Death's Door

Thirty-five

‘This comes out of a throwaway remark made during our conversation with Harry Paul’s dad,’ said Mario McGuire, ‘but let’s check it out anyway. I seem to remember from the file that Stacey Gavin had a website. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Then let’s check out whether Zrinka had as well.’

‘Will do,’ Stevie Steele replied. ‘I take it your thinking is that maybe the killer sourced them as targets at random, through a search engine.’

‘Something along those lines, yes.’

‘If she had one, that would be a possibility. It might even throw up a few more potential targets in this area. We’ll be better able to get on to it when we get into Zrinka’s flat. At the moment the crime-scene technicians are giving it a thorough going-over.’

‘What progress have you made since the press briefing?’

‘We’ve established one thing that might be significant. Three of Zrinka’s pictures are missing; we know that she took twelve pieces out to North Berwick on Monday, to an art gallery called the Westgate. The owner bought one for his private collection and took eight for stock, as many as he thought he could handle at one time, especially since they were unframed. Zrinka told him that she rarely sold work framed. She believed that it was better that the buyer decided how a work should be displayed, and that most artists did themselves no favours by using cheap or inappropriate framing.’

‘Maybe she left the other three somewhere else.’

‘No. We’ve established that. She went straight from the shop to the restaurant and straight from there to the bus. Her art bag was empty when we found it yesterday. The killer’s taken them as trophies, just as he probably took Stacey’s sketch pad.’

‘I’ll go with that. Anything else?’

Steele chuckled. ‘Oh, yes, and with respect, sir, it’s of a lot more immediate use than websites: we can put a face to Dominic Padstow. Stacey knew him, all right, and intimately too. He must have moved on to her from Zrinka. Tarvil’s just back from South Queensferry with a near life-size nude portrait of him that she painted. Russ Gavin’s met him and he reckons it’s just about as good as a photograph, so I’m going to have the face scanned and printed out. If we haven’t turned up an address for him soon, I’m going to be looking for the okay to release it to the media. Meantime, I’m going to ask Gregor Broughton, the fiscal, to declare him a potential suspect, so that we can set aside the Data Protection Act and pull his details from public agency sources.’

‘You know this picture is Padstow? For sure?’

‘Yes. Mr Gavin had the presence of mind to show Tarvil his daughter’s catalogue. She listed every work she ever did, by subject name and number. That includes the portraits that she did occasionally for family and friends. He appears there, by name, in the entry for portrait number nine.’

McGuire whistled down the phone. ‘You’re sending a happy man back to Edinburgh, Stevie,’ he declared. ‘So Padstow didn’t just know both women, he was intimate with them both. Finally we’ve got ourselves a prime suspect.’

‘A suspect, yes, but that’s all he is for now. We need more on him, from both victims’ friends. Griff’s been through Zrinka’s palmtop and found some names there. Not many, though: she wasn’t part of a student crowd, like Stacey.’

‘Is there an Amy among them?’

‘Yes, Amy Noone, seven Blinkbonny Vennel, Comely Bank.’

‘I suggest you start with her. She was there the night Zrinka met Harry, so she may have known Padstow too.’

‘I’ll do that.’

‘You’ll look up Hope Dell too, for contact details for the other band members?’

‘I will, but she’ll have to wait till tomorrow.’

‘Sure,’ McGuire agreed. ‘You’re running things on the ground; you set your own priorities.’

Steele was about to hang up, when he spoke again: ‘Hey, Andy tells me that he’s got a DI vacancy in this division, and no obvious candidates. It has to be one of the great numbers of all time. If I didn’t need you myself I’d have put your name in for it. Too bad: it’s fucking beautiful up here; Maggie would just love it.’