‘Spousal rights?’ Skinner suggested.
‘That’s it. Mrs Herbert said she should have bitten his hand off for the two million, but her lawyer promised her she’d get much more if she just hung in there, and stuck to her claim.’
‘Who’s her lawyer?’ the DS asked.
‘Moss Lee. Heard of him?’
‘Ach!’ Provan spat. ‘I might have fucking guessed.’
‘I know, he’s an arsehole, but he was bloody persistent and Faye fell for it. Greed got the better of her. I think Lee was hoping Leo would just get tired of arguing and pay her off whatever the cost. Mistake. My friend was not a guy you could wear down. The longer the fight lasted, the tougher he got, in the ring and in life.’
‘The fight’s over, though,’ Skinner pointed out, ‘with the will being a substitute for the judges’ scorecards. The investigation can’t progress properly until its contents are known. Do you have a contact number for Mrs Herbert, Mr Butler?’
‘Only the office, but I’m sure her mobile will be on Leo’s phone.’
‘Which is where, exactly?’ he asked, glancing at Provan.
‘At the lab in the crime campus at Gartcosh, for printing and DNA testing. It was on the floor beside the body; Arthur’s folk took it. Lottie wants to know if anyone else handled it. If somebody else was here when he died, that might tell us.’
‘I suggest you get it back. You need . . .’
‘I know,’ the DS sighed impatiently. ‘Apart from the Herbert woman’s number, we need a list of the calls he made before he died.’
‘Sorry, Dan, I’m not trying to tell you what your job is.’
‘You’re managing nonetheless.’
‘Excuse me,’ Butler said, ‘you don’t need the phone to access Leo’s contacts. They’ll be on his computer; it’s in his office. Unless they’ve taken that away too,’ he added.
‘They shouldnae have,’ Provan replied. ‘There was no reason. Where is his office?’
‘I’ll show you, come on.’
He led them out of the drawing room and upstairs to a small room overlooking the conservatory and the garden. There were signs of SOCO activity, but access had not been restricted. ‘This is it,’ the manager announced. ‘This is where Leo did most of his business when he was here. We both did.’ He paused. ‘You need to understand that Leo was a bit of a nomad. It was hard to say where he lived. When he made his first big pay-TV score, he bought an apartment in Chelsea; he lived there a lot of the time. He bought a house on Lake Las Vegas, where his American girlfriend Rae and their daughter Raeleen live now. It’s in Rae’s name, just as the one in Barassie belongs to Faye. Also there’s a place in the Bahamas, where a lot of sportspeople have property; that’s where he was planning to live permanently after he retired. This place here was where he laid his head when he was in Scotland, nothing more.’
‘With all those cars in the garage?’ the DS exclaimed.
‘His one extravagance. They were his only toys. The Mustang’s got about a thousand miles on the clock; the Ferrari he bought from a golfer he knew. The Bentley was his main car; he drove that between here and London. He didn’t mind flying but he wasn’t a big fan of airports.’
‘What did he use on Friday when he left the party?’
‘The Harley. That was his real pride and joy.’
‘It’d be mine too,’ Provan said. ‘Can you get into his computer?’
‘Sure, I used it as much as Leo did, possibly more. There’s no personal stuff on it. All that went on his laptop and his phone.’
‘What laptop?’
‘Leo separated his private life from his business life completely,’ Butler explained. ‘His business email was [email protected], with its own Cloud storage. Personally he was [email protected], with a separate account for that, his music and everything else.’
‘Nobody told me about a laptop. I’ll need to check with Gartcosh to see if it’s at the lab. Did he take it with him everywhere?’
‘Always.’
‘If Gartcosh doesn’t have it,’ Skinner pointed out, ‘that means he didn’t die alone, or that someone else was here before you, Mr Butler . . . that’s assuming you didn’t trouser it yourself.’
The manager seemed to reel backwards, holding his hands as if fending him off. ‘Wait a minute!’ he protested.
‘Well, did you?’
‘No! Fuck’s sake, man.’
‘Fair enough, but the question had to be asked. Didn’t it, Dan?’
He turned to see that Provan had withdrawn to a corner of the room, muttering into his mobile. ‘You certain?’ he heard him say. ‘Aye, okay, Arthur; keep your ginger mop on.’
The DS frowned as he pocketed the phone. ‘The laptop is at Gartcosh,’ he announced. ‘And a Samsung Edge. Mr Butler,’ he continued, ‘get us intae this thing, will ye, please.’
The manager nodded and moved past him to the desk, pressed a button behind the computer and waited for it to boot up. A minute elapsed, and then a menu appeared on screen. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Do you like the screen saver?’
The background image was a still from a fight. Speight stood, gloved right fist held high and perfectly balanced, as his opponent fell forward; the photographer had captured the moment perfectly, even catching the glaze in the beaten man’s eyes, and the look of detached professional satisfaction on the champion’s face.
‘Aaron Abbess,’ Butler murmured. ‘WBA champion, until that night four years ago in the MGM Grand in Vegas; he actually thought he had a chance, for about seven and a half minutes, until what you see there happened. That was Leo’s signature fight, the one he’ll be most remembered for.’
He moved the cursor on the screen, clicked the mouse, and a file appeared, a list of names and numbers. He scrolled down until he found ‘H’, then clicked again. ‘There you are: Joy Herbert’s mobile number.’
Both of his companions noted it down.
‘We can look at the party list on screen if you like,’ he continued. ‘It’s on here; I can print another copy too. I only brought the one.’
‘Fine,’ Skinner murmured. ‘I’d like one if I may.’
Butler’s hand moved the cursor once more, and clicked twice, opening a folder and then a file. Thirty seconds later a wireless printer on a desk in the corner hummed into action. He retrieved the two printed lists, clipped the sheets together with a stapler and handed them over.
‘There you are, gents.’
‘Thanks,’ Provan replied. ‘And thanks for helping us with the number. You can go now. Ye might want to avoid the media. Our PR guy will be announcing any minute now that it’s a suspicious death.’
‘Thanks for the advice, but I’m not quite done yet. I’m going to have a funeral to organise; nobody else is going to take that job on. Can you give me any idea, Mr Provan, of when you’re going to release Leo’s body?’
‘I wish I could, but it’s no’ our call. That’s down to the procurator fiscal, and in these circumstances there’s no saying how long he’ll take. It’ll no’ be before all the toxicology’s done, that’s for sure. Until there’s little or no prospect of an arrest, he might hold on to it. And even if we are able to charge somebody fairly soon, his lawyers might want to do their own testing.’
Butler frowned. ‘I see.’
‘Was Leo religious?’ Skinner asked.
‘Church of Scotland. We both are . . . were, but he actually went on occasion. Out of respect for his mother, he said.’
‘Did he ever express a preference for burial or cremation?’
‘Not to me, but his father went up the chimney, so I suppose . . .’
‘In that case, maybe you could think about a memorial service, with a private cremation when the PF does release the remains.’
‘Mmm. Might do. I suppose I should talk to Joy Herbert, just in case he
put an instruction in his will.’
‘That would make sense,’ Provan agreed, ‘but we’ll want to talk to her before anyone else does.’
‘Another thing. Rae and Raeleen were at the party; Leo wanted everybody in his life to be there. They’re due to go back to America on Wednesday. Can they do that?’
‘I hope so, but I cannae say for sure. That’ll be up to DI Mann once we’ve interviewed the mother. Where do we find her?’
‘We put them up in the Blacksmith. Faye stayed there on Friday night too; it meant that all the kids could be bedded down and the mothers could enjoy themselves.’
‘And did they?’ Skinner asked quietly.
‘As far as I could see. Faye doesn’t have an issue with Rae. As far as she’s concerned, she’s from another world.’
‘Then I hope she can get back to it soon,’ the DS said, ‘but if she tells us something that’s relevant to the investigation, we might ask her to stay here for a while longer.’
Butler raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Could you force her to stay if she insisted on going back?’
‘We could if she was locked up,’ the DS retorted. ‘But in practice she’s free to fly back as planned. Sure, we’ll want to talk to her, but she’s no’ even obliged to do that. It could get complicated, though, if she turned out to be a witness after she’d gone home. Would we have trouble getting her back?’
‘If it helped convict someone of Leo’s murder, she’d be on the first plane. She really loved him.’
‘How did he feel about her?’
‘Fond. He was fond of her; he told me he felt comfortable with her. Mind you, he said the same about Faye at the beginning. Leo didn’t really do love; he never saw any at home when he was a kid. His dad, Leonard, was a quiet bloke who never smiled, and his mother developed Alzheimer’s relatively young.’
‘What effect did that have on Leo? Can you say?’
The other man sighed. ‘I think,’ he replied, ‘that it was why he never got really close to anyone in his life, other than me, maybe. He was afraid that one day whatever had got into his mother’s head might get into his.’
‘Was that the real reason why he wasn’t too keen on the book approach?’ Provan asked.
‘That may have been part of it. I explained to Mrs Raynor that he’d had a difficult family life. She wasn’t bothered about that; she said she was prepared to skip over it. She told Leo that on Friday, but he didn’t react to it. He said he’d mull it over and give her a final answer yesterday. I’m pretty sure it would have been “no thanks”, though.’
‘How would you have felt about that? It would have cost you money too, would it not?’
Butler’s eyes narrowed; he peered at the DS. ‘I’ve got money, Sergeant. Yes, my share of the advance as Leo’s agent would have been just shy of a quarter of a million, but I wasn’t relying on it to keep a roof over my head in my old age, I promise you. The Chancellor of the bloody Exchequer would have been more annoyed than me. He really does need the cash.’
‘Fair enough,’ Provan muttered. ‘Although we may revisit that.’ He glanced at the printout in his hand. ‘Before you go, maybe you could help us wi’ some of these names. Gene Alderney, for example. Who’s he?’
‘She; it’s short for Genevieve. She’s Bryce Stoddart’s matchmaker in the promotional company. She finds the opponents and negotiates with them. She’s a holdover from old Benny’s time; came on the scene about ten years ago. He always said she had bigger balls than him when it came to cutting a deal. When he retired, he insisted that Bryce keep her on.’
‘Was she going to be involved in the new venture?’
‘She might have been on the boxing side, yes, but not the MMA; that roster would all be fighters directly contracted by the company, so it wouldn’t need a matchmaker.’
‘Mmm.’ He looked at the list again. ‘Charles Baxter. What about him?’
‘He’s a chartered surveyor from Edinburgh; he’s a partner in LJMcF. It’s an international practice; it looked after all of Leo’s property interests, personal and commercial, and he’s the main man. His name’s on the list, but he wasn’t there.’
‘Did Leo have a lot of property investments?’ Skinner asked.
‘Oh yes. Much of his wealth was invested in property.’ Butler smiled. ‘You’ve probably read estimates of Leo’s net worth. Around sixty-five million, some papers say. Bollocks. He had to have been worth twice that in property alone; held in different companies in different countries. Last year, thanks to LJMcF, he bought an advertising agency in Kuala Lumpur, through a company called LS Asia, registered in the Bahamas. The agency was pretty much fucked; it hadn’t made a profit in years. It was a distress sale really, but Charlie Baxter discovered something that everyone else had overlooked. It owned its own office block. Leo bought the company, inherited the debt, which was secured against the building, paid that off with a loan that he serviced through the rental income stream, and was left with an asset valued at forty million US dollars. If anyone deserved his party invitation, our Charlie did.’
‘Augusta Cambridge,’ Provan read. ‘What about her?’
‘She’s an artist, painter. Have you ever heard of LeRoy Neiman?’
‘Can’t say I have.’
‘He was an American, a legend; he specialised in impressionist paintings and screen prints of fighters, athletes, sporting events. They were wonderful, awash with colour. Augusta styles her work on his, although she’s more conventional. She’s done a few paintings of Leo in action; he commissioned them but she holds the copyright and the print income, which is worth having. She also did paintings of the crowds at a few of his fights. The originals are in public galleries in the countries where they were painted; the prints sell in the hundreds of thousands, and Augusta rakes it in.’ He broke off, then added, ‘That was one of the things about the champ. The people who hung around him tended to make a hell of a lot of money.’
‘And Aldo Mosca,’ Skinner said. ‘Who’s he?’
Butler gave a quick teeth-sucking intake of breath. ‘That’s a hell of a good question,’ he replied. ‘Of all the people on that list, he is the only one I didn’t know, not until this week, and you have to go and pick him out. Turns out he’s a movie director who wants to make a documentary about boxing. That’s not his real name, though; the full version has nine or ten syllables.’
‘If you didn’t know him, how did he get on the list?’
‘Leo added him, last week. I asked him who he was, but all he said was “a bloke I know”. I asked if he really needed to be there, because the Blacksmith was going to be bung full by that time. He insisted. “It’s not a request, Gino,” he said. But he refused to tell me why. Truth be told, I was annoyed. He never kept secrets from me; as it turned out, it was the wrong time to start.’
‘But Mosca was there on the night?’
‘Oh yes. A little chap with greasy dark hair and black-framed specs: Italian, by his accent.’
‘You spoke to him?’ Provan intervened.
‘As it turned out, I’d spoken to him before that, but I made a point of it on the night. I wanted to know how he was connected to Leo, but he didn’t drop any hints.’
‘Who else did he talk to that you know of?’
‘I saw him chatting to Rae; I think she might have known him, or maybe she was just being friendly.’
‘Did you arrange accommodation for him?’
‘Yes, I put him up in a hotel in Glasgow. Leo didn’t want him in the Blacksmith for some reason he didn’t explain. He’s still a bit of a mystery.’
‘One that we’d better solve,’ Skinner declared.
Twelve
‘I’ve been expecting your call,’ Joy Herbert said. ‘Indeed, after the news alert that flashed up on my phone half an hour ago, I intended to call the police. Your spokesman described my client’s death as “suspic
ious”. Can you be more specific than that?’
‘He was poisoned,’ Lottie Mann replied. ‘In theory we can’t rule out its being self-administered, but we can’t find a single reason in his personal circumstances for him to do that, so our presumption is that he was murdered. Mr Butler, his manager, told us that you handle Mr Speight’s private legal affairs, and that you drew up his will. Is that the case?’
‘Yes,’ the solicitor confirmed, ‘and I need to contact Mr Butler also. The will names him as an executor. The other is Mr Charles Baxter, who will have charge of all property matters.’
‘Butler’s just left us, heading home, but we need to see you soonest. I have to know the contents of the will. Do you have a problem with that?’
‘Not at all. My client is dead; the will’s of immediate importance. Also, as soon as I lodge it with the sheriff court, it’ll be a public document. You’d better come to my office; it’s in the Roberts Building in George Square. I’m just finishing lunch. I can be there in half an hour . . . that’s assuming I can get a taxi, since I’ve had a glass of wine.’
‘Make it an hour. We’re still at Mr Speight’s house in Ayr. Don’t worry about a taxi. I’ll send a police car for you.’
Mann heard the lawyer chuckle. ‘As long as they don’t put a hand on my head when I’m getting in, like they do on the telly.’
The DI noted her address, then ended the call. ‘Amazing,’ she remarked to Provan. ‘A solicitor who wants to help the police.’
‘Maybe she’ll take your case,’ her colleague said jokingly.
‘If she was Leo Speight’s lawyer, I couldn’t afford her. Besides, she does private law, not family law; there’s a difference.’ She sighed. ‘I wish she did, though; I feel so damn helpless. The thought of having to leave Jakey with those two overnight: it’s so bloody frustrating.’
A Brush With Death Page 9
