Death's Door

Seventy-nine

‘You know,’ said Skinner, ‘I thought Barnes would have been tougher than that.’

‘Me too,’ McGuire agreed. ‘But I have to confess you scared me a wee bit, so Christ knows what he must have felt.’

‘Maybe we’re getting too good at it.’

‘Maybe, but I’d like to think that there’s still room for improvement when we get our hands on Dražen. He’ll be a harder nut than his namesake, I’m sure of that.’ The head of CID’s eyes narrowed. ‘I wish we could go in there first.’

‘So do I, but that was never on. Amanda helped us as far as she could, and probably further, by having her people snatch Barnes for us. But when it comes to making a proper arrest, we’ve got no locus down here. We had to bring the Met in on it.’ He broke off as a tall figure came towards them, down the corridor in which they stood.

‘Gentlemen, we’re ready upstairs,’ said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Davies, head of Specialist Crime operations in the Met. He wore the air of a man who was doing something that had been forced upon him and did not like it.

‘I hope to God you’re right about this. Right or wrong, I’m going to catch Foreign Office flak for this. That damn woman Weiss has been bending my ear since last Saturday when your man threw her out of an interview.’

‘I thought she was Home Office,’ Skinner remarked.

‘That’s what I allowed Becky Stallings to believe.’

‘Christ,’ the Scot gasped, ‘you lie to your own officers.’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

’I would. Now don’t lie to me. I want Dražen alive, to stand trial; if you’re under orders from anybody to put a bullet in him to keep him quiet you’d better tell me now.’

‘I’m not, I assure you.’

‘Then make fucking sure that nobody does.’

‘My men will meet force with force.’

McGuire took a twenty-pound note from his breast pocket and held it up. ‘This says they won’t face any. Dražen Boras is anything but stupid: he’s not going to keep firearms in a luxury penthouse that’s pissing distance away from Chelsea Bridge. You could ring the fucking doorbell and he’d answer it and invite you in, yet you’ve got a squad of commandos up there. God bless Harry Stanley, may he rest in peace.’

The taunt, about the man shot dead by armed officers while carrying nothing more lethal than a table leg, struck home hard. Davies turned on his heel and stalked off.

‘You shouldn’t have said that, you know,’ Skinner murmured. ‘That’s the sort of guy that might apply for Jimmy’s job.’

‘The day he gets it, I’m going into the family business with Paula.’

‘He’ll have to get past me first.’

McGuire stared at him, but said nothing, as the sound of indistinct shouts drifted down from the floor above. They waited for ten minutes until, finally, Davies reappeared. ‘You can come up now,’ he said coldly.

They followed him, up one floor and through the open door that led into Dražen Boras’s penthouse. As with his father’s office, the living-room wall was made almost entirely of glass, framing Chelsea Bridge like an enormous picture postcard.

The furniture was 1960s retro, the kind that had once made Paula Viareggio stick two fingers down her throat when Mario had suggested buying a piece. Slowly, a vast white egg-shaped chair began to turn towards them on its base. Settled deep into it, and smiling like a demon, was Davor Boras.

‘I regret,’ he said, ‘that my son is not here to receive you. Nor will he be for quite some time, not until these silly allegations against him are shown to be unprovable and the Attorney General has exonerated him. In the process, you will, of course, be excoriated.’ He leaned on the last word as if he was proud of it.

McGuire took the chauffeur’s statement from his pocket, and waved it in the air. ‘The other David Barnes doesn’t agree with you.’

‘Come, come, Chief Superintendent,’ the millionaire laughed, ‘would you care to explain how that was obtained? Even now, Mr Barnes is recovering his courage.’

Skinner ignored him and turned to Davies. ‘I want this place searched under your warrant; look for passports. I bet you’ll find two: a guy like this, he’ll have had a third identity ready, in case of emergencies. Or. . What’s the range of an Embraer jet? Transatlantic, you said, Mario? He’s gone west, hasn’t he, Davor? And when he lands he’ll be welcomed in Virginia.’

From the depths of the chair, Boras winked at him.

Skinner turned on his heel and walked out of the room, through the apartment until he found the master bedroom. He went into Dražen’s en-suite bathroom and started to open drawers. In the third, he found a Philishave electric razor. He flicked it open, and saw that the chamber below the blades was full of beard residue. Very carefully, he closed it again, and returned to the huge, curved living room.

Boras was still in the chair, watching the proceedings with evident amusement. He turned as the DCC re-entered and held up the shaver.

‘Is this your son’s?’

‘Of course. A gift from me, in fact; top of the range, best in the world. He has another in his travel kit.’

‘I’ll borrow it for a while. Mr Davies, have it bagged it for me, please. That’s okay with you, Davor, isn’t it?’

Boras’s smile, and his eyes, narrowed just a little, but he nodded, and replied, ‘Of course.’

Skinner and McGuire stayed silent until they were clear of the building, and half-way across Chelsea Bridge. Finally, the chief superintendent exploded: ‘The shaver: Dražen’s DNA?’ he exclaimed.

‘Chock full of it, and his father’s witness to the fact.’

‘Yes! We’ve got the sod.’

‘If the lab does the business.’

‘Too bad about that confession, though.’

‘Yeah,’ Skinner grunted. ‘I suspect that Boras noticed that Barnes was absent and, in the circumstances, put the screw on him when he got back. “Courage,” he said; money can buy that too. Anyway, that statement was useless in court: the eedjit was too scared to notice that he’d never been formally cautioned.’

The head of CID stopped in his tracks. ‘Earlier on,’ he asked, ‘did I see you log Barnes’s phone number into your mobile, before you shredded Adrian’s note?’

‘I’m afraid so,’ said Skinner, cheerfully, ‘and his address too. Wicked, eh?’

‘Can I borrow it?’

‘Sure.’ He took the cell phone from his pocket and handed it over.

McGuire opened it, found the number, and pressed the green button. ‘Is that Mrs Barnes?’ Skinner heard him say, as they resumed their walk across the bridge. ‘This is a friend, one of yours, not your husband’s: there’s some stuff about him that you should know.’