Aftershock

Sixty-nine

‘This thing you’re doing, Andy,’ said Neil McIlhenney, standing outside Theo Weekes’s house, in the evening sunshine that baked South Bughtlin Road. ‘It makes my flesh creep. I can’t lose the thought that if it was anyone else we’d have had him in for serious questioning, or the Spanish would have if they’d known all the facts about the Dean murder, and especially about the picture connection to the second one.’

‘That’s why he wants me involved.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He knows me, and he knows that if the evidence becomes overwhelming, I might have to lock him up. He’d rather it was me than anybody else.’

‘Come on, you’re not seriously suggesting that Bob’s in the frame for these killings, are you?’

‘He’s suggesting it himself. At least, he’s pointing out the obvious, that there’s a chain of circumstantial evidence connecting him to the victims, not just these two but the Ballester victims as well.’

‘But those cases are closed. We know Ballester did it.’

‘As you say,’ Martin concurred, ‘those cases are closed.’ He glanced along the road to where the press corps was mustered behind a barrier. ‘But maybe they shouldn’t be.’

‘Stop it, for fuck’s sake!’ McIlhenney protested. ‘You’re suggesting that our deputy chief, never mind that he’s a friend of both of us, might have gone on a killing spree.’

‘No, I’m not, Neil. But that’s what the circumstances are suggesting. Among the six victims, there are four artists. Bob owns work by three of them and he’s in close proximity to a piece by the fourth, in his office. Three of the victims died on his doorstep, two in Gullane and one in Spain. He was at the scene of a fourth death and within reachable distance of the other two. He doesn’t have a cast-iron alibi for any of them: I know this because he volunteered it, but you’ve been there while it all happened. You must have put the same facts together for yourself.’

‘I have,’ the superintendent admitted. ‘Of course I have.’

‘Then you’ve been ignoring something he’s taught us: never back off from thinking the unthinkable.’

‘No, I haven’t. I’ve thought it, and I’m sure that Mario has too. But neither of us believes it.’

‘Neither do I, but I’ll continue to look at the evidence, as he wants me to do. And there is something else, something you know about. Last year, before any of this started, Bob was involved in that major incident at St Andrews. So were you. The situation was resolved successfully, but there were deaths.’

‘Yeah,’ McIlhenney murmured. ‘Something happened that night, Andy. I was there, I saw the bodies, and I maybe even accounted for one of them, but there was something else that was never talked about afterwards. One of the dead: he was never identified.’

‘I know who he was,’ said Martin. He paused, looking the superintendent in the eye. ‘Neil, you know that the big guy isn’t conventionally religious, but he has a couple of confessors. I’m one, and Jim Gainer, the Archbishop, is the other. He told me everything about that night: Jim probably knows too, but neither of us can talk about it. Suffice to say that it was bad. It hit him very hard: it would probably have broken anyone else, but not him. However, if other investigators came into this thing and looked at the total picture, it might be hard to persuade them that it didn’t knock him off the rails. He’s vulnerable, Neil, and he knows it. What he’s really asked me to do here is clear him.’

‘On the face of it, there’s only one way to do that: find our killer.’

‘Maybe not: confirming Ballester’s guilt would help. It would keep the copycat theory firmly in play. And it would put Davis Colledge back in the spotlight.’

‘He’s never been out of it, Andy. We just can’t find the wee bastard, that’s all. We lost his trail in Holland.’

‘He’ll turn up. Meanwhile, brief me on what we’ve got here.’

‘We’ve got a situation, DCC Martin. This man Weekes spent the last few days of his life drawing trouble like a turd draws flies. On Friday evening, Jack McGurk found him parked outside his ex-wife’s house, in breach of his bail conditions. Weekes threw a punch, but big Jack whacked him. He let him off, sent him on his way, with a heavy warning not to come back. He also arranged for frequent drive-pasts of this place, just to keep an eye on him.’

‘Was McGurk with the ex-wife?’

‘They’d been out on a date. They’re two single people, so why not? I have no problem with it professionally, and in practical terms it’s helped her by removing her as a suspect. Jack’s finished up here, and he was keen to get off to see her, so I’ve let him go.’

‘Fair enough. Back to the story.’

‘Yes. Yesterday afternoon Weekes had a visitor: John Dean, Sugar’s dad. His story is that Weekes insulted his daughter and they came to blows. One of the drive-by cars broke it up. Stallings was called; she acted as peacemaker. No charges, no arrests. Incidentally both of those officers, she and Jack, are now feeling a bit of guilt, thinking that if either of them had taken a harder line and had him locked up, when they could have, he’d still be alive. I’ve pointed out that Frankie Birtles would probably have had him released inside an hour, but it’s still niggling at them.’

‘I’ll have a word with them, if you think it’ll help.’

‘It might. Anyway, that brings us to today, when PC Grey, the victim’s by now former fiancée, arrived to collect some personal possessions and, in her words, to shove his engagement ring up his arse. She found said arse sticking up in the air in the hall, having been as dead as the rest of him since last night. Incidentally, now that the time of death’s more or less confirmed she’s also well alibied, since she and her mother were on their way home from shopping, and she has time-stamped till receipts to prove it. Dorward’s team are still working inside, lifting prints and DNA traces, but they haven’t found anything that looks remotely like the murder weapon. The pathologist believes that to be a large, broad-bladed knife of the sort carried by hunters or, more likely, scuba-divers, with a cutting edge on one side and serrations on the other. As you’ll have seen, we’ve got uniforms searching the surrounding area, but so far, nothing. On top of that, Jack McGurk’s found a closed-circuit camera. It belongs to the local supermarket and it covers its car park and the bus terminal for this area. He’s had a quick look at the footage for late yesterday afternoon. The only thing it told him is that there were a lot of people around; no familiar faces, though.’

‘Did the doc offer any theories on the attacker?’

‘Physically strong, she said, and almost certainly male, from the degree of force used. The attack was savage and sustained. The blood trail begins in the kitchen. The first blows were delivered there, before Weekes either staggered or crawled out into the hall, with his attacker following him, hacking and stabbing away at him. The doc counted twenty-seven penetrating wounds and six slashes, but she reckoned that he was finally killed by a deep cut to the neck that severed the jugular and the carotid. Some of the wounds, including one to an eye, might have been post mortem.’

‘Speaking of which, who’s doing it?’ asked Martin.

‘Old Joe; Professor Hutchinson. He’s still around, and still the best there is, especially now that Sarah’s gone.’

‘Undoubtedly. What about the man Dean? Has he been interviewed yet?’

‘Becky went to see him: there was nobody home. He and his wife left last night for their place up north. He called in to see his neighbour at about five thirty to let her know they were off, and she saw them drive away about fifteen minutes later.’

Martin frowned. ‘So far, Neil, you’ve done a hell of a good job of eliminating suspects. As far as I can see, all the runners were withdrawn before the tape went up.’

‘All the obvious ones, yes, but then someone else turned up at the starting gate. Our door-to-door questioning turned up two neighbours who mentioned seeing a car parked outside yesterday evening; definitely after five, they both said. It was a dark blue Volvo and they noticed it because it was parked across Weekes’s drive, blocking the exit.’

‘Number?’

‘Neither of them could tell us, but Stallings checked with the traffic department. It was noted by a patrol car at five forty. Just for fun, they ran a number check. Guess who popped out? Do you remember Jock Varley, a uniformed inspector?’

‘The name’s familiar.’

‘Have you read the Sugar Dean file, including Weekes’s formal statement?’

‘Jesus, yes!’ Martin exclaimed. ‘He claimed that Varley’s wife gave him a sexually transmitted disease.’

‘That’s right. And our investigation found evidence to support that.’

‘What have you done about it?’

‘I’ve sent Stallings and young DC Haddock to pick Varley up from his home and take him to Fettes. Mario and I will handle the interview. Do you want to sit in?’

‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ said Martin. ‘I can listen to the tape, if I need to. I’ve got to get back to Perth. When I tell Karen I’m going to be out of town for another week, she’s not going to be best pleased. I don’t want to stoke her fire any more than I have to.’