her face grow serious. ‘How many soldiers have died in Iraq this year? Do armies knock off when a man is killed? Should I set my work aside because of some nutcase? Should I abandon my walks every morning, and shut myself up in my lighthouse? No, thank you. As I understand it, two of those crimes have been cleared up, and the third might have been. If there is still a madman out there, tough.’

  ‘Going back to your past career, you’ve exhibited in several major cities, and now you’re coming home. Where to next?’

  She was about to hear herself reply, ‘Glasgow, probably,’ when her mobile rang. She picked it up and checked the caller ID.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I just thought I’d call to see whether you were okay.’

  ‘And I am.’

  ‘Listen, I know that this leap into the spotlight has been very sudden. I just want to say that although it’s going to look good on your resumé, if you feel you’ve been rushed into it, you can still back off.’

  Caitlin laughed. ‘And miss the chance to meet the First Minister, the second most famous Scotswoman, after Lulu? No chance.’

  Ninety-nine

  Maggie sat and gazed at the television as the ITN newscaster read the story. ‘A man detained in Monaco yesterday has been named this vening as Dražen Boras. It was revealed that the business tycoon was wanted for questioning in connection with two murders, including that of a Scottish police officer. It is understood that Boras arrived in the principality under an assumed identity and was on the guest list for a reception to be given by the president of Bosnia.

  ‘His father, the billionaire Davor Boras, is also in Monaco to attend the same reception. He was said by an aide to be astonished by the turn of events. In a statement issued on his behalf, he said that he and his wife had had no contact with their son since he left the United Kingdom, but felt confident that he would successfully defend the charges made against him.

  ‘The Foreign Office said this evening that extradition proceedings were expected to be swift and that Boras would be returned to Britain on Friday.

  ‘A spokesman for Northumbria Constabulary said that the arrest was the result of a joint operation carried out with colleagues in Scotland, two of whom are understood to have travelled to Monaco to liaise with local officers.’

  The background changed. ‘In London today . . .’ the announcer continued. Maggie pressed the off switch on her remote, and let out a huge sigh.

  ‘You are wonderful,’ said her sister. ‘You did all that, and you never left the house. You must feel . . . Christ, Margaret, I have no idea. How do you feel?’

  ‘Flat,’ she replied. ‘I wanted to be there, Bet. I wanted to see his face, to watch his eyes as he realised that he’d been nailed.’

  ‘That couldn’t be, and you know it. Mind you, I thought that a little public credit would have been in order.’

  ‘No, that can never happen. I should never have been allowed anywhere near the investigation.’

  ‘It might still leak out. Your friend from the Scotsman knows you were involved, and so does the woman you told me about, the stockbroker.’

  ‘Mo won’t say anything; I’m too good a contact to lose. As for Jacqui Harkness, if she does say anything I’ll claim that I was after a stock-market tip when I approached her. My part in the arrest will stay secret, and I’m fine with that. But I did so want to confront the bastard.’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to do it in court.’

  ‘Oh, I will. I’ll cheer when the sentence is passed.’

  ‘And when he gets out, are you still going to kill him?’

  Maggie smiled. ‘No, I was joking when I said that. Anyway, I probably won’t have to. I’ve just given Mo Goode the story of his life.’ve told him that Dražen and his father have been agents for the CIA in the Balkans and that the Americans helped him escape and set him up with his new identity. I’ve also told him to take a look at the LTN Trust in Bermuda and see where it leads him.’

  ‘Can he run a story like that?’

  ’Too bloody right he can. And when he does it won’t just be Dražen who’s in trouble. He and his father will both be on the run from their own countrymen, and with their cover blown, they’ll find that they’ve run out of influence in America. Even if Davor isn’t incriminated in his son’s trial, he’ll need to hire a private army afterwards to protect him.’

  She looked at Stevie’s photograph on the sideboard. ‘That’s as much as I can do for you, love,’ she said, ‘but I reckon it’s not bad.’

  One Hundred

  And Caitlin walked out again, along her beach path, for the fourth time since she had moved into the lighthouse. Yes, it was lonely, but she was content, for there were the birds. There were the gulls, and there were those that she now knew to be gannets, thanks to her afternoon visit to the Sea Bird Centre at North Berwick. She had been recognised there, from the television interview. When the manager had asked her if she would be prepared to help with fund-raising by staging a show there, she had replied, regretfully, that her work was not suitable for the venue, given the limitations of its hanging space.

  She had spent the rest of the previous day logged on to her website, which had registered more than a hundred hits following her media coverage. Her work was displayed there, and her biography: single, born in Largoward thirty-one years earlier to an English father and a Fifer mother, educated in Canada and at the New York Academy of Art; successful exhibitions in Toronto, Québec and Calgary, as well as in major American venues. She had received twelve feedback messages, and she had replied to them all, including the man with the Australian Internet address who had asked her to marry him. She had told him to send a photograph. The others had been innocuous, most of them from people wanting to know where they could buy her work.

  She was still smiling over the Australian as she closed the door behind her, but soon she had left him behind, as she listened to the cries of the gulls and watched the plummeting of the gannets, and the darting of the occasional puffin. They were good company, and so were the voices in her head.

  The voices were always with her in the outdoors. Most people would have thought her crackers, told her to get a life, to seek help, but she liked the voices. They were her friends, they gave her comfort, they helped her plot every step she took, every path she trod. She listened to them as she walked, her hands plunged deep into the big pockets of her canvas jacket.

  On previous mornings she had walked for four miles, to the site of the fossilised forest and a little beyond, then back to the lighthouse, trying not to look beyond, to the great grey mass of the nuclear power station, where two reactors supplied the energy to power huge turbine generators. This time, she had decided, with the consent of her voices, to w
alk all the way to Dunbar, although the second part of the journey would be even more isolated. She would be doing it only once more, maybe twice, before she had to concentrate on other things. ‘Mustn’t get too set in our ways, must we, Caitlin?’ she said, to the voices as much as to herself.

  She walked on until she reached the petrified forest or, rather, the spot on which it had once stood, where now only holes in the ground remained to show where the trees had been, inland in those times, before the North Sea had encroached. She stopped, and looked at it for a few minutes, stilling her voices until she was ready to go on.

  The terrain changed as she neared the Burnmouth Estate, where a modern forest grew. Caitlin knew her history: she had heard of the decisive battle at which General Leslie’s Cromwellian army had defeated the Covenanters before going on to punish the rest of the area for their insurrection. Three and a half centuries later, the place still had a dangerous air about it.

  The path seemed to level out, then led on to a small beach, with the wood close by. As she stepped on to it, she thought she heard a crunch behind her, but she resisted the temptation to turn round. A little further and Dunbar golf course would come into sight.

  And then one of the voices in her ear spoke again. It was the South African and this time its tone was different, no longer laughing, no longer soothing: instead it was urgent.

  ‘We have a man in sight, behind you. He mustn’t close on you! Go now!’

  Several things happened at once.

  The woman known as Caitlin Summers threw herself to her right. As she landed on the sand she rolled over and came up to one knee, her right hand clear of her jacket pocket and clutching a pistol.

  From somewhere behind the tree-line an amplified voice boomed, ‘Armed police officers! Stand still immediately. Put both your hands on your head. Do not move, repeat, do not move or we will shoot.’

  The figure at the centre of it all paused. He looked at the woman on the beach, his eyes hidden from her sight by the enveloping hood of a light grey cotton garment. He saw the gun in her steady shooter’s grip, pointing at his chest. Then, slowly and carefully, he spread his arms out wide, then brought his hands together, interlacing his fingers as they met.

  He stood like a statue as the woman rose from the sand and as Ray Wilding and Griff Montell emerged from the wood. The two detectives held their weapons on him as Wilding approached him and patted him down until he reached the right pocket of his jacket from which he removed a silenced pistol.

  As the sergeant pulled the man’s arms behind his back and cuffed him, a fifth person stepped out of the trees. He walked slowly towards the prisoner; as he reached him, he took hold of the hood, and pulled it backwards, revealing his face.

  ‘Old friend, old friend,’ said Bob Skinner, sadly. ‘What the hell has all this been about?’

  One Hundred and One

  The Crown Agent was at his desk glowering at a pile of papers that had come to him in his deputy’s absence; bloody man wasn’t due back for another week, and with Broughton going off too, things could only get worse. That assistant of his couldn’t be relied upon either. If she had shown a little common sense, the shit-storm of the previous week would not have descended upon his head.

  Top of the list, of course, was the prosecution of the Shadow Defence Secretary’s son for murder. The indictment would have to be absolutely flawless. He could not bear to imagine the consequences if a young man who was as guilty as sin managed to walk free as the result of a technicality. And that bloody woman Birtles was just the type to throw open the door, if it was left even the slightest bit ajar.

  It had never occurred to Joe Dowley that he was a misogynist, but he was. He was of a school, greatly diminished in numbers, but still alive and whining, that regarded women as professionally inferior. He bowed his head, sometimes literally, to the Lord Advocate, and the Lord Justice General, but he held the First Minister in barely disguised contempt, seeing her as the result of a period of ridiculous tokenism in parliamentary selection. As he glanced at the photograph of the Queen, which had been placed on the wall by one of his predecessors, and which he had been afraid to remove, he felt the usual frisson of irritation that she was proving so sturdy and apparently ageless.

  He scowled at the phone as it rang, but picked it up. The caller was a woman. ‘I have the Lord Advocate on the line for you,’ she said . . . more than a little haughtily, he thought.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, as if she had asked whether he was free to take the call.

  ‘Crown Agent,’ the principal law officer intoned as he came on the line. Dowley’s heart sank at the formality of the greeting.

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘I have a task for you,’ Gavin Johnson continued, ‘and for you alone. It has priority over everything else. I need you to go to the police headquarters building down at Fettes, and sit in on an interview that will be conducted there. When it’s over, you’ll be given a copy of the tape. I want you to bring it back to me.’

  ‘Who’s the interviewee?’

  ‘You’ll find that out when you get there.’

  ‘Are you sure this can’t be delegated? I really am . . .’

  ‘You, Joe. Nobody else, and go right away.’

  One Hundred and Two

  ‘You have to be kidding me,’ said Martin.

  ‘No, I’m not, but I am ringing to apologise for keeping you in the dark about certain things, even after you were given oversight of the inquiry. If I’d been able to tell you face to face, Andy, I would have. I wasn’t keeping you out of the loop.’

  ‘So what was it that I missed out on?’

  ‘On Monday,’ Skinner told him, ‘I set up a black operation.’

  ‘Under cover?’

  ‘Anything but: it was so far out there I’m still amazed that we got away with it, but we did, all the way. Have you seen anything in the papers lately about an artist called Caitlin Summers, big name in the US, come home in triumph to Scotland?’

  ‘Yes, I have. Isn’t Aileen opening her exhibition next week?’

  ‘That’s what they said, but she won’t be. Caitlin’s a figment of my imagination, brought to life by Alice Cowan.’

  ‘Alice? Special Branch Alice?’

  ‘Yes. We gave her a butch punk haircut, dyed it peroxide, and stuck a pair of John Lennon glasses on her nose. Her own mother wouldn’t have recognised her. In about half a day she became an internationally known painter, with a body of work that we borrowed from a graduate student in the art college, and presented as Caitlin’s on a website our IT department put together for her. Then we set her up as living in a decommissioned lighthouse in East Lothian, and had her out walking the coast every morning. Our friends in BBC Scotland even ran an interview with her on the evening bulletin on Wednesday.’

  ‘You set her up as bait?’

  Skinner laughed. ‘She used that term herself in the BBC interview. Neil nearly burst a blood vessel when he saw it, but it worked. She volunteered for the job. There was no question of coercion or of her being punished for her leak to her uncle. There was also very little risk. She had a weapon, and she had two bodyguards every hour of the day and every step of the way, Ray Wilding and Griff Montell, both armed too. They camped out in the lighthouse, and they kept her under observation from the dunes when she did her walks. We hoped that if he turned up, he would try to take her where he did. It offered the best cover for him, but happily, it did for us as well.’

  ‘And he surrendered when you had him trapped?’

  ‘Thank God. Alice was under orders to take no chances, and the other two wouldn’t have either. I had to take him alive, Andy, otherwise there might have been people afterwards who still thought it was me.’

  One Hundred and Three

  ‘I want you to understand, Mr Dowley,’ said Chief Constable Sir James Proud, ‘that you’re here as an observer. You will take no part in the interview. You will not speak to the prisoner or to the officers who will be conducting it, whatever the c
ircumstances. Understood?’ The chief’s customary bonhomie was missing: so were the chocolate digestive biscuits and tea with which he had greeted almost every visitor during his term of office. ‘No McVities for him,’ he had growled at Gerry Crossley.

  ‘I’d understand better if I knew what was going on, Sir James.’

  ‘Don’t worry, you will as soon as you walk into that room. Once again, are my instructions clear to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ the Crown Agent replied curtly. ‘Who will be conducting the interview?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Rebecca Stallings and Deputy Chief Constable Bob Skinner.’ Proud could have sworn that he heard a sudden intake of breath as the second name was mentioned. ‘They’re ready to begin, so let me take you there.’

  The chief led the way out of his office, but not out of the command corridor. Instead he turned to his left, and walked a few steps to a small meeting room, where, unusually, a uniformed constable stood guard. Proud opened the door and held it. ‘Your guest is here,’ he said, as the Crown Agent stepped inside . . .

  ... then stopped in his tracks. Skinner and Stallings were sitting with their backs to the door, and a third chair was placed alongside them. Facing them, staring at him as he entered, was Gregor Broughton, procurator fiscal for the Edinburgh area.

  ‘Mr Dowley, Crown Agent, has joined us,’ said Stallings for the tape.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ Skinner snapped. ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’ He turned and stared, hard, across the table. ‘Once again, Gregor,’ he continued, ‘as I asked you on the beach, what the hell is all this about?’

  ‘Aren’t you simply going to ask me what I was doing there, Bob?’

  ‘I saw what you were doing there. You were stalking one of my officers and I believe that you were about to shoot her. We found a pistol in your jacket pocket. You were dressed like a fucking hoodie, man.’