Death's Door

Sixty-five

The chief constable, flanked by the stone-faced, uniformed figures of Bob Skinner and Mario McGuire, made the formal announcement to a respectfully hushed gathering. The journalists knew from the English force that an officer had gone down in an incident in Northumberland the day before, but no word of his identity had leaked, and so when Sir James Proud told them that Detective Inspector Steven Stuart Steele had been killed in the line of duty, there were several gasps of undisguised horror from Edinburgh men and women who had known him well.

He paused, then added that Detective Inspector Steele had gone to the scene with Northumbrian colleagues to arrest a man named Daniel Ballester, also known as Dominic Padstow, wanted for questioning in connection with several recent homicides in the Edinburgh area, and that he had been found dead there.

He closed by extending condolences to DI Steele’s widow, Chief Superintendent Margaret Rose, and to the other members of his family, then sat back to allow his colleagues to take questions.

They came thick and fast, and were answered clearly, and as fully as legally possible, by Skinner and McGuire. Stevie Steele was thirty-four years old when he died, the victim, it appeared, of a trap set by Daniel Ballester before he committed suicide.

Yes, Ballester had left a note, on his laptop computer, confessing unequivocally to the four murders, and to rigging the grenade that had killed Steele. This had been given added authority by the discovery that morning of a weapon, a silenced pistol, and a quantity of soft-nosed bullets, hidden in a shed in the garden of Hathaway House. Other items had been found, including Stacey Gavin’s sketch pad, three paintings by Zrinka Boras, and a brassiere that they believed had belonged to Amy Noone.

‘What sort of grenade was it?’ a man from the Daily Telegraph asked.

‘We’re told by munitions experts,’ Skinner replied, ‘that it was probably an Austrian-made fragmentation grenade, used by NATO and other military customers around the world, absolutely lethal at close range.’

‘How was it triggered?’

‘It was fixed to the ceiling. The pin was pulled by a wire attached to the inside door handle and led to the weapon through two eyelets. From the accounts of officers at the scene, it exploded within two or three seconds of Stevie stepping into the kitchen. He died immediately.’

‘How easy would it have been for Ballester to get hold of one of these things?’

‘Probably as easy as it was for him to get hold of a precision Sig Sauer handgun, and ammunition that’s illegal in most countries. Regrettably, there have been so many armed conflicts in recent years that items like these are now falling into the wrong hands all too easily. Ballester was a journalist, with a record of going undercover. Who knows what contacts he had? Maybe, when we have a chance to go through his computer files, they’ll lead us to his supplier, but then again. .’

‘Are you saying that we need tighter firearms control?’ the Guardian’s Scotland reporter asked.

‘Firearms control is already very tight,’ the DCC replied. ‘Unfortunately there’s a snag. Fine, we made handguns illegal ten years ago, but criminals do not obey the law. All the legislation in the world isn’t going to change that.’ He glanced at the journalist. ‘I’m sorry, Peter; I’m pontificating. My answer is a simple no.’

‘Do you and the First Minister disagree about that?’

‘The First Minister and I disagree about a number of matters; happily we agree about many more. And, ladies and gentlemen, that’s the last time I will ever discuss her on this or any other platform, apart from telling you that she’s as gutted by this as the rest of us. Now, is there one last question?’

Grace Pretty raised her hand. ‘What about the million-pound reward that Mr Boras offered last week?’

‘I’m glad you asked that, Grace,’ McGuire replied. ‘The three of us have been discussing that, and we’re all agreed that it would be an excellent idea for Mr Boras to donate that money to the Police Dependants’ Trust. We hope he shares that view.’ There had been no such discussion, but the chief constable and his deputy nodded in confirmation.

‘A nice closer, Mario,’ Skinner murmured, as the three police officers made their way out of the briefing room. ‘Stevie would have loved it. Let’s see how the man wriggles out of that.’