Lethal Intent bs-15

by Quintin Jardine

  'Get in.'

  Without thinking about it, he obeyed. He jumped into the Vectra; even before his door had closed, it was roaring away from the scene.

  Sixty-seven

  It was a quiet night in Delight, inevitably, because it was Sunday, and because the snow was still thick on the ground. Nevertheless, there was still a full staff complement, and Sukur the chef was still ranting and raving in his kitchen, terrorising his underlings.

  Sean Green was on time as usual: he had passed his audition with flying colours, so much so that he had been designated head waiter by Peter Bassam, and presented with a black dinner jacket that almost fitted him. 'It's a job I've been wanting to fill, John,' the owner told him. 'I didn't want to advertise it as such, that's all.'

  To his surprise, he had actually been pleased, not just to be so solidly embedded in the restaurant but that his skills had been recognised. There was an extra bounce to his step in the restaurant that night; he knew it, and he made no attempt to hide it. If the other waiters resented him, they gave no sign; he guessed that they were simply glad to be in a job.

  The evening started out as if it would be busy; by seven o'clock, there were seven tables occupied. However, as time went on, no new customers appeared, and Bassam appeared to grow more and more edgy. Finally, just after eight, he beckoned Green across. 'John,' he said, 'I'm going to go out for a while, maybe have a meal in someone else's place for a change. You're in charge: look after the till, keep it smooth out front, don't let that crazy chef kill the dishwashers, and I'll see you later.'

  Green nodded, thinking that he might take up this line of work permanently.

  His sudden elevation did nothing to attract business. At nine thirty the restaurant was empty; just after ten three couples appeared, taking a table for six. At ten forty-five two men entered, but one was so blatantly drunk that Sean told him, quietly but firmly, that the kitchen was closed.

  The sextet lingered on: each had three courses, and they drank four bottles of wine. As they sipped their coffee, the new head waiter and acting manager told the kitchen staff and one of the waiters that they could go home.

  Finally, at eleven forty, the six paid their bill and left: Sean told the last remaining waiter, who had been looking after their table, that his night was over. He was alone, an opportunity that he had not expected.

  Quickly, he went through to Bassam's office. He was still convinced that the restaurateur was clean, but he had a job to do. He fanned quickly over his boss's desk, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. A quick check of the drawers told the same story. He was on his way back to the restaurant, through the tiny bar, when his eye was caught by something that had actually been there all night.

  The corner of a piece of paper protruded from under the till, as if it had been shoved in there hastily. Taking care that it would not catch and tear, he withdrew it. He frowned: it was a street map of St Andrews, golfing capital of the world. He struggled to think whether he had ever heard of a Turkish golfer, but could not come up with a single name. But St Andrews was not built on golf alone, he reminded himself. It was a holiday resort, he was sure. In all probability Bassam had been planning a weekend break for his wife back in the summer; the thing could have been there since then for all he knew. Idly, he folded the map and shoved it into his trouser pocket.

  He stood there, the man in charge, surveying his empty empire. He had begun to doubt long before that his boss was coming back at all that night, and wondered whether he should leave himself, until he realised that that would leave him with the keys in his possession. Of course, he could always come in early in the morning…

  As he weighed his choices, the door opened: there stood Bassam, behind him the flash of something white moving away from the pavement outside.

  'John,' he called out. it's like a grave in here.'

  'It was like a funeral for most of the night,' Green replied. 'Not many punters.'

  'Is everybody gone?' The owner stepped over to the bar.

  'Yes, long gone. Time I was off too: I've got a bus to catch.'

  'Ahh, have a drink with me before you go. I'll give you a lift. Gin and tonic?'

  'I'd prefer Bushmills, straight, no rocks,' Sean told him honestly.

  Bassam poured him a double and took a Cognac for himself. 'So how do you like my restaurant?' he asked.

  'Very much, Mr Bassam; it's a good place to work.'

  'Call me Peter, man. I'm pleased with you too. It's good to have someone here at last that I can trust to take the weight off my shoulders.' He finished his drink. 'In fact, I'll show you how much: I'm going to give you a bonus, cash, so you don't need to declare it.' He headed for his office. 'Come on through,' he said, over his shoulder. 'I keep some money in my safe.'

  He stepped into his office. Amused, and wondering whether he would declare his windfall to Mandy Dennis, Sean followed.

  Before he had taken two steps into the room, two men appeared from either side of the door. His arms were seized and pinned to his sides, a hood was pulled over his head, and everything went dark.

  Sixty-eight

  'We must stop talking like this,' Bob Skinner chuckled, as he answered the phone just after midnight, 'Trish will get suspicious.' There was no laugh from the other end of the line. 'What's up?' he asked suddenly serious.

  'Samir Bajram is,' McIlhenney replied, tersely. 'Him and the Jakes brothers; I'd reckon they're about three miles up by now and heading for orbit.'

  'They're what?'

  'As far as we could see it was car bomb. Sammy showed up in the pub. Frankie introduced him to us as his cousin, then the three of them went to the other end of the pub. They had a drink, went outside, got into a motor and were blown to smithereens.'

  'Were you close?'

  'Not close enough to get hurt, although the Bandit nearly got his eyebrows singed.'

  'What did you do?'

  'We got the hell out, as fast as we could. Since we weren't supposed to be there in the first place, I didn't reckon you'd want us giving witness statements.'

  'Too damn right. We'll leave it to Strathclyde, and maybe the SDEA to clear up. You are sure it was Samir?'

  McIlhenney growled. 'I won't dignify that with an answer, boss.'

  'Okay, sorry. Did you get any idea what he might have been up to?'

  'Frankie said that they were doing some business… or bizniz, to use his word. I guess it was that other thing he was talking about.'

  Skinner frowned. 'Given his background that must mean drugs. Could that be all there is to these guys' presence here after all, a drugs shipment?'

  'Maybe, but if so, where were the other three? No, I don't think so.'

  'No, that's true.' He sighed. 'It's a bugger, though: I was counting on Samir to lead us to the rest; now we're back to scratch. Plus, it leaves us with another question. Who did the three of them in, and why?'

  'The way I see it, Sammy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It looks like a Glasgow gang hit, with the Jakes boys as the target. I could understand Frankie pissing somebody off badly enough.' He laughed, softly. 'He was an annoying so-and-so.'

  'You sound as if you'll miss him.'

  'Strangely enough, I will. I actually liked the ugly wee bastard. Whoever did him just joined the long list of people I'd like to meet.'

  'Chances are you never will, Neil. Good night.'

  Skinner replaced his bedside phone in its cradle, and picked up his book. He looked at the page, but the letters were blurred. The day was coming, he knew, when he was going to need help for night-time reading. But it was not his late-forties vision alone that made him unable to focus. At the back of his mind, a disconcerting scenario was taking shape.

  He thought about it for a few minutes, then reached a decision. He climbed out of bed, picked up his personal directory from the dressing-table and, holding it directly under the light so that he could see clearly, looked through it until he found Amanda Dennis's mobile number.

  She was fuzzy with
sleep when she answered. 'Yes?' The word was slow and heavy.

  'Amanda,' he snapped, urgently. 'It's Bob. I want you to pull Sean Green out of his waiter job, right away. I'm probably being alarmist, but he could be in danger.'

  Sixty-nine

  Andy Martin worked assiduously in his Dundee office for two hours. When he was finished he had read through all the papers in his in-tray, scribbling notes on those that required action on his part, and he had dictated six letters. Satisfied, he took the tray and his electronic notepad through to his secretary and left her to do her part.

  Back in his office, he switched on the 'engaged' light above his door, hung his jacket over the back of his chair, settled down and switched on his laptop computer. He could have used the terminal on his desk, but that would have left a record of his activity, and that was something he did not want.

  He waited for the machine to power up, then went on line, using his private account with AOL. Opening the powerful search engine, he entered three words, 'Herbert Groves Construction', then sat back, gazing at the screen, until a range of options appeared.

  The firm's website was top of the list: he chose it and watched as the home page appeared, as fast as his computer would allow. It was a professional job, one befitting a major business, and it offered an extensive menu, offering history, services, projects completed, current projects, financial performance, employment opportunities and, finally, the element he had hoped to find, biographies. He selected it, and images of the company's senior executives appeared before him, with that of Brindsley Groves at the top. He clicked on the smiling face and waited.

  A page of text assembled itself on his screen: the life story that he had hoped to find. He began to read, silently.

  Brindsley Groves, BA, MBA, is chairman and managing director of Herbert Groves Construction. He is fifty-eight years old, and has been chief executive of the company for thirty-one years, since succeeding his father Herbert Groves II. He was elected chairman of the company on his father's death.

  He was educated at Strathallan School, and at Aberdeen University, from which he graduated with honours in accountancy and economics at the age of twenty-one. Before taking up a position with the company, he studied for a further year at the University of York, obtaining a Master's degree in Business Administration. Under his guidance the company has risen to become Scotland's second largest construction group, with annual turnover in excess of?300 million. Mr Groves is a member of CBI Scotland, and of the Caledonian Home-builders Association. He is also a non-executive director of four other Scottish companies.

  He is a keen sportsman, and represented Scotland at cycling. His other major interests are equestrianism, golf and horology. He is a member of the Antiquarian Horological Society.

  Brindsley Groves has been married to the former Celia Greatorix for thirty-seven years. They have two children, Herbert Groves III, and Rowena Groves.

  'He's been a busy guy,' Martin murmured to himself, then focused on the period of his life that interested him most.

  Seventy

  In Edinburgh, Stevie Steele had one thing on his mind: the whereabouts of Chris Aikenhead. He had completed all but one of his list of informal interviews; the last, with Dan Pringle, he feared would be the most difficult. He had served under the outgoing head of CID at divisional level, and for all his acknowledged weaknesses, he had admired him as the type of detective that he hoped to be himself.

  He knew that, like most detectives, Pringle hated offences against children more than anything else, and so he was not surprised that he had gone for Patsy Aikenhead in the interview room, given the evidence that he had had before him at the time.

  He told him as much, as they sat in his drawing room.

  Pringle exploded in his face. 'Are you digging that thing up again?' he shouted, his bushy moustache quivering. 'I'll tell you this once, Stevie, and once only. That bloody shambles had nothing to do with me. It was all that arrogant bastard McIlhenney's fault. He sent a uniformed officer to bring the Yasmin Khan woman to the office for her interview, rather than getting off his fat arse and going to talk to her on-site.'

  Steele had experienced his former boss's temper before: he knew that the one thing he could not do was bend before it. 'That's not George Regan's recollection, sir. He told me, without even being directly asked, that the order to bring her in came from you.'

  Pringle's eyes blazed. 'If George said that McIlhenney must have put him up to it.'

  'If McIlhenney had done that, sir, then surely he'd have told me that story himself, but he didn't. The only thing he said to me that was critical of you in any way was that he thought you went too hard against the girl.'

  'Maybe I did, son.' Steele was surprised by the concession. 'But there's one thing you and everybody else seems to have forgotten about her. That balls-up over the time didna' prove she was innocent, it just meant that the Spanish girl, Magda what's-her-name, could have done it too. Only she didn't, Stevie: Patsy Aikenhead was guilty. She did what she confessed to doing: she threw the kid into the cot in a temper, and the poor wee thing banged her head on the bars and died from it. I know that, I heard her say it, and for all her hysterics I bloody know she was telling me the truth!' He was breathing hard. 'Did you ask McIlhenney if he thought she was innocent?' he barked.

  The inspector felt his own temper rise. 'It doesn't matter what McIlhenney thinks!' he barked back. 'It doesn't matter what you think. I haven't been asked to investigate the conduct of the Aikenhead case. I've been asked to find links between you, Neil and George because of what's happened to all your children. I've been asked to protect any other coppers' kids who might be at risk. So will you please drop the outrage and the protests and co-operate with me?'

  It was as if Steele's sudden anger had blown out Pringle's fire. The older man seemed to sink into himself. 'She did it, Stevie, that's all,' he said, quietly, as he slumped into his armchair.

  'Okay,' his colleague murmured as he sat opposite him. 'Okay. Now, can I get down to the things I need to ask you?'

  'Aye, go on.'

  'First, do you agree that there are no other possible links between the three of you? This is most important.'

  'Yes, I agree. McIlhenney was on temporary secondment to my division. Maybe our paths crossed once or twice after that, I'm not sure, but certainly never with George involved.'

  'Good. That's a weight off my mind. The other questions I want to ask you are about Chris Aikenhead. At any point in the investigation did you interview him?'

  'No. He was away; it was only after we'd charged the girl that her solicitor got in touch with him and he came back. He came to see me then, but it was all wrapped up and the girl was on remand by that time. With hindsight, I shouldn't have let him anywhere near me, but he made such a fuss in the station, it was either that or have him arrested for breach of the peace.'

  'Why didn't you?'

  'I felt sorry for the boy. He hadn't killed the baby; he was just reacting like any husband might have in the circumstances.'

  'How did your discussion go?'

  'As you'd expect; he yelled at me that his wife would never do something like that, and I told him that she did and that she'd admitted to it. He said that it must have been the girl Magda; I told him that we knew for sure it wasn't, although I didn't tell him why.'

  'Did he make any threats?'

  'He got steamed up about the Spanish girl, until I told him that if I caught him within a mile of her I would have him arrested on the spot.'

  'Can you remember enough about him to give me a description?'

  Pringle nodded; he closed his eyes, as if it made it easier to form a picture in his mind. 'Big bugger,' he murmured, as if he was describing it, 'about six three, maybe, sun-tanned, brown hair, don't know about the eyes. Very fit; a strong-looking boy, but you'd expect that with him working on the rigs.' He blinked and looked across at Steele. 'That was ten years ago, mind. Can you not get a photo?'

  'I'm trying, but no luck
yet; he's never been arrested, and he doesn't have a photographic driving licence. Was that your only meeting with him?'

  'Not quite. I saw him again at the trial, then afterwards, when the whole thing had blown up in our faces. He asked to see me again, and I agreed. He was very quiet this time, very controlled; he asked me if the inquiry would be reopened, and I had to tell him that while it would, there was no prospect of progress as long as the other girl involved refused to come back from Spain, and that even if she did, the prospect of a guilty verdict against her was remote.'

  'How did he react? Do you remember?'

  Pringle closed his eyes again. 'Oh, yes, I remember. He looked across the desk at me and he said, "However long it takes, Mr Pringle, we can only hope that justice will be done." And then he said, "Of course, sometimes it needs help." He was calm, though, not threatening in any way; he just sounded sad.'

  He shifted in his chair. 'He was right, and all, Stevie. It needs help when buggers like us are involved. I'm sorry about my tantrum earlier. You see, it was no surprise your coming to see me. I've been expecting it, ever since I heard about the McIlhenney boy, and I've known what we would wind up talking about. I canna' bring Ross back, but I truly hope we're all wrong about this, and that her death was a one-in-a-million accident. For if it wasn't, I don't know if I'll be able to live with the knowledge that it was caused by something I did. You were spot on, son: whether I was right or I was wrong doesn't matter a toss. My daughter will still be just as dead, and so will George's son.'

  Steele rose, and Pringle showed him to the door. 'There's an extradition agreement with Spain now,' he said. 'D'you think this might lead to us trying to get the Magda girl back over here?'

  The inspector frowned. 'There wouldn't be much point. That's the one thing I've learned for sure, this morning. She died in Algeciras, five years ago, from a drug overdose.'