The Roots of Evil (Bob Skinner)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘Yes, and it’s been acted upon. The gun that killed Ms Karman has been around. It’s linked to two murders; the first was about twelve years ago, in Pretoria, South Africa and the other one was last week in Howgate, Scotland . . . that’s to say,’ he added, correcting himself, ‘the body was found there, but we believe he was killed somewhere else.’

  ‘Can you match the firearm to anyone, or is it one of those that can be rented?’

  ‘I wish it was,’ Haddock sighed. ‘It was found among the possessions of a former colleague of ours, Griffin Montell, who was murdered on New Year’s Day, along with another man, Terry Coats. That’s my investigation.’

  ‘How did it get from South Africa?’ the inspector asked.

  ‘It was smuggled across to him as part of a consignment.’

  ‘That was risky, was it not?’

  ‘Not the way he did it.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Ellis murmured. ‘Could you forward an image of this man? My colleagues in Liverpool have struck it lucky. They’ve traced a private-hire driver who’s used by Wister Air, her airline. He remembers picking Ms Karman up at John Lennon on what we believe was the day she disappeared, and taking her to the Grange Hotel near Manchester airport. But,’ she added, ‘he also remembers that as she got out of his car, she was hailed by a man, and instead of going into the hotel, she went across to talk to him. He said that she was animated, excited, as if she was pleased to see him.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ Haddock said. ‘The excitement didn’t last long. I am guessing that the man she met was Terry Coats, one of my murder victims. They were in a relationship in Edinburgh last year, a few months ago, whenever she flew there. I’ll send you down an image for you to show to your taxi driver, but I’ll send you Montell’s as well, just in case I’m wrong.’

  ‘Thanks. Is there anything else we can do?’

  ‘Yes, there is. You might talk to the manager at Wister Air’s Manchester office and ask him what, if anything, he knows about Karman. I need to understand why she wound up dead. On the basis of what I know so far, I don’t quite get it.’

  Forty-Three

  ‘Where’s DI Haddock?’ Lottie Mann asked, noting Jackie Wright’s new location as she took off her coat and slung it over the back of a chair.

  ‘Moved office,’ Marlon Honeyman replied. ‘The DCC was in earlier and had a fit of reorganisation. He’s moved into the meeting room; he said you’re welcome to join him in there.’

  ‘Decent of him,’ she said, ‘but I’ll stay with my guys. That said, what are you doing here, Marlon? You worked yesterday; you’re entitled to be off today. Haddock didn’t ask you to come in, did he?’

  The DC shook his head. ‘No, it’s my choice. I started something yesterday and I want to be the one that finishes it.’

  ‘That’s commendable, Marlon, but I’ve got to tell you, you don’t need to prove yourself to me. You’ve impressed me from day one.’

  ‘I know that, boss, and I appreciate it but . . . I’m a black boy frae Castlemilk; I have to prove myself to everybody else. Not everybody’s moved into the twenty-first century; fact is, I’ve come across one or two that are still living in the nineteenth.’

  ‘Come on,’ Mann protested, ‘it’s not that bad. Look at me, I’m walking proof that things have changed.’

  ‘Sure, boss, you are. You’re also a six-feet-tall female and you’re scary, so nobody’s going to take the slightest chance that you might hear any of the things that are said behind your back. I’m a detective constable, and I’m a bloke, so folk tend not to be as cautious around me. I’m not talking about the senior ranks. I’m not saying that my colour or my social origins affect my promotion prospects. But if you think racism’s been eradicated from a force this size, or even that it can be, you go and ask DS Singh. Okay, you might say that’s true of society as a whole, and you’d be right, but this is the part that I function in, and I need to go the extra mile because of it.’ He smiled. ‘Also, I like Edinburgh,’ he added.

  She gazed down at him, then glanced at Cotter, a silent witness to the conversation. ‘Is that right, John? Do they talk behind my back?’

  ‘I’m new here, ma’am,’ he said, ‘and I’m English.’

  ‘You’re also male. Do they?’

  ‘One or two maybe. Nothing to do with the job though.’

  ‘Hah!’ she laughed. ‘So the fact that I’ve moved in with a man twenty years older than me who used to be my DS makes me the talk of the steamie? That’s not exactly a surprise. I take it as a compliment to Dan, not a slur against me. But I know, Marlon, you’re talking about something different. You might think nothing can be done about it, but there is. Any time you believe you’ve been the subject of a racist remark, report it to me, and I will take it straight to the bosses for investigation. That’s not a suggestion, by the way, or an offer: it’s an order. Maybe we can’t beat it completely, but if we don’t try we’re all complicit, you included. Now, what’s this task you have in hand?’

  ‘I’m in the process of reviewing all the camera footage from the Edinburgh Airport bus from a week last Saturday.’

  ‘Who are you hoping to find?’ she asked, switching her attention to his computer screen.

  ‘Inspector Montell, ma’am, and Anatoly Rogozin, the third victim.’ He updated her on his discoveries of the day before.

  ‘Actually, he’s the fifth victim, chronologically.’ All three detectives turned towards Haddock, who had moved silently behind them. ‘Rogozin’s linked by the gun that killed him to the death of a police officer in South Africa, and to that of a woman in Manchester; the weapon itself is linked directly to Inspector Griffin Montell.’

  ‘Jeez,’ Lottie Mann whispered. ‘One of our own.’

  ‘Two of our own,’ the DI countered. ‘Terry Coats was a cop too, and he wasn’t an innocent bystander in all of this. We can’t prove that yet, but we’re close. Sorry, Marlon, I’m interrupting, keep doing what you’re doing. Lottie, come on and I’ll fill you and John in on the detail.’

  The trio headed for Haddock’s new office, leaving Honeyman to his video review. He carried on methodically; the bus service ran every ten minutes regardless of how full or empty each vehicle might be. On the Saturday before Christmas they were busy throughout the afternoon. The footage lacked an on-screen time clock, forcing the DC to examine every clip from the arrival of each bus on the stand to its departure.

  ‘Do you want a coffee?’ Tarvil Singh called to him. ‘I can do that for ten minutes.’

  Honeyman almost accepted the sergeant’s offer, but sheer stubbornness made him persevere. He ran through two more excerpts. His bladder was on the point of forcing him to take a break when . . . ‘What? Is it? Yes.’

  Two men boarded the bus, showing their tickets to the driver. The first was in his thirties, broad built, wearing a black knitted jacket; it appeared to be woollen and was certainly expensive, a designer label, the DC guessed. The second man was older, dragging a small suitcase and wearing a heavy overcoat. They walked towards the camera until they had passed out of its field of vision.

  Honeyman paused the recording, went to the toilet and relieved himself. On the way back, he collected the coffee that he had declined earlier, and settled back into his chair, resuming his study as the bus pulled away.

  Ten minutes later he knocked on the door of Haddock’s office, stepping inside without waiting for a summons. ‘Got them,’ he announced, ‘Montell and Rogozin, together on the bus. I followed them too until they got off. They weren’t on board long. They only went to the first stop in fact, Drumbrae, I think it was called.’

  ‘Drumbrae?’ the DI repeated. ‘Terry Coats’ place is five minutes’ walk from there. Finally, we’ve tied them together, Griff and Terry. Marlon, you are a star. Tell me, what was Montell wearing? I’m assuming Rogozin had on the coat he was killed in.’

  ‘A black woollen jacket with a zipper.’

  Haddock picked up his phone, found a number and called it. ‘Arthur,’ he said
as it was answered, ‘I need your team back into Terry Coats’ place. Yes, I know they’ve been there before, but this time they’ll know what they’re looking for. We know who was there, we know what they were wearing, we just need to be able to prove it.’

  Forty-Four

  ‘This is the strangest investigation I have ever been on, gaffer,’ Sauce said, his voice low as he glanced around Bar Italia; no more than half the tables were occupied but he had no wish to be overheard. ‘It began with a double murder, but now I find that the victims were perpetrators themselves. It’s an inquiry within an inquiry. We’re making great progress at one level, but none at all at the other. What am I doing wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Bob Skinner replied, as he wiped up the last traces of his lasagne with a piece of garlic bread. ‘Are there any questions you haven’t asked?’

  ‘Not that I can think of.’

  ‘Is there any part of any crime scene that the SOCOs haven’t been over?’

  ‘None that we know of.’

  ‘In your search for the second car in Torphichen Place, have you been over all the available street camera footage?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you interviewed all the friends and family members of the victims?’

  ‘All that we can find, yes. Lottie and Cotter traced Terry Coats’ mother last Thursday; she couldn’t offer anything. Likewise with his work colleagues; I had a team of DCs interview them. They knew him in the office; the men said he was capable, a couple of the women thought he was old school sexist.’

  ‘What about the story he spun us when we caught him with Aisha? What about the shop he claimed she used to launder the gold coinage?’

  ‘According to her, or so Coats said, the shop was owned by the same company as Wister Air. I’ve asked the airport’s commercial management to give me a list of possibles from among their tenants, but they’ve still to come back to me.’

  ‘What about the burner SIM card you found at Griff’s?’

  ‘One call made to another unregistered UK SIM.’

  ‘Did anything in his papers, on his computer, on any device, give you a clue to who he might have called?’

  ‘Not a scrap.’

  ‘That all being the case, Sauce,’ Skinner declared, ‘the central part of your investigation can’t be faulted. As for all the other stuff, where has it taken you?’

  ‘We know now that Montell and Coats were acting in concert. I had a call from Inspector Ellis in Manchester; she has a taxi-driver witness who’s identified Terry as the man who was waiting for Aisha Karman outside the Grange Hotel. She was killed with Griff’s gun, which is absolute proof that they’re a team.’

  ‘Are you telling me that Coats shot her?’

  ‘That’s how it looks, gaffer,’ Haddock replied. ‘Do you doubt it?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t see him as a killer, that’s all. Did the taxi-driver witness say there was only one person waiting for her at the hotel?’

  ‘Maybe Griff was in the car.’

  ‘Would she have got in if he had been? I tend to doubt that.’ He paused. ‘Didn’t you tell me she had sex just before she died?’

  ‘Yes, but . . . Well . . . Okay, I get it. The English autopsy report did say that the body showed no signs of a struggle.’

  Skinner leaned closer as another diner passed by their table on the way to the toilet. ‘Then either I’m wrong, and Coats did have it in him to kill, or he took her to the place where he knew Griff would be waiting.’ Unexpectedly, he shuddered and gazed out of the restaurant window, at the pedestrians and the traffic flow.

  ‘What’s up, gaffer?’ his companion asked.

  ‘I’m thinking about that man, and all the times he was alone with my daughter. It makes my blood run cold, Sauce. It makes me wish he was still alive, so I could kill him myself.’ His eyes came back to Haddock. ‘You’ve never had to fire a gun in the line of duty, have you? No, nor have ninety-nine out of a hundred police officers. I have, and even on the basis of a very brief acquaintanceship, that’s what makes me confident that Coats didn’t shoot the woman. He wasn’t capable of it. Mind you,’ he added with a twisted grin, ‘I’d have said the same about Griff Montell, so don’t listen to a bloody word I say.’

  He leaned back as the waiter arrived to clear their table. ‘Dessert, gentlemen? Or coffee?’

  ‘Double espresso,’ Skinner replied. ‘Sauce?’

  ‘Cappuccino, thanks.’

  ‘So, what else have you established?’

  ‘We know for sure how Griff got his gold and his gun into the country. His cousin DuPlessis told us he sent it to him on one of his company’s cruise liners. He was vague about the dates but Tarvil did some checking and found that two and a half years ago Griff hired a car from Hertz, a big hatchback. When he brought it back two days later, the recorded mileage was consistent with a round trip to Southampton. The date coincided with the docking there of the Oceanic Aladdin, the ship DuPlessis named.’

  ‘Do you know how many coins he collected?’

  ‘Not for sure, no,’ Haddock said. ‘But apart from that we have established that on his first three years here, each time he went to South Africa to visit his kids, when he came back he disposed of forty Krugerrands to a licensed gold dealer in Glasgow. Do the sums, and that’s around a hundred and twenty grand.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Skinner chuckled. ‘Lucky for some, eh.’

  Forty-Five

  ‘Good lunch?’ Singh asked.

  ‘Always is in the Bar Italia,’ Haddock replied. ‘It’s become big Bob’s local when he’s at the Saltire office. He was paying, which made it even better.’

  ‘Mmm. My corned beef sandwiches went down really well. I made them myself, too. Washed down by a really nice Cotes du Pepsi. You’ve just missed your mate from Pretoria. He Zoomed you; I said you’d Zoom him back. Remember the days when you just phoned somebody?’

  ‘Just about. The thing I remember most about them was that it was much easier to lie to someone.’

  Haddock returned to his office; although he was still luxuriating in the space, he reflected on the reason he was enjoying it, and told himself that he would give it up in a second to Sammy Pye, if he could be brought back to health. Whether he would cede it so willingly to someone else, that was a different matter.

  Settling into his chair, he switched on his computer and sent a Zoom meeting invitation to his South African colleague. Pollock responded within a minute, his face replacing Haddock’s own on the screen. The Major seemed to be looking at him wide-eyed. ‘What the hell is that building behind you?’ he exclaimed. ‘Since when did you have fucking Disneyland in Edinburgh?’

  ‘The governors of that place wouldn’t appreciate being compared to Mickey Mouse. You called me earlier?’

  ‘Yes, sorry; I forgot the time difference. I have news for you. You were right about Griffin’s gun. The one you have was indeed his service weapon on the day of the robbery. The serial number is still on our records, so I guess when we check them all, we’ll find one that isn’t. Obviously the inventory hasn’t been reviewed for twelve years, an omission that we’ll correct annually from now on.’ He paused. ‘In addition to that I have updates for you on both Anatoly Rogozin and Aisha Karman; they’ll interest you, I think. How much do you know about Anatoly?’

  ‘More than you might think,’ Haddock confessed. ‘He had a brother called Dimitri who was co-owner of a football club in Scotland. The other owner was a man named Cameron McCullough. As an aside, that’s my partner’s name too. She’s his granddaughter and she was named after him. The Rogozin brothers have a remarkable distinction given that they were Russians. They were both murdered in Scotland.’

  ‘Wow!’ Pollock gasped. ‘You have a knack for upstaging me, young man. You’re not going to tell me that your wife’s grandfather was involved in Dimitri’s death, are you?’

  He was about to correct the major’s use of the word ‘wife’, but stopped himself; it sounded right. ‘No, his killer was arrest
ed fairly quickly. He was a guy with a grievance, no more.’

  ‘What about Anatoly? Did he have a tie-up with him?’

  ‘No. Cameron bought out his brother’s share in the club.’

  ‘How did Anatoly take that?’ the major asked.

  ‘I don’t think he was best pleased, but nothing was made of it.’

  ‘Still, has Mr McCullough been interviewed about the killing? Not by you, obviously.’

  ‘Not by anyone.’ Haddock saw his eyebrows rise in the small box in the corner of the screen. ‘He disappeared, around the time of Griff’s murder, and hasn’t been seen since. He and his minder got into a car and drove off into the night.’

  ‘Are you telling me he’s a suspect?’

  ‘Not directly. He was miles away when the killings happened.’

  ‘Christ, he couldn’t be dead too, could he?’

  ‘In theory, he could,’ Sauce admitted, ‘but Grandpa McCullough’s not your average man. Given his past connection to the Rogozins, sure he needs to be interviewed, but I don’t believe he’s involved.’

  ‘Or you don’t want to believe?’ the major suggested.

  ‘Oh no, I could, trust me; but I don’t, that’s all. Everybody in the game was already dead when he went away, so why would he bother?’

  ‘How’s your wife feeling about this?’

  ‘Worried, but she feels the same about me. Cameron might be up to something but I don’t believe it has anything to do with this. Now, what about your updates?’

  ‘Yes, those. Anatoly had a place in Cape Town, owned by his airline, another in London, owned by a telecommunications company that he and his brother had part of, and another in Moscow that he inherited from Dimitri. His main South African business was Wister Air, which he bought ten years ago.’

  ‘He bought it?’