A Rush of Blood

Forty-seven

‘OK, George,’ Neil McIlhenney sighed, ‘since Mario’s out, I’ll speak to Arthur Dorward and ask him to send a couple of people out to join you. Meantime, don’t let any more vehicles near that shop.’

‘I won’t. The members don’t drive up to it anyway; they use the car park, then walk to the clubhouse. The only contaminating tyre tracks they’re liable to find will be from a wheelchair. I’ve just met His Grace, or whatever you call a marquis.’

‘I think “My Lord” usually cuts the mustard with them. I’m not surprised he was on the scene; he must be spitting bullets. We’d better look out for him to be on the phone to the boss; the two of them are pals.’

‘He doesn’t need to,’ Regan sighed. ‘He was able to bite the ear of the old boss, in person.’

‘Sir James?’

‘None other. He was with him. But as it happened, they were both pretty reasonable, given the circs. It doesn’t stop me feeling like a tosser, though.’

‘Nah, George, nobody’s going to blame you apart from yourself. If you’re right and it’s the same team, they’ve put one over on all of us. We’ll learn and it won’t happen again. If it’s somebody else, it’ll be a local opportunist and you’ll nail him.’

‘It happened on my patch, though.’

‘Forget it. You’re CID, not crime prevention. The guy who should be kicking himself is your man Fairley, for not moving his stock into the main clubhouse till the shop was properly secured.’

McIlhenney hung up, then called Arthur Dorward at the police lab, told him what had happened, and asked for specialist technicians to be sent to the scene. That done, he walked along to Maggie Steele’s office, arriving just as she returned from the chief constable’s morning meeting.

‘I can guess why you’re here,’ she said, as he held the door open for her. ‘You want to know whether we had any false alarm calls last night.’

‘I’ll bet we didn’t,’ he replied. He told her what had happened at Witches’ Hill. ‘Poor old George Regan. He got along there and found Lord Kinture and Proud Jimmy waiting for him. He’s checking out the local possibilities, but I agree with his view that it’s the same crew come back for what they left the night before.’

Steele winced. ‘Word can’t have filtered back to Bob or he’d have mentioned it, for sure.’ Pause. ‘Neil, do you reckon this is worth feeding to the Serious Crime Agency?’

‘I’ve thought about that,’ the detective superintendent admitted, ‘then decided against it. This isn’t serious crime, and it isn’t even organised in the accepted sense. It’s just a clever, opportunist team, operating across Scotland. I reckon it’s best dealt with by CID in the various forces pooling information, so that we can all be on the alert for a sudden unusual burst of 999 calls, and also for signs of the stolen gear appearing on the market. . unless most of it’s been moved on already.’

‘I’ll bet it hasn’t. If they’re as clever as all that,’ she pointed out, ‘they’ll have a disposal plan worked out. First thing we should do is assess the total value of everything they’ve stolen. Let me have a list of all the robberies, with contact points for each. I’ll ask David Mackenzie to pull everything together and see what we’ve got. It could be,’ she ventured, ‘they’re thinking about moving it in one lot.’

McIlhenney frowned, doubtfully. ‘Dunno about that, Mags. The only way to shift that amount of specialist gear would be to open a pro shop of your own.’