Aftershock

Sixteen

Maggie Steele, as she always thought of herself now, smiled at her daughter, asleep in the carry-cot that was part of something called by its manufacturer a ‘baby travel system’. They were alone, Bet having gone to a late-afternoon movie.

‘It’s an easy life being two months old, isn’t it?’ she whispered. Stephanie made a small noise, but dozed on, as her mother walked over to the desk that she and her father had once shared.

A brown envelope lay there: it had been delivered half an hour earlier by a uniformed constable from police headquarters at Fettes. She took a deep breath, then opened it and removed its contents.

The document was slimmer than she had expected, but as she looked at the list of sections she realised that it dealt only with events directly related to Stevie’s death, and did not include the detailed investigation into the Ballester murders. Also, if the original had contained crime-scene photographs showing her husband’s body, as she guessed it would have, they had been omitted from the copy.

‘You might have given me one of Boras, Mario,’ she murmured. ‘You might have let me see his face. Or did you think that might upset me?’

She opened the report and began to read, slowly and carefully, taking note of every detail, even those that were seemingly insignificant. Twenty minutes later she finished. ‘There’s nothing there that I didn’t know already,’ she said, to no-one other than her sleeping daughter.

Dražen Boras, tycoon son of a tycoon father, had been very clever. He had set up two unwitting detective constables to provide his alibi. It would have stood, too, but for the tenacity of Bob Skinner and Mario McGuire, and the investigative skill, bordering on genius, of Detective Inspector Arthur Dorward, the force’s senior scene-of-crime officer. Thanks to them, the case against Boras had been made.

But to no avail: the killer had evaded capture. He had fled the country in a private plane, just as the net was being readied to close around him. ‘Or, rather,’ Maggie whispered, ‘they assumed that he fled the country.’

She picked up the phone and called McGuire’s private number at Fettes. ‘Mario,’ she said urgently, as he answered, ‘thanks for the report. I’ve just finished reading it. Tell me something: how did the Met establish that he had left the country?’

‘His father’s company jet was missing from its hangar. Davor Boras said that he had no idea where it had gone, and nobody could prove different.’

‘What about the flight plan?’

‘There was none, but the plane had the range to cross the Atlantic.’

‘So that’s where the Met assumed he was headed?’

‘Yes, but they had other reasons to believe that.’

‘Did anyone search for him in England? Were commercial flights and ferry crossings monitored? Was the Channel Tunnel checked?’

‘No. They were dead sure he’s gone to the US.’

‘And what if they were wrong? What if he didn’t head for America? What if the plane was simply moved somewhere else?’

McGuire sighed. ‘Then he could have gone anywhere.’

‘He could still be in Britain.’

‘Risky.’

‘He’s used an assumed name in the past, to distance himself from his father. Okay, he can’t call himself David Barnes any more, but what if he had a third identity, ready and waiting?’

‘It would be typical behaviour for him, but, Mags, don’t count on him being in Britain.’

‘I’m not, but at least I’ve got somewhere to go from here.’