Death's Door

Fifty-five

‘I hope that my wife is getting on all right with your cousin’s wife,’ said Stevie Steele, as he and Ray Wilding stepped off the Heathrow Express at Paddington Station and headed for the taxi rank.

‘I’ve told you, it isn’t possible not to get on with Margot: she doesn’t allow it.’ The sergeant shook his head. ‘I still can’t get over Maggie’s bombshell.’ He laughed. ‘The faces in that room must have been a picture.’

‘They were, and I suspect that my jaw dropped furthest of all when she came out with it.’

‘You had no idea?’

‘Not that she was going to announce it there and then, I hadn’t. I knew that she had it in mind, but I thought she was still thinking it over, and that she was going to wait till the baby was safely delivered to make a decision.’

‘How long will it take you to stop thinking of her as a chief superintendent?’

‘God,’ Steele exclaimed, in disbelief. ‘You’re some machine. Do you see me as a common man version of Prince Philip, walking three paces behind his wife? Maggie stopped being a senior officer as soon as she walked in the front door. I haven’t thought of her that way from the day we started living together. . and since before that, if you really want to know.’ He flagged down a taxi. ‘Charing Cross police station,’ he told the driver.

‘It’ll take me a while,’ Wilding continued. ‘I’ve known her for a while too, and I’ve never been able to imagine her as anything other than a police officer. It’s one thing talking idly about giving up; I can imagine her doing that, in her condition. But for her actually to go through with it, to me that’s incredible.’

Steele sat silent for a while, as the black cab pulled out into the Saturday-morning traffic. ‘When I think about it, Ray, I have to confess that I find it remarkable too. Not that long ago we were talking about when the time would be right for her to move up to assistant chief, and whether she should move force to achieve it. Then all of a sudden there’s this sea change in her, leading up to her announcement last night.

‘I thought I knew her, better than I’ve ever known anyone in my whole life. I thought she’d never be able to surprise me again, and then she went and proved me wrong. I told her as much last night. She was sorry, you know, guilty that she hadn’t told me what she’d decided in advance, but when she said that she did what she did on the spur of the moment, she wasn’t kidding.’

‘Did anybody try to talk her out of it afterwards?’

‘Brian Mackie did. He pleaded with her to take longer to think about it, and not hand in her resignation straight away. He told her that replacing her permanently would be a big problem for him, one that he’d rather put off for the moment. He even said he’d been thinking about letting Neil McIlhenney gain a year’s seniority, but the DCC told him to forget that, pronto. He said that he wasn’t pulling Neil out of CID.’

‘The DCC,’ Wilding exclaimed. ‘Was he there?’

‘Of course. Mags used to be his exec, remember.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘He was great. He was the only one of us that didn’t bat an eyelid. He told her that she hadn’t made a wrong move in all the time he’d known her, and that if that was what she’d decided, she’d leave with his blessing. They’ve always been close, those two.’

‘You don’t mean. .’

‘Don’t be stupid; of course I don’t. They’ve seen a lot of action together. It’s the same with her and Mario, and big Neil too. There’s some serious history there, and I’m not just talking about her first marriage. I don’t think I know all of it, but if she doesn’t choose to tell me, that’s fine.’

‘So who is going to take her place?’

‘I reckon that Mary Chambers will carry on, for a while at least; they might bring Alastair Grant up from CID in the Borders, or they might even look outside our force. Time will tell. The only thing that’s certain is that it won’t be you or me.’

‘Maybe it’ll be Griff Montell,’ Wilding muttered.

Steele smiled. ‘Somehow, I don’t think so.’

‘Why do you say that? Is he in bother over that run-in with Special Branch?’

‘Not at all. Forget it, Ray, I didn’t mean anything by that. Griff’s okay; he just needs a crash course in tact and diplomacy, and I think he has one coming.’

The two officers sat back in the spacious cab, enjoying the view as the driver took them on a tourist route that led round Marble Arch and down Park Lane, past Buckingham Palace, then up the Mall towards Trafalgar Square. Their destination was Agar Street, just off the Strand. When they arrived they were both taken by surprise: Charing Cross police station was a fine white building with a pillared entrance.

‘Holy shit!’ Wilding exclaimed, as Steele paid the driver. ‘This isn’t like any nick I’ve ever seen. It looks more like a fucking bank.’

However, inside it was very much a working police office. They stepped through the high double doors into a public reception hall. The inspector walked up to a divider behind which a sergeant and a constable were on duty. ‘Morning, sir,’ the senior officer, a black woman, greeted him. ‘How can I help you?’

‘DI Steele and DS Wilding, from Edinburgh,’ he glanced at the name-tag on her tunic, ‘Sergeant Baptiste. We’re here to interview a prisoner.’

‘Yessir,’ she replied smartly. ‘I was told to expect you. Hold on and I’ll buzz DI Stallings.’ She walked back to her desk, picked up an intercom and spoke into it. ‘She’ll be right down,’ she called out.

Steele thanked her. They glanced around the entrance space as they waited. ‘Probably goes all the way back to Sherlock Holmes,’ Wilding murmured. ‘Maybe even before him.’

‘I don’t recall Sherlock being a serving officer,’ the inspector commented quietly.

As he spoke a door opened: a dark-suited, dark-haired woman appeared and headed in their direction. She looked at the visitors appraisingly, until her eye settled on Steele. ‘Inspector,’ she guessed correctly, offering a handshake. ‘Becky Stallings; good to meet you.’ She nodded to Wilding. ‘You too, Sergeant. Welcome to Charing Cross. Come on, our guest will soon be ready for you.’

There was a stairway behind the door; Wilding took in his surroundings as they climbed. ‘This beats Queen Charlotte Street,’ he said, as they reached the top. ‘Must be a cushy number being posted here.’

‘Come and join us,’ said Stallings, ‘when there’s a big demo in Trafalgar Square, and the place is full of anarchists, or even when there’s a celebration there and we get more pickpockets than we can process.’

‘I’ll do that,’ the sergeant replied, ‘if you come and join us when Rangers play at Easter Road.’

She smiled at his comeback as she opened a door and showed them into her office. ‘We’re going to have to wait for a bit,’ she told them. ‘Barker wants his lawyer present when you see him, and he’s not here yet. Saturday morning, too: he’ll be pissed off.’

‘We’ll be sure to apologise,’ said Wilding, cheerfully. As he spoke, he glanced casually at Stallings’s hands and saw no jewellery. ‘You must be pissed off too, Becky,’ he continued. ‘It’s Saturday for you as well.’

She shot him a severe look. ‘Yes, it’s ruined my whole weekend,’ she said drily.

‘Maybe we could all go and grab some lunch when we’re done here.’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘and then we could go shopping in the West End. You could buy a present for your wife.’

His expression turned mournful. ‘I don’t have one. I used to, but she left me for some bastard of a car salesman. She said she couldn’t stand my working hours, but he works every bloody Saturday.’

‘Ah, that’s too bad,’ said the Londoner; she seemed to loosen up slightly. ‘It’s not just the lawyer,’ she said. ‘Home Office security division want to sit in too.’

‘Why?’ asked Steele.

‘Because of the civil-service involvement, or so they say. So far, Barker hasn’t named anyone else he might have corrupted, but they want to be around if he does.’

‘I don’t actually give a damn about civil-service corruption,’ the Scot confessed. ‘We’re after a multiple murderer, and so, it seems, is Barker. Has he said anything so far?’

‘No. Hamilton, his lawyer, won’t let him. He’s waiting to see how much of a supporting case we can compile, to back up Dailey’s confession.’

‘How are you doing on that front?’

‘Not too bad. We found some photocopies of DTI documents in Barker’s office at Continental IT: they definitely should not have been there. We also found details at his home of a bank account in the name of Jack Frost. The balance is very healthy. . it’s several grand in credit … and there’s a record of cash withdrawals. Some of the dates match up roughly with the DTI papers that we found. There was three grand withdrawn on Thursday; we found that in an envelope in Barker’s desk. We’re sure that it was destined for Dailey, only he didn’t deliver the goods.

‘The account was set up by Barker, not long after he left ITN to work for Davor Boras. The initial deposit was made by a cheque for twenty thousand pounds drawn on Barker’s personal account. That received a cash injection for the same amount the day before. Since then it’s been topped up a couple of times, in the same way.’

‘Have you put this to Barker yet?’ asked Steele. ‘Have you pressed him about the money?’

‘No, but when we do, you know what he’ll say.’

‘Sure. He’ll tell us that he’s a gambler and that sometimes he wins big. At least, that’s what they all tell us at first.’

‘You think you can crack him?’

‘I’ve met the man; I think I can. I’ve been taught by experts. . my wife among them.’

Out of the blue, Wilding chuckled. ‘That’s pretty good.’

Stallings stared at him. ‘What is?’

‘The bank account. Somebody’s got a sense of humour. Jack Frost. . It’s a slush fund, isn’t it?’

For the second time she smiled at him. ‘Ray, you might not be as dumb as you look. Maybe we will go for lunch after all.’ Before the sergeant could reply, her phone rang. She picked it up. ‘Thanks,’ she said, nodding across her desk. ‘We’re on.’

She led the way along the corridor and round a corner to a room that Steele judged, even before he was ushered inside, had to be at the back of the building, but there was nothing to confirm this, since its two windows were shuttered.

Barker was waiting for them, immaculate in a pale blue open-necked shirt and tan slacks. As before, his hair was perfectly groomed. He looked like a man who had spent the night in a five-star hotel room, rather than in a police holding cell. He was flanked by a fat man in a business suit.

There were four seats on the other side of the long table at which they sat. One of them was occupied by a woman who rose as they entered. She was small and very slim, bespectacled, and with hair so red that at once Steele pictured Maggie standing in her place. ‘This is Rhonda Weiss,’ Stallings announced, ‘from the Home Office. Mr Barker, you know; the other gentleman is Lancelot Hamilton, his legal adviser.’ She introduced the two officers.

‘I’ll be sitting in,’ said Weiss. ‘I reserve the right to ask questions as I see fit.’

The Scottish inspector looked at her; she returned his gaze, unsmiling. ‘Can I see your warrant card?’ he asked politely.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me.’

‘You mean do I have identification?’ she spluttered. ‘This is ridiculous.’

‘No. I asked if I might see your warrant card. In other words, I’m asking if you’re a police officer.’

‘Of course not. I’m a civil servant.’

‘Then you have no locus,’ Steele told her. ‘This is a serious interview, part of a murder investigation. You can stay, but you will not utter a word unless invited by me, and you’ll sit at the end of the table, so that you cannot make eye contact with the prisoner. Are you carrying any form of recording device?’

‘Yes, but. .’

Steele held out his hand. ‘Give it to me, please. I’ll return it when we’re finished here.’

‘I will not!’

‘Then leave.’

‘I’m here with the approval of the Metropolitan Police.’

‘Which can be withdrawn.’

‘Not by you.’

‘Trust me, it can.’ He turned to Stallings. ‘Becky, I don’t want to put you on the spot, but. .’

‘No problem,’ she told him. ‘If you’ll come with me, Ms Weiss.’

‘Okay!’ The woman took a small personal-memo device from her bag and handed it to Steele.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Now, if you’ll take your place along there, we can begin.’ He took a seat, with Stallings on his left and Wilding on his right, and smiled across the table. ‘Good morning, Mr Barker,’ he began, once Stallings had activated a twin-tape recorder. ‘We’ll just go through the introductions again for the record.’ He recited the time, location, and list of those present, then continued: ‘I’m sorry about that piece of housekeeping, and that we’re meeting again in these surroundings. It might be palatial as police stations go, but it’s a hell of a change from the Caley, you’ll agree.’

‘Yes indeed,’ Barker murmured coldly. ‘It’s outrageous that I’ve been held here overnight, Inspector. Did you have something to do with that?’

‘I think that bribing a civil servant to provide sensitive information had a lot to do with that, Keith.’

Lancelot Hamilton leaned forward. ‘At the moment, Inspector,’ he pointed out, ‘no charges of that nature have been brought against my client.’

‘No, but if you weren’t damn sure that the Met have grounds to lay them whenever they think fit, you’d have screamed bloody murder to have your client released last night. However, Mr Hamilton, that’s not why DS Wilding and I are here. We want to talk to your client about four murders that have been committed in Scotland over the last two months.’

‘My client had nothing to do with any of those terrible crimes. He knows nothing about them.’

‘That’s what we’re here to find out.’ Steele leaned forward slightly and gazed at the lawyer. ‘Look, sir, I don’t want to be rude, but we’ll be done a lot quicker here if you let me get on with my job with as few interruptions as possible. In the process you might save your client a few quid in solicitor’s fees.’ He suppressed a smile, as Hamilton reddened.

‘That is a very well-made point,’ said Barker, grimly.

‘Of course, you won’t be picking up your legal tab, will you?’ said Steele, lightly. ‘Davor Boras will do that, won’t he?’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘Come on, when you leaned on Dailey, you weren’t acting on your own behalf.’

‘Who is Dailey?’

‘He’s a guy with your cellphone number on the SIM card memory of his, but let’s not get tangled up in that stuff. I’m interested in why, not who. Why should you try to track down Dominic Padstow through the passport agency?’

‘Good question, why should I?’

‘You’re using the royal “I” there, Keith. You really mean “we” and when you do you’re talking about you and your puppet-master, Boras. We’re after Padstow. Your boss offered a million quid to anyone who finds the man and puts him away. So why should he use a bent contact in the Home Office to try to track him down? Does he think that if he does the job himself, he’ll save a million?’

‘Hardly. A million is nothing to that man.’

‘Hey, that’s a sea change,’ Steele exclaimed. ‘A couple of days ago you were kissing his arse. Today, he’s “that man”. He’s denied you, hasn’t he?’ He glanced at Stallings. ‘That’s right, Becky, isn’t it? You interviewed Boras and he told you that if Barker had bribed anyone he had done it on his own initiative, and expressly against his orders.’

‘No,’ she replied. ‘We haven’t. I was going to, but I had orders to leave him alone.’

‘Orders? From whom?’

‘Upstairs; to be exact, from Deputy Assistant Commissioner Davies, the director of operations in the Specialist Crime directorate. He’s overseeing this operation and he set the parameters. He told me that Boras was off limits.’

‘Jesus!’ Steele was incredulous. ‘You’re saying that he’s behind the bribing of a public official and you can’t touch him? I know he’s a business leader and all that but. .’ His eyes flashed along the table and locked on to Rhonda Weiss. ‘Your lot are pulling the strings here, aren’t they? That’s why you’re here. You’re not interested in some middle-ranking twerp who sold information for money. It goes deeper than that.’

‘I can’t comment on that,’ the woman replied, quietly.

‘Well, I can.’ Keith Barker’s voice was laden with bitterness. ‘Through his company, Davor Boras is a major supporter of the Labour Party. Through his charitable foundation, he backs the Tories. He helps both of them, plays one off against the other. Some of the things he’s asked me to do, people he’s asked me to check up on, had nothing to do with business.’

‘And yet you’ve been fired, Keith, for doing his dirty work. You might as well tell me: we could find a journalist in around two seconds who’d call the Continental IT press office and confirm it.’

‘Yes,’ said Lancelot Hamilton. ‘Formal notice of dismissal was delivered to my client’s home late last night.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘Redundancy, I believe.’

‘That was quick off the mark, considering your client hasn’t been charged yet.’

‘What were the severance terms?’ Ray Wilding asked quietly.

‘That information’s privileged.’

The sergeant glared at the lawyer. ‘Do you think I’m an idiot? It’s fuck-all privileged. You’ve just said that it was delivered from Boras to your client’s home, not to your office, and not through you. The Met have already searched the place; they have an existing warrant so they can go back any time and pick the document up.’

‘Two years’ salary, in lieu of notice,’ Hamilton muttered.

‘Louder, please, for the tape.’

He repeated the terms of Barker’s sacking.

‘What’s your annual salary, Keith?’ asked Steele.

‘My business.’

‘Who paid you? Boras personally, or Continental IT? If it’s the latter we can find out easily.’

‘Okay! Two hundred and fifty thousand.’

The inspector whistled. ‘So you’ve pocketed half a million. And I bet a good chunk of it goes into your pension fund to minimise tax. If that’s the going rate for gross misconduct, I’m strongly tempted. .’ He grinned and broke off. ‘No, I’d better not say that with the tape running.’

Barker shot him a half-smile. ‘Perhaps not.’

‘Where does that take us?’ Steele went on. ‘You’ve been bought off. Clearly, you can’t work for Boras any longer, not after this. You might even have to do a year or so inside, unless the Home Office leans on the Crown Prosecution Service too, but it’ll be worth it to you, won’t it? I can fire questions at you all day and you’ll keep your mouth shut.’

‘That’s the way it is,’ the man said cheerfully. ‘And it serves you bastards right, for implying to the press that I’m somehow mixed up in these murders.’

‘Hey, Mr McGuire implied no such thing. All he said was “no comment”. He let you off lightly. Of course your arrest was linked to our investigation. You were trying to trace our prime suspect, on behalf of your boss. .’ Barker made to interrupt, but Steele cut him off. ‘Save it, we’ll just take that as read. The follow-up question is, what would have happened if you’d found him? After Boras’s statement at our press briefing on Thursday, we have grounds for thinking that his life would have been in danger.’

‘Why were you trying to trace him?’ Ray Wilding asked. His intervention seemed spur-of-the-moment, but he and Steele had conducted many interviews together.

‘You’re wasting your time too.’ Barker looked back at the inspector. ‘Look, can we please wrap this up? Mr Hamilton has secured an agreement that I be bailed after this interview and I really would like to catch some of the play at Lord’s.’

‘Yes,’ said Steele, pleasantly. ‘I can imagine; it’s a nice day for it. I have to get back to my wife too, Becky and Ray are going for lunch and I’m sure that Rhonda has to fit in Sainsbury’s before she reports back to her bosses that you haven’t said anything that would land any of them in trouble.’

He started to rise, then seemed to change his mind. ‘But, Keith,’ he murmured, ‘while you’re in the Tavern stand watching Middlesex whack it around, there’s something you might want to think about. That funny Jack Frost bank account of yours, the one the Met uncovered when they searched your place. .’

‘Winnings on the horses, old boy.’

Steele looked at Stallings and laughed out loud. ‘Of course. And I’m sure you’ve still got the betting slips. You’d better have them.’ He paused, for long enough to allow the first crack to appear in Barker’s mask of control. ‘You’ve moved a total of ninety thousand pounds through your personal account into old Jack Frost over the last three years. I’m a betting man too, Keith, and I’ll wager that you haven’t paid a penny in tax on any of it.

‘So, while you’re slurping your Greene King, or whatever it is you drink out in St John’s Wood, think of the line that the Inland Revenue takes with people who evade thirty-six grand’s worth of tax, and the national insurance as well. I’m afraid that, unless you can account for all that cash, the tax man will nail you, and there will be nothing that Boras’s friends in dark places will be able to do about it. There’ll be personal humiliation and jail time, there’ll be a huge fine, and there will be the back tax due, all liable to interest at a rate that will make you cry.

‘But how will the taxman find out about it, you ask me? How? Because we will fucking tell him, that’s how. Becky and I will dump your bank statements right down his insatiable, rapacious maw.’ He grinned and rose quickly to his feet. ‘Enjoy the cricket, pal. I hope you haven’t bought any Test-match tickets for the next few years, though. I don’t imagine they have satellite television in the nick either. Personally, I think it’s a disgrace that cricket was taken off the terrestrial channels.’ Steele reached across and switched off the recorder. ‘Interview terminated,’ he said.

He was less than halfway to the door when Barker called after him: ‘You’ve made your point, Mr Steele. Please come back.’

The smile had gone from the inspector’s face by the time he turned around. ‘Will it be worth my while?’ he asked.

‘I’ll answer your questions, if that’s what you mean.’ He looked along the table. ‘But I would feel more comfortable if it was just you and me.’

Steele shook his head. ‘I can’t do that, Keith, I’m afraid; this has to be formal. But I can ask Ms Weiss to leave if that would make you feel better.’

‘It would.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ the Home Office woman protested.

‘You’re going out of this room, now,’ said Becky Stallings, firmly. ‘Your presence here is no longer in the best interests of the Scottish investigation.’

‘I’ll call my section head.’

‘You can call the Home Secretary, as far as I’m concerned, but from outside this building.’ She looked at Wilding. ‘Ray, would you do me a favour and take Ms Weiss downstairs to the front office? Tell the staff there to make sure that she leaves.’

‘My pleasure, Becky.’ He beckoned to the woman. ‘Come on, Miss, do as she says.’

‘I want my memo stick,’ she snapped. Steele took the device from his pocket and handed it to his sergeant. He and Stallings watched as the pair left the room.

‘I’d like to reach an understanding,’ Lancelot Hamilton announced, ‘that the interview that is about to take place will deal purely with the matters under investigation in Edinburgh.’

‘That doesn’t work either,’ Steele told him. ‘We’ve got your client, sir; he knows it and you do too. If we throw him to the Revenue it’ll all get very sticky for him. My only interest is in the murders, and the recording of this discussion will be going back north with me. If anything comes up that crosses over into the other matter, it’s for Inspector Stallings to handle that as she thinks fit.’

‘That’s all right, Lance,’ Barker told the solicitor. ‘Let’s proceed.’

‘If you’re ready,’ said Steele. He switched on the recorder once more and repeated the location and list of participants. ‘Interview resuming with DI Steele questioning Mr Barker. Sir, did you cause enquiries to be made of the passport service, seeking information about a man named Dominic Padstow?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘On whose instructions?’

‘Those of my employer, Mr Davor Boras.’

‘How were those instructions conveyed?’

‘In a conversation in Mr Boras’s suite in the Caledonian Hotel, Edinburgh.’

‘Was anyone else present?’

‘No. Mrs Boras and Miss Britto, her secretary, had gone to the funeral director’s office to make arrangements for Zrinka.’

‘Arrangements?’

‘To choose a coffin and make sure that she was properly. .’

‘I understand.’

‘When did you receive your instructions from Mr Boras?’

‘On Thursday afternoon, at approximately four p.m. That was not long before Mrs Boras and Miss Britto returned, and shortly before we left for the airport to return to London.’

‘You’re sure about that timing?’ asked Steele, as Wilding re-entered the room and took his seat at the table

‘Certain.’

‘Are you aware that Mr Padstow’s name and image were not released to the press until late on Thursday evening?’

‘I am now.’

‘You were also present at a discussion in the same place that morning, when Detective Chief Superintendent Mario McGuire and I interviewed Mr and Mrs Boras.’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘Do you recall Mr Padstow’s name being mentioned at that time?’

‘Yes, I do, by Mrs Boras. She said that was the name of a man who had lived with Zrinka for a while, in Edinburgh.’

‘Had you ever heard the name before?’

‘No.’

‘To the best of your knowledge, had Mr Boras?’

‘No, I don’t believe he had. When we returned to the hotel, after the press briefing with Mr McGuire, he asked me if I had any idea about this man before, and if I knew anything about him. I told him that I hadn’t, and that I didn’t. He looked puzzled, concerned.’

‘When he gave you your orders, did Mr Boras tell you why he wanted to trace Mr Padstow?’

‘No, all he told me was that I should trace him as quickly as possible and obtain a photograph of him.’

‘Did he tell you how to go about this?’

‘Yes he did. He told me to contact Patrick Dailey, in the Home Office, and ask him to use his influence to obtain the necessary information and photograph from the passport agency.’

‘For the record,’ said Steele, ‘Mr Dailey tried to comply with this request, but was apprehended. Those circumstances are under investigation elsewhere and are not directly relevant to our enquiries. So, Mr Barker, you obeyed your boss’s instructions, without asking questions.’

‘You don’t question Davor Boras. You may advise him professionally, but ultimately, if you work for him, you do what he tells you, and that’s an end of it.’

‘Did you ask yourself any questions? Did you wonder why he might want to trace this man?’

‘I did.’

‘What was your conclusion?’

‘The obvious one: that Mr Boras wanted to find out for himself whether Padstow knew anything about Zrinka’s death.’

‘With respect, Keith, that isn’t obvious to me. My first assumption would have been that he intended to use his contacts to help the police investigation.’

‘Then you didn’t know Boras. He is not a sharing type. Why do you think his son left him to set up his own business, in competition with his father, and why are they now bitterly estranged? I’ll tell you, because that much I do know. Davor simply assumed that his son would join him in Continental IT, and for a while that might have happened. Only Dražen asked his father to draw him a career path, putting a rough date on when he would retire and hand over control of the business. Davor told him that would never happen until God made it so. In other words, as long as he was alive, Dražen would always be subordinate to him.’

‘How do you come to know this?’

’Because Dražen told me. I met him once after he struck out on his own, and I asked him why he had done it. He came right out with it, chapter and verse.’

‘Did it surprise you, what he told you?’

’Not when I thought about it. Dražen and Zrinka were very much alike, from what I knew of them. Neither was prepared to stand in anyone’s shadow for ever. He had plans for Zrinka too: he wanted her to run both of his art galleries; her brother told me that as well. She managed to deflect him, though. She persuaded him that nobody in the art world would respect her until she had established herself. She was supposed to settle in Edinburgh not just to paint but to find work in a national gallery, and gain experience there. Once she got up there, she forgot about that side of it, conveniently.’

‘So back to Padstow: you’re saying that Boras wanted to get to him himself, to get information out of him. How would he have done that?’

‘I do not know, and I do not care to speculate.’

‘Would he have used physical persuasion?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you believe him capable of it?’

Barker glanced at the recorder, then back at Steele. ‘I believe that if he has succeeded in finding Padstow before you, and if he is convinced, as you seem to be, that he murdered Zrinka, then you have a better chance of finding Lord Lucan than of catching up with the bastard. Boras won’t leave a single trace of him.’

‘Just as well that the Home Office woman didn’t hear that,’ Stallings murmured.

‘Maybe she should have,’ Steele replied quietly, his head turned away from the recorder. ‘Maybe she knows things about him that could point us in the right direction.’

‘Want me to go and get her back?’ Wilding whispered.

‘Except,’ said Barker, startling them all, ‘that there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that.’ They turned back towards him. ‘Now I’ve seen Padstow’s image, I know why Boras wanted me to find him. I should have worked it out for myself straight away, but I didn’t.’

‘Go on,’ said Steele.

‘Almost three years ago now,’ said the prisoner, ‘not all that long after I went to work for Boras, I became aware that someone was asking questions about us, about the business, about Boras himself, about me and what I had been recruited to do for him. Word filtered back to me, from employees, from suppliers and from former associates of mine.

‘I had no idea who the man was, but I knew that he was hostile, as such people almost invariably are. I made that assumption because no approaches were ever made to me, to any of my subordinates in the press office or in the consultancies that we use. At that point in time, I didn’t want to go to Boras, as I knew him well enough by that time to understand that you didn’t bring him suspicions, you brought him facts. So I began to seek the man actively, and to build up a dossier on what he was up to. I intended to trace him myself, but I never did. He was too good, too thorough. Finally, I decided that he was probably an industrial spy, hired by one of our smaller European rivals or, more likely, by an American outfit. That I had to take to the boss.’

‘How did he react, when you didn’t bring him hard facts?’

‘To my surprise, he was fine. He thanked me and he told me to leave it with him. A week later, he called me into his office. I should tell you that he never discusses anything sensitive outside his room at Continental; he has the place swept every day for listening devices. He showed me a folder and said, “That’s our man.” It contained photographs and a complete biography of a man called Daniel Ballester. He was a journalist, that sort of spy.’

‘Where did the information come from?’

‘He told me he’d hired a private security firm: its name was Aeron, according to the heading on the report I saw.’

‘Did he say whether he had acted on it?’

‘I asked him if he wanted me to do that, but he told me that the Aeron people had been instructed to talk to him, tell him that we knew who he was and to stop being bloody silly. That alarmed me a little; I asked if they would do anything physical, but Boras just laughed, a rarity for him, and said that he wasn’t worth it.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘Yes, I did. As it happened, Ballester was all over the press himself just a little later, after coming spectacularly unstuck by doing a piece on Diana, on the basis of bogus evidence that he fell for.’

‘Then three years on, you find out he had moved on from that setback to get onside with Zrinka.’

Barker nodded. ‘As soon as I saw the image you released, I knew who he was.’

‘When did you see it?’

‘In The Times, yesterday morning.’

‘What did you do?’

‘The obvious. I took the newspaper straight into Boras’s office, but he’d already seen it. I said to him, “You know who this is, don’t you?” and he nodded. I said that Aeron obviously hadn’t been persuasive enough. He replied, “Maybe they’ll be more efficient this time.” I warned him not to cross the police, but he told me not to worry. Then he took out the folder he’d shown me three years ago and shredded it before my eyes.’

‘Did he say any more than that?’

‘Yes, he did. Frankly, I was shitting myself by this time. I asked him point-blank what orders he had given the people at Aeron. He promised me that they had instructions to trace Ballester and report back to him, no more than that. When they did, he would hand everything over to you.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘I honestly can’t say. But if Aeron are the sort of people who are prepared to go all the way, my guess is that either the man will disappear and they’ll report failure or that he’ll have some sort of an accident.’

‘How did your discussion end?’

‘Effectively, Davor fired me. He said that he felt I was becoming too anxious about events to continue to perform on his behalf in the City, and that he needed to make a change. He told me what my severance terms would be and promised me another half-million in an offshore account in two years if I stuck to the confidentiality agreement that he would ask me to sign. I accepted dismissal, since that was in my financial interest, and we agreed that I would leave that afternoon.’ He smiled weakly at the three detectives. ‘I had my fucking jacket on when Inspector Stallings arrived to arrest me.’

Steele leaned back in his chair. ‘That’s the whole story?’

‘The part that concerns me.’

‘Okay, Keith.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Interview terminated at twelve fifty-seven.’ He switched off the recorder, removed the disks, pocketed one and handed the other to Hamilton. ‘You can negotiate the terms of your client’s bail now,’ he told the lawyer.

‘I’m not sure I want to be bailed,’ Barker murmured.

‘Don’t worry,’ Stallings told him. ‘We’ll look after you. If Boras does something silly, Scotland may need you as a witness.’

‘Shit!’

‘Hopefully, we’ll put a lid on it before then,’ said Steele. ‘Our next port of call has to be Aeron Security. It’s time they were told that they ain’t a private police force.’