by Nick Elliott
‘It’s okay. Let’s go and get a drink for Christ’s sake.’
We walked up through Stockbridge to Kay’s Bar in Jamaica Street, and shaking off the snow, sat ourselves beside the fire. It was quiet in there. We ordered haggis, neeps and tatties. I ordered a large Laphroaig to go with it and to my surprise Claire joined me.
‘Where did you go to school when you were in Hong Kong?’ I asked her.
‘Peak School, then Island for a year or two. Then I was packed off to boarding school in dreich, boring old Worcestershire. God, I hated it. I so envied those kids who stayed on at Island School. They had a great life.’ She broke off. ‘I really didn’t mean to drag all this up.’
‘It’s okay,’ I reassured her again. ‘I don’t remember that school photo; maybe I never saw it. Did I look a bit of a geek?’
‘You did actually,’ she laughed. It released some of the tension.
‘I wasn’t born when it happened, but as I grew up it was something everyone knew of. It was so tragic and it still received media attention on the anniversaries.’
‘In those days there was no proper slope stabilisation,’ I explained. ‘Ours was bad but landslides killed many others living in shanty towns over the years. They just didn’t grab the headlines in the same way.
‘I guess talking about it brought it all back, with the smell of the vegetation in there, and the humidity; when I was in Singapore a few days ago surrounded by it I never gave it a second thought.’
But we’d talked enough about it and my mind was still trying to make sense of Grant’s diatribe, never mind what had happened in the distant past.
‘What was it you wanted to see me about?’
‘Okay, well Grant phoned me right after you left the office. He wanted me to tell you that you’ve been stitched up. You have enemies within the Club, Angus. I should have told you straight away. He said to tell you he had to do a hatchet job on you like that in front of the board, but it was a charade.’
‘So why? What’s going on? And why weren’t you there? You’re on the board.’
‘Grant didn’t want me there. And I don’t know what’s going on either, but play along with it. That’s what he said. It’s all just office politics.’ She was looking at me intently. ‘He said you’re the best case-handler the Club’s ever had. You might bend the rules but you get results. You are your own man, he said. You think for yourself and you make things happen even if you drive everyone crazy in the process. It’s your strength. He said to tell you that.’
‘That’s because I’m freelance. I’m not hampered.’
‘It’s more than that, Angus. You’re tough and self-confident. He said you still managed to assert your superiority at that meeting. There should be room for people like you who use their own initiative, choose their own way of doing things. Otherwise we just become automatons. The system expects us to work how, when and where we’re told to. And being constrained like that has become the norm. It’s called being a team player and if you’re not one then there must be something wrong with you. It’s senseless and it doesn’t bode well for society when courage and initiative are rewarded with reprimand or dismissal.
‘And you’re a loner, Angus, perhaps because of what happened to you when you were a child, I don’t know, but that’s part of what makes you effective.’
‘I don’t know either,’ I said. ‘My uncle always said my father liked to do things his own way regardless of what the system dictated. He would get results quicker that way. Maybe I got it from him.
‘So what about giving Lawson the Piraeus desk?’ I said changing the subject. ‘Joe Ellis said he was one of the directors’ nephews. Who would that be?’
‘I don’t know but Roy Lawson’s a smart guy.’
‘I’ve no doubt he is, but you said yourself I had enemies in the Club. Anyway, it’s academic.’
‘No. This whole thing has been conjured up by someone,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who. But sometimes you have to trust people. Give Grant some credit. He’s playing a long game but you can count on him. And trust me. I’m not without influence.
‘Now, buy me another drink and tell me all about the Astro Maria. Have you told Grant? He said you hadn’t.’
‘I’m only just back in the country and they fire me. I’m hardly likely to, am I?’
‘Can you tell me?’
I ordered the drinks and placed another log on the fire. This wasn’t easy. Claire was a senior director. She was close to Grant and the rest of them. Was this all part of some elaborate plot hatched between Grant and her to find out what I knew? I found her pressing interest in the case troubling, but in the end it came down to whether I could trust her or not.
‘I told you, trust me,’ she said, reading my mind. But she didn’t know the ramifications of it all. I was still trying to figure them out for myself.
‘Do I have your word that you will not discuss any of this with anyone in the Club, or anywhere else for that matter?’
She placed her hand on mine. ‘You have my word, Angus.’
So I told her what I knew of the Astro Maria’s fate; of Derek Timson’s photos and the conclusions Yvonne and I had drawn; of the Revival speech Dougal had discovered; and finally of my meeting with Stark and the Mindanao situation. As I was speaking, a voice inside was shouting at me to stop, but I kept going. I did trust her. And if I were to find my way through this labyrinth I would need all the help I could get. When I’d finished I said, ‘Does any of this make any sense to you, ring any bells?’
She didn’t respond at first but took a cautious sip of her drink and placed it carefully on the table.
‘You remember when I told you to follow the money? I told you to keep going with your investigation into the frauds. Well, I did suspect, like you, that they were part of a wider coordinated operation. I felt certain they were.
‘Then it all seemed to slip off the radar. You got involved with the Astro Maria case and that seemed something quite separate. Now you’re telling me all this. Who are these people? Who do you think they are?’
‘I don’t know, but Dougal was following the trail leading from Timson’s death and it somehow led to his discovery of the Revival speech. So Dougal’s my next stop.’
‘What can I do? Tell me.’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I don’t want you in harm’s way, Claire – again.’
CHAPTER 24
‘Where the hell have you been? Do you not check your phone?’
‘It’s been frantic since I got back, Dougal. When can we meet?’
‘Truva, okay? I’ve much to tell, me old pal.’
Café Truva was a little Turkish-run place beside the Water of Leith, up from The Shore. It was cold but we sat outside for the sake of privacy – and so Dougal could smoke. I ordered their kofte.
After my meeting with Claire I didn’t know whether to feel reassured that my ejection from the CMM was a pretence, or alarmed that it was deemed necessary to protect me from enemies within. What I did know was that Dougal had something to tell me that I needed to know.
‘Give me your account, Dougal. Then we’ll see where we take it from there.’
‘Aye, it’s a right palaver,’ he began. ‘I’ll tell you from the start, right?’
‘Right.’
Derek Timson’s body had been found of course, and the hunt for his killer had begun. It wasn’t long before the Exeter police were sniffing around in Leith having discovered Timson’s past connection to the CMM, but it seemed nothing was turned up there that gave them cause for suspicion. As far as they were concerned, it was a case of aggravated robbery, and murder, but they’d satisfied themselves that there was no connection between his death and the CMM. At least that was their conclusion for the time being.
‘By the way,’ Dougal added, ‘seems he was lured outside then murdered and his body dumped in the bin. That’s why there was no sign of a struggle in the flat, and no blood.’
‘How was he killed?’
‘
I find this fair interesting, Angus, and so might you. Your man was knifed. A single stab wound inflicted downwards in between the left collar bone and the shoulder blade. Severed his sub-clavian artery. He bled to death, internally.
‘And why do you find that particularly interesting?’
‘Because that’s like leaving your signature behind. I would say your killer is a professional assassin, possibly with military training.’
He looked at me conspiratorially. ‘Does the name Fairbairn-Sykes mean anything to you?’
‘No, Dougal. But you’re going to tell me, right?’
‘They were two pals who met in Shanghai back in the 1920s. They were with the Shanghai Municipal Police and got into a lot of knife fights with the local gangs in the city’s red-light district. Anyway, come the Second World War they returned to the UK and joined up. The reason I know all this is that between them they developed something called the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife. It was based on a knife they’d used in Shanghai. It was a big success. Issued to the Commandos during the World War Two, and to the SAS, and other units too.
‘It was a stabbing knife, ideal for knocking off sentries from behind. But using it to penetrate in through that gap between the collar bone and shoulder blade, into the sub-clavian? That needs training, and expertise.’
‘Mmm. So the killer came up from behind?’
‘Aye. He’d cover his target’s mouth with his palm, grasp his nose too, then stick the knife in.’
‘Do you know which side of his body Timson was stabbed?’
‘Good point. Left, so the bastard was a leftie.’
I thought of Wongsurin. He’d been stabbed in the back, Manish had said. Could it be we were dealing with the same killer, a left-handed assassin?
‘So you think Timson was killed with one of these Fairbairn-Sykes knives?’
‘That or something very like it. It’s a hypothesis, ken, a deduction. You don’t learn how to inflict that kind of lethal injury out on the street. You learn it in the Special Forces, or the Marines, or the Paras. And I’ll tell you something else: to go for the sub-clavian like that is very deliberate, and smart too. He’d have been unconscious within thirty seconds or so, dead within a minute or two, but there’d be relatively little gushing or spurting if you get my meaning. Not like a stab to the carotid artery or slashing the throat. That gets real messy. Believe me, I know.’
‘Okay, Dougal, I get the picture.’
Dougal had also learned from his contacts in North Edinburgh Area Command, who were assisting the Exeter detectives, that Timson had taken frequent flights to Edinburgh well after his retirement from the CMM.
I wasn’t too happy with Dougal gathering all this information from the police in case it drew attention to my own investigation. ‘Dinnae worry, Angus. I had a cover. I told them I was making discreet enquiries on behalf of Timson’s mistress in Cape Town. She reckoned he might have provided for her in his will.’
He saw my look. ‘I have powers of persuasion, Angus, trust me.’
He’d then contacted Visit Scotland and, using the same cover to persuade them to break their own data protection rules, got them to run Timson’s name through their system. He’d popped up several times as a guest at an expensive hotel in Gullane along the coast from Edinburgh on the Forth.
Dougal had been to the hotel, ‘sweet-talked the cute little receptionist’ and through her contacted a local cab company which Timson had used. From there it wasn’t difficult to discover that he’d always given the cabbie the same destination.
‘I’m impressed, Dougal. So where did he go?’
‘You ken the main road from Gullane into North Berwick, just past the filling station? Turn down to the left, down there. But your man Timson never told the cabbie where he was going. Just: “Take me to the filling station this side of North Berwick,” he’d say. And he never asked to be picked up for the return to his hotel either. I asked if he ever had anyone with him. Nah, never. Did he carry anything? Nah. The cabbie thought he had a woman tucked away down there and didn’t want to let on.’
North Berwick is twenty-five miles or so east of Leith at the mouth of the Firth of Forth where it joins the North Sea. With its links golf courses, pristine beaches and old fishing harbour, it’s an upmarket little place favoured by Edinburgh city professionals and well-to-do retirees.
‘How’s about we take a run out there, Angus, and I can carry on briefing you on the way? There’s plenty more to tell.’
We walked over to his old Volvo. ‘Before we get any further into the dark arts of your trade, tell me this, Dougal. How did you get hold of that document of the Revival speech?’
He gave me a shifty look as we drove off. ‘I said dinnae ask, Angus but if you must know I transcribed it myself. Took half the night. I’m not that great on the keyboard as you might have guessed.’
So it was transcribed from a recording. I hadn’t realised that.
‘It was fine,’ I said, ‘but how did you get the recording?’
‘Och, it’s a wee trick known as a roving bug. You remotely activate a mobile phone’s microphone and even when a call’s not being made, you can listen to folk’s conversations when they’re in the vicinity of the phone, five metre range, ken?’
‘All strictly legal no doubt.’
‘Aye, naturally. Works like a charm,’ he said with a smug grin all over his gaunt face.
‘Whose phone did you tap into?’
‘Mine. I keep one for this very purpose.’
‘You mean you planted a phone in the room where these people were meeting? How did you manage that?’
‘I paid a visit. Said I was from the Council doing a spot check on how many people resided at the property for the purpose of verifying our records. The old biddy swallowed it too.’
‘What old biddy? Do you know how lethal this whole business is? We’re dealing with a bunch of criminal masterminds, not one of your two-bit hoodlums.’
‘Calm down, Angus, she’s the housekeeper.’
‘But you were there, or nearby, when the speech was made, picking up every word?’
‘Aye.’
‘So what about the others who spoke? The transcript mentions that others would give presentations.’
‘Aye, I thought you’d ask that. The speech I picked up was made in one room, the room I’d left the phone in. She said that’s where they were meeting. Then they must have moved into another room for the rest of their business.
‘And before you ask, she had no idea I wasn’t who I said I was. She just said she was expecting a party of “her men” arriving for meetings and they always gathered in that particular room. But she didn’t say when and I didn’t ask. It just came from casual chit-chat after I’d finished filling out the form. I’m good at that. And I placed the phone behind some books on a shelf. And dinnae worry. No way did she see what I was up to.’
We drove east through Portobello and Musselburgh and on through the villages that nestled amongst the dunes and golf courses along the coast. In Gullane he turned off to show me the hotel Timson had stayed at. Then, as it grew dark, we continued on to North Berwick.
Dougal had initially come out here for a recce before finding the house. He’d asked the girl in the filling station whether she’d seen anyone answering Timson’s description. It wasn’t too smart of Timson to get dropped off at the same place on every visit. The filling station was open late and the cabbie had stopped to fill up there and, it seemed, to chat up the attendant when he went in to pay. The cabbie had told her he’d been dropping this customer off regularly and he’d joked about his theory that he was off to meet a woman down by the sea. What the girl at the filling station then told Dougal gave him the lead he needed. On one occasion, after the cabbie had driven off, she had seen his customer head off on foot down a side road which led down to the dunes and the sea, further evidence she thought, that he was meeting a secret lover.
Dougal had given her one of his usual stories about investigat
ing adultery and deception to satisfy her curiosity. Having filled up he’d then driven off but returned a couple of days later to case the area properly steering well clear of the filling station he assured me, ‘in case the lassie there started getting a wee bit too nosy, ken?’
There was only one property down the side road that Timson had taken. Using his false Council ID Dougal deceived the housekeeper into letting him look around. After his visit, he’d hovered about the area on four consecutive evenings until he’d struck lucky.
‘Why do folk who are trying to keep a low profile drive around in conspicuous vehicles? That’s what I dinnae understand. Two black Range Rovers with blacked-out windows come sweepin’ into this drive. Electric gates, CCTV, the whole shebang, ken?
‘I kept a watch then and more cars arrived: Jags, Mercs, Audis, a Bentley – flash metal I’m tellin’ you.’
‘Did you get their registration numbers?’
‘No, Angus I did not.’
The cars were there from eight until midnight, then left. The house was surrounded by high walls but Dougal was able to activate the phone he’d planted earlier and make the recording.
As he spoke I was thinking it over. Timson had been in Durban when the explosives were planted on the Astro Maria, and then here at what seemed to be the headquarters of the Revival cabal. Put together with the contents of the speech itself, it was the link providing near positive proof that the group was behind the sinking of the ship. It’s what I had suspected and what I’d told Stark in Singapore. A shot across their bows, he’d said. Some shot.
‘Do you want to get in and have a look around?’
‘Let’s decide when we get there.’ I said.
It was completely dark when we arrived. A cold rain was driving in from the sea. We walked down the side road, stopping at a pair of high wrought-iron gates beyond which we could just make out the house, an old red sandstone baronial pile, replete with turrets. A small lodge stood inside and to the right of the gates. We peered up the driveway lined with trees, their branches waving about wildly in the wind. The beam from the nearby lighthouse on Fidra Island swept over the links to cast an eerie radiance across the front of the house every few seconds before pausing, then repeating its unique flashing sequence.
