Head Shot

64

She heard a chuckle. 'Ah, the things we can do these days. It makes me sorry in a way that I'm retiring; maybe I can get some freelance work off your lot… compiling criminal stats and the like.' He seemed to sense her impatience. 'Anyhow, I've got a result for you. Magnus Essary, no middle name, was born on the fourth of August, forty-nine years ago, in Bathgate, West Lothian. His parents were Alexander and Margaret Essary, mother's maiden surname, Smith, residing at 28 Dundee Terrace, Edinburgh. No one else of that name registered in that year, or during the ten-year periods before or after.'

'That's great, Jim. At least it gives us somewhere to start looking.'

'I can probably tell you exactly where to start looking. I did another check, just out of curiosity. Your man Essary's going to earn himself a special place in our museum; according to our records this is the second time he's died. Poor little Magnus succumbed to meningitis, aged three years and one month.'

Maggie threw back her head and stared up at the blue sky. 'Now why doesn't that surprise me,' she murmured.

'In that case,' said Glossop, 'this won't either. I did another check off my own bat. This time I looked at infant deaths in the Edinburgh area over a fifteen-year period between twenty and thirty-five years ago, under the name Frances. Guess what? Little Ella Frances, of Prince Street, Polwarth, Edinburgh, died of leukaemia at the age of four-and-a half, just under twenty-seven years ago. She'd have been about thirty-one now, had she lived.

'The two deaths were nineteen years apart, but they both took place in the same registration district in Edinburgh. I can't check this from here, but I'l bet you a pint of Guinness that both those children are buried in the same cemetery. Someone's gone round looking at gravestones, taken the details and then gone along to Register House and picked up copies of each of their birth certificates.'

'Can you check that?' Rose asked. Dan Pringle, looking back at her from the open door of the Land Rover, read the urgency on her face.

'I have done already. They were both issued to the same person, on the second of July last year. She said she was a research student doing some genealogical work. The clerk took a note of her name and address as usual.'

'And what was it?'

'Paula Viareggio, Penthouse One, Collier's Court, Leith.'

The cellphone slipped from Maggie's fingers, to land softly on the heather at her feet.

'You shouldn't be telling me this, Stevie,' said Mario McGuire. 'Mind you, when we worked together last year you might have mentioned that you'd been giving my cousin a seeing-to.'

'Maybe, but it was al over by that time, and I didn't want to dig it up again. As for the other thing I'm telling you, put it down to professional courtesy.'

'Appreciated; thanks. You don't real y think that Jay's going to pull Paula in for questioning, do you?'

'It's hard to say,' Steele replied, evenly, down the line. 'But he's under pressure to come up with something; the new head of CID's got a hard act to fol ow, and he's not going to fancy starting off with an unsolved investigation.'

'Still, he'd better be careful; if he involves me in it, even by implication, I really will do the bastard.'

'That would sound real y great if this call was being recorded, wouldn't it?'

'True,' McGuire muttered, ruefully. 'The sooner we find this Essary man the better. How are you getting on with your inquiries? Maggie told me what she was going to have you do.'

'Don't tell her I told you first,' said the inspector, 'but I'm finished.'

'Good news?'

'She won't see it that way. There were four policies on the life of Magnus Essary, each one with a major-league Edinburgh-based insurer, for a quarter of a million. Claims were submitted in each case on Tuesday last week; al four companies have paid out, two on Wednesday, one on Thursday and one on Friday. The cheques were al paid into a Clydesdale Bank account, in the name of El a Frances. It was closed yesterday and the funds were transferred to a numbered account in a bank in Basel.'

'Can the money be frozen there?'

'That's doubtful, given the reputation of the Swiss. But chances are it will have been moved again by now; it'll be pretty well untraceable.'