Lethal Intent bs-15

by Quintin Jardine

  'And will you?'

  'Like hell I will. Malky's in for a personal visit tomorrow; in fact he'd have had it by now if you and Lou hadn't been coming for dinner. Anyway, once Jay left, I had Sammy Pye tail him. You know where he went?' Mario paused in his tirade. 'But then I suppose you do know.'

  'St Andrews House?'

  'Got it in one.'

  'What's he doing there?'

  'Whatever Tommy Murtagh tells him to do: he's replaced Sir John Govan as security adviser.'

  'How long have you known this?'

  McIlhenney glanced at his watch. 'For approximately nine hours; I haven't had a chance to tell you since then.'

  'Apology accepted.'

  'I didn't know I'd offered one.' He took a sip of San Pellegrino. 'Do me a favour,' he said. 'Don't go off at half-cock over this. For example, don't do anything too painful to Gladsmuir.'

  'Why not? I'm not having the bastard thumbing his bloody nose at me.'

  'Maybe not, but just hold off for a wee while, okay?'

  'Are you up to something?' McGuire growled.

  'Let's just say that the Jay problem is being addressed. If you think that Jay pissed you off, you have no idea what he's done to Bob Skinner.' McIlhenney leaned back in his chair and watched a wicked smile cross his friend's face.

  'Is that so?' Mario mused. 'In that case, far be it from me to get in the way of his vengeance.'

  'Good. I was hoping you'd see it that way.'

  'I'm not daft. I want to hold on to my ambitions, for a while at least'

  McIlhenney was taken by surprise. 'You? Ambitious? I thought that all your Christmases had come. You're in the division you've always wanted, you're in a relationship that's exactly right for you, with neither you nor Paula making any demands of each other. On top of that, you're got the option of buggering off to run the family business any time you like. What the hell more do you want?'

  'I want Dan Pringle's job when he goes.'

  'Mmm. You do, do you?' McIlhenney murmured. 'I've wondered, but it's the first time I've heard you come right out and say it. What about Alastair Grant? He's got seniority now that Jay's out, and Maggie's back in uniform.'

  'I'll take my chances; but in the meantime I won't do anything to undermine them, don't worry.' McGuire glanced up, quickly. 'Enough about me, though: how about you, pal? Are you all right?'

  'I'm fine. Why do you ask?'

  'I thought you were looking knackered, that's all.'

  'Ah. I haven't been sleeping too well, if you really want to know. I think I must be worrying about Lou and the baby. Plus, I've got a lot on my plate.'

  Mario laughed. 'Pull the other one,' he said. 'I've done the SB job, remember. I'd have thought you'd caught your quota of terrorists for the year. It's not your fault that Murtagh gave them away.'

  McIlhenney scowled at him. 'I wish I had performance targets like you divisional guys. Just when you think you've pulled yourself out of the morass, something grabs your ankle and you're back in there.'

  'Something I should know about?'

  'Something I can't tell you about, officially.'

  'Unofficially?'

  'Not in detail.'

  'Spooks?'

  'No comment' McIlhenney fell silent for a few seconds, then looked up once more. 'What do you know about Jay's connections?'

  'What kind? Masonic?'

  'Maybe, but I was thinking political. I mean, the guy walks out of a successful but unspectacular thirty-year police career, one of a hundred or so across the country, with no flair and no distinguishing features, yet next day he's in an office at the heart of the Executive with a lot of real power in his hands. Clearly he didn't apply for the job; he was put there. It would be good to know how that happened.'

  'I'll ask around, but don't expect much. He didn't leave too many friends behind when he was transferred out of Leith.'

  'Ask quietly.'

  'Of course.'

  McIlhenney nodded. 'While you're at it, there's something else.'

  'There always is. Go on.'

  'Albanians.'

  'Balkan gangsters; terrible football team. Do I get any points for that?'

  'That's just your starter for ten. I'm looking for some.'

  'Is this what you can't tell me?'

  'Could be. Let's just say there are four of them, and there are a lot of soiled underpants around down south.'

  McGuire let his head fall against the high back of his armchair and raised his Barolo to his lips as he gazed at the loft's vaulted ceiling. 'Albanians,' he whispered. 'They're not exactly thick on the ground around here.'

  'I didn't think they would be.'

  'But there is one.'

  McIlhenney sat a little more upright. 'Yes?' he murmured.

  'There's a restaurant, in Elbe Street; it hasn't been open all that long. It's called Delight, would you believe? and it's supposed to be Turkish. The guy who owns it has a funny name: he's called Peter Bassam. One of my people was there for a meal a few weeks ago, and she got talking to him. She'd just been to Turkey on holiday, and she asked him what part of the country he was from. He said that although he'd lived in Ankara for many years, he was from Tirana. He laughed and said that he'd opened a Turkish restaurant because he didn't think he'd have any customers if he put "Albanian" over the door.'

  'Have you been there?'

  'No. She said it was okay, but not exceptional.'

  'What wasn't?' asked Paula, walking towards them with Lou. In her left hand she had a bottle of mineral water, which she gave to Neil as she topped up Mario's glass with her right.

  'The Turkish place in Elbe Street'

  She shuddered. 'Sheep's eyeballs and all that! No wonder it's only the Turks who eat there.'

  Thirty-one

  Willie Haggerty normally prided himself on his focus and his powers of concentration. Yet as he waited in the outer office of the Castle Street basement, listening to the secretary's fingers clattering on her keyboard, he found his mind wandering.

  He had had his eye on the Dumfries and Galloway job for a while. It, or something like it, had definitely been part of his career plan. Yet now that the moment might be drawing near, and the finger of opportunity was being flexed, ready to point, he found himself strangely torn.

  He had come to Edinburgh with mixed feelings, lured by Jimmy Proud and Bob Skinner, when his instincts had told him that he would find the place an alien environment after half a century of childhood, adolescence and an active police career in his bigger, and more dynamic native city.

  And yet he had been proved wrong. He had enjoyed it from the start. The Edinburgh force was not small by Scottish standards, yet it was dwarfed by its monolithic Strathclyde neighbour, which was second in size in the UK only to the Met. Where he would have been struggling to know half the officers under his command in an ACC post in Glasgow, Haggerty had settled in far more quickly than he would have believed, and had built good working relationships with all the ranking men and women in the uniformed divisions that reported to him.

  He had been looking forward to a couple of years more in post, before going for a top job, and so when the call had come from Geoff Dees, the Dumfries chief, giving him advance warning of his departure, he had struggled to sound enthusiastic at the pointed hint that went with it. Still, very few police officers enjoyed the opportunity that was before him now and he knew that he owed it to himself, and to his wife, to go for it.

  He was mentally planning his tactics at the interview, when the door opposite him opened, and a middle-aged man, dressed in a check shirt and faded jeans, beckoned to him. The secretary carried on typing as if nobody else was in the room. 'Sorry to keep you waiting,' he said, without sounding as if he meant it. 'I'm Tom Herron, the director of this organisation. Come on in.' The man looked harassed, and Haggerty found himself wondering what had made him that way, as he followed him into his office. It was furnished as shabbily as its occupant was dressed; its barred windows faced out on to a tiny courtyard,
above which the policeman could see the grey stone buildings on the other side of Castle Street.

  'What would they call all these places if there was no bloody castle?' he asked aloud.

  As they settled into their respective chairs, his host gave him a look that questioned his sanity. 'Pardon?'

  'Ach, don't mind me,' said the ACC. 'It's just the Glaswegian in me. Thanks for agreeing to see me, Mr Herron.'

  The man nodded; his manner was suspicious, if not hostile. 'I don't have much time,' he said, 'so let's get on with it. How can Refuge Scotland be of help to the police?'

  'I hope we can be of help to each other. We live in a changing world, even in Scotland, and even in Edinburgh. It's important that we keep up with events, so that our policing strategies are always relevant to the actual needs of the community.'

  'Very praiseworthy, I'm sure, Mr Haggerty, but what does that actually mean?'

  'Boiled down, it means that we need to know what's going on, all the time.'

  Herron swung round in his wooden swivel chair; it was old, and it squeaked. 'I see, so I guessed right: this is a spying mission.'

  'Not at all!' Haggerty protested. 'Why the hell are you folk in the voluntary sector always antagonistic towards the police?'

  'Long experience.' The man pointed to the pile of papers on his desk. 'See that lot? A significant amount of that correspondence involves complaints against the police, or other public authorities. Asylum-seekers in this country are hustled around from pillar to post. Do you know that you can't seek asylum in Scotland any more? You have to go to Liverpool to do it, but the government won't help with your travel costs. That's one reason why organisations like mine exist.'

  'You've heard this before, I'm sure,' the ACC retorted, 'but we don't make the law, we just enforce it. I'm not aware of a significant number of complaints against our force. Give me some examples.'

  Herron bridled. 'Okay, let's look at people arrested on suspicion of theft. They're held in custody for hours, often for far longer than they should be.'

  'I'm sorry, not often. We've had seven cases in the last year of asylum-seekers being arrested on suspicion of shop-lifting or other petty thefts… that's seven among many hundreds. If anyone was held for longer than normal it was because an interpreter was needed… an interpreter whose costs are met by the police service. I'm sorry, I'm not going to buy that one. I'm not here to antagonise or persecute anyone. I just want to pick your brains about what's going on out there.'

  'Couldn't the Home Office tell you?'

  'Do you trust information from the Home Office?'

  The director swung back to face him, smiling for the first time. 'Touche,' he said. 'Okay, pick away.'

  'Thanks. I know that we have fewer asylum-seekers than they do in the west of Scotland, but we still have some arriving here. I'm interested in where they're coming from.'

  Herron shrugged. 'My information is that most of them are from the sub-continent and Afghanistan. We have a well-established Asian community in the Edinburgh area, and it's natural that they should be drawn to cultures similar to their own. There are Iraqis, of course; Saddam drove a fifth of his population into exile, and they haven't all gone home. There are quite a few Turks as well; in fact, in Glasgow there are more Turkish refugees than from any other ethnic group. Then there are Somalis, Congolese, and people from several other African nations.'

  'How about the Balkans?'

  'It's got a lot quieter there in recent years. We took a quota of Kosovars during the crisis, as you know, but most of them have been repatriated since the fall of Milosevic'

  'Albanians?'

  'The Kosovars were ethnic Albanians.'

  'I know, but I mean home-based Albanians.'

  'They're negligible in Scotland as far as I know. There are some economic refugees from Albania, of course: it's a very poor country unless you're part of its Mafia. But as far as I know, most of them head for Germany.'

  'Are there any here that you know of?'

  'I don't know of any specifically, but if you ask some of the other charities, or even the local social-work department, they might be able to tell you. In any event, there won't be enough of them to require a separate strategy on your behalf.'

  'So any that did show up here would tend to stand out?'

  'I suppose they would, unless they blended with the Kosovars who are still here, or with another ethnic grouping; the Turkish community would be the likeliest, I'd say.'

  'Mmm,' said Haggerty. 'That's very useful, thanks. I won't take up any more of your time.' He stood, watching his host raise himself carefully from his unstable chair.

  'There's one thing I forgot to ask,' Herron murmured, as they moved towards the door. 'What is your rank, Mr Haggerty?'

  'I'm an assistant chief constable.'

  The director stopped and looked at him. 'That either makes you a very unusual copper,' he said, 'or it revives all of my suspicions about your visit. I've been around the police for quite a few years now, and I've had a few of your colleagues in this office. None of them ranked higher than sergeant. I've never known an ACC who did his own leg-work, and certainly not for a piece of routine fact-finding.'

  Thirty-two

  'How did you know about Jay's appointment?' asked Dan Pringle. 'It isn't the sort of thing that's put on the bulletin board. The command corridor's absolutely livid about it, I can tell you.'

  Mario McGuire chuckled. 'I'll bet they are.'

  'Even the chief, and it takes a lot to rile Proud Jimmy. So how did you find out?' The head of CID paused. 'Of course,' he exclaimed. 'Your big pal Neil: he'll have told you.'

  McGuire caught the subtle change in Pringle's tone: he and McIlhenney were not bosom companions. 'Wrong,' he said. 'Someone beat him to the punch: I had a visit from the man himself yesterday. He sat right where you're sat now.'

  'I hope you had the bloody seat sterilised,' the chief superintendent growled. 'I don't particularly mind him getting the job, but it's the way he went about it. Now he's gone and he's not under my command I can tell you that I never liked the man. He's as slimy as they come.'

  'He worked for you in Division, didn't he?'

  Pringle nodded. 'Aye, he did, briefly. When I took over as head of C division, CID, he was my second in command, but he got his own promotion and the move to Leith not long after that.'

  'Who promoted him?'

  'The head of CID of the day, Alf Stein. And do you know who he moved into Greg's job?'

  'No.'

  'Bob Skinner. He'd been Drugs Squad commander, but Alf wanted him back in mainstream CID. It was easy to see why: he was only there for eighteen months, then he was given Western division, and leapfrogged over us all when Alf retired, me, Greg, Roy Old, John McGrigor. The rest of us could see it coming, but Greg was livid. He and Alf were Masons together and he'd thought the job was his.' He tugged at a corner of his moustache. 'So why did he come to see you?'

  'I'm not sure. Maybe it was just to wind me up; if it was he succeeded.'

  'I hope that's all it was,' said Pringle. 'He came to see me as well, yesterday morning, to introduce himself in his new role, so he said… although I don't recall ever having a visit from Sir John Govan when he was in that post.'

  'What did you talk about? Old times?'

  'Not for long. Your name came up pretty quickly. I don't know why, but he's got it in for you, son. He was asking about your split from Maggie and your relationship with Paula. Whether the second caused the first; you know.'

  'I hope you told him to mind his own damn business.'

  'I did, but I also told him what Maggie told me, that you and she had come to the end of the road, and that she bears Paula no grudges. It didn't stop there, though: he asked me about your business interests. I told him that as your line commander I'm happy with the arrangements you've made and, more than that, I know that the DCC and the chief are too. Did he raise any of this with you?'

  McGuire nodded. 'The business part, yes; if he'd raised th
e other I'd have thrown him through the nearest window. He dropped some hints that I didn't like.'

  'Such as?'

  'Well, for a start, he said…' He paused as Pringle's mobile phone chirped a few familiar bars of the William Tell overture.

  The head of CID grunted his annoyance as he took it from his pocket. 'Yes,' he barked.

  As McGuire looked at him across the desk, he saw a sudden and awful change. His colleague's face grew ashen white, and he seemed to collapse into his chair. His mouth moved as if he was speaking but no sound came out. He tugged again at the corner of his moustache, but this time it was as if he was trying to rip it from his face. 'Yes,' he croaked at last. 'I'm still here. I can hear you. I just don't believe it, that's all. Yes, yes,' it came out as a moan, 'I'll be there.' He took the phone from his ear and jabbed at it as if to cancel the call, but his fingers were trembling. It slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.

  'Dan!' McGuire exclaimed. 'What's up? What is it?' The man stared at him helplessly; tears filled his eyes and his mouth hung open. 'What is it?'

  At last he responded. 'I've got to piss,' he mumbled, then jumped from his chair and rushed out and through the CID office.

  McGuire followed him, ignoring the curious looks of his team. He pushed open the door of the male toilet; he found him standing in a stall, urinating, his shoulders shaking. A bell seemed to ring in his head, and he remembered the moment when he had been told of his father's death. He waited until Pringle was finished, and until he had washed his hands, it's family, isn't it?' he asked quietly.

  'It's Ross, my daughter,' Pringle blurted out, choking back a sob. 'She's in a student flat on the Riccarton campus. They said something about a faulty gas fire. They said they couldn't revive her; the paramedics took her to the Royal. I've got to go there, Mario.'

  He headed for the door, but McGuire blocked his way. 'I'll take you.'

  'I'll drive myself.'

  'You'd be a danger; I'm taking you, and that's it.'