'No, no, no, no,' he assured her, quickly. 'This is just to tell you how things are going to be from now on. There'l be no surprise visits after this.
'But how're you doing anyway? And how's your man taking his uncle's death? That was a hell of a shock. Half-ratted as I was at the time, I remember thinking I've never seen him so rattled.'
'He had a rough weekend ... the whole family had, as you'd imagine, and that crap in the Sundays didn't help . .. but he's okay now. He headed off down to Gala at half-six this morning. It's his first day as well, remember.'
The Head ofCID rose to leave, but as he did so, his eye was caught by 182
a paper in her out-tray He picked it up; it was the flyer on George Rosewell, on which Mario had doodled a rough beard. 'Who's this ugly bugger?' he chuckled.
In spite of herself, she felt a cold tug at her stomach. 'He's a missing person. It's got to be re-circulated, since he's thought to have changed his appearance since that photo was taken; hence my husband's artwork.'
Pringle gave his moustache another tug. 'You know,' he murmured,
'this looks a hell of a lot like someone whose mug turned up on my desk this morning. It came through from Strathclyde, a notice about a guy they're looking for through there. It's the sort of thing where you'd say he's just done a runner, but they're taking it seriously, since the guy's a parish priest.'
'Could you send me a copy?' asked Maggie.
'Sure, if you like. Why?'
'I don't know. I suppose I'd just like to see a priest who looked like him!'
'What do you think of the Borders so far, sergeant?' Detective Superintendent Mario McGuire asked his new assistant, as they strol ed around the main thoroughfare of Galashiels, enjoying the midday sun.
Sammy Pye ran a hand over his dark hair. 'Come on, sir. I've only been here for four hours.'
'Come on, nothing. You make up your mind about a woman in about half a minute flat, so give me an instant opinion about our new surroundings.'
'If it's an order, boss; I know we haven't been out of Gala yet, but if this is the hub of the division as far as population's concerned, what's the rest going to be like? Even in comparison to Dalkeith and East Lothian, where I was before I was in Mr Martin's office, it's quiet.'
McGuire smiled. 'Maybe so, but your predecessor in this office got a lump shot off his ear not that long ago. There was no danger of that while you were working for the head of CID.'
'Maybe not, sir, but is it going to be that much different here? That thing they had last year was a one-off, and everybody involved got such heavy time that there won't be any repeat performances. Don't get me wrong, I jumped at the chance to get out to a division again, but my role's going to be much the same, isn't it? I was Mr Martin's exec; now I'm yours.'
'It'l not be the same, though, because my job's different... at least the way I do it wil be. After doing my stint in Special Branch, I was as keen as you to get out in the field again. I'm not going to drive this division from behind a desk; I'm going to take the lead on most investigations as they come up, and you'll be there with me. We've got a small team here, I know, but even if I'd been given an Edinburgh command, that's the way I'd have handled it.
'The downside of SB is that it doesn't let you do any conventional CID work. You spend al your bloody time gathering and exchanging intelligence, unless you're Alee Bloody Smith, and look what happened to him.' He reached out a shirt-sleeved arm and punched his sergeant 184
lightly on the shoulder. 'So you and I, Sammy, we're going to make this place sing. And don't you worry; the Borders might be quiet, but there are people here, and where there's punters there's crime. There's also a substantial amount of moneyed folk down here; it fol ows that there are also less-moneyed folk, some of a mind to do a bit of redistribution.
'We've also got colleges, and where you have colleges you have young people. Where you have young people you have discos and stuff, and where you have them you have guys peddling class A drugs. You get my drift, Sammy?'
Pye nodded.
'Good.' The superintendent stopped, in front of the police office. 'I don't like to speak il of my predecessors, and I won't to anyone else bar you, but this division was a problem for a while. When Mr Skinner became Head of CID he inherited John McGrigor as his commander down here, and John was a problem.
He was a former rugby international;
that made him revered down here, and got him his job, but he was a piss poor detective nonetheless.
'The Boss couldn't move him anywhere else; that would have been a disaster. He couldn't stick him back in uniform, because he wouldn't have been any better there. So effectively, he, and later Roy Old and Andy Martin, commanded this division from Fettes. When John took early retirement, the sigh of relief was heard all over headquarters.
'Dan Pringle started to get this place up to the same standard as the other divisions, but he'd tell you himself, as he's told me, that there's still work to be done, especial y on pushing crime prevention down here. We haven't been sent down here for a rest, Sam, I promise you that.'
They walked back into the grey stone building, past the front desk and through to the CID suite; the outer office was manned by a lone detective constable. 'Message for you, sir,' he said to McGuire as Pye resumed his seat behind his new desk. 'Would you cal Mr Jay in Leith, as soon as you can.'
'Aye, okay, Bert. Thanks.'
He went back to his room without a view, and called the Leith divisional office. 'Mario, old son,' Greg Jay greeted him down the line, when, eventual y, his cal was put through. 'Sorry to keep you hanging on. How are things in the Borders?'
'Warm and sunny thanks, Greg. I'm just getting the feel of my new office.'
'You'l be having a visitor in it soon; Dan Pringle's doing the rounds and he'l be heading your way this afternoon. I just thought I'd call to warn you.'
'Thanks, but I know that already. Maggie was second on his list; she phoned me after she had her official visit. Good for Clan; if that's how he wants to play it, that's fine by me. I couldn't see him chairing a formal meeting anyway: not his style.'
'You might find a flea in your ear after he's gone. When he was here, he asked me if I was happy with everything. He caught me at the wrong moment, 'cos I told him that as it happened, I was a bit pissed off with you. I saw the report you faxed in about your meeting with the Brennan woman. I know you've got a personal interest in the Viareggio investigation, Mario, but if you thought she had information, you should have passed it on to the investigating officers. I wouldn't even have minded if you'd cal ed me at home. Seeing her yourself was a bit out of order, son, and I'm afraid I told Dan Pringle as much.'
McGuire felt the fuse of his temper burning away fast. As he fought to control it, he held the phone away from his ear for a second or two, and stared at it, noticing that he was gripping it so hard that his knuckles were white. Finally, he put it back to his ear.
'There's a couple of things I should tell you, Greg,' he said evenly. 'To begin with, please don't call me "son", ever; I don't like it. Also, next time you try to score points off me with Dan Pringle or Bob Skinner or anyone else, then, whether we're senior officers or not, I'll take you somewhere quiet and do something serious to your head.
'For the record, Ivy Brennan's on the fringe of something else I'm involved in, something personal. When she cal ed me last night, I didn't real y think she knew anything about Beppe or his murder. I'm still not sure she didn't make up that story about the argument in the sauna, but she volunteered it, so I passed it on to you, informal y.
'She's a funny one, is Ivy, but she does know my cousin Paula. I've checked that out. If you're running your investigation properly, you'll send a couple of officers along to re-interview her, for the record. Or are you going to surprise me? Have you made an arrest already?'
'If I had, you'd have been the first to know,' Jay replied, stiffly.
'Have you got any new leads, then?'
'We might have. We found a
taxi-driver who said he dropped a couple off on the corner of the street that leads to your uncle's place, just before nine.'
'Descriptions?'
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'She was late twenties, he was older; that was the best he could do.
You know how many fares these guys have on a Friday night.'
'Anything else?'
'We've been looking at the property side with your other cousin's husband, Stan Coia; to see whether your family might have had any
tenants with a grievance against the landlord.'
'I doubt it. Stan's a good bloke; he keeps the portfolio in first-class shape. Maintenance can be a good investment, in terms of lower insurance premiums. I can't see anyone having grounds for complaint, not to the extent of wanting to put a bul et in Beppe.'
'Maybe not.' Jay paused. 'Did you know that the Viareggio Trust owns a bonded warehouse?' he asked.
'Yes, I do know that, as a matter of fact. We use it to bond wines from Italy for the deli chain, and we rent out space there to other importers.'
'Yes, that's right. There was one funny thing that Mr Coia mentioned.
A firm rented space, but never used it; they didn't pass a single case of wine through there. A few months back, your uncle wrote to them .. .
well, Coia wrote the letter, but Mr Viareggio signed it... and said that he intended to terminate their lease so that it could be made available to someone who actual y needed it. There's a clause in the agreement that lets him do that.
'The tenant's response was very angry and aggressive. It was so threatening, in fact, that Mr Coia was going to back off, but your uncle Beppe insisted that they go ahead. So legal papers were served a couple of weeks ago.'
'What was the name of the firm?'
'Essary and Frances Limited; it's registered at the office of its solicitor, and the directors are named as Mr Magnus Essary and Ms El a Frances.'
'You fol owing it up?'
'I've got people on it as we speak. Oh, and by the way, Mario; this time I'd be grateful if you left it to them.'
McGuire slammed the phone back into its cradle. He was still scowling when Dan Pringle walked into his office.
'You set it up right here in the heart of the city,' said Detective Chief Inspector Mary Chambers; as she gazed at the young man, her plain square face was lit with a mix of incredulity and amusement. 'Excuse my use of industrial language, but did you clever boys real y think we're as lucking stupid as that?'
'Well yes, actually,' he replied.
'They think that in Malaysia too; I was there last week at a conference.
There's a queue of guys like you in prisons out in south east Asia, all waiting to be hanged.'
She sighed. 'Not just in the heart of the city, mind you. Oh no, you two have to set up your Ecstasy lab less than half a mile from a divisional police office.' She paused as the midday train rattled by outside, and looked around the windowless space of the small industrial unit which had been turned into a chemical factory.
'Where better to hide than the heart of a city?' the tal youth asked.
'Just about anywhere,' Maggie Rose told him. 'We've got a concentration of manpower here that you won't find anywhere else.'
He looked at her scornful y. 'You didn't catch us. We were grassed up.'
'You know al the slang, too,' said Chambers, shaking her head. 'You poor lads. Al those brains and no common sense; you made the tabs local y, you sold them local y, and you used stupid bloody students like yourselves to peddle them for you. Of course you were grassed up! Did you real y think those two kids were going to do time for you, once they were offered the chance of being Crown witnesses?'
'It's their word against ours.'
The chief inspector looked at the second young man; there was raw fear in his voice and his chin was trembling. 'No, son,' she said, wearily.
'It's your word against ours, mine and Detective Superintendent Rose and DS McConochie and DC Guthrie, who's taking photographs of your equipment in situ, just as he's been taking shots of you two and the others, coming in and out of this place for the last week.
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'There's that, and then there's the name on the lease for this place. I have got that right, haven't I? I'm not mixed up between the two of you, am I? You are Brian Litster and he's Raymond Weston.' The boy nodded.
'Right, that's enough. Beano,' snapped the other. 'No more talk. Arrest us and caution us, if that's what you're going to do. Inspector.'
'Too right that's what I'm going to do, Mr Weston.'
'Good.' He took a phone from his pocket. 'Then I'l be entitled to cal my father.'
Chambers shrugged her broad shoulders. 'You can cal him right now, if you want. Tell him you're being arrested and taken to the Torphichen Place police office.'
Raymond Weston looked at her in surprise for a moment, then dialled a number. 'Dad,' he said, and as he spoke his voice took on an urgent, frightened tone that had not been there before. 'I've been picked up by the police. They've set me up. I told you that guy Martin would have it in for me, and I was right.' He paused for a few seconds. 'Torphichen Place, they said. No, I won't say anything til you and he get there.'
He put the phone back in his pocket. The head of the Drugs Squad shook her head and smiled. 'I see we're in for a busy day. George,' she called to Detective Sergeant McConochie. 'Go through the formalities with these two, and then get them round the corner. I don't imagine that this one's dad will be too long in getting there.' She turned to Rose. 'Will you come back to the office in my car?'
'Fine,' the superintendent replied, a frown on her face, and followed her outside.
'Who's his father, I wonder?' Chambers mused as she slid behind the wheel.
'I can tel you that. He's Professor Nolan Weston, and he's a surgeon at the Western.'
'And what was that stuff about? The bit about us having it in for him?'
The superintendent took a deep breath, then blew it out. 'Potentially it's a mess, if Weston goes to trial. There was an investigation a while back into the death of his girlfriend's uncle. Dan Pringle was in my job then, and he thought Weston might have had something to do with it. He offered an alibi; he told Dan that he'd been in bed with someone at the
time; not his girlfriend, someone else. It turned out that he was telling the truth.
'The other woman was Andy Martin's fiancee.'
'What? Karen?'
'No, this was before Karen. At the time, Andy was engaged to Bob Skinner's daughter, Alex.'
'Oh Jesus!' exclaimed Chambers. 'Weston's not still seeing her, is he?'
'Not a chance. Alex is working in her firm's office down south; the last I heard she was going out with an actor guy she met at Neil Mcl henney's wedding.'
'Still, if his defence alleges that we've got a down on him because of that, and we've fixed him up, you never know with juries. At the very least, it'll be all over the tabloids; I can see the headlines . . . and the pictures . . . even now.' She flashed a quick, engaging smile. 'By the way, did you know that Elvis Presley's song, "One Night with You" was original y cal ed "One Night of Sin"?'
Rose chuckled. 'No, I did not. I was never into Elvis ... or much into nights of sin, for that matter. But before you go offering Weston a deal to preserve the reputation of the force, there's something else you should take into account.'
'What's that?'
'The Bob Skinner factor. There aren't too many people who'd fancy throwing mud at his daughter. If you'd like a wager on how this wil turn out, I'd say that Litster wil catch the lot, since his name was on the lease, and that Ray Weston will plead to a reduced charge; being involved in manufacture, but not supply.'
'River?'
'Done.'
'I'd better get on with it then,' said Chambers. She drove round the twisting Haymarket junction and drew up outside divisional headquarters to let Rose out of the car, then pulled away again, heading for the park at the rear.
The red-haired superintendent was frowning as s
he strol ed back into her office. On impulse she picked up the phone and cal ed the Special Branch number, the one that had been her husband's until the previous Friday. 'DI Mcllhenney,' a familiar voice answered.
'Hi, Neil. How are you settling in?'
'Rushed off my feet, Mags. Is this a wish-me-luck call?'
'Not exactly. Something's come up that the Boss should be aware of, but it's far too delicate for Jack McGurk to handle on his first day in the job. And now that Andy's gone, you're the only man I can talk to about it.' Quickly, she explained what had happened at Weston and Litster's Ecstasy factory.
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'I see what you mean,' the big inspector muttered. 'You don't think the lad would real y be that stupid, do you?'
'I'm betting he isn't, but I've been wrong before.'
'Not very often, you haven't, but I agree, the Big Man needs to be told; Alex too, in case his lawyer gets cute and starts leaking stuff to the tabloids. Leave it with me; I'll take care of it.'
'Thanks. You know I wouldn't have figured on Alex getting into a jam like this.'
'Why not?' Neil drawled. 'Her father did ... not that I'd be daft enough to remind him of the fact.'
She laughed as she hung up. Final y, she turned back to the papers on her desk, able to give them her full attention for the first time since Mary Chambers' urgent cal two hours before. The photograph other father still lay on top of the pile. She thought of Dan Pringle's comment, and then another recollection came to her, the memory of another face she had seen, a week before.
She picked up the phone once more, and dial ed the general office extension. 'Sauce,' she began, as Haddock answered, 'I want you to dig out a file for me, if it's still there. It relates to an incident reported on night shift up in Oxgangs.' She gave him the details, then waited. Her door opened in less than five minutes; the gawky Haddock appeared, slightly breathless, and laid a file on her desk. 'Thanks,' she said. 'You
don't need to wait.'
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