But when those three guys, plus Leo Grace, the president's friend, got together, that time had come.
'They must have realised the danger, though; or at least Leo must have. Straight after that trip in January, he went out and bought those two automatics.'
There was a long silence. Skinner let it run its course. 'Kosinski,' said Doherty, after ful y two minutes. 'If it was Kosinski, why him, why someone in the Bureau?'
'Deniability. The organisation that planned or commissioned the hit wouldn't, then or now, use someone who led back to its door. But like I said, it may not have been Kosinski. He may be dead himself. Wait till they dig the bullet out of Wilkins: see if it's FBI issue.'
'And if it isn't?'
'Then there's a fair chance it'll have come from a Glock 19. Leo's second gun is missing.'
'What will that tell us?'
'Fuck all, except that it'll mean Kosinski could still be in the game.'
'Jeez. So how dp we investigate all this?'
'You want to investigate it?'
'Sure as hell, I do. I guess I'd better brief the director, though.'
'Can you trust the director?'
'Bob!'
'Could you trust Kosinski?'
'Aw hell. Okay, what do I do?'
'Use Special Agent Brand. Have him go through the bank and credit card records of the other three guys. I have access to all Leo's stuff. See if they tell you where they were in January. See what they tell you about those laptops. That's al for now.'
'Okay, I'l do that, and I'l ask for a copy of the Wilkins autopsy report.'
'No. You do the Wilkins autopsy through your own people. You have the authority; father and son murdered in different states makes it your business, yes?'
'You're catching on. I'll get Chicago on to that; be back in touch.'
'What about the Secret Service rosters?'
'Now you are being crazy. That stuff's off limits.'
'Tell me, Joe, aren't all records in the US computerised by now?'
'Pretty much.'
'And is the Bureau the only law enforcement agency in the US that doesn't know how to hack into a computer?'
'Bob, you didn't say that. I could have you deported just for thinking it, never mind suggesting it to a federal civil servant. I'll call you.'
Skinner hung up. The coffee filter had completed its programme, and the jug lay steaming on the hotplate, but he had forgotten his task entirely.
'Honey?'
Sarah's voice from the kitchen doorway brought him back into contact with his surroundings. 'Yes, sorry.'
'Bob, are you al right? You didn't seem with it there, and it's not the first time it's happened since I've arrived. I'm getting worried about you.'
'I'm fine, honest. I just had a call from Joe, that's all; I got wrapped up in it. I'l bring the coffee through now.'
'Forget it,' she said, lightly. 'lan had to leave. We thought you'd gone to Colombia for the beans.' She walked across to the work surface and picked up a mug. 'I'l have one now, though. You?'
He shook his head; unusual y, he found that he had no taste for coffee.
'Did Joe speak to his agent?' asked Sarah.
Bob looked down at her. When they had been reconciled after their split, part of their deal had been that there were to be no secrets between them, none of any sort. Yet something held him back from answering, held him back from telling her the whole story of Arthur Wilkins' murder, on the heels of Kosinski's visit and Doherty's phone call. Instinct told him to protect her from that knowledge, to protect her from it all… yet he did not know why.
'Not yet,' he answered, and left it at that; better to be economical with the truth than to bend it.
Even as he spoke, he saw something on her face that told him that she had a preoccupation of her own. He said nothing, leaving her to spit it out in her own time. He had to wait for little more than a minute, 222 watching her as she sipped her coffee, holding the mug in both hands.
'Bob,' she began. 'Remember when I was over here with Jazz…'
'How could I forget?' he chuckled. 'Much as I'd like to.'
'Yeah, me too; but that won't happen. I'd just hoped that it would al stay in the past.'
His smile turned into a frown. 'Yes?'
'The guy,' she said quietly, 'the man I had an affair with when we were apart.'
'The guy you worked beside in the hospital?'
'I didn't work beside him, exactly. He was a visiting consultant in another department; one that had nothing to do with me. But yes, the guy you mean, the guy I told you about; Terry. The thing is, he wants to meet me.'
'Does he now,' Bob murmured, his face unreadable.
'He cal ed Ian when he read about the murders. He knew that he and Babs are the best friends I have in Buffalo, and he asked Ian to pass on his condolences. He said also that he'd like to express them in person, if I'd be prepared to meet him.'
'And do you want to?'
'No, I don't; I hoped I'd never see him again. But…'
He held up a hand. 'Listen, Sarah,' he said, firmly. 'You told me about you and him; you hit me over the head with it, in fact. Yes, you told me why you let it happen: you did it to put us on an equal footing in the infidelity stakes, you said, and I've always forced myself to see it that way. Yet when you boil it al down, that's just an elegant way of saying that you did it to get even with me. To be dead honest, I wish you'd put it that way from the start.'
She looked away from him. 'If that's the way you want to see it, fine,' she snapped.
'Okay, let's cut away the soft words and tell the truth of it. You wrecked our marriage because you were wrapped up in your job and your obsessions, and eventual y, wrapped up in screwing your lady detective sergeant. You didn't have the guts to tel me that at the time though; you just froze me out of your life.
'So I came over here; I missed you every moment, waking and sleeping, and worse, my self-esteem was in pieces. Then someone took an interest in me. He wasn't pushy, he wasn't devious, he saw me as an attractive, unattached woman and he told me so. Better than that, he made me feel attractive again. When I slept with him, I had decided, more or less, to go back to Scotland, but yes, you're right, I did feel that it evened the score between us, whether you want to put it bluntly, or gently, as I tried to.
'But if you want it straight, here it is. I also felt that I owed him, for being there when you weren't, and for picking me up after you had knocked me down. I felt that it was right to give him something of me, and, truth be told, I wanted to. I hadn't had any for a while, since way before I left you, as you'll recall, and I was missing it, so why the hell not!'
'Just the once, you said,' Bob murmured.
'Just the once, I said, last time I saw him. The fact is, I thought about spending the whole night with him, but I'd have had to cal and tell my mom where I was. I felt guilty when I left him, knowing that I wasn't going to see him again, and knowing that I'd used him for mostly the wrong reasons. I've always felt sorry that I didn't say goodbye properly.'
He gave a short fierce laugh. 'Seems to me you couldn't have said it better!'
Sarah shot him a quick glance. 'Why? Do you feel the same about Leona McGrath?' She bit her lip almost as soon as she had said the words. 'Sorry. Cheap shot.'
'Yes, but so was mine.' He reached out, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. 'Anyway, so what? Al that's in our past and we've owned up to it, both of us. Look, love, I'm not going to jeopardise what we've rebuilt by getting uptight over this. ..' He grinned at her.
'… Even if I've got double standards, just like most blokes, and regardless of what I've done myself, my natural instincts are to kick the shit out of anyone I catch screwing my wife.
'If you feel you need to see this guy Terry to sign off, so to speak, that's up to you. I don't want to know, and I sure as hell don't want to see him.
'Don't call him direct; contact him through lan, and arrange to meet him. Just don't do it anywhere that
could compromise you, and don't do it in too public a place either; nowhere you could be seen and talked about.' He grinned, grudgingly, but to her enormous relief. 'Oh yes, and don't go kissing him goodbye again, either.'
54
'You going to like it here, d'you think. Ray?' the Head ofCID asked his assistant as they sat in the office that had been Andy Martin's until the previous Friday.
'Headquarters, sir? It's a nicer building than Torphichen Place, I have to say that.'
'Actually, son, I meant are you going to like it in my office: is the job going to be exciting enough for you?'
'I'd have said "no thanks" when I was offered it if I'd thought that, sir.
It's always been a wee bit exciting around you; I don't see why it should change just because you're in this job.'
'Jesus,' said Dan Pringle, vehemently. 'You think that? And here's me hoping for a quiet couple of years up to retirement.'
'You've got a foot in every division now, boss. I don't see how that could happen. You were hardly in the job when we had that murder down in Leith.'
'Aye, but that could be our quota for a while. We might not have another major investigation this year.'
Rising to leave, Detective Sergeant Ray Wilding paused to throw the chief superintendent a sceptical look, implying that a flight of pigs was passing the window. As he did so, there was a soft knock on the door, and Maggie Rose came into the room, not waiting for a summons.
'Got a minute, sir?'
'Aye, sure, Mags.' Pringle nodded to Wilding. 'On you go. Ray. See you in the morning.' He waited as the visitor took the seat vacated by his assistant. 'What can I do for you?'
Rose laid a brown A4 envelope on his desk. 'Remember that flyer you sent me from Strathclyde?' she began. 'The missing priest? Well he's not missing any more.' As the head ofCID drew out the report, she took Charlie Johnston's Polaroid from her pocket and laid it alongside it.
'He died just over a week ago, in a doctor's surgery up in Oxgangs.
Death was certified by a Dr Amritraj, an officer from my division attended and took that photograph, and the body was removed by ambulance to the Royal Infirmary mortuary.'
Pringle beamed with pleasure. 'Magic,' he exclaimed, reaching for his phone. 'We'll just cal Strathclyde now, and tell them to come and pick him up.'
'Ah well, Clan,' said Rose slowly, 'it's not going to be quite that easy.
The man I'm certain is Father Green was identified, by Dr Amritraj, as Mr Magnus Essary, of 46 Leightonstone Grove, Hunter's Tryst. The body was claimed next day by a woman named El a Frances, who said she was his business partner; it was cremated at Seafield last Saturday morning.'
'Aw, shite,' Pringle cried out. 'Why the hell did I not stay in a division?
The Frances woman; what do we know about her?'
'Next to nothing. Dr Amritraj gave PC Johnston…'
'Charlie Johnston?'
'That's the man.'
'It'l be right then; big Charlie's a chancer, but he's a sound copper.
Sorry, Mags, on you go.'
'Okay; Amritraj named Ella Frances as the personal contact listed with the practice. He gave Johnston a mobile phone number. I've checked with the practice already; they had Magnus Essary listed al right, but he had a fictitious NHS number. The entry in their records was made by Dr Amritraj.'
'Lift him,' said Pringle, immediately.
'I wish I could,' Rose countered. 'But he doesn't work there any more.
He was a locum, hired on a two-month contract. He didn't appear for surgery on Tuesday and they haven't seen him since. He lodges with an Indian family out in Livingston; I've got officers going out to see them now. You know the chances of him being there.'
'Bloody hell! What about Frances?'
'The mobile number she gave was a pre-paid type. It was bought in the name of Ella Frances all right, but the address given was as phoney as Essary's NHS entry.'
Pringle tugged at his moustache, so violently that Maggie wondered that he had any left. 'What have we got here?' he muttered.
'Time wil tell,' she answered, 'but once my people confirm that Amritraj has gone from his digs as well, I'l put a trace out for him right across the NHS. Since nothing else is as it seems in this business, it's a pound to a pinch of shit that Father Francis Donovan Green didn't die of natural causes.'
'I agree with you, but how the hell did he come to wind up in a doctor's in Oxgangs in the middle of the bloody night?'
'Good question, Clan. We'll need to involve Strathclyde in that end of the investigation. Father Green came from North Lanarkshire. I've got a contact in CID there, so if you're happy, I'll call him quietly and start them to work building up a profile of the man.'
'Do that,' Pringle exclaimed. 'There's another thing you should do as well; unless Amritraj is stupid enough still to be in Livingston, you should get a warrant to search his digs, and the surgery in Oxgangs, just in case the landlord and the doctors don't co-operate. We're no' going to be able to do a post mortem on a pile of ashes, so we've got to look everywhere we can to see if we can find out how he was killed.
'I don't fancy the Crown Office's job in this one, Mags. Once we catch this fella, someone in there's got to decide what the bloody hell we can charge him with.'
55
'Mario, I'll search my memory banks al night if that's what you want, but I promise you, I never met either of those people. Stan reported to your uncle and me that he had been approached by a new importer wanting to rent space in the bonded warehouse; we agreed, and later he told us that a deal had been done. He needed the signature of one trustee.
Beppe said he would do it, and that was that.
'Later, I heard from Stan that there was some difficulty with them, but he said they were dealing with it, and that I shouldn't bother.'
He sighed, partly out of relief that his mother had taken no part in the family's business with the elusive importers. All afternoon, since Greg Jay's second call, he had felt a growing unease, a detective's sense that something was very wrong with the firm of Essary and Frances.
'Okay, Mum,' he said. 'I'm waiting for Stan to cal me when he gets in. I'l get chapter and verse from him, I'm sure.'
'Yes, I'm sure you wil; Stan's very efficient. What's the fuss about anyway?'
'Nothing, really. I'm just doing a favour for Greg Jay.'
'Why? Is he interested in these people? Does he think they might have been involved in your uncle's murder?'
'Nah. He just wants to eliminate them from his enquiries, that's al.'
Christina McGuire snorted down the phone. 'Mario! This is your mother you're talking to, not the crime reporter from the Evening News. Don't give me any of your official police language. Are these people suspects or not?'
He laughed, reproved. 'No, not exactly. Beppe had a dispute with them over the tenancy; that's al. Greg needs to check them out, but he can't find them.'
'I see. You might have said that in the first place. Your col eague must be scraping the barrel; that's al I can say. Who's going to resort to murder over a few feet of warehouse space?'
'You're absolutely right. It has to be done, though, Mum.'
'If you say so. Just make sure it doesn't distract your friend from 228 pursuing the real criminal; Sophia and Viola are at their wits' end.'
That's not very far, Mario thought, but he knew better than to say it.
'We'l catch him, don't you worry.'
'Hmm. Now you're talking like a policeman again. Good night, darling.'
'Night, Mum.' He cradled the phone and checked his watch; it was pushing nine, yet Maggie still was not home. She had called him to say that she would be delayed, and that she would bring in a takeaway. He was hungry enough to eat a bear, but there was stil no sign of his wife, or of the chicken Madras, or the naan bread.
The phone rang. 'Stan's late back too,' he muttered, thinking it would be his cousin's husband. But he was wrong.
'Is Detective Superintendent Rose in?' a man
asked.
'No, but I'm a detective super as well. Will I do?'
'I suppose so, sir,' the voice was smooth, confident, with a hint of a laugh in there. 'This is DI David Mackenzie, N Division, Strathclyde Police. Ms Rose cal ed me this afternoon, and asked me to make some enquiries about a priest off my patch who's turned up dead on hers. She said I should cal her whenever I'd something to report.'
Mario had heard of Bandit Mackenzie, from Maggie. 'Flash' was how she had described him, but beneath that too-self-assured exterior, she had also said, there lurked one very good detective. And that was not her view alone; Bob Skinner seemed to rate the guy, too.
'Fine. Do you want to tell me, or leave a number for her to call you?'
'You'l do, sir. It's my wife's birthday today, and I'm in bother as it is.
Would you tel her that I've spoken to Father Green's curate. Father Tomkinson; I put him in the confessional, so to speak. I didn't tell him his boss was dead, but I did lean on him a bit, and he was a bit more forthcoming than in his first interview. He admitted to me that the late father wasn't exactly celibate. He liked the ladies, and he liked them youngish and attractive. Naturally, he was discreet about it; he never fished in his own river, so to speak. He used to go cast his line through in Edinburgh; whenever he went off to visit his sister, that's where he was real y going.'
'How did the curate know this?'
'Father Green told him. Whether it was in formal confession, or a casual conversation, I don't know; I didn't ask and the lad didn't say.
Green said that he used to go down the pubs in the Royal Mile in his dog collar. Never failed, he claimed; his experience was that there's any number of women out there who'll jump at the chance to shag a priest.
It's an interesting thought that, eh, sir? Any time you fancy an il icit leg over, all you need to do is put on a dog col ar.'
'I'll bear it in mind. Inspector. I'l give your message to my wife.
You'd better hurry off home to yours; I just hope you don't find her dressing up like a nun when you get there.'
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