Aftershock

Fifty

‘I shouldn’t be doing this,’ he said quietly, sipping the cold beer in his hand. ‘I’ve got to interview you guys formally tomorrow. I should steer clear of you till then.’

‘Andy,’ Mario McGuire replied, lounging behind his desk, ‘if it makes you uncomfortable, drink up and bugger off. But we’re not going to ask you anything about your investigation, I promise.’

‘I know, or I wouldn’t be here. What the hell? I’ve done a few thousand things in my life that I shouldn’t have, so what’s one more? Anyway, it was purely a social invitation, you said.’

‘That’s right,’ Neil McIlhenney confirmed. ‘How’s life in Tayside?’ He paused. ‘Here, that was a right shambles in the High Court in Dundee yesterday, was it not? Everybody there to begin the trial except the prisoner. Who is he anyway, this Grandpa McCullough? Sounds like the senior citizen from hell.’

‘He would be, if he was a senior citizen, but he’s still a few years short of that. He got the name because he became a grandfather when he was thirty-six. His daughter got pregnant when she was fifteen: she kept it a secret from him until it was too late for her to have a termination. The dad was one John McCreath, aged twenty-three, local playboy, but married with a kid. Not long after the news broke, he was found in a lock-up in Arbroath. I won’t tell you what Grandpa did to him: it would put you off your dinner. That was twenty-two years ago; silence prevailed, he got away with it, and nobody’s laid a glove on him since then, until now.’

‘How did you nail him?’

‘We didn’t, not really: McCreath’s son did. They moved to Aberdeen after it all happened, she remarried and the boy, James, took his stepfather’s name, Dickson. He grew up wide, and got involved in a drug deal with Grandpa. He set him up, then shopped him to us. We got him stone cold: as soon as he was in custody, McCreath’s widow and her sister came forward and gave evidence about the night John was taken away by Grandpa and his team. We picked up the two guys who were with him. One hasn’t said a word, but the other turned out to have terminal cancer; his priest persuaded him to make a dying declaration before a sheriff about the killing. Since then, the trick’s been to make sure the surviving witnesses, the women, stay that way.’ Martin smiled. ‘You guys, you laugh at Tayside. .’

‘We don’t!’ McGuire protested.

‘You bloody do; you think it’s a backwater, and that all the locals are either clods or sheep-shaggers. It’s not. It’s a more varied society than this one, and its subculture is more serious and better organised than yours.’

‘That’s because Bob Skinner, and guys like the three of us, got rid of most of ours.’

‘Maybe, but Grandpa McCullough is right up with the likes of Tony Manson and Jackie Charles in terms of violence and ruthlessness: maybe even ahead of them. If you looked at those guys closely, you might have found a redeeming feature. Grandpa doesn’t have one. He’s like a stick of rock with the word “evil” going all the way through.’

‘But even he fell to the might of a graduate of the Edinburgh school,’ said McIlhenney, grinning.

‘He hasn’t fallen yet,’ Martin countered tersely. ‘I won’t be happy until the jury comes in and says, “Guilty,” and the judge gives him a minimum of thirty years. . as she will when she reads the autopsy report. Even then, we’ll have to hide the witnesses, maybe abroad.’

‘What about the kid?’ asked McGuire.

‘James Dickson? He’s in limbo. Like I said, he was wide, but he got revenge for his dad by grassing Grandpa. If he’d just killed him. . You know the code, that would have been understood, admired even, but instead he shopped him. He’s got no friends anywhere. The wild side will shun him, and we don’t like him much either. He’ll go as far away as his mum. After that, it’s up to him.’

‘That’s too bad for him, Andy, but I didn’t mean him. I was talking about Grandpa’s grandchild.’

‘Granddaughter. Cameron McCullough; christened so, believe it or not, after Grandpa. That’s his real name.’

‘That’s okay these days. There’s Cameron Diaz: she’s a girl.’

‘This one’s twenty-one now.’

‘I’d worked that out. How does she feel about Grandpa killing her dad?’

‘She’s twenty-one, and she drives a Mercedes SLK. I’d say she’s come to terms with it.’

McIlhenney shook his head. ‘Lovely family. But at least they’re simple and uncomplicated. You know what they are; you know what you’re dealing with.’

‘That sounds a bit ominous.’

‘It is. Just before you came along, we had a video conference through the computer with the big man, out in Spain. He wasn’t alone; he had a local detective with him, a woman, high-ranking.’

Martin grunted. ‘And there you were, telling me that this was only a social gathering.’

‘See, you top brass,’ said McGuire, ‘you’re too smart for the likes of us. The fact is, we lied. . not that we wouldn’t be asking you for a beer anyway, while you’re here. The boss told us to bring you in on it.’

‘So what was this video conference about?’

‘This,’ McIlhenney replied, handing him two sheets of photo-quality paper. ‘Those were taken with a Polaroid and scanned into Bob’s system, but they’re clear enough. It happened in L’Escala this morning: he found her.’

Martin studied them one by one. The first showed a naked woman, lying serenely in the sun. She looked for all the world as if she was asleep, but he guessed that she would never waken again. The second was a close-up shot of the back of her head; it was darker, but as he peered at it he saw, in the parting of her hair, a small wound. ‘What the hell does this mean?’ he whispered.

‘It means that our copycat theory is right back in place, but that he’s moved abroad. The dead woman, Nadine Sebastian, was an artist.’

‘And what about Weekes, the cop that your team has banged up, ready for court tomorrow? Last I heard you were ready to charge him with murder.’

‘Not quite,’ said McGuire. ‘We were leaving that up to Gregor Broughton. In fact, we still are.’

‘Have you told the defence about this?’

‘Not yet. That can keep.’

‘You’ll have to disclose at some point.’

‘Maybe, but not now. The bastard can sweat it out for a while longer. We’ve got him on other charges.’

‘But you’ve got no direct evidence of murder?’

‘We’ve got him at the scene, and we’ve got him concealing the crime for ten whole days while the poor girl decomposed. And we’ve got him nicking a trophy from the body. A smoking gun in his hand? No, we don’t have that.’

‘He’s saying he found her?’

‘Maybe he did at that.’

‘Still,’ Martin muttered, ‘you’re right. Fuck him. Let him spend a sleepless night on a hard bed in the Torphichen Place cells. He deserves it. Who’s his agent?’

‘Frankie Birtles.’

‘Miss Bristles, is it? We don’t owe her any favours either.’

‘I don’t think she’s bothered,’ said McIlhenney. ‘According to Becky Stallings, by the time Weekes had finished dictating his statement, she was looking at him like he was something nasty she’d just found in her boyfriend’s underpants.’

Martin held up the images, gazing at them. ‘So where do you go with this?’ he asked.

‘We’re sending all the forensics on the Dean case to the Spanish for comparison.’›

‘How much do you have?’

‘Not a hell of a lot. We’ve got the bullet and various foreign DNA samples from the victim’s clothing. Most of them are animal, but five of them are human. One sample turned out to be from Lord Archibald.’

‘The ex-Lord Advocate? Used to be Archie Nelson?’

‘He found the body,’ McIlhenney told him. ‘I’m sorry about that. I’d have liked him on the bench when Weekes goes to the High Court.’

‘I can guess why. What about the other samples?’

‘One was from her dad, one from her mum. The other two, we haven’t identified.’

‘Weekes?’

‘Hers was on his jacket. They reckon he must have pulled some hairs out when he took the necklace she was wearing.’

‘So, where are you now?’ Martin asked.

‘Like I said, the copycat notion is back in play, but with a twist. Davis Colledge, the boyfriend, has gone walkabout in the South of France, not too hellish far from L’Escala where that girl was killed.’

‘Indeed?’ he mused. ‘I’m down here investigating a potential leak of information from the Ballester investigation to a second murderer, who’s imitating his style of killing.’ He smiled. ‘But if that has happened, how would such a leak get to the kid, if he’s a suspect?’

‘Andy,’ said McGuire, ‘he’s our only viable suspect. He was close to the dead girl, and he’s geographically placed to have killed the Spanish victim, another artist, as Neil said. Plus he’s one himself, a painter.’

‘How would he know about the newest one, Sebastian?’

‘I knew you’d ask me that, so before you came along I Googled her name on my computer and up she popped. She’s got a website, in Spanish, Catalan, French and English. She was thirty-two years old, with a studio in a town called Bellcaire, and a gallery to display her works, mainly painting, but some sculpture, all of it with a Christian theme. It says that her philosophy is “to create a universe of simplicity and impressive impact”, and the stuff it displays is fucking good. . to my reasonably educated eye at least: my mum’s a bit of a painter, remember. She’s exhibited in Barcelona, Paris, Leipzig, New York, and. . wait for it. . last year, at the Edinburgh International Festival.’

‘Okay, that’s two ways he could have known about her.’ Martin paused. ‘As for knowing about the Ballester killings, the question I asked a minute ago was a wee bit rhetorical. For your ears only, I’ve found the leak. . or, rather, a leak, for there could still be more than one. That unpleasant wee man Joe Dowley couldn’t resist bragging about the investigation to his pals at the Rotary. The branch secretary’s getting me a list of attendees on the night in question.’

‘You’ll pass it to us when you get it?’ McIlhenney asked. ‘Do that and I’ll put the team on to finding a lead from there to young Colledge.’

‘I can’t, Neil. It could put the finger on Dowley publicly, and I’m not ready for that. Mackenzie will check every name on the list. If he can make a connection, he’ll pass it on. Fair enough?’

The big superintendent shrugged. ‘You’re the ranking officer here, not me. But I can live with that.’

‘Thanks. You said the boy’s AWOL. What’s being done to find him?’

‘What was a fairly casual look-around’s being turned into a full-scale alert. His picture’s being circulated everywhere by the police in Spain and by the gendarmes in France.’

‘National publicity?’

‘Not yet: airports and railway stations.’

‘The boy’s only eighteen,’ Martin pointed out.

‘He’s got a complicated background, and he’s firearms trained, thanks to the school cadet force.’

‘Is he indeed? I can see why you’ve stepped up your interest. Mind you,’ he raised an eyebrow, ‘there’s something you’re overlooking. Davis Colledge isn’t the only person who was in the area where each of these murders were committed. There’s one other.’

McGuire frowned. ‘Who?’

‘Bob.’

‘Fuck! You’re having no more beer.’

‘Hey, come on. I’m a police officer, and more than that: I might wear a uniform now but, like you guys, I’m a detective at heart. All I’m doing is stating pure facts. Bob was in the Edinburgh area on the day that Sugar Dean was killed, and now you tell me that this later murder happened right on his doorstep. You don’t have a fucking clue where young Colledge was this morning. On the basis of what I’ve just said, who’s the likelier suspect?’

McIlhenney pushed himself out of his chair. ‘Andy!’ he growled.

Martin held up a hand. ‘Calm down, bear. He’s my best pal too, remember. But Señora Plod, over in Spain, she doesn’t know him at all. Now that she knows all about the Edinburgh murder, don’t be surprised if she gets professionally curious. If that happens. . who’s Bob got with him over there?’

‘Yes,’ McGuire murmured, ‘all true. Maybe he should get out of Dodge.’

‘Don’t get that carried away. Bob will protect Aileen from any embarrassment, don’t worry about that. Interesting, though, I had a call from him yesterday about my inquiry after I’d agreed to do it. It’ll come as no surprise that the thing was his idea. But it was strange: he asked me to think outside the box about the whole situation.’

‘What did he mean by that?’

‘I’ve no idea, but I suppose that’s why he told you to brief me on this.’

‘You will talk to him, won’t you?’

Martin’s green eyes flashed. ‘Too bloody right I will,’ he said.