Death's Door

Thirty-seven

Stevie Steele looked out of the window. ‘Mrs Boras wasn’t kidding,’ he said. ‘It is a nice view.’

He was standing in the living room of Zrinka Boras’s apartment in Castle Street, looking out of the window across Princes Street and its gardens. The great grey castle, on its rock, was bathed in the light of late afternoon as the sun made its way west.

‘Must be worth a fortune too,’ Griff Montell murmured. ‘A duplex in the heart of this city is a rich girl’s home.’

‘Yes, but we knew that already.’ He looked across the room to the desk at which the South African was sitting. Like the rest of the house it was tidy, with pens and paper-clips all in their proper containers, with a pile of grey business cards placed in front of the flat-screen monitor, and with a phone to the right corner, within easy reach. ‘Are you into her files yet?’ he asked.

‘Sure, boss, no problem. She’d never heard of computer security, or so it seems. I can answer your website question: she had one. There’s a folder here.’

‘I have the answer already.’ Steele showed him a business card that he had picked up. ‘It’s there,’ he said.

‘Want me to look at it?’

‘Not right now.’

‘I can access her e-mail if you like; the password’s memorised to let me in with one click.’

‘Do that later too. First I want you to look for a list of contacts. We didn’t find anything for Dominic Padstow on her PDA, but maybe she kept an entry on him here.’

‘She kept fuck all on her PDA, apart from a few notes of sales made, and a couple of phone numbers, for example Harry Paul’s and Amy Noone’s. I suspect that it was a Christmas gift she never really got round to using. Give me a minute and we’ll see what’s here.’

Steele stood back and watched as the detective constable opened the program menu, found an office package and opened it. ‘Nothing here,’ he declared, after a minute spent searching. ‘There is a calendar, though, and she has appointments on it.’

‘How far back does it go?’

‘Let me see.’ He began to click on an arrow, moving the display back month by month. ‘A couple of years,’ he announced eventually. ‘This computer’s newer than that, I’d say, so I guess she transferred files from an earlier model. There are regular entries, and quite a few of them involve the letter D, as in our man.’ He chose one at random and clicked on it, watching as it opened into an extended note. ‘Right; this one’s for November the second, the year before last, and it says, “Four p.m., Dom, Harry Potter and the Giblet of Fire”. I guess they went to the movies.’

‘You mean “goblet”,’ said the inspector. ‘As in “and the Goblet of Fire”.’

‘No, I don’t; that’s what’s here. Either Zrinka couldn’t type or she had a wry sense of humour.’

‘Can you check every entry and print them out?’

‘Sure, but I’d rather do it back at the office.’ He produced a small blue plastic object from his pocket. ‘I could copy all the files I need on to my flash drive.’

‘If that’s the easiest way, fair enough. Too bad about the lack of an address book, though. There’s no trace of anything anywhere. For an outgoing girl, as she’d been described, she seems to have had hardly any friends.’

‘I’m not done yet, though,’ said Montell. ‘She didn’t have to use a specialist program. Many people don’t; they just make an ordinary list.’ He opened the computer’s search facility, entered ‘address’, and waited. ‘There you are,’ he said triumphantly, as a single entry appeared in a window. ‘Zrinka’s documents, in a folder called “House”, a document called “Addresses”. And if we open that. .’ he clicked on the link and watched as the screen changed ‘. . we have a list. There you are, boss: names, addresses and phone numbers, in alphabetical order.’

Steele slapped him on the shoulder as he leaned over to look at the monitor screen. ‘Good lad, Griff. Scroll down and let’s take a look at the P entries.’ He watched as the DC spun the wheel on the mouse, pulling down pages of the file, slowing down as he reached O and coming to a halt as he arrived at the first P listings.

‘HP,’ Montell murmured, to himself. ‘That’s Harry’s address and number in Edinburgh. The next one’s Paul, T and M, his mum and dad, up in Aberfeldy. But no more Ps; the next entry’s RG, with a mobile number, no address.’

‘Maybe that’s out of place.’

‘No, the one after that’s an S. Bloody hell! “Skinner, Alex”, and with her office address and phone number. What’s she doing there?’

‘She bought one of Zrinka’s pictures for her father,’ Steele reminded him. ‘I guess she kept details of her buyers wherever she could. These aren’t just personal numbers: she’s built herself a mailing list. That’s why there are so many of them, compared to the very few numbers in her PDA.’

‘But no Dominic Padstow, even though he’s mentioned in her appointments calendar.’

‘If he lived with her. .’

‘… she wouldn’t need his bloody number. True, or maybe she just washed him right out of her hair when he moved on.’ Montell’s finger twitched on the wheel and more entries appeared. ‘Hey, look at this,’ he exclaimed. ‘There’s one for Stacey!’

Steele peered at the screen. ‘All it says is “S” and a mobile number. How do you know it’s her?’

‘I recognise the number; it’s noted in the case file. I’m dead certain, but we can call Tarvil in the office and have him check, if you like.’

‘I’ll trust your memory, Griff. That means the two victims did know each other.’

‘Is that significant?’

‘Who can say at this stage? All we’re doing is establishing a series of points of overlap between their lives. Until now, that’s been limited to the fact that they were both artists, and to them both having relationships with the man Dominic Padstow. But now we discover that they were acquainted. How did they meet? What brought them together? How close were they? We need to talk to Amy Noone, urgently, and we need to re-interview Stacey’s friends.’

‘And we sure as hell need to find Padstow.’

‘At the moment that’s our only objective, but let’s do it methodically. I want you to look at every file on that computer, and I want you to use that engagement diary to build me as complete a picture as possible of this woman’s life, as far back as it will take you. I don’t really care whether you do it here or whether you take the box back to the office, but the search needs to be complete. Copying selected items on to a flash drive isn’t going to be enough.’

‘No, I guess not,’ Montell conceded. ‘I’ll take it down to Leith in that case, but first, do you want to check Zrinka’s e-mails? ’

‘Yes, go on.’

‘She has direct broadband access; the computer logs on automatically, so if I just click here. .’ He did as he said and watched as the dead woman’s mailbox opened. ‘Nothing,’ he growled, as he scanned the list that appeared, ‘other than bloody on-line newspapers. I’d have expected an artist to be a Guardian reader, but Zrinka went for the Telegraph and The Scotsman. Let’s see what she’s had recently.’ He clicked on a box marked ‘old e-mails’. A longer list appeared; he and Steele scanned down it, neither of them quite sure what they hoped to find. ‘I’ll go through these one by one at the office, boss,’ said Montell.

‘You’ll still be able to access through our systems?’

‘No problem: I won’t change her set-up.’

‘Right, close up and let’s go.’ Steele straightened up, and moved towards the door.

‘Okay. Hey, wait a minute,’ the detective constable exclaimed. ‘She’s got Messenger: it’s signed on automatically. That means she has a secondary address, and I should,’ he clicked the icon, ‘be able to open it.’ The program took longer to display on screen than its predecessor, but as it did, a grin spread across the South African’s face. ‘She’s got mail!’ he called out. ‘And from her brother at that.’

‘God,’ the inspector sighed, ‘I’ve been trying to trace that man since we left his parents this morning, and drawing blanks everywhere. I sourced his office number and called that, but his secretary told me that he was away on a business trip and out of touch.’

‘Doesn’t he have a mobile?’

‘She said that he doesn’t. Hard to believe in this day and age, but I don’t think she was lying to me. She said that Mr Barnes was away sourcing suppliers and that he keeps trips like that absolutely secret, so that his competitors don’t find out who he’s dealing with. All I could do was ask her to ask him to make contact with us whenever he next got in touch. His mother’s secretary gave me a home phone number for him in London. I rang that too, but all I got was the same answer-machine that she had earlier. Now the bugger pops up here out of the blue. Open it, and let’s see what he’s telling her.’

Montell double-clicked the sender name and waited for the seconds the message took to open. ‘The title is “Keeping in touch”, ’ he began ‘and it reads,

‘Hi Sis

I’m on the move, so this will have to be a quick message. I hope you’re well and selling your pictures like crazy. It was good, what you told me about the man being in touch about one of your pictures. You make a friend like him and word will spread around town. Just don’t let him get too friendly! I can’t tell you often enough, you can’t trust men, but you know that from your own experience. I’m glad it seems to be working out for you with your new boyfriend. He has a good background. After you told me about him I checked out his father, and he seems like quite a man. He was very successful in business and before that he was a war hero. I wish our own dad was more like him. We know what he did when he saw war on the horizon.

I’m out of the country just now, finishing up a piece of business. I expect it to be taken care of in the next couple of days. Once it is, maybe I’ll come to Edinburgh to see you and your little friend, and meet Harry.

Love, Dražen.’

‘Looks like his secretary was telling the truth, boss.’

‘I never doubted her. Is the message dated?’

‘According to the heading it was sent today, at twelve fifty GMT.’

‘That’s well after the press conference. Griff, I want you to send a reply. Tell him it’s from me, give him our office address, phone number and e-mail, and tell him that when he picks it up, he should get in touch with us as soon as possible.’

Montell’s fingers were flashing on the keyboard even before he had finished speaking. ‘I’m ahead of you, boss. I wonder who the man was that Dražen mentioned,’ he added idly, as he worked.

‘Maybe Zrinka’s old e-mails will tell us. Finish up and let’s get back to the office, so you can start to work on them, and on any other surprises that might be in there.’