Gavin looked at his wife. ‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, almost as if she was a spectator at the meeting. ‘I certainly did, whenever Stacey brought him here.’
‘Whenever?’ Steele asked. ‘He was here more than once?’
‘Oh, yes. Stacey brought him out on several occasions, but usually on Fridays, when Russ was away. He stayed the night,’ she glanced at her husband, ‘and I’m afraid I let them sleep in the same room. I suppose that’s why she only brought him on Fridays.’
Gavin shrugged his shoulders. ‘She was a grown woman, Doreen.’
‘Perhaps, but if you’d been here to back me up I would have objected. When you were away Stacey used to bully me.’
‘Oh, come on, love.’
‘Well, maybe not bully me, but she was firm with me, and always had her own way.’
‘Doreen,’ Steele said gently, ‘we’re not interested in Stacey’s bedtime habits. We’re here about your safety. One person who knew Padstow has just been killed. You and Russ are the only people left who can give hard evidence against him, even if you can’t link him directly to Zrinka. With your permission, I propose to put you under police guard, twenty-four hours a day. You’ve got an alarm system and that’s good. Russ,’ he asked, ‘does it have a night setting?’
‘Yes. While we’re asleep there are sensors active in all the rest of the house.’
‘Fine. Obviously, Russ, you have to go to work, but we can look after you there. Doreen, during the day you don’t leave the house without a plain-clothes escort. For night cover, we’ll install video cameras front and back, and we’ll have armed officers monitoring them in a van parked just up the street.’ He paused. ‘I don’t really believe that Padstow would try anything here, but if he does, he won’t get in, and he won’t get away either. Are you both okay with that?’
‘One hundred per cent,’ said Gavin, anxiously.
‘Good. We’ll get it done, then.’ He put a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Russ, I think you should cancel your business trip this weekend, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Stevie, absolutely.’
‘Fine.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Now, Griff and I would like a word with you in private.’
‘Sure. Hold on.’ Gavin smiled at his wife. ‘Doreen, since I’m home I might as well stay for lunch.’
‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘I’ll rustle something up. Gentlemen, would you care to join us?’
‘That’s very kind of you, Doreen,’ said Steele, ‘but we’ll need to get back.’
As she left the room, the two detectives turned back to her husband. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Is the risk greater than you’ve been letting on?’
‘No, that’s as we set it out for you; it’s there, but we have it under control.’
‘Do you think this man will try to attack us?’
‘It would be out of character. He’ll probably assume that, after Amy’s death, we’ll be protecting you. This guy’s very careful: he doesn’t do suicide missions.’
‘Stevie, didn’t you anticipate that something like this might happen?’
The question riled Steele. ‘Mr Gavin, if I had,’ he said testily, ‘the kid would still be alive. We didn’t know she existed until yesterday, and there was nothing about her that marked her out as a potential target. All that she could have done was identify Padstow as Zrinka’s boyfriend, and later Stacey’s. That alone wouldn’t have convicted him. Taking her out was . . . well, overkill is the best word I can think of. Literally true.’ He glanced at Montell. ‘But that’s not what we want to talk to you about.’
‘No, then what?’
‘Mr Gavin,’ the South African asked,’ ‘what was your relationship with Zrinka Boras?’
Another flash of consternation showed in the man’s eyes, and he seemed to pale just a little, before recovering his composure. ‘I never knew Zrinka Boras,’ he replied. ‘My daughter might have, but I didn’t.’
‘Oh, Stacey knew her all right; that’s been established by Amy Noone, by other friends of hers, and by a barman at the Pear Tree pub, where they used to go. Have you ever been to the Pear Tree, Mr Gavin?’
‘God knows. I’ve been to a few pubs in my time.’
‘It’s near Bristo Square, beside the mosque.’
‘That still doesn’t mean anything. There are so many bloody monuments in Edinburgh you ignore them after a while.’
‘The barman I spoke about has a very good memory for faces. He told one of my colleagues that, as well as seeing Zrinka with Stacey and Amy Noone, he saw her there on a few occasions, last summer, with a man; an older man.’
‘So?’
‘So let’s stop fucking about,’ Steele hissed. ‘We’re doing you a favour here, Mr Gavin. We could be having this conversation with your wife in the room, and we will if you don’t stop lying to us.
‘For a period last year, beginning in July and stretching through to October, Zrinka’s engagement diary, the one she kept on her computer, shows regular meetings with a man referred to as RG. Interestingly, these nearly all took place on Fridays and Saturdays. Most of them have venues attached, like the Pear Tree, on several occasions, the Bar Roma, the Edinburgh Rendezvous, and often just “here”. Since her computer wasn’t a laptop, I take that to mean that they met at her place.’
‘The telephone directory’s full of men with those initials.’
‘Yes, but only one of them has a certain mobile number, one we found listed on Zrinka’s palmtop. We’ve traced it, Mr Gavin. It’s yours. It’s the mobile your wife doesn’t know you have, the one you use to call your girlfriends, to set up your Friday “business trips”. If I really wanted, I could go to the mobile network and get a list of every call made from that phone, and then go and interview the recipients. At the moment my thinking is to do just that, unless you give me a bloody good reason not to.’
Gavin glared at him. ‘You would too, wouldn’t you? Okay, you win. I did know Zrinka. I met her last year, one Saturday when Stacey was selling work from her market stall down in Leith, and I went along to see how she was doing. We got talking; I liked her. She was one of those people who brighten up your day. Know what I mean?’
‘Sure,’ said Steele, ‘I’m married to one of them. And if you took a really close look, instead of putting her down and treating her like a skivvy, you might find that you are too.’
‘Are you a fucking marriage-guidance counsellor as well as a cop, Stevie?’
‘No, and if that’s your attitude, let’s stick to “Detective Inspector Steele”. Go on.’
‘If you insist. I took one of her business cards; it had her website, her e-mail address, and her mobile number on it. I had a look at the website, and I sent her an e-mail congratulating her on it, and suggesting that she might help Stacey set one up. I got a reply saying, “Thanks. If she wants I’ll do that.” A couple of days later I called her and said that I’d like to thank her by taking her for dinner.’
‘Did you call her on your mobile?’
‘No, that time I called her from work.’
‘What age are you, Mr Gavin?’ asked Montell.
‘Forty-nine. Why?’
‘No comment; carry on. Where did you go?’
‘The first time, to the Rendezvous; her choice, she liked Chinese.’
‘Then back to her place?’ asked Steele. ‘It isn’t far.’
‘Not that time; it was just a friendly dinner. A week later we met for a pint after the stall closed . . . yes, at the Pear Tree . . . then went to a movie. I took her home and she kissed me. She kissed me, mind. We made a date for the next Friday, and that time I stayed over.’
‘You spun her a story, yes? You told her your marriage was cold and loveless.’
‘Which it is.’
‘Whose fault is that?’
‘Listen, I’m not going to discuss personal stuff between me and my wife.’
‘Fair enough: we don’t have time anyway. Go on. You were telling us how
you wound up sleeping with your daughter’s friend.’
‘I know, it sounds callous. But we didn’t have sex, not at first; it was just touching, know what I mean? Zrinka said she wasn’t in love with me or anything, she just liked me. But eventually we did. The first time, when it was over, she just lay there, stroking my hair and looking sad. Looking back, I think she probably felt sorry for me; she was that sort of girl.’
‘Who ended it?’
‘She did. It went on for a couple of months more, until one night she told me that it was over. She said that she felt guilty, about Doreen, and about keeping what she called her dark secret from Stacey and Amy. To be brutally honest, as she always was, it was more than that; she said that I couldn’t make her come, and she saw that as a sign that it was wrong. She said what she thought, did Zrinka; she told me that she had this feeling that I was just masturbating inside her. That was a new one on me, I’ll tell you.’
‘How did you feel about it?’
‘I was sorry, and my ego was bruised by what she said, but she was being frank rather than unkind. If you really want to know, I’ve learned from her. Can you imagine that, a middle-aged man learning about love-making from a girl? When it came to the end, I respected her choice. I knew that I wasn’t going to leave Doreen for her, even if she’d suggested that.’
‘No?’ Steele murmured.
‘No! And I never will. She might be pretty much sexless, and a scatterbrain, but she’s my scatterbrain. I might cheat on her, but I’ll never leave her.’
‘You’re a noble guy at heart, aren’t you?’
‘Fuck off . . . Detective Inspector.’
Steele laughed bitterly. ‘No, no. We’re not done yet. When you were with Zrinka, did she ever mention Dominic Padstow?’
Gavin started to reply, then stopped short, as if he was searching his memory. ‘Not by name,’ he said at last. ‘Early on, the first time we went out together, in fact, she told me that her last boyfriend had let her down, and that she was still badly affected by the experience. On the rare occasion she mentioned him after that, she called him “that so-and-so”, bad language by her standards, but she never used his name. When we finished, she thanked me for giving her back some of her self-confidence. I was pleased by that. It’s funny, I almost wound up thanking her for chucking me.’
‘Almost, but not quite. Stacey never knew about you and Zrinka, you said?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you quite sure about that?’
‘Yes!’
Steele gazed at him. ‘The two of them had some sort of fall-out, you know. Amy Noone was there when it happened. They were discussing Padstow initially, but it broadened out into men who couldn’t be trusted. You know what I’m wondering, Mr Gavin? Whether Zrinka asked her how she could trust Padstow when she couldn’t even trust her own dad. She told Stacey, eventually, didn’t she? That’s why they stopped seeing each other, isn’t it?’
‘Prove it!’ Gavin snapped.
‘That’s a hell of an odd reaction to a straight question, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Fine, but it is nonetheless. It’s got me looking at another scenario.’ He glanced at Montell. ‘Are you thinking the same as me, Griff? What if Stacey did know, and it chewed away at her, until eventually she faced him with it, and threatened to tell Doreen?’
‘That’s how my mind’s working, boss.’
‘How about it, Russ? Just among us, did she, and did you stop her?’
Gavin’s face twisted. ‘She was my daughter, for Christ’s sake,’ he protested.
‘Most murders are domestic. The way the body was laid out, it was almost reverential; it would fit. Then, having silenced Stacey, did you start to worry about Zrinka, more and more, until finally you decided she had to go too? Did you stalk her, and kill her, then leave her body neat and calm like Stacey’s? And did you kill Harry too, not because you were jealous of him but just because he was there?’
‘You’re crackers.’
‘Somebody is, crazy enough to kill four people. What about Amy Noone? When her name was mentioned as a witness, did you get nervous about her? Stacey’s dad could have talked his way into her place this morning, I’m sure.’
Gavin looked at Montell, as if for support. ‘You don’t believe all this, do you, Griff?’ he pleaded.
‘It fits,’ the detective constable replied. ‘Where were you on Monday night, Russ, then on Tuesday morning?’
The man’s face fell. ‘I was away,’ he murmured, ‘on a business trip. But look, I don’t own a gun. I’ve never fired a gun.’
‘You were in the Territorial Army for eight years,’ Steele retorted. ‘Catering Corps?’
Gavin’s legs seemed to give under him; he slumped into an armchair. ‘I didn’t kill my daughter. You must believe that.’
‘I’d like to,’ said Steele. ‘Make me.’
‘My business trip, on Monday night. She’ll back me up.’
‘Will she? Does she have a partner to protect?’
‘No. She’s a widow.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘Hope. Hope Dell. She was Stacey’s agent.’
Fifty
‘Don’t you think you should have waited till your DI got back, Sergeant, and discussed this with him?’
‘I have thought about it,’ said Ray Wilding, ‘and decided that this can’t wait any longer. The last time I spoke to Stevie he was at a crime scene, where he and Griff Montell had just tripped over our third murder victim in four days. He told me that once that was secure he was heading out to South Queensferry to make sure there wouldn’t be any more. This thing’s come up since then, and it needs looking into. When he does get back, he’s going to want to hear the answer, not the question.’
‘I suppose so,’ Dottie Shannon conceded. ‘But do you know what you’re asking me to do here?’
‘Yes, I’m asking you to use your channels to find out why some guy from the Home Office is second-guessing our investigation.’
‘What makes you think I’ve got contacts who can do that?’
‘If you don’t, you’ll know someone who has.’
‘You CID guys have inflated ideas about the importance of Special Branch. But leave it with me and I’ll try. What was the man’s name, the guy who’s been making these enquiries?’
‘Patrick Dailey. He’s in the immigration section.’
‘He’s way off his territory, in that case. I’ll get back to you or Stevie. Let him know about this when you do hear from him.’
‘Of course. I don’t know where this might lead, Inspector. I just know that it needs to be looked at, ASAP.’
‘You lot are like buses, aren’t you?’ Shannon hung up on a puzzled detective sergeant.
In fact, she did have contacts who could get things done. Chief among them was Bob Skinner, but he was on leave. When Steele had asked for her help earlier, she had almost interrupted his sabbatical, but had decided against it. Instead, she had considered playing it by the book and going to Brian Mackie, but that might have led to a discussion about her late-night confrontation with Montell, something she did not want to get into with the new ACC, a man she barely knew, for all her years of service.
Eventually she had decided to strike out on her own. When she thought about it, she was certain of what Skinner would have told her to do; and so she had called the person she had met with him, on their secret secondment to London almost half a year earlier, even though it did mean going to the top of the tree.
She had feared that she might have difficulty getting through, and so she was surprised when her call was accepted almost immediately.
‘Hello, Dottie.’ To her relief, Amanda Dennis’s tone had been friendly. ‘I’ve been hearing things about you.’
This time, after the conversation with Wilding had ended, she hesitated for a while. ‘You’re pushing your luck, Shannon,’ she murmured. But finally she snatched up the phone and called th
e security service number once more.
This time she had to wait a little longer before being connected; when she was put through, the acting director general of MI5 sounded a little less patient. ‘Has nobody been back to you yet, Dottie?’ she said. ‘I’ve put your request in motion, but finding a match on our database for a painting rather than a photograph might take a little time, if we can do it at all, that is.’
‘I appreciate that, Mrs Dennis,’ she replied, ‘but that’s not why I’m calling. As I’ve just said to someone, my requests from my colleagues are like buses: none for ages, then two at a time.
‘The man you’re trying to match for us was the subject of a fruitless search by the Passport Service yesterday, as I’ve told you. Today someone from the Home Office immigration section has been on to them making exactly the same request.’
‘Oh?’ Shannon could almost see Dennis sitting more stiffly in her chair. ‘On what grounds?’
‘He didn’t have any. When the passport-service person challenged him he tried a bit of bluster, then backed off. Are we overreacting here? Could the Home Office have had a legitimate reason for following up on Padstow, just on the basis of the press reports of our announcement and the release of the image?’
‘Hardly. If they had an interest in him, I’d have expected them either to contact you direct, and pool resources, or if there were security implications, to come to us, as you did earlier. What’s his name?’
‘Patrick Dailey. Apparently he’s ex-DTI, and hasn’t been there long.’
‘Nor will he be much longer, unless he has a very good story to tell. Thanks, Dottie; you were right to bring this to me. I’ll deal with this myself. The Home Office immigration section is unbelievably sensitive. We can’t afford to have anyone there who’s out of line.’
‘Will you let me know the outcome?’
‘Only if it’s necessary. You’ve seen how we can operate. You might be better not to know.’
Fifty-one
‘Are you absolutely certain that Russ Gavin isn’t a suspect?’ asked Mario McGuire. ‘You’re not protecting him from himself, are you?’
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