Death's Door

Nineteen

It was one of those embarrassing moments: Alex Skinner was in conference with the chairman of the firm when her mobile sounded. ‘Sorry,’ she said to Mitchell Laidlaw. ‘I forgot to switch it to silent.’

‘No problem,’ he replied. ‘It might be a client. Take it: we’re done here anyway.’

‘Thanks.’ She picked up her papers in her left hand and the phone with her right, hitting the accept button as she stepped through the door, which the chairman held open for her. ‘Alex,’ she said. ‘How can I help you?’

‘You could cheer me up by coming out with me tonight,’ Griff Montell exclaimed. ‘I’m having a hell of a busy day and I need to relax.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Movie?’

‘I can’t think of anything I fancy at the moment, truth be told. I was at the Ocean Terminal multiplex on Sunday with my dad and my young brothers. None of the trailers appealed to me. Let’s just go and eat.’

‘Sounds good. Anywhere in mind?’

‘No,’ she said, as she settled behind her desk. ‘We’ll take a taxi up to George Street and pick somewhere; it’s midweek, so we’ll have plenty of choice. Ring my doorbell at seven thirty: we’ll have a drink first.’

‘Okay.’ Alex was about to hang up, but he continued. ‘Speaking of your dad, how is he?’

‘He’s fine. I was worried about him a few months ago, but the time he’s spent by himself seems to have done him good.’

‘Why were you worried about him?’

‘For a couple of reasons: he was involved in a very big incident towards the end of last year. You’ll remember it: there were people killed. He’s had a few very rough scrapes in his time, has my father, but I don’t recall ever seeing him so badly affected as he was by that one. Then, just after it, he went off to London on some hush-hush inquiry. He didn’t tell me anything about it, but I got the definite impression that it was fairly nasty too. On top of all that, he’s had to deal with the break-up of his marriage.’

‘Bad timing?’

‘Not good, but it was more than that. Pops isn’t used to failure in any aspect of his life: if he undertakes something, he has to succeed. He’s bad enough when a four-foot putt lips out, so imagine what he was like when he had to admit that he and Sarah weren’t going to make it work. He took it personally, carried all the blame on his shoulders.’

‘Shouldn’t he? Isn’t he. .’ Montell started to venture.

She cut him off: ‘I know what you’re going to say; you’ve heard the gossip too. Well, it’s wrong. Aileen de Marco wasn’t a factor in the split. It wasn’t all his fault, either: he and Sarah both made mistakes, and in the end there wasn’t enough left to hold them together. But everything came to a head at once, her going, the horrors he was involved in.’ She paused. ‘Griff,’ she asked, ‘have you ever met my father?’

‘Once,’ he replied. ‘After you had your own trouble, and I was on hand to sort it, he sent for me, called me up to his office, to thank me personally.’

‘You never told me that. He wouldn’t, but you might have.’

‘I didn’t like to. I don’t know why, unless I was embarrassed at being thanked for just doing my job.’

She laughed. ‘That’s all I am, is it? Just another victim?’

‘That’s what I tried to tell him. . although not quite in those words. . but he wouldn’t have it. He said he owed me one, as a man, not as the deputy chief, but if he could use his office to repay it, he would. So I asked him if I could carry on working with DI Steele and Tarvil; they’re my kind of cops, see. He fixed it there and then.’

‘Good for him. And at that time, how did he seem to you? What did you think of him?’

‘Honestly? How do I describe him? It was like being in the same room as a volcano: the intensity of him. I’ve never met anyone like him.’

‘You’re not the first to say that. But honestly, he’s not usually like that. He really was wired directly into the mains then. I’ll tell you how bad he was. Last January he actually asked me to move back in with him for a while.’

‘You refused him?’

‘Obviously. I still live next door to you and your sister, do I not? I told him the truth: when daughters leave home they’re gone for good.’

‘After the day I’ve had,’ Griff said, ‘that’s maybe the wrong thing to say. I’ve spoken to the parents of one daughter who sure is gone and I’ve tracked down the father of another.’

‘The girl on the beach near Gullane? The photo on the front page of the News today? There’s something about her that’s been gnawing at me all day.’

‘Yeah, we know who she is now: we. .’

And then it came to her, as if an unseen hand had swept a curtain aside. In that instant she was somewhere else as a scene replayed itself in her mind. ‘And so do I,’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t remember her name, but I’ve met her. I’m sure of it now: she was a very striking girl, blonde and really beautiful; not just on the outside either. She had a really bubbly personality.’

‘When was this?’ Montell exclaimed.

‘About three months ago. I was with my dad and the kids one weekend; we went to a street market in Leith, fashion, CDs, arts and crafts, that sort of stuff. She had a stall, selling paintings, originals, all her own work. I stopped and looked at it, and I saw a couple that I was sure Pops would like. He was down at the time, still wounded by everything, so I bought him one, the biggest, as a cheer-up present.’

‘How did you pay her?’

‘It was a few hundred quid so I wrote her a cheque.’

‘Payable to Zrinka Boras?’

‘That’s it! Ms Z. Boras: I asked her where her name came from. She laughed and said that it came from her dad and that he was from Bosnia-Herzegovina.’

‘Jeez!’ Griff whistled. ‘Your old man must really have been off the ball back then. Stevie Steele showed him that photograph this morning and he didn’t recognise her. Maybe you should tell him, before your name shows up when we access her bank records.’

‘That’s a good point. I will, but don’t be too hard on him,’ Alex protested. ‘The way he was back then, he could have met Charlize Theron and forgotten about it.’