The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘In other words, she could have been a Watson,’ he murmured.

  ‘You’ll never let me forget that!’ she snapped, then surprised him by chuckling. ‘Although I must admit that when I was told about her, my mother did come to mind. No, I promise you, Vito is very much on the up and up. He even has a couple of medals from his days in the Italian army.’

  ‘Okay, that’s Vito,’ Skinner said. ‘Go on.’

  ‘He’s disappeared too.’

  ‘Why are you only telling me now? That makes a difference.’

  ‘I’m telling you because I’ve only just found out. Vito has a room in the hotel that he uses when he’s here, but he has a place across the river where he stays usually, a show home on one of Cameron’s house-building developments.’

  ‘Does he have a family?’

  ‘He’s only just joined us, so I don’t really know, but he didn’t bring anybody with him. He wasn’t at the Hogmanay celebration in the hotel,’ she said. ‘Cameron said he didn’t need him and that he should take a few days off, so when he vanished after the party, I never thought to contact him, not until today. I rang him, landline and mobile, and got no reply to either. I’m really worried, Bob. I want him found, sure, but I want it done discreetly. Cameron is who he is; he’s wealthy, he’s as low profile as he can manage, but he owns the fucking radio station, so all the media will be on to this if it leaks. Some of Cameron’s business interests are sensitive; there could be commercial damage if this gets out. Help me, Bob, please.’

  He drew a deep breath, and exhaled slowly, thinking. ‘Okay, Mia,’ he replied. ‘I’ll do what I can but be aware that if I have to involve the police I will. If that happens, it may go public.’

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘Right. Tell me everything you know, more than that, everything you suspect, anything he’s ever done that you might not be sure about. My gut is still saying that he’s done a runner for entirely personal reasons and that when you find out, you might not like them.’

  ‘If that’s so,’ she said, ‘God help him. You’re right. I am still a Watson.’

  Twenty-Three

  ‘Who stole your scone?’ Tarvil Singh asked, seeing the frown on the DI’s face as he walked into the office.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ he replied. ‘Family business.’ He was still focused on a call he had received earlier that morning from his mentor.

  ‘Sauce,’ Skinner had said. ‘I need a favour. Make a note of this registration.’ Later, Haddock realised that it had not even occurred to him to question the request. ‘It’s a Jag F-Pace; the registered keeper is Black Shield Lodge PLC, but the driver is a man called Vito Tremacoldi. It’s gone missing and so has he. Does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘I can’t say it does, gaffer. Should it?’

  ‘Not necessarily, but it might mean something to your partner. He works for Cheeky’s grandpa, and the two of them have gone off the radar at the same time. Mia’s asked me to find him, without any big public fuss if possible. If that car shows up anywhere, I want to know about it. I could get this information from my friends in Millbank, but I’d rather not go to that level. Will you do this for me? I’ll understand if you don’t.’

  ‘No, I won’t do it for you, Sir Bob . . . but I will do it for Cheeky. Should I tell her?’

  ‘That’s your call, son. But in your shoes I’d be trying to imagine the fallout from not doing that.’

  ‘That might not be pretty,’ he had conceded. ‘Leave it with me.’

  Of course he had told Cheeky, as much as he knew, and of course she had phoned her stepmother to ask what was going on. She and Mia McCullough lived in a state of fragile truce not unlike that between the two Koreas, and the fact that she had been kept out of the loop for twenty-four hours did not sit well with her. Once he had brokered a tentative cease-fire, he had made the call through the central traffic control, telling the duty officer that the vehicle was wanted in connection with a potential abduction, all responses directly to him. With his fingers crossed that word of his enquiry would not find its way upstairs, he had headed for the office.

  ‘It’s like a ghost town out there, isn’t it?’ the DS continued. ‘Officially this is the first working day of the year, but there’s hardly any bugger about. They’re up and at it in South Africa though. Jackie had a call from police headquarters in Pretoria five minutes ago; a guy was looking for you. His name’s Major Pollock and she put his number on your desk.’

  Haddock grunted his thanks and headed towards his office, stopping on the way at DC Wright’s desk. ‘Jackie,’ he said, ‘I want you to know that I appreciate the work you’re doing for us. I need someone here in the office that I can rely on to do the boring stuff. With Noele being off, it’s all the more difficult for you. You’re covering a lot of the slack. Please, please, please, pass those sergeant’s exams!’

  She grinned. ‘That’s my blind spot, boss, but I’m trying.’

  ‘Did Major Pollock say what he had for us?’

  ‘Not in detail, but he sounded keen. When I called last night with your request for information, on the contact number Mary Chambers gave you, they put me on to a sergeant. She sounded fairly disinterested, just said, “Okay, I’ll get back to you.” I was expecting just that, her to call me; instead I got a senior officer. I offered to pass on a message to you but he said no, that he needed to talk to you, preferably by Zoom or Skype.’

  ‘What the hell’s Zoom?’

  ‘It’s a video-conferencing tool. It’s the future, Sauce.’

  ‘I’ll sooner stick to the present,’ he chuckled. ‘I can just about work Skype but I suppose I should keep up with the times. Did Mary have anything else for me?’

  ‘Yes, sorry. She said she put your question to her friend, and he said that police sidearms would generally be a nine millimetre, but the make could be one of several. Helpful?’

  ‘Slightly. Anything else? How about Griff’s cousin? Any joy with him?’

  A quick frown creased her forehead. ‘None,’ she answered. She glanced up at him. ‘He’s very hard to catch, but I may be getting closer. I left messages on his landline and mobile numbers yesterday, and I sent him an email, but nothing’s been acknowledged. However, I did a search for him on social media and came up with a Tom DuPlessis who lives in Cape Town, and according to his ‘About’ info, works for a shipping company. Griff and Spring Montell are listed among his Facebook friends, so I guess that’s him.’

  ‘What sort of shipping company?’

  ‘Cruise liners; I googled it. It’s called Oceanic Magic.’

  ‘Call them,’ Haddock instructed. ‘I want to find this bugger.’ She reached for her computer mouse as he headed for his office.

  The note that Wright had left on his desk gave him detailed instructions on how to contact the South African policeman by Zoom. He followed them step by step and waited, gazing at his own image on the computer screen until it was replaced by that of a square-headed, crew-cut man in his mid-forties, wearing a uniform shirt, with epaulettes of rank on display.

  ‘Detective Inspector Haddock?’ he began, quizzically.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, I was expecting someone older.’

  ‘You should see the portrait in my attic,’ Sauce quipped, then moved on as the other man’s face showed blank bewilderment. ‘Thanks for responding to our request,’ he said. ‘I didn’t expect a call, just an email.’

  ‘It’s better this way,’ Pollock retorted. ‘Better to make eye contact; it reduces the risk of misunderstanding. I have to tell you that when your message came across my desk, I had a hell of a shock. I knew Griffin very well; I was his supervisor when he was a cadet, and later he worked under me in the detective division here in Pretoria; I was his lieutenant. I was sorry when he decided to emigrate, but I understood the reason for it. He had little or no option but to leave, and I was more than happy to give him a reference when I was asked for it. The family court gave him a hard time after his m
arriage breakdown, it really did.’

  ‘So I gather, from his sister and others. I knew him, but not that well. Why did the breakdown happen?’

  ‘He didn’t talk about it much,’ the major replied. ‘I don’t believe there was a third party involved. Griffin changed after the incident; he became darker, not quite the open, cheerful guy he had been before. These days you might call it PTSD, but back then we were all too butch to talk about that. Part of my job now involves officers’ mental health; it’s a serious issue.’

  ‘You mentioned the incident,’ Haddock said. ‘I take it you mean the gold robbery. I knew nothing about that until it came out in the discussion I had with his sister and her partner. I doubt that anyone in our force was aware of it, not even Bob Skinner, who approved his transfer.’

  ‘Skinner,’ Pollock repeated, ‘I remember that name. He was the guy who asked for the reference.’ He frowned. ‘I suppose I might have mentioned the robbery, but Griffin had put it behind him by then and so I decided just to let it lie. It wouldn’t have disqualified him. Plus, of course, it was in his service record. How could I forget that?’

  ‘What can you tell me about the robbery? How was it pulled off?’

  ‘We never did know for sure, not all of it, but we found a tracker on the bullion van afterwards. The route from the Mint was changed every time; there were several they could use, never the most direct way, all on roads that were rarely used. The choice was at the discretion of the escorting officers, but that day, with the tracker on the van, that was irrelevant. How it got there, we never did find out. Our suspicion was that it was put there by either the driver or his mate before they left the Mint, but they were both shot dead so it couldn’t be confirmed. If one of them was involved, he never collected his share. Griffin was lucky; he was shot twice but survived. I visited him in hospital.’ He touched the side of his head, drawing a finger across it. ‘The second gunshot ploughed a furrow, right along there. It was at close range, too.’

  ‘The gold was never traced, I’m told,’ Haddock said.

  ‘Fucking untraceable, wasn’t it? As soon as it was off the scene and out of its boxes.’

  ‘How much was stolen? I’ve heard a couple of figures.’

  The major raised his eyebrows. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. The Mint claimed that ten thousand coins had been lost. They said that they were never moved in quantities larger than that, but actually an audit revealed that to be bullshit. In fact, there were thirty-five thousand Krugerrands in the van. It was one of the biggest gold robberies ever.’

  ‘You’re telling me that upwards of thirty-five million sterling, current value, was taken?’

  ‘That’s right. The financial crash happened just after the theft, so the haul was worth a hell of a lot more than that for a couple of years.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘The belief was that nothing did, that the thieves put it away somewhere. It was too much to fence; if they had tried, even in small parcels, we have underworld sources that would have let us know if important quantities of Krugerrands suddenly appeared. Again,’ Pollock admitted, ‘we have nothing more than theory, and that is that most of it is still out there.’ He paused. ‘Look, Detective Inspector, I’m puzzled. Why are you so interested in this, and why are you asking for a copy of the police file? Be honest with me, please.’

  ‘I will,’ Haddock said. ‘I’ll be completely frank. The fact is, we’ve got no obvious suspects for these murders. We know that Griff and Terry Coats had encountered each other when Coats was still a cop, although they were in different forces. We’ve discovered also that Griff was in a developing relationship with one of my officers, who happened to be Coats’ ex-wife. Other than that we have nothing that puts them together . . . except . . . Coats worked in airport security and claimed to have uncovered a smuggling operation there, with gold coins being brought in by flight crew of a specific airline and routed through a certain airside shop. That’s how we first heard about the robbery, from Coats; he claimed that he had been told about it by Griff Montell. Yet Griff never mentioned it to any of his colleagues.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ the South African said. ‘It was a painful memory for him.’

  ‘Given what Coats said about the smuggling operation, can I ask, was there ever any suggestion of Russian involvement in the hold-up?’

  ‘None at all; we didn’t have any fucking clue who might have been involved, and that remains true, we still don’t. If your investigation uncovers anything, please, please let us know. That robbery is still a big stain on our reputation.’

  ‘Of course we will,’ Haddock said. ‘Are you okay with giving me a copy of the investigation file?’

  ‘Sure. It’s all digital, so no problem. It includes investigator reports, the text of a statement by Griff, crime-scene photographs and all the forensics.’

  ‘Thanks. Can you remember, where were the van driver and his mate killed?’

  ‘They were inside the cab, but they’d opened the door. The assumption was that they’d decided to give up and save their skins, only the robbers didn’t intend to leave any witnesses. They hadn’t a chance. Somebody emptied an Uzi magazine into them.’

  ‘The same weapon as wounded Griff and killed his partner?’

  ‘No,’ Pollock said. ‘All the bullets were nine millimetre, but the one that was taken out of Fannie DeWalt came from a different firearm than the one that shot the van crew. We never did find the cartridges that hit Griffin. The shoulder wound was through and through; the head shot we guessed hit the roadway and fragmented. You got an email for me?’ he asked.

  Haddock spelled out his online address letter by letter. As he finished, the door of his tiny office opened and Wright entered. ‘I called Oceanic Magic,’ she whispered. ‘Tom DuPlessis is their baggage controller. He didn’t turn up for work yesterday morning or today. The company can’t find him either.’

  ‘Maybe I can get them some help,’ he murmured in reply. ‘Meantime, get on to them and find out their cruise schedules over the last few years, where they sailed from, where they docked, everything you can.’

  He turned back to the computer, to see Major Pollock’s concentrated frown as he clicked his mouse. ‘There,’ he declared, ‘that’s the report off to you.’ He had barely finished speaking when an incoming email notification popped up on Haddock’s screen.

  ‘Great,’ he replied. ‘Thanks for that. I’ll study it, and if I have any more questions I’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, Major, there’s one more thing I wonder if you can do for me. I need to speak to Griff’s cousin. His name is Tom DuPlessis, he lives in Cape Town, and he works for a cruise line called Oceanic Magic. My problem is that he’s not responding to any messages, and he’s missing from work.’

  ‘Are you thinking this might be connected to Griffin’s murder?’

  ‘I have no reason to, but you and I both know what we detectives think of coincidences.’

  ‘Absolutely. Until they’re proven, we don’t believe in them. Email me the contact details you have for him, and I will order a search for him, country-wide. It’s been good to meet you, Detective Inspector Haddock, even if you haven’t come out and told me exactly what’s in your mind. Level with me: you suspect that Griffin was involved in the robbery in some way, do you not?’

  Sauce sighed. ‘I wish I didn’t, but yes, you’re right.’

  Twenty-Four

  ‘When will the pathologist be here?’ Lottie Mann asked, impatiently.

  ‘The post-mortem’s down for twelve noon,’ Denzil Douglas reminded her. ‘Professor Grace will be here by eleven forty-five, I’d guess, but not much earlier. If you’ve got time on your hands, Chief Inspector, there’s a coffee place in the bookshop round the corner.’

  ‘I’ll get by,’ she said. ‘You can spend some of the time filling me in on what you got from the body.’

  ‘The shitty drawers were Levi’s. They’d left the label on those; no surprise, all things considered. As I
established at the scene there was no identification on the coat, suit and shirt. However, the shoes he was wearing came from a company called Crick and Son, of Jermyn Street in London, and from the look of them they’re hand made. I’ve sent them to the company by courier and with a touch of luck they’ll be able to match them to a last and tell us whose it was.’

  ‘Last?’ John Cotter said.

  ‘It’s the mould of the customer’s feet, that all his shoes are made from. Very expensive.’

  ‘You might say he was well-heeled.’

  Douglas stared at the detective.

  ‘Well-heeled?’ Cotter ventured. ‘Wealthy?’

  ‘Whether he was or not, he’s been soled down the river by somebody,’ Mann drawled, as Sarah Grace came into the room.

  Twenty-Five

  ‘I wish my office was like this,’ Sauce Haddock remarked, looking around the spacious glass-walled room.

  ‘I still wish, sometimes, that my office was like yours,’ Bob Skinner countered. ‘Then reality bites, and I hear the goose-steps of the march of time. Do you want a coffee?’

  ‘Thanks, gaffer, I need one.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Sauce, as I keep telling you, call me Bob.’

  The DI smiled. ‘I will when I feel comfortable with it.’

  ‘You didn’t just come here for a view of a miserable rain-sodden January Edinburgh,’ Skinner said, as he handed his visitor a mug.

  ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I’d rather we talked about Grandpa away from the office. I’ve had no reported sightings of Tremacoldi’s car, and nobody’s heard from him. Mia’s been calling him and so has Cheeky. His phone’s going straight to voicemail, and they’ve been leaving messages, but neither’s had any joy. The thing that worries me most is him not getting back to Cheeky. If he’s had a strop with Mia that she’s not telling us about and gone away for a while to cool down, that I would understand, but him not calling his granddaughter, that is something else.’ He glanced up at Skinner. ‘Do you think I should be making this official?’